Project Gutenberg's Essays on Paul Bourget, by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: Essays on Paul Bourget Author: Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) Release Date: August 20, 2006 [EBook #3173] Last Updated: February 24, 2018 Language: English Character set encoding: UTF-8 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ESSAYS ON PAUL BOURGET *** Produced by David Widger
“His utterances concerning us are bound to be weighty and well
timed.”
“He gives us an object-lesson which should be thoughtfully and
profitably studied.”
These well-considered and important verdicts were of a nature to restore
public confidence, which had been disquieted by questionings as to whether
so young a teacher would be qualified to take so large a class as
70,000,000, distributed over so extensive a schoolhouse as America, and
pull it through without assistance.
I was even disquieted myself, although I am of a cold, calm temperament,
and not easily disturbed. I feared for my country. And I was not wholly
tranquilized by the verdicts rendered as above. It seemed to me that there
was still room for doubt. In fact, in looking the ground over I became
more disturbed than I was before. Many worrying questions came up in my
mind. Two were prominent. Where had the teacher gotten his equipment? What
was his method?
He had gotten his equipment in France.
Then as to his method! I saw by his own intimations that he was an
Observer, and had a System that used by naturalists and other scientists.
The naturalist collects many bugs and reptiles and butterflies and studies
their ways a long time patiently. By this means he is presently able to
group these creatures into families and subdivisions of families by nice
shadings of differences observable in their characters. Then he labels all
those shaded bugs and things with nicely descriptive group names, and is
now happy, for his great work is completed, and as a result he intimately
knows every bug and shade of a bug there, inside and out. It may be true,
but a person who was not a naturalist would feel safer about it if he had
the opinion of the bug. I think it is a pleasant System, but subject to
error.
The Observer of Peoples has to be a Classifier, a Grouper, a Deducer, a
Generalizer, a Psychologizer; and, first and last, a Thinker. He has to be
all these, and when he is at home, observing his own folk, he is often
able to prove competency. But history has shown that when he is abroad
observing unfamiliar peoples the chances are heavily against him. He is
then a naturalist observing a bug, with no more than a naturalist's
chance of being able to tell the bug anything new about itself, and no
more than a naturalist's chance of being able to teach it any new
ways which it will prefer to its own.
To return to that first question. M. Bourget, as teacher, would simply be
France teaching America. It seemed to me that the outlook was dark—almost
Egyptian, in fact. What would the new teacher, representing France, teach
us? Railroading? No. France knows nothing valuable about railroading.
Steamshipping? No. France has no superiorities over us in that matter.
Steamboating? No. French steamboating is still of Fulton's date—1809.
Postal service? No. France is a back number there. Telegraphy? No, we
taught her that ourselves. Journalism? No. Magazining? No, that is our own
specialty. Government? No; Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, Nobility,
Democracy, Adultery the system is too variegated for our climate.
Religion? No, not variegated enough for our climate. Morals? No, we cannot
rob the poor to enrich ourselves. Novel-writing? No. M. Bourget and the
others know only one plan, and when that is expurgated there is nothing
left of the book.
I wish I could think what he is going to teach us. Can it be Deportment?
But he experimented in that at Newport and failed to give satisfaction,
except to a few. Those few are pleased. They are enjoying their joy as
well as they can. They confess their happiness to the interviewer. They
feel pretty striped, but they remember with reverent recognition that they
had sugar between the cuts. True, sugar with sand in it, but sugar. And
true, they had some trouble to tell which was sugar and which was sand,
because the sugar itself looked just like the sand, and also had a
gravelly taste; still, they knew that the sugar was there, and would have
been very good sugar indeed if it had been screened. Yes, they are
pleased; not noisily so, but pleased; invaded, or streaked, as one may
say, with little recurrent shivers of joy—subdued joy, so to speak,
not the overdone kind. And they commune together, these, and massage each
other with comforting sayings, in a sweet spirit of resignation and
thankfulness, mixing these elements in the same proportions as the sugar
and the sand, as a memorial, and saying, the one to the other, and to the
interviewer: “It was severe—yes, it was bitterly severe; but
oh, how true it was; and it will do us so much good!”
If it isn't Deportment, what is left? It was at this point that I
seemed to get on the right track at last. M. Bourget would teach us to
know ourselves; that was it: he would reveal us to ourselves. That would
be an education. He would explain us to ourselves. Then we should
understand ourselves; and after that be able to go on more intelligently.
