manners; but youth in America is wont to be poor and hurried, not at
ease, or not in society where high behavior could be taught. But the
sentiment of honor and the wish to serve make all our pains superfluous.
Life is not so short but that there is always time enough for courtesy.
Self-command is the main elegance. "Keep cool, and you command
everybody," said St. Just; and the wily old Talleyrand would still say,
_Surtout, messieurs, pas de zêle_,--"Above all, gentlemen, no heat."
Why have you statues in your hall, but to teach you that, when the
door-bell rings, you shall sit like them. "Eat at your table as you
would eat at the table of the king," said Confucius. It is an excellent
custom of the Quakers, if only for a school of manners,--the silent
prayer before meals. It has the effect to stop mirth, and introduce a
moment of reflection. After the pause, all resume their usual
intercourse from a vantage-ground. What a check to the violent manners
which sometimes come to the table,--of wrath, and whining, and heat in
trifles!
'Tis a rule of manners to avoid exaggeration. A lady loses as soon as
she admires too easily and too much. In man or woman, the face and the
person lose power when they are on the strain to express admiration. A
man makes his inferiors his superiors by heat. Why need you, who are not
a gossip, talk as a gossip, and tell eagerly what the neighbors or the
journals say? State your opinion without apology. The attitude is the
main point, assuring your companion that, come good news or come bad,
you remain in good heart and good mind, which is the best news you can
possibly communicate. Self-control is the rule. You have in you there a
noisy, sensual savage which you are to keep down, and turn all his
strength to beauty. For example, what a seneschal and detective is
laughter! It seems to require several generations of education to train
a squeaking or a shouting habit out of a man. Sometimes, when in almost
all expressions the Choctaw and the slave have been worked out of him, a
coarse nature still betrays itself in his contemptible squeals of joy.
It is necessary for the purification of drawing-rooms, that these
entertaining explosions should be under strict control. Lord
Chesterfield had early made this discovery, for he says, "I am sure that
since I had the use of my reason, no human being has ever heard me
laugh." I know that there go two to this game, and, in the presence of
certain formidable wits, savage nature must sometimes rush out in some
disorder.
To pass to an allied topic, one word or two in regard to dress, in which
our civilization instantly shows itself. No nation is dressed with more
good sense than ours. And everybody sees certain moral benefit in it.
When the young European emigrant, after a summer's labor, puts on for
the first time a new coat, he puts on much more. His good and becoming
clothes put him on thinking that he must behave like people who are so
dressed; and silently and steadily his behavior mends. But quite another
class of our own youth, I should remind, of dress in general, that some
people need it, and others need it not. Thus a king or a general does
not need a fine coat, and a commanding person may save himself all
solicitude on that point. There are always slovens in State Street or
Wall Street, who are not less considered. If a man have manners and
talent he may dress roughly and carelessly. It is only when mind and
character slumber that the dress can be seen. If the intellect were
always awake, and every noble sentiment, the man might go in huckaback
or mats, and his dress would be admired and imitated. Remember George
Herbert's maxim, "This coat with my discretion will be brave." If,
however, a man has not firm nerves, and has keen sensibility, it is
perhaps a wise economy to go to a good shop and dress himself
irreproachably. He can then dismiss all care from his mind, and may
easily find that performance an addition of confidence, a fortification
that turns the scale in social encounters, and allows him to go gayly
into conversations where else he had been dry and embarrassed. I am not
ignorant,--I have heard with admiring submission the experience of the
lady who declared "that the sense of being perfectly well-dressed gives
a feeling of inward tranquillity which religion is powerless to bestow."
Thus much for manners: but we are not content with pantomime; we say,
this is only for the eyes. We want real relations of the mind and the
heart; we want friendship; we want knowledge; we want virtue; a more
inward existence to read the history of each other. Welfare requires one
or two companions of intelligence, probity, and grace, to wear out life
with,--persons with whom we can speak a few reasonable words every day,
by whom we can measure ourselves, and who shall hold us fast to good
sense and virtue; and these we are always in search of. He must be
inestimable to us to whom we can say what we cannot say to ourselves.
