Human Intercourse

ESSAY IX.

Two men, of whom one is extremely rich and the other almost penniless, have no difficulty in associating together on terms agreeable to both when they possess intellectual interests in common, or even when there is nothing more than an attraction of idiosyncrasy; but these conditions only subsist between one individual and another; they are not likely to subsist between two families. Intercourse between individuals depends on something in intellect and culture that enables them to understand each other, and upon something in character that makes them love or respect each other. Intercourse between families depends chiefly on neighborhood and similarity in style of living.

This is the reason why bachelors have so much easier access to society than men with wives and families. The bachelor is received for himself, for his genius, information, manners; but if he is married the question is, “What sort of people are they?” This, being interpreted, means, “What style do they live in?” “How many servants do they keep?”

Whatever may be the variety of opinions concerning the doctrines of the Church of Rome, there is but one concerning her astuteness. There can be no doubt that she is the most influential association of men that has ever existed; and she has decided for celibacy, that the priest might stand on his merits and on the power of the Church, and be respected and admitted everywhere in spite of notorious poverty.

Mignet, the historian, was a most intimate and constant friend of Thiers. Mignet, though rich in reality, as he knew how to live contentedly on moderate means, was poor in comparison with his friend. This inequality did not affect their friendship in the least; for both were great workers, well qualified to understand each other, though Thiers lived in a grand house, and Mignet in a barely furnished lodging high up in a house that did not belong to him.

Mignet was a bachelor, and they were both childless men; but imagine them with large families. One family would have been bred in the greatest luxury, the other in austere simplicity. Children are keenly alive to these distinctions; and even if there had been neither pride in the rich house nor envy in the poorer one the contrast would have been constantly felt. The historical studies that the fathers had in common would probably not have interested their descendants, and unless there had been some other powerful bond of sympathy the two families would have lived in different worlds. The rich family would have had rich friends, the poorer family would have attached itself to other families with whom it could have exchanged hospitality on more equal terms. This would have happened even in Paris, a city where there is a remarkable absence of contempt for poverty; a city where the slightest reason for distinction will admit any well-bred man into society in spite of narrow means and insure him immunity from disdain. All the more certainly would it happen in places where money is the only regulator of rank, the only acknowledged claim to consideration.

I once knew an English merchant who was reputed to be wealthy, and who, like a true Englishman as he was, inhabited one of those great houses that are so elaborately contrived for the exercise of hospitality. He had a kind and friendly heart, and lived surrounded by people who often did him the favor to drink his excellent wines and sleep in his roomy bedchambers. On his death it turned out that he had never been quite so rich as he appeared and that during his last decade his fortune had rapidly dwindled. Being much interested in everything that may confirm or invalidate those views of human nature that are current in ancient and modern literature, I asked his son how those who were formerly such frequent guests at the great house had behaved to the impoverished family. “They simply avoided us,” he said; “and some of them, when they met me, would cut me openly in the street.”

It may be said with perfect truth that this was a good riddance. It is certain that it was so; it is undeniable that the deliverance from a horde of false friends is worth a considerable sum per head of them; and that in itself was only a subject of congratulation, but their behavior was hard to bear because it was the evidence of a fall. We like deference as a proof that we have what others respect, quite independently of any real affection on their part; nay, we even enjoy the forced deference of those who hate us, well knowing that they would behave very differently if they dared. Besides this, it is not certain that an impoverished family will find truer friends amongst the poor than it did formerly amongst the rich. The relation may be the same as it was before, and only the incomes of the parties altered.

What concerns our present subject is simply that changes of pecuniary situation have always a strong tendency to throw people amongst other associates; and as these changes are continually occurring, the result is that families very rarely preserve the same acquaintances for more than a single generation. And now comes the momentous issue. The influence of our associates is so difficult to resist, in fact so completely irresistible in the long run, that people belong far less to the class they are descended from than to the class in which they live. The younger son of some perfectly aristocratic family marries rather imprudently and is impoverished by family expenses. His son marries imprudently again and goes into another class. The children of that second marriage will probably not have a trace of the peculiarly aristocratic civilization. They will have neither the manners, nor the ideas, nor the unexpressed instincts of the real aristocracy from which they sprang. In place of them they will have the ideas of the lower middle class, and be in habits and manners just as completely of that class as if their forefathers had always belonged to it.

I have in view two instances of this which are especially interesting to me because they exemplify it in opposite ways. In one of these cases the man was virtuous and religious, but though his ancestry was aristocratic his virtues and his religion were exactly those of the English middle class. He was a good Bible-reading, Sabbath-observing, theatre-avoiding Evangelical, inclined to think that dancing was rather sinful, and in all those subtle points of difference that distinguish the middle-class Englishman from the aristocratic Englishman he followed the middle class, not seeming to have any unconscious reminiscence in his blood of an ancestry with a freer and lordlier life. He cared neither for the sports, nor the studies, nor the social intercourse of the aristocracy. His time was divided, as that of the typical good middle-class Englishman generally is, between business and religion, except when he read his newspaper. By a combination of industry and good-fortune he recovered wealth, and might have rejoined the aristocracy to which he belonged by right of descent; but middle-class habits were too strong, and he remained contentedly to the close of life both in that class and of it.

The other example I am thinking of is that of a man still better descended, who followed a profession which, though it offers a good field for energy and talent, is seldom pursued by gentlemen. He acquired the habits and ideas of an intelligent but dissipated working-man, his vices were exactly those of such a man, and so was his particular kind of religious scepticism. I need not go further into detail. Suppose the character of a very clever but vicious and irreligious workman, such as may be found in great numbers in the large English towns, and you have the accurate portrait of this particular déclassé.

