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Worldly Ways and Byways
by Eliot Gregory
December, 1995 [Etext #379]
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Worldly Ways and Byways - Eliot Gregory. 1899 edition. Scanned and
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Worldly Ways and Byways
A Table of Contents
To the READER
1. Charm
2. The Moth and the Star
3. Contrasted Travelling
4. The Outer and the Inner Woman
5. On Some Gilded Misalliances
6. The Complacency of Mediocrity
7. The Discontent of Talent
8. Slouch
9. Social Suggestion
10. Bohemia
11. Social Exiles
12. "Seven Ages" of Furniture
13. Our Elite and Public Life
14. The Small Summer Hotel
15. A False Start
16. A Holy Land
17. Royalty at Play
18. A Rock Ahead
19. The Grand Prix
20. "The Treadmill"
21. "Like Master Like Man"
22. An English Invasion of the Riviera
23. A Common Weakness
24. Changing Paris
25. Contentment
26. The Climber
27. The Last of the Dandies
28. A Nation on the Wing
29. Husks
30. The Faubourg St. Germain
31. Men's Manners
32. An Ideal Hostess
33. The Introducer
34. A Question and an Answer
35. Living on Your Friends
36. American Society in Italy
37. The Newport of the Past
38. A Conquest of Europe
39. A Race of Slaves
40. Introspection
To the Reader
THERE existed formerly, in diplomatic circles, a curious custom,
since fallen into disuse, entitled the Pele Mele, contrived
doubtless by some distracted Master of Ceremonies to quell the
endless jealousies and quarrels for precedence between courtiers
and diplomatists of contending pretensions. Under this rule no
rank was recognized, each person being allowed at banquet, fete, or
other public ceremony only such place as he had been ingenious or
fortunate enough to obtain.
Any one wishing to form an idea of the confusion that ensued, of
the intrigues and expedients resorted to, not only in procuring
prominent places, but also in ensuring the integrity of the Pele
Mele, should glance over the amusing memoirs of M. de Segur.
The aspiring nobles and ambassadors, harassed by this constant
preoccupation, had little time or inclination left for any serious
pursuit, since, to take a moment's repose or an hour's breathing
space was to risk falling behind in the endless and aimless race.
Strange as it may appear, the knowledge that they owed place and
preferment more to chance or intrigue than to any personal merit or
inherited right, instead of lessening the value of the prizes for
which all were striving, seemed only to enhance them in the eyes of
the competitors.
Success was the unique standard by which they gauged their fellows.
Those who succeeded revelled in the adulation of their friends, but
when any one failed, the fickle crowd passed him by to bow at more
fortunate feet.
No better picture could be found of the "world" of to-day, a
perpetual Pele Mele, where such advantages only are conceded as we
have been sufficiently enterprising to obtain, and are strong or
clever enough to keep - a constant competition, a daily
steeplechase, favorable to daring spirits and personal initiative
but with the defect of keeping frail humanity ever on the qui vive.
Philosophers tell us, that we should seek happiness only in the
calm of our own minds, not allowing external conditions or the
opinions of others to influence our ways. This lofty detachment
from environment is achieved by very few. Indeed, the philosophers
themselves (who may be said to have invented the art of "posing")
were generally as vain as peacocks, profoundly pre-occupied with
the verdict of their contemporaries and their position as regards
posterity.
Man is born gregarious and remains all his life a herding animal.
As one keen observer has written, "So great is man's horror of
being alone that he will seek the society of those he neither likes
nor respects sooner than be left to his own." The laws and
conventions that govern men's intercourse have, therefore, formed a
tempting subject for the writers of all ages. Some have labored
hoping to reform their generation, others have written to offer
solutions for life's many problems.
Beaumarchais, whose penetrating wit left few subjects untouched,
makes his Figaro put the subject aside with "Je me presse de rire
de tout, de peur d'etre oblige d'en pleurer."
The author of this little volume pretends to settle no disputes,
aims at inaugurating no reforms. He has lightly touched on passing
topics and jotted down, "to point a moral or adorn a tale," some of
the more obvious foibles and inconsistencies of our American ways.
If a stray bit of philosophy has here and there slipped in between
the lines, it is mostly of the laughing "school," and used more in
banter than in blame.
This much abused "world" is a fairly agreeable place if you do not
take it seriously. Meet it with a friendly face and it will smile
gayly back at you, but do not ask of it what it cannot give, or
attribute to its verdicts more importance than they deserve.
ELIOT GREGORY
Newport, November first, 1897
CHAPTER 1 - Charm
WOMEN endowed by nature with the indescribable quality we call
"charm" (for want of a better word), are the supreme development of
a perfected race, the last word, as it were, of civilization; the
flower of their kind, crowning centuries of growing refinement and
cultivation. Other women may unite a thousand brilliant qualities,
and attractive attributes, may be beautiful as Astarte or witty as
Madame de Montespan, those endowed with the power of charm, have in
all ages and under every sky, held undisputed rule over the hearts
of their generation.
When we look at the portraits of the enchantresses whom history
tells us have ruled the world by their charm, and swayed the
destinies of empires at their fancy, we are astonished to find that
they have rarely been beautiful. From Cleopatra or Mary of
Scotland down to Lola Montez, the tell-tale coin or canvas reveals
the same marvellous fact. We wonder how these women attained such
influence over the men of their day, their husbands or lovers. We
would do better to look around us, or inward, and observe what is
passing in our own hearts.
Pause, reader mine, a moment and reflect. Who has held the first
place in your thoughts, filled your soul, and influenced your life?
Was she the most beautiful of your acquaintances, the radiant
vision that dazzled your boyish eyes? Has she not rather been some
gentle, quiet woman whom you hardly noticed the first time your
paths crossed, but who gradually grew to be a part of your life -
to whom you instinctively turned for consolation in moments of
discouragement, for counsel in your difficulties, and whose welcome
was the bright moment in your day, looked forward to through long
hours of toil and worry?
In the hurly-burly of life we lose sight of so many things our
fathers and mothers clung to, and have drifted so far away from
their gentle customs and simple, home-loving habits, that one
wonders what impression our society would make on a woman of a
century ago, could she by some spell be dropped into the swing of
modern days. The good soul would be apt to find it rather a far
cry from the quiet pleasures of her youth, to "a ladies' amateur
bicycle race" that formed the attraction recently at a summer
resort.
That we should have come to think it natural and proper for a young
wife and mother to pass her mornings at golf, lunching at the club-
house to "save time," returning home only for a hurried change of
toilet to start again on a bicycle or for a round of calls, an
occupation that will leave her just the half-hour necessary to slip
into a dinner gown, and then for her to pass the evening in dancing
or at the card-table, shows, when one takes the time to think of
it, how unconsciously we have changed, and (with all apologies to
the gay hostesses and graceful athletes of to-day) not for the
better.
It is just in the subtle quality of charm that the women of the
last ten years have fallen away from their elder sisters. They
have been carried along by a love of sport, and by the set of
fashion's tide, not stopping to ask themselves whither they are
floating. They do not realize all the importance of their acts nor
the true meaning of their metamorphosis.
The dear creatures should be content, for they have at last escaped
from the bondage of ages, have broken their chains, and vaulted
over their prison walls. "Lords and masters" have gradually become
very humble and obedient servants, and the "love, honour, and obey"
of the marriage service might now more logically be spoken by the
man; on the lips of the women of to-day it is but a graceful "FACON
DE PARLER," and holds only those who choose to be bound.
It is not my intention to rail against the short-comings of the
day. That ungrateful task I leave to sterner moralists, and
hopeful souls who naively imagine they can stem the current of an
epoch with the barrier of their eloquence, or sweep back an ocean
of innovations by their logic. I should like, however, to ask my
sisters one question: Are they quite sure that women gain by these
changes? Do they imagine, these "sporty" young females in short-
cut skirts and mannish shirts and ties, that it is seductive to a
lover, or a husband to see his idol in a violent perspiration, her
draggled hair blowing across a sunburned face, panting up a long
hill in front of him on a bicycle, frantic at having lost her race?
Shade of gentle William! who said
A woman moved, is like a fountain troubled, -
Muddy, ill-seeming, thick, bereft of beauty.
And while it is so, none so dry or thirsty
Will deign to sip or touch one drop of it.
Is the modern girl under the impression that men will be contented
with poor imitations of themselves, to share their homes and be the
mothers of their children? She is throwing away the substance for
the shadow!
The moment women step out from the sanctuary of their homes, the
glamour that girlhood or maternity has thrown around them cast
aside, that moment will they cease to rule mankind. Women may
agitate until they have obtained political recognition, but will
awake from their foolish dream of power, realizing too late what
they have sacrificed to obtain it, that the price has been very
heavy, and the fruit of their struggles bitter on their lips.
There are few men, I imagine, of my generation to whom the words
"home" and "mother" have not a penetrating charm, who do not look
back with softened heart and tender thoughts to fireside scenes of
evening readings and twilight talks at a mother's knee, realizing
that the best in their natures owes its growth to these influences.
I sometimes look about me and wonder what the word "mother" will
mean later, to modern little boys. It will evoke, I fear, a
confused remembrance of some centaur-like being, half woman, half
wheel, or as it did to neglected little Rawdon Crawley, the vision
of a radiant creature in gauze and jewels, driving away to endless
FETES - FETES followed by long mornings, when he was told not to
make any noise, or play too loudly, "as poor mamma is resting."
What other memories can the "successful" woman of to-day hope to
leave in the minds of her children? If the child remembers his
mother in this way, will not the man who has known and perhaps
loved her, feel the same sensation of empty futility when her name
is mentioned?
The woman who proposes a game of cards to a youth who comes to pass
an hour in her society, can hardly expect him to carry away a
particularly tender memory of her as he leaves the house. The girl
who has rowed, ridden, or raced at a man's side for days, with the
object of getting the better of him at some sport or pastime,
cannot reasonably hope to be connected in his thoughts with ideas
more tender or more elevated than "odds" or "handicaps," with an
undercurrent of pique if his unsexed companion has "downed" him
successfully.
What man, unless he be singularly dissolute or unfortunate, but
turns his steps, when he can, towards some dainty parlor where he
is sure of finding a smiling, soft-voiced woman, whose welcome he
knows will soothe his irritated nerves and restore the even balance
of his temper, whose charm will work its subtle way into his
troubled spirit? The wife he loves, or the friend he admires and
respects, will do more for him in one such quiet hour when two
minds commune, coming closer to the real man, and moving him to
braver efforts, and nobler aims, than all the beauties and "sporty"
acquaintances of a lifetime. No matter what a man's education or
taste is, none are insensible to such an atmosphere or to the grace
and witchery a woman can lend to the simplest surroundings. She
need not be beautiful or brilliant to hold him in lifelong
allegiance, if she but possess this magnetism.
Madame Recamier was a beautiful, but not a brilliant woman, yet she
held men her slaves for years. To know her was to fall under her
charm, and to feel it once was to remain her adorer for life. She
will go down to history as the type of a fascinating woman. Being
asked once by an acquaintance what spell she worked on mankind that
enabled her to hold them for ever at her feet, she laughingly
answered:
"I have always found two words sufficient. When a visitor comes
into my salon, I say, 'ENFIN!' and when he gets up to go away, I
say, 'DEJA!' "
"What is this wonderful 'charm' he is writing about?" I hear some
sprightly maiden inquire as she reads these lines. My dear young
lady, if you ask the question, you have judged yourself and been
found wanting. But to satisfy you as far as I can, I will try and
define it - not by telling you what it is; that is beyond my power
- but by negatives, the only way in which subtle subjects can be
approached.
A woman of charm is never flustered and never DISTRAITE. She talks
little, and rarely of herself, remembering that bores are persons
who insist on talking about themselves. She does not break the
thread of a conversation by irrelevant questions or confabulate in
an undertone with the servants. No one of her guests receives more
of her attention than another and none are neglected. She offers
to each one who speaks the homage of her entire attention. She
never makes an effort to be brilliant or entertain with her wit.
She is far too clever for that. Neither does she volunteer
information nor converse about her troubles or her ailments, nor
wander off into details about people you do not know.
She is all things - to each man she likes, in the best sense of
that phrase, appreciating his qualities, stimulating him to better
things.
- for his gayer hours
She has a voice of gladness and a smile and eloquence of beauty;
and she glides
Into his darker musings with a mild and healing sympathy that
steals away
Their sharpness ere he is aware.
CHAPTER 2 - The Moth and the Star
THE truth of the saying that "it is always the unexpected that
happens," receives in this country a confirmation from an unlooked-
for quarter, as does the fact of human nature being always,
discouragingly, the same in spite of varied surroundings. This
sounds like a paradox, but is an exceedingly simple statement
easily proved.
That the great mass of Americans, drawn as they are from such
varied sources, should take any interest in the comings and goings
or social doings of a small set of wealthy and fashionable people,
is certainly an unexpected development. That to read of the
amusements and home life of a clique of people with whom they have
little in common, whose whole education and point of view are
different from their own, and whom they have rarely seen and never
expect to meet, should afford the average citizen any amusement
seems little short of impossible.
One accepts as a natural sequence that abroad (where an hereditary
nobility have ruled for centuries, and accustomed the people to
look up to them as the visible embodiment of all that is splendid
and unattainable in life) such interest should exist. That the
home-coming of an English or French nobleman to his estates should
excite the enthusiasm of hundreds more or less dependent upon him
for their amusement or more material advantages; that his marriage
to an heiress - meaning to them the re-opening of a long-closed
CHATEAU and the beginning of a period of prosperity for the
district - should excite his neighbors is not to be wondered at.
It is well known that whole regions have been made prosperous by
the residence of a court, witness the wealth and trade brought into
Scotland by the Queen's preference for "the Land of Cakes," and the
discontent and poverty in Ireland from absenteeism and persistent
avoidance of that country by the court. But in this land, where
every reason for interesting one class in another seems lacking,
that thousands of well-to-do people (half the time not born in this
hemisphere), should delightedly devour columns of incorrect
information about New York dances and Lenox house-parties, winter
cruises, or Newport coaching parades, strikes the observer as the
"unexpected" in its purest form.
That this interest exists is absolutely certain. During a trip in
the West, some seasons ago, I was dumbfounded to find that the
members of a certain New York set were familiarly spoken of by
their first names, and was assailed with all sorts of eager
questions when it was discovered that I knew them. A certain young
lady, at that time a belle in New York, was currently called SALLY,
and a well-known sportsman FRED, by thousands of people who had
never seen either of them. It seems impossible, does it not? Let
us look a little closer into the reason of this interest, and we
shall find how simple is the apparent paradox.
Perhaps in no country, in all the world, do the immense middle
classes lead such uninteresting lives, and have such limited
resources at their disposal for amusement or the passing of leisure
hours.
Abroad the military bands play constantly in the public parks; the
museums and palaces are always open wherein to pass rainy Sunday
afternoons; every village has its religious FETES and local fair,
attended with dancing and games. All these mental relaxations are
lacking in our newer civilization; life is stripped of everything
that is not distinctly practical; the dull round of weekly toil is
only broken by the duller idleness of an American Sunday.
Naturally, these people long for something outside of themselves
and their narrow sphere.
Suddenly there arises a class whose wealth permits them to break
through the iron circle of work and boredom, who do picturesque and
delightful things, which appeal directly to the imagination; they
build a summer residence complete, in six weeks, with furniture and
bric-a-brac, on the top of a roadless mountain; they sail in
fairylike yachts to summer seas, and marry their daughters to the
heirs of ducal houses; they float up the Nile in dahabeeyah, or
pass the "month of flowers" in far Japan.
It is but human nature to delight in reading of these things. Here
the great mass of the people find (and eagerly seize on), the
element of romance lacking in their lives, infinitely more
enthralling than the doings of any novel's heroine. It is real!
It is taking place! and - still deeper reason - in every ambitious
American heart lingers the secret hope that with luck and good
management they too may do those very things, or at least that
their children will enjoy the fortunes they have gained, in just
those ways. The gloom of the monotonous present is brightened, the
patient toiler returns to his desk with something definite before
him - an objective point - towards which he can struggle; he knows
that this is no impossible dream. Dozens have succeeded and prove
to him what energy and enterprise can accomplish.
Do not laugh at this suggestion; it is far truer than you imagine.
Many a weary woman has turned from such reading to her narrow
duties, feeling that life is not all work, and with renewed hope in
the possibilities of the future.
Doubtless a certain amount of purely idle curiosity is mingled with
the other feelings. I remember quite well showing our city sights
to a bored party of Western friends, and failing entirely to amuse
them, when, happening to mention as we drove up town, "there goes
Mr. Blank," (naming a prominent leader of cotillions), my guests
nearly fell over each other and out of the carriage in their
eagerness to see the gentleman of whom they had read so much, and
who was, in those days, a power in his way, and several times after
they expressed the greatest satisfaction at having seen him.
I have found, with rare exceptions, and the experience has been
rather widely gathered all over the country, that this interest -
or call it what you will - has been entirely without spite or
bitterness, rather the delight of a child in a fairy story. For
people are rarely envious of things far removed from their grasp.
You will find that a woman who is bitter because her neighbor has a
girl "help" or a more comfortable cottage, rarely feels envy
towards the owners of opera-boxes or yachts. Such heart-burnings
(let us hope they are few) are among a class born in the shadow of
great wealth, and bred up with tastes that they can neither
relinquish nor satisfy. The large majority of people show only a
good-natured inclination to chaff, none of the "class feeling"
which certain papers and certain politicians try to excite.
Outside of the large cities with their foreign-bred, semi-
anarchistic populations, the tone is perfectly friendly; for the
simple reason that it never entered into the head of any American
to imagine that there WAS any class difference. To him his rich
neighbors are simply his lucky neighbors, almost his relations,
who, starting from a common stock, have been able to "get there"
sooner than he has done. So he wishes them luck on the voyage in
which he expects to join them as soon as he has had time to make a
fortune.
So long as the world exists, or at least until we have reformed it
and adopted Mr. Bellamy's delightful scheme of existence as
described in "Looking Backward," great fortunes will be made, and
painful contrasts be seen, especially in cities, and it would seem
to be the duty of the press to soften - certainly not to sharpen -
the edge of discontent. As long as human nature is human nature,
and the poor care to read of the doings of the more fortunate, by
all means give them the reading they enjoy and demand, but let it
be written in a kindly spirit so that it may be a cultivation as
well as a recreation. Treat this perfectly natural and honest
taste honestly and naturally, for, after all, it is
The desire of the moth for the star,
Of the night for the morrow.
The devotion to something afar
From the sphere of our sorrow.
CHAPTER 3 - Contrasted Travelling
WHEN our parents went to Europe fifty years ago, it was the event
of a lifetime - a tour lovingly mapped out in advance with advice
from travelled friends. Passports were procured, books read, wills
made, and finally, prayers were offered up in church and solemn
leave-taking performed. Once on the other side, descriptive
letters were conscientiously written, and eagerly read by friends
at home, - in spite of these epistles being on the thinnest of
paper and with crossing carried to a fine art, for postage was high
in the forties. Above all, a journal was kept.
Such a journal lies before me as I write. Four little volumes in
worn morocco covers and faded "Italian" writing, more precious than
all my other books combined, their sight recalls that lost time -
my youth - when, as a reward, they were unlocked that I might look
at the drawings, and the sweetest voice in the world would read to
me from them! Happy, vanished days, that are so far away they seem
to have been in another existence!
The first volume opens with the voyage across the Atlantic, made in
an American clipper (a model unsurpassed the world over), which was
accomplished in thirteen days, a feat rarely equalled now, by sail.
Genial Captain Nye was in command. The same who later, when a
steam propelled vessel was offered him, refused, as unworthy of a
seaman, "to boil a kettle across the ocean."
Life friendships were made in those little cabins, under the
swinging lamp the travellers re-read last volumes so as to be
prepared to appreciate everything on landing. Ireland, England and
Scotland were visited with an enthusiasm born of Scott, the tedium
of long coaching journeys being beguiled by the first "numbers" of
"Pickwick," over which the men of the party roared, but which the
ladies did not care for, thinking it vulgar, and not to be compared
to "Waverley," "Thaddeus of Warsaw," or "The Mysteries of Udolpho."
A circular letter to our diplomatic agents abroad was presented in
each city, a rite invariably followed by an invitation to dine, for
which occasions a black satin frock with a low body and a few
simple ornaments, including (supreme elegance) a diamond cross,
were carried in the trunks. In London a travelling carriage was
bought and stocked, the indispensable courier engaged, half guide,
half servant, who was expected to explore a city, or wait at table,
as occasion required. Four days were passed between Havre and
Paris, and the slow progress across Europe was accomplished, Murray
in one hand and Byron in the other.
One page used particularly to attract my boyish attention. It was
headed by a naive little drawing of the carriage at an Italian inn
door, and described how, after the dangers and discomforts of an
Alpine pass, they descended by sunny slopes into Lombardy. Oh! the
rapture that breathes from those simple pages! The vintage scenes,
the mid-day halt for luncheon eaten in the open air, the afternoon
start, the front seat of the carriage heaped with purple grapes,
used to fire my youthful imagination and now recalls Madame de
Stael's line on perfect happiness: "To be young! to be in love! to
be in Italy!"
Do people enjoy Europe as much now? I doubt it! It has become too
much a matter of course, a necessary part of the routine of life.
Much of the bloom is brushed from foreign scenes by descriptive
books and photographs, that St. Mark's or Mt. Blanc has become as
familiar to a child's eye as the house he lives in, and in
consequence the reality now instead of being a revelation is often
a disappointment.
In my youth, it was still an event to cross. I remember my first
voyage on the old side-wheeled SCOTIA, and Captain Judkins in a
wheeled chair, and a perpetual bad temper, being pushed about the
deck; and our delight, when the inevitable female asking him (three
days out) how far we were from land, got the answer "about a mile!"
"Indeed! How interesting! In which direction?"
"In that direction, madam," shouted the captain, pointing downward
as he turned his back to her.
If I remember, we were then thirteen days getting to Liverpool, and
made the acquaintance on board of the people with whom we travelled
during most of that winter. Imagine anyone now making an
acquaintance on board a steamer! In those simple days people
depended on the friendships made at summer hotels or boarding-
houses for their visiting list. At present, when a girl comes out,
her mother presents her to everybody she will be likely to know if
she were to live a century. In the seventies, ladies cheerfully
shared their state-rooms with women they did not know, and often
became friends in consequence; but now, unless a certain deck-suite
can be secured, with bath and sitting-room, on one or two
particular "steamers," the great lady is in despair. Yet our
mothers were quite as refined as the present generation, only they
took life simply, as they found it.
Children are now taken abroad so young, that before they have
reached an age to appreciate what they see, Europe has become to
them a twice-told tale. So true is this, that a receipt for making
children good Americans is to bring them up abroad. Once they get
back here it is hard to entice them away again.
With each improvement in the speed of our steamers, something of
the glamour of Europe vanishes. The crowds that yearly rush across
see and appreciate less in a lifetime than our parents did in their
one tour abroad. A good lady of my acquaintance was complaining
recently how much Paris bored her.
"What can you do to pass the time?" she asked. I innocently
answered that I knew nothing so entrancing as long mornings passed
at the Louvre.
"Oh, yes, I do that too," she replied, "but I like the 'Bon Marche'
best!"
A trip abroad has become a purely social function to a large number
of wealthy Americans, including "presentation" in London and a
winter in Rome or Cairo. And just as a "smart" Englishman is sure
to tell you that he has never visited the "Tower," it has become
good form to ignore the sight-seeing side of Europe; hundreds of
New Yorkers never seeing anything of Paris beyond the Rue de la
Paix and the Bois. They would as soon think of going to Cluny or
St. Denis as of visiting the museum in our park!
Such people go to Fontainebleau because they are buying furniture,
and they wish to see the best models. They go to Versailles on the
coach and "do" the Palace during the half-hour before luncheon.
Beyond that, enthusiasm rarely carries them. As soon as they have
settled themselves at the Bristol or the Rhin begins the endless
treadmill of leaving cards on all the people just seen at home, and
whom they will meet again in a couple of months at Newport or Bar
Harbor. This duty and the all-entrancing occupation of getting
clothes fills up every spare hour. Indeed, clothes seem to pervade
the air of Paris in May, the conversation rarely deviating from
them. If you meet a lady you know looking ill, and ask the cause,
it generally turns out to be "four hours a day standing to be
fitted." Incredible as it may seem, I have been told of one plain
maiden lady, who makes a trip across, spring and autumn, with the
sole object of getting her two yearly outfits.
Remembering the hundreds of cultivated people whose dream in life
(often unrealized from lack of means) has been to go abroad and
visit the scenes their reading has made familiar, and knowing what
such a trip would mean to them, and how it would be looked back
upon during the rest of an obscure life, I felt it almost a duty to
"suppress" a wealthy female (doubtless an American cousin of Lady
Midas) when she informed me, the other day, that decidedly she
would not go abroad this spring.
"It is not necessary. Worth has my measures!"
CHAPTER 4 - The Outer and the Inner Woman
IT is a sad commentary on our boasted civilization that cases of
shoplifting occur more and more frequently each year, in which the
delinquents are women of education and refinement, or at least
belong to families and occupy positions in which one would expect
to find those qualities! The reason, however, is not difficult to
discover.
In the wake of our hasty and immature prosperity has come (as it
does to all suddenly enriched societies) a love of ostentation, a
desire to dazzle the crowd by displays of luxury and rich trappings
indicative of crude and vulgar standards. The newly acquired
money, instead of being expended for solid comforts or articles
which would afford lasting satisfaction, is lavished on what can be
worn in public, or the outer shell of display, while the home table
and fireside belongings are neglected. A glance around our
theatres, or at the men and women in our crowded thoroughfares, is
sufficient to reveal to even a casual observer that the mania for
fine clothes and what is costly, PER SE, has become the besetting
sin of our day and our land.
The tone of most of the papers and of our theatrical advertisements
reflects this feeling. The amount of money expended for a work of
art or a new building is mentioned before any comment as to its
beauty or fitness. A play is spoken of as "Manager So and So's
thirty-thousand-dollar production!" The fact that a favorite
actress will appear in four different dresses during the three acts
of a comedy, each toilet being a special creation designed for her
by a leading Parisian house, is considered of supreme importance
and is dwelt upon in the programme as a special attraction.
It would be astonishing if the taste of our women were different,
considering the way clothes are eternally being dangled before
their eyes. Leading papers publish illustrated supplements devoted
exclusively to the subject of attire, thus carrying temptation into
every humble home, and suggesting unattainable luxuries. Windows
in many of the larger shops contain life-sized manikins loaded with
the latest costly and ephemeral caprices of fashion arranged to
catch the eye of the poorer class of women, who stand in hundreds
gazing at the display like larks attracted by a mirror! Watch
those women as they turn away, and listen to their sighs of
discontent and envy. Do they not tell volumes about petty hopes
and ambitions?
I do not refer to the wealthy women whose toilets are in keeping
with their incomes and the general footing of their households;
that they should spend more or less in fitting themselves out
daintily is of little importance. The point where this subject
becomes painful is in families of small means where young girls
imagine that to be elaborately dressed is the first essential of
existence, and, in consequence, bend their labors and their
intelligence towards this end. Last spring I asked an old friend
where she and her daughters intended passing their summer. Her
answer struck me as being characteristic enough to quote: "We
should much prefer," she said, "returning to Bar Harbor, for we all
enjoy that place and have many friends there. But the truth is, my
daughters have bought themselves very little in the way of toilet
this year, as our finances are not in a flourishing condition. So
my poor girls will be obliged to make their last year's dresses do
for another season. Under these circumstances, it is out of the
question for us to return a second summer to the same place."
