The Champagne Standard Part 12

Now our American Government not only declines to impress foreigners, but takes unnecessary pains to remind us that Benjamin Franklin appeared in homespun and wollen stockings at the Court of France. Times have changed since then, and though we have discarded wollen stockings in our intercourse with foreign Courts, our republic, in her consistent encouragement of an out-of-date Spartan simplicity, leaves her amba.s.sadors to pay her legitimate little bills themselves, with the result that she limits her choice of representatives to men who are not only distinguished, but also rich enough to pay the heavy and necessary expenses of their great position, which should by right be covered by an adequate salary.

It is not that our Government is impecunious; it is only pennywise. Now for the first time in our history America has an emba.s.sy in London worthy of her greatness, thanks not to our Government, but to the princely munificence of her new Amba.s.sador. Perhaps he will never know the impetus he has given to the lesser patriotism, nor with what innocent pride we have contemplated his residence from every point of view, and with what patriotic rapture we watched the erection of that splendid marquee destined for the welcome of his fellow-countrymen.

For the first time I realised that this was _our_ emba.s.sy and _our_ marquee, and I was proud of my country. These were the outward and visible sign of our great prosperity. Perhaps our Amba.s.sador thinks he is the temporary owner of this stately splendour. It is a pardonable mistake, but the fact is we are the owners, we Americans who have strayed into this crowded and lonely London by way of Cook's tours, and floating palaces, and who are, many of us, homesick for the sight of something "real American."

Last Sat.u.r.day we celebrated that famous Fourth of July which England is so courteous as to forgive. For the first time we penetrated into our emba.s.sy. We were aliens no more, we were, so to speak, on our native heath, we could not be crushed even by those magnificent footmen in powder and plush--our footmen--who, as beseems the footmen of a free and independent people, were quite affable.

How proudly we patriots filed up the marble stairs and stared at the pictures and at each other, and acknowledged with a genuine glow of pride how well we were all dressed. I guess!

"We are a prosperous nation," I exulted, as I had some republican refreshment in the marquee under a roof of green-and-white striped bunting. How good the lemonade tasted! A patriotic lady, with a huge bow of stars and stripes tied in her b.u.t.tonhole, said enthusiastically, "There is nothing like American lemonade!"

For once one rose superior to the English. One longed to recite to them the Declaration of Independence. I swelled with pride, it was all so well done, and it was my emba.s.sy, my marquee, my ices, and my Amba.s.sador. For the first time one revelled in the joy of a worthy possession. For once the English accent was relegated where it belonged--to the background--and we Americans talked unreproved with all those delightful and familiar intonations which eighty millions of people have stamped as cla.s.sic.

My only other experience of a Fourth of July reception, though there have been many distinguished and hospitable American Ministers since, was years ago. Two of us, urged on by patriotism, chartered a four-wheeler, and were deposited before a modest house, which was so dark inside, compared to the glare outside, that we stumbled up the dim stairs behind other ardent republicans, and groped for the hand of our hostess, who had apparently mislaid her smile early in the day. Then we blinked our way into a dark drawing-room, where a circle of patriots stared coldly at us.

In our search for our Minister we attached ourselves to a little procession that filed into the next room, and we found him talking with delightful affability to an Englishman. To an Englishman, and on this day of all days! To an enemy of that great country which paid him his inadequate salary, while we, his own people, stood meekly about waiting until it should suit him to notice us, and bestow on us that handshake which is the inexpensive entertainment of all republican functions.

First we stood on one foot, and then we stood on the other, and then we coughed--a deprecating, appealing cough--and finally our Minister took a lingering, fond farewell of his Englishman, and then turned to us, with a frost-bitten expression of resignation which did not encourage us to linger. We shook his limp hand, and then we jostled each other into the dining-room.

We were filled with an acute resentment, but far from declining to break bread in his house we decided to take it out of him in refreshments; but the un.o.btrusive simplicity of the preparations foiled our unworthy designs.

Those were simpler days, and enthusiastic republicans arrived in every variety of attire. Most popular of all was that linen "duster" with which in all its creases the travelling American loved to array himself.

