ESSAYS ON THINGS

By WILLIAM LYON PHELPS

ESSAYS ON THINGS

By WILLIAM LYON PHELPS

NEW YORK THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1930

Copyright, 1930, By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

All rights reserved—no part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher.

Set up and printed. Published September, 1930.

· PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA ·

v

I SUNRISE

At an uncertain hour before dawn in February 1912, as I lay asleep in my room on the top floor of a hotel in the town of Mentone, in Southern France, I was suddenly awakened by the morning star. It was shining with inquisitive splendour directly into my left eye. At that quiet moment, in the last stages of the dying night, this star seemed enormous. It hung out of the velvet sky so far that I thought it was going to fall, and I went out on the balcony of my room to see it drop. The air was windless and mild, and, instead of going back to bed, I decided to stay on the balcony and watch the unfolding drama of the dawn. For every clear dawn in this spectacular universe is a magnificent drama, rising to a superb climax.

The morning stars sang together and I heard the sons of God shouting for joy. The chief morning star, the one that had roused me from slumber, recited a splendid prologue. Then, as the night paled and the lesser stars withdrew,4 some of the minor characters in the play began to appear and take their respective parts. The grey background turned red, then gold. Long shafts of preliminary light shot up from the eastern horizon, and then, when the stage was all set, and the minor characters had completed their assigned rôles, the curtains suddenly parted and the sun—the Daystar—the star of the play, entered with all the panoply of majesty. And as I stood there and beheld this incomparable spectacle, and gazed over the mountains, the meadows and the sea, the words of Shakespeare came into my mind:

It is a pity that more people do not see the sunrise. Many do not get up early enough, many do not stay up late enough. Out of the millions and millions of men, women and children on this globe only a comparatively few see the sunrise, and I dare say there are many respectable persons who have never seen it at all. One really should not go through life without seeing the sun rise at least once, because, even if one is fortunate enough to be received at last into heaven, there is one sight wherein this vale of5 tears surpasses the eternal home of the saints. “There is no night there,” hence there can be no dawn, no sunrise; it is therefore better to make the most of it while we can.

As a man feels refreshed after a night’s sleep and his morning bath, so the sun seems to rise out of the water like a giant renewed. Milton gave us an excellent description:

Browning, in his poem, Pippa Passes, compares the sunrise to a glass of champagne, a sparkling wine overflowing the world:

DAY!

The sunset has a tranquil beauty but to me there is in it always a tinge of sadness, of the6 sadness of farewell, of the approach of darkness. This mood is expressed in the old hymn which in my childhood I used to hear so often in church:

Sorrow may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning, saith the Holy Book. The sunrise has not only inexpressible majesty and splendour, but it has the rapture of promise, the excitement of beginning again. Yesterday has gone forever, the night is over and we may start anew. To how many eyes, weary with wakefulness in the long watches of the night, or flushed with fever, is the first glimmer of the dawn welcome. The night makes every fear and worry worse than the reality, it magnifies every trivial distress. Mark Twain said the night brought madness—none of us is quite sane in the darkness. That particular regret for yesterday or apprehension for tomorrow that strikes you like a whiplash in the face at 2:45 A.M. dwindles into an absurdity in the healthy dawn.

Mark Twain, who had expressed the difference between the night and the morning tragically, also expressed it humorously. He said7 that when he was lying awake in the middle of the night he felt like an awful sinner, he hated himself with a horrible depression and made innumerable good resolutions; but when at 7:30 he was shaving himself he felt just as cheerful, healthy and unregenerate as ever.

I am a child of the morning. I love the dawn and the sunrise. When I was a child I saw the sunrise from the top of Whiteface and it seemed to me that I not only saw beauty but heard celestial music. Ever since reading in George Moore’s Evelyn Innes the nun’s description of her feelings while listening to Wagner’s Prologue to Lohengrin I myself never hear that lovely music rising to a tremendous climax without seeing in imagination what was revealed to the Sister of Mercy. I am on a mountain top before dawn; the darkness gives way; the greyness strengthens, and finally my whole mind and soul are filled with the increasing light.