I do not know how this anecdote strikes my readers. It made me
thoughtful and sad to think that, in a family of intelligent and
practical women, such a reason should be considered sufficient to
outweigh enjoyment, social relations, even health, and allowed to
change the plans of an entire family.
As American women are so fond of copying English ways they should
be willing to take a few lessons on the subject of raiment from
across the water. As this is not intended to be a dissertation on
"How to Dress Well on Nothing a Year," and as I feel the greatest
diffidence in approaching a subject of which I know absolutely
nothing, it will be better to sheer off from these reefs and
quicksands. Every one who reads these lines will know perfectly
well what is meant, when reference is made to the good sense and
practical utility of English women's dress.
What disgusts and angers me (when my way takes me into our surface
or elevated cars or into ferry boats and local trains) is the utter
dissonance between the outfit of most of the women I meet and their
position and occupation. So universal is this, that it might
almost be laid down as an axiom, that the American woman, no matter
in what walk of life you observe her, or what the time or the
place, is always persistently and grotesquely overdressed. From
the women who frequent the hotels of our summer or winter resorts,
down all the steps of the social staircase to the char-woman, who
consents (spasmodically) to remove the dust and waste-papers from
my office, there seems to be the same complete disregard of
fitness. The other evening, in leaving my rooms, I brushed against
a portly person in the half-light of the corridor. There was a
shimmer of (what appeared to my inexperienced eyes as) costly
stuffs, a huge hat crowned the shadow itself, "topped by nodding
plumes," which seemed to account for the depleted condition of my
feather duster.
I found on inquiring of the janitor, that the dressy person I had
met, was the char-woman in street attire, and that a closet was set
aside in the building, for the special purpose of her morning and
evening transformations, which she underwent in the belief that her
social position in Avenue A would suffer, should she appear in the
streets wearing anything less costly than seal-skin and velvet or
such imitations of those expensive materials as her stipend would
permit.
I have as tenants of a small wooden house in Jersey City, a bank
clerk, his wife and their three daughters. He earns in the
neighborhood of fifteen hundred dollars a year. Their rent (with
which, by the way, they are always in arrears) is three hundred
dollars. I am favored spring and autumn by a visit from the ladies
of that family, in the hope (generally futile) of inducing me to do
some ornamental papering or painting in their residence, subjects
on which they have by experience found my agent to be
unapproachable. When those four women descend upon me, I am fairly
dazzled by the splendor of their attire, and lost in wonder as to
how the price of all that finery can have been squeezed out of the
twelve remaining hundreds of their income. When I meet the father
he is shabby to the outer limits of the genteel. His hat has, I am
sure, supported the suns and snowstorms of a dozen seasons. There
is a threadbare shine on his apparel that suggests a heartache in
each whitened seam, but the ladies are mirrors of fashion, as well
as moulds of form. What can remain for any creature comforts after
all those fine clothes have been paid for? And how much is put
away for the years when the long-suffering money maker will be past
work, or saved towards the time when sickness or accident shall
appear on the horizon? How those ladies had the "nerve" to enter a
ferry boat or crowd into a cable car, dressed as they were, has
always been a marvel to me. A landau and two liveried servants
would barely have been in keeping with their appearance.
Not long ago, a great English nobleman, who is also famous in the
yachting world, visited this country accompanied by his two
daughters, high-bred and genial ladies. No self-respecting
American shop girl or fashionable typewriter would have
condescended to appear in the inexpensive attire which those
English women wore. Wherever one met them, at dinner, FETE, or
ball, they were always the most simply dressed women in the room.
I wonder if it ever occurred to any of their gorgeously attired
hostesses, that it was because their transatlantic guests were so
sure of their position, that they contented themselves with such
simple toilets knowing that nothing they might wear could either
improve or alter their standing
In former ages, sumptuary laws were enacted by parental
governments, in the hope of suppressing extravagance in dress, the
state of affairs we deplore now, not being a new development of
human weakness, but as old as wealth.
The desire to shine by the splendor of one's trappings is the first
idea of the parvenu, especially here in this country, where the
ambitious are denied the pleasure of acquiring a title, and where
official rank carries with it so little social weight. Few more
striking ways present themselves to the crude and half-educated for
the expenditure of a new fortune than the purchase of sumptuous
apparel, the satisfaction being immediate and material. The wearer
of a complete and perfect toilet must experience a delight of which
the uninitiated know nothing, for such cruel sacrifices are made
and so many privations endured to procure this satisfaction. When
I see groups of women, clad in the latest designs of purple and
fine linen, stand shivering on street corners of a winter night,
until they can crowd into a car, I doubt if the joy they get from
their clothes, compensates them for the creature comforts they are
forced to forego, and I wonder if it never occurs to them to spend
less on their wardrobes and so feel they can afford to return from
a theatre or concert comfortably, in a cab, as a foreign woman,
with their income would do.
There is a stoical determination about the American point of view
that compels a certain amount of respect. Our countrywomen will
deny themselves pleasures, will economize on their food and will
remain in town during the summer, but when walking abroad they must
be clad in the best, so that no one may know by their appearance if
the income be counted by hundreds or thousands.
While these standards prevail and the female mind is fixed on this
subject with such dire intent, it is not astonishing that a weaker
sister is occasionally tempted beyond her powers of resistance.
Nor that each day a new case of a well-dressed woman thieving in a
shop reaches our ears. The poor feeble-minded creature is not to
blame. She is but the reflexion of the minds around her and is
probably like the lady Emerson tells of, who confessed to him "that
the sense of being perfectly well-dressed had given her a feeling
of inward tranquillity which religion was powerless to bestow."
CHAPTER 5 - On Some Gilded Misalliances
A DEAR old American lady, who lived the greater part of her life in
Rome, and received every body worth knowing in her spacious
drawing-rooms, far up in the dim vastnesses of a Roman palace, used
to say that she had only known one really happy marriage made by an
American girl abroad.
In those days, being young and innocent, I considered that remark
cynical, and in my heart thought nothing could be more romantic and
charming than for a fair compatriot to assume an historic title and
retire to her husband's estates, and rule smilingly over him and a
devoted tenantry, as in the last act of a comic opera, when a rose-
colored light is burning and the orchestra plays the last brilliant
chords of a wedding march.
There seemed to my perverted sense a certain poetic justice about
the fact that money, gained honestly but prosaically, in groceries
or gas, should go to regild an ancient blazon or prop up the
crumbling walls of some stately palace abroad.
Many thoughtful years and many cruel realities have taught me that
my gracious hostess of the "seventies" was right, and that marriage
under these conditions is apt to be much more like the comic opera
after the curtain has been rung down, when the lights are out, the
applauding public gone home, and the weary actors brought slowly
back to the present and the positive, are wondering how they are to
pay their rent or dodge the warrant in ambush around the corner.
International marriages usually come about from a deficient
knowledge of the world. The father becomes rich, the family travel
abroad, some mutual friend (often from purely interested motives)
produces a suitor for the hand of the daughter, in the shape of a
"prince" with a title that makes the whole simple American family
quiver with delight.
After a few visits the suitor declares himself; the girl is
flattered, the father loses his head, seeing visions of his loved
daughter hob-nobbing with royalty, and (intoxicating thought!)
snubbing the "swells" at home who had shown reluctance to recognize
him and his family.
It is next to impossible for him to get any reliable information
about his future son-in-law in a country where, as an American, he
has few social relations, belongs to no club, and whose idiom is a
sealed book to him. Every circumstance conspires to keep the flaws
on the article for sale out of sight and place the suitor in an
advantageous light. Several weeks' "courting" follows,
paterfamilias agrees to part with a handsome share of his earnings,
and a marriage is "arranged."
In the case where the girl has retained some of her self-respect
the suitor is made to come to her country for the ceremony. And,
that the contrast between European ways and our simple habits may
not be too striking, an establishment is hastily got together, with
hired liveries and new-bought carriages, as in a recent case in
this state. The sensational papers write up this "international
union," and publish "faked" portraits of the bride and her noble
spouse. The sovereign of the groom's country (enchanted that some
more American money is to be imported into his land) sends an
economical present and an autograph letter. The act ends.
Limelight and slow music!
In a few years rumors of dissent and trouble float vaguely back to
the girl's family. Finally, either a great scandal occurs, and
there is one dishonored home the more in the world, or an
expatriated woman, thousands of miles from the friends and
relatives who might be of some comfort to her, makes up her mind to
accept "anything" for the sake of her children, and attempts to
build up some sort of an existence out of the remains of her lost
illusions, and the father wakes up from his dream to realize that
his wealth has only served to ruin what he loved best in all the
world.
Sometimes the conditions are delightfully comic, as in a well-known
case, where the daughter, who married into an indolent, happy-go-
lucky Italian family, had inherited her father's business push and
energy along with his fortune, and immediately set about "running"
her husband's estate as she had seen her father do his bank. She
tried to revive a half-forgotten industry in the district, scraped
and whitewashed their picturesque old villa, proposed her husband's
entering business, and in short dashed head down against all his
inherited traditions and national prejudices, until her new family
loathed the sight of the brisk American face, and the poor she had
tried to help, sulked in their newly drained houses and refused to
be comforted. Her ways were not Italian ways, and she seemed to
the nun-like Italian ladies, almost unsexed, as she tramped about
the fields, talking artificial manure and subsoil drainage with the
men. Yet neither she nor her husband was to blame. The young
Italian had but followed the teachings of his family, which decreed
that the only honorable way for an aristocrat to acquire wealth was
to marry it. The American wife honestly tried to do her duty in
this new position, naively thinking she could engraft transatlantic
"go" upon the indolent Italian character. Her work was in vain;
she made herself and her husband so unpopular that they are now
living in this country, regretting too late the error of their
ways.
Another case but little less laughable, is that of a Boston girl
with a neat little fortune of her own, who, when married to the
young Viennese of her choice, found that he expected her to live
with his family on the third floor of their "palace" (the two lower
floors being rented to foreigners), and as there was hardly enough
money for a box at the opera, she was not expected to go, whereas
his position made it necessary for him to have a stall and appear
there nightly among the men of his rank, the astonished and
disillusioned Bostonian remaining at home EN TETE-A-TETE with the
women of his family, who seemed to think this the most natural
arrangement in the world.
It certainly is astonishing that we, the most patriotic of nations,
with such high opinion of ourselves and our institutions, should be
so ready to hand over our daughters and our ducats to the first
foreigner who asks for them, often requiring less information about
him than we should consider necessary before buying a horse or a
dog.
Women of no other nation have this mania for espousing aliens.
Nowhere else would a girl with a large fortune dream of marrying
out of her country. Her highest ideal of a husband would be a man
of her own kin. It is the rarest thing in the world to find a
well-born French, Spanish, or Italian woman married to a foreigner
and living away from her country. How can a woman expect to be
happy separated from all the ties and traditions of her youth? If
she is taken abroad young, she may still hope to replace her
friends as is often done. But the real reason of unhappiness
(greater and deeper than this) lies in the fundamental difference
of the whole social structure between our country and that of her
adoption, and the radically different way of looking at every side
of life.
Surely a girl must feel that a man who allows a marriage to be
arranged for him (and only signs the contact because its pecuniary
clauses are to his satisfaction, and who would withdraw in a moment
if these were suppressed), must have an entirely different point of
view from her own on all the vital issues of life.
Foreigners undoubtedly make excellent husbands for their own women.
But they are, except in rare cases, unsatisfactory helpmeets for
American girls. It is impossible to touch on more than a side or
two of this subject. But as an illustration the following
contrasted stories may be cited:
Two sisters of an aristocratic American family, each with an income
of over forty thousand dollars a year, recently married French
noblemen. They naturally expected to continue abroad the life they
had led at home, in which opera boxes, saddle horses, and constant
entertaining were matters of course. In both cases, our
compatriots discovered that their husbands (neither of them
penniless) had entirely different views. In the first place, they
were told that it was considered "bad form" in France for young
married women to entertain; besides, the money was needed for
improvements, and in many other ways, and as every well-to-do
French family puts aside at least a third of its income as DOTS for
the children (boys as well as girls), these brides found themselves
cramped for money for the first time in their lives, and obliged,
during their one month a year in Paris, to put up with hired traps,
and depend on their friends for evenings at the opera.
This story is a telling set-off to the case of an American wife,
who one day received a windfall in the form of a check for a tidy
amount. She immediately proposed a trip abroad to her husband, but
found that he preferred to remain at home in the society of his
horses and dogs. So our fair compatriot starts off (with his full
consent), has her outing, spends her little "pile," and returns
after three or four months to the home of her delighted spouse.
Do these two stories need any comment? Let our sisters and their
friends think twice before they make themselves irrevocably wheels
in a machine whose working is unknown to them, lest they be torn to
pieces as it moves. Having the good luck to be born in the
"paradise of women," let them beware how they leave it, charm the
serpent never so wisely, for they may find themselves, like the
Peri, outside the gate.
CHAPTER 6 - The Complacency of Mediocrity
FULL as small intellects are of queer kinks, unexplained turnings
and groundless likes and dislikes, the bland contentment that buoys
up the incompetent is the most difficult of all vagaries to account
for. Rarely do twenty-four hours pass without examples of this
exasperating weakness appearing on the surface of those shallows
that commonplace people so naively call "their minds."
What one would expect is extreme modesty, in the half-educated or
the ignorant, and self-approbation higher up in the scale, where it
might more reasonably dwell. Experience, however, teaches that
exactly the opposite is the case among those who have achieved
success.
The accidents of a life turned by chance out of the beaten tracks,
have thrown me at times into acquaintanceship with some of the
greater lights of the last thirty years. And not only have they
been, as a rule, most unassuming men and women; but in the majority
of cases positively self-depreciatory; doubting of themselves and
their talents, constantly aiming at greater perfection in their art
or a higher development of their powers, never contented with what
they have achieved, beyond the idea that it has been another step
toward their goal. Knowing this, it is always a shock on meeting
the mediocre people who form such a discouraging majority in any
society, to discover that they are all so pleased with themselves,
their achievements, their place in the world, and their own ability
and discernment!
Who has not sat chafing in silence while Mediocrity, in a white
waistcoat and jangling fobs, occupied the after-dinner hour in
imparting second-hand information as his personal views on
literature and art? Can you not hear him saying once again: "I
don't pretend to know anything about art and all that sort of
thing, you know, but when I go to an exhibition I can always pick
out the best pictures at a glance. Sort of a way I have, and I
never make mistakes, you know."
Then go and watch, as I have, Henri Rochefort as he laboriously
forms the opinions that are to appear later in one of his "SALONS,"
realizing the while that he is FACILE PRINCEPS among the art
critics of his day, that with a line he can make or mar a
reputation and by a word draw the admiring crowd around an unknown
canvas. While Rochefort toils and ponders and hesitates, do you
suppose a doubt as to his own astuteness ever dims the self-
complacency of White Waistcoat? Never!
There lies the strength of the feeble-minded. By a special
dispensation of Providence, they can never see but one side of a
subject, so are always convinced that they are right, and from the
height of their contentment, look down on those who chance to
differ with them.
A lady who has gathered into her dainty salons the fruit of many
years' careful study and tireless "weeding" will ask anxiously if
you are quite sure you like the effect of her latest acquisition -
some eighteenth-century statuette or screen (flotsam, probably,
from the great shipwreck of Versailles), and listen earnestly to
your verdict. The good soul who has just furnished her house by
contract, with the latest "Louis Fourteenth Street" productions,
conducts you complacently through her chambers of horrors, wreathed
in tranquil smiles, born of ignorance and that smug assurance
granted only to the - small.
When a small intellect goes in for cultivating itself and improving
its mind, you realize what the poet meant in asserting that a
little learning was a dangerous thing. For Mediocrity is apt, when
it dines out, to get up a subject beforehand, and announce to an
astonished circle, as quite new and personal discoveries, that the
Renaissance was introduced into France from Italy, or that Columbus
in his day made important "finds."
When the incompetent advance another step and write or paint -
which, alas! is only too frequent - the world of art and literature
is flooded with their productions. When White Waistcoat, for
example, takes to painting, late in life, and comes to you, canvas
in hand, for criticism (read praise), he is apt to remark modestly:
"Corot never painted until he was fifty, and I am only forty-eight.
So I feel I should not let myself be discouraged."
The problem of life is said to be the finding of a happiness that
is not enjoyed at the expense of others, and surely this class have
solved that Sphinx's riddle, for they float through their days in a
dream of complacency disturbed neither by corroding doubt nor
harassed by jealousies.
Whole families of feeble-minded people, on the strength of an
ancestor who achieved distinction a hundred years ago, live in
constant thanksgiving that they "are not as other men." None of
the great man's descendants have done anything to be particularly
proud of since their remote progenitor signed the Declaration of
Independence or governed a colony. They have vegetated in small
provincial cities and inter-married into other equally fortunate
families, but the sense of superiority is ever present to sustain
them, under straitened circumstances and diminishing prestige. The
world may move on around them, but they never advance. Why should
they? They have reached perfection. The brains and enterprise
that have revolutionized our age knock in vain at their doors.
They belong to that vast "majority that is always in the wrong,"
being so pleased with themselves, their ways, and their feeble
little lines of thought, that any change or advancement gives their
system a shock.
A painter I know was once importuned for a sketch by a lady of this
class. After many delays and renewed demands he presented her one
day, when she and some friends were visiting his studio, with a
delightful open-air study simply framed. She seemed confused at
the offering, to his astonishment, as she had not lacked APLOMB in
asking for the sketch. After much blushing and fumbling she
succeeded in getting the painting loose, and handing back the
frame, remarked:
"I will take the painting, but you must keep the frame. My husband
would never allow me to accept anything of value from you!" - and
smiled on the speechless painter, doubtless charmed with her own
tact.
Complacent people are the same drag on a society that a brake would
be to a coach going up hill. They are the "eternal negative" and
would extinguish, if they could, any light stronger than that to
which their weak eyes have been accustomed. They look with
astonishment and distrust at any one trying to break away from
their tiresome old ways and habits, and wonder why all the world is
not as pleased with their personalities as they are themselves,
suggesting, if you are willing to waste your time listening to
their twaddle, that there is something radically wrong in any
innovation, that both "Church and State" will be imperilled if
things are altered. No blight, no mildew is more fatal to a plant
than the "complacent" are to the world. They resent any progress
and are offended if you mention before them any new standards or
points of view. "What has been good enough for us and our parents
should certainly be satisfactory to the younger generations." It
seems to the contented like pure presumption on the part of their
acquaintances to wander after strange gods, in the shape of new
ideals, higher standards of culture, or a perfected refinement of
surroundings.
We are perhaps wrong to pity complacent people. It is for another
class our sympathy should be kept; for those who cannot refrain
from doubting of themselves and the value of their work - those
unfortunate gifted and artistic spirits who descend too often the
VIA DOLOROSA of discontent and despair, who have a higher ideal
than their neighbors, and, in struggling after an unattainable
perfection, fall by the wayside.
CHAPTER 7 - The Discontent of Talent
THE complacency that buoys up self-sufficient souls, soothing them
with the illusion that they themselves, their towns, country,
language, and habits are above improvement, causing them to
shudder, as at a sacrilege, if any changes are suggested, is
fortunately limited to a class of stay-at-home nonentities. In
proportion as it is common among them, is it rare or delightfully
absent in any society of gifted or imaginative people.
Among our globe-trotting compatriots this defect is much less
general than in the older nations of the world, for the excellent
reason, that the moment a man travels or takes the trouble to know
people of different nationalities, his armor of complacency
receives so severe a blow, that it is shattered forever, the
wanderer returning home wiser and much more modest. There seems to
be something fatal to conceit in the air of great centres;
professionally or in general society a man so soon finds his level.
The "great world" may foster other faults; human nature is sure to
develop some in every walk of life. Smug contentment, however,
disappears in its rarefied atmosphere, giving place to a craving
for improvement, a nervous alertness that keeps the mind from
stagnating and urges it on to do its best.
It is never the beautiful woman who sits down in smiling serenity
before her mirror. She is tireless in her efforts to enhance her
beauty and set it off to the best advantage. Her figure is never
slender enough, nor her carriage sufficiently erect to satisfy.
But the "frump" will let herself and all her surroundings go to
seed, not from humbleness of mind or an overwhelming sense of her
own unworthiness, but in pure complacent conceit.
A criticism to which the highly gifted lay themselves open from
those who do not understand them, is their love of praise, the
critics failing to grasp the fact that this passion for measuring
one's self with others, like the gad-fly pursuing poor Io, never
allows a moment's repose in the green pastures of success, but
goads them constantly up the rocky sides of endeavor. It is not
that they love flattery, but that they need approbation as a
counterpoise to the dark moments of self-abasement and as a
sustaining aid for higher flights.
Many years ago I was present at a final sitting which my master,
Carolus Duran, gave to one of my fair compatriots. He knew that
the lady was leaving Paris on the morrow, and that in an hour, her
husband and his friends were coming to see and criticise the
portrait - always a terrible ordeal for an artist.
To any one familiar with this painter's moods, it was evident that
the result of the sitting was not entirely satisfactory. The quick
breathing, the impatient tapping movement of the foot, the swift
backward springs to obtain a better view, so characteristic of him
in moments of doubt, and which had twenty years before earned him
the name of LE DANSEUR from his fellow-copyists at the Louvre,
betrayed to even a casual observer that his discouragement and
discontent were at boiling point.
The sound of a bell and a murmur of voices announced the entrance
of the visitors into the vast studio. After the formalities of
introduction had been accomplished the new-comers glanced at the
portrait, but uttered never a word. From it they passed in a
perfectly casual manner to an inspection of the beautiful contents
of the room, investigating the tapestries, admiring the armor, and
finally, after another glance at the portrait, the husband
remarked: "You have given my wife a jolly long neck, haven't you?"
and, turning to his friends, began laughing and chatting in
English.
If vitriol had been thrown on my poor master's quivering frame, the
effect could not have been more instantaneous, his ignorance of the
language spoken doubtless exaggerating his impression of being
ridiculed. Suddenly he turned very white, and before any of us had
divined his intention he had seized a Japanese sword lying by and
cut a dozen gashes across the canvas. Then, dropping his weapon,
he flung out of the room, leaving his sitter and her friends in
speechless consternation, to wonder then and ever after in what way
they had offended him. In their opinions, if a man had talent and
understood his business, he should produce portraits with the same
ease that he would answer dinner invitations, and if they paid for,
they were in no way bound also to praise, his work. They were
entirely pleased with the result, but did not consider it necessary
to tell him so, no idea having crossed their minds that he might be
in one of those moods so frequent with artistic natures, when words
of approbation and praise are as necessary to them, as the air we
breathe is to us, mortals of a commoner clay.
Even in the theatrical and operatic professions, those hotbeds of
conceit, you will generally find among the "stars" abysmal depths
of discouragement and despair. One great tenor, who has delighted
New York audiences during several winters past, invariably
announces to his intimates on arising that his "voice has gone,"
and that, in consequence he will "never sing again," and has to be
caressed and cajoled back into some semblance of confidence before
attempting a performance. This same artist, with an almost
limitless repertoire and a reputation no new successes could
enhance, recently risked all to sing what he considered a higher
class of music, infinitely more fatiguing to his voice, because he
was impelled onward by the ideal that forces genius to constant
improvement and development of its powers.
What the people who meet these artists occasionally at a private
concert or behind the scenes during the intense strain of a
representation, take too readily for monumental egoism and conceit,
is, the greater part of the time, merely the desire for a
sustaining word, a longing for the stimulant of praise.
All actors and singers are but big children, and must be humored
and petted like children when you wish them to do their best. It
is necessary for them to feel in touch with their audiences; to be
assured that they are not falling below the high ideals formed for
their work.
Some winters ago a performance at the opera nearly came to a
standstill because an all-conquering soprano was found crying in
her dressing-room. After many weary moments of consolation and
questioning, it came out that she felt quite sure she no longer had
any talent. One of the other singers had laughed at her voice, and
in consequence there was nothing left to live for. A half-hour
later, owing to judicious "treatment," she was singing gloriously
and bowing her thanks to thunders of applause.
Rather than blame this divine discontent that has made man what he
is to-day, let us glorify and envy it, pitying the while the frail
mortal vessels it consumes with its flame. No adulation can turn
such natures from their goal, and in the hour of triumph the slave
is always at their side to whisper the word of warning. This
discontent is the leaven that has raised the whole loaf of dull
humanity to better things and higher efforts, those privileged to
feel it are the suns that illuminate our system. If on these
luminaries observers have discovered spots, it is well to remember
that these blemishes are but the defects of their qualities, and
better far than the total eclipse that shrouds so large a part of
humanity in colorless complacency.
It will never be known how many master-pieces have been lost to the
world because at the critical moment a friend has not been at hand
with the stimulant of sympathy and encouragement needed by an
overworked, straining artist who was beginning to lose confidence
in himself; to soothe his irritated nerves with the balm of praise,
and take his poor aching head on a friendly shoulder and let him
sob out there all his doubt and discouragement.
So let us not be niggardly or ungenerous in meting out to
struggling fellow-beings their share, and perchance a little more
than their share of approbation and applause, poor enough return,
after all, for the pleasure their labors have procured us. What
adequate compensation can we mete out to an author for the hours of
delight and self-forgetfulness his talent has brought to us in
moments of loneliness, illness, or grief? What can pay our debt to
a painter who has fixed on canvas the face we love?
The little return that it is in our power to make for all the joy
these gifted fellow-beings bring into our lives is (closing our
eyes to minor imperfections) to warmly applaud them as they move
upward, along their stony path.
CHAPTER 8 - Slouch
I SHOULD like to see, in every school-room of our growing country,
in every business office, at the railway stations, and on street
corners, large placards placed with "Do not slouch" printed thereon
in distinct and imposing characters. If ever there was a tendency
that needed nipping in the bud (I fear the bud is fast becoming a
full-blown flower), it is this discouraging national failing.
Each year when I return from my spring wanderings, among the
benighted and effete nations of the Old World, on whom the
untravelled American looks down from the height of his superiority,
I am struck anew by the contrast between the trim, well-groomed
officials left behind on one side of the ocean and the happy-go-
lucky, slouching individuals I find on the other.
As I ride up town this unpleasant impression deepens. In the
"little Mother Isle" I have just left, bus-drivers have quite a
coaching air, with hat and coat of knowing form. They sport
flowers in their button-holes and salute other bus-drivers, when
they meet, with a twist of whip and elbow refreshingly correct,
showing that they take pride in their calling, and have been at
some pains to turn themselves out as smart in appearance as
finances would allow.
Here, on the contrary, the stage and cab drivers I meet seem to be
under a blight, and to have lost all interest in life. They lounge
on the box, their legs straggling aimlessly, one hand holding the
reins, the other hanging dejectedly by the side. Yet there is
little doubt that these heartbroken citizens are earning double
what their London CONFRERES gain. The shadow of the national
peculiarity is over them.
When I get to my rooms, the elevator boy is reclining in the lift,
and hardly raises his eye-lids as he languidly manoeuvres the rope.
I have seen that boy now for months, but never when his boots and
clothes were brushed or when his cravat was not riding proudly
above his collar. On occasions I have offered him pins, which he
took wearily, doubtless because it was less trouble than to refuse.
The next day, however, his cravat again rode triumphant, mocking my
efforts to keep it in its place. His hair, too, has been a cause
of wonder to me. How does he manage to have it always so long and
so unkempt? More than once, when expecting callers, I have bribed
him to have it cut, but it seemed to grow in the night, back to its
poetic profusion.
In what does this noble disregard for appearances which
characterizes American men originate? Our climate, as some
suggest, or discouragement at not all being millionaires? It more
likely comes from an absence with us of the military training that
abroad goes so far toward licking young men into shape.
