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[Illustration: Photo of Julia Ward Howe
Signed,
Yours very cordially,
Julia Ward Howe.]
Is Polite Society Polite?
And Other Essays
BY
[Illustration: colophon]
MRS. JULIA WARD HOWE
BOSTON & NEW YORK
Lamson, Wolffe, & Company
1895
Copyright, 1895, By Lamson, Wolffe, & Co.
All rights reserved
Preface
I REMEMBER that, quite late in the fifties, I mentioned to Theodore
Parker the desire which I began to feel to give living expression to my
thoughts, and to lend to my written words the interpretation of my
voice.
Parker, who had taken a friendly interest in the publication of my first
volumes, "Passion Flowers" and "Words for the Hour," gave his approval
also to this new project of mine. "The great desire of the age," he
said, "is for vocal expression. People are scarcely satisfied with the
printed page alone: they crave for their instruction the living voice
and the living presence."
At the time of which I write, no names of women were found in the lists
of lecture courses. Lucy Stone had graduated from Oberlin, and was
beginning to be known as an advocate of temperance, and as an
antislavery speaker. Lucretia Mott had carried her eloquent pleading
outside the limits of her Quaker belonging. Antoinette Brown Blackwell
occupied the pulpit of a Congregational church, while Abby Kelly Foster
and the Grimke Sisters stood forth as strenuous pleaders for the
abolition of slavery. Of these ladies I knew little at the time of which
I speak, and my studies and endeavors occupied a field remote from that
in which they fought the good fight of faith. My thoughts ran upon the
importance of a helpful philosophy of life, and my heart's desire was to
assist the efforts of those who sought for this philosophy.
Gradually these wishes took shape in some essays, which I read to
companies of invited friends. Somewhat later, I entered the lecture
field, and journeyed hither and yon, as I was invited.
The papers collected in the present volume have been heard in many parts
of our vast country. As is evident, they have been written for popular
audiences, with a sense of the limitations which such audiences
necessarily impose. With the burthen of increasing years, the freedom of
locomotion naturally tends to diminish, and I must be thankful to be
read where I have in other days been heard. I shall be glad indeed if it
may be granted to these pages to carry the message which I myself have
been glad to bear,--the message of the good hope of humanity, despite
the faults and limitations of individuals.
That hope casts its light over the efforts of years that are past, and
gilds for me, with ineffaceable glow, the future of our race.
The lecture, "Is Polite Society Polite?" was written for a course of
lectures given some years ago by the New England Women's Club of Boston.
"Greece Revisited" was first read before the Town and Country Club of
Newport, R.I. "Aristophanes" and "Dante and Beatrice" were written for
the Summer School of Philosophy at Concord, Mass. "The Halfness of
Nature" was first read before the Boston Radical Club. "The Salon in
America" was written for the Contemporary Club in Philadelphia.
Contents
Preface
Is Polite Society Polite Page 3
Paris 37
Greece Revisited 77
The Salon in America 113
Aristophanes 133
The Halfness of Nature 161
Dante and Beatrice 181
Is Polite Society Polite?
WHY do we ask this question? For reasons which I shall endeavor to make
evident.
The life in great cities awakens a multitude of ambitions. Some people
are very unscrupulous in following these ambitions, attaining their
object either by open force and pushing, or by artful and cunning
manoeuvres. And so it will happen that in the society which considers
itself entitled to rank above all other circles one may meet with people
whose behavior is guided by no sincere and sufficient rule of conduct.
Observing their shortcomings, we may stand still and ask, Are these
people what they should be? Is polite society polite?
For this society, which is supposed to be nothing if not polite, does
assume, in every place, to set up the standard of taste and to regulate
the tone of manners. It aims to be what Hamlet once was in Ophelia's
eyes--"the glass of fashion and the mould of form." Its forms and
fashions change, of course, from age to age, and yet it is a steadfast
institution in the development of human civilization.
I should be sorry to overstate its shortcomings, but I wish I might help
it to feel its obligations and to fulfil them.
What shall we accept in the ordinary sense of men as politeness? Shall
we consider it a mere surface polish--an attitude expressive of
deference--corresponding to no inward grace of good feeling? Will you
like to live with the person who, in the great world, can put on fine
manners, but who, in the retirement of home, manifests the vulgarity of
a selfish heart and an undisciplined temper?
No, you will say; give me for my daily companions those who always wear
the best manners they have. For manners are not like clothes: you can
mend them best when you have them on.
We may say at the outset that sincerity is the best foundation upon
which to build the structure of a polite life. The affectation of
deference does not impose upon people of mature experience. It carries
its own contradiction with it. When I hear the soft voice, a little too
soft, I look into the face to see whether the two agree. But I need
scarcely do that. The voice itself tells the story, is sincere or
insincere. Flattery is, in itself, an offence against politeness. It is
oftenest administered to people who are already suffering the
intoxication of vanity. When I see this, I wish that I could enforce a
prohibitory ordinance against it, and prosecute those who use it mostly
to serve their own selfish purposes. But people can be trained never to
offer nor to receive this dangerous drug of flattery, and I think that,
in all society which can be called good, it becomes less and less the
mode to flavor one's dishes with it.
