Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General Part 14

Why has the masquerade ceased to interest and amuse? Simply because no travestie of costume, no change of condition, is so strikingly ludicrous as what we see on every side of us. The illiterate man with the revenue of a prince; the millionaire who cannot write his name, and whom yesterday we saw as a navvy; the Emperor who, a few years back, lodged over the bootmaker's; the out-at-elbow followers of imperial fortune, now raised to the highest splendour, and dispensing hospitalities more than regal in magnificence;--these are the spectacles which make the masquerade a tiresome mockery; and it is exactly because we get the veritable article for nothing that we neither seek playhouse nor ballroom, but go out into the streets and highways for our drama, and take our Kembles and Macreadys as we find them at taverns, at railway-stations, on the gra.s.sy slopes of Malvern, or the breezy cliffs of Brighton. Once admit that the wild-flower plucked at random has more true delicacy of tint and elegance of form, and there is no going back to the tasteless mockery of artificial wax and wire. The broad boards of real life are the true stage; and he who cannot find matter of interest or amus.e.m.e.nt in the piece performed, may rely upon it that the cause is in himself, and not in the drama. Some will say, The world is just what it always was. People are no more fict.i.tious now than at any other time.

There was always, and there will be always, a certain amount of false pretension in life which you may, if you like, call acting. And to this I demur _in toto_, and a.s.sert that as every age has its peculiar stamp of military glory, or money-seeking, or religious fervour, or dissipation, or scientific discovery, or unprofitable trifling, so the mark of our own time will be found to be its thorough unreality. Every one is in travestie. Selfishness is got up to play philanthropy, apathy to perform zeal, intense self-seeking goes in for love of country; and, to crown all, one of the most ordinary and vulgar minds of all Europe now directs and disposes of the fate and fortunes of all Christendom.

Daily habit familiarises us with the acting of the barrister. His generous trustfulness, his love of all that is good, his scorn for Vice, his n.o.ble pity, and the withering sarcasm with which he scathes the ill-doer, we know, can be had, in common cases, for ten pounds ten s.h.i.+llings; and five times as much will enlist in our service the same qualities in a less diluted form; while, by quadrupling the latter sum, we arrive at a self-devotion before which brotherly love pales, and old friends.h.i.+ps seem a cold and selfish indifferentism. We had contracted for this man's acuteness, his subtlety, his quick perception, and his ready-wittedness; but he gives, besides these, his hearty trustfulness, his faith in our honour, his conviction in our integrity: he knows our motives; he has been inside our bosom, and comes out to declare that all is pure and spotless there; and he does this with a trembling lip and a swelling throat, the sweat on his brow and the tear in his eye, it being all the while a matter of mere accident that he had not been engaged on the opposite side, and all the love he bears us been "briefed" for the defendant.

Look at the physician, too. Who is it, then, enters the sick-room with the footfall of a cat, and draws our curtain as gently as a zephyr might stir a rose-leaf, whose tender accents fall softly on our ear, and who asks with the fondest anxiety how we have pa.s.sed the night? Who is it that cheers, consoles, encourages, and supports us? Who a.s.sociates himself with our sufferings, and winces under our pain, and as suddenly rallies as we grow better, and joins in our little sickbed drolleries?

Who does all these?--a consummate actor, who takes from thirty to forty daily "benefits," and whose performances are paid at a guinea a scene!

The candidate on the hustings, the Government commissioner on his tour of inspection, the vicar-general of my lord bishop, the admiral on his station, the minister at the grand-ducal Court, are all good specimens of common acting--parts which can be filled with very ordinary capacities, and not above the powers of everyday artists. They conjugate but one verb, and on its moods and tenses they trade to the end of the chapter. These men never soar into the heroic regions of the drama; they infuse no imagination into their parts. They are as unpoetical as a lord-in-waiting. There are but two stops on their organ. They are bland, or they are overbearing; they are either beautifully gentle, or they are terrible in their wrath.

