Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General

The two classes which most prominently exhibit what I mean are somewhat socially separated, but they have a number of small analogies in common. They are Sweeps and Statesmen! It would be tempting – but I resist the temptation – to show how many points of resemblance unite them – how each works in the dark, in a small, narrow, confined sphere, without view or outlet; how the tendency of each is to scratch his way upwards and gain the top, caring wonderfully little how black and dirty the process has made him. One might even go farther, and mark how, when indolence or weariness suggested sloth, the stimulus of a little fire underneath, whether a few lighted straws or a Birmingham mass-meeting, was sure to quicken progress and excite activity.

Again, I make this statement on the faith of Lord Shaftesbury, who pronounced it before their Lordships in the Upper House: – “It is no uncommon thing to buy and sell them. There is a regular traffic in them; and through the agency of certain women, not the models of their sex, you can get any quantity of them you want.” Last of all, on the same high authority, we are told of their perfect inutility, “since there is nothing that they do could not be better done by a machine.”

I resist, as I say, all temptations of this kind, and simply address myself to the one point of similarity between them which illustrates the theory with which I have started – and now to state this as formally as I am able. Let me declare that in all the varied employments of life I have never met with men who have the same dread of their possible successors as sweeps and statesmen. The whole aim and object of each is directed, first of all, to keep those who do their work as little as possible, well knowing that the time will come when these small creatures will find the space too confined for them, and set up for themselves.

A volume might be written on the subtle artifices adopted to keep them “little” – the browbeatings, the insults, the crushing cruelties, the spare diet intermixed with occasional stimulants, the irregular hours, and the heat and confinement of the sphere they work in. Still, nature is stronger than all these crafty contrivances. The little sweep will grow into the big sweep, and the small under-sec. will scratch his way up to the Cabinet I will not impose on my reader the burden of carrying along with him this double load. I will address myself simply to one of these careers – the Statesman’s. It is a strange but a most unquestionable fact, that no other class of men are so ill-disposed to those who are the most likely to succeed them – not of an Opposition, for that would be natural enough, but of their own party, of their own colour, of their own rearing. Let us be just: when a man has long enjoyed place, power, and pre-eminence, dispensed honours and pensions and patronage, it is not a small trial to discover that one of those little creatures he has made – whose first scraper and brush he himself paid for – I can’t get rid of the sweep out of my head – will turn insolently on him and declare that he will no longer remain a subordinate, but go and set up for himself. This is excessively hard, and might try the temper of a man even without a fit of the gout.

It is exactly what has just happened; an apprentice, called Gladstone, having made a sort of connection in Manchester and Birmingham, a district abounding in tall chimneys, has given warning to his master Pam that he will not sweep any longer. He is a bold, aspiring sort of lad, and he is not satisfied with saying – as many others have done – that he is getting too broad-shouldered for his work; but he declares that the chimneys for the future must be all made bigger and the flues wider, just because he likes climbing, and doesn’t mean to abandon it. There is no doubt of it. Manchester and Stockport and Birmingham have put this in his head. Their great smelting-houses and steam-power factories require big chimneys; and being an overbearing set of self-made vulgar fellows, they say they ought to be a law to all England. You don’t want to make cotton-twist, or broad-gauge iron; so much the worse for you. It is the grandest object of humanity. Providence created men to manufacture printed cottons and cheap penknives. We of Manchester understand what our American friends call manifest destiny; we know and feel ours will be – to rule England. Once let us only introduce big chimneys, and you’ll see if you won’t take to spinning-jennies and mules and treddles; and there’s that climbing boy Gladstone declares he’ll not leave the business, but go up, no matter how dirty the flue, the day we want him.

