Kitabı oku: «Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 12, No. 29, August, 1873», sayfa 15
AT A MATINÉE: A MONOLOGUE
Oh Dear! I meant to be very early, people do look so cross when you squeeze by them. I don't think it is exactly proper, either, when they are men. Here is my seat, No. 10: that girl has piled all her waterproofs on it. Why don't she take them away quicker? and I wish she wouldn't grope about my feet for her overshoes.
I never sat right next to the orchestra before. What a convenient railing to hang my umbrella on! Provoking it should rain so to-day. There now! my waterproof is all disposed of, and I know my dress is all right, so I shall enjoy myself.
What a ridiculous girl beside me! Such a bunch of curls! The two young men on the other side look like gentlemen: the one this way especially nice—lovely eyes and moustache. I'll look round the house as far as I can without moving. Can't see much, though, for I'm so near the front. Why on earth didn't brother Bob put me where I could see the people?
Why, there's Lucy Morris! I can't bear that girl: her hair is almost the color of mine. A vacant seat beside her, too; so she came with some one. Wonder who it is? I hope she won't see me.
Oh, how funny! The musicians come up out of a hole just like the tame rats at the Museum, nasty things!—the rats, I mean. The man right in front of me has a trombone. I know what it is, because the name is written on his music. I'm so glad, for I never knew exactly what a trombone was until now. And what a funny instrument! He doesn't blow at all for ever so long, and then suddenly comes in with two or three toots.
But, good gracious! there's Dick Livingstone! I saw him come in at that door. I'm so glad I came! He asked me night before last at Mrs. Harris's if I was coming to the matinée, and of course I said "Yes," though I didn't have the slightest idea of doing so until he spoke. But what—! He has taken the seat by that Lucy Morris, and has given her a programme. I hate that girl!
There goes the curtain. What a stupid play! Why did I come? The damp will ruin my dress. Oh, that horrid girl! Well, of all the ridiculous acting I ever saw, this is the worst! I should think they would be ashamed to put such people on the stage. He is opening her fan. A fan to-day! absurd! I won't look again. How that man rants! I'm sure I don't know why I came: I might have known how poor it would be. Even I can see that Leicester and Mortimer have dresses at least a hundred years apart. I wonder if their legs are stuffed? Oh dear! that's hardly proper. What Dick can see to admire in that girl is beyond my comprehension. Such airs and graces!—all put on; and how she makes eyes at him! I can feel it behind my back.
How absurdly Queen Elizabeth is dressed! and what a fright she is! And I wore my new hat, too: he said he liked blue so much. I could just cry, I am so provoked. It's all her fault, I know. Oh! the play! Yes, Dudley is making love. Ridiculous! There, the curtain's down at last, and—what—! Dick is getting up: he looks as if he were saying good-bye. There's Lucy's uncle: he sits down beside her—he must have brought her. Oh, what a relief! After all, it was very natural for Dick to take the vacant seat, he is so thoughtful always. Lucy can talk pretty well sometimes, too. If she only had some idea of dress! There! I'm sure Dick saw me, but of course I shall take no notice.
Upon my word, the young man next me is admiring the girl's hair on the other side of me. It's hideous—red as a carrot, and stuck on at that. Thank Goodness! my hair hasn't a tinge of red in it—pure blonde cendré—but I have to pay awfully to match it. Wish I could tell that young fellow her hair is all stuck on. Hark! the nice one says,
"Why, it is all her own—I see it growing" "S-s-s-h!" says the other: "she'll hear you." "Loveliest hair I ever saw," continues No. 1: "pure gold, not a tinge of red—" It's my hair they are discussing. What a nice fellow he is! I'll just turn a little away, so he can study that curl which really does grow out of my head. It is worth all the trouble it gives me, for it makes the others seem so natural. I declare, he is looking right at me: suppose he should speak? I should die! Nonsense! he is bowing to a lady in the dress-circle. I know he'd like to do something for me. Brother Bob says girls can't be too careful. I might drop something. Not my handkerchief—that would be improper—but my opera-glass case: nothing could be said against that. Oh my! I haven't used my glasses yet, I'm so near the stage. I'll look round the house; so here goes. "Thank you, sir," with my sweetest smile and such a nice flutter. I saw him nudge his friend.
