Yet its wickedness is a subject that touches us less than its stupidity; for it is less of a daily experience, and has more denouncers to lash it. We also know less of its brilliancy than of its meanness; for the latter is visible in the smallest gathering and in the most insignificant place, while the former exists but in half a dozen great capitals, and even there only among one or two circles or strata of society. Paris and Vienna have their dull and respectable society, as well as other places, and they are by far the most numerous, and, we will venture to say it, the meanest. Downright license seems, strangely enough, to carry with it a certain reckless bonhomie which, while it is far from Christian charity, yet has many outward signs of it. The most abandoned are often found to be the most generous, or even philanthropic, while the pharisaical little-mindedness of many eminently “respectable” members of society is a constant reproach to the faith on which they pride themselves. The “milk of human kindness” is often [pg 127] scarce amid “saints” of a certain school. Noli me tangere is their motto, and an appropriate one, indeed; for you might tap their hearts till doomsday, and never draw from them one drop of the generous wine of sympathy.
Not that all persons whose path of life crosses your own by the chances bred of social conventionalities are of this type; many are generous, kind-hearted, impulsive; but it is part of the indictment we bring against “society” that its rules so smother this amiable individuality as seldom to allow it to be revealed to you save by some chance occurrence. You may have a “calling acquaintance” with a woman apparently frivolous (though obviously good-natured), and whose mind you judge to be probably as shallow as her conversation. Some sudden misfortune comes upon you, and, of all your acquaintances, this is, perhaps, the only one who will blossom into a friend. In emergencies, her native good sense and affectionate heart burst their artificial bonds, resume their proper place, and flow out in deeds of refined and considerate kindness. She will prove to have presence of mind, delicacy of heart, an active power of sympathy. This is the sort of woman you would choose to have by your dying-bed, or to whom you would consign the care of your children under unhappy circumstances, whether of poverty or absence—the woman whose nerve would not fail her in a hospital, and who would march boldly into a prison with bright looks and cheerful words, ever thinking of others before herself. But had it not been for an untoward accident, you might never have distinguished her from the herd of ordinary morning-callers. She goes through her part in society as glibly and cheerfully as your gray parrot, who is ever ready to repeat his lesson when the proper cue is given him, or as readily as your pet lap-dog, which has no objection to stand on its hind legs in a corner, and beg as long as you choose to hold the titbit up before it. What chance have you of recognizing a soul behind all that mass of conventionality? About as much as you would have of seeing the “angel imprisoned in the marble” in a sculptor's studio, or as much as Dante had of knowing the tormented souls hidden in the trunk of those grisly bleeding trees of the Inferno.
The more frequently and familiarly you mix with the world, the more your path is strewn with shattered ideals; for it is almost impossible to retain an ideal of anything which you see daily as a misshapen and blurred reality. Practical experience seems to coarsen and cheapen everything, and there never was yet a more melancholy truth than that of the old adage, “Familiarity breeds contempt.” Professional life as well as domestic furnishes lamentable instances of this. In commerce, where it is very difficult for poetry and ideals to find room, the reality is hardly obnoxious to the thoughtful looker-on; for what refining influence could be expected from the perpetual jar and clash of engines, the constant chaffering, the feverish life, of the exchange? It is the realm of purely earthly, material influences, and naturally dwarfs the sympathies, while it concentrates the thoughts on one narrow point of selfish interest, if pursued for its own sake. But in the learned professions, whose aims are intellectually superior, and whose special province it is to elevate the human [pg 128] mind above selfish and individual interests, leading it, on the contrary, to the contemplation of abstract principles, and to the furtherance of the public weal, the ideal should be more apparent. And yet, in most cases, it is not so. There is no reverence left for a pursuit the trivial details of which are grown too familiar; petty jealousies take the place of scientific or philosophic emulation; man's innate vanity soon narrows the circle of interest round the ego, and subordinates the progress of the world to personal advancement. There is scarcely anything less venerable in a man's eyes than the particular branch of knowledge in which he is most proficient; and if it be with him a hobby, the love he bears to it is rather a shadow of the good opinion he holds of himself than a genuine devotion to science in the abstract. Of course, there are exceptions, numerous and honorable, but such are the plain facts in the ordinary, every-day experience of which life is in the main composed. “No one is a hero to his valet.” Home life is another ideal destroyed by society, with its arbitrary rules and its hard, practical axioms. The peace and holiness of home are rudely jarred by the demands which fashion makes on the time of its members. We have sometimes been tempted to think that this would be a very pleasant world to any one who could go through it as a spectator only. To act a part in it yourself means to subject yourself to one disenchantment after another. You see a family group at a distance—say through a street-window in a large city, or on the porch of a country villa. Old and young are mingled together; there may be beauty among the girls, there is refinement in their surroundings; they seem as thrifty as they are comfortable, for some are reading and some sewing: perhaps the tea-table is spread and housewifely treasures displayed; as a picture, it is perfect. But as a drama? Are you quite sure that you would like to see the real state of mind of each person there? If so, prepare yourself for almost inevitable disappointment. It will not be a safe investigation, and the ideal you may have formed will probably come out of the trial as an angel might if he trusted himself to the rough handling of common men.
