For Clever People

— Your clever Contributor in the Club of last November — who is so clever that he (I use the pronoun impersonally, without regard to sex) has a very nice choice in the way of cleverness — seems inclined to flatter the instincts of so many tedious people that I am ready to ask if what he actually complains of is not that the world is not clever enough. “ The worst accusation,” he remarks, “ that we can bring against clever people is this : they do not care about the truth; their ambition is not to say what is true, but to say something ingenious and entertaining.” Now, I confess to feeling that there is so much dullness in the world, so much ignorance, inaccuracy, and conceit have to be put up with, that even the intention to amuse ought to be gratefully accepted. Of course, what we want is the real outcome of good minds in conversation, sincerity, simplicity of purpose, and genuine wit and humor; a pretentious cleverness is rarely, I think, successful, and what I complain of is that pretentious dullness too often is.

For it does seem to me more and more that a melancholy earnestness, a strenuous pursuit of the truth, is one of the signs of the times. Your Contributor’s world is no doubt the large world outside of women’s clubs and university extension lectures. It has been my experience for a year or two to be asked, for example, whether I have attended the course on Dante ; and when I have answered in the negative, to be told that I had missed an invaluable opportunity, and then to be inundated with information on the subject of the great and unhappy Florentine. George Eliot remarks that, no matter what may be his attainments, a man may fail to shine in society because in ordinary conversation it is so difficult to get a cue for a quotation in Greek ; but these nouveaux riches in polite learning are never at a loss ; now that all the world is so intelligent, the most abstruse subjects are sure of an opportunity.

Somebody attended lately a ladies’ luncheon, where, as soon as the material courses had been hurried through, the guests were called upon to listen to twenty-five papers, read by as many different authors, upon the question “ How does woman best fulfill her mission ? ” Speaking about the entertainment the next day, I ventured to demur a little, saying that at home one read for improvement, but one went out for amusement, when a very pretty and elegant matron told me that she made it a point no longer to go into society when the entertainment consisted only of trivial conversation.

“ A party in a parlor, all silent and all” — listening to somebody on a platform who reads, recites, addresses, and lectures, seems to be the modern idea of social edification. Mr. Augustine Birrell has remarked that in America we seem still to love talk for its own sake, and really enjoy sitting and being declaimed at in a loud voice, delighting in the rolling sentence and the lofty and familiar sentiment. And it is certainly the fact that let any one, nowadays, stand up and read a paper or recite a memorized speech, no matter on what subject, everybody listens ; every heart seems refreshed by the overflow, every intellectual need stilled. Indeed, no little wit, skill, grace, and clever powers of adaptation are pressed into service for drawing-room entertainments ; and so long as they go for what they are worth I am grateful enough, only I am tired of the dismal necessity of being instructed at every turn.

A friend, herself a successful writer, happened to be waiting on the veranda of a country inn, when two of the inmates — one a middle-aged farmer’s wife, and the other an elaborately dressed city girl —came out and surveyed the stranger. After a time the younger began conversation.

“ Hem ! Fond of reading ? ”

“ Not always,” replied my friend, whom I will call Mrs. X.

“ I am,” said the young lady, with an air of superior enlightenment. “ And I think it is very improving.” Having administered this crushing rebuke, she waited a moment ; then inquired, ‘ Any favorite authors ? ”

“Oh, I think not,” murmured Mrs. X.

“ I have a great many favorite authors,” said the young lady, with such severity that Mrs. X. felt constrained to ask, —

“ Who are your favorite authors ? ”

“ The Duchess, Mrs. Forrester, Rosa Nouchette Carey, E. P. Roe, and Dickens.” Then, watching for some sign of recognition on the part of her audience, she asked,

“ Ever heard of any of them ? ”

“ Not of the first three, I think.”

“ Do you know E. P. Roe and Dickens ? ”

“ A little.”

“ E. P. Roe is very popular with Sundayschools,” the young lady now explained, “ and Dickens, if you can understand him, is full of humor.”

She had hit, albeit an octave below the actual pitch, what seems to me the true contemporary keynote, the sort of tone which makes it embarrassing for a modest person, who has read all his life, and thinks no more of having done so than of having nourished his body with food and warmed it with clothes, to assert himself in the face of an intention superior to anything like mere interest and amusement, of such definite aim for improvement.

A woman at the World’s Fair who had charge of an exhibit in the Machinery Building, in a section given over to iron monsters which whirred, revolved, hammered, and shrieked on all sides, told me that one day one of the visitors stood near her, gazing about in a bewildered way for a time ; then approached, and inquired, “ Is this the Fisheries Building ? ” The question was found so amusing that it was repeated to one of the managers, who remarked, “ That is a capital idea,” and thereafter, when asked, as he was asked a hundred times a day, what building it was, he would reply with the utmost gravity, “The Fisheries Building.”

Of course this was flippant, for it would have been a good deed to set obtuse wits working clearly ; but oh, “ the ennui, the fatigue, the despair ” of having to put up with fatuity, of following the mental processes of people who will not do their own thinking ! The comfort of meeting a mind which rests on the verities, but lets them go without saying, takes for granted what is obvious ! Still, while I have a sympathy for people whose desire to instruct others is but moderate, I also think it necessary to exercise moderation in attempts to entertain them, — such attempts often making calamity of the best intentions, as in the case of the man who danced a hornpipe in order to cheer his wife after the death of her mother. I call him a would-be clever man, as I call those who involve their sentences ; as I call even George Meredith in certain passages which weary the reader, but which may be borne by grace of his speech when it becomes a flame of clear light and heat, with no smouldering residue of dross. Is not cleverness the best English equivalent for the French esprit which Amiel defines thus ? “ Esprit means taking things in the sense which they were intended to have, entering into the tone of other people, being able to place one’s self on the required level ; esprit is that just and accurate sense which divines, appoints, and weighs quickly, lightly, and well.”