You probably thought (and justly) that we cut off Matthew Arnold
rather abruptly yesterday. Well, we did; but there’s always a reason
for everything. We had to hurry uptown, by order of Dr. James Kendall
Burgess, the philosophical dentist, to call on Dr. Hillel Feldman for
some exodontia. In the old days, we dare say, it would have been called
having a tooth pulled, but we like the word exodontia much better.
Now, since we have always been candid with our clients, we will admit
that we were a bit nervous. Of course, we knew that these operations
rarely turn out fatally; but still, we could see, as soon as we got
into that medical office building at 616 Madison Avenue, that we
were out of our element. Everywhere there were trained nurses in
uniform--going about on “errands of mercy,” we supposed. There was
one near the elevator downstairs; there was another in the corridor
upstairs; and the soothing, tender way they asked what we wanted made
us, somehow, even more conscious of the painful nature of our errand.
However, another of our habits came somewhat to our rescue when we
found ourself sitting in Dr. Feldman’s chair. We are timid, we admit;
but we are also inquisitive and like to know the details of what’s
going on. We could see right away that Dr. Feldman is a tactful man,
for he keeps his instruments under a neat little napkin so that you
don’t have a chance to be alarmed by all those interesting gouges and
pincers. Dr. Feldman immediately pierced our jaw with some stuff he
called novocaine, and then, quite as though this was a very commonplace
proceeding, began to chat leisurely. “You know,” he said, “a fellow
can’t read your things in the paper just for a laugh. Those other
fellows’ columns, you can read them and get some fun out of it; but
your stuff, you have to read carefully and wade through a long slab to
see what it’s all about.”
“Yes,” we said, “we’re like you, Doctor. We believe in giving our
patients discipline--making them suffer.”
Now, of course, we said this hoping to give Dr. Feldman a chance to say
right away, “Oh, I’m not going to make you suffer. This won’t hurt a
bit.”
He didn’t say it, however. He chuckled in a way that seemed to us
a trifle threatening. We hastened to appease him by saying some
complimentary things about his shining, complicated apparatuses. To our
displeasure we found that our jaw now had a numb and frozen feeling, so
that we could not talk properly. We could only mumble.
The calm, genial way in which Dr. Feldman sized us up as we sat there
with our jaw getting more and more queer--a curious sensation of
mingled freezing and heat--reassured us a little. “Does the novocaine
make perspiration come out on your forehead like that?” he asked, with
a sort of intellectual curiosity. “No, no,” we hastened to say, out of
the other side of our mouth. “We’ve been hurrying to get here, Doctor.
Didn’t want to keep you waiting.” That was true; but we were afraid
he would think we were scared. He began to toy gently with the corner
of the napkin on his instrument stand. We were tremendously eager
to see what kind of tools he had concealed there. But he outwitted
us. He suddenly uttered the excellent words we had been hoping for.
“This’ll be absolutely painless,” he said, and then with great gusto
and alacrity he sprang upon us. There was a sound rather like grinding
out a stone that is imbedded in a frozen pond. It was very interesting.
We think the adverb _absolutely_ perhaps was a trifle too strong:
perhaps a precisian in words might substitute _almost_; but at any rate
our sense of excitement far outweighed any small twinges. By the time
we thought that he was getting well started, “That’s all,” he said.
“Perhaps you’d better have a little stimulant.”
Well, naturally, by this time we felt that Dr. Feldman was one of
the best friends we had ever had. We shook his hand warmly and
assured him we wouldn’t have missed the adventure for anything. Then
we went to browse for a few minutes in the second-hand bookshops
on Fifty-ninth Street to think it over. We called on Mr. Mitchell
Kennerley at the Anderson Galleries. As our jaw was still very much
frostbitten, we couldn’t talk very clearly, and we had to hold our
pipe in an unaccustomed corner of our mouth. We fear he misunderstood
our condition; but he was too polite to say so. Our mind went back to
Matthew Arnold.
Matthew Arnold, as we were saying, complained that American
civilization was not _interesting_. A silly thing to say, it seems to
us. He meant, evidently, that it did not supply the kind of interest
to which he was accustomed, or for which he yearned. For surely, to
any one ready to lay aside preconceptions, _interesting_ is exactly
what American life has always been. We reflected that the one word we
instinctively used in explaining to Dr. Feldman how we had enjoyed our
visit to him was just that--_interesting_. We feel that if Arnold had
been a little more courageously imaginative he might have felt the
same way about America. It may very truly have troubled some of his
sensitive nerves; it may have caused him terror and shuddering; it may
have seemed violent and tragic; but surely he might have seen that it
was a teeming laboratory of life and amazement. We believe, by the way,
that it was 1883 when he was first here; for we have just noticed in
Mendoza’s bookshop a copy of Arnold’s poems autographed by him for a
lady, and dated 1883. It was an American edition, so probably he signed
it while in this country.
Mr. Arnold’s comments on American newspapers, we should like to add,
were perhaps just a little scarce in humour. It is all very well to
stand aghast at the jocular irreverence of much newspaper writing;
but evidently it never occurred to Arnold that much of it is not mere
vulgarity but expresses a national sense of gusto and hilarity that is
far from a bad thing.
We cannot resist concluding this too brief excursus by quoting a letter
which came to us from a mysterious correspondent--whom we know only by
the initials N. O. N. P. It seems to us the most charming portrait of
Arnold that we have ever seen. N. O. N. P. wrote:
There is no art to read the mind’s construction in the face;
but it is possible to see the correspondence, after the cypher
has been well de-coded. Matthew Arnold--a plain face--a
plain brow--dark hair, parted exactly in the middle--and
cheek whiskers! A long nose, slightly thick, and drooping--a
wide plaster of mouth, firm but highly sensitive--a six-foot
stature and slim build--a scholastic figure and face and
cut--tutorial, perhaps; and in that plain face the expression
of _im_pression--that is, the visible result of sensitiveness.
Every pre-natal and post-natal fineness of his rarely fine,
high, sincere mind pervaded the texture of his countenance and
gave its stamp of authentic quality to render nugatory anything
that might seem superficially to counteract the inherent
integrity. Superficially, it might have seemed (perhaps) a smug
face or a supercilious one; not inwardly. Inward daintiness
might have been there, as there certainly was fastidiousness,
if not a frigidity. But a warm heart corresponded to that
mouth, which was thick without seeming sensual, and back of
that face was a just, a clear, a steady mind, a heat for right
and truth, a manly spirit with a manly intellect, a manly sense
of clean beauty--and with whatever æsthetic narrowings (if
they existed), a broad, direct, noble simplicity and humanity.
I hope he will verily have his reward, for in his brave,
unwhining, spotless life, he did most valuable, intelligent
drudgery for his bread; and out of a beautiful gift composed
the loftiest, simplest, broadest, gravest, most reserved and
felt, and perhaps most musical and moving poem (as pure poem)
of his generation--_Sohrab and Rustum_. It lacks all the
prettinesses of his contemporaries, but is the sole product of
his time, in “The Grand Style”--this, however, being of course
only the individual opinion of the present commenter.
If a man, one hundred years after his birth, still evokes such graceful
and pensive homage, he has evidently some durable claim upon our
hearts. Ever since our teens we have wondered what _Sohrab and Rustum_
was about and why it was always assigned as required study for College
Entrance. Now we intend to read it.
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