Chapter IX: In Society (5)

The consideration of actors as affecting the success of a play brings us to the last branch of the whole subject affected by the dramatic canons, which is _the qualifications required by the dramatist_ to secure success. When we have considered them we shall have finished our task--the completion of an essay to arouse thought in others. When we consider the literary construction of such plays as "Black Crook," "Buffalo Bill," as well as the hosts of nameless dramas that are constantly making their appearance at minor and first-class theatres, their flat dialogue and general insipidity when merely read, not acted, we begin to realize that genius or even talent in the author are not the first requisite. He may lack both and still succeed. He must, however, have one thing, or he might as well keep out of the box office altogether, for his plays will be there pigeon-holed for good if he possesses it not. This something is _stage experience_. He may be an actor, no matter how bad, a scene painter, a carpenter, a musician, but he must have been about a theatre in some capacity, no matter how humble, to see how things work. One week behind the curtain is worth a year in front. The mere acquaintance with the ways of managers and actors is worth a good deal of time, but the familiarity with the working of a piece is the main thing. The most successful American comedy that has yet appeared was written by a walking lady who never would have made an actress if she had staid on the stage forty years, but who utilized her experience to some purpose on quitting the stage. The most successful money-making sensational piece of late years was written by a scene painter, and the poorest actors frequently write very good pieces, while good actors who possess talent for scribbling, almost always do well as playwrights. Only one fault do they all exhibit, without any exception, so far as my experience has run: they are all utterly oblivious of the meaning of the eighth commandment, and seem to regard plagiarism not as theft, but as a favor to the author whose literary property they steal. This is the worst that can be said about actor-authors, and to the rule there are no exceptions that ever I heard of. Actor-authors are unmitigated pirates of the most utterly unscrupulous sort, who crib whole chapters out of novels, word for word, without shame or acknowledgment, and write successful plays by filching other men's ideas, making a patchwork. Perhaps the most shameless of the whole raft of these actor-authors is Lester Wallack, whose two plays, the "Veteran" and "Rose-dale," are marvels of patchwork of this sort. In the first all the Arab characters and several scenes, language and all, are taken straight out of Captain James Grant's nearly forgotten novel of the, "Queen's Own," and in the second most of the plot and the most successful comic scene of the play come bodily from Colonel Hamley's "Lady Lee's Widowhood," another military novel. The provoking part of all this thieving in Wallack is, that other parts of his plays show that the man has talent enough to write, if he were not too lazy to work; but this preference of theft to labor is so common among actor-authors that nothing will ever check it but an extension of the copyright law in the interests of justice; for moral sense in the direction of the eighth commandment seems to be utterly unknown among them. The truth of the old adage about "hawks pikeing out hawks 'een" is, however, curiously exemplified in the scruples which the same men display as managers toward appropriating a play, no matter how much of a piracy in itself, without payment to the playwright, unless he be a Frenchman, when the case at once becomes altered. Novelists and foreign dramatists having no legal rights, actor-authors appear to think they have also no moral rights entitled to respect. This is the one stain on the character of actor-authors from which not one of them is free, or ever has been free, no matter what his time and nation. From Shakespeare to Brougham, from Molière to Boucicault, the lustre of all their talents has been dimmed by this one dirty vice of filching the product of other men's brains; and the only dramatists free from the reproach have been those who have come to the boards from outside, like Bulwer and Sheridan. I do not here mean to include avowed translations like "Pizarro" and the "Stranger," nor avowed dramatizations of novels like Boucicault's "Heart of Mid Lothian." Such things are not thefts, any more than the use of history for the basis of a novel; they are open to all. But the unavowed stealing of unknown French plays, the surreptitious filching of chapters from forgotten novels, no more becomes right after quoting Shakespeare and Molière as exemplars, than cowardice and treason become noble because St. Peter sneaked out of Caiaphas's petty sessions once on a time.

Spite of this degrading meanness, however, there is no doubt that actor-authors have so far written the greatest number of good plays that hold the stage, in consequence of just one thing, their _experience_, which reveals itself as the first quality necessary in the dramatist. After experience of the stage, the next qualification that meets us in such dramatists as Shakespeare, Dumas, Lope de Vega, and Boucicault, is their marvellous fecundity of invention, implying an amount of information on various subjects simply amazing. Nothing comes amiss to them, and they seem to have a smattering of every science, to have skimmed the private history of the whole world. Variety of information comes next after stage experience. A man may be a great fool on most subjects, and yet write a fair acting play from stage experience alone, if he filches enough, but if he have plenty of general information, he will be able to double the value of his play, while some plays have been made quite successful by the use of nothing but stage experience and some special line of information, by men who could not have written an original story to save their necks.