Having spoken of flattery, I am naturally led to say a word about its
opposite, detraction.
The French have a witty proverb which says that "the absent are always
in the wrong," and which means that the blame for what is amiss is
usually thrown upon those who are not present to defend themselves. It
seems to me that the rules of politeness are to be as carefully observed
toward the absent as toward those in whose company we find ourselves.
The fact that they cannot speak in their own defence is one which should
appeal to our nicest sense of honor. Good breeding, or its reverse, is
as much to be recognized in the way in which people speak of others as
in the way in which they speak to them.
Have we not all felt the tone of society to be lowered by a low view of
the conduct and motives of those who are made the subjects of
discussion?
Those unfortunate men and women who delight in talk of this sort always
appear to me degraded by it. No matter how clever they may be, I avoid
their society, which has in it a moral malaria most unwholesome in
character.
I am glad to say that, although frivolous society constantly shows its
low estimate of human nature, I yet think that the gay immolation of
character which was once considered a legitimate source of amusement
has gone somewhat out of fashion. Sheridan's "School for Scandal" gives
us some notion of what this may once have been. I do think that the
world has grown more merciful in later years, and that even people who
meet only for their own amusement are learning to seek it without
murdering the reputation of their absent friends.
There is a mean impulse in human nature which leads some people to toss
down the reputation of their fellows just as the Wall Street bear tosses
down the value of the investments whose purchase he wishes to command at
his own price. But in opposition to this, God has set within us a power
which reacts against such base estimates of mankind. The utterance of
this false tone often calls out the better music, and makes us admire
the way in which good springs up in the very footsteps of evil and
effaces them as things of nought.
Does intercourse with great society make us more or less polite?
Elizabeth Browning says:--
First time he kissed me he but only kissed
The fingers of this hand wherewith I write,
Which ever thence did grow more clean and white,
Slow to world greetings, quick with its "Oh, list,"
When the angels speak.
This clearly expresses the sanctification of a new and noble interest.
How is it with those on whom the great world has set its seal of
superior position, which is derived from a variety of sources, among
which wealth, recognized talent, and high descent are the most
important?
I must say in answer that this social recognition does not affect all
people in the same manner. One passes the ordeal unscathed, is as fresh
in affection, as genuine in relation and intercourse, as faithful to
every fine and true personal obligation in the fiery furnace of wealth
and fashion and personal distinction as he or she was in the simple
village or domestic life, in which there was no question of greatness or
smallness, all being of nearly the same dimensions.
The great world may boast of its jewels which no furnace blast can melt
or dim, but they are rare. Madame de Staël and Madame Récamier seem to
have been among these undimmed gems; so, also, was Madame de Sévigné,
with a heart warm with love for her children and her friends in all the
dazzle of a brilliant court. So I have seen a vessel of the finest
glass, thin as paper, which a chemist left over his spirit-lamp, full of
boiling liquid, and, returning the next day, found uninjured, so perfect
was the temper of the glass. But for one such unspoiled world-favorite,
I can show you twenty men and women who, at the first lift of fortune,
forsake their old friends, neglect their near relations, and utterly
ignore their poor ones.
Romance is full of such shameful action; and let me say here, in
passing, that in my opinion Romance often wears off our horror of what
is wicked and heartless by showing it as a permanent and recognized
element of society. This is the reverse of what it should do. But in
these days it so exceeds its office in the hunt after the exhausted
susceptibilities of a novel-reading public that it really thumps upon
our aversion to vice until it wears it out.
De Balzac's novel called "Father Goriot" tells the story of a man of
humble origin who grows rich by trade, educates his daughters for
fashionable life, marries them to men of condition, portions them
abundantly, and is in return kept carefully out of what the world knows
of their lives. They seek him only when they want money, which they
always do, in spite of the rich dowry settled on them at their marriage.
_Father Goriot_ sells his last piece of silver to help them, and dies in
a low boarding-house, tended by the charity of strangers, tormented to
the last by the bickering of his children, but not cheered for one
moment by their affection.
I have heard on good authority that people of wealth and position in our
large cities sometimes deposit their aged and helpless parents in
asylums where they may have all that money can buy for them, but nothing
of what gratitude and affection should give them. How detestable such a
course is I need not say; my present business is to say that it is far
from polite.
Apropos of this suggestion, I remember that I was once invited to read
this essay to a village audience in one of the New England States. My
theme was probably one quite remote from the general thought of my
hearers. As I went on, their indifference began to affect me, and my
thought was that I might as well have appealed to a set of wooden
tenpins as to those who were present on that occasion.
