Modern Eloquence Volume Iii Part 2

And so I have gone in and out among you these four years and have come to know you well. I have taken part in many gratifying public functions; I have been the guest at many homes; and my heart has gone out with yours in memorable jubilee of that Sovereign Lady whom all Englishmen love and all Americans honor. I have stood with you by some unforgotten graves; I have shared in many joys; and I have tried as well as I could through it all, in my small way, to promote constantly a better understanding, a fuller and more accurate knowledge, a more genuine sympathy between the people of the two countries. [Cheers.]

And this leads me to say a word on the nature of these relations. The moral intercourse between the governments is most important to be maintained, and its value is not to be overlooked or disregarded. But the real significance of the att.i.tude of nations depends in these days upon the feelings which the general intelligence of their inhabitants entertains toward each other. The time has long pa.s.sed when kings or rulers can involve their nations in hostilities to gratify their own ambition or caprice. There can be no war nowadays between civilized nations, nor any peace that is not hollow and delusive, unless sustained and backed up by the sentiment of the people who are parties to it.

[Cheers.] Before nations can quarrel, their inhabitants must first become hostile. Then a cause of quarrel is not far to seek. The men of our race are not likely to become hostile until they begin to misunderstand each other. [Cheers.] There are no dragon's teeth so prolific as mutual misunderstandings. It is in the great and constantly increasing intercourse between England and America, in its reciprocities, and its amenities, that the security against misunderstanding must be found. While that continues, they cannot be otherwise than friendly. Unlucky incidents may sometimes happen; interests may conflict; mistakes may be made on one side or on the other, and sharp words may occasionally be spoken by unguarded or ignorant tongues. The man who makes no mistakes does not usually make anything. [Cheers and laughter.] The nation that comes to be without fault will have reached the millennium, and will have little further concern with the storm-swept geography of this imperfect world. But these things are all ephemeral; they do not touch the great heart of either people; they float for a moment on the surface and in the wind, and then they disappear and are gone--"in the deep bosom of the ocean buried."

I do not know, sir, who may be my successor, but I venture to a.s.sure you that he will be an American gentleman, fit by character and capacity to be the medium of communication between our countries; and an American gentleman, when you come to know him, generally turns out to be a not very distant kinsman of an English gentleman. [Cheers.] I need not bespeak for him a kindly reception. I know he will receive it for his country's sake and his own. ["Hear! Hear!"]

"Farewell," sir, is a word often lightly uttered and readily forgotten.

But when it marks the rounding-off and completion of a chapter in life, the severance of ties many and cherished, of the parting with many friends at once--especially when it is spoken among the lengthening shadows of the western light--it sticks somewhat in the throat. It becomes, indeed, "the word that makes us linger." But it does not prompt many other words. It is best expressed in few. What goes without saying is better than what is said. Not much can be added to the old English word "Good-by." You are not sending me away empty-handed or alone. I go freighted and laden with happy memories--inexhaustible and unalloyed--of England, its warm-hearted people, and their measureless kindness.

Spirits more than twain will cross with me, messengers of your good-will. Happy the nation that can thus speed its parting guest!

Fortunate the guest who has found his welcome almost an adoption, and whose farewell leaves half his heart behind! [Loud cheers.]

ARTHUR WING PINERO

THE DRAMA

[Speech of Arthur Wing Pinero at the annual banquet of the Royal Academy, London, May 4, 1895. The toast to the "Drama" was coupled with that to "Music," to which Sir Alexander Mackenzie responded.

Sir John Millais in proposing the toast said: "I have already spoken for both music and the drama with my brush. ["Hear! Hear!"]

I have painted Sterndale Bennett, Arthur Sullivan, Irving, and Hare."]

YOUR ROYAL HIGHNESS, MY LORDS, AND GENTLEMEN:--There ought to be at least one strong link of sympathy between certain painters and certain dramatists, for in the craft of painting as in that of play-writing, popular success is not always held to be quite creditable.

