Reflections and Comments 1865 1895 by Edwin Lawrence Godkin

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

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In the colonies, and especially in Canada, where there is so little
in the local life to gratify the imagination, the court shines with
a splendor which the distance only intensifies. To a certain class
of Canadians, who enjoy more frequent opportunities than the
inhabitants of the other great colonies of renewing or fortifying
their love of the competition of English social life, and of the
marks of success in it, the court, as the fountain of honor, apart
from all political significance, is an object of almost fierce
interest. In England itself the signs of social distinction are not
so much prized. This kind of Canadian is, in fact, apt to be rather
more of an Englishman than the Englishman himself in all these
things. He imitates and cultivates English usages with a passion
which takes no account of the restrictions of time or place. It is
"the thing" too in Canadian society, as in the American colony in
Paris, to be much disgusted by the "low Americans" who invade the
Dominion in summer, and to feel that even the swells of New York and
Boston could achieve much improvement in their manners by faithful
observation of the doings in the Toronto and Ottawa drawing-rooms.

As far as admiration of courts and a deep desire for court-life and
a belief in the saving grace of contact with royalty can go,
therefore, there are Canadians fully prepared for the establishment
of a court "in their midst." The society of the province was, in
fact, in an imflammable eagerness to kiss hands, and back out from
the presence of royalty, and perform the various exercises
pertaining to admission to court circles, and in a proper state of
Jingo distrust of the wicked Czar and his minions--which in the
Colonies is now one of the marks of gentility--when the magician,
Lord Beaconsfield, determined to apply the match to it by sending
out a real princess. In spite of his contempt for the "flat-nosed
Franks," however, he can hardly have been prepared for the response
which he elicited. He cannot have designed to make monarchy and
royalty seem ridiculous, and yet the articles and addresses and
ceremonies with which the new Governor-General and his wife have
been received look as if the Minister had determined, before he
died, to have the best laugh of his farcical career over the
barbarians who have called him in to rule over them. A court is a
very delicate thing, and a strong capacity for enjoying it does not
of itself make good courtiers. In England the reasons which prevent
a man's being received at court--such as active prosecution of the
dry-goods business--are a thousand years old; in fact, they may be
said to have come down from the ancient world along with the Roman
law. They have, therefore, a certain natural fitness and force in
the eyes of the natives of that country. That is, it seems to "stand
to reason" that a trader should not go to court. Moreover, they can
be enforced in England and still leave an abundant supply of
spotless persons for the purposes of court society. The court-line
is drawn along an existing and well-marked social division.

In Canada this preparation for court gayeties does not exist. If the
persons soiled by commerce were to be excluded from the princess's
presence, she would lead a lonely and dismal life, and the court
would be substantially a failure. If, on the other hand, the court
is to be made up exclusively of rich traders, it will not only
excite the fiercest jealousies and bitterness among those who are
excluded, but it will be very difficult to provide a rule for
passing on claims for presentation when once the line of official
position is passed. But, it may be said, why not throw all
restrictions aside and admit everybody, as at White House
receptions? Nobody will ask this question who has mastered even the
rudiments of royalty, and we shall not take the trouble of answering
it fully. We are now discussing the question for the benefit of
persons of some degree of knowledge. Suffice it to say that any
laxity of practice at Ottawa would do a good deal of damage to the
monarchical principle itself, which, as Mr. Bagehot has pointed out,
owes much of its force and permanence even in England to its hold on
the imagination. The princess cannot go back to England receiving
Tom, Dick, and Harry in Canada without a certain loss of prestige
both for herself and her house.