In mentioning these two cases I am anxious to avoid misinterpretation. I have no particular respect for one class more than another, and am especially disposed to indulgence for the faults of those who bear the stress of the labor of the world; but I see that there are classes, and that the fluctuations of fortune, more than any other cause, bring people within the range of influence exercised by the habits of classes, and form them in the mould, so that their virtues and vices afterwards, besides their smaller qualities and defects, belong to the class they live in and not to the class they may be descended from. In other words, men are more strongly influenced by human intercourse than by heredity.

The most remarkable effect of the fluctuation of wealth is the extreme rapidity with which the prosperous family gains refinement of manners, whilst the impoverished family loses it. This change seems to be more rapid in our own age and country than it has ever been before. Nothing is more interesting than to watch this double process; and nothing in social studies is more curious than the multiplicity of the minute causes that bring it about. Every abridgment of ceremony has a tendency to lower refinement by introducing that sans-gêne which is fatal to good manners. Ceremony is only compatible with leisure. It is abridged by haste; haste is the result of poverty; and so it comes to pass that the loss of fortune induces people to give up one little observance after another, for economy of time, till at last there are none remaining. There is the excellent habit of dressing for the evening meal. The mere cost of it is almost imperceptible, except that it causes a small additional expenditure in clean linen; but, although the pecuniary tax is slight, there is a tax on time which is not compatible with hurry and irregularity, so it is only people of some leisure who maintain it. Now consider the subtle influence, on manners, of the maintenance or abandonment of this custom. Where it is kept up, gentlemen and ladies meet in a drawing-room before dinner prepared by their toilet for the disciplined intercourse of well-regulated social life. They are like officers in uniform, or clergymen in canonicals: they wear a dress that is not without its obligations. It is not the luxury of it that does this, for the dress is always plain for men and often simple for ladies, but the mere fact of taking the trouble to dress is an act of deference to civilization and disposes the mind to other observances. It has the further advantage of separating us from the occupations of the day and marking a new point of departure for the gentler life of the evening. As people become poorer they give up dressing except when they have a party, and then they feel ill at ease from the consciousness of a white tie. You have only to go a little further in this direction to arrive at the people who do not feel any inclination to wash their hands before dinner, even when they visibly need it. Finally there are houses where the master will sit down to table in his shirt-sleeves and without anything round his neck. People who live in this way have no social intercourse whatever of a slightly ceremonious kind, and therefore miss all the discipline in manners that rich people go through every day. The higher society is a school of manners that the poor have not leisure to attend.

The downward course of an impoverished family is strongly aided by an element in many natures that the discipline of high life either subdues or eliminates. There are always people, especially in the male sex, who feel ill at ease under ceremonial restraints of any kind, and who find the release from them an ineffably delightful emancipation. Such people hate dressing for dinner, hate the forms of politeness, hate gloves and visiting-cards, and all that such things remind them of. To be rid of these things once for all, to be able to sit and smoke a pipe in an old gray coat, seems to them far greater and more substantial happiness than to drink claret in a dining-room, napkin on knee. Once out of society, such men have no desire to enter it again, and after a very short exclusion from it they belong to a lower class from taste quite as much as from circumstances. All those who have a tendency towards the philosophy of Diogenes (and they are more numerous than we suppose) are of this manner of thinking. Sometimes they have a taste for serious intellectual pursuits which makes the nothings of society seem frivolous, and also consoles their pride for an apparent déchéance.

If it were possible to get rid of the burdensome superfluities of high life, most of which are useless encumbrances, and live simply without any loss of refinement, I should say that these philosophers would have reason on their side. The complicated apparatus of wealthy life is not in itself desirable. To convert the simple act of satisfying hunger into the tedious ceremonial of a state dinner may be a satisfaction of pride, but it is assuredly not an increase of pleasure. To receive as guests people whom we do not care for in the least (which is constantly done by rich people to maintain their position) offers less of what is agreeable in human intercourse than a chat with a real friend under a shed of thatch. Nevertheless, to be totally excluded from the life of the wealthy is to miss a discipline in manners that nothing ever replaces, and this is the real loss. The cultivation of taste which results from leisure forms, in course of time, amongst rich people a public opinion that disciplines every member of an aristocratic society far more severely than the more careless opinion of the hurried classes ever disciplines them. To know the value of such discipline we have only to observe societies from which it is absent. We have many opportunities for this in travelling, and one occurred to me last year that I will describe as an example. I was boating with two young friends on a French river, and we spent a Sunday in a decent riverside inn, where we had déjeûner in a corner of the public room. Several men of the neighborhood, probably farmers and small proprietors, sat in another corner playing cards. They had a very decent appearance, they were fine healthy-looking men, quite the contrary of a degraded class, and they were only amusing themselves temperately on a Sunday morning. Well, from the beginning of their game to the end of it (that is, during the whole time of our meal), they did nothing but shout, yell, shriek, and swear at each other loudly enough to be heard across the broad river. They were not angry in the least, but it was their habit to make a noise and to use oaths and foul language continually. We, at our table, could not hear each other’s voices; but this did not occur to them. They had no notion that their noisy kind of intercourse could be unpleasant to anybody, because delicacy of sense, fineness of nerve, had not been developed in their class of society. Afterwards I asked them for some information, which they gave with a real anxiety to make themselves of use. Some rich people came to the inn with a pretty carriage, and I amused myself by noting the difference. Their manners were perfectly quiet. Why are rich people quiet and poorer ones noisy? Because the refinements of wealthy life, its peace and tranquillity, its leisure, its facilities for separation in different rooms, produce delicacy of nerve, with the perception that noise is disagreeable; and out of this delicacy, when it is general amongst a whole class, springs a strong determination so to discipline the members of the class that they shall not make themselves disagreeable to the majority. Hence lovers of good manners have a preference for the richer classes quite apart from a love of physical luxury or a snobbish desire to be associated with people of rank. For the same reason a lover of good manners dreads poverty or semi-poverty for his children, because even a moderate degree of poverty (not to speak of the acute forms of it) may compel them to associate with the undisciplined. What gentleman would like his son to live habitually with the card-players I have described?

