The Magnificent Montez Part 34

There is no such thing as genuine gallantry either in France or England. In France the relation between the s.e.xes is too fickle, variable, and insincere, for any nearer approach to gallantry than flirtation; while in England the aristocracy, which is the only cla.s.s in that country that could have the genuine feeling of gallantry, are turned shop-owners and tradesmen. The Smiths and the Joneses who figure on the signboards have the n.o.bility standing behind them as silent partners. The business habits of the United States and the examples of rapid fortunes in this country have quite turned the head of John Bull, and he is very fast becoming a sharp, thrifty, money-getting Yankee. A business and commercial people have no leisure for the cultivation of that feeling and romance which is the foundation of gallantry. The activities of human nature seek other more practical and more useful channels of excitement. Instead of devoting a life to the wors.h.i.+p and service of the fair ladies, they are building telegraphs, railroads, steamboats, constructing schemes of finance, and enlarging the area of practical civilization.

HEROINES OF HISTORY

In attempting to give a definition of strong-minded women, I find it necessary to distinguish between just ideas of strength and what is so considered by the modern woman's rights' movement.

A very estimable woman by the name of Mrs. Bloomer obtained the reputation of being strong-minded by curtailing her skirts six inches, a compliment which certainly excites no envious feeling in my heart; for I am philosophically puzzled to know how cutting six inches off a woman's dress can possibly add anything to the height of her head.

One or two hundred women getting together in convention and resolving that they are an abused community, and that all the men are great tyrants and rascals, proves plainly enough that they--the women--are somehow discontented, and that they have, perhaps, a certain amount of courage, but I cannot see that it proves them to have any remarkable strength of mind.

Really strong-minded women are not women of words, but of deeds; not of resolutions, but of actions. History does not teach me that they have ever consumed much time in conventions and in pa.s.sing resolutions about their rights; but they have been very prompt to a.s.sert their rights, and to defend them too, and to take the consequences of defeat.

Thus all history is full of startling examples of female heroism, which prove that woman's heart is made of as stout a stuff and of as brave a mettle as that which beats within the ribs of the coa.r.s.er s.e.x.

And if we were permitted to descend from this high plane of public history into the private homes of the world, in which s.e.x, think you, should we there find the purest spirit of heroism? Who suffers sorrow and pain with the most heroism of heart? Who, in the midst of poverty, neglect and crus.h.i.+ng despair, holds on most bravely through the terrible struggle, and never yields even to the fearful demands of necessity until death wrests the last weapon of defence from her hands? Ah, if all this unwritten heroism of woman could be brought to the light, even man himself would cast his proud wreath of fame at her feet!

Rousseau a.s.serts that "all great revolutions were owing to women." The French Revolution, the last great and stirring event upon which the world looks back, arose, as Burke ill-naturedly expresses it, "amidst the yells and violence of women." We accept the compliment which Burke here pays to the power of woman, and attribute the coa.r.s.eness of his language to the bitter repugnance which every Englishman of that day had to everything that was French. No, Mr. Burke, it was not by "yells and violence" that the great women of France helped on that mighty revolution--it was by the combined power of intellect and beauty. Nor will women who get together in conventions for the purpose of berating men, ever accomplish anything. They can effect legislation only by quiet and judicious counsel, with such means as control the judgment and the heart of legislators. And the experience of the world has pretty well proved that a man's judgment is pretty easily controlled when his heart is once persuaded.

