Occident, who, having been nourished in boyhood on the discourses of
rustic theologians, and the forensics of Shelbyville advocates, finds it
difficult to assimilate his own theories of life with a civilization he
so imperfectly understands. He doubts his ability to take the European
attitude, he doubts the propriety of the attitude when taken, and the
struggle ends in the usual manner by his marrying a wife, and going
back to Shelby County to be a good citizen for the rest of his days.
Hors-Concours, mindful of the duties entailed on the proprietor of a
small patrimony and an ancient name, espouses with becoming gravity and
deliberation the Princess Altissimi. The Prorege retires to Arcopia the
blessed, whither we would fain follow him if we could; and Pensieri-Vani,
left desolate and alone, consoles himself with the reflection that life
has many sides, and that Italy has not yet given up to him all she has
to give: “Others might falter; but he was still sufficient unto himself,
still master of his own time and his own actions, and enamored only of
that delightful land whose beauty age cannot wither, and whose infinite
variety custom can never stale.”
COMEDY OF THE CUSTOM HOUSE
There is no place in the world where human nature is so thoroughly human
or so purely natural as on the New York docks, when a great steamer
load of returning travelers are being put through the _peine forte et
dure_ of the United States custom house. Everybody is striving to play
a part, to assume an air of indifference which he does not feel, and of
innocence which he knows to be fallacious; and, like Mrs. Browning’s
Masker, everybody betrays too plainly in his “smiling face” and “jesting
bold” the anxiety that preys upon his vitals. Packed snugly away in
that wilderness of trunks and boxes are hundreds, nay, thousands, of
pretty trifles, which it is the painful duty of every man, and the proud
ambition of every woman, to carry in unscathed and undetected. The frank,
shameless delight which a woman takes in smuggling has long puzzled the
male moralist, who, following the intricacies of the feminine conscience,
can find no satisfactory explanation of this by-path. He cannot bring her
to understand why, when she has purchased and paid for an article, it
should not be hers to take where she likes, to deal with as she pleases;
and a dozen discourses on political economy and the laws of nations leave
her unshaken in this simple and primitive conception. As the English are
said to argue best in platoons, so a woman argues best in action; and,
while her husband or brother is proving to her in the clearest possible
fashion that a high protective tariff is a blessing to the land, she is
assiduously storing away embroidered table covers, and silk stockings,
and silver spoons, and tortoise-shell combs, and tiny jeweled pins,
and bits of frail Venetian glass, wherever her practiced eye tells her
they will best escape detection. In the abstract, of course, dear Edwin
is right—he always is—but she is far too busy with her task to enter
into abstractions just now. Whatever mental subtlety she possesses is
reserved for a much more important ordeal—that of getting clear, with a
clean conscience, from the searching questions of the inspector. “When
I am asked if I have any presents I always answer no,” said a devout,
church-going woman to me one day, “because I do not consider them
presents until I give them away.”
The grim, perplexed seriousness with which the customs officers play
their part makes a delightful foil (for the spectators) to the nimble,
elusive mental movements of their adversaries; and it is in the conflict
between aggressor and aggrieved, between invader and invaded, that the
humors of our great national institution develop their choicest bloom.
The fortunes of war which recently delayed my own boxes and my hoped-for
escape, gave me, by way of compensation, an easy opportunity of observing
and enjoying the experiences of other people, and I was encouraged in
my diversion by the too evident glee of one of the minor actors in the
strife. She was a very pretty girl, this gay young combatant, not more
than sixteen years old, and she sat kicking her heels on somebody else’s
trunk, while she watched with enviable composure the overhauling of her
own. I had seen her often during the homeward voyage, and had spoken
to her once or twice as she tripped endlessly up and down the deck in
company with every man and boy on board; taking them impartially, one
by one, and seeming to be on the same mysterious terms of intimacy with
all. She had a traveling companion in the shape of a mother who adored
her fretfully, and whom she treated with finely mingled affection and
contempt. She never spoke of this relative without the prefix “poor.”
“Poor mother is awfully sick to-day,” she would say in her shrill,
high-pitched voice, with a laugh which showed all her little white
teeth, and sounded a trifle unsympathetic in our ears. But five minutes
later she was helping “poor mother” to her steamer chair, wrapping her
up skilfully in half a dozen rugs and shawls, bullying the deck steward
to bring her some hot bouillon, bullying her to drink the bouillon when
brought, listening to her manifold complaints with an indulgent smile,
and flatly refusing to obey, when entreated to put on a warmer jacket.
