Reflections and Comments 1865 1895 by Edwin Lawrence Godkin

E >> Edwin Lawrence Godkin >> Reflections and Comments 1865 1895

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The first accommodation at the springs consisted of a circle of
log-cabins with a dining-hall and ball-room in the centre, and this
constitutes the fundamental plan of a spring to this day. There is
now always a hotel in which a considerable number of the visitors
both sleep and eat, but the bulk of them, or a very large proportion
of them, still live in the long rows of one-storied wooden huts,
with galleries running along in front of the doors, which are
dignified with the name of "cottages," but are in reality simply the
log-cabin in the next stage of evolution; and the hotel has taken the
place of the original dining and ball-rooms to which all resorted.
In looking at the cottages, and thinking of the log-cabins which
preceded them, and seeing what rude places they are, one wonders
a little how people could ever have been, or can now be, induced to
leave comfortable homes for the purpose of spending long summers in
them. But this brings up one of the marked characteristics of Southern
life, namely, the extent to which nearly all Southern men and women
were led in the slavery days to associate comfort not with the
trimness and order of Northern or English homes, but with an
abundance of service. Well-to-do Northerners used to be surprised,
in fact, at the amount of what they would consider discomfort in the
way of rude or unfinished surroundings, hard beds, poor fare, want of
order of all sorts, which even Southerners in easy circumstances were
willing to put up with; but the explanation lay in the fact that
Southerners placed their luxury in having plenty of servants at
command. All the ladies had maids and the men "body servants"
wherever they went, and this saved them, even on the frontier, from
a great deal of drudgery and inconvenience. Even a log-cabin is not
a bad place to lodge in if you have a valet (who cannot leave you)
to dress you, and brush your boots and your clothes, and light your
fire, and bring you ice-water and juleps and cocktails, and anything
else you happen to think of, who sleeps comfortably in a blanket
across your door. In fact, without this the Virginia springs could
never have become a popular resort until railroads were opened.
People used to take twenty days in reaching them from the coast--
some in their own carriages with four horses, and a wagon for the
baggage and "darkies," and some in stages, sleeping in taverns on the
roadside; but nothing could have made this practicable or tolerable
but the band of negroes by whom they were always accompanied.
This, too, enabled them to make their plans with certainty for
staying at the springs all summer, which they could not have done
had they been unable to count on their servants. One gentleman,
a Charlestonian, telling me his reminiscences of these long journeys
to the springs taken with his parents in their own carriage, when
he was a boy, said his mother was very delicate and her health
required it. This at the North would have been a joke, as it would
have killed a delicate woman to go into the woods with hired "help"
or without any service at all.

Partly owing to the efficacy of the waters and partly to the absence
of other Southern watering-places, the springs became very early the
resort of every Southerner who could afford to leave home in the
summer, and they grew in favor owing to the peculiarities of
Southern society and the delicate state of Southern relations with
the North. In the first place, at the South people know each other,
and know about each other, in a way of which the inhabitants of a
denser and busier community have little idea. The number of persons
in Illinois, or Ohio, or Michigan that a New Yorker knows anything
about, or cares to see for social purposes, is exceedingly small. At
the South everybody with the means to travel has relatives or
friends or acquaintances of longer or shorter standing, in nearly
every Southern State, whom it is agreeable for him to meet, and he
knows that they will probably, at some part of the season or other,
appear at the springs. They will not go North because the North is
far away, is, in a certain sense, a strange community, and before
the war a hostile or critical one. Then, too, the South abounded or
abounds with local notables to a degree of which we have no idea at
the North, with persons of a certain weight and consequence in their
own State or county, and to whom this weight and consequence are so
agreeable and important that they cannot bear to part with them when
they go on a journey. They could always carry them with them to the
springs. There everybody was sure to know their standing, while if
they had gone up North they would be lost in the crowd and be
nobodies, and, before the war, have been deprived of the services of
their "body servants" or labored under constant anxiety about their
security.

