Ars Recte Vivende
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George William Curtis >> Ars Recte Vivende
Is it possible to entertain the idea that Louis Napoleon has increased
the tax on tobacco, latterly, very largely, in the hope of discouraging
its use, and so contributing to the weal of the nation? If so, it would
illustrate one of the beautiful uses of despotic privilege.
(_February_, 1861)
TOBACCO AND MANNERS
I
The "old school" of manners has fallen into disrepute. Sir Charles
Grandison is a comical rather than a courtly figure to this generation; and
the man whose manners may be described as Grandisonian is usually called
a pompous and grandiloquent old prig. Certainly the elaborately dressed
gentleman speaking to a lady only with polished courtesy of phrase, and
avoiding in her presence all coarse words and acts, handing her in the
minuet with inexpressible grace and deference, and showing an exquisite
homage in every motion, was a very different figure from the gentleman in a
shooting-jacket or morning sack "chaffing" a lady with the freshest slang,
and smoking in her face. They are undeniably different, and the later
figure is wholly free from Grandisonian elegance and elaboration. But is he
much more truly a gentleman? Is he our Sidney, our Chevalier Bayard, our
Admirable Crichton? Is that refined consideration and gentle deference,
which is the flower of courtesy, an old-fashioned folly?
The overwrought politeness is made very ridiculous upon the stage, and
Richardson is undoubtedly hard reading for the general consumer of novels.
It is true, also, that fine morals do not always go with fine manners, and
that Lovelace had a fascination of address which John Knox lacked. The
chaff and slang of the Bayard of to-day are at least decent, and his morals
probably purer than those of the courtly and punctilious old Sir Roger
de Coverleys. Possibly; but it has been wisely said that hypocrisy is the
homage paid by vice to virtue. The good manners of a bad man are a rich
dress upon a diseased body. They are the graceful form of a vase full of
dirty water. The liquid may be poisonous, but the vessel is beautiful.
Some of the worst Lotharios in the world have a personal charm which is
irresistible. Many a stately compliment was paid by a graciously bowing
satyr in laced velvet coat and periwig, at the court of Louis the Great,
and paid for the basest purpose; but the grace and the courtesy were
borrowed, like plumage of living hues to deck carrion. They were not a part
of the baseness, and you do not escape dirty water by breaking the vase.
If the older morals were worse than the new, and the older manners were
better, cannot we who live to-day, and who may have everything, combine the
new morals and the old manners?
We can spare some elaboration of form, but we cannot safely spare the
substance of refined deference. If Romeo be permitted to treat Juliet as
hostlers are supposed to treat barmaids, and as the heroes of Fielding and
Smollett treat Abigails upon a journey, they will both lose self-respect
and mutual respect. It was a wise father who said to his son, "Beware of
the woman who allows you to kiss her." The woman who does not require
of a man the form of respect invites him to discard the substance. And
there is one violation of the form which is recent and gross, and might
be well cited as a striking illustration of the decay of manners. It
is the practice of smoking in the society of ladies in public places,
whether driving, or walking, or sailing, or sitting. There are _preux
chevaliers_ who would be honestly amazed if they were told they did
not behave like gentlemen, who, sitting with a lady on a hotel piazza, or
strolling on a public park, whip out a cigarette, light it, and puff as
tranquilly as if they were alone in their rooms. Or a young man comes alone
upon the deck of a steamer, where throngs of ladies are sitting, and blows
clouds of tobacco smoke in their faces, without even remarking that tobacco
is disagreeable to some people. This is not, indeed, one of the seven
deadly sins, but a man who unconcernedly sings false betrays that he has
no ear for music, and the man who smokes in this way shows that he is not
quite a gentleman.
