Over the Teacups Part 17

As for the hag, you can't see her, But hark! you can hear her black cat's purr, And now and then, as a car goes by, You may catch a gleam from her wicked eye.

Often you've looked on a rushing train, But just what moved it was not so plain.

It couldn't be those wires above, For they could neither pull nor shove; Where was the motor that made it go You couldn't guess, but now you know.

Remember my rhymes when you ride again On the rattling rail by the broomstick train!

X

In my last report of our talks over the teacups I had something to say of the fondness of our people for t.i.tles. Where did the anti-republican, anti-democratic pa.s.sion for swelling names come from, and how long has it been naturalized among us?

A striking instance of it occurred at about the end of the last century.

It was at that time there appeared among us one of the most original and singular personages to whom America has given birth. Many of our company,--many of my readers,--all well acquainted with his name, and not wholly ignorant of his history. They will not object to my giving some particulars relating to him, which, if not new to them, will be new to others into whose hands these pages may fall.

Timothy Dexter, the first claimant of a t.i.tle of n.o.bility among the people of the United States of America, was born in the town of Malden, near Boston. He served an apprenticeship as a leather-dresser, saved some money, got some more with his wife, began trading and speculating, and became at last rich, for those days. His most famous business enterprise was that of sending an invoice of warming-pans to the West Indies. A few tons of ice would have seemed to promise a better return; but in point of fact, he tells us, the warming-pans were found useful in the manufacture of sugar, and brought him in a handsome profit. His ambition rose with his fortune. He purchased a large and stately house in Newburyport, and proceeded to embellish and furnish it according to the dictates of his taste and fancy. In the grounds about his house, he caused to be erected between forty and fifty wooden statues of great men and allegorical figures, together with four lions and one lamb. Among these images were two statues of Dexter himself, one of which held a label with a characteristic inscription. His house was ornamented with minarets, adorned with golden b.a.l.l.s, and surmounted by a large gilt eagle. He equipped it with costly furniture, with paintings, and a library. He went so far as to procure the services of a poet laureate, whose business it seems to have been to sing his praises. Surrounded with splendors like these, the plain t.i.tle of "Mr." Dexter would have been infinitely too mean and common. He therefore boldly took the step of self-enn.o.bling, and gave himself forth--as he said, obeying "the voice of the people at large"--as "Lord Timothy Dexter," by which appellation he has ever since been known to the American public.

If to be the pioneer in the introduction of Old World t.i.tles into republican America can confer a claim to be remembered by posterity, Lord Timothy Dexter has a right to historic immortality. If the true American spirit shows itself most clearly in boundless self-a.s.sertion, Timothy Dexter is the great original American egotist. If to throw off the shackles of Old World pedantry, and defy the paltry rules and examples of grammarians and rhetoricians, is the special province and the chartered privilege of the American writer, Timothy Dexter is the founder of a new school, which tramples under foot the conventionalities that hampered and subjugated the faculties of the poets, the dramatists, the historians, essayists, story-tellers, orators, of the worn-out races which have preceded the great American people.

The material traces of the first American n.o.bleman's existence have nearly disappeared. The house is still standing, but the statues, the minarets, the arches, and the memory of the great Lord Timothy Dexter live chiefly in tradition, and in the work which he bequeathed to posterity, and of which I shall say a few words. It is unquestionably a thoroughly original production, and I fear that some readers may think I am trifling with them when I am quoting it literally. I am going to make a strong claim for Lord Timothy as against other candidates for a certain elevated position.

Thomas Jefferson is commonly recognized as the first to proclaim before the world the political independence of America. It is not so generally agreed upon as to who was the first to announce the literary emanc.i.p.ation of our country.

