The Ways of Men Part 9

As most of us were living far from home and friends for the purpose of acquiring the rudiments of art, this continual sweeping away of our foundations was discouraging. What was the use, we sometimes asked ourselves, of toiling, if our work was to be cast contemptuously aside by the next "school" as a pleasing trifle, not for a moment to be taken seriously? How was one to find out the truth? Who was to decide when doctors disagreed? Where was the rock on which an earnest student might lay his cornerstone without the misgiving that the next wave in public opinion would sap its base and cast him and his ideals out again at sea?

The eighteenth-century artists and the Italian composers had been sincere and convinced that they were producing works of art. In our own day the idol of one moment becomes the jest of the next. Was there, then, no fixed law?

The short period, for instance, between 1875 and the present time has been long enough for the talent of one painter (Bastien-Lepage) to be discovered, discussed, lauded, acclaimed, then gradually forgotten and decried. During the years when we were studying in Paris, that young painter's works were p.r.o.nounced by the critics and their following to be the last development of Art. Museums and amateurs vied with each other in acquiring his canvases. Yet, only this spring, while dining with two or three art critics in the French capital, I heard Lepage's name mentioned and his works recalled with the smile that is accorded to those who have hoodwinked the public and pa.s.sed off spurious material as the real thing.

If any one doubts the fleeting nature of a reputation, let him go to a sale of modern pictures and note the prices brought by the favorites of twenty years ago. The paintings of that arch-priest, Meissonier, no longer command the sums that eager collectors paid for them a score of years back. When a great European critic dares a.s.sert, as one has recently, of the master's "1815," that "everything in the picture appears metallic, except the cannon and the men's helmets," the mighty are indeed fallen! It is much the same thing with the old masters. There have been fas.h.i.+ons in them as in other forms of art. Fifty years ago Rembrandt's work brought but small prices, and until Henri Rochefort (during his exile) began to write up the English school, Romneys, Lawrences, and Gainsboroughs had little market value.

The result is that most of us are as far away from the solution of that vexed question "What is Art?" at forty as we were when boys. The majority have arranged a compromise with their consciences. We have found out what we like (in itself no mean achievement), and beyond such personal preference, are shy of a.s.serting (as we were fond of doing formerly) that such and such works are "Art," and such others, while pleasing and popular, lack the requisite qualities.

To enquiring minds, sure that an answer to this question exists, but uncertain where to look for it, the fact that one of the thinkers of the century has, in a recent "Evangel," given to the world a definition of "Art," the result of many years' meditation, will be received with joy.

"Art," says Tolstoi, "is simply a condition of life. It is any form of expression that a human being employs to communicate an emotion he has experienced to a fellow-mortal."

An author who, in telling his hopes and sorrows, amuses or saddens a reader, has in just so much produced a work of art. A lover who, by the sincerity of his accent, communicates the flame that is consuming him to the object of his adoration; the shopkeeper who inspires a purchaser with his own admiration for an object on sale; the baby that makes its joy known to a parent-artists! artists! Brown, Jones, or Robinson, the moment he has consciously produced on a neighbor's ear or eye the sensation that a sound or a combination of colors has effected on his own organs, is an artist!

Of course much of this has been recognized through all time. The formula in which Tolstoi has presented his meditations to the world is, however, so fresh that it comes like a revelation, with the additional merit of being understood, with little or no mental effort, by either the casual reader, who, with half-attention attracted by a headline, says to himself, "'What is art?' That looks interesting!" and skims lightly down the lines, or the thinker who, after perusing Tolstoi's lucid words, lays down the volume with a sigh, and murmurs in his humiliation, "Why have I been all these years seeking in the clouds for what was lying ready at my hand?"

