For more than a century the Dutch were the laughing-stock of polite
Europe. They were butter-firkins, swillers of beer and schnapps, and
their _vrouws_ from whom Holbein painted the all but loveliest of
Madonnas, Rembrandt the graceful girl who sits immortal on his knee in
Dresden, and Rubens his abounding goddesses, were the synonyms of
clumsy vulgarity. Even so late as Irving the ships of the greatest
navigators in the world were represented as sailing equally well
stern-foremost. That the aristocratic Venetians should have
"Riveted with gigantic piles
Thorough the center their new catched miles"
was heroic. But the far more marvelous achievement of the Dutch in
the same kind was ludicrous even to republican Marvell. Meanwhile,
during that very century of scorn, they were the best artists,
sailors, merchants, bankers, printers, scholars, jurisconsults, and
statesmen in Europe, and the genius of Motley has revealed them to us,
earning a right to themselves by the most heroic struggle in human
annals. But, alas! they were not merely simple burghers who had fairly
made themselves High Mightinesses, and could treat on equal terms with
anointed kings, but their commonwealth carried in its bosom the germs
of democracy. They even unmuzzled, at least after dark, that dreadful
mastiff, the Press, whose scent is, or ought to be, so keen for wolves
in sheep's clothing and for certain other animals in lions' skins.
They made fun of sacred majesty, and, what was worse, managed
uncommonly well without it. In an age when periwigs made so large a
part of the natural dignity of man people with such a turn of mind
were dangerous. How could they seem other than vulgar and hateful?
[Footnote 38: From the essay entitled "On a Certain Condescension in
Foreigners," printed in "From My Study Windows." Copyright, 1870,
1871, 1890, by James Russell Lowell. Published by Houghton, Mifflin
Company.]
In the natural course of things we succeeded to this unenviable
position of general butt. The Dutch had thriven under it pretty well,
and there was hope that we could at least contrive to worry along. And
we certainly did in a very redoubtable fashion. Perhaps we deserved
some of the sarcasm more than our Dutch predecessors in office. We had
nothing to boast of in arts or letters, and were given to bragging
overmuch of our merely material prosperity, due quite as much to the
virtue of our continent as to our own. There was some truth in
Carlyle's sneer after all. Till we had succeeded in some higher way
than this, we had only the success of physical growth. Our greatness,
like that of enormous Russia, was greatness on the map--barbarian mass
only; but had we gone down, like that other Atlantis, in some vast
cataclysm, we should have covered but a pin's point on the chart of
memory, compared with those ideal spaces occupied by tiny Attica and
cramped England. At the same time, our critics somewhat too easily
forgot that material must make ready the foundation for ideal
triumphs, that the arts have no chance in poor countries. But it must
be allowed that democracy stood for a great deal in our shortcoming.
The _Edinburgh Review_ never would have thought of asking, "Who reads
a Russian book?" and England was satisfied with iron from Sweden
without being impertinently inquisitive after her painters and
statuaries. Was it that they expected too much from the mere miracle
of freedom? Is it not the highest art of a republic to make men of
flesh and blood, and not the marble ideals of such? It may be fairly
doubted whether we have produced this higher type of man yet. Perhaps
it is the collective, not the individual humanity that is to have a
chance of nobler development among us. We shall see. We have a vast
amount of imported ignorance, and, still worse, of native ready-made
knowledge, to digest before even the preliminaries of such a
consummation can be arranged. We have got to learn that statesmanship
is the most complicated of all arts, and to come back to the
apprenticeship system too hastily abandoned....
So long as we continue to be the most common-schooled and the least
cultivated people in the world, I suppose we must consent to endure
this condescending manner of foreigners toward us. The more friendly
they mean to be the more ludicrously prominent it becomes. They can
never appreciate the immense amount of silent work that has been done
here, making this continent slowly fit for the abode of man, and which
will demonstrate itself, let us hope, in the character of the people.
Outsiders can only be expected to judge a nation by the amount it has
contributed to the civilization of the world; the amount, that is,
that can be seen and handled. A great place in history can only be
achieved by competitive examinations, nay, by a long course of them.
How much new thought have we contributed to the common stock? Till
that question can be triumphantly answered, or needs no answer, we
must continue to be simply interesting as an experiment, to be studied
as a problem, and not respected as an attained result or an
accomplished solution. Perhaps, as I have hinted, their patronizing
manner toward us is the fair result of their failing to see here
anything more than a poor imitation, a plaster-cast of Europe.
