Chapter II (4)

Dr. Howe had that kind of modesty which seems to be confined to the heroes of romantic adventure: rough soldiers have it, and people whose courage has been put to the proof a thousand times.

“I do assure you, my dear Sumner,” he writes in 1846, “the sort of vulgar notoriety which follows any movement of this kind is a very great drawback to the pleasure of making it. To the voice of praise I am sensible, too sensible I know; but I do detest this newspaper puffing, and I have been put to the blush very often by it.”

The following is his account of his reception by the peasants on the Isthmus of Corinth when he was recognized in 1844.

“The whole village gathered about the house, and to make a long story short, I went away amid demonstrations of affectionate remembrance and continued attachment, so earnest and so obvious that they made one of my companions shed tears, though he understood not a word of the spoken language. But I must not enlarge on this now, for I have no time; perhaps I ought not to do so even had I ever so much time; but you will not, I know, suspect me of vanity in making any communications to you.”

Charles Sumner is almost the only man to whom he unbosoms himself on such subjects: “It is quite too bad to keep people under such a delusion about me. One gentleman, an F. R. S., writes that he wants to see me more than any other man in Europe. He has published a little book, with physiological reflections on privation of senses, which he dedicates “To Dr. Howe, the ingenious and successful teacher of Laura Bridgman.” The man looks _up_ to me; yet it is evident, from reading his books, that he has himself tenfold more talent, acquirement, and merit than I have or ever shall have.”... To Horace Mann he writes in 1848, “It is absurd for me to reach up from my littleness to tender counsel to one so high as you; but my love for you is as great as though we stood face to face.”

He thus questions Sumner as to whether he himself can learn to be an editor: “Tell me my best, my almost only friend, is there any reason to suppose that by any apprenticeship I could, without rashness, enter the editorial field.” This from a man who had only to touch any cause to make the world ring with it, is incredible. One cannot hope really to understand such a character: it reminds one of the meekness of Moses. There is a rose-leaf girlish quality about this modesty which makes it one of the most wonderful things in nature. Few of us have ever seen it; we have only read about it; for people are always writing about it, and it evokes literature. No sooner does one of these modest people appear than everyone praises him. I suppose people feel that praise cannot injure such a nature: there is nothing for praise to stick to. The bitter lips of malice break into eulogy before this quality, which shrinks from commendation as most people shrink from censure. In Dr. Howe’s case this modesty set off not only deeds of physical prowess, but intellectual accomplishments of a most dazzling kind. Hence the enormous number of somewhat tedious eulogies upon him. One is obliged to approach him through a stack of funeral wreaths.

He was totally without personal thought, personal self-consciousness, and more like a disembodied spirit than a man. This impersonal quality gave him the power of telling home truths to people without offending them. To strangers, to acquaintances, to intimate friends, to proud spoiled egotists, to bad men with whom he is at odds--he can always tell the exact truth without conveying any personal ill-feeling. He flashes in through the walls and turrets of Charles Sumner, or of Theodore Parker, and puts the house in order with lightning strokes of wit, and with bold home-thrusts of spontaneous ridicule. He touches his friend’s soul with celestial surgery, then quickly rubs salve upon the wounds, and is back again at his desk before the patient has discovered his visitation. To say that he is the warmest nature that ever came out of New England would not be expressive. He is the warmest Anglo Saxon of whom I have ever read or heard tell. Constant expressions of love and affection flow from him, effusive, demonstrative, emotional. It is not necessary to cite them. Open the book. The German romanticists of whom Jean Paul Richter is a type come into one’s mind; but there was a literary tang to their sentiment. I must, however, quote two passages illustrative of Howe’s ordinary state of mind:--

“My Well-beloved Friend:--

“Your note from New York found me last evening, and gave me a feeling as near akin to pure joy as I ever expect to feel on earth. Why is it that we men are so shy about manifesting a natural feeling in a natural way, and letting down the flood-gates of the eye to the flow of tears? I feared to go and bid you adieu on Wednesday, lest I should not be able to conceal my emotion, hide my tears. I succeeded, however; I wept not until I was alone!”

