Part 6

“In the matter of environment, congenial surroundings means spontaneous action. Yet lack of harmony may stimulate: pastoral poetry and landscape painting are the work of men weary of towns. Both town stimulus and country composure have corresponding values. Many realistic and introspective writers agree with Poe that circumscription of space aids concentration of attention: Pope worked best in his grotto, Montaigne in his tower, and many great books have been written in prisons. Many romanticists and philosophers, on the other hand, prefer wide views from hills or mountains, or to be beside or upon the sea. There are similar differences with regard to tidiness or disorder among scholarly paraphernalia and personal belongings. Both efficiency and happiness depend upon a nice individual balance of habit and variety, freedom and restraint. Flaubert used the same study for forty years, and Lecky could think only when perfectly tranquil; but William Morris and Anthony Trollope liked to write on railway trains.

“As for mental society or solitude, there has been, as Edmund Gosse puts it, ‘a strong sentiment of intellectual comradeship in every age of real intellectual vitality.’ Philip Gilbert Hamerton was probably right in saying that intellectual traditions persist more through coteries than through books. Some general society is necessary to cultivate tolerance and sympathy. One must also come to some adjustment with democracy--its freedom and unrest, its ideal foundation and materialistic structure, its lack of prejudice and its inexperience--we cannot rest in Socrates’ opinion that the majority is merely a heap of bad pennies. After the demands of social service are arranged for, however, the intellect must look through and beyond popular standards, and purchase independence at whatever cost. Much seclusion is essential for knowledge, some solitude for wisdom. Both independence and sympathy are attained through an inner circle of select companions, kept in what Dr. Johnson called repair, by Emerson’s plan of allowing the less interested to fall away and be replaced by choice additions.

“Mental health, moreover, demands some conscious agreement with one’s income, and some mastery of expenditure. Too much money is as bad as too little. A generous amount insures free activity and rich material, but it relaxes determination and demands discrimination. Wealth is essential for works of great accumulation in history, or of fine appreciation in the arts. But humanists appear to be none the worse for poverty--Cervantes was a public letter-writer, and his family took in washing. It is well, in any case, to learn with Socrates how many things one does not need, and to remember that there are uses even for adversity.

“From physical foundation and social setting we approach personality:--that something peculiarly our own which, in the words of Petrarch, ‘it is both easier and wiser to cultivate and to correct than to alter;’ that something within us which, in the words of Emerson, ‘accepts and disposes of impressions after a native, individual law.’ We grow in wisdom as we grow in the knowledge of such inner laws. They are fundamental and inevitable. They control mental life and are not to be controlled save through much self-realization. Is a man instinctively active, or does he love contemplation and the forsaking of works? Is he single-minded, identified with his occupation, or does he work merely for bread and live, for himself alone, in some dear avocation? The single-minded may look forward to the perfection that comes from practice--and toward becoming subdued to what he works in. Hence Charles Lamb on the melancholy of tailors and Dr. Robertson Nicoll on Matthew Arnold as ever the inspector of schools. Other men show their spontaneity and genuineness in their avocations--witness Michael Angelo’s sonnets and Victor Hugo’s sketches. Little intentional literature has charmed the world like the amateur quatrains of Omar the astronomer, translated by Fitzgerald the dilettante.

“Is a man an idealist or a realist? Let him ponder Don Quixote’s impracticality and Sancho Panza’s aimlessness, following inner impulse or outward stimulus, denying the world or losing his own soul. Let him ponder, moreover, Rembrandt’s struggle to serve both at the same time. The pitfalls of the realist are proverbial, but ideals, also, may be dangerous, through mistaken selection, partial generalization, or imperfect adjustment to the facts in hand.

