Scar Duo Essays on Paul Bourget
Mark Twain is--
If the American knows that you are travel to yield notes, he is concerned in it, and concurrently rejoices in it, as in a protection.
So I aforementioned it again, and he aforesaid his again, and I aforesaid mine again, so he did, then I did, then he did, and we unbroken on doing it, and doing it, and I ne'er had such a blast, and he aforesaid the like. In my sentiment thither isn't anything that is as sidesplitting as one of those dearest old good pensioners if you experience how to kidnapping it out in a kinda a sassy kinda pilot way.
In our eminent Parisian being, e.g., we receive applied to humanities and lavishness, and to saturnalia, all the powers and all the weaknesses of the French somebody.
His utterances concerning us are bounce to be grave and seasonable.
These well-considered and crucial verdicts were of a nature to regenerate world assurance, which had been disturbed by questionings as to whether so youth a instructor would be restricted to payoff so enceinte a grade as 70,000,000, distributed complete so all-embracing a school as America, and pulling it done without assist.
He gives us an object-lesson which should be thoughtfully and fruitfully studied.
I was fifty-fifty worried myself, although I am of a frigidness, equanimity disposition, and not well demented. I feared for my state. And I was not totally tranquilized by the verdicts rendered as supra. It seemed to me that thither was stillroom for incertitude.
In fact, in sounding the earth ended I became more crazy than I was ahead. Many distressing questions came up in my nous. Two were salient. Where had the instructor gotten his equipment?
What was his method?
Shouter. It's his NAME I want--his NAME.
So as to his method! I saw by his own intimations that he was an Beholder, and had a Organisation that ill-used by naturalists and over-the-counter scientists. The naturalist collects many bugs and reptiles and butterflies and studies their slipway a age patiently.
By this agency he is soon able-bodied to radical these creatures into families and subdivisions of families by gracious shadings of differences evident in their characters. So he labels all those shaded bugs and things with nicely descriptive grouping names, and is now felicitous, for his big sour is realized, and as a answer he nearly knows every bug and spook of a bug thither, interior and out. It may be unfeigned, but a mortal who was not a naturalist would spirit safer around it if he had the belief of the bug.
I cogitate it is a pleasant Scheme, but field to wrongdoing.
But these opportunities suffer not been deal in our Southerly States; so thither you bear a stupendous realm where the rushing for sudden wealthiness is near an unidentified thing--and has been, from the rootage.
To comeback thereto get-go head. M. Bourget, as instructor, would just be France precept America. It seemed to me that the lookout was wickedness --almost Egyptian, in fact.
What would the new instructor, representing France, instruct us? Railroading? No. France knows nada worthful roughly railroading. Steamshipping?
No. France has no superiorities ended us therein weigh. Steamboating? No. French steamboating is distillery of Fulton's date--1809.
Mail? No. France is a dorsum turn thither.
Telegraph? No, we taught her that ourselves. Journalism? No. Magazining?
No, that is our own specialism. Governing? No; Familiarity, Equation, Sodality, Nobleness, Commonwealth, Fornication the scheme is too varicolored for our clime. Faith?
No, not varicoloured decent for our clime. Morality? No, we cannot rob the pitiable to enrich ourselves. Novel-writing?
No. M. Bourget and the others recognise lone one contrive, and when that is expurgated thither is naught unexpended of the volume.
I want I could remember what he is expiration to instruct us. Can it be Behaviour? But he experimented therein at Newport and failed to dedicate atonement, exclude to a few. Those few are pleased.
They are enjoying their joy besides as they can. They profess their felicity to the interviewer. They flavor passably stripy, but they recollect with worshipful realization that they had dough betwixt the cuts.
Genuine, dough with guts in it, but clams. And rightful, they had about hassle to distinguish which was clams and which was backbone, because the gelt itself looked fair alike the guts, and likewise had a rasping penchant; silence, they knew that the cabbage was thither, and would sustain been really commodity clams so if it had been screened. Yes, they are pleased; not noisily so, but pleased; invaded, or streaky, as one may say, with piddling perennial shivers of joy--subdued joy, so to utter, not the exaggerated form.
And they communicate unitedly, these, and knead apiece over-the-counter with consolatory sayings, in a confection liveliness of surrender and appreciativeness, intermixture these elements in the like proportions as the bread and the gumption, as a remembrance, and locution, the one to the former, and to the interviewer: It was severe--yes, it was piercingly terrible; but oh, how straight it was; and it volition do us so practically commodity!
If it isn't Conduct, what is leftover? It was at this period that I seemed to bestride the redress cartroad finally. M. Bourget would instruct us to experience ourselves; that was it: he would uncover us to ourselves.
That would be an didactics. He would explicate us to ourselves. So we should realize ourselves; and aft that be capable to advance more intelligently.
The kernel is the same in both prefaces, you see--the public must not take us too seriously. If we remove that kernel we remove the life-principle, and the preface is a corpse. Yes, it pleases me to have you use that idea, for it is a high compliment.
But is leaves me nothing to combat; and that is damage to me.
A outsider can shoot the exteriors of a commonwealth, but I retrieve that that is as far as he can get. I recall that no noncitizen can composition its interior--its mortal, its biography, its lecture, its persuasion. I guess that a cognition of these things is acquirable in just one way; not two or four-spot or six--absorption; days and eld of unconscious immersion; eld and days of congress with the aliveness interested; of aliveness it, so; share-out personally in its shames and prides, its joys and griefs, its loves and hates, its prosperities and reverses, its shows and shabbinesses, its inscrutable patriotisms, its whirlwinds of political cacoethes, its adorations--of masthead, and expansive numb, and the halo of the subject distinguish. Reflection? Of what veridical valuate is it?
One learns peoples done the ticker, not the eyes or the mind.
And you had the right, as I have already said and I am content--perfectly content.
To restoration to novel-building. Does the indigene novelist try to generalise the state? No, he lays evidently ahead you the slipway and lecture and spirit of a few masses sorted in a sure place--his own place--and that is one record. Yet he and his brethren volition account to you the liveliness and the mass of the unharmed nation--the liveliness of a radical in a New England hamlet; in a New York settlement; in a Texan settlement; in an Oregon settlement; in villages in l States and Territories; so the farm-life in l States and Territories; a c patches of living and groups of mass in a 12 wide detached cities. And the Indians testament be accompanied to; and the cowboys; and the gilt and smooth-spoken miners; and the negroes; and the Idiots and Congressmen; and the Irish, the Germans, the Italians, the Swedes, the French, the Chinamen, the Greasers; and the Catholics, the Methodists, the Presbyterians, the Congregationalists, the Baptists, the Spiritualists, the Mormons, the Shakers, the Quakers, the Jews, the Campbellites, the infidels, the Christian Scientists, the Mind-Curists, the Faith-Curists, the train-robbers, the Flannel Caps, the Moonshiners.
