From the Easy Chair, vol. 1
G >>
George William Curtis >> From the Easy Chair, vol. 1
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 Produced by Eric Eldred, Brendan Lane
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
[Illustration: Portrait of the author]
FROM THE EASY CHAIR
BY
GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS
"I shall from Time to Time Report and Consider all Matters of what
Kind Soever that shall occur to Me." --THE TATLER.
CONTENTS.
EDWARD EVERETT IN 1862
AT THE OPERA IN 1864
EMERSON LECTURING
SHOPS AND SHOPPING
MRS. GRUNDY AND THE COSMOPOLITAN
DICKENS READING [1867]
PHILLIS
THOREAU AND MY LADY CAVALIERE
HONESTUS AT THE CAUCUS
THALBERG AND OTHER PIANISTS [1871]
URBS AND RUS
RIP VAN WINKLE
A CHINESE CRITIC
HOLIDAY SAUNTERING
WENDELL PHILLIPS AT HARVARD [1881]
EASTER BONNETS
JENNY LIND
THE TOWN
SARAH SHAW RUSSELL
STREET MUSIC
A LITTLE DINNER WITH THACKERAY
CECILIA PLAYING
THE MANNERLESS SEX
ROBERT BROWNING IN FLORENCE
PLAYERS
UNMUSICAL BOXES
THE ACADEMY DINNER IN ARCADIA
EDWARD EVERETT IN 1862.
The house was full, and murmurous with the pleasant chat and rustling
movement of well-dressed persons of both sexes who waited patiently
the coming of the orator, looking at the expanse of stage, which was
carpeted, and covered with rows of settees that went backward from the
footlights to a landscape of charming freshness of color, that might
have been set for the "Maid of Milan" or the pastoral opera. Between
the seats and the foot-lights was a broad space, upon which stood a
small table and two or three chairs; and if the orator of the evening,
like a _primo tenore_, had been surveying the house through the
friendly chinks of the pastoral landscape, he would have felt a warm
suffusion of pleasure that his name should be the magic spell to
summon an audience so fair, so numerous, and so intelligent.
There were ushers who showed ladies to seats, and with their
dress-coats and bright badges looked like a milder Metropolitan
police. But no greater force was presumed to be required of them than
pressing aside a too discursive crinoline. In the soft, ample light,
as the audience sat with fluttering ribbons and bright gems and
splendid silks and shawls, so tranquilly expectant, so calmly smiling,
so shyly blushing (if, haply, in all that crowd there were a pair of
lovers!), it was hard to believe that civil war was wasting the land,
and that at the very moment some of those glad hearts were broken--but
would not know it until the sad news came. Yet it was easy, in the
same glance, to feel that even the terrible shape that we thought we
had eluded forever did not seem, after all, so terrible; that even
civil war might be shaking the gates and the guests still smile in the
chambers.
But while leaning against the wall, under the balcony, the Easy Chair
looks around upon the humming throng and thinks of camps far away, and
beating drums and wild alarms and sweeping squadrons of battle, there
is a sudden hush and a simultaneous glance towards one side of the
house, and there, behind the seats at the side, and making for the
stage door, marches a procession, two and two, very solemn, very bald,
very gray, and in evening dress. They are the invited guests, the
honored citizens of Brooklyn, the reverend clergy, and others; a body
of substantial, intelligent, decorous persons. They disappear for a
moment within the door, and immediately emerge upon the stage with a
composed bustle, moving the seats, taking off their coats, sedately
interchanging little jests, and finally seating themselves, and gazing
at the audience evidently with a feeling of doubt whether the honor of
the position compensates for its great disadvantage; for to sit behind
an orator is to hear, without seeing, an actor.
The audience is now waiting, both upon the stage and in the boxes,
with patient expectation. There is little talking, but a tension of
heads towards the stage. The last word is spoken there, the last joke
expires; all attention is concentrated upon an expected object. The
edge of eagerness is not suffered to turn, but precisely at the right
moment a figure with a dark head and another with a gray head are seen
at the depth of the stage, advancing through the aisle towards the
foot-lights and the audience. They are the president of the society
and the orator. The audience applauds. It is not a burst of
enthusiasm; it is rather applausive appreciation of acknowledged
merit. The gray-headed orator bows gravely and slightly, lays a roll
of MS. upon the table, then he and the president seat themselves side
by side. For a moment they converse, evidently complimenting the
brilliant audience. The orator, also, evidently says that the table is
right, that the light is right, that the glass of water is right, and
finally that he is ready.