“Poor mother is always worrying about wraps,” was her only acknowledgment
of the maternal solicitude; and even this remark was made, not to her
prostrate parent, but to the youth who was waiting to bear her away.
The pair had been traveling alone all summer, but were met on the docks
by a person whom they both called “cousin Jim,” and who assured them in
a hearty, offhand manner that he would have them safe through the custom
house in five minutes; a miscalculation, as it turned out, of quite
three-quarters of an hour. Malignant fate assigned them an inspector
who settled down to his search like an Indian to the war trail, and who
seemed possessed with the idea that the wealth of the Indies lay secreted
somewhere in those two shabby, travel-worn boxes. Whether this man was
really enamored of his disagreeable task, whether he conscientiously
believed that the United States would be impoverished and her industries
crippled by the contents of that modest luggage, or whether he had been
too pliable on former occasions, and seized this chance to assert his
general incorruptibility, it would be hard to determine; but while older
and less ardent officials lifted out trays and turned over corners in a
purely perfunctory manner, seeing nothing, and seeking to see nothing of
what lay beneath, this red-hot zealot went thoroughly and exhaustively to
work upon the limited materials before him. Now the particular irritation
of the custom house lies, not in the fact of your trunk being searched,
but of your neighbor’s trunk escaping; and the sharpest sting is when
you chance to know that your neighbor is carrying in unmolested ten
times the value of your dutiable articles. If Miss Maisie, kicking her
heels and smiling affably, did not realize the hardship of her position,
Miss Maisie’s mother—she never had any other name, her sole claim to
distinction resting on her daughter—felt it very keenly. She stood,
anxious and angry, by the side of the inspector, protesting fretfully at
each new in-road, and appealing for sympathy to her companions.
“It’s a perfect shame, the way he has rumpled your dresses, Maisie, and
upset that tray you packed so nice and close. You will never be able to
get the things back again in the world, and, if you do, one half of them
will be broken before we reach home. And there’s your new fur cape all
out of fold. I told you to wear it, or carry it in on your arm. No! that
is not a present; at least I think not, is it, Maisie?” as a small brown
paper parcel, carefully tied, was held up by the inspector for scrutiny.
“I can’t tell till I open it,” said the girl, reaching over, and very
deliberately unfastening the string. “You don’t remember what this is,
do you, mother? Oh! I see—a piece of camphor. No, it’s not a present. We
brought it from America. Lasts beautifully, doesn’t it?” returning the
parcel with a smile. “Would you mind wrapping it up again? It’s so very
hard to tie anything in gloves.”
Apparently the inspector did mind, for he jerked the lump of camphor
unwrapped into the trunk, and made a vicious scoop among the layers of
neatly packed clothing. “Is this a present, then?” he asked, drawing
to light a flat oblong white box, and snapping the cord that bound
it. Inside, resting on pink cotton wool, was a small silver-backed
hand-mirror of fine workmanship. “Surely this must be a present?” he
repeated, with the triumphant air of one who has dragged a secret crime
to justice.
Maisie’s mother looked nervous, and fidgeted visibly, but Maisie herself
was imperturbable. “You are mistaken; it is not,” she said, without a
tremor.
The man glanced at her sharply, and shrugged his shoulders. “You keep it
very nicely put away for an article in use,” he hinted, turning over the
box once or twice with manifest doubt and reluctance. “And these—are all
these your own, too?” unearthing from some secret receptacle six little
card-cases of blue leather, and spreading them out jeeringly in a row.
“I told you not to get so many, Maisie, but you would do it,” said her
mother, in the hopeless tone of a convicted criminal.
“They were such bargains, I couldn’t resist them,” answered the girl
sorrowfully. “Yes, they are presents; at least five of them are. I guess
I will keep one for myself, and save that, any way. Just put one of them
back, please. And oh, dear! do you have to lift out that heavy tray?
There are nothing but clothes at the bottom of the trunk.”
“Nothing at all but clothes,” interposed her mother peevishly. “I don’t
see why you have to go through everything in this fashion.”
“Nothing at all but clothes,” repeated cousin Jim, who had hitherto
stood staring silently at the confusion before him. “Can’t you take the
ladies’ word for it, when they assure you there is nothing underneath but
clothes?”
