CHAPTER XI.
TOWN MORALS
Have you seen Charles Matthews in “Used Up?” Sir Charles Coldstream represents us all. We are everlastingly seeking a sensation, and never finding it. Sir Charles’s valet’s description of him describes us all: – “He’s always sighing for what he calls excitement – you see, everything is old to him – he’s used up – nothing amuses him – he can’t feel.” And so he looks in the crater of Vesuvius and finds nothing in it, and the Bay of Naples he considers inferior to that of Dublin – the Campagna to him is a swamp – Greece a morass – Athens a bad Edinburgh – Egypt a desert – the pyramids humbugs. The same confession is on every one’s lips. The boy of sixteen, with a beardless chin, has a melancholy blasé air; the girl gets wise, mourns over the vanity of life, and laughs at love as a romance; a heart – unless it be a bullock’s, and well cooked, – is tacitly understood to be a mistake; and conscience a thing that no one can afford to keep. Our young men are bald at twenty-five, and woman is exhausted still sooner. I am told Quakers are sometimes moved by the spirit. I am told mad Ranters sing, and preach, and roar as if they were in earnest. I hear that there is even enthusiasm amongst the Mormons; but that matters little. We are very few of us connected with such outre sects, and the exceptions but prove the rule.
But a truce to generalities. Let us give modern instances. Look at Jenkins, the genteel stockbroker. In autumn he may be seen getting into his brougham, which already contains his better-half and the olive-branches that have blessed their mutual loves. This brougham will deposit the Jenkinses, and boxes of luggage innumerable, at the Brighton Railway Terminus, whence it is their intention to start for that crowded and once fashionable watering-place. Jenkins has been dying all the summer of the heat. Why, like the blessed ass as he is, did he stop in town, when for a few shillings he might have been braced and cooled by sea breezes, but because of that monotony which forbids a man consulting nature and common sense. Jenkins only goes out of town when the fashionable world goes; he would not for the life of him leave till the season was over.
Again, does ever the country look lovelier than when the snows of winter reluctantly make way for the first flowers of spring? Is ever the air more balmy or purer than when the young breath of summer, like a tender maiden, kisses timidly the cheek, and winds its way, like a blessing from above, to the weary heart? Does ever the sky look bluer, or the sun more glorious, or the earth more green, or is ever the melody of birds more musical, than then? and yet at that time the beau monde must resort to town, and London drawing-rooms must emit a polluted air, and late hours must enfeeble, and bright eyes must become dull, and cheeks that might have vied in loveliness with the rose, sallow and pale.
It is a fine thing for a man to get hold of a good cause; one of the finest sights that earth can boast is that of a man or set of men standing up to put into action what they know to be some blessed God-sent truth. A Cromwell mourning the flat Popery of St. Paul’s – a Luther, before principalities and powers, exclaiming, “Here stand I and will not move, so help me God!” – a Howard making a tour of the jails of Europe, and dying alone and neglected on the shores of the Black Sea – a Henry Martyn leaving the cloistered halls of Cambridge, abandoning the golden prospects opening around him, and abandoning what is dearer still, the evils of youth, to preach Christ, and Him crucified, beneath the burning and fatal sun of the East – or a Hebrew maiden, like Jepthah’s daughter, dying for her country or her country’s good, – are sights rare and blessed, and beautiful and divine. All true teachers are the same, and are glorious to behold. For a time no one regards their testimony. The man stands by himself – a reed, but not shaken by the wind – a voice crying in the wilderness – a John the Baptist nursed in the wilds, and away from the deadening spell of the world. Then comes the influence of the solitary thinker on old fallacies; the young and the enthusiastic rush to his side, the sceptic and the scoffer one by one disappear, and the world is conquered; or if it be not so, if he languishes in jail like Galileo, or wanders on the face of the earth seeking rest and finding none, like our Puritan forefathers; or die, as many an hero has died, as the Christ did, when the power of the Prince of Darkness prevailed, and the veil of the Temple was rent in twain; still there is for him a resurrection, when a coming age will honour his memory, collect his scattered ashes, and build them a fitting tomb. Yet even this kind of heroism has come to be but a monotonous affair.