COMIC ASPECT OF LOVE

My subject to-night is the comic aspect of love. No doubt most of you have had some little experience, at least in the sentimental and sighing side of the tender pa.s.sion; and what I propose to do is to give you the humorous or comic side. Perhaps I ought to begin by begging pardon of the ladies for treating so sacred a thing as love in a comic way, or for turning the ludicrous side of so charming a thing as they find love to be, to the gaze of men--but I wish to premise that I shall not so treat sensible or rational love. Of that beautiful feeling, less warm than pa.s.sion, yet more tender than friends.h.i.+p, I shall not for a moment speak irreverently; of that pure disinterested affection--as charming as it is reasonable, which one s.e.x feels for the other, I cannot speak lightly. But there is a certain romantic senseless kind of love, such as poets sometimes celebrate, and men and women feign, which is a legitimate target for ridicule. This kind of love is fanciful and foolish; it is not the offspring of the heart, but of the imagination. I know that generous deeds and contempt of death have sometimes covered this folly with a veil. The arts have twined for it a fantastic wreath, and the Muses have decked it with the sweetest flowers: but this makes it none the less ridiculous nor dangerous. Love of this romantic sort is an abstraction much too light and subtle to sustain a tangible existence in the midst of the jostling relations of this busy world. It is a mere bubble thrown to the surface by the pa.s.sions and fancies of men, and soon breaks by contact with the hard facts of daily life. It is a thing which bears but little handling. The German Wieland, who was a great disciple of love, was of opinion that "its metaphysical effects began with the first sigh, and ended with the first kiss!" Plato was not far out of the way when he called it "a great devil"; and the man or woman who is really possessed of it will find it a very hard one to cast out.

Of the refinements of love the great ma.s.s of men can know nothing. The truth is that sentimental love is so much a matter of the imagination that the uncultivated have no natural field for its display. In America you can hardly realise the full force of this truth, because the distinctions of cla.s.s are happily nearly obliterated. Here intellectual culture seems to be about equally divided among all cla.s.ses. I suppose it is not singular in this country to find the poorest cobbler, whose little shanty is next to the proud mansion of some millionaire, a man of really more mental attainments than his rich and haughty neighbour; in which case the millionaire will do well to look to it that the cobbler does not make love to his wife; and if he does, n.o.body need care much, for the millionaire will be quite sure to reciprocate.

The great statute, "t.i.t-for-tat," is, I believe, equally the law of all nations; besides, love is a great leveller of distinction, and it is in this levelling mission that it performs some of its most ridiculous antics. When a rich man's daughter runs off with her father's coachman, as occasionally happens, the whole country is in a roar of laughter about it. There is an innate, popular perception of the ridiculous, but everybody sees and feels that in such cases it is misplaced and grotesque. Everyone perceives that the woman's heart has taken the bit in its mouth, and run away with her brains. But, as comedy is often nearly allied to tragedy, so sorrow is sure to come as soon as the little honeymoon is over. This romantic love cannot flourish in the soil of poverty and want. Indeed, all the stimulants which pride and luxury can administer to it can hardly keep it alive.

The rich miss who runs away with a man far beneath her in education and refinement must inevitably awake, after a brief dream, to a state of things which have made her unfortunate for life; and he, poor man, will not be less wretched, unless she has brought him sufficient money to give him leisure and opportunity to indulge his fancies with that society which is on a level with his own tastes and education.

WITS AND WOMEN OF PARIS

The French wits tell a laughable story of an untravelled Englishman who, on landing at Calais, was received by a sulky red-haired hostess, when he instantly wrote down in his note-book: "All French women are sulky and red-haired."

We never heard whether this Englishman afterwards corrected his first impressions of French women, but quite likely he never did, for there is nothing so difficult on earth as for an Englishman to get over first impressions, and especially is this the case in relation to everything in France. An aristocratic Englishman may live years in Paris without really knowing anything about it. In the first place, he goes there with letters of introduction to the Faubourg St. Germain, where he finds only the fossil remains of the old _n.o.blesse_, intermixed with a slight proportion of the actual intelligence of the country, and here he moves round in the stagnant circles of historical France, and it is a wonder if he gets so much as a glimpse of the living progressive Paris. There is nothing on earth, unless it be a three-thousand-year-old mummy, that is so grim and stiff and shrivelled, as the pure old French n.o.bility. France is at present the possessor of three separate and opposing n.o.bilities. First, there is the n.o.bility of the Empire, the Napoleonic n.o.bility, which is based on military and civil genius; second, there is the Orleans n.o.bility, the family of the late Louis-Philippe, represented in the person of the young Comte de Paris; third, the Legitimists, or the old aristocracy of the Bourbon stock, represented in the person of Henry V, Duc de Bordeaux, now some fifty years old, and laid snugly away in exile in Italy.