In a few neat words "the honored son of Massachusetts" is introduced,
and he rises and moves a few steps forward. Standing for a moment, he
bows to the applause. He is dressed entirely in black; wearing a
dress-coat, and not a frock. Before he says a word, although it is but
a moment, a sudden flash of memory reveals to the attentive Easy Chair
all that he has heard and read of the orator before him; how he
returned an accomplished scholar from Germany, graced with a delicacy
of culture hitherto unknown to our schools; how the youthful professor
of Greek at Harvard, transferred to the pulpit of Brattle Street, in
Boston, held men and women in thrall by the splendor of his rhetoric
and the pleading music of his voice, drawing the young scholars after
him, who are now our chief glory and pride; how his Phi Beta Kappa
oration in 1824 and its apostrophe to Lafayette, who was present, is
still the fond tradition of those who heard it; and how as he passed
on from triumph to triumph in his art of oratory, the elegance, the
skill, the floridity, the elaboration, the unfailing fitness and
severe propriety of his art, with all its minor gifts, consoled Boston
that it was not Athens or Rome, and had not heard Demosthenes or
Cicero.
If you ventured curiously to question this fond recollection, to ask
whether the eloquence was of the heart and soul, or of the mind and
lips; whether it were impassioned oratory, burning, resistless, such
as we suppose Demosthenes and Patrick Henry poured out; or whether it
were polished and skilful declamation--those old listeners were like
lovers. They did not know; they did not care. They remembered the
magic tone, the witchery of grace, the exuberant rhetoric; they
recalled the crowds clustering at his feet, the gusts of emotion that
in the church swept over the pews, the thrills of delight that in the
hall shook the audience; their own youth was part of it; they saw
their own bloom in the flower they remembered, and they could not
criticise or compare.
All this recollection flashed through the mind of the Easy Chair
before the orator had well opened his lips. The tradition was
overpowering. It was not fair, but it was inevitable. If we could see
and hear Patrick Henry, with uplifted finger, shouting, "Charles First
had his Cromwell, and George Third--may take warning by his example!"
would it be, could it be, even with all our expectation, what we
believe it to have been? After the tremendous blare of trumpets in
advance that shake our very souls within us, no ordinary mortal can
satisfy the transcendent anticipation. We lift the leathern curtain of
St. Peter's, and catching our breath, look in. Alas! we see plainly
the other end of the great church, but with secret disappointment,
because we imagined there would be but a dim immensity of space. For
the first time we behold Niagara, and resentfully we ask, "Is that
all?" The illimitable expectation is too bewildering an overture. So
the eyes with which the Easy Chair saw were touched with glamour. The
ears with which it heard were full of eloquence beyond that of mortal
lips. And there was the orator just beginning to speak. It was not
fair; no, it was not fair.
The first words were clearly cut, simply and perfectly articulated.
"It is often said that the day for speaking has passed, and that of
action has arrived." It was a direct, plain introduction; not a florid
exordium. The voice was clear and cold and distinct; not especially
musical, not at all magnetic. The orator was incessantly moving; not
rushing vehemently forward or stepping defiantly backward, with that
quaint planting of the foot, like Beecher; but restlessly changing his
place, with smooth and rounded but monotonous movement. The arms and
hands moved harmonious with the body, not with especial reference to
what was said, but apparently because there must be action. The first
part of the discourse was strictly a lucid narrative of events and
causes: a compact and calm chapter of our political history by a man
as well versed in it as any man in the country; and it culminated in a
description of the fall of Sumter. This was an elaborate picture in
words of a perfectly neutral tint. There was not a single one which
was peculiarly picturesque or vivid; no electric phrase that sent the
whole striking scene shuddering home to every hearer; no sudden light
of burning epithet, no sad elegiac music. The passage was purely
academic. Each word was choice; each detail was finished; it was
properly cumulative to its climax; and when that was reached, loud
applause followed. It was general, but not enthusiastic. No one could
fail to admire the skill with which the sentence was constructed; and
so elaborate a piece of workmanship justly challenged high praise. But
still--still, do you get any thrill from the most perfect mosaic?
