第52章

The reader will perceive that all hope is gone here of deciding whether Herbert could have written Tennyson's poems, or whether Tennyson could have dug as much money out of the Heliogabalus Lode as Herbert did.The more one sees of life, I think the impression deepens that men, after all, play about the parts assigned them, according to their mental and moral gifts, which are limited and preordained, and that their entrances and exits are governed by a law no less certain because it is hidden.Perhaps nobody ever accomplishes all that he feels lies in him to do; but nearly every one who tries his powers touches the walls of his being occasionally, and learns about how far to attempt to spring.There are no impossibilities to youth and inexperience; but when a person has tried several times to reach high C and been coughed down, he is quite content to go down among the chorus.It is only the fools who keep straining at high C all their lives.

Mandeville here began to say that that reminded him of something that happened when he was on theBut Herbert cut in with the observation that no matter what a man's single and several capacities and talents might be, he is controlled by his own mysterious individuality, which is what metaphysicians call the substance, all else being the mere accidents of the man.

And this is the reason that we cannot with any certainty tell what any person will do or amount to, for, while we know his talents and abilities, we do not know the resulting whole, which is he himself.

THE FIRE-TENDER.So if you could take all the first-class qualities that we admire in men and women, and put them together into one being, you wouldn't be sure of the result?

HERBERT.Certainly not.You would probably have a monster.It takes a cook of long experience, with the best materials, to make a dish " taste good;" and the "taste good" is the indefinable essence, the resulting balance or harmony which makes man or woman agreeable or beautiful or effective in the world.

THE YOUNG LADY.That must be the reason why novelists fail so lamentably in almost all cases in creating good characters.They put in real traits, talents, dispositions, but the result of the synthesis is something that never was seen on earth before.

THE FIRE-TENDER.Oh, a good character in fiction is an inspiration.

We admit this in poetry.It is as true of such creations as Colonel Newcome, and Ethel, and Beatrix Esmond.There is no patchwork about them.

THE YOUNG LADY.Why was n't Thackeray ever inspired to create a noble woman?

THE FIRE-TENDER.That is the standing conundrum with all the women.

They will not accept Ethel Newcome even.Perhaps we shall have to admit that Thackeray was a writer for men.

HERBERT.Scott and the rest had drawn so many perfect women that Thackeray thought it was time for a real one.

THE MISTRESS.That's ill-natured.Thackeray did, however, make ladies.If he had depicted, with his searching pen, any of us just as we are, I doubt if we should have liked it much.

MANDEVILLE.That's just it.Thackeray never pretended to make ideals, and if the best novel is an idealization of human nature, then he was not the best novelist.When I was crossing the ChannelTHE MISTRESS.Oh dear, if we are to go to sea again, Mandeville, Imove we have in the nuts and apples, and talk about our friends.

III

There is this advantage in getting back to a wood-fire on the hearth, that you return to a kind of simplicity; you can scarcely imagine any one being stiffly conventional in front of it.It thaws out formality, and puts the company who sit around it into easy attitudes of mind and body,--lounging attitudes,--Herbert said.

And this brought up the subject of culture in America, especially as to manner.The backlog period having passed, we are beginning to have in society people of the cultured manner, as it is called, or polished bearing, in which the polish is the most noticeable thing about the man.Not the courtliness, the easy simplicity of the old-school gentleman, in whose presence the milkmaid was as much at her ease as the countess, but something far finer than this.These are the people of unruffled demeanor, who never forget it for a moment, and never let you forget it.Their presence is a constant rebuke to society.They are never "jolly;" their laugh is never anything more than a well-bred smile; they are never betrayed into any enthusiasm.Enthusiasm is a sign of inexperience, of ignorance, of want of culture.They never lose themselves in any cause; they never heartily praise any man or woman or book; they are superior to all tides of feeling and all outbursts of passion.They are not even shocked at vulgarity.They are simply indifferent.They are calm, visibly calm, painfully calm; and it is not the eternal, majestic calmness of the Sphinx either, but a rigid, self-conscious repression.You would like to put a bent pin in their chair when they are about calmly to sit down.

A sitting hen on her nest is calm, but hopeful; she has faith that her eggs are not china.These people appear to be sitting on china eggs.Perfect culture has refined all blood, warmth, flavor, out of them.We admire them without envy.They are too beautiful in their manners to be either prigs or snobs.They are at once our models and our despair.They are properly careful of themselves as models, for they know that if they should break, society would become a scene of mere animal confusion.

MANDEVILLE.I think that the best-bred people in the world are the English.

THE YOUNG LADY.You mean at home.

MANDEVILLE.That's where I saw them.There is no nonsense about a cultivated English man or woman.They express themselves sturdily and naturally, and with no subservience to the opinions of others.

There's a sort of hearty sincerity about them that I like.Ages of culture on the island have gone deeper than the surface, and they have simpler and more natural manners than we.There is something good in the full, round tones of their voices.