| | | | | We may say what we like about the worthlessness of the world and the | solid charms of home, but the plain fact, stripped of oratorical | disguise, is that we mostly give society the best we have and keep the | worst of ourselves for our own. The hero at home is not half so fine a | fellow as the hero in public, and cares far less for his audience. | Indeed, when looked at under the domestic microscope, he is frequently | found to be eminently un-heroic ~~ something of the nature of a botch | rather than nobility in undress and an ideal brought down to the line | of sight; which would be the case if he and all things else were what | they seem, and if heroism, like fine gold, was good all through. This | is not saying that the hero in public is a cheat. He has only turned | the best of his cloak outside, and hidden the seams and frays next his | skin. We know that every man's cloak must have its seams and frays; | and the vital question for each man's life is, Who ought to see most | of them, strangers or friends? We fear it must be owned that, whoever | ought, it is our friends who do get the worst of our wardrobe ~~ the | people we love, and for whom we would willingly die if necessary; | whilst strangers, for whom we have no kind of affection, are treated | to the freshest of the velvet and the brightest of the embroidery. The | man, say, who is pre-eminently good company abroad, who keeps a | dinner-table alive with his quick wit and keen repartee, and who has | always on hand a store of unhackneyed anecdotes, | the latest on dits , | and the newest information not known to Reuter, but who hangs up his | fiddle at his own fireside and in the bosom of his family is as silent | as the vocal Memnon at midnight, is not necessarily a cheat. He is an | actor without a part to play or a stage whereon to play it; a hero | without a flag; a bit of brute matter without an energizing force. | The excitement of applause, the good wine and the pleasant dishes, the | bright eyes of pretty women, the half-concealed jealousy of clever | men, the sensation of shining ~~ all these things, which are spurs to | him abroad, are wanting at home; and he has not the originating | faculty which enables him to dispense with these incentives. He is a | first-class hero on his own ground; but it would be a tremendous | downfall to his reputation were his admirers to see him as he is off | parade, without the pomps and vanities to show him to advantage. He | has just been the social hero of a dinner; |

'so bright, so lively, so | delightful,'

says the hostess enthusiastically, | with a side blow to | her own proprietor, who perhaps is pleasant enough by the domestic | hearth but only a dumb dog in public. | The party has been

'made'

by | him, rescued from universal dullness by his efforts alone; and every | woman admires him as he leaves in a polite blaze of glory, and only | wishes he could be secured for her own little affair next week. So he | takes his departure, a hero to the last, with a happy thought for | everyone | and a bright word all round. The hall-door closes on him, | and the hero sinks into the husband. He is as much transformed as soon | as he steps inside his brougham as was ever Cinderella after twelve, | with her state coach and footmen gone to pumpkin and green lizards. He | likes his wife well enough, as wives and liking go; but she does not | stir him up intellectually, and her applause is no whetstone for his | wit. Put the veriest chit of a girl as bodkin between them and he will | waken into life again, and become once more the conversational hero, | because he is no longer wholly at home. His wife probably does not | like it, and she laughs, as wives do, when she hears his praises from | those who know him only at his best, letting off his fireworks for the | applause of the crowd. | But then wives are proverbially unflattering in their estimates of | their husbands' heroics; and the Truth that used to live at the bottom | of a well has changed her name and abode in these later times, and has | come to mean the partner of your joys, who gives you her candid | opinion at home. Still, your good company abroad who sits like a mute | Memnon at home is not pleasant, though not necessarily a sham. | Certainly he is no hero all through, but he may be nothing worse than | one of those unfortunates whose intellect lives on drams and does not | take kindly to domestic pudding. | His wife does not approve of this hanging up of the fiddle by his own | fireside; yet she does the same thing on her side, and is as little a | heroine by the domestic hearth as he is a hero. What his talk is to | him her beauty is to her; and for whom, let us ask, does she make | herself loveliest? For her husband, or for a handful of fops and snobs | each one of whom individually is more indifferent to her than the | other? See her in society, a very Venus dressed by Worth and Bond | Street, if not by the Graces. Follow her home, and see her as her maid | sees her. The abundant chevelure , | which is the admiration of the men | and the envy of the women who believe in it, is taken off and hung up | like her great-grandfather's wig, leaving her small round head covered | by a wisp of ragged ends broken and burnt by dyes and restorers; her | bloom of glycerine and powder is washed from her face, showing the | faded skin and betraying lines beneath; the antimony is rubbed off her | eyelids; the effects of belladonna leave her now contracting pupils; | her perfectly moulded form is laid aside with her dress; and the fair | queen of the salon ~~ the heroine of | gaslight loveliness ~~ stands as a | lay-figure with bare tracts of possibilities whereon the artist may | work, but which tracts nature has forgotten or which she herself has | worked on so unmercifully as to have worn out. How many a heartache | would be healed if only the heroine, like the hero, could be followed | to the sanctuary of the dressing-room, and if the adored could appear | to the adorer as does the one to the maid the other to the valet! | The tender, sympathetic, moist-eyed woman who condoles so sweetly with | your little troubles, and whose affectionate compassion soothes you | like the trickling of sweet waters or the cooling breath of a pleasant | air, but who leaves her sick husband at home to get through the weary | hours as he best may, who bullies her servants and scolds her | children ~~ she too, is a heroine of a class that does not look well | when closely studied. The pretty young mother, making play with her | pretty young children in the Park ~~ a smiling picture of love and | loveliness ~~ when followed home, turning into a | fretful, self-indulgent | fine lady, flung wearily into an easy chair, sending the children up | to the nursery and probably seeing them no more until Park hour | to-morrow, when their beautiful little | têtes d'ange will enhance her | own loveliness in the eyes of men, and make her more beautiful because | making the picture more complete; Mrs. Jellaby given up to universal | philanthropy, refusing a crust to the beggar at her own gate, but full | of tearful pity for the misery she has undertaken to mitigate at | Borioboolagha; Croesus scattering showers of gold abroad, and | applauded to the echo when his name, with the donation following, is | read out at a public dinner, but looking after the cheese-parings at | home; the eloquent upholder of human equality in public, snubbing in | private all who are one degree below him in the social scale, and | treating his servants like dogs; the no less eloquent descanter on the | motto Noblesse oblige , when the house-door | is shut between him and | the world, running honesty so fine that it is almost undistinguishable | from roguery ~~ all these heroes abroad show but shabbily at home, and | make their heroism within the four walls literally a vanishing | quantity. | People who live on the outside of the charmed circle of letters, but | who believe that the men and women that compose it are of a different | mould from the rest of mankind, and who long to be permitted to | penetrate the rose-hedge and learn the facts of Armida's garden for | themselves, sometimes learn them too clearly for their dreams to be | ever possible again. They have a favourite author ~~ a poet, say, or a | novelist. If a poet, he is probably one whose songs are full of that | delicious melancholy which makes them so divinely sad; an æsthetic | poet; a blighted being; a creature walking in the moonlight among the | graves and watering their flowers with his tears: ~~ if a novelist, he | is one whose sprightly fancy makes the dull world gay. A friend takes | the worshipper to the shrine where the idol is to be found; in other | words, they go to call on him at his own house. The melancholy poet |