It is a strange feature of our age that the highest walk of the real-life drama should be given up to the men of money, and that Finance should be the most suggestive of all that is creative, fanciful, and imaginative. What a commentary on our era! It is no paradox I p.r.o.nounce here. The greatest actor I ever saw, the most consummate artist, was a railroad contractor; that is, he had more persuasiveness, more of that magnetic captivation which subordinates reason to mere hope, than any one I ever listened to. He scorned the pictorial, he despised all landscape effects, he summoned to his aid no a.s.sistance from gorge or mountain, no deep-bosomed wood or bright eddying river; he was a man of culverts and cuttings, of quartz and limestone and flint; with a glance he could estimate traffic, and with the speed of the lightning-flash tell you what dividend could come of the shares.

It was, however, in results that he was grandiose. Hear him on the theme of a completed line, a newly-opened tunnel, or a finished viaduct--it was a Poem! Such a picture of gus.h.i.+ng beat.i.tude as he could paint! It was the golden age--prosperity, happiness, and peace on every side; the song of the husbandman at his plough mingling with the hum of the village school; the thousand forms of civilisation, from cheap sugar to penny serials, that would permeate the land; the peasant studying social science over his tea, and the railway-guard supping his "cheap Gladstone" as he speculated on the Antiquity of Man. Never was such an Eden on earth, and all to be accomplished at the cost of a mere million or two, with a "limited liability."

With what a grand contempt this great man talked of the people who busied themselves in the visionary pursuits of politics or literature, or who devoted themselves to the Arts or Field-sports! With him earthworks were the grandest achievements of humanity, and there was no such civiliser as a parliamentary train. Had he been simply an enthusiast, that fatal false logic that _will_ track enthusiasm--however it be guided--would have betrayed him: but the man was not an enthusiast--he was a great actor; and while to capitalists and speculators he appealed by all the seductive inducements of profits, premiums, and preference shares, to the outer and unmoneyed world he made his approaches by a beautiful and touching philanthropy.

Did he believe in all this? Heaven knows. He talked and acted as if he did; and though, when I last saw him, he had smashed his banker, ruined his company, and beggared the shareholders, he was high-hearted, hopeful, and buoyant as ever. It was a general who had lost a battle, but he meant to recruit another army. It was some accidental rumour of a war--some stupid disturbance on the Danube or the Black Sea--that had frightened capital and made "money tight." The scheme itself was a glorious project--an unrivalled investment. Never was there such a paying line--innumerable towns, filled with a most migratory population, ever on the move, and only needing to learn the use of certain luxuries to be constantly in demand of them.

With a good harvest, however, and money easy, if Lord Russell could only be commonly civil to the Continental Cabinets, all would go well yet.

The bounties of Providence would be diffused over the earth--food would be cheap, taxation reduced, labour plenty, and "then, sir, these worthy people shall have their line, if I die for it."

I find it very hard to believe in Borneo's love or Oth.e.l.lo's jealousy.

I cannot, let me do all that I will, accept them as real, even in their most impa.s.sioned moments, and yet this other man holds me captive. If I had a hundred pounds in the world, I'd put it into his scheme, and I really feel that, in not borrowing the money to make a venture, I am a poor-spirited creature that has not the courage to win his way to fortune.

And yet these fellows have no aid from dress or make-up. They are not surrounded with all the appliances that aid a deception. They come to us in their everyday apparel, and, mayhap, at inopportune moments, when we are weary, or busy, or out of sorts, to talk of what we are not interested in, and have no relish for. With their marvellous tact they conquer apathy and overcome repugnance; they gain a hearing, and they obtain at least time for more. There is much in what they say that we feel no interest in; but now and then they _do_ touch a chord that vibrates within us; and when they do so, it is like magic the instinct with which they know it. It was that Roman camp, that lead-mine, that trout-stream, or that paper-mill, did the thing; and the rogue saw it as plainly as if he had a peep into our brain, and could read our thoughts like a printed book. These then, I say, are the truly great actors, who walk the boards of life with unwritten parts, who are the masters of our emotions, even to the extent of taking away our money, and who demand our trustfulness as a right not to be denied them.