ESSAY X.

This may bring upon me the imputation of being a democrat and a leveller. No, I rather like a well-defined social distinction when it has reality. Real distinctions keep society picturesque and interesting; what I fail to appreciate so completely are the fictitious little distinctions that have no basis in reality, and appear to be instituted merely for the sake of establishing differences that do not naturally exist. It seems to be an unfortunate tendency that seeks unapparent differences, and it may have a bad effect on character by forcing each man back upon the consideration of his own claims that it would be better for him to forget.

I once dined at a country-house in Scotland when the host asked one of the guests this question, “Are you a land-owner?” in order to determine his precedence. It did so happen that the guest owned a few small farms, so he answered “Yes;” but it struck me that the distinction between a man who had a moderate sum invested in land and one who had twice as much in other investments was not clearly in favor of the first. Could not the other buy land any day if he liked? He who hath gold hath land, potentially. If precedence is to be regulated by so material a consideration as wealth, let it be done fairly and plainly. The best and simplest plan would be to embroider the amount of each gentleman’s capital in gold thread on the breast of his dress-coat. The metal would be appropriate, the embroidery would be decorative, and the practice would offer unequalled encouragement to thrift.

Again, I have always understood in the most confused manner the distinction, so clear to many, between those who are in trade and those who are not. I think I see the only real objection to trade with the help of M. Renan, who has stated it very clearly, but my difficulty is to discover who are tradesmen, and, still more, who are not tradesmen. Here is M. Renan’s account of the matter:—

“Our ideal can only be realized with a Government that gives some éclat to those who are connected with it and which creates distinctions outside of wealth. We feel an antipathy to a society in which the merit of a man and his superiority to another can only be revealed under the form of industry and commerce; not that trade and industry are not honest in our eyes, but because we see clearly that the best things (such as the functions of the priest, the magistrate, the savant, the artist, and the serious man of letters) are the inverse of the industrial and commercial spirit, the first duty of those who follow them being not to try to enrich themselves, and never to take into consideration the venal value of what they do.”

This I understand, provided that the priest, magistrate, savant, artist, and serious man of letters are faithful to this “first duty;” provided that they “never take into consideration the venal value of what they do;” but there are tradesmen in the highest professions. All that can be said against trade is that its object is profit. Then it follows that every profession followed for profit has in it what is objectionable in trade, and that the professions are not noble in themselves but only if they are followed in a disinterested spirit. I should say, then, that any attempt to fix the degree of nobleness of persons by the supposed nobleness of their occupations must be founded upon an unreal distinction. A venal clergyman who does not believe the dogmas that he defends for his endowment, a venal barrister, ready to prostitute his talents and his tongue for a large income, seem to me to have in them far more of what is objectionable in trade than a country bookseller who keeps a little shop and sells note-paper and sealing-wax over the counter; yet it is assumed that their occupations are noble occupations and that his business is not noble, though I can see nothing whatever in it of which any gentleman need be in the slightest degree ashamed.

Again, there seem to be most unreal distinctions of respectability in the trades themselves. The wine trade has always been considered a gentlemanly business; but why is it more respectable to sell wine and spirits than to sell bread, or cheese, or beef? Are not articles of food more useful to the community than alcoholic drinks, and less likely to contribute to the general sum of evil? As for the honesty of the dealers, no doubt there are honest wine-merchants; but what thing that is sold for money has been more frequently adulterated, or more mendaciously labelled, or more unscrupulously charged for, than the produce of European vintages?[7]

Another wonderful unreality is the following. People desire the profits of trade, but are unwilling to lose caste by engaging in it openly. In order to fill their pockets and preserve their rank at the same time they engage in business anonymously, either as members of some firm in which their names do not appear, or else as share-holders in great trading enterprises. In both these cases the investor of capital becomes just as really and truly a tradesman as if he kept a shop, but if you were to tell him that he was a tradesman he would probably resent the imputation.

It is remarkable that the people who most despise commerce are the very people who bow down most readily before the accomplished results of commerce; for as they have an exaggerated sense of social distinctions, they are great adorers of wealth for the distinction that it confers. By their worship of wealth they acknowledge it to be most desirable; but then they worship rank also, and this other cultus goes with the sentiment of contempt for humble and plodding industry in all its forms.

The contempt for trade is inconsistent in another way. A man may be excluded from “good society” because he is in trade, and his grandson may be admitted because the grandfather was in trade, that is, through a fortune of commercial origin. The present Prime Minister (Gladstone) and the Speaker of the House of Commons (Mr. Arthur Peel) and many other men of high position in both Houses may owe their fame to their own distinguished abilities; but they owe the leisure and opportunity for cultivating and displaying those abilities to the wits and industry of tradesmen removed from them only by one or two generations.

