Journeys to Bagdad Part 4

HOOPSKIRTS & OTHER LIVELY MATTER

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HOOPSKIRTS & OTHER LIVELY MATTER

Several months ago I had occasion to go through a deserted "mansion." It was a gaunt building with long windows and it sat in a great yard. Over the windows were painted scrolls, like eyebrows lifted in astonishment.

Whatever was the cause of this, it has long since departed, for it is thirty years since the building was tenanted. It would seem as if it fell asleep--for so the blinds and the drawn curtains attest--before the lines of this first astonishment were off its face. I am told that the faces of men dead in battle show in similar fashion the marks of conflict. But there is a shocked expression on the face of this house as if a scandal were on the street. It is crying, as it were, "Fie, shame!" upon its neighbors.

Inside there are old carpets and curtains which spit dust at you if you touch them. (Is there not some fabulous animal which does the same, thereby to escape in the mirk it has itself created?) Most of the furniture has been removed, but here and there bulky pieces remain, an antique sideboard, maybe too large to be taken away; like Robinson Crusoe's boat, too heavy to be launched. In each room is a chandelier for gas, resplendent as though Louis XV had come again to life, with tinkling gla.s.s pendants and globules interlinked, like enormous Kohinoors.

Down in the kitchen--which is below stairs as in an old English comedy--you can see the place where the range stood. And there are smoky streaks upon the walls that may have come from the coals of ancient feasts. If you sniff, and put your fancy in it--it is an unsavory thought--it is likely even that you can get the stale smell from such hospitable preparation.

From the first floor to the second is a flaring staircase with a landing where opulence can get its breath. And then there is a choice of upward steps, either to the right or left as your wish shall direct. And on each side is a bal.u.s.trade unbroken by posts from top to bottom. Now the first excitement of my own life was on such a rail, which seemed a funicular made for my special benefit. The seats of all my early breeches, I have been told, were worn shiny thereon, like a rubbed apple. These descents were executed slowly at the turn, but gathered wild speed on the straight-away. There was slight need for Annie to dust the "bal.u.s.ters."

An old house is strong in its cla.s.s distinctions. There is a front part and a back part. To know the front part is to know it in its s.p.a.cious and generous moods. But somewhere you will find a door and there will be three steps behind it, and poof!--you will be prying into the darker life of the place. In this particular house of which I write, it was as if the back rooms, the back halls and the innumerable closets had been playing at hide and seek and had not been told when the game was over, and so still kept to their hiding places. It is in such obscure closets that a family skeleton, if it be kept at all, might be kept most safely. There would be slight hazard of its discovery if the skeleton restrained itself from clanking, as is the whim of skeletons.

It was in the back part of this house that I came on a closet, where, after all these years, women's garments were still hanging. A lighted match--for I am no burglar with a bull's-eye as you might suspect--displayed to me an array of petticoats--the flounced kind that gladdened the eye of woman in those remote days--also certain gauzy matters which the writers of the eighteenth century called by the name of smocks. Besides these, there were suspended from hooks those sartorial deceits, those lying mounds of fashion, that false incrustation on the surface of nature, known as "bustles." Also, there was a hoopskirt curled upon the floor, and an open barrel with a stowage of books--a novel or two of E. P. Roe, the poems of John Saxe, a table copy of Whittier in padded leather, an alb.u.m with a flourish on the cover--these at the top of the heap.

I choose to trace the connection between the styles of dress and books, and--where my knowledge serves--to show the effect of political change on both. For it is written that when Constantinople fell in the fifteenth century Turkish costumes became the fashion through western Europe--maybe a flash of eastern color across the shoulders or an oriental buckle for the shoes. Similarly the Balkan War gave us hints for dress. Many styles to-day are marks of our kinship with the East. These are mere broken promptings for your own elaboration. And it seems to sort with this theory of close relation, that the generation which flared and flounced its person until nature was no more than a kernel in the midst, which puffed itself like a m.u.f.fin with but a finger-point of dough within, should be the generation that particularly delighted in romantic literature, in which likewise nature is so prudently wrapped that scarce an ankle can show itself. It would be a nice inquiry whether the hoopskirt was not introduced--it was midway in the eighteenth century, I think--at the time of the first budding of romantic sentiment. The "Man of Feeling" came after and Anne Radcliffe's novels. Is it not significant also, in these present days of Russian novels and naked realism, that costume should advance sympathetically to the edge of modesty?

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There is something, however, to be said in favor of romantic books, despite the horrible examples at the top of this barrel. Perhaps our own literature shivers in too thin a shift. For once upon a time somewhere between the age of bustles and ourselves there were writers who ended their stories "and they were married and lived happily ever after."

Whereas at this present day stories are begun "They were married and straightway things began to go to the devil." And for my own part I have read enough of family quarrels. I am tired of the tune upon the triangle and I am ready for softer flutings. When I visit my neighbors, I want them to make a decent pretense. It was Charles Lamb who found his married friends too loving in his presence, but let us not go to extremes! And so, after I have read a few books of marital complication, I yearn for the old-fashioned couple in the older books who went hand in hand to old age.

