Part 1 (2/2)
”Wit is useful for everything, but sufficient for nothing,” says Amiel, who probably felt he needed some excuse for burying so much of his Gallic sprightliness in Teutonic gloom; and dulness, it must be admitted, has the distinct advantage of being useful for everybody and sufficient for nearly everybody as well. Nothing, we are told, is more rational than ennui; and Mr. Bagehot, contemplating the ”grave files of speechless men” who have always represented the English land, exults more openly and energetically even than Carlyle in the saving dulness, the superb impenetrability, which stamps the Englishman, as it stamped the Roman, with the sign-manual of patient strength. Stupidity, he reminds us, is not folly, and moreover it often insures a valuable consistency. ”What I says is this here, as I was a-saying yesterday, is the average Englishman's notion of historical eloquence and habitual discretion.” But Mr. Bagehot could well afford to trifle thus coyly with dulness, because he knew it only theoretically and as a dispa.s.sionate observer. His own roof-tree is free from the blighting presence; his own pages are guiltless of the leaden touch. It has been well said that an ordinary mortal might live for a twelvemonth like a gentleman on Hazlitt's ideas; but he might, if he were clever, s.h.i.+ne all his life long with the reflected splendor of Mr. Bagehot's wit, and be thought to give forth a very respectable illumination. There is a telling quality in every stroke; a pitiless dexterity that drives the weapon, like a fairy's arrow, straight to some vital point. When we read that ”of all pursuits ever invented by man for separating the faculty of argument from the capacity of belief, the art of debating is probably the most effective,” we feel that an unwelcome statement has been expressed with Mephistophelian coolness; and remembering that these words were uttered before Mr. Gladstone had attained his parliamentary preeminence, we have but another proof of the imperishable accuracy of wit. Only say a clever thing, and mankind will go on forever furnis.h.i.+ng living ill.u.s.trations of its truth. It was Thurlow who originally remarked that, ”companies have neither bodies to kick nor souls to lose,” and the jest fits in so aptly with our everyday humors and experiences that I have heard men attribute it casually to their friends, thinking, perhaps, that it must have been born in these times of giant corporations, of city railroads, and of trusts.
What a gap between Queen Victoria and Queen Bess; what a thorough and far-reaching change in everything that goes to make up the life and habits of men; and yet Shakespeare's fine strokes of humor have become so fitted to our common speech that the very unconsciousness with which we apply them proves how they tally with our modern emotions and opportunities. Lesser lights burn quite as steadily.
Pope and Goldsmith reappear on the lips of people whose knowledge of the ”Essay on Man” is of the very haziest character, and whose acquaintance with ”She Stoops to Conquer” is confined exclusively to Mr. Abbey's graceful ill.u.s.trations. Not very long ago I heard a bright schoolgirl, when reproached for wet feet or some such youthful indiscretion, excuse herself gaily on the plea that she was ”bullying nature”; and, knowing that the child was but modestly addicted to her books, I wondered how many of Doctor Holmes's trenchant sayings have become a heritage in our households, detached often from their original kins.h.i.+p, and seeming like the rightful property of every one who utters them. It is an amusing, barefaced, witless sort of robbery, yet surely not without its compensations; for it must be a pleasant thing to reflect in old age that the general murkiness of life has been lit up here and there by sparks struck from one's youthful fire, and that these sparks, though they wander occasionally masterless as will-o'-the-wisps, are destined never to go out.
Are destined never to go out! In its vitality lies the supreme excellence of humor. Whatever has ”wit enough to keep it sweet”
defies corruption and outlasts all time; but the wit must be of that outward and visible order which needs no introduction or demonstration at our hands. It is an old trick with dull novelists to describe their characters as being exceptionally brilliant people, and to trust that we will take their word for it and ask no further proof. Every one remembers how Lord Beaconsfield would tell us that a cardinal could ”sparkle with anecdote and blaze with repartee”; and how utterly dest.i.tute of sparkle or blaze were the specimens of His Eminence's conversation with which we were subsequently favored.
Those ”lively dinners” in ”Endymion” and ”Lothair” at which we were a.s.sured the brightest minds in England loved to gather became mere Barmecide feasts when reported to us without a single amusing remark, such waifs and strays of conversation as reached our ears being of the dreariest and most fatuous description. It is not so with the real masters of their craft. Mr. Peac.o.c.k does not stop to explain to us that Doctor Folliott is witty. The reverend gentleman opens his mouth and acquaints us with the fact himself. There is no need for George Eliot to expatiate on Mrs. Poyser's humor. Five minutes of that lady's society is amply sufficient for the revelation. We do not even hear Mr. Poyser and the rest of the family enlarging delightedly on the subject, as do all of Lawyer Putney's friends, in Mr.
