Is Polite Society Polite? Part 2

As I am speaking of England, I will say that some things in the const.i.tution 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 cla.s.ses, 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 a.s.sert 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 pa.s.sed there, the genial, home atmosphere, the unaffected music, the easy, brilliant conversation. Time pa.s.ses. 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 G.o.d'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 a.s.semblage 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, a.s.suming 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 inst.i.tutions give us is in our favor. We need call no man Master. We can pursue the highest aims, aspire to the n.o.blest 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 n.o.bler 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 cla.s.s loses,--and that, remember, the cla.s.s which a.s.sumes 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 n.o.bler 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 grat.i.tude.

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 G.o.ds, 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 pa.s.s 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.

I must here be allowed to say one word concerning the French novel, which, since that time, has here and there affected the tone of our society. In the days of which I speak, brothers who returned from Europe brought with them the romances of Balzac and Victor Hugo, which their sisters surrept.i.tiously read. We heard also with a sort of terror of George Sand, the evil woman, who wrote such somnambulic books. We pictured to ourselves the wicked delight of reading them; and presently some friend confidentially lent us the forbidden volumes, which our Puritan nurture and habit of life did much to render harmless and not quite clear in meaning.

I should say that the works of Balzac, George Sand, Victor Hugo, and Eugene Sue had each exerted an appreciable influence upon the social atmosphere of this country. Of these four, Balzac was the least popular, having long been known only to readers acquainted with the French language. George Sand first became widely recognized through her "Consuelo." Victor Hugo's popular fame dates from "Les Miserables," and "The Mysteries of Paris" opened the doors to Eugene Sue, and _Rigolette_ and _Fleur de Marie_, new types of character to most of us, appeared upon the stage.

Still nearer was Paris brought to us by Carlyle's work on the French Revolution, which, falling like a compact and burning coal upon the American imagination, reddened the sober twilight of our firesides with the burning pa.s.sion and frenzy of that great drama of enthusiasm and revenge. And here, lest I should entirely reverse the order in which historic things should be spoken of, let me dismiss those early memories, and, having shown you something of the far-reaching influence of the city, let me speak of it from nearer sight and study.

History must come first. I find it written in a certain record that Paris, in the time of Julius Caesar, was a collection of huts built upon an island in the Seine, and bearing the name of Lutetia. Its inhabitants were called Parisii, which was the name of their tribe, supposed to be an offshoot from the Belgae. I do not know whether this primitive settlement lay within the bounds of Gallia _Bracchiata_; but, if it did, how natural that to the other indebtedness of polite life, that of the trouser should be added! The city still possesses some interesting remains of the Roman period. The Hotel Cluny is also called "The Hotel of the Baths," and whoever visits it may at the same time explore a ma.s.sive ruin which is said to have covered beneath its roof the baths of the Emperor Julian, surnamed "The Apostate."

A rapid panoramic retrospect will give us briefly the leading points of the city's many periods of interest. First must be named Paris of the early saints: Saint Genevieve, who saved it from the hands of Attila; Saint Denis, famous for having walked several miles after his head was cut off, carrying that deposed member under his arm.

A well-known French proverb was suggested some time in the last century by the relation of this mediaeval miracle. The celebrated Madame Dudeffant, a wit and beauty of Horace Walpole's time, was told one day that the Archbishop of Paris had said that every one knew that Saint Denis had walked some distance after his decapitation, but that few people were aware that he had walked several miles on that occasion.

Madame Dudeffant said, in reply: "Indeed, in such a case, it is the first step only that costs,"--_"Ce n'est que le premier pas qui coute."_

Paris of the sleepy Merovingians,--do-nothing kings, a race made to be kicked out, and fulfilling its destiny,--Paris of Hugh Capet, in whose reign were laid the foundations of the Cathedral of Notre Dame. Paris of 1176, whereof the old chronicler, John of Salisbury, writes: "When I saw the abundance of provisions, the gaiety of the people, the good condition of the clergy, the majesty and glory of all the church, the diverse occupations of men admitted to the study of philosophy, I seemed to see that Jacob's ladder whose summit reached heaven, and on which the angels ascended and descended. I must confess that truly the Lord was in this place. This pa.s.sage also of a poet came to my mind: 'Happy is the man whose exile is to this place.'"