Now, what a poor piece of mockery, of false tinsel and fringe and folly and pretence, is your stage-player beside one of these fellows! Who is going to sit three weary hours at the Haymarket, bored by the a.s.sumed plausibility of the actor, when the real, the actual, the positive thing that he so poorly simulates is to be met on the railroad, at the station, in the club, on the chain-pier, or the penny steamer? Is there any one, I ask, who will pay to see the plaster-cast when he can behold the marble original for nothing? You say, "Are you going to the masquerade?" and I answer, "I am at it." _Circ.u.mspice!_ Look at the mock royalties hunting (Louis XIV. fas.h.i.+on) in the deep woods of Fontainebleau. Look at haughty lords and ladies--the haughtiest the earth has ever seen--vying in public testimonies of homage--as we saw a few days ago--to the very qualities that, if they mean anything, mean the subversion of their order. Look at the wasteful abundance of a prison dietary, and the laudable economy which half-starves the workhouse. Look at the famished curate, with little beyond Greek roots to support him, and see the millionaire, who can but write his name, with a princely fortune; and do you want Webster or Buckstone to give these "characters" more point?

Will you take a box for the 'Comedy of Errors,' when you can walk into the Chancery Court for nothing? Will you pay for 'Much Ado about Nothing,' when a friendly order can admit you to the House? And as for a 'New Way to Pay Old Debts,' commend me to Commissioner Goulburn in Bankruptcy; while 'Love's Last s.h.i.+ft' is daily performed at the Court of Probate, under the distinguished patronage of Judge Wills. Is there any need to puzzle one's head over the decline of the drama, then? You might as well ask if a moderate smoker will pay exorbitantly for dried cabbage-leaves, when he can have prime Cubans for the trouble of taking them!

PENSIONS FOR GOVERNORS.

I do not remember ever to have read more pompons nonsense than was talked a few days ago in Parliament on the subject of pensions for retired colonial governors.

On all ordinary occasions the strongest case a man can have with the British public is to be an ill-used man--that is to say, if you be a man of mark, or note, or station. To be ill-used, as one poor, friendless, and ign.o.ble, is no more than the complement of your condition. It is in the fitness of things that pauperism, which we English have declared to be illegal, should neither be fondled nor caressed. To be ill-used profitably there must be something pictorial in your case; it must have its reliefs of light as well as shade. There must be little touches, a bright "has been," sunny spots of a happy past Without the force of these contrasts, there is no possibility of establis.h.i.+ng the grand grievance which is embodied in ill-usage.

Now, Mr B. C. who brought on this motion was a sorry artist, and the whole sum and substance of his case was, that as we secured the services of eminent and able men, we ought to pay them "properly." Why, in that one word "properly" lay the whole question. What const.i.tutes proper payment? Every career in life carries with it some circ.u.mstance either of advantage or the reverse, which either compensates for the loss of a material benefit, or is requited by some addition of a tangible profit.

The educated man who accepts three hundred a-year in the Church is not recompensed, or considered to be recompensed, by this miserable pittance. It is in the respect, the influence, the power, and the reverence that attach to his calling he is rewarded. Place a layman in the parish beside him with that income, and mark the difference of their stations! The same of the soldier. Why or how does seven-and-sixpence diurnally represent one the equal of the best in any society of the land? Simply by a conventional treaty, by which we admit that a man, at the loss of so much hard cash, may enjoy a station which bears no imaginable proportion to his means.

On the other hand, there are large communities who, addressing themselves to acquire wealth and riches, care very little for the advent.i.tious advantages of social state. As it is told of Theodore Hook, at a Lord Mayor's feast, that he laid down his knife and fork at the fifth course, and declared "he would take the rest out in money;" so there are scores of people who "go in" for the actual and the real. They have no sympathy with those who "take out" their social status partly in condition partly in cash, as is the case with the curate and the captain.

Almost every man, at his outset in life, makes some computation of how much his career can pay him in money, how much in the advantages of rank and station. The bailiff on the estate makes very often a far better income than the village doctor; but do you believe that aesculapius would change places with him for all that? Is not the unbought deference to his opinion, the respect to his acquirements, the obedience to his counsel, something in the contract he makes with the world? Does he not recognise, every day of his life, that he is not measured by the dimensions of the small house he resides in, or the humble qualities of the hack he rides, but that he has an acceptance in society totally removed from every question of his fortune?