The springs, too, became, very early, and are now, a great
marrying-place. The "desirable young men, all riding on horses," as
the prophet called the Assyrian swells, go there in search of wives,
and are pretty sure to find there all the marriageable young women
of the South who can be said in any sense to be in society. Widows
abound at the springs just now--by which I mean widows who would not
object to trying the chances of matrimony again. I have been told
that, since the war, it is not uncommon for families whose means are
small to make up a purse to send one attractive youth or maid or
forlorn widow to the springs, in the hope that during the season
they may find the unknown soul which is to complete their destiny,
somewhat like the "culture" donations made to promising people at
the North to enable them to visit Europe. Then, too, to that very
large proportion of the population at the South who lead during the
rest of the year absolutely solitary lives on plantations, the visit
to the springs gives the only society of any kind they ever see, and
the one chance of showing their clothes and seeing what the other
women wear. In short, I do not believe that any one place of summer
resort serves so many purposes to any community as the Virginia
springs serve to that of the South, and by the springs I mean that
circle of mineral waters of various kinds which lie round the White
Sulphur, and to which the White Sulphur acts as a kind of
distributing reservoir of visitors.

As regards the opinions of the very representative company at the
springs on the subject of slavery, it seemed, as well as I could
get at it, to be that about one per cent, of the white people
regretted the emancipation; but this was composed almost entirely of
old persons, who were unable to accommodate themselves to a new
order of things, and to whom it meant the loss of personal
attendance--perhaps the greatest inconvenience which elderly
persons who have been used to valets and maids can undergo. Many
such persons at the South were really killed by the social changes
produced by the war, as truly as if they had been struck on the
battle-field; the bewildered resignation of the survivors is
sometimes touching to witness, and the calamity was generally
embittered by the wholesale flight of the most trusted household
servants, who it was supposed would have despised freedom even if
offered in a gold box by Phillips, Garrison, and Greeley in person.
Telling one old gentleman who was mourning over the change that the
young men to whom I spoke did not agree with him, but thought it an
excellent thing, he replied "that those fellows never had known what
domestic comfort was"--meaning that their experience did not run
back beyond 1865.

The traditions of the old system are, however, unquestionably a
better basis for good hotel-keeping than anything we have at the
North. The first condition of excellence in all places of
entertainment for man and beast is exactingness on the part of the
public. To be well cared for you must expect it and be used to it,
and this condition the Southerners fulfil in a much higher degree
than we do. They look for more attention, and they therefore get it;
and the waiter world, partly from habit and partly, no doubt, from
race temperament, render it with a cheerfulness we are not familiar
with here. But the superiority of manners in all classes is very
striking. One rarely meets a man on a Virginia road who does not
raise or touch his hat, and this not in a servile way either, but
simply as politeness. The bearing of the men toward each other
generally, too, has the ineffable charm, which Northern manners are
so apt to want, of indicating a recognition of the fact that even if
you are no better than any other man, you are different, and that
your peculiarities are respectable, and that you are entitled to a
certain amount of deference for your private tastes and habits. At
the North, on the other hand, manners, even as taught to children,
are apt to concede nothing except that you have an immortal soul and
a middling chance of salvation, and to avoid anything which is
likely to lead you to forget that you are simply a human male.

