Harper's New Monthly Magazine, No. XI.—April, 1851—Vol. II.. Various
was one family I visited more frequently than the rest of my miscellaneous acquaintance. I can hardly explain the attraction that drew me so much into their circle, for there was little in it that was lovable in itself, or that harmonized with my tastes. But antagonisms are sometimes as magnetic as affinities in the moral world. They were all very odd, and did nothing like other people. They were so changeable and eccentric that they scarcely appeared to me for two evenings in succession to be the same individuals. They were perpetually shifting the slides of character, and exhibiting new phases. Their amusements and occupations resembled the incessant dazzle of a magic lantern. They were never without a novelty of some kind on hand – a new whim, which they played with like a toy till they got tired of it – a subtle joke, with a little malicious pleasantry in it – or a piece of scandal, which they exhausted till it degenerated into ribaldry. Their raillery and mirth, even when they happened to be in their most good-natured moods, were invariably on the side of ridicule. They took delight in distorting every thing, and never distorted any thing twice in the same way. They laughed at the whole range of quiet, serious amiabilities, as if all small virtues were foibles and weaknesses; and held the heroic qualities in a sort of mock awe that was more ludicrous and humiliating than open scoffing and derision. In this way they passed their lives, coming out with fresh gibes every morning, and going to bed at night in the same harlequinade humor. It seemed as if they had no cares of their own, and made up for the want of them by taking into keeping the cares of their neighbors; which they tortured so adroitly that, disrelish it as you might, it was impossible to resist the infection of their grotesque satire.
One of the members of this family was distinguished from the rest by peculiarities special to himself. He was a dwarf in stature, with a large head, projecting forehead, starting eyes, bushy hair, and an angular chin. He was old enough to be dealt with as a man; but from his diminutive size, and the singularity of his manners, he was treated as a boy. Although his mental capacity was as stunted as his body, he possessed so extraordinary a talent for translating and caricaturing humanity, that he was looked upon as a domestic mime of unrivaled powers. He could run the circle of the passions with surprising facility, rendering each transition from the grave to the gay so clearly, and touching so rapidly, yet so truly, every shade of emotion, that your wonder was divided between the dexterity, ease, and completeness of the imitation, and the sagacious penetration into character which it indicated. Acting, no doubt, is not always as wise as it looks; and the mimicry that shows so shrewd on the surface is often a mere mechanical trick. But in this case the assumptions were various, distinct, and broadly marked, and not to be confounded with the low art that paints a feeling in a contortion or a grimace. During these strange feats he never spoke a word. He did not require language to give effect or intelligence to his action. All was rapid, graphic, and obvious, and dashed off with such an air of original humor that the most serious pantomime took the odd color of a jest without compromising an atom of its grave purpose. Indeed this tendency to indulge in a kind of sardonic fun was the topping peculiarity of the whole group, and the dwarf was a faithful subscriber to the family principles.
I suffered myself to be most unreasonably amused by this daily extravagance. The dwarf was a fellow after my own fancy: an irresponsible fellow, headlong, irregular, misshapen, and eternally oscillating to and fro without any goal in life. He never disturbed me by attempts to show things as they were, or by over-refined reasoning upon facts, in which some people are in the habit of indulging until they wear off the sharp edge of truths, and fritter them down into commonplaces. In short, he never reasoned at all. He darted upon a topic, struck his fangs into it, and left it, depositing a little poison behind him. His singularities never offended me, because they never interfered with my own. He turned the entire structure and operations of society to the account of the absurd; and made men, not the victims of distaste as I did, but the puppets of a farce. We arrived, however, at much the same conclusion by different routes, and the dwarf and I agreed well together; although there was an unconfessed repulsion between us which prohibited the interchange of those outward tokens of harmony that telegraph the good fellowship of the crowd.
From the first moment of our acquaintance I had a secret distrust about my friend the dwarf. I shrank from him instinctively when I felt his breath upon me, which was as hot as if it came from a furnace. I felt as if he was a social Mephistophiles, exercising a malignant influence over my fate. Yet, in spite of this feeling, we became intimate all at once. As I saw him in the first interview, I saw him ever after. We relaxed all formalities on the instant of introduction, when he broke out with a gibe that put us both at our ease at once. We were intimates in slippers and morning-gowns, while the rest of the family were as yet on full-dress ceremony with me.
II
After I had known this family a considerable time, a lady from a distant part of the country, whom I had never seen or heard of before, came on a visit to them. She was a woman of about twenty-five years of age, with a handsome person, considerable powers of conversation, and more intellect than fine women usually take the trouble to cultivate or display, preferring to trust, as she might have safely done, to the influence of their beauty. Her form was grand and voluptuous; her head, with her hair bound up in fillets, had a noble classical air; and her features were strictly intellectual. She had never been married; and exhibiting, as she did at all times, a lofty superiority over the people by whom she was surrounded in this house, it opened a strange chapter of sprightly malevolence to observe how they criticised her, and picked off her feathers, whenever she happened to be out of the room. They affected the most sublime regard for her, and the way they showed it was by wondering why she remained single, and trying to account for it by sundry flattering inuendos, with a sneer lurking under each of them.
The men had no taste – this was said so slily as to make every body laugh – or perhaps they were afraid of her; she was hard to please; her mind was too masculine, which made her appear more repulsive than she really was; she did not relish female society, and men are always jealous of women who are superior to themselves, and so, between the two – hem! – there was the old adage! Then she aimed at eccentricity, and had some uncommon tastes; she was fond of poetry and philosophy, and blue stockings are not so marketable as hosiery of a plainer kind: in short, it was not surprising that such a woman should find it rather difficult to suit herself with a husband. But whoever did succeed in overcoming her fastidiousness would get a prize!
These criticisms, probably, awakened an interest in my mind about this lady. She was evidently not understood by her critics; and it was by no means unlikely that, in attributing peculiarities to her which did not exist, they might have overlooked the true excellencies of her character. In proportion as they depreciated her, she rose in my estimation, by the rule of contrarieties. It had always been a weakness of mine to set myself against the multitude on questions of taste, and to reverse their judgment by a foregone conclusion. I then believed, and do still in a great measure believe, that persons of genius are not appreciated or comprehended by the mob; but I occasionally committed the mistake of taking it for granted that persons who were depreciated by the mob must of necessity be persons of genius.
Astræa – for so she was familiarly called, at first in the way of covert ridicule, but afterward from habit – was thoroughly in earnest in every thing she said and did. She could adapt herself to the passing humor of vivacity or sarcasm without any apparent effort, but her natural manner was grave and dominant. Beneath the severity of her air was an unsettled spirit, which a close observer could not fail to detect. It was to carry off or hide this secret disquietude of soul (such, at least, it appeared to me), that, with a strong aversion to frivolity, she heeded all the frivolous amusements; but then it was done with an effort and excess that showed how little her taste lay in it, and that it was resorted to only as an escape from criticism. She had no skill in these relaxations, and blundered sadly in her attempts to get through them; and people tried to feel complimented by her condescension, but were never really satisfied. And when she had succeeded in getting up the group to the height of its gayety, and thought that every body was fully employed, she would take advantage of the general merriment and relapse into her own thoughts. It was then you could see clearly how little interest she took in these things. But she was too important a person to be allowed to drop out, and as she was well aware of the invidious distinction with which she was treated, she would speedily rally and mix in the frivolity again. All this was done with a struggle that was quite transparent to me. She never played that