Page:The Dial vol. 15 (July 1 - December 16, 1893).djvu/237



It was the late Mr. Travers, we believe, who was one day surprised at seeing a certain distinguished contemporary standing on Wall Street with his hands in his own pockets. In somewhat the same way is the unprepared reader of Miss Agnes Repplier's Essays not unfrequently surprised in coming across a good thing that is not quoted from Montaigne, Sir Thomas Browne, or somebody else. At first sight Miss Repplier's own remarks hardly come to view, for the number of her unfamiliar (but generally excellent) quotations. The literary historian of the future will have little difficulty in describing Miss Repplier's method of work. "Her study," he will say, "was a room surrounded by pigeonholes marked with such titles as 'Cats,' 'War,' 'Words,' 'Leisure.' In this room she was accustomed to sit and read the choicest authors, pencil in hand, and on coming across anything about cats, or whatever else, she would copy it off and stick it in the appropriate pigeonhole. When any pigeonhole was full she took out the quotations and wrote an article for the 'Atlantic Monthly,' using them all." Now such a mode of composition has its difficulties. In the present case the quotations are generally good and the net result almost always entertaining. But a book abounding in quotations rarely impresses the reader with the originality it may really possess. One is apt to fight shy of such books. It is true that this is an age of potted literature, but even at the present day there are not a few for whom potted literature has very slight attractions. By the peculiar character of her work Miss Repplier runs the risk of losing the attention of many who would be interested in the good qualities that her writings undoubtedly possess.

For when we say that "Essays in Idleness" are Miss Repplier's usual combinations of quotation and comment, we have by no means said the last word on the matter. That fact being once accepted, one is free to find in the book a certain sort of work, exquisite of its kind, and of a kind that rightly pleases many cultivated people. It may be that Miss Repplier is consciously a follower of Mr. Oscar Wilde. Consciously or not, she is, as an artist, of a character somewhat akin to that sketched by the ineffable Gilbert, as he passed in an irridescent mist of words from his chambertin and ortalans to the roses in Covent Garden. Other authors write about life and such things. Miss Elepplier writes about (and around) what others have written. She treats of all subjects, while involved in a sort of cloud of what other people have said on the matter. One gets from her book no echo of the world, only echoes from the world of letters. On the foundations of what she has read she uplifts new structures of her own, and the remarkable thing is that these new structures are not wanting in grace and beauty. A somewhat individual gift this: it is worth while to remark it and appreciate it. It will not do to set Miss Repplier down as merely a clever woman who has read much. Her cleverness is of a peculiar type, and her work has its own excellences.

In the present volume, the first essay is the most charming. It is about Miss Repplier's cat. Cats and men of letters seem to be the two things that stimulate Miss Repplier's genius. For this essay (besides providing us with the opinions concerning cats, and other things, of Saint Beuve, M. Fée, Montaigne, Buffon, La Fontaine, Schopenhauer, Walt Whitman, Sidney Smith, Chateaubriand, Wolsey, Abbé Galiani, Voltaire, Champfleury, Monk Lewis, Heine, Pierre Loti, Theophile Gautier, Sir Thomas Browne, and Mrs. Graham Thomson) contains some of the most truly sympathetic, and therefore the wisest, remarks about cats that we have seen. It is worth while giving a few examples of them, although it is not easy to give the true quality of such a book by a few extracts. The real character is in the general toning rather than in any separate remark.

"Rude and masterful souls resent this fine self-sufficiency in a domestic animal, and require that it should have no will but theirs, no pleasure that does not emanate from them. They are forever prating of the love and fidelity of the dog, of the beast that obeys their slightest word, crouches contentedly for hours at their feet, is exuberately grateful for the smallest attention, and so affectionate that its demonstrations require to be curbed rather than encouraged. All this homage is pleasing to their vanity; yet there are people, less magisterial perhaps, or less exacting, who believe that true friendship, even with an animal, may be built upon mutual esteem and independance; that to demand gratitude is to be unworthy of it; and that obedience is not essential to agreeable and healthy intercourse. … 'My dog fetches my supper for me every night,' said a friend triumphantly, not long ago. … 'Would your cat do as much for you, I'd like to know?' Assuredly not! If I waited for Agrippina to fetch me shoes or slippers, I should have no other resource save to join as speedily, as possible one of the barefooted religious orders of Italy. But, after all, fetching slippers is not the whole duty of domestic pets. … Agrippina will never make herself serviceable. Yet nevertheless is she of }}