Are they not partly right? If the tone of the uncultivated American
has too often the arrogance of the barbarian, is not that of the
cultivated as often vulgarly apologetic? In the America they meet with
is there the simplicity, the manliness, the absence of sham, the faith
in human nature, the sensitiveness to duty and implied obligation,
that in any way distinguishes us from what our orators call "the
effete civilization of the Old World"? Is there a politician among us
daring enough (except a Dana[39] here and there) to risk his future on
the chance of our keeping our word with the exactness of superstitious
communities like England? Is it certain that we shall be ashamed of a
bankruptcy of honor, if we can only keep the letter of our bond? I
hope we shall be able to answer all these questions with a frank yes.
[Footnote 39: The reference is to Richard Henry Dana, author of "Two
Years Before the Mast," who in 1876 was appointed by President Grant
minister to England, but failed of confirmation in the Senate, owing
to political intrigues due to his independence. Lowell appears to have
inserted this reference to Dana in an edition published subsequent to
the first, the date of the first being 1871.]
At any rate, we would advise our visitors that we are not merely
curious creatures, but belong to the family of man, and that, as
individuals, we are not to be always subjected to the competitive
examination above mentioned, even if we acknowledged their competence
as an examining board. Above all, we beg them to remember that America
is not to us, as to them, a mere object of external interest to be
discust and analyzed, but in us, part of our very marrow. Let them not
suppose that we conceive of ourselves as exiles from the graces and
amenities of an older date than we, tho very much at home in a state
of things not yet all it might be or should be, but which we mean to
make so, and which we find both wholesome and pleasant for men (tho
perhaps not for _dilettanti_) to live in. "The full tide of human
existence"[40] may be felt here as keenly as Johnson felt it at
Charing Cross, and in a larger sense. I know one person who is
singular enough to think Cambridge the very best spot on the habitable
globe. "Doubtless God could have made a better, but doubtless He never
did."
[Footnote 40: A remark of Dr. Johnson's as reported by Boswell.]
It will take England a great while to get over her airs of patronage
toward us, or even passably to conceal them. She can not help
confounding the people with the country, and regarding us as lusty
juveniles. She has a conviction that whatever good there is in us is
wholly English, when the truth is that we are worth nothing except so
far as we have disinfected ourselves of Anglicism. She is especially
condescending just now, and lavishes sugar-plums on us as if we had
not outgrown them. I am no believer in sudden conversions, especially
in sudden conversions to a favorable opinion of people who have just
proved you to be mistaken in judgment and therefore unwise in policy.
I never blamed her for not wishing well to democracy--how should
she?--but _Alabamas_ are not wishes. Let her not be too hasty in
believing Mr. Reverdy Johnson's[41] pleasant words. Tho there is no
thoughtful man in America who would not consider a war with England
the greatest of calamities, yet the feeling toward her here is very
far from cordial, whatever our minister may say in the effusion that
comes after ample dining. Mr. Adams,[42] with his famous "My Lord,
this means war," perfectly represented his country. Justly or not, we
have a feeling that we have been wronged, not merely insulted. The
only sure way of bringing about a healthy relation between the two
countries is for Englishmen to clear their minds of the notion that we
are always to be treated as a kind of inferior and deported Englishman
whose nature they perfectly understand, and whose back they
accordingly stroke the wrong way of the fur with amazing perseverance.
Let them learn to treat us naturally on our merits as human beings, as
they would a German or a Frenchman, and not as if we were a kind of
counterfeit Briton whose crime appeared in every shade of difference,
and before long there would come that right feeling which we naturally
call a good understanding. The common blood, and still more the common
language, are fatal instruments of misapprehension. Let them give up
trying to understand us, still more thinking that they do, and acting
in various absurd ways as the necessary consequence, for they will
never arrive at that devoutly-to-be-wished consummation till they
learn to look at us as we are and not as they suppose us to be. Dear
old long-estranged mother-in-law, it is a great many years since we
parted. Since 1660, when you married again, you have been a
step-mother to us. Put on your spectacles, dear madam. Yes, we have
grown, and changed likewise. You would not let us darken your doors,
if you could possibly help it.
[Footnote 41: Reverdy Johnson of Maryland, Mr. Adams's successor as
minister to England, negotiated a settlement of the _Alabama_ dispute,
which was unfavorably received in this country and finally rejected by
the Senate, which led to his recall in 1869.]
[Footnote 42: Charles Francis Adams, our minister to England from 1861
to 1867, made this remark to a British cabinet minister at the time of
the threatened sailing of the Laird rams.]
We know that perfectly well. But pray, when we look to be treated as
men, don't shake that rattle in our faces, nor talk baby to us any
longer.
"Do, child, go to it grandam, child;
Give grandam kingdom, and it grandam will
Give it a plum, a cherry, and a fig!"