But some ladies smoke? Yes, and some ladies drink liquor. Does that mend
the matter? The Easy Chair has seen a lady at the head of her own table
smoking a fine cigar. You will see a great many highly dressed women in
Paris smoking cigarettes. Does all this change the situation? Does this
make it more gentlemanly to smoke with a lady beside you in a carriage, or
upon a bench on the piazza? But some ladies like the odor of a cigar? Not
many; and the taste of those who sincerely do so cannot justify the habit
of promiscuous puffing in their presence. The intimacy of domesticity is
governed by other rules; but a gentleman smoking would hardly enter his
own drawing-room, where other ladies sat with his wife, without a word
of apology. The Easy Chair is no King James, and is more likely to issue
blasts of tobacco than blasts against it. But King James belonged to a very
selfish sex--a sex which seems often to suppose that its indulgences and
habits are to be tenderly tolerated, for no other reason than that they
are its habits. Therefore the young woman must defend herself by showing
plainly that she prohibits the intrusion of which, if suffered, she is
really the victim. In other times the Easy Chair has seen the lovely Laura
Matilda unwilling to refuse to dance with the partner who had bespoken her
hand for the german, although when he presented himself he was plainly
flown with wine. The Easy Chair has seen the hapless, foolish maid
encircled by those Bacchic arms, and then a headlong whirl and dash down
the room, ending in the promiscuous overthrow and downfall of maid,
Bacchus, and musicians.
If in the Grandisonian day the morals were wanting, it was something to
have the manners. They at least were to the imagination a memory and a
prophecy. They recalled the idyllic age when fine manners expressed fine
feelings, and they foretold the return of Astraa to her ancient haunts.
Here is young Adonis dreaming of a four-in-hand and a yacht, like any other
gentleman. Let us hope that he knows the test of a gentleman not to be the
ownership of blood-horses and a unique drag, but perfect courtesy founded
upon fine human feeling--that rare and indescribable gentleness and
consideration which rests upon manner as lightly as the bloom upon a fruit.
It may be imitated, as gold and diamonds are. But no counterfeit can harm
it; and, Adonis, it is incompatible with smoking in a lady's face, even if
she acquiesces.
(_September_, 1879)
II
Apollodorus came in the other morning and announced to the Easy Chair that
it had been made by common consent arbiter of a dispute in a circle of
young men. "The question," said he, "is not a new one in itself, but it
constantly recurs, for it is the inquiry under what conditions a gentleman
may smoke in the presence of ladies."
The Easy Chair replied that it could not answer more pertinently than in
the words of the famous Princess Emilia, who, upon being asked by a youth
who was attending her in a promenade around the garden, "What should you
say if a gentleman asked to smoke as he walked with you?" replied, "It is
not supposable, for no gentleman would propose it."
Naturally that youth did not venture to light even a cigarette. Emilia had
parried his question so dexterously that, although the rebuke was stinging,
he could not even pretend to be offended. His question was merely a form of
saying, "I am about to smoke, and what have you to say?" That he asked the
question was evidence of a lingering persuasion, inherited from an ancestry
of gentlemen, that it was not seemly to puff tobacco smoke around a lady
with whom he was walking.
Apollodorus was silent for a moment, as if reflecting whether this anecdote
was to be regarded as a general judgment of the arbiter that a gentleman
will never smoke in the presence of a lady. But the Easy Chair broke in
upon his meditation with a question, "If you had a son, should you wish to
meet him smoking as he accompanied a lady upon the avenue? or, were you
the father of a daughter, should you wish to see her cavalier smoking as
he walked by her side? Upon your own theory of what is gentlemanly and
courteous and respectful and becoming in the manner of a man towards a
woman, should you regard the spectacle with satisfaction?"
"Well," replied Apollodorus, "isn't that rather a high-flying view? When
can a man smoke--"
"But you are not answering," interrupted the Easy Chair. "Of two youths
walking with your daughter, one of whom was smoking a cigarette, or a
cigar, or a pipe, as he attended her, and the other was not smoking, which
would seem to you the more gentlemanly?"
"The latter," said Apollodorus, promptly and frankly.
"It appears, then," returned the Easy Chair, assuming the Socratic manner,
"that there are circumstances under which a gentleman will not smoke in
the presence of a lady. But to answer your question directly, it is not
possible to prescribe an exact code, although certain conditions may be
definitely stated. For instance, a gentleman will not smoke while walking
with a lady in the street. He will not smoke while paying her an evening
visit in her drawing-room. He will not smoke while driving with her in the
Park."
It is significant of a radical change in manners that such rules can
be laid down, because formerly the question could not have arisen. The
grandfather of Apollodorus, who was the flower of courtesy, could no more
have smoked with a lady with whom he was walking or driving than he could
have attended her without a coat or collar. Yet manners change, and the
grandfather must not insist that those of his time were best because they
were those of his time. It is but a little while since that a gentleman
who appeared at a party without gloves would have been a "queer" figure.
