The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II | Page 6

are only pointing your own unimportance? If
your father was Governor of the State, what right have you to use that

fact only to fatten your self-conceit? Take care, good care; for whether
you say it by your lips or by your life, that withering response awaits
you--"then what are you?" If your ancestor was great, you are under
bonds to greatness. If you are small, make haste to learn it betimes, and,
thanking heaven that your name has been made illustrious, retire into a
corner and keep it, at least, untarnished.
Our thirdly, is a class made by sundry French tailors, bootmakers,
dancing-masters, and Mr. Brown. They are a corps-de-ballet, for use of
private entertainments. They are fostered by society for the use of
young debutantes, and hardier damsels, who have dared two or three
years of the "tight" polka. They are cultivated for their heels, not their
heads. Their life begins at ten o'clock in the evening, and lasts until
four in the morning. They go home and sleep until nine; then they reel,
sleepy, to counting-houses and offices, and doze on desks until
dinnertime. Or, unable to do that, they are actively at work all day, and
their cheeks grow pale, and their lips thin, and their eyes bloodshot and
hollow, and they drag themselves home at evening to catch a nap until
the ball begins, or to dine and smoke at their club, and the very manly
with punches and coarse stories; and then to rush into hot and glittering
rooms, and seize very décolleté girls closely around the waist, and dash
with them around an area of stretched linen, saying in the panting
pauses, "How very hot it is!" "How very pretty Miss Podge looks!"
"What a good redowa!" "Are you going to Mrs. Potiphar's?"
Is this the assembled flower of manhood and womanhood, called "best
society," and to see which is so envied a privilege? If such are the
elements, can we be long in arriving at the present state, and necessary
future condition of parties?
Vanity Fair is peculiarly a picture of modern society. It aims at English
follies, but its mark is universal, as the madness is. It is called a satire,
but, after much diligent reading, we can not discover the satire. A state
of society not at all superior to that of Vanity Fair is not unknown to
our experience; and, unless truth-telling be satire; unless the most
tragically real portraiture be satire; unless scalding tears of sorrow, and
the bitter regret of a manly mind over the miserable spectacle of

artificiality, wasted powers, misdirected energies, and lost opportunities,
be satirical; we do not find satire in that sad story. The reader closes it
with a grief beyond tears. It leaves a vague apprehension in the mind,
as if we should suspect the air to be poisoned. It suggests the terrible
thought of the enfeebling of moral power, and the deterioration of
noble character, as a necessary consequence of contact with "society."
Every man looks suddenly and sharply around him, and accosts himself
and his neighbors, to ascertain if they are all parties to this corruption.
Sentimental youths and maidens, upon velvet sofas, or in calf-bound
libraries, resolve that it is an insult to human nature--are sure that their
velvet and calf-bound friends are not like the dramatis personæ of
Vanity Fair, and that the drama is therefore hideous and unreal. They
should remember, what they uniformly and universally forget, that we
are not invited, upon the rising of the curtain, to behold a cosmorama,
or picture of the world, but a representation of that part of it called
Vanity Fair. What its just limits are--how far its poisonous purlieus
reach--how much of the world's air is tainted by it, is a question which
every thoughtful man will ask himself, with a shudder, and look sadly
around, to answer. If the sentimental objectors rally again to the charge,
and declare that, if we wish to improve the world, its virtuous ambition
must be piqued and stimulated by making the shining heights of "the
ideal" more radiant; we reply, that none shall surpass us in honoring the
men whose creations of beauty inspire and instruct mankind. But if
they benefit the world, it is no less true that a vivid apprehension of the
depths into which we are sunken or may sink, nerves the soul's courage
quite as much as the alluring mirage of the happy heights we may attain.
"To hold the mirror up to Nature," is still the most potent method of
shaming sin and strengthening virtue.
If Vanity Fair be a satire, what novel of society is not? Are Vivian Grey,
and Pelham, and the long catalogue of books illustrating English, or the
host of Balzacs, Sands, Sues, and Dumas,