'hidden in the light of thought,'

is a rubicund, rosy-gilled | gentleman, brisk, middle-aged, comfortable, respectable, particular as | to his wines, a connoisseur as to the merits of the chef , | a bon vivant of the Horatian order, | and in his talk prone to personal | gossip and feeble humour. The lively novelist, on the other hand, is a | taciturn, morose kind of person, afflicted with perennial catarrh, | ever ready with an unpleasant suggestion, given to start disagreeable | topics of a grave, not to say depressing, nature, perhaps a rabid | politician incapable of a give-and-take argument, or a pessimistic | economist, taking gloomy views of the currency and despondent about | our carrying trade. | As for the women, they never look the thing they are reputed to be, | save in fashion, and sometimes in beauty. A woman who goes to public | meetings and makes speeches on all kinds of subjects, tough as well as | doubtful, presents herself in society with the look of an old maid and | the address of a shy schoolgirl. A sour kind of essayist, who finds | everything wrong and nothing in its place, has a face like the full | moon and looks as if she fed on cream and butter. A novelist who sails | very near the wind, and on whom the critics are severe by principle, | is as quiet as a Quakeress in her conversation and as demure as a nun | in her bearing; while a writer of religious tracts has her gowns from | Paris and gives small suppers out of the proceeds. The public | character and the private being of almost every person in the world | differ widely from each other; and the hero of history who is also the | hero to his valet has yet to be found. | Some people call this difference inconsistency, and some | manysidedness; to some it argues unreality, to others it is but the | necessary consequence of a complex human nature, and a sign that the | mind needs the rest of alternation just as much as the body. We cannot | be always in the same groove, never changing our attitude nor object. | Is it inconsistency or supplement, contradiction or compensation? The | sterner moralists, and those whose minds dwell on tares, say the | former; those who look for wheat even on the stony ground and among | thorns assert the latter. Anyhow, it is certain that those who desire | ideals and who like to worship heroes would do well to content | themselves with adoration at a long range. Distance lends enchantment, | and ignorance is bliss in more cases than one. Heroism at home is | something like the delicacy of Brobdingnag, or the grandiosity of | Lilliput; and the undress of the domestic hearth is more favourable to | personal comfort than to public glory. To keep our ideals intact we | ought to keep them unknown. Our goddesses should not be seen eating | beefsteaks and drinking stout; our poets are their best in print, and | social small-talk does not come like truths divine mended from their | tongue; our sages and philanthropists gain nothing, and may lose much, | by being rashly followed to their firesides. Yet a man's good work and | brave word are, in any case, part of his real self, though they may | not be the whole; and even if he is not true metal all through, his | gold, so far as it goes, counts for more than its alloy, and his | public heroism overtops his private puerility.