But now should he wear gloves he would be remarked as unfamiliar with good
usage.
It does not argue a decline of courtesy that the Grandisonian compliment
and the ineffable bending over a lady's hand and respectful kissing of the
finger-tips have yielded to a simpler and less stately manner. The woman
of the minuet was not really more respected than the woman of the waltz.
However the word gentlemanly may be defined, it will not be questioned
that the quality which it describes is sympathetic regard for the feelings
of others and the manner which evinces it. The manner, of course, may be
counterfeited and put to base uses. To say that Lovelace has a gentlemanly
manner is not to say that he is a gentleman, but only that he has caught
the trick of a gentleman. To call him or Robert Macaire or Richard Turpin a
gentleman is to say only that he behaves as a gentleman behaves. But he is
not a gentleman, unless that word describes manners and nothing more.
This is the key to the question of Apollodorus. It is not easy to define a
gentleman, but it is perfectly easy to see that in his pleasures and in the
little indifferent practices of society the gentleman will do nothing which
is disagreeable to others. He certainly will not assume that a personal
gratification or indulgence must necessarily be pleasant to others, nor
will he make the selfish habits of others a plea for his own.
Apollodorus listened patiently, and then said slowly that he understood the
judgment to be that a gentleman would smoke in the presence of ladies only
when he knew that it was agreeable to them, but that, as the infinite grace
and courtesy of women often led them, as an act of self-denial, to persuade
themselves that what others wish to do ought not to annoy them, it was very
difficult to know whether the practice was or was not offensive to any
particular lady, and therefore--therefore--
The youth seemed to be unable to draw the conclusion.
"Therefore," said the mentor, "it is well to remember the old rule in
whist."
"Which is--?" asked Apollodorus.
"When in doubt, trump the trick."
"But what is the special application of that rule to this case?"
"Precisely this, that the doubting smoker should follow the advice of
_Punch_ to those about to marry."
"Which is--?" asked Apollodorus.
"Don't."
(_September_, 1883)
DUELLING
Twenty-five years ago, at the table of a gentleman whose father had fallen
in a duel, the conversation fell upon duelling, and after it had proceeded
for some time the host remarked, emphatically, that there were occasions
when it was a man's solemn duty to fight. The personal reference was too
significant to permit further insistence at that table that duelling was
criminal folly, and the subject of conversation was changed.
The host, however, had only reiterated the familiar view of General
Hamilton. His plea was, that in the state of public opinion at the time
when Burr challenged him, to refuse to fight under circumstances which
by the "code of honor" authorized a challenge, was to accept a brand of
cowardice and of a want of gentlemanly feeling, which would banish him to a
moral and social Coventry, and throw a cloud of discredit upon his family.
So Hamilton, one of the bravest men and one of the acutest intellects of
his time, permitted a worthless fellow to murder him. Yet there is no doubt
that he stated accurately the general feeling of the social circle in which
he lived. There was probably not a conspicuous member of that society who
was of military antecedents who would not have challenged any man who had
said of him what Hamilton had said of Burr. Hamilton disdained explanation
or recantation, and the result was accepted as tragical, but in a certain
sense inevitable.
Yet that result aroused public sentiment to the atrocity of this barbarous
survival of the ordeal of private battle. That one of the most justly
renowned of public men, of unsurpassed ability, should be shot to death
like a mad dog, because he had expressed the general feeling about an
unprincipled schemer, was an exasperating public misfortune. But that he
should have been murdered in deference to a practice which was approved in
the best society, yet which placed every other valuable life at the mercy
of any wily vagabond, was a public peril. From that day to this there has
been no duel which could be said to have commanded public sympathy or
approval. From the bright June morning, eighty years ago, when Hamilton
fell at Weehawken, to the June of this year, when two foolish men shot at
each other in Virginia, there has been a steady and complete change of
public opinion, and the performance of this year was received with almost
universal contempt, and with indignant censure of a dilatory police.