In this, I afterwards learned that I was mistaken. After the conclusion
of the evening's exercise, a young man, well known in the community, was
heard to inquire urgently where he could find the lecturer. Friends
asked, what did he want of her? He replied: "Well, I did put my brother
in the poorhouse, and now that I have heard Mrs. Howe, I suppose that I
must take him out."
Need I say that I felt myself amply repaid for the trouble I had taken?
On the other hand, this same theme was once selected from my list by a
lecture association in a small town buried in the forests of the far
West. As I surveyed my somewhat home-spun audience, I feared that a
discussion of the faults of polite society would interest my hearers
very little. I was surprised after my reading to hear, from more than
one of those present, that this lecture appeared to them the very thing
that was most needed in that place.
There is to my mind something hideous in the concealment and disregard
of real connections which involve real obligations.
If you are rich, take up your poor relations. Assist them at least to
find the way of earning a competence. Use the power you have to bring
them within the sphere of all that is refining. You can embellish the
world to them and them to the world. Do so, and you will be respected by
those whose respect is valuable. On the contrary, repudiate those who
really belong to you and the mean world itself will laugh at you and
despise you. It is clever and cunning enough to find out your secret,
and when it has done so, it will expose you pitilessly.
I have known men and women whose endeavors and successes have all been
modelled upon the plane of social ambition. Starting with a good
common-school education, which is a very good thing to start with, they
have improved opportunities of culture and of desirable association
until they stand conspicuous, far away from the sphere of their village
or homemates, having money to spend, able to boast of wealthy
acquaintances, familiar guests at fashionable entertainments.
Now sometimes these individuals wander so far away from their original
belongings that these latter are easily lost sight of. And I assure you
that they are left in the dark, in so far as concerns the actions of
the friends we are now considering. Many a painstaking mother at a
distance, many a plain but honest old father, many a sister working in a
factory to help a brother at college, is never spoken of by such
persons, and is even thought of with a blush of shame and annoyance.
Oh! shame upon the man or woman of us who is guilty of such behavior as
this! These relatives are people to be proud of, as we should know if we
had the heart to know what is true, good, and loyal. Even were it not
so, were your relative a criminal, never deny the bond of nature. Stand
beside him in the dock or at the gallows. You have illustrious precedent
for such association in one whom men worship, but forget to imitate.
Let me here relate a little story of my early years. I had a nursery
governess when I was a small child. She came from some country town, and
probably regarded her position in my father's family as a promotion. One
evening, while we little folks gathered about her in our nursery, she
wept bitterly. "What is the matter?" we asked; and she took me up in her
lap, and said: "My poor old father came here to see me to-day, and I
would not see him. I bade them tell him that he had mistaken the house,
and he went away, and as he went I saw him looking up at the windows so
wistfully!" Poor woman! We wept with her, feeling that this was indeed
a tragical event, and not knowing what she could do to make it better.
But could I see that woman now, I would say to her: "If you were serving
the king at his table, and held his wine-cup in your hand, and your
father stood without, asking for you, you should set down the cup, and
go out from the royal presence to honor your father, so much the more if
he is poor, so much the more if he is old." And all that is really
polite in polite society would say so too.
Now this action which I report of my governess corresponds to something
in human nature, and to something which polite society fosters.
For polite society bases itself upon exclusions. In this it partly
appeals to that antagonism of our nature through which the desire to
possess something is greatly exaggerated by the difficulty of becoming
possessed of it. If every one can come to your house, no one, you think,
will consider it a great object of desire to go there. Theories of
supply and demand come in here. People would gladly destroy things that
give pleasure, in order to enhance their value in the hands of the few.
I once heard a lady, herself quite new in society, say of a Parisian
dame who had shown her some attention: "Ah! the trouble with Madame----
is that she is too good-natured. She entertains everybody." "Indeed,"
thought I, "if she had been less good-natured, is it certain that she
would have entertained you?"
But of course the justifiable side of exclusion is choice, selection of
one's associates. No society can confer the absolute right or power to
make this selection. Tiresome and unacceptable people are everywhere
entangled in relations with wise and agreeable ones. There is no bore
nor torment who has not the right to incommode some fireside or assembly
with his or her presence. You cannot keep wicked, foolish, tiresome,
ugly people out of society, however you and your set may delight in good
conduct, grace, and beauty. You cannot keep poor people out of the
society of the rich. Those whom you consider your inferiors feed your
cherished stomach, and drape your sacred person, and stand behind your
chair at your feasts, judging your manners and conversation.
Let us remember Mr. Dickens's story of "Little Dorrit," in which _Mr.
Murdle_, a new-rich man, sitting with guests at his own sumptuous table,
is described as dreading the disapprobation of his butler. This he might
well do, as the butler was an expert, well aware of the difference
between a gentleman of breeding and education and a worldling, lifted by
the possession of wealth alone.
