Part 26

A countryman of Lafayette and Bartholdi, this gentleman is not unknown to some Americans, more especially perhaps, to some of us New Yorkers. He is an honorary member of most of the Fifth Avenue clubs, anything but unwelcome at their chance gatherings, while at their premeditated banquets his appearance--and he always happily times it--is commonly hailed by a plausive clapping of hands simultaneous with the vocal salutation. But a person of genial temper is not only very likely to be a popular man’s man, but also, and beyond that, a favourite with the ladies. For it is something less venial than mere error in the old philosopher penally branded with a horrible name--misogynist, I think--and a soggy soul he must have been; it was something less venial than error in him to say, as he did, that women, however apt to that grand passion which makes the one divine rapture of life, have nevertheless a constitutional incapacity for good-fellowship, that is, in the masculine acceptation of the term. Assuredly, Hymen knows, too few of them practically demonstrate their capacity for it. Some musky dew-drops from the Garden expelled Eve unwillingly carried away quivering in her hair. More than man, she partakes of the paradisiac spirit. Under favourable conditions evincing a quicker aptitude to pleasure than man. How alert to twine the garland for the holiday! How instinctively prompt for that faint semblance of Eden, the picnic in the greenwood!

Now there is something in the fine, open, cheery aspect of the Marquis de Grandvin that conveys a thrill to these frames so exquisitely strung to happiness. Not invariably running the risk of incurring dark clouds from their lords, the dames and sisters of the Benedicks of the clubs, at their balls and parties, cast upon the Marquis that kindled merry glance which, according to the old French epic whose theme is Roncesvalles, the ladies bestowed upon Roland; not alone smitten by the fame and taken with the person of that noble accredited nephew of Charlemagne, but rightly inferring him to be not more a David against the Saracen than a champion against still more flagitious infidels, impugners of the sex. Yes, it is by instinct that all superior women recognise in this gentleman a cordial friend. Nor do they approve him the less for his friendly alliance with his charming sphere. This is a verity not out of keeping with another, namely, this feminine appreciation of the Marquis, gracious though it be, hardly extends to such of his qualities as partake of the Grand Style, as one may say, the highly elevated style; a style apparently demanding for its due appreciation a robust habit, in short, the masculine habit. For the most part, it is for his less exalted qualities that the ladies approve de Grandvin. They approve him for the way in which he contributes to those amenities and gaieties in which the sexes upon common ground participate, and wherein, thanks to their gallantry of good-nature, the countrymen of the Marquis de Grandvin have always excelled.

The foregoing hints as to what is the standing in America, or at least among some of us Americans, of the genial foreigner here ushered into a regard less exclusive; that, by patriotic intention goes before the recital, show that not alone in his own sweet France are the blended suavity and power of his genius estimated at their just rate, but that in the high circles of every European capital he is received with even more than good-will.

Though the subject of this theme, de Grandvin, be a patrician of hereditary mark, he was not consulted in the matter of his progenitors. At any rate, his cosmopolitan sympathies, transcending his class, go out to mankind. Under auspicious circumstances make his acquaintance, and whatever your degree in the social scale, you will find him friendly company, cordial and frank; without condescension, a solemn popery he was never guilty of.

As to his title, if here he be introduced as the Marquis, it is only because his troops of friends on both sides of the water, not excluding even the Levellers among them, insist upon retaining for him an inherited prefix which he himself long ago renounced; and doubtless for the reason that any appellative at all savouring of arbitrary rank is unsuitable to a man of liberal and catholic mind.

In defence of their insistent employment of the title, a caprice hardly compatible with their political principles, the Levellers of his acquaintance, candid in inconsistency, freely admit that somehow there is something in it felicitously befitting the character innately noble of de Grandvin.

But some fuller account of this genial paragon, upon whom are concentred the otherwise diverging suffrages of the divers parties in Church and State--some account less restricted by considerations of space--is in course of preparation, and if clamorously demanded, may hereafter appear. For the present purpose it will be enough, perhaps, if an outlined picture or two serve to suggest the filled portrait.