“What, again, are our innate or acquired interests and desires? Does their vision of the future help or hinder our realization of the present? Do we aspire after the impossible, expecting precision or clarity, brevity or completeness, where they cannot or should not be? Do we apprehend the unlikely? ‘If anything external vexes you,’ says Marcus Aurelius, ‘take notice that it is not the thing which disturbs you, but your notion about it, which notion you may dismiss at once if you please.’ Disappointment, says Dr. Johnson, ‘you may easily compensate by enjoining yourself some particular study, or opening some new avenue to information.’ If we cannot attain, like Lamb, to hissing our failures, let us, like La Motte, retire to a Trappist monastery, and drown consciousness in study. Let us not expect ideal conditions--Spencer and Huxley could work but three hours a day. Let us look, if necessary, to our compensations. Napoleon had satisfactions in spite of his standing forty-second at military school. Darwin’s inability to master languages and his loss of pleasure in poetry, painting, music, and natural scenery were more than made up for. Let us hope for no ‘simple, plausible, easy solution of life that will free us from all responsibility;’ but endeavor to apprehend and ennoble our practical religion, that scale of values according to which we spend our hoard of life.

“Mental action varies with individuals, yet Emerson’s general statement is true--‘thought is a kind of reception uncontrolled by will; we can only open our senses and clear away obstructions; suddenly thought engages us; afterward we remember the process and its results.’ Attention, however, may be led, if not driven; sensibility may become dirigible; it is possible to learn how to keep a fresh eye. Observation of our reactions will make possible a wise selection among stimuli; so Gray learned to seek music, Darwin to avoid it, and many have come to some conscious relation between reading and writing. Experience will teach us how to free the mind from haunting suggestions by fixing and holding their values; how to recollect emotion in tranquillity; how to begin work slowly, and steadily, and then accelerate; how to value the process as well as the product of acquisition. We may learn, through the slowness of accumulation, that we retain only what we use, that a bad memory may be the best, because selective, that even leisure may be well employed. ‘Whatever I do or do not do,’ said Sainte-Beuve, ‘I cease not to learn from the book of life.’ Lope de Vega, sailing with the Armada, sacrificed all his manuscripts for gun-wads, but landed with eleven thousand new verses.

“With such realization of ends and calculation of means, production reduces itself largely to a matter of method. ‘The difference between persons,’ said Emerson, ‘is not in wisdom, but in the art of classifying and using facts.’ Each mind has some ways in which it works most easily and efficiently; let us discover and arrange for these, and reap the rewards. Then it is time to remember Dante’s saying that ‘sitting upon down one cometh not to fame,’ and Whistler’s that ‘drudgery leads to felicity,’ and Emerson’s that ‘inspiration is the sister of daily labor.’ Newton made his discoveries ‘simply by always thinking about them.’ Darwin’s method was as elaborate as it was successful--with portfolios of abstracts, memoranda, and references; detailed, general, and classified indexes for books; brief, then full, then minute outlines before beginning to write. Concentration and intensity of thought come almost of themselves through such a system. Darwin’s practice, too, of writing rapidly and later correcting deliberately, reaped the reward of both states of mind without suffering the loss involved in continually changing from one adjustment to another,--that drain of energy which makes interruptions so wasteful, even to minds that focus quickly. Wisely controlled change combines the benefits of continuity and variety. The scientist, whose study requires muscular as well as mental activity, tires less easily than the scholar busied wholly with books. Varying the adjustment of the same part, or successively occupying different parts of the mechanism, is more refreshing than total relaxation.

“While thus adapted to the mental mechanism, a successful system must also be adjustable to the material in hand. Observation must be receptive, reading selective. Poets may harvest their dreams; historians must winnow their documents. Goethe’s ‘vast abundance of objects that must be before us ere we can think upon them,’ and Hawthorne’s ‘immense amount of history that it takes to make a little literature,’ must be provided for, along with Pater’s selection and rejection--‘all art does but consist in the removal of surplusage.’ Every system ought to provide, at any time and in any place, some form of record, careful enough to be permanent, yet so simple as not to be wasteful if never used--an envelope that can contain data or be written upon itself meets these needs. A system for preservation and arrangement must be comprehensive enough to include everything, accurate enough to make everything available, flexible enough to vary with any need, yet so simple as not to become a tax. Few devices are better than Darwin’s labelled portfolios, or smaller envelopes arranged alphabetically or logically. Note-books are useful only when abstracted or indexed. There are clergymen whose sermons write themselves as particular texts accumulate references in the interleaved Bibles in which they note what interests them. For coördination and organization few things equal a tabular abstract on a single sheet of paper large enough to show at a glance the nature of all the material. Such implements influence intellectual efficiency more than we suppose. Much crabbed writing is due to bad pens, much journalistic ease to soft pencils. Self-realization and the sense of life depend upon some form of diary; style varies with dictation and the typewriter.