Not the least curious feature of the crisis is the interest the
prospect of a Canadian court has excited in this country. Our
newspapers know what they are about when they give whole pages to
accounts of the voyage and the reception, including a history of the
House of Argyll and a brief sketch of the feelings of Captain the
Duke of Edinburgh, now on the Halifax Station, over his approaching
meeting with his sister. They recognize the existence of a deep and
abiding curiosity, at least among the women of our country, about
all that relates to royalty and its doings, in spite of the labor
expended for nearly a century by orators and editors in showing up
the vanity and hollowness of monarchical distinctions. In fact, if
the secrets of American hearts could be revealed, we fear it would
be found that the materials for about a million of each order of
nobility, from dukes down, exist among us under quiet republican
exteriors, and that if a court circle were set up among us no
earthly power could prevent its assuming unnatural and unmanageable
proportions. A prince like the late Emperor Maximilian, whose purse
was meagre but whose connection with a reigning house was
unquestioned and close, might find worse ways of repairing his
fortune than setting up an amateur court in some of the Atlantic
cities and charging a moderate fee for presentation, and drawing the
line judiciously so as to keep up the distinction without damaging
his revenues. To prevent cutting remarks on the members of the
circle, however, and too much ridicule of the whole enterprise, he
would have to give the editors high places about his person, and
provide offices for the reporters in his basement. If the scheme
were well organized and did not attempt too much, its value in
settling people's "position," and in giving the worthy their proper
place without the prolonged struggles they now have sometimes to
undergo, would be very great, and it would enable foreign students
of our institutions to pursue successfully certain lines of inquiry
into our manners and customs in which they are now too often
baffled.

LIVING IN EUROPE AND GOING TO IT

Every year a great deal of discussion of the best mode of spending
the summer, and the course of the people who go to Europe, instead
of submitting to the discomfort and extortion of American hotels, is
for the most part greatly commended. The story told about the hotels
and lodging-houses is the same every year. The food is bad, the
rooms uncomfortable, and the charges high. The fashion, except
perhaps at Newport and Beverly, near Boston, Bar Harbor, and one or
two other highly favored localities, grows stronger and stronger, to
live in the city in the winter and spend the three hot months in
France or England or Switzerland. Moreover, the accounts which come
from Europe of the increase in the number of American colonists now
to be found in every attractive town of the Continent are not
exactly alarming, but they are sufficient to set people thinking.
The number of those who pass long years in Europe, educate their
children there, and retain little connection with America beyond
drawing their dividends, grows steadily, and as a general rule they
are persons whose minds or manners or influence makes their
prolonged absence a sensible loss to our civilization. Moreover,
when they come back, they find it difficult to stay, and staying is
not made easy for them. People here are a little suspicious of them,
and are apt to fancy that they have got out of sympathy with
American institutions, and have grown too critical for the rough
processes by which the work of life in America has in a large degree
to be done. They themselves, on the other hand, besides being soured
by the coldness of their reception, are apt to be disgusted by the
want of finish of all their surroundings, by the difficulty with
which the commoner and coarser needs are met in this country, and by
the reluctance with which allowance is made by legislation and
opinion for the gratification of unusual or unpopular tastes.

The result is a breach, which is already wide, and tends to widen,
between the class which is hard at work making its fortune and the
class which has either made its fortune or has got all it desires,
which is the same thing as a fortune. There is a great deal of work
which this latter would like to do. There is a great deal of the
work of legislation and administration and education for which it is
eminently fitted, but in which, nevertheless, it has little or no
chance of sharing, owing to the loss of the art of winning the
confidence of others, and working with others, which is more easily
learned in America than elsewhere, and which is readily lost by
prolonged residence in any European country, and the absence of
which here makes all other gifts for practical purposes almost
worthless. So that it must be said that the amount of intellectual
and aesthetic culture which an American acquires in Europe is
somewhat dearly purchased. When he gets home, he is apt to find it a
useless possession, as far as the world without is concerned, unless
he is lucky enough, as sometimes but not often happens, to drop into
some absorbing occupation or to lose his fortune. Failing this, he
begins that melancholy process of vibration between the two
continents in which an increasingly large number of persons pass a
great part of their lives, their hearts and affections being wholly
in neither.

The remedy for the mania for _living_ abroad is an elaborate one,
and one needing more time for its creation. No country retains the
hearty affection of its educated class which does not feed its
imagination. The more we cultivate men, the higher their ideals grow
in all directions, political and social, and they like best the
places in which these ideals are most satisfied. The long and varied
history of older countries offers their citizens a series of
pictures which stimulate patriotism in the highest degree; and it
will generally be found that the patriotism and love of home of the
cultivated class is in the ratio of the supply of this kind of food.
They are languid among the Russians, and among the Germans prior to
the late war, as compared to the English and French. In default of a
long history, however, historic incidents are apt to lose their
power on the imagination through over-use. The jocose view of
Washington and of the Pilgrim Fathers, of Bunker Hill and of the
Fourth of July, already gains ground rapidly among us, through too
great familiarity. When Professor Tyndall, in one of his lectures
here, made an allusion which he meant to be solemn and impressive,
to Plymouth Rock, its triteness drew a titter from the audience
which for a moment confounded him.