Last of the qualifications for dramatic success come _ideas_, and the possession of ideas implies also genius or at least talent, without which, after all, the really successful dramatist cannot work and leave enduring work behind him. All the ephemeral successes of the stage lack this one element, the one thing that cannot be taught, but must be born in a man. With genius, with real talent, everything is at last possible to a writer ambitious of stage success. Like Bulwer, he may make failure after failure, before he gets the _entrée_ to theatrical life, but once there he will get past the portal and command success at last. Experience and information will be acquired with more or less labor, but he will get them at last, and then will be content to add his voice to the last canon of theatrical conditions to success:

XVII. Stage experience, varied information, and talent, are the _sine quâ non_ of the dramatist who hopes for success.

FREDERICK WHITTAKER.

SAINT LAMBERT'S COAL.

Wild hordes had sacked the minster: scattered
Upon the broken pavement, lay
The crash of blazon'd windows, shattered
By barbarous knights in wanton fray,
Who wrought the wreck and went their way.

Across pale, pictur'd faces, gashes
Showed where their godless blades had thrust
Profane defiance; and with ashes
Strewn was the altar, and encrust
Was chalice, pyx, and urn with rust.

No lamp shed forth its sacred glimmer,
No incense breathed its hallowed fume;
And as the rudded eve grew dimmer,
Shadows as ghostly as the tomb
Wrapped choir and nave and aisle in gloom.

Anon athwart the murk came stealing
Far floatings of a chanted hymn,
Up-borne in gusto from floor to ceiling,
As faintly a procession dim
Out of the darkness seemed to swim.

Onward it wended--nor did falter,
Till from their midmost, one cried--"Who
Bethought him of the quenchéd altar?
Alas! how guide the service through?
Would God might light the lamp anew!"

"_Amen!_" came through the silence drifting:
And from the train, therewith, out stole
A little acolyte, who, lifting
His surplice hem, displayed a coal
That glowed, yet left the garment whole.

"_Christus illuminator!_" kneeling,
The astonied Bishop cried. "From whom
Can light else come? Thyself revealing.
Flash forth that faith to chase our gloom,
Which burns and yet doth not consume!

"Such faith is thine, O Lambert! Kindle
Thereat the altar-lamp, and let
Its lustre, henceforth, never dwindle!"
He took the coal, the light reset,
And there, they tell, 'tis burning yet.

MARGARET J. PRESTON.

ENGLISH TRAITS.

One of the earliest records of modern history in regard to the race which peopled the old England and the New refers to its beauty. Most of us have heard the story: how three young captives, brought from an almost unknown island on the verge of civilization, and indeed at the western limit of the then known world, were exposed for sale in Rome, and how Gregory the Great, not yet Pope, seeing them, was struck by their beauty and asked what they were, and being told, _Angli_ (English), replied "_Non Angli, sed angeli_" (not Angles, but angels); which was a tolerable pun for a future Pope and saint. This was twelve hundred years ago; and since that time the English race has enjoyed the reputation (subject to some carping criticism, due to the self-love of other peoples) of being the handsomest in the world. It is well deserved; indeed, if it were not, it would long ago have been jealously extinguished. Not improbably, however, the impression made upon Gregory was greatly due to the fair complexion, blue eyes, and golden brown hair of the English captives, which, indeed, are mentioned in the story. For southern Europe is peopled with dark-skinned, dark-haired races; and the superior beauty of the blonde type was recognized by the painters, who always, from the earliest days, represented angels as of that type. The Devil was painted black so much as a matter of course that his pictured appearance gave rise to a well-known proverb; ordinary mortals were represented as more or less dark; celestial people were white and golden-haired; whence the epithet "divinely fair." When therefore the good Gregory saw the fair, blue-eyed English youths, his comparison was at once suggested, and his pun was almost made to his hand. And I am inclined to believe that it is of much later origin, although he ought to have made it; just as Sidney Smith ought to have said to Landseer, when he asked the Reverend wit to sit for his portrait, "Is thy servant a dog that he should do the thing?" and as the innkeeper ought to have said to Mr. Seward that he was not Governor of New York, but "Thurlow Weed, by thunder?" but did not. In each of these cases, however, and in all such, a significant fact is at the bottom of the story, which otherwise would have no reason for its being.

It is hardly true, however, that other races do not produce individuals approaching as nearly to an ideal standard of beauty as any that are seen among the English. These are found, as we all know, among the various Latin races, the Celts and the Sclaves, and even, as Mr. Julian Hawthorne himself would hardly venture to deny, among the Teutons, the very Saxons themselves. Who has not seen French women and French men, Italians, Spaniards, Russians, Poles, Irish, and even Germans of both sexes, distinguished by striking and captivating personal beauty both of face and figure? But the average beauty of the English race appears to be in a marked degree above that of all others. Among a thousand men and women of that race there will not only be found more "beauties" than among the same number of other races, but the majority will be handsomer, "finer," more symmetrically formed, better featured, with clearer skins, and a more dignified bearing and presence than the majority of any other European race with which they may be compared.