It seemed a doubtful scheme. He could explain us to himself—that
would be easy. That would be the same as the naturalist explaining the bug
to himself. But to explain the bug to the bug—that is quite a
different matter. The bug may not know himself perfectly, but he knows
himself better than the naturalist can know him, at any rate.
A foreigner can photograph the exteriors of a nation, but I think that
that is as far as he can get. I think that no foreigner can report its
interior—its soul, its life, its speech, its thought. I think that a
knowledge of these things is acquirable in only one way; not two or four
or six—absorption; years and years of unconscious absorption; years
and years of intercourse with the life concerned; of living it, indeed;
sharing personally in its shames and prides, its joys and griefs, its
loves and hates, its prosperities and reverses, its shows and
shabbinesses, its deep patriotisms, its whirlwinds of political passion,
its adorations—of flag, and heroic dead, and the glory of the
national name. Observation? Of what real value is it? One learns peoples
through the heart, not the eyes or the intellect.
There is only one expert who is qualified to examine the souls and the
life of a people and make a valuable report—the native novelist.
This expert is so rare that the most populous country can never have
fifteen conspicuously and confessedly competent ones in stock at one time.
This native specialist is not qualified to begin work until he has been
absorbing during twenty-five years. How much of his competency is derived
from conscious “observation”? The amount is so slight that it
counts for next to nothing in the equipment. Almost the whole capital of
the novelist is the slow accumulation of unconscious observation—absorption.
The native expert's intentional observation of manners, speech,
character, and ways of life can have value, for the native knows what they
mean without having to cipher out the meaning. But I should be astonished
to see a foreigner get at the right meanings, catch the elusive shades of
these subtle things. Even the native novelist becomes a foreigner, with a
foreigner's limitations, when he steps from the State whose life is
familiar to him into a State whose life he has not lived. Bret Harte got
his California and his Californians by unconscious absorption, and put
both of them into his tales alive. But when he came from the Pacific to
the Atlantic and tried to do Newport life from study-conscious observation—his
failure was absolutely monumental. Newport is a disastrous place for the
unacclimated observer, evidently.
To return to novel-building. Does the native novelist try to generalize
the nation? No, he lays plainly before you the ways and speech and life of
a few people grouped in a certain place—his own place—and that
is one book. In time he and his brethren will report to you the life and
the people of the whole nation—the life of a group in a New England
village; in a New York village; in a Texan village; in an Oregon village;
in villages in fifty States and Territories; then the farm-life in fifty
States and Territories; a hundred patches of life and groups of people in
a dozen widely separated cities. And the Indians will be attended to; and
the cowboys; and the gold and silver 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 White Caps, the Moonshiners. And
when a thousand able novels have been written, there you have the soul of
the people, the life of the people, the speech of the people; and not
anywhere else can these be had. And the shadings of character, manners,
feelings, ambitions, will be infinite.
“'The nature of a people' is always of a similar shade in its
vices and its virtues, in its frivolities and in its labor.
'It is this physiognomy which it is necessary to discover',
and every document is good, from the hall of a casino to the
church, from the foibles of a fashionable woman to the
suggestions of a revolutionary leader. I am therefore quite
sure that this 'American soul', the principal interest and the
great object of my voyage, appears behind the records of
Newport for those who choose to see it.”—M. Paul Bourget.
[The italics ('') are mine.] It is a large contract which he
has undertaken. “Records” is a pretty poor word there, but I
think the use of it is due to hasty translation. In the original the word
is 'fastes'. I think M. Bourget meant to suggest that he
expected to find the great “American soul” secreted behind the
ostentations of Newport; and that he was going to get it out and examine
it, and generalize it, and psychologize it, and make it reveal to him its
hidden vast mystery: “the nature of the people” of the United
States of America. We have been accused of being a nation addicted to
inventing wild schemes. I trust that we shall be allowed to retire to
second place now.
There isn't a single human characteristic that can be safely labeled
“American.” There isn't a single human ambition, or
religious trend, or drift of thought, or peculiarity of education, or code
of principles, or breed of folly, or style of conversation, or preference
for a particular subject for discussion, or form of legs or trunk or head
or face or expression or complexion, or gait, or dress, or manners, or
disposition, or any other human detail, inside or outside, that can
rationally be generalized as “American.”