Then followed a caustic and brilliant sketch of the attitude of
Virginia in this war. In this part of his discourse the orator was
himself an historic personage; for it was to him, when editor of the
_North American Review_, that James Madison wrote his letter
explanatory of the Virginia resolutions of '98. The wit that sparkled
then in the pages of the _Review_ glittered now along the speech. Here
was Junius turned gentleman and transfixing a State with satire. The
action of the orator was unchanged. But, in one passage, after
describing the wrongs wrought by rebels upon the country, he turned,
with upraised hand, to the rows of white-cravated clergymen who sat
behind him, and apostrophized them: "Tell me, ministers of the living
God, may we not without a breach of Christian charity exclaim,
"'Is there not some hidden curse,
Some chosen thunder in the stores of heaven,
Red with uncommon wrath to blast the man
That seeks his greatness in his country's ruin?'"
This passage was uttered with more force than any in the oration. The
orator's hands were clasped and raised; he moved more rapidly across
the stage; the words were spoken with artistic energy, and loudly
applauded.
Thus far the admirable clearness of statement and perfect propriety of
speech, added to the personal prestige which surrounds any man so
distinguished as the orator, had secured a well-bred attention. But
there was not yet that eager, fixed intentness, sensitive to every
tone and shifting humor of the speaker, which shows that he thoroughly
possesses and controls the audience. There was none of that charmed
silence in which the very heart and soul seem to be listening; and at
any moment it would have been easy to go out.
But when leaving the purely historical current the orator struck into
some considerations upon the views of our affairs taken by foreign
nations, the vivacious skill of his treatment excited a more vital
attention. There was a truer interest and a heartier applause. And
when still pressing on, but with unchanged action, he glanced at the
consequences of a successful rebellion, the audience was, for the
first time, really aroused.
Let us suppose, said the orator, that secession is successful, what
has been gained? How are the causes of discontent removed? Will the
malcontents have seceded because of the non-rendition of fugitive
slaves? But how has secession helped it? When, in the happy words of
another, Canada has been brought down to the Potomac, do they think
their fugitives will be restored? No: not if they came to its banks
with the hosts of Pharaoh, and the river ran dry in its bed.
Loud applause here rang through the building.
Or, continued the orator, more vehemently, do they think, in that
case, to carry their slaves into territories now free? No, not if the
Chief-justice of the United States--and here a volley of applause
rattled in, and the orator wiped his forehead--not if the venerable
Chief-justice Taney should live yet a century, and issue a Dred Scott
decision every day of his life.
Here followed the sincerest applause of the whole evening; and the
Easy Chair pinched his neighbor to make sure that all was as it
seemed; that these were words actually spoken, and that the orator was
Edward Everett.
The hour and a half were passed. The peroration was upon the speaker's
tongue, closing with an exhortation to old men and old women, young
men and maidens, each in his kind and degree, to come as the waves
come when navies are stranded--to come as the winds come when forests
are rended--to come with heart and hand, with purse and
knitting-needle, with sword and gun, and fight for the Union.
He bowed: the audience clapped for a moment, then rose and bustled
out.
--It was not fair; no, it was not fair. The Easy Chair did not
find--how could it find?--the charm which those of another day
remembered. The oration was an admirable and elaborate address, full
of instruction and truth and patriotism, the work of a remarkably
accomplished man of great public experience. It was written in the
plainest language, and did not contain an obscure word. It was
delivered with perfect propriety, with the confidence that comes from
the habit of public speaking, and with artistic skill of articulation
and emphasis. As an illustration of memory it was remarkable, for it
was but the second time that the address had been spoken. It occupied
an hour and a half in the delivery, and yet the manuscript lay
unopened upon the table. Only three or four times was there any
hesitation which reminded the hearer that the speaker was repeating
what he had already written. His power in this respect has been often
mentioned. He is understood to have said that, if he reads anything
once, he can repeat it correctly; but if he has written it out, he can
repeat it exactly and always. This unusual facility secures to all his
addresses a completeness and finish which very few orators command. He
can say exactly what he means, and nothing more, being never betrayed
by confusion or sudden emotion to say, as so many speakers say, more
than they really think.
But, on the other hand, it is doubtful whether all that electric
eloquence by which the hearer is caught up as by a whirlwind and swept
onward at the will of the orator, is not now a tradition in the
speeches of the orator. The glow of feeling, the rush of rhetoric, the
fiery burst of passionate power--the overwhelming impulse which makes
senates adjourn and men spring to arms--were they in the orator or in
the fascinated youth of those who remember the sermon in Brattle
Street, the apostrophe to Lafayette?
AT THE OPERA IN 1864.
