The Contributors' Club

A PATHETIC word has been repeated by the newspapers, purporting to be Emerson’s complaint that old age has come upon him with a rush; he who sang so cheerfully and courageously

now confesses the tremor of age. It was but a few years before Terminus was published that Emerson sat to Rowse for his portrait, and this crayon has always been regarded as a very satisfactory likeness of the poet; perhaps we are justified in placing Emerson’s prime before he thought to say, as in this poem,—

At any rate, Rowse’s picture conveys to one, whether familiar or not with Emerson’s presence, a most clear and satisfying impression of the poet, and it is a rare good fortune which has now made the picture the possible possession of many besides the generous owner; for it has been engraved in a masterly manner by Mr. S. A. Schoff, one of the very few who keep alive in America the traditions of line engraving. Mr. Rowse bears testimony to the faithfulness and value of the engraving, and certainly no American writer has been so admirably presented in portrait to his countrymen. It seems to me an exceptionally good opportunity for those who honor our literature in its highest, most enduring forms, at once to have before them the likeness of the poet who is eminently American, and eminently more than American, and to recognize the ambition of an engraver to do worthily what was so well worth doing. Mr. Sehoff may have the consciousness of devoting his art to noble purpose; he ought also to have the pleasure of knowing that his work has been appreciated. It would be a happy result if there should be so general a recognition of his labor of love as to encourage him to give us also an engraving of Rowse’s portrait of Hawthorne.

The portrait of Emerson is more than a satisfactory likeness of the poet; it is more than a thorough piece of engraving; because it is both of these, it has a personal power which might well make one desirous of its silent presence in his study. It calls to mind those fine lines in Astræa: —

— Is a man’s ideal of what woman should be higher than her own? This question was suggested after reading the story entitled Rosamond and the Conductor, in the March number of this magazine.

Out of curiosity, as the vote for president is sometimes taken on a train, I put to all my friends who had likewise read the story the question, “ Did Rosamond shock you?” The women universally defended her, finding her womanly and modest, and all the condemnation and disapproval came from the other sex. One masculine, critic denounced her as “obnoxious;” another fervently “hoped there were not many girls running loose in real life who gave rein to their imagination as she did.” I wondered if a fellow-feeling made her sisters wondrous kind toward the heroine; or whether they had a nice discrimination that enabled them to judge her more intelligently; or whether, after all, they demanded less of a woman. Will some one who understands human nature better than I do please rise and explain ?

— The article on Over-Production in the April Atlantic is, if really written by a workingman, decidedly one of the best and clearest papers that has yet been produced by that class; and will, I hope, receive a careful reading by all who are giving any attention to this most pressing of economic questions. Recognizing the false economy of a people simply striving to keep down their expenditure, regardless of its being possibly both productive and profitable, Mr. Richards points out the best course as lying in the direction of a wisely regulated consumption and continually elevated standard of life and of necessaries as the only corrective of an over-production. Of course, this implies an ability to consume, and a potential demand; so that, to follow his reasoning, the effort should be to advance the laboring class, and instead of trying to teach them a lower habit of life, with its fewer necessities and smaller consumption, to educate them to a higher plane of living and desires, and at the same time place them in a position to obtain the new necessaries created by their higher standard. Where the difference between the rich and poor is very great, and the latter are compelled to adapt themselves to a mode of living with few wants and small expenditure, over-production is inevitable; for the rich, in whose hands alone are the means to purchase those articles produced, are too few in number to consume the surplus. In no way can the equation between consumption and production be maintained except by making the laborer a consumer whose demand is potential through his having both desire and means.

While it is to be regretted that the discussion of this subject is not conducted more judicially, Mr. Richards should remember that the counsels for both sides must present their case with testimony and argument before the judge can even charge the jury, far less decide the case. Ex parte discussion is the only way to arrive at the merits of a thing, as it is the only way in which enough interest can be excited to insure all the facts being hunted up and thought over. Even questions of abstract science are not always debated with perfect coolness and freedom from bias, so how can we expect more in those in which the getting of bread and butter is involved?

