I have committed sins, of course; but I have not committed
enough of them to entitle me to the punishment of
reduction to the bread and water of ordinary literature
during six years when I might have been living on the
fat diet spread for the righteous in Professor Dowden’s
Life of Shelley, if I had been justly dealt with.
During these six years I have been living a life of
peaceful ignorance. I was not aware that Shelley’s
first wife was unfaithful to him, and that that was
why he deserted her and wiped the stain from his sensitive
honor by entering into soiled relations with Godwin’s
young daughter. This was all new to me when
I heard it lately, and was told that the proofs of
it were in this book, and that this book’s verdict
is accepted in the girls’ colleges of America
and its view taught in their literary classes.
In each of these six years multitudes of young people
in our country have arrived at the Shelley-reading
age. Are these six multitudes unacquainted with
this life of Shelley? Perhaps they are; indeed,
one may feel pretty sure that the great bulk of them
are. To these, then, I address myself, in the
hope that some account of this romantic historical
fable and the fabulist’s manner of constructing
and adorning it may interest them.
First, as to its literary style. Our negroes
in America have several ways of entertaining themselves
which are not found among the whites anywhere.
Among these inventions of theirs is one which is particularly
popular with them. It is a competition in elegant
deportment. They hire a hall and bank the spectators’
seats in rising tiers along the two sides, leaving
all the middle stretch of the floor free. A cake
is provided as a prize for the winner in the competition,
and a bench of experts in deportment is appointed
to award it. Sometimes there are as many as
fifty contestants, male and female, and five hundred
spectators. One at a time the contestants enter,
clothed regardless of expense in what each considers
the perfection of style and taste, and walk down the
vacant central space and back again with that multitude
of critical eyes on them. All that the competitor
knows of fine airs and graces he throws into his carriage,
all that he knows of seductive expression he throws
into his countenance. He may use all the helps
he can devise: watch-chain to twirl with his
fingers, cane to do graceful things with, snowy handkerchief
to flourish and get artful effects out of, shiny new
stovepipe hat to assist in his courtly bows; and the
colored lady may have a fan to work up her effects
with, and smile over and blush behind, and she may
add other helps, according to her judgment. When
the review by individual detail is over, a grand review
of all the contestants in procession follows, with
all the airs and graces and all the bowings and smirkings
on exhibition at once, and this enables the bench of
experts to make the necessary comparisons and arrive
at a verdict. The successful competitor gets
the prize which I have before mentioned, and an abundance
of applause and envy along with it. The negroes
have a name for this grave deportment-tournament;
a name taken from the prize contended for. They
call it a Cakewalk.