A notion was for some time in vogue that this English distinction did not obtain in America, but that the race had degenerated here. It was a mere notion, having its origin in a prejudiced perversion of isolated facts; in the desire of book-writing travellers to find something strange, and also derogatory, with which to spice their pages; and in a craving, which amounts to a mild insanity, among European people, and particularly among all classes of the British nation, to lay hold of some distinctive "American" quality, whether physiological, literary, political, or other, and label it, and file it away, and pigeon-hole it for reference by way of differencing "Americans" from themselves.

The notion, I venture to say, was essentially absurd. That a race of men should materially change its physical traits in the course of two centuries, under whatever conditions of climate or other external influence, is inconsistent with all that we know upon that subject. The very pyramids protest against it by their pictured records. According to the history of mankind, as it is thus far known to us, such a change could not take place within such a period, unless to external influences of great modifying power there were added such an intermingling of races as has not yet taken place here more than in England itself, although plainly it is to come in future generations. Up to thirty years ago the intermarriage of Yankees--by which name, for lack of another, I designate people of English blood born in this country--with Irish and Germans was so rare as practically, in regard to this question, not to exist; and at that period there was not in England itself a more purely English people than that of New England.

This notion of English degeneracy in "America" has, however, been rapidly dying out in Europe, and even in England during the last ten or fifteen years. The change has been brought about partly by the events of our civil war; for the blindest prejudice saw that that war was not fought by a physically degenerate people; and partly by the increase of knowledge obtained, not from carping travellers writing books to please a carping public, but from personal observation. This I know, not by inference, but from Englishmen and others who have been here, and who have not written books. The belief, formerly prevalent, that "American" women had in their youth pretty doll faces, but at no period of life womanly beauty of figure, is passing away before a knowledge of the truth, and I have heard it scouted here by Englishmen, who, pointing to the charming evidence to the contrary before their eyes, have expressed surprise that the travelling book-writers, who had given them their previous notions on the subject, could have so misrepresented the truth. A colonel in the British army, who had been all over the world, and with whom I was in New England during the war, at a time when a large number of our volunteers were home on furlough, expressed constantly his surprise at the "fine men" he saw going about in uniform, the equals of whom he said that he had never seen as a whole in any army; although he did not hesitate to express his dislike of their uniform, or his disgust at the slouchy, slovenly way in which they carried themselves. I was ready to believe what he said; for I had then just seen the Coldstreams in Montreal; and I had before seen the Spanish regular troops in Cuba, who, even the regiment of the Queen, were so small that they looked to me like toy soldiers to be kept in a box; and a very bad box they soon got into. During my recent visit to England, after I had been in London a week or two, having previously visited other places, a London friend who had twice visited "the States," said to me, "Well, I suppose you've been looking at the people here and comparing them with those you've left at home?" "Yes, of course." "Do you find much difference in them really?" "No; very little; almost none." "You're right--quite right. There may be a little more fulness of figure and a little more ruddiness; but it's been greatly exaggerated--greatly." One reason for this exaggeration I learned from the remarks of two English friends to me in this country. Some years ago I took one, a gentleman who had travelled a good deal, and who held an important position in the Queen's household--and a very outspoken man he was--to a "private view," at which for a wonder there was not a miscellaneous throng, but just enough people to fill the rooms pleasantly. As we sat together after a tour, looking at the company, I asked him to tell me the difference between the people he saw there and those he would see on a like occasion at the Royal Academy. He sat looking around him in silence for so long a time that I thought he was going to pass my question unnoticed, when he said, "I can see no difference; none at all; except that there would not be quite so many pretty women there, and that there would be more stout old people." The other, a lady, who also did not hesitate in her criticisms, remarked that the chief difference in appearance between people of the same condition here and in England was that here she "didn't see any fat old men." _She_ said nothing about fat old women; not, however, that she herself was either fat or old.

There is this difference among old people; although even this has been exaggerated; and it is this which gives a certain color of truth to the notion I have referred to. English men and women do not always grow stout and red-faced as they grow old; but after they have passed middle age more of them do tend to rubicundity and to protuberant rotundity of figure than people of the same age do in "America." The cause, I am quite sure, is simply--beer. Both the color and the rotundity come to a large proportion of the Americans who live in England and drink English beer, in English allowance; which, it need hardly be said, could not be the case if there had been any essential change in the type of the race. But among men under forty and women under thirty, the difference either in complexion or figure is almost inappreciable.