Howells's story, ”Annie Kilburn”; and yet even the united testimony of Hatboro' fails to clear up our lingering doubts concerning Mr.
Putney's wit. The dull people of that soporific town are really and truly and realistically dull. There is no mistaking them. The stamp of veracity is upon every brow. They pay morning calls, and we listen to their conversation with a dreamy impression that we have heard it all many times before, and that the ghosts of our own morning calls are revisiting us, not in the glimpses of the moon, but in Mr.
Howells's decorous and quiet pages. That curious conviction that we have formerly pa.s.sed through a precisely similar experience is strong upon us as we read, and it is the most emphatic testimony to the novelist's peculiar skill. But there is none of this instantaneous acquiescence in Mr. Putney's wit; for although he does make one very nice little joke, it is hardly enough to flavor all his conversation, which is for the most part rather unwholesome than humorous. The only way to elucidate him is to suppose that Mr. Howells, in sardonic mood, wishes to show us that if a man be discreet enough to take to hard drinking in his youth, before his general emptiness is ascertained, his friends invariably credit him with a host of s.h.i.+ning qualities which, we are given to understand he balked and frustrated by his one unfortunate weakness. How many of us know these exceptionally brilliant lawyers, doctors, politicians and journalists who bear a charmed reputation based exclusively upon their inebriety, and who take good care not to imperil it by too long a relapse into the mortifying self-revelations of soberness! And what wrong has been done to the honored name of humor by these pretentious rascals! We do not love Falstaff because he is drunk; we do not admire Becky Sharp because she is wicked. Drunkenness and wickedness are things easy of imitation; yet all the sack in Christendom could not beget us another Falstaff--though Seithenyn ap Seithyn comes very near to the incomparable model--and all the wickedness in the world could not fas.h.i.+on us a second Becky Sharp. There are too many dull topers and stupid sinners among mankind to admit of any uncertainty on these points.
Bishop Burnet, in describing Lord Halifax, tells us, with thinly veiled disapprobation, that he was ”a man of fine and ready wit, full of life, and very pleasant, but much turned to satire. His imagination was too hard for his judgment, and a severe jest took more with him than all arguments whatever.” Yet this was the first statesman of his age, and one whose clear and tranquil vision penetrated so far beyond the turbulent, troubled times he lived in that men looked askance upon a power they but dimly understood. The st.u.r.dy ”Trimmer,” who would be bullied neither by king nor commons, who would ”speak his mind and not be hanged as long as there was law in England,” must have turned with infinite relief from the horrible medley of plots and counterplots, from the ugly images of Oates and Dangerfield, from the scaffolds of Stafford and Russell and Sidney, from the b.l.o.o.d.y Circuit and the ma.s.sacre of Glencoe, from the false smiles of princes and the howling arrogance of the mob, to any jest, however ”severe,” which would restore to him his cold and fastidious serenity and keep his judgment and his good temper unimpaired.
”Ridicule is the test of truth,” said Hazlitt, and it is a test which Halifax remorselessly applied, and which would not be without its uses to the Trimmer of to-day, in whom this adjusting sense is lamentably lacking. For humor distorts nothing, and only false G.o.ds are laughed off their earthly pedestals. What monstrous absurdities and paradoxes have resisted whole batteries of serious arguments, and then crumbled swiftly into dust before the ringing death-knell of a laugh! What healthy exultation, what genial mirth, what loyal brotherhood of mirth attends the friendly sound! Yet in labeling our life and literature, as the Danes labeled their Royal Theatre in Copenhagen, ”Not for amus.e.m.e.nt merely,” we have pushed one step further, and the legend too often stands, ”Not for amus.e.m.e.nt at all.”
Life is no laughing matter, we are told, which is true; and, what is still more dismal to contemplate, books are no laughing matters, either. Only now and then some gay, defiant rebel, like Mr.
Saintsbury, flaunts the old flag, hums a bar of ”Blue Bonnets over the Border,” and ruffles the quiet waters of our souls by hinting that this age of Apollinaris and of lectures is at fault, and that it has produced nothing which can vie as literature with the products of the ages of wine and song.