I shall never forget the surprise on the face of a French statesman
to whom I once expressed my sympathy for his country, laboring
under the burden of so vast a standing army. He answered:
"The financial burden is doubtless great; but you have others.
Witness your pension expenditures. With us the money drawn from
the people is used in such a way as to be of inestimable value to
them. We take the young hobbledehoy farm-hand or mechanic,
ignorant, mannerless, uncleanly as he may be, and turn him out at
the end of three years with his regiment, self-respecting and well-
mannered, with habits of cleanliness and obedience, having acquired
a bearing, and a love of order that will cling to and serve him all
his life. We do not go so far," he added, "as our English
neighbors in drilling men into superb manikins of 'form' and
carriage. Our authorities do not consider it necessary. But we
reclaim youths from the slovenliness of their native village or
workshop and make them tidy and mannerly citizens."
These remarks came to mind the other day as I watched a group of
New England youths lounging on the steps of the village store, or
sitting in rows on a neighboring fence, until I longed to try if
even a judicial arrangement of tacks, 'business-end up,' on these
favorite seats would infuse any energy into their movements. I
came to the conclusion that my French acquaintance was right, for
the only trim-looking men to be seen, were either veterans of our
war or youths belonging to the local militia. And nowhere does one
see finer specimens of humanity than West Point and Annapolis turn
out.
If any one doubts what kind of men slouching youths develop into,
let him look when he travels, at the dejected appearance of the
farmhouses throughout our land. Surely our rural populations are
not so much poorer than those of other countries. Yet when one
compares the dreary homes of even our well-to-do farmers with the
smiling, well-kept hamlets seen in England or on the Continent,
such would seem to be the case.
If ours were an old and bankrupt nation, this air of discouragement
and decay could not be greater. Outside of the big cities one
looks in vain for some sign of American dash and enterprise in the
appearance of our men and their homes.
During a journey of over four thousand miles, made last spring as
the guest of a gentleman who knows our country thoroughly, I was
impressed most painfully with this abject air. Never in all those
days did we see a fruit-tree trained on some sunny southern wall, a
smiling flower-garden or carefully clipped hedge. My host told me
that hardly the necessary vegetables are grown, the inhabitants of
the West and South preferring canned food. It is less trouble!
If you wish to form an idea of the extent to which slouch prevails
in our country, try to start a "village improvement society," and
experience, as others have done, the apathy and ill-will of the
inhabitants when you go about among them and strive to summon some
of their local pride to your aid.
In the town near which I pass my summers, a large stone, fallen
from a passing dray, lay for days in the middle of the principal
street, until I paid some boys to remove it. No one cared, and the
dull-eyed inhabitants would doubtless be looking at it still but
for my impatience.
One would imagine the villagers were all on the point of moving
away (and they generally are, if they can sell their land), so
little interest do they show in your plans. Like all people who
have fallen into bad habits, they have grown to love their
slatternly ways and cling to them, resenting furiously any attempt
to shake them up to energy and reform.
The farmer has not, however, a monopoly. Slouch seems ubiquitous.
Our railway and steam-boat systems have tried in vain to combat it,
and supplied their employees with a livery (I beg the free and
independent voter's pardon, a uniform!), with but little effect.
The inherent tendency is too strong for the corporations. The
conductors still shuffle along in their spotted garments, the cap
on the back of the head, and their legs anywhere, while they chew
gum in defiance of the whole Board of Directors.
Go down to Washington, after a visit to the Houses of Parliament or
the Chamber of Deputies, and observe the contrast between the
bearing of our Senators and Representatives and the air of their
CONFRERES abroad. Our law-makers seem trying to avoid every
appearance of "smartness." Indeed, I am told, so great is the
prejudice in the United States against a well-turned-out man that a
candidate would seriously compromise his chances of election who
appeared before his constituents in other than the accustomed
shabby frock-coat, unbuttoned and floating, a pot hat, no gloves,
as much doubtfully white shirt-front as possible, and a wisp of
black silk for a tie; and if he can exhibit also a chin-whisker,
his chances of election are materially increased.
Nothing offends an eye accustomed to our native LAISSER ALLER so
much as a well-brushed hat and shining boots. When abroad, it is
easy to spot a compatriot as soon and as far as you can see one, by
his graceless gait, a cross between a lounge and a shuffle. In
reading-, or dining-room, he is the only man whose spine does not
seem equal to its work, so he flops and straggles until, for the
honor of your land, you long to shake him and set him squarely on
his legs.
No amount of reasoning can convince me that outward slovenliness is
not a sign of inward and moral supineness. A neglected exterior
generally means a lax moral code. The man who considers it too
much trouble to sit erect can hardly have given much time to his
tub or his toilet. Having neglected his clothes, he will neglect
his manners, and between morals and manners we know the tie is
intimate.
In the Orient a new reign is often inaugurated by the construction
of a mosque. Vast expense is incurred to make it as splendid as
possible. But, once completed, it is never touched again. Others
are built by succeeding sovereigns, but neither thought nor
treasure is ever expended on the old ones. When they can no longer
be used, they are abandoned, and fall into decay. The same system
seems to prevail among our private owners and corporations.
Streets are paved, lamp-posts erected, store-fronts carefully
adorned, but from the hour the workman puts his finishing touch
upon them they are abandoned to the hand of fate. The mud may cake
up knee-deep, wind and weather work their own sweet will, it is no
one's business to interfere.
When abroad one of my amusements has been of an early morning to
watch Paris making its toilet. The streets are taking a bath,
liveried attendants are blacking the boots of the lamp-posts and
newspaper-KIOSQUES, the shop-fronts are being shaved and having
their hair curled, cafe's and restaurants are putting on clean
shirts and tying their cravats smartly before their many mirrors.
By the time the world is up and about, the whole city, smiling
freshly from its matutinal tub, is ready to greet it gayly.
It is this attention to detail that gives to Continental cities
their air of cheerfulness and thrift, and the utter lack of it that
impresses foreigners so painfully on arriving at our shores.
It has been the fashion to laugh at the dude and his high collar,
at the darky in his master's cast-off clothes, aping style and
fashion. Better the dude, better the colored dandy, better even
the Bowery "tough" with his affected carriage, for they at least
are reaching blindly out after something better than their
surroundings, striving after an ideal, and are in just so much the
superiors of the foolish souls who mock them - better, even
misguided efforts, than the ignoble stagnant quagmire of slouch
into which we seem to be slowly descending.
CHAPTER 9 - Social Suggestion
THE question of how far we are unconsciously influenced by people
and surroundings, in our likes and dislikes, our opinions, and even
in our pleasures and intimate tastes, is a delicate and interesting
one, for the line between success and failure in the world, as on
the stage or in most of the professions, is so narrow and depends
so often on what humor one's "public" happen to be in at a
particular moment, that the subject is worthy of consideration.
Has it never happened to you, for instance, to dine with friends
and go afterwards in a jolly humor to the play which proved so
delightful that you insist on taking your family immediately to see
it; when to your astonishment you discover that it is neither
clever nor amusing, on the contrary rather dull. Your family look
at you in amazement and wonder what you had seen to admire in such
an asinine performance. There was a case of suggestion! You had
been influenced by your friends and had shared their opinions. The
same thing occurs on a higher scale when one is raised out of one's
self by association with gifted and original people, a communion
with more cultivated natures which causes you to discover and
appreciate a thousand hidden beauties in literature, art or music
that left to yourself, you would have failed to notice. Under
these circumstances you will often be astonished at the point and
piquancy of your own conversation. This is but too true of a
number of subjects.
We fondly believe our opinions and convictions to be original, and
with innocent conceit, imagine that we have formed them for
ourselves. The illusion of being unlike other people is a common
vanity. Beware of the man who asserts such a claim. He is sure to
be a bore and will serve up to you, as his own, a muddle of ideas
and opinions which he has absorbed like a sponge from his
surroundings.
No place is more propitious for studying this curious phenomenon,
than behind the scenes of a theatre, the last few nights before a
first performance. The whole company is keyed up to a point of
mutual admiration that they are far from feeling generally. "The
piece is charming and sure to be a success." The author and the
interpreters of his thoughts are in complete communion. The first
night comes. The piece is a failure! Drop into the greenroom then
and you will find an astonishing change has taken place. The Star
will take you into a corner and assert that, she "always knew the
thing could not go, it was too imbecile, with such a company, it
was folly to expect anything else." The author will abuse the Star
and the management. The whole troupe is frankly disconcerted, like
people aroused out of a hypnotic sleep, wondering what they had
seen in the play to admire.
In the social world we are even more inconsistent, accepting with
tameness the most astonishing theories and opinions. Whole circles
will go on assuring each other how clever Miss So-and-So is, or,
how beautiful they think someone else. Not because these good
people are any cleverer, or more attractive than their neighbors,
but simply because it is in the air to have these opinions about
them. To such an extent does this hold good, that certain persons
are privileged to be vulgar and rude, to say impertinent things and
make remarks that would ostracize a less fortunate individual from
the polite world for ever; society will only smilingly shrug its
shoulders and say: "It is only Mr. So-and-So's way." It is useless
to assert that in cases like these, people are in possession of
their normal senses. They are under influences of which they are
perfectly unconscious.
Have you ever seen a piece guyed? Few sadder sights exist, the
human being rarely getting nearer the brute than when engaged in
this amusement. Nothing the actor or actress can do will satisfy
the public. Men who under ordinary circumstances would be
incapable of insulting a woman, will whistle and stamp and laugh,
at an unfortunate girl who is doing her utmost to amuse them. A
terrible example of this was given two winters ago at one of our
concert halls, when a family of Western singers were subjected to
absolute ill-treatment at the hands of the public. The young girls
were perfectly sincere, in their rude way, but this did not prevent
men from offering them every insult malice could devise, and making
them a target for every missile at hand. So little does the public
think for itself in cases like this, that at the opening of the
performance had some well-known person given the signal for
applause, the whole audience would, in all probability, have been
delighted and made the wretched sisters a success.
In my youth it was the fashion to affect admiration for the Italian
school of painting and especially for the great masters of the
Renaissance. Whole families of perfectly inartistic English and
Americans might then he heard conscientiously admiring the ceiling
of the Sistine Chapel or Leonardo's Last Supper (Botticelli had not
been invented then) in the choicest guide-book language.
When one considers the infinite knowledge of technique required to
understand the difficulties overcome by the giants of the
Renaissance and to appreciate the intrinsic qualities of their
creations, one asks one's self in wonder what our parents admired
in those paintings, and what tempted them to bring home and adorn
their houses with such dreadful copies of their favorites. For if
they appreciated the originals they never would have bought the
copies, and if the copies pleased them, they must have been
incapable of enjoying the originals. Yet all these people thought
themselves perfectly sincere. To-day you will see the same thing
going on before the paintings of Claude Monet and Besnard, the same
admiration expressed by people who, you feel perfectly sure, do not
realize why these works of art are superior and can no more explain
to you why they think as they do than the sheep that follow each
other through a hole in a wall, can give a reason for their
actions.
Dress and fashion in clothes are subjects above all others, where
the ineptitude of the human mind is most evident. Can it be
explained in any other way, why the fashions of yesterday always
appear so hideous to us, - almost grotesque? Take up an old album
of photographs and glance over the faded contents. Was there ever
anything so absurd? Look at the top hats men wore, and at the
skirts of the women!
The mother of a family said to me the other day: "When I recall the
way in which girls were dressed in my youth, I wonder how any of us
ever got a husband."
Study a photograph of the Empress Eugenie, that supreme arbiter of
elegance and grace. Oh! those bunchy hooped skirts! That awful
India shawl pinned off the shoulders, and the bonnet perched on a
roll of hair in the nape of the neck! What were people thinking of
at that time? Were they lunatics to deform in this way the
beautiful lines of the human body which it should be the first
object of toilet to enhance, or were they only lacking in the
artistic sense? Nothing of the kind. And what is more, they were
convinced that the real secret of beauty in dress had been
discovered by them; that past fashions were absurd, and that the
future could not improve on their creations. The sculptors and
painters of that day (men of as great talent as any now living),
were enthusiastic in reproducing those monstrosities in marble or
on canvas, and authors raved about the ideal grace with which a
certain beauty draped her shawl.
Another marked manner in which we are influenced by circumambient
suggestion, is in the transient furore certain games and pastimes
create. We see intelligent people so given over to this influence
as barely to allow themselves time to eat and sleep, begrudging the
hours thus stolen from their favorite amusement.
Ten years ago, tennis occupied every moment of our young people's
time; now golf has transplanted tennis in public favor, which does
not prove, however, that the latter is the better game, but simply
that compelled by the accumulated force of other people's opinions,
youths and maidens, old duffers and mature spinsters are willing to
pass many hours daily in all kinds of weather, solemnly following
an indian-rubber ball across ten-acre lots.
If you suggest to people who are laboring under the illusion they
are amusing themselves that the game, absorbing so much of their
attention, is not as exciting as tennis nor as clever in
combinations as croquet, that in fact it would be quite as amusing
to roll an empty barrel several times around a plowed field, they
laugh at you in derision and instantly put you down in their
profound minds as a man who does not understand "sport."
Yet these very people were tennis-mad twenty years ago and had
night come to interrupt a game of croquet would have ordered
lanterns lighted in order to finish the match so enthralling were
its intricacies.
Everybody has known how to play BEZIQUE in this country for years,
yet within the last eighteen months, whole circles of our friends
have been seized with a midsummer madness and willingly sat glued
to a card-table through long hot afternoons and again after dinner
until day dawned on their folly.
Certain MEMOIRES of Louis Fifteenth's reign tell of an
"unravelling" mania that developed at his court. It began by some
people fraying out old silks to obtain the gold and silver threads
from worn-out stuffs; this occupation soon became the rage, nothing
could restrain the delirium of destruction, great ladies tore
priceless tapestries from their walls and brocades from their
furniture, in order to unravel those materials and as the old stock
did not suffice for the demand thousands were spent on new brocades
and velvets, which were instantly destroyed, entertainments were
given where unravelling was the only amusement offered, the entire
court thinking and talking of nothing else for months.
What is the logical deduction to be drawn from all this? Simply
that people do not see with their eyes or judge with their
understandings; that an all-pervading hypnotism, an ambient
suggestion, at times envelops us taking from people all free will,
and replacing it with the taste and judgment of the moment.
The number of people is small in each generation, who are strong
enough to rise above their surroundings and think for themselves.
The rest are as dry leaves on a stream. They float along and turn
gayly in the eddies, convinced all the time (as perhaps are the
leaves) that they act entirely from their own volition and that
their movements are having a profound influence on the direction
and force of the current.
CHAPTER 10 - Bohemia
LUNCHING with a talented English comedian and his wife the other
day, the conversation turned on Bohemia, the evasive no-man's-land
that Thackeray referred to, in so many of his books, and to which
he looked back lovingly in his later years, when, as he said, he
had forgotten the road to Prague.
The lady remarked: "People have been more than kind to us here in
New York. We have dined and supped out constantly, and have met
with gracious kindness, such as we can never forget. But so far we
have not met a single painter, or author, or sculptor, or a man who
has explored a corner of the earth. Neither have we had the good
luck to find ourselves in the same room with Tesla or Rehan, Edison
or Drew. We shall regret so much when back in England and are
asked about your people of talent, being obliged to say, 'We never
met any of them.' Why is it? We have not been in any one circle,
and have pitched our tents in many cities, during our tours over
here, but always with the same result. We read your American
authors as much as, if not more than, our own. The names of dozens
of your discoverers and painters are household words in England.
When my husband planned his first tour over here my one idea was,
'How nice it will be! Now I shall meet those delightful people of
whom I have heard so much.' The disappointment has been complete.
Never one have I seen."
I could not but feel how all too true were the remarks of this
intelligent visitor, remembering how quick the society of London is
to welcome a new celebrity or original character, how a place is at
once made for him at every hospitable board, a permanent one to
which he is expected to return; and how no Continental
entertainment is considered complete without some bright particular
star to shine in the firmament.
"Lion-hunting," I hear my reader say with a sneer. That may be,
but it makes society worth the candle, which it rarely is over
here. I realized what I had often vaguely felt before, that the
Bohemia the English lady was looking for was not to be found in
this country, more's the pity. Not that the elements are lacking.
Far from it, (for even more than in London should we be able to
combine such a society), but perhaps from a misconception of the
true idea of such a society, due probably to Henry Murger's dreary
book SCENES DE LA VIE DE BOHEME which is chargeable with the fact
that a circle of this kind evokes in the mind of most Americans
visions of a scrubby, poorly-fed and less-washed community, a world
they would hardly dare ask to their tables for fear of some
embarrassing unconventionality of conduct or dress.
Yet that can hardly be the reason, for even in Murger or Paul de
Kock, at their worst, the hero is still a gentleman, and even when
he borrows a friend's coat, it is to go to a great house and among
people of rank. Besides, we are becoming too cosmopolitan, and
wander too constantly over this little globe, not to have learned
that the Bohemia of 1830 is as completely a thing of the past as a
GRISETTE or a glyphisodon. It disappeared with Gavarni and the
authors who described it. Although we have kept the word, its
meaning has gradually changed until it has come to mean something
difficult to define, a will-o'-the-wisp, which one tries vainly to
grasp. With each decade it has put on a new form and changed its
centre, the one definite fact being that it combines the better
elements of several social layers.
Drop in, if you are in Paris and know the way, at one of Madeleine
Lemaire's informal evenings in her studio. There you may find the
Prince de Ligne, chatting with Rejane or Coquelin; or Henri
d'Orleans, just back from an expedition into Africa. A little
further on, Saint-Saens will be running over the keys, preparing an
accompaniment for one of Madame de Tredern's songs. The Princess
Mathilde (that passionate lover of art) will surely be there, and -
but it is needless to particularize.
Cross the Channel, and get yourself asked to one of Irving's choice
suppers after the play. You will find the bar, the stage, and the
pulpit represented there, a "happy family" over which the "Prince"
often presides, smoking cigar after cigar, until the tardy London
daylight appears to break up the entertainment.
For both are centres where the gifted and the travelled meet the
great of the social world, on a footing of perfect equality, and
where, if any prestige is accorded, it is that of brains. When you
have seen these places and a dozen others like them, you will
realize what the actor's wife had in her mind.
Now, let me whisper to you why I think such circles do not exist in
this country. In the first place, we are still too provincial in
this big city of ours. New York always reminds me of a definition
I once heard of California fruit: "Very large, with no particular
flavor." We are like a boy, who has had the misfortune to grow too
quickly and look like a man, but whose mind has not kept pace with
his body. What he knows is undigested and chaotic, while his
appearance makes you expect more of him than he can give - hence
disappointment.
Our society is yet in knickerbockers, and has retained all sorts of
littlenesses and prejudices which older civilizations have long
since relegated to the mental lumber room. An equivalent to this
point of view you will find in England or France only in the
smaller "cathedral" cities, and even there the old aristocrats have
the courage of their opinions. Here, where everything is quite
frankly on a money basis, and "positions" are made and lost like a
fortune, by a turn of the market, those qualities which are purely
mental, and on which it is hard to put a practical value, are
naturally at a discount. We are quite ready to pay for the best.
Witness our private galleries and the opera, but we say, like the
parvenu in Emile Augier's delightful comedy LE GENDRE DE M.
POIRIER, "Patronize art? Of course! But the artists? Never!"
And frankly, it would be too much, would it not, to expect a family
only half a generation away from an iron foundry, or a mine, to be
willing to receive Irving or Bernhardt on terms of perfect
equality?
As it would be unjust to demand a mature mind in the overgrown boy,
it is useless to hope for delicate tact and social feeling from the
parvenu. To be gracious and at ease with all classes and
professions, one must be perfectly sure of one's own position, and
with us few feel this security, it being based on too frail a
foundation, a crisis in the "street" going a long way towards
destroying it.
Of course I am generalizing and doubt not that in many cultivated
homes the right spirit exists, but unfortunately these are not the
centres which give the tone to our "world." Lately at one of the
most splendid houses in this city a young Italian tenor had been
engaged to sing. When he had finished he stood alone, unnoticed,
unspoken to for the rest of the evening. He had been paid to sing.
"What more, in common sense, could he want?" thought the "world,"
without reflecting that it was probably not the TENOR who lost by
that arrangement. It needs a delicate hand to hold the reins over
the backs of such a fine-mouthed community as artists and singers
form. They rarely give their best when singing or performing in a
hostile atmosphere.
A few years ago when a fancy-dress ball was given at the Academy of
Design, the original idea was to have it an artists' ball; the
community of the brush were, however, approached with such a
complete lack of tact that, with hardly an exception, they held
aloof, and at the ball shone conspicuous by their absence.
At present in this city I know of but two hospitable firesides
where you are sure to meet the best the city holds of either
foreign or native talent. The one is presided over by the wife of
a young composer, and the other, oddly enough, by two unmarried
ladies. An invitation to a dinner or a supper at either of these
houses is as eagerly sought after and as highly prized in the great
world as it is by the Bohemians, though neither "salon" is open
regularly.
There is still hope for us, and I already see signs of better
things. Perhaps, when my English friend returns in a few years, we
may be able to prove to her that we have found the road to Prague.
CHAPTER 11 - Social Exiles
BALZAC, in his COMEDIE HUMAINE, has reviewed with a master-hand
almost every phase of the Social World of Paris down to 1850 and
Thackeray left hardly a corner of London High Life unexplored; but
so great have been the changes (progress, its admirers call it,)
since then, that, could Balzac come back to his beloved Paris, he
would feel like a foreigner there; and Thackeray, who was among us
but yesterday, would have difficulty in finding his bearings in the
sea of the London world to-day.
We have changed so radically that even a casual observer cannot
help being struck by the difference. Among other most significant
"phenomena" has appeared a phase of life that not only neither of
these great men observed (for the very good reason that it had not
appeared in their time), but which seems also to have escaped the
notice of the writers of our own day, close observers as they are
of any new development. I mean the class of Social Exiles,
pitiable wanderers from home and country, who haunt the Continent,
and are to be found (sad little colonies) in out-of-the-way corners
of almost every civilized country.
To know much of this form of modern life, one must have been a
wanderer, like myself, and have pitched his tent in many queer
places; for they are shy game and not easily raised, frequenting
mostly quiet old cities like Versailles and Florence, or
inexpensive watering-places where their meagre incomes become
affluence by contrast. The first thought on dropping in on such a
settlement is, "How in the world did these people ever drift here?"
It is simple enough and generally comes about in this way:
The father of a wealthy family dies. The fortune turns out to be
less than was expected. The widow and children decide to go abroad
for a year or so, during their period of mourning, partially for
distraction, and partially (a fact which is not spoken of) because
at home they would be forced to change their way of living to a
simpler one, and that is hard to do, just at first. Later they
think it will be quite easy. So the family emigrates, and after a
little sight-seeing, settles in Dresden or Tours, casually at
first, in a hotel. If there are young children they are made the
excuse. "The languages are so important!" Or else one of the
daughters develops a taste for music, or a son takes up the study
of art. In a year or two, before a furnished apartment is taken,
the idea of returning is discussed, but abandoned "for the
present." They begin vaguely to realize how difficult it will be
to take life up again at home. During all this time their income
(like everything else when the owners are absent) has been slowly
but surely disappearing, making the return each year more
difficult. Finally, for economy, an unfurnished apartment is
taken. They send home for bits of furniture and family belongings,
and gradually drop into the great army of the expatriated.
Oh, the pathos of it! One who has not seen these poor stranded
waifs in their self-imposed exile, with eyes turned towards their
native land, cannot realize all the sadness and loneliness they
endure, rarely adopting the country of their residence but becoming
more firmly American as the years go by. The home papers and
periodicals are taken, the American church attended, if there
happens to be one; the English chapel, if there is not. Never a
French church! In their hearts they think it almost irreverent to
read the service in French. The acquaintance of a few fellow-
exiles is made and that of a half-dozen English families, mothers
and daughters and a younger son or two, whom the ferocious
primogeniture custom has cast out of the homes of their childhood
to economize on the Continent.
I have in my mind a little settlement of this kind at Versailles,
which was a type. The formal old city, fallen from its grandeur,
was a singularly appropriate setting to the little comedy. There
the modest purses of the exiles found rents within their reach, the
quarters vast and airy. The galleries and the park afforded a
diversion, and then Paris, dear Paris, the American Mecca, was
within reach. At the time I knew it, the colony was fairly
prosperous, many of its members living in the two or three
principal PENSIONS, the others in apartments of their own. They
gave feeble little entertainments among themselves, card-parties
and teas, and dined about with each other at their respective
TABLES D'HOTE, even knowing a stray Frenchman or two, whom the
quest of a meal had tempted out of their native fastnesses as it
does the wolves in a hard winter. Writing and receiving letters
from America was one of the principal occupations, and an epistle
descriptive of a particular event at home went the rounds, and was
eagerly read and discussed.
The merits of the different PENSIONS also formed a subject of vital
interest. The advantages and disadvantages of these rival
establishments were, as a topic, never exhausted. MADAME UNE TELLE
gave five o'clock tea, included in the seven francs a day, but her
rival gave one more meat course at dinner and her coffee was
certainly better, while a third undoubtedly had a nicer set of
people. No one here at home can realize the importance these
matters gradually assume in the eyes of the exiles. Their slender
incomes have to be so carefully handled to meet the strain of even
this simple way of living, if they are to show a surplus for a
little trip to the seashore in the summer months, that an extra
franc a day becomes a serious consideration.
Every now and then a family stronger-minded than the others, or
with serious reasons for returning home (a daughter to bring out or
a son to put into business), would break away from its somnolent
surroundings and re-cross the Atlantic, alternating between hope
and fear. It is here that a sad fate awaits these modern Rip Van
Winkles. They find their native cities changed beyond recognition.
(For we move fast in these days.) The mother gets out her visiting
list of ten years before and is thunderstruck to find that it
contains chiefly names of the "dead, the divorced, and defaulted."
The waves of a decade have washed over her place and the world she
once belonged to knows her no more. The leaders of her day on
whose aid she counted have retired from the fray. Younger, and
alas! unknown faces sit in the opera boxes and around the dinner
tables where before she had found only friends. After a feeble
little struggle to get again into the "swim," the family drifts
back across the ocean into the quiet back water of a continental
town, and goes circling around with the other twigs and dry leaves,
moral flotsam and jetsam, thrown aside by the great rush of the
outside world.
For the parents the life is not too sad. They have had their day,
and are, perhaps, a little glad in their hearts of a quiet old age,
away from the heat and sweat of the battle; but for the younger
generation it is annihilation. Each year their circle grows
smaller. Death takes away one member after another of the family,
until one is left alone in a foreign land with no ties around her,
or with her far-away "home," the latter more a name now than a
reality.
A year or two ago I was taking luncheon with our consul at his
primitive villa, an hour's ride from the city of Tangier, a ride
made on donkey-back, as no roads exist in that sunny land. After
our coffee and cigars, he took me a half-hour's walk into the
wilderness around him to call on his nearest neighbors, whose mode
of existence seemed a source of anxiety to him. I found myself in
the presence of two American ladies, the younger being certainly
not less than seventy-five. To my astonishment I found they had
been living there some thirty years, since the death of their
parents, in an isolation and remoteness impossible to describe, in
an Arab house, with native servants, "the world forgetting, by the
world forgot." Yet these ladies had names well known in New York
fifty years ago.
The glimpse I had of their existence made me thoughtful as I rode
home in the twilight, across a suburb none too safe for strangers.
What had the future in store for those two? Or, worse still, for
the survivor of those two? In contrast, I saw a certain humble
"home" far away in America, where two old ladies were ending their
lives surrounded by loving friends and relations, honored and
cherished and guarded tenderly from the rude world.
