There is this advantage in getting back to a wood-fire on the hearth,
that you return to a kind of simplicity; you can scarcely imagine any
one being stiffly conventional in front of it. It thaws out formality,
and puts the company who sit around it into easy attitudes of mind and
body,--lounging attitudes,--Herbert said.
And this brought up the subject of culture in America, especially as to
manner. The backlog period having passed, we are beginning to have in
society people of the cultured manner, as it is called, or polished
bearing, in which the polish is the most noticeable thing about the man.
Not the courtliness, the easy simplicity of the old-school gentleman, in
whose presence the milkmaid was as much at her ease as the countess,
but something far finer than this. These are the people of unruffled
demeanor, who never forget it for a moment, and never let you forget it.
Their presence is a constant rebuke to society. They are never "jolly;"
their laugh is never anything more than a well-bred smile; they
are never betrayed into any enthusiasm. Enthusiasm is a sign of
inexperience, of ignorance, of want of culture. They never lose
themselves in any cause; they never heartily praise any man or woman
or book; they are superior to all tides of feeling and all outbursts
of passion. They are not even shocked at vulgarity. They are simply
indifferent. They are calm, visibly calm, painfully calm; and it is
not the eternal, majestic calmness of the Sphinx either, but a rigid,
self-conscious repression. You would like to put a bent pin in their
chair when they are about calmly to sit down.
A sitting hen on her nest is calm, but hopeful; she has faith that her
eggs are not china. These people appear to be sitting on china eggs.
Perfect culture has refined all blood, warmth, flavor, out of them. We
admire them without envy. They are too beautiful in their manners to be
either prigs or snobs. They are at once our models and our despair. They
are properly careful of themselves as models, for they know that if they
should break, society would become a scene of mere animal confusion.
MANDEVILLE. I think that the best-bred people in the world are the
English.
THE YOUNG LADY. You mean at home.
MANDEVILLE. That's where I saw them. There is no nonsense about a
cultivated English man or woman. They express themselves sturdily and
naturally, and with no subservience to the opinions of others. There's a
sort of hearty sincerity about them that I like. Ages of culture on the
island have gone deeper than the surface, and they have simpler and
more natural manners than we. There is something good in the full, round
tones of their voices.
HERBERT. Did you ever get into a diligence with a growling English-man
who had n't secured the place he wanted?
[Mandeville once spent a week in London, riding about on the tops of
omnibuses.]
THE MISTRESS. Did you ever see an English exquisite at the San Carlo,
and hear him cry "Bwavo"?
MANDEVILLE. At any rate, he acted out his nature, and was n't afraid to.
THE FIRE-TENDER. I think Mandeville is right, for once. The men of the
best culture in England, in the middle and higher social classes,
are what you would call good fellows,--easy and simple in manner,
enthusiastic on occasion, and decidedly not cultivated into the smooth
calmness of indifference which some Americans seem to regard as the sine
qua non of good breeding. Their position is so assured that they do not
need that lacquer of calmness of which we were speaking.
THE YOUNG LADY. Which is different from the manner acquired by those who
live a great deal in American hotels?
THE MISTRESS. Or the Washington manner?
HERBERT. The last two are the same.
THE FIRE-TENDER. Not exactly. You think you can always tell if a man
has learned his society carriage of a dancing-master. Well, you cannot
always tell by a person's manner whether he is a habitui of hotels or
of Washington. But these are distinct from the perfect polish and
politeness of indifferentism.