Though not so plentiful as our peaches in a good year, there are men of such noble quality that being in their company enriches and mellows one. The wisdom they by contact give out is not celibate and sterile like Solomon’s, but wedded to enjoyment, and hence productive. They would seem to be a confirmation of the otherwise disputable maxim of Spinoza, that every advance in joy implies an ascent in the scale of intelligence and capability. The influence of such a man insensibly disposes one to gentle charities, brave conceptions, heroic virtues. They have a suggestion of the potentialities in the unvitiated Adam, a creature, according to hallowed authority, originally created but a little lower than the angels. Almost invariably these men have physical beauty; and the moral charm is in keeping with that, apparently a spontaneous emanation from it. It is as golden wine down in a golden chalice, where, seen through the lustre suffusing the shadow, the delicious fluid looks to be the exuded gathered sap of the precious metal.

It was of the Marquis de Grandvin that the landscape painter, B. Hobbema Brown, an inoffensive sort of theoretical misanthrope, with a treacherous flow of loving-kindness in him--to borrow one of his own eccentric phrases; the same B. Hobbema who, were his significant reticence on the point, no unwise thing in him, by the way, conjecturally rendered into words, would seem in his own private judgment to have been treated illiberally enough by the art-dealers, art-critics, and academic hanging-committees, to say nothing of the art public; well, it was of some other than the Marquis that Hobbema B., returning in moonlight from a choice assemblage, where he had been introduced to him, and undergone the inevitable fascination of the contact; it was of him that Brown enthusiastically exclaimed to his companion: ‘What a godsend to meet such a man! He is a set-off against the battalions of his contraries. Between you and me, mankind taken in a lump are the gods’ job-lot; but, by heaven, the race that can produce a Marquis de Grandvin is not promiscuously to be contemned!’

See there how the talismanic something in the sort of nature here indicated can operate upon another nature though of a temper not favourably disposed to receive its benign influence.

In the casual outcome of such a character, gay fancies and suggestions without stint, sallies of wit and bonhomie, all sharing more or less in a certain lyric glow; herein the spiritual bounty to us would seem to be an unconsciousness in the almoner, involving, too, an indifference or unconcern as to who may appropriate, or as to what purpose the appropriation may be applied. In this particular, what recks the Marquis de Grandvin, for example? He is the ripe peach-tree shedding its abundance, careless of the garner; he is the Prince of Golconda at the ball, some of whose innumerable diamond buttons drop from his raiment unheeded by him in the chance fleeting rubs and collisions of the dance.

But how transitory these prodigal improvident ones can prove!--and once gone, how soon all but good as forgotten! True, were an example here demanded, one adapted for popular illustration, not readily could it be supplied. Literature will not furnish it, since these natures, never directly expressing themselves in literature, have no memorial place in its records. Neither are they Alexanders and Napoleons that the fame which is all but independent of literature should trumpet them. Nevertheless, in local tradition, and comparatively recent, I do find a citable instance which, though below the grade, say, of a de Grandvin, and but in a minor way to the purpose, may perhaps for these reasons serve the better to actualise the general truth, in a measure bring it home.

Rufus Choate, the Boston advocate, when inspired to his best before an audience, how he exhilarated and elevated and transported his hearers. But he is gone; and all those fireworks of elfish passion and wit, where are they? Vainly in the Ceramicus of the libraries will you seek any enduring monument of that oratorical pyrotechnist. As well ransack the museums of Natural History for the bottled-up tail of Encke’s comet. What shall we say, then? Are there natures strong to draw and enthrall, yet whose influence is like that of the magnet, only operative as a bodily presence? Yes, withdraw the magnet and all is over. And holds this true as to the Marquis de Grandvin? Yea, and shall he also at last vanish, sailing into the boundless Nil, leaving no phosphorescent wake or magic moon-glade behind? Shall naught remain of his cherub sparkle and spirit?--nothing of all those ineffable qualities that make him what Raphael, Milton’s affable archangel, would be seen to be were he commissioned hither to dissuade mankind from ever perpetrating an inhumanity or a pun? And, oh, thou Admirable Crichton, nay, a thousandfold more admirable than he, for art thou not kindly as wise?--of all thy more sustained sallies of bright fantasy and humour, let alone thy erratic coruscations, shall nothing be crystallised into permanence? Nothing at last remain of our Lord Bountiful but the empty larder and void dusty bin? When we laud thee departed, shall the infidel twit us with--What were his assets? If the very plenitude and variety of thy shining gifts, and the preoccupation of thy social charm, if these indispose thee to drudge it as an ‘author,’ or operate as disqualifications; will no painstaking aspirant for the literary fame essay the task of methodising thee, or some little segment of thee, into the literary form? But even thy foremost disciple, Jack Gentian, though out of humble emulation he strive to follow thy devious footing, yet thy brow is among the stars; he ventures not to lift his head to thy height.

But I--ah, brimmed with thy genial flood--I, here, in the small hour, not long returned from a richer than Plato’s ‘Banquet,’ where thou didst pour from thy cornucopia, with a hand redundant as that of Millet’s seed-sower, the profusion of thy good things; I, audacious as I am, resolved upon an emprise.

The Marquis, methought, though glorious, is not of the gods, the more reproach to their synod; but I will make them yield a place for him on their golden benches; I will make him an Immortal! How? Monumentalise him to the remotest posterity in a book fragrant as violets, yet lasting as the Pyramids!

Yes, and as the prophets of old, announcing the mind of their deity, in some instances dramatically put on his personality, even so will I assume that of de Grandvin. How otherwise, indeed? since he it is that kindles me, inspires me, usurps me. I will snatch at those themes--New Italy and the Old Masters--wherein this very night we heard him so sportively romance. I will render the fine festivity of his tone, as well as the loftier touch; catch the rhythm of the waves of his seas of invention; swim out there; in short, I did by implication say to myself an insane thing--I will imitate the inimitable!

The issue of the temerarious resolve, how humiliating! And no wonder. The inordinate aim, and the inadequate achievement! The soaring ambition of the balloon, and its abrupt drop at a fatal puncture!

You who have basked in the vital beams of the Marquis, place not in contrast his own radiant aspect side by side with the dim delineation of him in the preceding sketch. And, for the attempted rendering of his thought and style in the piece to follow, take charitable example from the Persian, who in his comment upon the Icelandic version of the fervid orientalisms of Sadi and Hafiz, made humane allowance for the inherent difficulties and presumably numb fingers of the translator in penning it.

PORTRAIT OF A GENTLEMAN

John Gentian, Esq., or Major Gentian, or the Dean, or the Major, or Jack--for all these styles are his according to circumstances and the person mentioning or addressing him--is one of those socially notable characters whose names for all the notability will be found rather in the trustworthy City Directory than in the not-always-reliable Biographical Dictionary. Accordingly in the former ‘John Gentian’ is set down as hailing from the ‘Burgundy Club,’ the street and number of the club-house duly and accurately given. In brief, John Gentian is a bachelor having chambers on an upper story of the club-house, a privilege which at his solicitation was cheerfully accorded him, as by seniority of membership, to say nothing of happy qualifications in his character, Dean of the Chapter of _Burgundians_, for so do they denominate themselves, the brethren of that congenial fraternity.