As to the women, there are at least as many in England who are spare and angular of figure as here, and of those who have not passed thirty I think rather more. The London "Spectator" said some years ago, in discussing the Banting diet, I believe, that "scragginess was more common in England among women than stoutness"; and it is remarkable that the French caricatures of Englishwomen always represent them as thin, bony, and sharp-featured. In this of course there is a little malice; but it shows the impression left upon the French people by their near neighbors. I cannot do better here than to offer my readers, in the following passage, a share in one of my letters written home; it has at least the advantage of recording on the spot impressions received by me after careful examination under the most favorable circumstances. I was writing about the beauty of the parks:

"It is amazing to see the great space of this little island that these English folk have reserved for air, and health, and beauty; and it is for all, the poorest and meanest as well as the richest and noblest; there are no privileged classes in this. As to the effect upon their health, I suppose it must be something, but it shows for very little. G---- [a gentleman who is very strong upon the subject of degeneracy, which I have always doubted] will laugh and say that it was a foregone conclusion with me, but to set aside my inference he will be obliged to take the position that there is nothing so misleading as facts, except figures. I have now seen many hundreds of thousands of Englishmen and Englishwomen of all classes. I have placed myself in positions to examine them closely. At the great Birmingham musical festival my seat gave me full view of the house, chorus and all. The vast hall was filled with people of the middle and upper middle classes, and at one end with members of the highest aristocracy, who occupied seats roped off from the rest, and called 'the President's seats'--the President being the Marquis of Hertford. At the end of the performance, both evening and morning, I hastened to a place where a great part of the audience would pass close before me. At Westminster Abbey I stood again and again at the principal door and watched the congregation as they came out; I have done the same in swarming railway stations; I have walked through country villages and cathedral towns; I know the human physiognomy of all quarters of London pretty well; I have seen the Guards and the heavy dragoons, and I say without any hesitation that thus far I find that the men and the women are generally smaller and less robust than ours, and above all that the women are on the whole sparer and less blooming than ours. The men are ruddier on the whole; that is, there are more ruddy men here; but the number of men without color in their cheeks seems to be nearly the same as with us. The apparent inconsistency of what I have said is due to the fact that the ruddy men and women here are generally so very red that they produce a great impression of redness, an impression that lasts and remains salient in the memory. A delicately graduated and healthy bloom is not very common. And so the fat women are so very fat that they seem to take up a great part of the island. But the little London 'gent,' with whom Leech has made us so familiar, you meet everywhere in the great city. Sunday before last, loitering in the cloisters of Westminster, I stopped to look at a tablet in the wall. There were three of these men before me, and the number soon increased to seven. I looked over _the hats_--round felt hats--of the whole seven without raising my chin. I remember that like Rosalind I am 'more than common tall,' but I never did anything like that at home. At the Horse Guards they put their finest men as sentinels, mounted, on each side of the gate. Well, they are fine fellows, and would be very uncomfortable chaps to meet, except in a friendly way; a detachment of them riding up St. James's street the other morning, with their cuirasses like mirrors, and the coats of their big black horses almost as bright, was a spectacle which it seemed to me could not be surpassed for its union of military splendor and the promise of bitter business in a fight; but Maine, or Vermont, or Connecticut, or Kentucky can turn out whole regiments of bigger and stronger men. Colonel M----, whom I met in Canada, said the same to me when he thought he was talking to an Englishman. I wonder that he ever forgave me the things he said to me during his brief self-deception; for they were true. But he was a good fellow and bore no malice. Nevertheless, you sometimes meet here a very fine man, or a big, blooming beauty, and in either case the impression is stronger and more memorable than in a like case it is apt to be with us; chiefly, I think, because of their dress and 'set up,' which in such cases--as in that of the Guards and Dragoons--is apt to be very pronounced."

I will add here, in passing, that this English "set up," particularly in the case of almost all Englishmen of any pretensions, is distinctive, and is in a great measure the cause of the impression of superior good looks and strength on their side. It appears in a marked degree in all military persons, rank and file as well as officers, and in the police force, the men of which are on the whole inferior in stature and bulk to ours--leaving the big Broadway squad, most of them Yankees, out of the question--and yet it is far superior in appearance to ours, owing to the "set up" of the men, and the way in which they carry themselves. I observed that although the upper classes contained a fair proportion, although no notable excess, of large and well-formed men and women, the burly men and the big-bodied, heavy-limbed women were generally of the lower and the lower middle class. This made me wonder where all the pretty housemaids and shop girls came from; for the prettiest faces, the most delicately blooming complexions, and the finest figures that I saw in England were among them. In a letter written from the Rose Inn at Canterbury, a cosy comfortable old hostlery, I find the following passage, which is to the purpose:

