Part 12

My present object in writing is likely, I think, to be popular--at least, with the ladies. I do not want to put down Crinoline--I only want to make room for it. Personally, I rather like it--I do, indeed, though I am a man. The fact is, I am a thoroughly well-disciplined husband and father; and I know the value of it. The only defect in my eldest daughter's otherwise perfect form, lies in her feet and ankles. She is married, so I don't mind mentioning that they are decidedly clumsy. Without Crinoline, they would be seen; with Crinoline (except when she goes up stairs), nobody has the slightest suspicion of them. My wife--pray don't tell her that I ever observed it--my wife used to waddle before the invention of Crinoline. Now she swims voluptuously, and knocks down all the light articles of furniture, whenever she crosses the room, in a manner which, but for the expense of repairs, would be perfectly charming. One of my other single daughters used to be sadly thin, poor girl. Oh, how plump she is now! Oh, my marriageable young men, how ravishingly plump she is now! Long life to the monarchy of Crinoline! Every mother in this country who has daughters to marry, and who is not quite so sure of their unaided personal attractions as she might wish to be, echoes that loyal cry, I am sure, from the bottom of her affectionate heart. And the Press actually thinks it can shake our devotion to our Queen Petticoat? Pooh! pooh!

But we must have room--we must positively have room for our petticoat at evening parties. We wanted it before Crinoline. We want it ten thousand times more, now. I don't know how other parents feel; but, unless there is some speedy reform in the present system of party-giving--so far as regards health, purse, and temper, I am a lost man. Let me make my meaning clear on this point by a simple and truthful process. Let me describe how we went to our last party, and how we came back from it.

Doctor and Mrs. Crump, of Gloucester Place (I mention names and places to show the respectable character of the party), kindly requested the pleasure of our company a week ago. We accepted the invitation, and agreed to assemble in my dining-room previous to departure, at the hour of half-past nine. It is unnecessary to say that I and my son-in-law (who is now staying with me on a visit) had the room entirely to ourselves at the appointed time. We waited half-an-hour: both ill-tempered, both longing to be in bed, and both obstinately silent. When the hall-clock struck ten, a sound was heard on the stairs, as if a whole gale of wind had broken into the house, and was advancing to the dining-room to blow us both into empty space. We knew what this meant, and looked at each other, and said, "Here they are!" The door opened, and Boreas swam in voluptuously, in the shape of my wife, in claret-coloured velvet. She stands five feet nine, and wears--No! I have never actually counted them. Let me not mislead the public, or do injustice to my wife. Let me rest satisfied with stating her height, and adding that she is a fashionable woman. Her circumference, and the causes of it, may be left to the imagination of the reader.

She was followed by four minor winds, blowing dead in our teeth--by my married daughter in Pink Moiré Antique; by my own Julia (single) in Violet Tulle Illusion; by my own Emily (single) in white lace over glacé silk; by my own Charlotte (single) in blue gauze over glacé silk. The four minor winds, and the majestic maternal Boreas, entirely filled the room, and overflowed on to the dining-table. It was a grand sight. My son-in-law and I--a pair of mere black tadpoles--shrank into a corner, and gazed at it helplessly.

Our corner was, unfortunately, the farthest from the door. So, when I moved to lead the way to the carriages, I confronted a brilliant intermediate expanse of ninety yards of outer clothing alone (allowing only eighteen yards each to the ladies). Being old, wily, and respected in the house, I took care to avoid my wife, and succeeded in getting through my daughters. My son-in-law, young, innocent, and of secondary position in the family, was not so fortunate. I left him helpless, looking round the corner of his mother-in-law's claret-coloured velvet, with one of his legs lost in his wife's Moiré Antique. There is every reason to suppose that he never extricated himself; for when we got into the carriages he was not to be found; and, when ultimately recovered, he exhibited symptoms of physical and mental exhaustion. I am afraid my son-in-law caught it--I am very much afraid that, during my absence, my son-in-law caught it.

We filled--no, we overflowed--two carriages. My wife and her married daughter in one, and I, myself, on the box--the front seat being very properly wanted for the velvet and the Moiré Antique. In the second carriage were my three girls--crushed, as they indignantly informed me, crushed out of all shape (didn't I tell you, just now, how plump one of them was?) by the miserably-inefficient accommodation which the vehicle offered to them. They told my son-in-law, as he meekly mounted to the box, that they would take care not to marry a man like him, at any rate! I have not the least idea what he had done to provoke them. The worthy creature gets a great deal of scolding in the house, without any assignable cause for it. Do my daughters resent his official knowledge, as a husband, of the secret of their sister's ugly feet? Oh, dear me, I hope not--I sincerely hope not!