In big cities like Paris and Rome there is another class of the
expatriated, the wealthy who have left their homes in a moment of
pique after the failure of some social or political ambition; and
who find in these centres the recognition refused them at home and
for which their souls thirsted.
It is not to these I refer, although it is curious to see a group
of people living for years in a country of which they, half the
time, do not speak the language (beyond the necessities of house-
keeping and shopping), knowing but few of its inhabitants, and
seeing none of the society of the place, their acquaintance rarely
going beyond that equivocal, hybrid class that surrounds rich
"strangers" and hangs on to the outer edge of the GRAND MONDE. One
feels for this latter class merely contempt, but one's pity is
reserved for the former. What object lessons some lives on the
Continent would be to impatient souls at home, who feel
discontented with their surroundings, and anxious to break away and
wander abroad! Let them think twice before they cut the thousand
ties it has taken a lifetime to form. Better monotony at your own
fireside, my friends, where at the worst, you are known and have
your place, no matter how small, than an old age among strangers.
CHAPTER 12 - "Seven Ages" of Furniture
THE progress through life of active-minded Americans is apt to be a
series of transformations. At each succeeding phase of mental
development, an old skin drops from their growing intelligence, and
they assimilate the ideas and tastes of their new condition, with a
facility and completeness unknown to other nations.
One series of metamorphoses particularly amusing to watch is, that
of an observant, receptive daughter of Uncle Sam who, aided and
followed (at a distance) by an adoring husband, gradually develops
her excellent brain, and rises through fathoms of self-culture and
purblind experiment, to the surface of dilettantism and
connoisseurship. One can generally detect the exact stage of
evolution such a lady has reached by the bent of her conversation,
the books she is reading, and, last but not least, by her material
surroundings; no outward and visible signs reflecting inward and
spiritual grace so clearly as the objects people collect around
them for the adornment of their rooms, or the way in which those
rooms are decorated.
A few years ago, when a young man and his bride set up housekeeping
on their own account, the "old people" of both families seized the
opportunity to unload on the beginners (under the pretence of
helping them along) a quantity of furniture and belongings that had
(as the shopkeepers say) "ceased to please" their original owners.
The narrow quarters of the tyros are encumbered by ungainly sofas
and arm-chairs, most probably of carved rosewood. ETAGERES OF the
same lugubrious material grace the corners of their tiny drawing-
room, the bits of mirror inserted between the shelves distorting
the image of the owners into headless or limbless phantoms. Half
of their little dining-room is filled with a black-walnut
sideboard, ingeniously contrived to take up as much space as
possible and hold nothing, its graceless top adorned with a stag's
head carved in wood and imitation antlers.
The novices in their innocence live contented amid their hideous
surroundings for a year or two, when the wife enters her second
epoch, which, for want of a better word, we will call the Japanese
period. The grim furniture gradually disappears under a layer of
silk and gauze draperies, the bare walls blossom with paper
umbrellas, fans are nailed in groups promiscuously, wherever an
empty space offends her eye. Bows of ribbon are attached to every
possible protuberance of the furniture. Even the table service is
not spared. I remember dining at a house in this stage of its
artistic development, where the marrow bones that formed one course
of the dinner appeared each with a coquettish little bow-knot of
pink ribbon around its neck.
Once launched on this sea of adornment, the housewife soon loses
her bearings and decorates indiscriminately. Her old evening
dresses serve to drape the mantelpieces, and she passes every spare
hour embroidering, braiding, or fringing some material to adorn her
rooms. At Christmas her friends contribute specimens of their
handiwork to the collection.
The view of other houses and other decorations before long
introduces the worm of discontent into the blossom of our friend's
contentment. The fruit of her labors becomes tasteless on her
lips. As the finances of the family are satisfactory, the re-
arrangement of the parlor floor is (at her suggestion) confided to
a firm of upholsterers, who make a clean sweep of the rosewood and
the bow-knots, and retire, after some months of labor, leaving the
delighted wife in possession of a suite of rooms glittering with
every monstrosity that an imaginative tradesman, spurred on by
unlimited credit, could devise.
The wood work of the doors and mantels is an intricate puzzle of
inlaid woods, the ceilings are panelled and painted in complicated
designs. The "parlor" is provided with a complete set of neat,
old-gold satin furniture, puffed at its angles with peacock-colored
plush.
The monumental folding doors between the long, narrow rooms are
draped with the same chaste combination of stuffs.
The dining-room blazes with a gold and purple wall paper, set off
by ebonized wood work and furniture. The conscientious contractor
has neglected no corner. Every square inch of the ceilings, walls,
and floors has been carved, embossed, stencilled, or gilded into a
bewildering monotony.
The husband, whose affairs are rapidly increasing on his hands, has
no time to attend to such insignificant details as house
decoration, the wife has perfect confidence in the taste of the
firm employed. So at the suggestion of the latter, and in order to
complete the beauty of the rooms, a Bouguereau, a Toulmouche and a
couple of Schreyers are bought, and a number of modern French
bronzes scattered about on the multicolored cabinets. Then, at
last, the happy owners of all this splendor open their doors to the
admiration of their friends.
About the time the peacock plush and the gilding begin to show
signs of wear and tear, rumors of a fresh fashion in decoration
float across from England, and the new gospel of the beautiful
according to Clarence Cook is first preached to an astonished
nation.
The fortune of our couple continuing to develop with pleasing
rapidity, the building of a country house is next decided upon. A
friend of the husband, who has recently started out as an
architect, designs them a picturesque residence without a straight
line on its exterior or a square room inside. This house is done
up in strict obedience to the teachings of the new sect. The
dining-room is made about as cheerful as the entrance to a family
vault. The rest of the house bears a close resemblance to an
ecclesiastical junk shop. The entrance hall is filled with what
appears to be a communion table in solid oak, and the massive
chairs and settees of the parlor suggest the withdrawing room of
Rowena, aesthetic shades of momie-cloth drape deep-set windows,
where anaemic and disjointed females in stained glass pluck
conventional roses.
To each of these successive transitions the husband has remained
obediently and tranquilly indifferent. He has in his heart
considered them all equally unfitting and uncomfortable and sighed
in regretful memory of a deep, old-fashioned arm-chair that
sheltered his after-dinner naps in the early rosewood period. So
far he has been as clay in the hands of his beloved wife, but the
anaemic ladies and the communion table are the last drop that
causes his cup to overflow. He revolts and begins to take matters
into his own hands with the result that the household enters its
fifth incarnation under his guidance, during which everything is
painted white and all the wall-papers are a vivid scarlet. The
family sit on bogus Chippendale and eat off blue and white china.
With the building of their grand new house near the park the couple
rise together into the sixth cycle of their development. Having
travelled and studied the epochs by this time, they can tell a
Louis XIV. from a Louis XV. room, and recognize that mahogany and
brass sphinxes denote furniture of the Empire. This newly acquired
knowledge is, however, vague and hazy. They have no confidence in
themselves, so give over the fitting of their principal floors to
the New York branch of a great French house. Little is talked of
now but periods, plans, and elevations. Under the guidance of the
French firm, they acquire at vast expense, faked reproductions as
historic furniture.
The spacious rooms are sticky with new gilding, and the flowered
brocades of the hangings and furniture crackle to the touch. The
rooms were not designed by the architect to receive any special
kind of "treatment." Immense folding-doors unite the salons, and
windows open anywhere. The decorations of the walls have been
applied like a poultice, regardless of the proportions of the rooms
and the distribution of the spaces.
Building and decorating are, however, the best of educations. The
husband, freed at last from his business occupations, finds in this
new study an interest and a charm unknown to him before. He and
his wife are both vaguely disappointed when their resplendent
mansion is finished, having already outgrown it, and recognize that
in spite of correct detail, their costly apartments no more
resemble the stately and simple salons seen abroad than the cabin
of a Fall River boat resembles the GALERIE DES GLACES at
Versailles. The humiliating knowledge that they are all wrong
breaks upon them, as it is doing on hundreds of others, at the same
time as the desire to know more and appreciate better the perfect
productions of this art.
A seventh and last step is before them but they know not how to
make it. A surer guide than the upholsterer is, they know,
essential, but their library contains nothing to help them. Others
possess the information they need, yet they are ignorant where to
turn for what they require.
With singular appropriateness a volume treating of this delightful
"art" has this season appeared at Scribner's. "The Decoration of
Houses" is the result of a woman's faultless taste collaborating
with a man's technical knowledge. Its mission is to reveal to the
hundreds who have advanced just far enough to find that they can go
no farther alone, truths lying concealed beneath the surface. It
teaches that consummate taste is satisfied only with a perfected
simplicity; that the facades of a house must be the envelope of the
rooms within and adapted to them, as the rooms are to the habits
and requirements of them "that dwell therein;" that proportion is
the backbone of the decorator's art and that supreme elegance is
fitness and moderation; and, above all, that an attention to
architectural principles can alone lead decoration to a perfect
development.
CHAPTER 13 - Our Elite and Public Life
THE complaint is so often heard, and seems so well founded, that
there is a growing inclination, not only among men of social
position, but also among our best and cleverest citizens, to stand
aloof from public life, and this reluctance on their part is so
unfortunate, that one feels impelled to seek out the causes where
they must lie, beneath the surface. At a first glance they are not
apparent. Why should not the honor of representing one's town or
locality be as eagerly sought after with us as it is by English or
French men of position? That such is not the case, however, is
evident.
Speaking of this the other evening, over my after-dinner coffee,
with a high-minded and public-spirited gentleman, who not long ago
represented our country at a European court, he advanced two
theories which struck me as being well worth repeating, and which
seemed to account to a certain extent for this curious abstinence.
As a first and most important cause, he placed the fact that
neither our national nor (here in New York) our state capital
coincides with our metropolis. In this we differ from England and
all the continental countries. The result is not difficult to
perceive. In London, a man of the world, a business man, or a
great lawyer, who represents a locality in Parliament, can fulfil
his mandate and at the same time lead his usual life among his own
set. The lawyer or the business man can follow during the day his
profession, or those affairs on which he depends to support his
family and his position in the world. Then, after dinner (owing to
the peculiar hours adopted for the sittings of Parliament), he can
take his place as a law-maker. If he be a London-born man, he in
no way changes his way of life or that of his family. If, on the
contrary, he be a county magnate, the change he makes is all for
the better, as it takes him and his wife and daughters up to
London, the haven of their longings, and the centre of all sorts of
social dissipations and advancement.
With us, it is exactly the contrary. As the District of Columbia
elects no one, everybody living in Washington officially is more or
less expatriated, and the social life it offers is a poor
substitute for the circle which most families leave to go there.
That, however, is not the most important side of the question. Go
to any great lawyer of either New York or Chicago, and propose
sending him to Congress or the Senate. His answer is sure to be,
"I cannot afford it. I know it is an honor, but what is to replace
the hundred thousand dollars a year which my profession brings me
in, not to mention that all my practice would go to pieces during
my absence?" Or again, "How should I dare to propose to my family
to leave one of the great centres of the country to go and vegetate
in a little provincial city like Washington? No, indeed! Public
life is out of the question for me!"
Does any one suppose England would have the class of men she gets
in Parliament, if that body sat at Bristol?
Until recently the man who occupied the position of Lord Chancellor
made thirty thousand pounds a year by his profession without
interfering in any way with his public duties, and at the present
moment a recordership in London in no wise prevents private
practice. Were these gentlemen Americans, they would be obliged to
renounce all hope of professional income in order to serve their
country at its Capital.
Let us glance for a moment at the other reason. Owing to our laws
(doubtless perfectly reasonable, and which it is not my intention
to criticise,) a man must reside in the place he represents. Here
again we differ from all other constitutional countries.
Unfortunately, our clever young men leave the small towns of their
birth and flock up to the great centres as offering wider fields
for their advancement. In consequence, the local elector finds his
choice limited to what is left - the intellectual skimmed milk, of
which the cream has been carried to New York or other big cities.
No country can exist without a metropolis, and as such a centre by
a natural law of assimilation absorbs the best brains of the
country, in other nations it has been found to the interests of all
parties to send down brilliant young men to the "provinces," to be,
in good time, returned by them to the national assemblies.
As this is not a political article the simple indication of these
two causes will suffice, without entering into the question of
their reasonableness or of their justice. The social bearing of
such a condition is here the only side of the question under
discussion; it is difficult to over-rate the influence that a man's
family exert over his decisions.
Political ambition is exceedingly rare among our women of position;
when the American husband is bitten with it, the wife submits to,
rather than abets, his inclinations. In most cases our women are
not cosmopolitan enough to enjoy being transplanted far away from
their friends and relations, even to fill positions of importance
and honor. A New York woman of great frankness and intelligence,
who found herself recently in a Western city under these
circumstances, said, in answer to a flattering remark that "the
ladies of the place expected her to become their social leader," "I
don't see anything to lead," thus very plainly expressing her
opinion of the situation. It is hardly fair to expect a woman
accustomed to the life of New York or the foreign capitals, to look
forward with enthusiasm to a term of years passed in Albany, or in
Washington.
In France very much the same state of affairs has been reached by
quite a different route. The aristocracy detest the present
government, and it is not considered "good form" by them to sit in
the Chamber of Deputies or to accept any but diplomatic positions.
They condescend to fill the latter because that entails living away
from their own country, as they feel more at ease in foreign courts
than at the Republican receptions of the Elysee.
There is a deplorable tendency among our self-styled aristocracy to
look upon their circle as a class apart. They separate themselves
more each year from the life of the country, and affect to smile at
any of their number who honestly wish to be of service to the
nation. They, like the French aristocracy, are perfectly willing,
even anxious, to fill agreeable diplomatic posts at first-class
foreign capitals, and are naively astonished when their offers of
service are not accepted with gratitude by the authorities in
Washington. But let a husband propose to his better half some
humble position in the machinery of our government, and see what
the lady's answer will be.
The opinion prevails among a large class of our wealthy and
cultivated people, that to go into public life is to descend to
duties beneath them. They judge the men who occupy such positions
with insulting severity, classing them in their minds as corrupt
and self-seeking, than which nothing can be more childish or more
imbecile. Any observer who has lived in the different grades of
society will quickly renounce the puerile idea that sporting or
intellectual pursuits are alone worthy of a gentleman's attention.
This very political life, which appears unworthy of their attention
to so many men, is, in reality, the great field where the nations
of the world fight out their differences, where the seed is sown
that will ripen later into vast crops of truth and justice. It is
(if rightly regarded and honestly followed) the battle-ground where
man's highest qualities are put to their noblest use - that of
working for the happiness of others.
CHAPTER 14 - The Small Summer Hotel
WE certainly are the most eccentric race on the surface of the
globe and ought to be a delight to the soul of an explorer, so full
is our civilization of contradictions, unexplained habits and
curious customs. It is quite unnecessary for the inquisitive
gentlemen who pass their time prying into other people's affairs
and then returning home to write books about their discoveries, to
risk their lives and digestions in long journeys into Central
Africa or to the frozen zones, while so much good material lies
ready to their hands in our own land. The habits of the "natives"
in New England alone might occupy an active mind indefinitely,
offering as interesting problems as any to be solved by penetrating
Central Asia or visiting the man-eating tribes of Australia.
Perhaps one of our scientific celebrities, before undertaking his
next long voyage, will find time to make observations at home and
collect sufficient data to answer some questions that have long
puzzled my unscientific brain. He would be doing good work. Fame
and honors await the man who can explain why, for instance, sane
Americans of the better class, with money enough to choose their
surroundings, should pass so much of their time in hotels and
boarding houses. There must be a reason for the vogue of these
retreats - every action has a cause, however remote. I shall await
with the deepest interest a paper on this subject from one of our
great explorers, untoward circumstances having some time ago forced
me to pass a few days in a popular establishment of this class.
During my visit I amused myself by observing the inmates and trying
to discover why they had come there. So far as I could find out,
the greater part of them belonged to our well-to-do class, and when
at home doubtless lived in luxurious houses and were waited on by
trained servants. In the small summer hotel where I met them, they
were living in dreary little ten by twelve foot rooms, containing
only the absolute necessities of existence, a wash-stand, a bureau,
two chairs and a bed. And such a bed! One mattress about four
inches thick over squeaking slats, cotton sheets, so nicely
calculated to the size of the bed that the slightest move on the
part of the sleeper would detach them from their moorings and undo
the housemaid's work; two limp, discouraged pillows that had
evidently been "banting," and a few towels a foot long with a
surface like sand-paper, completed the fittings of the room. Baths
were unknown, and hot water was a luxury distributed sparingly by a
capricious handmaiden. It is only fair to add that everything in
the room was perfectly clean, as was the coarse table linen in the
dining room.
The meals were in harmony with the rooms and furniture, consisting
only of the strict necessities, cooked with a Spartan disregard for
such sybarite foibles as seasoning or dressing. I believe there
was a substantial meal somewhere in the early morning hours, but I
never succeeded in getting down in time to inspect it. By
successful bribery, I induced one of the village belles, who served
at table, to bring a cup of coffee to my room. The first morning
it appeared already poured out in the cup, with sugar and cold milk
added at her discretion. At one o'clock a dinner was served,
consisting of soup (occasionally), one meat dish and attendant
vegetables, a meagre dessert, and nothing else. At half-past six
there was an equally rudimentary meal, called "tea," after which no
further food was distributed to the inmates, who all, however,
seemed perfectly contented with this arrangement. In fact they
apparently looked on the act of eating as a disagreeable task, to
be hurried through as soon as possible that they might return to
their aimless rocking and chattering.
Instead of dinner hour being the feature of the day, uniting people
around an attractive table, and attended by conversation, and the
meal lasting long enough for one's food to be properly eaten, it
was rushed through as though we were all trying to catch a train.
Then, when the meal was over, the boarders relapsed into apathy
again.
No one ever called this hospitable home a boarding-house, for the
proprietor was furious if it was given that name. He also scorned
the idea of keeping a hotel. So that I never quite understood in
what relation he stood toward us. He certainly considered himself
our host, and ignored the financial side of the question severely.
In order not to hurt his feelings by speaking to him of money, we
were obliged to get our bills by strategy from a male subordinate.
Mine host and his family were apparently unaware that there were
people under their roof who paid them for board and lodging. We
were all looked upon as guests and "entertained," and our rights
impartially ignored.
Nothing, I find, is so distinctive of New England as this graceful
veiling of the practical side of life. The landlady always
reminded me, by her manner, of Barrie's description of the bill-
sticker's wife who "cut" her husband when she chanced to meet him
"professionally" engaged. As a result of this extreme detachment
from things material, the house ran itself, or was run by
incompetent Irish and negro "help." There were no bells in the
rooms, which simplified the service, and nothing could be ordered
out of meal hours.
The material defects in board and lodging sink, however, into
insignificance before the moral and social unpleasantness of an
establishment such as this. All ages, all conditions, and all
creeds are promiscuously huddled together. It is impossible to
choose whom one shall know or whom avoid. A horrible burlesque of
family life is enabled, with all its inconveniences and none of its
sanctity. People from different cities, with different interests
and standards, are expected to "chum" together in an intimacy that
begins with the eight o'clock breakfast and ends only when all
retire for the night. No privacy, no isolation is allowed. If you
take a book and begin to read in a remote corner of a parlor or
piazza, some idle matron or idiotic girl will tranquilly invade
your poor little bit of privacy and gabble of her affairs and the
day's gossip. There is no escape unless you mount to your ten-by-
twelve cell and sit (like the Premiers of England when they visit
Balmoral) on the bed, to do your writing, for want of any other
conveniences. Even such retirement is resented by the boarders.
You are thought to be haughty and to give yourself airs if you do
not sit for twelve consecutive hours each day in unending
conversation with them.
When one reflects that thousands of our countrymen pass at least
one-half of their lives in these asylums, and that thousands more
in America know no other homes, but move from one hotel to another,
while the same outlay would procure them cosy, cheerful dwellings,
it does seem as if these modern Arabs, Holmes's "Folding Bed-
ouins," were gradually returning to prehistoric habits and would
end by eating roots promiscuously in caves.
The contradiction appears more marked the longer one reflects on
the love of independence and impatience of all restraint that
characterize our race. If such an institution had been conceived
by people of the Old World, accustomed to moral slavery and to a
thousand petty tyrannies, it would not be so remarkable, but that
we, of all the races of the earth, should have created a form of
torture unknown to Louis XI. or to the Spanish Inquisitors, is
indeed inexplicable! Outside of this happy land the institution is
unknown. The PENSION when it exists abroad, is only an exotic
growth for an American market. Among European nations it is
undreamed of; the poorest when they travel take furnished rooms,
where they are served in private, or go to restaurants or TABLE
D'HOTES for their meals. In a strictly continental hotel the
public parlor does not exist. People do not travel to make
acquaintances, but for health or recreation, or to improve their
minds. The enforced intimacy of our American family house, with
its attendant quarrelling and back-biting, is an infliction of
which Europeans are in happy ignorance.
One explanation, only, occurs to me, which is that among New
England people, largely descended from Puritan stock, there still
lingers some blind impulse at self-mortification, an hereditary
inclination to make this life as disagreeable as possible by self-
immolation. Their ancestors, we are told by Macaulay, suppressed
bull baiting, not because it hurt the bull, but because it gave
pleasure to the people. Here in New England they refused the Roman
dogma of Purgatory and then with complete inconsistency, invented
the boarding-house, in order, doubtless, to take as much of the joy
as possible out of this life, as a preparation for endless bliss in
the next.
CHAPTER 15 - A False Start
HAVING had, during a wandering existence, many opportunities of
observing my compatriots away from home and familiar surroundings
in various circles of cosmopolitan society, at foreign courts, in
diplomatic life, or unofficial capacities, I am forced to
acknowledge that whereas my countrywoman invariably assumed her new
position with grace and dignity, my countryman, in the majority of
cases, appeared at a disadvantage.
I take particular pleasure in making this tribute to my "sisters"
tact and wit, as I have been accused of being "hard" on American
women, and some half-humorous criticisms have been taken seriously
by over-susceptible women - doubtless troubled with guilty
consciences for nothing is more exact than the old French proverb,
"It is only the truth that wounds."
The fact remains clear, however, that American men, as regards
polish, facility in expressing themselves in foreign languages, the
arts of pleasing and entertaining, in short, the thousand and one
nothings composing that agreeable whole, a cultivated member of
society, are inferior to their womankind. I feel sure that all
Americans who have travelled and have seen their compatriot in his
social relations with foreigners, will agree with this, reluctant
as I am to acknowledge it.
That a sister and brother brought up together, under the same
influences, should later differ to this extent seems incredible.
It is just this that convinces me we have made a false start as
regards the education and ambitions of our young men.
To find the reasons one has only to glance back at our past. After
the struggle that insured our existence as a united nation, came a
period of great prosperity. When both seemed secure, we did not
pause and take breath, as it were, before entering a new epoch of
development, but dashed ahead on the old lines. It is here that we
got on the wrong road. Naturally enough too, for our peculiar
position on this continent, far away from the centres of
cultivation and art, surrounded only by less successful states with
which to compare ourselves, has led us into forming erroneous ideas
as to the proportions of things, causing us to exaggerate the value
of material prosperity and undervalue matters of infinitely greater
importance, which have been neglected in consequence.
A man who, after fighting through our late war, had succeeded in
amassing a fortune, naturally wished his son to follow him on the
only road in which it had ever occurred to him that success was of
any importance. So beyond giving the boy a college education,
which he had not enjoyed, his ambition rarely went; his idea being
to make a practical business man of him, or a lawyer, that he could
keep the estate together more intelligently. In thousands of
cases, of course, individual taste and bent over-ruled this
influence, and a career of science or art was chosen; but in the
mass of the American people, it was firmly implanted that the
pursuit of wealth was the only occupation to which a reasonable
human being could devote himself. A young man who was not in some
way engaged in increasing his income was looked upon as a very
undesirable member of society, and sure, sooner or later, to come
to harm.
Millionaires declined to send their sons to college, saying they
would get ideas there that would unfit them for business, to
Paterfamilias the one object of life. Under such fostering
influences, the ambitions in our country have gradually given way
to money standards and the false start has been made! Leaving
aside at once the question of money in its relation to our politics
(although it would be a fruitful subject for moralizing), and
confining ourselves strictly to the social side of life, we soon
see the results of this mammon worship.
In England (although Englishmen have been contemptuously called the
shop-keepers of the world) the extension and maintenance of their
vast empire is the mainspring which keeps the great machine in
movement. And one sees tens of thousands of well-born and
delicately-bred men cheerfully entering the many branches of public
service where the hope of wealth can never come, and retiring on
pensions or half-pay in the strength of their middle age,
apparently without a regret or a thought beyond their country's
well-being.
In France, where the passionate love of their own land has made
colonial extension impossible, the modern Frenchman of education is
more interested in the yearly exhibition at the SALON or in a
successful play at the FRANCAIS, than in the stock markets of the
world.
Would that our young men had either of these bents! They have
copied from England a certain love of sport, without the English
climate or the calm of country and garrison life, to make these
sports logical and necessary. As the young American millionaire
thinks he must go on increasing his fortune, we see the anomaly of
a man working through a summer's day in Wall Street, then dashing
in a train to some suburban club, and appearing a half-hour later
on the polo field. Next to wealth, sport has become the ambition
of the wealthy classes, and has grown so into our college life that
the number of students in the freshman class of our great
universities is seriously influenced by that institution's losses
or gains at football.
What is the result of all this? A young man starts in life with
the firm intention of making a great deal of money. If he has any
time left from that occupation he will devote it to sport. Later
in life, when he has leisure and travels, or is otherwise thrown
with cultivated strangers, he must naturally be at a disadvantage.
"Shop," he cannot talk; he knows that is vulgar. Music, art, the
drama, and literature are closed books to him, in spite of the fact
that he may have a box on the grand tier at the opera and a couple
of dozen high-priced "masterpieces" hanging around his drawing-
rooms. If he is of a finer clay than the general run of his class,
he will realize dimly that somehow the goal has been missed in his
life race. His chase after the material has left him so little
time to cultivate the ideal, that he has prepared himself a sad and
aimless old age; unless he can find pleasure in doing as did a man
I have been told about, who, receiving half a dozen millions from
his father's estate, conceived the noble idea of increasing them so
that he might leave to each of his four children as much as he had
himself received. With the strictest economy, and by suppressing
out of his life and that of his children all amusements and
superfluous outlay, he has succeeded now for many years in living
on the income of his income. Time will never hang heavy on this
Harpagon's hands. He is a perfectly happy individual, but his
conversation is hardly of a kind to attract, and it may be doubted
if the rest of the family are as much to be envied.
An artist who had lived many years of his life in Paris and London
was speaking the other day of a curious phase he had remarked in
our American life. He had been accustomed over there to have his
studio the meeting-place of friends, who would drop in to smoke and
lounge away an hour, chatting as he worked. To his astonishment,
he tells me that since he has been in New York not one of the many
men he knows has ever passed an hour in his rooms. Is not that a
significant fact? Another remark which points its own moral was
repeated to me recently. A foreigner visiting here, to whom
American friends were showing the sights of our city, exclaimed at
last: "You have not pointed out to me any celebrities except
millionaires. 'Do you see that man? he is worth ten millions.
Look at that house! it cost one million dollars, and there are
pictures in it worth over three million dollars. That trotter cost
one hundred thousand dollars,' etc." Was he not right? And does
it not give my reader a shudder to see in black and white the
phrases that are, nevertheless, so often on our lips?
