—HOBBES, Leviathan, Chap. VIII.
The bachelor is almost extinct in America. Our hopelessly utilitarian2 civilization demands that a man of forty should be rearing a family, should go to an office five times a week, and pretend an interest in the World's Series. It is unthinkable to us that there should be men of mature years who do not know the relative batting averages of the Red Sox and the Pirates. The intellectual and strolling male of from thirty-five to fifty-five years (which is what one means by bachelor) must either marry and settle down in the Oranges, or he must flee to Europe or the MacDowell Colony. There is no alternative. Vachel Lindsay please notice.
The fate of Henry James is a case in point. Undoubtedly3 he fled the shores of his native land to escape the barrage4 of the bonbonniverous sub-deb, who would else have mown him down without ruth.
But in England they still linger, these quaint5, phosphorescent middle-aged6 creatures, lurking7 behind a screenage of muffins and crumpets and hip8 baths. And thither9 fled one of the most delightful10 born bachelors this hemisphere has ever unearthed12, Mr. Logan Pearsall Smith.
Mr. Smith was a Philadelphian, born about fifty years ago. But that most amiable13 of cities does not encourage detached and meditative14 bachelorhood, and after sampling what is quaintly15 known as "a guarded education in morals and manners" at Haverford College, our hero passed to Harvard, and thence by a swifter decline to Oxford16. Literature and liberalism became his pursuits; on the one hand, he found himself engrossed17 in the task of proving to the British electorate18 that England need not always remain the same; on the other, he wrote a Life of Sir Henry Wotton, a volume of very graceful19 and beautiful short stories about Oxford ("The Youth of Parnassus") and a valuable little book on the history and habits of the English language.
But in spite of his best endeavours to quench20 and subdue21 his mental humours, Mr. Smith found his serious moments invaded by incomprehensible twinges of esprit. Travelling about England, leading the life of the typical English bachelor, equipped with gladstone bag, shaving kit22, evening clothes and tweeds; passing from country house to London club, from Oxford common room to Sussex gardens, the solemn pageantry of the cultivated classes now and then burst upon him in its truly comic aspect. The tinder and steel of his wit, too uncontrollably frictioned, ignited a shower of roman candles, and we conceive him prostrated23 with irreverent laughter in some lonely railway carriage.
Mr. Smith did his best to take life seriously, and I believe he succeeded passably well until after forty years of age. But then the spectacle of the English vicar toppled him over, and once the gravity of the Church of England is invaded, all lesser24 Alps and sanctuaries25 lie open to the scourge26. Menaced by serious intellectual disorders27 unless he were to give vent28 to these disturbing levities29, Mr. Smith began to set them down under the title of "Trivia," and now at length we are enriched by the spectacle of this iridescent30 and puckish little book, which presents as it were a series of lantern slides of an ironical31, whimsical, and merciless sense of humour. It is a motion picture of a middle-aged, phosphorescent mind that has long tried to preserve a decent melancholy33 but at last capitulates in the most delicately intellectual brainslide of our generation.
This is no Ring Lardner, no Irvin Cobb, no Casey at the bat. Mr. Smith is an infinitely34 close and acute observer of sophisticated social life, tinged35 with a faint and agreeable refined sadness, by an aura of shyness which amounts to a spiritual virginity. He comes to us trailing clouds of glory from the heaven of pure and unfettered speculation36 which is our home. He is an elf of utter simplicity37 and infinite candour. He is a flicker38 of absolute Mind. His little book is as precious and as disturbing as devilled crabs39.
Blessed, blessed little book, how you will run like quicksilver from mind to mind, leaping—a shy and shining spark—from brain to brain! I know of nothing since Lord Bacon quite like these ineffably40 dainty little paragraphs of gilded41 whim32, these rainbow nuggets of wistful inquiry42, these butterfly wings of fancy, these pointed43 sparklers of wit. A purge44, by Zeus, a purge for the wicked! Irony45 so demure46, so quaint, so far away; pathos47 so void of regret, merriment so delicate that one dare not laugh for fear of dispelling48 the charm—all this is "Trivia." Where are Marcus Aurelius or Epictetus or all the other Harold Bell Wrights of old time? Baron49 Verulam himself treads a heavy gait beside this airy elfin scamper50. It is Atalanta's heels. It is a heaven-given scenario51 of that shyest, dearest, remotest of essences—the mind of a strolling bachelor.
Bless his heart, in a momentary52 panic of modesty53 at the thought of all hi sacred plots laid bare, the heavenly man tries to scare us away. "These pieces of moral prose have been written, dear Reader, by a Carnivorous Mammal, belonging to that suborder of the Animal Kingdom which includes also the Baboon54, with his bright blue and scarlet55 bottom, and the gentle Chimpanzee."
