THIS year (1922) brings the centennial of Matthew Arnold’s birth. Except for a few of his more important poems, we confess to an affectionate ignorance about Arnold. Of course, we remember taking notes during a number of lectures about him when we were at college; a few catchwords about culture and anarchy; sweetness and light; seeing life steadily and seeing it whole; Barbarians, Philistines, and Populace—a few faded buntings of this sort flutter rather dingily from the halliards of our memory; and we remember that he had exceptionally fine whiskers. We used to speculate, in the jejune manner of youth, as to whether Matt, as Rugby boy and Oxford undergraduate, was not a rather amusing contrast to the robust Tom Brown whom his father made famous. But, as you will see, Arnold has never been more than an interesting and gracious wraith in our mind. Those of his essays that we were told to reread we have forgotten, or else (more likely) we never opened.
But rambling not long ago in the cellar of Mr. Mendoza’s bookshop on Ann Street we found, with a shock of excitement, a little book published in Boston in 1888, called Civilization in the United States: First and Last Impressions of America, by Matthew Arnold. We wondered whether this little book had ever been perused by any of the vigorous skeptics who published a recent large volume with the same title. They made, as far as we can recall, no allusion to it. Yet they would have found in it much nourishing meat.
Matthew Arnold’s analysis of American life is interesting to read now. Much of his estimate he would certainly wish to revise. We forget just when it was that he travelled over here—in the 80’s, we suppose—but his general comment was that American civilization was not interesting. He used the word in a very special sense, apparently; he explains it by mentioning the sense of beauty and the sense of distinction. He found American life lacking in charm and in those elements of beauty which appeal to the tranquil and more reflective emotions. It is entertaining—in view of later developments—to hear him say that “the American cities have hardly anything to please a trained or a natural sense for beauty ... where the Americans succeed best in their architecture—in that art so indicative and educative of a people’s sense for beauty—is in the fashion of their villa-cottages in wood.” One cannot help putting a little covey of exclamation marks in the margin at that point. Those “villa-cottages in wood” of the 1880’s are now the jest and rapidly vanishing pox of our suburbs. Even to Abraham Lincoln, by the way, he denies “distinction.” He says, “shrewd, sagacious, humorous, honest, courageous, firm; a man with qualities deserving the most sincere esteem and praise, but he has not distinction.” We have read somewhere (it is an unforgettable crumb of human oddity) that Arnold was chiefly interested in Lincoln’s assassination because the murderer shouted in Latin as he leapt on the stage.
There is much that might be said about a point of view so sincere, so sympathetic, so bravely honest, and yet so lacking in some qualities of imagination as that we seem to find in Arnold’s book. But what we want to quote is a portion of his comment on the American newspapers. Perhaps it is more nearly true still—and, since Northcliffe, more nearly true of British newspapers also—than any other part of his remarks. But we wish to quote it without either assent or denial. He wrote:
You must have lived amongst their newspapers to know what they are. If I relate some of my own experiences, it is because these will give a clear enough notion of what the newspapers over there are, and one remembers more definitely what has happened to oneself. Soon after arriving in Boston I opened a Boston newspaper and came upon a column headed: “Tickings.” By tickings we are to understand news conveyed through the tickings of the telegraph. The first “ticking” was: “Matthew Arnold is sixty-two years old”—an age, I must just say in passing, which I had not then reached. The second “ticking” was: “Wales says, Mary is a darling”; the meaning being that the Prince of Wales expressed great admiration for Miss Mary Anderson. This was at Boston, the American Athens. I proceeded to Chicago. An evening paper was given me soon after I arrived; I opened it, and found under a large-type heading, “We have seen him arrive,” the following picture of myself: “He has harsh features, supercilious manners, parts his hair down the middle, wears a single eyeglass and ill-fitting clothes.” Notwithstanding this rather unfavourable introduction, I was most kindly and hospitably received at Chicago. It happened that I had a letter for Mr. Medill, an elderly gentleman of Scotch descent, the editor of the chief newspaper in those parts, the Chicago Tribune. I called on him, and we conversed amicably together. Some time afterwards, when I had gone back to England, a New York paper published a criticism of Chicago and its people, purporting to have been contributed by me to the Pall Mall Gazette over here. It was a poor hoax, but many people were taken in and were excusably angry, Mr. Medill of the Chicago Tribune amongst the number. A friend telegraphed to me to know if I had written the criticism. I, of course, instantly telegraphed back that I had not written a syllable of it. Then a Chicago paper is sent to me; and what I have the pleasure of reading, as the result of my contradiction, is this: “Arnold denies; Mr. Medill refuses to accept Arnold’s disclaimer; says Arnold is a cur.”