This levelling of everything to its cash value is so ingrained in
us that we are unconscious of it, as we are of using slang or local
expressions until our attention is called to them. I was present
once at a farce played in a London theatre, where the audience went
into roars of laughter every time the stage American said, "Why,
certainly." I was indignant, and began explaining to my English
friend that we never used such an absurd phrase. "Are you sure?"
he asked. "Why, certainly," I said, and stopped, catching the
twinkle in his eye.
It is very much the same thing with money. We do not notice how
often it slips into the conversation. "Out of the fullness of the
heart the mouth speaketh." Talk to an American of a painter and
the charm of his work. He will be sure to ask, "Do his pictures
sell well?" and will lose all interest if you say he can't sell
them at all. As if that had anything to do with it!
Remembering the well-known anecdote of Schopenhauer and the gold
piece which he used to put beside his plate at the TABLE D'HOTE,
where he ate, surrounded by the young officers of the German army,
and which was to be given to the poor the first time he heard any
conversation that was not about promotion or women, I have been
tempted to try the experiment in our clubs, changing the subjects
to stocks and sport, and feel confident that my contributions to
charity would not ruin me.
All this has had the result of making our men dull companions;
after dinner, or at a country house, if the subject they love is
tabooed, they talk of nothing! It is sad for a rich man (unless
his mind has remained entirely between the leaves of his ledger) to
realize that money really buys very little, and above a certain
amount can give no satisfaction in proportion to its bulk, beyond
that delight which comes from a sense of possession. Croesus often
discovers as he grows old that he has neglected to provide himself
with the only thing that "is a joy for ever" - a cultivated
intellect - in order to amass a fortune that turns to ashes, when
he has time to ask of it any of the pleasures and resources he
fondly imagined it would afford him. Like Talleyrand's young man
who would not learn whist, he finds that he has prepared for
himself a dreadful old age!
CHAPTER 16 - A Holy Land
NOT long ago an article came under my notice descriptive of the
neighborhood around Grant's tomb and the calm that midsummer brings
to that vicinity, laughingly referred to as the "Holy Land."
As careless fingers wandering over the strings of a violin may
unintentionally strike a chord, so the writer of those lines, all
unconsciously, with a jest, set vibrating a world of tender
memories and associations; for the region spoken of is truly a holy
land to me, the playground of my youth, and connected with the
sweetest ties that can bind one's thoughts to the past.
Ernest Renan in his SOUVENIRS D'ENFANCE, tells of a Brittany
legend, firmly believed in that wild land, of the vanished city of
"Is," which ages ago disappeared beneath the waves. The peasants
still point out at a certain place on the coast the site of the
fabled city, and the fishermen tell how during great storms they
have caught glimpses of its belfries and ramparts far down between
the waves; and assert that on calm summer nights they can hear the
bells chiming up from those depths. I also have a vanished "Is" in
my heart, and as I grow older, I love to listen to the murmurs that
float up from the past. They seem to come from an infinite
distance, almost like echoes from another life.
At that enchanted time we lived during the summers in an old wooden
house my father had re-arranged into a fairly comfortable dwelling.
A tradition, which no one had ever taken the trouble to verify,
averred that Washington had once lived there, which made that hero
very real to us. The picturesque old house stood high on a slope
where the land rises boldly; with an admirable view of distant
mountain, river and opposing Palisades.
The new Riverside drive (which, by the bye, should make us very
lenient toward the men who robbed our city a score of years ago,
for they left us that vast work in atonement), has so changed the
neighborhood it is impossible now for pious feet to make a
pilgrimage to those childish shrines. One house, however, still
stands as when it was our nearest neighbor. It had sheltered
General Gage, land for many acres around had belonged to him. He
was an enthusiastic gardener, and imported, among a hundred other
fruits and plants, the "Queen Claude" plum from France, which was
successfully acclimated on his farm. In New York a plum of that
kind is still called a "green gage." The house has changed hands
many times since we used to play around the Grecian pillars of its
portico. A recent owner, dissatisfied doubtless with its classic
simplicity, has painted it a cheerful mustard color and crowned it
with a fine new MANSARD roof. Thus disfigured, and shorn of its
surrounding trees, the poor old house stands blankly by the
roadside, reminding one of the Greek statue in Anstey's "Painted
Venus" after the London barber had decorated her to his taste.
When driving by there now, I close my eyes.
Another house, where we used to be taken to play, was that of
Audubon, in the park of that name. Many a rainy afternoon I have
passed with his children choosing our favorite birds in the glass
cases that filled every nook and corner of the tumble-down old
place, or turning over the leaves of the enormous volumes he would
so graciously take down from their places for our amusement. I
often wonder what has become of those vast IN-FOLIOS, and if any
one ever opens them now and admires as we did the glowing colored
plates in which the old ornithologist took such pride. There is
something infinitely sad in the idea of a collection of books
slowly gathered together at the price of privations and sacrifices,
cherished, fondled, lovingly read, and then at the owner's death,
coldly sent away to stand for ever unopened on the shelves of some
public library. It is like neglecting poor dumb children!
An event that made a profound impression on my childish imagination
occurred while my father, who was never tired of improving our
little domain, was cutting a pathway down the steep side of the
slope to the river. A great slab, dislodged by a workman's pick,
fell disclosing the grave of an Indian chief. In a low archway or
shallow cave sat the skeleton of the chieftain, his bows and arrows
arranged around him on the ground, mingled with fragments of an
elaborate costume, of which little remained but the bead-work.
That it was the tomb of a man great among his people was evident
from the care with which the grave had been prepared and then
hidden, proving how, hundreds of years before our civilization,
another race had chosen this noble cliff and stately river
landscape as the fitting framework for a great warrior's tomb.
This discovery made no little stir in the scientific world of that
day. Hundreds came to see it, and as photography had not then come
into the world, many drawings were made and casts taken, and
finally the whole thing was removed to the rooms of the Historical
Society. From that day the lonely little path held an awful charm
for us. Our childish readings of Cooper had developed in us that
love of the Indian and his wild life, so characteristic of boyhood
thirty years ago. On still summer afternoons, the place had a
primeval calm that froze the young blood in our veins. Although we
prided ourselves on our quality as "braves," and secretly pined to
be led on the war-path, we were shy of walking in that vicinity in
daylight, and no power on earth, not even the offer of the tomahawk
or snow-shoes for which our souls longed, would have taken us there
at night.
A place connected in my memory with a tragic association was across
the river on the last southern slope of the Palisades. Here we
stood breathless while my father told the brief story of the duel
between Burr and Hamilton, and showed us the rock stained by the
younger man's life-blood. In those days there was a simple iron
railing around the spot where Hamilton had expired, but of later
years I have been unable to find any trace of the place. The tide
of immigration has brought so deep a deposit of "saloons" and
suburban "balls" that the very face of the land is changed, old
lovers of that shore know it no more. Never were the environs of a
city so wantonly and recklessly degraded. Municipalities have vied
with millionaires in soiling and debasing the exquisite shores of
our river, that, thirty years ago, were unrivalled the world over.
The glamour of the past still lies for me upon this landscape in
spite of its many defacements. The river whispers of boyish
boating parties, and the woods recall a thousand childish hopes and
fears, resolute departures to join the pirates, or the red men in
their strongholds - journeys boldly carried out until twilight
cooled our courage and the supper-hour proved a stronger temptation
than war and carnage.
When I sat down this summer evening to write a few lines about
happy days on the banks of the Hudson, I hardly realized how sweet
those memories were to me. The rewriting of the old names has
evoked from their long sleep so many loved faces. Arms seem
reaching out to me from the past. The house is very still tonight.
I seem to be nearer my loved dead than to the living. The bells of
my lost "Is" are ringing clear in the silence.
CHAPTER 17 - Royalty At Play
FEW more amusing sights are to be seen in these days, than that of
crowned heads running away from their dull old courts and
functions, roughing it in hotels and villas, gambling, yachting and
playing at being rich nobodies. With much intelligence they have
all chosen the same Republican playground, where visits cannot
possibly be twisted into meaning any new "combination" or political
move, thus assuring themselves the freedom from care or
responsibility, that seems to be the aim of their existence.
Alongside of well-to-do Royalties in good paying situations, are
those out of a job, who are looking about for a "place." One
cannot take an afternoon's ramble anywhere between Cannes and
Mentone without meeting a half-dozen of these magnates.
The other day, in one short walk, I ran across three Empresses, two
Queens, and an Heir-apparent, and then fled to my hotel, fearing to
be unfitted for America, if I went on "keeping such company." They
are knowing enough, these wandering great ones, and after trying
many places have hit on this charming coast as offering more than
any other for their comfort and enjoyment. The vogue of these
sunny shores dates from their annexation to France, - a price
Victor Emmanuel reluctantly paid for French help in his war with
Austria. Napoleon III.'s demand for Savoy and this littoral, was
first made known to Victor Emmanuel at a state ball at Genoa.
Savoy was his birthplace and his home! The King broke into a wild
temper, cursing the French Emperor and making insulting allusions
to his parentage, saying he had not one drop of Bonaparte blood in
his veins. The King's frightened courtiers tried to stop this
outburst, showing him the French Ambassador at his elbow. With a
superhuman effort Victor Emmanuel controlled himself, and turning
to the Ambassador, said:
"I fear my tongue ran away with me!" With a smile and a bow the
great French diplomatist remarked:
"SIRE, I am so deaf I have not heard a word your Majesty has been
saying!"
The fashion of coming to the Riviera for health or for amusement,
dates from the sixties, when the Empress of Russia passed a winter
at Nice, as a last attempt to prolong the existence of the dying
Tsarewitsch, her son. There also the next season the Duke of
Edinburgh wooed and won her daughter (then the greatest heiress in
Europe) for his bride. The world moves fast and a journey it
required a matter of life and death to decide on, then, is gayly
undertaken now, that a prince may race a yacht, or a princess try
her luck at the gambling tables. When one reflects that the "royal
caste," in Europe alone, numbers some eight hundred people, and
that the East is beginning to send out its more enterprising
crowned heads to get a taste of the fun, that beyond drawing their
salaries, these good people have absolutely nothing to do, except
to amuse themselves, it is no wonder that this happy land is
crowded with royal pleasure-seekers.
After a try at Florence and Aix, "the Queen" has been faithful to
Cimiez, a charming site back of Nice. That gay city is always EN
FETE the day she arrives, as her carriages pass surrounded by
French cavalry, one can catch a glimpse of her big face, and dowdy
little figure, which nevertheless she can make so dignified when
occasion requires. The stay here is, indeed, a holiday for this
record-breaking sovereign, who potters about her private grounds of
a morning in a donkey-chair, sunning herself and watching her
Battenberg grandchildren at play. In the afternoon, she drives a
couple of hours - in an open carriage - one outrider in black
livery alone distinguishing her turnout from the others.
The Prince of Wales makes his headquarters at Cannes where he has
poor luck in sailing the Brittania, for which he consoles himself
with jolly dinners at Monte Carlo. You can see him almost any
evening in the RESTAURANT DE PARIS, surrounded by his own
particular set, - the Duchess of Devonshire (who started a
penniless German officer's daughter, and became twice a duchess);
Lady de Grey and Lady Wolverton, both showing near six feet of
slender English beauty; at their side, and lovelier than either,
the Countess of Essex. The husbands of these "Merry Wives" are
absent, but do not seem to be missed, as the ladies sit smoking and
laughing over their coffee, the party only breaking up towards
eleven o'clock to try its luck at TRENTE ET QUARANTE, until a
"special" takes them back to Cannes.
He is getting sadly old and fat, is England's heir, the likeness to
his mamma becoming more marked each year. His voice, too, is oddly
like hers, deep and guttural, more adapted to the paternal German
(which all this family speak when alone) than to his native
English. Hair, he has none, except a little fringe across the back
of his head, just above a fine large roll of fat that blushes above
his shirt-collar. Too bad that this discovery of the microbe of
baldness comes rather late for him! He has a pleasant twinkle in
his small eyes, and an entire absence of POSE, that accounts
largely for his immense and enduring popularity.
But the Hotel Cap Martin shelters quieter crowned heads. The
Emperor and Empress of Austria, who tramp about the hilly roads,
the King and Queen of Saxony and the fat Arch-duchess Stephanie.
Austria's Empress looks sadly changed and ill, as does another lady
of whom one can occasionally catch a glimpse, walking painfully
with a crutch-stick in the shadow of the trees near her villa. It
is hard to believe that this white-haired, bent old woman was once
the imperial beauty who from the salons of the Tuileries dictated
the fashions of the world! Few have paid so dearly for their brief
hour of splendor!
Cannes with its excellent harbor is the centre of interest during
the racing season when the Tsarewitsch comes on his yacht Czaritza.
At the Battle of Flowers, one is pretty sure to see the Duke of
Cambridge, his Imperial Highness, the Grand Duke Michael, Prince
Christian of Denmark, H.R.H. the Duke of Nassau, H.R.H. the
Archduke Ferdinand d'Este, their Serene Highnesses of Mecklenburg-
Schwerin and the Saxe-Coburg-Gothas, also H.R.H. Marie Valerie and
the Schleswig-Holsteins, pelting each other and the public with
CONFETTI and flowers. Indeed, half the A1MANACH DE GOTHA, that
continental "society list," seems to be sunning itself here and
forgetting its cares, on bicycles or on board yachts. It is said
that the Crown Princess of Honolulu (whoever she may be) honors
Mentone with her presence, and the newly deposed Queen "Ranavalo"
of Madagascar is EN ROUTE to join in the fun.
This crowd of royalty reminds me of a story the old sea-dogs who
gather about the "Admirals' corner" of the Metropolitan Club in
Washington, love to tell you. An American cockswain, dazzled by a
doubly royal visit, with attending suites, on board the old
"Constitution," came up to his commanding officer and touching his
cap, said:
"Beg pardon, Admiral, but one of them kings has tumbled down the
gangway and broke his leg."
It has become a much more amusing thing to wear a crown than it
was. Times have changed indeed since Marie Laczinska lived the
fifty lonely years of her wedded life and bore her many children,
in one bed-room at Versailles - a monotony only broken by visits to
Fontainebleau or Marly. Shakespeare's line no longer fits the
case.
Beyond securing rich matches for their children, and keeping a
sharp lookout that the Radicals at home do not unduly cut down
their civil lists, these great ones have little but their
amusements to occupy them. Do they ever reflect, as they rush
about visiting each other and squabbling over precedence when they
meet, that some fine morning the tax-payers may wake up, and ask
each other why they are being crushed under such heavy loads, that
eight hundred or more quite useless people may pass their lives in
foreign watering-places, away from their homes and their duties?
It will be a bad day for them when the long-suffering subjects say
to them, "Since we get on so exceedingly well during your many
visits abroad, we think we will try how it will work without you at
all!"
The Prince of little Monaco seems to be about the only one up to
the situation, for he at least stays at home, and in connection
with two other gentlemen runs an exceedingly good hotel and several
restaurants on his estates, doing all he can to attract money into
the place, while making the strictest laws to prevent his subjects
gambling at the famous tables. Now if other royalties instead of
amusing themselves all the year round would go in for something
practical like this, they might become useful members of the
community. This idea of Monaco's Prince strikes one as most
timely, and as opening a career for other indigent crowned heads.
Hotels are getting so good and so numerous, that without some
especial "attraction" a new one can hardly succeed; but a
"Hohenzollern House" well situated in Berlin, with William II. to
receive the tourists at the door, and his fat wife at the desk,
would be sure to prosper. It certainly would be pleasanter for him
to spend money so honestly earned than the millions wrested from
half-starving peasants which form his present income. Besides
there is almost as much gold lace on a hotel employee's livery as
on a court costume!
The numerous crowned heads one meets wandering about, can hardly
lull themselves over their "games" with the flattering unction that
they are of use, for, have they not France before them (which they
find so much to their taste) stronger, richer, more respected than
ever since she shook herself free of such incumbrances? Not to
mention our own democratic country, which has managed to hold its
own, in spite of their many gleeful predictions to the contrary.
CHAPTER 18 - A Rock Ahead
HAVING had occasion several times during this past season, to pass
by the larger stores in the vicinity of Twenty-third Street, I have
been struck more than ever, by the endless flow of womankind that
beats against the doors of those establishments. If they were
temples where a beneficent deity was distributing health, learning,
and all the good things of existence, the rush could hardly have
been greater. It saddened me to realize that each of the eager
women I saw was, on the contrary, dispensing something of her
strength and brain, as well as the wearily earned stipend of the
men of her family (if not her own), for what could be of little
profit to her.
It occurred to me that, if the people who are so quick to talk
about the elevating and refining influences of women, could take an
hour or two and inspect the centres in question, they might not be
so firm in their beliefs. For, reluctant as I am to acknowledge
it, the one great misfortune in this country, is the unnatural
position which has been (from some mistaken idea of chivalry)
accorded to women here. The result of placing them on this
pedestal, and treating them as things apart, has been to make women
in America poorer helpmeets to their husbands than in any other
country on the face of the globe, civilized or uncivilized.
Strange as it may appear, this is not confined to the rich, but
permeates all classes, becoming more harmful in descending the
social scale, and it will bring about a disintegration of our
society, sooner than could be believed. The saying on which we
have all been brought up, viz., that you can gauge the point of
civilization attained in a nation by the position it accords to
woman, was quite true as long as woman was considered man's
inferior. To make her his equal was perfectly just; all the
trouble begins when you attempt to make her man's superior, a
something apart from his working life, and not the companion of his
troubles and cares, as she was intended to be.
When a small shopkeeper in Europe marries, the next day you will
see his young wife taking her place at the desk in his shop. While
he serves his customers, his smiling spouse keeps the books, makes
change, and has an eye on the employees. At noon they dine
together; in the evening, after the shop is closed, are pleased or
saddened together over the results of the day. The wife's DOT
almost always goes into the business, so that there is a community
of interest to unite them, and their lives are passed together. In
this country, what happens? The husband places his new wife in a
small house, or in two or three furnished rooms, generally so far
away that all idea of dining with her is impossible. In
consequence, he has a "quick lunch" down town, and does not see his
wife between eight o'clock in the morning and seven in the evening.
His business is a closed book to her, in which she can have no
interest, for her weary husband naturally revolts from talking
"shop," even if she is in a position to understand him.
His false sense of shielding her from the rude world makes him keep
his troubles to himself, so she rarely knows his financial position
and sulks over his "meanness" to her, in regard to pin-money; and
being a perfectly idle person, her days are apt to be passed in a
way especially devised by Satan for unoccupied hands. She has
learned no cooking from her mother; "going to market" has become a
thing of the past. So she falls a victim to the allurements of the
bargain-counter; returning home after hours of aimless wandering,
irritable and aggrieved because she cannot own the beautiful things
she has seen. She passes the evening in trying to win her
husband's consent to some purchase he knows he cannot afford, while
it breaks his heart to refuse her - some object, which, were she
really his companion, she would not have had the time to see or the
folly to ask for.
The janitor in our building is truly a toiler. He rarely leaves
his dismal quarters under the sidewalk, but "Madam" walks the
streets clad in sealskin and silk, a "Gainsborough" crowning her
false "bang." I always think of Max O'Rell's clever saying, when I
see her: "The sweat of the American husband crystallizes into
diamond ear-rings for the American woman." My janitress sports a
diminutive pair of those jewels and has hopes of larger ones!
Instead of "doing" the bachelor's rooms in the building as her
husband's helpmeet, she "does" her spouse, and a char-woman works
for her. She is one of the drops in the tide that ebbs and flows
on Twenty-third Street - a discontented woman placed in a false
position by our absurd customs.
Go a little further up in the social scale and you will find the
same "detached" feeling. In a household I know of only one horse
and a COUPE can be afforded. Do you suppose it is for the use of
the weary breadwinner? Not at all. He walks from his home to the
"elevated." The carriage is to take his wife to teas or the park.
In a year or two she will go abroad, leaving him alone to turn the
crank that produces the income. As it is, she always leaves him
for six months each year in a half-closed house, to the tender
mercies of a caretaker. Two additional words could be
advantageously added to the wedding service. After "for richer for
poorer," I should like to hear a bride promise to cling to her
husband "for winter for summer!"
Make another step up and stand in the entrance of a house at two
A.M., just as the cotillion is commencing, and watch the couples
leaving. The husband, who has been in Wall Street all day, knows
that he must be there again at nine next morning. He is furious at
the lateness of the hour, and dropping with fatigue. His wife, who
has done nothing to weary her, is equally enraged to be taken away
just as the ball was becoming amusing. What a happy, united pair
they are as the footman closes the door and the carriage rolls off
home! Who is to blame? The husband is vainly trying to lead the
most exacting of double lives, that of a business man all day and a
society man all night. You can pick him out at a glance in a
ballroom. His eye shows you that there is no rest for him, for he
has placed his wife at the head of an establishment whose working
crushes him into the mud of care and anxiety. Has he any one to
blame but himself?
In England, I am told, the man of a family goes up to London in the
spring and gets his complete outfit, down to the smallest details
of hat-box and umbrella. If there happens to be money left, the
wife gets a new gown or two: if not, she "turns" the old ones and
rejoices vicariously in the splendor of her "lord." I know one
charming little home over there, where the ladies cannot afford a
pony-carriage, because the three indispensable hunters eat up the
where-withal.
Thackeray was delighted to find one household (Major Ponto's) where
the governess ruled supreme, and I feel a fiendish pleasure in
these accounts of a country where men have been able to maintain
some rights, and am moved to preach a crusade for the liberation of
the American husband, that the poor, down-trodden creature may
revolt from the slavery where he is held and once more claim his
birthright. If he be prompt to act (and is successful) he may work
such a reform that our girls, on marrying, may feel that some
duties and responsibilities go with their new positions; and a
state of things be changed, where it is possible for a woman to be
pitied by her friends as a model of abnegation, because she has
decided to remain in town during the summer to keep her husband
company and make his weary home-coming brighter. Or where (as in a
story recently heard) a foreigner on being presented to an American
bride abroad and asking for her husband, could hear in answer: "Oh,
he could not come; he was too busy. I am making my wedding-trip
without him."
CHAPTER 19 - The Grand Prix
IN most cities, it is impossible to say when the "season" ends. In
London and with us in New York it dwindles off without any special
finish, but in Paris it closes like a trap-door, or the curtain on
the last scene of a pantomime, while the lights are blazing and the
orchestra is banging its loudest. The GRAND PRIX, which takes
place on the second Sunday in June, is the climax of the spring
gayeties. Up to that date, the social pace has been getting faster
and faster, like the finish of the big race itself, and fortunately
for the lives of the women as well as the horses, ends as suddenly.
In 1897, the last steeple chase at Auteuil, which precedes the
GRAND-PRIX by one week, was won by a horse belonging to an actress
of the THEATRE FRANCAIS, a lady who has been a great deal before
the public already in connection with the life and death of young
Lebaudy. This youth having had the misfortune to inherit an
enormous fortune, while still a mere boy, plunged into the wildest
dissipation, and became the prey of a band of sharpers and
blacklegs. Mlle. Marie Louise Marsy appears to have been the one
person who had a sincere affection for the unfortunate youth. When
his health gave way during his military service, she threw over her
engagement with the FRANCAIS, and nursed her lover until his death
- a devotion rewarded by the gift of a million.
At the present moment, four or five of the band of self-styled
noblemen who traded on the boy's inexperience and generosity, are
serving out terms in the state prisons for blackmailing, and the
THEATRE FRANCAIS possesses the anomaly of a young and beautiful
actress, who runs a racing stable in her own name.
THE GRAND PRIX dates from the reign of Napoleon III., who, at the
suggestion of the great railway companies, inaugurated this race in
1862, in imitation of the English Derby, as a means of attracting
people to Paris. The city and the railways each give half of the
forty-thousand-dollar prize. It is the great official race of the
year. The President occupies the central pavilion, surrounded by
the members of the cabinet and the diplomatic corps. On the
tribunes and lawn can be seen the TOUT PARIS - all the celebrities
of the great and half-world who play such an important part in the
life of France's capital. The whole colony of the RASTAQUOUERES,
is sure to be there, "RASTAS," as they are familiarly called by the
Parisians, who make little if any distinction in their minds
between a South American (blazing in diamonds and vulgar clothes)
and our own select (?) colony. Apropos of this inability of the
Europeans to appreciate our fine social distinctions, I have been
told of a well-born New Yorker who took a French noblewoman rather
to task for receiving an American she thought unworthy of notice,
and said:
"How can you receive her? Her husband keeps a hotel!"
"Is that any reason?" asked the French-woman; "I thought all
Americans kept hotels."
For the GRAND PRIX, every woman not absolutely bankrupt has a new
costume, her one idea being a CREATION that will attract attention
and eclipse her rivals. The dressmakers have had a busy time of it
for weeks before.
Every horse that can stand up is pressed into service for the day.
For twenty-four hours before, the whole city is EN FETE, and Paris
EN FETE is always a sight worth seeing. The natural gayety of the
Parisians, a characteristic noticed (if we are to believe the
historians) as far back as the conquest of Gaul by Julius Caesar,
breaks out in all its amusing spontaneity. If the day is fine, the
entire population gives itself up to amusement. From early morning
the current sets towards the charming corner of the Bois where the
Longchamps race-course lies, picturesquely encircled by the Seine
(alive with a thousand boats), and backed by the woody slopes of
Suresnes and St. Cloud. By noon every corner and vantage point of
the landscape is seized upon, when, with a blare of trumpets and
the rattle of cavalry, the President arrives in his turnout A LA
DAUMONT, two postilions in blue and gold, and a PIQUEUR, preceded
by a detachment of the showy GARDES REPUBLICAINS on horseback, and
takes his place in the little pavilion where for so many years
Eugenie used to sit in state, and which has sheltered so many
crowned heads under its simple roof. Faure's arrival is the signal
for the racing to begin, from that moment the interest goes on
increasing until the great "event." Then in an instant the vast
throng of human beings breaks up and flows homeward across the
Bois, filling the big Place around the Arc de Triomphe, rolling
down the Champs Elysees, in twenty parallel lines of carriages.
The sidewalks are filled with a laughing, singing, uproarious crowd
that quickly invades every restaurant, CAFE, or chop-house until
their little tables overflow on to the grass and side-walks, and
even into the middle of the streets. Later in the evening the
open-air concerts and theatres are packed, and every little square
organizes its impromptu ball, the musicians mounted on tables, and
the crowd dancing gayly on the wooden pavement until daybreak.
The next day, Paris becomes from a fashionable point of view,
"impossible." If you walk through the richer quarters, you will
see only long lines of closed windows. The approaches to the
railway stations are blocked with cabs piled with trunks and
bicycles. The "great world" is fleeing to the seashore or its
CHATEAUX, and Paris will know it no more until January, for the
French are a country-loving race, and since there has been no
court, the aristocracy pass longer and longer periods on their own
estates each year, partly from choice and largely to show their
disdain for the republic and its entertainments.
The shady drives in the park, which only a day or two ago were so
brilliant with smart traps and spring toilets, are become a cool
wilderness, where will meet, perhaps, a few maiden ladies
exercising fat dogs, uninterrupted except by the watering-cart or
by a few stray tourists in cabs. Now comes a delightful time for
the real amateur of Paris and the country around, which is full of
charming corners where one can dine at quiet little restaurants,
overhanging the water or buried among trees. You are sure of
getting the best of attention from the waiters, and the dishes you
order receive all the cook's attention. Of an evening the Bois is
alive with a myriad of bicycles, their lights twinkling among the
trees like many-colored fire-flies. To any one who knows how to
live there, Paris is at its best in the last half of June and July.
Nevertheless, in a couple of days there will not be an American in
Paris, London being the objective point; for we love to be "in at
the death," and a coronation, a musical festival, or a big race is
sure to attract all our floating population.
