Kitabı oku: «Harper's New Monthly Magazine, No. XXVII, August 1852, Vol. V», sayfa 24
There are three grades of employment whose respective rank must ever be independent of all conventionalities. Two are reputable, though differing in degree. The third is essentially dishonorable through all its great variety of departments. The highest place is given, and must ever be given, to those who live for the spirit's good, or the health of the body as conducive to it – the second to those most useful and reputable employments that have for their end the material well-being, in itself considered. The region of dishonor embraces all of every class whose aim is the ἡδὑ instead of the ἁγαθὁν, the pleasurable instead of the good or the truly useful, whether in respect to soul or body – all who live to please, to gratify simply – to amuse mankind – in other words, to aid them in annihilating their precious earthly time, and in turning away their thoughts from the great ends of their immortal existence. The poorest mechanic, or day-laborer, who is toiling in the lowest department of the utile (or useful as we have defined it) is of a higher rank, belongs to a more honorable class, than the proudest play-actor that ever trod the boards of a theatre. Among these "men and women of pleasure," there may be also numerous varieties and degrees, from the female balancer on the tight rope to the most fashionable danseuse; from the clown of the circus to the Forrest or Macready of the aristocratic theatre; but the instinct of the human consciousness recognizes in them all but one genus. They all live to amuse, and such a life can not be honorable.
It may be said, perhaps, that this dishonor should attach to those who are amused as well as to the amusers. It might be so on the score of abstract justice; but, in fact, from the very thought there comes an additional load of obloquy upon the condemned caste. Mere pleasure-seeking, mere amusement, is felt to be, in itself, a degradation of the rational nature, and a semi-conscious sense of this finds relief by casting it upon the instruments who are supposed to receive pecuniary emolument in place of the unavoidable dishonor. It may be thus seen that the disrepute of actors and actresses is no accidental disadvantage, but has an unchangeable reason in the laws of the human consciousness. From no other cause could have come that universal reprobation of the scenic character, to be found in the writings of the most enlightened heathen as well as in those of the most zealous Christian Fathers. The opinions of Plato and Socrates on this point are most express, and Augustine only utters the sentiment of the Classical as well as the Christian world when he says (De Civ. Dei, 2. 14), Adores removent a societate civitatis – ab honoribus omnibus repellunt ho mines scenicos– "They remove actors from civic society – from all honors do they repel the men of the stage." The exceptions to this only prove the rule. The fact that in a very few cases, like those of Garrick and Mrs. Siddons, they have barely emerged from this load of dishonor, only shows how universal and how deep is the opprobrium.
The stage can not be reformed. Our proof of this has, thus far, been drawn mainly from historical experience. But such experience, like every other legitimate induction, forces upon us the thought of some underlying principle of evil, some inherent vitiosity which no change of outward circumstances could be ever expected to eradicate. In searching for this essential vice we need not indulge in any affectation of profundity. It will be found, we think, lying nearer the surface than is commonly imagined. Why is play-acting radically vicious? Because, we answer, it is just what its name imports. It is acting—acting in the theatrical sense – acting a part – an unreal part, in distinction from the stern verities which ever ought to occupy this serious and earnest life of ours. We have alluded to the heartlessness of the stage in view of the abounding sufferings and sorrows of the world. It is a varied aspect of the same truth we would here present. We have no right to waste upon mere amusement the precious time that might be employed in the alleviation of so much misery. We have no right to be acting, or to take delight in seeing others acting, in a world where abounding insincerity, falsehood, and disguise, are ever demanding truthfulness, and earnestness, and reality, as the noblest and most valuable elements in human character. Certainly there is a call upon us to avoid every thing of even a seemingly contrary tendency, in whatever fair disguise it may present itself, or under whatever fair name of art, or æsthetics, or literature, it may claim our admiration. The objection is not so much that the representation is fictitious in itself, as its tendency to generate fictitious characters in the actors and spectators. No sober thinking man can look round upon our world without perceiving that its prevailing depravity is just that which the theatre is most adapted to encourage. There is acting, stage-acting, every where – in politics, in literature, and even in religion. Men are playing State and playing Church. Artificialness of character is pervading our "world of letters" to a most demoralizing extent. We are every where living too much out of ourselves – alternately the victims and creators of false public sentiments under which the theatrical spirit of the times is burying every thing real and truthful in human nature. Our morals are theatrical; our public and social life is theatrical; our revolutions and our sympathy with revolutions are theatrical; our political conventions are theatrical; our philanthropy and our reforms are theatrical.
