The Art of Living

If one runs over in his mind the Madame Tussaud Gallery of masculine types, he cannot fail to acknowledge that, in our capacity of lords of creation and viceregents of Providence, we have produced and perpetuated a number of sorry specimens. First in the list stands the so-called man of the world, on account of whom in particular, according to Barbara, the nineteenth-century Joan of Arc looks askance at our sex. He is an old stager; he dates back very nearly, if not completely, to the garden of Eden, and he has always been a bugbear to woman. It is not necessary to describe him; he has ever stood for simply carnal interests and appetites, whether as a satyr, a voluptuary, a wine-bibber, a glutton, a miser, an idler, or a mere pleasure-seeker. If all the human industries which have owed and still owe their prosperity to his propensities were to be obliterated, there would be a large array of unemployed in the morning but a healthier world. The bully, or prevailer by brute force, the snob, the cynic, the parasite, the trimmer, and the conceited egotist are others prominent in the category, without regard to criminals and unvarnished offenders against whose noxious behavior men have protected themselves by positive law.

On the other hand, our gallery of past types has many figures of which we have a right to be proud. Unfortunately we are barred again from comparison or answering back by the taunt that woman has never had a chance; nevertheless we may claim for what it is worth that, in the realm of intellect or of the spirit, there have been no women who have soared so high; seers, poets, law-givers, unfolders of nature’s secrets, administrators of affairs, healers and scholars have been chiefly or solely men. If some of us have fraternized with Belial, others have walked, or sought to walk, with God no less genuinely and fervently than any woman who ever breathed. In the matter of spirituality, indeed, some of us in the past having been led to believe that women knew more about the affairs of the other world than men, sought to cultivate the spindle-legged, thin-chested, pale, anæmic Christian as the type of humanity most acceptable to God and serviceable to society; but we have gone back to the bishop of sturdy frame and a reasonably healthy appetite as a more desirable mediator between ourselves and heaven.

From the standpoint of our present inquiry, what man in his various types has been in the past is less pertinent than what he is at present. To begin with, certainly the modern man is not a picturesque figure. He no longer appeals to the feminine or any eye by virtue of imposing apparel or accoutrements. Foreign army officers and servants in livery are almost the only males who have not exchanged plumage for sober woollens, tweeds, or serges, and the varied resplendent materials and colors by means of which men used to distinguish themselves from one another and to negative their evil-doings in the eyes of women have been discarded. All men but one look alike to any woman, and even that one is liable to be confounded with the rest of mankind when he is more than half a block away.

Nor is the homogeneous tendency limited to clothes; it includes manners, morals, and point of view. The extreme types approximate each other much more closely than formerly, and apart from criminals and deliberately evil-minded persons, women have some ground for their insinuation that we are all pretty much alike. Let it be said that this effect is in one sense a feather in our caps. The nineteenth-century Joan of Arc to the contrary notwithstanding, the modern man of the world is a manifest improvement on his predecessor. He is no longer to be found under the table after dinner as a social matter of course, and three-bottles-to-a-guest festivities have ceased to be an aristocratic function. Though on occasions still he will fumble with the latch-key, he mounts the stairs very little, if at all, after midnight with the nonchalance of self-congratulatory sobriety, and all those dire scenes of woman on the staircase with a lighted candle looking down at her prostrate lord and master belong to an almost dim past. True it may be that the man of the world fears God no more than formerly, but he has learned to have a wholesome dread of Bright’s disease, the insane asylum, and those varied forms of sudden and premature death which are included under the reportorial head of heart-failure. Mere brutishness in its various forms is less apparent. The coarse materialist still swaggers in public places and impudently puffs a cigar in the face of modesty, but he serves no longer as a model for envious contemporaries or an object of hero-worship to the rising generation. Good taste, if nothing better, has checked man’s tendencies to make a beast of himself in public or in private.

