THE POINT OF VIEW
It is more than a full generation, it is going on for half a century, since Thackeray, lecturing on Charity and Honor, in New York, paid the street-manners of the city the pretty compliment that all readers ought to remember:
American Urbanities
I will tell you when I have been put in mind of the courteous gallantry of the noble knight, Sir Roger de Coverley, of Coverley Manor, of the noble Hidalgo Don Quixote of la Mancha: here, in your own omnibus-carriages and railway-cars, when I have seen a woman step in, handsome or not, well-dressed or not, and a workman in hob-nailed shoes, or a dandy in the height of the fashion, rise up and give her his place.
"Omnibus-carriages" have given way altogether to the horse-car; and the horse-car has ceded to the elevated train, to the cable-car, to the under-ground trolley. These vehicles subsist, but in what one of them could the admiring tourist see repeated as a rule what was, without question, the rule in 1852?
"The age of chivalry is gone" from the public conveyances of New York. Apparently it has gone farther from New York than from any other American city. At least that is the conclusion to which a New Yorker is reluctantly driven who has occasion to visit other American cities. The boorishness of New York is now what impresses the British tourist. Stevenson made his first appearance in New York a matter of seventeen years after Thackeray's last appearance, and he in turn recorded his observation. It was that he was received in casual places where he was personally unknown with a surprising mixture of "rudeness and kindness." But what struck him first, struck him in the face, so to say, was the rudeness. The healing kindness came after, and the final conclusion was that New Yorkers (he was careful not to say Americans) were well-meaning and kind-hearted people who had no manners. The good intentions and the kind hearts may be questioned by any spectator of the scramble at a station of any one of the elevated roads during the crowded hours, where male creatures may be seen using the superior strength of their sex to arrive at seats in advance of women. Even where this is not put too grossly in evidence, it is plain to the spectator of the scramble that the age of chivalry is gone.
The travelling New Yorker becomes aware that this is largely local. A Southern newspaper man, writing from New York to his paper, not long ago, noted its manners with even a touch of horror. "When I saw a man sitting in a car in which a woman was standing," he says, "I knew that I was far from home." A very recent British observer, the clever author of "The Land of The Dollar," proceeding from New York to Philadelphia, recorded his refreshment at happening upon an American town where the inhabitants were not too busy, when the stranger thanked them for a piece of information, to answer "You're very welcome."
When the New Yorker goes abroad at home, he finds unwelcome confirmation of the suggestion that his own city is the most unmannerly of all. The New Englander has undoubtedly a way, as Anthony Trollope noted, of giving you a piece of information as if he were making you a present of a dollar. But for all that, the sensitive stranger finds himself much less rasped at the end of a day in Boston, than at the end of a day in New York. As you go Southward, the level of manners rises in proportion almost to the respective stages of social culture reached in the colonial times, when Josiah Quincy found in Charleston a degree of "civility" and "elegance" such as the good Bostonian recorded that he had never seen, nor expected to see, on this side of the Atlantic. One is driven, in view of the Southern courtesy, to wonder whether there may not be something in Goethe's defence of the duello, to the effect that it is more desirable that there should be some security in the community against a rude act than that all men should be secure of dying in their beds.
But this explanation does not account for the fact that in whatever direction the New Yorker goes from home he finds better manners of the road, manners of the street-car, manners of the elevator, than those he left. Western cities, unless they be Southwestern also, have not the soothing softness and deference of Southern manners, but there is in these a recognition on the part of the human brother whom you casually encounter, of your human brotherhood which you are by no means so sure of eliciting from the casual and promiscuous New Yorker. The Chicagoan will tell you in detail what you want to know, even though, as Mr. Julian Ralph has remarked, he makes you trot alongside of him on the sidewalk while he is telling it. And in an elevator in which there is a woman, the Chicagoan hats are as promptly and automatically doffed as the Bostonese, while in this regard it is New York and not Philadelphia that is the Quaker city.
"Ethnic" explanations of the bad manners of New York will occur to many readers, which "it may be interesting not to state." These mostly fall to the ground before the appalling fact that Chicago is better-mannered. The elevated roads are great demoralizers. It is barely that primitive human decency escapes from the "Sauve qui peut" and "Devil take the hindmost" of that mode of transit, to say nothing of the fine flower of courtesy. Let us hope it is all the doing of the elevated roads.