But this whimsical brother to the chimpanzee, despite this last despairing attempt at modest evasion56, denudes57 himself before us. And his heart, we find is strangely like our own. His reveries, his sadnesses, his exhilarations, are all ours, too. Like us he cries, "I wish I were unflinching and emphatic58, and had big bushy eyebrows59 and a Message for the Age. I wish I were a deep Thinker, or a great Ventriloquist." Like us he has only a ghost, a thin, unreal phantom60 in a world of bank cashiers and duchesses and prosperous merchants and other Real Persons. Like us he fights a losing battle against the platitudes61 and moral generalizations62 that hem11 us round. "I can hardly post a letter," he laments63, "without marvelling64 at the excellence65 and accuracy of the Postal66 System." And he consoles himself, good man, with the thought of the meaningless creation crashing blindly through frozen space. His other great consolation67 is his dear vice68 of reading—"This joy not dulled by Age, this polite and unpunished vice, this selfish, serene69, life-long intoxication70."
It is impossible by a few random71 snippets to give any just figment of the delicious mental intoxication of this piercing, cathartic72 little volume. It is a bright tissue of thought robing a radiant, dancing spirit. Through the shimmering73 veil of words we catch, now and then, a flashing glimpse of the Immortal74 Whimsy75 within, shy, sudden, and defiant76. Across blue bird-haunted English lawns we follow that gracious figure, down dusky London streets where he is peering in at windows and laughing incommunicable jests.
But alas77, Mr. Pearsall Smith is lost to America. The warming pans and the twopenny tube have lured78 him away from us. Never again will he tread on peanut shells in the smoking car or read the runes about Phoebe Snow. Chiclets and Spearmint and Walt Mason and the Toonerville Trolley79 and the Prince Albert ads—these mean nothing to him. He will never compile an anthology of New York theatrical80 notices: "The play that makes the dimples to catch the tears." Careful and adroit81 propaganda, begun twenty years ago by the Department of State, might have won him back, but now it is impossible to repatriate82 him. The exquisite83 humours of our American life are faded from his mind. He has gone across the great divide that separates a subway from an underground and an elevator from a lift. I wonder does he ever mourn the scrapple and buckwheat cakes that were his birthright?
Major George Haven84 Putnam in his "Memories of a Publisher" describes a famous tennis match played at Oxford years ago, when he and Pearsall Smith defeated A.L. Smith and Herbert Fisher, the two gentlemen who are now Master of Balliol and British Minister of Education. The Balliol don attributed the British defeat in this international tourney to the fact that his tennis shoes (shall we say his "sneakers?") came to grief and he had to play the crucial games in stocking feet. But though Major Putnam and his young ally won the set of patters (let us use the Wykehamist word), the Major allowed the other side to gain a far more serious victory. They carried off the young Philadelphian and kept him in England until he was spoiled for all good American uses. That was badly done, Major! Because we needed Pearsall Smith over here, and now we shall never recapture him. He will go on calling an elevator a lift, and he will never write an American "Trivia."
点击收听单词发音
1 profane | |
adj.亵神的,亵渎的;vt.亵渎,玷污 | |
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2 utilitarian | |
adj.实用的,功利的 | |
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3 undoubtedly | |
adv.确实地,无疑地 | |
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4 barrage | |
n.火力网,弹幕 | |
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5 quaint | |
adj.古雅的,离奇有趣的,奇怪的 | |
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6 middle-aged | |
adj.中年的 | |
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7 lurking | |
潜在 | |
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8 hip | |
n.臀部,髋;屋脊 | |
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9 thither | |
adv.向那里;adj.在那边的,对岸的 | |
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10 delightful | |
adj.令人高兴的,使人快乐的 | |
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11 hem | |
n.贴边,镶边;vt.缝贴边;(in)包围,限制 | |
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12 unearthed | |
出土的(考古) | |
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13 amiable | |
adj.和蔼可亲的,友善的,亲切的 | |
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14 meditative | |
adj.沉思的,冥想的 | |
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15 quaintly | |
adv.古怪离奇地 | |
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16 Oxford | |
n.牛津(英国城市) | |
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17 engrossed | |
adj.全神贯注的 | |
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18 electorate | |
n.全体选民;选区 | |
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19 graceful | |
adj.优美的,优雅的;得体的 | |
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20 quench | |
vt.熄灭,扑灭;压制 | |
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21 subdue | |
vt.制服,使顺从,征服;抑制,克制 | |
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22 kit | |
n.用具包,成套工具;随身携带物 | |
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23 prostrated | |
v.使俯伏,使拜倒( prostrate的过去式和过去分词 );(指疾病、天气等)使某人无能为力 | |
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24 lesser | |
adj.次要的,较小的;adv.较小地,较少地 | |
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25 sanctuaries | |