Not very long ago I met at an exhibition of pictures a friend whose business it is to comment in the public journals upon painting and the drama. The exhibition was composed of the works of two artists, and I found myself in one room praising the pictures of the man who was exhibiting in the other. My friend promptly took me to task. "Surely,"

said he, "you noticed that two-thirds of the works in the next room are already sold?" I admitted having observed that many of the pictures were so ticketed. My friend shrugged his shoulders. "But," said I, anxiously, "do you really regard that circ.u.mstance as reflecting disparagingly upon the man's work in the next room?" His reply was: "Good work rarely sells." [Laughter.] My lords and gentlemen, if the dictum laid down by my friend be a sound one, I am placed to-night in a situation of some embarra.s.sment. For, in representing, as you honor me, by giving me leave to do, my brother dramatists, I confess I am not in the position to deny that their wares frequently "sell." [Laughter.] I might, of course, artfully plead in extenuation of this condition of affairs that success in such a shape is the very last reward the dramatist toils for, or desires; that when the theatre in which his work is presented is thronged nightly no one is more surprised, more abashed than himself; that his modesty is so impenetrable, his artistic absorption so profound, that the sound of the voices of public approbation reduces him to a state of shame and dismay. [Laughter.] But did I advance this plea, I think it would at once be found to be a very shallow plea. For in any department of life, social, political, or artistic, nothing is more difficult than to avoid incurring the suspicion that you mean to succeed in the widest application of that term, if you can. If therefore there be any truth in the a.s.sertion that "good work rarely sells," it would appear that I must, on behalf of certain of my brother dramatists, either bow my head in frank humiliation, or strike out some ingenious line of defence. ["Hear! Hear!"]

But, my lords and gentlemen, I shall, with your sanction, adopt neither of those expedients; I shall simply beg leave to acknowledge freely, to acknowledge without a blush, that what is known as popular success is, I believe, greatly coveted, sternly fought for, by even the most earnest of those writers who deal in the commodity labelled "modern British drama." And I would, moreover, submit that of all the affectations displayed by artists of any craft, the affectation of despising the approval and support of the great public is the most mischievous and misleading. [Cheers.] Speaking at any rate of dramatic art, I believe that its most substantial claim upon consideration rests in its power of legitimately interesting a great number of people. I believe this of any art; I believe it especially of the drama. Whatever distinction the dramatist may attain in gaining the attention of the so-called select few, I believe that his finest task is that of giving back to a mult.i.tude their own thoughts and conceptions, illuminated, enlarged, and if needful, purged, perfected, transfigured. The making of a play that shall be closely observant in its portrayal of character, moral in purpose, dignified in expression, stirring in its development, yet not beyond our possible experience of life; a drama, the unfolding of whose story shall be watched intently, responsively, night after night by thousands of men and women, necessarily of diversified temperaments, aims, and interests, men and women of all cla.s.ses of society--surely the writing of that drama, the weaving of that complex fabric, is one of the most arduous of the tasks which art has set us; surely its successful accomplishment is one of the highest achievements of which an artist is capable.

I cannot claim--it would be immodest to make such a claim in speaking even of my brother dramatists--I cannot claim that the thorough achievement of such a task is a common one in this country. It is indeed a rare one in any country. But I can claim--I do claim for my fellow-workers that they are not utterly unequal to the demands made upon them, and that of late there have been signs of the growth of a thoughtful, serious drama in England. ["Hear! Hear!"] I venture to think, too, that these signs are not in any sense exotics; I make bold to say that they do not consist of mere imitations of certain models; I submit that they are not as a few critics of limited outlook and exclusive enthusiasm would have us believe--I submit that they are not mere echoes of foreign voices. I submit that the drama of the present day is the natural outcome of our own immediate environment, of the life that closely surrounds us. And, perhaps, it would be only fair to allow that the reproaches which have been levelled for so long a period at the British theatre--the most important of these reproaches being that it possessed no drama at all--perhaps I say we may grant in a spirit of charity that these reproaches ought not to be wholly laid at the door of the native playwright. If it be true that he has been in the habit of producing plays invariably conventional in sentiment, trite in comedy, wrought on traditional lines, inculcating no philosophy, making no intellectual appeal whatever, may it not be that the att.i.tude of the frequenters of the theatre has made it hard for him to do anything else?

