The evening book, or, Fireside talk on morals
and manners with sketches of western life |
FASTIDIOUSNESS. |
 | The evening book, or, Fireside talk on morals
and manners |  |
FASTIDIOUSNESS.
Who, that is not a botanist, likes to see one of that disenchanting
and unpoetical craft coolly pull into fragments—cut, maim, and
disfigure—discolor with pitiless acids and virulent alkalies, and
macerate to undistinguishable pulp—his favorite flower? Who
can bear to see petals pinched—anthers analyzed—pericarps pried
into—roots rummaged—by a utilitarian? How much pleasanter is
it to find sacred emblems in a certain peculiar arrangement of
stamens and pistils; read constancy of affection in
The same look that she turned when he rose—
That fling from their bells a sweet peal anew,
Of music so delicate, soft and intense,
It is felt like an odor within the sense!
Delicate things should be treated delicately; the golden beauty
of pollen is lost in the handling. It is one of the cherished evidences
touched, and this thought brings us to our subject.
The fastidious are of right shocked at any examination into the
nature and essence of fastidiousness. They would be ready to forswear
it after its humiliating subjection to vulgar tests, if there were
anything else that could so well distinguish the ineffable few from
the intolerable many. It is their own—their chosen—their resource
—their defence—their hope—their glory;—to question with or
upon it is insolently coarse; to doubt its rightful supremacy, profane.
We remember reading somewhere of a simple rural lover
who had followed some Lady Clara Vere de Vere to town, there to
behold her waltzed and polka'd with by all manner of men, returning
to his shades in despairing disgust:
From the rose-bud you've shaken the tremulous dew—
What you've touched you may take!—
We have some fear that fastidiousness will be even so—contemptuously
left to the critics, if they once try their art upon it. But
we claim the privilege of science, which dissects without respect to
persons, and does not blush to be the sworn enemy of poetry.
To begin botanically then: Where shall we class this flower of
worldliness—among the roots of healing or the subtle poisons?
Shall it take rank with the favored Camellia in the bouquet of
beauty, or with
And the dock and the henbane and hemlock dank—
Prickly and pulpous and blistering and blue,
Livid, and starr'd with a lurid hue?
and delusive as Hellebore, and again harmless and insipid as some
`weed inane.' But let us not be led by these spiral figuratives to
a height of metaphor from which it may be difficult to slip down
gracefully.
In the plainest prose, then, what is fastidiousness?
Stern old Johnson, who confessed that it was difficult for him to
pity the choice sorrows of a fine lady, says, to be fastidious is to be
`insolently nice—delicate to a vice—squeamish—disdainful.' Do
these seem amiable adjectives? Impertinent dictionary-maker!
Unaccommodating, obdurate, Saxon tongue! Is there no unique
name for that fine essence—that impalpable sina qua non—which
is the life and soul of the genteel? No! none but itself can be its
parallel. Let us then not seek to define but to examine it.
Personal fastidiousness is said to be the characteristic of a condition
of high refinement. If refinement were a matter of physics, this might
be admitted. The Israelitish ladies `could not set the sole of their
foot to the ground for delicateness and tenderness,' but were they,
therefore, refined women? There is an implication even of impiety
in the scriptural notice of them. Poppæa must have a bath of
asses' milk; somebody of old wept because a rose-leaf was doubled
under him. Not to go beyond our own day and sphere for instances,
we have ourselves known a gentleman who would not sign his name
until he had put on his gloves, lest by any accident his fingers
should incur the contamination of ink; and a lady who objected to
joining in the Holy Communion, because the idea of drinking after
other people was so disgusting! Shall we then reckon among the
marks of true refinement a quality which is compatible with ignorance,
with vice, with inanity, vanity, and irreligion?
Hans Christian Andersen has given us one of his shrewd little
stories in point.
There was once a prince of great honor and renown who wished
to marry a real princess. Many persons calling themselves princesses
had been offered for this dignity, but there was always something
about the ladies which made him doubtful of their claim to the title.