Now-a-days the thing can be done, and in one way – a meeting at Exeter Hall, a dinner at Freemasons’ tavern, Harker for toast-master, a few vocalists to sing between the pieces, and for chairman a lord by all means; if possible, a royal duke. The truest thing about us is our appetite. Our appreciation of a hero is as our appreciation of a coat; a saviour of a nation and a Soyer we class together, and do justice to both at the same time. We moderns eat where our fathers bled. Our powers we show by the number of bottles of wine we can consume; our devotion is to our dinners; the sword has made way for the carving-knife; our battle is against the ills to which gluttonness and wine-bibbing flesh is heir; the devil that comes to us is the gout; the hell in which we believe and against which we fight is indigestion; our means of grace are blue pill and black draught. All art and science and lettered lore, all the memories of the past and the hopes of the future —
“All thoughts, all passions, all delights —
Whatever stirs this mortal frame,”
now-a-days, tend to dinner. Our sympathy with the unfortunate females, or the indigent blind, with the propagation of the Gospel in foreign parts, or with the diffusion of useful knowledge at home – with the Earl of Derby or Mr. Cobden – with Lord John Russell or Mr. Disraeli – with the soldier who has blustered and bullied till the world has taken him for a hero – with the merchant who has bound together in the peaceful pursuits of trade hereditary foes – with the engineer who has won dominion over time and space – with the poet who has sat
“In the light of thought
Singing hymns unbidden,
Till the world is wrought
To sympathy, with hopes and joys it heeded not,”
finds a common mode of utterance, and that utterance to all has a common emphasis. Even the Church apes the world in this respect; and even that section which calls itself non-conforming, conforms here. When dinner is concerned, it forgets to protest, and becomes dumb. Dr. Watts might sing,
“Lord, what a wretched land is this
That yields us no supplies;”
but his successors do not. I read of grand ordination dinners, of grand dinners when a new chapel is erected or an old pastor retires. But lately I saw one reverend gentleman at law with another. Most of my readers will recollect the case. It was that of Tidman against Ainslie. Dr. Tidman triumphs, and the Missionary Society is vindicated. What was the consequence? – a dinner to Dr. Tidman at the Guildhall Coffee-house, at which all the leading ministers of the denomination to which he belonged were present.
The Queen is the fountain of honour. What has been the manner of men selected for royal honour? The last instance is Lord Dudley, who has been made an earl. Why? Is it that he lent Mr. Lumley nearly £100,000 to keep the Haymarket Opera House open? because really this is all the general public knows about Lord Dudley. The other day Lord Derby was the means of getting a peerage for a wealthy and undistinguished commoner. Is it come to this, then, that we give to rich men, as such, honours which ought to be precious, and awarded by public opinion to the most gifted and the most illustrious of our fellows. If in private life I toady a rich swell, that I may put my feet under his mahogany, and drink his wine, besides making an ass of myself, I do little harm; but if we prostitute the honours of the nation, the nation itself suffers; and, as regards noble sentiments and enlightened public spirit, withers and declines.