The Americans who have the hardest time in Paris are those who try
to "run with the deer and hunt with the hounds," as the French
proverb has it, who would fain serve God and Mammon. As anything
especially amusing is sure to take place on Sunday in this wicked
capital, our friends go through agonies of indecision, their
consciences pulling one way, their desire to amuse themselves the
other. Some find a middle course, it seems, for yesterday this
conversation was overheard on the steps of the American Church:
FIRST AMERICAN LADY: "Are you going to stop for the sermon?"
SECOND AMERICAN LADY: "I am so sorry I can't, but the races begin
at one!"
CHAPTER 20 - "The Treadmill."
A HALF-HUMOROUS, half-pathetic epistle has been sent to me by a
woman, who explains in it her particular perplexity. Such letters
are the windfalls of our profession! For what is more attractive
than to have a woman take you for her lay confessor, to whom she
comes for advice in trouble? opening her innocent heart for your
inspection!
My correspondent complains that her days are not sufficiently long,
nor is her strength great enough, for the thousand and one duties
and obligations imposed upon her. "If," she says, "a woman has
friends and a small place in the world - and who has not in these
days? - she must golf or 'bike' or skate a bit, of a morning; then
she is apt to lunch out, or have a friend or two in, to that meal.
After luncheon there is sure to be a 'class' of some kind that she
has foolishly joined, or a charity meeting, matinee, or reception;
but above all, there are her 'duty' calls. She must be home at
five to make tea, that she has promised her men friends, and they
will not leave until it is time for her to dress for dinner, 'out'
or at home, with often the opera, a supper, or a ball to follow.
It is quite impossible," she adds, "under these circumstances to
apply one's self to anything serious, to read a book or even open a
periodical. The most one can accomplish is a glance at a paper."
Indeed, it would require an exceptional constitution to carry out
the above programme, not to mention the attention that a woman must
(however reluctantly) give to her house and her family. Where are
the quiet hours to be found for self-culture, the perusal of a
favorite author, or, perhaps, a little timid "writing" on her own
account? Nor does this treadmill round fill a few months only of
her life. With slight variations of scene and costume, it
continues through the year.
A painter, I know, was fortunate enough to receive, a year or two
ago, the commission to paint a well-known beauty. He was delighted
with the idea and convinced that he could make her portrait the
best work of his life, one that would be the stepping-stone to fame
and fortune. This was in the spring. He was naturally burning to
begin at once, but found to his dismay that the lady was just about
starting for Europe. So he waited, and at her suggestion installed
himself a couple of months later at the seaside city where she had
a cottage. No one could be more charming than she was, inviting
him to dine and drive daily, but when he broached the subject of
"sitting," was "too busy just that day." Later in the autumn she
would be quite at his disposal. In the autumn, however, she was
visiting, never ten days in the same place. Early winter found her
"getting her house in order," a mysterious rite apparently attended
with vast worry and fatigue. With cooling enthusiasm, the painter
called and coaxed and waited. November brought the opera and the
full swing of a New York season. So far she has given him half a
dozen sittings, squeezed in between a luncheon, which made her
"unavoidably late," for which she is charmingly "sorry," and a
reception that she was forced to attend, although "it breaks my
heart to leave just as you are beginning to work so well, but I
really must, or the tiresome old cat who is giving the tea will be
saying all sorts of unpleasant things about me." So she flits off,
leaving the poor, disillusioned painter before his canvas, knowing
now that his dream is over, that in a month or two his pretty
sitter will be off again to New Orleans for the carnival, or
abroad, and that his weary round of waiting will recommence. He
will be fortunate if some day it does not float back to him, in the
mysterious way disagreeable things do come to one, that she has
been heard to say, "I fear dear Mr. Palette is not very clever, for
I have been sitting to him for over a year, and he has really done
nothing yet."
He has been simply the victim of a state of affairs that neither of
them were strong enough to break through. It never entered into
Beauty's head that she could lead a life different from her
friends. She was honestly anxious to have a successful portrait of
herself, but the sacrifice of any of her habits was more than she
could make.
Who among my readers (and I am tempted to believe they are all more
sensible than the above young woman) has not, during a summer
passed with agreeable friends, made a thousand pleasant little
plans with them for the ensuing winter, - the books they were to
read at the same time, the "exhibitions" they were to see, the
visits to our wonderful collections in the Metropolitan Museum or
private galleries, cosy little dinners, etc.? And who has not
found, as the winter slips away, that few of these charming plans
have been carried out? He and his friends have unconsciously
fallen back into their ruts of former years, and the pleasant
things projected have been brushed aside by that strongest of
tyrants, habit.
I once asked a very great lady, whose gracious manner was never
disturbed, who floated through the endless complications of her
life with smiling serenity, how she achieved this Olympian calm.
She was good enough to explain. "I make a list of what I want to
do each day. Then, as I find my day passing, or I get behind, or
tired, I throw over every other engagement. I could have done them
all with hurry and fatigue. I prefer to do one-half and enjoy what
I do. If I go to a house, it is to remain and appreciate whatever
entertainment has been prepared for me. I never offer to any
hostess the slight of a hurried, DISTRAIT 'call,' with glances at
my watch, and an 'on-the-wing' manner. It is much easier not to
go, or to send a card."
This brings me around to a subject which I believe is one of the
causes of my correspondent's dilemma. I fear that she never can
refuse anything. It is a peculiar trait of people who go about to
amuse themselves, that they are always sure the particular
entertainment they have been asked to last is going to "be
amusing." It rarely is different from the others, but these people
are convinced, that to stay away would be to miss something. A
weary-looking girl about 1 A.M. (at a house-party) when asked why
she did not go to bed if she was so tired, answered, "the nights I
go to bed early, they always seem to do something jolly, and then I
miss it."
There is no greater proof of how much this weary round wears on
women than the acts of the few who feel themselves strong enough in
their position to defy custom. They have thrown off the yoke (at
least the younger ones have) doubtless backed up by their husbands,
for men are much quicker to see the aimlessness of this stupid
social routine. First they broke down the great New-Year-call
"grind." Men over forty doubtless recall with a shudder, that
awful custom which compelled a man to get into his dress clothes at
ten A.M., and pass his day rushing about from house to house like a
postman. Out-of-town clubs and sport helped to do away with that
remnant of New Amsterdam. Next came the male revolt from the
afternoon "tea" or "musical." A black coat is rare now at either
of these functions, or if seen is pretty sure to be on a back over
fifty. Next, we lords of creation refused to call at all, or leave
our cards. A married woman now leaves her husband's card with her
own, and sisters leave the "pasteboard" of their brothers and often
those of their brothers' friends. Any combination is good enough
to "shoot a card."
In London the men have gone a step further. It is not uncommon to
hear a young man boast that he never owned a visiting card or made
a "duty" call in his life. Neither there nor with us does a man
count as a "call" a quiet cup of tea with a woman he likes, and a
cigarette and quiet talk until dressing time. Let the young women
have courage and take matters into their own hands. (The older
ones are hopeless and will go on pushing this Juggernaut car over
each other's weary bodies, until the end of the chapter.) Let them
have the courage occasionally to "refuse" something, to keep
themselves free from aimless engagements, and bring this paste-
board war to a close. If a woman is attractive, she will be asked
out all the same, never fear! If she is not popular, the few dozen
of "egg-shell extra" that she can manage to slip in at the front
doors of her acquaintances will not help her much.
If this matter is, however, so vastly important in women's eyes,
why not adopt the continental and diplomatic custom and send cards
by post or otherwise? There, if a new-comer dines out and meets
twenty-five people for the first time, cards must be left the next
day at their twenty-five respective residences. How the cards get
there is of no importance. It is a diplomatic fiction that the new
acquaintance has called in person, and the call will be returned
within twenty-four hours. Think of the saving of time and
strength! In Paris, on New Year's Day, people send cards by post
to everybody they wish to keep up. That does for a year, and no
more is thought about it. All the time thus gained can be given to
culture or recreation.
I have often wondered why one sees so few women one knows at our
picture exhibitions or flower shows. It is no longer a mystery to
me. They are all busy trotting up and down our long side streets
leaving cards. Hideous vision! Should Dante by any chance
reincarnate, he would find here the material ready made to his hand
for an eighth circle in his INFERNO.
CHAPTER 21 - "Like Master Like Man."
A FREQUENT and naive complaint one hears, is of the
unsatisfactoriness of servants generally, and their ingratitude and
astonishing lack of affection for their masters, in particular.
"After all I have done for them," is pretty sure to sum up the long
tale of a housewife's griefs. Of all the delightful
inconsistencies that grace the female mind, this latter point of
view always strikes me as being the most complete. I artfully lead
my fair friend on to tell me all about her woes, and she is sure to
be exquisitely one-sided and quite unconscious of her position.
"They are so extravagant, take so little interest in my things, and
leave me at a moment's notice, if they get an idea I am going to
break up. Horrid things! I wish I could do without them! They
cause me endless worry and annoyance." My friend is very nearly
right, - but with whom lies the fault?
The conditions were bad enough years ago, when servants were kept
for decades in the same family, descending like heirlooms from
father to son, often (abroad) being the foster sisters or brothers
of their masters, and bound to the household by an hundred ties of
sympathy and tradition. But in our day, and in America, where
there is rarely even a common language or nationality to form a
bond, and where households are broken up with such facility, the
relation between master and servant is often so strained and so
unpleasant that we risk becoming (what foreigners reproach us with
being), a nation of hotel-dwellers. Nor is this class-feeling
greatly to be wondered at. The contrary would be astonishing.
From the primitive household, where a poor neighbor comes in as
"help," to the "great" establishment where the butler and
housekeeper eat apart, and a group of plush-clad flunkies imported
from England adorn the entrance-hall, nothing could be better
contrived to set one class against another than domestic service.
Proverbs have grown out of it in every language. "No man is a hero
to his valet," and "familiarity breeds contempt," are clear enough.
Our comic papers are full of the misunderstandings and absurdities
of the situation, while one rarely sees a joke made about the other
ways that the poor earn their living. Think of it for a moment!
To be obliged to attend people at the times of day when they are
least attractive, when from fatigue or temper they drop the mask
that society glues to their faces so many hours in the twenty-four;
to see always the seamy side of life, the small expedients, the
aids to nature; to stand behind a chair and hear an acquaintance of
your master's ridiculed, who has just been warmly praised to his
face; to see a hostess who has been graciously urging her guests
"not to go so soon," blurt out all her boredom and thankfulness
"that those tiresome So-and-So's" are "paid off at last," as soon
as the door is closed behind them, must needs give a curious bent
to a servant's mind. They see their employers insincere, and copy
them. Many a mistress who has been smilingly assured by her maid
how much her dress becomes her, and how young she is looking, would
be thunderstruck to hear herself laughed at and criticised (none
too delicately) five minutes later in that servant's talk.
Servants are trained from their youth up to conceal their true
feelings. A domestic who said what she thought would quickly lose
her place. Frankly, is it not asking a good deal to expect a maid
to be very fond of a lady who makes her sit up night after night
until the small hours to unlace her bodice or take down her hair;
or imagine a valet can be devoted to a master he has to get into
bed as best he can because he is too tipsy to get there unaided?
Immortal "Figaro" is the type! Supple, liar, corrupt, intelligent,
- he aids his master and laughs at him, feathering his own nest the
while. There is a saying that "horses corrupt whoever lives with
them." It would be more correct to say that domestic service
demoralizes alike both master and man.
Already we are obliged to depend on immigration for our servants
because an American revolts from the false position, though he
willingly accepts longer hours or harder work where he has no one
around him but his equals. It is the old story of the free, hungry
wolf, and the well-fed, but chained, house-dog. The foreigners
that immigration now brings us, from countries where great class
distinctions exist, find it natural to "serve." With the increase
in education and consequent self-respect, the difficulty of getting
efficient and contented servants will increase with us. It has
already become a great social problem in England. The trouble lies
beneath the surface. If a superior class accept service at all, it
is with the intention of quickly getting money enough to do
something better. With them service is merely the means to an end.
A first step on the ladder!
Bad masters are the cause of so much suffering, that to protect
themselves, the great brother-hood of servants have imagined a
system of keeping run of "places," and giving them a "character"
which an aspirant can find out with little trouble. This
organization is so complete, and so well carried out, that a
household where the lady has a "temper," where the food is poor, or
which breaks up often, can rarely get a first-class domestic. The
"place" has been boycotted, a good servant will sooner remain idle
than enter it. If circumstances are too much for him and he
accepts the situation, it is with his eyes open, knowing infinitely
more about his new employers and their failings than they dream of,
or than they could possibly find out about him.
One thing never can be sufficiently impressed on people, viz.: that
we are forced to live with detectives, always behind us in caps or
dress-suits, ready to note every careless word, every incautious
criticism of friend or acquaintance - their money matters or their
love affairs - and who have nothing more interesting to do than to
repeat what they have heard, with embroideries and additions of
their own. Considering this, and that nine people out of ten talk
quite oblivious of their servants' presence, it is to be wondered
at that so little (and not that so much) trouble is made.
It always amuses me when I ask a friend if she is going abroad in
the spring, to have her say "Hush!" with a frightened glance
towards the door.
"I am; but I do not want the servants to know, or the horrid things
would leave me!"
Poor, simple lady! They knew it before you did, and had discussed
the whole matter over their "tea" while it was an almost unuttered
thought in your mind. If they have not already given you notice,
it is because, on the whole your house suits them well enough for
the present, while they look about. Do not worry your simple soul,
trying to keep anything from them. They know the amount of your
last dressmaker's bill, and the row your husband made over it.
They know how much you would have liked young "Croesus" for your
daughter, and the little tricks you played to bring that marriage
about. They know why you are no longer asked to dine at Mrs.
Swell's, which is more than you know yourself. Mrs. Swell
explained the matter to a few friends over her lunch-table
recently, and the butler told your maid that same evening, who was
laughing at the story as she put on your slippers!
Before we blame them too much, however, let us remember that they
have it in their power to make great trouble if they choose. And
considering the little that is made in this way, we must conclude
that, on the whole, they are better than we give them credit for
being, and fill a trying situation with much good humor and
kindliness. The lady who is astonished that they take so little
interest in her, will perhaps feel differently if she reflects how
little trouble she has given herself to find out their anxieties
and griefs, their temptations and heart-burnings; their material
situation; whom they support with their slowly earned wages, what
claims they have on them from outside. If she will also reflect on
the number of days in a year when she is "not herself," when
headaches or disappointments ruffle her charming temper, she may
come to the conclusion that it is too much to expect all the
virtues for twenty dollars a month.
A little more human interest, my good friends, a little more
indulgence, and you will not risk finding yourself in the position
of the lady who wrote me that last summer she had been obliged to
keep open house for "'Cook' tourists!"
CHAPTER 22 - An English Invasion of the Riviera
WHEN sixty years ago Lord Brougham, EN ROUTE for Italy, was thrown
from his travelling berline and his leg was broken, near the
Italian hamlet of Cannes, the Riviera was as unknown to the polite
world as the centre of China. The GRAND TOUR which every young
aristocrat made with his tutor, on coming of age, only included
crossing from France into Italy by the Alps. It was the occurrence
of an unusually severe winter in Switzerland that turned Brougham
aside into the longer and less travelled route VIA the Corniche,
the marvellous Roman road at that time fallen into oblivion, and
little used even by the local peasantry.
During the tedious weeks while his leg was mending, Lord Brougham
amused himself by exploring the surrounding country in his
carriage, and was quick to realize the advantages of the climate,
and appreciate the marvellous beauty of that coast. Before the
broken member was whole again, he had bought a tract of land and
begun a villa. Small seed, to furnish such a harvest! To the
traveller of to-day the Riviera offers an almost unbroken chain of
beautiful residences from Marseilles to Genoa.
A Briton willingly follows where a lord leads, and Cannes became
the centre of English fashion, a position it holds to-day in spite
of many attractive rivals, and the defection of Victoria who comes
now to Cimiez, back of Nice, being unwilling to visit Cannes since
the sudden death there of the Duke of Albany. A statue of Lord
Brougham, the "discoverer" of the littoral, has been erected in the
sunny little square at Cannes, and the English have in many other
ways, stamped the city for their own.
No other race carry their individuality with them as they do. They
can live years in a country and assimilate none of its customs; on
the contrary, imposing habits of their own. It is just this that
makes them such wonderful colonizers, and explains why you will
find little groups of English people drinking ale and playing golf
in the shade of the Pyramids or near the frozen slopes of
Foosiyama. The real inwardness of it is that they are a dull race,
and, like dull people despise all that they do not understand. To
differ from them is to be in the wrong. They cannot argue with
you; they simply know, and that ends the matter.
I had a discussion recently with a Briton on the pronunciation of a
word. As there is no "Institute," as in France, to settle matters
of this kind, I maintained that we Americans had as much authority
for our pronunciation of this particular word as the English. The
answer was characteristic.
"I know I am right," said my Island friend, "because that is the
way I pronounce it!"
Walking along the principal streets of Cannes to-day, you might
imagine yourself (except for the climate) at Cowes or Brighton, so
British are the shops and the crowd that passes them. Every
restaurant advertises "afternoon tea" and Bass's ale, and every
other sign bears a London name. This little matter of tea is
particularly characteristic of the way the English have imposed a
taste of their own on a rebellious nation. Nothing is further from
the French taste than tea-drinking, and yet a Parisian lady will
now invite you gravely to "five o'clocker" with her, although I can
remember when that beverage was abhorred by the French as a
medicine; if you had asked a Frenchman to take a cup of tea, he
would have answered:
"Why? I am not ill!"
Even Paris (that supreme and undisputed arbiter of taste) has
submitted to English influence; tailor-made dresses and low-heeled
shoes have become as "good form" in France as in London. The last
two Presidents of the French Republic have taken the oath of office
dressed in frock-coats instead of the dress clothes to which French
officials formerly clung as to the sacraments.
The municipalities of the little Southern cities were quick to
seize their golden opportunity, and everything was done to detain
the rich English wandering down towards Italy. Millions were spent
in transforming their cramped, dirty, little towns. Wide
boulevards bordered with palm and eucalyptus spread their sunny
lines in all directions, being baptized PROMENADE DES ANGLAIS or
BOULEVARD VICTORIA, in artful flattery. The narrow mountain roads
were widened, casinos and theatres built and carnival FETES
organized, the cities offering "cups" for yacht- or horse-races,
and giving grounds for tennis and golf clubs. Clever Southern
people! The money returned to them a hundredfold, and they lived
to see their wild coast become the chosen residence of the
wealthiest aristocracy in Europe, and the rocky hillsides blossom
into terrace above terrace of villa gardens, where palm and rose
and geranium vie with the olive and the mimosa to shade the white
villas from the sun. To-day, no little town on the coast is
without its English chapel, British club, tennis ground, and golf
links. On a fair day at Monte Carlo, Nice, or Cannes, the
prevailing conversation is in English, and the handsome, well-
dressed sons of Albion lounge along beside their astonishing
womankind as thoroughly at home as on Bond Street.
Those wonderful English women are the source of unending marvel and
amusement to the French. They can never understand them, and small
wonder, for with the exception of the small "set" that surrounds
the Prince of Wales, who are dressed in the Parisian fashion, all
English women seem to be overwhelmed with regret at not being born
men, and to have spent their time and ingenuity since, in trying to
make up for nature's mistake. Every masculine garment is twisted
by them to fit the female figure; their conversation, like that of
their brothers, is about horses and dogs; their hats and gloves are
the same as the men's; and when with their fine, large feet in
stout shoes they start off, with that particular swinging gait that
makes the skirt seem superfluous, for a stroll of twenty miles or
so, Englishwomen do seem to the uninitiated to have succeeded in
their ambition of obliterating the difference between the sexes.
It is of an evening, however, when concealment is no longer
possible, that the native taste bursts forth, the Anglo-Saxon
standing declared in all her plainness. Strong is the contrast
here, where they are placed side by side with all that Europe holds
of elegant, and well-dressed Frenchwomen, whether of the "world" or
the "half-world," are invariably marvels of fitness and freshness,
the simplest materials being converted by their skilful touch into
toilettes, so artfully adapted to the wearer's figure and
complexion, as to raise such "creations" to the level of a fine
art.
An artist feels, he must fix on canvas that particular combination
of colors or that wonderful line of bust and hip. It is with a
shudder that he turns to the British matron, for she has probably,
for this occasion, draped herself in an "art material," -
principally "Liberty" silks of dirty greens and blues (aesthetic
shades!). He is tempted to cry out in his disgust: "Oh, Liberty!
Liberty! How many crimes are committed in thy name!" It is one of
the oddest things in the world that the English should have elected
to live so much in France, for there are probably nowhere two
peoples so diametrically opposed on every point, or who so
persistently and wilfully misunderstand each other, as the English
and the French.
It has been my fate to live a good deal on both sides of the
Channel, and nothing is more amusing than to hear the absurdities
that are gravely asserted by each of their neighbors. To a Briton,
a Frenchman will always be "either tiger or monkey" according to
Voltaire; while to the French mind English gravity is only
hypocrisy to cover every vice. Nothing pleases him so much as a
great scandal in England; he will gleefully bring you a paper
containing the account of it, to prove how true is his opinion. It
is quite useless to explain to the British mind, as I have often
tried to do, that all Frenchmen do not pass their lives drinking
absinthe on the boulevards; and as Englishmen seem to leave their
morals in a valise at Dover when off for a visit to Paris, to be
picked up on their return, it is time lost to try to make a Gaul
understand what good husbands and fathers the sons of Albion are.
These two great nations seem to stand in the relation to each other
that Rome and Greece held. The English are the conquerors of the
world, and its great colonizers; with a vast capital in which
wealth and misery jostle each other on the streets; a hideous
conglomeration of buildings and monuments, without form and void,
very much as old Rome must have been under the Caesars, enormous
buildings without taste, and enormous wealth. The French have
inherited the temperament of the Greeks. The drama, painting, and
sculpture are the preoccupation of the people. The yearly
exhibitions are, for a month before they open, the unique subject
of conversation in drawing-room or club. The state protects the
artist and buys his work. Their CONSERVATOIRES form the singers,
and their schools the painters and architects of Europe and
America.
The English copy them in their big way, just as the Romans copied
the masterpieces of Greek art, while they despised the authors. It
is rare that a play succeeds in Paris which is not instantly
translated and produced in London, often with the adapter's name
printed on the programme in place of the author's, the French-man,
who only wrote it, being ignored. Just as the Greeks faded away
and disappeared before their Roman conquerors, it is to be feared
that in our day this people of a finer clay will succumb. The
"defects of their qualities" will be their ruin. They will stop at
home, occupied with literature and art, perfecting their dainty
cities; while their tougher neighbors are dominating the globe,
imposing their language and customs on the conquered peoples or the
earth. One feels this on the Riviera. It reminds you of the
cuckoo who, once installed in a robin's nest, that seems to him
convenient and warmly located in the sunshine, ends by kicking out
all the young robins.
CHAPTER 23 - A Common Weakness
GOVERNMENTS may change and all the conditions of life be modified,
but certain ambitions and needs of man remain immutable. Climates,
customs, centuries, have in no way diminished the craving for
consideration, the desire to be somebody, to bear some mark
indicating to the world that one is not as other men.
For centuries titles supplied the want. This satisfaction has been
denied to us, so ambitious souls are obliged to seek other means to
feed their vanity.
Even before we were born into the world of nations, an attempt was
made amongst the aristocratically minded court surrounding our
chief magistrate, to form a society that should (without the name)
be the beginning of a class apart.
The order of the Cincinnati was to have been the nucleus of an
American nobility. The tendencies of this society are revealed by
the fact that primogeniture was its fundamental law. Nothing could
have been more opposed to the spirit of the age, nor more at
variance with the declaration of our independence, than the
insertion of such a clause. This fact was discovered by the far-
seeing eye of Washington, and the society was suppressed in the
hope (shared by almost all contemporaries) that with new forms of
government the nature of man would undergo a transformation and
rise above such puerile ambitions.
Time has shown the fallacy of these dreams. All that has been
accomplished is the displacement of the objective point; the
desire, the mania for a handle to one's name is as prevalent as
ever. Leave the centres of civilization and wander in the small
towns and villages of our country. Every other man you meet is
introduced as the Colonel or the Judge, and you will do well not to
inquire too closely into the matter, nor to ask to see the title-
deeds to such distinctions. On the other hand, to omit his prefix
in addressing one of these local magnates, would be to offend him
deeply. The women-folk were quick to borrow a little of this
distinction, and in Washington to-day one is gravely presented to
Mrs. Senator Smith or Mrs. Colonel Jones. The climax being reached
by one aspiring female who styles herself on her visiting cards,
"Mrs. Acting-Assistant-Paymaster Robinson." If by any chance it
should occur to any one to ask her motive in sporting such an
unwieldy handle, she would say that she did it "because one can't
be going about explaining that one is not just ordinary Mrs.
Robinson or Thompson, like the thousand others in town." A woman
who cannot find an excuse for assuming such a prefix will sometime
have recourse to another stratagem, to particularize an ordinary
surname. She remembers that her husband, who ever since he was
born has been known to everybody as Jim, is the proud possessor of
the middle name Ivanhoe, or Pericles (probably the result of a
romantic mother's reading); so one fine day the young couple bloom
out as Mr. and Mrs. J. Pericles Sparks, to the amusement of their
friends, their own satisfaction, and the hopeless confusion of
their tradespeople.
Not long ago a Westerner, who went abroad with a travelling show,
was received with enthusiasm in England because it was thought "The
Honorable" which preceded his name on his cards implied that
although an American he was somehow the son of an earl. As a
matter of fact he owed this title to having sat, many years before
in the Senate of a far-western State. He will cling to that
"Honorable" and print it on his cards while life lasts. I was told
the other day of an American carpet warrior who appeared at court
function abroad decorated with every college badge, and football
medal in his possession, to which he added at the last moment a
brass trunk check, to complete the brilliancy of the effect. This
latter decoration attracted the attention of the Heir Apparent, who
inquired the meaning of the mystic "416" upon it. This would have
been a "facer" to any but a true son of Uncle Sam. Nothing
daunted, however, our "General" replied "That, Sir, is the number
of pitched battles I have won."
I have my doubts as to the absolute veracity of this tale. But
that the son of one of our generals, appeared not long ago at a
public reception abroad, wearing his father's medals and
decorations, is said to be true. Decorations on the Continent are
official badges of distinction conferred and recognized by the
different governments. An American who wears, out of his own
country, an army or college badge which has no official existence,
properly speaking, being recognized by no government, but which is
made intentionally to look as much as possible like the "Legion
d'Honneur," is deliberately imposing on the ignorance of
foreigners, and is but little less of a pretentious idiot than the
owners of the trunk check and the borrowed decorations.
There seems no end to the ways a little ambitious game can be
played. One device much in favor is for the wife to attach her own
family name to that of her husband by means of a hyphen. By this
arrangement she does not entirely lose her individuality; as a
result we have a splendid assortment of hybrid names, such as Van
Cortland-Smith and Beekman-Brown. Be they never so incongruous
these double-barrelled cognomens serve their purpose and raise
ambitious mortals above the level of other Smiths and Browns.
Finding that this arrangement works well in their own case, it is
passed on to the next generation. There are no more Toms and Bills
in these aspiring days. The little boys are all Cadwalladers or
Carrolls. Their school-fellows, however, work sad havoc with these
high-sounding titles and quickly abbreviate them into humble "Cad"
or "Rol."
