Worldly Ways and Byways Part 4

Has it never happened to you, for instance, to dine with friends and go afterwards in a jolly humor to the play which proved so delightful that you insist on taking your family immediately to see it; when to your astonishment you discover that it is neither clever nor amusing, on the contrary rather dull. Your family look at you in amazement and wonder what you had seen to admire in such an asinine performance. There was a case of suggestion! You had been influenced by your friends and had shared their opinions. The same thing occurs on a higher scale when one is raised out of one's self by a.s.sociation with gifted and original people, a communion with more cultivated natures which causes you to discover and appreciate a thousand hidden beauties in literature, art or music that left to yourself, you would have failed to notice. Under these circ.u.mstances you will often be astonished at the point and piquancy of your own conversation. This is but too true of a number of subjects.

We fondly believe our opinions and convictions to be original, and with innocent conceit, imagine that we have formed them for ourselves. The illusion of being unlike other people is a common vanity. Beware of the man who a.s.serts such a claim. He is sure to be a bore and will serve up to you, as his own, a muddle of ideas and opinions which he has absorbed like a sponge from his surroundings.

No place is more propitious for studying this curious phenomenon, than behind the scenes of a theatre, the last few nights before a first performance. The whole company is keyed up to a point of mutual admiration that they are far from feeling generally. "The piece is charming and sure to be a success." The author and the interpreters of his thoughts are in complete communion. The first night comes. The piece is a failure! Drop into the greenroom then and you will find an astonis.h.i.+ng change has taken place. The Star will take you into a corner and a.s.sert that, she "always knew the thing could not go, it was too imbecile, with such a company, it was folly to expect anything else." The author will abuse the Star and the management. The whole troupe is frankly disconcerted, like people aroused out of a hypnotic sleep, wondering what they had seen in the play to admire.

In the social world we are even more inconsistent, accepting with tameness the most astonis.h.i.+ng theories and opinions. Whole circles will go on a.s.suring each other how clever Miss So-and-So is, or, how beautiful they think someone else. Not because these good people are any cleverer, or more attractive than their neighbors, but simply because it is in the air to have these opinions about them. To such an extent does this hold good, that certain persons are privileged to be vulgar and rude, to say impertinent things and make remarks that would ostracize a less fortunate individual from the polite world for ever; society will only smilingly shrug its shoulders and say: "It is only Mr. So-and-So's way." It is useless to a.s.sert that in cases like these, people are in possession of their normal senses. They are under influences of which they are perfectly unconscious.

Have you ever seen a piece guyed? Few sadder sights exist, the human being rarely getting nearer the brute than when engaged in this amus.e.m.e.nt. Nothing the actor or actress can do will satisfy the public.

Men who under ordinary circ.u.mstances would be incapable of insulting a woman, will whistle and stamp and laugh, at an unfortunate girl who is doing her utmost to amuse them. A terrible example of this was given two winters ago at one of our concert halls, when a family of Western singers were subjected to absolute ill-treatment at the hands of the public. The young girls were perfectly sincere, in their rude way, but this did not prevent men from offering them every insult malice could devise, and making them a target for every missile at hand. So little does the public think for itself in cases like this, that at the opening of the performance had some well-known person given the signal for applause, the whole audience would, in all probability, have been delighted and made the wretched sisters a success.

In my youth it was the fas.h.i.+on to affect admiration for the Italian school of painting and especially for the great masters of the Renaissance. Whole families of perfectly inartistic English and Americans might then he heard conscientiously admiring the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel or Leonardo's Last Supper (Botticelli had not been invented then) in the choicest guide-book language.

When one considers the infinite knowledge of technique required to understand the difficulties overcome by the giants of the Renaissance and to appreciate the intrinsic qualities of their creations, one asks one's self in wonder what our parents admired in those paintings, and what tempted them to bring home and adorn their houses with such dreadful copies of their favorites. For if they appreciated the originals they never would have bought the copies, and if the copies pleased them, they must have been incapable of enjoying the originals. Yet all these people thought themselves perfectly sincere. To-day you will see the same thing going on before the paintings of Claude Monet and Besnard, the same admiration expressed by people who, you feel perfectly sure, do not realize why these works of art are superior and can no more explain to you why they think as they do than the sheep that follow each other through a hole in a wall, can give a reason for their actions.

Dress and fas.h.i.+on in clothes are subjects above all others, where the inept.i.tude of the human mind is most evident. Can it be explained in any other way, why the fas.h.i.+ons of yesterday always appear so hideous to us,--almost grotesque? Take up an old alb.u.m of photographs and glance over the faded contents. Was there ever anything so absurd? Look at the top hats men wore, and at the skirts of the women!

