hymn writing. _Hark, Hark, My Soul!_ and _There’s a Wideness in God’s
Mercy_ are known everywhere. No martial song was ever more inspiring
than _Faith of Our Fathers_, with its thrilling second stanza. I often
wonder when people sing that stanza in church, sing it mechanically
with their thoughts elsewhere, what would happen if they took it
literally:
Our fathers, chained in prisons dark,
Were still in heart and conscience free;
And blest would be their children’s fate,
If they, like them, should die for Thee.
Faith of our fathers, holy faith,
We will be true to Thee till death.
One of the greatest of all hymns, _Nearer, My God, to Thee_, was
written by Sarah Flower, a friend of the young poet Robert Browning.
The first time it was ever heard in public was when Sarah and Eliza
Flower sang it as a duet in the Rev. Mr. Fox’s church. Little did those
sisters guess that they had added to the Christian church all over the
world an imperishable song.
Scores of other hymns might be mentioned, hymns that are exalted and
passionate in feeling and aspiration and nobly poetic in expression.
It is a pity that we so seldom hear good congregational singing.
People nowadays let others do their singing for them, as well as their
praying. If one will look at the faces of an audience in church and
notice that although their mouths are open no sound emerges, one will
be reminded of a cat on the back doorstep on a winter morning. You look
at the cat and the animal opens its mouth as if to mew, but has not
sufficient energy to bring the articulate mew to the surface--just an
expression of vague discomfort. So during the singing of hymns I see
people with no animation in their faces and with open, silent mouths,
like the dry mew of the cat.
XXXVIII
OLD-FASHIONED SNOBS
I suppose there never was a time in the history of human society
without snobs--that is, without young men of fashion who wished to be
thought prominent members of the smart set. The slang of various epochs
has called them macaronies, dandies, dudes, toffs, swells--but under
various appellations the creature is the same, with the same habits.
There are certain persons who cultivate superficial elegancies and are
never caught in an informal attitude or off their guard. Lowell said
that if N. P. Willis had lived in the Garden of Eden he would have
attracted attention by the way he wore his skin.
About three centuries ago, in the spacious times of Queen Elizabeth, as
we learn from the plays of Shakespeare and of his contemporaries, and
from a satirical guide-book written by Thomas Dekker, the typical young
snob in London got through an average day in the following manner:
He rose at noon. Late rising has always been an essential feature of
snobbery; because if one gets up early, it proves that one has to earn
one’s living, and to support oneself is incompatible with swelldom.
If any one thinks that the idea of Walter Camp’s setting-up exercise
is new, let me remind him that the Elizabethan dandy, invariably
after rising, took a whole series of gymnastic exercises while stark
naked. The object of this was twofold: he had to keep in fair physical
condition, and these exercises helped to take out of his system the
invariable “hangover.”
He then dressed with the utmost care, and here we must remember an
essential difference between the mental attitude of Elizabethans and
that of young men of today. The late Professor Moulton said that the
chief characteristic of our age was anticonspicuousness. And this is
quite true. Women wear short skirts not to attract attention, but to
avoid it. We follow fashions to escape notoriety. But in Elizabethan
times exactly the contrary was true.
The most democratic garment in the world today is men’s evening dress.
After six o’clock, in any locality in the so-called civilised world, a
man is in style with the black dinner jacket or swallow-tail. Time and
again the tailors have fought this, doing their best to persuade men to
wear something in colour, or at all events something more individual.
But the men thus far have succeeded in preserving economical uniformity.
Now in Elizabethan times the garments of men were as gorgeous as the
feathers of male birds. A group of men talking together was a “riot of
colour.” A man wore soft leather boots, narrow at the ankle, and with
immense, colored flaring tops. His knee breeches were tight-fitting
silk or satin. His jacket was a slashed doublet, brilliant in colour;
at the neck was an enormous white ruff, which must have kept the
laundries busy; imagine eating soup over that ruff! Over the doublet he
wore a short velvet cloak, with a high collar. The hat was as elaborate
in design as the old style woman’s Easter bonnet, very broad, with an
audacious feather. And, of course, he invariably carried a sword, with
jewelled hilt.