“My dear sir,” said the inspector, exasperated into insolence, “I should
be very glad to take any lady’s word, but I can’t. I’ve learned a great
deal better.”
Maisie’s mother colored hotly, with the righteous indignation of a woman
who lies easily, and is accused of falsehood; but Maisie, screwing
her pretty head on one side, winked at me in shameless enjoyment of
the situation. “He’ll find I’m right this time,” she whispered; “but
wasn’t it lucky he got it into his stupid brain that the glass must be a
present! If he had said ‘commission’ now, I should have been caught, and
the friend I bought it for would be simply furious if I had to pay duty
on it. Poor mother insisted that I should not take a single commission
this summer, so I only have very few; just that glass, and some gloves,
of course, and a feather collar, and half a dozen pairs of stockings, and
a little silk shawl from Rome. One girl did ask me to buy her a dress in
Paris, but I wouldn’t do it; and another wanted a pair of blue slippers,
but fortunately I forgot her size; and another—”
“Maisie, dear, do put back your things now,” interrupted her unhappy
parent, who by this time was on the verge of tears. “The inspector has
finished with your trunk, and is going to mine. And please be careful of
your cape! I wish you had worn it instead—”
“Instead of my old one?” said the girl hastily, smoothing down, as
she spoke, a very handsome and palpably new piece of sealskin on her
shoulders. “Poor mother is so blundering,” she sighed softly in my
ear. “I am wearing this cape for Dr. Hunsdale. He is bringing it home
to his sister, and of course wouldn’t have any shadow of a chance with
it himself. Indeed, he intended to declare it, which would have been a
dreadful shame. So I just offered to pack mine and wear this one. Lots
of girls do, you know. I’ve got a watch here for another man, too,”
lightly touching the châtelaine by her side. “Not a gold one. Only a
little silver thing he bought for _his_ sister, who is a child. Poor
mother doesn’t know about that, or she would be more miserable still;
and she is pretty miserable now, isn’t she?” contemplating her perturbed
relative with gentle disfavor. “You see, she worries so, she makes that
man believe we have something tremendously valuable somewhere, and he is
bent on finding it out. There, he’s after our Roman blankets; but those
are for ourselves, and, what is more,” raising her voice, “we have had
them in use for nearly three months.”
“Three months isn’t long enough,” returned the official surlily. “You
must have had them in use a year, to bring them in free.”
“A year!” echoed Maisie, opening her round eyes with innocent amazement.
“If you knew much about Roman blankets, you wouldn’t expect anybody
to use them for a year, and then think them worth bringing home. What
a thrifty lot the custom-house people must be! Poor mother! She never
expected to pay for those, and it does seem a little hard on her. But
what’s that he’s got now? Oh! _do_ look!” for the inspector had grabbed
something loosely wrapped in white tissue paper, and was holding it aloft
with an exultant shake, and an “I’ve-tracked-you-at-last” expression.
Down fell a rubber shoe, of unmistakable American manufacture, but
richly crusted with layers of foreign mud. It flopped modestly into the
bottom of the trunk, and was greeted with a ringing laugh of genuine,
uncontrolled delight. “That’s a present,” sobbed the girl, literally
choking with mirth, “and very valuable. We brought it from the South
Kensington, and are going to send it to the Metropolitan Museum as soon
as we reach home.”
“Maisie, how can you be so foolish!” protested her mother, roused by
desperation to some faint semblance of authority, and visibly anxious to
propitiate the inspector, who looked ominously angry. “If you will wrap
such absurd things in white tissue paper, naturally people think they are
of some value.”
“But we had so much tissue paper in London, and nothing else to wrap
with,” was the very reasonable reply. “Fifteen sheets the tailor sent
home with my one frock, and I am keeping most of it to use at Christmas
time. Poor old shoe!” lifting it tenderly out of the trunk; “if mud
were a dutiable article—and I only wonder it isn’t—you would come very
expensive just now. Swiss mud, too, I do believe, never brushed off since
that day at Grindelwald, and quite a relic. Don’t you think,” turning
suddenly to me, “don’t you really think all this is fearfully funny?”
