Over the Teacups Part 22

This series of papers is the fourth of its kind which I have offered to my readers. I may be allowed to look back upon the succession of serial articles which was commenced more than thirty years ago, in 1857. "The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table" was the first of the series. It was begun without the least idea what was to be its course and its outcome.

Its characters shaped themselves gradually as the ma.n.u.script grew under my hand. I jotted down on the sheet of blotting paper before me the thoughts and fancies which came into my head. A very odd-looking object was this page of memoranda. Many of the hints were worked up into formal shape, many were rejected. Sometimes I recorded a story, a jest, or a pun for consideration, and made use of it or let it alone as my second thought decided. I remember a curious coincidence, which, if I have ever told in print,--I am not sure whether I have or not,--I will tell over again. I mention it, not for the pun, which I rejected as not very edifying and perhaps not new, though I did not recollect having seen it.

Mulier, Latin for woman; why apply that name to one of the gentle but occasionally obstinate s.e.x? The answer was that a woman is (sometimes) more mulish than a mule. Please observe that I did not like the poor pun very well, and thought it rather rude and inelegant. So I left it on the blotter, where it was standing when one of the next numbers of "Punch"

came out and contained that very same pun, which must have been hit upon by some English contributor at just about the same time I fell upon it on this side of the Atlantic. This fact may be added to the chapter of coincidences which belongs to the first number of this series of papers.

The "Autocrat" had the attraction of novelty, which of course was wanting in the succeeding papers of similar character. The criticisms upon the successive numbers as they came out were various, but generally encouraging. Some were more than encouraging; very high-colored in their phrases of commendation. When the papers were brought together in a volume their success was beyond my expectations. Up to the present time the "Autocrat" has maintained its position. An immortality of a whole generation is more than most writers are ent.i.tled to expect. I venture to think, from the letters I receive from the children and grandchildren of my first set of readers, that for some little time longer, at least, it will continue to be read, and even to be a favorite with some of its readers. Non omnis moriar is a pleasant thought to one who has loved his poor little planet, and will, I trust, retain kindly recollections of it through whatever wilderness of worlds he may be called to wander in his future pilgrimages. I say "poor little planet." Ever since I had a ten cent look at the transit of Venus, a few years ago, through the telescope in the Mall, the earth has been wholly different to me from what it used to be. I knew from books what a speck it is in the universe, but nothing ever brought the fact home like the sight of the sister planet sailing across the sun's disk, about large enough for a buckshot, not large enough for a full-sized bullet. Yes, I love the little globule where I have spent more than fourscore years, and I like to think that some of my thoughts and some of my emotions may live themselves over again when I am sleeping. I cannot thank all the kind readers of the "Autocrat" who are constantly sending me their acknowledgments. If they see this printed page, let them be a.s.sured that a writer is always rendered happier by being told that he has made a fellow-being wiser or better, or even contributed to his harmless entertainment. This a correspondent may take for granted, even if his letter of grateful recognition receives no reply. It becomes more and more difficult for me to keep up with my correspondents, and I must soon give it up as impossible.

"The Professor at the Breakfast Table" followed immediately on the heels of the "Autocrat." The Professor was the alter ego of the first personage. In the earlier series he had played a secondary part, and in this second series no great effort was made to create a character wholly unlike the first. The Professor was more outspoken, however, on religious subjects, and brought down a good deal of hard language on himself and the author to whom he owed his existence. I suppose he may have used some irritating expressions, unconsciously, but not unconscientiously, I am sure. There is nothing harder to forgive than the sting of an epigram. Some of the old doctors, I fear, never pardoned me for saying that if a s.h.i.+p, loaded with an a.s.sorted cargo of the drugs which used to be considered the natural food of sick people, went to the bottom of the sea, it would be "all the better for mankind and all the worse for the fishes." If I had not put that snapper on the end of my whip-lash, I might have got off without the ill temper which my ant.i.thesis provoked. Thirty years set that all right, and the same thirty years have so changed the theological atmosphere that such abusive words as "heretic" and "infidel," applied to persons who differ from the old standards of faith, are chiefly interesting as a test of breeding, being seldom used by any people above the social half-caste line. I am speaking of Protestants; how it may be among Roman Catholics I do not know, but I suspect that with them also it is a good deal a matter of breeding. There were not wanting some who liked the Professor better than the Autocrat. I confess that I prefer my champagne in its first burst of gaseous enthusiasm; but if my guest likes it better after it has stood awhile, I am pleased to accommodate him. The first of my series came from my mind almost with an explosion, like the champagne cork; it startled me a little to see what I had written, and to hear what people said about it. After that first explosion the flow was more sober, and I looked upon the product of my wine-press more coolly.

Continuations almost always sag a little. I will not say that of my own second effort, but if others said it, I should not be disposed to wonder at or to dispute them.