Some shrewd folk, who see farther into the millstone than their neighbours, have hinted that this same boy is of a crotchety, intriguing type, full of his own ingenuity, and enamoured of his own subtlety; so that make the chimney how great you will, he’ll not go up it, but scratch out another flue for himself, and come out, heaven knows where or how. Indeed, they tell that on one occasion of an alarm of fire in the house – caused by a pantry-boy called Russell burning some wasterpaper instead of going up the chimney as he was ordered – this same Will began to tell how the Greeks had no chimneys, and a mass of antiquarian rubbish of the same kind, so that his master, losing patience, exclaimed, “Of all plagues in the world he knew of none to compare with these ‘climbing boys!’”

LINGUISTS

There are two classes of people not a little thought of, and even caressed, in society, and for whom I have ever felt a very humble estimate – the men who play all manner of games, and the men who speak several languages. I begin with the latter, and declare that, after a somewhat varied experience of life, I never met a linguist that was above a third-rate man; and I go farther, and aver, that I never chanced upon a really able man who had the talent for languages.

I am well aware that it sounds something little short of a heresy to make this declaration. It is enough to make the blood of Civil-Service Commissioners run cold to hear it. It sounds illiberal – and, worse, it seems illogical. Why should any intellectual development imply deficiency? Why should an acquirement argue a defect? I answer, I don’t know – any more than I know why sanguineous people are hot-tempered, and leuco-phlegmatic ones are more brooding in their wrath. If – for I do not ask to be anything higher than empirical – if I find that parsimonious people have generally thin noses, and that the snub is associated with the spendthrift, I never trouble myself with the demonstration, but I hug the fact, and endeavour to apply it.

In the same spirit, if I hear a man in a salon change from French to German and thence diverge into Italian and Spanish, with possibly a brief excursion into something Scandinavian or Sclav – at home in each and all – I would no more think of associating him in my mind with anything responsible in station or commanding in intellect, than I should think of connecting the servant that announced me with the last brilliant paper in the ‘Quarterly.’

No man with a strongly-marked identity – and no really able man ever existed without such – can subordinate that identity so far as to put on the foreigner; and without this he never can attain that mastery of a foreign language that makes the linguist. To be able to repeat conventionalities – bringing them in at the telling moment, adjusting phrases to emergencies, as a joiner adapts the pieces of wood to his carpentry – may be, and is, a very neat and a very dexterous performance, but it is scarcely the exercise to which a large capacity will address itself. Imitation must be, in one sense or other, the stronghold of the linguist – imitation of expression, of style, of accent, of cadence, of tone. The linguist must not merely master grammar, but he must manage gutturals. The mimicry must go farther: in simulating expression it must affect the sentiment. You are not merely borrowing the clothes, but you are pretending to put on the feelings, the thoughts, the prejudices of the wearer. Now, what man with a strong nature can merge himself so entirely in his fictitious being as not to burst the seams and tear the lining of a garment that only impedes the free action of his limbs, and actually threatens the very extinction of his respiration?

It is not merely by their greater adaptiveness that women are better linguists than men; it is by their more delicate organisation, their more subdued identity, and their less obstreperous temperaments, which are consequently less egotistical, less redolent of the one individual self. And what is it that makes the men of mark or note, the cognate signs of human algebra, but these same characteristics; not always good, not always pleasant, not always genial, but always associated with something that declares preeminence, and pronounces their owner to be a “representative man”?

When Lord Ward replied to Prince Schwartzenberg’s flippant remark on the bad French of English diplomatists by the apology, “that we had not enjoyed the advantage of having our capital cities so often occupied by French troops as some of our neighbours,” he uttered not merely a smart epigram but a great philosophical truth. It was not alone that we had not possessed the opportunity to pick up an accent, but that we had not subordinated our minds and habits to French modes and ways of thought, and that the tone and temper of the French people had not been beaten into us by the roll of a French drum. One may buy an accomplishment too dearly. It is possible to pay too much even for a Parisian pronunciation! Not only have I never found a linguist a man of eminence, but I have never seen a linguist who talked well. Fluent they are, of course, like the Stecknadel gun of the Prussians, they can fire without cessation, but, like the same weapon, they are comparatively aimless. It is a feu roulant, with plenty of noise and some smoke, but very “few casualties” announce the success. The greatest linguist of modern Europe, Mezzofanti, was a most inferior man. Of the countries whose dialect he spoke to perfection, he knew nothing. An old dictionary would have been to the full as companionable. I find it very hard not to be personal just now, and give a list – it would be a long one – of all the tiresome people I know, who talk four, five, some of them six modern languages perfectly. It is only with an effort I abstain from mentioning the names of some well-known men who are the charming people at Borne and Vienna every winter, and each summer are the delight of Ems, of Berlin, and of Ischl. What tyrants these fellows are, too, over the men who have not got their gift of tongues! how they out-talk them and overbear them! with what an insolent confidence they fall back upon the petty superiority of their fluency, and lord it over those who are immeasurably their masters! Just as Blondin might run along the rigging of a three-decker, and pretend that his agility entitled him to command a squadron!