Guizot says – and if he had not said it somebody else would – that our civilization is yet young. I believe it. At present it is little better than an experiment. If it be a good, it is not without its disadvantages. It has its drawbacks. Man gives up something for it. One of its greatest evils perhaps is its monotony, which makes us curse and mourn our fate – which forces from our lips the exclamation of Mariana, in the “Moated Grange” —
“I’m a aweary, aweary —
Oh, would that I were dead;”
or which impels us, with the “Blighted Being” of Locksley Hall, to long to “burst all bonds of habit and to wander far away.” Do these lines chance to attract the attention of one of the lords of creation – of one who,
“Thoughtless of mamma’s alarms,
Sports high-heeled boots and whiskers,”
– what is it, we would ask, most magnanimous Sir, in the most delicate manner imaginable, that keeps you standing by the hour together, looking out of the window of your club in Pall Mall, in the utter weariness of your heart, swearing now at the weather, now at the waiter, and, anon, muttering something about your dreaming that you dwelt in marble halls, but that very monotony of civilization which we so much deprecate? Were it not for that, you might be working in this working world – touching the very kernel and core of life, instead of thus feeding on its shell. And if it be that the soft eye of woman looks down on what we now write, what is it, we would ask, O peerless paragon, O celestial goddess, but the same feeling that makes you put aside the last new novel, and, in shameless defiance of the rules taught in that valuable publication and snob’s vade mecum– “Hints on the Etiquette and the Usages of Society,” actually yawn – aye, yawn, when that gold watch, hanging by your most fairy-like and loveliest of forms, does not tell one hour that does not bear with it from earth to heaven some tragedy acted – some villainy achieved – some heroic thing done: aye, yawn, when before you is spread out the great rôle of life, with its laughter and tears – with its blasts from hell – with its odours coming down from heaven itself. A brave, bold, noble-hearted Miss Nightingale breaks through this monotony, and sails to nurse the wounded or the dying of our army in the East, and “Common Sense” writes in newspapers against such a noble act; and a religious paper saw in it Popery at the very least. What a howl has there been in some quarters because a few clergymen have taken to preaching in theatres! Even, woman’s heart, with its gushing sympathies, has become dead and shrivelled up, where that relentless scourge – that demon of our time, the monotony of civilization – has been suffered to intrude. It is owing to that, that when we look for deeds angels might love to do, our daughters, and sisters, and those whom we most passionately love, scream out Italian songs which neither they nor we understand, and bring to us, as the result of their noblest energies, a fancy bag or a chain of German wool. Such is the result of what Sir W. Curtis termed the three R’s and the usual accomplishments. Humanity has been stereotyped. We follow one another like a flock of sheep. We have levelled with a vengeance; we have reduced the doctrine of human equality to an absurdity – we live alike, think alike, die alike. A party in a parlour in Belgrave Square, “all silent and all d-d,” is as like a party in a parlour in Hackney as two peas. The beard movement was a failure; so was the great question of hat reform, and for similar reasons. We still scowl upon a man with a wide-a-wake, as we should upon a pick-pocket or a cut-throat. A leaden monotony hangs heavy on us all. Not more does one man or woman differ from another than does policeman A1 differ from policeman A 999. Individuality seems gone: independent life no longer exists. Our very thought and inner life is that of Buggins, who lives next door. The skill of the tailor has made us all one, and man, as God made him, cuts but a sorry figure by the side of man as his tailor made him. This is an undeniable fact: it is not only true but the truth. One motive serves for every variety of deed – for dancing the polka or marrying a wife – for wearing white gloves or worshipping the Most High. “At any rate, my dears,” said a fashionable dame to her daughters when they turned round to go home, on finding that the crowded state of the church to which they repaired would not admit of their worshipping according to Act of Parliament, – “At any rate, my dears, we have done the genteel thing.” By that mockery to God she had made herself right in the sight of man. Actually we are all so much alike that not very long since in Madrid a journeyman tailor was mistaken for a Prince. It is not always that such extreme cases happen; but the tendency of civilization, as we have it now, is to work us all up into one common, unmeaning whole – to confound all the old distinctions by which classes were marked – to mix up the peasant and the prince, more by bringing down the latter than elevating the former; and thus we all become unmeaning, and monotonous, and common-place. The splendid livery in which “Jeames” rejoices may show that he is footman to a family that dates from the Conquest: it may be that he is footman to the keeper of the ham and beef shop near London Bridge. The uninitiated