"The Poet at the Breakfast Table" came some years later. This series of papers was not so much a continuation as a resurrection. It was a doubly hazardous attempt, made without any extravagant expectations, and was received as well as I had any right to antic.i.p.ate. It differed from the other two series in containing a poem of considerable length, published in successive portions. This poem holds a good deal of self-communing, and gave me the opportunity of expressing some thoughts and feelings not to be found elsewhere in my writings. I had occasion to read the whole volume, not long since, in preparation for a new edition, and was rather more pleased with it than I had expected to be. An old author is constantly rediscovering himself in the more or less fossilized productions of his earlier years. It is a long time since I have read the "Autocrat," but I take it up now and then and read in it for a few minutes, not always without some degree of edification.

These three series of papers, "Autocrat," "Professor," "Poet," are all studies of life from somewhat different points of view. They are largely made up of sober reflections, and appeared to me to require some lively human interest to save them from wearisome didactic dulness. What could be more natural than that love should find its way among the young people who helped to make up the circle gathered around the table?

Nothing is older than the story of young love. Nothing is newer than that same old story. A bit of gilding here and there has a wonderful effect in enlivening a landscape or an apartment. Napoleon consoled the Parisians in their year of defeat by gilding the dome of the Invalides.

Boston has glorified her State House and herself at the expense of a few sheets of gold leaf laid on the dome, which s.h.i.+nes like a sun in the eyes of her citizens, and like a star in those of the approaching traveller. I think the gilding of a love-story helped all three of these earlier papers. The same need I felt in the series of papers just closed. The slight incident of Delilah's appearance and disappearance served my purpose to some extent. But what should I do with Number Five?

The reader must follow out her career for himself. For myself, I think that she and the Tutor have both utterly forgotten the difference of their years in the fascination of intimate intercourse. I do not believe that a nature so large, so rich in affection, as Number Five's is going to fall defeated of its best inheritance of life, like a vine which finds no support for its tendrils to twine around, and so creeps along the ground from which nature meant that love should lift it. I feel as if I ought to follow these two personages of my sermonizing story until they come together or separate, to fade, to wither,--perhaps to die, at last, of something like what the doctors call heart-failure, but which might more truly be called heart-starvation. When I say die, I do not mean necessarily the death that goes into the obituary column. It may come to that, in one or both; but I think that, if they are never united, Number Five will outlive the Tutor, who will fall into melancholy ways, and pine and waste, while she lives along, feeling all the time that she has cheated herself of happiness. I hope that is not going to be their fortune, or misfortune. Vieille fille fait jeune mariee. What a youthful bride Number Five would be, if she could only make up her mind to matrimony! In the mean time she must be left with her lambs all around her. May heaven temper the winds to them, for they have been shorn very close, every one of them, of their golden fleece of aspirations and antic.i.p.ations.

I must avail myself of this opportunity to say a few words to my distant friends who take interest enough in my writings, early or recent, to wish to enter into communication with me by letter, or to keep up a communication already begun. I have given notice in print that the letters, books, and ma.n.u.scripts which I receive by mail are so numerous that if I undertook to read and answer them all I should have little time for anything else. I have for some years depended on the a.s.sistance of a secretary, but our joint efforts have proved unable, of late, to keep down the acc.u.mulations which come in with every mail. So many of the letters I receive are of a pleasant character that it is hard to let them go unacknowledged. The extreme friendliness which pervades many of them gives them a value which I rate very highly. When large numbers of strangers insist on claiming one as a friend, on the strength of what he has written, it tends to make him think of himself somewhat indulgently.

It is the most natural thing in the world to want to give expression to the feeling the loving messages from far-off unknown friends must excite. Many a day has had its best working hours broken into, spoiled for all literary work, by the labor of answering correspondents whose good opinion it is gratifying to have called forth, but who were unconsciously laying a new burden on shoulders already aching. I know too well that what I say will not reach the eyes of many who might possibly take a hint from it. Still I must keep repeating it before breaking off suddenly and leaving whole piles of letters unanswered. I have been very heavily handicapped for many years. It is partly my own fault. From what my correspondents tell me, I must infer that I have established a dangerous reputation for willingness to answer all sorts of letters. They come with such insinuating humility,--they cannot bear to intrude upon my time, they know that I have a great many calls upon it,--and incontinently proceed to lay their additional weight on the load which is breaking my back.

The hypocrisy of kind-hearted people is one of the most painful exhibitions of human weakness. It has occurred to me that it might be profitable to reproduce some of my unwritten answers to correspondents.

If those which were actually written and sent were to be printed in parallel columns with those mentally formed but not written out responses and comments, the reader would get some idea of the internal conflicts an honest and not unamiable person has to go through, when he finds himself driven to the wall by a correspondence which is draining his vocabulary to find expressions that sound as agreeably, and signify as little, as the phrases used by a diplomatist in closing an official communication.