So not being able to satisfy his fastidiousness on this point, he
remained for a long time undecided.
One night during a tremendous storm, a young lady came to the
door and requested admittance, saying that she was a real princess.
She was in a most pitiable condition—draggled from head to foot,
with the rain pouring in torrents from her dishevelled locks, she
looked forlorn enough for a beggar. But the prince would not prejudge
her; he invited her to spend the night, and in the meantime
his mother devised a plan by which to ascertain whether her pretensions
were genuine. On the place where the princess was to sleep she
put three small peas, and on the top of them twenty mattresses,
covering these again with twenty feather beds. Upon this luxurious
couch the supposed princess retired to rest, and in the morning she
was asked how she had passed the night.
`Oh, most wretchedly,' she replied; `there was something hard
in my bed which distressed me extremely, and has bruised me all
over black and blue!'
Then they knew that her pretensions were not false, for none but
a real princess could have possessed sufficient delicacy of perception
to feel the three little peas under twenty mattresses and twenty
feather beds!
Is not then delicacy of personal habits desirable?
Beyond doubt, when it is held in subservience to higher things.
The man or woman to whom coarseness is not offensive, can never
might be expected to counterbalance this defect of nature or education.
But to be naturally or habitually delicate is one thing, to be
systematically fastidious quite another. The quality or habit we
are considering has its root in the profoundest egotism, and its
branches are so numerous that it is impossible to consider them all
in detail. It is like the paper-mulberry tree, no two leaves of which
are alike. Let us pick a spring or two here and there as specimens.
Fastidiousness, when unaffected—which it is not always—is very
generally a mark of weakness. Persons of exalted virtue are never
reputed to be fastidious, and why? not because they are constituted
differently from other men, but because great objects—noble aims—
occupy the soul and thoughts to the exclusion of whatever might
interfere with them. If a man who has devoted himself to the
highest pursuits which can engage the attention of mortals, finds
fastidious habits in his way, they will be the first sacrifice he will
lay upon the altar of duty. But it may be questioned whether
these habits will not be often beforehand with us, effectually preventing
any hearty devotion to duty. Questioned, did we say?
Alas! does not every day's observation show us that they are the
hindrance, in too many cases, especially of feminine goodness? In
the care of the poor, and especially in any attempt to reform the
vicious, is not this conspicuously the difficulty, even to the extent of
subjecting a woman to the charge of coarseness if she is found able
to bear the presence of the squalid and the degraded? We have
heard ladies observe calmly and with obvious self-complacency, that
they could not endure the very atmosphere of the poor, and must
leave the care of them to those who could! And we could not
help feeling that the daring required for such an avowal might have
served an excellent purpose if turned in the right direction.
Fastidiousness is a dreadful weapon of domestic tyranny. Many
a household can tell the grinding power of a selfishness which disguises
itself under the form of delicacy of tastes and habits. Many
are the tears of vexation, anxiety, mortification, and disappointment,
occasioned by the unfeeling temper and inconsiderate exactions
which are the legitimate fruit of undue attention to personal comfort.
One must be little observant of what is about him if he have
not sometimes been driven, by the ingenious requisitions of the self-indulgent,
to wish that the hair shirt, the pulse-and-water, and the
flinty bed of the anchorite could be tried for the reformation of
such. Providence seems often to discipline these people by increasing
the sensitiveness they have voluntarily induced or cherished,
until it becomes a tormenting want which nothing in nature is capable
of allaying. They are crushed by the gods their own hands
have set up.