No real happiness can exist in a life of perpetual excitement; and this a fashionable life can hardly fail to be. There is an intoxication of the mind as well as of the senses. The whirl of so-called pleasure never satisfies, but stimulates. More is required, and yet more, till, like the drunkard, you are a living paradox, never at peace unless in an atmosphere of excitement, just as he may be said to be never sober—or at least capable—unless when drunk. In the whirl of society, the mind withers; there is no time for thought, for study, for application. How many young girls there are who tell you candidly, “Oh! I have no time to practise my music. I used to do so four hours a day; but since I am in society, I can never find an hour to myself.” Then you inquire into this multiplicity of engagements, and you find—perhaps some religious occupation, some charitable work? Oh! no; only a call to be returned, cards to be left, a new toilet to be tried on, a little shopping, and a drive in the park. Pressing business, truly!
In great cities, during the season of balls and parties, a girl's life is one unbroken round of dissipation [pg 129] two-thirds of the day, and recuperation for coming “pleasure” during the remaining third. At the end of four or five months of this life, vitality is half extinct, the cheeks are pale, the mouth drawn, the eyes violet-circled; and against all this what prize is there to set? A bubble burst, a shadow vanished! These continual festivities, beginning late, ending in the early dawn, when the poor are just waking to their toil, and servants of God are rising to praise him—these repeated gatherings called “society” entirely upset the routine of domestic life. Instead of the blithe, healthy face sparkling at the head of the breakfast-table, there is a jaded, weary countenance, pale with a floury paleness, or flushed by late and disturbed slumbers; instead of the brisk tread and ringing voice that cheer the home, there is the listless step of the worn-out dancer, the peevish tone that tells plainly of bodily fatigue. In the evening there is no time for a cosy gathering round the hearth, a quiet game or chat, the reading aloud of some interesting book, or the simple delights of old-fashioned national airs. The dressing-room absorbs all that time—the choice of flowers or jewels takes long; the last finishing touches to the toilet must not be given in a hurry. The event of the day is about to begin; and so it will be to-morrow and the day after, and for an interminable tread-mill of days. If there is innate talent, there is no time to develop it; or, if it is cultivated at all, that, too, is distorted into a mere social “accomplishment,” the sole object of which is to add to the value of the possessor in the social market. The champion piece of embroidery is framed and pointed out as the work of the daughter of the house; the solitary basket of wax flowers is displayed in a conspicuous manner on an elaborate étagère; the water-colors are studiously hung in the best-lighted part of the drawing-room; the overture of William Tell is invariably called for on the slightest provocation, and played off indiscriminately before the least appreciative as well as the most artistic of the family's visiting list. And, by the way, what more egregious sham can there be than the conventional interest in music so universally professed? It is a matter of course to exclaim, “Oh! I dote on music”; and, on the basis of this broad assertion, what ludicrous exemplifications one is condemned to listen to! One will add, “Oh! yes, and I do so love Strauss' valses”; another will tell you there is no music like the bagpipes, and no dance like an Irish jig or an old-time Virginia reel. One gushing young lady will call the “Maud Valse” and the “Guards' Polka” “perfectly divine,” while her sentimental friend will murmur that “Home, Sweet Home” is her favorite. With many people, a collection of ballads is identical with the whole science of music; their sympathies and comprehension can go no further.
To many, again, music stands for comic songs and Christy's Minstrels. If an instrumental piece takes more than five minutes to get through, people begin to shift their feet and whisper to their neighbors; of course, when it is over, they will turn round and sweetly simper: “Oh! do play us something more; that last was so lovely.” In ninety-nine out of a hundred houses where you are doomed for your sins to hear music, you hear trash. It is hardly worth criticising, either in the choice or in the execution, and, one [pg 130] would therefore think, hardly worth telling a lie for. And yet this conventional admiration, what is it but a lie pure and simple?