There were California boosters even then, we note. Arnold quotes a Coast newspaper which called all Easterners “the unhappy denizens of a forbidding clime,” and added: “The time will surely come when all roads will lead to California. Here will be the home of art, science, literature, and profound knowledge.”
You probably thought (and justly) that we cut off Matthew Arnold rather abruptly yesterday. Well, we did; but there’s always a reason for everything. We had to hurry uptown, by order of Dr. James Kendall Burgess, the philosophical dentist, to call on Dr. Hillel Feldman for some exodontia. In the old days, we dare say, it would have been called having a tooth pulled, but we like the word exodontia much better.
Now, since we have always been candid with our clients, we will admit that we were a bit nervous. Of course, we knew that these operations rarely turn out fatally; but still, we could see, as soon as we got into that medical office building at 616 Madison Avenue, that we were out of our element. Everywhere there were trained nurses in uniform—going about on “errands of mercy,” we supposed. There was one near the elevator downstairs; there was another in the corridor upstairs; and the soothing, tender way they asked what we wanted made us, somehow, even more conscious of the painful nature of our errand.
However, another of our habits came somewhat to our rescue when we found ourself sitting in Dr. Feldman’s chair. We are timid, we admit; but we are also inquisitive and like to know the details of what’s going on. We could see right away that Dr. Feldman is a tactful man, for he keeps his instruments under a neat little napkin so that you don’t have a chance to be alarmed by all those interesting gouges and pincers. Dr. Feldman immediately pierced our jaw with some stuff he called novocaine, and then, quite as though this was a very commonplace proceeding, began to chat leisurely. “You know,” he said, “a fellow can’t read your things in the paper just for a laugh. Those other fellows’ columns, you can read them and get some fun out of it; but your stuff, you have to read carefully and wade through a long slab to see what it’s all about.”
“Yes,” we said, “we’re like you, Doctor. We believe in giving our patients discipline—making them suffer.”
Now, of course, we said this hoping to give Dr. Feldman a chance to say right away, “Oh, I’m not going to make you suffer. This won’t hurt a bit.”
He didn’t say it, however. He chuckled in a way that seemed to us a trifle threatening. We hastened to appease him by saying some complimentary things about his shining, complicated apparatuses. To our displeasure we found that our jaw now had a numb and frozen feeling, so that we could not talk properly. We could only mumble.
The calm, genial way in which Dr. Feldman sized us up as we sat there with our jaw getting more and more queer—a curious sensation of mingled freezing and heat—reassured us a little. “Does the novocaine make perspiration come out on your forehead like that?” he asked, with a sort of intellectual curiosity. “No, no,” we hastened to say, out of the other side of our mouth. “We’ve been hurrying to get here, Doctor. Didn’t want to keep you waiting.” That was true; but we were afraid he would think we were scared. He began to toy gently with the corner of the napkin on his instrument stand. We were tremendously eager to see what kind of tools he had concealed there. But he outwitted us. He suddenly uttered the excellent words we had been hoping for. “This’ll be absolutely painless,” he said, and then with great gusto and alacrity he sprang upon us. There was a sound rather like grinding out a stone that is imbedded in a frozen pond. It was very interesting. We think the adverb absolutely perhaps was a trifle too strong: perhaps a precisian in words might substitute almost; but at any rate our sense of excitement far outweighed any small twinges. By the time we thought that he was getting well started, “That’s all,” he said. “Perhaps you’d better have a little stimulant.”
