The Complete Essays of C. D. Warner

C >> Charles Dudley Warner >> The Complete Essays of C. D. Warner


This is, however, mere speculation. The serious aspect of the proposed
change is the effect it will have upon the character of men, who are not
enough considered in any of these discussions. The revolution will be a
radical one in one respect. We may admit that in the future woman can
take care of herself, but how will it be with man, who has had little
disciplinary experience of adversity, simply because he has been
permitted to have his own way? Heretofore his life has had a stimulus.
When he proposes to a woman, he in fact says: "I am able to support you;
I am able to protect you from the rough usage of the world; I am strong
and ambitious, and eager to take upon myself the lovely bondage of this
responsibility. I offer you this love because I feel the courage and
responsibility of my position." That is the manly part of it. What effect
will it have upon his character to be waiting round, unselected and
undecided, until some woman comes to him, and fixes her fascinating eyes
upon him, and says, in effect: "I can support you; I can defend you. Have
no fear of the future; I will be at once your shield and your backbone. I
take the responsibility of my choice." There are a great many men now,
who have sneaked into their positions by a show of courage, who are
supported one way and another by women. It might be humiliating to know
just how many men live by the labors of their wives. And what would be
the effect upon the character of man if the choice, and the
responsibility of it, and the support implied by it in marriage, were
generally transferred to woman?




FROCKS AND THE STAGE

The condescension to literature and to the stage is one of the notable
characteristics of this agreeable time. We have to admit that literature
is rather the fashion, without the violent presumption that the author
and the writer have the same social position that is conferred by money,
or by the mysterious virtue there is in pedigree. A person does not lose
caste by using the pen, or even by taking the not-needed pay for using
it. To publish a book or to have an article accepted by a magazine may
give a sort of social distinction, either as an exhibition of a certain
unexpected capacity or a social eccentricity. It is hardly too much to
say that it has become the fashion to write, as it used to be to dance
the minuet well, or to use the broadsword, or to stand a gentlemanly mill
with a renowned bruiser. Of course one ought not to do this
professionally exactly, ought not to prepare for doing it by study and
severe discipline, by training for it as for a trade, but simply to toss
it off easily, as one makes a call, or pays a compliment, or drives
four-in-hand. One does not need to have that interior impulse which
drives a poor devil of an author to express himself, that something to
say which torments the poet into extreme irritability unless he can be
rid of it, that noble hunger for fame which comes from a consciousness of
the possession of vital thought and emotion.

The beauty of this condescension to literature of which we speak is that
it has that quality of spontaneity that does not presuppose either a
capacity or a call. There is no mystery about the craft. One resolves to
write a book, as he might to take a journey or to practice on the piano,
and the thing is done. Everybody can write, at least everybody does
write. It is a wonderful time for literature. The Queen of England writes
for it, the Queen of Roumania writes for it, the Shah of Persia writes
for it, Lady Brassey, the yachtswoman, wrote for it, Congressmen write
for it, peers write for it. The novel is the common recreation of ladies
of rank, and where is the young woman in this country who has not tried
her hand at a romance or made a cast at a popular magazine? The effect of
all this upon literature is expansive and joyous. Superstition about any
mystery in the art has nearly disappeared. It is a common observation
that if persons fail in everything else, if they are fit for nothing
else, they can at least write. It is such an easy occupation, and the
remuneration is in such disproportion to the expenditure! Isn't it indeed
the golden era of letters? If only the letters were gold!

If there is any such thing remaining as a guild of authors, somewhere on
the back seats, witnessing this marvelous Kingdom Come of Literature,
there must also be a little bunch of actors, born for the stage, who see
with mixed feelings their arena taken possession of by fairer if not more
competent players. These players are not to be confounded with the
play-actors whom the Puritans denounced, nor with those trained to the
profession in the French capital.