Nothing, besides, is more imposing than the mock eloquence of good French. The language in itself is so adaptive, it is so felicitous, it abounds in such innumerable pleasant little analogies, such nice conceits and suggestive drolleries, that he who acquires these has at will a whole armoury of attack and defence. It actually requires years of habit to accustom us to a display that we come at last to discover implies no brilliancy whatever in him who exhibits, though it argues immense resources in the treasury from which he derives this wealth.

I have known scores of delightful talkers – Frenchmen – who had no other charm than what their language lent them. They were neither profound, nor cultivated, nor witty – some were not even shrewd or acute; but all were pleasant – pleasant in the use of a conversational medium, of which the world has not the equal – a language that has its set form of expression for every social eventuality, and that hits to a nicety every contingency of the “salon;” for it is no more the language of natural people than the essence of the perfumer’s shop is the odour of a field flower. It is pre-eminently the medium of people who talk with tall glasses before them, and an incense of truffles around them, and well-dressed women – clever and witty, and not over-scrupulous in their opinions – for their company. Then, French is unapproachable; English would be totally unsuited to the occasion, and German even more so. There is a flavour of sauer kraut about that unhappy tongue that would vulgarise a Queen if she talked it.

To attain, therefore, the turns and tricks of this language – for it is a Chinese puzzle in its involvements – what a life must a man have led! What “terms” he must have “put in” at cafés and restaurants! What seasons at small theatres – tripots and worse! What nights at bals-masqués, Chateaux des Fleurs, and Cadrans rouges et bleus! What doubtful company he must have often kept! What company a little more than doubtful occasionally! What iniquities of French romance must he have read, with all the cardinal virtues arrayed as the evil destinies of humanity, and every wickedness paraded as that natural expansion of the heart which alone raises man above the condition of the brute! I ask, if proficiency must imply profligacy, would you not rather find a man break down in his verbs than in his virtue? Would you not prefer a little inaccuracy in his declensions to a total forgetfulness of the decalogue? And, lastly of all, what man of real eminence could have masqueraded – for it is masquerading – for years in this motley, and come out, after all, with even a rag of his identity?

Many people would scruple to play at cards with a stranger whose mode of dealing and general manipulation of the pack bespoke daily familiarity with the play-table. They would infer that he was a regular and professional gambler. In the very same way, and for the selfsame reason, would I carefully avoid any close intimacy with the Englishman of fluent French, well knowing he could not have graduated in that perfection save at a certain price. But it is not at the moral aspect of the question I desire particularly to look. I assert – and I repeat my assertion – that these talkers of many tongues are poor creatures. There is no initiative in them – they suggest nothing – they are vendors of second-hand wares, and are not always even good selectors of what they sell. It is only in narrative that they are at all endurable. They can raconter, certainly; and so long as they go from salon to salon repeating in set phrase some little misadventure or accident of the day, they are amusing; but this is not conversation, and they do not converse.

“Every time a man acquires a new language, is he a new man?” is supposed to have been a saying of Charles V. – a sentiment that, if he uttered it, means more of sarcasm than of praise; for it is the very putting off a man’s identity that establishes his weakness. All real force of character excludes dualism. Every eminent, every able man has a certain integrity in his nature that rejects this plasticity.