Very genial in contrast with this picture appears the response of
Abraham Lincoln, who, on being asked by the head waiter at his first
state dinner whether he would take white wine or red, replied: "I don't
know; which would you?"
Well, what can society do, then? It can decree that those who come of a
certain set of families, that those who have a certain education, and
above all, a certain income, shall associate together on terms of
equality. And with this decree there comes to foolish human nature a
certain irrational desire to penetrate the charmed circle so formed.
The attempt to do this encounters resistance; there is pushing in and
shoving out,--coaxing and wheedling on the one hand, and cold denial or
reluctant assent on the other. So a fight is perpetually going on in the
realm of fashion. Those not yet recognized are always crowding in. Those
first in occupation are endeavoring to crowd these out. In the end,
perseverance usually conquers.
But neither of these processes is polite--neither the crowding in nor
the crowding out--and this last especially, as many of those who are in
were once out, and are trying to keep other people from doing what they
themselves have been very glad to do. In Mr. Thackeray's great romance,
"The Newcomes," young _Ethel Newcome_ asks her grandmother, _Lady Kew_,
"Well then, grandmother, who is of a good family?" And the old lady
replies: "Well, my dear, mostly no one." But I would reply: Mostly
every one, if people are disposed to make their family good.
There is an obvious advantage in society's possession of a recognized
standard of propriety in general deportment; but the law of good
breeding should nowhere be merely formal, nor should its application be
petty and captious. The externals of respectability are most easily aped
when they are of the permanent and stereotyped kind, and may be used to
conceal gross depravity; while the constant, fresh, gracious inspiration
of a pure, good heart is unmistakable, and cannot be successfully
counterfeited.
On the other hand, young persons should be desirous to learn the opinion
of older ones as to what should and should not be done on the ground of
general decorum and good taste. Youth is in such hot haste to obtain
what it desires that it often will not wait to analyze the spirit of an
occasion, but classes opposition to its inclinations as prejudice and
antiquated superstition. But the very individual who in youth thus
scoffs at restraint often pays homage to it in later days, having
meanwhile ascertained the weighty reasons which underlie the whole law
of reserve upon which the traditions of good society are based.
How much trouble, then, might it save if the young people, as a rule,
were to come to the elders and ask at least why this thing or that is
regarded as unbecoming or of doubtful propriety. And how much would it
assist this good understanding if the elders, to the last, were careful
to keep up with the progress of the time, examining tendencies, keeping
a vigilant eye upon fashions, books, and personages, and, above all,
encouraging the young friends to exercise their own powers of
discrimination in following usages and customs, or in departing from
them.
This last suggestion marks how far the writer of these pages is behind
the progress of the age. In her youth, it was customary for sons and
daughters both to seek and to heed the counsel of elders in social
matters. In these days, a grandmother must ask her granddaughter whether
such or such a thing is considered "good form," to which the latter will
often reply, "O dear! no."
* * * * *
It is sad that we should carry all the barbarism of our nature into our
views of the divine, and make our form of faith an occasion of ill-will
to others, instead of drawing from it the inspiration of a wide and
comprehensive charity. The world's Christianity is greatly open to this
accusation, in dealing with which we are forced to take account of the
slow rate of human progress.
A friend lately told me of a pious American, familiar in Hong Kong, who
at the close of his last visit there, took a formal and eternal leave
of one of the principal native merchants with whom he had long been
acquainted. Mr. C---- alluded to his advanced age, and said that it was
almost certain he could never return to China. "We shall not meet again
in this world," he said, "and as you have never embraced the true
religion, I can have no hope of meeting you in a better one."
I ask whether this was polite, from one sinner to another?
A stupid, worldly old woman of fashion in one of our large cities once
said of a most exemplary acquaintance, a liberal Christian saint of
thirty years or more ago: "I am very fond of Mrs. S---- but she is a
Unitarian. What a pity we cannot hope to meet in heaven!" The wicked
bystanders had their own view of the reason why this meeting would
appear very improbable.
What shall we say of the hospitality which in some churches renders each
man and woman the savage guardian of a seat or pew? Is this God's house
to you, when you turn with fury on a stranger who exercises a stranger's
right to its privileges? Whatever may be preached from the pulpit of
such a church, there is not much of heaven in the seats so maintained
and defended. I remember an Episcopal church in one of our large cities
which a modest looking couple entered one Sunday, taking seats in an
unoccupied pew near the pulpit. And presently comes in the plumed head
of the family, followed by its other members. The strangers are warned
to depart, which they do, not without a smile of suppressed amusement.
The church-woman afterwards learned that the persons whom she had turned
out of her pew were the English ambassador and his wife, the
accomplished Lord and Lady Napier.