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II MOLASSES

Before both the word molasses and the thing it signifies disappear forever from the earth, I wish to recall its flavour and its importance to the men and women of my generation. By any other name it would taste as sweet; it is by no means yet extinct; but for many years maple syrup and other commodities have taken its place on the breakfast table. Yet I was brought up on molasses. Do you remember, in that marvellous book, Helen’s Babies, when Toddie was asked what he had in his pantspocket, his devastating reply to that tragic question? He calmly answered, “Bread and molasses.”

Well, I was brought up on bread and molasses. Very often that was all we had for supper. I well remember, in the sticky days of childhood, being invited out to supper by my neighbour Arthur Greene. My table manners were primitive and my shyness in formal company overwhelming. When I was ushered into the Greene dining room not only as the guest of honour but as the only guest, I felt like Fra9 Lippo Lippi in the most august presence in the universe, only I lacked his impudence to help me out.

The conditions of life in those days may be estimated from the fact that the entire formal supper, even with “company,” consisted wholly and only of bread, butter and molasses. Around the festive board sat Mr. Greene, a terrifying adult who looked as if he had never been young; Mrs. Greene, tight-lipped and serious; Arthur Greene, his sister Alice, and his younger brother, Freddy. As I was company I was helped first and given a fairly liberal supply of bread, which I unthinkingly (as though I were used to such luxuries) spread with butter and then covered with a thick layer of molasses. Ah, I was about to learn something.

Mr. Greene turned to his eldest son, and enquired grimly, “Arthur, which will you have, bread and butter or bread and molasses?”

The wretched Arthur, looking at my plate, and believing that his father, in deference to the “company,” would not quite dare to enforce what was evidently the regular evening choice, said, with what I recognised as a pitiful attempt at careless assurance, “I’ll take both.”

“No, you don’t!” countered his father, with a tone as final as that of a judge in court. His10 father was not to be bluffed by the presence of company; he evidently regarded discipline as more important than manners. The result was I felt like a voluptuary, being the only person at the table who had the luxury of both butter and molasses. They stuck in my throat; I feel them choking me still, after an interval of more than fifty years.

The jug of molasses was on our table at home at every breakfast and at every supper. The only variety lay in the fact (do you remember?) that there were two distinct kinds of molasses—sometimes we had one, sometimes the other. There was Porto Rico molasses and there was New Orleans molasses—brunette and blonde. The Porto Rico molasses was so dark it was almost black, and New Orleans molasses was golden brown.

The worst meal of the three was invariably supper, and I imagine this was fairly common among our neighbours. Breakfast was a hearty repast, starting usually with oatmeal, immediately followed by beefsteak and potatoes or mutton chops, sometimes ham and eggs; but usually beef or chops. It had a glorious coda with griddle cakes or waffles; and thus stuffed, we rose from the table like condors from their prey,11 and began the day’s work. Dinner at one was a hearty meal, with soup, roast, vegetables and pie.

Supper consisted of “remainders.” There was no relish in it, and I remember that very often my mother, who never complained vocally, looking at the unattractive spread with lack-lustre eye, would either speak to our one servant or would disappear for a moment and return with a cold potato, which it was clear she distinctly preferred to the sickening sweetish “preserves” and cookies or to the bread and molasses which I myself ate copiously.

However remiss and indifferent and selfish I may have been in my conduct toward my mother—and what man does not suffer as he thinks of this particular feature of the irrecoverable past?—it does me good to remember that, after I came to man’s estate, I gave my mother what it is clear she always and in vain longed for in earlier years, a good substantial dinner at night.

At breakfast we never put cream and sugar on our porridge; we always put molasses. Then, if griddle cakes followed the meat, we once more had recourse to molasses. And as bread and molasses was the backbone of the evening meal, you will see what I mean when I say I swam to manhood through this viscous sea. In those days youth was sweet.

12

The transfer of emphasis from breakfast to supper is the chief distinguishing change in the procession of meals as it was and as it became. It now seems incredible that I once ate large slabs of steak or big chops at breakfast, but I certainly did. And supper, which approached the vanishing point, turned into dinner in later years.

