Part 7 (2/2)
Grotesque is all very well, but it should show a light, delicate play of fancy; and things comic are very amusing when they are not vulgar.
But the degenerate caricatures we see about now, mark a tendency to flatter the lowest order of taste, which, if followed, will inevitably drag our conversation down with it. These silly table-decorations began with caricatures of the men who carry the sandwich placards up and down the streets, and daily I see them acquiring all the bad style of common burlesques, or of the cheap valentines.
THE DRAWING-ROOM.
Social pressure--Agreeable evening parties--Troubles of party-giving --Musical parties--Flowers on a balcony--Window-gardening--Crowded drawing-rooms--The library or study--Gas, candles, and candlesticks --Original outlay on furniture--Different styles of furniture-- Raffaelesque decorations--Carpets, curtains, and chair coverings-- Portieres--Window blinds--Rugs--Care required in buying furniture-- Ornaments--Dusting--Chiffoniers useless--Portfolio stand--Mirrors.
This section of our subject involves our relations with society; and here not even our vanity can make us believe that modern customs are really improvements.
What chance has any lady of our time of emulating the graceful manner in which Madame Recamier held her salon, although she may have as much learning as Madame de Stael?
We are too heavily weighted, our social intercourse is too complicated, too much clogged with ceremony, to move easily; and where our highest faculties should be allowed full play, we find so much hard work and consequent fatigue, that we look upon every dinner and evening party in the light of an uphill road with a difficult team to drive.
We all know and applaud the French manner of visiting. Receiving friends on a stated day of the week, simply enjoying their society, and exerting the intellectual faculties instead of merely opening the purse for their entertainment.
Why have we so seldom the courage to follow this example?
It is because we fear to show less well to the eyes of our acquaintance if our own habits seem less expensive than theirs. A low purse-pride is at the bottom of it all. Our dress must be costly and perpetually changing, our servants and establishment must be displayed, if we are ourselves smothered beneath their weight.
So we give up our precious daylight to morning calls, as we ridiculously call those visits of ceremony which are paid in the afternoon. These afford us no pleasure, while they are an infliction to the people called upon. Do not most of us know the feeling of relief that we have after paying a round of visits, when, on finding, as the day was fine, the greater number of our friends from home, we return with an empty card-case, and say, with the complacency of self-satisfied persons who have done their duty, ”There, that is done and need not be done again for a month.” Whereas we are sorry when even our slight acquaintances ”regret they cannot accept” our invitations to an evening party, when we might enjoy their company, and they the society of each other, at the same time, and at a reasonable hour for enjoyment.
Our ”at homes” are on a radically wrong principle. We crowd our rooms, we insist on late hours and fullest dress, and our pleasure in consequence becomes a toil.
But how agreeable is the easy evening gathering in a cheerful and early lighted drawing-room, where few or many welcome guests drop in, knowing it to be our ”at home” day. Where we talk and sip tea, play and sing, or amuse ourselves, if clever, with paper games--capital promoters of laughter and whetstones to the wits--and go away as early as we please.
All to be over by half-past ten, at any rate, in order not to interfere with early rising next morning. I have found nothing, not even guinea lessons from eminent masters, more conducive to family improvement in music than this way of enjoying society, since one is obliged to have a few new things always at one's fingers' ends ready to perform; and in homely little parties like these, young girls ”not yet out” may pa.s.s many pleasant evenings under their mother's wing, with real advantage to themselves.
The simpler the dress worn by the ladies who are ”at home,” the better the taste shown. Here again we may learn much from the French, who perfectly understand the art of _demi-toilette_.
Our theatres and concert-rooms are filled night after night by people who pay to be entertained. They never take food in their pockets, and the pa.s.sing to and fro of sellers of refreshment is felt to be a nuisance. Why should people who have dined late be supposed to want supper, unless they have been dancing, or are sitting up later than is good for them? And the proof that they do not want it is in the very little they take of it, except some stout elderly ladies who prepared for it before they came, and who consequently have felt too low all the evening to be moderately cheerful.
People who dine early always make a solid tea about six o'clock. It is only the _bourgeois_ cla.s.s who love their hot suppers, and the taste stamps them.
How can we use hospitality one towards another without grudging, when, instead of being able to rejoice that a friend is sharing our daily pursuits and repasts, we must spend a fortune in jellies, pastry, and unwholesome sweets, whenever we invite our friends inside our doors; when we are compelled to import from the confectioner piles of plates, dishes, and hired cutlery, turn our houses into scenes of confusion for a week, and feed our children upon what have been aptly called ”bra.s.s knockers,” the remains of the feast? No wonder most of us dread giving a party! No; I would have special banquets on special occasions--Christmas, comings of age, marriages, silver, and above all golden, weddings, welcomes from abroad, and other joyful days. But our enjoyment of society need not be limited to such observances as these, but rather the crop of friends.h.i.+p increased by attentive cultivation.
”Has friends.h.i.+p increased?” asks wise Sir Arthur Helps. ”Anxious as I am to show the uniformity of human life, I should say that this, one of the greatest soothers of human misery, has decreased.”
Lady Morgan, an experienced leader of society, used to tell me, ”My dear, give them plenty of wax-candles and people will enjoy themselves;” to which I add, manage the music well, and teach your daughters to help you, and cultivate musical young men, keeping, however, the law in your own hands.
Almost the only art we have not spoiled by machinery is music--for we do not consider the barrel-organ in the light of music.
Perhaps it is because in this art we had scope for invention, not finding a good thing ready made to our hands by the Greeks, which we might imitate mechanically, and become slaves of its tradition.
Possibly it is a blessing in disguise that the music of the ancients is lost to us, for having no models we have no fetters.
There is, however, in music, less liberty for the performer than for the master-inventor; and this is as it should be: we interpret his greater mind. Wilful music is seldom pleasing.
What Ruskin says about truth of line in drawing applies equally to music: In the rapid pa.s.sages of a _presto_ by Beethoven, the audience at St. James's Hall would know if Halle played one single note out, even if he slightly touched the corner of a wrong black key; for our ears have been wonderfully trained. And the time must be as accurate as the tone, and the proper degree of light and shade must be expressed, or you are no master. What must it be to be the creator of the music which it is so difficult even to copy!
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