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Manners - Part II
Manners - Part II
Therefore, besides personal force and so much perception as constitutes
unerring taste, society demands in its patrician class another element already
intimated, which it significantly terms good-nature, expressing all degrees
of generosity, from the lowest willingness and faculty to oblige, up to the
heights of magnanimity and love. Insight we must have, or we shall run against
one another, and miss the way to our food; but intellect is selfish and
barren. The secret of success in society, is a certain heartiness and
sympathy. A man who is not happy in the company, cannot find any word in his
memory that will fit the occasion. All his information is a little
impertinent. A man who is happy there, finds in every turn of the conversation
equally lucky occasions for the introduction of that which he has to say. The
favorites of society and what it calls whole souls, are able men, and of more
spirit than wit, who have no uncomfortable egotism, but who exactly fill the
hour and the company, contented and contenting, at a marriage or a funeral, a
ball or a jury, a water party or a shooting-match. England, which is rich in
gentlemen, furnished, in the beginning of the present century, a good model of
that genius which the world loves, in Mr. Fox, who added to his great
abilities the most social disposition, and real love of men. Parliamentary
history has few better passages than the debate, in which Burke and Fox
separated in the House of Commons; when Fox urged on his old friend the claims
of old friendship with such tenderness, that the house was moved to tears.
Another anecdote is so close to my matter, that I must hazard the story. A
tradesman who had long dunned him for a note of three hundred guineas, found
him one day counting gold, and demanded payment: "No," said Fox, "I owe this
money to Sheridan: it is a debt of honor: if an accident should happen to me,
he has nothing to show." "Then," said the creditor, "I change my debt into a
debt of honor," and tore the note in pieces. Fox thanked the man for his
confidence, and paid him, saying, "his debt was of older standing, and
Sheridan must wait." Lover of Liberty, friend of the Hindoo, friend of the
African slave, he possessed a great personal popularity; and Napoleon said of
him on the occasion of his visit to Paris, in 1805, "Mr. Fox will always hold
the first place in an assembly at the Tuileries."
We may easily seem ridiculous in our eulogy of courtesy, whenever we
insist on benevolence as its foundation. The painted phantasm Fashion rises to
cast a species of derision on what we say. But I will neither be driven from
allowance to Fashion as a symbolic institution, nor from the belief that love
is the basis of courtesy. We must obtain that, if we can; but by all means we
must affirm this. Life owes much of its spirit to these sharp contrasts.
Fashion which affects to be honor, is often, in all men`s experience, only a
ballroom-code. Yet, so long as it is the highest circle, in the imagination
of the best heads on the planet, there is something necessary and excellent in
it; for it is not to be supposed that men have agreed to be the dupes of
anything preposterous; and the respect which these mysteries inspire in the
most rude and sylvan characters, and the curiosity with which details of high
life are read, betray the universality of the love of cultivated manners. I
know that a comic disparity would be felt, if we should enter the acknowledged
"first circles" and apply these terrific standards of justice, beauty, and
benefit to the individuals actually found there. Monarchs and heroes, sages
and lovers, these gallants are not. Fashion has many classes and many rules of
probation and admission; and not the best alone. There is not only the right
of conquest, which genius pretends, - the individual, demonstrating his
natural aristocracy best of the best; - but less claims will pass for the
time; for Fashion loves lions, and points, like Circe, to her horned company.
This gentleman is this afternoon arrived from Denmark; and that is my Lord
Ride, who came yesterday from Bagdat; here is Captain Friese, from Cape
Turnagain; and Captain Symmes, from the interior of the earth; and Monsieur
Jovaire, who came down this morning in a balloon; Mr. Hobnail, the reformer;
and Reverend Jul Bat, who has converted the whole torrid zone in his Sunday -
school; and Signor Torre del Greco, who extinguished Vesuvius by pouring into
it the Bay of Naples; Spahi, the Persian ambassador; and Tul Wil Shan, the
exiled nabob of Nepaul, whose saddle is the new moon. - But these are monsters
of one day, and to-morrow will be dismissed to their holes and dens; for, in
these rooms, every chair is waited for. The artist, the scholar, and, in
general, the clerisy wins its way up into these places, and gets represented
here, somewhat on this footing of conquest. Another mode is to pass through
all the degrees, spending a year and a day in St. Michael`s Square, being
steeped in Cologne water, and perfumed, and dined, and introduced, and
properly grounded in all the biography, and politics, and anecdotes of the
boudoirs.