Similarly, also, the type of man to whom we look up most proudly and confidently to-day is not altogether the same. The model whom we were urged, and whom we sought of old to imitate, was he who wrestled with God on the mountain-top, without a thought of earth’s smoke and din and wretchedness. Human life and its joys and interests served for him as a homily on vanity, or was regarded as a degradation in comparison with the revelations obtained by the priest, poet, or devotee of culture through the vista of aspiring imagination or zeal. The conservative man of affairs – vigorous, far-seeing, keenly alive to the joys and interests of this life, strongly sympathetic on the humanitarian side, a man of the world withal in a reasonable sense – has impressed his personality on modern society more successfully than any other type. The priest who cares not for his fellow-man, the poet whose dreams and visions include no human interest or passion, the devotee of culture who refines merely to refine, have been superseded, and in their stead we have the man of the world who is interested in the world and for the world.

This change in the avowed aims and aspirations of man has not been without certain apparently melancholy results and manifestations of which society is feeling the effect at present, and which if allowed to prevail too far will undo us. The removal of the gaze of the priest, poet, and devotee of culture from the stars in contempt of earth, and the substitution of earth-gazing as a method for understanding the stars, has seemed to cast a damper on human imagination and has thereby caused many excellent women and some men to weep. If materialism be the science of trying to get the most out of this life, this is a material age; but at the same time it should be remembered that man in this age has ceased for the first time to be either a hypocrite or a fool. Undoubtedly the process of becoming both sincere and sensible, especially as it has substituted concern for the ignorant, the oppressed, and the vicious of this earth about whom we know next to nothing, in place of Pre-Raphaelite heavenly choirs, alabaster halls, and saints in glory about whom we thought we knew everything, has been a little trying for the rest of us as well as for the priests, poets, and devotees of culture. But the women must not be discouraged; we shall grow to the situation in time, and even the poets, who seem to be most down in the mouth at present, will sooner or later find a fresh well of inspiration by learning to study the reflection of the stars on the earth instead of looking directly at them. Let them be patient, though it be to death, and some day through others, if not through themselves, the immortal verse will flow and the immortal lyre sound again.

Undoubtedly the modern man is at present a rather trying person to woman, for woman would have been glad, now that she is coming into her kingdom, to have him more of a crusader and less of a philosopher. To behold him lacking in picturesqueness and a philosopher addicted to compromise into the bargain is almost irritating to her, and she has certainly some ground for criticism. The man who sits opposite to her at the breakfast-table, even after he has overcome conservative fears of nothing to live on and dawdled into matrimony, is a lovable but not especially exciting person. He eats, works, and sleeps, does most of the things which he ought to do and leaves undone a commendable number of the things which he ought not to do, and is a rather respectable member of society of the machine-made order. He works very hard to supply her with money; he is kind to her and the children; he gives her her head, as he calls it; and he acquiesces pleasantly enough in the social plans which she entertains for herself and him, and ordinarily he is sleepy in the evening. Indeed, in moments of most serious depression she is tempted to think of him as a superior chore-man, a comparison which haunts her even in church. She would like, with one fell swoop of her broom, to clear the world of the social evil, the fruit of the grape, tobacco, and playing cards, to introduce drastic educational reforms which would, by kindergarten methods, familiarize every one on earth with art and culture, and to bring to pass within five, or possibly six years, a golden age of absolute reform inspired and established by woman. Life for her at present means one vast camp of committee meetings, varied only by frequent cups of tea; and that steaming beverage continues prominent in her radiant vision of the coming millennium. No wonder it disconcerts and annoys her to find so comparatively little enthusiastic confidence in the immediate success of her fell swoop, and to have her pathway blocked by grave or lazy ifs and buts and by cold contradictions of fact. No wonder she abhors compromise; no wonder she regards the man who goes on using tobacco and playing cards and drinking things stronger than tea as an inert and soulless creature.

Yet smile as we may at the dull, sorry place the world would be were the golden age of her intention to come upon us over night like a cold wave, is she not justified in regarding the average custom-made man of the day as a highly respectable, well-to-do chore-man who earns fair wages and goes to sleep at night contented with a good meal and a pipe? Is he not machine-made? Sincere and wise as he is, now that his gaze is fixed on the needs of earth, has he not the philosophy of hygienic comfort and easy-going conservative materialism so completely on the brain that he is in danger of becoming ordinary instead of just a little lower than the angels? Let us consider him from this point of view more in detail.