“The chief criteria of mental efficiency, then,” read Professor Maturin, with a glance at the clock, “lie between Matthew Arnold’s definitions of genius--‘mainly an affair of energy’ and ‘an infinite capacity for taking pains.’ Professor James, holding that the average man uses only a small part of his energy, would have us persist through fatigue and ‘second wind,’ perhaps to a third and a fourth. Even if experiment, however, did not show that working beyond the fatigue point yields a rapidly decreasing product at a rapidly increasing cost, it would be uneconomic to attempt to increase our flow of energy so long as we waste so much of what we have in inefficient and unhygienic methods of work. Let us rather study the conditions of our best moments, clear away hindrances, and provide helps. Let us prize the spontaneous activity of each state, using fortunate moments for concentration, less efficient periods for accumulation and selection, looking to future coördination. Let us follow natural rhythms of activity, relaxing primary activities by secondary functions useful also in themselves. Thus regularity and routine will develop speed; accumulation and economy end in ripeness. Quantity condenses into quality; selection and arrangement grow into judgment and intuition that may bear inspiration and vision. ‘A man’s vision,’ says Professor James, ‘is the great thing about him.’ The natural history of such vision, however, indicates that it is scarcely more than the synthetic apex of long and careful accumulation. The moment of the aperçu is so memorable that the conditions precedent are usually forgotten, but the precious brilliance of the diamond is merely the result of a happy crystallization of common elements.

“For all of which,” concluded Professor Maturin with a smile, as he closed his portfolio, “I bespeak your most esteemed consideration.”

XI

_The Mystery of Dress_

Professor Maturin was leaning sidewise on his cane, gazing at the river. I stood by his side several moments before he came out of his reverie, greeted me warmly, and proposed a walk along the Drive.

“I was thinking,” said he, “of Fitzgerald’s falling overboard and coming up serenely, still wearing his top hat. This morning, while reading Scarron’s sonnet on the decay of the pyramids and his black doublet, I noticed that I too needed a new coat. Later, I lunched with one colleague who is as dressy as Disraeli, and another who goes almost as much out at elbows as Napoleon when he entered Moscow. I have just left a third, who is devoted to Lowell’s favorite combination of short coat and top hat. That brought me, by way of Old Fitz, to a general contemplation of the custom of wearing clothes. Hast any such philosophy in thee, shepherd?”

“But little, I fear,” replied I, “unless Carlyle’s will do.”

“Scarcely, if you mean ‘Sartor Resartus,’” was his answer. “Do you believe that man, by nature a naked animal, is demoralized by clothes, and that a return to nudity would dissolve society? On the contrary, when Humphrey Howarth, the surgeon, went to a duel naked for fear of the infection of cloth in a gunshot wound, his antagonist came to his senses and withdrew his challenge. Of course, I agree that whatever represents spirit is a kind of clothing, and that wisdom looks through vestures to realities. But clothes in ‘Sartor’ are merely the beginning of a philosophy of things in general. Carlyle’s irritation when Browning called on him in a green riding-coat, and his own refusal to carry an umbrella are more to my point. It is obviously appropriate that George Borrow should always have carried an umbrella, I understand how Goethe could ignore waistcoats and Coleridge forget his shirt, but why did Dickens dress like a dandy and Swinburne like a farmer? What do clothes mean?”

“They sometimes represent the state of their owners’ finances,” said I. “Lack of suitable clothing made Poe decline dinners and Johnson dine behind the screen--if he really did.”

