Reflections and Comments 1865 1895 by Edwin Lawrence Godkin

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

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Let us give some illustrations of the errors into which people
are apt to fall in it. Count Gasparin, a French Protestant, and
as spiritually minded a man as breathed, once talking with an
American friend expressed in strong terms his sense of the pain
it caused him that Mr. Lincoln should have been at the theatre
when he was killed, not, the friend found, because he objected in
the least to theatre-going, but because it was the evening of
Good Friday--a day which the Continental Calvinists "keep" with
great solemnity, but to which American non-episcopal Protestants
pay no attention whatever. Count Gasparin, on the other hand,
would have no hesitation in taking a ride on Sunday, or going to
a public promenade after church hours, and, from seeing him
there, his American friend would draw deductions just as
unfavorable to the Count's religious character as the Count
himself drew with regard to Mr. Lincoln's.

Take, again, the question of drinking beer and wine. There is a
large body of very excellent men in America who, from a long
contemplation of the evils wrought by excessive indulgence in
intoxicating drinks, have worked themselves up to a state of mind
about all use of such drinks which is really discreditable to
reasonable beings, leads to the most serious platform excesses,
and is perfectly incomprehensible to Continental Europeans. To
the former, the drinking even of lager beer connotes, as the
logicians say, ever so many other vices--grossness and sensuality
of nature, extravagance, indifference to home pleasures,
repugnance to steady industry, and a disregard of the precepts of
religion and morality. To many of them a German workman, and his
wife and children, sitting in a beer-garden on a summer's
evening, which to European moralists and economists is one of the
most pleasing sights in the world, is a revolting spectacle,
which calls for the interference of the police. Now, if you go to
a beer-garden in Berlin you may, any Sunday afternoon, see
doctors of divinity--none of your rationalists--but doctors of
real divinity, to whom American theologians go to be taught,
doing this very thing, and, what is worse, smoking pipes. An
American who applied to this the same course of reasoning which
he would apply to a similar scene in America, would simply be
guilty of outrageous folly. If he argued from it that the German
doctor was selfish, or did not "live as in the sight of God," the
whole process would be a model of absurdity.

Foreigners have drawn, on the other hand, from the American
"diligence in business," conclusions with regard to American
character far more uncomplimentary than those the _Christian Union_
has expressed with regard to the Prussians. There are not a few
religious and moral and cultivated circles in Europe in which the
suggestion that Americans, as a nation, were characterized by
thoughtfulness for others and a sense of God's presence would be
received with derisive laughter, owing to the application to the
phenomena of American society of the process of reasoning on which,
we fear, the _Union_ relies. Down to the war, so candid and
perspicacious a man as John Stuart Mill might have been included in
this class. The earlier editions of his "Elements of Political
Economy" contained a contemptuous statement that one sex in America
was entirely given up to "dollar-hunting" and the other to "breeding
dollar-hunters." In other words, he held that the American people
were plunged in the grossest materialism, and he doubtless based
this opinion on that intense application of the men to commercial
and industrial pursuits which we see all around us, which no church
finds fault with, but which, we know, bad as its effects are on art
and literature, really coexists with great generosity, sympathy,
public spirit, and ideality.

Take, again, the matter of chastity, on which the _Union_
touched. We grant at the outset that wherever you have classes,
the women of the lower class suffer more or less from the men of
the upper class, and anybody who says that seductions, accomplished
through the effect on female vanity of the addresses of "superiors
in station," while almost unknown here, are very numerous in Europe,
would find plenty of facts to support him. But, on the other hand,
an attempt made to persuade a Frenchman that the familiar
intercourse which the young people of both sexes in this country
enjoy was generally pure, would fail in ninety-nine cases out of
a hundred. That it should be pure is opposed to all his experience
of human nature, both male and female; and the result of your
argument with him would be that he would conclude either that you
were an extraordinarily simple person, or took him for one.

