Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells

by William Dean Howells

  I can hear that fearful cry.

  And hollow and haggard faces

  Look into the lighted hall,

  And wasted hands are extended

  To catch the crumbs that fall.

  For within there is light and plenty,

  And odors fill the air;

  But without there is cold and darkness,

  And hunger and despair.

  And there, in the camp of famine,

  In wind and cold and rain,

  Christ, the great Lord of the Army,

  Lies dead upon the plain.’”

  “Ah,” said the facetious gentleman, “that is fine! We really forget how fine Longfellow was. It is so pleasant to hear you quoting poetry, Mrs. Strange! That sort of thing has almost gone out; and it’s a pity.”

  XVII

  Our fashion of offering hospitality on the impulse would be as strange here as offering it without some special inducement for its acceptance. The inducement is, as often as can be, a celebrity or eccentricity of some sort, or some visiting foreigner; and I suppose that I have been a good deal used myself in one quality or the other. But when the thing has been done, fully and guardedly at all points, it does not seem to have been done for pleasure, either by the host or the guest. The dinner is given in payment of another dinner; or out of ambition by people who are striving to get forward in society; or by great social figures who give regularly a certain number of dinners every season. In either case it is eaten from motives at once impersonal and selfish. I do not mean to say that I have not been at many dinners where I felt nothing perfunctory either in host or guest, and where as sweet and gay a spirit ruled as at any of our own simple feasts. Still, I think our main impression of American hospitality would be that it was thoroughly infused with the plutocratic principle, and that it meant business.

  I am speaking now of the hospitality of society people, who number, after all, but a few thousands out of the many millions of American people. These millions are so far from being in society, even when they are very comfortable, and on the way to great prosperity, if they are not already greatly prosperous, that if they were suddenly confronted with the best society of the great Eastern cities they would find it almost as strange as so many Altrurians. A great part of them have no conception of entertaining except upon an Altrurian scale of simplicity, and they know nothing and care less for the forms that society people value themselves upon. When they begin, in the ascent of the social scale, to adopt forms, it is still to wear them lightly and with an individual freedom and indifference; it is long before anxiety concerning the social law renders them vulgar.

  Yet from highest to lowest, from first to last, one invariable fact characterizes them all, and it may be laid down as an axiom that in a plutocracy the man who needs a dinner is the man who is never asked to dine. I do not say that he is not given a dinner. He is very often given a dinner, and for the most part he is kept from starving to death; but he is not suffered to sit at meat with his host, if the person who gives him a meal can be called his host. His need of the meal stamps him with a hopeless inferiority, and relegates him morally to the company of the swine at their husks, and of Lazarus, whose sores the dogs licked. Usually, of course, he is not physically of such a presence as to fit him for any place in good society short of Abraham’s bosom; but even if he were entirely decent, or of an inoffensive shabbiness, it would not be possible for his benefactors, in any grade of society, to ask him to their tables. He is sometimes fed in the kitchen; where the people of the house feed in the kitchen themselves, he is fed at the back door.