It was a strange chance that took the Easy Chair, the other evening,
to the opera in the midst of a terrible war. But there was the scene,
exactly as it used to be. There were the bright rows of pretty women
and smiling men; the white and fanciful opera-cloaks; the gay rich
dresses; the floating ribbons; the marvellous _chevelures_; the
pearl-gray, the dove, and "tan" gloves, holding the jewelled fans and
the beautiful bouquets--the smile, the sparkle, the grace, the superb
and irresistible dandyism that we all know so well in the days of
golden youth--they were all there, and the warm atmosphere was sweet
with the thick odor of heliotrope, the very scent of _haute societe_.
The house was full: the opera was "Faust," and by one of the exquisite
felicities of the stage, the hero, a mild, ineffective gentleman, sang
his ditties and passionate bursts in Italian, while the poor Gretchen
vowed and rouladed in the German tongue. Certainly nothing is more
comical than the careful gravity with which people of the highest
civilization look at the absurd incongruities of the stage. After the
polyglot love-making, Gretchen goes up steps and enters a house.
Presently she opens a window at which she evidently could not appear
as she does breast high, without having her feet in the cellar. The
Italian Faust rushes, ascends three steps leading to the window, which
could not by any possibility appropriately be found there, and
reclines his head upon the bosom of the fond maid. We all look on and
applaud with "sensation." But ought we not to insist, however, that
ladies in the play shall stand upon the floor, and that the floor in a
stately mansion shall not be two feet below the front door-sill? And
ought we not to demand that Faust shall woo Gretchen in their
mother-tongue?
But we, the ludicrous public, who snarl at the carpenter and shoemaker
if the fitness of things be not observed; we, the shrewd critics, who
pillory the luckless painter who dresses a gentleman of the
Restoration in the ruff of James First's court, gaze calmly on the
most ridiculous anachronisms and impossibilities, and smite our
perfumed gloves in approbation. It is no excuse to say that the whole
thing is absurd; that people do not carry on the business of life in
song, nor expire in recitative. That is true, but even fairy tales
have their consistency. Every part is adapted to every other, and, in
the key, the whole is harmonious. Hermann, for instance, the basso,
who sang Mephistopheles, would have been quite perfect if he had only
remembered this. But he forgot that Mephisto is a sly and subtle
devil. He caricatured him. He made him a buffoon and repulsive. Such
extravagance could not have imposed upon Faust or Martha; yet we all
agreed that it was very fine, and amiably applauded what no opera-goer
of sense could seriously approve.
You think that this is taking syllabub seriously, and that the
circumstances of the time had made the Easy Chair hypercritical. No;
it was only that there comes a time in theatre-going when the boxes
are more interesting than the stage. The mimic life fades before the
real. In the midst of the finest phrases of the impassioned Herr
Faust, what if your truant eyes stray across the parquette and see a
slight, pale figure, and recognize one of the bravest and most daring
Union generals, whose dashing assaults upon the enemy's works carried
dismay and victory day after day? Herr Faust trills on, but you see
the sombre field and the desperate battle and the glorious cause.
Gretchen musically sighs, but you see the brave boys lying where they
fell: you hear the deep, sullen roar of the cannonade; you catch far
away through the tumult of war the fierce shout of victory. And there
sits the slight, pale figure with eyes languidly fixed upon the stage;
his heart musing upon other scenes; himself the unconscious hero of a
living drama.
Or, if you choose to lift your eyes, you see that woman with the
sweet, fair face, composed, not sad, turned with placid interest
towards the loves of Gretchen and Faust. She sees the eager delight of
the meeting; she hears the ardent vow; she feels the rapture of the
embrace. With placid interest she watches all--she, and the sedate
husband by her side. And yet when her eyes wander it is to see a man
in the parquette below her on the other side, who, between the acts,
rises with the rest and surveys the house, and looks at her as at all
the others. At this distance you cannot say if any softer color steals
into that placid face; you cannot tell if his survey lingers longer
upon her than upon the rest. Yet she was Gretchen once, and he was
Faust. There is no moonlight romance, no garden ecstasy, poorly
feigned upon the stage, that is not burned with eternal fire into
their memories. Night after night they come. They do not especially
like this music. They are not infatuated with these singers. They have
seats for the season; she with her husband, he in the orchestra
chairs. She has a pleasant home and sweet children and a kind mate,
and is not unhappy. He is at ease in his fortunes, and content. They
do not come here that they may see each other. They meet elsewhere as
all acquaintances meet. They cherish no morbid repining, no
sentimental regret. But every night there is an opera, and the theme
of every opera is love; and once, ah! once, she was Gretchen and he
was Faust.