If he has until lately evaded in his theatrical work any attempt at a true criticism of life, if he has ignored the social, religious, and scientific problems of his day, may we not attribute this to the fact that the public have not been in the mood for these elements of seriousness in their theatrical entertainment, have not demanded these special elements of seriousness either in plays or in novels? But during recent years, the temper of the times has been changing; it is now the period of a.n.a.lysis, of general restless inquiry; and as this spirit creates a demand for freer expression on the part of our writers of books, so it naturally permits to our writers of plays a wider scope in the selection of subject, and calls for an accompanying effort of thought, a large freedom of utterance.

At this moment, perhaps, the difficulty of the dramatist lies less in paucity of subject, than in an almost embarra.s.sing wealth of it. The life around us teems with problems of conduct and character, which may be said almost to cry aloud for dramatic treatment, and the temptation that besets the busy playwright of an uneasy, an impatient age, is that in yielding himself to the allurements of contemporary psychology, he is apt to forget that fancy and romance have also their immortal rights in the drama. ["Hear! Hear!"] But when all is claimed for romance, we must remember that the laws of supply and demand a.s.sert themselves in the domain of dramatic literature as elsewhere. What the people, out of the advancement of their knowledge, out of the enlightenment of modern education, want, they will ask for; what they demand, they will have.

And at the present moment the English people appear to be inclined to grant to the English dramatist the utmost freedom to deal with questions which have long been thought to be outside the province of the stage. I do not deplore, I rejoice that this is so, and I rejoice that to the dramatists of my day--to those at least who care to attempt to discharge it, falls the duty of striking from the limbs of English drama some of its shackles. ["Hear! Hear!"] I know that the discharge of this duty is attended by one great, one special peril. And in thinking particularly of the younger generation of dramatists, those upon whom the immediate future of our drama depends, I cannot help expressing the hope that they will accept this freedom as a privilege to be jealously exercised, a privilege to be exercised in the spirit which I have been so presumptuous as to indicate.

It would be easy by a heedless employment of the lat.i.tude allowed us to destroy its usefulness, indeed to bring about a reaction which would deprive us of our newly granted liberty altogether. Upon this point the young, the coming dramatist would perhaps do well to ponder; he would do well, I think, to realize fully that freedom in art must be guarded by the eternal unwritten laws of good taste, morality, and beauty, he would do well to remember always that the real courage of the artist is in his capacity for restraint. [Cheers.] I am deeply sensible of the honor which has been done me in the a.s.sociation of my name with this toast, and I ask your leave to add one word--a word of regret at the absence to-night of my friend, Mr. Toole, an absence unhappily occasioned by an illness from which he is but slowly recovering. Mr.

Toole charges me to express his deep disappointment at being prevented from attending this banquet. He does not, however, instruct me to say what I do say heartily--that Mr. Toole fitly represents in any a.s.semblage, his own particular department of the drama; more fitly represents his department than I do mine. I know of no actor who stands higher in the esteem, who exists more durably in the affection of those who know him, than does John Lawrence Toole.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _HORACE PORTER_

_Photogravure after a photograph from life_]

HORACE PORTER

MEN OF MANY INVENTIONS

[Speech of Horace Porter at the seventy-second annual dinner of the New England Society in the City of New York, December 22, 1877. The President, William Borden, said: "Gentlemen, in giving you the next toast, I will call upon one whom we are always glad to listen to. I suppose you have been waiting to hear him, and are surprised that he comes so late in the evening; but I will tell you in confidence, he is put there at his own request. [Applause.] I give you the eleventh regular toast: 'Internal Improvements.'--The triumph of American invention. The modern palace runs on wheels.

'When thy car is loaden with [dead] heads, Good Porter, turn the key.'

General Horace Porter will respond."]

MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN OF THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY:--I suppose it was a matter of necessity, calling on some of us from other States to speak for you to-night, for we have learned from the history of Priscilla and John Alden, that a New Englander may be too modest to speak for himself. [Laughter.] But this modesty, like some of the greater blessings of the war, has been more or less disguised to-night.

We have heard from the eloquent gentleman [Noah Porter, D.D.] on my left all about the good-fellowship and the still better fellowships in the rival universities of Harvard and Yale. We have heard from my sculptor friend [W. W. Story] upon the extreme right all about Hawthorne's tales, and all the great Storys that have emanated from Salem; but I am not a little surprised that in this age, when speeches are made princ.i.p.ally by those running for office, you should call upon one engaged only in running cars, and more particularly upon one brought up in the military service, where the practice of running is not regarded as strictly professional. [Laughter.] It occurred to me some years ago that the occupation of moving cars would be fully as congenial as that of stopping bullets--as a steady business, so when I left Washington I changed my profession. I know how hard it is to believe that persons from Washington ever change their professions. [Laughter.] In this regal age, when every man is his own sovereign, somebody had to provide palaces, and, as royalty is not supposed to have any permanent abiding place in a country like this, it was thought best to put these palaces on wheels; and, since we have been told by reliable authority that "Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown," we thought it necessary to introduce every device to enable those crowned heads to rest as easily as possible. Of course we cannot be expected to do as much for the travelling public as the railway companies. They at times put their pa.s.sengers to death. We only put them to sleep. We don't pretend that all the devices, patents, and inventions upon these cars are due to the genius of the management. Many of the best suggestions have come from the travellers themselves, especially New England travellers.

[Laughter.]

Some years ago, when the bedding was not supposed to be as fat as it ought to be, and the pillows were accused of being constructed upon the h.o.m.oeopathic principle, a New Englander got on a car one night. Now, it is a remarkable fact that a New Englander never goes to sleep in one of these cars. He lies awake all night, thinking how he can improve upon every device and patent in sight. [Laughter.] He poked his head out of the upper berth at midnight, hailed the porter and said, "Say, have you got such a thing as a corkscrew about you?" "We don't 'low no drinkin'

sperits aboa'd these yer cars, sah," was the reply. "'Tain't that," said the Yankee, "but I want to get hold onto one of your pillows that has kind of worked its way into my ear." [Loud laughter.] The pillows have since been enlarged.

I notice that, in the general comprehensiveness of the sentiment which follows this toast, you allude to that large and liberal cla.s.s of patrons, active though defunct, known as "deadheads." It is said to be a quotation from Shakespeare. That is a revelation. It proves conclusively that Shakespeare must at one time have resided in the State of Missouri. It is well-known that the term was derived from a practice upon a Missouri railroad, where, by a decision of the courts, the railroad company had been held liable in heavy damages in case of accidents where a pa.s.senger lost an arm or a leg, but when he was killed outright his friends seldom sued, and he never did; and the company never lost any money in such cases. In fact, a grateful mother-in-law would occasionally pay the company a bonus. The conductors on that railroad were all armed with hatchets, and in case of an accident they were instructed to go around and knock every wounded pa.s.senger in the head, thus saving the company large amounts of money; and these were reported to the general office as "deadheads," and in railway circles the term has ever since been applied to pa.s.sengers where no money consideration is involved. [Laughter.]

One might suppose, from the manifestations around these tables for the first three hours to-night, that the toast "Internal Improvements"