In this array our young swell walked at ease in the centre aisle of
St. Paul’s Cathedral, the favourite place for fashionable display. His
tailor sometimes accompanied him like a detective and, in response to
a signal, took notes of some new and particularly splendid costume.
The young man would salute noblemen and aristocrats in a loud voice,
calling them, if he dared, by their first name, so as to give the
impression of intimacy; for it was essential then, as now, to be with
the “right crowd.” In stentorian tones he would make an appointment for
a two o’clock luncheon at an expensive eating house. After luncheon,
the toothpick was prominently displayed while on promenade.
In contrast to the modern soldier, who never speaks of his war
experiences, the young Elizabethan, if he had fought in the Low
Countries or elsewhere, bragged noisily about it in all public places.
If he were a poet, he behaved like a tenth-rate poet in Paris today. He
entered a restaurant with a solemn, preoccupied air, and, in taking his
glove from his pocket, purposely let fall a manuscript. Some one would
pick it up and he would remark that it was only a poem he had dashed
off an hour ago; but he would manage the conversation so that he would
be asked to read it aloud.
Tobacco was “coming in” then, and every young swell must be able to
smoke in public without becoming sick. They had their favourite pipes
and elaborate silver pouches; they talked about the different brands of
tobacco like a professional, and it was a great accomplishment to blow
rings.
All public theatrical performances were in the afternoon. The swell
always entered late, attracting as much attention as possible, and
took a seat on the stage, in full view of the audience. In the midst of
a tragedy, he laughed aloud, to show his immunity to sentiment; at a
funny play he scowled and sometimes noisily left the theatre, clanking
his spurs, and saluting acquaintances as he passed out. Sometimes he
would take a rush from the stage floor and playfully tickle the ear of
one of the actors.
After the play, he went to the tavern, where it was important to call
the waiters by their first names, showing that he was a regular patron;
and when the bill was presented he must never look at the items or add
them up, which might show that he was a family man, or familiar with
current prices; no, he must glance carelessly at the total, and pay
with a big tip.
Then in the night he went to his lodgings. One must remember there were
no paved streets in London and no sidewalks and no lights; if the young
gentleman could afford it, he had a linkboy, carrying a torch, precede
him, for in Dryden’s later phrase, the real swell “sailed behind his
link.” The boy was properly tipped, so that if he met strangers, he
would call out, “My lord, step this way.” Then others gave him place,
and the officers of the law respected his intoxicated condition. And so
to bed.
XXXIX
A FAIR CITY
Almost every writer and thinker has the city of his dreams, his Utopia.
In recent years the novelists W. H. Hudson, H. G. Wells and Alfred
Ollivant have each published a book setting forth a conception of the
ideal community. It is not my purpose to add another Utopia but rather
to call attention to an actual city, which, while it is imperfect like
everything else in this motley world, has nevertheless many advantages
that might well be imitated by American cities. I refer to Munich,
Germany.
Munich is my favourite European town. I had rather live in the United
States of America than in any other country; partly because I was born
here, partly because I like the country anyway, but if I could not live
in the United States I had rather live in Munich than in any other city
in the world.
Munich is nearly as large as Boston and yet as quiet as a country
village. Where the people are I don’t know, but those who are familiar
with Boylston and Tremont Streets in Boston will see nothing like
that in Munich. The streets are calm, the sidewalks uncrowded, the
highway uncongested by traffic; there is no Great White Way; there
are no flaring lights; there is no hurly-burly. You can hear your own
footsteps. An American who arrived at Munich at nine o’clock in the
evening, observing the silence of the streets, asked his taxi driver to
take him somewhere. The driver said, “Isn’t that rather indefinite?”
“You know what I mean--take me where there is a lot of noise and a
lot of people.” The driver answered, “What you want is the railway
station.” And indeed that is the only place in Munich that fulfills
those requirements.