Marietta Holley
AN UNMARRIED FEMALE
I suppose we are about as happy as the most of folks, but as I was sayin' a few days ago to Betsey Bobbet, a neighborin' female of ours--”Every station-house in life has its various skeletons. But we ort to try to be contented with that spear of life we are called on to handle.” Betsey hain't married, and she don't seem to be contented. She is awful opposed to wimmin's rights--she thinks it is wimmin's only spear to marry, but as yet she can't find any man willin' to lay holt of that spear with her. But you can read in her daily life, and on her eager, willin' countenance, that she fully realizes the sweet words of the poet, ”While there is life there is hope.”
Betsey hain't handsome. Her cheek-bones are high, and she bein' not much more than skin and bone they show plainer than they would if she was in good order. Her complexion (not that I blame her for it) hain't good, and her eyes are little and sot way back in her head.
Time has seen fit to deprive her of her hair and teeth, but her large nose he has kindly suffered her to keep, but she has got the best white ivory teeth money will buy, and two long curls fastened behind each ear, besides frizzles on the top of her head; and if she wasn't naturally bald, and if the curls was the color of her hair, they would look well. She is awful sentimental; I have seen a good many that had it bad, but of all the sentimental creeters I ever did see, Betsey Bobbet is the sentimentalest; you couldn't squeeze a laugh out of her with a cheeze-press.
As I said, she is awful opposed to wimmin's havin' any right, only the right to get married. She holds on to that right as tight as any single woman I ever see, which makes it hard and wearyin' on the single men round here.
For take the men that are the most opposed to wimmin's havin' a right, and talk the most about its bein' her duty to cling to man like a vine to a tree, they don't want Betsey to cling to them; they won't let her cling to 'em. For when they would be a-goin' on about how wicked it was for wimmin to vote--and it was her only spear to marry, says I to 'em, ”Which had you ruther do, let Betsey Bobbet cling to you or let her vote?” and they would every one of 'em quail before that question. They would drop their heads before my keen gray eyes--and move off the subject.
But Betsey don't get discouraged. Every time I see her she says in a hopeful, wishful tone, ”That the deepest men of minds in the country agree with her in thinkin' that it is wimmin's duty to marry and not to vote.” And then she talks a sight about the retirin' modesty and dignity of the fair sect, and how shameful and revoltin' it would be to see wimmin throwin' 'em away and boldly and unblus.h.i.+n'ly talkin'
about law and justice.
Why, to hear Betsey Bobbet talk about wimmin's throwin' their modesty away, you would think if they ever went to the political pole they would have to take their dignity and modesty and throw 'em against the pole and go without any all the rest of their lives.
Now I don't believe in no such stuff as that. I think a woman can be bold and unwomanly in other things besides goin' with a thick veil over her face, and a bra.s.s-mounted parasol, once a year, and gently and quietly dropping a vote for a Christian President, or a religious and n.o.ble-minded pathmaster.
She thinks she talks dreadful polite and proper. She says ”I was cameing,” instead of ”I was coming”; and ”I have saw,” instead of ”I have seen”; and ”papah” for paper, and ”deah” for dear. I don't know much about grammer, but common sense goes a good ways. She writes the poetry for the _Jonesville Augur_, or ”_Augah_,” as she calls it. She used to write for the opposition paper, the _Jonesville Gimlet_, but the editor of the _Augur_, a longhaired chap, who moved into Jonesville a few months ago, lost his wife soon after he come there, and sense that she has turned Dimocrat, and writes for his paper stidy. They say that he is a dreadful big feelin' man, and I have heard--it came right straight to me--his cousin's wife's sister told it to the mother-in-law of one of my neighbors' brother's wife, that he didn't like Betsey's poetry at all, and all he printed it for was to plague the editor of the _Gimlet_, because she used to write for him. I myself wouldn't give a cent a bushel for all the poetry she can write. And it seems to me, that if I was Betsey, I wouldn't try to write so much. Howsumever, I don't know what turn I should take if I was Betsey Bobbet; that is a solemn subject, and one I don't love to think on.
I never shall forget the first piece of her poetry I ever see. Josiah Allen and I had both on us been married goin' on a year, and I had occasion to go to his trunk one day, where he kept a lot of old papers, and the first thing I laid my hand on was these verses.
Josiah went with her a few times after his wife died, on Fourth of July or so, and two or three camp-meetin's and the poetry seemed to be wrote about the time _we_ was married. It was directed over the top of it, ”Owed to Josiah,” just as if she were in debt to him.
This was the way it read:
”OWED TO JOSIAH
”Josiah, I the tale have hurn, With rigid ear, and streaming eye, I saw from me that you did turn, I never knew the reason why.
Oh, Josiah, It seemed as if I must expiah.
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