But we can not at present dwell upon this view in its more general aspects. In the more immediate effect upon actors and actresses themselves we find the radical cause of the vicious lives which have ever characterized them as a class. Men and women who act every character will have no character of their own. The dangerous faculty of assuming any passion, and any supposed moral state, must, in the end, be inconsistent with that earnestness of feeling without which there can be neither moral nor intellectual depth. We have neither time nor space to dwell upon those evil effects of theatrical representations which are best known and most generally admitted. Whoever demands proof of them may be referred to the records of our Criminal Courts. We would rather search for the root of the evil. It is here in the most interior idea of the drama that we find the virus fountain from which all its poison flows, and of which what are called the incidental evils, are but the necessary ultimate manifestations. It is not found simply in the personation of vicious characters, whether in the shape of heroic crime or vulgar comedy. The radical mischief is in the fact that the theatre is the great storehouse and seminary of false feeling; and all false feeling, without the exception even of the religious (in fact, the higher the pretension the greater the evil), is so much spiritual poison. By this we mean an emotion and a sentimentality having no ground in any previous healthy moral state with which they may be organically connected. No fact is more certain than that such a seeming virtue may be called out in the worst of men, and that instead of truly softening and meliorating, it invariably exerts a hardening influence, rendering the affections less capable of being aroused to the genuine duties and genuine benevolence of real life. It is indeed a blessed and a blissful thing to have a feeling heart; but, then, the feeling must be real; that is, as we have defined it, flowing from within as the legitimate product of a true, moral organism. Better be without all feeling than have that which is the unnatural result of artificial stimulus. Better that the soul be an arid desert than that it should be watered by such Stygian streams, or luxuriate in the rank Upas of such a deadly verdure. There is evidence in abundance that a man may melt under the influence of a theatrical sentimentality, and yet go forth to the commission of the worst of crimes; with a freedom, too, all the greater for the fictitious virtue under which his true character has been so completely concealed from his own eyes.
It might, at first, seem strange that this should be so. The emotions of benevolence, of compassion, of patriotism, it might be said, must be the same whatever calls them forth. But a true analysis will show that there is not only a great but an essential difference. In the one case feeling is the natural result of a sound soul in direct communion with the realities of life. In the other it is entirely artificial. – One has its ground in the reason and the conscience; the other in the sensitive and imaginative nature. One comes to us in the due course of things; the other we create for ourselves. The one is ever recuperative, elevating while it humbles, softening while it invigorates. It grows stronger and purer by exercise. It never satiates, never exhausts, never reacts. The other ever produces an exhaustion corresponding to the unnatural excitement, and like every other artificial stimulus reduces the spiritual nature to a lower state at every repetition. In short, to use the expressive Scriptural comparisons, the one is a continual pouring into broken cisterns; the other is like a well of living water, springing up to everlasting life. Nothing is more alluringly deceptive, and therefore more dangerous, than the cultivation of the æsthetic nature, either to the exclusion of the moral, or by cherishing a public sentiment that confounds them together. We should be warned by the fact, of which history furnishes more than one example, that a nation may be distinguished for artistic and dramatic refinement, and yet present the most horrid contrast of crime and cruelty. A similar view may be taken of an age noted for a theoretical, or sentimental, or theatrical philanthropy. There is great reason to fear that it will be followed, if not accompanied, by one distinguished for great ferocity and recklessness of actual human suffering.
But to return to our analogy. It might with equal justice be maintained, in respect to the body, that physical strength is the same, whatever the cause by which it is produced. And yet we all know that there is a most essential difference between that vigor of nerve and muscle which is the result of the real and natural exercise of the healthy organism, in the performance of its legitimate functions, and that which comes from maddening artificial stimulants. They may appear the same for the moment; and yet we know that the one has an element of invigorating and re-creating life; the other has the seeds of death, and brings death into the human microcosm with all its train of physical as well as spiritual woes.