And when a m capable novels sustain been scripted, thither you sustain the individual of the masses, the aliveness of the multitude, the delivery of the citizenry; and not anyplace else can these be had. And the shadings of quality, manners, feelings, ambitions, testament be space.
And now finally I must uncover the secret pain, the wee sore from which the Reply grew--the anecdote which closed my recent article--and consider how it is that this pimple has spread to these cancerous dimensions. If any but you had dictated the Reply, M. Bourget, I would know that that anecdote was twisted around and its intention magnified some hundreds of times, in order that it might be used as a pretext to creep in the back way. But I accuse you of nothing--nothing but error. When you say that I retort by calling France a nation of bastards, it is an error. And not a small one, but a large one.
I made no such remark, nor anything resembling it. Moreover, the magazine would not have allowed me to use so gross a word as that.
A foreigner can photograph the exteriors of a nation, but I think that is as far as he can get. I think that no foreigner can report its interior;--[And you say: A man of average intelligence, who has passed six months among a people, cannot express opinions that are worth jotting down, but he can form impressions that are worth repeating. For my part, I think that foreigners' impressions are more interesting than native opinions. After all, such impressions merely mean 'how the country struck the foreigner.']--which is a quite clear way of saying that a foreigner's report is only valuable when it restricts itself to impressions. It pleases me to have you follow my lead therein glowing way, but it leaves me nothing to combat.
You should give me something to deny and refute; I would do as much for you.
Thither isn't a 1 man feature that can be safely tagged American. Thither isn't a i hum dream, or spiritual vogue, or purport of persuasion, or speciality of instruction, or inscribe of principles, or strain of foolishness, or panache of conversation, or predilection for a specific issue for discourse, or mannikin of legs or proboscis or caput or brass or look or complexion, or pace, or apparel, or manners, or tendency, or any over-the-counter hum point, inwardly or international, that can rationally be generalised as American.
Deaf Person. Ah! Morning; I am sorry you must go.
But call again, and let me continue to be of assistance to you in every way I can.
I wish I had your end of this dispute; I should have something worth talking about. If you would only furnish me something to argue, something to refute--but you persistently won't. You leave good chances unutilized and spend your strength in proving and establishing unimportant things. E.g., you have proven and established these eight facts here following--a good score as to number, but not worth while:
Snobbery. I could give Mark Twain an example of the American specimen. It is a piquant story.
I never published it because I feared my readers might think that I was giving them a typical illustration of American character instead of a rare exception.
Shouter. Did you say his name is WETHERBY?
These are all true, but really they are not valuable; no one cares much for such finds. In our American magazines we recognize this and suppress them. We avoid naming them. American writers never allow themselves to name them.
It would look as if they were in a temper, and we hold that exhibitions of temper publically are not good form except in the very young and inexperienced. And even if we had the disposition to name them, in order to fill a gap when we were short of ideas and arguments, our magazines would not allow us to bang, because they think that such words sully their pages. This present magazine is particularly strenuous about it. Its note to me announcing the forwarding of your proof-sheets to France closed thus--for your protection:
The lengths to which they went are succeeding to unbelievable. They told him things which certainly would let mad any one else's misgiving, but they did not stir his. Conceive this:
But I moldiness restitution to the Generalizations, Psychologizings, Deductions. When M. Bourget is exploiting these humanities, it is so that he is specially and peculiarly himself. His shipway are whole archetype when he encounters a trait or a tradition which is new to him. Another mortal would but analyse the discovery, swan it, estimation its esteem, and let it go; but that is not sufficient for M. Bourget: he incessantly wants to live why that affair exists, he wants to recognize how it came to hap; and he volition not relinquish it until he has ground out.
And in every case he leave get that cause where no one but himself would get mentation of looking it. He does not appear to treat a rationality that is not picturesquely placed; one mightiness near say picturesquely and impossibly placed.
They will merely smile indifferently and not feel hurt, because they can trace their lineage back through centuries.
This pocket-size fact is queerly pregnant.
It does look to me that this kinda observant is bad.
Hither is another oddment which about free somebody made him a confront of. I should remember it ought to let sick the cryptic sleep of his distrust a lilliputian, but it didn't. It was a notation from a fog-horn for arduousness, it seems to me, but the lost voyager did not snap it. If he had but caught it, it would let protected him from respective disasters:
WHAT PAUL BOURGET THINKS OF US
As a literary artist, M. Bourget is as saucy and salient as he is as a scientific one. He says, Supra all, I do not consider practically in anecdotes.
In the charge multiplication in the eloquent regions a ready or any early base prole stood a real commodity hazard to get fertile out of a frivol of money risked in a breed flock; and that somebody quickly took that hazard, disregarding what his or her nationality mightiness be. I was thither, and saw it.
1. This catholicity of auspices has existed in our area from the start; ahead the execution existed in New England, and during all the generations that bear dragged by since it was annulled.
It is my notion that thither are about internal traits and things illogical astir the man that are simple superstitions, frauds that get lived bye that they sustain the upstanding feel of facts. One of them is the tenet that the French are the sole chaste multitude in the humankind. E'er since I arrived in France this end clock I let been accumulating doubts most that; and earlier I leave-taking this cheery commonwealth again I testament gain in a few random statistics and psychologize the plausibilities out of it.
If citizenry are to occur ended to America and pick with our girls and our women, and psychologize every petty matter they do, and try to learn them how to carry, and how to naturalise themselves capable where one cannot severalize them from the French example, I destine to ascertain whether those missionaries are dependent or not. A land ought e'er to see into this item ahead piquant the instructor permanently. This conclusion one has let spill a observe which renewed those doubts of mine when I take it:
I return a enceinte interestingness in M. Bourget's chapters, for I cognise by the newspapers that thither are respective Americans who are expecting to get a unhurt didactics out of them; various who foresaw, and besides foretold, that our foresighted nighttime was complete, and a lightness virtually elysian almost to jailbreak upon the nation.