Whenever you have found what seems to be an “American”
peculiarity, you have only to cross a frontier or two, or go down or up in
the social scale, and you perceive that it has disappeared. And you can
cross the Atlantic and find it again. There may be a Newport religious
drift, or sporting drift, or conversational style or complexion, or cut of
face, but there are entire empires in America, north, south, east, and
west, where you could not find your duplicates. It is the same with
everything else which one might propose to call “American.” M.
Bourget thinks he has found the American Coquette. If he had really found
her he would also have found, I am sure, that she was not new, that she
exists in other lands in the same forms, and with the same frivolous heart
and the same ways and impulses. I think this because I have seen our
coquette; I have seen her in life; better still, I have seen her in our
novels, and seen her twin in foreign novels. I wish M. Bourget had seen
ours. He thought he saw her. And so he applied his System to her. She was
a Species. So he gathered a number of samples of what seemed to be her,
and put them under his glass, and divided them into groups which he calls
“types,” and labeled them in his usual scientific way with
“formulas”—brief sharp descriptive flashes that make a
person blink, sometimes, they are so sudden and vivid. As a rule they are
pretty far-fetched, but that is not an important matter; they surprise,
they compel admiration, and I notice by some of the comments which his
efforts have called forth that they deceive the unwary. Here are a few of
the coquette variants which he has grouped and labeled:
THE COLLECTOR.
THE EQUILIBREE.
THE PROFESSIONAL BEAUTY.
THE BLUFFER.
THE GIRL-BOY.
If he had stopped with describing these characters we should have been
obliged to believe that they exist; that they exist, and that he has seen
them and spoken with them. But he did not stop there; he went further and
furnished to us light-throwing samples of their behavior, and also
light-throwing samples of their speeches. He entered those things in his
note-book without suspicion, he takes them out and delivers them to the
world with a candor and simplicity which show that he believed them
genuine. They throw altogether too much light. They reveal to the native
the origin of his find. I suppose he knows how he came to make that novel
and captivating discovery, by this time. If he does not, any American can
tell him—any American to whom he will show his anecdotes. It was
“put up” on him, as we say. It was a jest—to be plain,
it was a series of frauds. To my mind it was a poor sort of jest, witless
and contemptible. The players of it have their reward, such as it is; they
have exhibited the fact that whatever they may be they are not ladies. M.
Bourget did not discover a type of coquette; he merely discovered a type
of practical joker. One may say the type of practical joker, for these
people are exactly alike all over the world. Their equipment is always the
same: a vulgar mind, a puerile wit, a cruel disposition as a rule, and
always the spirit of treachery.
In his Chapter IV. M. Bourget has two or three columns gravely devoted to
the collating and examining and psychologizing of these sorry little
frauds. One is not moved to laugh. There is nothing funny in the
situation; it is only pathetic. The stranger gave those people his
confidence, and they dishonorably treated him in return.
But one must be allowed to suspect that M. Bourget was a little to blame
himself. Even a practical joker has some little judgment. He has to
exercise some degree of sagacity in selecting his prey if he would save
himself from getting into trouble. In my time I have seldom seen such
daring things marketed at any price as these conscienceless folk have
worked off at par on this confiding observer. It compels the conviction
that there was something about him that bred in those speculators a quite
unusual sense of safety, and encouraged them to strain their powers in his
behalf. They seem to have satisfied themselves that all he wanted was
“significant” facts, and that he was not accustomed to examine
the source whence they proceeded. It is plain that there was a sort of
conspiracy against him almost from the start—a conspiracy to freight
him up with all the strange extravagances those people's decayed
brains could invent.
The lengths to which they went are next to incredible. They told him
things which surely would have excited any one else's suspicion, but
they did not excite his. Consider this:
“There is not in all the United States an entirely nude
statue.”
If an angel should come down and say such a thing about heaven, a
reasonably cautious observer would take that angel's number and
inquire a little further before he added it to his catch. What does the
present observer do? Adds it. Adds it at once. Adds it, and labels it with
this innocent comment:
“This small fact is strangely significant.”
It does seem to me that this kind of observing is defective.
Here is another curiosity which some liberal person made him a present of.
