Richer Or Poorer?
acdouglas
character -- a description that might occupy not more than a few dozen-or-so
words in any contemporary novel.
Are we the richer or the poorer for that?
--
ACD
http://www.monmouth.com/~acdouglas
The father of the Custom-House - the patriarch, not only of this little squad
of officials, but, I am bold to say, of the respectable body of tide-waiters
all over the United States - was a certain permanent Inspector. He might truly
be termed a legitimate son of the revenue system, dyed in the wool, or rather
born in the purple; since his sire, a Revolutionary colonel, and formerly
collector of the port, had created an office for him, and appointed him to
fill it, at a period of the early ages which few living men can now remember.
This Inspector, when I first knew him, was a man of fourscore years, or
thereabouts, and certainly one of the most wonderful specimens of winter-green
that you would be likely to discover in a lifetime's search. With his florid
cheek, his compact figure smartly arrayed in a bright-buttoned blue coat, his
brisk and vigorous step, and his hale and hearty aspect, altogether he
seemed - not young, indeed - but a kind of new contrivance of Mother Nature in
the shape of man, whom age and infirmity had no business to touch. His voice
and laugh, which perpetually re-echoed through the Custom-House, had nothing
of the tremulous quaver and cackle of an old man's utterance; they came
strutting out of his lungs, like the crow of a cock, or the blast of a
clarion. Looking at him merely as an animal - and there was very little else
to look at - he was a most satisfactory object, from the thorough
healthfulness and wholesomeness of his system, and his capacity, at that
extreme age, to enjoy all, or nearly all, the delights which he had ever aimed
at or conceived of.
The careless security of his life in the Custom-House, on a regular income,
and with but slight and infrequent apprehensions of removal, had no doubt
contributed to make time pass lightly over him. The original and more potent
causes, however, lay in the rare perfection of his animal nature, the moderate
proportion of intellect, and the very trifling admixture of moral and
spiritual ingredients; these latter qualities, indeed, being in barely enough
measure to keep the old gentleman from walking on all-fours. He possessed no
power of thought no depth of feeling, no troublesome sensibilities: nothing,
in short, but a few commonplace instincts, which, aided by the cheerful temper
which grew inevitably out of his physical well-being, did duty very
respectably, and to general acceptance, in lieu of a heart. He had been the
husband of three wives, all long since dead; the father of twenty children,
most of whom, at every age of childhood or maturity, had likewise returned to
dust. Here, one would suppose, might have been sorrow enough to imbue the
sunniest disposition through and through with a sable tinge. Not so with our
old Inspector One brief sigh sufficed to carry off the entire burden of these
dismal reminiscences. The next moment he was as ready for sport as any
unbreeched infant: far readier than the Collector's junior clerk, who at
nineteen years was much the elder and graver man of the two.
I used to watch and study this patriarchal personage with, I think, livelier
curiosity than any other form of humanity there presented to my notice. He
was, in truth, a rare phenomenon; so perfect, in one point of view; so
shallow, so delusive, so impalpable such an absolute nonentity, in every
other. My conclusion was that he had no soul, no heart, no mind; nothing, as I
have already said, but instincts; and yet, withal, so cunningly had the few
materials of his character been put together that there was no painful
perception of deficiency, but, on my part, an entire contentment with what I
found in him. It might be difficult - and it was so - to conceive how he
should exist hereafter, so earthly and sensuous did he seem; but surely his
existence here, admitting that it was to terminate with his last breath, had
been not unkindly given; with no higher moral responsibilities than the beasts
of the field, but with a larger scope of enjoyment than theirs, and with all
their blessed immunity from the dreariness and duskiness of age.