St. Paul tells us that in an unknown guest we may entertain an angel
unawares. But I will say that in giving way to such evil impulses,
people entertain a devil unawares.
Polite religion has to do both with manners and with doctrine. Tolerance
is the external condition of this politeness, but charity is its
interior source. A doctrine which allows and encourages one set of men
to exclude another set from claim to the protection and inspiration of
God is in itself impolite. Christ did not reproach the Jews for holding
their own tenets, but for applying these tenets in a superficial and
narrow spirit, neglecting to practise true devotion and benevolence, and
refusing to learn the providential lessons which the course of time
should have taught them. At this day of the world, we should all be
ready to admit that salvation lies not so much in the prescriptions of
any religion as in the spirit in which these are followed.
It is the fashion to-day to decry missions. I believe in them greatly.
But a missionary should start with a polite theory concerning the
religion which he hopes to supersede by the introduction of one more
polite. If he studies rightly, he will see that all religions seek after
God, and will imitate the procedure of Paul, who, before instructing the
Athenians in the doctrines of the new religion, was careful to recognize
the fact that they had a religion of their own.
I wish to speak here of the so-called rudeness of reform; and to say
that I think we should call this roughness rather than rudeness. A true
reformer honors human nature by recognizing in it a higher power than is
shown in its average action. The man or woman who approaches you, urging
upon you a more fervent faith, a more impartial justice, a braver
resolve than you find in your own mind, comes to you really in
reverence, and not in contempt. Such a person sees in you the power and
dignity of manhood or womanhood, of which you, perhaps, have an
insufficient sense. And he will strike and strike until he finds in you
that better nature, that higher sense to which he appeals, and which in
the end is almost sure to respond to such appealing.
I remember having thought in my youth that the Presbyterian preacher,
John Knox, was probably very impolite in his sermons preached before
poor Queen Mary Stuart. But when we reflect upon the follies which, more
than aught else, wrecked her unhappy life, we may fancy the stern divine
to have seen whither her love of pleasure and ardent temperament would
lead her, and to have striven, to the best of his knowledge and power,
to pluck her as a brand from the burning, and to bring her within the
sober sphere of influence and reflection which might have saved her
kingdom and her life.
With all its advances, society still keeps some traces of its original
barbarism. I see these traces in the want of respect for labor, where
this want exists, and also in the position which mere Fashion is apt to
assign to teachers in the community.
That those who must be intellectually looked up to should be socially
looked down upon is, to say the least, very inconsistent. That the
performance of the helpful offices of the household should be held as
degrading to those who perform them is no less so. We must seek the
explanation of these anomalies in the distant past. When the handiwork
of society was performed by slaves, the world's estimate of labor was
naturally lowered. In the feudal and military time, the writer ranked
below the fighter, and the skill of learning below the prowess of arms.
The mind of to-day has only partially outgrown this very rude standard
of judgment. I was asked, some fifteen years ago, in England, by people
of education, whether women teachers ranked in America with ladies or
with working women. I replied: "With ladies, certainly," which seemed to
occasion surprise.
I remember having heard that a relative of Theodore Parker's wife, who
disliked him, would occasionally taunt him with having kept school. She
said to him one day: "My father always told me to avoid a schoolmaster."
Parker replied: "It is evident that you have."
I think that as Americans we should all feel an especial interest in the
maintenance of polite feeling in our community. The theory of a
government of the people, by the people, and for the people is in itself
the most polite of theories. The fact that under such a government no
man has a position of absolute inferiority forced upon him for life
ought to free us from mean subserviency on the one hand, and from
haughty and brutal assumption on the other.
Yet I doubt whether politeness is as much considered in American
education as it ought to be. Perhaps our theory of the freedom and
equality of all men leads some of us to the mistaken conclusion that all
people equally know how to behave themselves, which is far from being
the fact.
One result of our not being well instructed in the nature of politeness
is that we go to the wrong sources to learn it. People who have been
modestly bred think they shall acquire fine manners by consorting with
the world's great people, and in this way often unlearn what they
already know of good manners, instead of adding to their knowledge.
Rich Americans seem latterly to have taken on a sort of craze about the
aristocracies of other countries. One form of this craze is the desire
of ambitious parents to marry their daughters to titled individuals
abroad. When we consider that these counts, marquises, and barons
scarcely disguise the fact that the young lady's fortune is the object
of their pursuit, and that the young lady herself is generally aware of
this, we shall not consider marriage under such circumstances a very
polite relation.
What does make our people polite, then? Partly the inherited blood of
men who would not submit to the rude despotism of old England and old
Europe, and who thought a better state of society worth a voyage in the
_Mayflower_ and a tussle with the wild forest and wilder Indian. Partly,
also, the necessity of the case. As we recognize no absolute social
superiority, no one of us is entirely at liberty to assume airs of
importance which do not belong to him. No matter how selfish we may be,
it will not do for us to act upon the supposition that the comfort of
other people is of less consequence than our own. If we are rude, our
servants will not live with us, our tradespeople will not serve us.