I should think it ought to have disturbed the deep slumber of his
suspicion a little, but it didn't. It was a note from a fog-horn for
strenuousness, it seems to me, but the doomed voyager did not catch it. If
he had but caught it, it would have saved him from several disasters:
“If the American knows that you are traveling to take notes, he
is interested in it, and at the same time rejoices in it, as in
a tribute.”
Again, this is defective observation. It is human to like to be praised;
one can even notice it in the French. But it is not human to like to be
ridiculed, even when it comes in the form of a “tribute.” I
think a little psychologizing ought to have come in there. Something like
this: A dog does not like to be ridiculed, a redskin does not like to be
ridiculed, a negro does not like to be ridiculed, a Chinaman does not like
to be ridiculed; let us deduce from these significant facts this formula:
the American's grade being higher than these, and the chain-of
argument stretching unbroken all the way up to him, there is room for
suspicion that the person who said the American likes to be ridiculed, and
regards it as a tribute, is not a capable observer.
I feel persuaded that in the matter of psychologizing, a professional is
too apt to yield to the fascinations of the loftier regions of that great
art, to the neglect of its lowlier walks. Every now and then, at half-hour
intervals, M. Bourget collects a hatful of airy inaccuracies and dissolves
them in a panful of assorted abstractions, and runs the charge into a
mould and turns you out a compact principle which will explain an American
girl, or an American woman, or why new people yearn for old things, or any
other impossible riddle which a person wants answered.
It seems to be conceded that there are a few human peculiarities that can
be generalized and located here and there in the world and named by the
name of the nation where they are found. I wonder what they are. Perhaps
one of them is temperament. One speaks of French vivacity and German
gravity and English stubbornness. There is no American temperament. The
nearest that one can come at it is to say there are two—the composed
Northern and the impetuous Southern; and both are found in other
countries. Morals? Purity of women may fairly be called universal with us,
but that is the case in some other countries. We have no monopoly of it;
it cannot be named American. I think that there is but a single specialty
with us, only one thing that can be called by the wide name “American.”
That is the national devotion to ice-water. All Germans drink beer, but
the British nation drinks beer, too; so neither of those peoples is the
beer-drinking nation. I suppose we do stand alone in having a drink that
nobody likes but ourselves. When we have been a month in Europe we lose
our craving for it, and we finally tell the hotel folk that they needn't
provide it any more. Yet we hardly touch our native shore again, winter or
summer, before we are eager for it. The reasons for this state of things
have not been psychologized yet. I drop the hint and say no more.
It is my belief that there are some “national” traits and
things scattered about the world that are mere superstitions, frauds that
have lived so long that they have the solid look of facts. One of them is
the dogma that the French are the only chaste people in the world. Ever
since I arrived in France this last time I have been accumulating doubts
about that; and before I leave this sunny land again I will gather in a
few random statistics and psychologize the plausibilities out of it. If
people are to come over to America and find fault with our girls and our
women, and psychologize every little thing they do, and try to teach them
how to behave, and how to cultivate themselves up to where one cannot tell
them from the French model, I intend to find out whether those
missionaries are qualified or not. A nation ought always to examine into
this detail before engaging the teacher for good. This last one has let
fall a remark which renewed those doubts of mine when I read it:
“In our high Parisian existence, for instance, we find applied
to arts and luxury, and to debauchery, all the powers and all
the weaknesses of the French soul.”
You see, it amounts to a trade with the French soul; a profession; a
science; the serious business of life, so to speak, in our high Parisian
existence. I do not quite like the look of it. I question if it can be
taught with profit in our country, except, of course, to those pathetic,
neglected minds that are waiting there so yearningly for the education
which M. Bourget is going to furnish them from the serene summits of our
high Parisian life.
I spoke a moment ago of the existence of some superstitions that have been
parading the world as facts this long time. For instance, consider the
Dollar. The world seems to think that the love of money is “American”;
and that the mad desire to get suddenly rich is “American.” I
believe that both of these things are merely and broadly human, not
American monopolies at all. The love of money is natural to all nations,
for money is a good and strong friend. I think that this love has existed
everywhere, ever since the Bible called it the root of all evil.