Is there not a strange inconsistency in adoring wealth as it is adored, and despising the particular kind of skill and ability by which it is usually acquired? For if there be anything honorable about wealth it must surely be as evidence of the intelligence and industry that are necessary for the conquest of poverty. On the contrary, a narrowly exclusive society despises the virtue that is most creditable to the nouveau riche, his industry, whilst it worships his wealth as soon as the preservation of it is compatible with idleness.

There is a great deal of unreal distinction in the matter of ancestry. Those who observe closely are well aware that many undoubted and lineal descendants of the oldest families are in humble social positions, simply for want of money to make a display, whilst others usurp their coats-of-arms and claim a descent that they cannot really prove. The whole subject is therefore one of the most unsatisfactory that can be, and all that remains to the real members of old families who have not wealth enough to hold a place in the expensive modern aristocracy, is to remember secretly the history of their ancestors if they are romantic and poetical enough to retain the old-fashioned sentiment of birth, and to forget it if they look only to the present and the practical. There is, indeed, so little of the romantic sentiment left in the country, that even amongst the descendants of old families themselves very few are able to blazon their own armorial bearings, or even know what the verb “to blazon” means.

Amidst so great a confusion the simplest way would be not to think about rank at all, and to take human nature as it comes without reference to it; but however the ancient barriers of rank may be broken down, it is only to erect new ones. English feeling has a deep satisfaction in contemplating rank and wealth combined. It is that which it likes,—the combination. When wealth is gone it thinks that a man should lock up his pedigree in his desk and forget that he has ancestors; so it has been said that an English gentleman in losing wealth loses his caste with it, whilst a French or Italian gentleman may keep his caste, except in the most abject poverty. On the other hand, when an Englishman has a vast fortune it is thought right to give him a title also, that the desirable combination may be created afresh. Nothing is so striking in England, considering that it is an old country, as the newness of most of the great families. The aristocracy is like London, that has the reputation of being a very ancient city, yet the houses are of recent date. An aristocracy may be stronger and in better repair because of its newness; it may also be more likely to make a display of aristocratic superiorities, and expect deference to be paid to them, than an easy-going old aristocracy would be.

What are the superiorities, and what is the nature of the deference?

The superiority given by title depends on the intensity of title-worship amongst the public. In England that religion is in a very healthy and flourishing state, so that titles are very valuable there; in France the sense of a social hierarchy is so much weakened that titles are of infinitely less value. False ones are assumed and borne with impunity on account of the general indifference, whilst true and authentic titles are often dropped as an encumbrance. The blundering ignorance of the French about our titles, which so astonishes Englishmen, is due to a carelessness about the whole subject that no inhabitant of the British Islands can imagine.[8] In those islands title is of very great importance because the people have such a strong consciousness of its existence. In England, if there is a lord in the room every body is aware of it.

Superiority of family, without title, is merely local; it is not understood far from the ancestral home. Superiority of title is national; it is imperfectly appreciated in foreign countries. But superiority of wealth has the immense advantage over these that it is respected everywhere and can display itself everywhere with the utmost ostentation under pretext of custom and pleasure. It commands the homage of foolish and frivolous people by possibilities of vain display, and at the same time it appears desirable to the wise because it makes the gathering of experience easy and human intercourse convenient.

The rich man has access to an immense range of varied situations; and if he has energy to profit by this facility and put himself in those situations where he may learn the most, he may become far more experienced at thirty-five than a poor man can be at seventy. A poor man has a taste for boating, so he builds a little boat with his own hands, and paints it green and white, with its name, the “Cock-Robin,” in yellow. Meanwhile his good wife, in spite of all the work she has to do, has a kindly indulgence for her poor Tom’s hobby, thinks he deserves a little amusement, and stitches the sail for him in the evenings. He sails five or six miles up and down the river. Sir Thomas Brassey has exactly the same tastes: he builds the “Sunbeam;” and whilst the “Cock-Robin” has been doing its little trips, the “Sunbeam” has gone round the world; and instead of stitching the sails, the kind wife has accompanied the mariner, and written the story of his voyage. If after that you talk with the owners of the two vessels you may be interested for a few minutes—deeply interested and touched if you have the divine gift of sympathy—with the poor man’s account of his doings; but his experience is small and soon told, whilst the owner of the “Sunbeam” has traversed all the oceans and could tell you a thousand things. So it naturally follows in most cases, though the rule has exceptions, that rich men are more interesting people to know than poor men of equal ability.

I remember being forcibly reminded of the narrow experience of the poor on one of those occasions that often happen to those who live in the country and know their poorer neighbors. A friend of mine, with his children, had come to stay with me; and there was a poor woman, living in a very out-of-the-way hamlet on a hill, who had made me promise that I would take my friend and his children to see her, because she had known their mother, who was dead, and had felt for her one of those strong and constant affections that often dwell in humble and faithful hearts. We have a great respect for this poor woman, who is in all ways a thoroughly dutiful person, and she has borne severe trials with great patience. Well, she was delighted to see my friend and his children, delighted to see how well they looked, how much they had grown, and so on; and then she spoke of her own little ones, and showed us the books they were learning in, and described their dispositions, and said that her husband was in full work and went every day to the schist mine, and was much steadier than he used to be, and made her much happier. After that she began again, saying exactly the same things all over again, and she said them a third time, and a fourth time. When we had left, we noticed this repetition, and we agreed that the poor woman, instead of being deficient in intelligence, was naturally above the average, but that the extreme narrowness of her experience, the total want of variety in her life, made it impossible for her mind to get out of that little domestic groove. She had about half-a-dozen ideas, and she lived in them, as a person in a small house lives in a very few rooms.

