At any rate, we realize as never before how disorganized the social fabric must have been at the period, and how it had deteriorated from that of the older régimes. It is all but ludicrous, that entry in the diary where the connoisseurs gather in Barclay Street to pay their respects to such mediocre art as was exemplified by the allegorical series of paintings called “The Voyage of Life.” The reader remembers the old engravings of them, I dare say, very well. But we know that the connoisseurs did do this very silly thing, because Philip Hone’s diary is indisputable and exact evidence uncolored. It is incredible, nevertheless, that a political expediency should have caused the whole nation to forget so readily the proficiency in art matters attained by preceding generations, and, presto! resolved its most representative spirits into an unpromising class of abecedarians.
There is a tone often noticeable throughout the memoirs of Philip Hone, who sometimes made trips abroad in the sailing packets of his day, thereby extending the scope of his own horizon, as though he were a bit ashamed of the crude provincialism of his compatriots when it was the custom to speak the English language incorrectly, and when the three Rs--“Reading, Riting and Rithmetic”--were all the academic preparation for a life of usefulness that was required. Indeed, if he were quick at figures, could follow Webster’s spelling book, and make neat flourishes with his pen, no young man of the Transitional period need ever have despaired of positions and promotion.
The question often heard, now-a-days, “What chance has a man for self-cultivation in a boom town?” applies very nearly to the metropolis of the Transitional period.[5] What use more profitable could one have found for his time than speculation in real estate, if one could buy a house for $25,000, as did Philip Hone, and sell it within a few years for $60,000? Certainly, there was little inducement to pursue art in such a phenomenally active market for values. The best that could be expected of the very busy man of the day was to send his son betimes to college and to Europe, the liberal education, it is true, often unfitting him again for business as it was transacted in America. There was a manufacturer of Transitional furniture who sent his son to Paris to learn cabinet-making of those most renowned of European artificers; and I have it from the son himself that he was, afterwards, obliged to unlearn and forget all his Parisian training in order to meet the home demand for cheap and tawdry stuff. Fancy!