To return to our belles and their murdered home-life. Not only is their time so mortgaged that they have none left for the joys of the family hearth, but they have none to spare for self-culture. A woman's education does not close on the threshold of the school-room. Every advance made later by voluntary application to study is a greater stride than all the compulsory teaching she receives in her school-life. If society materially interferes with this self-development, it has a heavy responsibility to bear. Each mind thus stunted, crude, and unevenly balanced reduces the sum total of usefulness in this world, and adds to the dead-weight of shiftless beings whose room would be decidedly better than their company in the scheme of human advancement. A frivolous, fashionable man or woman is a monster upon earth, a being whom nature certainly does not recognize, and whom religion reprobates.
The most satisfactory reflection whereby to dispel the effect of this dismal picture is this: the thing carries its antidote with it to all but hopelessly narrow minds. The pleasures of dancing within an area of a yard square, and of listening night after night to the same insipid gallantries and insincere congratulations, cannot fail to pall after a time. A French author says that after the age of thirty, a woman of any account does not dance; she leaves this pleasure to those who have no other.[64] As with all pleasures which address the senses rather than the intellect, a surfeit often proves a cure. You have tasted all the delights to be got from certain things, and the sameness at last begins to pall. There could be no more effectual check on the levelling spirit of the age than a voluntary renunciation for a time on the part of the possessors of wealth and power, and a temporary enjoyment of these honors on the part of those who envy them. How soon should we see the harassed artisan fly from the post he once coveted, the working-girl tear off the finery she envied, the millionaire pro tem. entreat his coachman to change places with him! Those who, in the midst of their grinding toil, envy the man in broadcloth, the woman in her barouche, whom they pass and repass day by day, quite leave out of the scales the weight of inner anxiety, grief, or often only ennui, which burdens the rich and fashionable. If they could tell how this one's heart is devoured by jealousy, how that one's home is rendered gloomy by his too plodding ambition, or unhappy by his wife's irritable temper! If they could guess how that sickly, white child, seated among its furs in that dark, handsome clarence, causes sleepless nights and heavy fears to that anxious mother in velvet robe and seal-skin cloak! If they only knew the secret remorse for ever gnawing at the heart of this exquisite of the clubs, whispering the name of a girl once happy and innocent—a name now to him the synonym of a crime; or if they could tell the thoughts of the substantial merchant, as he turns away with heavy steps from a counting-house which, the more astounding is its financial success, the more it resembles, in all but in name, a [pg 131] gambling-den! And, above all, did they but know how often the sad votary of fashion, in some moment of long-repressed but untamable natural emotion, cries out for the freedom of the poor and their robust health! That is the saddest part of this grim masque—no one is contented, no one believes in himself or in his fellow-man; it is a drama in which the actors know full well that when the foot-lights are put out and the curtain of night falls, they will no longer be what they seem. So the gigantic sham grows day by day, stifling nature, burying the intellect, blurring the moral sense, fossilizing the whole being. Outward shapes of humanity remain, but, by some fell enchantment, the spiritual essence is sucked away, and an automaton, skilfully contrived, represents what once was a man.
Even pleasure no longer lurks in its outward forms when “society” has thus worked its will on men. The real enjoyment is gone, but its dismal appearance must be assumed. Not to shock the world—your world—the flavorless fruit must be eaten with a good grace, the graceful draperies of social decorum must be hung on the skeleton. The wheel goes round, and it is so long since you have trusted to your own feet for guidance that you must needs keep hold of the conventional support. It is very difficult to win back your independence once it has been surrendered. The world—your world—is a pitiless task-master, and does not pension off its former servants. If you leave it, you do so at your own risk; and if you can conquer no position which merit and your own individuality are enough to gain, you may resign yourself to the rôle of a dummy. We are not sure that some of the happiest people on earth are not, socially speaking, dummies. But when you come to think of it, what a strange, magnetic power has the little circle that forms your world! When a lady has crowded from five to six hundred guests in her narrow drawing-rooms, she sees before her all the persons who, to her, constitute society. Of these, perhaps one-third are of hazy position; they are but outsiders, candidates for the social honors which will only be bestowed fully and ungrudgingly on their grandchildren. Their opinion is not of much value. When you dissect the remaining thirds, you mentally check off many a respectable and amiable person as incapable of forming any independent opinion; others you secretly stigmatize as gossips, shallow-minded, or spiteful; and the circle of responsible people becomes gradually narrower and narrower. Hardly a score do you credit with sound judgment and discriminating sense. But these are precisely the judges you do not fear, unless your conscience pricks you. They are generous and large-minded; they stand apart from the crowd, with wider sympathies and larger appreciation; they see beyond the present, and unconsciously you find yourself classing them as exceptions to the rule. They do not form the impalpable social tribunal, then? It must be, therefore, the mediocre company of gossips. Search a little into your consciousness or your memory, and you will doubtless find it is so. A recent novelist gives an apt illustration of the relative proportion, in the eyes of an old English country gentleman, between his county, England, and the world. A diagram contains, first, a large, irregular outline representing the county; [pg 132] a round ball ten times smaller typifies England, and an infinitesimal point in space denotes the whole civilized world. This is the way we all look at things. No doubt it is instinctive. To us, “the world” consists of a hundred old women, eminently respectable and unctuously compassionate, who gossip about our private affairs over their tea and hot rolls. This is the core of that dread tribunal which we tremble to offend. It is indeed a hard tyrant, if it can succeed in chaining us to its car, after the pleasures which it dispenses have lost their flavor for us. But, unfortunately, half mankind acknowledge this species of bondage, and we must presume voluntarily, or at least passively.
