ON PUTTING ONE’S HEAD INTO ONE’S BELLY
MR. HENRY HOLT, a publisher, has uttered his mind at no inconsiderable length in deprecation of what he calls “the commercialization of literature.” That literature, in this country and England at least, has somewhat fallen from its high estate and is regarded even by many of its purveyors as a mere trade is unfortunately true, as we see in the genesis and development of the “literary syndicates”; in the unholy alliance between the book reviewer and the head of the advertising department; in the systematic “booming” of certain books and authors by methods, both supertabular and submanual, not materially different from those used for the promotion of a patent medicine; in the reverent attitude of editors and publishers toward authors of “best sellers,” and in more things than can be here set down. In the last century when, surely by no fortuitous happening, American literature was made by such men as Irving, Cooper, Bryant, Poe, Emerson, Whittier, Hawthorne, Longfellow, Holmes and Lowell, these purely commercial phenomena were in less conspicuous evidence and some of them were altogether indiscernible.
That the period of literature’s commercialization should be that of its decay is obviously more than a coincidence. Mr. Holt observes both, and is sad, but that is a coincidence pure and simple: his melancholy is due to something else. The “commercialization” is confessedly compelling him to do a good deal more advertising than he likes to pay for; for commerce spells competition. The authors of to-day and their agents have acquired the disagreeable habit of taking their wares to the highest bidder — the publisher who will give the highest royalties and the broadest publicity. The immemorial relation whereby the publisher was said to drink wine out of the author’s skull has been rudely disturbed by the latter demanding some of the wine for himself and refusing to supply the skull — an irritating infraction of a good understanding sanctified by centuries of faithful observance. It is only natural that Mr. Holt, being a conservative man and a protagonist of established order, should experience some of the emotions appropriate to the defenders in a servile insurrection.
With a candor that is most becoming, Mr. Holt expressly bewails the passing of the old régime — the departed days when authors “had other resources” than authorship. This is the second time that it has been my melancholy privilege to hear the head of a prosperous American publishing house make this moan. Another one, a few years ago, in addressing a company of authors, solemnly advised them to have some means of support additional to writing. I was not then, and am not now, assured that publishers find it necessary to have any means of support additional to publishing.
THE AMERICAN CHAIR
A LONDON philosopher was once pleased to remark that the American habit of sitting on the middle of the back with the feet elevated might in time profoundly alter the American physical structure, producing a race having its type in the Bactrian camel. If “our cousins across the water” understood this matter they would not adopt the flippant tone toward us that they now do, but in place of ridicule would bestow compassion. Before endeavoring to clear away the misconceptions surrounding the subject, so as to let in upon ourselves the holy light of British sympathy I must explain that the practice of sitting in the manner which the British philosopher somewhat inaccurately describes is confined mostly to the males of our race; the American woman will not, I trust, partake of the structural modification foreseen by the scientific eye, but remain, as now, simply and sweetly, dromedarian. True, Nature may punish her for being found in bad company, but at the first stroke of the lash she will doubtless forsake us and seek sanctuary in the companionship of that bolt-upright vertebrate, the English nobleman.
The national peculiarity which, one is sorry to observe, provokes nothing but levity in the British mind — and British levity is no light affliction — is not our fault but our misfortune. Like every other people, we Americans are the slaves of those who serve us. Not one of us in a thousand (so busy are we in “subduing the wilderness” and guarding our homes against the Redskins) has leisure to plan and order his surroundings; and to the few whom Fortune has favored with leisure she has denied the means. We take everything readymade — our houses, grounds, carriages, furniture and all. In some of these things Providence has by special interposition introduced new designs and revived old ones, but in most of them there is neither change nor the shadow of turning. They are to-day what they were a century ago, and a century hence will be what they are to-day. The chair-maker, for example, is the obscure intelligence and indirigible energy that his grandfather was before him: the American chair maintains through the ages its bad eminence as an instrument of torture. Time can not wither nor custom stale its infinite malevolence. The type of the species is the familiar hard-pan chair of the kitchen; in the dining-room this has been deplaced by the “splint-bottom,” and in the parlor by an armed and upholstered abomination which tempts us to session only to turn to ashes, as it were, upon our bodies. They are essentially the same old chair — worthy descendants of the original Adam of Chairs, created from a block in the image of its maker’s head. The American chair is never made to measure; it is supposed to fit anybody and be universally applicable.