Yet these fineries may have grace and wit. Let there be grotesque
sculpture about the gates and offices of temples. Let the creed and
commandments even have the saucy homage of parody. The forms of politeness
universally express benevolence in superlative degrees. What if they are in
the mouths of selfish men, and used as means of selfishness? What if the false
gentleman almost bows the true out of the world? What if the false gentleman
contrives so to address his companion, as civilly to exclude all others from
his discourse, and also to make them feel excluded? Real service will not lose
its nobleness. All generosity is not merely French and sentimental; nor is it
to be concealed, that living blood and a passion of kindness does at last
distinguish God`s gentleman from Fashion`s. The epitaph of Sir Jenkin Grout is
not wholly unintelligible to the present age. "Here lies Sir Jenkin Grout, who
loved his friend, and persuaded his enemy: what his mouth ate, his hand paid
for: what his servants robbed, he restored: if a woman gave him pleasure, he
supported her in pain: he never forgot his children: and whoso touched his
finger, drew after it his whole body." Even the line of heroes is not utterly
extinct. There is still ever some admirable person in plain clothes, standing
on the wharf, who jumps in to rescue a drowning man; there is still some
absurd inventor of charities; some guide and comforter of runaway slaves; some
friend of Poland; some Philhellene; some fanatic who plants shade-trees for
the second and third generation, and orchards when he is grown old; some well
- concealed piety; some just man happy in an ill-fame; some youth ashamed of
the favors of fortune, and impatiently casting them on other shoulders. And
these are the centres of society, on which it returns for fresh impulses.
These are the creators of Fashion, which is an attempt to organize beauty of
behavior. The beautiful and the generous are, in the theory, the doctors and
apostles of this church: Scipio, and the Cid, and Sir Philip Sidney, and
Washington, and every pure and valiant heart, who worshipped Beauty by word
and by deed. The persons who constitute the natural aristocracy, are not found
in the actual aristocracy, or, only on its edge; as the chemical energy of the
spectrum is found to be greatest just outside of the spectrum. Yet that is the
infirmity of the seneschals, who do not know their sovereign, when he appears.
The theory of society supposes the existence and sovereignty of these. It
divines afar off their coming. It says with the elder gods, -
As Heaven and Earth are fairer far
Than Chaos and blank Darkness, though once chiefs;
And as we show beyond that Heaven and Earth,
In form and shape compact and beautiful;
So, on our heels a fresh perfection treads;
A power, more strong in beauty, born of us,
And fated to excel us, as we pass
In glory that old Darkness:
_____ for, `tis the eternal law,
That first in beauty shall be first in might.