There goes the curtain again. Mary queen of Scots: I thought she was prettier. Oh, the act is really over; I actually forgot everything but the stage. My eyes are all wet. But it won't do to cry: they would be red. I don't quite like some of the words they use, though—they make one feel queer. Now, why couldn't they say "illegitimate child"? It means just the same; besides, it's longer.
I wonder how Dick Livingstone liked it? Mr. Livingstone, I should say. Brother Bob doesn't think it nice for girls to speak of young men by their first names. But then brothers are so particular about their own sisters, though, Goodness knows, they flirt enough with other people's. Bob and Kate Harris, for example, and yet he preaches at me!
Oh, the young men are going out. They push by as well as they can, but still they crowd unpleasantly. I am sure I've seen that nice one somewhere. They are going to stay away, too, I think, for they have taken their over-coats. If only Dick—Mr. Livingstone, I mean—
Oh, there's the curtain again. It's really quite interesting. I was mistaken about the actors: they do very well indeed. Queen Elizabeth is excellent, and so are they all. It shows how careful one ought to be not to judge too hastily. That's what mother always says. I won't do so again.
Well, that play is over—now for the comedy. Some one says it is still raining. I hate a waterproof, my figure looks so well in this suit. I might carry my cloak over my arm, but then I'm afraid the rain will ruin my dress. I must wear the waterproof and be a dowdy. I don't believe, after all, that it would hurt the underskirt, and then, with the umbrella up, I should have to take his arm. I shouldn't like to get this dress spoiled, either. I know mother wouldn't give me another. Brother Bob says men don't care so much about women's dress: they like to see a sensible girl. I don't believe that; besides, I have thick boots, and I'm sure that's sensible. I don't care: I won't wear the waterproof unless it is a perfect deluge. My goodness! I don't see Dick anywhere! Suppose, after all, he didn't come to meet me? and I gave him that flower at Mrs. Leslie's, too! I wish the thing was over.
But oh, what a pretty dress! and how sweet she is! I had no idea she could be so cunning, after being such a tragedy queen. The man on the stage actually kissed her. Bob says they don't really kiss, though.
I'm sorry it's over. Oh dear! I don't like being alone in such a crowd. Brother Bob wouldn't have let me come, I know, only he thought I should meet the Davidsons. No matter: I'll never tell him. I do believe Dick hasn't stayed, after all. I'll just put on my waterproof and thick veil, and go home and have a good cry.
Oh, Mr. Livingstone, how you startled me! I had no idea you were here. Yes, I am by myself: certainly you may escort me home. Take a walk in this pouring rain? Why, it's all sunshine!
C.A.D.
NOTES
Wellnigh half a century has elapsed since the discovery of the beautiful Venus of Milo (the exact year was 1825), and yet now, for the first time, the endless discussions regarding two doubtful and interesting points in its history have been set at rest. These two points are—first, the original pose of the statue; and, secondly, the reason of its being armless. After so many years of dispute over these questions, it occurred at length to M. Jules Ferry to do what of course ought to have been done long ago—namely, go to the very spot whence the statue was exhumed, and there talk with all the surviving witnesses of the exhumation. M. Ferry not long since put his idea into execution, went to Milo, took into consultation with him M. Brest, son of the consul who procured the statue for France, and found and cross-questioned two Greeks who were present at the unearthing of the statue. M. Ferry has collected the details of his labors in an elaborate communication to the Académie des Beaux Arts, but a brief indication of the results obtained may be made as follows:
First, then, the Venus was found in 1825 at the foot of a little hill, where it had been covered up by successive crumblings of the earth above. The proprietor of the ground, wishing to clear a little more of the soil for his planting, chanced to strike the statue with his shovel. "It was on its base, erect," said the two Greek peasants to the French minister. "With one hand she held together her draperies, and in the other an apple"—the same, doubtless, that Paris had just given her. Such, very briefly, is the clear, short, definite, decisive story which puts an end to ten thousand disquisitions and hypotheses about the pose. The evidence thus given is that of people who actually saw what they describe. But, secondly, what of those "long-lost arms"? and how came they to be lost? The body of the Venus was formed of two blocks, and the arms were afterward fastened upon the trunk. When discovered, it was intact. M. Brest, the French consul, instantly bought the Venus for five hundred dollars, while the Turkish government on its part hurried off a small vessel to bring it away, offering the owner of the farm fivefold the French price, or something like two thousand five hundred dollars. A French aviso, sent by M. de Rivière, the ambassador at Constantinople, arrived on the scene at the very moment when the Turks had got possession of the statue, and were embarking it on their vessel. A dispute arose at once, and in the material as well as legal confusion the arms of the Venus, which had been detached for safer transportation, were missed. The people of the neighborhood got up a story that the arms were carried off by the Turkish vessel out of chagrin and spite, but this seems to be mere surmise where all else is clear.