It is to the American chair that we must look for the genesis and rationale of the American practice of shelving the American feet on the most convenient dizzy eminence. We naturally desire as little contact with the chair as possible, so we touch it with the acutest angle that we are able to achieve. The feet must rest somewhere, and a place must be found for them. It is admitted that the mantel, the sideboard, the window-sill, the escritoire and the dining table (at least during meals) are not good places; but que voulez vous? — the chairmakers have not chosen to invent anything to mitigate the bitterness of the situation as by their genius for evil they have made it.
I humbly submit that in all this there is nothing deserving of ridicule. It is a situation with a pathos of its own, which ought to appeal strongly to a people suffering so many of the ills of conservitude, as do the English. It is all very well (to use their own pet locution) to ask why we do not abolish the American chair, but really the question ought not to come from a nation that endures Mr. Punch, pities the House of Lords and embraces that of Hanover. The American chair was probably divinely designed and sent upon us for the chastening of our national spirit, and we accept it with the same reverent submission that distinguishes our English critic in bowing his neck to the heavy yoke of his own humor.
ANOTHER “COLD SPELL”
THE late Professor Hayden, a distinguished official of the Coast Survey, held disquieting views regarding the significance of certain seismic and meteorological phenomena, or, as they say in English, earthquake and storms. It is the professor’s notion that stupendous changes are going on in the center of the earth. As the human race does not live in that locality, it may be thought that these changes are insufficiently important to engage the attention of the public press. Unfortunately, we are not permitted to entertain that pleasing illusion, for the learned scientist has traced an obscurely marked, but indubitable connection between them and the “blizzards” and cyclones of the Northwest. In a manner not clearly explained, the “central changes” of which the earthquake is the outward and visible sign, beget also “a nipping and an eager air” singularly distasteful to the Montana cattle-grower, and afflict Dakota with that kind of zephyr which, as a nameless humorist has averred, “just sits on its hind legs and howls.” Here, again, we are denied the double gratification of seeing the Northwestern States and Territories devastated and feeling ourselves secure from the same mischance. Professor Hayden — whose good will is unquestionable — had no hope of confining these frigorific activities to the region of their birth and overcoming them by some scientific coup de main, as the man beat the gout by herding it into his great toe, then cutting off the toe. No; the “blizzard,” both still and sparkling, will spread all over the globe with increasing intensity and vehemence, to the no small discomfort of the unacclimated, though greatly,
no doubt, to the innocent glee of Esquimau, Innuit, Aleut and other natives of those “thrilling regions.”
Where the playful Polar bear
Nips the hunter unaware.
In short, as the professor puts it, “scientific men here and abroad concur in the opinion that we are approaching an extremely interesting period.”
We are not left in doubt as to the precise nature of the disasters which an “interesting period” may naturally be expected to entail; it is strongly intimated that the period is to be “another glacial age.” The one with which we were last favored, not longer ago, according to some authorities, than a matter of twenty thousand years, appears to have accomplished its purposes of erosion and extinction imperfectly. Its vast layers of ice, moving from the Pole toward the Equator, planed off the surface of the earth so badly that such asperities as the Rocky Mountains, the Alps and the Himalayas may be supposed to offend the mechanical eye of Nature and make her desirous to go over them again. The fact that the now temperate and torrid zones are still infested by men and other beasts is evidence that the cave-dwellers of the pre-glacial age were a tougher lot than the good old dame had supposed. In her next attempt she will probably pile on more ice and give it a superior momentum, at the same time heralding its southward encroachment with a temperature that will be such a terror as to turn the citrus belt white in a single night and drive it out altogether.