One of Mr. Emerson's biographers has claimed that his Phi Beta Kappa Oration was our Declaration of Literary Independence. But Mr. Emerson did not cut himself loose from all the traditions of Old World scholarship. He spelled his words correctly, he constructed his sentences grammatically. He adhered to the slavish rules of propriety, and observed the reticences which a traditional delicacy has considered inviolable in decent society, European and Oriental alike. When he wrote poetry, he commonly selected subjects which seemed adapted to poetical treatment,--apparently thinking that all things were not equally calculated to inspire the true poet's genius. Once, indeed, he ventured to refer to "the meal in the firkin, the milk in the pan," but he chiefly restricted himself to subjects such as a fastidious conventionalism would approve as having a certain fitness for poetical treatment. He was not always so careful as he might have been in the rhythm and rhyme of his verse, but in the main he recognized the old established laws which have been accepted as regulating both. In short, with all his originality, he worked in Old World harness, and cannot be considered as the creator of a truly American, self-governed, self-centred, absolutely independent style of thinking and writing, knowing no law but its own sovereign will and pleasure.

A stronger claim might be urged for Mr. Whitman. He takes into his hospitable vocabulary words which no English dictionary recognizes as belonging to the language,--words which will be looked for in vain outside of his own pages. He accepts as poetical subjects all things alike, common and unclean, without discrimination, miscellaneous as the contents of the great sheet which Peter saw let down from heaven.

He carries the principle of republicanism through the whole world of created objects. He will "thread a thread through [his] poems," he tells us, "that no one thing in the universe is inferior to another thing."

No man has ever a.s.serted the surpa.s.sing dignity and importance of the American citizen so boldly and freely as Mr. Whitman. He calls himself "teacher of the unquenchable creed, namely, egotism." He begins one of his chants, "I celebrate myself," but he takes us all in as partners in his self-glorification. He believes in America as the new Eden.

"A world primal again,--vistas of glory incessant and branching, A new race dominating previous ones and grander far, New politics--new literature and religions--new inventions and arts."

Of the new literature be himself has furnished specimens which certainly have all the originality he can claim for them. So far as egotism is concerned, he was clearly antic.i.p.ated by the t.i.tled personage to whom I have referred, who says of himself, "I am the first in the East, the first in the West, and the greatest philosopher in the Western world."

But while Mr. Whitman divests himself of a part of his baptismal name, the distinguished New Englander thus announces his proud position: "Ime the first Lord in the younited States of A mercary Now of Newburyport.

it is the voice of the peopel and I cant Help it." This extract is from his famous little book called "A Pickle for the Knowing Ones." As an inventor of a new American style he goes far beyond Mr. Whitman, who, to be sure, cares little for the dictionary, and makes his own rules of rhythm, so far as there is any rhythm in his sentences. But Lord Timothy spells to suit himself, and in place of employing punctuation as it is commonly used, prints a separate page of periods, colons, semicolons, commas, notes of interrogation and of admiration, with which the reader is requested to "peper and soolt" the book as he pleases.

I am afraid that Mr. Emerson and Mr. Whitman must yield the claim of declaring American literary independence to Lord Timothy Dexter, who not only taught his countrymen that they need not go to the Heralds' College to authenticate their t.i.tles of n.o.bility, but also that they were at perfect liberty to spell just as they liked, and to write without troubling themselves about stops of any kind. In writing what I suppose he intended for poetry, he did not even take the pains to break up his lines into lengths to make them look like verse, as may be seen by the following specimen:

WONDER OF WONDERS!

How great the soul is! Do not you all wonder and admire to see and behold and hear? Can you all believe half the truth, and admire to hear the wonders how great the soul is--only behold--past finding out! Only see how large the soul is! that if a man is drowned in the sea what a great bubble comes up out of the top of the water... The bubble is the soul.

I confess that I am not in sympathy with some of the movements that accompany the manifestations of American social and literary independence. I do not like the a.s.sumption of t.i.tles of Lords and Knights by plain citizens of a country which prides itself on recognizing simple manhood and womanhood as sufficiently ent.i.tled to respect without these unnecessary additions. I do not like any better the familiar, and as it seems to me rude, way of speaking of our fellow-citizens who are ent.i.tled to the common courtesies of civilized society. I never thought it dignified or even proper for a President of the United States to call himself, or to be called by others, "Frank"

Pierce. In the first place I had to look in a biographical dictionary to find out whether his baptismal name was Franklin, or Francis, or simply Frank, for I think children are sometimes christened with this abbreviated name. But it is too much in the style of Cowper's unpleasant acquaintance:

"The man who hails you Tom or Jack, And proves by thumping on your back How he esteems your merit."