This is good as far as it goes, but I wish that I could oftener see in
our young people a desire to know what is perfectly and beautifully
polite. And I feel sure that more knowledge in this direction would
save us from the vulgarity of worshipping rank and wealth.
Who have been the polite spirits of our day? I can mention two of them,
Mr. Longfellow and Mr. Emerson, as persons in whose presence it was
impossible to be rude. But our young people of to-day consider the great
fortunes rather than the great examples.
In order to be polite, it is important to cultivate polite ways of
thinking. Great social troubles and even crimes grow out of rude and
selfish habits of mind. Let us take the case of the Anarchists who were
executed in Chicago some years ago. Before their actions became wicked,
their thoughts became very impolite. They were men who had to work for
their living. They wanted to be so rich that they should not be under
this necessity. Their mode of reasoning was something like this: "I want
money. Who has got it? The capitalist. What protects him in keeping it?
The laws. Down with the laws, then!"
He who reasons thus forgets, foolish man, that the laws protect the poor
as well as the rich. The laws compel the capitalist to make roads for
the use of the poor man, and to build schoolhouses for the education of
his children. They make the person of the poor man as sacred as that of
the rich man. They secure to both the enjoyment of the greatest
benefits of civilization. The Anarchist puts all this behind him, and
only reasons that he, being poor, wants to be rich, and will overthrow,
if he can, the barriers which keep him from rushing like a wild beast
upon the rich man and despoiling him of his possessions.
And this makes me think of that noble man Socrates, whom the Athenians
sentenced to death for impiety, because he taught that there was one
God, while the people about him worshipped many deities. Some of the
friends of this great man made a plan for his escape from prison to a
place of safety. But Socrates refused to go, saying that the laws had
hitherto protected him as they protected other citizens, and that it
would be very ungrateful for him to show them the disrespect of running
away to evade their sentence. He said: "It is better for me to die than
to set the example of disrespect to the laws." How noble were these
sentiments, and how truly polite!
Whoever brings up his children to be sincere, self-respecting, and
considerate of others brings them up to good manners. Did you ever see
an impolite Quaker? I never did. Yet the Friends are a studiously plain
people, no courtiers nor frequenters of great entertainments. What makes
them polite? The good education and discipline which are handed down
among them from one generation to another.
The eminent men of our own early society were simple in their way of
living, but when public duty called them abroad to mingle with the
elegant people of the Old World, they did us great credit. Benjamin
Franklin was much admired at the court of Louis XVI. Jay and Jefferson
and Morris and Adams found their manners good enough to content the
highest European society. They were educated men; but besides
book-learning, and above it, they had been bred to have the thoughts
and, more than all, the feelings of gentlemen.
The assumption of special merit, either by an individual or a class, is
not polite. We notice this fault when some dressy young lady puts on
airs, and struts in fine clothes, or condescends from an elegant
carriage. Elder women show it in hardness and hauteur of countenance, or
in unnecessary patronage.
But we allow classes of people to assume special merit on false grounds.
It may very easily be shown that it requires more talent and merit to
earn money than to spend it. Yet, by almost common consent of the
fashionable world, those who inherit or marry money are allowed to place
themselves above those who earn it.
If this is the case so far as men are concerned, much more is it the
case with women. Good society often feels itself obliged to apologize
for a lady who earns money. The fact, however explained, is a badge of
discredit. She could not help it, poor thing! Her father failed, or her
trustee lost the investments made for her. He usually does. So she
has--oh, sad alternative!--to make herself useful.
Now in America the judgment of the Old World in this respect has come to
be somewhat reversed. We do not like idle inheritors here; and so the
moneyed aristocracy of our country is a tolerably energetic and
industrious body. But in the case of womankind, I could wish to see a
very different standard adopted from that now existing. I could wish
that the fact of an idle and useless life should need apology--not that
of a laborious and useful one. Idleness is a pregnant source of
demoralization to rich women. The hurry and excitement of fashionable
engagements, and the absorbing nature of entirely selfish and useless
pursuits, such as dancing, dress, and flirtation, cannot take the place
of healthful work. Dr. Watts warns us that
Satan finds some mischief still
For idle hands to do.
And Tennyson has some noble lines in one of his noblest poems:--
I know you, Clara Vere de Vere,
You pine among your halls and towers;
The languid light of your proud eyes
Is wearied of the rolling hours.
In glowing health, with boundless wealth,
But sickening of a vague disease,
You know so ill to deal with time,
You needs must play such pranks as these.
As I am speaking of England, I will say that some things in the
constitution of English society seem to tend to impoliteness.