The Public Manners of Women
It is painful to have to say that inquiry among males for an explanation of the degeneration just mentioned reveals yet another lamentable decline in chivalry. For it is a fact that the current masculine hypothesis attributes it to the women themselves. This is a reversion to a state of things which prevailed long before the age of chivalry had come. The scandalous behavior of Adam, in devolving upon the partner and fragment of his bosom the responsibility for his indulgence in the "malum prohibitum" of Eden, has been frequently cited in assemblages of Woman in proof of the innate and essential unchivalrousness of Man. It is there regarded as, to say the least of it, real mean.
The citation may not appear germane to an appeal for merely equal rights, which is the professed object of the "woman-women," but it is surely pertinent to the male contention that woman would get more by throwing herself upon the mercy of man than by appealing to his justice. If we take a more modern view of the origin of the relations of the sexes, it is evident that only that minimum of courtly consideration for the weaker vessel which was needful for the preservation of the species was to be expected from a gentleman whose habits had only just ceased to be arboreal, and that the age of chivalry must have been a very long time in coming.
It is, all the same, a fact that, when a son of Adam of the younger generation is asked how, in a public conveyance, he can retain both his seat and his equanimity while a daughter of Eve is standing, he is apt to recur to the third chapter of Genesis, and to put the blame on "the woman thou gavest to be with me." "You don't even get thanked for it," he will say. His father, and much more his grandfather, would have been ashamed to offer that excuse. It would have been ruled out as invalid, even if accurate; and the heir of all the ages who makes it does not put it to the proof often enough to know whether it is accurate or not.
But it must be owned that there is too much truth in it. Woman's inhumanity to man is a good deal in evidence. The late Senator Morton, of Indiana, was, it will be remembered, an invalid and a cripple. He came into a company at the capital one day in a state of great indignation because, in a street-car crowded with young women, not one had offered him a seat, and he had been compelled to make the journey painfully and precariously supported upon his crutches. The like of this may very often be seen. Humanity, consideration for weakness and helplessness, is the root of which chivalry is the fine flower. The Senator's experience was not unique, was not even exceptional. It is a startling proposition that man's inhumanity to man is less than woman's, but the time seems to give it some proof. At any rate, a man evidently disabled would not be allowed to stand in a public conveyance in which able-bodied men were seated, even in the most unchivalrous part of our country, which I have given some reasons for believing to be the city of New York. And, if that be true, it seems that the assumption of the right of an able-bodied woman to remain seated while a disabled man is standing is an assumption that the claims of chivalry are superior to those of humanity. On the other hand, it may fairly be said that the selfishness of women with regard to the wayfaring man is more thoughtless and perfunctory than the selfishness of men with regard to the wayfaring woman. In this country, at least, this latter is in all cases felt to be a violation of propriety and decency. The native American feels himself to be both on his defence and without defence, when he is arraigned for it. This was illustrated one day in a car of the New York elevated road, in which a middle-aged woman was standing in front of a young man who was sitting. Fixing him with her glittering eye, she said, calmly but firmly, "Get up, young man, I want that seat." The conscience-stricken youth rose meekly and automatically at the summons, and left his seat the spoil of the Amazonian bow and spear.
However it may be with woman's inhumanity to man, there can be no question about her inhumanity to woman. It does "make countless thousands mourn." And this not alone in the familiar sense in which
Every fault a tear may claim,
Except an erring sister's shame.
Whatever male has assisted at a function at which males are not supposed to assist, and at which the admixture of males is so small as to be negligible, has seen sights as astonishing in their way as the sights witnessed by the rash males who, at the peril of their lives, smuggled themselves into those antique mysteries from which they were expressly excluded. Nowhere in the gatherings of men does shameless selfishness find so crude an expression as, say, at a crowded matinée. It could not be exhibited at a prize-fight, for the exhibitor would subject himself to prompt personal assault. But the female bully is without fear as without shame. She elbows her way through and past her timid sisters, takes tranquil possession of the standing-places they have reserved by occupation, and scatters them to flight as the fierce hawk the pavid doves. Of course the bullies are a small minority, but one hawk suffices to flutter the most populous dove-cote, and to characterize the assemblage which it dominates. The young man who excuses his own bad manners by blaming "the woman" only emphasizes his want of chivalry; but the validity of his plea is more deniable than its accuracy.
