The Champagne Standard

by Mrs. John Lane

Of course you have to administer disagreement with great caution, because when a man reaches the highest eminence there is nothing that makes him so mad as contradiction. The first sign of real greatness shows itself when you decline to be contradicted. If, as it is stated, Lord Beaconsfield never contradicted his Queen, then did he well deserve her most loyal friendship. The bliss of never being contradicted! for that alone it is worth being a queen; but of course that is essentially a royal prerogative. It is said that there are people who by the exercise of this great negative gift have worked their way up from being quite modest members of society until they are now shining social lights.

Tell a man how great he is and will he come to tea? for there are crowds dying to meet him; why, of course he will come. Who has ever yet met a really celebrated recluse. One has heaps of recluses who professed to like solitude, but only in a crowd, but there was never one, however famous, who chose to exile himself in a desert island without the morning paper.

It is said of a famous poet, whose footsteps were much dogged by the enterprising tourist, that he complained bitterly and wrathfully of his inability to have even his own privacy; but that his bitterness and wrath were as nothing to what he felt when the blameless tripper was discovered to be paying no attention to him whatever. One wonders if this innocent form of soft-soap is out of fashion, or are the poets less great? How many pious pilgrims wandered to the old Colonial house in Cambridge, America, where Longfellow lived, and looked with awe at his front windows. Did not pilgrims by the car-load go to Concord to catch a glimpse of the great Emerson, while they leaned reverently across the philosopher's white picket-fence?

The poets of the past were accustomed to this innocent worship; what about the poets of to-day? Do they also walk along the streets haughtily (like the illustrious Mr. and Mrs. Crummles) whilst admiring passers-by stop and say with bated breath, "This is the great Smith!" or is that involuntary form of flattery out of fashion, or haven't the new poets grown up yet?

Perhaps an ardent admirer might suggest Miss Marie Corelli as one to whom the twentieth century pilgrim makes pilgrimages; but that isn't fair, for how can any one distinguish her pilgrims from Shakespeare's pilgrims? Pilgrims are not labelled like trunks. One hardly ventures to say so, but it seems to me that in this Miss Corelli has taken an unfair advantage of Shakespeare and the other poets.

There is nothing so democratic as true greatness, and this is a democratic age, and everybody exhibits to the public. We are either a great orator or we loop the loop, or we are a transcendent poet, or we walk from Cheapside to the Marble Arch on a wager. But do we do all these great things alone, unseen or unheard of by the world? No, we don't! Not a bit of it! It is not praise we want—we want more. We clamour for soft-soap; we demand it at the point of the bayonet.

It is an age of coarse effects, an age of advertisement. A poet could not conscientiously sing now about a rose left to bloom unseen, for excursion trains would be sure to be arranged there at reduced rates. It is a confidential age, and we demand a confidant as much as a matter of course as the heroine of the old-fashioned Italian opera,—in fact we demand the undivided attention of the whole world.

We sing our songs and listen greedily for the applause of the gallery; we meet with domestic misfortune, and we weep on the bosom of the divorce court, and the daily papers weep with us. We do not do good by stealth, but rather in such a way that we get a baronetcy or a decoration; so when you see a man all tinkley with little stars and things, you will know that he is always a very great and charitable man indeed, and charity is not only alms bestowed on the poor. It is the beauty of charity that it is not bigoted.

We put our breaking hearts under a microscope and make "copy" out of them and money and notoriety,—and notoriety in these days pays much better than mere celebrity, and what therefore so fitting a tribute to notoriety as soft-soap? Ah me! it is enough to make the cat laugh! I really have never understood this curious fact in natural history, though I know how hard it is to make a cat laugh; this whole morning I spent trying to make Mr. Boxer laugh (Mr. Boxer being the purry commander-in-chief of our mouse-holes), and did not succeed.

Our modern world is a hippodrome, and we demand hippodrome effects and thunders of applause, because ordinary applause cannot be heard. Watch the next painted face you see, and observe how familiarity with the process has coarsened it. Not that one has any objection to paint if it is well done. It is a woman's duty to look her best; and if paint makes her more beautiful, let her put it on—but, one does implore, not with the trowel.