But personal fastidiousness, although a hardener of the heart, a
traitor to the rights and feeling of those who depend on us, a bar to
improvement, a puller down of all the faculties of the soul, is not
the only form of this specious enemy. Its effects upon society are
quite as extensive and fatal in its other character of—what we may
call for want of a more expressive term—exclusiveness. In this
shape its office is to allow value and charm to all that is desirable,
only in proportion as others are shut out from its enjoyment. It
seems strange that this so obvious refuge of empty pride could
become a formidable moral evil, but it is one of the sorest of our
condition of society—a condition which, because it is artificial and
contrary to our better nature, we please ourselves with calling
refined. An anxious reaching after something which shall distinguish
us from others is one of the natural traits of mortal man; but
one of the most unlovely and ungenerous manifestations of this disposition
and people that we see, in order that our taste and judgment may
be reckoned supreme by people as superficial as ourselves. It is
this which occasions the listlessness displayed by certain persons
when they are out of their own set; the chilling look, the dead
reply, the disclaiming air with which they decline to participate in
social pleasures which have not a certain conventional sanction.
They are so fastidious! They lament the fault, too, with an air
that says they would not be without it for the world; they evidently
feel that their chosen position depends upon an incapacity to enjoy
common pleasures, quite ignorant all the while that the highest
point and object of true cultivation is a universal human sympathy.
The eagle can look down from such a commanding altitude that the
difference in height of the objects on the plain is scarcely perceptible;
while the mole, blinking about a diameter of a few inches, is
quite sure there is nothing worth seeing beyond that circle. What
wounds, what heart-burnings, what stiflings of the sweet charities
of life, what `evil surmisings,' what an unchristian tone of
intercourse, what loss of a thousand advantages to be communicated
and received, result from the cultivation of a spirit of fastidious
exclusiveness! How much spontaneous kindness is prevented
by the intrusion of a cultivated and cherished distaste for certain
harmless peculiarities which we have chosen to consider intolerable!
We can pardon criminality in some shapes more easily than we can
overlook mere unpleasantness in others, so arbitrary is our fastidiousness,
so unamenable to right reason. `There are far worse sins than
sins against taste,' said a young clergyman once to a lady who was
inveighing against the coarseness of certain reformers; and the lesson
might well be repeated in many a so-called refined circle. One
always exercised about trifles.
Like other things spurious, fastidiousness is often inconsistent
with itself; the coarsest things are done, the cruellest things said
by the most fastidious people. Horace Walpole was a proverb of
epicurean particularity of taste, yet none of the vulgarians whom he
vilified had a keener relish for a coarse allusion or a malicious falsehood.
Beckford, of Fonthill, demanded that life should be thrice
winnowed for his use, but what was his life? Louis XIV. was
“insolently nice” in some things, what was he in others? If we
observe a person proud of a reputation for fastidiousness, we shall
always find that the egotism which is its life will at times lead him
to say or do something disgusting. We need expect from such
people no delicate, silent self-sacrifice, no tender watching for others'
tastes or needs, no graceful yielding up of privileges in unconsidered
trifles, on which wait no “flowing thanks.” They may be kind and
obliging to a certain extent, but when the service required involves
anything disagreeable, anything offensive to the taste on which they
pride themselves, we must apply elsewhere. Their fineness of nature
sifts common duties, selecting for practice only those which will pass
the test; and conscience is not hurt, for unsuspected pride has given
her a bride.
One of the fruits of misplaced fastidiousness is the utter and intolerable
tameness which it induces in society. We ask for truth and
nature in poetry and painting, and find nothing so charming as
flashes of natural genius in literature; but in society everything is
crushed to a dead level, and by what? By a tyrannical something
which claims to be good taste, but which is in truth anything else.
This resolute frowning down or freezing up of whatever is spontaneous
is not the operation of good taste. but the cunning artifice of
them for the purpose of repressing in others whatever might
threaten to disturb their empire. It seems strange at first view that
this should have been practicable, and the reason why it is so is
rather a mortifying one. The power of wealth, even of wealth in
which we have no interest, is overwhelming. It has ever been so
since the world began; whoever becomes the envied possessor of a
few extra thousands, has a more obvious power on the surface of
society than the man of genius or learning can possibly have; and if
he would live in society he must submit to take the tone which has
been given to it by such people. We need not then wonder that
persons of high intellectual pretensions so often decline society. It
suits not the free mind, which finds its best pleasure in the exercise
of its highest powers, to spend its precious hours and energies where
every emotion of the soul must be suppressed, and every independent
thought is voted “bad taste,” if it do not happen to chime in with
the tone of the circle. If we would give our social intercourse the
charm whose absence we so often regret, we must learn to distinguish
between true delicacy and justness of taste,—a quality referable
to principles and not amenable to fantasy—and that fickle tyrant
fastidiousness, which claims despotic power, and wields its sceptre so
capriciously that we may as well ask a fool to “render a reason.”