referred more especially to the benefiting of the true inwardness of the New England men; but I see that the sentiment which follows contains much more than human stomachs, and covers much more ground than cars. It soars into the realms of invention. Unfortunately the genius of invention is always accompanied by the demon of unrest. A New England Yankee can never let well enough alone. I have always supposed him to be the person specially alluded to in Scripture as the man who has found out many inventions. If he were a Chinese Pagan, he would invent a new kind of Joss to worship every week. You get married and settle down in your home. You are delighted with everything about you. You rest in blissful ignorance of the terrible discomforts that surround you, until a Yankee friend comes to visit you. He at once tells you you mustn't build a fire in that chimney-place; that he knows the chimney will smoke; that if he had been there when it was built he could have shown you how to give a different sort of flare to the flue. You go to read a chapter in the family Bible. He tells you to drop that; that he has just written an enlarged and improved version, that can just put that old book to bed. [Laughter.] You think you are at least raising your children in general uprightness; but he tells you if you don't go out at once and buy the latest patented article in the way of steel leg-braces and put on the baby, the baby will grow up bow-legged. [Laughter.] He intimates, before he leaves, that if he had been around to advise you before you were married, he could have got you a much better wife. These are some of the things that reconcile a man to sudden death. [Continued laughter and applause.]

Such occurrences as these, and the fact of so many New Englanders being residents of this city and elsewhere, show that New England must be a good place--to come from.

At the beginning of the war we thought we could shoot people rapidly enough to satisfy our consciences, with single-loading rifles; but along came the inventive Yankee and produced revolvers and repeaters, and Gatling guns, and magazine guns--guns that carried a dozen shots at a time. I didn't wonder at the curiosity exhibited in this direction by a backwoods Virginian we captured one night. The first remark he made was, "I would like to see one of them thar new-fangled weepons of yourn. They tell me, sah, it's a most remarkable eenstrument. They say, sah, it's a kind o' repeatable, which you can load it up enough on Sunday to fiah it off all the rest of the week." [Laughter.] Then there was every sort of new invention in the way of bayonets. Our distinguished Secretary of State has expressed an opinion to-night that bayonets are bad things to sit down on. Well, they are equally bad things to be tossed up on. If he continues to hold up such terrors to the army, there will have to be important modifications in the uniform. A soldier won't know where to wear his breastplate. [Laughter.] But there have not only been inventions in the way of guns, but important inventions in the way of firing them. In these days a man drops on his back, coils himself up, sticks up one foot, and fires off his gun over the top of his great toe.

It changes the whole stage business of battle. It used to be the man who was shot, but now it is the man who shoots that falls on his back and turns up his toes. [Laughter and applause.] The consequence is, that the whole world wants American arms, and as soon as they get them they go to war to test them. Russia and Turkey had no sooner bought a supply than they went to fighting. Greece got a schooner-load, and, although she has not yet taken a part in the struggle, yet ever since the digging up of the lost limbs of the Venus of Milo, it has been feared that this may indicate a disposition on the part of Greece generally to take up arms. [Laughter and applause.]

But there was one inveterate old inventor that you had to get rid of, and you put him on to us Pennsylvanians--Benjamin Franklin. [Laughter.]

Instead of stopping in New York, in Wall Street, as such men usually do, he continued on into Pennsylvania to pursue his kiting operations. He never could let well enough alone. Instead of allowing the lightning to occupy the heavens as the sole theatre for its pyrotechnic displays, he showed it how to get down on to the earth, and then he invented the lightning-rod to catch it. Houses that had got along perfectly well for years without any lightning at all, now thought they must have a rod to catch a portion of it every time it came around. Nearly every house in the country was equipped with a lightning-rod through Franklin's direct agency. You, with your superior New England intelligence, succeeded in ridding yourselves of him; but in Pennsylvania, though we have made a great many laudable efforts in a similar direction, somehow or other we have never once succeeded in getting rid of a lightning-rod agent.

[Laughter.] Then the lightning was introduced on the telegraph wires, and now we have the duplex and quadruplex instruments, by which any number of messages can be sent from opposite ends of the same wire at the same time, and they all appear to arrive at the front in good order.

Electricians have not yet told us which messages lies down and which one steps over it, but they all seem to bring up in the right camp without confusion. I shouldn't wonder if this principle were introduced before long in the operating of railroads. We may then see trains running in opposite directions pa.s.s each other on a single-track road. [Laughter.]