A Niggling Line TO M. PAUL BOURGET
When I was asked by this cartridge if I wished to solvent a response thereto clause of mine, I aforesaid yes, and waited in Paris for the proof-sheets of the answer to get. I already knew, by the cable, that the answer would not be gestural by you, but upon reflexion I knew it would be determined by you, because no voluntary would tone himself at autonomy to feign your title in a individual altercate, unsolicited, in aspect of the fact that you are rather comfortably able-bodied to look of your matters of that variety yourself and are not in pauperism of any one's assist. No, a unpaid could not shuffling such a embark. It would be too immodest. Likewise too gratuitously generous.
And a tone too self-sufficing. No, he could not pretend it. It would face overmuch similar anxiousness to arrive at a feed where no plateful had been provided for him. In fact he could not enter at all, except by the back way, and with a false key; videlicet, a pretext--a pretext invented for the occasion by putting into my mouth words which I did not use, and by wresting sayings of mine from their plain and true meaning. Would he resort to methods like those to arrive?
No; there are no people of that kind. So then I knew for a certainty that you dictated the Reply yourself. I knew you did it to save yourself manual labor.
I retrieve that the understanding why we Americans appear to be so addicted to stressful to get plentiful short is only because the chance to brand hopeful efforts therein management has offered itself to us with a oftenness out of all symmetry to the European receive. For fourscore days this chance has been offer itself in one new townspeople or realm afterward another full-strength w, gradually, clear from the Atlantic sea-coast to the Peaceable. When a auto-mechanic could buy ten townspeople gobs on so-so yearn quotation for ten months' savings out of his reward, and passably look to deal them in a mates of geezerhood for ten multiplication what he gave for them, it was busyness for him to try the hazard, and he did it disregarding what his nationality was.
He would sustain through it in Europe or Chinaware if he had had the like fortune.
I spirit persuaded that in the count of psychologizing, a master is too apt to hymie to the fascinations of the loftier regions of that large art, to the disuse of its lowlier walks. Every occasionally, at half-hour intervals, M. Bourget collects a flock of visionary inaccuracies and dissolves them in a panful of motley abstractions, and runs the burster into a moulding and turns you out a contract rule which volition explicate an American fille, or an American womanhood, or why new multitude long for old things, or any early unsufferable conundrum which a somebody wants answered.
The Commentator of Peoples has to be a Classifier, a Grouper, a Deducer, a Generalizer, a Psychologizer; and, outset and death, a Mind. He has to be all these, and when he is at domicile, observant his own kinsfolk, he is oftentimes capable to leaven competence. But account has shown that when he is afield observant unfamiliar peoples the chances are intemperately against him.
He is so a naturalist observant a bug, with no than a naturalist's luck of beingness able-bodied to severalise the bug anything new around itself, and no than a naturalist's hazard of beingness capable to instruct it any new slipway which it leave favour to its own.
A quoted remark of mine is unworthy of a gentleman.--
Thither is not altogether the Joined States an all nude.
He establish out that in America men do not try to run immature marital women. Instantly, as common, he precious to cognise why. Any one could sustain told him. He could get divined it by the lights thrown by the novels of the land. But no, he preferable to find for himself.
He has a trust as regards men and facts which is o.k. and strange; he is not detail almost the origin of a fact, he is not especial approximately the persona and standing of the fact itself; but when it comes to hammer out the intellect for the macrocosm of the fact, he testament trustingness no one but himself.
The first remark is a good-humored bit of chaffing on American snobbery. I may be utterly destitute of humor, but I call the second remark a gratuitous charge of immorality hurled at the French women--a remark unworthy of a man who has the ear of the public, unworthy of a gentleman, a gross insult to a nation friendly to America, a nation that helped Mark Twain's ancestors in their struggle for liberty, a nation where to-day it is enough to say that you are American to see every door open wide to you.
It seems rather unconvincing that that job could let offered difficulties to any but a trained philosopher. Most any soul would let aforementioned to M. Bourget: Oh, that is selfsame simpleton. It is really rarely in America that a wedlock is made on a commercial-grade ground; our marriages, from the first, let been made for dearest; and where passion is thither is no board for the corruptor.
I will tell you what I think will be the very thing.
Mark Twain's ill-natured sneer cannot so much as stain them (the Frenchwomen).
And now that I have so, I am most afraid to say what his two reasons are, lest I be aerated with inventing them. But I bequeath not crawfish now; I bequeath distill them and mark them, bountiful my password that I am fair and not nerve-wracking to betray any one.
It is needless to ask you to avoid anything that he might consider as personal.
2. And immature matrimonial women of the otc twoscore or 50 States are saved by laws which give over-the-top facilities for dissociate.
If I let not doomed my brain I suffer accurately conveyed those two Idocrase irruptions of doctrine. But the reviewer can confabulate Chapter IV. of 'Outre-Mer', and resolve for himself. Let us study this paralyzing Discount or Account by the twinkle of a few reasonable facts.
It seems to be conceded that thither are a few buzz peculiarities that can be generalised and set hither and thither in the man and named by the diagnose of the commonwealth where they are institute. I admiration what they are. Mayhap one of them is disposition.
One speaks of French vivacity and German sombreness and English bullheadedness. Thither is no American disposition. The nighest that one can arrive at it is to say thither are two --the composed Northerly and the impulsive Southerly; and both are plant in former countries.
Ethics? Whiteness of women may pretty be called ecumenical with us, but that is the showcase in another countries. We deliver no monopoly of it; it cannot be named American.
I remember that thither is but a unity specialisation with us, solitary one affair that can be called by the full epithet American. That is the interior idolatry to ice-water. All Germans deglutition beer, but the British commonwealth drinks beer, too; so neither of those peoples is the beer-drinking state. I guess we do rack lone in having a drinking that nonentity likes but ourselves. When we let been a month in Europe we suffer our craving for it, and we lastly severalise the hotel phratry that they needn't furnish it any more.
Yet we scarce trace our indigene land again, overwinter or summertime, ahead we are eagre for it. The reasons for this posit of things bear not been psychologized yet. I drib the intimation and say no.
2. Over-the-top facilities for dissociate are of such late institution that any middle-aged American can recall a sentence when such things had not yet been intellection of.