The English Voice on the American Stage
In the play of "Pudd'nhead Wilson," made out of Mark Twain's book by Frank Mayo, the evil genius combines in his veins the bad blood and craven instincts of two races. The rôle was given, when first presented, a remarkable impersonation in which there was a subtle mingling of a white man's presumption and a negro's animalism. But the creator of the part was the brother of a leading English poet! An American actor essayed the rôle in the second season with decidedly less success. In "The Heart of Maryland," a strenuous developing of Civil War emotions and events, the fate of the hero, a soldier whose devotion to the North alienates him from father and sweetheart, was given in both its first two seasons to actors of good schooling indeed, but distinctly English. The "leading juvenile," supposedly a Confederate officer with all a Southron's manner of speech, was also most pronouncedly a Briton in tongue, build, and carriage. In that exciting coil about a lovable spy—"Secret Service"—not exactly the villain, but the chief meddler with the hero's plans, was on the programme a Virginia gentleman, but on the stage entirely British.
Multiplying examples is unnecessary; there is enough food for reflection in these three recent plays. They are all marked with particular Americanism, and a prominent share of that Americanism is entrusted to actors foreign-born and foreign-bred.
We are so used here to accepting certain mannerisms of speech as indigenous to, and proper to, the theatre, and so many of our actors follow British pronunciation and inflection, that we hardly see the extent to which the natively English voice prevails on our stage. Once the thing gets on one's nerves, however, it is most noticeable. Indeed, the presence of English actors on the American stage is so pervasive of everything, from farce-comedy to society-tragedy, that they fairly invest our national drama.
Now of all insularities the most abominable, the one most to be shunned by this country is artistic insularity. It is an excellent cosmopolitanism that gives our patronage so generously to the greatest foreign stars, although it is bald snobbery that often leads us to favor mediocre importations over native genius. But it is surely carrying our worldliness too far when we accept and approve the hopeless incapacity of foreigners to enact rôles demanding American local color. This may substantiate our proverbial patience, but it deals hard with our boasted sense of the incongruous. So much have unlike environments in a hundred years differentiated the two races that an English impersonation of an American character can never be acceptable to real criticism.
The reason for the sway of English actors over our stage is not far to seek. It is not that the best of them can act better than our best, for we have in our little day produced a very few of the greatest actors, tragic and comic. And we still have an excellent array of the plebs of the stage. It is the middle class—which is ever the grand average and backbone of any organization—that is not satisfactory and must draw on foreign aid. The average middle-class actor in England supplies the demand, for he is far above our similar caste in training and finish, and for good reason. In England the stage is taken more seriously than here, at least by the players. There an actor enters upon his career with the same desire for the thoroughness that comes from humble beginnings and complete experience as anyone entering upon any other profession. He may cherish vague hopes of greatness—as every American lawyer hopes to be President—but he is content if his lot is cast in respectable places, where the labor is agreeable and the compensation decent. The result is an army of thoroughly drilled actors that can do almost anything well, though they may do nothing brilliantly.
In the United States, however, where opinion still maligns the business of the actor, he is likely to look on his career as a mere trade or as a too, too high art. Our actor is either one whose ambitions lead him to hitch his wagon to a star and scorn all sublunary things, or one stolidly content to please—not the aristocratic groundlings, but the skylings. Of these two sorts of actor, the former thinks a legitimate minor part too far beneath him to justify serious preparation, the latter thinks it too far above him. There is, consequently, an inadequate list of native actors sufficiently prepared in technic to do well anything that comes to hand. The tendency, too, of an American actor, having hit upon a success in one kind of character, to make an exclusive specialty of it and devote a lifetime to one range of parts, is both due to the besetting commercialism of our stage and responsible for much of its lack of versatility. The manager, finding no well-equipped, highly adaptable rank-and-file at home, turns naturally to the one source of unfailing supply—England.
In the few stock companies that survive the old régime, the English voice is particularly prevalent. For the English origin of these actors essaying American rôles is discoverable by the voice almost more than by the bearing. Though we of the United States and they of the United Kingdom approximate considerably in language, we are radically different in speech. The British actor rather modifies than accentuates the arpeggios of Piccadilly, but it is only a long life in America and a plasticity uncommon in his race that can disguise him. His curious scale-singing is an unfailing wonder to the American. In the American play it can never be anything but a hopeless incongruity.