Therefore, within the ethnical circle of good society, there is a
narrower and higher circle, concentration of its light, and flower of
courtesy, to which there is always a tacit appeal of pride and reference, as
to its inner and imperial court, the parliament of love and chivalry. And this
is constituted of those persons in whom heroic dispositions are native, with
the love of beauty, the delight in society, and the power to embellish the
passing day. If the individuals who compose the purest circles of aristocracy
in Europe, the guarded blood of centuries, should pass in review, in such
manner as that we could, at leisure, and critically inspect their behavior, we
might find no gentleman, and no lady; for, although excellent specimens of
courtesy and high-breeding would gratify us in the assemblage, in the
particulars, we should detect offence. Because, elegance comes of no breeding,
but of birth. There must be romance of character, or the most fastidious
exclusion of impertinences will not avail. It must be genius which takes that
direction: it must be not courteous, but courtesy. High behavior is as rare in
fiction, as it is in fact. Scott is praised for the fidelity with which he
painted the demeanor and conversation of the superior classes. Certainly,
kings and queens, nobles and great ladies, had some right to complain of the
absurdity that had been put in their mouths, before the days of Waverley; but
neither does Scott`s dialogue bear criticism. His lords brave each other in
smart epigrammatic speeches, but the dialogue is in costume, and does not
please on the second reading: it is not warm with life. In Shakespeare alone,
the speakers do not strut and bridle, the dialogue is easily great, and he
adds to so many titles that of being the best-bred man in England, and in
Christendom. Once or twice in a lifetime we are permitted to enjoy the charm
of noble manners, in the presence of a man or woman who have no bar in their
nature, but whose character emanates freely in their word and gesture. A
beautiful form is better than a beautiful face; a beautiful behavior is better
than a beautiful form: it gives a higher pleasure than statues or pictures; it
is the finest of the fine arts. A man is but a little thing in the midst of
the objects of nature, yet, by the moral quality radiating from his
countenance, he may abolish all considerations of magnitude, and in his
manners equal the majesty of the world. I have seen an individual, whose
manners, though wholly within the conventions of elegant society, were never
learned there, but were original and commanding, and held out protection and
prosperity; one who did not need the aid of a court-suit, but carried the
holiday in his eye; who exhilarated the fancy by flinging wide the doors of
new modes of existence; who shook off the captivity of etiquette, with happy,
spirited bearing, good-natured and free as Robin Hood; yet with the port of
an emperor, - if need be, calm, serious, and fit to stand the gaze of
millions.
The open air and the fields, the street and public chambers, are the
places where Man executes his will; let him yield or divide the sceptre at the
door of the house. Woman, with her instinct of behavior, instantly detects in
man a love of trifles, any coldness or imbecility, or, in short, any want of
that large, flowing, and magnanimous deportment, which is indispensable as an
exterior in the hall. Our American institutions have been friendly to her, and
at this moment, I esteem it a chief felicity of this country, that it excels
in women. A certain awkward consciousness of inferiority in the men, may give
rise to the new chivalry in behalf of Woman`s Rights. Certainly, let her be as
much better placed in the laws and in social forms, as the most zealous
reformer can ask, but I confide so entirely in her inspiring and musical
nature, that I believe only herself can show us how she shall be served. The
wonderful generosity of her sentiments raises her at times into heroical and
godlike regions, and verifies the pictures of Minerva, Juno, or Polymnia; and,
by the firmness with which she treads her upward path, she convinces the
coarsest calculators that another road exists, than that which their feet
know. But besides those who make good in our imagination the place of muses
and of Delphic Sibyls, are there not women who fill our vase with wine and
roses to the brim, so that the wine runs over and fills the house with
perfume; who inspire us with courtesy; who unloose our tongues, and we speak;
who anoint our eyes, and we see? We say things we never thought to have said;
for once, our walls of habitual reserve vanished, and left us at large; we
were children playing with children in a wide field of flowers. Steep us, we
cried, in these influences, for days, for weeks, and we shall be sunny poets,
and will write out in many-colored words the romance that you are. Was it
Hafiz or Firdousi that said of his Persian Lilla, She was an elemental force,
and astonished me by her amount of life, when I saw her day after day
radiating, every instant, redundant joy and grace on all around her. She was a
solvent powerful to reconcile all heterogeneous persons into one society: like
air or water, an element of such a great range of affinities, that it combines
readily with a thousand substances. Where she is present, all others will be
more than they are wont. She was a unit and whole, so that whatsoever she did,
became her. She had too much sympathy and desire to please, than that you
could say, her manners were marked with dignity, yet no princess could surpass
her clear and erect demeanor on each occasion. She did not study the Persian
grammar, nor the books of the seven poets, but all the poems of the seven
seemed to be written upon her. For, though the bias of her nature was not to
thought, but to sympathy, yet was she so perfect in her own nature, as to meet
intellectual persons by the fulness of her heart, warming them by her
sentiments; believing, as she did, that by dealing nobly with all, all would
show themselves noble.