I think that the reason why we Americans seem to be so addicted to trying
to get rich suddenly is merely because the opportunity to make promising
efforts in that direction has offered itself to us with a frequency out of
all proportion to the European experience. For eighty years this
opportunity has been offering itself in one new town or region after
another straight westward, step by step, all the way from the Atlantic
coast to the Pacific. When a mechanic could buy ten town lots on tolerably
long credit for ten months' savings out of his wages, and reasonably
expect to sell them in a couple of years for ten times what he gave for
them, it was human for him to try the venture, and he did it no matter
what his nationality was. He would have done it in Europe or China if he
had had the same chance.
In the flush times in the silver regions a cook or any other humble worker
stood a very good chance to get rich out of a trifle of money risked in a
stock deal; and that person promptly took that risk, no matter what his or
her nationality might be. I was there, and saw it.
But these opportunities have not been plenty in our Southern States; so
there you have a prodigious region where the rush for sudden wealth is
almost an unknown thing—and has been, from the beginning.
Europe has offered few opportunities for poor Tom, Dick, and Harry; but
when she has offered one, there has been no noticeable difference between
European eagerness and American. England saw this in the wild days of the
Railroad King; France saw it in 1720—time of Law and the Mississippi
Bubble. I am sure I have never seen in the gold and silver mines any
madness, fury, frenzy to get suddenly rich which was even remotely
comparable to that which raged in France in the Bubble day. If I had a
cyclopaedia here I could turn to that memorable case, and satisfy nearly
anybody that the hunger for the sudden dollar is no more “American”
than it is French. And if I could furnish an American opportunity to staid
Germany, I think I could wake her up like a house afire.
But I must return to the Generalizations, Psychologizings, Deductions.
When M. Bourget is exploiting these arts, it is then that he is peculiarly
and particularly himself. His ways are wholly original when he encounters
a trait or a custom which is new to him. Another person would merely
examine the find, verify it, estimate its value, and let it go; but that
is not sufficient for M. Bourget: he always wants to know why that thing
exists, he wants to know how it came to happen; and he will not let go of
it until he has found out. And in every instance he will find that reason
where no one but himself would have thought of looking for it. He does not
seem to care for a reason that is not picturesquely located; one might
almost say picturesquely and impossibly located.
He found out that in America men do not try to hunt down young married
women. At once, as usual, he wanted to know why. Any one could have told
him. He could have divined it by the lights thrown by the novels of the
country. But no, he preferred to find out for himself. He has a
trustfulness as regards men and facts which is fine and unusual; he is not
particular about the source of a fact, he is not particular about the
character and standing of the fact itself; but when it comes to pounding
out the reason for the existence of the fact, he will trust no one but
himself.
In the present instance here was his fact: American young married women
are not pursued by the corruptor; and here was the question: What is it
that protects her?
It seems quite unlikely that that problem could have offered difficulties
to any but a trained philosopher. Nearly any person would have said to M.
Bourget: “Oh, that is very simple. It is very seldom in America that
a marriage is made on a commercial basis; our marriages, from the
beginning, have been made for love; and where love is there is no room for
the corruptor.”
Now, it is interesting to see the formidable way in which M. Bourget went
at that poor, humble little thing. He moved upon it in column—three
columns—and with artillery.
“Two reasons of a very different kind explain”—that
fact.
And now that I have got so far, I am almost afraid to say what his two
reasons are, lest I be charged with inventing them. But I will not retreat
now; I will condense them and print them, giving my word that I am honest
and not trying to deceive any one.
1. Young married women are protected from the approaches of the seducer in
New England and vicinity by the diluted remains of a prudence created by a
Puritan law of two hundred years ago, which for a while punished adultery
with death.
2. And young married women of the other forty or fifty States are
protected by laws which afford extraordinary facilities for divorce.
If I have not lost my mind I have accurately conveyed those two Vesuvian
irruptions of philosophy. But the reader can consult Chapter IV. of
'Outre-Mer', and decide for himself. Let us examine this
paralyzing Deduction or Explanation by the light of a few sane facts.
1. This universality of “protection” has existed in our
country from the beginning; before the death penalty existed in New
England, and during all the generations that have dragged by since it was
annulled.
2. Extraordinary facilities for divorce are of such recent creation that
any middle-aged American can remember a time when such things had not yet
been thought of.
Let us suppose that the first easy divorce law went into effect forty
years ago, and got noised around and fairly started in business
thirty-five years ago, when we had, say, 25,000,000 of white population.