In the United States and in England we are born to enter upon any
avocation, thank Heaven! without training for it. We have not in this
country any such obstacle to universal success as the Theatre Francais,
but Providence has given us, for wise purposes no doubt, Private
Theatricals (not always so private as they should be), which domesticate
the drama, and supply the stage with some of the most beautiful and best
dressed performers the world has ever seen. Whatever they may say of it,
it is a gallant and a susceptible age, and all men bow to loveliness, and
all women recognize a talent for clothes. We do not say that there is not
such a thing as dramatic art, and that there are not persons who need as
severe training before they attempt to personate nature in art as the
painter must undergo who attempts to transfer its features to his canvas.
But the taste of the age must be taken into account. The public does not
demand that an actor shall come in at a private door and climb a steep
staircase to get to the stage. When a Star from the Private Theatricals
descends upon the boards, with the arms of Venus and the throat of Juno,
and a wardrobe got out of Paris and through our stingy Custom-house in
forty trunks, the plodding actor, who has depended upon art, finds out,
what he has been all the time telling us, that all the world's a stage,
and men and women merely players. Art is good in its way; but what about
a perfect figure? and is not dressing an art? Can training give one an
elegant form, and study command the services of a man milliner? The stage
is broadened out and re-enforced by a new element. What went ye out for
to see?

A person clad in fine raiment, to be sure. Some of the critics may growl
a little, and hint at the invasion of art by fashionable life, but the
editor, whose motto is that the newspaper is made for man, not man for
the newspaper, understands what is required in this inspiring histrionic
movement, and when a lovely woman condescends to step from the
drawing-room to the stage he confines his descriptions to her person, and
does not bother about her capacity; and instead of wearying us with a
list of her plays and performances, he gives us a column about her
dresses in beautiful language that shows us how closely allied poetry is
to tailoring. Can the lady act? Why, simpleminded, she has nearly a
hundred frocks, each one a dream, a conception of genius, a vaporous
idea, one might say, which will reveal more beauty than it hides, and
teach the spectator that art is simply nature adorned. Rachel in all her
glory was not adorned like one of these. We have changed all that. The
actress used to have a rehearsal. She now has an "opening." Does it
require nowadays, then, no special talent or gift to go on the stage? No
more, we can assure our readers, than it does to write a book. But homely
people and poor people can write books. As yet they cannot act.




ALTRUISM

Christmas is supposed to be an altruistic festival. Then, if ever, we
allow ourselves to go out to others in sympathy expressed by gifts and
good wishes. Then self-forgetfulness in the happiness of others becomes a
temporary fashion. And we find--do we not?--the indulgence of the feeling
so remunerative that we wish there were other days set apart to it. We
can even understand those people who get a private satisfaction in being
good on other days besides Sunday. There is a common notion that this
Christmas altruistic sentiment is particularly shown towards the
unfortunate and the dependent by those more prosperous, and in what is
called a better social position. We are exhorted on this day to remember
the poor. We need to be reminded rather to remember the rich, the lonely,
not-easy-to-be-satisfied rich, whom we do not always have with us. The
Drawer never sees a very rich person that it does not long to give him
something, some token, the value of which is not estimated by its cost,
that should be a consoling evidence to him that he has not lost
sympathetic touch with ordinary humanity. There is a great deal of
sympathy afloat in the world, but it is especially shown downward in the
social scale. We treat our servants--supposing that we are society
--better than we treat each other. If we did not, they would leave us. We
are kinder to the unfortunate or the dependent than to each other, and we
have more charity for them.

The Drawer is not indulging in any indiscriminate railing at society.
There is society and society. There is that undefined something, more
like a machine than an aggregate of human sensibilities, which is set
going in a "season," or at a watering-place, or permanently selects
itself for certain social manifestations. It is this that needs a
missionary to infuse into it sympathy and charity. If it were indeed a
machine and not made up of sensitive personalities, it would not be to
its members so selfish and cruel. It would be less an ambitious scramble
for place and favor, less remorseless towards the unsuccessful, not so
harsh and hard and supercilious. In short, it would be much more
agreeable if it extended to its own members something of the
consideration and sympathy that it gives to those it regards as its
inferiors. It seems to think that good-breeding and good form are
separable from kindliness and sympathy and helpfulness. Tender-hearted
and charitable enough all the individuals of this "society" are to
persons below them in fortune or position, let us allow, but how are they
to each other? Nothing can be ruder or less considerate of the feelings
of others than much of that which is called good society, and this is why
the Drawer desires to turn the altruistic sentiment of the world upon it
in this season, set apart by common consent for usefulness. Unfortunate
are the fortunate if they are lifted into a sphere which is sapless of
delicacy of feeling for its own. Is this an intangible matter? Take
hospitality, for instance. Does it consist in astonishing the invited, in
overwhelming him with a sense of your own wealth, or felicity, or family,
or cleverness even; in trying to absorb him in your concerns, your
successes, your possessions, in simply what interests you? However
delightful all these may be, it is an offense to his individuality to
insist that he shall admire at the point of the social bayonet. How do
you treat the stranger? Do you adapt yourself and your surroundings to
him, or insist that he shall adapt himself to you? How often does the
stranger, the guest, sit in helpless agony in your circle (all of whom
know each other) at table or in the drawing-room, isolated and separate,
because all the talk is local and personal, about your little world, and
the affairs of your clique, and your petty interests, in which he or she
cannot possibly join? Ah! the Sioux Indian would not be so cruel as that
to a guest. There is no more refined torture to a sensitive person than
that. Is it only thoughtlessness? It is more than that. It is a want of
sympathy of the heart, or it is a lack of intelligence and broad-minded
interest in affairs of the world and in other people. It is this
trait--absorption in self--pervading society more or less, that makes it
so unsatisfactory to most people in it. Just a want of human interest;
people do not come in contact.

Avid pursuit of wealth, or what is called pleasure, perhaps makes people
hard to each other, and infuses into the higher social life, which should
be the most unselfish and enjoyable life, a certain vulgarity, similar to
that noticed in well-bred tourists scrambling for the seats on top of a
mountain coach. A person of refinement and sensibility and intelligence,
cast into the company of the select, the country-house, the radiant,
twelve-button society, has been struck with infinite pity for it, and
asks the Drawer to do something about it. The Drawer cannot do anything
about it. It can only ask the prayers of all good people on Christmas Day
for the rich. As we said, we do not have them with us always--they are
here today, they are gone to Canada tomorrow. But this is, of course,
current facetiousness. The rich are as good as anybody else, according to
their lights, and if what is called society were as good and as kind to
itself as it is to the poor, it would be altogether enviable. We are not
of those who say that in this case, charity would cover a multitude of
sins, but a diffusion in society of the Christmas sentiment of goodwill
and kindliness to itself would tend to make universal the joy on the
return of this season.




SOCIAL CLEARING-HOUSE

The Drawer would like to emphasize the noble, self-sacrificing spirit of
American women. There are none like them in the world. They take up all
the burdens of artificial foreign usage, where social caste prevails, and
bear them with a heroism worthy of a worse cause. They indeed represent
these usages to be a burden almost intolerable, and yet they submit to
them with a grace and endurance all their own. Probably there is no
harder-worked person than a lady in the season, let us say in Washington,
where the etiquette of visiting is carried to a perfection that it does
not reach even in New York, Boston, or Philadelphia, and where woman's
effort to keep the social fabric together requires more expenditure of
intellect and of physical force than was needed to protect the capital in
its peril a quarter of a century ago. When this cruel war is over, the
monument to the women who perished in it will need to be higher than that
to the Father of his Country. Merely in the item of keeping an account of
the visits paid and due, a woman needs a bookkeeper. Only to know the
etiquette of how and when and to whom and in what order the visits are to
be paid is to be well educated in a matter that assumes the first
importance in her life. This is, however, only a detail of bookkeeping
and of memory; to pay and receive, or evade, these visits of ceremony is
a work which men can admire without the power to imitate; even on the
supposition that a woman has nothing else to do, it calls for our humble
gratitude and a recognition of the largeness of nature that can put aside
any duties to husband or children in devotion to the public welfare. The
futile round of society life while it lasts admits of no rival. It seems
as important as the affairs of the government. The Drawer is far from
saying that it is not. Perhaps no one can tell what confusion would fall
into all the political relations if the social relations of the capital
were not kept oiled by the system of exchange of fictitious courtesies
among the women; and it may be true that society at large--men are so
apt, when left alone, to relapse--would fall into barbarism if our
pasteboard conventions were neglected. All honor to the self-sacrifice of
woman!