Having been encouraged by Professor Hayden to nourish anticipations of an interesting period pregnant with such pleasing possibilities as these, we are inexpressibly disappointed to have him say, as he does, that the operation of the great “central changes” to which we are to be indebted for all this is so slow that it may be a thousand years, or even longer, before they get to their work with perceptible efficacy. Of course one must recognize the stern necessity that dominates the scientific prophet — he has to carry the fulfilment so far into the future as to avoid the melancholy fate of short-range prophets, like Zadkiel; and therein we discern the true difference between the scientist and the impostor.
Nevertheless, in a matter of such pith and moment it would have been agreeable to be permitted to hope that these fascinating events would begin to occur in our day, and their author (if one may reverently venture to call him so) would have done a graceful thing if he had so far departed from the strictly scientific method as to assure us that some of us, at least, might reasonably expect to be frozen into the advancing wall of ice, like the famous Siberian mastodon of blessed memory, and become objects of interest to the possible Haydens of a later dispensation. As he has denied us the gratification which he could so cheaply have given to our curiosity and ambition, one feels justified in denouncing him as a miscreant and a viper.
THE LOVE OF COUNTY
HISTORIANS, homilists, orators, poets and magazine poets have for ages been justly extolling the love of country as one of the noblest of human sentiments; and it has been officially recommended to the fair members of the Women’s Press Association as an appropriate subject to write about — as “the vanity of life” was by the good-natured traveler suggested to the inquiring hermit as a suitable theme for meditation. Through all the ages has sounded the praise of patriotism, the love of country. Philanthropy, the love of mankind, is a modern invention — a newfangled notion with which it is unprofitable to reckon.
But while the love of country has been so generally and so justly extolled, too little has been said in praise of that still more highly concentrated virtue, the love of county. This noble sentiment is even more nearly general (where there are counties) than the other. That it is a stronger and more fervent passion goes without saying. The natural laws of affection are extremely simple and commonplace. The human heart has a fixed and definite quantity of affection; no two have the same quantity, but in each it is definite and incapable of augmentation. It follows that the more objects it is bestowed upon, the less each object will get; the more ground it is made to cover, the more thinly it must be spread out. A woman, for example, cannot love a child, five dogs, a Japanese teapot, The Ladies’ Weekly Dieaway, an exquisite shade of lavender and a foreign count any harder than, in the absence of the other blessings, she could love the child alone. Similarly, the man whose patriotism embraces the ninety millions of Americans, Americanesses and Americanettes can care very little for any one of them; whereas he whose less comprehensive heart takes in the inhabitants of only a single county must, especially in the sparsely settled districts, be comparatively enamored of each individual. It is this that gives to parochialism (it has not been more definitely named) a dignity altogether superior to that of the diffused sentiment which the historians, the homilists, orators, poets and newspaper poets have united in belauding, not without reason, though, in the case of those last mentioned, commonly without rhyme. In the love of county the gifted ladies of the Women’s Press Association would find a theme surpassed in sublimity by but one other, namely the love of township. Of that sacred passion no uninspired pen would dare to write.
DISINTRODUCTIONS
THE devil is a citizen of every country, but only in our own are we in constant peril of an introduction to him. That is democracy. All men are equal; the devil is a man; therefore, the devil is equal. If that is not a good and sufficient syllogism I should be pleased to know what is the matter with it.
To write in riddles when one is not prophesying is too much trouble; what I am affirming is the horror of the characteristic American custom of promiscuous, unsought and unauthorized introductions.
You incautiously meet your friend Smith in the street; if you had been prudent you would have remained indoors. Your helplessness makes you desperate and you plunge into conversation with him, knowing entirely well the disaster that is in cold storage for you.