The mother of a family said to me the other day: "When I recall the way in which girls were dressed in my youth, I wonder how any of us ever got a husband."

Study a photograph of the Empress Eugenie, that supreme arbiter of elegance and grace. Oh! those bunchy hooped skirts! That awful India shawl pinned off the shoulders, and the bonnet perched on a roll of hair in the nape of the neck! What were people thinking of at that time? Were they lunatics to deform in this way the beautiful lines of the human body which it should be the first object of toilet to enhance, or were they only lacking in the artistic sense? Nothing of the kind. And what is more, they were convinced that the real secret of beauty in dress had been discovered by them; that past fas.h.i.+ons were absurd, and that the future could not improve on their creations. The sculptors and painters of that day (men of as great talent as any now living), were enthusiastic in reproducing those monstrosities in marble or on canvas, and authors raved about the ideal grace with which a certain beauty draped her shawl.

Another marked manner in which we are influenced by circ.u.mambient suggestion, is in the transient furore certain games and pastimes create.

We see intelligent people so given over to this influence as barely to allow themselves time to eat and sleep, begrudging the hours thus stolen from their favorite amus.e.m.e.nt.

Ten years ago, tennis occupied every moment of our young people's time; now golf has transplanted tennis in public favor, which does not prove, however, that the latter is the better game, but simply that compelled by the acc.u.mulated force of other people's opinions, youths and maidens, old duffers and mature spinsters are willing to pa.s.s many hours daily in all kinds of weather, solemnly following an indian-rubber ball across ten- acre lots.

If you suggest to people who are laboring under the illusion they are amusing themselves that the game, absorbing so much of their attention, is not as exciting as tennis nor as clever in combinations as croquet, that in fact it would be quite as amusing to roll an empty barrel several times around a plowed field, they laugh at you in derision and instantly put you down in their profound minds as a man who does not understand "sport."

Yet these very people were tennis-mad twenty years ago and had night come to interrupt a game of croquet would have ordered lanterns lighted in order to finish the match so enthralling were its intricacies.

Everybody has known how to play _Bezique_ in this country for years, yet within the last eighteen months, whole circles of our friends have been seized with a midsummer madness and willingly sat glued to a card-table through long hot afternoons and again after dinner until day dawned on their folly.

Certain _Memoires_ of Louis Fifteenth's reign tell of an "unravelling"

mania that developed at his court. It began by some people fraying out old silks to obtain the gold and silver threads from worn-out stuffs; this occupation soon became the rage, nothing could restrain the delirium of destruction, great ladies tore priceless tapestries from their walls and brocades from their furniture, in order to unravel those materials and as the old stock did not suffice for the demand thousands were spent on new brocades and velvets, which were instantly destroyed, entertainments were given where unravelling was the only amus.e.m.e.nt offered, the entire court thinking and talking of nothing else for months.

What is the logical deduction to be drawn from all this? Simply that people do not see with their eyes or judge with their understandings; that an all-pervading hypnotism, an ambient suggestion, at times envelops us taking from people all free will, and replacing it with the taste and judgment of the moment.

The number of people is small in each generation, who are strong enough to rise above their surroundings and think for themselves. The rest are as dry leaves on a stream. They float along and turn gayly in the eddies, convinced all the time (as perhaps are the leaves) that they act entirely from their own volition and that their movements are having a profound influence on the direction and force of the current.

No. 10--Bohemia

Lunching with a talented English comedian and his wife the other day, the conversation turned on Bohemia, the evasive no-man's-land that Thackeray referred to, in so many of his books, and to which he looked back lovingly in his later years, when, as he said, he had forgotten the road to Prague.

The lady remarked: "People have been more than kind to us here in New York. We have dined and supped out constantly, and have met with gracious kindness, such as we can never forget. But so far we have not met a single painter, or author, or sculptor, or a man who has explored a corner of the earth. Neither have we had the good luck to find ourselves in the same room with Tesla or Rehan, Edison or Drew. We shall regret so much when back in England and are asked about your people of talent, being obliged to say, 'We never met any of them.' Why is it? We have not been in any one circle, and have pitched our tents in many cities, during our tours over here, but always with the same result. We read your American authors as much as, if not more than, our own. The names of dozens of your discoverers and painters are household words in England. When my husband planned his first tour over here my one idea was, 'How nice it will be! Now I shall meet those delightful people of whom I have heard so much.' The disappointment has been complete. Never one have I seen."

I could not but feel how all too true were the remarks of this intelligent visitor, remembering how quick the society of London is to welcome a new celebrity or original character, how a place is at once made for him at every hospitable board, a permanent one to which he is expected to return; and how no Continental entertainment is considered complete without some bright particular star to s.h.i.+ne in the firmament.