Many, many years ago we banished the molasses jug and even the lighter and more patrician maple syrup ceased to flow at the breakfast table. I am quite aware that innumerable persons still eat griddle cakes or waffles and syrup at the first meal of the day. It is supposed that the poet-artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti ruined his health by eating huge portions of ham and eggs, followed by griddle cakes and molasses, for breakfast. To me there has always been something incongruous between syrup and coffee; they are mutually destructive; one spoils the taste of the other.

Yet waffles and syrup are a delectable dish; and I am quite certain that nectar and ambrosia made no better meal. What to do, then? The answer is simple. Eat no griddle cakes, no waffles and no syrup at breakfast; but use these commodities for dessert at lunch. Then comes the full flavour.

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Many taverns now have hit upon the excellent idea of serving only two dishes for lunch or dinner—chicken and waffles. This obviates the expense of waste, the worry of choice, the time lost in plans. And what combination could possibly be better?

One of the happiest recollections of my childhood is the marvelous hot, crisp waffle lying on my plate, and my increasing delight as I watched the molasses filling each square cavity in turn. As the English poet remarked, “I hate people who are not serious about their meals.”

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III RESOLUTIONS WHEN I COME TO BE OLD

At the age of thirty-two, Jonathan Swift wrote the following:

Resolutions When I Come to Be Old

(1) Not to marry a young woman.

(2) Not to keep young company, unless they desire it.

(3) Not to be peevish, or morose, or suspicious.

(4) Not to scorn present ways, or wits, or fashions, or men, or war, etc.

(5) Not to be fond of children.

(6) Not to tell the same story over and over to the same people.

(7) Not to be covetous.

(8) Not to neglect decency or cleanliness, for fear of falling into nastiness.

(9) Not to be over severe with young people, but give allowances for their youthful follies and weaknesses.

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(10) Not to be influenced by, or give ear to, knavish tattling servants, or others.

(11) Not to be too free of advice, or trouble any but those who desire it.

(12) To desire some good friend to inform me which of these resolutions I break or neglect, and wherein, and reform accordingly.

(13) Not to talk too much, nor of myself.

(14) Not to boast of my former beauty, or strength, or favour with ladies, etc.

(15) Not to hearken to flatteries, nor conceive I can be beloved by a young woman.

(16) Not to be positive or opinionative.

(17) Not too set for observing all these rules, for fear I should observe none.

Swift died at the age of seventy-eight; so far as I can find out, he lived up to these resolutions with commendable consistency, except one: his friend, Dr. Sheridan, was sufficiently indiscreet to remind him that he was becoming too parsimonious. Swift resented this criticism, and it spoiled their friendship.

Although Swift was a pessimist, a cynic and a misanthrope, these resolutions contain much wisdom; so much, in fact, that a faithful adherence to them would save most old men much suffering and humiliation. I read them first16 when I was a boy and they produced a profound impression; now that I am in a position where they fit my case, I believe them to be good medicine, bitter but wholesome. Swift must have been bored horribly by many old men, or he must have observed many old people behaving in a silly fashion to have written down these rules with such emphasis.

(1, 2) “Crabbed age and youth cannot live together,” said Shakespeare; the few exceptions do no more than prove the rule. Many old people suffer because they fear that young people do not desire their company. The solution is for old people not to allow their happiness to be dependent on young folks but to have either company of their own age or intellectual resources which will make them mentally independent. I have taught young people for forty years, and although I am very fond of them, I prefer the society of people of my own age. If I were about to take a trip around the world and could choose either a young or old companion, I would take the latter.

(3) Good advice for any age, but old persons, owing to bodily infirmities, are more apt to show these unlovely characteristics.

(4) This advice was never more needed than now.

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(5) I would change this, so it would read “Not to fondle children.” A man with a bushy beard can terrify babes.

(6) “I suppose you have all heard this before, but——” then why tell it?

(7) Especially of the health, vigour, and activity of younger men.

(8) Swift was himself almost fanatically clean. It is a disgusting sight to behold old men who are careless of their clothes and appearance, as though old age gave one the privilege to appear in public with the remains of the last meal on the coat, waistcoat and shirt.