The fastidiousness of society does not content itself with repressing
the natural expression of our feelings on subjects comparatively
indifferent; it carries its pretensions still further. Certain topics of
great importance, of the first moment, are prohibited altogether. It
is considered bad taste, and voted indubitable cant, to introduce the
subject of religion; one may talk of church affairs, discuss the
sermon ad libitum, pass the most sweeping judgment on the character
and manner of the pastor, the dress and behavior of his wife,
behavior of church members, and so confess by implication that
there is a standard somewhere; but to speak of religion itself,
seriously and practically; to make its experience or its duties the
theme of conversation, is to dare looks of cold dislike, and to make
one's company shunned like a pestilence. It used to be considered
mauvais ton to “mention hell to ears polite,” but in modern society
it will hardly do to allude to heaven. And this is not to be ascribed
so much to the irreligiousness of those who proscribe sacred subjects,
as to the general impression, the effect of false notions of civilization,
that only mediocrity of talk is safe; that whatever would quicken
the dull flow of the blood, bring color to the cheek and fire to the
eye, is dangerous in society. This is undoubtedly the great reason
why religion is so much left, even among people who would like to
be good if they could, for Sunday use and cultivation, and for times
of affliction, when emotion is not out of place, because the depths of
the soul are stirred by God himself, and man has no power to enforce
the ordinary chilling calm.
We would not be considered as pleading for what is sometimes
called religious conversation, too often as far from truth and nature
as the most inane talk of fashionable society; but for liberty to talk
on whatever subject really interests us. This excludes cant and all
prosing for effect. If it were allowable for all to talk on religious
subjects when so disposed, there would be the less field for those
who assume the right as if it were an exclusive merit. Perfect
liberty for all would leave no temptation to hypocritical pretenders
or weak devotees, for liberty induces a healthful action, which naturally
extinguishes whatever is spurious and forced. Conversation is
much impoverished by the exclusion of religion, for there is scarcely
a subject of human interest which can be fully treated without reference
who doubt may see an admirable exemplification of our meaning in
two modern works by one author, “Modern Painters,” and “The
Seven Lamps of Architecture,” by Mr. Ruskin, a writer who insists
on the connexion not only of art but of every gratification of our
higher nature with religion.
The exclusion of religious topics from conversation, includes, of
course, the exclusion of all discussion of morals deduced from religion.
Moral rules founded on social convenience and public order
are within the pale; it is only when we would contemplate a code
of morals which is somewhat stricter than the law of the land, that
we offend fastidious taste. Here is another cause of barrenness, for
who can dwell for ever in the merest externals, without becoming
distressingly cold and empty? How is it possible to take an intelligent
interest in human affairs, without contemplating them in their
moral bearings, whether obvious or remote? If it be contended
that to talk about these things is to do no good, we might refer to
the objector's own experience, and ask whether, on close examination
of the sources of some of his most important moral impressions, he
does not discover that a sentiment uttered in ordinary conversation
by some man of sense or piety lies at the very root of his convictions
of duty. The arrows of truth stick, whether shot from formally
prepared and authorized bows or not. The mind may be on
its guard against regular teachings, while it will receive unquestioned
an idea which, though presented by a seeming chance, is yet commended
by truth to the understanding or the conscience. How
important then is it to enjoy a free expression of sentiment on matters
of importance! The `word fitly spoken,' which is truly `like
apples of gold in pictures (baskets) of silver,' should never be lost,
in deference to a pretentious and stolid fastidiousness. It is as much
as to act conscientiously in any other way. To suppress the good
word is a sin, and it is a sin to which society continually tempts the
unwary. It is not long since we ourselves heard an ingenuous young
person say, `I felt as if I ought to say what I thought, but I did
not dare.' `Why not?' `O, they would have thought me so disagreeable!'