I should not like to hear our past chief magistrates spoken of as Jack Adams or Jim Madison, and it would have been only as a political partisan that I should have reconciled myself to "Tom" Jefferson. So, in spite of "Ben" Jonson, "Tom" Moore, and "Jack" Sheppard, I prefer to speak of a fellow-citizen already venerable by his years, ent.i.tled to respect by useful services to his country, and recognized by many as the prophet of a new poetical dispensation, with the customary t.i.tle of adults rather than by the free and easy school-boy abbreviation with which he introduced himself many years ago to the public. As for his rhapsodies, Number Seven, our "cracked Teacup," says they sound to him like "fugues played on a big organ which has been struck by lightning."

So far as concerns literary independence, if we understand by that term the getting rid of our subjection to British criticism, such as it was in the days when the question was asked, "Who reads an American book?"

we may consider it pretty well established. If it means dispensing with punctuation, coining words at will, self-revelation unrestrained by a sense of what is decorous, declamations in which everything is glorified without being idealized, "poetry" in which the reader must make the rhythms which the poet has not made for him, then I think we had better continue literary colonists. I shrink from a lawless independence to which all the virile energy and trampling audacity of Mr. Whitman fail to reconcile me. But there is room for everybody and everything in our huge hemisphere. Young America is like a three-year-old colt with his saddle and bridle just taken off. The first thing he wants to do is to roll. He is a droll object, sprawling in the gra.s.s with his four hoofs in the air; but he likes it, and it won't harm us. So let him roll,--let him roll.

Of all The Teacups around our table, Number Five is the one who is the object of the greatest interest. Everybody wants to be her friend, and she has room enough in her hospitable nature to find a place for every one who is worthy of the privilege. The difficulty is that it is so hard to be her friend without becoming her lover. I have said before that she turns the subjects of her Circe-like enchantment, not into swine, but into lambs. The Professor and I move round among her lambs, the docile and amiable flock that come and go at her bidding, that follow her footsteps, and are content to live in the sunshine of her smile and within reach of the music of her voice. I like to get her away from their amiable bleatings; I love to talk with her about life, of which she has seen a great deal, for she knows what it is to be an idol in society and the centre of her social circle. It might be a question whether women or men most admire and love her. With her own s.e.x she is always helpful, sympathizing, tender, charitable, sharing their griefs as well as taking part in their pleasures. With men it has seemed to make little difference whether they were young or old: all have found her the same sweet, generous, unaffected companion; fresh enough in feeling for the youngest, deep enough in the wisdom of the heart for the oldest. She does not pretend to be youthful, nor does she trouble herself that she has seen the roses of more Junes than many of--the younger women who gather round her. She has not had to say,

Comme je regrette Mon bras si dodu,

for her arm has never lost its roundness, and her face is one of those that cannot be cheated of their charm even if they live long enough to look upon the grown up grandchildren of their coevals.

It is a wonder how Number Five can find the time to be so much to so many friends of both s.e.xes, in spite of the fact that she is one of the most insatiable of readers. She not only reads, but she remembers; she not only remembers, but she records, for her own use and pleasure, and for the delight and profit of those who are privileged to look over her note-books. Number Five, as I think I have said before, has not the ambition to figure as an auth.o.r.ess. That she could write most agreeably is certain. I have seen letters of hers to friends which prove that clearly enough. Whether she would find prose or verse the most natural mode of expression I cannot say, but I know she is pa.s.sionately fond of poetry, and I should not be surprised if, laid away among the pressed pansies and roses of past summers, there were poems, songs, perhaps, of her own, which she sings to herself with her fingers touching the piano; for to that she tells her secrets in tones sweet as the ring-dove's call to her mate.

I am afraid it may be suggested that I am drawing Number Five's portrait too nearly after some model who is unconsciously sitting for it; but have n't I told you that you must not look for flesh and blood personalities behind or beneath my Teacups? I am not going to make these so lifelike that you will be saying, This is Mr. or Miss, or Mrs.

So-and-So. My readers must remember that there are very many pretty, sweet, amiable girls and women sitting at their pianos, and finding chords to the music of their heart-strings. If I have pictured Number Five as one of her lambs might do it, I have succeeded in what I wanted to accomplish. Why don't I describe her person? If I do, some gossip or other will be sure to say, "Oh, he means her, of course," and find a name to match the p.r.o.noun.

