This consideration led me to seek for a man sufficiently intelligent and independent to absorb my thoughts, and yet in his inclinations and feelings standing so much nearer than I to the herd, that he could exert an influence. Moreover, some one with the prestige lent by some extraordinary quality or other - as learnedness, or still better, organizing talent - and with the ability, the aplomb, the ruling power which the herd tolerates and demands. Thus a mediator between me, the all too original and practically unqualified, for whom an attempt to make himself prevail would signify a useless martyrdom, and the herd, that in its unoriginality is yet so greatly in need of the stirring ferment of my ideas.
Before we neared the American sh.o.r.es I had made my choice from the persons that had come to my mind as qualified for my purpose. I shall call the man Judge Elkinson, concealing his real name, as he is still in the public eye. He had been governor of his state and at my arrival was a member of the Supreme Court, the highest tribunal in the United States, sovereign in its judgments and only admitting to membership the most trusted and esteemed men of this mighty realm.
It was a clear, cold, bright day when we steamed up the Hudson and saw the white building ma.s.ses of the giant city rising from the centre of the wide, grayish-yellow stream. A strong icy wind was blowing from the blue sky, and the valiant little tug-boats rocking on the turbulent waters and amid shrill whistles running quickly in and out among the great ships, like sea-monsters hunting for prey, were covered with a solid coating of ice from the splashing water.
Upon the elongated island protruding into the wide mouth of the river stretched the mighty city, a densely packed conglomeration of houses piled up toward the sea, block upon block, so that the tall ma.s.ses of masonry at the point of the island appeared to be heaped up one upon the other like pack-ice. There where the blocks were the highest and stood facing each other like giant building-blocks set on end, there was Wall Street, the centre of activity, where the stony growth seemed as though spurred on by the restless stir, the yet unregulated and uncomprehended instinct of acc.u.mulation.
As we drew nearer we saw the delicate, fresh colors, the soft reds and creamy whites of the buildings in the clear, smokeless atmosphere, the white exhausts of the beating systems, standing out like little white flags against the light blue sky, and the myriad dark, twinkling eyes of the houses, row upon row, severe, square, strong, firm and light with a myriad grave, fixed questioning glances reviewing the new arrivals from across the sea, who streamed from all the quarters of the globe to this land of future promise and expectation.
Then followed the confusing and confounding impressions of the landing, where the great nation, compelled by experience, seems to guard itself against the instreaming invasion of undesired elements, and investigates and selects with humiliating, apparently heartless strictness, as though we were animals to be examined.
Elsje"s smile and cheerful endurance alleviated for me the bitterness of standing in the long line for examination, ordered about by the gruff officials - I, the proud aristocrat, who had never come here otherwise than surrounded by luxury, and treated with distinction as an honored guest.
When we were finally released and found ourselves in the noise and tumult of that tremendous life, where the selfish seeking of the few is by a secret and uncomprehended power forced together into a mysterious and curious order, - as out of the seemingly aimless and orderless agitation of ants or bees one sees a well-planned structure arise, - amid the rattling of the trucks, the shuffling of thousands of feet upon the worn and ill-kept pavement, the ceaseless thunder of the elevated trains running between the graceless buildings and signs, designed solely for doing business or attracting attention, in this so preeminently incomplete, imperfect, half-barbarous and half-polished world, I saw my dear, delicate wife, overwhelmed and confounded, cling to me as though she sought everything that still attracted her to the world with me, powerless to find it in this tumult of life.
I did not remain in the city a day, knowing everything that here preys upon the inexperienced arrival, but went directly to one of those vaguely scattered villages in the immediate vicinity of the town, where spots of nature, still wild or again run wild, can be found in the midst of the remote, neglected precincts of a quickly and carelessly growing human colony. There in the woody, rocky territory little, dingy, wooden houses are to be found, built of unsightly boards, outwardly no better than sheds or barns, as though put up temporarily by people who would probably move on further soon - houses that one may occupy for comparatively little money.
It did not look inviting for a woman accustomed to the choice solidity of a Dutch house, and the well-sustained intimacy of a Dutch landscape, where man and nature through long-continued symbiosis have grown together in a harmonious union.
Everywhere all through the woods were tumbledown houses, heaps of rubbish, crockery, old iron and dirt, trees chopped down and left to rot, burnt underbrush, annoying signs of the proximity of a heedless, careless, prodigal human world. And close by, between long rows of signboards, monstrously drawn and painted in glaring colors, rushed the trains, besmirching everything with their smoke.