Now, however much esteem, respect, and affection you may have for a person of that kind, you will find it impossible to enjoy such society because conversation has no aliment. This is the one great reason why cultivated people seem to avoid the poor, even when they do not despise them in the least.

The greater experience of the rich is united to an incomparably greater power of pleasant reception, because in their homes conversation is not interfered with by the multitude of petty domestic difficulties and inconveniences. I go to spend the day with a very poor friend, and this is what is likely to happen. He and I can only talk without interruption when we are out of the house. Inside it his children break in upon us constantly. His wife finds me in the way, and wishes I had not come, because she has not been able to provide things exactly as she desired. At dinner her mind is not in the conversation; she is really occupied with petty household cares. I, on my part, have the uncomfortable feeling that I am creating inconvenience; and it requires incessant attention to soothe the watchful sensitiveness of a hostess who is so painfully alive to the deficiencies of her small establishment. If I have a robust appetite, it is well; but woe to me if my appetite is small, and I must overeat to prove that the cookery is good! If I accept a bed the sacrifice of a room will cause crowding elsewhere, besides which I shall be a nuisance in the early morning hours when nothing in the ménage is fit for the public eye. Whilst creating all this inconvenience to others, I suffer the great one of being stopped in my usual pursuits. If I want a few quiet hours for reading and writing there is only one way: I must go privately to some hotel and hire a sitting-room for myself.

Now consider the difference when I go to visit a rich friend! The first delightful feeling is that I do not occasion the very slightest inconvenience. His arrangements for the reception of guests are permanent and perfect. My arrival will scarcely cost his wife a thought; she has simply given orders in the morning for a room to be got ready and a cover to be laid at table. Her mind is free to think about any subject that suggests itself. Her conversation, from long practice, is as easy as the style of a good writer. All causes of interruption are carefully kept in the background. The household details are attended to by a regiment of domestics under their own officers. The children are in rooms of their own with their governesses and servants, and we see just enough of them to be agreeable. If I desire privacy, nothing is more easily obtained. On the slightest hint a room is placed at my disposal. I remember one house where that room used to be a splendid library, full of the books which at that time I most wanted to consult; and the only interruption in the mornings was the noiseless entrance of the dear lady of the house, always at eleven o’clock precisely, with a glass of wine and a biscuit on a little silver tray. It is not the material luxury of rich men’s houses that a wise man would desire; but he must thoroughly appreciate their convenience and the varied food for the mind that they afford,—the books, the pictures, the curiosities. In one there is a museum of antiquities that a large town might envy, in another a collection of drawings, in a third a magnificent armory. In one private house in Paris[9] there used to be fourteen noble saloons containing the arts of two hundred years. You go to stay in ten rich houses and find them all different; you enjoy the difference, and in a certain sense you possess the different things. The houses of the poor are all alike, or if they differ it is not by variety of artistic or intellectual interest. By the habit of staying in each other’s houses the rich multiply their riches to infinity. In a certain way of their own (it is not exactly the way of the early Christians) they have their goods in common.

There are, no doubt, many guests in the houses of the rich who care little for the people they visit, but much for the variety and accommodation,—guests who visit the place rather than the owner; guests who enjoy the cookery, the wines, the shooting, and who would go to the house if the owner were changed, exactly as they continue to patronize some pleasantly situated and well-managed hotel, after a change of masters. I hardly know how to describe these people in a word, but it is easy to characterize their entertainers. They are unpaid innkeepers.

There are also people, apparently hospitable, who care little for the persons they invite,—so very little, indeed, that we do not easily discover what motive they have for inviting them. The answer may be that they dislike solitude so much that any guest is acceptable, or else that they want admirers for the beautiful arrangements and furniture of their houses; for what is the use of having beautiful things if there is nobody to appreciate them? Hosts of this class are amateur exhibitors, or they are like amateur actors who want an audience, and who will invite people to come and listen, not because they care for the people, but because it is discouraging to play to empty benches.

These two classes of guests and hosts cannot exist without riches. The desire to be entertained ceases at once when it is known that the entertainment will be of a poor quality; and the desire to exhibit the internal arrangements of our houses ceases when we are too poor to do justice to the refinement of our taste.

The story of the rich man who had many friends and saw them fall away from him when he became poor, which, under various forms, reappears in every age and is common to all literatures, is explained by these considerations. Bucklaw does not find Lord Ravenswood a valuable gratuitous innkeeper; and Ravenswood is not anxious to exhibit to Bucklaw the housekeeping at Wolf’s Crag.

But quite outside of parasite guests and exhibiting entertainers, there still remains the undeniable fact that if you like a rich man and a poor one equally well, you will prefer the rich man’s hospitality for its greater convenience. Nay, more, you will rightly and excusably prefer the rich man’s hospitality even if you like the poor man better, but find his household arrangements disagreeable, his wife fagged, worn, irritable, and ungracious, his children ill-bred, obtrusive, and dirty, himself unable to talk about anything rational on account of family interruptions, and scarcely his own better and higher self at all in the midst of his domestic plagues.[10]