It is strange to see how we are all coming to depend upon the friendly aid of Number Five in our various perplexities. The Counsellor asked her opinion in one of those cases where a divorce was too probable, but a reconciliation was possible. It takes a woman to sound a woman's heart, and she found there was still love enough under the ruffled waters to warrant the hope of peace and tranquillity. The young Doctor went to her for counsel in the case of a hysteric girl possessed with the idea that she was a born poetess, and covering whole pages of foolscap with senseless outbursts, which she wrote in paroxysms of wild excitement, and read with a rapture of self-admiration which there was nothing in her verses to justify or account for. How sweetly Number Five dealt with that poor deluded sister in her talk with the Doctor! "Yes," she said to him, "nothing can be fuller of vanity, self-worship, and self-deception.

But we must be very gentle with her. I knew a young girl tormented with aspirations, and possessed by a belief that she was meant for a higher place than that which fate had a.s.signed her, who needed wholesome advice, just as this poor young thing does. She did not ask for it, and it was not offered. Alas, alas! 'no man cared for her soul,'--no man nor woman either. She was in her early teens, and the thought of her earthly future, as it stretched out before her, was more than she could bear, and she sought the presence of her Maker to ask the meaning of her abortive existence.--We will talk it over. I will help you take care of this child."

The Doctor was thankful to have her a.s.sistance in a case with which he would have found it difficult to deal if he had been left to, his unaided judgment, and between them the young girl was safely piloted through the perilous straits in which she came near shipwreck.

I know that it is commonly said of her that every male friend of hers must become her lover unless he is already la.s.soed by another. Il fait pa.s.ser par l'a. The young Doctor is, I think, safe, for I am convinced that he is bewitched with Delilah. Since she has left us, he has seemed rather dejected; I feel sure that he misses her. We all do, but he more seriously than the rest of us. I have said that I cannot tell whether the Counsellor is to be counted as one of Number Five's lambs or not, but he evidently admires her, and if he is not fascinated, looks as if he were very near that condition.

It was a more delicate matter about which the Tutor talked with her.

Something which she had pleasantly said to him about the two Annexes led him to ask her, more or less seriously, it may be remembered, about the fitness of either of them to be the wife of a young man in his position.

She talked so sensibly, as it seemed to him, about it that he continued the conversation, and, shy as he was, became quite easy and confidential in her company. The Tutor is not only a poet, but is a great reader of the poetry of many languages. It so happened that Number Five was puzzled, one day, in reading a sonnet of Petrarch, and had recourse to the Tutor to explain the difficult pa.s.sage. She found him so thoroughly instructed, so clear, so much interested, so ready to impart knowledge, and so happy in his way of doing it, that she asked him if he would not allow her the privilege of reading an Italian author under his guidance, now and then.

The Tutor found Number Five an apt scholar, and something more than that; for while, as a linguist, he was, of course, her master, her intelligent comments brought out the beauties of an author in a way to make the text seem like a different version. They did not always confine themselves to the book they were reading. Number Five showed some curiosity about the Tutor's relations with the two Annexes. She suggested whether it would not be well to ask one or both of them in to take part in their readings. The Tutor blushed and hesitated. "Perhaps you would like to ask one of them," said Number Five. "Which one shall it be?" "It makes no difference to me which," he answered, "but I do not see that we need either." Number Five did not press the matter further.

So the young Tutor and Number Five read together pretty regularly, and came to depend upon their meeting over a book as one of their stated seasons of enjoyment. He is so many years younger than she is that I do not suppose he will have to pa.s.s par la, as most of her male friends have done. I tell her sometimes that she reminds me of my Alma Mater, always young, always fresh in her attractions, with her scholars all round her, many of them graduates, or to graduate sooner or later.