Let us suppose that among 5,000,000 of them the young married women were
“protected” by the surviving shudder of that ancient Puritan
scare—what is M. Bourget going to do about those who lived among the
20,000,000? They were clean in their morals, they were pure, yet there was
no easy divorce law to protect them.
Awhile ago I said that M. Bourget's method of truth-seeking—hunting
for it in out-of-the-way places—was new; but that was an error. I
remember that when Leverrier discovered the Milky Way, he and the other
astronomers began to theorize about it in substantially the same fashion
which M. Bourget employs in his reasonings about American social facts and
their origin. Leverrier advanced the hypothesis that the Milky Way was
caused by gaseous protoplasmic emanations from the field of Waterloo,
which, ascending to an altitude determinable by their own specific
gravity, became luminous through the development and exposure—by the
natural processes of animal decay—of the phosphorus contained in
them.
This theory was warmly complimented by Ptolemy, who, however, after much
thought and research, decided that he could not accept it as final. His
own theory was that the Milky Way was an emigration of lightning bugs; and
he supported and reinforced this theorem by the well-known fact that the
locusts do like that in Egypt.
Giordano Bruno also was outspoken in his praises of Leverrier's
important contribution to astronomical science, and was at first inclined
to regard it as conclusive; but later, conceiving it to be erroneous, he
pronounced against it, and advanced the hypothesis that the Milky Way was
a detachment or corps of stars which became arrested and held in 'suspenso
suspensorum' by refraction of gravitation while on the march to join
their several constellations; a proposition for which he was afterwards
burned at the stake in Jacksonville, Illinois.
These were all brilliant and picturesque theories, and each was received
with enthusiasm by the scientific world; but when a New England farmer,
who was not a thinker, but only a plain sort of person who tried to
account for large facts in simple ways, came out with the opinion that the
Milky Way was just common, ordinary stars, and was put where it was
because God “wanted to hev it so,” the admirable idea fell
perfectly flat.
As a literary artist, M. Bourget is as fresh and striking as he is as a
scientific one. He says, “Above all, I do not believe much in
anecdotes.”
Why? “In history they are all false”—a sufficiently
broad statement—“in literature all libelous”—also
a sufficiently sweeping statement, coming from a critic who notes that we
are “a people who are peculiarly extravagant in our language—”
and when it is a matter of social life, “almost all biased.”
It seems to amount to stultification, almost. He has built two or three
breeds of American coquettes out of anecdotes—mainly “biased”
ones, I suppose; and, as they occur “in literature,” furnished
by his pen, they must be “all libelous.” Or did he mean not in
literature or anecdotes about literature or literary people? I am not able
to answer that. Perhaps the original would be clearer, but I have only the
translation of this installment by me. I think the remark had an
intention; also that this intention was booked for the trip; but that
either in the hurry of the remark's departure it got left, or in the
confusion of changing cars at the translator's frontier it got
side-tracked.
“But on the other hand I believe in statistics; and those on
divorces appear to me to be most conclusive.” And he sets himself
the task of explaining—in a couple of columns—the process by
which Easy-Divorce conceived, invented, originated, developed, and
perfected an empire-embracing condition of sexual purity in the States. IN
40 YEARS. No, he doesn't state the interval. With all his passion
for statistics he forgot to ask how long it took to produce this gigantic
miracle.
I have followed his pleasant but devious trail through those columns, but
I was not able to get hold of his argument and find out what it was. I was
not even able to find out where it left off. It seemed to gradually
dissolve and flow off into other matters. I followed it with interest, for
I was anxious to learn how easy-divorce eradicated adultery in America,
but I was disappointed; I have no idea yet how it did it. I only know it
didn't. But that is not valuable; I knew it before.
Well, humor is the great thing, the saving thing, after all. The minute it
crops up, all our hardnesses yield, all our irritations and resentments
flit away, and a sunny spirit takes their place. And so, when M. Bourget
said that bright thing about our grandfathers, I broke all up. I remember
exploding its American countermine once, under that grand hero, Napoleon.
He was only First Consul then, and I was Consul-General—for the
United States, of course; but we were very intimate, notwithstanding the
difference in rank, for I waived that. One day something offered the
opening, and he said:
“Well, General, I suppose life can never get entirely dull to an
American, because whenever he can't strike up any other way to put
in his time he can always get away with a few years trying to find out who
his grandfather was!”