CHROMO-CIVILIZATION

The last "statement," it is reasonable to hope, has been made in the
Beecher-Tilton case previous to the trial at law, and it is safe to
say that it has left the public mind in as unsettled a state as ever
before. People do not know what to believe, but they do not want to
hear any more newspaper discussion by the principal actors. We are
not going to attempt any analysis or summing-up of the case at
present. It will be time enough to do that after the _dramatis
personae_ have undergone an examination in court, but we would again
warn our readers against looking for any decisive result from the
legal trial. The expectations on this point which some of the
newspapers and a good many lawyers are encouraging are in the
highest degree extravagant. The truth is that only a very small
portion of the stuff contained in the various "statements" can,
under the rules of evidence, be laid before the jury--not, we
venture to assert, more than would fill half a newspaper column in
all. What _will_ be laid before the jury is, in the main, "questions
of veracity" between three or four persons whose credit is already
greatly shaken, or, in other words, the very kind of questions on
which juries are most likely to disagree, even when the jurymen are
entirely unprejudiced. In the present case they are sure to be
prejudiced, and are sure to be governed, consciously or
unconsciously, in reaching their conclusions by agencies wholly
foreign to the matter in hand, and are thus very likely to disagree.
There are very few men whose opinions about Mr. Beecher's guilt or
innocence are not influenced by their own religious and political
beliefs, or by their social antecedents or surroundings. A curious
and somewhat instructive illustration of the way in which a man's
fate in such cases as this may be affected by considerations having
no sort of relation to the facts, is afforded by the attitude of the
Western press toward the chief actors in the present scandal. It may
be said, roughly, that while the press east of the Alleghanies has
inclined in Beecher's favor, the newspapers west of them have gone
somewhat savagely and persistently against him, and have treated
Tilton as a martyr. The cause of such a divergence of views,
considering that both Tilton and Beecher are Eastern men, is of
course somewhat obscure, but we have no doubt that it is due to a
vague feeling prevalent in the West that Tilton's cause is the
democratic one--that is, the cause of the poor, friendless man
against the rich and successful one--a feeling somewhat like that
which in England enlisted the working-classes in London on the side
of the Tichborne claimant, in defiance of all reason and evidence,
as a poor devil fighting a hard battle with the high and mighty. One
of the reporters of a Western paper which has made important
contributions to the literature of the scandal, recently accounted
for his support of Tilton by declaring that in standing by him he
was "fighting the battle of the Bohemians against Capital." Another
Western paper, in analyzing the causes of the position taken by the
leading New York papers on Beecher's side, ascribed it to the social
relations of the editors with him, believing that they met him
frequently at dinners and breakfasts, and found him a jovial
companion. All this would be laughable enough if it did not show the
amount of covert peril--peril against which no precautions can be
taken--to which every prominent man's character is exposed. The
moment he gets into a scrape of any kind he finds a host of persons
whose enmity he never suspected clamoring to have him thrown to the
beasts "on general grounds"--that is, in virtue of certain tests
adopted by themselves, judged by which, apart from the facts of any
particular accusation, a man of his kind is unquestionably a bad
fellow. The accusation, in short, furnishes the occasion for
destroying him, not necessarily the reason for it.

In Europe there are already abundant signs that the scandal will be
considered a symptomatic phenomenon--that is, a phenomenon
illustrative of the moral condition of American society generally;
for it must not be overlooked that, putting aside altogether the
question of Beecher's guilt or innocence, the "statements" furnish
sociological revelations of a most singular and instructive kind.
The witnesses, in telling their story, although their minds are
wholly occupied with the proof or disproof of certain propositions,
describe ways of living, standards of right and wrong, traits of
manners, codes of propriety, religious and social ideas, which,
taken together, form social pictures of great interest and value.
Now, if these were really pictures of American society in general,
as some European observers are disposed to conclude, we do not
hesitate to say that the prospects of the Anglo-Saxon race on this
continent would be somewhat gloomy. But we believe we only express
the sentiment of all parts of the country when we say that the state
of things in Brooklyn revealed by the charges and countercharges has
filled the best part of the American people with nearly as much
amazement as if an unknown tribe worshipping strange gods had been
suddenly discovered on Brooklyn Heights. In fact, the actors in the
scandal have the air of persons who are living, not _more majorum_,
by rules with which they are familiar, but like half-civilized
people who have got hold of a code which they do not understand, and
the phrases of which they use without being able to adapt their
conduct to it.