  We were talking of this the other night at the house of that lady whom Mrs. Makely invited me specially to meet on Thanksgiving-day. It happened then, as it often happens here, that although I was asked to meet her, I saw very little of her. It was not so bad as it sometimes is, for I have been asked to meet people, very informally, and passed the whole evening with them, and yet not exchanged a word with them. Mrs. Makely really gave me a seat next Mrs. Strange at table, and we had some unimportant conversation; but there was a lively little creature vis-�-vis of me, who had a fancy of addressing me so much of her talk that my acquaintance with. Mrs. Strange rather languished through the dinner, and she went away so soon after the men rejoined the ladies in the drawing-room that I did not speak to her there. I was rather surprised, then, to receive a note from her a few days later, asking me to dinner; and I finally went, I am ashamed to own, more from curiosity than from any other motive. I had been, in the mean time, thoroughly coached concerning her by Mrs. Makely, whom I told of my invitation, and who said, quite frankly, that she wished Mrs. Strange had asked her, too. “But Eveleth Strange wouldn’t do that,” she explained, “because it would have the effect of paying me back. I’m so glad, on your account, that you’re going, for I do want you to know at least one American woman that you can unreservedly approve of; I know you don’t begin to approve of me; and I was so vexed that you really had no chance to talk with her that night you met her here; it seemed to me as if she ran away early just to provoke me; and, to tell you the truth, I thought she had taken a dislike to you. I wish I could tell you just what sort of a person she is, but it would be perfectly hopeless, for you haven’t got the documents, and you never could get them. I used to be at school with her, and even then she wasn’t like any of the other girls. She was always so original, and did things from such a high motive, that afterwards, when we were all settled, I was perfectly thunderstruck at her marrying old Bellington Strange, who was twice her age and had nothing but his money; he was not related to the New York Bellingtons at all, and nobody knows how he got the name; nobody ever heard of the Stranges. In fact, people say that he used to be plain Peter B. Strange till he married Eveleth, and she made him drop the Peter and blossom out in the Bellington, so that he could seem to have a social as well as a financial history. People who dislike her insisted that they were not in the least surprised at her marrying him; that the high-motive business was just her pose; and that she had jumped at the chance of getting him. But I always stuck up for her — and I know that she did it for the sake of her family, who were all as poor as poor, and were dependent on her after her father went to smash in his business. She was always as high-strung and romantic as she could be, but I don’t believe that even then she would have taken Mr. Strange if there had been anybody else. I don’t suppose any one else ever looked at her, for the young men are pretty sharp nowadays, and are not going to marry girls without a cent, when there are so many rich girls, just as charming every way; you can’t expect them to. At any rate, whatever her motive was, she had her reward, for Mr. Strange died within a year of their marriage, and she got all his money. There was no attempt to break the will, for Mr. Strange seemed to be literally of no family; and she’s lived quietly on in the house he bought her ever since, except when she’s in Europe, and that’s about two-thirds of the time. She has her mother with her, and I suppose that her sisters and her cousins and her aunts come in for outdoor aid. She’s always helping somebody. They say that’s her pose, now; but, if it is, I don’t think it’s a bad one; and certainly, if she wanted to get married again, there would be no trouble, with her three millions. I advise you to go to her dinner, by all means, Mr. Homos. It will be something worth while, in every way, and perhaps you’ll convert her to Altrurianism; she’s as hopeful a subject as I know.”

  XVIII

  I was one of the earliest of the guests, for I cannot yet believe that people do not want me to come exactly when they say they do. I perceived, however, that one other gentleman had come before me, and I was both surprised and delighted to find that this was my acquaintance Mr. Bullion, the Boston banker. He professed as much pleasure at our meeting as I certainly felt; but after a few words he went on talking with Mrs. Strange, while I was left to her mother, an elderly woman of quiet and even timid bearing, who affected me at once as born and bred in a wholly different environment. In fact, every American of the former generation is
almost as strange to it in tradition, though not in principle, as I am; and I found myself singularly at home with this sweet lady, who seemed glad of my interest in her. I was taken from her side to be introduced to a lady, on the opposite side of the room, who said she had been promised my acquaintance by a friend of hers, whom I had met in the mountains — Mr. Twelvemough; did I remember him? She gave a little cry while still speaking, and dramatically stretched her hand towards a gentleman who entered at the moment, and whom I saw to be no other than Mr. Twelvemough himself. As soon as he had greeted our hostess he hastened up to us, and, barely giving himself time to press the still outstretched hand of my companion, shook mine warmly, and expressed the greatest joy at seeing me. He said that he had just got back to town, in a manner, and had not known I was here, till Mrs. Strange had asked him to meet me. There were not a great many other guests, when they all arrived, and we sat down, a party not much larger than at Mrs. Makely’s.

  I found that I was again to take out my hostess, but I was put next the lady with whom I had been talking; she had come without her husband, who was, apparently, of a different social taste from herself, and had an engagement of his own; there was an artist and his wife, whose looks I liked; some others whom I need not specify were there, I fancied, because they had heard of Altruria and were curious to see me. As Mr. Twelvemough sat quite at the other end of the table, the lady on my right could easily ask me whether I liked his books. She said, tentatively, people liked them because they felt sure when they took up one of his novels they had not got hold of a tract on political economy in disguise.