— I should like to enter a protest on behalf of the friends and relatives of authors. Why, in order to exalt the private virtues of a man or woman who has pleased us, must those near and dear to them in this life be sacrificed upon their tomb-stones ? Better not to have been Achilles' dog than to have been burnt upon his funeral pyre. For instance, I have just laid down Lord Macaulay’s Life, having been behind the age in reading it; why should I henceforth be inoculated by all the uncharitable passing thoughts Macaulay ever conceived of his acquaintances? Why should Zachary Macaulay, who has hitherto been to me a staid, hard-working religionist and philanthropist of the Wilberforce and Simeon school, henceforward live chiefly in my memory as an old gentleman of such fussy philoprogenitiveness and narrow sympathies that when he did deign to turn his attention on his family he was a thorn in the side of his illustrious son ? Why must I see through a thin veil of dashes and initials that Tom ’s youngest brother was a scamp, and that his second was a spendthrift and a beggar ? How would Macaulay have been ashamed of his own words could he have known that Christopher North, who left his dying bed to record his vote for him at his last election, would be handed down to posterity, on his authority, as “ a grog-drinking, cock-fighting, cudgelplaying professor of moral philosophy!" Above all, why should we all know concerning poor P— “ that the lad is such a fool he would disgrace any recommendation ; ” that “he had better be apprenticed to some hatter or tailor, where he might come to make good coats, for he will never write good dispatches”? Better for P—had Zachary Macaulay never recognized the relationship, or attempted to influence in the lad’s favor his impracticable son.

In Miss Martineau’s Life, our sympathy is claimed for her at her mother’s expense. If that poor lady had not borne a literary daughter, her disagreeable peculiarities would have been “ interrèd with her bones.” How often must Mr. Brontë have wished that an instinct of self-preservation had prompted him to suppress the writing propensities of Charlotte! Must not the late Mrs. Robertson have felt that she paid too high a price for her connection with the fame of her first husband in being known to us as a wife who did not make him happy? But the most flagrant case of cruel exposure to the public is that of Miss Mitford’s father. The old gentleman was a Turveydrop of the worst kind, selfish and good for nothing; his daughter’s life was a long sacrifice to his exactions, his egotisms, and his carelessness about money. This she bore nobly, undergoing martyrdom to hide his errors, acting towards him the part of an Antigone, giving herself for his sake, and piously protecting him almost till she died. No sooner was she gone than her biography was written, making forever useless all the ungrudging sacrifices of forty years. The object of Miss Mitford’s life had been to screen from her friends’ eyes the character of her father; now we all know him and despise him. Think what tears of bitterness this woman would have wept could she have known that it was her own literary reputation which had dealt this stab at the old man towards whom she had been ever the devoted daughter! It seems to me that a literary life has no right to be made a weapon of offense to the friends, relatives, and acquaintances of those whom biographers may delight to honor. Miss Edgeworth earnestly forbade the publication of her Life; so did Thackeray. Some persons protect the reputation of their friends by leaving autobiographies. In reading such works we are by no means expected to accept the author’s views. We are apt even to take part against him in his quarrels with others. Pepys’s abuse does not tell much against his acquaintances. When Benvenuto Cellini flies out against his traveling companion, who broke through a bridge on horseback, with an exclamation that it is only “because the Lord is ofttimes merciful to fools that questa bestia and that other bestia, his horse, were not drowned,” we laugh, but the laugh goes against the irascible goldsmith, who never could let slip the opportunity of making himself an enemy. Occasionally, but very rarely, biographies are so generously and judiciously written that (like Mr.Ticknor’s Life of Prescott, and his own life by his widow and daughter) no reputation is compromised, no feelings ruffled, no wholesome reserves indelicately broken through.