In the great lottery we call life, the prizes differ in many things besides degree. If the man of high ambition determine to strain every nerve to attain a station of eminence and power, it may be that his intellectual equal, fonder of ease, more disposed to tranquillity, will settle down with a career that at the very best will only remove him a step above poverty; and shall we dare to say that either is wrong? My brother the Lord Chancellor is a great man, no doubt. The mace is a splendid club, and the woolsack a most luxurious sofa; but as I walk my village rounds of a summer's morning, inhaling perfume of earth and plant, following with my eye the ever-mounting lark, have I not a lighter heart, a freer step, a less wearied head? Have I not risen refreshed from sleep? not nightmared by the cutting sarcasms of some n.o.ble earl on my fresh-gilt coronet, some slighting allusion to my "newness in that place"? Depend upon it, the grand law of compensation which we recognise throughout universal nature extends to the artificial conditions of daily life, and regulates the action and adjusts the inequalities of our social state.

What is a viceroy or a colonial governor? A man of eminence and ability, doubtless, but who is satisfied to estrange himself from home and country, and occupy himself with cares and interests totally new and strange to him, for some five or fifteen thousand pounds a-year, plus a great variety of other things, which to certain minds unquestionably represent high value--the--station, the power, the prestige of a great position, with all its surroundings of deference and homage. Large as his salary is, it is the least distinctive feature of his high office.

In every attribute of rank the man is a king. In his presence the wisest and the most gifted do no more than insinuate the words of their wisdom, and beauty retires curtsying, after a few commonplaces from his lips.

Why, through all the employments of life, who ever attains to the like of this? His presence is an honour, his notice is fame. To be his guest is a distinction for a day; to be his host is to be ill.u.s.trious for a lifetime. Are these things nothing? Ask the n.o.ble earl as he sits in his howdah; ask my lord marquis as he rides forth with a glittering staff.

Did any one, even Mr B. C. himself, ever imagine that Mr Macready ought to be pensioned after he had played Cardinal Wolsey? Was it ever proposed, even in Parliament, that Mr Kean should have a retiring allowance when he had taken off his robes as Henry IV.? These eminent men were, however, just as real, just as actual, during their brief hour on the stage, as His Excellency the Viceroy or the "Lord High." They were there under a precisely similar compact. They had to represent a state which had no permanence, and a power that had no stability. They were to utter words which would be ridiculous from their lips to-morrow, and to a.s.sume a port and bearing that must be abandoned when they retired to change their clothes.

It is one of my very oldest memories as a boy that I dined in company with Charles Kemble. There was a good deal of talking, and a fair share of wine-drinking. In the course of the former came the question of the French Revolution of '30, and the conduct of the French King on that occasion. Kemble took no part in the discussion; he listened, or seemed to listen, filled his gla.s.s and emptied it, but never spoke. At last, when each speaker appeared to have said his say, and the subject approached exhaustion, the great actor, with the solemnity of a judge in a charge, and with a grand resonance of voice, said: "I'll tell you how it is, sirs; Charles X. has forfeited a--a--a right good engagement!"

And that was exactly the measure that he and all his tribe took, and are now taking, of kings and rulers--and let us profit by it. The colonial king has his "engagement;" it is defined exactly like the actor's. He is to play certain parts, and for so many nights; he is to strut his hour in the very finest of properties, and is sure, which the actor is not always, of a certain amount of applause. No living creature believes seriously in him, far less he himself, except, perhaps, in some impa.s.sioned moment or other like that in which I once knew Oth.e.l.lo so far carried away that he flung Iago into the orchestra.

Pension Carlisle, pension Storks, if you will; but be just as well as generous, and take care that you provide for Paul Bedford and Buckstone.

In Archbishop Whately's 'Historic Doubts,' we find that the existence of the first emperor can be disproven by the very train of argument employed to deny the apostles. Let me suggest the converse of this mode of reasoning, and ask, Is there a word you can say for the Viceroy you cannot equally say for the actor? Have you an argument for him who governs St Helena that will not equally apply to him who struts his hour at the Haymarket?