At this minute there is a black book that looks down upon me like a crow.

It is "Crime and Punishment." I read it once when I was ill, and I nearly died of it. I confess that after a very little acquaintance with such books I am tempted to sequester them on a top shelf somewhere, beyond reach of tiptoe, where they may brood upon their banishment and rail against the world.

Encyclopedias and the tonnage of learning properly take their places on the lowest shelves, for their lump and ma.s.s make a fitting foundation. I must say, however, that the habit of the dictionary of secreting itself in the darkest corner of the lowest shelf contributes to general illiteracy.

I have known families wrangle for ten minutes on the meaning of a word rather than lift this laggard from its depths. Be that as it may, the novels and poetry should be on the fifth shelf from the bottom, just off the end of the nose, so to speak.

Now, the vinegar cruet is never the largest vessel in the house. So by strict a.n.a.logy, sour books--the kind that bite the temper and snarl upon your better moods--should be in a small minority. Do not mistake me! I shall find a place, maybe, for a volume or two of Nietzsche, and all of Ibsen surely. I would admit _uplift_ too, for my taste is catholic. And there will be other books of a kind that never rouse a chuckle in you. For these are necessary if for no more than as alarm clocks to awake us from our dreaming self-content. But in the main I would not have books too insistent upon the wrongs of the world and the impossibility of remedy.

I confess to a liking for tales of adventure, for wrecks in the South Seas, for treasure islands, for pirates with red shirts. Mark you, how a red shirt lights up a dull page! It is like a scarlet leaf on a gray November day. Also I have a weakness for the bang of pistols, round oaths and other desperate rascality. In such stories there is no small mincing.

A villain proclaims himself on his first appearance--unless John Silver be an exception--and retains his villainy until the rope tightens about his neck in the last chapter but one; the very last being set aside for the softer commerce of the hero and heroine.

You will remember that about twenty years ago a fine crop of such stories came out of the Balkans. At that time it was a dim, unknown land, a kind of novelists' Coast of Bohemia, an appropriate setting for distressed princesses. I'll hazard a guess that there was not a peak in all that district on which there was not some Black Rudolph's castle, not a road that did not clack romantically with horses' hoofs on bold adventure. But the wars have changed all this by bringing too sharp a light upon the dim scenery of this pageantry, and swash-bucklery is all but dead.

To confess the truth, it is in such stories that I like horses best. In real life I really do not like them at all. I am rather afraid of them as of strange organisms that I can neither start with ease nor stop with safety. It is not that I never rode or drove a horse. I have achieved both. But I don't urge him to deviltry. Instead I humor his whims. Some horses even I might be fond of. Give me a horse that nears the age of slippered pantaloon and is, moreover, phlegmatic in his tastes, and then, as the stories say "with tightened girth and feet well home"--but enough!

I must not be led into boasting.

But in these older stories I love a horse. With what fire do his hoofs ring out in the flight of elopement! "Pursuit's at the turn. Speed my brave Dobbin!" And when the Prince has kissed the Princess' hand, you know that the story is nearly over and that they will live happily ever after.

Of course there is always someone to suggest that Cinderella was never happy after she left her ashes and pumpkins and went to live in the palace. But this is idle gossip. Even if there were "occasional bickerings" between her and the Prince, this is as Lamb says it should be among "near relations."

I nearly died of "Crime and Punishment." These Russian novelists have too distressful a point of view. They remind me too painfully of the poem--

It was dreadful dark In that doleful ark When the elephants went to bed.

Doubtless if the lights burn high in you, it is well to read such gloom as is theirs. Perhaps they depict life. These things may be true and if so, we ought to know them. At the best, theirs is a real attempt "to cleanse the foul body of the infected world." But if there be a blast without and driving rain, must we be always running to the door to get it in our face?

Will not one glance in the evening be enough? Shall we be always exposing ourselves "to feel what wretches feel"? It is true that we are too content under the suffering of others, but it is true, also, that too few of us were born under a laughing star. Gray shadows fall too often on our minds.

A sunny road is the best to travel by. Furthermore--and here is a deep plat.i.tude--there is many a man who sobs upon a doleful book, who to the end of time will blithely underpay his factory girls. His grief upon the book is diffuse. It ranges across the mountains of the world, but misses the nicer point of his own conduct. Is this not sentimentally like the gray yarn hysteria under the spell of which wealthy women clicked their needles in public places for the soldiers? Let me not underrate the number of garments that they made--surely a single machine might produce as many within a week. But there is danger that their work was only a sentimental expression of their world-grief. I'll sink to depths of practicality and claim that a pittance from their allowances would have bought more and better garments in the market.

Perhaps we read too many tragical books. In the decalogue the inheritance of evil is too strongly visited on the children to the third and fourth generation, and there is scant sanction as to the inheritance of goodness.

It is the sins of the fathers that live in the children. It is the evil that men do that lives after them, while the good, alas, is oft interred with their bones. If a doleful book stirs you up to life, for G.o.d's sake read it! If it wraps you all about as in a winding sheet for death, you had best have none of it.