II

The young man of the present era on his twenty-first birthday is apt to find himself in a very prudent and conservative atmosphere. The difficulties of getting on are explained to him; he is properly assured that, though there is plenty of room on the top benches, the occupations and professions are crowded, if not overcrowded, and that he must buckle down if he would succeed. It is obvious to him that the field of adventure and fortune-seeking in foreign or strange places is practically exhausted. It is open to him, to be sure, to go to the North Pole in search of some one already there, or to study in a cage in the jungles of Africa the linguistic value of the howls and chatterings of wild animals; but these are manifestly poor pickings compared with the opportunities of the past when a considerable portion of the globe was still uninvestigated soil, and a reputation or treasure-trove was the tolerably frequent reward of leaving the rut of civilized life. It is plainly pointed out to him, too, that to be florid is regarded as almost a mental weakness in intellectual or progressive circles. He sees the lawyer who makes use of metaphor, bombast, and the other arts of oratory, which used to captivate and convince, distanced in the race for eminence by him who employs a succinct, dispassionate, and almost colloquial form of statement. He recognizes that in every department of human activity, from the investigation of disease-germs to the management of railroads, steady, undemonstrative marshallings of fact, and cautious, unemotional deduction therefrom are considered the scientific and only appropriate method. He knows that the expression of unusual or erratic ideas will expose him to the stigma of being a crank, a reputation which, once acquired, sticks like pitch, and that the betrayal of sentiment will induce conservative people to put him on the suspected list.

All this is imbibed by him as it should be, in the interest of sincerity and sense. Under the sobering restraint of it the young man begins to make his way with enthusiasm and energy, but circumspectly and deliberately. He mistrusts everything that he cannot pick to pieces on the spot and analyze, and though he is willing to be amused, beguiled, or even temporarily inspired by appeals to his imagination or emotions, he puts his doubts or qualms aside next morning at the behest of business. He wishes to get on. He is determined not to allow anything to interfere with that, and he understands that that is to be accomplished partly by hard work and partly by becoming a good fellow and showing common-sense. This is excellent reasoning until one examines too closely what is expected of him as a good fellow, and what is required of him in the name of common-sense.

There have been good fellows in every age, and some of them have been tough specimens. Our good fellow is almost highly respectable. He wishes to live as long as he can, and to let others live as long as they can. His patron saints are his doctor, his bank account, prudence, and general toleration. If he were obliged to specify the vice not covered by the statute law which he most abhors, he would probably name slopping over. He aims to be genial, sympathetic, and knowing, but not obtrusively so, and he is becomingly suspicious and reticent regarding everything which cannot be demonstrated on a chart like an international yacht-race or a medical operation. He is quietly and moderately licentious, and justifies himself satisfactorily but mournfully on hygienic grounds or on the plea of masculine inevitability. He works hard, if he has to, for he wishes to live comfortably by the time he is forty, and comfort means, as it ought to mean, an attractive wife, an attractive establishment, and an attractive income. An imprudent marriage seems to him one of the most egregious forms of slopping over. If he hears that two of his contemporaries are engaged, his first inquiry is, “What have they to live on?” and if the answer is unsatisfactory, they fall a peg or two in his estimation, and he is likely, the next time he feels mellow after dinner, to descant on the impropriety of bringing children into the world who may be left penniless orphans. If he falls in love himself before he feels that his pecuniary position warrants it, he tries to shake out the arrow, and, if that fails, he cuts it out deliberately under antiseptic treatment to avoid blood-poisoning. All our large cities are full of young men who have undergone this operation. To lose one’s vermiform appendix is a perilous yet blessed experience; but this trifling with the human heart, however scientific the excision, can scarcely be regarded as beneficial unless we are to assume that it, like the fashionable sac, has become rudimentary.