"Lion-hunting," I hear my reader say with a sneer. That may be, but it makes society worth the candle, which it rarely is over here. I realized what I had often vaguely felt before, that the Bohemia the English lady was looking for was not to be found in this country, more's the pity. Not that the elements are lacking. Far from it, (for even more than in London should we be able to combine such a society), but perhaps from a misconception of the true idea of such a society, due probably to Henry Murger's dreary book _Scenes de la vie de Boheme_ which is chargeable with the fact that a circle of this kind evokes in the mind of most Americans visions of a scrubby, poorly-fed and less-washed community, a world they would hardly dare ask to their tables for fear of some embarra.s.sing unconventionality of conduct or dress.

Yet that can hardly be the reason, for even in Murger or Paul de k.o.c.k, at their worst, the hero is still a gentleman, and even when he borrows a friend's coat, it is to go to a great house and among people of rank.

Besides, we are becoming too cosmopolitan, and wander too constantly over this little globe, not to have learned that the Bohemia of 1830 is as completely a thing of the past as a _grisette_ or a glyphisodon. It disappeared with Gavarni and the authors who described it. Although we have kept the word, its meaning has gradually changed until it has come to mean something difficult to define, a will-o'-the-wisp, which one tries vainly to grasp. With each decade it has put on a new form and changed its centre, the one definite fact being that it combines the better elements of several social layers.

Drop in, if you are in Paris and know the way, at one of Madeleine Lemaire's informal evenings in her studio. There you may find the Prince de Ligne, chatting with Rejane or Coquelin; or Henri d'Orleans, just back from an expedition into Africa. A little further on, Saint-Saens will be running over the keys, preparing an accompaniment for one of Madame de Tredern's songs. The Princess Mathilde (that pa.s.sionate lover of art) will surely be there, and--but it is needless to particularize.

Cross the Channel, and get yourself asked to one of Irving's choice suppers after the play. You will find the bar, the stage, and the pulpit represented there, a "happy family" over which the "Prince" often presides, smoking cigar after cigar, until the tardy London daylight appears to break up the entertainment.

For both are centres where the gifted and the travelled meet the great of the social world, on a footing of perfect equality, and where, if any prestige is accorded, it is that of brains. When you have seen these places and a dozen others like them, you will realize what the actor's wife had in her mind.

Now, let me whisper to you why I think such circles do not exist in this country. In the first place, we are still too provincial in this big city of ours. New York always reminds me of a definition I once heard of California fruit: "Very large, with no particular flavor." We are like a boy, who has had the misfortune to grow too quickly and look like a man, but whose mind has not kept pace with his body. What he knows is undigested and chaotic, while his appearance makes you expect more of him than he can give--hence disappointment.

Our society is yet in knickerbockers, and has retained all sorts of littlenesses and prejudices which older civilizations have long since relegated to the mental lumber room. An equivalent to this point of view you will find in England or France only in the smaller "cathedral"

cities, and even there the old aristocrats have the courage of their opinions. Here, where everything is quite frankly on a money basis, and "positions" are made and lost like a fortune, by a turn of the market, those qualities which are purely mental, and on which it is hard to put a practical value, are naturally at a discount. We are quite ready to pay for the best. Witness our private galleries and the opera, but we say, like the parvenu in Emile Augier's delightful comedy _Le Gendre de M.

Poirier_, "Patronize art? Of course! But the artists? Never!" And frankly, it would be too much, would it not, to expect a family only half a generation away from an iron foundry, or a mine, to be willing to receive Irving or Bernhardt on terms of perfect equality?

As it would be unjust to demand a mature mind in the overgrown boy, it is useless to hope for delicate tact and social feeling from the parvenu. To be gracious and at ease with all cla.s.ses and professions, one must be perfectly sure of one's own position, and with us few feel this security, it being based on too frail a foundation, a crisis in the "street" going a long way towards destroying it.

Of course I am generalizing and doubt not that in many cultivated homes the right spirit exists, but unfortunately these are not the centres which give the tone to our "world." Lately at one of the most splendid houses in this city a young Italian tenor had been engaged to sing. When he had finished he stood alone, unnoticed, unspoken to for the rest of the evening. He had been paid to sing. "What more, in common sense, could he want?" thought the "world," without reflecting that it was probably not the _tenor_ who lost by that arrangement. It needs a delicate hand to hold the reins over the backs of such a fine-mouthed community as artists and singers form. They rarely give their best when singing or performing in a hostile atmosphere.

A few years ago when a fancy-dress ball was given at the Academy of Design, the original idea was to have it an artists' ball; the community of the brush were, however, approached with such a complete lack of tact that, with hardly an exception, they held aloof, and at the ball shone conspicuous by their absence.