I know that this Byzantine pile of chivalry or Fashion, which seems so
fair and picturesque to those who look at the contemporary facts for science
or for entertainment, is not equally pleasant to all spectators. The
constitution of our society makes it a giant`s castle to the ambitious youth
who have not found their names enrolled in its Golden Book, and whom it has
excluded from its coveted honors and privileges. They have yet to learn that
its seeming grandeur is shadowy and relative: it is great by their allowance:
its proudest gates will fly open at the approach of their courage and virtue.
For the present distress, however, of those who are predisposed to suffer from
the tyrannies of this caprice, there are easy remedies. To remove your
residence a couple of miles, or at most four, will commonly relieve the most
extreme susceptibility. For, the advantages which fashion values, are plants
which thrive in very confined localities, in a few streets, namely. Out of
this precinct, they go for nothing; are of no use in the farm, in the forest,
in the market, in war, in the nuptial society, in the literary or scientific
circle, at sea, in friendship, in the heaven of thought or virtue.
But we have lingered long enough in these painted court. The worth of the
thing signified must vindicate our taste for the emblem. Everything that is
called fashion and courtesy humbles itself before the cause and fountain of
honor, creator of titles and dignities, namely, the heart of love. This is the
royal blood, this is the fire, which, in all countries and contingencies, will
work after its kind, and conquer and expand all that approaches it. This gives
new meanings to every fact. This impoverishes the rich, suffering no grandeur
but its own. What is rich? Are you rich enough to help anybody? to succor the
unfashionable and the eccentric? rich enough to make the Canadian in his
wagon, the itinerant with his consul`s paper which commends him "To the
charitable," the swarthy Italian with his few broken words of English, the
lame pauper hunted by overseers from town to town, even the poor insane or
besotted wreck of man or woman, feel the noble exception of your presence and
your house, from the general bleakness and stoniness; to make such feel that
they were greeted with a voice which made them both remember and hope? What is
vulgar, but to refuse the claim on acute and conclusive reasons? What is
gentle, but to allow it, and give their heart and yours one holiday from the
national caution? Without the rich heart, wealth is an ugly beggar. The king
of Schiraz could not afford to be so bountiful as the poor Osman who dwelt at
his gate. Osman had a humanity so broad and deep, that although his speech was
so bold and free with the Koran, as to disgust all the dervishes, yet was
there never a poor outcast, eccentric, or insane man, some fool who had cut
off his beard, or who had been mutilated under a vow, or had a pet madness in
his brain, but fled at once to him, - that great heart lay there so sunny and
hospitable in the centre of the country, that it seemed as if the instinct of
all sufferers drew them to his side. And the madness which he harbored, he did
not share. Is not this to be rich? this only to be rightly rich?
But I shall hear without pain, that I play the courtier very ill, and
talk of that which I do not well understand. It is easy to see, that what is
called by distinction society and fashion, has good laws as well as bad, has
much that is necessary, and much that is absurd. Too good for banning, and too
bad for blessing, it reminds us of a tradition of the pagan mythology, in any
attempt to settle its character. "I overheard Jove, one day," said Silenus,
"talking of destroying the earth; he said, it had failed; they were all rogues
and vixens, who went from bad to worse, as fast as the days succeeded each
other. Minerva said, she hoped not; they were only ridiculous little
creatures, with this odd circumstance, that they had a blur, or indeterminate
aspect, seen far or seen near; if you called them bad, they would appear so;
if you called them good, they would appear so; and there was no person or
action among them, which would not puzzle her owl, much more all Olympus, to
know whether it was fundamentally bad or good."
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