Do you see? These are three out of the three thousand. There is
nothing to distinguish them from the rest. Look at them all, and
reflect that all have their history; and that it is known, as this one
is known, to some other old Easy Chair, sitting in the parquette and
spying round the house. "All the world's a stage, and men and women
merely players."
Is it quite so? Are these players? The young pale general there, the
placid woman, the man in the orchestra stall, have they been playing
only? There are scars upon that young soldier's body; in the most
secret drawer of that woman's chamber there is a dry, scentless
flower; the man in the orchestra stall could show you a tress of
golden hair. If they are players, who is in earnest?
EMERSON LECTURING.
Many years ago the Easy Chair used to hear Ralph Waldo Emerson
lecture. Perhaps it was in the small Sunday-school room under a
country meeting-house, on sparkling winter nights, when all the
neighborhood came stamping and chattering to the door in hood and
muffler, or ringing in from a few miles away, buried under
buffalo-skins. The little, low room was dimly lighted with oil-lamps,
and the boys clumped about the stoves in their cowhide boots, and
laughed and buzzed and ate apples and peanuts and giggled, and grew
suddenly solemn when the grave men and women looked at them. At the
desk stood the lecturer and read his manuscript, and all but the boys
sat silent and inthralled by the musical spell.
Some of the hearers remembered the speaker as a boy, as a young man.
Some wondered what he was talking about. Some thought him very queer.
All laughed at the delightful humor or the illustrative anecdote that
sparkled for a moment upon the surface of his talk; and some sat
inspired with unknown resolves, soaring upon lofty hopes as they
heard. A nobler life, a better manhood, a purer purpose wooed every
listening soul. It was not argument, nor description, nor appeal. It
was wit and wisdom, and hard sense and poetry, and scholarship and
music. And when the words were spoken and the lecturer sat down, the
Easy Chair sat still and heard the rich cadences lingering in the air,
as the young priest's heart throbs with the long vibrations when the
organist is gone.
The same speaker had been heard a few years previously in the Masonic
Temple in Boston. It was the fashion among the gay to call him
transcendental. Grave parents were quoted as saying, "I don't go to
hear Mr. Emerson; I don't understand him. But my daughters do." Then
came a volume containing the discourses. They were called _Essays_.
Has our literature produced any wiser book?
As the lyceum or lecture system grew, the philosopher whom "my
daughters" understood was called to speak. A simplicity of manner that
could be called rustic if it were not of a shy, scholarly elegance;
perfect composure, clear, clean, crisp sentences; maxims as full of
glittering truth as a winter night of stars; an incessant spray of
fine fancies like the November shower of meteors; and the same
intellectual and moral exaltation, expansion, and aspiration, were the
characteristics of all his lectures.
He was never exactly popular, but always gave a tone and flavor to the
whole lyceum course, as the lump of ambergris flavors the Sultan's
cups of coffee for a year. "We can have him once in three or four
seasons," said the committees. But really they had him all the time
without knowing it. He was the philosopher Proteus, and he spoke
through all the more popular mouths. The speakers were acceptable
because they were liberal, and he was the great liberalizer. They
were, and they are, the middle-men between him and the public. They
watered the nectar, and made it easy to drink.
The Easy Chair heard from time to time of Proteus on the platform--how
he was more and more eccentric--how he could not be understood--how
abrupt his manner was. But the Chair did not believe that the flame
which had once been so pure could ever be dimmer, especially as he
recognized its soft lustre on every aspect of life around him.
After many years the opportunity to hear him came again; and although
the experiment was dangerous the Chair did not hesitate to try it. The
hall was pretty and not too large, and the audience was the best that
the country could furnish. Every one came solely to hear the speaker,
for it was one lecture in a course of his only. It was pleasant to
look around and mark the famous men and the accomplished women
gathering quietly in the same city where they used to gather to hear
him a quarter of a century before. How much the man who was presently
to speak had done for their lives, and their children's, and the
country! The power of one man is not easily traced in its channels and
details, but it is marked upon the whole. The word "transcendentalism"
has long passed by. It has not, perhaps, even yet gone out of fashion
to smile at wisdom as visionary, but this particular wise man had been
acquitted of being understood by my daughters, and there were rows of
"hardheads," "practical people," curious and interesting to
contemplate in the audience.
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9