There is no nation in the world that has so acute a sense of the value, almost the necessity, of wealth for human intercourse as the English nation. Whilst in other countries people think “Wealth is peace of mind, wealth is convenience, wealth is la vie élégante,” in England they silently accept the maxim, “A large income is a necessary of life;” and they class each other according to the scale of their establishments, looking up with unfeigned reverence to those who have many servants, many horses, and gigantic houses where a great hospitality is dispensed. An ordinary Englishman thinks he has failed in life, and his friends are of the same opinion, if he does not arrive at the ability to imitate this style and state, at least in a minor degree. I have given the best reasons why it is desired; I understand and appreciate them; but at the same time I think it deeply to be deplored that an expenditure far beyond what can be met by the physical or intellectual labor of ordinary workers should be thought necessary in order that people may meet and talk in comfort. The big English house is a machine that runs with unrivalled smoothness; but it masters its master, it possesses its nominal possessor. George Borrow had the deepest sense of the Englishman’s slavery to his big, well-ordered dwelling, and saw in it the cause of unnumbered anxieties, often ending in heart-disease, paralysis, bankruptcy, and in minor cases sacrificing all chance of leisure and quiet happiness. Many a land-owner has crippled himself by erecting a great house on his estate,—one of those huge, tasteless buildings that express nothing but pompous pride. What wisdom there is in the excellent old French adage, “A petite terre, petite maison”!

The reader may remember Herbert Spencer’s idea that the display of wealth is intended to subjugate. Royal palaces are made very vast and magnificent to subjugate those who approach the sovereign; and all rich and powerful people use the same means, for the same purpose, though in minor degrees. This leads us to the price that has to be paid for intercourse with persons of great rank and wealth. May we not suspect that there is a heavy price of some kind, since many of the best and noblest minds in the world either avoid it altogether or else accept it cautiously and only with a very few rich men whom they esteem independently of their riches?

The answer is that wealth and rank expect deference, not so much humble and slavish manners as that intellectual deference which a thinker can never willingly give. The higher the rank of the personage the more it is considered ill-bred to contradict him, or even to have an opinion of your own in his presence. This, to a thinker, is unendurable. He does not see that because a person is rich and noble his views on everything must be the best and soundest views.

You, my dear Aristophilus, who by your pleasing manners are so well fitted for the very best society, could give interesting answers to the following questions: Have you never found it advisable to keep silence when your wealthy host was saying things against which you inwardly protested? Have you not sometimes gone a step further, and given a kind of assent to some opinion that was not your own? Have you not, by practice, attained the power of giving a still stronger and heartier assent to what seemed doubtful propositions?

There is one form of this assent which is deeply damaging to character. Some great person, a great lady perhaps, unjustly condemns, in your presence, a public man for whom you have a sincere respect. Instead of boldly defending him, you remain silent and acquiescent. You are afraid to offend, afraid to lose favor, afraid that if you spoke openly you would not be invited to the great house any more.

Sometimes not a single individual but a class is attacked at once. A great lady is reported to have said that she “had a deep objection to French literature in all its branches.” Observe that this expression of opinion contains a severe censure on all French authors and on all readers of French literature. Would you have ventured to say a word in their defence? Would you have dared to hint, for example, that a serious mind might be none the worse for some acquaintance with Montesquieu and De Tocqueville? No, sir, you would have bowed your head and put on a shocked expression of countenance.

In this way, little by little, by successive abandonments of what we think, and abdications of what we know, we may arrive at a state of habitual and inane concession that softens every fibre of the mind.

ESSAY XI.

It seems probable that much of the future happiness of humanity will depend upon a determination to learn foreign languages more thoroughly. International ill-will is the parent of innumerable evils. From the intellectual point of view it is a great evil, because it narrows our range of ideas and deprives us of light from foreign thinkers. From the commercial point of view it is an evil, because it leads a nation to deny itself conveniences in order to avoid the dreaded result of doing good to another country. From the political point of view it is an enormous evil, because it leads nations to make war upon each other and to inflict and endure all the horrors, the miseries, the impoverishment of war rather than make some little concession on one side or on both sides that would have been made with little difficulty if the spirit of the two countries had been more friendly. May we not believe that a more general spirit of friendliness would result from more personal intercourse, and that this would be the consequence of more thorough linguistic acquirement?

It has always seemed to me an inexpressible misfortune to the French that they should not be better acquainted with English literature; and this not simply from the literary point of view, but because on so many questions that interest active minds in France it would be such an advantage to those minds to be able to see how those questions have appeared to men bred in a different and a calmer atmosphere. If the French read English easily they might often avoid (without ceasing to be national) many of those errors that result from seeing things only from a single point of view. I know a few intelligent Frenchmen who do read our most thoughtful writers in the original, and I can see what a gain this enlarged experience has been to them. On the other hand, it is certain that good French literature may have an excellent effect on the literary training of an Englishman. The careful study of that clear, concise, and moderate French writing which is the most perfect flower of the cultivated national mind has been most beneficial to some English writers, by making them less clumsy, less tedious, less verbose.

Of commercial affairs it would be presumptuous in me to say much, but no one disputes that international commerce is a benefit, and that it would not be possible without a class of men who are acquainted with foreign languages. On this class of men, be they merchants or corresponding clerks, the commercial intercourse between nations must depend. I find it stated by foreign tradesmen that if they were better acquainted with the English language much trade that now escapes them might be made to pass through their hands. I have myself often observed, on a small scale, that transactions of an international character have taken place because one of the parties happened to know the language of the other, when they would certainly not have taken place if it had been necessary to make them through an agent or an interpreter.