And this suggests that idea in which we find the most interior difference between true and false feeling. In the one the emotion is sought for its own sake as an end. In the other it is the means to a higher good. One seeks to save its life and loses it. The other loses its life and finds it. The true benevolence is unconscious of itself as an end, and through such unconsciousness attains to substantial satisfaction. The spurious looks to nothing but the luxury of its own emotion, and thus continually transmutes into poison the very aliment on which it feeds. Like Milton's incestuous monsters, so do the matricidal pleasures of artificial sentiment.
Into the womb
That bred them ever more return —
engendering, in the end, a fiercer want, and giving birth to a more intolerable pain —
Hourly conceived
And hourly born with sorrow infinite.
There, too, we find the right notion of that word which would seem so incapable of all strict definition – we mean the much-used and much-abused term, sentimentalism. It differs from true feeling in this, that it is a feeling to feel– or, for the sake of feeling – a feeling of one's own feelings (if we may use the strange expression), instead of the woes and sufferings of others, which are not strictly the objects, but only the means of luxurious excitement, to this introverted state of the affections. Hence, while true benevolence ever goes forth in the freedom of its unconsciousness, sentimentalism is ever most egotistical, ever turning inward to gaze upon itself, and feel itself, and thus ever more in the most rigorous and ignominious bondage.
The same position, had we time, might be taken in respect to what may be styled false, or theatrical mirth. Even mirth, which, under other circumstances, and when produced by other causes, might be an innocent and healthful recreation, is here utterly spoiled, because we know it to be all acting. It is all false; there is no reality in it; there is no true merry heart there. To the right feeling, there is even a thought of sadness in the spectacle, when we reflect how often amid the wearisome repetition of what must be to him the same stale buffoonery, the soul of the wretched actor may be actually aching, and bitterly aching, beneath his comic mask.
Our argument might, perhaps, be charged with proving too much – with invading the sacred domain of poetry – with condemning all works of fiction and all reading, as well as acting, of plays. We would like to dispose of these objections if we had time. In some respects, and to a certain extent, their validity might be candidly admitted. In others, we might make modifications and distinctions, drawing the line, as we think we could, in accordance with the demands of right reason, right faith, right taste, and right morals. But the limits of our Editorial Table do not permit; and we, therefore, leave our readers to draw this line for themselves, believing that, in so doing, a sound moral sense, proceeding on the tests here laid down, will easily distinguish all healthful and recreative reading from those inherent evils that must ever belong to dramatic representations.
Editor's Easy Chair
"Ouf! ouf!" – The French have a funny way of writing a letter, as well as of telling a story. For instance, our friend of the Courrier, whose gossip we have time and again transmuted, with some latitude of construction into our own noon-tide sentences, commences one of his later epistles with the exclamation, "Ouf! ouf!" "And this," says he, "is the best resumé that I can give you of the situation of Paris." It is a cry of distress, and of lassitude, breaking out from the Parisian heart, over-burdened with plenitude of pleasure; it is the re-action of the fêtes of May. How many things in ten days! How much dust – cannon-smoke – fire – fury – Roman candles – thunder – melodramas – and provincials! How much theatre-going – dining out – spent francs —demitasses– and ennui!
It is no wonder that your true Parisian is troubled with the crowd and uproar that the fêtes bring to Paris, and, above all, with the uncouth hordes of banditti provincials. The New-Yorker or the Philadelphian can look complacently upon the throngs that our Eastern and Northern steamers disgorge upon the city, and upon the thousand wagons of "Market-street;" for these, all of them, not only bring their quota of money to his till, but they lend a voice and a tread to the hurry and the noise in which, and by which, your true-blooded American feels his fullest life.
But the Parisian – living by daily, methodic, quiet, uninterrupted indulgence of his tastes and humors – looks harshly upon the stout wool-growers and plethoric vineyard men, who elbow him out of the choicest seats at the Theatre of the Palais Royal, and who break down his appreciative chuckle at a stroke of wit, with their immoderate guffaw. Then, the dresses of these provincials are a perpetual eye-sore to his taste. Such coats! such hats! such canes! The very sight of them makes misery for your habitual frequenter of the Maison d'or, or of the Café Anglais.