The most celebrated duel in this country since that of Hamilton and Burr
was the encounter between Commodores Decatur and Barron, in 1820, near
Washington, in which Decatur, like Hamilton, was mortally wounded, and
likewise lived but a few hours. The quarrel was one of professional, as
Burr's of political, jealousy. But as the only conceivable advantage of
the Hamilton duel lay in its arousing the public mind to the barbarity of
duelling, the only gain from the Decatur duel was that it confirmed this
conviction. In both instances there was an unspeakable shock to the country
and infinite domestic anguish. Nothing else was achieved. Neither general
manners nor morals were improved, nor was the fame of either combatant
heightened, nor public confidence in the men or admiration of their public
services increased. In both cases it was a calamity alleviated solely by
the resolution which it awakened that such calamities should not occur
again.
Such a resolution, indeed, could not at once prevail, and eighteen years
after Decatur was killed, Jonathan Cilley, of Maine, was killed in a duel
at Washington by William J. Graves, of Kentucky. This event occurred
forty-five years ago, but the outcry with which it was received even at
that time--one of the newspaper moralists lapsing into rhyme as he deplored
the cruel custom which led excellent men to the fatal field,
"where Cilleys meet their Graves"--
and the practical disappearance of Mr. Graves from public life, showed how
deep and strong was the public condemnation, and how radically the general
view of the duel was changed.
Even in the burning height of the political and sectional animosity of
1856, when Brooks had assaulted Charles Sumner, the challenge of Brooks
by some of Sumner's friends met with little public sympathy. During the
excitement the Easy Chair met the late Count Gurowski, who was a constant
and devoted friend of Mr. Sumner, but an old-world man, with all the
hereditary social prejudices of the old world. The count was furious
that such a dastardly blow had not been avenged. "Has he no friends?" he
exclaimed. "Is there no honor left in your country?" And, as if he would
burst with indignant impatience, he shook both his fists in the air, and
thundered out, "Good God! will not somebody challenge anybody?"
No, that time is passed. The elderly club dude may lament the decay
of the good old code of honor--a word of which he has a very ludicrous
conception--as Major Pendennis, when he pulled off his wig, and took out
his false teeth, and removed the padded calves of his legs, used to hope
that the world was not sinking into shams in its old age. Quarrelling
editors may win a morning's notoriety by stealing to the field, furnishing
a paragraph for the reporters, and running away from the police. But they
gain only the unsavory notoriety of the man in a curled wig and flowered
waistcoat and huge flapped coat of the last century who used to parade
Broadway. The costume was merely an advertisement, and of very contemptible
wares. The man who fights a duel to-day excites but one comment. Should he
escape, he is ridiculous. Should he fall, the common opinion of enlightened
mankind writes upon his head-stone, "He died as the fool dieth."
(_September_, 1883)
NEWSPAPER ETHICS
I
Newspaper manners and morals hardly fall into the category of minor manners
and morals, which are supposed to be the especial care of the Easy Chair,
but there are frequent texts upon which the preacher might dilate, and
push a discourse upon the subject even to the fifteenthly. Indeed, in
this hot time of an opening election campaign, the stress of the contest
is so severe that the first condition of a good newspaper is sometimes
frightfully maltreated. The first duty of a newspaper is to tell the news;
to tell it fairly, honestly, and accurately, which are here only differing
aspects of the same adverb. "Cooking the news" is the worst use to which
cooking and news can be put. The old divine spoke truly, if with exceeding
care, in saying, "It has been sometimes observed that men will lie." So it
has been sometimes suspected that newspapers will cook the news.
A courteous interviewer called upon a gentleman to obtain his opinions,
let us say, upon the smelt fishery. After the usual civilities upon such
occasions, the interviewer remarked, with conscious pride: "The paper that
I represent and you, sir, do not agree upon the great smelt question. But
it is a newspaper. It prints the facts. It does not pervert them for its
own purpose, and it finds its account in it. You may be sure that whatever
you may say will be reproduced exactly as you say it. This is the news
department. Meanwhile the editorial department will make such comments upon
the news as it chooses." This was fair, and the interviewer kept his word.
The opinions might be editorially ridiculed from the other smelt point of
view, and they probably were so. But the reader of the paper could judge
between the opinion and the comment.
