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Page 39
I say "the hotel," for the Chautauqua Settlement contains but one such
institution. It carries the classic name of Athen�um; but the first view
of it occasioned in my sensitive constitution a sinking of the heart. The
edifice dates from the early-gingerbread period of architecture. It
culminates in a horrifying cupola, and is colored a discountenancing
brown. The first glimpse of it reminded me of the poems of A.H. Clough,
whose chief merit was to die and to offer thereby an occasion for a grave
and twilit elegy by Matthew Arnold. Clough's life-work was a continual
asking of the question, "Life being unbearable, why should I not
die?"--while echo, that commonplace and sapient commentator, mildly
answered, "Why?": and this was precisely the impression that I gathered
from my initial vista of the Athen�um between trees.
On entering the hotel I was greeted over the desk (with what might be
defined as a left-handed smile) by one of the leading students of the
university with which I am associated as a teacher. He called out,
"Front!" in the manner of an amateur who is amiably aping the
professional, and assigned me to a scarcely comfortable room.
My first voluntary act in the Chautauqua Community was to take a swim. But
the water was tepid, and brown, and tasteless, and unbuoyant; and I felt,
rather oddly, as if I were swimming in a gigantic cup of tea. From this
initial experience I proceeded, somewhat precipitately, to induce an
analogy; and it seemed to me, at the time, as if I had forsaken the roar
and tumble of the hoarse, tumultuous world, for the inland disassociated
peace of an unaware and loitering backwater.
With hair still wet and still dishevelled, I was met by the Secretary of
Instruction,--a man (as I discovered later) of wise and humorous
perceptions. By him I was informed that, in an hour or so, I was to
lecture, in the Hall of Philosophy, on (if I remember rightly) Edgar Allan
Poe. I combed my hair, and tried to care for Poe, and made my way to the
Hall of Philosophy. This turned out to be a Greek temple divested of its
walls. An oaken roof, with pediments, was supported by Doric columns; and
under the enlarged umbrella thus devised, about a thousand people were
congregated to greet the new and unknown lecturer.
I honestly believe that that was the worst lecture I have ever imposed
upon a suffering audience. I had lain awake all night, in an upper berth,
on the hottest day of the year; I had found my swim in inland water
unrefreshing; and, at the moment, I really cared no more for Edgar Allan
Poe than I usually care for the sculptures of Bernini, the paintings of
Bouguereau, or the base-ball playing of the St. Louis "Browns." This
feeling was, of course, unfair to Poe, who is (with all his emptiness of
content) an admirable artist; but I was tired at the time. It pained me
exceedingly to listen, for an hour, to my own dull and unilluminated
lecture. And yet (and here is the pathetic point that touched me deeply) I
perceived gradually that the audience was listening not only attentively
but eagerly. Those people really wanted to hear whatever the lecturer
should say: and I wandered back to the depressing hotel with bowed head,
actuated by a new resolve to tell them something worthy on the morrow.
That afternoon and evening I strolled about the summer settlement of
Chautauqua; and (in view of my subsequent shift of attitude) I do not mind
confessing that this first aspect of the community depressed me to a
perilous melancholy. I beheld a landscape that reminded me of Wordsworth's
Windermere, except that the lake was broader and the hills less high,
deflowered and defamed by the huddled houses of the Chautauqua settlers.
The lake was lovely; and, with this supreme adjective, I forbear from
further effort at description. Upon the southern shore, a natural grove of
noble and venerable trees had been invaded by a crowded horror of
discomfortable tenements, thrown up by carpenters with a taste for
machine-made architectural details, and colored a sickly green, an acid
yellow, or an angry brown. The Chautauqua Settlement, which is surrounded
by a fence of palings, covers only two or three square miles of territory;
and, in the months of July and August, between fifteen and twenty thousand
people are crowded into this constricted area. Hence a horror of unsightly
dormitories, spawning unpredictable inhabitants upon the ambling, muddy
lanes.
There have been, in the history of this Assembly, a few salutary
fires,--as a result of which new buildings have been erected which are
comparatively easy on the eyes. The Hall of Philosophy is really
beautiful, and is nobly seated among memorable trees at the summit of a
little hill. The Aula Christi tried to be beautiful, and failed; but at
least the good intention is apparent. The Amphitheatre (which seats six or
seven thousand auditors) is admirably adapted to its uses; and some of the
more recent business buildings, like the Post Office, are inoffensive to
the unexacting observer. A wooded peninsula, which is pleasantly laid out
as a park, projects into the lake; and, at the point of this, has lately
been erected a _campanile_ which is admirable in both color and
proportion. Indeed, when a fanfaronnade of sunset is blown wide behind it,
you suffer a sudden tinge of homesickness for Venice or Ravenna. It is
good enough for that. But beside it is a helter-skelter wooden edifice
which reminds you of Surf Avenue at Coney Island. Indeed, the Settlement
as a whole exhibits still an overwhelmment of the un�sthetic, and appalls
the eye of the new-comer from a more considerative world.
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