cannot tell the difference. A man says he is a lord; otherwise we should not take him for one of the nobles of the earth. A man puts on a black gown, and says he is a religious teacher: otherwise we should not take him for one who could understand and enlighten the anxious yearnings of the human heart. The old sublime faith in God and heaven is gone. We have had none of it since the days of old Noll: it went out when Charles and his mistresses came in. But instead, we have a world of propriety and conventionalism. We have a universal worshipping of Mrs. Grundy. A craven fear sits in the hearts of all. Men dare not be generous, high-minded, and true. A man dares not act otherwise than the class by which he is surrounded: he must conform to their regulations or die; outside the pale there is no hope. If he would not be as others are, it were better that a millstone were hung round his neck and that he were cast into the sea. If, as a tradesman, he will not devote his energies to money-making – if he will not rise up early and sit up late – if he will not starve the mind – if he will not violate the conditions by which the physical and mental powers are sustained – he will find that in Christian England, in the nineteenth century, there is no room for such as he. The externals which men in their ignorance have come to believe essential to happiness, he will see another’s. Great city “feeds” – white-bait dinners at Blackwall, and “genteel residences,” within a few miles of the Bank or the bridges – fat coachmen and fiery steeds – corporation honours and emoluments, – a man may seek in vain if he will not take first, the ledger for his Gospel, and mammon for his God. It is just the same with the professions. Would the “most distinguished counsel” ever have a brief were he to scorn to employ the powers God has given him to obtain impunity for the man whose heart’s life has become polluted with crime beyond the power of reform. Many a statesman has to thank a similar laxity of conscience for his place and power.
CHAPTER XI.
THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED
I am not in the best of humours. The wind and weather of the last few months have been bad enough to vex the temper and destroy the patience of a saint. I wish the papers would write a little more about reforms at home, and not trouble themselves about the Emperor of the French. I wish country gentlemen, when airing their vocabularies at agricultural dinners, would not talk so much of our friends across the water being desirous to avenge the disgrace of Waterloo, as if there were any disgrace to France, after having been a match, single-handed, for all Europe for a generation, in being compelled to succumb at last. I wish we could be content with trading with China, without sending ambassadors to Pekin, and endeavouring by fair means or foul to make that ancient city, as regards red-tapeism and diplomatic quarrels, as great a nuisance as Constantinople is now. I wish Mr. George Augustus Sala, with that wonderful talent of his for imitating Dickens and Thackeray, would quite forget there was such gentlemen in the world, and write independently of them. And I wish the little essayists, who copy Mr. George Augustus Sala, and are so very smart and facetious by his aid, would either swim without corks, or not swim at all. Thank heaven, none of them are permanent, and most of them speedily sink down into limbo. Where are the gaudily-covered miscellanies, and other light productions of this class? if not dead, why on every second-hand book-stall in London, in vain seeking a sale at half-price, and dear at the money. But the spirit of which they are the symptom, of which they are the outward and visible sign, lives. Directly you take up one of these books, you know what is coming. But after all, why quarrel with these butterflies, who, at any rate, have a good conceit of themselves, if they have but a poor opinion of others? Fontaine tells of a motherly crab, who exclaimed against the obliquity of her daughter’s gait, and asked whether she could not walk straight. The young crab pleaded, very reasonably, the similarity of her parent’s manner of stepping, and asked whether she could be expected to walk differently from the rest of the family?
This fable throws me back on general principles; our writers – our preachers – our statesmen, are fearful, and tremble at the appearance of originality. The age overrules us all, society is strong, and the individual is consequently weak. We have no patrons now, but, instead, we have a mob. Attend a public meeting, – the speaker who is the most applauded, is the man most given to exaggeration. Listen to a popular preacher, – is he not invariably the most commonplace, and in his sermons least suggestive, of men? When a new periodical is projected, what care is taken that it shall contain nothing to offend, as if a man or writer were worth a rap that did not come into collision with some prejudices, and trample on some corns. In describing some ceremony where beer had been distributed, a teetotal reporter, writing for a teetotal public, omitted all mention of the beer. This is ridiculous, but such things are done every day in all classes. Society exercises a censorship over the press of the most distinctive character. The song says,
“Have faith in one another.”