No. 1. Want my autograph, do you? And don't know how to spell my name.

An a for an e in my middle name. Leave out the l in my last name. Do you know how people hate to have their names misspelled? What do you suppose are the sentiments entertained by the Thompsons with a p towards those who address them in writing as Thomson?

No. 2. Think the lines you mention are by far the best I ever wrote, hey? Well, I didn't write those lines. What is more, I think they are as detestable a string of rhymes as I could wish my worst enemy had written. A very pleasant frame of mind I am in for writing a letter, after reading yours!

No. 3. I am glad to hear that my namesake, whom I never saw and never expect to see, has cut another tooth; but why write four pages on the strength of that domestic occurrence?

No. 4. You wish to correct an error in my Broomstick poem, do you? You give me to understand that Wilmington is not in Ess.e.x County, but in Middles.e.x. Very well; but are they separated by running water? Because if they are not, what could hinder a witch from crossing the line that separates Wilmington from Andover, I should like to know? I never meant to imply that the witches made no excursions beyond the district which was more especially their seat of operations.

As I come towards the end of this task which I had set myself, I wish, of course, that I could have performed it more to my own satisfaction and that of my readers. This is a feeling which almost every one must have at the conclusion of any work he has undertaken. A common and very simple reason for this disappointment is that most of us overrate our capacity. We expect more of ourselves than we have any right to, in virtue of our endowments. The figurative descriptions of the last Grand a.s.size must no more be taken literally than the golden crowns, which we do not expect or want to wear on our heads, or the golden harps, which we do not want or expect to hold in our hands. Is it not too true that many religious sectaries think of the last tribunal complacently, as the scene in which they are to have the satisfaction of saying to the believers of a creed different from their own, "I told you so"? Are not others oppressed with the thought of the great returns which will be expected of them as the product of their great gifts, the very limited amount of which they do not suspect, and will be very glad to learn, even at the expense of their self-love, when they are called to their account? If the ways of the Supreme Being are ever really to be "justified to men," to use Milton's expression, every human being may expect an exhaustive explanation of himself. No man is capable of being his own counsel, and I cannot help hoping that the ablest of the archangels will be retained for the defence of the worst of sinners.

He himself is unconscious of the agencies which made him what he is.

Self-determining he may be, if you will, but who determines the self which is the proximate source of the determination? Why was the A self like his good uncle in bodily aspect and mental and moral qualities, and the B self like the bad uncle in look and character? Has not a man a right to ask this question in the here or in the hereafter,--in this world or in any world in which he may find himself? If the All-wise wishes to satisfy his reasonable and reasoning creatures, it will not be by a display of elemental convulsions, but by the still small voice, which treats with him as a dependent ent.i.tled to know the meaning of his existence, and if there was anything wrong in his adjustment to the moral and spiritual conditions of the world around him to have full allowance made for it. No melodramatic display of warring elements, such as the white-robed Second Adventist imagines, can meet the need of the human heart. The thunders and lightnings of Sinai terrified and impressed the more timid souls of the idolatrous and rebellious caravan which the great leader was conducting, but a far n.o.bler manifestation of divinity was that when "the Lord spake unto Moses face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend."

I find the burden and restrictions of rhyme more and more troublesome as I grow older. There are times when it seems natural enough to employ that form of expression, but it is only occasionally; and the use of it as the vehicle of the commonplace is so prevalent that one is not much tempted to select it as the medium for his thoughts and emotions. The art of rhyming has almost become a part of a high-school education, and its practice is far from being an evidence of intellectual distinction.

Mediocrity is as much forbidden to the poet in our days as it was in those of Horace, and the immense majority of the verses written are stamped with hopeless mediocrity.

When one of the ancient poets found he was trying to grind out verses which came unwillingly, he said he was writing--

INVITA MINERVA.

Vex not the Muse with idle prayers, --She will not hear thy call; She steals upon thee unawares, Or seeks thee not at all.

Soft as the moonbeams when they sought Endymion's fragrant bower, She parts the whispering leaves of thought To show her full-blown flower.

For thee her wooing hour has pa.s.sed, The singing birds have flown, And winter comes with icy blast To chill thy buds unblown.

Yet, though the woods no longer thrill As once their arches rung, Sweet echoes hover round thee still Of songs thy summer sung.

Live in thy past; await no more The rush of heaven-sent wings; Earth still has music left in store While Memory sighs and sings.

I hope my special Minerva may not always be unwilling, but she must not be called upon as she has been in times past. Now that the teacups have left the table, an occasional evening call is all that my readers must look for. Thanking them for their kind companions.h.i.+p, and hoping that I may yet meet them in the now and then in the future, I bid them goodbye for the immediate present, then in the future, I bid them goodbye for the immediate present.