There is everything in Munich to make a cultivated foreigner happy,
cheerful and content with a long stay. I have never seen any town that
has so much to give to the visitor. In the first place, everything
that one wants to see is within easy walking distance. If one rooms
in a boarding house on a side street off the Ludwig Strasse, one can
walk in a few moments to the university, to the public library, to the
concert halls, to the State Opera House, to the State Theatre, to the
Play House, to the art galleries; and the English Garden, an enormous
tract of land, is in the centre of the town and close to all of these
other delectable places. In the English Garden in summer one may take
long walks or one may sit down and hear music as one sips coffee or
beer. In the winter one may skate on the frozen lake. Those who are
fond of winter sports have the mountains close at hand. It is estimated
that on some Sunday mornings in winter 100,000 people take an early
train to the mountains for skiing and other amusements. In the summer
the environs of Munich are beautiful. There is a series of lakes where
one may take excursions in a little steamer or in a rowboat; where one
may visit famous old castles and see the treasures with which they are
filled.
If one is fond of tennis, there are three or four tennis courts in the
heart of the city where one may become a visiting member at a nominal
fee and find plenty of agreeable companions. The golf links are ten
minutes by trolley, and there again the entrance fee is nominal. The
only objection that I have to the golf links is that the magnificent
mountains are so near that one is constantly tempted to lift up one’s
eyes to the hills, and, however valuable it may be for one’s spiritual
development, it is fatal to one’s efficiency in golf.
Every night in Munich there is something interesting to hear at the
opera, at the theatre or at the concert hall. Every morning there is
published a little paper devoted exclusively to theatrical and musical
affairs. This paper gives every event that will take place in the city
in the afternoon and evening, with the exact time of beginning, the
exact time of closing and a complete list of the actors, singers and
performers.
One of the chief attractions of the theatre and the operas in Munich
is the fact that they begin early. The opera begins at six o’clock and
is always over before ten, except in the case of a very long opera.
The plays begin at seven-thirty and in nearly every instance are
over at nine-thirty. In other words, the opera and theatres are run
not for the benefit of members of a leisure class who do not have to
get up the next morning but for the ordinary citizen and his family
who are obliged to rise early and go to work. In New York, in Paris
and in London theatre-going and opera-going are in the nature of a
dissipation. The theatres in Paris do not close until midnight, and
in New York and London one does not usually get to one’s domicile
before that. The result is that one is exhausted, and, according to
Kipling, “There is nothing certain but the morning head.” To go to
the theatre or opera four nights in succession in London, Paris or
New York--unless one is able to rise very late the next day--is an
exhausting ordeal, but in Munich, during a period of seven months, I
averaged five nights a week at the opera and theatre and never felt
fatigue.
There is another advantage about beginning early. Instead of going to
the opera or theatre stuffed with a soggy dinner and made somnolent by
food, one takes tea before going and when the entertainment is over one
goes into a cheerful café and has a hot supper in delightful company
and is in bed before eleven.
What does going to the theatre mean in New York, London and Paris?
It too often means something like this. One attends a dinner party
where half the guests arrive late; one then has a long course dinner,
hurried toward the end; the entire company is hustled into automobiles
and arrives at the theatre or opera a half hour after the performance
has begun and in a condition that precludes the possibility of mental
concentration.
After one has spent two or three months in Munich, one falls in love
with the place, with the temper of the town and with the people. I am
frequently homesick for Munich. In one year, after I had spent four
months there, I went in April to Italy--the land where the lemon trees
bloom. There I lived in sunshine and enjoyed the glory and beauty of
the romantic country. But after a while I became homesick for Munich
and, although on the morning of my return it was raining and the
weather in general was doing its worst, my heart was singing, for I was
home again.