I perceive that the writer of a letter to the 'Times' advocates the claims of the ex-Governors, on the plausible plea that it is exactly the very men who best represent the dignity of the station--best reflect the splendour of the Sovereign--who come back poor and penniless from the high office: while the penurious Governor, who has given dissatisfaction everywhere, made the colony half rebellious by his narrow economies, and degraded his station by contemptible savings, comes back wealthy and affluent--self-pensioned, in fact, and independent.

To meet this end, the writer suggests that the Crown, as advised thereon, should have a discretionary power of rewarding the well-doer and refusing the claim of the unmeriting, which would distinctly separate the case of the worthy servant of the Sovereign from that of him who only employed his office to enrich himself.

There is a certain shallow--it is a very shallow--plausibility about this that attracts at first sight; and there would unquestionably be some force in it, if dinner-giving and hospitalities generally were the first requisites of a colonial ruler; but I cannot admit this. I cannot believe that the man who administers India or Canada, or even Jamaica or Barbadoes, is only an expatriated Lord Mayor. I will not willingly consent to accept it as qualification for a high trust that a man has a good cook and an admirable cellar, and an ostentatious tendency to display the merits of both. Mind, I am no ascetic who say this: I like good dinners; I like occasionally--only occasionally though--very good dinners. I feel with a clever countryman who said he liked being asked out to dine, "it was flattering, and it was nouris.h.i.+ng;" but with all this I should never think of "elevating my host" to the dignity of high statesmans.h.i.+p on the mere plea of his hospitality.

We have had some able men in our dependencies who were not in the least given to social enjoyments, who neither understood them for themselves nor thought of them for others--Sir Charles Napier, for instance. And who, let me ask, would have lost the services of such a man to the State, because he had not the tastes of a Sir William Curtis, nor could add a "Cubitt" to his stature?

All discretionary powers are, besides, abuses. They are the snares and pitfalls of official jobbery; and there would be no end of bickering and complaining on the merits of this and the shortcomings of that man.

Not to say that such a system as this writer recommends would place a Government in the false position of rewarding extravagance and offering a premium for profusion, and holding up for an example to our colonial fellow-subjects the very habits and tastes which are the bane and destruction of young communities.

Can any one imagine a Cabinet Council sitting to determine whether the ex-Governor of St Helena had or had not entertained the officers of the 509th Foot on their return from India, or whether he of Heligoland had really fed his family on molluscs during all the time of his administration, and sold the sh.e.l.ls as magnesia? There could be but one undeniable test of an ex-Governor's due claim to a pension, since on the question of a man's hospitalities evidence would vary to eternity. There are those whose b.u.t.termilk is better than their neighbours' bordeaux. I repeat, there could be but one test as to the claim; and as we read in a police sheet, as a sufficient ground for arrest, the two words, "Drunk and Disorderly," so should any commission on pensions accept as valid grounds for a pension, "Insolvent and a Bankrupt."

To talk of these men as ill-used, or their case as a hard one, is simply nonsense! You might as well say that the man you asked to dinner to-day has a legitimate ground of complaint against you because you have not invited him to breakfast to-morrow.

A GRUMBLE.

I wonder is the world as pleasant as it used to be? Not to myself, of course--I neither ask nor expect it; but I mean to those who are in the same position to enjoy it as I was--years ago. I am delicate about the figures, for Mrs O'D. occasionally reads these sketches, and might feel a wifelike antipathy to a record of this nature. I repeat--I wonder is life as good fun as it was when I made my first acquaintance with it? My impression is that it is not. I do not presume to say that all the same elements are not as abundant as heretofore. There are young people, and witty people, and, better, there are beautiful people, in abundance.

There are great houses as of yore, maintained, perhaps, with even more than bygone splendour: the horses are as good--the dogs as good--the trout-streams as well stocked--the grouse as abundant--foreign travel is more easy--all travel is more facile--there are more books and more ill.u.s.trated newspapers; and yet, with all these advantages--very tangible advantages too--I do not think the present occupants make the house as pleasant as their fathers did, and for the very simple reason, that they never try.