This captain of the good fellows belongs to a transplanted shoot of Southern stock for two generations taking root and branching out in the North, within the borders of a State which, thanks to its relative geographical position and circumstances originating in that, least partakes of a sectional spirit. For now a fair period, ever since the latter part of 1865, the Dean has gone on in what would seem to be the after-mission of his life, namely, the dispensing of those less abbreviated greetings on the Avenue and considerate old-school hospitalities of the board, hardly practicable for the ‘business-man’ of our day, or, for that matter, the man of leisure either, unless abounding in natural benevolence backed up by its desirable concomitant, a comfortable bank account. Do not infer, however, that there is aught of Count D’Orsay superannuated, or Sir Charles Grandison, become senile, in our Dean of the Burgundians. He is no prodigal in airs and graces, and, on the contrary, sometimes takes singular liberties with etiquette, not out of ignorance, to be sure, or the Leveller’s contempt; no, but from a certain impulsive straightforwardness at times, hardly compatible with the abstract theory of a formalised gentlemanhood. Furthermore, he of late has permitted himself an easy latitude in his dress, evincing a lack of proper reverence for mercers and the mode. But yet more astray, he will, upon provocation--say, at some story of perfidy or brutal behaviour--incontinently rap out an expletive, startling to the ladies as Brandt’s flourished tomahawk at the London masked ball long ago. Then again, as if there were no end to his derelictions, he, when convenient to him, thinks nothing of carrying a brown paper parcel in the street rather than trouble the shopkeeper to send some inexpensive small matter to his rooms. Notwithstanding these deviations from the conventionally correct, there is that in the look of Major Gentian, something in the ‘cut of his jib,’ as the sailors say, if not in the end of his coat, that involuntarily inspires respect, yes, even in cabby himself. Cabby, before club-house or theatre, poised on the curb, expectant of the prey, would never dream of hailing him (_the Dean_) with the ambiguous ‘_Gent._’ Should he do so, whether out of ignorance or sly impudence, the Major would have to hold his temper well in hand to obviate a violent breach of the peace. To _Boss_ he objects not, that Dutch monosyllable having an honest bovine sound to it, and being, in fact, a natural localism of a city first settled by the Hollander; and if _master_ be not the word’s exact equivalent, it would be difficult to find one.

The Major’s propensity is to occasional unlicensed emphasis in his talk, a thing assuredly not commendable in anybody, very likely contracted from certain experiences, namely, his adventures in early life among our frontiersmen. Nor could his subsequent campaignings during our Civil War have served to displace the secular expletives by Biblical ejaculations such as those attributed to Cromwell’s pious troopers, though, indeed, the historical sceptics of our time have suggested doubts as to whether even these same martial deacons for all their psalmody in the tents did not during active operations against the foe indulge more or less in that ‘horrible swearing’ wherewith ‘the army in Flanders’ stands pre-eminently charged. To terrorise, if possible, this pertains to the true function of a soldier in the field. The point is energetically put by a Roman consul, one of those schooling his infantry on the eve of an eye-to-eye and hand-to-hand encounter of ancient war. To the same purpose is a well-known passage in Shakespeare. But there are various modes of terrorising as a preliminary to closely engaging. The Chinese Achilles, for example, hurls at the foe missiles of an unmentionable name in English, and which explode an abomination of stench. The sequence is hot air, though disagreeable, and what is ‘horrible swearing’ but the same? It is perhaps equally efficacious, and, in military ethics, why may not either be used as an adjunct to the artillery? But alas for the oathing. It becomes a habit, and so in times of peace is mechanically resorted to by the retired Christian veteran when there is no military call for it. In short, a soldier’s or sailor’s oath, however shocking to ears polite, is, at least when the man is not actually engaged in tussle with the foe public or private, but an idiocratic form given to whatever meaning may lurk in such phrases as Bless my soul! Thunder! Goodness gracious!

If, however, sin be not of the heart but the tongue, a theological opinion to which some would seem to incline, then woe to no few of our warriors in the late Civil Unhappiness. For, in that case, who but an orthodox Calvinist can with any adequacy appreciate the sublime disinterestedness of their patriotism, since from his point of view, not alone did our heroes jeopardise their lives for us, but mortally endangered their souls. And for what? Oh futility! in the attempts to terrorise enemies who, being our own countrymen, of course, refused to be terrified, though in the end fate, working through force, made them succumb.