Moreover, there is something in the very insouciance of these country-comers to Paris which provokes the citizen the more. What do they care for their white bell-crowns of ten years ago? or what, for marching and counter-marching the Boulevard, with a fat wife on one arm, and a fat daughter on the other? What do they care for the fashion of a dinner, as they call for a bouillon, followed with a steak and onions, flanked by a melon, and wet with a deep bottle of Julienne premier?
What do they care for any mode, or any proprieties of the Faubourg St. Honoré, as they leer at the dancers of the Bal Mabil, or roar once and again at the clown who figures at the Estaminet-Café of the Champs Elyssées?
In short, says our aggrieved friend, the letter-writer, they press us, and torture us every where; they eat our bread, and drink our wine, and tread on our toes, and crowd us from our seats, as if the gay capital were made for them alone! Nor is the story unreal: whoever has happened upon that mad French metropolis, in the days of its fête madness, can recall the long procession of burly and gross provincials who swarm the streets and gardens, like the lice in the Egypt of Pharaoh.
In the old kingly times, when fêtes were regal, and every Frenchman gloated at the velvet panoply, worked over with golden fleurs-de-lis, as they now gloat at the columns of their Republican journals, their love for festal-days was well hit off in an old comedy. The shopkeeper (in the play) says to his wife, "Take care of the shop; I am going to see the king." And the wife presently says to the chief clerk, "Take care of the shop; I am going to see the king." And the clerk, so soon as the good woman is fairly out of sight, says to the garçon, "Take care of the shop; I am going to see the king." And the garçon enjoins upon the dog to "take care of the shop, as he is going to see the king." And the dog, stealing his nose out at the door, leaves all in charge of the parroquet, and goes to see the king!
The joke made a good laugh in those laughing days: nor is the material for as good a joke wanting now. The prefect leaves business with the sub-prefect, that he may go up to the Paris fête. The sub-prefect leaves his care with some commissioner, that he may go up to the Paris fête. And the commissioner, watching his chance, steals away in his turn, and chalks upon the door of the prefecture, "Gone to the fêtes of May."
All this, to be sure, is two months old, and belonged to that festive season of the Paris year, which goes before the summer. Now, if report speaks true, with provincials gone home, and the booths along the Champs Elyssées struck, and the theatric stars escaped to Belgium, or the Springs, the Parisian is himself again. He takes his evening drive in the Bois de Boulogne; he fishes for invitations to Meudon, or St. Cloud; he plots a descent upon Boulogne, or Aix la Chapelle; he studies the summer fashions from his apartments on the Boulevard de la Madeleine; he takes his river-bath by the bridge of the Institute; he smokes his evening cigar under the trees by the National Circus; and he speculates vaguely upon the imperial prospects of his President, the Prince Louis.
Meantime, fresh English and Americans come thronging in by the Northern road, and the Havre road, and the road from Strasbourg. They cover every floor of every hotel and maison garnie in the Rue Rivoli. They buy up all the couriers and valets-de-place; they swarm in the jewelry and the bronze shops of the Rue de la Paix; and they call, in bad French, for every dish that graces the carte du jour in the restaurants of the Palais Royal. They branch off toward the Apennines and the Alps, in flocks; and, if report speak true, the Americans will this year outnumber upon the mountains of Switzerland both French and German travelers. Indeed, Geneva, and Zurich, and Lucerne, are now discussed and brought into the map of tourists, as thoughtlessly as, ten years since, they compared the charms of the Blue Lick and the Sharon waters.
Look at it a moment: Ten days, under the Collins guidance, will land a man in Liverpool. Three days more will give him a look at the Tower, the Parks, Windsor Castle, Buckingham Palace, and Paternoster Row; and on the fourth he may find himself swimming in a first-class French car, on damask cushions, at forty miles the hour from Boulogne to Paris. Five days in the capital will show him (specially if he is free of service-money) the palaces of Versailles, the Louvre, the park at St. Cloud, the church of Notre Dame, the Madeleine, the Bourse, the Dead House, a score of balls, half as many theatres, the pick of the shops, and the great Louis himself.