The wide-reaching definition of the Russian writer has the effect of a vigorous blow from a pickaxe at the foundations of a shaky and too elaborate edifice. The wordy superstructure of aphorisms and paradox falls to the ground, disclosing fair "Truth," so long a captive within the temple erected in her honor. As, however, the newly freed G.o.ddess smiles on the ignorant and the pedants alike, the result is that with one accord the aesthetes raise a howl! "And the 'beautiful,'" they say, "the beautiful? Can there be any 'Art' without the 'Beautiful'? What! the little greengrocer at the corner is an artist because, forsooth, he has arranged some lettuce and tomatoes into a tempting pile! Anathema! Art is a secret known only to the initiated few; the vulgar can neither understand nor appreciate it! We are the elect! Our mission is to explain what Art is and point out her beauty to a coa.r.s.e and heedless world. Only those with a sense of the 'beautiful' should be allowed to enter into her sacred presence."

Here the expounders of "Art" plunge into a sea of words, offering a dozen definitions each more obscure than its predecessor, all of which have served in turn as watchwords of different "schools." Tolstoi's sweeping truth is too far-reaching to please these gentry. Like the priests of past religions, they would have preferred to keep such knowledge as they had to themselves and expound it, little at a time, to the ignorant. The great Russian has kicked away their altar and routed the false G.o.ds, whose acolytes will never forgive him.

Those of my readers who have been intimate with painters, actors, or musicians, will recall with amus.e.m.e.nt how lightly the performances of an a.s.sociate are condemned by the brotherhood as falling short of the high standard which according to these wiseacres, "Art" exacts, and how sure each speaker is of understanding just where a brother carries his "mote."

Voltaire once avoided giving a definition of the beautiful by saying, "Ask a toad what his ideas of beauty are. He will indicate the particular female toad he happens to admire and praise her goggle-eyes and yellow belly as the perfection of beauty!" A negro from Guiana will make much the same unsatisfactory answer, so the old philosopher recommends us not to be didactic on subjects where judgments are relative, and at the same time without appeal.

Tolstoi denies that an idea as subtle as a definition of Art can be cla.s.sified by pedants, and proceeds to formulate the following delightful axiom: "A principle upon which no two people can agree does not exist."

A truth is proved by its evidence to all. Discussion outside of that is simply beating the air. Each succeeding "school" has sounded its death-knell by a.s.serting that certain combinations alone produced beauty-the weakness of to-day being an inclination to see art only in the obscure and the recondite. As a result we drift each hour further from the truth. Modern intellectuality has formed itself into a scornful aristocracy whose members, esteeming themselves the elite, withdraw from the vulgar public, and live in a world of their own, looking (like the Lady of Shalott) into a mirror at distorted images of nature and declaring that what they see is art!

In literature that which is difficult to understand is much admired by the simple-minded, who also decry pictures that tell their own story! A certain cla.s.s of minds enjoy being mystified, and in consequence writers, painters, and musicians have appeared who are willing to juggle for their amus.e.m.e.nt. The simple definition given to us by the Russian writer comes like a breath of wholesome air to those suffocating in an atmosphere of perfumes and artificial heat. Art is our common inheritance, not the property of a favored few. The wide world we love is full of it, and each of us in his humble way is an artist when with a full heart he communicates his delight and his joy to another. Tolstoi has given us back our birthright, so long withheld, and crowned with his aged hands the true artist.

CHAPTER 19-The Genealogical Craze

There undoubtedly is something in the American temperament that prevents our doing anything in moderation. If we take up an idea, it is immediately run to exaggeration and then abandoned, that the nation may fly at a tangent after some new fad. Does this come from our climate, or (as I am inclined to think) from the curiously uncla.s.sified state of society in our country, where so few established standards exist and so few are sure of their own or their neighbors' standing? In consequence, if Mrs. Brown starts anything, Mrs. Jones, for fear of being left behind, immediately "goes her one better" to be in turn "raised" by Mrs.

Robinson.

In other lands a reasonable pride of birth has always been one of the bonds holding communities together, and is estimated at its just value.