On the other hand, we believe the German, who thinks nothing of
drinking as much wine or beer as he cares for, draws from the
conduct of the American young woman whom he sees abroad, and from
what he reads in our papers about "free love," Indiana divorces,
abortion, and what not, conclusions with regard to American chastity
very different from those of the _Union_; and, if you sought to meet
him in discussion, he would overwhelm you with facts and cases
which, looked at apart from the general tenor of American life and
manners, it would be very hard to dispose of. He would say, for
instance, that we are not, perhaps, guilty of as many violations of
the marriage vows as Europeans; but that we make it so light a vow
that, instead of violating it, we get it abrogated, and then follow
our will; and then he would come down on us with boarding-house and
hotel life, and other things of the same kind, which might make us
despise him, but would make it a little difficult to get rid of him.

There is probably no minor point of manners which does more to
create unfavorable impressions of Europeans among the best class
of Americans--morally the best, we mean--than the importance
attached by the former to their eating and drinking; while there
is nothing which does more to spread in Europe impressions
unfavorable to American civilization than the indifference of
Americans, and, we may add, as regards the progressive portion of
American society--cultivated indifference--to the quality of
their meals and the time of eating them. In no European country
is moderate enjoyment of the pleasures of the table considered
incompatible with high moral aims, or even a sincerely religious
character; but a man to whom his dinner was of serious importance
would find his position in an assembly of American reformers very
precarious. The German or Frenchman or Englishman, indeed, treats
a man's views of food, and his disposition or indisposition to
eat it in company with his fellows as an indication of his place
in civilization. Savages love to eat alone, and it has been
observed in partially civilized communities relapsing into
barbarism, that one of the first indications of their decline was
the abandonment of regular meals on tables, and a tendency on the
part of the individuals to retire to secret places with their
victuals. This is probably a remnant of the old aboriginal
instinct which we still see in domesticated dogs, and was,
doubtless, implanted for the protection of the species in times
when everybody looked on his neighbor's bone with a hungry eye,
and the man with the strong hand was apt to have the fullest
stomach. Accordingly, there is in Europe, and indeed everywhere,
a tendency to regard the growth of a delicacy in eating, and
close attention to the time and manner of serving meals and their
cookery, and the use of them as promoters of social intercourse,
as an indication of moral as well as material progress. To a
large number of people here, on the other hand, the bolting of
food--ten-minute dinners, for instance--and general unconsciousness
of "what is on the table," is a sign of preoccupation with serious
things. It may be; but the German love of food is not necessarily a
sign of grossness, and that "overfed" appearance, of which the
_Union_ spoke, is not necessarily a sign of inefficiency, any more
than leanness or cadaverousness is a sign of efficiency. There is
certainly some power of hard work in King William's army, and,
indeed, we could hardly point to a better illustration of the truth,
that all the affairs of men, whether political, social, or
religious, depend for their condition largely on the state of the
digestion.

Honesty, by which we mean that class of virtues which Cicero
includes in the term _bona fides_, has, to a considerable extent,
owing, we think, to the peculiar humanitarian character which the
circumstances of the country have given to the work of reform, been
subordinated in the United States to brotherly kindness. Now, this
right to arrange the virtues according to a scale of its own, is
something which not only every age, but every nation, has claimed,
and, accordingly, we find that each community, in forming its
judgment of a man's character, gives a different degree of weight to
different features of it. Keeping a mistress would probably,
anywhere in the United States, damage a man's reputation far more
seriously than fraudulent bankruptcy; while horse-stealing, which in
New England would be a comparatively trifling offence, out in
Montana is a far fouler thing than murder. But in the European
scale, honesty still occupies the first place. Bearing this in mind,
it is worth any man's while who proposes to pass judgment on the
morality of any foreign country, to consider what is the impression
produced on foreign opinion about American morality by the story of
the Erie Railroad, by the career of Fisk, by the condition of the
judicial bench in the commercial capital of the country, by the
charges of corruption brought against such men as Trumbull and
Fessenden at the time of the impeachment trial; by the comically
prominent and beloved position which Butler has held for some years
in our best moral circles, and by the condition of the civil
service.