The story of Demosthenes and the pebbles is familiar. Less familiar, we venture to say, is the theory that declamation is sometimes the cause of stammering; or, rather, that stuttering impels a man to talkativeness, and the yielding to this tendency fixes the habit of stammering and makes it worse. Hence it might plausibly be argued that it is the rostrum, or the very emotion of speaking in public, which makes some orators become stammerers. At all events, in Paris an institution has been founded expressly to remedy stuttering; and M. Chervin, its director, not long ago presented before a meeting of the learned societies at the Sorbonne some interesting statistics on his specialty. These statistics seem to show that stuttering is in direct proportion with the habit of speaking, and that the more one speaks the more one stutters. This is certainly an unexpected result of the restoration of freedom of speech in France. M. Chervin mentions a village of eighteen hundred souls where everybody, without exception, undeniably stutters. What strange dialogues, says Jules Claretie (who cites these points in l'Indépendance Belge), must take place there! A very curious fact is, that stammering is less frequent in the north of France than in the south. In the north-east it is least known, and most in the south-east. For example, all things being equal, for six stammerers in Paris there would be twenty-five in Lyons and seventy in Marseilles. The admitted garrulity or fluency of southern speaking is often the cause or the preface to stammering. Thus, comically concludes M. Claretie, oratorical habits threaten to make stammering become the order of the day, and for one Vergniaud there will be ten stutterers, and ten more stutterers for one General Foy. Nevertheless, in earlier days, Camille Desmoulins stammered, and yet spoke but little at the Convention. It does not appear that Charles Lamb was a garrulous person, and in the familiar experience of daily life we rarely find stutterers to be rapid talkers. Still, this latter fact really helps M. Chervin's theory, since we may conclude it is precisely because stammerers find that a very rapid utterance increases their defect that they force themselves to speak deliberately, and also not to tire the vocal muscles. Hence, apart from the jesting inference which M. Claretie, in French journalist's fashion, is bent son twisting out of the scientific statistics, there would appear to be a mutual influence, perfectly comprehensible, of rapidity in utterance and a tendency to stammering. We could not safely go on to generalize that only voluble people become stutterers, or that all stutterers are unusually garrulous and unusually eager in enunciation; but we may conclude that if they are thus careless and rattling in delivery, their peculiarity will be likely to grow more marked, and that accordingly a natural tendency to the same defect is developed by the same habits or necessities of much and rapid talking.