"I ate my bacon and eggs this morning in the coffee room, where at another table were three queer Englishwomen, yet nice looking--apparently a mother and two daughters. The elder daughter was, I will not say a lathy girl, but very slim not only in the waist, but above and below it. The mother and the younger were plump and rosy, absurdly alike, and with that cocked-up nose which is one of the very few distinctive peculiarities of figure that you see here, but even this very rarely; and their black hair was curled in tight curls all over their heads. I was struck by this, because curling hair is comparatively rare here, and I had expected to find it common. It was cut just like a man's, and plainly so because it would have been impossible to dress it if it were allowed to grow long in woman fashion. They were very jolly and pleasant, chaffing each other in low, soft voices, and breaking out in rich, sweet laughter. They looked just like boys masquerading in women's clothes; for the eldest was quite young looking and may have been an elder sister. The youngest, who was some seventeen or eighteen years old, looked very fair and blooming across the room, but when I came close to her, which I had an opportunity of doing, I found that her color, both white and red, was coarse, which is very often the case here when there is color. In the mother, or eldest sister, this coarseness was apparent even at a distance. But see, Lady ---- and her daughters, although pretty and elegant, had no tinge of color in their cheeks, and they were all as thin as rails, and the girls' hair, as well as their mother's, was as straight as fiddle strings. I came here expecting to see golden curls in plentiful crops, or at least not uncommonly. But it seems to me that I haven't seen a dozen curly-haired children since I have been in the country; and I have seen them--the children--by tens of thousands, and examined them closely, making memorandums of my observation. Nor have the ladies of this family (I am now at ----), Lady ---- and Mrs. ----, any more bloom than this paper, and they are both as thin as Lady ---- and her daughters; Mrs. ---- painfully so. The men, belonging of course to another family, are stout, well-built fellows enough, but the two other guests are as lean as greyhounds. I went to a little dinner party the other evening, and the carriage sent to the station for me (for they think nothing here of asking you fifteen or twenty miles to dinner even when you are not expected to stay over night) took also a Major General Sir ---- ----. I was told that he would join me, and I expected to see a portly, ruddy man of inches, with sweeping whiskers and moustache. I found a short, slender, meek-looking, pale-faced man; but his bearing was very military; he was a charming companion and the pink of courtesy. We entered the drawing-room together of course; but notwithstanding his rank, he waved me in before him, and my plain Mistership was announced before his titles. I have seen no men here at all equal in face or figure to General Hooker, General Hancock, General Augur, or General Terry, to say nothing of General Scott, who was something out of the common even with us. And Burnside, and McDowell, and Grant, and McClellan are all stouter men than you are apt to find here. The biggest men that I have seen were from the north, Yorkshire and Northumberland. Those of the south, particularly in Kent, are the shortest; although, as a Kent man said to me, they are generally 'stocky.'"[3]

[3] Mr. Jennings, late editor of the New York "Times," now London
correspondent of the "World," in a recent letter describing the
opening of Parliament by the Queen in person, on which occasion
the House of Lords was filled with peers and peeresses, writes
thus with regard to the beauty of the women and the presence and
figures of the men:

"On this occasion the ladies overflowed the House. Early as
it still was, the floor was covered with them--large blocks
of the benches were occupied, and the galleries were crowded.
All these ladies were in evening toilets, the peeresses
wearing coronets of diamonds--most of them being fairly
ablaze with diamonds on head and neck. If the daylight was
not very favorable to the shoulders or complexions of some of
these noble dames, the gorgeousness of their costumes and the
glitter of their precious stones served to divert attention
from the defects of nature or the ravages of time.... Not
many of these ladies in the House were very pretty, although
here and there was a face such as makes one stop short and
hold one's breath, and wonder at the divine perfection of
nature's handiwork when she is at her best.... As for the old
bald-headed gentlemen, some of them very short and stumpy,
they looked painfully like a collection of 'senators' in some
opera bouffe. One of them in particular, with four ermine
bars on his cloak, denoting his high rank, was exactly like
the funny-looking dummy Englishman which the French delight
to exhibit in their farces. He had very little hair left to
boast of, and that little was very red, and his face was
round and red also, and he was altogether so comic a little
man that one could not look at him without a smile. I could
not find out who he was till the royal procession entered,
when he suddenly reappeared in great pomp and state, standing
on the throne by the side of her Majesty's chair and carrying
the 'Cap of Maintenance.' Then I knew that he was the Marquis
of Winchester--fourteenth of that ilk--John Paulet by name,
and the Premier Marquis of England. So much for appearances."

Mr. Jennings, it should be remembered, is an Englishman; but he
lived eight or ten years in New York; and I may be pardoned for
saying that he carried away a constant reminder of "American"
beauty, and a standard of comparison which would be likely to
make him fastidious.