But after all it was a home, and with all the energy that the long years of suffering had left in her, Elsje joyously began to turn the dear illusion of these years of pining and waiting into reality.
And when the humble dwelling had been made somewhat habitable, when there was a pantry stocked with provisions, an extremely fresh and spotlessly-kept bedroom, a table with a cover upon which the kerosene lamp threw its circle of light at night, so that I could sit and read the paper while Elsje sewed and mended busily, her head full of tenderly solicitous domestic thoughts, and when to the great satisfaction of the housewife a young negro girl had been found who came daily to help a few hours, thereby giving to the household, according to Dutch ideas, a necessary air of completeness - then I saw upon Elsje"s wan countenance and in her clear, dark-ringed eyes a light that shone out above all gloomy memories or sad forebodings.
Only then I saw her faithful, loving nature in its perfect radiant glory, but also, alas! with the distressing realization of its frailness.
XXIX
The so universally-recognized type of human excellence indicated by the term "gentleman," cannot go hand in hand with true originality that makes itself prevail. For one of the chief characteristics of the gentleman is the respect for group ideas, the obedience to the voice of the herd; while the characteristic quality of the Original is precisely his breaking away from the group union, his reversing of ideas, his making himself obeyed instead of obeying.
The seceder who is not able to change the ideas of the group and to make the herd follow, is annihilated and deserves annihilation. In the human economy he is only harmful and his existence is unwarranted.
The gentleman on the contrary has a pre-eminently useful and important function. He is that member of the group who without separating from the union retains most of the original element. He combines the highest possible originality with the strictest subordination to the group nature, which only very few exceptional natures can defy with impunity.
He changes nothing, but he inclines toward the original, thus making the entire herd more adaptable to change, while be lacks the ever-dangerous tendency of the originals to break loose, and keeps alive in the herd the lofty, indispensable virtue of respecting and upholding the sacredness of the union.
The more the group ideas diverge from the elemental ideas of human nature, the rarer the type of "gentleman" becomes in the group. And so my little brother Shaw"s lament that the true English gentleman has become extinct is comprehensible, as in the entire tremendous herd of the nations of West-European or Anglo-Saxon civilization, ideas are current which every original immediately recognizes as conflicting with the nature of humanity, as hostile to Christ.
The term "un-Christian" is with just consistency applied to them.
Un-Christian means the enriching oneself at the cost of others, the enriching oneself by means of craft, the enriching oneself without bound or measure. In many groups of ancient times these things were not lawful. But the great herd of the nations calling themselves Christian, include these so unmistakably un-Christian actions among the lawful, even honorable and generally admitted. And this moreover in the very worst form. It is one of the group-ideas of the great herd, that without oneself doing any work, one may enrich oneself unrestrictedly, by means of craft, at the expense of the very poorest. Only the unprecedented magnitude of the herd and its unparalleled firm coherence made so great a deviation from Primal Reason conceivable and possible.
The type of "gentleman" has changed, however, and grown rarer in this process. It is well-nigh impossible to preserve one"s originality without separating from the union of the group, or without, as the socialists and anarchists, forming new groups that stand hostile to the great herd. The respecting of group-ideas and at the same time preserving one"s original human feelings, demands a forcing and straining of truth that only few sagacious and honest people succeed in.
Judge Elkinson still represented the fast disappearing type of gentleman, and I knew that for him this was possible through an extraordinary suppleness of mind, fineness of tact and feeling, and a philosophic broadness of view.
Honest in the strict sense of the word, with nave uprightness - that he could not be any more than any other faithful member of the herd, with some astuteness. But he was at least capable of giving everyone the impression that he always desired to be honest. He forgave himself the necessary distortion demanded by the group union, as the humane physician does not charge himself with the lies he tells for the good of his patients. He also comprehended the relativeness of words, the vagueness of conceptions, the faultiness of all communion, but was nevertheless not so broad-minded that he found extenuating circ.u.mstances everywhere and for everyone. His great power lay in his demand for fixedness of opinion. Growth and development were thereby excluded, but he sacrificed these, for the sake of the support so necessary to the herd, that positiveness and regularity afford.