With regard to peace and war, can it be doubted that the main reason for our peaceful relations with the United States lies in the fact of our common language? We may have newspaper quarrels, but the newspapers themselves help to make every question understood. It is far harder to gain acceptance for English ideas in France, yet even our relations with France are practically more peaceful than of old, and though there is intense jealousy between the two countries, they understand each other better, so that differences which would certainly have produced bloodshed in the days of Pitt, cause nothing worse than inkshed in the days of Gladstone. This happy result may be attributed in great part to the English habit of learning French and going to Paris or to the south of France. We need not expect any really cordial understanding between the two countries, though it would be an incalculable benefit to both. That is too much to be hoped for; their jealousy, on both sides, is too irritable and too often inflamed afresh by new incidents, for neither of them can stir a foot without putting the other out of temper; but we may hope that through the quietly and constantly exerted influence of those who know both languages, war may be often, though perhaps not always, avoided.

Unfortunately an imperfect knowledge of a foreign language is of little use, as it does not give any real freedom of intercourse. Foreigners do not open their minds to one who blunders about their meaning; they consider him to be a sort of child, and address to him “easy things to understand.” Their confidence is only to be won by a demonstration of something like equality in intelligence, and nobody can give proof of this unless he has the means of making his thoughts intelligible, and even of assuming, when the occasion presents itself, a somewhat bold and authoritative tone. People of mature and superior intellect, but imperfect linguistic acquirements, are liable to be treated with a kind of condescending indulgence when out of their own country, as if they were as young in years and as feeble in power of thought as they are in their knowledge of foreign languages.

The extreme rarity of that degree of attainment in a foreign language which deserves to be called mastery is well known to the very few who are competent to judge. At a meeting of French professors Lord Houghton said that the wife of a French ambassador had told him that she knew only three Englishmen who could speak French. One of these was Sir Alexander Cockburn, another the Duke of Bedford, and we may presume the third to have been Lord Houghton himself. Amongst men of letters Lord Houghton only knew one, Henry Reeve, the editor of the “Edinburgh Review” and translator of the works of De Tocqueville. He mentioned Lord Arthur Russell as an example of accomplishment, but he is “quasi French by l’esprit, education, and marriage.”

On reading the report of Lord Houghton’s speech, I asked a cultivated Parisian lady (who knows English remarkably well and has often been in England) what her own experience had been. After a little hesitation she said it had been exactly that of the French ambassadress. She, also, had met with three Englishmen who spoke French, and she named them. I suggested several others, and amongst them some very learned scholars, merely to hear what she would say, but her answer was that their inadequate power of expression compelled them to talk far below the level of their abilities, so that when they spoke French nobody would suppose them to be clever men. She also affirmed that they did not catch the shades of French expression, so that in speaking French to them one was never sure of being quite accurately understood.

I myself have known many French people who have studied English more or less, including several who read English authors with praiseworthy industry, but I have only met with one or two who can be said to have mastered the language. I am told that M. Beljame, the learned Professor of English Literature at the Sorbonne, has a wonderful mastery of our tongue. Many French professors of English have considerable historical and grammatical knowledge of it, but that is not practical mastery. In general, the knowledge of English attained by French people (not without more labor than the result would show) is so poor and insufficient as to be almost useless.

I remember an accidental circumstance that put into my hands some curious materials for judging of the attainments of a former generation. A Belgian lady, for a reason that has no concern with our present subject, lent me for perusal an important packet of letters in the French language written by English ladies of great social distinction about the date of Waterloo. They showed a rough familiarity with French, but no knowledge of its finer shades, and they abounded in glaring errors. The effect of this correspondence on my mind was that the writers had certainly used (or abused) the language, but that they had never condescended to learn it.

These and other experiences have led me to divide progress in languages into several stages, which I place at the reader’s disposal in the belief that they may be convenient to him as they have been convenient to me.

The first stage in learning a language is when every sentence is a puzzle and exercises the mind like a charade or a conundrum. There are people to whom this kind of exercise is a sport. They enjoy the puzzle for its own sake and without any reference to the literary value of the sentence or its preciousness as an utterance of wisdom. Such people are much better adapted to the early stage of linguistic acquirement than those who like reading and dislike enigmas.

The excessive slowness with which one works in this early stage is a cause of irritation when the student interests himself in the thoughts or the narrative, because what comes into his mind in a given time is so small a matter that it seems not worth while to go on working for such a little intellectual income. Therefore in this early stage it is a positive disadvantage to have eager literary desires.

In the second stage the student can push along with the help of a translation and a dictionary; but this is not reading, it is only aided construing. It is disagreeable to a reader, though it may be endured by one who is indifferent to reading. This may be made clear by reference to other pursuits. A man who loves rowing, and who knows what rowing is, does not like to pull a slow and heavy boat, such as an ordinary Scottish Highlander pulls with perfect contentment. So a man who loves reading, and knows what reading is, does not like the heavy work of laborious translation. This explains the fact which is often so unintelligible to parents, that boys who are extremely fond of reading often dislike their classical studies. Grammar, prosody, philology, so far as they are the subjects of conscious attention (which they are with all pedagogues), are the rivals of literature, and so it happens that pedagogy is unfavorable to literary art. It is only when the sciences of dissection are forgotten that we can enjoy the arts of poetry and prose.

If, then, the first stage of language-learning requires rather a taste for solving puzzles than a taste for literature, so I should say that the second stage requires rather a turn for grammatical and philological considerations than an interest in the ideas or an appreciation of the style of great authors. The most favorable state of mind for progress in this stage is that of a philologist; and if a man has literary tastes in great strength, and philological tastes in a minor degree, he will do well, in this stage, to encourage the philologist in himself and keep his love of literature in abeyance.