A New England man now living in England, who made his house very delightful to me, first by the presence of himself and his family, and next by the kindest and most considerate hospitality, is an ever present rebuke of the stoutest sort to the British notion of the physical degeneracy of the English race in "America." He, a Yankee of the old Puritan emigration, is five feet ten and a half inches high, is forty-eight inches, four good feet, in girth around the chest, weighs two hundred pounds, and yet has not the least appearance of portliness, rather the contrary. He is the only man I ever met whose friendly grip was rather more than I liked to bear. I spoke to his wife about his strength and his figure, and she told me that when he went to get his life insured here the surgeons said that they very rarely saw such a powerful, finely formed, and perfectly healthy man as he is, and never any finer or healthier. That would be impossible. And as he is so was his father. Were they exceptions? Only of a sort that constantly occur among real Yankees--"Americans" whose families have been in the country for generations, and who are the only proper examples of the influence of the climate and the social conditions of the country.

I have, perhaps, said too much upon this subject of the comparative physical condition of the race in the two countries; but I have been led to do so because of the very great inconsistency I found between the facts and the common notion as to stout Englishmen and lean "Americans," blooming, buxom Englishwomen and pale, slender "American" women--a notion which one writer has repeated, parrot-like, after the other, until even we ourselves have accepted it without question. Like many other notions which no one disputes, it is false. But the world has gone on accepting it and assuming it to be true until it has so taken possession of the general mind that if in a room full of English people only one man were found ruddy and burly, and only one woman blooming and well rounded (and this or something very like it I have seen more than once), they would be picked out and spoken of as English-looking, to the disregard of all the others. The exceptions would be taken as examples of the rule; and this even by the English themselves, so swayed are we by tradition and authority, even in such an everyday matter. Nay, even I myself, skeptical and carping, was thus misled. The steamer, going out, was filled chiefly with English people. Two of my fellow passengers I selected in my mind as notably and typically English, not only in person, but in bearing. They proved to be, one a Massachusetts Yankee and the other a Western man; but both had from association contracted English habits of dress and of manner. Two Englishwomen, however, attracted my particular attention. One was, I think, the very largest human female I ever saw outside of a caravan. She was a fearful manifestation of the enormous development of solid flesh which the British fair sometimes attain. As she stood by her husband she was the taller from the ear upward. She weighed about twenty stone. I think that a plumb line dropped from the front of her corsage would have reached the deck without touching her skirts. Her tread was hippopotamic. And yet she showed traces of beauty, and not improbably had been a fine fair girl; and even at the present time she managed to effect a very palpable waist. I mused wonderingly upon the process by which she did this; but still more upon that sad gradual enormification by which she passed from a tall blooming beauty into her present tremendous proportions. The other was exactly the reverse. She could hardly be called ill looking in the face, but her pale, blank, unfeatured countenance reminded one instantly of a sheep. She was a washed-out, and although young, a faded creature, with no more shoulders or hips than my forefinger. And yet she was a perfect English type, and so like some of John Leech's women that I could not look at her without internal laughter. Her husband--for even such women by some mysterious process known to themselves will get husbands--was like unto her in face, in feature, and in expression; and yet he was so strikingly, so aggressively British in look and in manner that I heard some Yankees on board say that they would like to kick him. And I somewhat shared their prejudice; of which before we landed I learned to be ashamed; for I found him a very intelligent, well-informed, pleasant man, reserved in his manners, and although firm in his opinions, which were strongly British, very respectful of other men's, and very careful of giving offence. His union of firmness and courtesy seemed to me worthy of admiration; and if he did wish to kick any of the Yankees on board, for which in one or two cases I could have forgiven him, I am sure that he never let the desire manifest itself in their presence.

Another prevalent notion, which is reciprocal between the people of the two countries, is mistaken according to my observation. It is generally believed, or at least very often said in "America," that the men in England are very much handsomer than the women; and conversely it is commonly believed in England, or said, that the women in "America" are handsomer than the men. An absurd and truly preposterous notion, as will be seen upon a moment's reflection. For the women in both countries are the mothers of both the men and the women; and the men are the fathers of both the men and the women; and as some of the women are of their fathers' types and some of the men of their mothers', the imputed difference of the two in personal beauty could not be brought about. It is physiologically impossible that the women of a race should be handsomer than the men, and _vice versa_.