At present in this city I know of but two hospitable firesides where you are sure to meet the best the city holds of either foreign or native talent. The one is presided over by the wife of a young composer, and the other, oddly enough, by two unmarried ladies. An invitation to a dinner or a supper at either of these houses is as eagerly sought after and as highly prized in the great world as it is by the Bohemians, though neither "salon" is open regularly.

There is still hope for us, and I already see signs of better things.

Perhaps, when my English friend returns in a few years, we may be able to prove to her that we have found the road to Prague.

No. 11--Social Exiles

Balzac, in his _Comedie Humaine_, has reviewed with a master-hand almost every phase of the Social World of Paris down to 1850 and Thackeray left hardly a corner of London High Life unexplored; but so great have been the changes (progress, its admirers call it,) since then, that, could Balzac come back to his beloved Paris, he would feel like a foreigner there; and Thackeray, who was among us but yesterday, would have difficulty in finding his bearings in the sea of the London world to-day.

We have changed so radically that even a casual observer cannot help being struck by the difference. Among other most significant "phenomena"

has appeared a phase of life that not only neither of these great men observed (for the very good reason that it had not appeared in their time), but which seems also to have escaped the notice of the writers of our own day, close observers as they are of any new development. I mean the cla.s.s of Social Exiles, pitiable wanderers from home and country, who haunt the Continent, and are to be found (sad little colonies) in out-of- the-way corners of almost every civilized country.

To know much of this form of modern life, one must have been a wanderer, like myself, and have pitched his tent in many queer places; for they are shy game and not easily raised, frequenting mostly quiet old cities like Versailles and Florence, or inexpensive watering-places where their meagre incomes become affluence by contrast. The first thought on dropping in on such a settlement is, "How in the world did these people ever drift here?" It is simple enough and generally comes about in this way:

The father of a wealthy family dies. The fortune turns out to be less than was expected. The widow and children decide to go abroad for a year or so, during their period of mourning, partially for distraction, and partially (a fact which is not spoken of) because at home they would be forced to change their way of living to a simpler one, and that is hard to do, just at first. Later they think it will be quite easy. So the family emigrates, and after a little sight-seeing, settles in Dresden or Tours, casually at first, in a hotel. If there are young children they are made the excuse. "The languages are so important!" Or else one of the daughters develops a taste for music, or a son takes up the study of art. In a year or two, before a furnished apartment is taken, the idea of returning is discussed, but abandoned "for the present." They begin vaguely to realize how difficult it will be to take life up again at home. During all this time their income (like everything else when the owners are absent) has been slowly but surely disappearing, making the return each year more difficult. Finally, for economy, an unfurnished apartment is taken. They send home for bits of furniture and family belongings, and gradually drop into the great army of the expatriated.

Oh, the pathos of it! One who has not seen these poor stranded waifs in their self-imposed exile, with eyes turned towards their native land, cannot realize all the sadness and loneliness they endure, rarely adopting the country of their residence but becoming more firmly American as the years go by. The home papers and periodicals are taken, the American church attended, if there happens to be one; the English chapel, if there is not. Never a French church! In their hearts they think it almost irreverent to read the service in French. The acquaintance of a few fellow-exiles is made and that of a half-dozen English families, mothers and daughters and a younger son or two, whom the ferocious primogeniture custom has cast out of the homes of their childhood to economize on the Continent.

I have in my mind a little settlement of this kind at Versailles, which was a type. The formal old city, fallen from its grandeur, was a singularly appropriate setting to the little comedy. There the modest purses of the exiles found rents within their reach, the quarters vast and airy. The galleries and the park afforded a diversion, and then Paris, dear Paris, the American Mecca, was within reach. At the time I knew it, the colony was fairly prosperous, many of its members living in the two or three princ.i.p.al _pensions_, the others in apartments of their own. They gave feeble little entertainments among themselves, card-parties and teas, and dined about with each other at their respective _tables d'hote_, even knowing a stray Frenchman or two, whom the quest of a meal had tempted out of their native fastnesses as it does the wolves in a hard winter. Writing and receiving letters from America was one of the princ.i.p.al occupations, and an epistle descriptive of a particular event at home went the rounds, and was eagerly read and discussed.

The merits of the different _pensions_ also formed a subject of vital interest. The advantages and disadvantages of these rival establishments were, as a topic, never exhausted. _Madame une telle_ gave five o'clock tea, included in the seven francs a day, but her rival gave one more meat course at dinner and her coffee was certainly better, while a third undoubtedly had a nicer set of people. No one here at home can realize the importance these matters gradually a.s.sume in the eyes of the exiles.

Their slender incomes have to be so carefully handled to meet the strain of even this simple way of living, if they are to show a surplus for a little trip to the seash.o.r.e in the summer months, that an extra franc a day becomes a serious consideration.