Yet now and then we say things to our mates, or hear things from them,
which seem to put it out of the power of the parties to be strangers
again. "Either death or a friend," is a Persian proverb. I suppose I
give the experience of many when I give my own. A few times in my life
it has happened to me to meet persons of so good a nature and so good
breeding, that every topic was open and discussed without possibility of
offence,--persons who could not be shocked. One of my friends said in
speaking of certain associates, "There is not one of them but I can
offend at any moment." But to the company I am now considering, were no
terrors, no vulgarity. All topics were broached,--life, love, marriage,
sex, hatred, suicide, magic, theism, art, poetry, religion, myself,
thyself, all selves, and whatever else, with a security and vivacity
which belonged to the nobility of the parties and to their brave truth.
The life of these persons was conducted in the same calm and affirmative
manner as their discourse. Life with them was an experiment continually
varied, full of results, full of grandeur, and by no means the hot and
hurried business which passes in the world. The delight in good company,
in pure, brilliant, social atmosphere; the incomparable satisfaction of
a society in which everything can be safely said, in which every member
returns a true echo, in which a wise freedom, an ideal republic of
sense, simplicity, knowledge, and thorough good-meaning abide,--doubles
the value of life. It is this that justifies to each the jealousy with
which the doors are kept. Do not look sourly at the set or the club
which does not choose you. Every highly organized person knows the value
of the social barriers, since the best society has often been spoiled to
him by the intrusion of bad companions. He of all men would keep the
right of choice sacred, and feel that the exclusions are in the interest
of the admissions, though they happen at this moment to thwart his
wishes.
The hunger for company is keen, but it must be discriminating, and must
be economized. 'Tis a defect in our manners that they have not yet
reached the prescribing a limit to visits. That every well-dressed lady
or gentleman should be at liberty to exceed ten minutes in his or her
call on serious people, shows a civilization still rude. A universal
etiquette should fix an iron limit after which a moment should not be
allowed without explicit leave granted on request of either the giver or
receiver of the visit. There is inconvenience in such strictness, but
vast inconvenience in the want of it. To trespass on a public servant is
to trespass on a nation's time. Yet presidents of the United States are
afflicted by rude Western and Southern gossips (I hope it is only by
them) until the gossip's immeasurable legs are tired of sitting; then he
strides out and the nation is relieved.
It is very certain that sincere and happy conversation doubles our
powers; that, in the effort to unfold our thought to a friend, we make
it clearer to ourselves, and surround it with illustrations that help
and delight us. It may happen that each hears from the other a better
wisdom than any one else will ever hear from either. But these ties are
taken care of by Providence to each of us. A wise man once said to me
that "all whom he knew, met":--meaning that he need not take pains to
introduce the persons whom he valued to each other: they were sure to be
drawn together as by gravitation. The soul of a man must be the servant
of another. The true friend must have an attraction to whatever virtue
is in us. Our chief want in life,--is it not somebody who can make us do
what we can? And we are easily great with the loved and honored
associate. We come out of our eggshell existence and see the great dome
arching over us; see the zenith above and the nadir under us.
Speech is power: speech is to persuade, to convert, to compel. It is to
bring another out of his bad sense into your good sense. You are to be
missionary and carrier of all that is good and noble. Virtues speak to
virtues, vices to vices,--each to their own kind in the people with whom
we deal. If you are suspiciously and dryly on your guard, so is he or
she. If you rise to frankness and generosity, they will respect it now
or later.