n.避难所( sanctuary的名词复数 );庇护;圣所;庇护所 | |
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26 scourge | |
n.灾难,祸害;v.蹂躏 | |
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27 disorders | |
n.混乱( disorder的名词复数 );凌乱;骚乱;(身心、机能)失调 | |
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28 vent | |
n.通风口,排放口;开衩;vt.表达,发泄 | |
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29 levities | |
n.欠考虑( levity的名词复数 );不慎重;轻率;轻浮 | |
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30 iridescent | |
adj.彩虹色的,闪色的 | |
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31 ironical | |
adj.讽刺的,冷嘲的 | |
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32 whim | |
n.一时的兴致,突然的念头;奇想,幻想 | |
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33 melancholy | |
n.忧郁,愁思;adj.令人感伤(沮丧)的,忧郁的 | |
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34 infinitely | |
adv.无限地,无穷地 | |
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35 tinged | |
v.(使)发丁丁声( ting的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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36 speculation | |
n.思索,沉思;猜测;投机 | |
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37 simplicity | |
n.简单,简易;朴素;直率,单纯 | |
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38 flicker | |
vi./n.闪烁,摇曳,闪现 | |
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39 crabs | |
n.蟹( crab的名词复数 );阴虱寄生病;蟹肉v.捕蟹( crab的第三人称单数 ) | |
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40 ineffably | |
adv.难以言喻地,因神圣而不容称呼地 | |
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41 gilded | |
a.镀金的,富有的 | |
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42 inquiry | |
n.打听,询问,调查,查问 | |
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43 pointed | |
adj.尖的,直截了当的 | |
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44 purge | |
n.整肃,清除,泻药,净化;vt.净化,清除,摆脱;vi.清除,通便,腹泻,变得清洁 | |
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45 irony | |
n.反语,冷嘲;具有讽刺意味的事,嘲弄 | |
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46 demure | |
adj.严肃的;端庄的 | |
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47 pathos | |
n.哀婉,悲怆 | |
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48 dispelling | |
v.驱散,赶跑( dispel的现在分词 ) | |
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49 baron | |
n.男爵;(商业界等)巨头,大王 | |
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50 scamper | |
v.奔跑,快跑 | |
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51 scenario | |
n.剧本,脚本;概要 | |
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52 momentary | |
adj.片刻的,瞬息的;短暂的 | |
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53 modesty | |
n.谦逊,虚心,端庄,稳重,羞怯,朴素 | |
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54 baboon | |
n.狒狒 | |
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55 scarlet | |
n.深红色,绯红色,红衣;adj.绯红色的 | |
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56 evasion | |
n.逃避,偷漏(税) | |
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57 denudes | |
v.使赤裸( denude的第三人称单数 );剥光覆盖物 | |
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58 emphatic | |
adj.强调的,着重的;无可置疑的,明显的 | |
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59 eyebrows | |
眉毛( eyebrow的名词复数 ) | |
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60 phantom | |
n.幻影,虚位,幽灵;adj.错觉的,幻影的,幽灵的 | |
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61 platitudes | |
n.平常的话,老生常谈,陈词滥调( platitude的名词复数 );滥套子 | |
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62 generalizations | |
一般化( generalization的名词复数 ); 普通化; 归纳; 概论 | |
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63 laments | |
n.悲恸,哀歌,挽歌( lament的名词复数 )v.(为…)哀悼,痛哭,悲伤( lament的第三人称单数 ) | |
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64 marvelling | |
v.惊奇,对…感到惊奇( marvel的现在分词 ) | |
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65 excellence | |
n.优秀,杰出,(pl.)优点,美德 | |
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66 postal | |
adj.邮政的,邮局的 | |
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67 consolation | |
n.安慰,慰问 | |
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68 vice | |
n.坏事;恶习;[pl.]台钳,老虎钳;adj.副的 | |
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69 serene | |
adj. 安详的,宁静的,平静的 | |
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70 intoxication | |
n.wild excitement;drunkenness;poisoning | |
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71 random | |
adj.随机的;任意的;n.偶然的(或随便的)行动 | |
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72 cathartic | |
adj.宣泄情绪的;n.泻剂 | |
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73 shimmering | |
v.闪闪发光,发微光( shimmer的现在分词 ) | |
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74 immortal | |
adj.不朽的;永生的,不死的;神的 | |
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75 whimsy | |
n.古怪,异想天开 | |
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76 defiant | |
adj.无礼的,挑战的 | |
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77 alas | |
int.唉(表示悲伤、忧愁、恐惧等) | |
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78 lured | |
吸引,引诱(lure的过去式与过去分词形式) | |
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79 trolley | |
n.手推车,台车;无轨电车;有轨电车 | |
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80 theatrical | |
adj.剧场的,演戏的;做戏似的,做作的 | |
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81 adroit | |
adj.熟练的,灵巧的 | |
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82 repatriate | |
v.遣返;返回;n.被遣返回国者 | |
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83 exquisite | |
adj.精美的;敏锐的;剧烈的,感觉强烈的 | |
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84 haven | |
n.安全的地方,避难所,庇护所 | |
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