(9) Observe the ways of the dog, and learn wisdom. The dog allows children to pull his tail, and bother him in many ways; not because he likes it, but because he knows children have no sense. It is useless to expect that children and young people will think and act like middle-aged men and women; why be fretful when they are simply running true to form?

(10) One must remember that slander is of value only as a self-revelation, never as an accurate description. The recoil of that particular gun is greater than the discharge.

(11) Every person loves to give advice and no one loves to take it. The mother says to the child, “Now, Freddy, don’t forget to put your18 rubbers on!” to which Freddy replies “Huh!” Then when Freddy is seventy-six years old, his granddaughter says, “Now, Grandpa, don’t forget to put your rubbers on!” to which the grandparent replies “Huh!” It is a good thing not to force one’s opinion on others unless they ask for it; one’s professions and creed will be judged by one’s life, anyhow.

(12) Ah, that requires the very grace of God. This kind comes only by prayer and fasting.

(13, 14) Many an old man likes to have others think that he was in his prime a devil of a fellow. This particular vanity is hard to eradicate. Even in the moment of Lear’s heartbreaking and shattering grief over the death of his daughter Cordelia he found time to boast of his former prowess.

(15) I say it not cynically, but in all seriousness: There is no one who cannot be successfully flattered, provided the flattery be applied with some skill. We have at the core such invincible egotism that we not only listen greedily to flattery, but, what is far worse, we believe it!

(16) An overbearing, domineering, dogmatic manner in conversation is abominable in persons of any age; when old people behave in this fashion, and it is not resented by the young, it should really all the more humiliate the old.19 For such acquiescence means that the old man hasn’t any sense, anyhow.

(17) Know thyself. Ulysses showed his wisdom in not trusting himself. A Yale undergraduate left on his door a placard for the janitor on which was written, “Call me at 7 o’clock; it is absolutely necessary that I get up at seven. Make no mistake. Keep knocking until I answer.” Under this he had written. “Try again at ten.”

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IV ENGLISH AND AMERICAN HUMOUR

Some one has said that American humour consists in over-statement and English humour in understatement. This judgment does not include everything, but so far as it goes it is not only accurate, but helps both to explain English humour and the frequently heard remark that the English are without it. I suppose one reason many ill-informed Americans say that Englishmen have no sense of humour is because the English do not indulge so commonly as we in boisterous jocularity, exaggeration, surprise and burlesque. The average Englishman does not see why a stranger should accost him with jocosity—many Englishmen do not see why a stranger should accost them at all. It is an excellent plan while travelling in England or anywhere in Europe never to speak first to an Englishman; let him open the conversation.

One of the chief differences between the average Englishman and American is in amiability, responsiveness, amenity. Americans are probably21 the most amiable people in the world, the most happy to respond to an exploratory remark, the most willing. I dare say it is partly a matter of climate. Our chronic sunshine makes us expansive and ebullient.

In any American city on a terrifically hot day, two hitherto unacquainted men will speak to each other as they pass on the street, one saying, “Don’t you wish you had brought your overcoat!” which harmless jest is returned by the other with equal affability. If you said that to an Englishman, he might stare at you blankly, and perhaps hazard the query, “You mean, of course, your light overcoat?”

After introduction to a resident Englishman in Vancouver, British Columbia, at a small dining-table in a hotel, I remarked gently, “Even though you are behind the times here in Vancouver, I do not see why you should advertise the fact.” “What on earth do you mean?” he enquired. Then I called his attention to the dinner-card, on which was printed Vancouver, B. C. He exclaimed, “But it doesn’t mean that, you know!” I do not believe he was deficient in a sense of humour. I had just met him, and he did not see why a stranger should be sufficiently intimate to be taken otherwise than seriously.

22

Punch is the best of comic papers; it expresses the genuine original humour of a humorous folk. I remember seeing there a picture of the village orchestra, and as the director rapped for attention, the first violin leaned forward and asked, “What is the next piece?” and being informed, replied, “Why I just played that one.”

Woodrow Wilson once told me a story which illustrates how dangerous it is for anyone to assume that the English have no sense of humour.