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I had now burned several matches--and my fingers too--in the inspection of the closet where the women's garments hung. And it came on me as I poked the books within the barrel and saw what silly books were there, that perhaps I have overstated my position. It would be a lighter doom, I thought, to be rived and shriveled by the lightning flash of a modern book, even "Crime and Punishment," than stultified by such as were within.

Then, like the lady of the poem

Having sat me down upon a mound To think on life, I concluded that my views were sound And got me up and turned me round, And went me home again.

ON TRAVELING

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ON TRAVELING

In old literature life was compared to a journey, and wise men rejoiced to question old men because, like travelers, they knew the sloughs and roughnesses of the long road. Men arose with the sun, and toddled forth as children on the day's journey of their lives, and became strong to endure the heaviness of noonday. They strived forward during the hours of early afternoon while their sun's ambition was hot, and then as the heat cooled they reached the crest of the last hill, and their road dipped gently to the valley where all roads end. And on into the quiet evening, until, at last, they lie down in that shadowed valley, and await the long night.

This figure has lost its meaning, for we now travel by rail, and life is expressed in terms of the railway time-table. As has been said, we leave and arrive at places, but we no longer travel. Consequently we cannot understand the hubbub that Marco Polo must have caused among his townsmen when he swaggered in. He and his crew were bronzed by the sun, were dressed as Tartars, and could speak their native Italian with difficulty.

To convince the Venetians of their ident.i.ty, Marco gave a magnificent entertainment, at which he and his officers received, clad in oriental dress of red satin. Three times during the banquet they changed their dress, distributing the discarded garments among their guests. At last, the rough Tartar clothing worn on their travels was displayed and then ripped open. Within was a profusion of jewels of the Orient, the gifts of Kublai Khan of Cathay. The proof was regarded as perfect, and from that time Marco was acknowledged by his countrymen, and loaded with distinction. When Drake returned from the Straits of Magellan and, powdered and beflunkied, told his lies at fashionable London dinners, no doubt he was believed. And his crew, let loose on the beer-shops, gathered each his circle of listeners, drank at his admirers' expense, and yarned far into the night. It was worth one's while to be a traveler in those times.

But traveling has fallen to the yellow leaf. The greatest traveler is now the brakeman. Next is he who sells colored cotton. A poor third pursues health and flees from restlessness. Wise men have ceased to question travelers, except to inquire of the arrival of trains and of the comfort of hotels.

To-day I am a thousand miles from home. From my window the world stretches ma.s.sive, homewards. Even though I stood on the most distant range of mountains and looked west, still I would look on a world that contained no suggestion of home; and if I leaped to that horizon and the next, the result would be the same--so insignificant would be the relative distance accomplished. And here I am set down with no knowledge of how I came.

There was a continuous jar and the noise of motion. We pa.s.sed a barn or two, I believe, and on one hillside animals were frightened from their grazing as we pa.s.sed. There were the cluttered streets of several cities and villages. There was a prodigious number of telegraph poles going in the opposite direction, h.e.l.l-bent as fast as we, which poles considerately went at half speed through towns, for fear of hitting children. The United States was once an immense country, and extended quite to the sunset. For convenience we have reduced its size, and made it but a map of its former self. Any section of this map can be unrolled and inspected in a day's time.

In the books for children is the story of the seven-league boots--wonderful boots, worth a cobbler's fortune. If a prince is escaping from an ogre, if he is eloping with a princess, if he has an engagement at the realm's frontier and the wires are down, he straps these boots to his feet and strides the mountains and spans the valleys. For with the clicking of the silver buckles he has destroyed the dimensions of s.p.a.ce.

Length, breadth and depth are measured for him but in wishes. One wish and perhaps a snap of the fingers, or an invocation to the devil of locomotion, and he stands on a mountain-top, the next range of hills blue in the distance; another wish and another snap and he has leaped the valley. Wonderful boots, these! Worth a king's ransom. And this prince, too, as he travels thus dizzily may remember one or two barns, animals frightened from their grazing, and the cluttered streets nested in the valley. When he reaches his journey's end he will be just as wise and just as ignorant as we who now travel by rail in magic, seven-league fashion.

For here I am set down, and all save the last half-mile of my path is lost in the curve of the mountains. From my window I see the green-covered mountains, so different from city streets with their horizon of buildings.

I fancy that, on the memorable morning when Aladdin's Palace was set down in Africa after its magic night's ride from the Chinese capital, a housemaid must have gone to the window, thrown back the hangings and looked out, astounded, on the barren mountains, when she expected to see only the courtyard of the palace and its swarm of Chinese life. She then recalled that the building rocked gently in the night, and that she heard a whirling sound as of wind. These were the only evidences of the devil-guided flight. Now she looked on a new world, and the familiar paG.o.das lay far to the east within the eye of the rising sun.

There are summer evenings in my recollection when I have traveled the skies, landing from the sky's blue sea upon the cloud continent, and traversing its mountain ranges, its inland lakes, harbors and valleys.

Over the wind-swept ridges I have gone, watching the world-change, seeing