It is nevertheless true that the men in England are on the whole more attractive to the eye than the women, and that the women in "America" are generally much more attractive than the men. The cause of this is a fact very distinctive of the social surface of the two countries. I have spoken of the "set up" and the bearing of the men in England. It is very remarkable, and is far superior to anything of the kind that is found even among the most cultivated people in this country, except in comparatively rare individual cases. But in England it is common; it is the rule. There, from the middle classes up, a slovenly man is a rare exception. There men are almost universally neat and tidy, and they carry themselves with a conscious self-respect. They do not slouch. They do not go about, even in the morning, with coats unbuttoned, skirts flying, and their hands in their overcoat pockets. They dress soberly, quietly, with manly simplicity, but almost always in good taste, and with notable neatness. They are manly looking men, with an air of conscious manhood. Moreover, in England the man is still recognized as the superior. England has been called the purgatory of horses and the paradise of women. But that saying came from the continent of Europe, where women, except in the very highest and most cultivated classes, are not treated with that tenderness and consideration for their weakness and their womanly functions which I am inclined to think is somewhat peculiar to the English race. I should call England the paradise of men; for there the world is made for them; and women are happy in making it so. An Englishman who is the head of a family is not only master of his house, but of the whole household. His will is recognized as the law of that household. No one thinks of disputing it. It is not deemed unreasonable that in the house which he provides and keeps up his comfort and his convenience should be first considered, or that, as he is responsible for his household both to the law and to society, authority should go with responsibility. And yet--perhaps for this very reason--wives there have the household affairs more absolutely in their hands than they have here. A man whose absolute authority is acknowledged, practically as well as theoretically, is very ready to make concessions and to rid himself of what at any time he may assume. Real monarchs, like the Czars or like the Tudors, are careless of the protection of royal etiquette. The consciousness of this acknowledged or rather unquestioned superiority shows itself in the men's faces, and in their bearing, simple and unpretending as their manner is. Besides all this, men in England (I am leaving out of consideration the lower classes) show the effect of cultivation, of breeding, of discipline. Even in the middle classes they are well informed, and, what is of more importance to the present question, they have been taught to behave themselves respectfully to others. They do so behave; they feel that they ought to do so and that they must. There are two gods worshipped in England, and one is propriety; and a very good god he is, when he is not made a Juggernaut. The result of all this is a very different man in appearance from him who generally pervades "America." The latter may be, and generally is, as handsome physically as the former; he may be, and generally is, as good morally; but the one generally shows for all that he is and perhaps for more, and the other does not, and frequently does for less. And yet again; among such men in England another sort who, for example, say "hadn't oughter," and "have came," and who spit upon the floor, are not generally found mingling. They are kept in social pens by themselves. And thus in judging of English society they are left out.

A comparative estimate of Englishwomen is too serious and far too complicated a subject to be treated except in an article by itself.

RICHARD GRANT WHITE.

A DEAD VASHTI.

Do we indeed desire the dead should still be near us, at our side?

"I do not know how it is with others," said the spirit, looking away from the Sunday child to the red and spectral moon that was arising from the tossing ocean into a mass of heavy, broken clouds; "for since my death I have been alone; but when I left my human form I left few of the affections, the passions of life, and thus death has made but little change in me. I cannot believe, however, that all the dead carry as much of their old life into the new as I have, for few can be cursed as I have been with a granted prayer. What my life in the world of spirits might have been I cannot tell you; but I know that all I have suffered comes from my folly, my wickedness in praying for my own will! But my life upon earth had been so complete, so happy, it seemed as if I might be justified in thinking that it ought to give me the same bliss if it was made eternal. My love for Philip was so pure and true that it seemed as fit that it should govern me in one life as in the other! Other women, I suppose, have loved their husbands as well; but few would have had the temerity to stake their eternal happiness on human fidelity as I did! But my love was a part of my being, and I thought no more of its extent or duration than of the density of the air I breathed. It was never put to the test of neglect or misunderstanding, and was never subject to question. Looking back now, it seems impossible that I ever lived without Philip; for all my days before I knew him are but fragments of a half-forgotten time. Of his love I had no doubt. It satisfied me. And we were not only lovers, but also comrades. I was but an amateur where he was a master, but I followed him attentively, eagerly. I like to remember those days, when we wandered like children through the woods, when we climbed, sketched, laughed, and sang together, and I often wonder if any mortals are as happy now. At home we had our hours of work, of merry talk, and happy plans. We had the excitements of the exhibition days, the pleasures of social life, and then we had also my dear little girl, our Nellie! Sometimes I fancy that such happiness cannot die; that if our words and actions perpetuate themselves, such vivid experiences cannot fade away, and that I may some time find it all passed into an eternal form! But these are dreams; for every thing has changed, and I know that nothing can be eternal that is not based upon truth, upon faithfulness.

"You can understand, although you are so young, and are just learning how love transfigures everything, that my life with my husband was so complete that we did not dream of any change; we did not comprehend that we could ever be parted. I have heard women say that they have trembled when they were very happy, knowing that there must be an end to their joy; but I had no such fears. Still it came to me, and in a horrible shape.

"I knew that I was very ill, and that Philip was anxious and wretched, but I never thought that I might die. My fierce pain gave me no hint of death, and so it came almost without warning. I would not believe that I must go away, and that this brief illness meant death was incredible, preposterous! I shrank from thinking of it; I cried out that I would not die; I would not leave Philip! I begged my physicians for life; I entreated Heaven to spare me; I almost broke my husband's heart by my wild cries for life. It was a bitter struggle! I prayed for annihilation--for anything but the knowledge that we were separated. Do not think that I forgot Nellie, or that I did not grieve to part with her; but other mothers have loved their children for the father's sake, and I could have surrendered anything to have kept him. I could trust her to a Higher love, but for us there was nothing but daily, hourly union.