We, after having practically ignored the subject for half a century, suddenly rush to the other extreme, and develop an entire forest of genealogical trees at a growth.

Chagrined, probably, at the small amount of consideration that their superior birth commanded, a number of aristocratically minded matrons united a few years ago as "Daughters of the Revolution," restricting members.h.i.+p to women descended from officers of Was.h.i.+ngton's army. There may have been a reason for the formation of this society. I say "may"

because it does not seem quite clear what its aim was. The originators doubtless imagined they were founding an exclusive circle, but the numbers who clamored for admittance quickly dispelled this illusion. So a small group of the elect withdrew in disgust and banded together under the cognomen of "Colonial Dames."

The only result of these two movements was to awaken envy, hatred, and malice in the hearts of those excluded from the mysterious rites, which to outsiders seemed to consist in blackballing as many aspirants as possible. Some victims of this bad treatment, thirsting for revenge, struck on the happy thought of inaugurating an "Aztec" society. As that t.i.tle conveyed absolutely no idea to any one, its members were forced to explain that only descendants of officers who fought in the Mexican War were eligible. What the elect did when they got into the circle was not specified.

The "Social Order of Foreign Wars" was the next creation, its authors evidently considering the Mexican campaign as a domestic article, a sort of family squabble. Then the "Children of 1812" attracted attention, both groups having immediate success. Indeed, the vogue of these enterprises has been in inverse ratio to their usefulness or _raison d'etre_, people apparently being ready to join anything rather than get left out in the cold.

Jealous probably of seeing women enjoying all the fun, their husbands and brothers next banded together as "Sons of the Revolution." The wives retaliated by inst.i.tuting the "Granddaughters of the Revolution" and "The Mayflower Order," the "price of admission" to the latter being descent from some one who crossed in that celebrated s.h.i.+p-whether as one of the crew or as pa.s.senger is not clear.

It was not, however, in the American temperament to rest content with modest beginnings, the national motto being, "The best is good enough for me." So wind was quickly taken out of the Mayflower's sails by "The Royal Order of the Crown," to which none need apply who were not prepared to prove descent from one or more royal ancestors. It was not stated in the prospectus whether Irish sovereigns and Fiji Island kings counted, but I have been told that bar sinisters form a cla.s.s apart, and are deprived of the right to vote or hold office.

Descent from any old king was, however, not sufficient for the high-toned people of our republic. When you come to think of it, such a circle might be "mixed." One really must draw the line somewhere (as the Boston parvenu replied when asked why he had not invited his brother to a ball).

So the founders of the "Circle of Holland Dames of the New Netherlands"

drew the line at descent from a sovereign of the Low Countries. It does not seem as if this could be a large society, although those old Dutch pashas had an unconscionable number of children.

The promoters of this enterprise seem nevertheless to have been fairly successful, for they gave a fete recently and crowned a queen. To be acclaimed their sovereign by a group of people all of royal birth is indeed an honor. Rumors of this ceremony have come to us outsiders. It is said that they employed only lineal descendants of Vatel to prepare their banquet, and I am a.s.sured that an offspring of Gambrinus acted as butler.

But it is wrong to joke on this subject. The state of affairs is becoming too serious. When sane human beings form a "Baronial Order of Runnymede," and announce in their prospectus that only descendants through the male line from one (or more) of the forty n.o.blemen who forced King John to sign the Magna Charta are what our Was.h.i.+ngton Mrs. Malaprop would call "legible," the action attests a diseased condition of the community. Any one taking the trouble to remember that eight of the original barons died childless, and that the Wars of the Roses swept away nine tenths of what families the others may have had, that only one man in England (Lord de Ros) can at the present day _prove_ male descent further back than the eleventh century, must appreciate the absurdity of our compatriots' pretensions. Burke's Peerage is acknowledged to be the most "faked" volume in the English language, but the descents it attributes are like mathematical demonstrations compared to the "trees"

that members of these new American orders climb.