“And Lovelace vary between cloth of gold and rags,” continued Professor Maturin meditatively, “much as Rembrandt varies his dress in his portraits of himself. But that was when one man would wear the worth of a thousand oaks and a hundred oxen, when mantles were conferred by royal patent, and orders grew rich out of hat monopolies. To-day, however, in spite of adulterations that I am told call for a pure textile law, few of us are in need either of Pepys’ prayers to be able to pay his tailor, or of Lord Westminster’s thrifty making over his servants’ liveries for himself.

“Habit influences us more than cost, but what influences habit? Why did Milton always wear black, Pope gray, and Lamb snuff color? Why did distributing his cast clothes ‘disconsolate and intender’ Montaigne? Why did Tennyson send his old clothes to be measured for new ones? Why do I find myself repeating an outfit I once chose because it suggested what naturalists call protective coloration--when an animal, like a squirrel on a tree-trunk, is scarcely distinguishable from its background? Do I make a good principle gloss a dull habit?”

“Such a habit,” I replied, “like George Fox’s suit of leather, does deprive you of the interest that accompanies even unsuccessful effort for variety. The fairer sex is never wearied in its quest of beautiful garb, nor sated with the rapture of attainment.”

“How curiously we have changed all that,” replied Professor Maturin, “in the three centuries since James Howell said that a letter should be attired simply, like a woman; an oration richly, like a man. I would not, like him, have putting on a clean shirt an occasion for special prayer; but perhaps we have gone too far in our neglect of finery. Dr. Holmes’s counsel, ‘always err upon the safe side,’ may be too cautious. Allingham says that Leigh Hunt was old in street costume, but young in his dressing-gown. Perhaps Goldsmith’s satin, or Jefferson’s plush, or Mark Twain’s white flannels would renew my youth.”

“Are you elated by your scarlet gown on Commencement Day?” said I.

“By no means so much as the boys are,” he replied with a chuckle. “But that suggests another aspect of the matter. Outward and visible signs move those who are blind to inward graces. Since Protestantism is retrieving some of its banished ceremonial, it might advance learning to clothe it with more circumstance. Yet, we seem to hesitate at symbolic clothing. Police and military uniforms help law and order, but we tolerate ecclesiastical, judicial, and academic costume only during the performance of specific functions. We are so far from intellectual blue-stockings and political _sans-culottes_, that we smile at musicians’ hair and painters’ cloaks, and banish yachting and golf clothes from every-day wear.

“Simplicity seems the only unwritten law that has succeeded so many written ones concerning clothes. Tradition itself is weak. We wear the Roman orator’s neck-cloth, the wrist-bands that marked the gentleman’s freedom from manual labor, the nobleman’s black evening clothes, the courtier’s sword-belt and gauntlet buttons, and a sailor king’s long trousers--but all because we wish to, or, at least, do not mind. Names are naught, whether of mackintoshes or cravenettes or bluchers or tam-o’-shanters. We ignore even fashion, with its ever varying promise of equality to the uncomely and its powerful economic urge. We are emancipated by a common sense in clothes that would have jailed a man in Addison’s day.

“We may dress as we like, so long as we are inconspicuous, but we must be that. We will no longer tolerate clothes-advertising like the Admirable Crichton’s. The man who lost his lawsuit for damages because his horse ran away when he saw the first top hat in England, would recover at least costs to-day. Gautier deserved the mobbing his pink doublet cost him. Tennyson was right to charge a young woman with creaking stays, and to apologize when he found that the sound came from his own braces.”

“What other principles would you adduce?” said I.

“A modicum of care,” he continued, “in agreement with Plato and Ruskin, that ‘clothes carefully cared for and rightly worn, show a balanced mind.’ I would have clothes appropriate, too, to climate, use, and the individuality of the wearer. I was once advised, most profitably, by a friendly portrait painter as to what was appropriate to my figure, features, and coloring. He objected especially to my hats.