Two illustrations of nineteenth-century precocity, rather superior to the generality of anecdotes regarding the wisdom of the rising generation, we find in recent French papers. One of them is originated by the Moulin-à-Parole. Madame de B. was visiting, with her baby, her friend Madame X. After chattering three-quarters of an hour, without giving anybody else a chance to put in a word, Madame X. pauses, when Baby immediately takes up the burden of conversation. Madame X., getting tired at last, says, "Why do you talk so much, mignonne? It isn't nice for a little girl like you to do so." "Oh," replies Baby very graciously, "it is only so that mamma may rest!" A little lad furnishes the other instance of the premature sagacity of modern childhood. A famous merchant has four children, three daughters and a boy named Arthur. Two of the former die successively of consumption, and at the funeral of the second a friend of the family comes to offer his compliments of condolence, and, patting little Arthur's head, tells the poor lad the house must seem lonely to him now. "Yes," briskly replies Arthur, whom his father has brought up to accurate ideas, "here we children are reduced fifty per cent." Worthy to take charge of these children would have been the prudent bonne of whom Charivari speaks. The morning after engaging herself to Madame R. she hastened to that lady with her finger wrapped in a handkerchief, and in an agitated voice asked if the converts were real silver. "Why so, Nannette?" "Because, I just pricked my finger with a fork, and I know that if it is plated copper I ought to take the precaution of having the place bled." "Don't be alarmed," replies the lady, smiling despite herself at the young girl's innocence, "my plate is all solid." "Ah," says the bonne with a sigh of relief, "I am so glad!" The day after, the simple young lady disappeared with all the silver. It is not every bonne that would take such precautions.
Paris has always been famous among modern cities for its genius and industry in adding variety to its cuisine, either by the audacious invention of new dishes or the felicitous combination of old ones—either by discovering new sources of food or new methods of preparing it. It was a curious incident in the late history of the city that what had been a fashionable whim became a hard necessity—that after Saint-Hilaire and the hippophagists had struggled to introduce horseflesh as regular provender, the siege of Paris made horseflesh a prized rarity. But the zest resulting from the enforced diet of dogs, cats, rats and monkeys in bombardment days appears to have been so great that we now hear of an enterprise worthy to have a Brillat-Savarin to celebrate it—namely, the formation of a society under the presidency of the naturalist Lespars, designed to bring into vogue as eatable a great class of living creatures whose presence now inspires ordinary persons only with disgust. A naturalist who devotes himself to eating such creatures with a motive so philanthropic deserves our praise, though we may not be able to personally imitate his heroic example. Among the choice dishes mentioned by one paper as selected to figure at the first public banquet of M. Lespars are a plate of white worms, a bushel of grasshoppers, and a broil of magpies seasoned with the slugs that infest certain green berries. One regards this announcement with more or less incredulity; but little doubt seems to hang over the assertion that the dormouse has just been introduced into the list of French game-dishes. The puzzle for the cooks seems to be with regard to the proper sauce for the new delicacy; but this matter does not trouble the little chimney-sweeps, who find the animal so long associated in poetry and in fact chiefly with their own humble career, now rising to the dignity of game, and commanding a price for the table. Piedmont has thus far furnished the larger part of the displays of marmottes in Paris stalls. The chief trouble in making rats, magpies and other delicacies of that sort really popular amongst the poorer classes is that the latter do not possess adroit cooks to disguise the original flavor under aromatic adjuncts, nor yet the money to buy the necessary spices and side-dishes, nor the high grade of champagne wines with which the wealthy and noble patrons of "food reform" commonly wash down unpalatable viands.
LITERATURE OF THE DAY
Rousseau. By John Morley. 2 vols. London: Chapman & Hall.
