Previous: Summer XII. Rumination
In this high summertide, I remember with a strange feeling that there are people who, of their free choice, spend day and night in cities, who throng to the gabble of drawing-rooms, make festival in public eating-houses, sweat in the glare of the theatre. They call it life; they call it enjoyment. Why, so it is, for them; they are so made. The folly is mine, to wonder that they fulfil their destiny...
[About 19th century stage lighting “As Savoy producer, Richard D'Oyly Carte, explained... ‘The greatest drawbacks to the enjoyment of the theatrical performances are, undoubtedly, the foul air and heat which pervade all theatres. As everyone knows, each gas-burner consumes as much oxygen as many people, and causes great heat beside. The incandescent lamps consume no oxygen, and cause no perceptible heat.’ By the end of the 19th century most “modern” theatres have switched from gas lights to the much safer electric lights.”]
Never again shall I shake hands with man or woman who is not in truth my friend. Never again shall I go to see acquaintances with whom I have no acquaintance. All men my brothers? Nay, thank Heaven, that they are not? I will do harm, if I can help it, to no one; I will wish good to all; but I will make no pretense of personal kindliness where, in the nature of things, it cannot be felt. I have grimaced a smile and pattered unmeaning words to many a person whom I despised or from whom in heart I shrank; I did so because I had not courage to do otherwise. For a man conscious of such weakness, the best is to live apart from the world....
Alpha.
Solitude will cure our aversion to the throng, the throng our weariness of solitude.
Seneca
There is something here of what people see in persons of born status -- the Tietjens and Darcies of life. People without the middle-class or working-class need to please others. This is yet another aspect of Gissing’s fantasy. In his own modest way, Ryecroft is like a Tietjens of Groby -- not born but also not dependent on the pleasure of others. A modest Tory standing free of either the disapprobation or good opinion of the world.
I must admit here that I still struggle with these concepts of class. As an American (of a particular character) I’m prepared to grant a superiority to talent -- intelligence mostly but also, to some extent, for a natural ability for music or painting or some other form of artistic expression -- but birth seems to me a lame excuse for special status. But, it also seems to me that while people who are born to status are not naturally superior, being raised with that status can shape them in ways that are not entirely bad.
Count Vronsky, and his general friend, Serpukhovskoy, expressed this well in Anna Karenina:
“... what’s needed is a strong [political] party made up of independents like you and me”
“But why?” Vronsky named a few people in power. “Now why aren’t they independent?
“Simply because they haven’t got or weren’t born with independent means; they had no names, they weren’t born close to the sun as we were. They can be bought, either by money or by flattery. To stay in power they have to think up some policy. And they put out some idea or other, some policy that they don’t believe in themselves and that may be harmful; the whole policy is just a way of keeping their government quarters and a salary. It’s as simple as that, if you take a look at their cards. I may be worse than they are, or more stupid, though I don’t see why I should be worse, but you and I definitely have one important advantage -- we’re harder to buy. People like that are needed now more than ever.”
In a world where most people are striving (there’s that word again) to become something, there’s something to be said in favor of people who are already “something.” Of course this argument would be easier to make if so many landed gentleman hadn’t proved themselves greedy and power hungry knaves. And it doesn’t help that most of the writers (Tolstoy, Austen, Nancy Mitford) who paint the gentry in a favorable light, and the middle class in an unfavorable light, were themselves to the gentry born. Ford and Proust were middle class but, while the gentry would have no doubt as to where artists fit in the scheme of the classes, I’m not sure I’m that sure. They would seem to be something of a special case.
Next: Summer XIV. Climate.
No comments:
Post a Comment