One point in which he had vastly the advantage over his four-footed brethren
was his ability to recollect the good dinners which it had made no small
portion of the happiness of his life to eat. His gourmandism was a highly
agreeable trait; and to hear him talk of roast meat was as appetizing as a
pickle or an oyster. As he possessed no higher attribute, and neither
sacrificed nor vitiated any spiritual endowment by devoting all his energies
and ingenuities to subserve the delight and profit of his maw, it always
pleased and satisfied me to hear him expatiate on fish, poultry, and butcher's
meat, and the most eligible methods of preparing them for the table. His
reminiscences of good cheer, however ancient the date of the actual banquet,
seemed to bring the savour of pig or turkey under one's very nostrils. There
were flavours on his palate that had lingered there not less than sixty or
seventy years, and were still apparently as fresh as that of the mutton chop
which he had just devoured for his breakfast. I have heard him smack his lips
over dinners, every guest at which, except himself, had long been food for
worms. It was marvellous to observe how the ghosts of bygone meals were
continually rising up before him - not in anger or retribution, but as if
grateful for his former appreciation, and seeking to repudiate an endless
series of enjoyment. at once shadowy and sensual, A tender loin of beef, a
hind-quarter of veal, a spare-rib of pork, a particular chicken, or a
remarkably praiseworthy turkey, which had perhaps adorned his board in the
days of the elder Adams, would be remembered; while all the subsequent
experience of our race, and all the events that brightened or darkened his
individual career, had gone over him with as little permanent effect as the
passing breeze. The chief tragic event of the old man's life, so far as I
could judge, was his mishap with a certain goose, which lived and died some
twenty or forty years ago: a goose of most promising figure, but which, at
table, proved so inveterately tough, that the carving-knife would make no
impression on its carcase, and it could only be divided with an axe and
handsaw.
But it is time to quit this sketch; on which, however, I should be glad to
dwell at considerably more length, because of all men whom I have ever known,
this individual was fittest to be a Custom-House officer. Most persons, owing
to causes which I may not have space to hint at, suffer moral detriment from
this peculiar mode of life. The old Inspector was incapable of it; and, were
he to continue in office to tile end of time, would be just as good as he was
then, and sit down to dinner with just as good an appetite.
xyy...@cotse.com
news:9ioreu$945$1...@news.monmouth.com...
>The following is a 19th-century
>author's description of but a single
>character -- a description that
>might occupy not more than a few
>dozen-or-so words in any contemporary
>novel.
>
> Are we the richer or the poorer for that?
Consider it a mercy, Douggie. Nat Hawthorne stands head and shoulders above
the scribbling solipsists who pass for "writers" in contemporary America.
They have have neither the talent nor the inclination to emulate Hawthorne's
Dickensian feats of descriptive prose. Nor do they have his elite, well-read
readership.
If modern Americans craved descriptive writing of that order, then they'd be
reading Hawthorne and Melville and not Delillo and McInerney. However, I
suspect that few, if any, of those who read your post will recognise the
source of your quotation.
Ironically, Hawthorne considered himself little better than a hack (having
been raised on a rich literary diet of Shakespeare and Bunyan), and referred
to himself disparagingly as a writer of "moonshiny romances". In 1859, he
wrote to his publisher: "It is odd enough, moreover, that my own individual
taste is for quite another class of works than those which I myself am able
to write". (He meant Trollope and the great English novelists).
And who reads *them* nowadays, never mind Nat Hawthorne?
Cassandra
w.d. greene
"acdouglas" wrote:
> The following is a 19th-century author's description of but a single
> character -- a description that might occupy not more than a few
dozen-or-so
> words in any contemporary novel.
>
> Are we the richer or the poorer for that?
Richer, IMO.
Description is typically exposition. I beleive that the dynamic profile of
an individual provided by the story itself has always been more interesting,
more relavent. The long descriptions of the 19th century in some ways
parallel realistic painting of the former era. Once technology made
realistic painting redundant, painting evolved into something else. Once
movies and television came along, storytelling has moved on. The shift is
to focus on that which is unique about writing, that which images on the
screen cannot provide. It is, IMO, a distillation process towards a purer,
more powerful art form.