The Champagne Standard

by Mrs. John Lane

Society is an elusive expression, and the human beings who constitute it are spread out in layers like the chocolate cake of our childhood, and every layer aspires to be the top one with the sugar frosting. In a kingdom the only ones who ever reach that sugar-coated eminence are of course the august reigning family besides a very precious and select few, who must be horribly bored at having reached an altitude where there is no need of further aspiration. After all, it does add a zest to life to triumph over one's dearest friends and snub them. Of course a reigning family has the superlative privilege of snubbing, but they have to take it out in that, for to them is denied the joy of "climbing."

In America we are still in the beginning of things, and society is less complex, though more so than formerly, as the unfortunate result of increasing wealth. There was a golden age in America, when different cities each required of its votaries different qualifications to enable them to enter what is called "Society." In those days, it is pleasant to testify, it was what a man had done, intellectually or morally, that opened to him the iron-bound gates of Boston. You might be shabby and poor, and rattle up to Society in an exceedingly inelegant vehicle called a "herdic" (which shot you out like coal), but you were welcome if you were literary or scientific, musician or philanthropist. Money looked on respectfully at the great and shabby, and was distinctly elbowed into a corner.

Something grips at my heart as I recall those bygone days when, as a very young girl, with a bump of reverence as high as the Himalayas, I sat in the corner of a splendid, shabby Boston drawing-room, and watched the great men and women, whose genius has left its imprint on American history and literature. They talked to each other, like ordinary human beings, and refreshed themselves with cold coffee and heavy cake, which was passed by such of the younger generation as the wonderful hostess could press into service. It is remembering this wonderful hostess that I am impressed by the truth that entertaining is not a fine art, but genius; it is not acquired, it is inborn.

In this shabby old mansion, with its relics of a bygone splendour, I saw for the first time the greatest hostess it has ever been my good fortune to meet. She was neither beautiful, witty, nor young, but she had the subtle quality which made you at once at home in her genial presence; which made you feel that you were the one guest in whom she was interested, and this impression she made on everybody. Such was her magnetism that her spirit inspired every one, at least for the time being; a charming intercourse was the result, a geniality among her guests who, the very next day, in an overwhelming flood of shyness, would cut each other dead.

I have come to the conclusion that it is this abominable shyness which makes human beings so repellent to each other. It is one of the minor martyrdoms of existence resulting in an antagonistic attitude, not so much because one doubts the eligibility of the other, but rather that one doubts one's self. The agony of self-consciousness that surrounds one as with a thin coating of ice, out of which frosty prison one breathes ice. Did the other but know what one suffers!

It is often very difficult to distinguish between shyness and reserve, for one can be reserved without being shy, and one can be shy and in an excess of shyness frightfully unreserved. Though the English are rightly credited with having brought reserve and self-control—those characteristics of the highest civilization as well as the lowest—to the greatest mastery, yet some of their amazing silence and immobility I believe to be shyness. It is a comfort to think so because, when one's vivacious disposition occasionally hurls one against an icy obstacle, it pains.

The English self-control—the result of generations of self-controlled ancestors—makes heroes in the battlefield, but sometimes it also makes of its bravest officers but foolhardy leaders of men. On the other hand, the national pride to suppress emotion retaliates on nature in a perfectly legitimate way; the emotion one suppresses, like all unused functions, ends by weakening, then disappearing. Not that the English are without emotion, but compared to other nationalities, the average Englishman's emotions are not easily stirred. Self-control is a very inspiring quality, but it is not so wonderful when the nature exercising it is tuned to a low key. English supremacy is so great that English self-control is the fashion, but while an Englishman's self-control is the icy covering to a quiet, placid mountain; the control a Frenchman or an Italian assumes is the ice veneering a volcano.

Human nature is, to a certain extent, everywhere the same, and its simple and primal virtues are the same, only modified by race and climate. A man may be panic-stricken in disaster, not through cowardice, but because of uncontrolled imagination. No one will deny the superlative bravery of the French, but it is equally impossible to deny that in panics they sometimes lose their heads. In such circumstances the Frenchman does not show to the same advantage as the Englishman, not because of a lack of bravery, but because he possesses a fiery imagination. A Frenchman sees not only the present disaster, but he sees the results far into the dim future; the Englishman, with controlled imagination, if any, applies himself to a hurried view of the situation, and wastes no time on a thought of the future.

I knew an American of English descent who found himself in a burning German theatre one night. In the instant there was a panic, and a frantic woman clung to his arms and implored him to save her. He was very near-sighted, and in the confusion his eyeglasses had fallen off. "I certainly will," he said, reassuringly, "if you will just let me put on my glasses." Then he climbed upon the seat, calmly gauged a possible chance of escape, and rescued his companion and himself. Yet the imagination which in certain circumstances results in disaster, under others gives a man a charm which makes his companionship a delight.

We Americans are a composite race; we have the coolness of the English, as well as the nervous tension of multiples of races, exaggerated by that glowing air, which has been wittily called "free champagne." The warring of these various elements promises results that cannot be foreseen in a nation which boasts of being Anglo-Saxon, whatever that may mean.