This suggests the familiar saying of our own time,--that good Bostonians, when they die, go to Paris.

Paris of Louis XI., he of the strong hand, the stony heart, the superst.i.tious mind. Scott has seized the features of the time and of the man in his novel of "Quentin Durward." His hat, full of leaden images of saints, his cunning and pitiless diplomacy, and the personages of his brilliant court are brought vividly before us by the magician of the North.

Paris of Louis XIII., and its Richelieu live for us in Bulwer's vivid play, in which I have often seen the fine impersonation of Edwin Booth.

Paris of Louis XIV., the handsome young king, the idol, the absolute sovereign, who said: _"L'etat, c'est moi;"_ the old man before whom Madame de Maintenon is advised to say her prayers, in order to make upon his mind a serious impression; the revoker of the edict of Nantes; he who tried to extinguish Dutch freedom with French blood; a G.o.d in his own time, a figure now faded, pompous, self-adoring.

Paris of Louis XV., the reign of license, the _Parc aux cerfs_, the period of the courtesan, Madame de Pompadour, and a host of rivals and successors,--a hateful type of womanhood, justly odious and gladly forgotten.

Paris of Louis XVI., the days of progress and of good intentions; the deficit, the ministry of Neckar, the states general, Mirabeau, Lafayette, Robespierre, the fall of the monarch, the reign of terror; the guillotine in permanence, science, virtue, every distinction supplying its victims.

Paris of Napoleon I.; a whiff of grape-shot that silences the last grumblings of the Revolution; the mighty marches, the strategy of Ulysses, the labors of Hercules, the glory of Jupiter, ending in the fate of Prometheus.

Paris of the returned Bourbons, Charles X., the Duc de Berri, the d.u.c.h.ess d'Angouleme; Paris of the Orleans dynasty, civil, civic, free, witty; wise here, and wicked there; the Mecca of students in all sciences; a region problematic to parents, who fear its vices and expense, but who desire its opportunities and elegance for their sons.

This was in the days in which a visit to Paris was the _ne plus ultra_ of what parents could do to forward a son's studies, or perfect a daughter's accomplishments.

Having made my connections in this breathless review, I must return to speak of two modern works of art which treat of matters upon which my haste did not allow me, in the first instance, to dwell.

The first of these is Victor Hugo's picture of mediaeval Paris, given in his famous romance ent.i.tled "Notre Dame de Paris." This remarkable novel preserves valuable details of the architecture of the ancient cathedral from which it takes its name. It paints the society of the time in gloomy colors. The clergy are corrupt, the soldiery licentious, the people forlorn and friendless. Here is a brief outline of the story. The beautiful gipsy, _Esmeralda_, dances and twirls her tambourine in the public streets. Her companion is a little goat, which she has taught to spell her lover's name, by putting together the letters which compose it. This lover is _Phbus_, captain of the guard. _Claude Frollo_, the cunning, wicked priest of the period, has cast his evil eye upon the girl. He manages to surprise her when alone with her lover, and stabs the latter so as to endanger his life. A hideous dwarf, named _Quasimodo_, also loves _Esmeralda_, with humble, faithful affection. As the story develops, he turns out to have been the changeling laid in the place of the lovely girl-infant whom gipsies stole from her cradle.

_Esmeralda_ finds her distracted parent, but only to be torn from her arms again. The priest, _Claude Frollo_, foiled in his unlawful pa.s.sion, stirs up the wrath of the populace against _Esmeralda_, accusing her of sorcery. She is seized by the mob, and hanged in the public street. The narrative is powerful and graphic, but it shows the disease of Victor Hugo's mind,--a morbid imagination which heightens the color of human crimes in order to give a melodramatic brilliancy to the virtue which contrasts with them. According to his view, suffering through the fault of others is necessarily the lot of all good people. French romance has in it much of this despair of the cause of virtue. It springs, however remotely, from the dark days of absolutism, whose bitter secrets were masked over by the frolic fancy of the people who invented the joyous science of minstrelsy.