I fairly shouted, for I had never heard it sound better; and then I was
back at him as quick as a flash—“Right, your Excellency! But I
reckon a Frenchman's got his little stand-by for a dull time, too;
because when all other interests fail he can turn in and see if he can't
find out who his father was!”
Well, you should have heard him just whoop, and cackle, and carry on! He
reached up and hit me one on the shoulder, and says:
“Land, but it's good! It's im-mensely good! I'George,
I never heard it said so good in my life before! Say it again.”
So I said it again, and he said his again, and I said mine again, and then
he did, and then I did, and then he did, and we kept on doing it, and
doing it, and I never had such a good time, and he said the same. In my
opinion there isn't anything that is as killing as one of those dear
old ripe pensioners if you know how to snatch it out in a kind of a fresh
sort of original way.
But I wish M. 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'.
[The preceding squib was assailed in the North American Review
in an article entitled “Mark Twain and Paul Bourget,” by Max
O'Rell. The following little note is a Rejoinder to that
article. It is possible that the position assumed here—that
M. Bourget dictated the O'Rell article himself—is untenable.]
You have every right, my dear M. Bourget, to retort upon me by dictation,
if you prefer that method to writing at me with your pen; but if I may say
it without hurt—and certainly I mean no offence—I believe you
would have acquitted yourself better with the pen. With the pen you are at
home; it is your natural weapon; you use it with grace, eloquence, charm,
persuasiveness, when men are to be convinced, and with formidable effect
when they have earned a castigation. But I am sure I see signs in the
above article that you are either unaccustomed to dictating or are out of
practice. If you will re-read it you will notice, yourself, that it lacks
definiteness; that it lacks purpose; that it lacks coherence; that it
lacks a subject to talk about; that it is loose and wabbly; that it
wanders around; that it loses itself early and does not find itself any
more. There are some other defects, as you will notice, but I think I have
named the main ones. I feel sure that they are all due to your lack of
practice in dictating.
Inasmuch as you had not signed it I had the impression at first that you
had not dictated it. But only for a moment. Certain quite simple and
definite facts reminded me that the article had to come from you, for the
reason that it could not come from any one else without a specific
invitation from you or from me. I mean, it could not except as an
intrusion, a transgression of the law which forbids strangers to mix into
a private dispute between friends, unasked.
Those simple and definite facts were these: I had published an article in
this magazine, with you for my subject; just you yourself; I stuck
strictly to that one subject, and did not interlard any other. No one, of
course, could call me to account but you alone, or your authorized
representative. I asked some questions—asked them of myself. I
answered them myself. My article was thirteen pages long, and all devoted
to you; devoted to you, and divided up in this way: one page of guesses as
to what subjects you would instruct us in, as teacher; one page of doubts
as to the effectiveness of your method of examining us and our ways; two
or three pages of criticism of your method, and of certain results which
it furnished you; two or three pages of attempts to show the justness of
these same criticisms; half a dozen pages made up of slight fault-findings
with certain minor details of your literary workmanship, of extracts from
your 'Outre-Mer' and comments upon them; then I closed with an
anecdote. I repeat—for certain reasons—that I closed with an
anecdote.
When I was asked by this magazine if I wished to “answer” a
“reply” to that article of mine, I said “yes,” and
waited in Paris for the proof-sheets of the “reply” to come. I
already knew, by the cablegram, that the “reply” would not be
signed by you, but upon reflection I knew it would be dictated by you,
because no volunteer would feel himself at liberty to assume your
championship in a private dispute, unasked, in view of the fact that you
are quite well able to take care of your matters of that sort yourself and
are not in need of any one's help. No, a volunteer could not make
such a venture. It would be too immodest. Also too gratuitously generous.
And a shade too self-sufficient. No, he could not venture it. It would
look too much like anxiety to get in at a feast where no plate had been
provided for him. In fact he could not get in at all, except by the back
way, and with a false key; that is to say, 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 get in? 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.
And you had the right, as I have already said and I am content—perfectly
content.
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.
Because then it would have replied—and that is really what a Reply
is for. Broadly speaking, its function is to refute—as you will
easily concede. That leaves something for the other person to take hold
of: 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 out of practice, 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 basic principle of discussion with a
fault-finder is relevancy and concentration upon the subject; whereas the
great foundation-rule and basic principle 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 7 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:
Shouter. Did you say his name is WETHERBY?