  It was this complimentary close of a remark, which scarcely began with praise, that made itself heard across the table, and was echoed with a heartfelt sigh from the lips of another lady.

  “Yes,” she said, “that is what I find such a comfort in Mr. Twelvemough’s books.”

  “We were speaking of Mr. Twelvemough’s books,” the first lady triumphed, and several began to extol them for being fiction pure and simple, and not dealing with anything but loves of young people.

  Mr. Twelvemough sat looking as modest as he could under the praise, and one of the ladies said that in a novel she had lately read there was a description of a surgical operation that made her feel as if she had been present at a clinic. Then the author said that he had read that passage, too, and found it extremely well done. It was fascinating, but it was not art.

  The painter asked, Why was it not art?

  The author answered, Well, if such a thing as that was art, then anything that a man chose to do in a work of imagination was art.

  “Precisely,” said the painter— “art is choice.”

  “On that ground,” the banker interposed, “you could say that political economy was a fit subject for art, if an artist chose to treat it.”

  “It would have its difficulties,” the painter admitted, “but there are certain phases of political economy, dramatic moments, human moments, which might be very fitly treated in art. For instance, who would object to Mr. Twelvemough’s describing an eviction from an East Side tenement-house on a cold winter night, with the mother and her children huddled about the fire the father had kindled with pieces of the household furniture?”

  “I should object very much, for one,” said the lady who had objected to the account of the surgical operation. “It would be too creepy. Art should give pleasure.”

  “Then you think a tragedy is not art?” asked the painter.

  “I think that these harrowing subjects are brought in altogether too much,” said the lady. “There are enough of them in real life, without filling all the novels with them. It’s terrible the number of beggars you meet on the street, this winter. Do you want to meet them in Mr. Twelvemough’s novels, too?”

  “Well, it wouldn’t cost me any money there. I shouldn’t have to give.”

  “You oughtn’t to give money in real life,” said the lady. “You ought to give charity tickets. If the beggars refuse them, it shows they are impostors.”

  “It’s some comfort to know that the charities are so active,” said the elderly young lady, “even if half the letters one gets do turn out to be appeals from them.”

  “It’s very disappointing to have them do it, though,” said the artist, lightly. “I thought there was a society to abolish poverty. That doesn’t seem to be so active as the charities this winter. Is it possible they’ve found it a failure?”

  “Well,” said Mr. Bullion, “perhaps they have suspended during the hard times.”

  They tossed the ball back and forth with a lightness the Americans have, and I could not have believed, if I had not known how hardened people become to such things here, that they were almost in the actual presence of hunger and cold. It was within five minutes’ walk of their warmth and surfeit; and if they had lifted the window and called, “Who goes there?” the houselessness that prowls the night could have answered them from the street below, “Despair!”

  “I had an amusing experience,” Mr. Twelvemough began, “when I was doing a little visiting for the charities in our ward, the other winter.”

  “For the sake of the literary material?” the artist suggested.

  “Partly for the sake of the literary material; you know we have to look for our own everywhere. But we had a case of an old actor’s son, who had got out of all the places he had filled, on account of rheumatism, and could not go to sea, or drive a truck, or even wrap gas-fixtures in paper any more.”

  “A checkered employ,” the banker mused aloud.

  “It was not of a simultaneous nature,” the novelist explained. “So he came on the charities, and, as I knew the theatrical profession a little, and how generous it was with all related to it, I said that I would undertake to look after his case. You know the theory is that we get work for our patients, or clients, or whatever they are, and I went to a manager whom I knew to be a good fellow, and I asked him for some sort of work. He said, Yes, send the man round, and he would give him a job copying parts for a new play he had written.”

  The novelist paused, and nobody laughed.

  “It seems to me that your experience is instructive, rather than amusing,” said the banker. “It shows that something can be done, if you try.”