Sometimes he wore a coat under it and sometimes he didn't. Those were the days of paper collars and "made-up" ties, and on state occasions a cl.u.s.ter diamond "bosom pin." It was a stifling hot day, and we pa.s.sed into the small dining-room, where a long table imprisoned three waiters.

It was a question of each for himself, and I remember the father of a family clutching a plate of what we Americans call "crackers," and refusing the contents to all but his own offspring.

How we struggled for tea, and what a mercy it was that the waiters were protected from bodily a.s.sault by the table! One bestowed on me a tablespoonful of ice cream, densely flavoured with salt. For a moment I hated my country. Republican elbows poked me in every direction, and while I stood helpless in the crush I saw an elderly and stout compatriot pour the tea she had captured into the saucer, and with a placid composure proceed to drink it in that simple way.

"To think of it," a voice cried into my ear in pained and shocked surprise, "and she a relation of Longfellow's!"

Exhausted I found myself in the street in a chaos of frantic republicans, part of whom clamoured to get into the house, and part struggled to get out.

If our great Government would only realise that there is nothing so good for the soul as a thrill of patriotism! It is worth cultivating. We cannot all lay down our lives for our country, but there are lesser acts of loyalty which are of infinite value. It belongs to the lesser patriotism to show other folks that we are just as good as they are, if not a bit better. It is our patriotic duty to wear good clothes, to look prosperous, and to prove to foreigners that the star-spangled banner is quite at home even when floating over a palace. It is really worth while going down Park Lane just to say "Our Emba.s.sy!"

When I told the cabman to drive to the American Emba.s.sy, and for the first time in history he positively knew the way, I thrilled with patriotic pride. It marked an epoch.

_Romance and Eyegla.s.ses_

It is curious to observe that even the greatest realists do not venture to bestow eyegla.s.ses on their heroines. It is rather odd too, seeing how many charming women do in real life wear them, nor are they debarred by them from the most dramatic careers and the most poignant emotions. But while the modern novelist has bestowed eyegla.s.ses on everybody else he has not yet had the hardihood to put them on the nose of his heroine.

Why?

It is a problem which again shows the unquestionably undeserved and superior position of man, for a novelist does not hesitate to put him behind any kind of gla.s.ses, and leave him just as fascinating and dangerous as he was before. Eyegla.s.ses are so much the common lot of humanity these degenerate days that babies are nearly born with them, to judge at least from the tender age of the bespectacled infants one sees trundled past in their perambulators. And there is no doubt that the time will come, if the strain on the hearing increases from the diabolic noises in the streets, that the next generation's hearing will be as much affected as our eyes are now. The result will be that all the world will be using ear-trumpets, and the novelist of the future, the accredited historian of manners, will be obliged, if he is at all accurate, to have his love-sick hero whisper his pa.s.sion to the heroine through an ear-trumpet. However it is a comfort not to be obliged to solve the riddles of the future.

Still if it is inevitable that the future deaf hero will have to fall in love with a deaf heroine, why should not the present astigmatic hero in novels be permitted to fall in love with a beautiful creature in gla.s.ses? He certainly does it often enough in real life. Of course it would not do for a heroine to have a wooden leg, I grant, and yet I have met a hero with a wooden leg, and I am quite sure I know several who have lost an arm; why then should it be required of us poor women to be so perfect? If a man can wear spectacles without forfeiting his position as a hero of romance, I demand the same right for a woman. Why, a man can even be bald and she will love him all the same! Now I ask would the hero love her under the same circ.u.mstances? There is no use arguing, for that very fact proves that there are laws for men and laws for women.

The truth is she will love him under every objectionable kind of circ.u.mstance, both in real life and in novels. Has not a thrilling romance of recent years produced a hero without legs, and made him all the more hideously captivating to the patron of the circulating library?

Now what novel reader would, even under the auspices of so gifted a novelist, take any stock in a heroine similarly afflicted? Yes I fear, though it is neither here nor there, that men also have it their own way in literature.

To be sure there are instances of blind heroines inspiring a pa.s.sion, and also, I believe, of lame heroines limping poetically through the pages of a novel, as well as burdened with other disabilities which apparently never take away from their charms; but I know of no heroine whom the novelist has endowed with a _pince-nez_. Now why are gla.s.ses in literature so incompatible with romance in a woman while they never damage a man?