We see a great many allusions in our comic and satiric weeklies to marrying for money, but the good fellow of the best type ordinarily disdains such a proceeding. His self-respect is not offended but hugely gratified if the young woman with whom he intends to ally himself would be able immediately or prospectively to contribute a million or so to the domestic purse; but he would regard a deliberate sale of himself for cash as a dirty piece of business. On the other hand, he is very business-like where his heart is engaged, and is careful not to let his emotions or fancy get the better of him until he can see his ship – and a well-freighted one at that – on the near horizon. And what is to become of the young woman in the meantime? To let concealment, like a worm in the bud, feed on a damask cheek may be more fatal than masculine arrow extraction; for woman, less scientific in her methods than man, is less able to avoid blood-poisoning. She doses herself, probably, with anti-pyrine, burns her Emerson and her Tennyson, and after a period of nervous prostration devotes herself to charity toward the world at large with the exception of all good fellows.

The good fellow after he marries continues to be a good fellow. He adapts himself to the humanitarian necessities of the situation; he becomes fond and domestic, almost oppressively so, and he is eager to indulge the slightest wish or fancy of his mate, provided it be within the bounds of easy-going rationalism. The conjugal pliability of the American husband is a well-recognized original feature of our institutions, nevertheless he is apt to develop kinks unless he be allowed to be indulgent and companionable in his own way. He works harder than ever, and she for whose sake he is ostensibly toiling is encouraged to make herself fetching and him comfortable as progressively as his income will permit. When the toil of the week is over he looks for his reward in the form of a Welsh-rarebit with theatrical celebrities, a little game of poker within his means, or, if he be musical, a small gathering of friends to sing or play, if possible in a so-called Bohemian spirit. It irks him to stand very upright or to converse for long, whether in masculine or feminine society. He likes to sprawl and to be entertained with the latest bit of humor, but he is willing, on a pleasant Sunday or holiday, to take exercise in order to perspire freely, and then to lie at ease under a tree or a bank, pleasantly refreshed with beer and tobacco, and at peace with the world. He prefers to have her with him everywhere, except at the little game of poker, and is conscious of an aching void if she be not at hand to help him recuperate, philosophize, and admire the view. But he expects her to do what he likes, and expects her to like it too.

In no age of the world has the reasoning power of man been in better working order than at present. With all due respect to the statistics which show that the female is beginning to outstrip the male in academic competitive examinations, one has only to keep his ears and eyes open in the workaday world in order to be convinced that man’s purely mental processes suggest a razor and woman’s a corkscrew. The manager of corporate interests, the lawyer, the historian, the physician, the chemist, and the banker seek to-day to probe to the bottom that which they touch, and to expose to the acid of truth every rosy theory and seductive prospectus. This is in the line of progress; but to be satisfied with this alone would speedily reduce human society to the status of a highly organized racing stable. If man is to be merely a jockey, who is to ride as light as he can, there is nothing to be said; but even on that theory is it not possible to train too fine? With eloquence tabooed as savoring of insincerity, with conversation as a fine art starved to death, with melody in music sniffed at as sensational, and fancy in literature condemned as unscientific, with the loosening of all the bonds of conventionality which held civilization to the mark in matters of taste and elegance, and with a general doing away with color and emotion in all the practical affairs of life out of regard to the gospel of common-sense and machine-made utility, the jockey now is riding practically in his own skin.

One has to go back but a little way in order to encounter among the moving spirits of society a radically different attitude. Unquestionably the temper of the present day is the result of a vigorous reaction against false or maudlin sentiment, florid drivel, and hypocritical posturing; but certainly a Welsh-rarebit at midnight, with easy-going companions, is a far remove as a spiritual stimulus from bread eaten in tears at the same hour. As has been intimated, this exaggeration of commonplaceness will probably right itself in time, but man’s lack of susceptibility to influences and impressions which cannot be weighed, fingered, smelt, looked at, or tasted, seems to justify at present the strictures of the modern woman, who, with all her bumptiousness, would fain continue to reverence him. Some in the van of feminine progress would be glad to see the inspiration and direction of all matters – spiritual, artistic, and social – apportioned to woman as her sole rightful prerogative, and consequently to see man become veritably a superior chore-man. Fortunately the world of men and women is likely to agree with Barbara that mutual sympathy and co-operation in these matters between the sexes are indispensable to the healthy development of human society.

