Essays — Second Series
and trade, but the personal force appears readily enough in these new
arenas.
Power first, or no leading class. In politics and in trade, bruisers and
pirates are of better promise than talkers and clerks. God knows
that all sorts of gentlemen knock at the door; but whenever used in
strictness and with any emphasis, the name will be found to point
at original energy. It describes a man standing in his own right and
working after untaught methods. In a good lord there must first be
a good animal, at least to the extent of yielding the incomparable
advantage of animal spirits. The ruling class must have more, but they
must have these, giving in every company the sense of power, which
makes things easy to be done which daunt the wise. The society of the
energetic class, in their friendly and festive meetings, is full of
courage and of attempts which intimidate the pale scholar. The courage
which girls exhibit is like a battle of Lundy's Lane, or a sea-fight.
The intellect relies on memory to make some supplies to face these
extemporaneous squadrons. But memory is a base mendicant with basket and
badge, in the presence of these sudden masters. The rulers of society
must be up to the work of the world, and equal to their versatile
office: men of the right Caesarian pattern, who have great range of
affinity. I am far from believing the timid maxim of Lord Falkland
("that for ceremony there must go two to it; since a bold fellow will go
through the cunningest forms"), and am of opinion that the gentleman is
the bold fellow whose forms are not to be broken through; and only that
plenteous nature is rightful master which is the complement of whatever
person it converses with. My gentleman gives the law where he is; he
will outpray saints in chapel, outgeneral veterans in the field, and
outshine all courtesy in the hall. He is good company for pirates
and good with academicians; so that it is useless to fortify yourself
against him; he has the private entrance to all minds, and I could as
easily exclude myself, as him. The famous gentlemen of Asia and Europe
have been of this strong type; Saladin, Sapor, the Cid, Julius Caesar,
Scipio, Alexander, Pericles, and the lordliest personages. They sat very
carelessly in their chairs, and were too excellent themselves, to value
any condition at a high rate.
A plentiful fortune is reckoned necessary, in the popular judgment, to
the completion of this man of the world; and it is a material deputy
which walks through the dance which the first has led. Money is not
essential, but this wide affinity is, which transcends the habits of
clique and caste and makes itself felt by men of all classes. If the
aristocrat is only valid in fashionable circles and not with truckmen,
he will never be a leader in fashion; and if the man of the people
cannot speak on equal terms with the gentleman, so that the gentleman
shall perceive that he is already really of his own order, he is not
to be feared. Diogenes, Socrates, and Epaminondas, are gentlemen of the
best blood who have chosen the condition of poverty when that of wealth
was equally open to them. I use these old names, but the men I speak of
are my contemporaries. Fortune will not supply to every generation one
of these well-appointed knights, but every collection of men furnishes
some example of the class; and the politics of this country, and the
trade of every town, are controlled by these hardy and irresponsible
doers, who have invention to take the lead, and a broad sympathy which
puts them in fellowship with crowds, and makes their action popular.
The manners of this class are observed and caught with devotion by men
of taste. The association of these masters with each other and with men
intelligent of their merits, is mutually agreeable and stimulating. The
good forms, the happiest expressions of each, are repeated and adopted.
By swift consent everything superfluous is dropped, everything graceful
is renewed. Fine manners show themselves formidable to the uncultivated
man. They are a subtler science of defence to parry and intimidate; but
once matched by the skill of the other party, they drop the point of the
sword,--points and fences disappear, and the youth finds himself in a
more transparent atmosphere, wherein life is a less troublesome game,
and not a misunderstanding rises between the players. Manners aim to
facilitate life, to get rid of impediments and bring the man pure
to energize. They aid our dealing and conversation as a railway aids
travelling, by getting rid of all avoidable obstructions of the road and
leaving nothing to be conquered but pure space. These forms very soon
become fixed, and a fine sense of propriety is cultivated with the more
heed that it becomes a badge of social and civil distinctions. Thus
grows up Fashion, an equivocal semblance, the most puissant, the most
fantastic and frivolous, the most feared and followed, and which morals
and violence assault in vain.