The English are a most powerful and energetic race, with immense
vitality, cruelly divided up in their own country by absolute social
conditions, handed down from generation to generation. So a sense of
superiority, more or less lofty and exaggerated, characterizes the upper
classes, while the lower partly rest in a dogged compliance, partly
indulge the blind instinct of reverence, partly detest and despise those
whom birth and fate have set over them. In England, people assert their
own rank and look down upon that of others all the way from the throne
to the peasant's hut. I asked an English visitor, the other day, what
inferior the lowest man had,--the man at the bottom of the social pile.
I answered him myself: "His wife, of course."
Where worldliness gives the tone to character, it corrupts the source of
good manners, and the outward polish is purchased by the inward
corruption of the heart. The crucial experiment of character is found in
the transition from modest competency to conspicuous wealth and fashion.
Most of us may desire this; but I should rather say: Dread it. I have
seen such sweetness and beauty impaired by the process, such
relinquishment of the genuine, such gradual adoption of the false and
meretricious!
Such was a house in which I used to meet all the muses of the earlier
time,--in which economy was elegant; frugality, tasteful and thrifty. My
heart recalls the golden hours passed there, the genial, home
atmosphere, the unaffected music, the easy, brilliant conversation. Time
passes. A or B is the head of a great mercantile house now. I meet him
after a lapse of years. He is always genial, and pities all who are not
so rich as he is. But when I go to his great feast, I pity him. All the
tiresome and antiquated furniture of fashionable society fills his
rooms. Those empty bores whom I remember in my youth, and many new ones
of their kind, float their rich clothing through his rooms. The old
good-hearted greeting is replaced by the distant company bow. The
moderate banquet, whose special dishes used to have the care of the
young hostess, is replaced by a grand confectioner's avalanche, cold,
costly, and comfortless. And I sigh, and go home feeling, as Browning
says, "chilly and grown old."
This is not one case, but many. And since I have observed this page of
human experience, I say to all whom I love and who are in danger of
becoming very wealthy: Do not, oh! do not be too fashionable. "Love not
the world."
Most of us know the things men really say to us beneath the disguise of
the things they seem to say. And So-and-So, taking my hand, expresses to
me: "How much more cordial should I be to you if your father's real
estate had not been sold off before the rise." And such another would,
if he could, say: "I am really surprised to see you at this house, and
in such good clothes. Pray have you any income that I don't happen to
know about?" The tax-gatherer is not half so vigilant about people's
worldly goods as these friends are. No matter how they bow and smile,
their real impoliteness everywhere penetrates its thin disguise.
What is this impoliteness? To what is it shown? To God's image,--the
true manhood and true womanhood, which you may strip or decorate, but
which you cannot destroy. Human values cannot be raised or lowered at
will. "Thou canst not, by taking thought, add one cubit to thy stature."
I derive impoliteness from two sources,--indifference to the divine, and
contempt for the human.
The king of Wall Street, some little time since, was a man who had risen
from a humble beginning to the eminence of a successful stock-gambler.
He had been fortunate and perhaps skilful in his play, and was supposed
to be possessed of immense wealth. Immediately, every door was opened to
him. No assemblage was perfect without him. Every designing mother
wanted him for her son-in-law. One unlucky throw overturned all this.
Down went his fortune; down, his eminence. No more bowing and cringing
and smiling now. No more plotting against his celibacy--he was welcome
to it. No more burthensome hospitality. He was dropped as coldly and
selfishly as he was taken up,--elbowed aside, left out in the cold. When
I heard of all this, I said: "Is it ever necessary in these times to
preach about the meanness of the great world?"
Let us, in our new world, lay aside altogether the theory of human
superiority as conferred by special birth or fortune. Let us recognize
in all people human right, capacity, and dignity.
Having adopted this equal human platform, and with it the persuasion
that the society of good people is always good society, let us organize
our circles by real tastes and sympathies. Those who love art can follow
it together; those who love business, and science, and theology, and
belles-lettres, can group themselves harmoniously around the object
which especially attracts them.
But people shall, in this new order, seek to fill their own place as
they find it. No crowding up or down, or in or out. A quiet reference to
the standard of education and to the teachings of Nature will show each
one where he belongs. Religion shall show the supreme source of power
and of wisdom near to all who look for it. And this final unity of the
religious sense shall knit together the happy human variety into one
great complex interest, one steadfast faith, one harmonious effort.
The present essay, I must say, was written in great part for this very
society which, assuming to take the lead in social attainment, often
falls lamentably short of its promise. But let us enlarge the ground of
our remarks by a more general view of American society.
I have travelled in this country North and South, East and West. I have
seen many varieties of our national life. I think that I have seen
everywhere the capacity for social enjoyment. In many places, I have
found the notion of co-operation for good ends, which is a most
important element in any society. What I have seen makes me think that
we Americans start from a vantage-ground compared with other nations. As
mere social units, we are ranked higher than Britons or continental
Europeans.