Though of all men Jack be the least exclusive as to the company he keeps, and is anything but bumptious in his manner, there have not been wanting detractors who have insinuated a charge against him rather serious in a democratic community, namely, not alone a tendency to the aristocratic in general, but a weakness for certain gewgaws, that savour of the monarchical. True, at certain grand banquets, where as an honorary guest he sits at the high table, banquets more especially of those national societies wherewith our cosmopolitan city abounds--the St. Denis, St. Nicholas, St. Patrick, St. George, St. Andrew; on these occasions the Major a little lays himself open to invidious suspicion by wearing on his left lapel the eagle wings in gold of the Cincinnati, a venerable order whereof he who still reigns ‘first in the hearts of his countrymen’ was the original head. This decoration descended to the Major from his great-grandfather, a South Carolinian, a white-haired captain of infantry at the battle of Saratoga Springs, who therefore, being eligible as a Revolutionary officer, was enrolled in the order upon its formation just after the Peace.

Now, an inherited badge of the Cincinnati, every American, however ultra in his democracy, must allow to be something of which no other American need be ashamed. As the Major himself once demanded, and with some animation--‘Compared with this bit of old gold,’ tapping it with his hand, ‘what is the insignia of the Knights of the Golden Fleece or the Knights of the Spanish Order of the Holy Ghost? Gimcracks, sir! and the last, in fact as in name, but a ghostly sort of vanity.’

TO MAJOR JOHN GENTIAN, DEAN OF THE BURGUNDY CLUB

With thy rare single-mindedness, so resented by the ambidextrous double-dealers, a virtue putting thee in a worldly sense almost as much at disadvantage with them as thy single arm (the other lost in the Wilderness under Grant) assuredly would in a personal encounter; the genial humour of thy club-chat, garnished, as not unfrequently it is, even like to a holiday barn, with sprigs of classic parsley set about it or inserted cloves of old English proverbs, or yet older Latin ones equally commonplace, yet never losing the verity in them, their preservative spice; thy yellow, wrinkled parchment from Harvard hung up framed in thy bachelor quarters (so convenient to the Club); thy cherished eagle of the Society of the Cincinnati, a golden insignia thou polishest up and sportest on occasion; and--be it never omitted--thy high relish for the qualities of M. de Grandvin, through frequent communion with whom thou hast caught much of his generous spirit enhancing what is naturally thine own, yes, and something of his beaming aspect as well; insomuch that unto thee--after him--belong all the titles of good fellowship. Dean of the Burgundians, but I love thee! Though some of the points just cited might of themselves avail to denote thee, Dean, two other characteristics there are which peradventure may serve to signalise. Though a soldier of the Civil War, and a gazetted one, thou at all times, even upon that legal holiday which has undesignedly become the annual commemoration of that war, refrainest from wearing on thy person any memorial thereof. And, ever since the Peace, even as during the entire military contest, no superfluous syllable ever fell from thy lips touching the Southern half of thy country.

Now, as to the personal memorial, honourably worn by so many, if thou declined to wear it, was this because thou wert in sympathy with the spirit of thy deplored New England friend, Charles Sumner--whom, for what was sterling in him, thou didst so sincerely honour, though far from sharing in all his advocated measures? Years ago Grant and Lee joined hands at Appomattox. Art thou such an old-fashioned Roman in thy patriotism that thou wouldst consign to oblivion the fact that thy countrymen, claiming the van of Adam’s alleged advance, were but yesterday plunged in patricidal strife? And, for thy never being a partisan animadverter, is that because for all the free thought that beats in thy brain, at heart thou art the captive of Christ, yea, even something of a Christian, and though but dimly conscious of it, perhaps, art not unmindful of the divine text which implies that if sinners abound they are not in vain demarked from the saints by any parallel of latitude. Or, rather, that there are no saints, but that all mankind, not excluding Americans, are sinners--miserable sinners, as even no few Bostonians themselves nowadays contritely respond in the liturgy.

However this be, both the omission and the abstention referred to are in significant contrast with thy words relative to that elder war wherein thy grandfather was one of the ‘rebels,’ a contrast emphasised though involuntarily in thy social utterances upon every recurrence of our one national holiday.