In one sense I did, though the fun was of a strictly esoteric character,
not appealing broadly to the crowd. But then Mr. Saintsbury assures us
that real fun seldom does. Poor mother’s sense of humor was plainly
unequal to the demand made upon it; cousin Jim, who had not spoken since
his first repulse, looked more bewildered than amused; and even the
inspector did not seem vastly entertained by the situation. The trunks
had been examined, and their contents sadly disarranged; the handbags
searched, and found to contain only toilet articles and underwear; the
steamer rugs, unrolled, revealed nothing more precious than an old
magazine and four battered French novels. As a result of over half an
hour’s inquisition, the authorities had possessed themselves of two
well-worn Roman blankets, a pretty, inexpensive little fan, painted on
brown linen, a beer mug of Munich ware, and those five blue card-cases
that had been so cheap in Paris. It hardly seemed as if the spoils were
worth the conflict, or as if the three dollars and ninety cents duty
charged on them could be a serious addition to the revenues of the
United States. But the home-coming of one poor woman had been marred, and
no salt-tax of ancient France was ever paid with more manifest reluctance
and ill-will.
“It’s the burning injustice of the thing I mind, Maisie,” was the
vehement protest hurled at the inspector’s back. “There were plenty of
people all around whose trunks were hardly touched. I watched one man
myself, and he never lifted out a single thing—just turned the corners
a little, and smoothed all down again. He was examining the Hardings’s
luggage, too, and I know they have five times as much as we have—really
costly, beautiful things—and they never paid a cent.”
“But we didn’t pay a great deal,” returned the girl cheerfully. She was
down on her knees now, deftly rearranging the disordered trunks. “Think
of all our man might have found, and didn’t.”
“Think of the shameful condition he left our clothes in!” said her angry
mother. “It is an outrage. And those blankets! Everybody brings them,
and nobody but ourselves has to pay. The Hardings had them, I know, and
so did Miss Rebecca Chambers, and Mrs. Starr; and they all came in free.”
“Yes, but Mr. Maitland was charged four dollars duty on a pair he bought
for twenty shillings in London, and he presented them to the custom-house
officers rather than give their value over again,” said Maisie
triumphantly.
“Did he, really?” cried her mother, brightening up wonderfully under the
beneficent influence of other people’s misfortunes. “What a shame! Four
dollars duty on twenty-shilling blankets! I never heard of anything so
preposterous.”
“Yes, and Dr. Carson gave them a silver watch he had brought over for his
little boy, rather than pay the duty on that, it was so high,” continued
Maisie, who seemed to know the fate and fortunes of every passenger on
board.
Her mother’s face relaxed from fretfulness into smiles. “I wonder he
doesn’t sue the government, or something,” she remarked, with feminine
vagueness. “I am sure I should. It is a good thing, Maisie, we had no
watches to bring.”
The girl chuckled softly, and shook the little châtelaine by her side.
“Yes, it _is_ a good thing,” she said, with an air of simple conviction.
“After all, we did get off pretty cheap. And it was almost worth the
money to see the delicious flourish with which that muddy old overshoe
tumbled on the scene. Don’t _you_ think,” turning once more appealingly
to me, “that three dollars and ninety cents was little enough to pay for
such a sight?”
Perhaps I did. A laugh is always worth its price, and in these serious
days grows rare at any figure. Besides, when a great republic condescends
to play an active part in even an indifferent comedy, it is ill-timed to
grumble at the cost.
MR. WILDE’S _INTENTIONS_
Ever since the first printers with misguided zeal dipped an innocent
world in ink, those books have been truly popular which reflected
faithfully and enthusiastically the foibles and delusions of the hour.
This is what is called “keeping abreast with the spirit of the times,”
and we have only to look around us at present to see the principle at
work. With an arid and dreary realism chilling us to the heart, and
sad-voiced novelists entreating us at every turn to try to cultivate
indecorous conduct and religious doubts, fiction has ceased to be a
medium of delight. Even nihilism, which is the only form of relief that
true earnestness permits, is capable of being overstrained, and some
narrowly conservative people are beginning to ask themselves already
whether this new development of “murder as a fine art” has not been
sufficiently encouraged. Out of the midst of the gloom, out of the
confusion and depression of conflicting forms of seriousness, rises
from London a voice, clear, languid, musical, shaken with laughter, and
speaking in strange, sweet tones of art and beauty, and of that finer
criticism which is one with art and beauty, and claims them forever as
its own. The voice comes from Mr. Oscar Wilde, and few there are who
listen to him, partly because his philosophy is alien to our prevalent
modes of thought, and partly because of the perverse and paradoxical
fashion in which he delights to give it utterance. People are more
impressed by the way a thing is said than by the thing itself. A grave
arrogance of demeanor, a solemn and self-assertive method of reiterating
an opinion until it grows weighty with words, are weapons more convincing
than any subtlety of argument. “As I have before expressed to the still
reverberating discontent of two continents”—this is the mode in which the
public loves to have a statement offered to its ears, that it may gape,
and wonder, and acquiesce.