XL
TRADITIONS
Whether we like it or not, we are governed by the past. The books
written by men long dead have the largest influence in shaping our
minds and ruling our conduct; the laws that control our duties and
our privileges as citizens were made by men whose names we cannot
remember; spirit hands guide our footsteps; we think the thoughts of
our ancestors and carry into execution conceptions formed by them. The
muscles of our bodies and the swifter impulses of our minds are set
in motion by thousands of men and women. We have been shaped by our
traditions. We can ourselves add something to these traditions, but
even if we would, we cannot annihilate them. They are as real as we are.
Many Americans have such a militant consciousness of independence that
they cannot endure the thought of having America’s destiny in any way
influenced by hands across the sea. “What! do you mean to say that
foreigners shall tell us what we may and may not do?” Now the truth
is, that not only men in foreign nations have a vital influence on our
present conduct and future acts, but that this is especially true of
those foreigners who have been dead for centuries. The situation is
humiliating. Bad enough to have an absentee ruler alive--how much more
insupportable when he has ceased to exist!
Nothing is more foolish than to despise the past or to attempt to
arrange the future without a sound knowledge of history. The difficulty
with some radical reformers is that they are deficient in historical
knowledge. They do not know that the experiment they have in mind
has been tried so many times without success that some lesson might
possibly be gained by observation of previous results. “Histories make
men wise,” said Bacon; they make us wise, not merely because history
books were written by wise men, but because history itself is the
accumulation of human wisdom gleaned from human folly. To sneer at the
past is to sneer at wisdom. For despite the glib way in which the word
evolution is used, despite the advances made in personal luxuries,
housing and locomotion, despite the broad (rather than deep) diffusion
of culture by which reading and writing have become no more conspicuous
than breathing--there is not one scintilla of evidence to prove that
the individual mind has advanced a single step in the power of thought,
or in the ability to reason, or in the possession of wisdom. The men of
ancient times--as represented by their leaders--were in every respect
as able-minded as the best products of the twentieth century.
Reflexion makes us realise the imponderable worth of traditions; we
know they come only from years. Even if every man had his price, which
is not true, there are things beyond all price. A boy who goes to
Cambridge or Oxford has something in his education beyond the price he
pays for his tuition, or the instruction he receives in lectures, or
the advantages of modern laboratories. The grey walls of the cloisters,
the noble old towers, the enchanting beauty of the quadrangle,
represent not only the best in architecture, but they are hallowed
by thousands of ghosts. Lowell coined the phrase, “God’s passionless
reformers, influences.” These influences, silently but chronically
active, like a deep-flowing river, give something that no recently
founded institution can bring; something that makes the so-called
almighty dollar look impotent. Any well-disposed multi-millionaire
can start a well-equipped university; in time it, too, will have its
traditions; but many centuries give a tone and a stamp that cannot be
bought or sold.
A certain independent humour accompanies those who live in ancient
surroundings--and this humour is frequently the Anglo-Saxon way of
expressing pride. After dining in hall with the dons one evening in a
college at Oxford, we adjourned successively to three rooms. I asked
one of my hosts if that had always been the custom. “No, indeed,” said
he, with a smile; “in fact, it is comparatively recent. We have been
doing this only since the seventeenth century.” He spoke as though it
were a rather startling innovation. A wealthy American was so pleased
with the velvet turf of the Oxford quadrangles that he asked a janitor
how such turf was produced; it appeared that he wished his front lawn
at home to wear a similar aspect. The janitor replied that the matter
was simple; all that was necessary was to wait a thousand years. Age
sometimes really comes before beauty.
When the Englishman Thomas Hardy sat down in his house at Dorchester to
write a poem, he knew that the ground in his garden was filled with the
relics of Roman occupation--pottery, utensils and human bones. Twenty
centuries were in his dooryard. No wonder there is dignity in his
compositions when their roots go so deep.
Tennyson said:
That man’s the best cosmopolite
Who loves his native country best.
I suppose he meant that the man who loved his own country was better
fitted to love all countries and thus become a citizen of the world
than one who, while professing to be swayed only by international
sentiment, should have little affection for any country in particular.