It is surprising to notice what a number of middle-aged gentlemen
have blossomed out of late with decorations in their button-holes
according to the foreign fashion. On inquiry I have discovered
that these ornaments designate members of the G.A.R., the Loyal
Legion, or some local Post, for the rosettes differ in form and
color. When these gentlemen travel abroad, to reduce their waists
or improve their minds, the effects on the hotel waiters and cabmen
must be immense. They will be charged three times the ordinary
tariff instead of only the double which is the stranger's usual
fate at the hands of simple-minded foreigners. The satisfaction
must be cheap, however, at that price.
Even our wise men and sages do not seem to have escaped the
contagion. One sees professors and clergymen (who ought to set a
better example) trailing half a dozen letters after their names,
initials which to the initiated doubtless mean something, but which
are also intended to fill the souls of the ignorant with envy. I
can recall but one case of a foreign decoration being refused by a
compatriot. He was a genius and we all know that geniuses are
crazy. This gentleman had done something particularly gratifying
to an Eastern potentate, who in return offered him one of his
second-best orders. It was at once refused. When urged on him a
second time our countryman lost his temper and answered, "If you
want to give it to somebody, present it to my valet. He is most
anxious to be decorated." And it was done!
It does not require a deeply meditative mind to discover the
motives of ambitious struggles. The first and strongest illusion
of the human mind is to believe that we are different from our
fellows, and our natural impulse is to try and impress this belief
upon others.
Pride of birth is but one of the manifestations of the universal
weakness - invariably taking stronger and stronger hold of the
people, who from the modest dimension of their income, or other
untoward circumstances, can find no outward and visible form with
which to dazzle the world. You will find that a desire to shine is
the secret of most of the tips and presents that are given while
travelling or visiting, for they can hardly be attributed to pure
spontaneous generosity.
How many people does one meet who talk of their poor and
unsuccessful relatives while omitting to mention rich and powerful
connections? We are told that far from blaming such a tendency we
are to admire it. That it is proper pride to put one's best foot
forward and keep an offending member well out of sight, that the
man who wears a rosette in the button-hole of his coat and has half
the alphabet galloping after his name, is an honor to his family.
Far be it from me to deride this weakness in others, for in my
heart I am persuaded that if I lived in China, nothing would please
me more than to have my cap adorned with a coral button, while if
fate had cast my life in the pleasant places of central Africa, a
ring in my nose would doubtless have filled my soul with joy. The
fact that I share this weakness does not, however, prevent my
laughing at such folly in others.
CHAPTER 24 - Changing Paris
PARIS is beginning to show signs of the coming "Exhibition of
1900," and is in many ways going through a curious stage of
transformation, socially as well as materially. The PALAIS DE
L'INDUSTRIE, familiar to all visitors here, as the home of the
SALONS, the Horse Shows, and a thousand gay FETES and merry-
makings, is being torn down to make way for the new avenue leading,
with the bridge Alexander III., from the Champs Elysees to the
Esplanade des Invalides. This thoroughfare with the gilded dome of
Napoleon's tomb to close its perspective is intended to be the
feature of the coming "show."
Curious irony of things in this world! The PALAIS DE L'INDUSTRIE
was intended to be the one permanent building of the exhibition of
1854. An old "Journal" I often read tells how the writer saw the
long line of gilded coaches (borrowed from Versailles for the
occasion), eight horses apiece, led by footmen - horses and men
blazing in embroidered trappings - leave the Tuileries and proceed
at a walk to the great gateway of the now disappearing palace.
Victoria and Albert who were on an official visit to the Emperor
were the first to alight; then Eugenie in the radiance of her
perfect beauty stepped from the coach (sad omen!) that fifty years
before had taken Josephine in tears to Malmaison.
It may interest some ladies to know how an Empress was dressed on
that spring morning forty-four years ago. She wore rose-colored
silk with an over-dress (I think that is what it is called) of
black lace flounces, immense hoops, and a black CHANTILLY lace
shawl. Her hair, a brilliant golden auburn, was dressed low on the
temples, covering the ears, and hung down her back in a gold net
almost to her waist; at the extreme back of her head was placed a
black and rose-colored bonnet; open "flowing" sleeves showed her
bare arms, one-buttoned, straw-colored gloves, and ruby bracelets;
she carried a tiny rose-colored parasol not a foot in diameter.
How England's great sovereign was dressed the writer of the journal
does not so well remember, for in those days Eugenie was the
cynosure of all eyes, and people rarely looked at anything else
when they could get a glimpse of her lovely face.
It appears, however, that the Queen sported an India shawl, hoops,
and a green bonnet, which was not particularly becoming to her red
face. She and Napoleon entered the building first; the Empress
(who was in delicate health) was carried in an open chair, with
Prince Albert walking at her side, a marvellously handsome couple
to follow the two dowdy little sovereigns who preceded them. The
writer had by bribery succeeded in getting places in an ENTRESOL
window under the archway, and was greatly impressed to see those
four great ones laughing and joking together over Eugenie's trouble
in getting her hoops into the narrow chair!
What changes have come to that laughing group! Two are dead, one
dying in exile and disgrace; and it would be hard to find in the
two rheumatic old ladies whom one sees pottering about the Riviera
now, any trace of those smiling wives. In France it is as if a
tidal wave had swept over Napoleon's court. Only the old palace
stood severely back from the Champs Elysees, as if guarding its
souvenirs. The pick of the mason has brought down the proud
gateway which its imperial builder fondly imagined was to last for
ages. The Tuileries preceded it into oblivion. The Alpha and
Omega of that gorgeous pageant of the fifties vanished like a
mirage!
It is not here alone one finds Paris changing. A railway is being
brought along the quais with its depot at the Invalides. Another
is to find its terminus opposite the Louvre, where the picturesque
ruin of the Cour des Comptes has stood half-hidden by the trees
since 1870. A line of electric cars crosses the Rond Point, in
spite of the opposition of all the neighborhood, anxious to keep,
at least that fine perspective free from such desecration. And,
last but not least, there is every prospect of an immense system of
elevated railways being inaugurated in connection with the coming
world's fair. The direction of this kind of improvement is
entirely in the hands of the Municipal Council, and that body has
become (here in Paris) extremely radical, not to say communistic;
and takes pleasure in annoying the inhabitants of the richer
quarters of the city, under pretext of improvements and facilities
of circulation.
It is easy to see how strong the feeling is against the
aristocratic class. Nor is it much to be wondered at! The
aristocracy seem to try to make themselves unpopular. They detest
the republic, which has shorn them of their splendor, and do
everything in their power (socially and diplomatically their power
is still great) to interfere with and frustrate the plans of the
government. Only last year they seized an opportunity at the
funerals of the Duchesse d'Alencon and the Duc d'Aumale to make a
royalist manifestation of the most pronounced character. The young
Duchesse d'Orleans was publicly spoken of and treated as the "Queen
of France;" at the private receptions given during her stay in
Paris the same ceremonial was observed as if she had been really on
the throne. The young Duke, her husband, was not present, being in
exile as a pretender, but armorial bearings of the "reigning
family," as their followers insist on calling them, were hung
around the Madeleine and on the funeral-cars of both the
illustrious dead.
The government is singularly lenient to the aristocrats. If a poor
man cries "Long live the Commune!" in the street, he is arrested.
The police, however, stood quietly by and let a group of the old
nobility shout "Long live the Queen!" as the train containing the
young Duchesse d'Orleans moved out of the station. The secret of
this leniency toward the "pretenders" to the throne, is that they
are very little feared. If it amuses a set of wealthy people to
play at holding a court, the strong government of the republic
cares not one jot. The Orleans family have never been popular in
France, and the young pretender's marriage to an Austrian
Archduchess last year has not improved matters.
It is the fashion in the conservative Faubourg St. Germain, to
ridicule the President, his wife and their bourgeois surroundings,
as forty years ago the parents of these aristocrats affected to
despise the imperial PARVENUS. The swells amused themselves during
the official visit of the Emperor and Empress of Russia last year
(which was gall and wormwood to them) by exaggerating and repeating
all the small slips in etiquette that the President, an
intelligent, but simple-mannered gentleman, was supposed to have
made during the sojourn of his imperial guests.
Both M. and Mme. Faure are extremely popular with the people, and
are heartily cheered whenever they are seen in public. The
President is the despair of the lovers of routine and etiquette,
walking in and out of his Palais of the Elysee, like a private
individual, and breaking all rules and regulations. He is fond of
riding, and jogs off to the Bois of a morning with no escort, and
often of an evening drops in at the theatres in a casual way. The
other night at the Francais he suddenly appeared in the FOYER DES
ARTISTES (A beautiful greenroom, hung with historical portraits of
great actors and actresses, one of the prides of the theatre) in
this informal manner. Mme. Bartet, who happened to be there alone
at the time, was so impressed at such an unprecedented event that
she fainted, and the President had to run for water and help revive
her. The next day he sent the great actress a beautiful vase of
Sevres china, full of water, in souvenir.
To a lover of old things and old ways any changes in the Paris he
has known and loved are a sad trial. Henri Drumont, in his
delightful MON VIEUX PARIS, deplores this modern mania for reform
which has done such good work in the new quarters but should, he
thinks, respect the historic streets and shady squares.
One naturally feels that the sights familiar in youth lose by being
transformed and doubts the necessity of such improvements.
The Rome of my childhood is no more! Half of Cairo was ruthlessly
transformed in sixty-five into a hideous caricature of modern
Paris. Milan has been remodelled, each city losing in charm as it
gained in convenience.
So far Paris has held her own. The spirit of the city has not been
lost, as in the other capitals. The fair metropolis of France, in
spite of many transformations, still holds her admirers with a
dominating sway. She pours out for them a strong elixir that once
tasted takes the flavor out of existence in other cities and makes
her adorers, when in exile, thirst for another draught of the
subtle nectar.
CHAPTER 25 - Contentment
AS the result of certain ideal standards adopted among us when this
country was still in long clothes, a time when the equality of man
was the new "fad" of many nations, and the prizes of life first
came within the reach of those fortunate or unscrupulous enough to
seize them, it became the fashion (and has remained so down to our
day) to teach every little boy attending a village school to look
upon himself as a possible future President, and to assume that
every girl was preparing herself for the position of first lady in
the land. This is very well in theory, and practice has shown
that, as Napoleon said, "Every private may carry a marshal's baton
in his knapsack." Alongside of the good such incentive may
produce, it is only fair, however, to consider also how much harm
may lie in this way of presenting life to a child's mind.
As a first result of such tall talking we find in America, more
than in any other country, an inclination among all classes to
leave the surroundings where they were born and bend their energies
to struggling out of the position in life occupied by their
parents. There are not wanting theorists who hold that this is a
quality in a nation, and that it leads to great results. A
proposition open to discussion.
It is doubtless satisfactory to designate first magistrates who
have raised themselves from humble beginnings to that proud
position, and there are times when it is proper to recall such
achievements to the rising generation. But as youth is
proverbially over-confident it might also be well to point out,
without danger of discouraging our sanguine youngsters, that for
one who has succeeded, about ten million confident American youths,
full of ambition and lofty aims, have been obliged to content
themselves with being honest men in humble positions, even as their
fathers before them. A sad humiliation, I grant you, for a self-
respecting citizen, to end life just where his father did; often
the case, nevertheless, in this hard world, where so many fine
qualities go unappreciated, - no societies having as yet been
formed to seek out "mute, inglorious Miltons," and ask to crown
them!
To descend abruptly from the sublime, to very near the ridiculous,
- I had need last summer of a boy to go with a lady on a trap and
help about the stable. So I applied to a friend's coachman, a
hard-working Englishman, who was delighted to get the place for his
nephew - an American-born boy - the child of a sister, in great
need. As the boy's clothes were hardly presentable, a simple
livery was made for him; from that moment he pined, and finally
announced he was going to leave. In answer to my surprised
inquiries, I discovered that a friend of his from the same
tenement-house in which he had lived in New York had appeared in
the village, and sooner than be seen in livery by his play-fellow
he preferred abandoning his good place, the chance of being of aid
to his mother, and learning an honorable way to earn his living.
Remonstrances were in vain; to the wrath of his uncle, he departed.
The boy had, at his school, heard so much about everybody being
born equal and every American being a gentleman by right of
inheritance, that he had taken himself seriously, and despised a
position his uncle was proud to hold, preferring elegant leisure in
his native tenement-house to the humiliation of a livery.
When at college I had rooms in a neat cottage owned by an American
family. The father was a butcher, as were his sons. The only
daughter was exceedingly pretty. The hard-worked mother conceived
high hopes for this favorite child. She was sent to a boarding-
school, from which she returned entirely unsettled for life, having
learned little except to be ashamed of her parents and to play on
the piano. One of these instruments of torture was bought, and a
room fitted up as a parlor for the daughter's use. As the family
were fairly well-to-do, she was allowed to dress out of all keeping
with her parents' position, and, egged on by her mother, tried her
best to marry a rich "student." Failing in this, she became
discontented, unhappy, and finally there was a scandal, this poor
victim of a false ambition going to swell the vast tide of a city's
vice. With a sensible education, based on the idea that her
father's trade was honorable and that her mission in life was to
aid her mother in the daily work until she might marry and go to
her husband, prepared by experience to cook his dinner and keep his
house clean, and finally bring up her children to be honest men and
women, this girl would have found a happy future waiting for her,
and have been of some good in her humble way.
It is useless to multiply illustrations. One has but to look about
him in this unsettled country of ours. The other day in front of
my door the perennial ditch was being dug for some gas-pipe or
other. Two of the gentlemen who had consented to do this labor
wore frock-coats and top hats - or what had once been those
articles of attire - instead of comfortable and appropriate
overalls. Why? Because, like the stable-boy, to have worn any
distinctive dress would have been in their minds to stamp
themselves as belonging to an inferior class, and so interfered
with their chances of representing this country later at the Court
of St. James, or presiding over the Senate, - positions (to judge
by their criticism of the present incumbents) they feel no doubt as
to their ability to fill.
The same spirit pervades every trade. The youth who shaves me is
not a barber; he has only accepted this position until he has time
to do something better. The waiter who brings me my chop at a
down-town restaurant would resign his place if he were requested to
shave his flowing mustache, and is secretly studying law. I lose
all patience with my countrymen as I think over it! Surely we are
not such a race of snobs as not to recognize that a good barber is
more to be respected than a poor lawyer; that, as a French saying
goes, IL N'Y A PAS DE SOT METIER. It is only the fool who is
ashamed of his trade.
But enough of preaching. I had intended - when I took up my pen
to-day - to write on quite another form of this modern folly, this
eternal struggle upward into circles for which the struggler is
fitted neither by his birth nor his education; the above was to
have been but a preface to the matter I had in mind, viz., "social
climbers," those scourges of modern society, the people whom no
rebuffs will discourage and no cold shoulder chill, whose efforts
have done so much to make our countrymen a byword abroad.
As many philosophers teach that trouble only is positive, happiness
being merely relative; that in any case trouble is pretty equally
distributed among the different conditions of mankind; that,
excepting the destitute and physically afflicted, all God's
creatures have a share of joy in their lives, would it not be more
logical, as well as more conducive to the general good, if a little
more were done to make the young contented with their lot in life,
instead of constantly suggesting to a race already prone to be
unsettled, that nothing short of the top is worthy of an American
citizen?
CHAPTER 26 - The Climber
THAT form of misplaced ambition, which is the subject of the
preceding chapter, can only be regarded seriously when it occurs
among simple and sincere people, who, however derided, honestly
believe that they are doing their duty to themselves and their
families when they move heaven and earth to rise a few steps in the
world. The moment we find ambition taking a purely social form, it
becomes ridiculous. The aim is so paltry in comparison with the
effort, and so out of proportion with the energy-exerted to attain
it, that one can only laugh and wonder! Unfortunately, signs of
this puerile spirit (peculiar to the last quarter of the nineteenth
century) can be seen on all hands and in almost every society.
That any man or woman should make it the unique aim and object of
existence to get into a certain "set," not from any hope of profit
or benefit, nor from the belief that it is composed of brilliant
and amusing people, but simply because it passes for being
exclusive and difficult of access, does at first seem incredible.
That humble young painters or singers should long to know
personally the great lights of their professions, and should strive
to be accepted among them is easily understood, since the aspirants
can reap but benefit, present and future, from such companionship.
That a rising politician should deem it all-important to be on
friendly terms with the "bosses" is not astonishing, for those
magnates have it in their power to make or mar his fortune. But in
a MILIEU as fluctuating as any social circle must necessarily be,
shading off on all sides and changing as constantly as light on
water, the end can never be considered as achieved or the goal
attained.
Neither does any particular result accompany success, more
substantial than the moral one which lies in self-congratulation.
That, however, is enough for a climber if she is bitten with the
"ascending" madness. (I say "she," because this form of ambition
is more frequent among women, although by no means unknown to the
sterner sex.)
It amuses me vastly to sit in my corner and watch one of these FIN-
DE-SIECLE diplomatists work out her little problem. She generally
comes plunging into our city from outside, hot for conquest, making
acquaintances right and left, indiscriminately; thus falling an
easy prey to the wolves that prowl around the edges of society,
waiting for just such lambs to devour. Her first entertainments
are worth attending for she has ingeniously contrived to get
together all the people she should have left out, and failed to
attract the social lights and powers of the moment. If she be a
quick-witted lady, she soon sees the error of her ways and begins a
process of "weeding" - as difficult as it is unwise, each rejected
"weed" instantly becoming an enemy for life, not to speak of the
risk she, in her ignorance, runs of mistaking for "detrimentals"
the FINES FLEURS of the worldly parterre. Ah! the way of the
Climber is hard; she now begins to see that her path is not strewn
with flowers.
One tactful person of this kind, whose gradual "unfolding" was
watched with much amusement and wonder by her acquaintances,
avoided all these errors by going in early for a "dear friend."
Having, after mature reflection, chosen her guide among the most
exclusive of the young matrons, she proceeded quietly to pay her
court EN REGLE. Flattering little notes, boxes of candy, and
bunches of flowers were among the forms her devotion took. As a
natural result, these two ladies became inseparable, and the most
hermetically sealed doors opened before the new arrival.
A talent for music or acting is another aid. A few years ago an
entire family were floated into the desired haven on the waves of
the sister's voice, and one young couple achieved success by the
husband's aptitude for games and sports. In the latter case it was
the man of the family who did the work, dragging his wife up after
him. A polo pony is hardly one's idea of a battle-horse, but in
this case it bore its rider on to success.
Once climbers have succeeded in installing themselves in the
stronghold of their ambitions, they become more exclusive than
their new friends ever dreamed of being, and it tries one's self-
restraint to hear these new arrivals deploring "the levelling
tendencies of the age," or wondering "how nice people can be
beginning to call on those horrid So-and-Sos. Their father sold
shoes, you know." This ultra-exclusiveness is not to be wondered
at. The only attraction the circle they have just entered has for
the climbers is its exclusiveness, and they do not intend that it
shall lose its market value in their hands. Like Baudelaire, they
believe that "it is only the small number saved that makes the
charm of Paradise." Having spent hard cash in this investment,
they have every intention of getting their money's worth.
In order to give outsiders a vivid impression of the footing on
which they stand with the great of the world, all the women they
have just met become Nellys and Jennys, and all the men Dicks and
Freds - behind their backs, BIEN ENTENDU - for Mrs. "Newcome" has
not yet reached that point of intimacy which warrants using such
abbreviations directly to the owners.
Another amiable weakness common to the climber is that of knowing
everybody. No name can be mentioned at home or abroad but Parvenu
happens to be on the most intimate terms with the owner, and when
he is conversing, great names drop out of his mouth as plentifully
as did the pearls from the pretty lips of the girl in the fairy
story. All the world knows how such a gentleman, being asked on
his return from the East if he had seen "the Dardanelles,"
answered, "Oh, dear, yes! I dined with them several times!" thus
settling satisfactorily his standing in the Orient!
Climbing, like every other habit, soon takes possession of the
whole nature. To abstain from it is torture. Napoleon, we are
told, found it impossible to rest contented on his successes, but
was impelled onward by a force stronger than his volition. In some
such spirit the ambitious souls here referred to, after "the
Conquest of America" and the discovery that the fruit of their
struggles was not worth very much, victory having brought the
inevitable satiety in its wake, sail away in search of new fields
of adventure. They have long ago left behind the friends and
acquaintances of their childhood. Relations they apparently have
none, which accounts for the curious phenomenon that a parvenu is
never in mourning. As no friendships bind them to their new
circle, the ties are easily loosened. Why should they care for one
city more than for another, unless it offer more of the sport they
love? This continent has become tame, since there is no longer any
struggle, while over the sea vast hunting grounds and game worthy
of their powder, form an irresistible temptation - old and
exclusive societies to be besieged, and contests to be waged
compared to which their American experiences are but light
skirmishes. As the polo pony is supposed to pant for the fray, so
the hearts of social conquerors warm within them at the prospect of
more brilliant victories.
The pleasure of following them on their hunting parties abroad will
have to be deferred, so vast is the subject, so full of thrilling
adventure and, alas! also of humiliating defeat.
CHAPTER 27 - The Last of the Dandies
SO completely has the dandy disappeared from among us, that even
the word has an old-time look (as if it had strayed out of some
half-forgotten novel or "keepsake"), raising in our minds the
picture of a slender, clean-shaven youth, in very tight
unmentionables strapped under his feet, a dark green frock-coat
with a collar up to the ears and a stock whose folds cover his
chest, butter-colored gloves, and a hat - oh! a hat that would
collect a crowd in two minutes in any neighborhood! A gold-headed
stick, and a quizzing glass, with a black ribbon an inch wide,
complete the toilet. In such a rig did the swells of the last
generation stroll down Pall Mall or drive their tilburys in the
Bois.
The recent illness of the Prince de Sagan has made a strange and
sad impression in many circles in Paris, for he has always been a
favorite, and is the last surviving type of a now extinct species.
He is the last Dandy! No understudy will be found to fill his role
- the dude and the swell are whole generations away from the dandy,
of which they are but feeble reflections - the comedy will have to
be continued now, without its leading gentleman. With his head of
silvery hair, his eye-glass and his wonderful waistcoats, he held
the first place in the "high life" of the French capital.
No first night or ball was complete without him, Sagan. The very
mention of his name in their articles must have kept the wolf from
the door of needy reporters. No DEBUTANTE, social or theatrical,
felt sure of her success until it had received the hall-mark of his
approval. When he assisted at a dress rehearsal, the actors and
the managers paid him more attention than Sarcey or Sardou, for he
was known to be the real arbiter of their fate. His word was law,
the world bowed before it as before the will of an autocrat.
Mature matrons received his dictates with the same reverence that
the Old Guard evinced for Napoleon's orders. Had he not led them
on to victory in their youth?
On the boulevards or at a race-course, he was the one person always
known by sight and pointed out. "There goes Sagan!" He had become
an institution. One does not know exactly how or why he achieved
the position, which made him the most followed, flattered, and
copied man of his day. It certainly was unique!
The Prince of Sagan is descended from Maurice de Saxe (the natural
son of the King of Saxony and Aurora of Koenigsmark), who in his
day shone brilliantly at the French court and was so madly loved by
Adrienne Lecouvreur. From his great ancestor, Sagan inherited the
title of Grand Duke Of Courland (the estates have been absorbed
into a neighboring empire). Nevertheless, he is still an R.H., and
when crowned heads visit Paris they dine with him and receive him
on a footing of equality. He married a great fortune, and the
daughter of the banker Selliere. Their house on the Esplanade des
Invalides has been for years the centre of aristocratic life in
Paris; not the most exclusive circle, but certainly the gayest of
this gay capital, and from the days of Louis Philippe he has given
the keynote to the fast set.
Oddly enough, he has always been a great favorite with the lower
classes (a popularity shared by all the famous dandies of history).
The people appear to find in them the personification of all
aspirations toward the elegant and the ideal. Alcibiades,
Buckingham, the Duc de Richelieu, Lord Seymour, Comte d'Orsay,
Brummel, Grammont-Caderousse, shared this favor, and have remained
legendary characters, to whom their disdain for everything vulgar,
their worship of their own persons, and many costly follies gave an
ephemeral empire. Their power was the more arbitrary and despotic
in that it was only nominal and undefined, allowing them to rule
over the fashions, the tastes, and the pastimes of their
contemporaries with undivided sway, making them envied, obeyed,
loved, but rarely overthrown.
It has been asserted by some writers that dandies are necessary and
useful to a nation (Thackeray admired them and pointed out that
they have a most difficult and delicate role to play, hence their
rarity), and that these butterflies, as one finds them in the
novels of that day, the de Marsys, the Pelhams, the Maxime de
Trailles, are indispensable to the perfection of society. It is a
great misfortune to a country to have no dandies, those supreme
virtuosos of taste and distinction. Germany, which glories in
Mozart and Kant, Goethe and Humboldt, the country of deep thinkers
and brave soldiers, never had a great dandy, and so has remained
behind England or France in all that constitutes the graceful side
of life, the refinements of social intercourse, and the art of
living. France will perceive too late, after he has disappeared,
the loss she has sustained when this Prince, Grand Seigneur, has
ceased to embellish by his presence her race-courses and "first
nights." A reputation like his cannot be improvised in a moment,
and he has no pupils.
Never did the aristocracy of a country stand in greater need of
such a representation, than in these days of tramcars and "fixed-
price" restaurants. An entire "art" dies with him. It has been
whispered that he has not entirely justified his reputation, that
the accounts of his exploits as a HAUT VIVEUR have gained in the
telling. Nevertheless he dominated an epoch, rising above the
tumultuous and levelling society of his day, a tardy Don Quixote,
of the knighthood of pleasures, FETES, loves and prodigalities,
which are no longer of our time. His great name, his grand manner,
his elderly graces, his serene carelessness, made him a being by
himself. No one will succeed this master of departed elegances.
If he does not recover from his attack, if the paralysis does not
leave that poor brain, worn out with doing nothing, we can honestly
say that he is the last of his kind.
An original and independent thinker has asserted that
civilizations, societies, empires, and republics go down to
posterity typified for the admiration of mankind, each under the
form of some hero. Emerson would have given a place in his
Pantheon to Sagan. For it is he who sustained the traditions and
became the type of that distinguished and frivolous society, which
judged that serious things were of no importance, enthusiasm a
waste of time, literature a bore; that nothing was interesting and
worthy of occupying their attention except the elegant distractions
that helped to pass their days-and nights! He had the merit (?) in
these days of the practical and the commonplace, of preserving in
his gracious person all the charming uselessness of a courtier in a
country where there was no longer a court.
What a strange sight it would be if this departing dandy could,
before he leaves for ever the theatre of so many triumphs, take his
place at some street corner, and review the shades of the
companions his long life had thrown him with, the endless
procession of departed belles and beaux, who, in their youth, had,
under his rule, helped to dictate the fashions and lead the sports
of a world.
CHAPTER 28 - A Nation on the Wing
ON being taken the other day through a large and costly residence,
with the thoroughness that only the owner of a new house has the
cruelty to inflict on his victims, not allowing them to pass a
closet or an electric bell without having its particular use and
convenience explained, forcing them to look up coal-slides, and
down air-shafts and to visit every secret place, from the cellar to
the fire-escape, I noticed that a peculiar arrangement of the rooms
repeated itself on each floor, and several times on a floor. I
remarked it to my host.
"You observe it," he said, with a blush of pride, "it is my wife's
idea! The truth is, my daughters are of a marrying age, and my
sons starting out for themselves; this house will soon be much too
big for two old people to live in alone. We have planned it so
that at any time it can be changed into an apartment house at a
nominal expense. It is even wired and plumbed with that end in
view!"
This answer positively took my breath away. I looked at my host in
amazement. It was hard to believe that a man past middle age, who
after years of hardest toil could afford to put half a million into
a house for himself and his children, and store it with beautiful
things, would have the courage to look so far into the future as to
see all his work undone, his home turned to another use and himself
and his wife afloat in the world without a roof over their wealthy
old heads.