Why can a man look at the object of his pa.s.sionate adoration through all the known varieties of gla.s.ses and yet not lose for an instant the breathless interest of the most gus.h.i.+ng of novel readers? His eyegla.s.ses may even grow dim with manly tears, and the lady readers' own eyes will be blurred with sympathetic moisture. But let the heroine weep behind her gla.s.ses and the most inveterate devourer of novels will close the book in revolt. It is no use to describe how the heroine's great brown eyes looked yearningly at the hero behind her gla.s.ses, nor how they swam in tears behind those same useful articles, the reader refuses to read, and even if the heroine is only nineteen and bewitchingly beautiful, she is at once divested of any romance.

What a mercy for the novelist in this age of perpetual repet.i.tion, of twice told tales, if he might give his heroine a new attribute! One feels sure that if eyegla.s.ses and their variations were permitted they would produce quite a new kind of heroine, to the immense advantage and relief of literature. Of course the novelist has to keep up with the times; it is as imperative for him as for the fas.h.i.+on-books, for it is from him alone that future generations will learn how we lived, dressed and looked, and what were our favourite sufferings. So the novelist cannot of course ignore what is so common as eyegla.s.ses and he has in turn bestowed them on all his characters except his heroines. One can understand his hesitation when one tries oneself to put gla.s.ses on the noses of one's own literary pets, and then realises how they war with romance. Put a pair on the nose of the loveliest Rosalind who ever wandered through the enchanted forest of Arden, or let the most pathetic Ophelia look through them at Hamlet with grief-stricken eyes, and I am quite sure that even Shakespeare's poetry would not survive the shock.

But if eyegla.s.ses are tabooed by novelists, what shall we say of spectacles? What gallery would accept a Juliet with spectacles? For a woman in literature to wear spectacles is to put her out of the pale of romance at once. Even in real life spectacles are a problem, but to the heroine of a novel they are impossible. No novelist with any regard for his publisher or his sales would venture to give his heroine gold spectacles. The only ones I remember as the property of a heroine of fiction belonged to the heroine when she repented, and they more than anything else proved the sincerity of her remorse, and these were the famous blue spectacles in "East Lynne" that worked such an amazing transformation upon that erring and repentant lady.

Yes, a heroine can be repentant behind spectacles, but I defy her to be alluring. I was struck by their sobering effect on studying the head of the Venus de Medici decorated with a pair in the window of an inspired optician. They so changed her expression that she might have successfully applied for a position in a board-school.

It is possibly a digression, but I should like to know why opticians and corset-makers look upon the young Augustus and Clytie, who loved Apollo the sun-G.o.d, as especially created to exhibit their wares? It seems but a pitiful ending to the career of a Roman Emperor to show the pa.s.sing mult.i.tude how to wear spectacles, or to prove the superior excellence of a certain kind of green shade for weak eyes. And why should Clytie, with her face shyly downbent, as well it may be, be obliged to appear in the newest things in stays, in Great Portland Street? I wonder.

To return to gla.s.ses. Perhaps the only thing in gla.s.ses on which a rash novelist might venture is the monocle. I have not yet met a feminine monocle in fiction, but we all know its entrancing effect when worn by a man. We even realise its power in real life. It gives a man a kind of moral support and even changes his character. I have seen meek and rather ordinary men stick in a monocle, and it at once gave them that fict.i.tious fascination, that, so to speak, go-to-the-devil impudence which is so irresistible. It is the aid to sight essentially of the upper cla.s.ses, or of the best imitation, and as such it naturally inspires the confidence of society.

Of course the feminine monocle is not adapted to all costumes, but there is about it a rakishness, a coquetry particularly suited to a riding-habit. The suggestion is quite at the service of any hara.s.sed novelist. It may be quite as much a help to sight as spectacles, but, O, the difference! A woman buries her youth behind spectacles, but she can coquet to the very end behind a monocle.