“It is curious how difficult hats are,” continued Professor Maturin, after a pause that I forbore to break. “I doubt if any one, except Fortunatus, ever had a perfect one. The Greeks were wise in having little to do with them--suppose all Greek statues had their straw bonnets tied under the chin! Indeed, hats are chiefly developments of the last five centuries, and, it is said, baldness with them. Yet, Synesius wrote ‘In Praise of Baldness;’ Caesar prized the privilege of continually wearing a laurel crown because it hid his, and I do not know why else the academic mortar-board comes down so far behind. I will not wear a ventilating hat like Rossetti’s, although I long for summer and the straws that America has done so much to popularize.

“I am too thin for the comfortable Tennysonian sombrero. I enjoy, as a dressing-gown, a cowled Capuchin robe that I once had made on Lake Orta, because of my theory that the flowering of the monastic mind in the Middle Ages was due to the germinating heat of hoods. But, generally, I would emulate an acquaintance who usually carries his hat in his hand, or another who actually owns none, were that not too conspicuous. Even Leigh Hunt’s charming essay on ‘Hats, Ancient and Modern’ has no help for me--although I believe I might like a cocked hat or a chapeau.

“I can take comfort in a coat,” he continued, “if it is loose; and in overcoats, if they resemble Socrates’ cloak, or the cloak that Petrarch bequeathed to Boccaccio. Indeed, I should welcome a return to shawls. I am uncomfortable in any neckwear but black, or in any but reindeer gray gloves. I should disesteem trousers had I not once inadvertently worn a striped pair with evening clothes--since then I have respected their power. In shoes I emulate Wellington’s care, for, like William Morris, I need rather large ones. And I enjoy canes as much as Wellington did umbrellas.”

“All of which,” said I, as we reached Professor Maturin’s door, “even if unvaried, is sufficiently sober, appropriate, and individual.”

“And simple enough,” concluded he, “for Frederick the Great or Newton. But, most of all, I wish that the Germans would extend their investigations in the hygiene of clothing. If we knew more about that, we might trust its architecture and ornamentation to any discriminating tailor.”

XII

_Questions at Issue_

The Sindbad Society at its last meeting--on the night of the full moon, according to custom--met within the hospitable doors of the Ollapod Club. There, in the room with the roses on the ceiling, we had for dinner caviare with limes, a thin mushroom soup, duck roasted over spice-wood, Turinese pepperoni of chilies and preserved grapes, Leghorn coffee, and Turkish sweetmeats.

The archaeologist was hot against such modern abuses as motor boats in Venice, and motor cars on what he called the finest roads in the world--those from Nice to Genoa, Amalfi to Sorrento, and Ragusa to Gravosa. But when the diplomat begged him also to ban the ancient and dishonorable dogs from Constantinople, he became resigned to life’s little ironies, and, in response to a general request, described quite wonderfully how, after years of fruitless digging, he had found a royal tomb in Egypt, and entered its hot silence, to find its stately presences, its furniture and linen, its sacrificial bread and incense and flowers, all with their sense of yesterday enduring through the ages.

This prompted the musician, who was reared in Turkey, to tell how an Arab sheik he used to visit in the desert always bore with him the same atmosphere of untold centuries. The colonel followed, queerly enough, by saying that in his aeroplane tests he always had the same impression of the endless duration of time. Then some one broke the happy spell, as people will, with something clever and distracting, although the joke was good enough--James Howell’s on people who “travel much but see little, like Jonah in the whale.”

At that the talk scattered, the colonel describing Coromandel and Malabar, the biologist a boat he was building, the mountain-climber planning for Alaska, and the painter for Japan, until the psychologist asked the last why he was going there.

The painter bent his head sidewise for a moment, as he does when he is thoughtful, and then said: “Partly for the natural beauty, but chiefly to study an art that does not disturb the truth of its impressions by conscious theories like our perspective; that honors color and emotion as well as line and thought.”

“Your psychology is sound,” commented the other. “Color vision is very organic, which is to say, emotional; being apparently caused by minute chemical changes in the eye, under the action of light. The appreciation of line, on the other hand, seems to be due to mental association with touching and feeling, and therefore is rather a matter of attention and judgment.”