Unluckily, history cannot be made to order. It is the product of
ages. The proper substitute for it, as well as for the spectacular
effects of monarchy, in new democratic societies, is perfection.
There is no way in which we can here kindle the imaginations of the
large body of men and women to whom we are every year giving an
increasingly high education so well as by finish in the things we
undertake to do. Nothing does so much to produce despondency about
the republic, or alienation from republican institutions, among the
young of the present day, as the condition of the civil service, the
poor working of the post-office and the treasury or the courts, or
the helplessness of legislators in dealing with the ordinary every-
day problems. The largeness of the country, and the rapidity of its
growth, and the comparatively low condition of foreign nations in
respect to freedom, which roused people in Fourth-of-July orations
forty years ago, have, like the historical reminiscences, lost their
magic, and the material prosperity is now associated in people's
minds with so much moral corruption that the mention of it produces
in some of the best of us a feeling not far removed from nausea.
Nothing will do so much now to rouse the old enthusiasm as the
spectacle of the pure working of our administrative machinery,
of able and independent judges, a learned and upright bar, a
respectable and purified custom-house, an enlightened and efficient
treasury, and a painstaking post-office. The colleges of the country
and the railroads, and indeed everything that depends on private
enterprise, are rapidly becoming objects of pride; but a good deal
needs to be done by the government to prevent its being a source of
shame.

Mrs. Stevenson, a Philadelphia lady; the president of the Civic Club
in that city, delivered an address to the club some weeks ago on its
work of reform, in which we find the following passage:

"There seems to exist a mysterious, unwritten law governing the
social organism which causes a natural and wholesome reaction to
take place whenever tendencies, perhaps inherent in certain classes,
threaten to become general, and thereby dangerous to the community.
A few years ago, for instance, with the increasing facilities for
foreign travel, and the corresponding increase of international
intercourse, Anglomania had become so much in vogue as to form an
incipient danger to the true democratic American spirit that
constitutes the real strength of our nation. It was fast becoming a
national habit to extol everything European--from monarchy and its
aristocratic institutions down to the humblest article of dress or
of household use--to the detriment of everything American; and from
the upper 'four hundred' this habit was fast extending to the upper
forty thousand. But just as our wealthy classes were beginning to
make themselves positively ridiculous abroad, and almost intolerable
at home, a reaction set in, and upon all sides there sprang up
patriotic associations of a social order--'Sons and Daughters of the
Revolution,' 'Colonial Dames,' etc.--which revived proper American
self-respect among our people by teaching us to rest our pride, if
pride we _must_ have, where it legitimately should rest--upon good
service rendered to our own country."

This seems to be a shaft aimed at the practice of "going to Europe,"
for the decline of "the true American spirit" and the growth of
Anglomania are ascribed to the "increasing facilities for foreign
travel" and "the corresponding increase of international
intercourse." If the charge be true, it is one of the most
afflicting over made, because it shows that "the true democratic
American spirit" suffers from what the world has hitherto considered
one of the greatest triumphs of modern science, and one of the
greatest blessings conferred on the race--the enormous improvement
in oceanic steam navigation; that, in fact, American patriotism is
very much like the Catholic faith in the Middle Ages--something
naturally hostile to progress in the arts.