It is in vain to expect most persons to have the courage
to be honest in the expression of unpopular sentiments at such cost,
and every instance of conscious disingenuousness takes something
from our self-respect and our courage in withstanding evil.
What is called fastidiousness in literature is, happily for literature,
nearly out of date. The first demand now-a-days, is that a writer
shall say something, and only the second that he shall say it well.
Mere style is but little esteemed, except so far as it has direct fitness
to convey ideas clearly. There is plenty of criticism of style, but
its grounds are more manly than they were a hundred years since.
There are hypercritics of course, but nobody minds them, and the
usual tone of remark on books is so general, that we are in danger
of falling into a neglectful habit of writing, through lack of that
sharp and carping spirit which was fashionable in the days of Warburton
and Ritson. The few who still attempt to be noted for
literary fastidiousness are usually heard to utter only sentences of
lofty and general disapprobation. They do not like the book!
But why? Oh, they do not know! They are unfortunately rather
fastidious! It is hard to extract anything like criticism from these
objectors. They do not like to commit themselves by specific
remarks which might be refuted. They prefer the safe dignity of
indefinite censure. There is no disputing about taste, and this saves
all trouble of argument and explanation. It may be suggested to
this class of fastidious people that not only good common sense,
make literary judgment worth anything, and they may, perhaps, be
profitably advised to read what Coleridge has said of critics who
decide without the aid of these qualities. We must know what a
work ought to be, before we are competent to say what it is.
Delicacy of taste in all things is one of the most charming and
desirable of qualities. It supposes in the first place great perfection
and sensitiveness of bodily organization, in the second, high cultivation,
and in the third, a moral tenderness which is tremblingly alive
to the most delicate test. Without the last of these requisites the
others are null or worse; with it they are indeed things to be
thankful for. It was our lot once to meet a gentleman who had
lost his sight and hearing, yet retained his taste in even increased
sensibility—a circumstance which occasioned the keenest mortification
to his high-strung and proud mind, because it assimilated him
with the beasts. Yet who has not known people who prided themselves
on this very quality, without reference to any other? True
delicacy is founded on principle; it selects and rejects for a reason.
Mere fastidiousness is often either conscious coarseness attempting a
redeeming and genteelifying trait, or ambitious vulgarity aping the
refined. Delicacy is consistent, because it is real; fastidiousness
forgets to be so when the inducement is absent. Delicacy is sensitive
for others; fastidiousness is too often mere self-indulgence
slightly veiled. Delicacy is always conciliated by what is intrinsically
good; fastidiousness is disgusted by any originality even of
virtue. Delicacy is at home even in a desert; fastidiousness can
exist only in the atmosphere of a pseudo-refinement. Delicacy
accompanied Catharine Vonder Wart, when she watched alone in
the open storm all night by her husband, wiping the foam of agony
from his lips, and bearing up his spirit as he lay stretched upon the
hands and tearing her hair perhaps, but never thinking such service
possible.
But whither are we tending? We have been led to maiming
and macerating our flower indeed, to an extent which even botany
will hardly justify. Do we seem to have treated our subject harshly?
It is only seeming. The moment we begin to analyze we must
necessarily wear the appearance of severity. Is it—can it be—
needful to say that after all we have said about fastidiousness, there
are some fastidious people whom we love dearly, and who are full
of all good things? When we treat a subject of this nature, we
must be indulged in a complete abstraction, which allows us to call
everything by its plainest name, give it its true meaning, and trace
it out to its legitimate consequences. It is in applying our remarks,
that allowances are to be made and special circumstances and
balances considered. That is the business of the reader rather than
of the writer. Of the writer is to be required only the most rigorous
impartiality of research, and of course the most unflinching self-application!
| The evening book, or, Fireside talk on morals
and manners | |