There exists a strict relation between the class of power and the
exclusive and polished circles. The last are always filled or filling
from the first. The strong men usually give some allowance even to the
petulances of fashion, for that affinity they find in it. Napoleon,
child of the revolution, destroyer of the old noblesse, never ceased to
court the Faubourg St. Germain; doubtless with the feeling that fashion
is a homage to men of his stamp. Fashion, though in a strange way,
represents all manly virtue. It is virtue gone to seed: it is a kind of
posthumous honor. It does not often caress the great, but the children
of the great: it is a hall of the Past. It usually sets its face against
the great of this hour. Great men are not commonly in its halls; they
are absent in the field: they are working, not triumphing. Fashion is
made up of their children; of those who through the value and virtue
of somebody, have acquired lustre to their name, marks of distinction,
means of cultivation and generosity, and, in their physical organization
a certain health and excellence which secures to them, if not the
highest power to work, yet high power to enjoy. The class of power, the
working heroes, the Cortez, the Nelson, the Napoleon, see that this is
the festivity and permanent celebration of such as they; that fashion is
funded talent; is Mexico, Marengo, and Trafalgar beaten out thin; that
the brilliant names of fashion run back to just such busy names as their
own, fifty or sixty years ago. They are the sowers, their sons shall
be the reapers, and their sons, in the ordinary course of things, must
yield the possession of the harvest to new competitors with keener eyes
and stronger frames. The city is recruited from the country. In the year
1805, it is said, every legitimate monarch in Europe was imbecile. The
city would have died out, rotted, and exploded, long ago, but that it
was reinforced from the fields. It is only country which came to town
day before yesterday that is city and court today.
Aristocracy and fashion are certain inevitable results. These mutual
selections are indestructible. If they provoke anger in the least
favored class, and the excluded majority revenge themselves on the
excluding minority by the strong hand and kill them, at once a new class
finds itself at the top, as certainly as cream rises in a bowl of milk:
and if the people should destroy class after class, until two men only
were left, one of these would be the leader and would be involuntarily
served and copied by the other. You may keep this minority out of sight
and out of mind, but it is tenacious of life, and is one of the estates
of the realm. I am the more struck with this tenacity, when I see its
work. It respects the administration of such unimportant matters, that
we should not look for any durability in its rule. We sometimes meet
men under some strong moral influence, as a patriotic, a literary, a
religious movement, and feel that the moral sentiment rules man and
nature. We think all other distinctions and ties will be slight and
fugitive, this of caste or fashion for example; yet come from year to
year and see how permanent that is, in this Boston or New York life
of man, where too it has not the least countenance from the law of the
land. Not in Egypt or in India a firmer or more impassable line. Here
are associations whose ties go over and under and through it, a
meeting of merchants, a military corps, a college class, a fire-club,
a professional association, a political, a religious convention;--the
persons seem to draw inseparably near; yet, that assembly once
dispersed, its members will not in the year meet again. Each returns to
his degree in the scale of good society, porcelain remains porcelain,
and earthen earthen. The objects of fashion may be frivolous, or fashion
may be objectless, but the nature of this union and selection can
be neither frivolous nor accidental. Each man's rank in that perfect
graduation depends on some symmetry in his structure or some
agreement in his structure to the symmetry of society. Its doors
unbar instantaneously to a natural claim of their own kind. A natural
gentleman finds his way in, and will keep the oldest patrician out who
has lost his intrinsic rank. Fashion understands itself; good-breeding
and personal superiority of whatever country readily fraternize with
those of every other. The chiefs of savage tribes have distinguished
themselves in London and Paris, by the purity of their tournure.
To say what good of fashion we can, it rests on reality, and hates
nothing so much as pretenders; to exclude and mystify pretenders and
send them into everlasting 'Coventry,' is its delight. We contemn in
turn every other gift of men of the world; but the habit even in little
and the least matters of not appealing to any but our own sense of
propriety, constitutes the foundation of all chivalry. There is almost
no kind of self-reliance, so it be sane and proportioned, which fashion
does not occasionally adopt and give it the freedom of its saloons. A
sainted soul is always elegant, and, if it will, passes unchallenged
into the most guarded ring. But so will Jock the teamster pass, in some
crisis that brings him thither, and find favor, as long as his head is
not giddy with the new circumstance, and the iron shoes do not wish to
dance in waltzes and cotillons. For there is nothing settled in manners,
but the laws of behavior yield to the energy of the individual. The
maiden at her first ball, the country-man at a city dinner, believes
that there is a ritual according to which every act and compliment must
be performed, or the failing party must be cast out of this presence.
Later they learn that good sense and character make their own forms
every moment, and speak or abstain, take wine or refuse it, stay or go,
sit in a chair or sprawl with children on the floor, or stand on their
head, or what else soever, in a new and aboriginal way; and that strong
will is always in fashion, let who will be unfashionable. All that
fashion demands is composure and self-content. A circle of men perfectly
well-bred would be a company of sensible persons in which every man's
native manners and character appeared. If the fashionist have not this
quality, he is nothing. We are such lovers of self-reliance that we
excuse in a man many sins if he will show us a complete satisfaction
in his position, which asks no leave to be, of mine, or any man's good
opinion. But any deference to some eminent man or woman of the world,
forfeits all privilege of nobility. He is an underling: I have nothing
to do with him; I will speak with his master. A man should not go where
he cannot carry his whole sphere or society with him,--not bodily, the
whole circle of his friends, but atmospherically. He should preserve in