— Literary people are supposed, more than others, to possess culture; but if this means something positive as well as negative, — power to produce, to think, as well as ability to receive and to understand,— then their culture, as a class, makes, in my opinion, but a poor show. Suppose, for instance, that we consider their ideas on the alleged inadequate remuneration of literary labor. As many people are never able to conceive of wealth as taking any other form than that of money, so literary persons tacitly ignore any other rewards than those which take the shape of cash. But it is one of the maxims of the theory of wages that services receive a high or a low recompense in proportion as they are agreeable or disagreeable; or, in technical language, honorable or the opposite. Now, we don’t hear of people in easy circumstances setting up as shoemakers, or bankers, or physicians, from pure love of the thing; while the number of persons who write poems and histories and novels for this reason, and nothing else, is by no means small. The non-pecuniary rewards of law, etc., are not only difficult of attainment, but are very few at that, while the slightest poem or essay brings its stay-at-home or traveling young lady author much honor and reputation with the only public she cares for. Thus literature is not only the most “honorable” of all trades, but it is that in which, from other causes, the labor of the artisan must always be the worst paid, for in no other can unskilled labor be used to such advantage. “ La literature,” says Beranger, “ doit être une canne à la main, jamais une béguille.”

—I suppose observant readers of all creeds, and no creeds, have noticed the almost total absence of religious tone in both authors and characters of recent fiction. And some, perhaps, may yet be found who would rather condone the villainous pages of the earlier English novelists for the sake of the leaf or two of robustious moral sop thrown them by the hero, as he confesses his blackguardism, thanks Providence for the good fortune it had brought him, and makes his exit from the stage, than trust the modern author’s negative virtues, or his self-repressed heroes and heroines, who go through all the tragic agonies without a prayer on their lips.

That the mass of readers should be disturbed by this latter trait is not to be wondered at; but even the reviewers are now waxing religious over the nonreligion of the two strongest recent stories, — Black’s Macleod of Dare and Hardy’s Return of the Native. Of the former, one critic marvels “ that any one should undertake to portray conflicts of passion and emotion, to give what are designed to be faithful delineations of life, and yet eliminate currents of thought and motives of action which enter into and color all phases of human existence and human experience.” But do currents of religious thought and motives of action enter into and color all phases of human life?

Would it, for instance, be true to life or her nature to make Miss White feel aught of remorse at the havoc she had wrought inMacleod’s life; or, as she saw the catastrophe approaching, to have her fall on her knees and call on divine aid? It does, however, seem a little off color to allow so much human and so little religious emotion to Macleod’s mother; a good deal of Christian resignation would not come amiss in toning down the strong current of pagan fatalism which sweeps and moans around Castle Dare. As to Macleod himself, it is hardly fair to subject him to modern criticism, since the author plainly intended to show us an ancient Kelt, projected by some freak of nature into the present, and then places him amidst all the shallows and subtleties of modern life. And, despite all carping, I think the author’s venture is worth while. There is an immense fascination in watching this strong, simple, primitive nature’s belief in the might of its own truth against all conventional obstacles. And what a relief to the reader from the slow-paced, calculating, world-weary lover, who is such a favorite with present novelists!

But to those who believe in every human life being swayed by religious thought and emotion, Hardy must stand out as a greater sinner than Black, for his good people are so by nature, without a touch of awakening grace. Mrs. Yeobright does her duty without the aid of a Christian sentiment; neither does the patient, devoted Thomasin give verbal proof of having ever profited by the like; while Clement, who foregoes all personal ambition in the weaving of a plan for the good of his fellow-creatures, does it in the same mood of nature which might have actuated an ancient philosopher. As for the common people, their curious mixture of religious awe and superstitious dread reveals more glimpses of Druidical darkness than of Christian light. And yet, the strangest thing about it all is the absolute certainty with which an unbiased reader must accept it as fact. We are all more or less familiar with that commingling of paganism and Christianity which runs through the more common human importations from the British Isles; but most of us, perhaps, imagine it to be peculiar to adherents of the mother church. Hardy, by taking us into the remote interior of England, convinces us that it is neither a matter of Romanism nor Protestantism, but a subtile inheritance from a remote pagan ancestry. Would it be too curious an inquiry to question how much of the high-bred paganism of our day may be derived from the same source? — since it is clearly a thing of nature, not of choice.