I say, have faith in yourself. This faith in oneself would go far to put society in a better position than it is. A common complaint in everybody’s mouth is the want of variety in individual character – the dreary monotony we find everywhere pervading society. Men and women, lads and maidens, boys and girls, if we may call the little dolls dressed up in crinoline and flounces, and the young gentlemen in patent-leather boots, such, are all alike. Civilization is a leveller of the most destructive kind. Man is timid, imitative, and lazy. Hence, it is to the past we must turn, whenever we would recall to our minds how sublime and great man, in his might and majesty, may become. Hence it is we can reckon upon but few who dare to stand alone in devotedness to truth and human right. Most men are enslaved by the opinions of the little clique in which they move; they can never imagine that beyond their little circle there can exist anything that is lovely or of good report. We are the men, and wisdom will die with us, is the burden of their song. We judge not according to abstract principles, but conventional ideas. Ask a young lady, of average intelligence, respecting some busy hive of industry, and intelligence, and life. “Oh!” she exclaims, “there is no society in such a place.” Ask an evangelical churchman as to a certain locality, and he will reply, “Oh it is very dark, dark, indeed;” as if there was a spot on this blessed earth where God’s sun did not shine. The dancing Bayaderes, who visited London some fifteen years back, were shocked at what they conceived the immodest attire of our English dames, who, in their turn, were thankful that they did not dress as the Bayaderes. All uneducated people, or rather all unreflective people, are apt to reason in this way; orthodoxy is my doxy, heterodoxy, yours. But we English, especially, are liable to this fallacy, on account of our insular position, and the reserve and phlegm of our national character. Abroad people travel more, come more into collision with each other, socially are more equal. We can only recognize goodness and greatness in certain forms. People must be well-dressed, must be of respectable family, must go to church, and then they may carry on any rascality. Sir John Dean Paul, Redpath, and others, were types of this class. Hence it is society stagnates – such is a description of a general law, illustrated in all history, especially our own. Society invariably sets itself against all great improvements in their birth. Society gives the cold shoulder to whatever has lifted up the human race – to whatever has illustrated and adorned humanity – to whatever has made the world wiser and better. Our fathers stoned the prophets, and we continue the amiable custom. Our judgment is not our own, but that of other people. We think what will other people think? our first question is not, Is a course of action right or wrong? but; What will Mr. Grundy say? Here is the great blunder of blunders. John the Baptist lived in a desert. “If I had read as much as other men,” said Hobbes, “I should have been as ignorant as they.” “When I began to write against indulgences,” says Luther, “I was for three years entirely alone; not a single soul holding out the hand of fellowship and coöperation to me.” Of Milton, Wordsworth writes, “his soul was like a star, and dwelt apart.”
The great original thinker of the last generation, John Foster, actually fled the face of man. What a life of persecution and misrepresentation had Arnold of Rugby to endure, and no wonder, when we quote against the conclusions of common sense the imaginary opinions of an imaginary scarecrow we term society. This deference to the opinion of others is an unmitigated evil. In no case is it a legitimate rule of action. The chances are that society is on the wrong side, as men of independent thought and action are in the minority, and even if society be right; it is not from a desire to win her smile or secure her favour that a man should act. It is not the judgment of others that a man must seek, but his own; it is by that he must act – by that he must stand or fall – by that he must live – and by that he must die. All real life is internal, all honest action is born of honest thought; out of the heart are the issues of life. The want of exercising one’s own understanding has been admirably described by Locke. It is that, he says, which weakens and extinguishes this noble faculty in us. “Trace it, and see whether it be not so; the day labourer in a country village has commonly but a small pittance of knowledge, because his ideas and notions have been confined to the narrow bounds of a poor conversation and employment; the low mechanic of a country town does somewhat outdo him – porters and cobblers of great cities surpass him. A country gentleman, leaving Latin and Learning in the University, who returns thence to his mansion-house, and associates with his neighbours of the same strain, who relish nothing but hunting and a bottle; with these alone he spends his time, with these alone he converses, and can away with no company whose discourses go beyond what claret and dissoluteness