Well, naturally, by this time we felt that Dr. Feldman was one of the best friends we had ever had. We shook his hand warmly and assured him we wouldn’t have missed the adventure for anything. Then we went to browse for a few minutes in the second-hand bookshops on Fifty-ninth Street to think it over. We called on Mr. Mitchell Kennerley at the Anderson Galleries. As our jaw was still very much frostbitten, we couldn’t talk very clearly, and we had to hold our pipe in an unaccustomed corner of our mouth. We fear he misunderstood our condition; but he was too polite to say so. Our mind went back to Matthew Arnold.
Matthew Arnold, as we were saying, complained that American civilization was not interesting. A silly thing to say, it seems to us. He meant, evidently, that it did not supply the kind of interest to which he was accustomed, or for which he yearned. For surely, to any one ready to lay aside preconceptions, interesting is exactly what American life has always been. We reflected that the one word we instinctively used in explaining to Dr. Feldman how we had enjoyed our visit to him was just that—interesting. We feel that if Arnold had been a little more courageously imaginative he might have felt the same way about America. It may very truly have troubled some of his sensitive nerves; it may have caused him terror and shuddering; it may have seemed violent and tragic; but surely he might have seen that it was a teeming laboratory of life and amazement. We believe, by the way, that it was 1883 when he was first here; for we have just noticed in Mendoza’s bookshop a copy of Arnold’s poems autographed by him for a lady, and dated 1883. It was an American edition, so probably he signed it while in this country.
Mr. Arnold’s comments on American newspapers, we should like to add, were perhaps just a little scarce in humour. It is all very well to stand aghast at the jocular irreverence of much newspaper writing; but evidently it never occurred to Arnold that much of it is not mere vulgarity but expresses a national sense of gusto and hilarity that is far from a bad thing.
We cannot resist concluding this too brief excursus by quoting a letter which came to us from a mysterious correspondent—whom we know only by the initials N. O. N. P. It seems to us the most charming portrait of Arnold that we have ever seen. N. O. N. P. wrote:
There is no art to read the mind’s construction in the face; but it is possible to see the correspondence, after the cypher has been well de-coded. Matthew Arnold—a plain face—a plain brow—dark hair, parted exactly in the middle—and cheek whiskers! A long nose, slightly thick, and drooping—a wide plaster of mouth, firm but highly sensitive—a six-foot stature and slim build—a scholastic figure and face and cut—tutorial, perhaps; and in that plain face the expression of impression—that is, the visible result of sensitiveness. Every pre-natal and post-natal fineness of his rarely fine, high, sincere mind pervaded the texture of his countenance and gave its stamp of authentic quality to render nugatory anything that might seem superficially to counteract the inherent integrity. Superficially, it might have seemed (perhaps) a smug face or a supercilious one; not inwardly. Inward daintiness might have been there, as there certainly was fastidiousness, if not a frigidity. But a warm heart corresponded to that mouth, which was thick without seeming sensual, and back of that face was a just, a clear, a steady mind, a heat for right and truth, a manly spirit with a manly intellect, a manly sense of clean beauty—and with whatever æsthetic narrowings (if they existed), a broad, direct, noble simplicity and humanity. I hope he will verily have his reward, for in his brave, unwhining, spotless life, he did most valuable, intelligent drudgery for his bread; and out of a beautiful gift composed the loftiest, simplest, broadest, gravest, most reserved and felt, and perhaps most musical and moving poem (as pure poem) of his generation—Sohrab and Rustum. It lacks all the prettinesses of his contemporaries, but is the sole product of his time, in “The Grand Style”—this, however, being of course only the individual opinion of the present commenter.
If a man, one hundred years after his birth, still evokes such graceful and pensive homage, he has evidently some durable claim upon our hearts. Ever since our teens we have wondered what Sohrab and Rustum was about and why it was always assigned as required study for College Entrance. Now we intend to read it.