In the third stage the vocabulary has become rich enough to make references to the dictionary less frequent, and the student can read with some degree of literary enjoyment. There is, however, this remaining obstacle, that even when the reader knows the words and can construe well, the foreign manner of saying things still appears unnatural. I have made many inquiries concerning this stage of acquirement and find it to be very common. Men of fair scholarship in Latin tell me that the Roman way of writing does not seem to be really a natural way. I find that even those Latin works which were most familiar to me in youth, such as the Odes of Horace, for example, seem unnatural still, though I may know the meaning of every word, and I do not believe that any amount of labor would ever rid me of this feeling. This is a great obstacle, and not the less that it is of such a subtle and intangible nature.[11]

In the fourth stage the mode of expression seems natural, and the words are perfectly known, but the sense of the paragraph is not apparent at a glance. There is the feeling of a slight obstacle, of something that has to be overcome; and there is a remarkable counter-feeling which always comes after the paragraph is mastered. The reader then wonders that such an obviously intelligible page can have offered any opposition whatever. What surprises us is that this fourth stage can last so long as it does. It seems as if it would be so easily passed, and yet, in fact, it is for most persons impassable.

The fifth stage is that of perfection in reading. It is not reached by everybody even in the native language itself. The reader who has attained it sees the contents of a page and catches their meaning at a glance even before he has had time to read the sentences.

This condition of extreme lucidity in a language comes, when it comes at all, long after the mere acquisition of it. I have said that it does not always come even in the native tongue. Some educated people take a much longer time than others to make themselves acquainted with the contents of a newspaper. A clever newspaper reader sees in one minute if there is anything of importance. He knows what articles and telegrams are worth reading before he separates the words.

These five stages refer only to reading, because educated people learn to read first and to speak afterwards. Uneducated people learn foreign languages by ear in a most confused and blundering way. I need not add that they never master them, as only the educated ever master their native tongue. It is unnecessary to go through the stages of progress in conversation, as they are in a great degree dependent upon reading, though they lag behind it; but I will say briefly that the greatest of all difficulties in using foreign languages is to become really insensible to the absurdities that they contain. All languages, I believe, abound in absurd expressions; and a foreigner, with his inconveniently fresh perceptions, can hardly avoid being tickled by them. He cannot use the language seriously without having first become unconscious of these things, and it is inexpressibly difficult to become unconscious of something that has once provoked us to laughter. Again, it is most difficult to arrive at that stage when foreign expressions of politeness strike us no more and no less than they strike the native; or, in other words, it is most difficult for us to attach to them the exact value which they have in the country where they prevail. French forms seem absurdly ceremonious to Englishmen; in reality, they are only convenient, but the difficulty for an Englishman is to feel that they are convenient. There are in every foreign tongue two classes of absurdities,—the real inherent absurdities to which the natives are blinded by habit, though they are seen at once to be comical when attention is directed to them, and the expressions that are not absurd in themselves but only seem so to us because they are not like our own.

The difficulty of becoming insensible to these things must be especially great for humorous people, who are constantly on the look-out for subjects of odd remarks. I have a dear friend who is gifted with a delightful genius for humor, and he knows a little French. All that he has acquired of that language is used by him habitually as material for fun, and as he is quite incapable of regarding the language as anything but a funny way of talking, he cannot make any progress in it. If he were asked to read prayers in French the idea would seem to him incongruous, a mingling of frivolous with sacred things. Another friend is serious in French because he knows it well, and therefore has become unconscious of its real or apparent absurdities, but when he is in a merry mood he talks Italian, with which he is much less intimately acquainted, so that it still seems droll and amusing.

Many readers will be already familiar with the idea of a universal language, which has often been the subject of speculation in recent times, and has even been discussed in a sort of informal congress connected with one of the universal exhibitions. Nobody now looks forward to anything so unlikely, or so undesirable, as the abandonment of all the languages in the world except one. What is considered practicable is the selection of one language as the recognized international medium, and the teaching of that language everywhere in addition to the mother tongue, so that no two educated men could ever meet without possessing the means of communication. To a certain degree we have this already in French, but French is not known so generally, or so perfectly, as to make it answer the purpose. It is proposed to adopt modern Greek, which has several great advantages. The first is that the old education has familiarized us sufficiently with ancient Greek to take away the first sense of strangeness in the same language under its modern form. The second is that everything about modern arts and sciences, and political life, and trade, can be said easily in the Greek of the present day, whilst it has its own peculiar interest for scholars. The third reason is of great practical importance. Greece is a small State, and therefore does not awaken those keen international jealousies that would be inevitably aroused by proposing the language of a powerful State to be learned, without reciprocity, by the youth of the other powerful States. It may be some time before the Governments of great nations agree to promote the study of modern Greek, or any other living language, amongst their peoples; but if all who feel the immense desirableness of a common language for international intercourse would agree to prepare the way for its adoption, the time might not be very far distant when statesmen would begin to consider the question within the horizon of the practical. Let us try to imagine the difference between the present Babel-confusion of tongues, which makes it a mere chance whether we shall be able to communicate with a foreigner or not, and the sudden facility that would result from the possession of a common medium of intercourse! If it were once agreed by a union of nations (of which the present Postal Union may be the forerunner) that the learning of the universal language should be encouraged, that language would be learned with a zest and eagerness of which our present languid linguistic attempts give but a faint idea. There would be such powerful reasons for learning it! All those studies that interest men in different nations would lead to intercommunication in the common tongue. Many books would be written in it, to be circulated everywhere, without being enfeebled and falsified by translation. International commerce would be transacted by its means. Travelling would be enormously facilitated. There would be such a gain to human intercourse by language that it might be preferred, in many cases, to the old-fashioned international intercourse by means of bayonets and cannon-balls.