The truth is that it is almost impossible for anybody to compare
one nation with another fairly, unless he possesses complete
familiarity with the national life of both, and therefore can
distinguish isolated facts from symptomatic facts.

The reason why some of the phenomena of American society which
shock foreigners greatly, do not shock even the best Americans so
much, is not that the latter have become hardened to them--though
this counts for something--but that they know of various
counteracting and compensating phenomena which prevent, or are
sure to prevent, them in the long run from doing the mischief
which they seem to threaten. In other words, they understand the
checks and balances of their society as well as its tendencies.
Anybody who considers these things will be careful how he
denounces people whose manners differ from his own for want of
spirituality or morality, and we may add that any historical
student engaged in comparing the morality of the age in which he
lives with that of any other age which he knows only through
chronicles, will do well to exercise the same caution for the
same reasons.

THE "COMIC-PAPER" QUESTION

It is recorded of a patriotic member of the Committee of Ways and
Means, that after hearing from the Special Commissioner of the
Revenue an elaborate and strongly fortified argument which made a
deep impression on the committee in favor of a reduction of the
whiskey tax, on the ground that the then rate, two dollars a
gallon, could not be collected--he closed the debate, and carried
the majority with him, by declaring that, for his part, he never
would admit that a government which had just suppressed the
greatest rebellion the world ever saw, could not collect two
dollars a gallon on whiskey. A large portion of the public
approaches the comic-paper problem in much the same spirit in
which this gentleman approached the whiskey tax. The country has
plenty of humor, and plenty of humorists. It fills whole pages of
numerous magazines and whole columns of numerous newspapers with
really good jokes every month. It supplies great numbers of
orators and lecturers and diners-out with "little stories,"
which, of their kind, cannot be surpassed. There is probably no
country in the world, too, in which there is so much constantly
going on of the fun which does not need local knowledge or
coloring to be enjoyed, but will bear exportation, and be
recognized as the genuine article in any English-speaking part of
the world. Moreover, there is in the real American stories an
amount of suggestiveness, a power of "connotation," which cannot
be affirmed of those of any other country. A very large number of
them are real contributions to sociology, and of considerable
value too. Besides all this, the United States possesses, what no
other nation does, several professed jesters--that is, men who
are not only humorous in the ordinary sense of the term, but make
a business of cracking jokes, and are recognized as persons whose
duty it is to take a jocose view of things. Artemus Ward, Josh
Billings, and Mark Twain, and the Rev. P. V. Nasby, and one or
two others of less note, are a kind of personages which no other
society has produced, and could in no other society attain equal
celebrity. In fact, when one examines the total annual production
of jokes in the United States, one who knows nothing of the past
history of the comic-paper question can hardly avoid the
conclusion that such periodicals would run serious risk of being
overwhelmed with "good things" and dying of plethora. Yet the
melancholy fact is that several--indeed, all that have been
started--have died of inanition; that is, of the absence of
jokes. The last one says it offered all the great humorists in
the country plenty of work, and their own terms as to pay, and
failed to enlist them, and the chance jokes apparently were
neither numerous enough nor good enough to keep it afloat.

Now what is the cause of this disheartening state of things? Why can
the United States not have a comic paper of their own? The answers
to this question vary, though of course not greatly. They are mostly
given in the shape of a history, with appropriate comments, of the
unsuccessful attempts made to establish comic papers; one went down
because it did not sympathize with the liberal and humane movements
of the day, and laughed in the pro-slavery interest; another,
because it never succeeded in getting hold of a good draughtsman for
its engravings; and another venture failed, among other mistakes, we
are told, because it made fun of the New York _Tribune_. The
explanation which finds most general favor with the public is, that
while in England, France, and Germany "the great dailies" confine
themselves to the serious treatment of the topics of the day, and
thus leave room for the labors of _Punch_, or _Kladderadatsch_, or
_Charivari_, in America all papers do their own joking; and, if it
seems desirable to take a comic view of anything or anybody, take it
on the spot in their own columns.