It was in the natural course of things that modern criticism, ever aiming at a wider comprehension, a keener analysis, a greater independence of judgment and expression, should test itself anew on a subject affording so full a scope and so sure a touchstone as the life and writings of Rousseau. The character of Rousseau, with its strange blending of delicate beauty and repulsive infirmity, requires to be handled with the firm but tender and sympathetic touch which the nurse or the physician lays upon a child afflicted with sores. His career, with its alternations of obscurity and conspicuousness, of tumult and torpidity, of wretchedness and rapture, must be followed with an eye keen to detect the springs and alive to the subtle play of circumstance and impulse. His influence, if not more profound, more varied, extensive and direct than that of any thinker and writer since Luther, is to be traced in the whole history of his own and of later times, under manifold aspects and amid momentous changes of spirit and of form. In the case of most men who have helped to mould the ideas and direct the tendencies of an age, it would be difficult to determine what each has contributed to the general result, or to say with certainty that the work performed by one would not, if he had been wanting, have been equally accomplished by others. On the other hand, there are a few master-spirits—men not of an age but for all time—whose power has been so deeply infused, so generally and silently absorbed, that it would be vain to inquire how it has operated in detail. We cannot indicate the course or fix the limits of its action: we perceive only that without it our intellectual life must have been dormant or extinct. Rousseau belongs to neither of these classes. His power was not general but specific, not creative but stimulative, not a source of perennial light but the torch of a conflagration; yet it was original and independent, it did not co-operate but clashed with that of his contemporaries, and while it acted upon minds far higher and broader than his own, it received no aid except from disciples and imitators. Of the French Revolution we may say with precision and confidence that it owed primarily its peculiar character—its austere ideals and wild distortions, its illimitable aspirations and chaotic endeavors—to the extent to which the nation had become imbued with his spirit and theories. In regard to literature, it is not sufficient to point to a long list of celebrated writers, from Chateaubriand and De Staël to Lamartine and George Sand, whose works have reflected the characteristic hues of his sentiment and style; or to adduce particular instances of his influence upon writers of higher and more contrasted genius, such as Goethe and Byron, Schiller and Richter: what is to be noted, as underlying all such examples and illustrations, is the fact that a literature distinguished from that which had immediately preceded it by earnestness, simplicity and depth, by spontaneous and vivid conceptions and freedom from conventional restraints, had its beginning with him, appealing to emotions and ideas which he was the first to call into renewed and general activity. In education, in art, in modifications of religious opinion and of social life, the same force, if less measurable and distinct, is everywhere apparent either as an active participant or a strong original impulse.
It need hardly be said that, as productions of genius, the writings of Rousseau cannot hold any rank proportionate to the effect which they thus produced. They are not among the treasures that constitute our intellectual capital, the possessions which we could not lose without becoming bankrupt. They are rather among the instruments which, having served their purpose, may be laid aside, however interesting as mementoes or admirable as curiosities. Their highest qualities—their fervor, simplicity and grace—do not of themselves disclose the secret of their power. From the point of view of mere literary criticism we are apt to be more observant of their defects than their beauties. By the side of earlier and later models they are seen to be deficient in the very qualities—force of passion and depth of thought—by which they startled or enthralled contemporary readers.
If we turn to the man himself, we might imagine at the first glance that none could have been less fitted for the position of a leader of thought, a founder of systems and schools, the apostle of a new era. The career for which Nature seemed to have destined him, and which, in truth, he may almost be said to have followed, was that of a vagabond, or at the best a recluse. Of all the advantages we desire and anxiously seek for our children, Rousseau enjoyed none. Poverty, degradation and neglect weighed upon him from his birth. The evil in him was unchecked, the good unfostered, by any training hand. The opportunity and the faculty of acquiring any substantial nutriment from books seemed alike denied him. His intercourse with mankind through all his earlier and the greater part of his later life was confined to the ignorant, and with these alone was he ever able to hold any harmonious relations or any grateful interchange of sentiment. Physically, mentally and morally diseased, weak yet stern, sensitive but unpliant, equally devoid of courage and of tact, he could not come in contact with the world without suffering a shock and swift recoil that drove him back to the refuge of solitude—to the mute companionship of external Nature or the brooding contemplation of himself. Even the ideals which, despite his practical aberrations from them, he yet intensely worshiped, had, in his conception of them, little connection with the activities of life: truth, simplicity, order, purity and peace were ideas that occupied his soul only to fill it with a horror of reality, with yearnings for an idyllic repose, with dreams of a state which he persuaded himself had been the original condition of the race, in which virtue and right must prevail through the mere absence of occasion for wrong or temptation to evil.