Deaf Person. Change? Yes, I think it will. Though if it should clear off I—
Shouter. It's his NAME I want—his NAME.
Deaf Person. Maybe so, maybe so; but it will only be a shower, I think.
Shouter. No, no, no!—you have quite misunderSTOOD me. If—
Deaf Person. Ah! GOOD 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.
You see it is a perfect kodak of the article you have dictated. It is
really curious and interesting when you come to 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 for facts that lack a pedigree; and you turn around and come back at
me with eight pages of weather.
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:
“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 in that 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.
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 in this 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.
Persons attempting to find a motive in
this 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.
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 it leaves me nothing
to combat; and that is damage to me.
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 even so much as stain them.
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 three times he can retire from
business?']—It is a good answer.
It relates to manners, customs, and morals—three things concerning
which we can never have exhaustive and determinate statistics, and so 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 do it, 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 do it without throwing the country into
earthquakes and convulsions that cripple and embarrass business, stir up
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
come with homage and gratitude and ask France for the bill—there is
nothing to pay. And in return for this imperial generosity, what does
America do? She charges a duty on French works of art!
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. For instance, you have proven and established these eight facts
here following—a good score as to number, but not worth while:
Mark Twain is—
1. “Insulting.”
2. (Sarcastically speaking) “This refined humorist.”
3. Prefers the manure-pile to the violets.
4. Has uttered “an ill-natured sneer.”
5. Is “nasty.”
6. Needs a “lesson in politeness and good manners.”
7. Has published a “nasty article.”
8. Has made remarks “unworthy of a gentleman.”—[“It
is more funny than his” (Mark Twain's) “anecdote, and
would have been less insulting.”]
A quoted remark of mine “is a gross insult to a nation friendly to
America.”
“He has read La Terre, this refined humorist.”
“When Mark Twain visits a garden... he goes in the far-away corner
where the soil is prepared.”
“Mark Twain's ill-natured sneer cannot so much as stain them”
(the Frenchwomen).
“When he” (Mark Twain) “takes his revenge he is unkind,
unfair, bitter, nasty.”
“But not even your nasty article on my country, Mark,” etc.
“Mark might certainly have derived from it” (M. Bourget's
book) “a lesson in politeness and good manners.”
A quoted remark of mine is “unworthy of a gentleman.”—
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 in public 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 up a gap when we were short of ideas and arguments, our
magazines would not allow us to do it, 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:
“It is needless to ask you to avoid anything that he might consider
as personal.”
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.
Indeed, we are reserved, and particular in America to a degree which you
would consider exaggerated. For instance, 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 get away with a few years' trying
to find out 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!
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.
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 be
given, the lady sent to my manager to say that she would expect me to
arrive at 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.”
I fairly shouted, as Mark Twain would say, and then, indulging myself in a
bit 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 do it.]—We
should not think it kind. No matter 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 do
it, 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 long time 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 all over 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 at
the same time convict myself of being equipped with a vacancy where my
penetration ought to be lodged.
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.
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:
“He has the Grand Monarch, but where is the portrait of his
grandfather?” That is, the American aristocrat's grandfather.
Now that hits only a few of us, I grant—just the upper crust only—but
it hits exceedingly hard.
I wondered if there was any way of getting back at you. In one of your
chapters I found this chance:
“In our high Parisian existence, for instance, we find applied to
arts and luxury, and to debauchery, all the powers and all the weaknesses
of the French soul.”
You see? Your “higher Parisian” class—not everybody, not
the nation, but only the top crust of the Nation—applies to
debauchery all the powers of its soul.
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. So long 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.]
For example: 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 put in his time, he can
always get away with a few years trying to find out 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 turn in and see
if he can't find out who his father was.”
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.
If Mark Twain was hard up 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.”
“Ain't got no father!” replies the other; “I've
got more fathers than you.”
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 on it if it hadn't had point.
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 of course 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 to that little unnumerous upper layer.
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.
I will tell you what I think will be the very thing.
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:
“Ha, ha! You must have a pretty hard time trying to find out who
your grandfathers were?”
They will merely smile indifferently and not feel hurt, because they can
trace their lineage back through centuries.
And you will hurl mine at every individual in the American nation, saying:
“And you must have a pretty hard time trying to find out 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 all in 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.
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