At ten minutes past ten we drove to the hospitable abode of Doctor and Mrs. Crump. The women of my family were then perfectly dressed in the finest materials. There was not a flaw in any part of the costume of any one of the party. This is a great deal to say of ninety yards of clothing, without mentioning the streams of ribbon, and the dense thickets of flowery bushes that wantoned gracefully all over their heads and half-down their backs--nevertheless, I can say it.

At forty minutes past four, the next morning, we were all assembled once more in my dining-room, to light our bed-room candles. Judging by costume only, I should not have known one of my daughters again--no, not one of them!

The Tulle Illusion, was illusion no longer. My daughter's gorgeous substratum of Gros de Naples bulged through it in half a dozen places. The Pink Moiré Antique was torn into a draggle-tailed pink train. The white lace was in tatters, and the blue gauze was in shreds.

"A charming party!" cried my daughters in melodious chorus, as I surveyed this scene of ruin. Charming, indeed! If I had dressed up my four girls, and sent them to Greenwich Fair, with strict orders to get drunk and assault the police, and if they had carefully followed my directions, could they have come home to me in a much worse condition than the condition in which I see them now? Could any man, not acquainted with the present monstrous system of party-giving, look at my four young women, and believe that they had been spending the evening under the eyes of their parents, at a respectable house? If the party had been at a linendraper's, I could understand the object of this wanton destruction of property. But Doctor Crump is not interested in making me buy new gowns. What have I done to him that he should ask me and my family to his house, and all but tear my children's gowns off their backs, in return for our friendly readiness to accept his invitation?

But my daughters danced all the evening, and these little accidents will happen in private ballrooms. Indeed? I did not dance, my wife did not dance, my son-in-law did not dance. Have we escaped injury on that account? Decidedly not. Velvet is not an easy thing to tear, so I have no rents to deplore in my wife's dress. But I apprehend that a spoonful of trifle does not reach its destination properly, when it is deposited in a lady's lap; and I altogether deny that there is any necessary connection between the charms of society, and the wearing of crushed macaroons, adhesively dotted over the back part of a respectable matron's dress. I picked three off my wife's gown, as she swam out of the dining-room, on her way up-stairs; and I am informed that two new breadths will be wanted in front, in consequence of her lap having been turned into a plate for trifle. As for my son-in-law, his trousers are saturated with spilt champagne; and he took, in my presence, nearly a handful of flabby lobster salad out of the cavity between his shirt-front and his waistcoat. For myself, I have had my elbow in a game-pie, and I see with disgust a slimy path of extinct custard, meandering down the left-hand lappel of my coat. Altogether, this party, on the lowest calculation, casts me in damages to the tune of ten pounds, eighteen shillings, and sixpence.[4]

In damages for spoilt garments only. I have still to find out what the results may be of the suffocating heat in the rooms, and the freezing draughts in the passages, and on the stairs--I have still to face the possible doctor's bills for treating our influenzas and our rheumatisms. And to what cause is all this destruction and discomfort attributable? Plainly and simply, to this. When Doctor and Mrs. Crump issued their invitations, they followed the example of the rest of the world, and asked to their house five times as many people as their rooms would comfortably hold. Hence, jostling, bumping, and tearing among the dancers, and jostling, bumping, and spilling in the supper-room. Hence, a scene of barbarous crowding and confusion, in which the successful dancers are the heaviest and rudest couples in the company, and the successful guests at the supper-table, the people who have the least regard for the restraints of politeness and the wants of their neighbours.

Is there no remedy for this great social nuisance? for a nuisance it certainly is. There is a remedy in every district in London, in the shape of a spacious and comfortable public room, which may be had for the hiring. The rooms to which I allude are never used for doubtful purposes. They are mainly devoted to Lectures, Concerts, and Meetings. When used for a private object, they might be kept private by giving each guest a card to present at the door, just as cards are presented at the opera. The expense of the hiring, when set against the expense of preparing a private house for a party, and the expense of the injuries which crowding causes, would prove to be next to nothing. The supper might be sent into the large room as it is sent into the small house. And what benefit would be gained by all this? The first and greatest of all benefits, in such cases--room. Room for the dancers to exercise their art in perfect comfort; room for the spectators to move about and talk to each other at their ease; room for the musicians in a comfortable gallery; room for eating and drinking; room for agreeable equal ventilation. In one word, all the acknowledged advantages of a public ball, with all the pleasant social freedom of a private entertainment.

And what hinders the adopting of this sensible reform? Nothing but the domestic vanity of my beloved countrymen.