There was a New England quartermaster in charge of railroads in Tennessee, who tried to introduce this principle during the war. The result was discouraging. He succeeded in telescoping two or three trains every day. He seemed to think that the easiest way to shorten up a long train and get it on a short siding was to telescope it. I have always thought that if that man's attention had been turned in an astronomical direction, he would have been the first man to telescope the satellites of Mars. [Laughter.]

The latest invention in the application of electricity is the telephone.

By means of it we may be able soon to sit in our houses, and hear all the speeches, without going to the New England dinner. The telephone enables an orchestra to keep at a distance of miles away when it plays.

If the instrument can be made to keep hand-organs at a distance, its popularity will be indescribable. The worst form I have ever known an invention to take was one that was introduced in a country town, when I was a boy, by a Yankee of musical turn of mind, who came along and taught every branch of education by singing. He taught geography by singing, and to combine accuracy of memory with patriotism, he taught the multiplication-table to the tune of Yankee Doodle. [Laughter.] This worked very well as an aid to the memory in school, but when the boys went into business it often led to inconvenience. When a boy got a situation in a grocery-store and customers were waiting for their change, he never could tell the product of two numbers without commencing at the beginning of the table and singing up till he had reached those numbers. In case the customer's ears had not received a proper musical training, this practice often injured the business of the store. [Laughter.]

It is said that the Yankee has always manifested a disposition for making money, but he never struck a proper field for the display of his genius until we got to making paper money. [Laughter.] Then every man who owned a printing-press wanted to try his hand at it. I remember that in Washington ten cents' worth of rags picked up in the street would be converted the next day into thousands of dollars.

An old mule and cart used to haul up the currency from the Printing Bureau to the door of the Treasury Department. Every morning, as regularly as the morning came, that old mule would back up and dump a cart-load of the sinews of war at the Treasury. [Laughter.] A patriotic son of Columbia, who lived opposite, was sitting on the doorstep of his house one morning, looking mournfully in the direction of the mule. A friend came along, and seeing that the man did not look as pleasant as usual, said to him, "What is the matter? It seems to me you look kind of disconsolate this morning." "I was just thinking," he replied, "what would become of this government if that old mule was to break down."

[Laughter and applause.] Now they propose to give us a currency which is brighter and heavier, but not worth quite as much as the rags. Our financial horizon has been dimmed by it for some time, but there is a lining of silver to every cloud. We are supposed to take it with 4121/2 grains of silver--a great many more grains of allowance. [Laughter.]

Congress seems disposed to pay us in the "dollar of our daddies"--in the currency which we were familiar with in our childhood. Congress seems determined to pay us off in something that is "child-like and Bland."

[Laughter and applause.] But I have detained you too long already.

[Cries of "No, no; go on!"]

Why, the excellent President of your Society has for the last five minutes been looking at me like a man who might be expected, at any moment, to break out in the disconsolate language of Bildad the Shuhite to the patriarch Job, "How long will it be ere ye make an end of words?"

Let me say then, in conclusion, that, coming as I do from the una.s.suming State of Pennsylvania, and standing in the presence of the dazzling genius of New England, I wish to express the same degree of humility that was expressed by a Dutch Pennsylvania farmer in a railroad car, at the breaking out of the war. A New Englander came in who had just heard of the fall of Fort Sumter, and he was describing it to the farmer and his fellow-pa.s.sengers. He said that in the fort they had an engineer from New England, who had constructed the traverses, and the embrasures, and the parapets in such a manner as to make everybody within the fort as safe as if he had been at home; and on the other side, the Southerners had an engineer who had been educated in New England, and he had, with his scientific attainments, succeeded in making the batteries of the bombarders as safe as any harvest field, and the bombardment had raged for two whole days, and the fort had been captured, and the garrison had surrendered, and not a man was hurt on either side. A great triumph for science, and a proud day for New England education. Said the farmer, "I suppose dat ish all right, but it vouldn't do to send any of us Pennsylvany fellers down dare to fight mit does pattles. Like as not ve vould shoost pe fools enough to kill somepody." [Loud applause and laughter, and cries of "Go on; go on."]