Hence any paper which starts on a comic basis alone meets with
rivals in all its sober-minded contemporaries, and comes to
grief. The difficulty it has to contend with is, in short, very
like that which the professional laundress or baker has to
contend with, owing to the fact that families are accustomed to
do their own washing and bake their own bread. And, indeed, it is
not unlike that with which professional writers of all kinds have
to contend, owing to the readiness of clergymen, lawyers, and
professors to write, while doing something else. An ordinary
daily paper supplies, besides its serious disquisitions, fun
enough for one average household--sometimes in single jokes, and
sometimes in the shape of "sparkle" or "spiciness" in grave
articles. Often enough it is very poor stuff, but it amuses
people, without turning their attention away from the sober work
of life, which is the only way in which the vast body of
Americans are willing to be amused. Newspaper comedians have
here, what they would not have in London, a chance of letting off
a joke once a day, and six or seven jokes a week is more than any
comic paper is willing or able to take from any one contributor,
partly owing to the need of variety in a paper given wholly to
humor, and partly owing to want of space. Anybody, therefore, who
has humor for sale finds a readier market among the dailies or
magazines, and a far wider circle of readers, than he would in
any comic paper.

The charge that our comic papers have generally opposed the friends
of liberty and progress--that is the most intelligent and
appreciative portion of the public--is quite true, but it does not
go far to account for their failure. _Punch_ has done this steadily
ever since its establishment, without serious injury. No good cause
has ever received much backing from it till it became the cause of
the majority, or indeed has escaped being made the butt of its
ridicule; and we confess we doubt whether "the friends of progress,"
using the term in what we may call its technical sense, were ever a
sufficiently large body, or had ever sufficient love of fun, to make
their disfavor of any great consequence. Most people in the United
States who are very earnestly enlisted in the service of "a cause"
look on all ridicule as "wicked," and regard with great suspicion
anybody who indulges in it, whether he makes them the object of it
or not. They bore with it, when turned against slavery, from one or
two distinguished humorists, because its effectiveness was plain;
but we doubt whether any man who had the knack of seeing the
ludicrous side of things ever really won their confidence, partly
owing to their own natural want of humor, and partly to their
careful cultivation of a habit of solemnity of mind as the only
thing that can make an "advanced" position really tenable, to say
nothing of comfortable. The causes of all successes, as of all
failures, in the literary world are of course various, and no doubt
there is a good deal of truth in all that has been said in solution
of the comic-paper problem. American humorists of the best class can
find something better or more lucrative to do than writing for a
comic paper; while the poor American humorists, like the poor
humorists of all countries, are coarse and vulgar, even where they
are not stupid.

But there is one striking difference between American society and
those societies in which comic papers have succeeded which not
only goes a good way to explain their failure here, but puts a
better face on some of their efforts--such as their onslaughts on
the friends of progress--than they seem to wear at first sight.
To furnish sufficient food for fun to keep a comic paper afloat,
a country must supply a good many strong social contrasts for the
professional joker to play upon, and must have a large amount of
reverence for social distinctions and dignities for him to shock.
Two-thirds of the zest with which foreign comic papers are read
is due to the fact that they caricature persons or social circles
with which the mass of their readers are not thoroughly familiar,
and whose habits and ways of looking at things they do not share
or only partly share. A good deal of the fun in _Punch_, for
instance, consists in making costermongers or cabmen quarrel with
the upper classes, in ridicule of Jeames's attempts to imitate
his master, of Brown's efforts to scrape acquaintance with a
peer, of the absurd figure cut by the "cad" in the hunting-field,
and of the folly of the city clerk in trying to dress and behave
like a guardsman. In short, the point of a great number of its
best jokes is made by bringing different social strata into sharp
comparison. The peculiarities of Irishmen and Scotchmen also
furnish rich materials to the caricaturist. He never tires of
illustrating the blunders and impudence of the one and the hot
patriotism and niggardliness of the other. The Irish Highlander,
who denies, in a rich brogue, that any Irish are ever admitted
into his regiment, and the cannie burgher from Aberdeen, who, on
his return home from a visit to London, says it's an "awfu' dear
place; that he hadna' been twa oors in the toon when bang went
saxpence," are types which raise a laugh all over the United
Kingdom, and all because, again, they furnish materials for
ludicrous contrast which everybody is capable of appreciating.