No description which I can give can convey a just idea of the fascination of society among such wits as Dejazet; and nowhere do you find that kind of society so complete as in Paris. Nowhere else do you find so many women of wit and genius mingling in the a.s.semblies and festive occasions of literary men; and I may add that in no part of the world is literary society so refined, so brilliant, and charmingly intellectual as in Paris. It is a great contrast to literary society in London or America. Listen to the following confession of Lord Byron: "I have left an a.s.sembly filled with all the great names of _haut-ton_ in London, and where little but names were to be found, to seek relief from the _ennui_ that overpowered me, in a cider cellar!

and have found there more food for speculation than in the vapid circles of glittering dullness I had left."

One of the most remarkable and the most noted persons to be met with in Paris is Madame Dudevant, commonly known as Georges Sand. She is now about fifty years of age (it is no crime to speak of the age of a woman of her genius), a large, masculine, coa.r.s.e-featured woman, but with fine eyes, and open, easy, frank, and hearty in her manner to friends. To a discerning mind her writings will convey a correct idea of the woman. You meet her everywhere dressed in men's clothes--a custom which she adopts from no mere caprice or waywardness of character, but for the reason that in this garb she is enabled to go where she pleases without exciting curiosity, and seeing and hearing what is most useful and essential for her in writing her books. She is undoubtedly the most masculine mind of France at the present day.

Through the folly of her relations she was early married to a fool, but she soon left him in disgust, and afterwards formed a friends.h.i.+p with Jules Sandeau, a novelist and clever critic. It was he who discovered her genius, and first caused her to write. It was the name of this author, Jules Sandeau, that she altered into Georges Sand--a name which she has made immortal.

Georges Sand in company is silent, and except when the conversation touches a sympathetic chord in her nature, little given to demonstration. Then she will talk earnestly on great matters, generally on philosophy or theology, but in vain will you seek to draw her into conversation on the little matters of ordinary chit-chat. She lives in a small circle of friends, where she can say and do as she pleases. Her son is a poor, weak-brained creature, perpetually annoying the whole neighbourhood by beating on a huge drum night and day. She has a daughter married to Chlessindur, the celebrated sculptor, but who resembles but little her talented mother. Madame Georges Sand has had a life of wild storms, with few rays of suns.h.i.+ne to brighten her pathway; and like most of the reformers of the present day, especially if it is her misfortune to be a woman, is a target to be placed in a conspicuous position, to be shot at by all dark, unenlightened human beings who may have peculiar motives for restraining the progress of mind; but it is as absurd in this glorious nineteenth century to attempt to destroy freedom of thought and the sovereignty of the individual, as it is to stop the falls of Niagara.

There was a gifted and fas.h.i.+onable lady (the Countess of Agoult), herself an accomplished auth.o.r.ess, concerning whom and Georges Sand a curious story is told. They were great friends, and the celebrated pianist Liszt was the admirer of both. Things went on smoothly for some time, all _couleur de rose_, when one fine day Lizst and Georges Sand disappeared suddenly from Paris, having taken it into their heads to make the tour of Switzerland for the summer together. Great was the indignation of the fair countess at this double desertion; and when they returned to Paris, Madame d'Agoult went to Georges Sand, and immediately challenged the great writer to a duel, the weapons to be finger-nails, etc. Poor Lizst ran out of the room, and locked himself up in a dark closet till the deadly affray was ended, and then made his body over in charge to a friend, to be preserved, as he said, for the remaining a.s.sailant. Madame d'Agoult was married to an old man, a book-worm, who cared for nought else but his library; he did not know even the number of children he possessed, and so little the old philosopher cared about the matter that when a stranger came to the house, he invariably, at the appearance of the family, said: "Allow me to present to you my wife's children"; all this with the blandest smile and most contented air.