Three other summer days, allowing a ten hours' tramp over the galleries and sombre grounds of Fontainebleau, will set him down, at the door of "mine host" of the Hotel de l'Ecu, in the city of Geneva, and he will brush the dews from his eyes in the morning, within sight of the "blue, arrowy Rhone," and "placid Leman, and the bald white peak of Mont Blanc." A Sunday in the Genevese church, will rest his aching limbs, and give him hearing of such high doctrine as comes from the lips of Merle d'Aubigné, and Monday will drift him on char-a-banc straight down through wooded Sardinia – reading Coleridge's Hymn – into the marvelous valley of Chamouny.
There, he may take breath before he goes up upon the Sea of Ice; and afterward he may idle, on donkeys or his own stout feet, over such mountain passes as will make Franconia memories tame, and boat it upon the Lake of Lucerne; and dine at the White Swan of Frankfort, and linger at Bingen, and drink Hock at Heidelberg; and chaffer with Jean Maria Farina at Cologne, and measure the stairs of the belfry at Antwerp, and toss in a cockle shell of a steamer across the straits, and lay him down in his Collins berth one month from his landing, a fresher and fuller man – with only six weeks cloven from his summer, and a short "five hundred" lifted from his purse.
The very fancy of it all – so easy, and so quick-coming – makes our blood beat in the office-chair, and tempts us strangely to fling down the pen, and to book ourselves by the Arctic.
We happened the other day upon an old French picture of Washington, which it may be worth while to render into passable English. It comes from the writings of M. de Broglie.
"I urged," he says, "M. de Rochambeau to present me, and the next day was conducted by him to dine with the great general. He received, most graciously, a letter from my father, and gave me a pleasant welcome. The general is about forty-nine – tall, well-made, and of elegant proportions. His face is much more agreeable than generally represented: notwithstanding the fatigues of the last few years, he seems still to possess all the agility and freshness of youth.
"His expression is sweet and frank; his address rather cold, though polished; his eye, somewhat pensive, is more observant than flashing; and his look is full of dignified assurance. He guards always a dignity of manner which forbids great familiarity, while it seems to offend none. He seems modest, even to humility; yet he accepts, kindly and graciously, the homage which is so freely rendered him. His tone of voice is exceedingly low; and his attention to what is addressed to him, so marked, as to make one sure he has fully understood, though he should venture no reply. Indeed this sort of circumspection is a noted trait of his character.
"His courage is rather calm than brilliant, and shows itself rather in the coolness of his decision, than in the vigor with which he battles against odds.
"He usually dines in company with twenty or thirty of his officers; his attention to them is most marked and courteous; and his dignity, at table only, sometimes relapses into gayety. He lingers at dessert for an hour or two, eating freely of nuts, and drinking wine with his guests. I had the honor of interchanging several toasts with the general; among others, I proposed the health of the Marquis de Lafayette. He accepted the sentiment with a very benevolent smile, and was kind enough to offer, in turn, the health of my own family.
"I was particularly struck with the air of respect and of admiration with which his officers uniformly treated General Washington."
M. de Broglie makes mention of the meeting of Washington and Gates, after their unfortunate difference, and speaks in high praise of the conduct of both. He furthermore suggests that the assignment of the chief command of the army to General Greene was owing to a certain feeling of jealousy which Washington entertained for the reputation of Gates: a suggestion, which neither contemporaneous history, or the relative merits of Greene and of Gates would confirm.
It is not a little singular how greedy we become to learn the most trivial details of the private life of the men we admire. Who would not welcome nowadays any bona fide contemporaneous account of the meals or dress of William Shakspeare, or of Francis Bacon? And what a jewel of a spirit that would be, who would make some pleasant letter-writer for the Tribune, the medium of communicating to us what colored coat Shakspeare wore when he wooed Ann Hathaway, and how much wine he drank for the modeling of Jack Falstaff! Were there no Boswells in those days, whose spirits might be coaxed into communicative rappings about the king of the poets? We recommend the matter, in all sincerity, to the Misses Media.