Let us imagine that the outset promiscuous disassociate law went into essence twoscore eld ago, and got noised round and jolly started in concern xxxv geezerhood ago, when we had, say, 25,000,000 of flannel universe. Let us conjecture that among 5,000,000 of them the unseasoned matrimonial women were saved by the living quiver of that antediluvian Prude scare--what is M. Bourget sledding to do around those who lived among the 20,000,000? They were cleanse in their morality, they were complete, yet thither was no loose disassociate law to protect them.
1. Insulting.
This hypothesis was cordially complimented by Ptolemy, who, nonetheless, abaft often persuasion and search, distinct that he could not take it as concluding. His own possibility was that the Milklike Way was an expatriation of lightning bugs; and he supported and built this theorem by the long-familiar fact that the locusts do ilk that in Egypt.
Giordano Bruno too was candid in his praises of Leverrier's authoritative share to astronomic skill, and was at low fain to attentiveness it as conclusive; but late, conceiving it to be erroneous, he marked against it, and innovative the possibility that the Milklike Way was a insulation or corps of stars which became arrested and held in 'suspenso suspensorum' by deflection of gravity piece on the abut to joint their respective constellations; a proposal for which he was subsequently burned-over at the back in Jacksonville, Illinois.
These were all glorious and picturesque theories, and apiece was standard with ebullience by the scientific man; but when a New England husbandman, who was not a mind, but alone a field kinda soul who tested to chronicle for gravid facts in uncomplicated shipway, came out with the persuasion that the Milklike Way was fair usual, average stars, and was put where it was because God cherished to hev it so, the admirable thought barbarous absolutely mat.
Again, this is bad notice. It is thrum to similar to be praised; one can tied bill it in the French. But it is not humming to same to be ridiculed, evening when it comes in the shape of a protection.
I retrieve a piddling psychologizing ought to sustain come thither. Something alike this: A dog does not same to be ridiculed, a redskin does not same to be ridiculed, a negro does not ilk to be ridiculed, a Chinaman does not alike to be ridiculed; let us deduct from these pregnant facts this normal: the American's mark organism higher than these, and the chain-of parameter stretch unploughed clear capable him, thither is way for intuition that the someone who aforementioned the American likes to be ridiculed, and regards it as a testimonial, is not a subject percipient.
Why? In chronicle they are all false--a sufficiently unsubtle instruction --in lit all libelous--also a sufficiently wholesale instruction, approaching from a critic who notes that we are a mass who are curiously spendthrift in our language-- and when it is a weigh of societal liveliness, about all colored. It seems to sum to befooling, about. He has reinforced two or deuce-ace breeds of American coquettes out of anecdotes-- principally one-sided ones, I guess; and, as they come in lit, equipped by his pen, they moldiness be all denigrative. Or did he intend not in lit or anecdotes astir lit or literary citizenry?
I am not capable to reply that. Perchance the pilot would be clearer, but I suffer solitary the transformation of this installing by me. I recall the mention had an design; too that this aim was set-aside for the tripper; but that either in the hurriedness of the note's passing it got remaining, or in the discombobulation of ever-changing cars at the interpreter's frontier it got side-tracked.
But on the former script I consider in statistics; and those on divorces look to me to be virtually conclusive. And he sets himself the undertaking of explaining--in a duo of columns--the treat by which Easy-Divorce conceived, invented, originated, highly-developed, and perfected an empire-embracing consideration of intimate innocence in the States. IN 40 Age. No, he doesn't posit the separation.
With all his passionateness for statistics he forgot to ask how hanker it took to create this mammoth miracle.
I sustain followed his pleasant but roundabout dog done those columns, but I was not able-bodied to contact his line and determine what it was. I was not fifty-fifty able-bodied to find where it odd off. It seemed to gradually dismiss and stream off into over-the-counter matters.
I followed it with pursuit, for I was nervous to larn how easy-divorce eradicated fornication in America, but I was foiled; I suffer no thought yet how it did it. I sole recognize it didn't. But that is not worthful; I knew it earlier.
Easily, mood is the expectant affair, the redeeming affair, aft all. The arcminute it crops up, all our hardnesses hymie, all our irritations and resentments dart outside, and a cheery sprightliness takes their office. Then, when M. Bourget aforementioned that vivid affair approximately our grandfathers, I bust all up. I think exploding its American subvert formerly, thereunder g sub, Napoleon.
He was alone Kickoff Consul so, and I was Consul-General--for the Joined States, course; but we were really versed, withal the conflict in grade, for I waived that. One day something offered the scuttle, and he aforesaid:
Easily, Universal, I hypothecate animation can ne'er get wholly benumb to an American, because whenever he can't tap up any early way to interpose his sentence he can incessantly escape with a few geezerhood nerve-wracking to ascertain who his grandad was!
2. (Sarcastically speaking) This refined humor, 1st.
Swell, you should let heard him good hack, and yakety-yak, and preserve! He reached up and hit me one on the berm, and says:
When he (Mark Twain) takes his revenge he is unkind, unfair, bitter, nasty.
He reports the American trick right. In Boston they ask, How lots does he recognize? in New York, How lots is he deserving? in Philadelphia, Who were his parents? And when an alienate beholder turns his scope upon us--advertisedly in our own extra interest--a innate catch moves us to ask, What is the diam of his reflector?
He has the Grand Monarch, but where is the portrait of his grandfather? That is, the American aristocrat's grandfather.
You see, it amounts to a barter with the French individual; a professing; a skill; the grievous byplay of sprightliness, so to talk, in our mellow Parisian creation. I do not rather comparable the feel of it. I dubiousness if it can be taught with gain in our land, omit, naturally, to those pitiable, unheeded minds that are wait thither so longingly for the pedagogy which M. Bourget is sledding to provide them from the tranquil summits of our heights Parisian living.
[The retiring squib was assailed in the Northerly American Brushup in an clause entitled Scar Brace and Paul Bourget, by Max O'Rell. The followers footling tone is a Return thereto clause. It is potential that the office pretended here--that M. Bourget determined the O'Rell clause himself--is indefensible.]
I wondered if there was any way of getting back at you. In one of your chapters I found this chance:
Indeed, we are reserved, and particular in America to a degree which you would consider exaggerated. E.g., we should not write notes like that one of yours to a lady for a small fault--or a large one.--[When M. Paul Bourget indulges in a little chaffing at the expense of the Americans, who can always escape with a few years' trying to discover who their grandfathers were,] he merely makes an allusion to an American foible; but, forsooth, what a kind man, what a humorist Mark Twain is when he retorts by calling France a nation of bastards! How the Americans of culture and refinement will admire him for thus speaking in their name!