Neither the Irishman, Scotchman, nor Englishman, as such, can be
made to yield much fun, if sketched alone. It is when ranged
alongside of each other, and measured by the English middle-class
standard of propriety, that they become entertaining.

In a homogeneous society, like that of the United States, none of
this material is to be found. The New Englander, to be sure,
furnishes a type which differs from the Middle-States man or the
Southerner or Westerner, but none of them differs enough to make him
worth caricaturing. His speech, his dress, his modes of acting and
thinking so nearly resemble those of his neighbors in other parts of
the country that after the comic writer or draughtsman had done his
best or his worst upon him, it would remain still a little doubtful
where the joke came in. The Irishman, and especially the New York
Irish voter, and his sister Bridget, the cook, have during the past
ten years rendered more or less service as butts for caricaturists,
but they are rapidly wearing out. They are not many-sided persons at
best, and their characteristics have become associated in the
American mind with so much that is uncomfortable and repulsive in
domestic and political life, that it becomes increasingly difficult
to get a native to laugh at them. It must be confessed, too, that
the Irish in America have signally belied the poet's assertion,
"_Coelum non animam mutant qui trans mare currunt_." There is
nothing more striking in their condition than the almost complete
disappearance from their character, at least in its outward
manifestations, of the vivacity, politeness, kindliness, comical
blundering impetuosity, and double-sightedness, out of which the
Irishman of the stage and Jo Miller's Irishman who made all the
bulls were manufactured in the last century. Of the other
nationalities we need hardly speak, as the English-speaking public
knows little of them, although the German Jew is perhaps the most
durable material the comic writer has ever worked on.

The absence of class distinctions here, too, and the complete
democratization of institutions during the last forty years, have
destroyed the reverence and sense of mystery by shocking which
the European comic paper produces some of its most tickling
effects. Gladstone and Disraeli figuring as pugilists in the
ring, for instance, diverts the English public, because it gives
a very smart blow to the public sense of fitness, and makes a
strong impression of absurdity, these two men being to the
English public real dignitaries, in the strict sense of the word,
and under the strongest obligations to behave properly. But a
representation of Grant and Sumner as pugilists would hardly make
Americans laugh, because, though absurd, it would not be nearly
so absurd, or run counter to any so sharply defined standard of
official demeanor. The Lord Chief-Justice playing croquet with a
pretty girl owes nearly all its point, as a joke, to the popular
awe of him and the mystery which surrounds his mode of life in
popular eyes; a picture of Chief-Justice Chase doing the same
thing would hardly excite a smile, because everybody knows him,
and has known him all his life, and can have access to him at any
hour of the night or day. And then it must be borne in mind that
Paris and London contain all the famous men of France and
England, and anybody who jokes about them is sure of having the
whole public for an audience; while the best New York joke falls
flat in Boston or Philadelphia, and flatter still in Cincinnati
or Chicago, owing to want of acquaintance with the materials of
which it is composed.

We might multiply these illustrations indefinitely, but we have
probably said enough to show anyone that the field open to our
comic writer is very much more restricted than that in which his
European rival labors. He has, in short, to seek his jokes in
character, while the European may draw largely upon manners, and
it is doubtful whether character will ever supply materials for a
really brilliant weekly comedian. Its points are not sufficiently
salient. The American comic papers have evidently perceived the
value of reverence and of violent contrast for the purposes of
their profession, and this it is which leads them so constantly
to select reformers and reform movements as their butts. The
earnest man, intensely occupied with "a cause," comes nearer to
standing in the relation to the popular mind occupied in England
by the aristocrat or statesman than anybody else in America. The
politician is notorious for his familiarity with all comers, and
"the gentleman" has become too insignificant a person to furnish
materials for a contrast; but the progressive man is sufficiently
well known, and sufficiently stiff in his moral composition, to
make it funny to see him in a humorous tableau.

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