Nothing can be further from such admirable solidity than Mr. Wilde’s
flashing sword-play, than the glee with which he makes out a case against
himself, and then proceeds valiantly into battle. There are but four
essays in the volume, rather vaguely called _Intentions_, and of these
four only two have real and permanent value. “The Truth of Masks” is a
somewhat trivial paper, inserted apparently to help fill up the book, and
“Pen, Pencil, and Poison” is visibly lacking in sincerity. The author
plays with his subject very much as his subject, “kind, light-hearted
Wainwright,” played with crime, and in both cases there is a subtle
and discordant element of vulgarity. It is not given to our eminently
respectable age to reproduce the sumptuous and horror-laden atmosphere
which lends an artistic glamor to the poisonous court of the Medicis.
This “study in green” contains, however, some brilliant passages, and
at least one sentence—“The domestic virtues are not the true basis of
art, though they may serve as an excellent advertisement for second-rate
artists”—that must make Mr. George Moore pale with envy, when he
reflects that he missed saying it, where it belongs, in his clever,
truthful, ill-natured paper on “Mummer-Worship.”
The significance and the charm of Mr. Wilde’s book are centred in its
opening chapter, “The Decay of Lying,” reprinted from _The Nineteenth
Century_, and in the long two-part essay, entitled “The Critic as
Artist,” which embodies some of his most thoughtful, serious, and
scholarly work. My own ineffable content rests with “The Decay of Lying,”
because, under its transparent mask of cynicism, its wit, its satire,
its languid mocking humor, lies clearly outlined a great truth that is
slipping fast away from us—the absolute independence of art—art nourished
by imagination and revealing beauty. This is the hand that gilds the
grayness of the world; this is the voice that sings in flute tones
through the silence of the ages. To degrade this shining vision into a
handmaid of nature, to maintain that she should give us photographic
pictures of an unlovely life, is a heresy that arouses in Mr. Wilde
an amused scorn which takes the place of anger. “Art,” he says, “never
expresses anything but itself. It has an independent life, just as
Thought has, and develops purely on its own lines. It is not necessarily
realistic in an age of realism, nor spiritual in an age of faith. So far
from being the creation of its time, it is usually in direct opposition
to it, and the only history that it preserves for us is the history of
its own progress.” That we should understand this, it is necessary to
understand also the “beautiful untrue things” which exist only in the
world of fancy; the things that are lies, and yet help us to endure
the truth. Mr. Wilde repudiates distinctly and almost energetically
all lying with an object, all sordid trifling with a graceful gift.
The lies of newspapers yield him no pleasure; the lies of politicians
are ostentatiously unconvincing; the lies of lawyers are “briefed by
the prosaic.” He reviews the world of fiction with a swift and caustic
touch; he lingers among the poets; he muses rapturously over those
choice historic masterpieces, from Herodotus to Carlyle, where “facts
are either kept in their proper subordinate position, or else entirely
excluded on the general ground of dulness.” He laments with charming
frankness the serious virtues of his age. “Many a young man,” he says,
“starts in life with a natural gift for exaggeration, which, if nurtured
in congenial and sympathetic surroundings, or by the imitation of the
best models, might grow into something really great and wonderful. But,
as a rule, he comes to nothing. He either falls into careless habits
of accuracy, or takes to frequenting the society of the aged and the
well-informed. Both things are equally fatal to his imagination, and in a
short time he develops a morbid and unhealthy faculty of truth-telling,
begins to verify all statements made in his presence, has no hesitation
in contradicting people who are much younger than himself, and often ends
by writing novels that are so like life that no one can possibly believe
in their probability.” Surely this paragraph has but one peer in the
world of letters, and that is the immortal sentence wherein De Quincey
traces the murderer’s gradual downfall to incivility and procrastination.