On Living Lives

We are a primitive folk in Ithaca; Arcadian, not to say Bœotian, in our isolation from the great currents of modern thought. We were still reading Tolstoi when the Ibsen era was half done, and we missed Beardsley altogether. We continued to be strenuous weeks after we should have become simple. As for Mr. Bernard Shaw, we do not even yet know if he is really “it.”

Nevertheless, we yield place to no community in our admiration of things Japanese. Nothing Japanese, I may say, is foreign to us, except those impossible creatures, the women; but our best hold has been our appreciation of the Japanese Spirit, especially since we discovered how nicely this can be made to fit in with our interest in Arts and Crafts and Colonial furniture.

I am afraid that I did not get quite all of Penelope’s essay, “Eastern Ideals in Western Life ” — the fact is I was too much engrossed with looking at Penelope. If ever an advocate of fewer things and better looked her part, it was she. Her costume was plain to austerity, though I venture that even the much-enduring Ulysses gasped when he saw the bill; and she wore no ornaments except her wedding ring and one gold clasp at her throat — a simple thing, Tuscan, of the fifteenth century, — I don’t know how she ever managed to pick it up. Altogether she made the rest of us look like gilt ginger-bread.

We walked home together, Penelope and I, and naturally enough fell to talking about East and West and the lessons that each might learn from the other. “ I myself,” Penelope went on soberly, “feel most strongly on this subject. If we could but discard the superfluous from our lives, be more spontaneous and serene,— we whose position in society,” — but perhaps I would best not quote Penelope’s remarks in full; her sentiments are wont to be rather admirable than striking. She at least was convinced that in Japanese ideals of life and art is the surest refuge from that “deplorable tendency toward artificiality and ostentation which” — in short, she was refurnishing her parlors in teak-wood after Morris designs, and purposed having the more ornate portions of her silverware made over at the Handicraft Shop.

How much more the elimination of the unessential was to cost the Much-enduring I could not learn; for at this point we were joined by Diogenes. The old cynic has always been something of a favorite of Penelope, for whom he is accustomed to temper his bark to a faint growl. This time, however, she was so noticeably cool that the poor gentleman was quite abashed and left us at the next corner.

“I think,” Penelope went on, “that Diogenes ought to be made to understand that he carries his independence of other people’s opinions quite too far. I don’t object, particularly, to his tramping about over the country in his old clothes, with a packet of sandwiches in one coat pocket, and the nose of a bottle sticking out of the other. I certainly do approve his interest in nature; that, of course, is quite the thing now, though it does not seem to me that the very nicest people are taking it up. But a man in his position ought never to allow himself to forget what is due to a reasonable propriety.”

My objection that Diogenes had always been doing exactly as he liked, with no fear of Mrs. Grundy before his eyes, brought out the details of the latest scandal concerning him. It seems that the philosopher, in one of his peregrinations, had found himself in a lonely place on the wrong side of the river from the little station where he planned to take the train home; and had thereupon proceeded to swim the inconvenient stream, pushing his clothes before him on a stray log. Then, to add to this offending, he had lingered to frolic with certain small boys whom he found disporting themselves near the further bank until he nearly missed his train and had to tie his neckscarf as he ran. The small boys, delighted beyond measure, had reported the matter at home. Thus it leaked out, and the two Apostles of the Unostentatious are no longer friends.

They tell me that the Oriental is unruffled. I certainly do not see how he manages it. The Japanese life has already worried me more than all the other lives that I ever led. To do it after the manner of Diogenes is to risk getting talked about; Penelope’s version is altogether beyond me to afford. If the Japanese life becomes the mode, I shall welcome the double life as a relief.

For comment on the contributors to this number, see advertising page 27.