Now an interview is no more news than much else that is printed in a paper,
and it is no more pardonable to misrepresent other facts than to distort
the opinions of the victim of an interview. Yet it has been possible at
times to read in the newspapers of the same day accounts of the same
proceedings of--of--let us say, as this is election time--of a political
convention. The _Banner_ informs us that the spirit was unmistakable,
and the opinion most decided in favor of Jones. True, the convention voted,
by nine hundred to four, for Smith, but there is no doubt that Jones is the
name written on the popular heart. The _Standard_, on the other hand,
proclaims that the popular heart is engraved all over with the inspiring
name of Smith, and that it is impossible to find any trace of feeling for
Jones, except, possibly, in the case of one delegate, who is probably an
idiot or a lunatic. This is gravely served up as news, and the papers pay
for it. They even hire men to write this, and pay them for it. How Ude
and Careme would have disdained this kind of cookery! It is questionable
whether hanging is not a better use to put a man to than cooking news. Sir
Henry Wotton defined an ambassador as an honest man sent to lie abroad for
the commonwealth. This kind of purveyor, however, does not lie for his
country, but for a party or a person.
It is done with a purpose, the purpose of influencing other action. It is
intended to swell the paean for Jones or for Smith, and to procure results
under false pretences. Procuring goods under false pretences is a crime,
but everybody is supposed to read the newspapers at his own risk. Has the
reader yet to learn that newspapers are very human? A paper, for instance,
takes a position upon the Jones or Smith question. It decides, upon all the
information it can obtain, and by its own deliberate judgment, that Jones
is the coming man, or ("it has been observed that men will sometimes lie")
it has illicit reasons for the success of Smith. Having thus taken its
course, it cooks all the news upon the Smith and Jones controversy, in
order that by encouraging the Jonesites or the Smithians, according to the
color that it wears, it may promote the success of the side upon which its
opinion has been staked. It is a ludicrous and desperate game, but it is
certainly not the honest collection and diffusion of news. It is a losing
game also, because, whatever the sympathies of the reader, he does not care
to be foolishly deceived about the situation. If he is told day after day
that Smith is immensely ahead and has a clear field, he is terribly shaken
by the shock of learning at the final moment that he has been cheated from
the beginning, and that poor Smith is dead upon the field of dishonor.
Everybody is willing to undertake everybody else's business, and an Easy
Chair naturally supposes, therefore, that it could show the able editor a
plan of securing and retaining a large audience. The plan would be that
described by the urbane reporter as the plan of his own paper. It is
nothing else than truth-telling in the news column, and the peremptory
punishment of all criminals who cook the news, and "write up" the
situation, not as it is, but as the paper wishes it to be. This is more
than an affair of the private wishes or preferences of the paper. To cook
the news is a public wrong, and a violation of the moral contract which
the newspaper makes with the public to supply the news, and to use every
reasonable effort to obtain it, not to manufacture it, either in the office
or by correspondence.
(_July_, 1880)
II
If, as a New York paper recently said, the journalist is superseding the
orator, it is full time for the work upon _Journals and Journalism_,
which has been lately issued in London. The New York writer holds that in
our political contests the "campaign speech" is not intended or adapted
to persuade or convert opponents, but merely to stimulate and encourage
friends. The party meetings on each side, he thinks, are composed of
partisans, and the more extravagant the assertion and the more unsparing
the denunciation of "the enemy," the more rapturous the enthusiasm of the
audience. In fact, his theory of campaign speeches is that they are merely
the addresses of generals to their armies on the eve of battle, which are
not arguments, since argument is not needed, but mere urgent appeals to
party feeling. "Thirty centuries look down from yonder Pyramid" is the
Napoleonic tone of the campaign speech.
As an election is an appeal to the final tribunal of the popular judgment,
the apparent object of election oratory is to affect the popular decision.
But this, the journalist asserts, is not done by the orator, for the reason
just stated, but by the journal. The newspaper addresses the voter, not
with rhetorical periods and vapid declamation, but with facts and figures
and arguments which the voter can verify and ponder at his leisure, and not
under the excitement or the tedium of a spoken harangue. The newspaper,
also, unless it be a mere party "organ," is candid to the other side, and
states the situation fairly. Moreover, the exigencies of a daily issue and
of great space to fill produce a fulness and variety of information and of
argument which are really the source of most of the speeches, so that the
orator repeats to his audience an imperfect abstract of a complete and
ample plea, and the orator, it is asserted, would often serve his cause
infinitely better by reading a carefully written newspaper article than by
pouring out his loose and illogical declamation.