Little Journey in the World

Dudley Warner Charles

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pubOne.info present you this new edition. The title naturally suggested for this story was "A Dead Soul, " but it was discarded because of the similarity to that of the famous novel by Nikolai Gogol- "Dead Souls"- though the motive has nothing in common with that used by the Russian novelist. Gogol exposed an extensive fraud practiced by the sale, in connection with lands, of the names of "serfs" (called souls) not living, or "dead souls.

Informations

• Publié par: Pub One Info
• Date de parution: 06 novembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9782819945666
• Langue: English

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A LITTLE JOURNEY IN THE WORLD
By Charles Dudley Warner
INTRODUCTORY SKETCH
The title naturally suggested for this story was “ADead Soul, ” but it was discarded because of the similarity to thatof the famous novel by Nikolai Gogol— “Dead Souls”— though themotive has nothing in common with that used by the Russiannovelist. Gogol exposed an extensive fraud practiced by the sale,in connection with lands, of the names of “serfs” (called souls)not living, or “dead souls. ”
This story is an attempt to trace the demoralizationin a woman's soul of certain well-known influences in our existingsocial life. In no other way could certain phases of our society bemade to appear so distinctly as when reflected in the once puremirror of a woman's soul.
The character of Margaret is the portrait of no onewoman. But it was suggested by the career of two women (amongothers less marked) who had begun life with the highest ideals,which had been gradually eaten away and destroyed by “prosperous”marriages and association with unscrupulous methods of acquiringmoney.
The deterioration was gradual. The women were in alloutward conduct unchanged, the conventionalities of life weremaintained, the graces were not lost, the observances of the dutiesof charities and of religion were even emphasized, but worldlinesshad eaten the heart out of them, and they were “dead souls. ” Thetragedy of the withered life was a thousand-fold enhanced by theexternal show of prosperous respectability.
The story was first published (in 1888) in Harper'sMonthly. During its progress— and it was printed as soon as eachinstallment was ready (a very poor plan)— I was in receipt of theusual letters of sympathy, or protest, and advice. One sympatheticmissive urged the removal of Margaret to a neighboring city, whereshe could be saved by being brought under special Christianinfluences. The transfer, even in a serial, was impossible, and sheby her own choice lived the life she had entered upon.
And yet, if the reader will pardon the confidence,pity intervened to shorten it. I do not know how it is with otherwriters, but the persons that come about me in a little drama areas real as those I meet in every-day life, and in this case I foundit utterly impossible to go on to what might have been the bitter,logical development of Margaret's career. Perhaps it was as well.Perhaps the writer should have no despotic power over hiscreations, however slight they are. He may profitably recall thedictum of a recent essayist that “there is no limit to the mercy ofGod. ”
CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER. Hartford, August 11,1899.
A LITTLE JOURNEY IN THE WORLD
I
We were talking about the want of diversity inAmerican life, the lack of salient characters. It was not at aclub. It was a spontaneous talk of people who happened to betogether, and who had fallen into an uncompelled habit of happeningto be together. There might have been a club for the study of theWant of Diversity in American Life. The members would have beenobliged to set apart a stated time for it, to attend as a duty, andto be in a mood to discuss this topic at a set hour in the future.They would have mortgaged another precious portion of the littletime left us for individual life. It is a suggestive thought thatat a given hour all over the United States innumerable clubs mightbe considering the Want of Diversity in American Life. Only in thisway, according to our present methods, could one expect toaccomplish anything in regard to this foreign-felt want. It seemsillogical that we could produce diversity by all doing the samething at the same time, but we know the value of congregate effort.It seems to superficial observers that all Americans are born busy.It is not so. They are born with a fear of not being busy; and ifthey are intelligent and in circumstances of leisure, they havesuch a sense of their responsibility that they hasten to allot alltheir time into portions, and leave no hour unprovided for. This isconscientiousness in women, and not restlessness. There is a dayfor music, a day for painting, a day for the display of tea-gowns,a day for Dante, a day for the Greek drama, a day for the DumbAnimals' Aid Society, a day for the Society for the Propagation ofIndians, and so on. When the year is over, the amount that has beenaccomplished by this incessant activity can hardly be estimated.Individually it may not be much. But consider where Chaucer wouldbe but for the work of the Chaucer clubs, and what an effect uponthe universal progress of things is produced by the associateconcentration upon the poet of so many minds.