ROMANISM

I know not that history has anything more wonderful to show than the part which the Catholic Church has borne in the various civilizations of the world.

What a marvellous structure it is, with its hierarchy ranging through long centuries almost from apostolic days to our own; living side by side with forms of civilisation and uncivilisation, the most diverse and the most contradictory, through all the fifteen hundred years and more of its existence; a.s.serting an effective control over opinions and inst.i.tutions; with its pontificate (as is claimed) dating from the fisherman of Galilee, and still reigning there in the city that heard Saint Peter preach, and whom it saw martyred; impiously pretending to sit in his chair and to bear his keys; shaken, exiled, broken again and again by schism, by Lutheran revolts and French revolutions; yet always righting itself and rea.s.serting a vitality that neither force nor opinion has yet been able to extinguish. Once with its foot on the neck of kings, and having the fate of empires in its hands, and even yet superintending the grandest ecclesiastical mechanism that man ever saw; ordering fast days and feast days, and regulating with omnipotent fiat the very diet of millions of people; having countless bands of religious soldiery trained, organized, and officered as such a soldiery never was before nor since; and backed by an infallibility that defies reason, an inquisition to bend or break the will, and a confessional to unlock all hearts and master the profoundest secrets of all consciences. Such has been the mighty Church of Rome, and there it is still, cast down, to be sure, from what it once was, but not yet destroyed; perplexed by the variousness and freedom of an intellectual civilisation, which it hates and vainly tries to crush; laboriously trying to adapt itself to the Europe of the nineteenth century, as it once did to the Europe of the twelfth; lengthening its cords and strengthening its stakes, enlarging the place of its tent, and stretching forth the curtains of its habitations, even to this Republic of the New World.

The only wonder is that such a church should be able to push its fortunes so far into the centre of modern civilization, with which it can feel no sympathy, and which it only embraces to destroy. I confess I find it difficult to believe that a total lie could administer comfort and aid to so many millions of souls; and the explanation is, no doubt, that it is all not a total lie; for even its worse doctrines are founded on certain great truths which are accepted by the common heart of humanity.

There is such a thing as universal truth, and there is such a thing as apostolic succession, made not by edicts, bulls, and church canons, but by an interior life divine and true. But all these Rome has perverted, by hardening the diffusive spirit of truth into so much mechanism cast into a mould in which it has been forcibly kept; and by getting progressively falser and falser as the world has got older and wiser, till the universality became only another name for a narrow and intolerant sectism, while the infallibility committed itself to absurdity, and which reason turns giddy, and faith has no resource but to shut her eyes; and the apostolic succession became narrowed down into a mere dynasty of priests and pontiffs. A hierarchy of magicians, saving souls by machinery, opening and shutting the kingdom of heaven by a "sesame" of incantations which it would have been the labour of a lifetime to make so much as intelligible to St. Peter or St. Paul.

Now who shall compute the stupefying and brutalising effects of such a religion? Who will dare say that a principle which so debases reason is not like bands of iron around the expanding heart and struggling limbs of modern freedom?

Who will dare tell me that this terrible Church does not lie upon the bosom of the present time like a vast unwieldy and offensive corpse, crus.h.i.+ng the life-blood out of the body of modern civilization? It is not as a religious creed that we are looking at this thing; it is not for its theological sins that we are here to condemn it; but it is its effect upon political and social freedom that we are discussing. What must be the ultimate political and social freedom that we are discussing? What must be the ultimate political night that settles upon a people who are without individuality of opinions and independence of will, and whose brains are made tools of in the hands of a clan or an order? Look out there into that sad Europe, and see it all! See, there, how the Catholic element everywhere marks itself with night, and drags the soul, and energies, and freedom of the people backwards and downwards into political and social inaction--into unfathomable quagmires of death!