  “Well,” said Mr. Twelvemough, “I thought that was the moral, myself, till the fellow came afterwards to thank me. He said that he considered himself very lucky, for the manager had told him that there were six other men had wanted that job.”

  Everybody laughed now, and I looked at my hostess in a little bewilderment. She murmured, “I suppose the joke is that he had befriended one man at the expense of six others.”

  “Oh,” I returned, “is that a joke?”

  No one answered, but the lady at my right asked, “How do you manage with poverty in Altruria?”

  I saw the banker fix a laughing eye on me, but I answered, “In Altruria we have no poverty.”

  “Ah, I knew you would say that!” he cried out. “That’s what he always does,” he explained to the lady. “Bring up any one of our little difficulties, and ask how they get over it in Altruria, and he says they have nothing like it. It’s very simple.”

  They all began to ask me questions, but with a courteous incredulity which I could feel well enough, and some of my answers made them laugh, all but my hostess, who received them with a gravity that finally prevailed. But I was not disposed to go on talking of Altruria then, though they all protested a real interest, and murmured against the hardship of being cut off with so brief an account of our country as I had given them.

  “Well,” said the banker at last, “if there is no cure for our poverty, we might as well go on and enjoy ourselves.”

  “Yes,” said our hostess, with a sad little smile, “we might as well enjoy ourselves.”

  XIX

  The talk at Mrs. Strange’s table took a far wider range than my meagre notes would intimate, and we sat so long that it was almost eleven before the men joined the ladies in th
e drawing-room. You will hardly conceive of remaining two, three, or four hours at dinner, as one often does here, in society; out of society the meals are despatched with a rapidity unknown to the Altrurians. Our habit of listening to lectors, especially at the evening repast, and then of reasoning upon what we have heard, prolongs our stay at the board; but the fondest listener, the greatest talker among us, would be impatient of the delay eked out here by the great number and the slow procession of the courses served. Yet the poorest American would find his ideal realized rather in the long-drawn-out gluttony of the society dinner here than in our temperate simplicity.

  At such a dinner it is very hard to avoid a surfeit, and I have to guard myself very carefully, lest, in the excitement of the talk, I gorge myself with everything, in its turn. Even at the best, my overloaded stomach often joins with my conscience in reproaching me for what you would think a shameful excess at table. Yet, wicked as my riot is, my waste is worse, and I have to think, with contrition, not only of what I have eaten, but of what I have left uneaten, in a city where so many wake and sleep in hunger.

  The ladies made a show of lingering after we joined them in the drawing-room; but there were furtive glances at the clock, and presently her guests began to bid Mrs. Strange good-night. When I came up and offered her my hand, she would not take it, but murmured, with a kind of passion: “Don’t go! I mean it! Stay, and tell us about Altruria — my mother and me!”

  I was by no means loath, for I must confess that all I had seen and heard of this lady interested me in her more and more. I felt at home with her, too, as with no other society woman I have met; she seemed to me not only good, but very sincere, and very good-hearted, in spite of the world she lived in. Yet I have met so many disappointments here, of the kind that our civilization wholly fails to prepare us for, that I should not have been surprised to find that Mrs. Strange had wished me to stay, not that she might hear me talk about Altruria, but that I might hear her talk about herself. You must understand that the essential vice of a system which concentres a human being’s thoughts upon his own interests, from the first moment of responsibility, colors and qualifies every motive with egotism. All egotists are unconscious, for otherwise they would be intolerable to themselves; but some are subtler than others; and as most women have finer natures than most men everywhere, and in America most women have finer minds than most men, their egotism usually takes the form of pose. This is usually obvious, but in some cases it is so delicately managed that you do not suspect it, unless some other woman gives you a hint of it, and even then you cannot be sure of it, seeing the self-sacrifice, almost to martyrdom, which the poseuse makes for it. If Mrs. Makely had not suggested that some people attributed a pose to Mrs. Strange, I should certainly never have dreamed of looking for it, and I should have been only intensely interested, when she began, as soon as I was left alone with her and her mother: