The Entire Project Gutenberg Works of Charles Dudley Warner

C >> Charles Dudley Warner >> The Entire Project Gutenberg Works of Charles Dudley Warner


Not at all, at least not a Roman copy of one. But it would be better to
marry a woman who would rather be like a Greek statue than like some of
these figures, without even an idea for clothing, which are lying about
on green banks in our spring exhibitions.




THE ART OF IDLENESS

Idleness seems to be the last accomplishment of civilization. To be idle
gracefully and contentedly and picturesquely is an art. It is one in
which the Americans, who do so many things well, do not excel. They have
made the excuse that they have not time, or, if they have leisure, that
their temperament and nervous organization do not permit it. This excuse
will pass for a while, for we are a new people, and probably we are more
highly and sensitively organized than any other nation--at least the
physiologists say so; but the excuse seems more and more inadequate as we
accumulate wealth, and consequently have leisure. We shall not criticise
the American colonies in Paris and Rome and Florence, and in other
Continental places where they congregate. They know whether they are
restless or contented, and what examples they set to the peoples who get
their ideas of republican simplicity and virtue from the Americans who
sojourn among them. They know whether with all their leisure they get
placidity of mind and the real rest which the older nations have learned
to enjoy. It may not be the most desirable thing for a human being to be
idle, but if he will be, he should be so in a creditable manner, and with
some enjoyment to himself. It is no slander to say that we in America
have not yet found out the secret of this. Perhaps we shall not until our
energies are spent and we are in a state of decay. At present we put as
much energy into our pleasure as into our work, for it is inbred in us
that laziness is a sin. This is the Puritan idea, and it must be said for
it that in our experience virtue and idleness are not commonly
companions. But this does not go to the bottom of the matter.

The Italians are industrious; they are compelled to be in order to pay
their taxes for the army and navy and get macaroni enough to live on. But
see what a long civilization has done for them. They have the manner of
laziness, they have the air of leisure, they have worn off the angular
corners of existence, and unconsciously their life is picturesque and
enjoyable. Those among them who have money take their pleasure simply and
with the least expense of physical energy. Those who have not money do
the same thing. This basis of existence is calm and unexaggerated; life
is reckoned by centimes, not by dollars. What an ideal place is Venice!
It is not only the most picturesque city in the world, rich in all that
art can invent to please the eye, but how calm it is! The vivacity which
entertains the traveler is all on the surface. The nobleman in his palace
if there be any palace that is not turned into a hotel, or a magazine of
curiosities, or a municipal office--can live on a diet that would make an
American workman strike, simply because he has learned to float through
life; and the laborer is equally happy on little because he has learned
to wait without much labor. The gliding, easy motion of the gondola
expresses the whole situation; and the gondolier who with consummate
skill urges his dreamy bark amid the throng and in the tortuous canals
for an hour or two, and then sleeps in the sun, is a type of that rest in
labor which we do not attain. What happiness there is in a dish of
polenta, or of a few fried fish, in a cup of coffee, and in one of those
apologies for cigars which the government furnishes, dear at a cent--the
cigar with a straw in it, as if it were a julep, which it needs five
minutes to ignite, and then will furnish occupation for a whole evening!
Is it a hard lot, that of the fishermen and the mariners of the Adriatic?
The lights are burning all night long in a cafe on the Riva del
Schiavoni, and the sailors and idlers of the shore sit there jabbering
and singing and trying their voices in lusty hallooing till the morning
light begins to make the lagoon opalescent. The traveler who lodges near
cannot sleep, but no more can the sailors, who steal away in the dawn,
wafted by painted sails. In the heat of the day, when the fish will not
bite, comes the siesta. Why should the royal night be wasted in slumber?
The shore of the Riva, the Grand Canal, the islands, gleam with twinkling
lamps; the dark boats glide along with a star in the prow, bearing youth
and beauty and sin and ugliness, all alike softened by the shadows; the
electric lights from the shores and the huge steamers shoot gleams on
towers and facades; the moon wades among the fleecy clouds; here and
there a barge with colored globes of light carries a band of singing men
and women and players on the mandolin and the fiddle, and from every side
the songs of Italy, pathetic in their worn gayety, float to the entranced
ears of those who lean from balconies, or lounge in gondolas and listen
with hearts made a little heavy and wistful with so much beauty.

Can any one float in such scenes and be so contentedly idle anywhere in
our happy land? Have we learned yet the simple art of easy enjoyment? Can
we buy it with money quickly, or is it a grace that comes only with long
civilization? Italy, for instance, is full of accumulated wealth, of art,
even of ostentation and display, and the new generation probably have
lost the power to conceive, if not the skill to execute, the great works
which excite our admiration. Nothing can be much more meretricious than
its modern art, when anything is produced that is not an exact copy of
something created when there was genius there. But in one respect the
Italians have entered into the fruits of the ages of trial and of
failure, and that, is the capacity of being idle with much money or with
none, and getting day by day their pay for the bother of living in this
world. It seems a difficult lesson for us to learn in country or city.
Alas! when we have learned it shall we not want to emigrate, as so many
of the Italians do? Some philosophers say that men were not created to be
happy. Perhaps they were not intended to be idle.




IS THERE ANY CONVERSATION

Is there any such thing as conversation? It is a delicate subject to
touch, because many people understand conversation to be talk; not the
exchange of ideas, but of words; and we would not like to say anything to
increase the flow of the latter. We read of times and salons in which
real conversation existed, held by men and women. Are they altogether in
the past? We believe that men do sometimes converse. Do women ever?
Perhaps so. In those hours sacred to the relaxation of undress and the
back hair, in the upper penetralia of the household, where two or three
or six are gathered together on and about the cushioned frame intended
for repose, do they converse, or indulge in that sort of chat from which
not one idea is carried away? No one reports, fortunately, and we do not
know. But do all the women like this method of spending hour after hour,
day after day-indeed, a lifetime? Is it invigorating, even restful? Think
of the talk this past summer, the rivers and oceans of it, on piazzas and
galleries in the warm evenings or the fresher mornings, in private
houses, on hotel verandas, in the shade of thousands of cottages by the
sea and in the hills! As you recall it, what was it all about? Was the
mind in a vapid condition after an evening of it? And there is so much to
read, and so much to think about, and the world is so interesting, if you
do think about it, and nearly every person has some peculiarity of mind
that would be worth study if you could only get at it! It is really, we
repeat, such an interesting world, and most people get so little out of
it. Now there is the conversation of hens, when the hens are busy and not
self-conscious; there is something fascinating about it, because the
imagination may invest it with a recondite and spicy meaning; but the
common talk of people! We infer sometimes that the hens are not saying
anything, because they do not read, and consequently their minds are
empty. And perhaps we are right. As to conversation, there is no use in
sending the bucket into the well when the well is dry--it only makes a
rattling of windlass and chain. We do not wish to be understood to be an
enemy of the light traffic of human speech. Deliver us from the didactic
and the everlastingly improving style of thing! Conversation, in order to
be good, and intellectually inspiring, and spiritually restful, need not
always be serious. It must be alert and intelligent, and mean more by its
suggestions and allusions than is said. There is the light touch-and-go
play about topics more or less profound that is as agreeable as
heat-lightning in a sultry evening. Why may not a person express the
whims and vagaries of a lambent mind (if he can get a lambent mind)
without being hauled up short for it, and plunged into a heated dispute?
In the freedom of real conversation the mind throws out half-thoughts,
paradoxes, for which a man is not to be held strictly responsible to the
very roots of his being, and which need to be caught up and played with
in the same tentative spirit. The dispute and the hot argument are
usually the bane of conversation and the death of originality. We like to
express a notion, a fancy, without being called upon to defend it, then
and there, in all its possible consequences, as if it were to be an
article in a creed or a plank in a platform. Must we be always either
vapid or serious?

We have been obliged to take notice of the extraordinary tendency of
American women to cultivation, to the improvement of the mind, by means
of reading, clubs, and other intellectual exercises, and to acknowledge
that they are leaving the men behind; that is, the men not in the
so-called professions. Is this intellectualization beginning to show in
the conversation of women when they are together, say in the hours of
relaxation in the penetralia spoken of, or in general society? Is there
less talk about the fashion of dress, and the dearness or cheapness of
materials, and about servants, and the ways of the inchoate citizen
called the baby, and the infinitely little details of the private life of
other people? Is it true that if a group of men are talking, say about
politics, or robust business, or literature, and they are joined by women
(whose company is always welcome), the conversation is pretty sure to
take a lower mental plane, to become more personal, more frivolous,
accommodating itself to quite a different range? Do the well-read,
thoughtful women, however beautiful and brilliant and capable of the
gayest persiflage, prefer to talk with men, to listen to the conversation
of men, rather than to converse with or listen to their own sex? If this
is true, why is it? Women, as a rule, in "society" at any rate, have more
leisure than men. In the facilities and felicities of speech they
commonly excel men, and usually they have more of that vivacious dramatic
power which is called "setting out a thing to the life." With all these
advantages, and all the world open to them in newspapers and in books,
they ought to be the leaders and stimulators of the best conversation.
With them it should never drop down to the too-common flatness and
banality. Women have made this world one of the most beautiful places of
residence to be conceived. They might make it one of the most
interesting.




THE TALL GIRL

It is the fashion for girls to be tall. This is much more than saying
that tall girls are the fashion. It means not only that the tall girl has
come in, but that girls are tall, and are becoming tall, because it is
the fashion, and because there is a demand for that sort of girl. There
is no hint of stoutness, indeed the willowy pattern is preferred, but
neither is leanness suggested; the women of the period have got hold of
the poet's idea, "tall and most divinely fair," and are living up to it.
Perhaps this change in fashion is more noticeable in England and on the
Continent than in America, but that may be because there is less room for
change in America, our girls being always of an aspiring turn. Very
marked the phenomenon is in England; on the street, at any concert or
reception, the number of tall girls is so large as to occasion remark,
especially among the young girls just coming into the conspicuousness of
womanhood. The tendency of the new generation is towards unusual height
and gracious slimness. The situation would be embarrassing to thousands
of men who have been too busy to think about growing upward, were it not
for the fact that the tall girl, who must be looked up to, is almost
invariably benignant, and bears her height with a sweet timidity that
disarms fear. Besides, the tall girl has now come on in such force that
confidence is infused into the growing army, and there is a sense of
support in this survival of the tallest that is very encouraging to the
young.

Many theories have been put forward to account for this phenomenon. It is
known that delicate plants in dark places struggle up towards the light
in a frail slenderness, and it is said that in England, which seems to
have increasing cloudiness, and in the capital more and more months of
deeper darkness and blackness, it is natural that the British girl should
grow towards the light. But this is a fanciful view of the case, for it
cannot be proved that English men have proportionally increased their
stature. The English man has always seemed big to the Continental
peoples, partly because objects generally take on gigantic dimensions
when seen through a fog. Another theory, which has much more to commend
it, is that the increased height of women is due to the aesthetic
movement, which has now spent its force, but has left certain results,
especially in the change of the taste in colors. The woman of the
aesthetic artist was nearly always tall, usually willowy, not to say
undulating and serpentine. These forms of feminine loveliness and
commanding height have been for many years before the eyes of the women
of England in paintings and drawings, and it is unavoidable that this
pattern should not have its effect upon the new and plastic generation.
Never has there been another generation so open to new ideas; and if the
ideal of womanhood held up was that of length and gracious slenderness,
it would be very odd if women should not aspire to it. We know very well
the influence that the heroines of the novelists have had from time to
time upon the women of a given period. The heroine of Scott was, no
doubt, once common in society--the delicate creature who promptly fainted
on the reminiscence of the scent of a rose, but could stand any amount of
dragging by the hair through underground passages, and midnight rides on
lonely moors behind mailed and black-mantled knights, and a run or two of
hair-removing typhoid fever, and come out at the end of the story as
fresh as a daisy. She could not be found now, so changed are the
requirements of fiction. We may assume, too, that the full-blown
aesthetic girl of that recent period--the girl all soul and faded
harmonies--would be hard to find, but the fascination of the height and
slenderness of that girl remains something more than a tradition, and is,
no doubt, to some extent copied by the maiden just coming into her
kingdom.