We are familiar with the type of man who is filled with enthusiasm for
humanity, but who never helps an individual; love, like charity, should
begin at home. It is a singular but happy human characteristic that we
love so ardently the scenes of our childhood; even those brought up in
a detestable climate will, when far away in golden sunlight, become
homesick for the fog, the mist, and the rain. Many who have left home
in early manhood will return thither in old age, as though drawn by
invisible but irresistible bonds.
American traditions go back to Colonial days; and those days went back
to the English country and English speech. We ought not to forget
these traditions or be untrue to the best that is in Anglo-Saxon
civilisation. Perhaps no one thing is more necessary to the welfare
and peace of the world today than frank, hearty, sincere friendship and
good will between Great Britain and the United States.
XLI
SPOOKS
There are intelligent and well-educated persons who believe in
ghosts--I mean they believe in the actual reappearance on earth in
visible form of certain individuals who have for some time been dead
and buried. These are the genuine ghosts, not the creations of fear
or fancy, but as the French call them, _revenants_, those who come
back. Hamlet’s father was a true ghost, seen by a number of reliable
witnesses; the bloody Banquo at the dinner table was the painting of
Macbeth’s fear, actually not there at all.
The late William De Morgan was a devout believer in ghosts, was
convinced that he had himself seen a sufficient number for purposes
of verification, and hence did not scruple to introduce them into his
novels.
I have not been so fortunate. I cannot even say as many do, “I do not
believe in ghosts, but I am afraid of them.” I will not say that I do
not believe in them, but I am not afraid of them. I never saw one. I
have never seen or heard anything that could not be explained in some
commonplace fashion. There are many who affirm that they have seen in
broad daylight the face and figure of a friend, and as they have drawn
nearer in order to converse, the appearance became a disappearance,
without any rational explanation. The friend may be living, or he may
have long since died. A great many persons are “seeing things,” and I
rather envy them. Others have distinctly felt a touch on the shoulder,
and on turning, no one was discoverable. I have always, alas, found the
responsible party.
But though I have never seen spooks, I have had a few spooky
experiences, of which I will mention two.
One night, with the exception of the maids on the top floor, I was
alone in the house. I had not been well for many days, and felt
particularly miserable when I went to bed. I had lain uneasily for some
hours, and had finally lapsed into semi-consciousness. At half-past two
I was startled by the loud ringing of the front door bell. Accoutred
as I was, I descended, and opened the door. There was no one. For
a few moments, like the man in Poe’s poem, I stood, deep into the
darkness peering. But the darkness gave no token, and wonderingly
I shut the door. I had not got half-way up the stairs, when once
again the doorbell rang with violence. It is easy enough to tell this
lightly now, but then, alone in the house, and ill, it was worse than
mysterious. I ran to the door, and flung it wide open. Not a soul in
sight, the street silent and deserted. Then I thought it might after
all not have been the doorbell, but the telephone. Accordingly I rang
up Central, only to be informed that no one had called my number. While
I was considering this, the doorbell once more reverberated through the
empty house. Again I opened the door. No one.
I decided that some one with a deficient or perverted sense of humour
was making me a victim. Accordingly I shut the front door, and crouched
directly behind it, with the intention of leaping out and seizing the
humorist as soon as he rang again. In a few moments the bell rang
loudly; I jerked back the door and sprang outside. But there was
absolutely no one, and there was no sound of retreating steps.
I stood outside the door, lost in amazement and fear, for I was
terrified. I gazed wonderingly at the button, half-expecting to see
some spirit-finger push it; when, to my utter dismay, the bell rang
shriller and louder than ever.
If I had really believed in ghosts, that would have been sufficient
evidence. As it is, I shall never forget my distress while the bell
continued ringing and I was looking directly at the only means of
making it ring. I closed the door, and had a bad night.
In the morning I consulted a specialist, not on nerves, but on
doorbells. The explanation was simple. A mouse was enjoying the flavour
of the paraffin in which the wires in the cellar were wrapped, and
every time he gave a particularly fervent bite, the bell rang. I hope
it scared him as much as it did me, but if so, his hunger triumphed
over his fear, for he kept returning to the feast.