"The night before I died--for who can thrust away the inevitable!--I lay close in Philip's arms as he knelt by my bedside. I was almost helpless, but I clung body and soul to him. It was poor comfort to tell each other that this was but a temporary separation; that we had yet an eternity in which to live together. Eternity was indefinite and far away, while our parting, his lonely life, my waiting hours, were so near. I cannot forget how he wept as he held me close, closer to him, and how his courage failed as he realized how fast my hour of departure was hastening to us! I do not now know how it was that we did not die together that night! We talked of it, and it seemed so easy and natural that we thought we could not help it; but the daylight came, and we were still alive, clinging to each other.

"But this night of agony did more than death alone could have done, for it shaped my future. Out of our frantic grief there came a prayer that has fixed me here, and which has taught me of what love is made! Together that night we besought Heaven to give me no other happiness than that I had known in life, but to let me linger near my home, and be with my husband until he died. I cried out that any other existence would be hell to me; and with desperate hands we beat against the doors of prayer, and pleaded for power to choose our own future.

"The next night I died. All day I had laid on my bed passive and quiet. My grief had worn me out, and I could not have spoken had I wished. Philip sat by me holding my hand, but he too was silent. I felt vaguely that mine was the easier task; that living could be harder than dying; but I had no words with which to comfort or strengthen him. I could faintly smile when he would bend his head, and kiss my nerveless hand, and I wondered if he knew how much I liked to lie quietly and look at him. Yet I did not care for it all! I remember the watchful indifference with which I regarded my physician's face, and followed the motions of the nurse about the room. I remember my sister's tears, and how little Nellie sat by me on the bed with her doll, until she fell asleep on my pillow. I remember how the hours measured themselves away, how the sunshine deepened and faded, how the night came, and all grew dim and silent. An absolute hush rested upon the earth. The fire blazed, but it had ceased its crackling; the watchers moved noiselessly about the room, the street had become quiet, and everything seemed awaiting some coming, some solemn change. As Philip leaned over me, and I saw his lips move, but heard no sound, I fancied that perhaps my hearing had gone from me, but I cared nothing for it! Then the fire grew dim, the room seemed full of shadows, the lights faded away, and my eyes became heavy, but I did not care to shut them, or to brush away the film that covered them. My breath gained substance, and began to push its way through my lungs, my throat seemed closing, and then suddenly everything changed!

"It is not to my purpose, even were I allowed, to tell you anything of the conditions of my present life, or to explain to you how I can reveal myself to you, and why it was that Philip could never see me. All that I am to tell you is connected with this earth.

"After the first surprise was over I turned to Philip, who was kneeling by the bed. He could not believe that I was dead, but called vehemently on me to look at him. I remember the joy with which I sprang to his side, and putting my arms around, tried to turn his head away from the dead body to my living, happy face! But it was all in vain, in vain! He was deaf, he was blind to me! Our prayer, our compact was as nothing: he knew only the dead wife! I was as indifferent to the body as to a shadow on the wall; but to be clinging to him unrecognized, unfelt, terrified me, shocked me! I cannot dwell on this, but after all was over, and the body carried away, he was still ignorant of my presence. I followed his aimless steps through the house; I stood by his chair as he sat idly at his easel; I watched with him through the long nights, but he never suspected that I was there! How often when he has called me have I answered, and when he has prayed for one glimpse of me have I clung to him, but had no sign from him to tell me that he even blindly guessed that our prayer might have been granted! I have put my arms around him; my head has lain upon his shoulder; I have passionately called upon him, but still been as empty air! Yet it comforted me to be with him, and I could not doubt that some time he would come to know of my presence. It was impossible, I thought, for him to dwell in such an atmosphere of love and always be unconscious of it. Why, we thought only of each other, we longed only for each other, and so he must at last come to know how near I was, and then, I thought with joy, waiting would lose its pain!

"I could laugh as I now think of this fond and foolish fancy--of my trust in time, in a man's intuition! Why, I did not even know that men do not nurse grief as we do; and I was surprised by Philip's resolute bravery in turning to work, and trying to forget in study all he had lost in love. But do not think it was easy for him! I was much too intimately connected with his art not to be always suggested by it; and my dumb and unknown presence awakened none of the old inspiration of our talks, our mutual sympathy and interest. Sometimes his desire for me became so intense that I felt that my time for recognition had surely come, and I have knelt, clinging to him, waiting for that blessed smile of knowledge, but all in vain!