What a beautiful civilization ours is, supposed to be growing in
intelligence and simplicity, and yet voluntarily taking upon itself this
artificial burden in an already overtaxed life! The angels in heaven must
admire and wonder. The cynic wants to know what is gained for any
rational being when a city-full of women undertake to make and receive
formal visits with persons whom for the most part they do not wish to
see. What is gained, he asks, by leaving cards with all these people and
receiving their cards? When a woman makes her tedious rounds, why is she
always relieved to find people not in? When she can count upon her ten
fingers the people she wants to see, why should she pretend to want to
see the others? Is any one deceived by it? Does anybody regard it as
anything but a sham and a burden? Much the cynic knows about it! Is it
not necessary to keep up what is called society? Is it not necessary to
have an authentic list of pasteboard acquaintances to invite to the
receptions? And what would become of us without Receptions? Everybody
likes to give them. Everybody flocks to them with much alacrity. When
society calls the roll, we all know the penalty of being left out. Is
there any intellectual or physical pleasure equal to that of jamming so
many people into a house that they can hardly move, and treating them to
a Babel of noises in which no one can make herself heard without
screaming? There is nothing like a reception in any uncivilized country.
It is so exhilarating! When a dozen or a hundred people are gathered
together in a room, they all begin to raise their voices and to shout
like pool-sellers in the noble rivalry of "warious langwidges," rasping
their throats into bronchitis in the bidding of the conversational ring.
If they spoke low, or even in the ordinary tone, conversation would be
possible. But then it would not be a reception, as we understand it. We
cannot neglect anywhere any of the pleasures of our social life. We train
for it in lower assemblies. Half a dozen women in a "call" are obliged to
shout, just for practice, so that they can be heard by everybody in the
neighborhood except themselves. Do not men do the same? If they do, it
only shows that men also are capable of the higher civilization.

But does society--that is, the intercourse of congenial people--depend
upon the elaborate system of exchanging calls with hundreds of people who
are not congenial? Such thoughts will sometimes come by a winter fireside
of rational-talking friends, or at a dinner-party not too large for talk
without a telephone, or in the summer-time by the sea, or in the cottage
in the hills, when the fever of social life has got down to a normal
temperature. We fancy that sometimes people will give way to a real
enjoyment of life and that human intercourse will throw off this
artificial and wearisome parade, and that if women look back with pride,
as they may, upon their personal achievements and labors, they will also
regard them with astonishment. Women, we read every day, long for the
rights and privileges of men, and the education and serious purpose in
life of men. And yet, such is the sweet self-sacrifice of their nature,
they voluntarily take on burdens which men have never assumed, and which
they would speedily cast off if they had. What should we say of men if
they consumed half their time in paying formal calls upon each other
merely for the sake of paying calls, and were low-spirited if they did
not receive as many cards as they had dealt out to society? Have they not
the time? Have women more time? and if they have, why should they spend
it in this Sisyphus task? Would the social machine go to pieces--the
inquiry is made in good faith, and solely for information--if they made
rational business for themselves to be attended to, or even if they gave
the time now given to calls they hate to reading and study, and to making
their household civilizing centres of intercourse and enjoyment, and paid
visits from some other motive than "clearing off their list"? If all the
artificial round of calls and cards should tumble down, what valuable
thing would be lost out of anybody's life?

The question is too vast for the Drawer, but as an experiment in
sociology it would like to see the system in abeyance for one season. If
at the end of it there had not been just as much social enjoyment as
before, and there were not fewer women than usual down with nervous
prostration, it would agree to start at its own expense a new experiment,
to wit, a kind of Social Clearing-House, in which all cards should be
delivered and exchanged, and all social debts of this kind be balanced by
experienced bookkeepers, so that the reputation of everybody for
propriety and conventionality should be just as good as it is now.