Those who would belittle this matter may say that the appearance of which
we speak is due largely to the fashion of dress--the long unbroken lines
which add to the height and encourage the appearance of slenderness. But
this argument gives away the case. Why do women wear the present
fascinating gowns, in which the lithe figure is suggested in all its
womanly dignity? In order that they may appear to be tall. That is to
say, because it is the fashion to be tall; women born in the mode are
tall, and those caught in a hereditary shortness endeavor to conform to
the stature of the come and coming woman.

There is another theory, that must be put forward with some hesitation,
for the so-called emancipation of woman is a delicate subject to deal
with, for while all the sex doubtless feel the impulse of the new time,
there are still many who indignantly reject the implication in the
struggle for the rights of women. To say, therefore, that women are
becoming tall as a part of their outfit for taking the place of men in
this world would be to many an affront, so that this theory can only be
suggested. Yet probably physiology would bear us out in saying that the
truly emancipated woman, taking at last the place in affairs which men
have flown in the face of Providence by denying her, would be likely to
expand physically as well as mentally, and that as she is beginning to
look down upon man intellectually, she is likely to have a corresponding
physical standard.

Seriously, however, none of these theories are altogether satisfactory,
and we are inclined to seek, as is best in all cases, the simplest
explanation. Women are tall and becoming tall simply because it is the
fashion, and that statement never needs nor is capable of any
explanation. Awhile ago it was the fashion to be petite and arch; it is
now the fashion to be tall and gracious, and nothing more can be said
about it. Of course the reader, who is usually inclined to find the
facetious side of any grave topic, has already thought of the application
of the self-denying hymn, that man wants but little here below, and wants
that little long; but this may be only a passing sigh of the period. We
are far from expressing any preference for tall women over short women.
There are creative moods of the fancy when each seems the better. We can
only chronicle, but never create.




THE DEADLY DIARY

Many people regard the keeping of a diary as a meritorious occupation.
The young are urged to take up this cross; it is supposed to benefit
girls especially. Whether women should do it is to some minds not an open
question, although there is on record the case of the Frenchman who tried
to shoot himself when he heard that his wife was keeping a diary. This
intention of suicide may have arisen from the fear that his wife was
keeping a record of his own peccadilloes rather than of her own thoughts
and emotions. Or it may have been from the fear that she was putting down
those little conjugal remarks which the husband always dislikes to have
thrown up to him, and which a woman can usually quote accurately, it may
be for years, it may be forever, without the help of a diary. So we can
appreciate without approving the terror of the Frenchman at living on and
on in the same house with a growing diary. For it is not simply that this
little book of judgment is there in black and white, but that the maker
of it is increasing her power of minute observation and analytic
expression. In discussing the question whether a woman should keep a
diary it is understood that it is not a mere memorandum of events and
engagements, such as both men and women of business and affairs
necessarily keep, but the daily record which sets down feelings,
emotions, and impressions, and criticises people and records opinions.
But this is a question that applies to men as well as to women.