What do I mean by graduates? Why, that they have made love to her, and would be ent.i.tled to her diploma, if she gave a parchment to each one of them who had had the courage to face the inevitable. About the Counsellor I am, as I have said, in doubt. Who wrote that "I Like You and I Love You," which we found in the sugar-bowl the other day? Was it a graduate who had felt the "icy dagger," or only a candidate for graduation who was afraid of it? So completely does she subjugate those who come under her influence that I believe she looks upon it as a matter of course that the fateful question will certainly come, often after a brief acquaintance. She confessed as much to me, who am in her confidence, and not a candidate for graduation from her academy. Her graduates--her lambs I called them--are commonly faithful to her, and though now and then one may have gone off and sulked in solitude, most of them feel kindly to her, and to those who have shared the common fate of her suitors. I do really believe that some of them would be glad to see her captured by any one, if such there can be, who is worthy of her.

She is the best of friends, they say, but can she love anybody, as so many other women do, or seem to? Why shouldn't our Musician, who is evidently fond of her company, and sings and plays duets with her, steal her heart as Piozzi stole that of the pretty and bright Mrs. Thrale, as so many music-teachers have run away with their pupils' hearts? At present she seems to be getting along very placidly and contentedly with her young friend the Tutor. There is something quite charming in their relations with each other. He knows many things she does not, for he is reckoned one of the most learned in his literary specialty of all the young men of his time; and it can be a question of only a few years when some first-cla.s.s professorship will be offered him. She, on the other hand, has so much more experience, so much more practical wisdom, than he has that he consults her on many every-day questions, as he did, or made believe do, about that of making love to one of the two Annexes.

I had thought, when we first sat round the tea-table, that she was good for the bit of romance I wanted; but since she has undertaken to be a kind of half-maternal friend to the young Tutor, I am afraid I shall have to give her up as the heroine of a romantic episode. It would be a pity if there were nothing to commend these papers to those who take up this periodical but essays, more or less significant, on subjects more or less interesting to the jaded and impatient readers of the numberless stories and entertaining articles which crowd the magazines of this prolific period. A whole year of a tea-table as large as ours without a single love pa.s.sage in it would be discreditable to the company. We must find one, or make one, before the tea-things are taken away and the table is no longer spread.

The Dictator turns preacher.

We have so many light and playful talks over the teacups that some readers may be surprised to find us taking up the most serious and solemn subject which can occupy a human intelligence. The sudden appearance among our New England Protestants of the doctrine of purgatory as a possibility, or even probability, has startled the descendants of the Puritans. It has naturally led to a reconsideration of the doctrine of eternal punishment. It is on that subject that Number Five and I have talked together. I love to listen to her, for she talks from the promptings of a true woman's heart. I love to talk to her, for I learn my own thoughts better in that way than in any other "L'appet.i.t vient en mangeant," the French saying has it. "L'esprit vient en causant;" that is, if one can find the right persons to talk with.

The subject which has specially interested Number Five and myself, of late, was suggested to me in the following way.

Some two years ago I received a letter from a clergyman who bears by inheritance one of the most distinguished names which has done honor to the American "Orthodox" pulpit. This letter requested of me "a contribution to a proposed work which was to present in their own language the views of 'many men of many minds' on the subject of future punishment. It was in my mind to let the public hear not only from professional theologians, but from other professions, as from jurists on the alleged but disputed value of the hangman's whip overhanging the witness-box, and from physicians on the working of beliefs about the future life in the minds of the dangerously sick. And I could not help thinking what a good thing it would be to draw out the present writer upon his favorite borderland between the spiritual and the material."

The communication came to me, as the writer reminds me in a recent letter, at a "painfully inopportune time," and though it was courteously answered, was not made the subject of a special reply.

This request confers upon me a certain right to express my opinion on this weighty subject without fear and without reproach even from those who might be ready to take offence at one of the laity for meddling with pulpit questions. It shows also that this is not a dead issue in our community, as some of the younger generation seem to think. There are some, there may be many, who would like to hear what impressions one has received on the subject referred to, after a long life in which he has heard and read a great deal about the matter. There is a certain gravity in the position of one who is, in the order of nature very near the undiscovered country. A man who has pa.s.sed his eighth decade feels as if he were already in the antechamber of the apartments which he may be called to occupy in the house of many mansions. His convictions regarding the future of our race are likely to be serious, and his expressions not lightly uttered. The question my correspondent suggests is a tremendous one. No other interest compares for one moment with that belonging to it. It is not only ourselves that it concerns, but all whom we love or ever have loved, all our human brotherhood, as well as our whole idea of the Being who made us and the relation in which He stands to his creatures. In attempting to answer my correspondent's question, I shall no doubt repeat many things I have said before in different forms, on different occasions. This is no more than every clergyman does habitually, and it would be hard if I could not have the same license which the professional preacher enjoys so fully.