Yet it is not in some radiance breaking through this cloudy environment, it is not in this or that faculty overcoming all obstacles, it is in the entirety of his nature as originally formed, and as moulded or marred by circumstance and fate, that we shall find the secret of that spell which he exercised over men of all classes and characters. The culture which might have sweetened and perhaps ennobled his life would have unfitted him for his mission. It would have brought him more or less into harmony with his age; and it was by his utter and vehement opposition to its habits and opinions that he turned the stream into a different channel. Not only his finer intuitions and purer tastes, but his unsatisfied desires, his errors, his remorse, urged him to make war upon it, as the step-mother that had sought to enervate or brutalize his mind while defrauding him of his inheritance. He held up the image of its corruption, shallowness and false refinement, and that of a life of simple manners and unperverted instincts. That he depicted this as the real life of a primitive epoch only gave greater pungency to the contrast. The eighteenth century, aroused to the consciousness of its own degeneracy, its false and artificial existence, readily accepted an idealized Geneva, an idealized Sparta, as the type of a primitive community, the model on which society was to be refashioned. What the "pure word of God" had been to the Reformers, that "Nature" became to the revolutionists in all departments of thought and action, in poetry and music as in philosophy and politics—a shibboleth to rally and unite all the elements of discontent and aspirations for change, a universal test by which to try all doctrines and systems. In either case, as was soon discovered, the test would itself admit of diverse interpretations; but in the mean while the solvent had taken effect, the authority of custom and tradition had been overthrown, old organizations had crumbled into dust.
That the agitation thus evoked should have produced many grotesque, many frightful results, cannot seem strange. Long before the lower strata had been reached the surface was in a state of ebullition. Polite society was delightfully thrilled with a feeling of its own depravity, and found in the novel sensation the zest that had been wanting to its jaded powers of enjoyment. Nor was it awakened from its illusions by the first eruption from below. In a transport of delirium it threw away, as if they had been idle gems, of use only when cast into the public treasury, the privileges and prerogatives that had formed the basis of the monarchy. Thenceforth the only effort was to secure a tabula rasa on which to rear that new and perfect state of which the model was at hand, if only the proper materials could be found and the foundations be laid. Of the men who acquired a temporary mastery, three only, by the massive force of practical genius, were able to free themselves from the fascination of the common ideal. But Mirabeau and Danton were overborne by the full tide, and Napoleon, when he arrested it in its languor, turned it into depths from which it emerged the other day to sweep away his column in the Place Vendôme.
In thus glancing at the vast proportions of the subject, we have wandered far from the range of Mr. Morley's work, which has a special purpose with well-defined limits. It is not a complete biography of Rousseau, much less a history of his times. It gives no full or vivid portraiture of character, no adequate narrative of events, no summary even of results. It is an analytical study, an examination of the life and works of Rousseau with a view to determine their precise nature and quality, rather than their relative value or bearings. Within these limits it exhibits ample knowledge and skill, combined with a searching but tolerant judgment. Without labored discussion or passionate apology, it clears away entangling prejudices and current misconceptions, to assume a position from which undistorted views may be obtained. At times, indeed, Mr. Morley carries his impartiality to the verge of indifference. His certificate of Grimm's "integrity" rests on very slender grounds, and the Memoirs of Madame d'épinay are subjected to no such scrutiny as the circumstances of their composition and preservation call for, before their statements can be accepted as authority. But whatever minor defects may be found in the book, the general spirit and execution are admirable. It is full of interest and suggestiveness both for readers to whom the subject may not be unfamiliar, and for those who may hitherto have neglected to explore it. Above all, it is valuable as marking the line to which English criticism has advanced, its capacity for treating complicated and delicate questions with clearness, frankness and entire fairness.
Pascarel: Only a Story. By "Ouida," author of "Tricotrin," "Folle-Farine," "Under Two Flags," etc. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co.
The genius of "Ouida" is sui generis, and must in part create the standards by which it is to be judged. Her works are so different from the common type of modern novels that they demand to be looked at from a different point of view. The present standard of excellence in prose fiction seems to be the conformity of character and incident to what is actually seen in life. It is a good test for all mere stories, but is manifestly not the test by which to gauge the recent works of "Ouida." She does not aim at this pre-Raphaelite delineation of men and things as they are. Her characters are idealizations: her later books are prose-poems, not only in the affluence and rhythm of their style, but in the allegoric form and purpose which, pervade them. This characteristic is plain enough in Tricotrin and Folle-Farine, but finds its most marked expression in Pascarel. "Only an Allegory" would be a more expressive sub-title for the book than "Only a Story," for the story is the mere thread which sustains and binds together a series of parables and crystallized truths. Most of these, indeed, she has embodied in former works, but nowhere as in Pascarel is the author's design to teach them made so manifest.
