At my leisure I hope to fill up the gaps left between the skeleton outlines of my map of life—what remains to be said, extending over the nett balance of my years, of which I seem to have more to say than can reasonably be expected of a man past his eighty-third birthday. But I have been asked to write a memoir, first by one, then by another; by one who has long been, and who continues to be, the greatest master of heart-finding fiction in our time. One comes to me and asks how I get on with it. One reads a portion and calls it interesting; so, in a way, I am urged on with my task.
At Boston I dined with Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence; he formerly filled the United States Embassy at our Court. He was gentleman enough to have been an English duke. He had nothing to say about the old country that was not good and admiring, and told me many anecdotes of his own country people while in London.
Remarking on the strict etiquette observed by us, in never addressing a man you are not introduced to, he observed that he sat opposite to another every morning at breakfast in the Athenæum Club, for two years, without their exchanging a word, when, one day a carriage called to take him to a country house, and he found his silent companion already seated in it. In this way they became known to each other and entered into conversation. To give effect to his own story, a countryman of his own, he said, came to England and travelled all over it without introductions, and calling on him he said that he had not been able to speak to any one for months, and being one day on the chain pier at Brighton, he could bear it no longer, and observed to a gentleman there: “It’s a fine day, sir!”
But Mr. Lawrence, instead of condoling with him in his trials, replied: “I wonder at your impudence!”
Mrs. Lawrence did not appear to have been at all Anglicized; she rather looked for perfection in the English undergoing the process of Americanization. Sir Charles Lyell had been a good republican when in the new country, she said, and had greatly improved through his visits, but not so fully as she should have liked; and this she emphasized in good Yankee brogue. I was acquainted with Sir Charles; it was on his introduction that I came to know the Lawrence family; and I never saw a sign in him of such improvement. I was among his friends in Boston; on his introductions I saw Mr. Prescott, but he did not impress me.
My experience of Americans is that they are less advanced in the art of humbug, and therefore more earnest and sincere than the British. They, therefore, perform the duties of friendship with great thoroughness.
An interesting feature of immorality has often struck me: it consists in the never-failing breach of promise made in all the apparent sincerity felt by men who do not fail to keep their word. Such men—I could give the names of many for recognition—are very peculiarly framed. They are contented with the thanks one feels on a kindly proposition being made by them while they are with you; not caring to gather the gratitude attendant on the completion of a promise. I know men who play this skeleton part every day of their lives, and I class them with swindlers.
As one advances in life one gets to know the sowers of this harvest of tares, and to separate them from those of the wheat crops, without fouling one’s barn with the results of their labour; the effect of it being merely amusing at last. What cruelty it can inflict is practised on children and young people. They are born with implicit confidence: to them it acts educationally. It affords them a most thorough teaching of mistrust, which, more than any other branch of education, makes a bad citizen.
Some evils in life are unavoidable, but the training that comes from behind the falsehood habitually worn by an amateur friend is not one of these.
These moral ornaments of the social system have a game of their own to play; they know no other, and they play it with all the finesse exercised over a game of whist.