We have not space at our command to illustrate this as fully as we
could wish, even if the patience of our readers would permit of it,
but we can perhaps illustrate sufficiently within a very short
compass. We have already spoken of the Oriental extravagance of the
language used in the scandal, which might pass in Persia or Central
Arabia, where wild hyperbole is permitted by the genius of the
language, and where people are accustomed to it in conversation,
understand it perfectly, and make unconscious allowance for it.
Displayed here in the United States, in a mercantile community, and
in a tongue characterized by directness and simplicity, it makes the
actors almost entirely incomprehensible to people outside their own
set, as is shown by the attempts made to explain and understand the
letters in the case. Most of the critics, both the friendly and
hostile, are compelled to treat them as written in a sort of dialect
which has to be read with the aid of commentary, glosses, and
parallels, and accompanied, like the study of Homer or the Reg-Veda,
by a careful examination of the surroundings of the writers, the
conditions of their birth and education, the usages of the circle in
which they live, and the social and religious influences by which
they have been moulded, and so on. Their almost entire want of any
sense of necessary connection between facts and written statements
has been strikingly revealed by Moulton's production of various
drafts or outlines of cards, reports, and letters which the actors
proposed from time to time to get up and publish for the purpose of
settling their troubles and warding off exposure by imposing on the
public. No savages could have acted with a more simple-minded
unconsciousness of truth. Moulton, according to his own story,
helped Beecher to publish a lying card; got Tilton to procure from
his wife a lying letter; and Tilton concocted a lying report for the
committee, in which he made them express the highest admiration for
himself, his adulterous wife, and her paramour. Here we have a bit
of the machinery of high civilization--a committee, with its
investigation and report, used, or attempted to be used, with just
the kind of savage directness with which a Bongo would use it, when
once he came to understand it, and found he could make it serve some
end, and with just as little reference to the moral aspect of the
transaction.

Take, again, Tilton's account of the motives which governed him in
his treatment of his wife and of Beecher. He is evidently aware that
there are two codes regulating a man's conduct under such
circumstances--one the Christian code and the other the conventional
code of honor, or, as he calls it, "club-house morality"; but it
soon became clear that he had no distinct conception of their
difference. Having been brought up under the Christian code, and
taught, doubtless, to regard the term "gentleman" as a name for a
heartless epicurean, he started off by forgiving both Beecher and
his wife, or, as the lawyers say, condoning their offence; and he
speaks scornfully of the religious ignorance of the committee in
assuming in their report that there was any offence for which a
Christian was not bound to accept an apology as a sufficient
atonement. The club-house code would, however, have prescribed the
infliction of vengeance on Beecher by exposing him. Accordingly,
Tilton mixes the two codes up in the most absurd way. Having, as a
Christian, forgiven Beecher, he began, thirty days after the
discovery of the offence, to expose him as a "gentleman," and kept
forgiving and exposing him continuously through the whole four
years, the _eclat_ of such a relation to Beecher having evidently an
irresistible temptation for him. Finally, when Dr. Bacon called him
a "dog," he threw aside the Christian __role_ altogether and began
assailing his enemy with truly heathen virulence and vigor. A more
curious blending of two conceptions of duty is not often seen, and
it was doubtless due to the fact that no system of training or
culture had made any impression on the man or gone more than skin
deep. His interview with Beecher, too, by appointment, at his own
house, for the purpose of ascertaining by a comparison of dates and
reference to his wife's diary the probable paternity of her youngest
child, which he describes with the utmost simplicity, is, we venture
to say, an incident absolutely without precedent, and one which may
safely be pronounced foreign to our civilization. Whether it really
occurred, or Tilton invented it, it makes him a problem in social
philosophy of considerable interest.

Moulton's story, too, furnishes several puzzles of the same kind.
That an English-speaking Protestant married couple in easy
circumstances and of fair education, and belonging to a religious
circle, should not only be aware that their pastor was a libertine
and should be keeping it a secret for him, but should make his
adulteries the subject of conversation with him in the family
circle, is hardly capable of explanation by reference to any known
and acknowledged tendency of our society. But perhaps the most
striking thing in Moulton's _role_ is that while he appears on the
scene as a gentleman or "man of the world," who does for honor's
sake what the other actors do from fear of God, his whole course is
a kind of caricature of what a gentleman under like circumstances
would really do. For instance, he accepts Beecher's confidence,
which may have been unavoidable, and betrays it by telling various
people, from time to time, of the several incidents of Beecher's
trouble, which is something of which a weak or loose-tongued
person--vain of the task in which he was engaged, as it seemed to
him, _i.e._, of keeping the peace between two great men--might
readily be guilty. But he tells the public of it in perfect
unconsciousness that there was anything discreditable in it, as he
does of his participation in the writing of lying letters and cards,
and his passing money over from the adulterer to pacify the injured
husband. In fact, he carries, according to his own account, his
services to Beecher to a point at which it is very difficult to
distinguish them from those of a pander, maintaining at the same
time relations of the most disgusting confidence with Mrs. Tilton.
Finally, too, when greatly perplexed as to his course, he goes
publicly and with _eclat_ for advice to a lawyer, with whom no
gentleman, in the proper sense of the term, could maintain intimate
personal relation or safely consult on a question of honor. The
moral insensibility shown in his visit to General Butler is one of
the strange parts of the affairs.