It is a very common habit, particularly with newspaper writers, to ascribe skill in languages, and occasionally in games, to distinguished people. It was but the other day we were told that Garibaldi spoke ten languages fluently. Now Garibaldi is not really master of two. He speaks French tolerably; and his native language is not Italian, but a patois-Genoese. Cavour was called a linguist with almost as little truth; but people repeat the story, just as they repeat that Napoleon I. was a great chess-player. If his statecraft and his strategy had been on a par with his chess, we should never have heard of Tilsit or Wagram.

Lord Castlereagh, the Duke of Wellington, and George Canning, each of whom administered our foreign policy with no small share of success, were not linguists; and as to Charles Fox, he has left a French sentence on record that will last even as long as his own great name. I do not want to decry the study of languages; I simply desire to affirm that linguists – and through all I have said I mean colloquial linguists – are for the most part poor creatures, not otherwise distinguished than by the gift of tongues; and I want to protest against the undue pre-eminence accorded to the possessors of a small accomplishment, and the readiness with which the world, especially the world of society, awards homage to an acquirement in which a boarding-school Miss can surpass Lord Brougham. I mean to say a word or two about those who have skill in games; but as they are of a higher order of intelligence, I’ll wait till I have got “fresh wind” ere I treat of them.

THE OLD CONJURORS AND THE NEW

As there are few better tests of the general health of an individual than in the things he imagines to be injurious to him, so there is no surer evidence of the delicate condition of a State than in the character of those who are assumed to be dangerous to it. Now, after all that has been said of Rome and the corruptions of Roman government, I do not know anything so decidedly damnatory as the fact, to which allusion was lately made in Parliament, that the Papal Government had ordered Mr Home, the spiritualist, to quit the city and the States of his Holiness, and not to return to them.

In what condition, I would ask, must a country be when such a man is regarded as dangerous? and in what aspect of his character does the danger consist?

Do we want ghosts or spirits to reveal to us any more of the iniquities of that State than we already know? Is there a detail of its corrupt administration that the press of Europe has not spread broadcast over the world? What could Mr Home and all his spirits tell us of peculation, theft, subornation, bigotry, and oppression, that the least observant traveller has not brought home with him?

And then, as to the man himself, how puerile it is to give him this importance! The solitary bit of cleverness about him is his statement that he has no control whatever over the spirits that attend him. Asking him not to summon them, is pretty like asking Mr Windham not to send for his creditors. They come pretty much as they like, and probably their visits are about equally profitable.

In this respect Home belongs to a very low order of his art. When Bosco promises to make a bouquet out of a mouse-trap, or Houdin engages to concoct a batter-pudding in your hat, each keeps his word. There is no subterfuge about the temper the spirits may happen to be in, or of their willingness or unwillingness to present themselves. The thing is done, and we see it – or we think we see it, which comes much to the same.

With this provision of escape Mr Home secures himself against all failure. Should, for instance, the audience prove to be of a more discriminating and observant character than he liked or anticipated, and the exhibition in consequence be rendered critical, all he had to do was, to aver that the spirits would not come; it was no breakdown on his part Homer was sulky, or Dante was hipped, or Lord Bacon was indisposed to meet company, and there was the end of it. You were invited to meet celebrities, but it was theirs to say if they would present themselves.

On the other hand, when the proper element of credulity offered – when the séance was comprised of the select few, emotional, sensitive, and hysterical as they ought to be – when the nervous lady sat beside the timid gentleman, and neuralgia confronted confirmed dyspepsia – the artist could afford to be daring, and might venture on flights that astounded even himself. What limit is there, besides, to contagional sympathy? Look at the crowded theatre, with its many-minded spectators, and see how one impulse, communicated occasionally by a hireling, will set the whole mass in a ferment of enthusiastic delight. Mark, too, how the smile, that plays like an eddy on a lake, deepens into a laugh, and is caught up by another and another, till the whole storm breaks out in a hearty ocean of merriment. These, if you like, are spirits; but the great masters of them are not men like Mr Home – they have ever been, and still are, of a very different order. Shakespeare and Molière and Cervantes knew something of the mode to summon these imps, and could make them come at their bidding besides.