In this art of conversation, Woman, if not the queen and victor, is the
lawgiver. If every one recalled his experiences, he might find the best
in the speech of superior women,--which was better than song, and
carried ingenuity, character, wise counsel, and affection, as easily as
the wit with which it was adorned. They are not only wise themselves,
they make us wise. No one can be a master in conversation who has not
learned much from women; their presence and inspiration are essential to
its success. Steele said of his mistress, that "to have loved her was a
liberal education." Shenstone gave no bad account of this influence in
his description of the French woman: "There is a quality in which no
woman in the world can compete with her,--it is the power of
intellectual irritation. She will draw wit out of a fool. She strikes
with such address the chords of self-love, that she gives unexpected
vigor and agility to fancy, and electrifies a body that appeared
non-electric." Coleridge esteems cultivated women as the depositaries
and guardians of "English undefiled"; and Luther commends that
accomplishment of "pure German speech" of his wife.
Madame de Staël, by the unanimous consent of all who knew her, was the
most extraordinary converser that was known in her time, and it was a
time full of eminent men and women; she knew all distinguished persons
in letters or society, in England, Germany, and Italy, as well as in
France, though she said, with characteristic nationality, "Conversation,
like talent, exists only in France." Madame de Staël valued nothing but
conversation. When they showed her the beautiful Lake Leman, she
exclaimed, "O for the gutter of the Rue de Bac!" the street in Paris in
which her house stood. And she said one day, seriously, to M. Molé, "If
it were not for respect to human opinions, I would not open my window to
see the Bay of Naples for the first time, whilst I would go five hundred
leagues to talk with a man of genius whom I had not seen." Ste. Beuve
tells us of the privileged circle at Coppet, that, after making an
excursion one day, the party returned in two coaches from Chambéry to
Aix, on the way to Coppet. The first coach had many rueful accidents to
relate,--a terrific thunder-storm, shocking roads, and danger and gloom
to the whole company. The party in the second coach, on arriving, heard
this story with surprise;--of thunder-storm, of steeps, of mud, of
danger, they knew nothing; no, they had forgotten earth, and breathed a
purer air: such a conversation between Madame de Staël and Madame
Récamier and Benjamin Constant and Schlegel! they were all in a state
of delight. The intoxication of the conversation had made them
insensible to all notice of weather or rough roads. Madame de Tessé
said, "If I were Queen, I should command Madame de Staël to talk to me
every day." Conversation fills all gaps, supplies all deficiencies. What
a good trait is that recorded of Madame de Maintenon, that, during
dinner, the servant slipped to her side, "Please, madame, one anecdote
more, for there is no roast to-day."
Politics, war, party, luxury, avarice, fashion, are all asses with
loaded panniers to serve the kitchen of Intellect, the king. There is
nothing that does not pass into lever or weapon.
And yet there are trials enough of nerve and character, brave choices
enough of taking the part of truth and of the oppressed against the
oppressor, in privatest circles. A right speech is not well to be
distinguished from action. Courage to ask questions; courage to expose
our ignorance. The great gain is, not to shine, not to conquer your
companion,--then you learn nothing but conceit,--but to find a companion
who knows what you do not; to tilt with him and be overthrown, horse and
foot, with utter destruction of all your logic and learning. There is a
defeat that is useful. Then you can see the real and the counterfeit,
and will never accept the counterfeit again. You will adopt the art of
war that has defeated you. You will ride to battle horsed on the very
logic which you found irresistible. You will accept the fertile truth,
instead of the solemn customary lie.
Let nature bear the expense. The attitude, the tone, is all. Let our
eyes not look away, but meet. Let us not look east and west for
materials of conversation, but rest in presence and unity. A just
feeling will fast enough supply fuel for discourse, if speaking be more
grateful than silence. When people come to see us, we foolishly prattle,
lest we be inhospitable. But things said for conversation are chalk
eggs. Don't _say_ things. What you _are_ stands over you the while, and
thunders so that I cannot hear what you say to the contrary. A lady of
my acquaintance said, "I don't care so much for what they say as I do
for what makes them say it."