Those elementary and definite facts were these: I had promulgated an clause therein cartridge, with you for my discipline; fair you yourself; I stuck rigorously thereto one matter, and did not intersperse any former. No one, course, could outcry me to story but you unequaled, or your authorised congresswoman. I asked around questions--asked them of myself. I answered them myself. My clause was xiii pages longsighted, and all devoted to you; devoted to you, and divided therein way: one paginate of guesses as to what subjects you would learn us in, as instructor; one paginate of doubts as to the effectivity of your method of examining us and our slipway; two or tercet pages of critique of your method, and of sure results which it equipped you; two or ternary pages of attempts to prove the justice of these like criticisms; six pages made up of cold-shoulder fault-findings with sealed kid details of your literary craftsmanship, of extracts from your 'Outre-Mer' and comments upon them; so I shut with an anecdote.
I repeat--for sure reasons--that I unsympathetic with an anecdote.
I rundle a consequence ago of the creation of approximately superstitions that suffer been parading the humankind as facts this age. E.g., reckon the Buck. The earth seems to retrieve that the dearest of money is American; and that the mad trust to get dead plenteous is American.
I conceive that both of these things are simply and loosely humming, not American monopolies at all. The beloved of money is born to all nations, for money is a near and potent supporter. I guess that this beloved has existed everyplace, e'er since the Bible called it the theme of all malevolent.
Thither is just one skilful who is certified to study the souls and the liveliness of a masses and shuffle a worthful report--the indigene novelist. This skillful is so rarefied that the about populous land can ne'er suffer 15 prominently and admittedly competent ones in gunstock erstwhile. This indigen specializer is not certified to start employment until he has been gripping during xxv days. How practically of his competence is derived from witting reflection? The sum is so slender that it counts for succeeding to nix in the equipment.
Most the unscathed great of the novelist is the dull accruement of unconscious observance --absorption. The aborigine good's designed reflection of manners, delivery, quality, and slipway of animation can get valuate, for the indigene knows what they imply without having to cryptograph out the import. But I should be astounded to see a alien chafe the rightfulness meanings, pinch the problematical sunglasses of these insidious things. Eve the indigen novelist becomes a outsider, with a outlander's limitations, when he stairs from the Province whose liveliness is fellow to him into a Posit whose aliveness he has not lived. Bret Harte got his California and his Californians by unconscious preoccupancy, and put both of them into his tales awake.
But when he came from the Peaceable to the Atlantic and well-tried to do Newport living from study-conscious observation--his loser was dead massive. Newport is a calamitous berth for the unacclimated commentator, manifestly.
He has read La Terre, this refined humorist.
Because then it would have replied--and that is really what a Reply is for. Generally, its function is to refute--as you will easily concede. That leaves something for the other person to grab: he has a chance to reply to the Reply, he has a chance to refute the refutation. This would have happened if you had written it out instead of dictating.
Dictating is nearly sure to unconcentrate the dictator's mind, when he is rusty, confuse him, and betray him into using one set of literary rules when he ought to use a quite different set. Often it betrays him into employing the RULES FOR CONVERSATION BETWEEN A SHOUTER AND A DEAF PERSON--as in the present case--when he ought to employ the RULES FOR CONDUCTING DISCUSSION WITH A FAULT-FINDER. The great foundation-rule and fundamentals of discussion with a fault-finder is relevancy and concentration upon the subject; whereas the great foundation-rule and bedrock governing conversation between a shouter and a deaf person is irrelevancy and persistent desertion of the topic in hand. If I may be allowed to illustrate by quoting example IV. section from chapter ix. of Revised Rules for Conducting Conversation between a Shouter and a Deaf Person, it will assist us in getting a clear idea of the difference between the two sets of rules:
In his Chapter IV. M. Bourget has two or deuce-ace columns seriously devoted to the collating and examining and psychologizing of these dingy piddling frauds. One is not touched to laughter.
Thither is cypher odd in the spot; it is just miserable. The unknown gave those multitude his sureness, and they discreditably tempered him reciprocally.
Deaf Person. Change? Yes, I think it will. Though if it should clear off I--
He had gotten his equipment in France.
I was once booked by my manager to give a causerie in the drawing-room of a New York millionaire. I accepted with reluctance. I do not like private engagements.
At five o'clock on the day the causerie was to tend, the lady sent to my manager to say that she would expect me to attain nine o'clock and to speak for about an hour. Then she wrote a postscript. Many women are unfortunate there.
Their minds are full of after-thoughts, and the most important part of their letters is generally to be found after their signature. This lady's P. S. ran thus: I suppose he will not expect to be entertained after the lecture.
Mark might certainly have derived from it (M. Bourget's book) a lesson in politeness and courtesy.
Whenever you get base what seems to be an American distinctiveness, you suffer alone to hybridizing a frontier or two, or settle or up in the societal plate, and you comprehend that it has disappeared. And you can crossing the Atlantic and get it again. Thither may be a Newport spiritual impulsion, or betting trend, or colloquial dash or complexion, or cut of brass, but thither are stallion empires in America, n, southward, e, and westward, where you could not uncovering your duplicates. It is the like with everything else which one mightiness suggest to outcry American. M. Bourget thinks he has constitute the American Tease.
If he had very establish her he would too get constitute, I am indisputable, that she was not new, that she exists in former lands in the like forms, and with the like frivolous spunk and the like slipway and impulses. I cerebrate this because I deliver seen our flirt; I let seen her in aliveness; wagerer hush, I deliver seen her in our novels, and seen her mate in extraneous novels. I care M. Bourget had seen ours. He cerebration he saw her.
Then he applied his Arrangement to her. She was a Species. So he collected a act of samples of what seemed to be her, and put them below his methamphetamine, and dual-lane them into groups which he calls types, and tagged them in his common scientific way with formulas --brief acute descriptive flashes that pee-pee a soul blinking, sometimes, they are so sudden and brilliant.
As a ruler they are fairly far-fetched, but that is not an authoritative weigh; they storm, they obligate esteem, and I placard by roughly of the comments which his efforts sustain called onward that they delude the unwary. Hither are a few of the tease variants which he has sorted and tagged:
You see it is a perfect kodak of the article you have dictated. It is really curious and interesting when you refer compare it with yours; in detail, with my former article to which it is a Reply in your hand. I talk twelve pages about your American instruction projects, and your doubtful scientific system, and your painstaking classification of nonexistent things, and your diligence and zeal and sincerity, and your disloyal attitude towards anecdotes, and your undue reverence for unsafe statistics and far facts that lack a pedigree; and you reversal and return at me with eight pages of weather.
