The trivial aspect of society is oftener still before us—the inanity of morning calls, the gossip of a provincial town, the petty local interests that absorb three-fourths of mankind. Why, we wonder, should general conversation invariably breed gossip, while a tête-à-tête sometimes elicits real information and rational interchange of ideas? The same person who in a company of five or six has nothing but commonplace remarks to offer, often opens out in private though yet only ceremonial conversation, and startles you by original opinions and valuable suggestions. The French are perhaps the only people who shine in mixed conversation; they have the talent of causerie—a thing that with us hardly exists; the very word is untranslatable. A Frenchwoman can be sparkling where we can only be dull; she can dance on a cobweb, while we should break down on a cart-rope. Gallic vivacity can make even the details of the kitchen amusing, while we should be insufferably prosy on the same subject.
How well we remember the ponderous magnates of our neighborhood in the county! The stately morning calls, the inevitable topics of local interest, the solemnity of that “quarter of an hour” which we were fain to liken to that rendered famous by an old author. Unfailing resources, O Court Journal! the royal visit to such and such a place, the marriage of so-and-so, etc., etc. Then the flower-garden and the poultry-yard (hereditary hobbies with English ladies), the agricultural show, the coming election. And then the formidable ordeal comes to an end, probably to the great relief of both parties. Neither of the two cared for the subjects discussed or for the interlocutor discussing them; but etiquette demanded the waste of fifteen minutes, and the laws of society are as those of the Medes and Persians. In a lower rank of life, the proprieties are perhaps still more rigidly enforced, and the only [pg 134] difference would be in the choice of topics. George Eliot's inimitable gossip in The Mill on the Floss describes that to a nicety, and indeed, although written in England, might do duty almost as well anywhere else. The quality of the house linen, the antiquity of the silver spoons, the solemn conclave over a new bonnet, and the delinquencies of the maid-servant—such would be the staple. In every case you see the mask is on, it fits close, and no form of “society” is disregarded!
Staying for a few days at a friend's house is a terrible trial in polite society. You are never a moment off duty; you have to change costumes as often as an actress in a play where the “unities” are “nowhere”; and, above all, if you are a woman, you have the dismal prospect of three hours' morning talk with a bevy of your own sex, your hands meanwhile engaged in some useless piece of fancy-work. The topics of conversation may be guessed, their range not being very extensive; of course, somebody's marriage or probable engagement is discussed, silks and laces are made up into imaginary toilets with surprising rapidity, the history of some refractory scholar and the details of the clothing club are next drawn upon, and it is very seldom that the talk glides into any interesting or rational channel. It really is a pity that people will persist in talking of each other and not of things. So much might be altered for the better in society, if conversation were not so exclusively personal. Mutual improvement is a thing altogether overlooked in the civilized world. Even men succumb to gossip; for what is the staple of club-talk? So-and-so has “sold out,” and gone into a less expensive regiment; such an one seems very attentive to Miss So-and-so; such another was deeply offended because he was not asked to Lady So-and-so's party; the shooting in Lord C——'s preserves is confoundedly bad this year; Mr. A—— thinks of contesting the next election at B——. Interminable waves of gossip flood the world from the club as from the boudoir, though the latter certainly does by far the most mischief.
We are told that “no man can serve two masters.” In all relations in life this is eminently true. Intellect and Mammon scarcely agree better than God and Mammon. The proper atmosphere of intellectual life is peace, and a student's career should be blameless in morals as well as tranquil in experience. Fashion and society forbid this; they necessitate loss of time, and unsettle the even balance of the mind. For one who values his calmness of spirit and his health of body there is a golden rule, which, if he weigh all external pleasures by it, will infallibly secure him the peace he needs: No pleasure is safe but that which leaves no regret behind it on the morrow. Who has not felt the wretched sensation left by pleasures not fulfilling this condition? Who does not remember the feverish pulse, the troubled dreams, the vague uneasiness, the sickly apathy that follow on a night spent in violent and unnatural amusement? One wiser than our generation has said:
“The desires of sensuality draw thee abroad; but, when the hour is past, what dost thou bring home but a weight upon thy conscience and a dissipation of heart? A joyful going abroad often brings forth a sorrowful coming home, and a [pg 135] merry evening makes a sad morning.”[65]
These words, written centuries ago, contain volumes, and are not less applicable now than in the middle ages.
We often hear it said that man is a gregarious animal. He needs companionship, and clings to his kind. This it is that induces that more stirring life which distinguishes the city from the province; which quickens the perceptions and enlarges the sympathies. But the perfection of the intellectual life is not found in cities. The world-wide influences that stir great centres have locomotive powers that are superior to the channels of human contrivance. It needs not the friction of mind with mind to originate great ideas or engender great deeds. The companionship needful for men of talent lies not in the social circle, but in the library. As Ruskin has said in one of his lectures, we should each of us be proud of being admitted to the friendship of some great poet, artist, or philosopher; and yet we neglect that inner communion which is open to us at any moment with the spirits of all the departed heroes of the mind, whose choicest thoughts are stored on the shelves of our libraries. It is true that the straitened circumstances of many a scholar keep him chain-bound within the limits of great, black, smoky cities; for, since he cannot possess individually the literary treasures that are the necessary food of his intellectual life, he is obliged to slake his thirst at the common fountain of the public libraries and lecture-rooms. But we were speaking rather of the ideal, the perfect scholarly life, which implies a combination of pursuits. The mind which looks to the highest products of ancient and modern thought for its legitimate pabulum can never be but half satisfied with anything less than perfection in its accessory surroundings. Such a mind is naturally allied to a sensitive and imaginative organization, and the coarse contrasts between the peaceful study and the common street-sights of every large city must necessarily be painful to it. Even so the petty gossip and “storms in a tea-cup” of a rural centre; for all that is mean and small is foreign to that calm atmosphere in which sages and poets live. Those sages, those poets, in their day, may have lived, it is true, among the turmoil and strife of small interests; but death and the lapse of time seem to have bereft them, in our eyes, of any such disenchantments; we see them transformed and idealized, and we gladly aim at reproducing, not their commonplace lives, but their spiritual existence. This existence still survives, and it is to this that we wish to ally our own. For this perfection of lofty companionship, the solitude of a country life is most conducive, but it must be a solitude of leisure, of freedom from conventionalities, and, unluckily, of at least some degree of wealth. This latter condition is fulfilled in so few cases that our ideal remains but too often unrealized in this work-a-day world, yet none the less is it the true and only dignified ideal of the intellectual life. The instinct of those born with a spark of genius will bear us out in this assertion; no miser longs for wealth more thirstingly than a book-worm. There is an innate sympathy with the outward beauties of nature which distinguishes the scholar even more than it does the gipsy.
But, as a crowning condition to the enjoyment of these beauties, he must be free from the common cares and interests of men; he must walk in a higher sphere than those whose sympathies cannot mingle with his; he must walk alone in spirit, even though his body may jostle the unthinking crowd. Have we made our scholar a misanthrope? Yes, if thereby is meant a hater of society, with its shams and its stage-like scenery; no, if you understand thereby a hater of humankind. But be sure of one thing: a man learns to love men more the less he sees of them, and the more, by their absence, they leave him his charitable estimate of their probable good qualities. No doubt the earth itself looks fairer from the standpoint of a fixed star than it does to-day to any toiling wayfarer on its rough pathway.