Number Five and I have occasionally talked on religious questions, and discovered many points of agreement in our views. Both of us grew up under the old "Orthodox" or Calvinistic system of belief. Both of us accepted it in our early years as a part of our education. Our experience is a common one. William Cullen Bryant says of himself, "The Calvinistic system of divinity I adopted of course, as I heard nothing else taught from the pulpit, and supposed it to be the accepted belief of the religious world." But it was not the "five points" which remained in the young poet's memory and shaped his higher life. It was the influence of his mother that left its permanent impression after the questions and answers of the a.s.sembly's Catechism had faded out, or remained in memory only as fossil survivors of an extinct or fast-disappearing theological formation. The important point for him, as for so many other children of Puritan descent, was not his father's creed, but his mother's character, precepts, and example. "She was a person," he says, "of excellent practical sense, of a quick and sensitive moral judgment, and had no patience with any form of deceit or duplicity. Her prompt condemnation of injustice, even in those instances in which it is tolerated by the world, made a strong impression upon me in early life; and if, in the discussion of public questions, I have in my riper age endeavored to keep in view the great rule of right without much regard to persons, it has been owing in a great degree to the force of her example, which taught me never to countenance a wrong because others did."

I have quoted this pa.s.sage because it was an experience not wholly unlike my own, and in certain respects like that of Number Five. To grow up in a narrow creed and to grow out of it is a tremendous trial of one's nature. There is always a bond of fellowship between those who have been through such an ordeal.

The experiences we have had in common naturally lead us to talk over the theological questions which at this time are constantly presenting themselves to the public, not only in the books and papers expressly devoted to that cla.s.s of subjects, but in many of the newspapers and popular periodicals, from the weeklies to the quarterlies. The pulpit used to lay down the law to the pews; at the present time, it is of more consequence what the pews think than what the minister does, for the obvious reason that the pews can change their minister, and often do, whereas the minister cannot change the pews, or can do so only to a very limited extent. The preacher's garment is cut according to the pattern of that of the hearers, for the most part. Thirty years ago, when I was writing on theological subjects, I came in for a very pretty share of abuse, such as it was the fashion of that day, at least in certain quarters, to bestow upon those who were outside of the high-walled enclosures in which many persons; not naturally unamiable or exclusive, found themselves imprisoned. Since that time what changes have taken place! Who will believe that a well-behaved and reputable citizen could have been denounced as a "moral parricide," because he attacked some of the doctrines in which he was supposed to have been brought up? A single thought should have prevented the masked theologian who abused his incognito from using such libellous language.

Much, and in many families most, of the religious teaching of children is committed to the mother. The experience of William Cullen Bryant, which I have related in his own words, is that of many New England children. Now, the sternest dogmas that ever came from a soul cramped or palsied by an obsolete creed become wonderfully softened in pa.s.sing between the lips of a mother. The cruel doctrine at which all but case-hardened "professionals" shudder cones out, as she teaches and ill.u.s.trates it, as unlike its original as the milk which a peasant mother gives her babe is unlike the coa.r.s.e food which furnishes her nourishment. The virus of a cursing creed is rendered comparatively harmless by the time it reaches the young sinner in the nursery. Its effects fall as far short of what might have been expected from its virulence as the pearly vaccine vesicle falls short of the terrors of the confluent small-pox. Controversialists should therefore be careful (for their own sakes, for they hurt n.o.body so much as themselves) how they use such terms as "parricide" as characterizing those who do not agree in all points with the fathers whom or whose memory they honor and venerate. They might with as much propriety call them matricides, if they did not agree with the milder teachings of their mothers. I can imagine Jonathan Edwards in the nursery with his three-year-old child upon his knee. The child looks up to his face and says to him,--"Papa, nurse tells me that you say G.o.d hates me worse than He hates one of those horrid ugly snakes that crawl all round. Does G.o.d hate me so?"