Views and Opinions

by Ouida

Truly, in nine times out of ten it is but a conventional and unreal sorrow which thus expresses itself; truly, out of the millions of deaths which take place there are but few which create deep and abiding grief; still, the association of these elaborate artificial wreaths and garlands, these stiff and crucified blossoms, with the tomb would only be possible to the most vulgar and insensible of generations, even as decoration, even as mere common-place compliment, whilst to the true lover of flowers they must be ever a distressing outrage.

In Lopez de Vega’s Diego de Alcala the humble servant of a poor hermit, lowliest of the low, begs pardon of the flowers which he gathers for the chapel, and begs them to forgive him for taking them away from their beloved meadows. This is a worthier attitude before those divine children of the dews and sun than the indifference of the lovers of the flower carnival or the funeral pageant.

If a daisy were but as scarce as a diamond, how would the multitudes rush to adore the little golden-eyed star in the grass!

One of the most exquisitely beautiful things I ever saw in my life was a thick tuft of harebell glittering all over with dew on a sunny morning where it grew on a mossy wall. It was not worth sixpence, yet it was a thing to kneel down before and adore and remember reverently for evermore.

Who will deliver us, asks George Sala, from the fashionable bridal, from the eternal ivory satin and the ghastly orange-blossom, and the two little shavers masquerading as pages?

The roughest and rudest marriage forms of savage nations are less offensive than those which are the received and admired custom of the civilised world. There cannot be a more Philistian jumble of greed, show, indecency and extravagance than are compressed into the marriage festivities of the cities of Europe and America. When the nuptials are solemnised in the country, something of country simplicity and freshness may enter into them, but almost all fashionable weddings are now taken to the cities, because a huge enough crowd cannot be gathered together even in the biggest of big country houses. Often the persons concerned go to an hotel, or borrow a friend’s mansion for the celebration of the auspicious event.

Year after year the same trivial and tiresome usage, the same vulgar and extravagant customs, the same barbarous and uncouth ceremonies prevail, and are accepted as sacred and unalterable law. The most intimate, the most delicate, the most personal actions and emotions of life are set out in the full glare of light in the most unscreened and most unsparing publicity; and no one sees the odious and disgusting coarseness of it all. The more sensitive and refined temperaments submit meekly to the torture of its commands.

If marriage, so long as the institution lasts, could become in its celebration that which decency and good taste would suggest, a simple and sacred rite with neither publicity nor gaudy expenditure to profane it, there might come, with such a change, similar alteration in other ceremonies, and sentiment might have a chance to put in its modest plea for place unfrightened by the loud beating of the brazen drums of wealth. In all the annals of the social life of the world there has not been anything so atrocious in vulgarity as a fashionable wedding, whether viewed in its greedy pillaging of friends and acquaintances or in its theatrical pomp of costume, of procession and of banquet. It is the very apogee of bad taste, incongruity and indecency, from the coarse words of its rites to its sputtering champagne, its unvaried orations, and its idiotic expenditure. It is this publicity which is dear to the soul of our Gaius and Gaia; for were it not so there would be more special licences demanded, since these are not so costly that gentle-people could not easily afford to have their marriage ceremony as entirely private as they pleased. But they would not feel any pleasure at privacy; they despise it; they are always ready with gag and rouge for the foot-lights; if they had not an audience the bride and bridegroom would yawn in each other’s faces. Every ceremony duly repeats and carefully imitates those which have preceded it. There is no originality, there is no modesty, there is no dignity or reserve. The plunder which is called ‘presents’ are laid out on exhibition, and the feverish anxiety of every bride-elect is to get more presents than any of her contemporaries. Even the in-door and out-door servants of each of the two households have this shameless blackmail levied on them; and gillies subscribe for a hunting-watch, and kitchen-maids contribute to the purchase of a silver-framed mirror. Scarcely even is a royal or aristocratic marriage announced than the laundries and the pantries are ransacked for sovereigns and half-sovereigns to purchase some costly article to be offered to their princely or noble employers. Imagine the slaves of Augustus presenting him with a gold whistle, or the comedians of Louis Quatorze offering him a silver cigar-box!

But all is fish which comes to the nets of the impecunious great folks of the fin de siècle, and the unhappy households must submit and buy a propitiatory gift out of their salaries. That households are notoriously dishonest in our day is but a necessary consequence. Who can blame a servant if, knowing the blackmail which will be levied on him, he recoups himself with commissions levied in turn upon tradesmen, or perquisites gleaned from the wine-cellars? It is said openly, though I cannot declare with what truth, that all the gifts in gold and silver and jewels which are offered to princes on their travels by loyal corporations or adoring colonists are sold immediately, whilst all the costly boxes and jewelled trifles which such princes are obliged by custom to leave behind them wherever they have been received are similarly disposed of by the greater number of their recipients. It is, perhaps, the reason why royal donors so frequently limit themselves to the cheap gift of a signed photograph. They know that photographs cannot be offered to them in return.

The diffusion of German influence, which has been general over Europe through the fatality which has seated Germans on all the thrones of Europe, has had more than any other thing to do with the vulgarisation of European society. The German eats in public, kisses in public, drags all his emotions out into the public garden or coffee-house, makes public his curious and nauseous mixture of sugar and salt, of jam and pickles, alike in his sentiments and in his cookery, and praises Providence and embraces his betrothed with equal unction under the trees of the public square.