Indifferentism is the tone of the day. No one must be eager, pleased, displeased, interested, or anxious about anything. Life is to be treated as a tiresome sort of thing, but which is far too much beneath one to be thought of seriously--a wearisome performance, which good manners require you should sit out, though nothing obliges you to applaud or even approve of it. This is the theory, and we have been most successful in reducing it to practice. We are immensely bored, and we take good care so shall be our neighbour. Just as we have voted that there is nothing new, nothing strange, nothing amusing, we defy any one to differ with us, on pain of p.r.o.nouncing him vulgar. North American Indians are not more case-hardened against any show of suffering under torture than are our well-bred people against any manifestation of showing pleasure in anything. "It wasn't bad," is about the highest expression of our praise; and I doubt if we would accord more to heaven--if we got there.

The grand test of your modern Englishman is, to bear any amount of amus.e.m.e.nt without wincing: no pleasure is to wring a smile from him, nor is any expectancy to interest, or any unlooked-for event to astonish. He would admit that "the Governor"--meaning his father--was surprised; he would concede the fact, as recording some prejudice of a bygone age. As the tone of manners and observance has grown universal, so has the very expression of the features. They are intensely like each other. We are told that a shepherd will know the actual faces of all the sheep in his flock, distinguis.h.i.+ng each from each at a glance. I am curious to know if the Bishop of London knows even the few lost sheep that browse about Rotten Eow of an afternoon, and who are so familiar to us in Leech's sketches. There they are--whiskered, bearded, and bored; fine-looking animals in their way, but just as much living creatures in 'Punch'

as they are yonder. It is said that they only want the stimulus of a necessity, something of daring to tempt, or something of difficulty to provoke them, to be just as bold and energetic as ever their fathers were. I don't deny it. I am only complaining of the system which makes sheep of them, reduces life to a dreary table-land, making the stupid fellows the standard, and coming down to their level for the sake of uniformity. Formerly they who had more wit, more smartness, more worldly knowledge than their neighbours, enjoyed a certain pre-eminence; the flash of their agreeability lighted up the group they talked in, and they were valued and sought after. Now the very homage rendered, even in this small way, was at least a testimony that superiority was recognised and its claims admitted. What is the case now? Apathy is excellence, and the nearest approach to insensibility is the greatest eminence attainable.

In the Regency, when George IV. was Prince, the clever talkers certainly abounded; and men talk well or ill exactly as there is a demand for the article. The wittiest conversationalist that ever existed would be powerless in a circle of these modern "Unsurprised ones." Their vacant self-possession would put down all the Grattans and Currans and Jeffreys and Sydney Smiths in the world. I defy the most brilliant, the readiest, the most genial of talkers to vivify the ma.s.s of inert dulness he will find now at every dinner and in every drawing-room.

The code of modern manners is to make ease the first of all objects; and, in order that the stupidest man may be at his ease, the ablest is to be sacrificed. He who could bring vast stores of agreeability to the common stock must not show his wares, because there are a store of incapables who have nothing for the market.

They have a saying in Donegal, that "the water is so strong it requires two whiskies;" but I would ask what amount of "spirits" would enliven this dreariness; what infusion of pleasantry would make Brown and Jones endurable when multiplied by what algebraists call an _x_--an unknown quant.i.ty--of other Browns and Joneses?

We are constantly calling attention to the fact of the influence exerted over morals and manners in France by the prevailing tone of the lighter literature, and we mark the increasing licentiousness that has followed such works as those of Eugene Sue and the younger Dumas. Let us not forget to look at home, and see if, in the days when the Waverleys const.i.tuted almost all our lighter reading, the tone of society was not higher, the spirit more heroic, the current of thought and expression purer, than in these realistic days, when we turn for amus.e.m.e.nt to descriptions of every quaint vulgarity that makes up the life of the boarding-house or the strolling theatre.

The glorious heroism of Scott's novels was a fine stream to turn into the turbid river of our worldliness and money-seeking. It was of incalculable benefit to give men even a pa.s.sing glance of n.o.ble devotion, high-hearted courage, and unsullied purity.

I can remember the time when, as freshmen in our first year, we went about talking to each other of 'Ivanhoe' and 'Kenilworth;' and I can remember, too, when the glorious spirit of those novels had so possessed us, that our romance elevated and warmed us to an unconscious imitation of the n.o.ble thoughts and deeds we had been reading.