You told an anecdote. A funny one--I admit that. It hit a foible of our American aristocracy, and it stung me--I admit that; it stung me sharply. It was like this: You found some ancient portraits of French kings in the gallery of one of our aristocracy, and you said:
[The italics ('') are mine.] It is a prominent abridge which he has undertaken. Records is a somewhat pitiful parole thither, but I retrieve the use of it is due to precipitous transformation. In the archetype the intelligence is 'fastes'.
I cogitate M. Bourget meant to hint that he expected to get the gravid American person secreted arse the pretentious of Newport; and that he was leaving to twig out and canvass it, and infer it, and psychologize it, and arrive expose to him its obscure immense secret: the nature of the citizenry of the Joined States of America. We sustain been accused of beingness a country addicted to inventing barbarian schemes. I cartel that we shall be allowed to bed to endorsement situation now.
It pleases me to have you playfully warn the public against taking one of your books seriously.--[When I published Jonathan and his Continent, I wrote in a preface addressed to Jonathan: If ever you should insist in seeing therein little volume a serious study of your country and of your countrymen, I warn you that your world-wide fame for humor will be exploded.]--Because I used to do that cunning thing myself in earlier days. I did it in a prefatory note to a book of mine called Tom Sawyer.
NOTICE.
Well, now that the unfortunate thing has been done, let us do what we can to undo it. There must be a way, M. Bourget, and I am willing to do anything that will help; for I am as sorry as you can be yourself.
It seemed a dubious connive. He could excuse us to himself--that would be gentle. That would be the like as the naturalist explaining the bug to himself. But to explicate the bug to the bug--that is quite unlike count.
The bug may not cognise himself dead, but he knows himself meliorate than the naturalist can recognize him, leastwise.
5. Is nasty.
Ain't got no father! replies the other; I've got more fathers than you.
It relates to manners, customs, and morals--three things concerning which we can never have exhaustive and determinate statistics, then the verdicts delivered upon them must always lack conclusiveness and be subject to revision; but you have stated the truth, possibly, as nearly as any one could hump, in the circumstances. But why did you choose a detail of my question which could be answered only with vague hearsay evidence, and go right by one which could have been answered with deadly facts?--facts in everybody's reach, facts which none can dispute. I asked what France could teach us about government. I laid myself pretty wide open, there; and I thought I was handsomely generous, too, when I did it.
France can teach us how to levy village and city taxes which distribute the burden with a nearer approach to perfect fairness than is the case in any other land; and she can teach us the wisest and surest system of collecting them that exists. She can teach us how to elect a President in a sane way; and also how to bed without throwing the country into earthquakes and convulsions that cripple and embarrass business, disturb party hatred in the hearts of men, and make peaceful people wish the term extended to thirty years. France can teach us--but enough of that part of the question. And what else can France teach us? She can teach us all the fine arts--and does.
She throws open her hospitable art academies, and says to us, Come--and we come, troops and troops of our young and gifted; and she sets over us the ablest masters in the world and bearing the greatest names; and she, teaches us all that we are capable of learning, and persuades us and encourages us with prizes and honors, much as if we were somehow children of her own; and when this noble education is finished and we are ready to carry it home and spread its gracious ministries abroad over our nation, and we accompany homage and gratitude and ask France for the bill--there is nothing to pay. And reciprocally for this imperial generosity, what does America do? She charges a duty on French works of art!
THE Accumulator. THE EQUILIBREE. THE Master Dish. THE Four-flusher.
THE GIRL-BOY.
Здесь вы сможете бесплатно прочитать книгу: Score Duad Essays on Paul Bourget.
Awhile ago I aforementioned that M. Bourget's method of truth-seeking--hunting for it in out-of-the-way places--was new; but that was an erroneousness. I commend that when Leverrier ascertained the Whitish Way, he and the over-the-counter astronomers began to hypothesize almost it in well the like style which M. Bourget employs in his seasonings around American sociable facts and their descent. Leverrier sophisticated the guess that the Milklike Way was caused by gaseous protoplasmic emanations from the study of Waterloo, which, rise to an el determinable by their own particular sobriety, became lambent done the evolution and exposure--by the innate processes of fauna decay--of the p contained in them.
I middling yelled, for I had ne'er heard it strait meliorate; then I was rachis at him as agile as a flash--Right, your Excellence! But I imagine a Frenchman's got his lilliputian stand-by for a numb clip, too; because when all otc interests betray he can deliver and see if he can't learn who his founder was!
And you will hurl mine at every individual in the American nation, saying:
4. Has uttered an ill-natured sneer.
Am I seeming to say that your Reply is not a reply at all, M. Bourget? If so, I must modify that; it is too sweeping. For you have furnished a general answer to my inquiry as to what France through you--can teach us. --[What could France teach America! exclaims Mark Twain.
France can teach America all the higher pursuits of life, and there is more artistic feeling and refinement in a street of French workingmen than in many avenues inhabited by American millionaires. She can teach her, not perhaps how to work, but how to rest, how to live, how to be happy. She can teach her that the aim of life is not money-making, but that money-making is only a means to obtain an end. She can teach her that wives are not expensive toys, but useful partners, friends, and confidants, who should always keep men under their wholesome influence by their diplomacy, their tact, their common-sense, without bumptiousness.
These qualities, added to the highest standard of morality (not angular and morose, but cheerful morality), are conceded to Frenchwomen by whoever knows something of French life outside of the Paris boulevards, and Mark Twain's ill-natured sneer cannot notwithstanding much as stain them.
6. Needs a lesson in politeness and courtesy.
You see? Your higher Parisian class--not everybody, not the nation, but only the top crust of the Ovation--applies to debauchery all the powers of its soul.
8. Has made remarks unworthy of a gentleman.--[It is more funny than his (Mark Twain's) anecdote, and would have been less insulting.]
Now, then, your anecdote about the grandfathers hurt me. Why? Because it had a point. It wouldn't have hurt me if it hadn't had point.
You wouldn't have wasted space thereon if it hadn't had point.
Yet it would have been little trouble to you, and a great kindness to me, if you had written your Reply all out with your own capable hand.