A cynic says that clubs and circles are for theaccumulation of superficial information and unloading it on others,without much individual absorption in anybody. This, like allcynicism, contains only a half-truth, and simply means that thegeneral diffusion of half-digested information does not raise thegeneral level of intelligence, which can only be raised to anypurpose by thorough self-culture, by assimilation, digestion,meditation. The busy bee is a favorite simile with us, and we areapt to overlook the fact that the least important part of hisexample is buzzing around. If the hive simply got together andbuzzed, or even brought unrefined treacle from some cyclopaedia,let us say, of treacle, there would be no honey added to thegeneral store.
It occurred to some one in this talk at last to denythat there was this tiresome monotony in American life. And thisput a new face on the discussion. Why should there be, with everyrace under the heavens represented here, and each one struggling toassert itself, and no homogeneity as yet established even betweenthe people of the oldest States? The theory is that democracylevels, and that the anxious pursuit of a common object, money,tends to uniformity, and that facility of communication spreads allover the land the same fashion in dress; and repeats everywhere thesame style of house, and that the public schools give all thechildren in the United States the same superficial smartness. Andthere is a more serious notion, that in a society without classesthere is a sort of tyranny of public opinion which crushes out theplay of individual peculiarities, without which human intercourseis uninteresting. It is true that a democracy is intolerant ofvariations from the general level, and that a new society allowsless latitude in eccentricities to its members than an oldsociety.
But with all these allowances, it is also admittedthat the difficulty the American novelist has is in hitting uponwhat is universally accepted as characteristic of American life, sovarious are the types in regions widely separated from each other,such different points of view are had even in conventionalities,and conscience operates so variously on moral problems in onecommunity and another. It is as impossible for one section toimpose upon another its rules of taste and propriety in conduct—and taste is often as strong to determine conduct as principle— asit is to make its literature acceptable to the other. If in theland of the sun and the jasmine and the alligator and the fig, theliterature of New England seems passionless and timid in face ofthe ruling emotions of life, ought we not to thank Heaven for thediversity of temperament as well as of climate which will in thelong-run save us from that sameness into which we are supposed tobe drifting?
When I think of this vast country with any attentionto local developments I am more impressed with the unlikenessesthan with the resemblances. And besides this, if one had theability to draw to the life a single individual in the mosthomogeneous community, the product would be sufficiently startling.We cannot flatter ourselves, therefore, that under equal laws andopportunities we have rubbed out the saliencies of human nature. Ata distance the mass of the Russian people seem as monotonous astheir steppes and their commune villages, but the Russian novelistsfind characters in this mass perfectly individualized, and, indeed,give us the impression that all Russians are irregular polygons.Perhaps if our novelists looked at individuals as intently, theymight give the world the impression that social life here is asunpleasant as it appears in the novels to be in Russia.
This is partly the substance of what was said onewinter evening before the wood fire in the library of a house inBrandon, one of the lesser New England cities. Like hundreds ofresidences of its kind, it stood in the suburbs, amid forest-trees,commanding a view of city spires and towers on the one hand, and onthe other of a broken country of clustering trees and cottages,rising towards a range of hills which showed purple and warmagainst the pale straw-color of the winter sunsets. The charm ofthe situation was that the house was one of many comfortabledwellings, each isolated, and yet near enough together to form aneighborhood; that is to say, a body of neighbors who respectedeach other's privacy, and yet flowed together, on occasion, withoutthe least conventionality. And a real neighborhood, as our modernlife is arranged, is becoming more and more rare.
I am not sure that the talkers in this conversationexpressed their real, final sentiments, or that they should be heldaccountable for what they said. Nothing so surely kills the freedomof talk as to have some matter-of-fact person instantly bring youto book for some impulsive remark flashed out on the instant,instead of playing with it and tossing it about in a way that shallexpose its absurdity or show its value. Freedom is lost with toomuch responsibility and seriousness, and the truth is more likelyto be struck out in a lively play of assertion and retort than whenall the words and sentiments are weighed. A person very likelycannot tell what he does think till his thoughts are exposed to theair, and it is the bright fallacies and impulsive, rash ventures inconversation that are often most fruitful to talker and listeners.T