The expected occurs: another man comes along and is promptly halted by Smith and you are introduced! Now, you have not given to the Smith the right to enlarge your circle of acquaintance and select the addition himself; why did he do this thing? The person whom he has condemned you to shake hands with may be an admirable person, though there is a strong numerical presumption against it; but for all that the Smith knows he may be your bitterest enemy. The Smith has never thought of that. Or you may have evidence (independent of the fact of the introduction) that he is some kind of thief — there are one thousand and fifty kinds of thieves. But the Smith has never thought of that. In short, the Smith has never thought. In a Smithocracy all men, as aforesaid, being equal, all are equally agreeable to one another.
That is a logical extension of the Declaration of American Independence. If it is erroneous the assumption that a man will be pleasing to me because he is pleasing to another is erroneous too, and to introduce me to one that I have not asked nor consented to know is an invasion of my rights — a denial and limitation of my liberty to a voice in my own affairs. It is like determining what kind of clothing I shall wear, what books I shall read, or what my dinner shall be.
In calling promiscuous introducing an American custom I am not unaware that it obtains in other countries than ours. The difference is that in those it is mostly confined to persons of no consequence and no pretensions to respectability; here it is so nearly universal that there is no escaping it. Democracies are naturally and necessarily gregarious. Even the French of to-day are becoming so, and the time is apparently not distant when they will lose that fine distinctive social sense that has made them the most punctilious, because the most considerate, of all nations excepting the Spanish and the Japanese. By those who have lived in Paris since I did I am told that the chance introduction is beginning to devastate the social situation, and men of sense who wish to know as few persons as possible can no longer depend on the discretion of their friends.
To say so is not the same thing as to say “Down with the republic I” The republic has its advantages. Among these is the liberty to say, “Down with the republic!”
It is to be wished that some great social force, say a billionaire, would s
et up a system of disintroductions, It should work somewhat like this; Mr. WHITE — Mr. Black, knowing the low esteem in which you hold each other, I have the honor to disintroduce you from Mr. Green.
Mr. Black (bowing) — Sir, I have long desired the advantage of your unacquaintance.
MR. GREEN (bowing) — Charmed to unmeet you, sir. Our acquaintance (the work of a most inconsiderate and unworthy person) has distressed me beyond expression. We are greatly indebted to our good friend here for his tact in repairing the mischance.
MR. WHITE — Thank you. I’m sure you will become very good strangers.
This is only the ghost of a suggestion; of course the plan is capable of an infinite elaboration. Its capital defect is that the persons who are now so liberal with their unwelcome introductions, will be equally lavish with their disintroductions, and will estrange the best of friends with as little ceremony as they now observe in their more fiendish work.
1902.
THE TYRANNY OF FASHION
I
THE mindless male of our species is commonly engaged in committing an indelicate assault upon woman’s taste in dress. He is graciously pleased to dislike the bright colors that she wears. Her dazzling headgear, her blinding parasol, her gorgeous frock with its burning bows and sunset streamers, the iridescence of her neckwear, the radiant glories of her scarves and the flaming splendor of her hose — these various and varied brilliances pain the eyes of this weakling, making him sad. He seems so miserable that it is charity to wish that he had died when he was little — when he was himself in hue (and cry) a blazing scarlet Every man to his taste; doubtless mine is barbaric. Anyhow, I like the rich, bright bravery that the ladies wear. It is not a healthy eye that is offended by intensity of color. It is not an honest taste that admires it in a butterfly, a humming bird or a sunset, and derides it in a woman. Nature is opulent of color; one has to look more than twice to see what a wealth of brilliant hues are about him, so used to them have our eyes become. They are everywhere — on the hills, in the air, the water, the cloud. They float like banners in the sunlight and lurk in shadows. No artist can paint them; none dares to if he could. The critics would say he had gone mad and the public would believe them. And it is wicked to believe a critic.
Complete Works of Ambrose Bierce (Delphi Classics) Page 259