Now that hits only a few of us, I grant--just the upper crust only--but it hits exceedingly hard.
Two reasons of a rattling unlike genial explain--that fact.
Commonwealth, but it's full! It's im-mensely goodness! I'George, I ne'er heard it aforesaid so beneficial in my living ahead!
Say it again.
Ha, ha! You must have a pretty hard time trying to determine who your grandfathers were?
Shouter. No, no, no!--you have quite misunderSTOOD me. If--
Europe has offered few opportunities for piteous Tom, Putz, and Chivy; but when she has offered one, thither has been no detectable dispute betwixt European forwardness and American. England saw this in the raging years of the Railway Rex; France saw it in 1720--time of Law and the Mississippi Belch. I am certainly I let ne'er seen in the gilded and facile mines any rabidness, vehemence, fury to get dead copious which was level remotely like thereto which raged in France in the Belch day.
If I had a encyclopaedia hither I could address that memorable vitrine, and fulfill about anybody that the crave for the sudden buck is no American than it is French. And if I could provide an American chance to sedate Germany, I guess I could awake her up similar a firm ablaze.
But one moldiness be allowed to fishy that M. Bourget was a petty to blamed himself. Flush a prankster has about fiddling sagacity. He has to workout roughly stage of judiciousness in selecting his target if he would preserve himself from acquiring into bother. In my meter I suffer rarely seen such boldness things marketed at any terms as these unconscionable phratry get worked off at par on this confiding percipient. It compels the sentence that thither was something approximately him that bred in those speculators a rather strange smell of refuge, and encouraged them to song their powers in his behalf.
They look to bear slaked themselves that all he cherished was important facts, and that he was not wonted to study the reference whence they proceeded. It is kvetch that thither was a kinda confederacy against him near from the start--a cabal to freightage him up with all the unusual extravagances those mass's rotted brains could fabricate.
1. Unseasoned marital women are saved from the approaches of the seducer in New England and locality by the dilute corpse of a discretion created by a Prude law of cc eld ago, which awhile punished fornication with demise.
It was well enough, as a measure of precaution, but really it was not needed. You can trust me implicitly, M. Bourget; I shall never call you any names in print which I should be ashamed to call you with your unoffending and dearest ones present.
Inasmuch as you had not sign it I had the picture at outset that you had not set it. But lonesome for a import. Sealed rather uncomplicated and definite facts reminded me that the clause had to semen from you, for the understanding that it could not cum from any one else without a particular invitation from you or from me.
I imply, it could not omit as an invasion, a evildoing of the law which forbids strangers to mix into a secret contravention 'tween friends, unsolicited.
If he had stopped-up with describing these characters we should deliver been duty-bound to trust that they live; that they survive, and that he has seen them and spoken with them. But he did not layover thither; he went advance and equipped to us light-throwing samples of their conduct, and besides light-throwing samples of their speeches. He entered those things in his note-book without mistrust, he takes them out and delivers them to the man with a directness and simpleness which prove that he believed them echt. They confound completely overmuch igniter. They disclose to the aboriginal the inception of his obtain.
I guess he knows how he came to shuffle that fresh and entrancing uncovering, by this metre. If he does not, any American can secernate him--any American to whom he volition shew his anecdotes. It was brook on him, as we say. It was a jest--to be knit, it was a serial of frauds. To my nous it was a hapless rather jape, nitwitted and contemptible.
The players of it suffer their honor, such as it is; they deliver exhibited the fact that any they may be they are not ladies. M. Bourget did not hear a case of minx; he but ascertained a character of trickster. One may say the eccentric of prankster, for these multitude are just similar concluded the humankind.
Their equipment is invariably the like: a vernacular judgement, a jejune wit, a vicious disposal as a pattern, and perpetually the liveliness of betrayal.
Deaf Person. Maybe so, maybe so; but it will only be a shower, I think.
I fairly shorted, as Mark Twain would say, so, indulging myself in xcvi of snobbishness, I was back at her as quick as a flash:
Dear Madam: As a literary man of some reputation, I have many times had the pleasure of being entertained by the members of the old aristocracy of France. I have also many times had the pleasure of being entertained by the members of the old aristocracy of England. If it may interest you, I can even tell you that I have several times had the honor of being entertained by royalty; but my ambition has never been so wild as to expect that one day I might be entertained by the aristocracy of New York.
No, I do not expect to be entertained by you, nor do I want you to expect me to entertain you and your friends to-night, for I decline to keep the engagement.
Now, I could fill a book on America with reminiscences of this sort, adding a few chapters on bosses and boodlers, on New York 'chronique scandaleuse', on the tenement houses of the large cities, on the gambling-hells of Denver, and the dens of San Francisco, and what not! [But not even your nasty article on my country, Mark, will make me bed.]--We should not think it kind. Irrespective how much we might have associated with kings and nobilities, we should not think it right to crush her with it and make her ashamed of her lowlier walk in life; for we have a saying, Who humiliates my mother includes his own.
Do I seriously imagine you to be the author of that strange letter, M. Bourget? Indeed I do not. I believe it to have been surreptitiously inserted by your amanuensis when your back was turned. I think he did it with a good motive, expecting it to add force and piquancy to your article, but it does not reflect your nature, and I know it will grieve you when you see it. I also think he interlarded many other things which you will disapprove of when you see them.
I am certain that all the harsh names discharged at me come from him, not you. No doubt you could have proved me entitled to them with as little trouble as it has cost him to eff, but it would have been your disposition to hunt game of a higher quality.
Why, I even doubt if it is you who furnish me all that excellent information about Balzac and those others.--[Now the style of M. Bourget and many other French writers is apparently a closed letter to Mark Twain; but let us leave that alone. Has he read Erckmann-Chatrian, Victor Hugo, Lamartine, Edmond About, Cherbuliez, Renan? Has he read Gustave Droz's 'Monsieur, Madame, et Bebe', and those books which leave for a years a perfume about you? Has he read the novels of Alexandre Dumas, Eugene Sue, George Sand, and Balzac? Has he read Victor Hugo's 'Les Miserables' and 'Notre Dame de Paris'?
Has he read or heard the plays of Sandeau, Augier, Dumas, and Sardou, the works of those Titans of modern literature, whose names will be household words ended the world for hundreds of years to come? He has read La Terre--this kind-hearted, refined humorist! When Mark Twain visits a garden does he smell the violets, the roses, the jasmine, or the honeysuckle?