DINNER-TABLE TALK

Many people suppose that it is the easiest thing in the world to dine if
you can get plenty to eat. This error is the foundation of much social
misery. The world that never dines, and fancies it has a grievance
justifying anarchy on that account, does not know how much misery it
escapes. A great deal has been written about the art of dining. From time
to time geniuses have appeared who knew how to compose a dinner; indeed,
the art of doing it can be learned, as well as the art of cooking and
serving it. It is often possible, also, under extraordinarily favorable
conditions, to select a company congenial and varied and harmonious
enough to dine together successfully. The tact for getting the right
people together is perhaps rarer than the art of composing the dinner.
But it exists. And an elegant table with a handsome and brilliant company
about it is a common conjunction in this country. Instructions are not
wanting as to the shape of the table and the size of the party; it is
universally admitted that the number must be small. The big
dinner-parties which are commonly made to pay off social debts are
generally of the sort that one would rather contribute to in money than
in personal attendance. When the dinner is treated as a means of
discharging obligations, it loses all character, and becomes one of the
social inflictions. While there is nothing in social intercourse so
agreeable and inspiring as a dinner of the right sort, society has
invented no infliction equal to a large dinner that does not "go," as the
phrase is. Why it does not go when the viands are good and the company is
bright is one of the acknowledged mysteries.

There need be no mystery about it. The social instinct and the social
habit are wanting to a great many people of uncommon intelligence and
cultivation--that sort of flexibility or adaptability that makes
agreeable society. But this even does not account for the failure of so
many promising dinners. The secret of this failure always is that the
conversation is not general. The sole object of the dinner is talk--at
least in the United States, where "good eating" is pretty common, however
it may be in England, whence come rumors occasionally of accomplished men
who decline to be interrupted by the frivolity of talk upon the
appearance of favorite dishes. And private talk at a table is not the
sort that saves a dinner; however good it is, it always kills it. The
chance of arrangement is that the people who would like to talk together
are not neighbors; and if they are, they exhaust each other to weariness
in an hour, at least of topics which can be talked about with the risk of
being overheard. A duet to be agreeable must be to a certain extent
confidential, and the dinner-table duet admits of little except
generalities, and generalities between two have their limits of
entertainment. Then there is the awful possibility that the neighbors at
table may have nothing to say to each other; and in the best-selected
company one may sit beside a stupid man--that is, stupid for the purpose
of a 'tete-a-tete'. But this is not the worst of it. No one can talk well
without an audience; no one is stimulated to say bright things except by
the attention and questioning and interest of other minds. There is
little inspiration in side talk to one or two. Nobody ought to go to a
dinner who is not a good listener, and, if possible, an intelligent one.
To listen with a show of intelligence is a great accomplishment. It is
not absolutely essential that there should be a great talker or a number
of good talkers at a dinner if all are good listeners, and able to "chip
in" a little to the general talk that springs up. For the success of the
dinner does not necessarily depend upon the talk being brilliant, but it
does depend upon its being general, upon keeping the ball rolling round
the table; the old-fashioned game becomes flat when the balls all
disappear into private pockets. There are dinners where the object seems
to be to pocket all the balls as speedily as possible. We have learned
that that is not the best game; the best game is when you not only depend
on the carom, but in going to the cushion before you carom; that is to
say, including the whole table, and making things lively. The hostess
succeeds who is able to excite this general play of all the forces at the
table, even using the silent but not non-elastic material as cushions, if
one may continue the figure. Is not this, O brothers and sisters, an evil
under the sun, this dinner as it is apt to be conducted? Think of the
weary hours you have given to a rite that should be the highest social
pleasure! How often when a topic is started that promises well, and might
come to something in a general exchange of wit and fancy, and some one
begins to speak on it, and speak very well, too, have you not had a lady
at your side cut in and give you her views on it--views that might be
amusing if thrown out into the discussion, but which are simply
impertinent as an interruption! How often when you have tried to get a
"rise" out of somebody opposite have you not had your neighbor cut in
across you with some private depressing observation to your next
neighbor! Private talk at a dinner-table is like private chat at a parlor
musicale, only it is more fatal to the general enjoyment. There is a
notion that the art of conversation, the ability to talk well, has gone
out. That is a great mistake. Opportunity is all that is needed. There
must be the inspiration of the clash of minds and the encouragement of
good listening. In an evening round the fire, when couples begin, to
whisper or talk low to each other, it is time to put out the lights.
Inspiring interest is gone. The most brilliant talker in the world is
dumb. People whose idea of a dinner is private talk between
seat-neighbors should limit the company to two. They have no right to
spoil what can be the most agreeable social institution that civilization
has evolved.