The main point is to throw yourself on the truth, and say with Newton,
"There's no contending against facts." When Molyneux fancied that the
observations of the nutation of the earth's axis destroyed Newton's
theory of gravitation, he tried to break it softly to Sir Isaac, who
only answered, "It may be so; there's no arguing against facts and
experiments."
But there are people who cannot be cultivated,--people on whom speech
makes no impression,--swainish, morose people, who must be kept down and
quieted as you would those who are a little tipsy; others, who are not
only swainish, but are prompt to take oath that swainishness is the only
culture; and though their odd wit may have some salt for you, your
friends would not relish it. Bolt these out. And I have seen a man of
genius who made me think that if other men were like him co-operation
were impossible. Must we always talk for victory, and never once for
truth, for comfort, and joy? Here is centrality and penetration, strong
understanding, and the higher gifts, the insight of the real, or from
the real, and the moral rectitude which belongs to it: but all this and
all his resources of wit and invention are lost to me in every
experiment that I make to hold intercourse with his mind; always some
weary, captious paradox to fight you with, and the time and temper
wasted. And beware of jokes; too much temperance cannot be used:
inestimable for sauce, but corrupting for food: we go away, hollow and
ashamed. As soon as the company give in to this enjoyment, we shall have
no Olympus. True wit never made us laugh. Mahomet seems to have borrowed
by anticipation of several centuries a leaf from the mind of Swedenborg,
when he wrote in the Koran:--
"On the day of resurrection, those who have indulged in ridicule will be
called to the door of Paradise, and have it shut in their faces when
they reach it. Again, on their turning back, they will be called to
another door, and again, on reaching it, will see it closed against
them; and so on, _ad infinitum_, without end."
Shun the negative side. Never worry people with your contritions, nor
with dismal views of politics or society. Never name sickness; even if
you could trust yourself on that perilous topic, beware of unmuzzling a
valetudinarian, who will soon give you your fill of it.
The law of the table is Beauty,--a respect to the common soul of all the
guests. Everything is unseasonable which is private to two or three or
any portion of the company. Tact never violates for a moment this law;
never intrudes the orders of the house, the vices of the absent, or a
tariff of expenses, or professional privacies; as we say, we never "talk
shop" before company. Lovers abstain from caresses, and haters from
insults, whilst they sit in one parlor with common friends.
Stay at home in your mind. Don't recite other people's opinions. See how
it lies there in you; and if there is no counsel, offer none. What we
want is, not your activity or interference with your mind, but your
content to be a vehicle of the simple truth. The way to have large
occasional views, as in a political or social crisis, is to have large
habitual views. When men consult you, it is not that they wish you to
stand tiptoe, and pump your brains, but to apply your habitual view,
your wisdom, to the present question, forbearing all pedantries, and the
very name of argument; for in good conversation parties don't speak to
the words, but to the meanings of each other.
Manners first, then conversation. Later, we see that, as life was not in
manners, so it is not in talk. Manners are external; talk is occasional:
these require certain material conditions, human labor for food,
clothes, house, tools, and, in short, plenty and ease,--since only so
can certain finer and finest powers appear and expand. In a whole nation
of Hottentots there shall not be one valuable man,--valuable out of his
tribe. In every million of Europeans or of Americans there shall be
thousands who would be valuable on any spot on the globe.
The consideration the rich possess in all societies is not without
meaning or right. It is the approval given by the human understanding to
the act of creating value by knowledge and labor. It is the sense of
every human being, that man should have this dominion of nature, should
arm himself with tools, and force the elements to drudge for him and
give him power. Every one must seek to secure his independence; but he
need not be rich. The old Confucius in China admitted the benefit, but
stated the limitation: "If the search for riches were sure to be
successful, though I should become a groom with whip in hand to get
them, I will do so. As the search may not be successful, I will follow
after that which I love." There is in America a general conviction in
the minds of all mature men, that every young man of good faculty and
good habits can by perseverance attain to an adequate estate; if he have
a turn for business, and a quick eye for the opportunities which are
always offering for investment, he can come to wealth, and in such good
season as to enjoy as well as transmit it.