Were it not that this thraldom is so unspeakably sad, it would seem such a farce, if looked upon dispassionately from without! One might almost liken a ball or great official reception in one of the capitals of fashion to the mediæval Dance of Death. The scene is brilliant with deceptive gaiety; the whole surface of society ripples with smiles; the maskers all wear their brightest garments and their stereotyped badges of mirth. There, in the doorway, stands a lovely woman, in rose-color from head to foot—a cherub's face enshrined in a sunset cloud, so perhaps an artist would fancy. She smiles bewitchingly, and coquets with her fan, while talking to a gray-bearded hero from India. But she has made up her mind to sacrifice her honor to her love; tomorrow, at dawn, she will leave her husband's home and her baby's cradle; and, poor victim! she is panting under the weight of this wretched secret even while she listens to old-world gallantry from her fatherly admirer. Not far from her stands another fair form, not more pure in outward semblance, hardly less beautiful—a gifted woman, a true wife, smiling and conversing as calmly as any one in the room; but she knows that she has a fatal internal disease, and that at any moment death might suddenly overtake her. Not to alarm her husband, she joins in every festivity, carrying her secret with her as the Spartan did the fox who was gnawing at his bosom. Amid the whirl of the dance, you perhaps single out that young girl, fair, fresh, seventeen. She is not as happy as she seems; her eyes roam shyly around; there is one whom she both longs and dreads to see, for she is not sure whether she will not find him by the side of her school friend, now her rival. And among the men, how many, beneath their masks, bear sorrowing or anxious hearts! That elderly man, so calmly listening to a fluent diplomate, knows that to-morrow it will be noised abroad that he is bankrupt—utterly ruined. When he leaves this gay scene to-night, it will be for the railway, which will bear him out of the country in a few hours. Yonder pale man, who wears his regulation smile so listlessly that you cannot help likening it to a garment loosely hung, is here in the interest of a friend, and is waiting an opportunity to speak a word of cordial recommendation to a ministerial acquaintance, formerly a college friend, now a power in the cabinet. His heart is heavy with a private grief; his child lies dangerously ill at home, and his poor distracted wife needs his comfort and support; but, true to his word, he forgets himself for an hour or two, that he may not miss the golden opportunity on which [pg 133] hang the hopes of his friend's whole future. In the centre of the dance, the tall form of a Life-guardsman is prominent; to-morrow he will have disappeared from the world, and only his intimates will know that he had long determined to enter a Catholic seminary, and study for the priesthood. He did not want his decision discussed beforehand, and took the best means of silencing curiosity by appearing the gayest of the gay. Every one here to-night has a long record oppressing his heart—something that makes the present scene quite secondary in his thoughts, and that causes in his breast a bitter feeling of reaction against the mockery of which he forms a part. And this is the thing called pleasure! How little we know of the people with whom we spend our lives—those that touch our hands daily, and speak to us commonplace words of courtesy! Surely the bees in their hive, the ants on their hill, the beavers and prairie-dogs of a “village,” know each other better than we do our next-door neighbors! We cut the thread of a guilty reverie by some observation about the weather, or we laugh the unmeaning laugh that supplies the place of an answer, perhaps inconvenient to ourselves, and this laugh jars on the tenderest memories of a sorrowful past uppermost just then in our neighbor's mind. There is something appalling in all this—the tragedy lies so near the surface, and we tread upon it so often!