A charming creature used to pa.s.s my window every day on horseback. I had a distant vision of a rounded figure in the perfection of a habit, a silk hat at just the right angle and a monocle. I wove romances about her; she was Lady Guy Spanker and all the rest of those mannish and dangerous coquettes of whom I had read. Yesterday we met at a mutual greengrocer's. She was elderly, and she had discarded the monocle for a pair of working eyegla.s.ses with black rims, through which she studied the vegetables with the eye of experience. She also wore a wig, a black wig. I was so aghast that I stared speechlessly at the greengrocer who patiently offered me cabbages at "tuppence" a piece. "It can't be," I said, still staring. "I beg your pardon, Madam," he said, quite offended, "it's the usual price." "It must be the monocle," and I pursued my train of thought aloud. "No," the greengrocer retorted with some impatience, "it's a Savoy."

But it is only the monocle which has that rejuvenating effect. The other day I called on the loveliest woman I know, and who has always seemed to me the picture of exquisite and immortal youth. She looked up from the corner of a couch sumptuous with brilliant cus.h.i.+ons. She had been reading, and she laid aside her book and something else. I followed her hand and felt as guilty as if I had been caught eavesdropping. There lay a pair of gold spectacles and I saw a red line across the bridge of her lovely nose. Those wicked spectacles! How they took away the bloom of her youth. To me she will never seem young again, only well-preserved, alas! How tragic to think that even beauty comes to spectacles at last!

Now how different it is with men. If they do have to wear spectacles they do it boldly, and not on the sly, and yet they always find some one to love them, so the novelists prove, and they ought to know.

But a heroine with spectacles, that is a different thing. What novelist has the courage for such an innovation? Even realism, which we know usually stops at nothing, does draw the line there.

Now I do ask in all seriousness, are eyegla.s.ses in fiction really so incompatible with romance?

_The Plague of Music_

Yesterday as I strolled through this little Hamps.h.i.+re village, I pa.s.sed a woman with a baby in her arms, followed by a chubby boy of about three, whose little trousers had only just emerged from the petticoat stage. He lingered behind his mother, and drew across his pursed-up lips and his puffed-out red cheeks the instrument called a mouth harmonica, and drank in rapturously his own celestial harmonies.

"Come 'long with your mewsic," his mother remarked briefly over her shoulder. And he came.

I looked smilingly after that young disciple of what may be truly described as the most offensive of the fine arts, and meditated on the poverty of language which describes by the same word the art of Beethoven and the tooting of a penny whistle--at least in the vernacular of the people.

There is, perhaps, no common characteristic more unfortunate than the sheep-like habit human beings have of imitating each other. As infants, the howling of one baby certainly encourages any evilly disposed infant in the neighbourhood to imitation, and a group of roaring youngsters rejoice in their rivalling shrieks.

As we grow older this artless love of noise is of necessity controlled, but human nature must have vent, so by a kind of common consent we give way to our natural exuberance in what, for lack of other description, we are pleased to call "music." Music is the only divine art we are promised in Heaven, and it is certainly the only divine art with which we are tortured on earth.

The nerves of the ear must be the most sensitive of the whole nervous system, for they have it in their power to inflict the most exquisite torture. The silent arts, no matter how outrageously presented, cannot possibly make one quiver in agony, nor set one's teeth on edge with the sharp lash of a discord. Eyes are long-suffering, and they look at what is discordant with indifference, possibly with resignation, and at most with impatience; nor have these silent discords the power to leave the human being distinctly the worse for his experience.

No other art is able to inflict such merciless suffering! Under the name of music we are afflicted with every variety of noise, including the hand organ, the bagpipes, the German band, the man who toots the cornet in the street, the harp man, the lady who has seen better days and who sings before our house in the evening, the active piano-organ invented by a heartless genius, the musical box and all its amazing progenies, the gramophone and the pianola. Not to mention the millions of pianos and the millions of fiddles that never cease being thumped and scratched all the world over night and day. The contemplation of such collective discord is truly appalling.

Unfortunately for us we live in an inventive and imitative age, and one is inclined to think that the devil is the patron saint of inventors, or why has the blameless spinet waxed great and blossomed into a piano? Why should the resources of a modern orchestra be at the disposal of every infant whose mistaken mother plumps it down on the piano-stool and lets it thump the keys to keep it quiet! One would so much rather hear its natural shrieks than that other noise which is supposed to be a harmless subst.i.tute! Why music, of all the fine arts, with its power for inflicting untold anguish, should be the most common, pa.s.ses my understanding.