I suggested the hiring of a room, the other day, to an excellent friend of mine, who thought of giving a party, and who inhumanly contemplated asking at least a hundred people into his trumpery little ten-roomed house. He absolutely shuddered when I mentioned my idea: all his insular prejudices bristled up in an instant. "If I can't receive my friends under my own roof, on my own hearth, sir, and in my own home, I won't receive them at all. Take a room indeed! Do you call that an Englishman's hospitality? I don't." It was quite useless to suggest to this gentleman that an Englishman's hospitality, or any man's hospitality, is unworthy of the name unless it fulfils the first great requisite of making his guests comfortable. We don't take that far-fetched view of the case in this domestic country. We stand on our own floor (no matter whether it is only twelve feet square or not); we make a fine show in our houses (no matter whether they are large enough for the purpose or not); never mind the women's dresses; never mind the dancers being in perpetual collision; never mind the supper being a comfortless, barbarous scramble; never mind the ventilation alternating between unbearable heat and unbearable cold--an Englishman's house is his castle, even when you can't get up his staircase, and can't turn round in his rooms. If I lived in the Black Hole at Calcutta, sir, I would see my friends _there_ because I lived there, and would turn up my nose at the finest marble palace in the whole city, because it was a palace that could be had for the hiring!

And yet the innovation on a senseless established custom which I now propose, is not without precedent, even in this country. When I was a young man, I, and some of my friends, used to give a Bachelors' Ball, once a-year. We hired a respectable public room for the purpose. Nobody ever had admission to our entertainment who was not perfectly fit to be asked into any gentleman's house. Nobody wanted room to dance in; nobody's dress was injured; nobody was uncomfortable at supper. Our ball was looked forward to, every year, by the young ladies, as the especial dance of the season at which they were sure to enjoy themselves. They talked rapturously of the charming music, and the brilliant lighting, and the pretty decorations, and the nice supper. Old ladies and gentlemen used to beg piteously that they might not be left out on account of their years. People of all ages and tastes found something to please them at the Bachelors' Ball, and never had a recollection, in connection with it, which was not of the happiest nature. What prevents us, now we are married, from following the sensible proceeding of our younger days? The stupid assumption that my house must be big enough to hold all my friends comfortably, _because_ it is my house. I did not reason in that way, when I had lodgings, although my bachelor sitting-room was, within a few feet each way, as large as my householder's drawing-room at the present time.

However, I have really some hopes of seeing the sensible reform, which I have ventured to propose, practically and generally carried out, before I die. Not because I advocate it, not because it is in itself essentially reasonable; but merely because the course of Time is likely, before long, to leave obstinate Prejudice no choice of alternatives and no power of resistance. Party-giving is on the increase, party-goers are on the increase, petticoats are on the increase,--but private houses remain exactly as they were. It is evidently only a question of time. The guests already overflow on to the staircase. Give us a ten years' increase of the population, and they will overflow into the street. When the door of the Englishman's nonsensical castle cannot be shut, on account of the number of his guests who are squeezed out to the threshold, then he will concede to necessity what he will not now concede to any strength of reasoning, or to any gentleness of persuasion. The only cogent argument with obstinate people is Main Force--and Time, in the case now under consideration, is sooner or later sure to employ it.

FOOTNOTE:

[4] For the information of ignorant young men, who are beginning life, I subjoin the lamentable particulars of this calculation:--

£. s. d.

A Tulle Illusion spoilt 2 0 0

Repairing gathers of Moiré Antique 0 5 0

Cheap white lace dress spoilt 3 0 0

Do. blue gauze do. 1 6 0

Two new breadths of velvet for Mama 4 0 0

Cleaning my son-in-law's trousers 0 2 6

Cleaning my own coat 0 5 0 -------------- Total 10 18 68

CURIOSITIES OF LITERATURE.--II.

PORTRAIT OF AN AUTHOR, PAINTED BY HIS PUBLISHER.

I.

The Author was born a Frenchman, and died in the year 1850. Over the whole continent of Europe, wherever the literature of France has penetrated, his readers are numbered by tens of thousands. Women of all ranks and orders have singled him out, long since, as the marked man, among modern writers of fiction, who most profoundly knows and most subtly appreciates their sex in its strength and in its weakness. Men, whose critical judgment is widely and worthily respected, have declared that he is the deepest and truest observer of human nature whom France has produced since the time of Molière. Unquestionably, he ranks as one of the few great geniuses who appear by ones and twos, in century after century of authorship, and who leave their mark ineffaceably on the literature of their age. And yet, in spite of this widely-extended continental fame, and this indisputable right and title to enjoy it, there is probably no civilised country in the Old World in which he is so little known as in England. Among all the readers--a large class in these islands--who are, from various causes, unaccustomed to study French literature in its native language, there are probably very many who have never even heard of the name of HONORÉ DE BALZAC.