Dr. Howe’s aged friend, Mr. F. W. Bird, has left an anecdote of their last meeting which would add a beauty to Homer:

“As I rose to leave, he followed me into the hall, threw his arms around my neck and with a beautiful smile said: ‘My dear old fellow, let me kiss you,’ and gave me a warm kiss. Within two days the thick curtain fell.” At the time of this parting Bird was sixty-six, and Howe seventy-five.

Is it not evident from all that has gone before that Dr. Howe was a saint? He constantly suggests one or other of the great saints in the Roman Calendar. And I will predict that the world has rather begun than finished with its interest in him. His work in charity will never be superseded. Succeeding penologists will recur to it to save them from the science of their times.

JESTERS.

It is right to break up old china because it is ugly; but to destroy the china because you enjoy the sound of the crash is a little depraved. Bernard Shaw and G. K. Chesterton, _et id omne genus_--the race of joyous tomboys who dash things about--have a great charm always. The bored, cultivated, sedentary people in any old civilization wake up more cheerfully in the morning when there is one of these fellows at work. A new thrill comes into the journals which the literati had grown to hate so heartily. “Ah,” cry the leisure classes, “what has Tommy got to say this morning, I wonder.”

These two gentlemen, Shaw and Chesterton, are the Max and Moritz of the present epoch. For this reason I have tried to like them. I have tried to tolerate them. I have tried to believe that they are serviceable to mankind from some point of view which is not yet revealed to me. I do believe this; but I believe it with the head and not with the heart. The following reflections are, after all, a mere groping toward the light, and the tapping of the staff of a blind man.

Any one who has ever passed through London must have been struck with the competition for notice among all classes of people whose conspicuousness depends upon their personal activity. In England there are such masses of any one kind of man or woman that the desire for identification--in itself a noble desire--leads people to resort to every expedient for attracting notice to themselves. This is the explanation of the hyphen in names. Edward B. Jones is a name that no one can remember; but Edward Burne-Jones is easy. In like manner ladies turn to lion-hunting, not because they love lions but because it gives them a status. Indeed, England has always been full of sham lions, who spring into existence to supply the demand created by these ladies. So of charity; so of culture; so of politics.

Now there are often intellectual men--like Beaconsfield, and Oscar Wilde, and Whistler--who are unwilling to wait for their talents to lift them into notice, but who resort to artificial notoriety in order to expedite matters. They stick a feather in their cap and call it ‘maccaroni’. Their times suggest this course to them, and their times claim them instantly when they have complied with the suggestion. In literary England there is such an enormous and immediate acclaim for any new cleverness, that a poor and talented young man is under strong temptation to become surprising and brilliant in his writing. If he will only do this he will find himself petted, fed, and proclaimed almost at once.

This particular entry into the Temple of Fame, however, exacts a heavy toll; for a man who has written in order to break the crust of the public with his pungency, is not allowed ever thereafter to write without pungency. I believe that the talent of all the men I have named would have developed more seriously if they had not in early life given way to the taste of the public for sensation. But they would not wait: they must sting themselves into notice.

As for Shaw and Chesterton, they seem to have become partners in a sort of game of buffoonery--for the world will have its jesters. They are tumblers on a raft, floating down stream, surrounded by a whole Henley regatta, an armada of applauding multitudes, on barges, wherries, tugs, and ferry-boats and river-craft innumerable, whose holiday passengers shout their admiration to the performers on the raft, and egg on the favorites to superhuman effort. Shaw shows how far he can stick out his tongue while continuing to stand on one leg. “Bravo! Huzzah!” roars the audience. “Did you ever see the like? O Jesu, this is excellent sport! Faith! How he holds his countenance! He doth it as like one of these harlotry players as ever I see.”

Chesterton thereupon puts his wrists on the carpet and lifts his back like a cat. “Lord save us! This was Ercles’ vein! He hath simply the best wit of any handy-craftsman in Athens. You have not a man in all Athens able to discharge Pyramus but he!”

There is some exaggeration in this picture; but, I think, some truth also. The loss which Shaw and Chesterton share in common is a loss of delicacy. They are crude: they are all edge. They are, indeed, a little vulgar. But this is not the serious objection to them. The serious objection to Shaw and Chesterton is that they have no intellectual independence. They are moving with the show. It will pass, and they with it.

THE COMIC.