One could depend on him absolutely; he was called "a man of character"
and thereby exercised the most beneficial influence at the cost of personal development, actuated as it were by unconscious love, by a preservative instinct for the ma.s.ses. His moral code was as broad as the group-ideas allowed, but beyond that point - immutable. He maintained it with the same sacred respect which as judge he demanded for the law, though his philosophic reason told him that neither could by any means exclude injustice. He called a rogue a rogue, though he realized that complete comprehension means complete forgiveness; he considered an anarchist an enemy to mankind, a harmful monster, even though he had to admit that the anarchistic criticism of society was well founded.
If the group-ideas and the group-union of those calling themselves socialists, had not been so wretchedly vague, confused and based on pseudo-science and hollow rhetoric, he would perhaps have joined that brotherhood. For he had the full measure of American courage and resolution. And he would have represented the "gentleman" in that confederacy just as well as in the old union. But, as every "gentleman," he had the intuitive dislike of bad company, the natural and wholesome aristocracy that makes one shun a group if it is represented by inferior people. And in the socialist herd he saw nothing much better than uncultured followers driven by fanatic leaders, a very sorry realization of the Originals who had brought about the movement. Moreover the union of this group was so weak, so entirely based upon the negative, so badly formulated, that it was impossible for him to transfer to it his natural respect for the union.
With this man, then, I considered that I might try my luck. He had grown very rich by clever, but according to group-ideas perfectly lawful money transactions, as commissioner of all sorts of large undertakings, and he had a fine mansion in Washington and in New York.
Toward me he would, as a philosopher, sometimes jokingly excuse his wealth, referring in this connection to the example of Seneca the sage.
I called on him as soon as I knew he was in New York, and was received most cordially.
Elkinson had a large, bony head upon a lean, muscular body. He was not yet sixty, and his clean-shaven face was of a youthfully fresh and ruddy complexion. His hair was snow-white, but still thick and full, parted in the middle and trimly cut. His strongly-p.r.o.nounced jawbones, large teeth and firm chin, lent him an expression of will-power and energy; the thin-lipped large mouth and the clear, gray, steady eyes commanded respect and marked the man who would not let himself be imposed upon or put out of countenance; his eyes twinkled at the slightest occasion with an expression of subtle roguishness, evidence of the general American inclination for jesting and joking.
"It is very kind of you, my dear Count Muralto, very kind indeed to look me up again. Have you been a.s.signed to the post at Washington again? And how are the countess and the children?"
"Don"t bother about using my t.i.tle, Mr. Elkinson. It must be distressing to your democratic spirit."
The mocking eyes twinkled as though they enjoyed my sally.
"On the contrary! on the contrary! - that is atavism! It does us good.
We are above such things, to be sure, but just as eager to do them as a worthy professor to sing the college songs at a reunion."
"Then I regret that I must deprive you of this pleasure. I am no longer a count and intend to become a citizen of your republic."
"What is that you tell me? Well, well, well! that is a remarkable decision."
"Your enthusiasm is not as hearty as one should expect of a true American. I believe you think that something is lost by this transaction after all."
"Perhaps I do! - Italian counts are rarer than American citizens. With these t.i.tles it"s the same as with sailing vessels and feudal castles.
They are unpractical and out of date. And yet it is a pity to see one after another disappearing."
"Would you put me into a museum and have the state support me?"
"No! No! - we are glad to make use of such excellent working powers. We need men like you. And what does madame say to it?"
"Contessa Muralto remains Contessa Muralto. I have broken completely with her and with my old life. I wish to make my position clear to you.
I have come here as an emigrant, poor, and accompanied by a woman who is my true wife, but can never be lawfully recognized as such."
"H"m! H"m! - that is grave, very grave," said Judge Elkinson. The roguish twinkle in his eyes vanished and he a.s.sumed the severe, inexorable expression of the judge.
Then, as simply as possible and with the trusting uprightness that would make the strongest appeal to his kind heart, I recounted the vicissitudes of my lot. Mutely he listened to my story, obviously interested and touched, wondering what to make of this cage.
"And now?" he finally asked. "What do you expect now? I know that a deep sensibility to what we here call the tender pa.s.sion is one of your national characteristics. But after all you are no longer a boy, and you have enough sense and experience of life to know that your present position does not offer you much chance of success, not even in this country."
"I do not expect or desire success in the American sense of the word. A frugal, existence is all I want. I shall endeavor to obtain that. By giving lessons, for example."
"And had you hoped to be in any degree supported by me in that direction?" asked the careful and practical American.
"No! - I did not come to you for that. I have not the slightest intention of burdening my old acquaintances by presuming on our former relations."