It has been assumed that the diary serves two good purposes: it is a
disciplinary exercise for the keeper of it, and perhaps a moral guide;
and it has great historical value. As to the first, it may be helpful to
order, method, discipline, and it may be an indulgence of spleen, whims,
and unwholesome criticism and conceit. The habit of saying right out what
you think of everybody is not a good one, and the record of such opinions
and impressions, while it is not so mischievous to the public as talking
may be, is harmful to the recorder. And when we come to the historical
value of the diary, we confess to a growing suspicion of it. It is such a
deadly weapon when it comes to light after the passage of years. It has
an authority which the spoken words of its keeper never had. It is 'ex
parte', and it cannot be cross-examined. The supposition is that being
contemporaneous with the events spoken of, it must be true, and that it
is an honest record. Now, as a matter of fact, we doubt if people are any
more honest as to themselves or others in a diary than out of it; and
rumors, reported facts, and impressions set down daily in the heat and
haste of the prejudicial hour are about as likely to be wrong as right.
Two diaries of the same events rarely agree. And in turning over an old
diary we never know what to allow for the personal equation. The diary is
greatly relied on by the writers of history, but it is doubtful if there
is any such liar in the world, even when the keeper of it is honest. It
is certain to be partisan, and more liable to be misinformed than a
newspaper, which exercises some care in view of immediate publicity. The
writer happens to know of two diaries which record, on the testimony of
eye-witnesses, the circumstances of the last hours of Garfield, and they
differ utterly in essential particulars. One of these may turn up fifty
years from now, and be accepted as true. An infinite amount of gossip
goes into diaries about men and women that would not stand the test of a
moment's contemporary publication. But by-and-by it may all be used to
smirch or brighten unjustly some one's character. Suppose a man in the
Army of the Potomac had recorded daily all his opinions of men and
events. Reading it over now, with more light and a juster knowledge of
character and of measures, is it not probable that he would find it a
tissue of misconceptions? Few things are actually what they seem today;
they are colored both by misapprehensions and by moods. If a man writes a
letter or makes report of an occurrence for immediate publication,
subject to universal criticism, there is some restraint on him. In his
private letter, or diary especially, he is apt to set down what comes
into his head at the moment, often without much effort at verification.

We have been led to this disquisition into the fundamental nature of this
private record by the question put to us, whether it is a good plan for a
woman to keep a diary. Speaking generally, the diary has become a sort of
fetich, the authority of which ought to be overthrown. It is fearful to
think how our characters are probably being lied away by innumerable pen
scratches in secret repositories, which may some day come to light as
unimpeachable witnesses. The reader knows that he is not the sort of man
which the diarist jotted him down to be in a single interview. The diary
may be a good thing for self-education, if the keeper could insure its
destruction. The mental habit of diarizing may have some value, even when
it sets undue importance upon trifles. We confess that, never having seen
a woman's private diary (except those that have been published), we do
not share the popular impression as to their tenuity implied in the
question put to us. Taking it for granted that they are full of noble
thoughts and beautiful imaginings, we doubt whether the time spent on
them could not be better employed in acquiring knowledge or taking
exercise. For the diary forgotten and left to the next generation may be
as dangerous as dynamite.




THE WHISTLING GIRL

The wisdom of our ancestors packed away in proverbial sayings may always
be a little suspected. We have a vague respect for a popular proverb, as
embodying folk-experience, and expressing not the wit of one, but the
common thought of a race. We accept the saying unquestioning, as a sort
of inspiration out of the air, true because nobody has challenged it for
ages, and probably for the same reason that we try to see the new moon
over our left shoulder. Very likely the musty saying was the product of
the average ignorance of an unenlightened time, and ought not to have the
respect of a scientific and traveled people. In fact it will be found
that a large proportion of the proverbial sayings which we glibly use are
fallacies based on a very limited experience of the world, and probably
were set afloat by the idiocy or prejudice of one person. To examine one
of them is enough for our present purpose.

"Whistling girls and crowing hens
Always come to some bad ends."

It would be interesting to know the origin of this proverb, because it is
still much relied on as evincing a deep knowledge of human nature, and as
an argument against change, that is to say, in this case, against
progress. It would seem to have been made by a man, conservative, perhaps
malevolent, who had no appreciation of a hen, and a conservatively poor
opinion of woman. His idea was to keep woman in her place--a good idea
when not carried too far--but he did not know what her place is, and he
wanted to put a sort of restraint upon her emancipation by coupling her
with an emancipated hen. He therefore launched this shaft of ridicule,
and got it to pass as an arrow of wisdom shot out of a popular experience
in remote ages.