When my cla.s.s was graduated from Mr. McMullen's school, we little boys had the brilliant idea of uniting in a society, but were greatly put about for an effective name, hitting finally upon that of Ancient Seniors' Society. For a group of infants, this must be acknowledged to have been a luminous inspiration. We had no valid reason for forming that society, not being particularly fond of each other. Living in several cities, we rarely met after leaving school and had little to say to each other when we did. But it sounded so fine to be an "Ancient Senior," and we hoped in our next school to impress new companions with that t.i.tle and make them feel proper respect for us in consequence.

Pride, however, sustained a fall when it was pointed out that the initials formed the ominous word "a.s.s."

I have a shrewd suspicion that the motives which prompted our youthful actions are not very different from those now inciting children of a larger growth to band together, blackball their friends, crown queens, and perform other senseless mummeries, such as having the weatherc.o.c.k of a departed meeting-house brought in during a banquet, and dressing restaurant waiters in knickerbockers for "one night only."

This malarial condition of our social atmosphere accounts for the quant.i.ty of genealogical quacks that have taken to sending typewritten letters, stating that the interest they take in your private affairs compels them to offer proof of your descent from any crowned head to whom you may have taken a fancy. One correspondent a.s.sured me only this month that he had papers in his possession showing beyond a doubt that I might claim a certain King McDougal of Scotland for an ancestor. I have misgivings, however, as to the quality of the royal blood in my veins, for the same correspondent was equally confident six months ago that my people came in direct line from Charlemagne. As I have no desire to "corner" the market in kings, these letters have remained unanswered.

Considering the mania to trace descent from ill.u.s.trious men, it astonishes me that a Mystic Band, consisting of lineal descendants from the Seven Sages of Greece, has not before now burst upon an astonished world. It has been suggested that if some one wanted to organize a truly restricted circle, "The Grandchildren of our Tripoli War" would be an excellent t.i.tle. So few Americans took part in that conflict-and still fewer know anything about it-that the satisfaction of joining the society would be immense to exclusively-minded people.

There is only one explanation that seems in any way to account for this vast tomfoolery. A little sentence, printed at the bottom of a prospectus recently sent to me, lets the ambitious cat out of the genealogical bag. It states that "social position is a.s.sured to people joining our order." Thanks to the idiotic habit some newspapers have inaugurated of advertising, gratis, a number of self-elected society "leaders," many feeble-minded people, with more ambition than cash, and a larger supply of family papers than brains, have been bitten with a social madness, and enter these traps, thinking they are the road to position and honors. The number of fools is larger than one would have believed possible, if the success of so many "orders," "circles,"

"commanderies," and "regencies" were not there to testify to the unending folly of the would-be "smart."

This last decade of the century has brought to light many strange fads and senseless manias. This "descent" craze, however, surpa.s.ses them all in inanity. The keepers of insane asylums will tell you that one of the hopeless forms of madness is _la folie des grandeurs_. A breath of this delirium seems to be blowing over our country. Crowns and sceptres haunt the dreams of simple republican men and women, troubling their slumbers and leading them a will-o'-the-wisp dance back across the centuries.

CHAPTER 20-As the Twig is Bent

I knew, in my youth, a French village far up among the Cevennes Mountains, where the one cultivated man of the place, saddened by the unlovely lives of the peasants around him and by the bare walls of the village school, organized evening cla.s.ses for the boys. During these informal hours, he talked to them of literature and art and showed them his prints and paintings. When the youths' interest was aroused he lent them books, that they might read about the statues and buildings that had attracted their attention. At first it appeared a hopeless task to arouse any interest among these peasants in subjects not bearing on their abject lives. To talk with boys of the ideal, when their poor bodies were in need of food and raiment, seemed superfluous; but in time the charm worked, as it always will. The beautiful appealed to their simple natures, elevating and refining them, and opening before their eager eyes perspectives of undreamed-of interest. The self-imposed task became a delight as his pupils' minds responded to his efforts. Although death soon ended his useful life, the seed planted grew and bore fruit in many humble homes.