Was it – to come back to what I started with – was it in any spirit of rivalry that the Papal Government drove Mr Home out of Home? Was it that, assuming to have a monopoly in the wares he dealt in, they would not stand a contraband trade? If so, their ground is at least defensible; for what chance of attraction would there be for the winking Virgin in competition with him who could “make a young lady ascend to the ceiling, and come slowly down like a parachute!” – a spiritual fact I have heard from witnesses who really, so far as character went, might challenge any incredulity.

If the Cardinals were jealous of the Conjuror, the thing is intelligible enough, and one must feel a certain degree of sympathy with the old-established firm that had spent such enormous sums, and made such stupendous preparations, when a pretender like this could come into competition with them, without any other properties than could be carried conveniently about him.

But let us be practical The Pope’s Government demanded of Mr Home that he should have no dealings with the Evil One during his stay at Rome. Now, I ask, what should we say of the efficacy of our police system if we were to hear that the Chief Inspector at Scotland Yard lived in nightly terror of the pickpockets who frequented that quarter, and came to Parliament with a petition to accord him some greater security against their depredations? Would not the natural reply be an exclamation of astonishment that he who could summon to his aid every alphabetical blue-coat that ever handled a truncheon, should deem any increased security necessary to his peace? And so, would I ask, of what avail these crowds of cardinals – these regiments of monsignori – these battalions of bishops, Arch and simple? – of what use all the incense and these chanted litanies, these eternal processions, and these saintly shin-bones borne in costly array – if one poor mortal, supposed to live on visiting terms with the Evil One, can strike such terror into the whole army led on by Infallibility?

If I had been possessed of any peculiar dread of coming unexpectedly on the Devil – as the old ladies of New York used to feel long ago about suddenly meeting with the British army – I should certainly have comforted myself by the thought that I could always go and sit down on the steps of the Vatican. It would immediately have occurred to me, that as Holyrood offers its sanctuary against the sheriff, the Quirinal would be the sure retreat against Old Nick; and I have even pictured to myself the rage of his disappointed malice as he saw me sheltering safely beneath a protection he dared not invade. And now I am told to relinquish all the blessed enjoyment of this immunity; that the Pope and the Cardinals and Antonelli himself are not a whit better off than the rest of us; that if Mr Home gets into Rome, there is nothing to prevent his having the Devil at his tea-parties. What an ignoble confession is this! Who will step forward any longer and contend that this costly system is to be maintained, and all these saintly intercessors to be kept on the most expensive of all pension-lists, if a poor creature like Home can overthrow it all?

Can any one conceive such a spectacle as these gorgeous men of scarlet and purple cringing before this poor pretender, and openly avowing before Europe that there is no peace for them till he consents to cross the Tiber?

Why – I speak, of course, in the ignorance of a laic – but, I ask, why not fumigate him and cleanse him? When I saw him last, the process would not have been so supererogatory. Why not exorcise and defy him? Why not say, Come, and bring your friend if you dare; you shall see how we will treat you. Only try it It is what we have been asking for nigh two thousand years. Let the great culprit step forward and plead to his indictment.

I can fancy the Pope saying this – I can picture to myself the proud attitude of the Pontiff declaring, “I have had enough of these small devilries, like Louis Napoleon and Victor Emmanuel – I am sick of Mazzini and his petty followers. Let us deal with the chief of the gang at once; if we cannot convict him, he will be at least open to a compromise.” This, I say, I can comprehend; but it is clear and clean beyond me that he should shirk the interview, and own he was afraid of it. It would not surprise me to-morrow to hear that Lord Derby dreaded the Radicals, and actually feared the debating powers of “Mr Potter of the Strikes.”