If, too, the practice of going to Europe be dangerous to American
faith and morals, the number of those who go makes it of immense
importance. There is probably no American who has risen above very
narrow circumstances who does not go to Europe at least once in his
life. There is hardly a village in the country in which the man who
has succeeded in trade or commerce does not announce his success to
his neighbors by a trip to Europe for himself and his family. There
is hardly a professor, or teacher, or clergyman, or artist, or
author who does not save out of a salary, however small, in order to
make the voyage. Tired professional or business men make it
constantly, under the pretence that it is the only way they can get
"a real holiday." Journalists make it as the only way of getting out
of their heads such disgusting topics as Croker and Gilroy, and Hill
and Murphy. Rich people make it every year, or oftener, through mere
restlessness. We are now leaving out of account, of course,
immigrants born in the Old World, who go back to see their friends.
We are talking of native Americans. Of course, all native Americans
cannot go, because, even when they can afford it, they cannot always
get the time. But we venture on the proposition that there is hardly
any American "in this broad land," as members of Congress say, who,
having both time and money, has not gone to Europe, or does not mean
to go some day or other. So that, if Mrs. Stevenson's account of the
moral effects of the voyage were true, it would show that the very
best portion of our population, the most moral, the most religious,
and the most educated were constantly exposing themselves by tens of
thousands to most debasing influences.

But is it true? We think not. Americans who go to Europe with some
knowledge of history, of the fine arts, and of literature, all
recognize the fact that they could not have completed their
education without going. To such people travel in Europe is one of
the purest and most elevating of pleasures, for Europe contains the
experience of mankind in nearly every field of human endeavor.
They often, it is true, come back discontented with America, but
out of this discontent have grown some of our most valuable
improvements--libraries, museums, art-galleries, colleges. What they
have seen in Europe has opened their eyes to the possibilities and
shortcomings of their own country.

To take a familiar example, it is travel in Europe which has done
most to stimulate the movement for municipal reform. It is seeing
London and Paris, and Berlin and Birmingham, which has done most to
wake people up to the horrors of the Croker-Gilroy rule, and inflame
the determination to end it as a national disgrace. The class of
Americans who do not come back discontented are usually those who
had no education to start with.

"Knowledge to their eyes her ample page,
Rich with the spoils of time, did ne'er unroll!"

So, even when standing on the Acropolis at Athens or in the Tribuna
at Florence, they feel themselves sadly "out of it." They think
longingly of Billy or Jimmy, and the coffee and cakes of their far
Missouri or Arkansas home, and come back cursing Europe and its
contents. No damage is ever done by foreign travel to the "true
democratic American spirit" of this class.

And now as to "Anglomania," a subject to be handled with as much
delicacy as an anarchist bomb. Anglomania in one form or other is to
be met with in all countries, especially France and Germany, and has
shown itself here and there all over the Continent ever since the
peace of 1815. The things in which it most imitates the English are
riding, driving, men's clothes, sports in general, and domestic
comfort. The reason is that the English have for two centuries given
more attention to these things than any other people. No other has
so cultivated the horse for pleasure purposes. No other has devoted
so much thought and money to suitability in dress and to field sports.
No other has brought to such perfection the art of living in country
houses. In all these things people who can afford it try to imitate
them. We say, with a full consciousness of the responsibility which
the avowal entails on us, that they do right. It is well in any art
to watch and imitate the man who has best succeeded in it. The
sluggard has been exhorted even to imitate the ant, and anyone who
wishes to ride or drive well, or dress appropriately, or entertain
in a country house, ought to study the way the English do these
things, and follow their example, for anything worth doing ought to
be done well. It is mostly in these things that Anglomania consists.

Mrs. Stevenson, we fear, exaggerates greatly the number of
Anglomaniacs. A few dozen are as many as are to be found in any
country, and any government or polity which their presence puts in
peril ought to be overthrown, for assuredly it is rotten to the
core. There is nothing, in fact, better calculated to make Americans
hang their heads for shame than the list of small things which one
hears from "good Americans," put our institutions in danger. We
remember a good old publisher, in the days before international
copyright, who thought we could not much longer stand the
circulation of British novels. Their ideas, he said, were dangerous
to a republic. An Anglomaniac can hardly turn up his trousers on
Fifth Avenue without eliciting shrieks of alarm from the American
patriot. And yet a more harmless creature really does not exist.

These matters are worth notice because we are the only great nation
in the world whom people try to preach into patriotism. The natives
of other countries love their country simply, naturally, and for the
most part silently, as they love their mothers and their wives. But
to get an American to do so he has, one would think, to be followed
about by a preacher with a big stick exhorting him to be a "good
American," or he will catch it. But nobody was ever preached into
love of country. He may be preached into sacrifices in its behalf,
but the springs of love cannot be got at by any system of
persuasion. No man will love his country unless he feels it to be
lovable; and it is to making it lovable that the exertions of those
who have American patriotism in charge should be devoted.