A French court-room is not unfrequently as "good as a play: " besides which, the Paris reporters have a dainty way of working up the infirmities of a weak wicked man into a most captivating story. They dramatize, even to painting the grave nod of the judge; and will work out a farce from a mere broken bargain about an ass! – as one may see from this trial of Léonard Vidaillon.
Léonard Vidaillon, as brave a cooper as ever hammered a hoop, having retired from business, bethought him of buying an equipage for his family; but hesitated between the purchase of a pony or a donkey.
"A pony," said he, to himself, "is a graceful little beast, genteel, coquet, and gives a man a 'certain air;' but on the other hand, your pony is rather hard to keep, and costly to equip. The donkey takes care of himself – eats every thing – wants no comb or brush; but, unfortunately, is neither vivacious or elegant."
In the midst of this embarrassment, an old friend recommended to him – a mule. With this idea flaming in his thought, Léonard ran over all of Paris in search of a mule, and ended with finding, at the stable of a worthy donkey-drover, a little mule of a year old – of "fine complexion" – smaller than a horse – larger than a donkey – with a lively eye – in short, such a charming little creature as bewitched the cooper, and secured the sale.
The price was a hundred francs, it being agreed that the young mule should have gratuitous nursing of its donkey-mother for three months; at the expiration of which time our cooper should claim his own.
The next scene opens in full court.
Léonard, the defendant, is explaining.
"Yes, your honor, I bought the mule, to be delivered at the end of three months. At the end of three months I fell sick; I lay a-bed twelve weeks; I drugged myself to death; I picked up on water-gruel; I got on my legs; and the second day out I went after my little mule."
Donkey-man (being plaintiff). – The court will observe that three months and twelve weeks make six months.
The Judge nods acquiescence.
Leonard. – Agreed. They make six months. I went then after my little mule, a delicate creature, not larger than a large ass, that I had picked out expressly for my little wagon. I went, as I said, to see my little mule. And what does the man show me? A great, yellow jackass, high in the hips, with a big belly, that would be sure to split the shafts of my carriage! I said to him, "M. Galoupeau, this is not my little mule, and I sha'n't pay you."
Galoupeau (plaintiff). – And what did I say?
Leonard. – You swore it was my mule.
Galoupeau. – I said better than that: I said I couldn't constrain the nature of the beast, and hinder a little mule from growing large.
Leonard. – But mine was a blond, and yours is yellow.
Galoupeau. – Simply another effect of nature! And I have seen a little black ass foal turn white at three months old!
Leonard. – Do you think I have filled casks so long, not to know that red wine is red, and white wine, white.
Galoupeau. – I don't know. I don't understand the nature of wines; but donkeys – yes.
Judge (to the defendant). – So you refuse to take the mule?
Leonard. – I rather think so – a mule like a camel, and such a ferocious character, that he came within an ace of taking my life!
Judge. – You will please to make good this point of the injuries sustained.
Leonard. – The thing is easy. This M. Galoupeau insisted that I should take a look at his beast, and brought him out of the stable. The animal made off like a mad thing, and came near killing all the poultry. Then M. Galoupeau, who professes to know his habits, followed him up to the bottom of the yard, spoke gently to him, and after getting a hand upon his shoulder, called me up. As for myself, I went up confidently. I came near the beast, and just as I was about to reach out my hand for a gentle caress, the brute kicked me in the stomach – such a kick! – Mon Dieu! but here, your Honor, is the certificate – "twelve days a-bed; one hundred and fifty leeches." All that for caressing the brute!
Galoupeau. – If you were instructed, M. Léonard, in the nature of these beasts, you would understand that they never submit to any flattery from behind; and you know very well that you approached him by the tail.
Here two stable-boys were called to the stand, who testified that Signor Léonard Vidaillon, late cooper, did approach their master's jackass by the tail; and furthermore, that the mule (or jackass) was ordinarily of a quiet and peaceable disposition. This being shown to the satisfaction of the Court, and since it appeared that an inexperience, arising out of ignorance of the nature of the beast, had occasioned the injury to Signor Vidaillon, the case was decided for the plaintiff. Poor Léonard was mulcted in the cost of the mule, the costs of the suit, the cost of a hundred and fifty leeches, and the cost of broader shafts to his family wagon.