We have, of course, only indicated in the briefest way some of the
things which may be regarded as symptomatic of strange mental and
moral conditions in the circle in which the affair has occurred. The
explanation of them in any way that would generally be considered
satisfactory would be a difficult task. The influences which bring
about a certain state of manners at any given time or place are
always numerous and generally obscure, but we think something of
this sort may be safely offered in consideration of the late "goings
on" in Brooklyn.

In the first place, the newspapers and other cheap periodicals, and
the lyceum lectures and small colleges, have diffused through the
community a kind of smattering of all sorts of knowledge, a taste for
reading and for "art"--that is, a desire to see and own pictures--
which, taken together, pass with a large body of slenderly equipped
persons as "culture," and give them an unprecedented self-confidence
in dealing with all the problems of life, and raise them in their
own minds to a plane on which they see nothing higher, greater,
or better than themselves. Now, culture, in the only correct and
safe sense of the term, is the result of a process of discipline,
both mental and moral. It is not a thing that can be picked up,
or that can be got by doing what one pleases. It cannot be acquired
by desultory reading, for instance, or travelling in Europe. It
comes of the protracted exercise of the faculties for given ends,
under restraints of some kind, whether imposed by one's self or
other people. In fact, it might not improperly be called the art of
doing easily what you don't like to do. It is the breaking-in of the
powers to the service of the will; and a man who has got it is not
simply a person who knows a good deal, for he may know very little,
but a man who has obtained an accurate estimate of his own capacity,
and of that of his fellows and predecessors, who is aware of the
nature and extent of his relations to the world about him, and who is
at the same time capable of using his powers to the best advantage.
In short, the man of culture is the man who has formed his ideals
through labor and self-denial. To be real, therefore, culture ought
to affect a man's whole character and not merely store his memory
with facts. Let us add, too, that it may be got in various ways,
through home influences as well as through schools or colleges;
through living in a highly organized society, making imperious
demands on one's time and faculties, as well as through the
restraints of a severe course of study. A good deal of it was
obtained from the old Calvinistic theology, against which, in the
days of its predominance, the most bumptious youth hit his head at
an early period of his career, and was reduced to thoughtfulness and
self-examination, and forced to walk in ways that were not always to
his liking.

If all this be true, the mischievous effects of the pseudo-culture
of which we have spoken above may be readily estimated. A society of
ignoramuses who know they are ignoramuses might lead a tolerably
happy and useful existence, but a society of ignoramuses each of
whom thinks he is a Solon would be an approach to Bedlam let loose,
and something analogous to this may really be seen to-day in some
parts of this country. A large body of persons has arisen, under the
influence of the common schools, magazines, newspapers, and the
rapid acquisition of wealth, who are not only engaged in enjoying
themselves after their fashion, but who firmly believe that they
have reached, in the matter of social, mental, and moral culture,
all that is attainable or desirable by anybody, and who, therefore,
tackle all the problems of the day--men's, women's, and children's
rights and duties, marriage, education, suffrage, life, death, and
immortality--with supreme indifference to what anybody else thinks
or has ever thought, and have their own trumpery prophets,
prophetesses, heroes and heroines, poets, orators, scholars and
philosophers, whom they worship with a kind of barbaric fervor. The
result is a kind of mental and moral chaos, in which many of the
fundamental rules of living, which have been worked out painfully by
thousands of years of bitter human experience, seem in imminent risk
of disappearing totally.

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