Every human society wants to be officered by a best class, who shall be
masters instructed in all the great arts of life; shall be wise,
temperate, brave, public men, adorned with dignity and accomplishments.
Every country wishes this, and each has taken its own method to secure
such service to the state. In Europe, ancient and modern, it has been
attempted to secure the existence of a superior class by hereditary
nobility, with estates transmitted by primogeniture and entail. But in
the last age, this system has been on its trial and the verdict of
mankind is pretty nearly pronounced. That method secured permanence of
families, firmness of customs, a certain external culture and good
taste; gratified the ear with preserving historic names: but the heroic
father did not surely have heroic sons, and still less surely heroic
grandsons; wealth and ease corrupted the race.
In America, the necessity of clearing the forest, laying out town and
street, and building every house and barn and fence, then church and
town-house, exhausted such means as the Pilgrims brought, and made the
whole population poor; and the like necessity is still found in each new
settlement in the Territories. These needs gave their character to the
public debates in every village and State. I have been often impressed
at our country town meetings with the accumulated virility, in each
village, of five or six or eight or ten men, who speak so well, and so
easily handle the affairs of the town. I often hear the business of a
little town (with which I am most familiar) discussed with a clearness
and thoroughness, and with a generosity, too, that would have satisfied
me had it been in one of the larger capitals. I am sure each one of my
readers has a parallel experience. And every one knows that in every
town or city is always to be found a certain number of public-spirited
men, who perform, unpaid, a great amount of hard work in the interest of
the churches, of schools, of public grounds, works of taste and
refinement. And as in civil duties, so in social power and duties. Our
gentlemen of the old school, that is, of the school of Washington,
Adams, and Hamilton, were bred after English types, and that style of
breeding furnished fine examples in the last generation; but, though
some of us have seen such, I doubt they are all gone. But nature is not
poorer to-day. With all our haste, and slipshod ways, and flippant
self-assertion, I have seen examples of new grace and power in address
that honor the country. It was my fortune not long ago, with my eyes
directed on this subject, to fall in with an American to be proud of. I
said never was such force, good meaning, good sense, good action,
combined with such domestic lovely behavior, such modesty and persistent
preference for others. Wherever he moved he was the benefactor. It is of
course that he should ride well, shoot well, sail well, keep house well,
administer affairs well, but he was the best talker, also, in the
company: what with a perpetual practical wisdom, with an eye always to
the working of the thing, what with the multitude and distinction of his
facts (and one detected continually that he had a hand in everything
that has been done), and in the temperance with which he parried all
offence, and opened the eyes of the person he talked with without
contradicting him. Yet I said to myself, How little this man suspects,
with his sympathy for men and his respect for lettered and scientific
people, that he is not likely, in any company, to meet a man superior to
himself. And I think this is a good country, that can bear such a
creature as he is.
The young men in America at this moment take little thought of what men
in England are thinking or doing. That is the point which decides the
welfare of a people; _which way does it look_? If to any other people,
it is not well with them. If occupied in its own affairs and thoughts
and men, with a heat which excludes almost the notice of any other
people,--as the Jews, the Greeks, the Persians, the Romans, the
Arabians, the French, the English, at their best times have done,--they
are sublime; and we know that in this abstraction they are executing
excellent work. Amidst the calamities which war has brought on our
country this one benefit has accrued,--that our eyes are withdrawn from
England, withdrawn from France, and look homeward. We have come to feel
that "by ourselves our safety must be bought"; to know the vast
resources of the continent, the good-will that is in the people, their
conviction of the great moral advantages of freedom, social equality,
education, and religious culture, and their determination to hold these
fast, and, by them, to hold fast the country and penetrate every square
mile of it with this American civilization.