CHAPTER VII
THE TRANSITIONAL PERIOD
The trick enigmatical nature sometimes plays the gentlest parents by an offspring who, notwithstanding their constant solicitude—the constant bending of the twig—turns out to be a disappointment, not to say a positively black sheep, has its analogy in art. And of such curious analogy no more picturesque example exists than that supplied by what has come to be known as our “Transitional period”—a hopelessly ordinary offspring of a civilization highly cultivated and refined.
To see the Transitional period in its popular aspect, which is its worst aspect, no better spectacles may be borrowed than those once worn by Charles Dickens, the novelist, to write his “American Notes” and “Martin Chuzzlewit.” Only, it will not do to pass final judgment from a scathing arraignment of crimes to the extent of burlesquing the subject, as happens at times in Dickens’ books. There is the documentary evidence to be sifted and examined which, I am very sure, will lessen and correct the scandal materially. And if I have hitherto neglected to avail myself of such evidence, permitting the scandal of the Transitional period to appear as common gossip in these articles, it was for dramatic effect and for contrast. In the present article I propose to make reparation, and direct the magnifying power mainly upon that which is good.
It was somewhat unfair of Dickens to expect that we should have achieved architectural grandeur in the brief time at our disposal; but I regret that his uncomplimentary description of the City of Washington in the forties is yet graphic in a degree of the present capital, though vast appropriations by Congress have been frequently lavished upon it, and misspent. We know that Dickens was not always prejudiced, by the encomiums he bestowed upon the scenery of New England, for instance, and the pretty girls he chanced to meet during his visit, who it seems contrived to be born in America despite the banal times and hideous fashions which, I am glad, could not wholly disguise them. However, as complete sets of the works of Charles Dickens are to be found upon the shelves of every public library, and secondhand copies of “American Notes” and “Martin Chuzzlewit” may be picked up for a few pennies at the bookstands, nobody need miss the salutary influence of many of the criticisms. Not so easily may the American student provide himself with a copy of the diary of Philip Hone, though it be a much more instructive and faithful commentary upon the Transitional period than anything Dickens ever wrote. For I think the two volumes sell for $7 net. There are no pirated copies to be had, of course, no cheap editions, as is usually the case with the more reliable sources of information it is obligatory upon us to look up would we follow cause and effect in the history of American art. Here indeed our own copyright law is a positive hindrance to the acquisition of knowledge. Few architectural students can afford $7 for a purely literary work devoted to the Transitional period.
Mr. Hone wrote his journal from day to day as Samuel Pepys wrote his, without idea of publication, and, consequently, without exaggeration, praise or ridicule for effect. He wrote things down as he saw them. He was not writing to correct popular abuses. He was, apparently, governed in his avocation by no other desire than the simple one of keeping a diary. And it is this unaffected form of diary that makes its contents more and more valuable as time goes on.
When Dickens has “Martin Chuzzlewit” entertained in New York society he constructs for our edification an amusing farce which we enjoy as a farce, though the author himself pretends to be in very earnest; but when Philip Hone relates of an assembly ball with great difficulty arranged owing to the painful lack of homogeneity and even suitability of the available personnel, another and serious phase of the case is presented, because it is sadly true. Under the ingenuous pen of this diarist, we may see James Gordon Bennett the elder wrangling with the unliveried servants for admission which, we are told, the management finally consented to extend upon the one condition that the account of the ball which was to appear in the Herald the following morning should at least be “decent.” I believe that is the word Mr. Hone uses.
GRACE CHURCH RECTORY.