This higher estimation begins early in life. Every child in this country
is considered worth educating. The State will rescue the child of the
pauper or criminal from the ignorance which has been a factor in the
condition of its parents. Even the idiot has a school provided for him,
in which he may receive such training as he can profit by. This general
education starts us on a pretty high level. We have, no doubt, all the
faults of our human nature, but we know, too, how and why these should
be avoided.
Then the great freedom of outlook which our institutions give us is in
our favor. We need call no man Master. We can pursue the highest aims,
aspire to the noblest distinctions. We have no excuse for contenting
ourselves with the paltry objects and illusory ambitions which play so
large a part in Old-World society.
The world grows better and not worse, but it does not grow better
everywhere all the time. Wherever human effort to a given end is
intermitted, society does not attain that end, and is in danger of
gradually losing it from view, and thus of suffering an unconscious
deterioration which it may become difficult to retrieve. I do not think
that the manners of so-called polite society to-day are quite so polite
as they were in my youth. Young women of fashion seem to me to have lost
in dignity of character and in general tone and culture. Young men of
fashion seem to regard the young ladies with less esteem and deference,
and a general cheap and easy standard of manners is the result.
On the other hand, outside this charmed circle of fashion, I find the
tone of taste and culture much higher than I remember it to have been in
my youth. I find women leading nobler and better lives, filling larger
and higher places, enjoying the upper air of thought where they used to
rest upon the very soil of domestic care and detail. So the community
gains, although one class loses,--and that, remember, the class which
assumes to give to the rest the standard of taste.
Instead of dwelling too much upon the faults of our neighbors, let us
ask whether we are not, one and all of us, under sacred obligations to
carry our race onward toward a nobler social ideal. In Old-World
countries, people lack room for new ideas. The individual who would
introduce and establish these may be imprisoned, or sent to Siberia, or
may suffer, at the least, a social ostracism which is a sort of
martyrdom.
Here we have room enough; we cannot excuse ourselves on that ground. And
we have strength enough--we, the people. Let us only have the _royal_
will which good Mr. Whittier has celebrated in "Barbara Frietchie," and
we shall be able, by a resolute and persevering effort, to place our
civilization where no lingering trace of barbarism shall deform and
disgrace it.
Paris.
AN old woman's tale will always begin with a reminiscence of some period
more or less remote.
In accordance with this law of nature, I find that I cannot begin to
speak of Paris without going back to the projection which the fashions
and manners of that ancient capital were able to cast upon my own native
city of New York. My recollections of the latter reach back, let me say,
to the year 1826. I was then seven years old; and, beginning to take
notice of things around me, I saw the social eminences of the day lit up
with the far-off splendors of Parisian taste.
To speak French with ease was, in those days, considered the most
desirable of accomplishments. The elegance of French manners was
commended in all polite circles. The services of General Lafayette were
held up to children as deserving their lifelong remembrance and
gratitude.
But the culmination of the _Gallomania_ was seen in the millinery of the
period; and I must confess that my earliest views of this were enjoyed
within the precincts of a certain Episcopal sanctuary which then stood
first upon the dress-list, and, like Jove among the gods, without a
second. This establishment retained its pre-eminence of toilet for more
than thirty years after the time of which I speak, and perhaps does so
still. I have now lived so long in Boston that I should be obliged to
consult New York authorities if I wished to be able to say decidedly
whether the well-known Grace Church of that city still deserves to be
called "The Church of the Holy Milliner." A little child's fancy
naturally ran riot in a field of bonnets so splendid and showy, and,
however admonished to listen to the minister, I am afraid that a raid
upon the flowers and plumes so lavishly displayed before me would have
offered more attractions to my tender mind than any itinerary of the
celestial journey of which I should have been likely to hear in that
place.
The French dancing-master of that period taught us gambols and
flourishes long since banished from the domain of social decorum. Being
light and alert, I followed his prescriptions with joy, and learned with
patience the lessons set me by the French mistress, who, while leading
us through Florian's tales and La Fontaine's fables, did not forget to
impress upon us her conviction that to be French was to be virtuous, but
to be Parisian was to be perfect.
Let me now pass on to the years of my youngladyhood, when New York
reflected Paris on a larger scale. The distinguished people of the
society to which my youth was related either had been to Paris or
expected to go there very shortly. Our circles were sometimes
electrified by the appearance of a well-dressed and perfumed stranger,
wearing the moustache which was then strictly contraband in the New York
business world, and talking of manners and customs widely different from
our own.
These elegant gentlemen were sometimes adventurers in pursuit of a rich
wife, sometimes intelligent and well-informed travellers, and sometimes
the agents of some foreign banking-house, for the drummer was not yet
invented. If they were furnished with satisfactory credentials, the
fathers of Gotham introduced them into their domestic circle, usually
warning their daughters never to think of them as husbands,--a warning
which, naturally, would sometimes defeat its own object.