Unaccountable as it may appear at first sight, the reason why the illustrious author of Eugénie Grandet, Le Père Goriot, and La Recherche de l'Absolu, happens to be so little known to the general public of England is, on the surface of it, easy enough to discover. Balzac is little known, because he has been little translated. An English version of Eugénie Grandet was advertised, lately, as one of a cheap series of novels. And the present writer has some indistinct recollection of meeting, many years since, with a translation of La Peau de Chagrin. But so far as he knows, excepting the instances of these two books, not one other work, out of the whole number of ninety-seven fictions, long and short, which proceeded from the same fertile pen, has been offered to our own readers in our own language. Immense help has been given in this country to the reputations of Alexandre Dumas, Victor Hugo, and Eugène Sue: no help whatever, or next to none, has been given to Balzac--although he is regarded in France (and rightly regarded, in some respects) as a writer of Action superior to all three.

Many causes, too numerous to be elaborately traced within the compass of a single article, have probably contributed to produce this singular instance of literary neglect. It is not to be denied, for example, that serious difficulties stand in the way of translating Balzac, which are caused by his own peculiarities of style and treatment. His French is not the clear, graceful, neatly-turned French of Voltaire and Rousseau. It is a strong, harsh, solidly vigorous language of his own; now flashing into the most exquisite felicities of expression, and now again involved in an obscurity which only the closest attention can hope to penetrate. A special man, not hurried for time, and not easily brought to the end of his patience, might give the English equivalent of Balzac with admirable effect. But ordinary translating of him by average workmen would only lead, through the means of feeble parody, to the result of utter failure.[5]

The difficulties, again, caused by his style of treatment are not to be lightly estimated, in considering the question of presenting this author to our own general public. The peculiarity of Balzac's literary execution is, that he never compromises the subtleties and delicacies of Art for any consideration of temporary effect. The framework in which his idea is set, is always wrought with a loving minuteness which leaves nothing out. Everything which, in this writer's mind, can even remotely illustrate the characters that he depicts, must be elaborately conveyed to the minds of his readers before the characters themselves start into action. This quality of minute finish, of reiterated refining, which is one of Balzac's great merits, so far as foreign audiences are concerned, is another of the hindrances, so far as an English audience is concerned, in the way of translating him.

Allowing all due weight to the force of these obstacles; and further admitting that Balzac lays himself open to grave objection (on the part of that unhappily large section of the English public which obstinately protests against the truth wherever the truth is painful), as a writer who sternly insists on presenting the dreary aspects of human life, literally, exactly, nakedly, as he finds them--making these allowances, and many more if more be needful--it is still impossible not to regret, for the sake of readers themselves, that worthy English versions of the best works of this great writer are not added to the national library of translated literature. Towards the latter part of his career, Balzac's own taste in selection of subject seems to have become vitiated. His later novels, consummately excellent as some of them were in a literary sense, are assuredly, in a moral sense, not to be defended against the grave accusation of being needlessly and even horribly repulsive. But no objections of this sort apply to the majority of the works which he produced when he was in the prime of his life and his faculties. The conception of the character of "Eugénie Grandet" is one of the purest, tenderest, and most beautiful things in the whole range of fiction; and the execution of it is even worthy of the idea. If the translation already accomplished of this book be only creditably executed, it may be left to speak for itself. But there are other fictions of the writer which deserve the same privilege, and which have not yet obtained it. "La Recherche de l'Absolu,"--a family picture which, for truth, delicacy, and pathos, has been surpassed by no novelist of any nation or any time; a literary achievement in which a new and an imperishable character (the exquisitely beautiful character of the wife) has been added to the great gallery of fiction--remains still unknown to the general public of England. "Le Père Goriot"--which, though it unveils some of the hidden corruptions of Parisian life, unveils them nobly in the interests of that highest morality belonging to no one nation and no one sect--"Le Père Goriot," which stands first and foremost among all the writer's works, which has drawn the tears of thousands from the purest sources, has its appeal still left to make to the sympathies of English readers. Other shorter stories, scattered about the "Scènes de la Vie Privée," the "Scènes de la Vie de Province," and the "Scènes de la Vie Parisienne," are as completely unknown to a certain circle of readers in this country, and as unquestionably deserve careful and competent translation, as the longer and more elaborate productions of Balzac's inexhaustible pen. Reckoning these shorter stories, there are at least a dozen of his highest achievements in fiction which might be safely rendered into English; which might form a series by themselves; and which no sensible Englishwoman could read and be, either intellectually or morally, the worse for them.