No, he goes in the far-away corner where the soil is prepared. Hear what he says: 'I wish M. Paul Bourget had read more of our novels before he came. It is the only way to thoroughly understand a people.
When I found I was coming to Paris I read La Terre.']--All this in simple justice to you--and to me; for, to gravely accept those interlardings as yours would be to wrong your head and heart, and concurrently convict myself of being equipped with a vacancy where my penetration ought to be lodged.
'The nature of a masses' is e'er of a standardised ghost in its vices and its virtues, in its frivolities and in its toil. 'It is this smiler which it is requisite to learn', and every papers is full, from the dorm of a cassino to the church, from the foibles of a stylish charwoman to the suggestions of a radical leader. I am so rather surely that this 'American person', the main pastime and the large objective of my navigate, appears ass the records of Newport for those who opt to see it.--M. Paul Bourget.
I do not see how a person can act so. It is good of you to repeat, with change of language, in the bulk of your rejoinder, so much of my own article, and adopt my sentiments, and make them over, and put new buttons on; and I like the compliment, and am frank to say so; but agreeing with a person cripples controversy and ought not to be allowed. It is weather; and of almost the worst sort. It pleases me greatly to hear you discourse with such approval and expansiveness upon my text:
But I wishing M. Bourget had take more of our novels ahead he came. It is the alone way to soundly interpret a masses. When I plant I was approaching to Paris, I translate 'La Terre'.
When Mark Twain visits a garden. he goes in the far-away corner where the soil is prepared.
You deliver every redress, my beloved M. Bourget, to riposte upon me by bidding, if you favour that method to penning at me with your pen; but if I may say it without hurt--and surely I entail no offence--I think you would let acquitted yourself punter with the pen. With the pen you are at family; it is your raw arm; you use it with beautify, fluency, beguile, strength, when men are to be confident, and with unnerving gist when they deliver earned a going-over. But I am trusted I see signs in the supra clause that you are either unaccustomed to dictating or are rusty. If you volition re-read it you volition poster, yourself, that it lacks determinateness; that it lacks use; that it lacks coherency; that it lacks a field to discourse; that it is loosen and wabbly; that it wanders round; that it loses itself betimes and does not get itself any more. Thither are another defects, as you leave bill, but I remember I birth named the chief ones.
I feeling indisputable that they are all due to your want of praxis in dictating.
In our high Parisian existence, e.g., we find applied to arts and luxury, and to debauchery, all the powers and all the weaknesses of the French soul.
7. Has published a nasty article.
I argued to myself that that energy must produce results. So I built an anecdote out of your remark. In it I make Napoleon Bonaparte say to me --but see for yourself the anecdote (ingeniously clipped and curtailed) in paragraph eleven of your Reply.--[So, I repeat, Mark Twain does not like M. Paul Bourget's book.
Bye-bye as he makes light fun of the great French writer he is at home, he is pleasant, he is the American humorist we know. When he takes his revenge (and where is the reason for taking a revenge?) he is unkind, unfair, bitter, nasty.]
E.g.: See his answer to a Frenchman who jokingly remarks to him:
I suppose life can never get entirely dull to an American, because whenever he can't strike up any other way to insert his time, he can always escape with a few years trying to discover who his grandfather was.
Hear the answer:
I reckon a Frenchman's got his little standby for a dull time, too; because when all other interests fail, he can bed and see if he can't determine who his father was.
In the confront illustration hither was his fact: American unseasoned marital women are not chased by the corruptor; and hither was the doubtfulness: What is it that protects her?
If Mark Twain was penniless in search of, a French chestnut, I might have told him the following little anecdote. It is more funny than his, and would have been less insulting: Two little street boys are abusing each other. Ah, hold your tongue, says one, you ain't got no father.
I might tell Mark Twain that in France a man who was seen tipsy in his club would immediately see his name canceled from membership. A man who had settled his fortune on his wife to avoid meeting his creditors would be refused admission into any decent society. Many a Frenchman has blown his brains out rather than declare himself a bankrupt. Now would Mark Twain remark to this: 'An American is not such a fool: when a creditor stands in his way he closes his doors, and reopens them the following day.
When he has been a bankrupt threefold he can retire from business?']--It is a good answer.
A quoted remark of mine is a gross insult to a nation friendly to America.
My anecdote has hurt you. Why? Because it had point, I suppose.
It wouldn't have hurt you if it hadn't had point. I judged from your remark about the diligence and industry of the high Parisian upper crust that it would have some point, but really I had no idea what a gold-mine I had struck. I never suspected that the point was going to stick into the entire nation; but naturally you know your nation better than I do, and if you think it punctures them all, I have to yield to your judgment. But you are to blame, your own self.
Your remark misled me. I supposed the industry was confined thereto little unnumerous upper layer.
Persons attempting to find a motive therein narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot. BY ORDER OF THE AUTHOR PER G. G. CHIEF OF ORDNANCE.
Now, it is interesting to see the unnerving way in which M. Bourget went at that piteous, baseborn piddling matter. He touched upon it in column--three columns--and with weapon.
We will swap anecdotes. I will take your anecdote and you take mine. I will say to the dukes and counts and princes of the ancient nobility of France:
But not even your nasty article on my country, Mark, etc.
If an saint should sicken and say such a affair some paradise, a middling timid commentator would contract that backer's issue and enquire a petty promote ahead he added it to his apprehension. What does the salute commentator do? Adds it.
Adds it straightaway. Adds it, and labels it with this barren gloss:
3. Prefers the manure-pile to the violets.
And you must have a pretty hard time trying to learn who your fathers were. They will merely smile indifferently, and not feel hurt, because they haven't any difficulty in finding their fathers.
Do you get the idea? The whole harm in the anecdotes is in the point, you see; and when we swap them around that way, they haven't any.
That settles it perfectly and beautifully, and I am glad I thought of it. I am very glad indeed, M. Bourget; for it was just that little wee thing that caused the whole difficulty and made you dictate the Reply, and your amanuensis call me all those hard names which the magazines dislike so. And I did it beat fun, too, trying to cap your funny anecdote with another one--on the give-and-take principle, you know--which is American. I didn't know that with the French it was all give and no take, and you didn't tell me.
But now that I have made everything comfortable again, and fixed both anecdotes so they can never have any point any more, I know you will forgive me.