Every Good American may take comfort in the fact that very few
people indeed of any social or political value who have once lived
in America ever want again to live in Europe, unless they go for
purposes of study or education. For there is no question that there
is no country in the world in which the atmosphere is so friendly,
and in which one is so sure of sympathy in misfortune, of acceptance
on his own merits independently of birth or money, and has so many
opportunities of escape from the slings and arrows of outrageous
fortune, as America. These are the things which, after all, in the
vast majority of cases, win and hold the human heart; and a country
which has them can well afford to let its citizens travel, and even
let some of them "be early English if they can."

CARLYLE'S POLITICAL INFLUENCE

The numerous articles called forth by Carlyle's "Reminiscences,"
both in this country and in England, while varying greatly in the
proportions in which they mix their praise and blame, leave no doubt
that there has occurred a very strong revulsion of feeling about
him, so strong in England that we are told that the subscriptions
for a proposed memorial to him have almost if not entirely ceased.
The censure which Carlyle's friends are visiting on Mr. Froude for
his indiscretion in printing the book, though deserved, has done but
little to mitigate the severity of the judgment passed on the writer
himself. In fact, we are inclined to believe that Mr. Froude's want
of judgment rather helps to deepen the surprise and disappointment
with which the book has been received, as affording an additional
proof of the feebleness of Carlyle's own powers in estimating the
people about him. That, after heaping contempt on so many of whom
the world has been accustomed to think highly, he should have
retained to the last his confidence in, and respect for, a person
capable of dealing his fame such a deadly blow as Mr. Froude, not
unnaturally increases the irritation with which the public has read
his recollections of his friends and contemporaries. The
"disillusion and disenchantment" worked by the book, in so far as it
affects Carlyle's fame as a prophet, is, of course, a misfortune,
and a very serious one. What it was he preached when his preaching
first startled the world, but very few now undertake to say, and
these few by no means agree in their story. His influence,
apparently, was not of the kind which reaches a man through
articulate speech, but rather that which comes through the blast of
a trumpet or the marching tune of a good band, and fills the heart
with a feeling of capacity for high endeavor, though one cannot say
in what particular field it is to be displayed. But though he
founded no school and taught no system of morals, his eminence as
a mere preacher was one of the very valuable possessions of the
Anglo-Saxon world, as a sort of standing protest against the
materialistic tendencies of the age; and this eminence rested a good
deal on the popular conception of the elevation of his own
character. This conception has undoubtedly, whether justly or
unjustly, been greatly shaken, if not destroyed, by the revelation
that invidious comparison between himself and others was almost a
habit of his life; that, while preaching patient endurance, he did
not himself endure patiently even the minor ills of existence; that,
when looking at the fine equipages at Hyde Park Corner, he had to
support himself by "sternly thinking"--"yes, and perhaps none of you
could do what I am at;" that his mental attitude during the
preparation of most of his books was that of a man not properly
appreciated who was going to cast pearls before swine; or, in other
words, the attitude of an ordinary literary man burdened with too
much vanity for his powers, and more concerned about the effect his
work was likely to have on his personal fortunes than on the mental
or moral condition of the world. While full of contempt for
sciolists and pretenders and newspapers, he wrote, and was ready to
write, on the American war without any knowledge of the facts, and
scorned Darwinism without ever bestowing a thought on it. Carlyle's
public were long ago conscious, as one of his critics has said, that
he canted prodigiously about cant, and talked voluminously in praise
of silence; but then it recognized that much repetition has always
the air of cant, and that to persuade men to be silent, as well as
to do anything else, one must talk a great deal. A prophet has to be
diffuse and loud, and often shrill, and his disciples will always
forgive any number of mistakes in method or manner as long as they
believe that behind the preaching there is perfect simplicity and
self-forgetfulness. That this belief has been weakened in many minds
with regard to Carlyle by the "Reminiscences" there is no question,
and the consequence of it is that the Anglo Saxon world has lost one
of its best possessions; and it is a kind of possession which no
apologies or explanations, and no proof of Mr. Froude's
indiscretion, can restore.

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