The introduction of the cigar into society was a great trial to the womenkind. At first a smoker was no gentleman, and he only became one when no gentleman did otherwise than smoke. The Sybarites at the commencement of their new epoch smoked only out of doors or in a room set apart for the purpose; this was still a reason for the separation of the sexes, but at length some beauties of independent spirit assured the youth of their set that they liked the perfume of a cigar, and from that time the revolution set in.
The puppyism of that day was mere fashion, the exercise of the imitative faculty which the monkey is supposed to still retain. But fashion is not a very durable religion.
The novelists, clever creatures, have shown a fondness for making such inanities as I have depicted very heroic on occasions, and as coming out in quite a new character; but they have not said why. The truth is that the vanity which begets a dressy snob will ferment itself up into the leader of a forlorn hope, and be thankful for the chance of a Victoria Cross instead of the praises of the giggling sex, whose blessedness threatens to keep them single.
Some men are vain to the last; Addison was when he invited a nobleman to come and see how a Christian could die; Dr. Donne was before parting with his last breath but one or two—he was laid out by himself. Women, too, are supposed to be not free from vanity, not only up to the last, but a little after, desiring to be called “beautiful corpses;” and to this end they have directed their maids to rouge their cheeks when they are no more.
These are the true lovers of art.
As we are on the topic, one may say the least vain are those who die by their own hand, especially with the aid of a pistol. These instruments do the work of suicide with a very ill grace; the effect is that however much the relatives may have wished for a photograph to be taken after death, even that consolation is forbidden them.
It takes two or three generations for the world to forget it when a great man kills himself.
“Life is a handsome present—no man earns it;
Ungracious therefore is he who returns it.”
I could never regard a suicide otherwise than as a very remarkable person, with inscrutable traits of character; in truth, as a singular anomaly. Napoleon, the most noticeable, perhaps, of men, because the worst among conspicuous ones, could not reach the courage to kill himself; bravery seems inadequate to such a purpose. Butcher as he was, there was not a sprinkling of self-destruction in him; his life was more to him than the empire of the world which he had lost, though that life was one of cancer.