inspire. Such a patriot, formed in this happy day of improvement, cannot fail, we see, to give notable decisions upon the bench at quarter sessions, and eminent proofs of his skill in politics, when the strength of his purse, and party, have advanced him to a more auspicious situation. * * * To carry this a little further: here is one muffled up in the zeal and infallibility of his own sect, and will not touch a book, or enter into debate, with a person that will question any of those things which, to him, are sacred.” People wonder now-a-days why we have so many societies – the cause is the same. Men cannot trust themselves; to do that requires exercise of the understanding. A man must take his opinions from society; he can do no battle with the devil unless he have an association formed to aid him. At Oxford the example of an individual, Dr. Livingstone, created a generous enthusiasm. A society was formed under distinguished patronage, subscription lists were opened, a public meeting was held, and the most renowned men of the day – the Bishop of Oxford and Mr. Gladstone – lent to the meeting not merely the attraction of their presence, but the charm of their oratorical powers. The result is a very small collection, and a talk of sending out six missionaries to christianize Africa. When societies are formed there is no end to the absurdities they are guilty of. Just think of the men of science at Aberdeen, all rushing over hill and dale to Balmoral, where they were permitted, not to converse with majesty (that were too great an act of condescension), but to have lunch in an apartment of the royal residence. Then, again, what murmurs were there at Bradford, because, at the close of the meeting, the younger members of the Social Reform Congress were not permitted to dance the polka. If old Columbus were alive now a new world would never have been discovered. We should have had a limited liability company established for the purpose. A board of lawyers, and merchants, and M.P.’s, as directors, would have been formed. Some good-natured newspaper editors would have inserted some ingenious puffs, – the shares would have gone up in the market, – the directors would have sold out at a very fair rate of profit. Columbus would have made one or two unsuccessful voyages – the shares would have gone down – the company would have been wound up – and no western continent, with its vast resources, would ever have been heard of. I like the old plan best; I like to see a man. If I go into the House of Commons I hear of men, somewhat too much talk of men is there; on one side of the house Pitt is quoted, on another Fox, or Peel, or Canning. If Pitt, and Fox, and Canning, and Peel had done so depend upon it we should never have heard their names. It is a poor sign when our statesmen get into this habit; it is a mutual confession of inability to act according to the wants and necessities of the age. They quote great men to hide their littleness. They imagine that by using the words of great statesmen they may become such, or, at any rate, get the public to note them for such themselves. They use the names of Pitt and Fox as corks, by means of which they may keep afloat. Well, I must fain do the same; while I rail against custom, I must e’en follow her.
“He seems to me,” said old Montaigne, “to have had a right and true apprehension of the power of custom, who first invented the story of a country-woman who, having accustomed herself to play with and carry a young calf in her arms, and daily continuing to do so as it grew up obtained this by custom, that when grown to a great ox she was still able to bear it. For, in truth, custom is a violent and treacherous schoolmistress. She by little and little, slyly and unperceived, slips in the foot of her authority, but having by this gentle and humble beginning, with the benefit of time, fixed and established it, she then unmasks a furious and tyrannical countenance, against which we have no more the courage or the power so much as to lift up our eyes. We see it at every turn forcing and violating the rules of nature. Usus efficacissimus rerum omnium magister. Custom is the greatest master of all things.”
And now I finish with a fable. A knight surprised a giant of enormous size and wickedness sleeping, his head lying under the shade of a big oak. The knight prayed to heaven to aid his strength, and lifting his battle-axe dashed it with all his might on the giant’s forehead. The giant opened his eyes, and drowsily passing his hand over his eyes, murmured, “The falling leaves trouble my rest,” and straight he slumbered again. The knight summoned his energies for another stroke, again whirled his axe in the air, and furiously dashed it to the utter destruction of the giant’s scull. The latter merely stirred, and said, “The dropping acorns disturb my sleep.” The knight flung down his axe and fled in despair from an enemy who held his fiercest blows and his vaunted and well-tried might but as falling leaves and dropping acorns. Reader, so do I. My hardest blows shall seem but as leaves and acorns to the giant with whom I am at war, and would fain destroy.