At this moment I know men in several walks of life who revere with touching devotion the memory of the one human being who had brought to them, at the moment when they were most impressionable, the gracious message that existence was not merely a struggle for bread. The boys he had gathered around him realize now that the encouragement and incentive received from those evening glimpses of n.o.ble works existing in the world was the mainspring of their subsequent development and a source of infinite pleasure through all succeeding years.

This reference to an individual effort toward cultivating the poor has been made because other delicate spirits are attempting some such task in our city, where quite as much as in the French village schoolchildren stand in need of some message of beauty in addition to the instruction they receive,-some window opened for them, as it were, upon the fields of art, that their eyes when raised from study or play may rest on objects more inspiring than blank walls and the graceless surroundings of street or schoolroom.

We are far too quick in a.s.suming that love of the beautiful is confined to the highly educated; that the poor have no desire to surround themselves with graceful forms and harmonious colors. We wonder at and deplore their crude standards, bewailing the general lack of taste and the gradual reducing of everything to a commonplace money basis. We smile at the efforts toward adornment attempted by the poor, taking it too readily for granted that on this point they are beyond redemption.

This error is the less excusable as so little has been done by way of experiment before forming an opinion,-whole cla.s.ses being put down as inferior beings, incapable of appreciation, before they have been allowed even a glimpse of the works of art that form the daily mental food of their judges.

The portly charlady who rules despotically in my chambers is an example.

It has been a curious study to watch her growing interest in the objects that have here for the first time come under her notice; the delight she has come to take in dusting and arranging my belongings, and her enthusiasm at any new acquisition. Knowing how bare her own home was, I felt at first only astonishment at her vivid interest in what seemed beyond her comprehension, but now realize that in some blind way she appreciates the rare and the delicate quite as much as my more cultivated visitors. At the end of one laborious morning, when everything was arranged to her satisfaction, she turned to me her poor, plain face, lighted up with an expression of delight, and exclaimed, "Oh, sir, I do love to work in these rooms! I'm never so happy as when I'm arranging them elegant things!" And, although my pleasure in her pleasure was modified by the discovery that she had taken an eighteenth-century comb to disentangle the fringes of a rug, and broken several of its teeth in her ardor, that she invariably placed a certain Whister etching upside down, and then stood in rapt admiration before it, still, in watching her enthusiasm, I felt a thrill of satisfaction at seeing how her untaught taste responded to a contact with good things.

Here in America, and especially in our city, which we have been at such pains to make as hideous as possible, the schoolrooms, where hundreds of thousands of children pa.s.s many hours daily, are one degree more graceless than the town itself; the most artistically inclined child can hardly receive any but unfortunate impressions. The other day a friend took me severely to task for rating our American women on their love of the big shops, and gave me, I confess, an entirely new idea on the subject. "Can't you see," she said, "that the shops here are what the museums abroad are to the poor? It is in them only that certain people may catch glimpses of the dainty and exquisite manufactures of other countries. The little education their eyes receive is obtained during visits to these emporiums."

If this proves so, and it seems probable, it only proves how the humble long for something more graceful than their meagre homes afford.

In the hope of training the younger generations to better standards and less vulgar ideals, a group of ladies are making an attempt to surround our schoolchildren during their impressionable youth with reproductions of historic masterpieces, and have already decorated many schoolrooms in this way. For a modest sum it is possible to tint the bare walls an attractive color-a delight in itself-and adorn them with plaster casts of statues and solar prints of pictures and buildings. The transformation that fifty or sixty dollars judiciously expended in this way produces in a schoolroom is beyond belief, and, as the advertis.e.m.e.nts say, "must be seen to be appreciated," giving an air of cheerfulness and refinement to the dreariest apartment.