But even assuming that women were ready to accept the responsibility and men were willing to renounce it, I, for one, fear that civilization would find itself in a ditch rather speedily. All of us – we men, I mean – recognize the purifying and deterrent influence of woman as a Mentor and sweet critic at our elbows. We have learned to depend upon her to prod us when we lag, and to save us from ourselves when our brains get the better of our hearts. But, after all, woman is a clinging creature. She has been used to playing second fiddle; and it is quite a different affair to lead an orchestra. To point the way to spiritual or artistic progress needs, first of all, a clear intellect and a firm purpose, even though they alone are not sufficient. Woman is essentially yielding and impressionable. At the very moment when the modern Joan of Arc would be doing her best to make the world a better place, would not eleven other women out of the dozen be giving way to the captivating plausibility of some emotional situation?

As an instance of what she is already capable of from a social point of view, now that she has been given her head, may well be cited the feverish eagerness with which some of the most highly cultivated and most subtly evolved American women of our large cities vie with each other for intimacy with artistic foreign lions of their own sex known to be unchaste. They seem to regard it as a privilege to play hostess to, or, at least, to be on familiar terms with, actresses, opera-singers, and other public characters quietly but notoriously erotic, the plea in each case being that they are ready to forgive, to forget, and ignore for the sake of art and the artist. Yes, ignore or forget, if you choose, so far as seeing the artist act or hearing her sing in public is concerned, where there are no social ceremonies or intercourse; but let us please remember at the same time that even those effete nations who believe that the world would be a dull place without courtesans, insist on excluding such persons from their drawing-rooms. Indeed there is reason to believe that some of the artists in question have become hilarious, when out of sight of our hospitable shores, over the wonders of American social usages among the pure and cultivated women. Before our young men will cease to sow wild oats their female relations must cease to run after other men’s mistresses. Decidedly, the modern Joan of Arc to the contrary notwithstanding, man cannot afford to abdicate just yet. But he needs to mend his hedges and to look after his preserves.

The Case of Woman

I

A great many men, who are sane and reasonable in other matters, allow themselves, on the slightest provocation, to be worked up into a fever over the aspirations of woman. They decline to listen to argument, grow red in the face, and saw the air with their hands, if they do not pound on the table, to express their views on the subject – which, by the way, are as out of date and old-fashioned as a pine-tree shilling. They remind one of the ostrich in that they seem to imagine, because they have buried their heads in the sand, nothing has happened or is happening around them. They confront the problem of woman’s emancipation as though it were only just being broached instead of in the throes of delivery.

For instance, my friend, Mr. Julius Cæsar, who though a conservative, cautious man by nature, is agreeably and commendably liberal in other matters, seems to be able to see only one side of this question. And one side seems to be all he wishes to see. “Take my wife,” he said to me the other day; “as women go she is a very clever and sensible woman. She was given the best advantages in the way of school-training open to young ladies of her day; she has accomplishments, domestic virtues, and fine religious instincts, and I adore her. But what does she know of politics? She couldn’t tell you the difference between a senator and an alderman, and her mind is practically a blank on the tariff or the silver question. I tell you, my dear fellow, that if woman is allowed to leave the domestic hearth and play ducks and drakes with the right of suffrage, every political caucus will become a retail drygoods store. If there is one thing which makes a philosopher despair of the future of the race, it is to stand in a crowded drygoods store and watch the jam of women perk and push and sidle and grab and covet and go well-nigh crazy over things to wear. The average woman knows about clothes, the next world, children, and her domestic duties. Let her stick to her sphere. A woman at a caucus? Who would see that my dinner was properly cooked, eh?”