Surely this was the Spirit of the Age in its purest expression, the
more strikingly so that he seemed to feel pride rather than
anything else in his ingenious combination.
He liked the city he had built in well enough now, but nothing
proved to him that he would like it later. He and his wife had
lived in twenty cities since they began their brave fight with
Fortune, far away in a little Eastern town. They had since changed
their abode with each ascending rung of the ladder of success, and
beyond a faded daguerreotype or two of their children and a few
modest pieces of jewelry, stored away in cotton, it is doubtful if
they owned a single object belonging to their early life.
Another case occurs to me. Near the village where I pass my
summers, there lived an elderly, childless couple on a splendid
estate combining everything a fastidious taste could demand. One
fine morning this place was sold, the important library divided
between the village and their native city, the furniture sold or
given away, - everything went; at the end the things no one wanted
were made into a bon-fire and burned.
A neighbor asking why all this was being done was told by the lady,
"We were tired of it all and have decided to be 'Bohemians' for the
rest of our lives." This couple are now wandering about Europe and
half a dozen trunks contain their belongings.
These are, of course, extreme cases and must be taken for what they
are worth; nevertheless they are straws showing which way the wind
blows, signs of the times that he who runs may read. I do not run,
but I often saunter up our principal avenue, and always find myself
wondering what will be the future of the splendid residences that
grace that thoroughfare as it nears the Park; the ascending tide of
trade is already circling round them and each year sees one or more
crumble away and disappear.
The finer buildings may remain, turned into clubs or restaurants,
but the greater part of the newer ones are so ill-adapted to any
other use than that for which they are built that their future
seems obscure.
That fashion will flit away from its present haunts there can be
little doubt; the city below the Park is sure to be given up to
business, and even the fine frontage on that green space will
sooner or later be occupied by hotels, if not stores; and he who
builds with any belief in the permanency of his surroundings must
indeed be of a hopeful disposition.
A good lady occupying a delightful corner on this same avenue,
opposite a one-story florist's shop, said:
"I shall remain here until they build across the way; then I
suppose I shall have to move."
So after all the man who is contented to live in a future apartment
house, may not be so very far wrong.
A case of the opposite kind is that of a great millionaire, who,
dying, left his house and its collections to his eldest son and his
grandson after him, on the condition that they should continue to
live in it.
Here was an attempt to keep together a home with its memories and
associations. What has been the result? The street that was a
charming centre for residences twenty years ago has become a
"slum;" the unfortunate heirs find themselves with a house on their
hands that they cannot live in and are forbidden to rent or sell.
As a final result the will must in all probability be broken and
the matter ended.
Of course the reason for a great deal of this is the phenomenal
growth of our larger cities. Hundreds of families who would gladly
remain in their old homes are fairly pushed out of them by the
growth of business.
Everything has its limits and a time must come when our cities will
cease to expand or when centres will be formed as in London or
Paris, where generations may succeed each other in the same homes.
So far, I see no indications of any such crystallization in this
our big city; we seem to be condemned like the "Wandering Jew" or
poor little "Joe" to be perpetually "moving on."
At a dinner of young people not long ago a Frenchman visiting our
country, expressed his surprise on hearing a girl speak of "not
remembering the house she was born in." Piqued by his manner the
young lady answered:
"We are twenty-four at this table. I do not believe there is one
person here living in the house in which he or she was born." This
assertion raised a murmur of dissent around the table; on a census
being taken it proved, however, to be true.
How can one expect, under circumstances like these, to find any
great respect among young people for home life or the conservative
side of existence? They are born as it were on the wing, and on
the wing will they live.
The conditions of life in this country, although contributing
largely to such a state of affairs, must not be held, however,
entirely responsible. Underlying our civilization and culture,
there is still strong in us a wild nomadic strain inherited from a
thousand generations of wandering ancestors, which breaks out so
soon as man is freed from the restraint incumbent on bread-winning
for his family. The moment there is wealth or even a modest income
insured, comes the inclination to cut loose from the dull routine
of business and duty, returning instinctively to the migratory
habits of primitive man.
We are not the only nation that has given itself up to globe-
trotting; it is strong in the English, in spite of their
conservative education, and it is surprising to see the number of
formerly stay-at-home French and Germans one meets wandering in
foreign lands.
In 1855, a Londoner advertised the plan he had conceived of taking
some people over to visit the International Exhibition in Paris.
For a fixed sum paid in advance he offered to provide everything
and act as courier to the party, and succeeded with the greatest
difficulty in getting together ten people. From this modest
beginning has grown the vast undertaking that to-day covers the
globe with tourists, from the frozen seas where they "do" the
midnight sun, to the deserts three thousand miles up the Nile.
As I was returning a couple of years ago VIA Vienna from
Constantinople, the train was filled with a party of our
compatriots conducted by an agency of this kind - simple people of
small means who, twenty years ago, would as soon have thought of
leaving their homes for a trip in the East as they would of
starting off in balloons en route for the inter-stellar spaces.
I doubted at the time as to the amount of information and
appreciation they brought to bear on their travels, so I took
occasion to draw one of the thin, unsmiling women into
conversation, asking her where they intended stopping next.
"At Buda-Pesth," she answered. I said in some amusement:
"But that was Buda-Pesth we visited so carefully yesterday."
"Oh, was it," she replied, without any visible change on her face,
"I thought we had not got there yet." Apparently it was enough for
her to be travelling; the rest was of little importance. Later in
the day, when asked if she had visited a certain old city in
Germany, she told me she had but would never go there again: "They
gave us such poor coffee at the hotel." Again later in speaking to
her husband, who seemed a trifle vague as to whether he had seen
Nuremberg or not, she said:
"Why, you remember it very well; it was there you bought those nice
overshoes!"
All of which left me with some doubts in my mind as to the
cultivating influences of foreign travel on their minds.
You cannot change a leopard's spots, neither can you alter the
nature of a race, and one of the strongest characteristics of the
Anglo-Saxon, is the nomadic instinct. How often one hears people
say:
"I am not going to sit at home and take care of my furniture. I
want to see something of the world before I am too old." Lately, a
sprightly maiden of uncertain years, just returned from a long trip
abroad, was asked if she intended now to settle down.
"Settle down, indeed! I'm a butterfly and I never expect to settle
down."
There is certainly food here for reflection. Why should we be more
inclined to wander than our neighbors? Perhaps it is in a measure
due to our nervous, restless temperament, which is itself the
result of our climate; but whatever the cause is, inability to
remain long in one place is having a most unfortunate influence on
our social life. When everyone is on the move or longing to be, it
becomes difficult to form any but the most superficial ties; strong
friendships become impossible, the most intimate family relations
are loosened.
If one were of a speculative frame of mind and chose to take as the
basis for a calculation the increase in tourists between 1855, when
the ten pioneers started for Paris, and the number "personally
conducted" over land and sea today, and then glance forward at what
the future will be if this ratio of increase is maintained the
result would be something too awful for words. For if ten have
become a million in forty years, what will be the total in 1955?
Nothing less than entire nations given over to sight-seeing,
passing their lives and incomes in rushing aimlessly about.
If the facilities of communication increase as they undoubtedly
will with the demand, the prospect becomes nearer the idea of a
"Walpurgis Night" than anything else. For the earth and the sea
will be covered and the air filled with every form of whirling,
flying, plunging device to get men quickly from one place to
another.
Every human being on the globe will be flying South for the cold
months and North for the hot season.
As personally conducted tours have been so satisfactory, agencies
will be started to lead us through all the stages of existence.
Parents will subscribe on the birth of their children to have them
personally conducted through life and everything explained as it is
done at present in the galleries abroad; food, lodging and reading
matter, husbands and wives will be provided by contract, to be
taken back and changed if unsatisfactory, as the big stores do with
their goods. Delightful prospect! Homes will become superfluous,
parents and children will only meet when their "tours" happen to
cross each other. Our great-grandchildren will float through life
freed from every responsibility and more perfectly independent than
even that delightful dreamer, Bellamy, ventured to predict.
CHAPTER 29 - Husks
AMONG the Protestants driven from France by that astute and
liberal-minded sovereign Louis XIV., were a colony of weavers, who
as all the world knows, settled at Spitalfields in England, where
their descendants weave silk to this day.
On their arrival in Great Britain, before the looms could be set up
and a market found for their industry, the exiles were reduced to
the last extremity of destitution and hunger. Looking about them
for anything that could be utilized for food, they discovered that
the owners of English slaughter-houses threw away as worthless, the
tails of the cattle they killed. Like all the poor in France,
these wanderers were excellent cooks, and knew that at home such
caudal appendages were highly valued for the tenderness and flavor
of the meat. To the amazement and disgust of the English villagers
the new arrivals proceeded to collect this "refuse" and carry it
home for food. As the first principle of French culinary art is
the POT-AU-FEU, the tails were mostly converted into soup, on which
the exiles thrived and feasted.
Their neighbors, envious at seeing the despised French indulging
daily in savory dishes, unknown to English palates, and tempted
like "Jack's" giant by the smell of "fresh meat," began to inquire
into the matter, and slowly realized how, in their ignorance, they
had been throwing away succulent and delicate food. The news of
this discovery gradually spreading through all classes, "ox-tail"
became and has remained the national English soup.
If this veracious tale could be twisted into a metaphor, it would
serve marvellously to illustrate the position of the entire Anglo-
Saxon race, and especially that of their American descendants as
regards the Latin peoples. For foolish prodigality and reckless,
ignorant extravagance, however, we leave our English cousins far
behind.
Two American hotels come to my mind, as different in their
appearance and management as they are geographically asunder. Both
are types and illustrations of the wilful waste that has recently
excited Mr. Ian Maclaren's comment, and the woeful want (of good
food) that is the result. At one, a dreary shingle construction on
a treeless island, off our New England coast, where the ideas of
the landlord and his guests have remained as unchanged and
primitive as the island itself, I found on inquiry that all
articles of food coming from the first table were thrown into the
sea; and I have myself seen chickens hardly touched, rounds of
beef, trays of vegetables, and every variety of cake and dessert
tossed to the fish.
While we were having soups so thin and tasteless that they would
have made a French house-wife blush, the ingredients essential to
an excellent "stock" were cast aside. The boarders were paying
five dollars a day and appeared contented, the place was packed,
the landlord coining money, so it was foolish to expect any
improvement.
The other hotel, a vast caravansary in the South, where a fortune
had been lavished in providing every modern convenience and luxury,
was the "fad" of its wealthy owner. I had many talks with the
manager during my stay, and came to realize that most of the
wastefulness I saw around me was not his fault, but that of the
public, to whose taste he was obliged to cater. At dinner, after
receiving your order, the waiter would disappear for half an hour,
and then bring your entire meal on one tray, the over-cooked meats
stranded in lakes of coagulated gravy, the entrees cold and the
ices warm. He had generally forgotten two or three essentials, but
to send back for them meant to wait another half-hour, as his other
clients were clamoring to be served. So you ate what was before
you in sulky disgust, and got out of the room as quickly as
possible.
After one of these gastronomic races, being hungry, flustered, and
suffering from indigestion, I asked mine host if it had never
occurred to him to serve a TABLE D'HOTE dinner (in courses) as is
done abroad, where hundreds of people dine at the same moment, each
dish being offered them in turn accompanied by its accessories.
"Of course, I have thought of it," he answered. "It would be the
greatest improvement that could be introduced into American hotel-
keeping. No one knows better than I do how disastrous the present
system is to all parties. Take as an example of the present way,
the dinner I am going to give you to-morrow, in honor of Christmas.
Glance over this MENU. You will see that it enumerates every
costly and delicate article of food possible to procure and a long
list of other dishes, the greater part of which will not even be
called for. As no number of CHEFS could possibly oversee the
proper preparation of such a variety of meats and sauces, all will
be carelessly cooked, and as you know by experience, poorly served.
"People who exact useless variety," he added, "are sure in some way
to be the sufferers; in their anxiety to try everything, they will
get nothing worth eating. Yet that meal will cost me considerably
more than my guests pay for their twenty-four hours' board and
lodging."
"Why do it, you ask? Because it is the custom, and because it will
be an advertisement. These bills of fare will be sown broadcast
over the country in letters to friends and kept as souvenirs. If,
instead of all this senseless superfluity, I were allowed to give a
TABLE D'HOTE meal to-morrow, with the CHEF I have, I could provide
an exquisite dinner, perfect in every detail, served at little
tables as deftly and silently as in a private house. I could also
discharge half of my waiters, and charge two dollars a day instead
of five dollars, and the hotel would become (what it has never been
yet) a paying investment, so great would he the saving."
"Only this morning," he continued, warming to his subject, "while
standing in the dining room, I saw a young man order and then send
away half the dishes on the MENU. A chicken was broiled for him
and rejected; a steak and an omelette fared no better. How much do
you suppose a hotel gains from a guest like that?"
"The reason Americans put up with such poor viands in hotels is,
that home cooking in this country is so rudimentary, consisting
principally of fried dishes, and hot breads. So little is known
about the proper preparation of food that tomorrow's dinner will
appear to many as the NE PLUS ULTRA of delicate living. One of the
charms of a hotel for people who live poorly at home, lies in this
power to order expensive dishes they rarely or never see on their
own tables."
"To be served with a quantity of food that he has but little desire
to eat is one of an American citizen's dearest privileges, and a
right he will most unwillingly relinquish. He may know as well as
you and I do, that what he calls for will not be worth eating; that
is of secondary importance, he has it before him, and is
contented."
"The hotel that attempted limiting the liberty of its guests to the
extent of serving them a TABLE D'HOTE dinner, would be emptied in a
week."
"A crowning incongruity, as most people are delighted to dine with
friends, or at public functions, where the meal is invariably
served A LA RUSSE (another name for a TABLE D'HOTE), and on these
occasions are only too glad to have their MENU chosen for them.
The present way, however, is a remnant of 'old times' and the
average American, with all his love of change and novelty, is very
conservative when it comes to his table."
What this manager did not confide to me, but what I discovered
later for myself, was that to facilitate the service, and avoid
confusion in the kitchens, it had become the custom at all the
large and most of the small hotels in this country, to carve the
joints, cut up the game, and portion out vegetables, an hour or two
before meal time. The food, thus arranged, is placed in vast steam
closets, where it simmers gayly for hours, in its own, and fifty
other vapors.
Any one who knows the rudiments of cookery, will recognize that
with this system no viand can have any particular flavor, the
partridges having a taste of their neighbor the roast beef, which
in turn suggests the plum pudding it has been "chumming" with.
It is not alone in a hotel that we miss the good in grasping after
the better. Small housekeeping is apparently run on the same
lines.
A young Frenchman, who was working in my rooms, told me in reply to
a question regarding prices, that every kind of food was cheaper
here than abroad, but the prejudice against certain dishes was so
strong in this country that many of the best things in the markets
were never called for. Our nation is no longer in its "teens" and
should cease to act like a foolish boy who has inherited (what
appears to him) a limitless fortune; not for fear of his coming,
like his prototype in the parable, to live on "husks" for he is
doing that already, but lest like the dog of the fable, in grasping
after the shadow of a banquet he miss the simple meal that is
within his reach.
One of the reasons for this deplorable state of affairs lies in the
foolish education our girls receive. They learn so little
housekeeping at home, that when married they are obliged to begin
all over again, unless they prefer, like a majority of their
friends, to let things as go at the will and discretion of the
"lady" below stairs.
At both hotels I have referred to, the families of the men
interested considered it beneath them to know what was taking
place. The "daughter" of the New England house went semi-weekly to
Boston to take violin lessons at ten dollars each, although she had
no intention of becoming a professional, while the wife wrote
poetry and ignored the hotel side of her life entirely.
The "better half" of the Florida establishment hired a palace in
Rome and entertained ambassadors. Hotels divided against
themselves are apt to be establishments where you pay for riotous
living and are served only with husks.
We have many hard lessons ahead of us, and one of the hardest will
be for our nation to learn humbly from the thrifty emigrants on our
shores, the great art of utilizing the "tails" that are at this
moment being so recklessly thrown away.
As it is, in spite of markets overflowing with every fish,
vegetable, and tempting viand, we continue to be the worst fed,
most meagrely nourished of all the wealthy nations on the face of
the earth. We have a saying (for an excellent reason unknown on
the Continent) that Providence provides us with food and the devil
sends the cooks! It would be truer to say that the poorer the food
resources of a nation, the more restricted the choice of material,
the better the cooks; a small latitude when providing for the table
forcing them to a hundred clever combinations and mysterious
devices to vary the monotony of their cuisine and tempt a palate,
by custom staled.
Our heedless people, with great variety at their disposition, are
unequal to the situation, wasting and discarding the best, and
making absolutely nothing of their advantages.
If we were enjoying our prodigality by living on the fat of the
land, there would be less reason to reproach ourselves, for every
one has a right to live as he pleases. But as it is, our foolish
prodigals are spending their substance, while eating the husks!
CHAPTER 30 - The Faubourg of St. Germain
THERE has been too much said and written in the last dozen years
about breaking down the "great wall" behind which the aristocrats
of the famous Faubourg, like the Celestials, their prototypes, have
ensconced themselves. The Chinese speak of outsiders as
"barbarians." The French ladies refer to such unfortunates as
being "beyond the pale." Almost all that has been written is
arrant nonsense; that imaginary barrier exists to-day on as firm a
foundation, and is guarded by sentinels as vigilant as when, forty
years ago, Napoleon (third of the name) and his Spanish spouse
mounted to its assault.
Their repulse was a bitter humiliation to the PARVENUE Empress,
whose resentment took the form (along with many other curious
results) of opening the present Boulevard St. Germain, its line
being intentionally carried through the heart of that quarter,
teeming with historic "Hotels" of the old aristocracy, where
beautiful constructions were mercilessly torn down to make way for
the new avenue. The cajoleries which Eugenie first tried and the
blows that followed were alike unavailing. Even her worship of
Marie Antoinette, between whom and herself she found imaginary
resemblances, failed to warm the stony hearts of the proud old
ladies, to whom it was as gall and wormwood to see a nobody crowned
in the palace of their kings. Like religious communities,
persecution only drew this old society more firmly together and
made them stand by each other in their distress. When the Bois was
remodelled by Napoleon and the lake with its winding drive laid
out, the new Court drove of an afternoon along this water front.
That was enough for the old swells! They retired to the remote
"Allee of the Acacias," and solemnly took their airing away from
the bustle of the new world, incidentally setting a fashion that
has held good to this day; the lakeside being now deserted, and the
"Acacias" crowded of an afternoon, by all that Paris holds of
elegant and inelegant.
Where the brilliant Second Empire failed, the Republic had little
chance of success. With each succeeding year the "Old Faubourg"
withdrew more and more into its shell, going so far, after the fall
of Mac Mahon, as to change its "season" to the spring, so that the
balls and FETES it gave should not coincide with the "official"
entertainments during the winter.
The next people to have a "shy" at the "Old Faubourg's" Gothic
battlements were the Jews, who were victorious in a few light
skirmishes and succeeded in capturing one or two illustrious
husbands for their daughters. The wily Israelites, however,
discovered that titled sons-in-law were expensive articles and
often turned out unsatisfactorily, so they quickly desisted. The
English, the most practical of societies, have always left the
Faubourg alone. It has been reserved for our countrywomen to lay
the most determined siege yet recorded to that untaken stronghold.
It is a characteristic of the American temperament to be unable to
see a closed door without developing an intense curiosity to know
what is behind; or to read "No Admittance to the Public" over an
entrance without immediately determining to get inside at any
price. So it is easy to understand the attraction an hermetically
sealed society would have for our fair compatriots. Year after
year they have flung themselves against its closed gateways.
Repulsed, they have retired only to form again for the attack, but
are as far away to-day from planting their flag in that citadel as
when they first began. It does not matter to them what is inside;
there may be (as in this case) only mouldy old halls and a group of
people with antiquated ideas and ways. It is enough for a certain
type of woman to know that she is not wanted in an exclusive
circle, to be ready to die in the attempt to get there. This point
of view reminds one of Mrs. Snob's saying about a new arrival at a
hotel: "I am sure she must be 'somebody' for she was so rude to me
when I spoke to her;" and her answer to her daughter when the girl
said (on arriving at a watering-place) that she had noticed a very
nice family "who look as if they wanted to know us, Mamma:"
"Then, my dear," replied Mamma Snob, "they certainly are not people
we want to meet!"
The men in French society are willing enough to make acquaintance
with foreigners. You may see the youth of the Faubourg dancing at
American balls in Paris, or running over for occasional visits to
this country. But when it comes to taking their women-kind with
them, it is a different matter. Americans who have known well-born
Frenchmen at school or college are surprised, on meeting them
later, to be asked (cordially enough) to dine EN GARCON at a
restaurant, although their Parisian friend is married. An
Englishman's or American's first word would be on a like occasion:
"Come and dine with me to-night. I want to introduce you to my
wife." Such an idea would never cross a Frenchman's mind!
One American I know is a striking example of this. He was born in
Paris, went to school and college there, and has lived in that city
all his life. His sister married a French nobleman. Yet at this
moment, in spite of his wealth, his charming American wife, and
many beautiful entertainments, he has not one warm French friend,
or the ENTREE on a footing of intimacy to a single Gallic house.
There is no analogy between the English aristocracy and the French
nobility, except that they are both antiquated institutions; the
English is the more harmful on account of its legislative power,
the French is the more pretentious. The House of Lords is the most
open club in London, the payment of an entrance-fee in the shape of
a check to a party fund being an all-sufficient sesame. In France,
one must be born in the magic circle. The spirit of the Emigration
of 1793 is not yet extinct. The nobles live in their own world
(how expressive the word is, seeming to exclude all the rest of
mankind), pining after an impossible RESTAURATION, alien to the
present day, holding aloof from politics for fear of coming in
touch with the masses, with whom they pride themselves on having
nothing in common.
What leads many people astray on this subject is that there has
formed around this ancient society a circle composed of rich
"outsiders," who have married into good families; and of eccentric
members of the latter, who from a love of excitement or for
interested motives have broken away from their traditions. Newly
arrived Americans are apt to mistake this "world" for the real
thing. Into this circle it is not difficult for foreigners who are
rich and anxious to see something of life to gain admission. To be
received by the ladies of this outer circle, seems to our
compatriots to be an achievement, until they learn the real
standing of their new acquaintances.
No gayer houses, however, exist than those of the new set. At
their city or country houses, they entertain continually, and they
are the people one meets toward five o'clock, on the grounds of the
Polo Club, in the Bois, at FETES given by the Island Club of
Puteaux, attending the race meetings, or dining at American houses.
As far as amusement and fun go, one might seek much further and
fare worse.
It is very, very rare that foreigners get beyond this circle.
Occasionally there is a marriage between an American girl and some
Frenchman of high rank. In these cases the girl is, as it were,
swallowed up. Her family see little of her, she rarely appears in
general society, and, little by little, she is lost to her old
friends and relations. I know of several cases of this kind where
it is to be doubted if a dozen Americans outside of the girls'
connections know that such women exist. The fall in rents and land
values has made the French aristocracy poor; it is only by the
greatest economy (and it never entered into an American mind to
conceive of such economy as is practised among them) that they
succeed in holding on to their historical chateaux or beautiful
city residences; so that pride plays a large part in the isolation
in which they live.
The fact that no titles are recognized officially by the French
government (the most they can obtain being a "courtesy"
recognition) has placed these people in a singularly false
position. An American girl who has married a Duke is a good deal
astonished to find that she is legally only plain "Madame So and
So;" that when her husband does his military service there is no
trace of the high-sounding title to be found in his official
papers. Some years ago, a colonel was rebuked because he allowed
the Duc d'Alencon to be addressed as "Monseigneur" by the other
officers of his regiment. This ought to make ambitious papas
reflect, when they treat themselves to titled sons-in-law. They
should at least try and get an article recognized by the law.
Most of what is written here is perfectly well known to resident
Americans in Paris, and has been the cause of gradually splitting
that once harmonious settlement into two perfectly distinct camps,
between which no love is lost. The members of one, clinging to
their countrymen's creed of having the best or nothing, have been
contented to live in France and know but few French people,
entertaining among themselves and marrying their daughters to
Americans. The members of the other, who have "gone in" for French
society, take what they can get, and, on the whole, lead very jolly
lives. It often happens (perhaps it is only a coincidence) that
ladies who have not been very successful at home are partial to
this circle, where they easily find guests for their entertainments
and the recognition their souls long for.
What the future of the "Great Faubourg" will be, it is hard to say.
All hope of a possible RESTAURATION appears to be lost. Will the
proud necks that refused to bend to the Orleans dynasty or the two
"empires" bow themselves to the republican yoke? It would seem as
if it must terminate in this way, for everything in this world must
finish. But the end is not yet; one cannot help feeling sympathy
for people who are trying to live up to their traditions and be
true to such immaterial idols as "honor" and "family" in this
discouragingly material age, when everything goes down before the
Golden Calf. Nor does one wonder that men who can trace their
ancestors back to the Crusades should hesitate to ally themselves
with the last rich PARVENU who has raised himself from the gutter,
or resent the ardor with which the latest importation of American
ambition tries to chum with them and push its way into their life.
CHAPTER 31 - Men's Manners
NOTHING makes one feel so old as to wake up suddenly, as it were,
and realize that the conditions of life have changed, and that the
standards you knew and accepted in your youth have been raised or
lowered. The young men you meet have somehow become uncomfortably
polite, offering you armchairs in the club, and listening with a
shade of deference to your stories. They are of another
generation; their ways are not your ways, nor their ambitions those
you had in younger days. One is tempted to look a little closer,
to analyze what the change is, in what this subtle difference
consists, which you feel between your past and their present. You
are surprised and a little angry to discover that, among other
things, young men have better manners than were general among the
youths of fifteen years ago.
Anyone over forty can remember three epochs in men's manners. When
I was a very young man, there were still going about in society a
number of gentlemen belonging to what was reverently called the
"old school," who had evidently taken Sir Charles Grandison as
their model, read Lord Chesterfield's letters to his son with
attention, and been brought up to commence letters to their
fathers, "Honored Parent," signing themselves "Your humble servant
and respectful son." There are a few such old gentlemen still to
be found in the more conservative clubs, where certain windows are
tacitly abandoned to these elegant-mannered fossils. They are
quite harmless unless you happen to find them in a reminiscent
mood, when they are apt to be a little tiresome; it takes their
rusty mental machinery so long to get working! Washington
possesses a particularly fine collection among the retired army and
navy officers and ex-officials. It is a fact well known that no
one drawing a pension ever dies.
About 1875, a new generation with new manners began to make its
appearance. A number of its members had been educated at English
universities, and came home burning to upset old ways and teach
their elders how to live. They broke away from the old clubs and
started smaller and more exclusive circles among themselves,
principally in the country. This was a period of bad manners.
True to their English model, they considered it "good form" to be
uncivil and to make no effort towards the general entertainment
when in society. Not to speak more than a word or two during a
dinner party to either of one's neighbors was the supreme CHIC. As
a revolt from the twice-told tales of their elders they held it to
be "bad form" to tell a story, no matter how fresh and amusing it
might be. An unfortunate outsider who ventured to tell one in
their club was crushed by having his tale received in dead silence.
When it was finished one of the party would "ring the bell," and
the circle order drinks at the expense of the man who had dared to
amuse them. How the professional story-teller must have shuddered
- he whose story never was ripe until it had been told a couple of
hundred times, and who would produce a certain tale at a certain
course as surely as clock-work.
That the story-telling type was a bore, I grant. To be grabbed on
entering your club and obliged to listen to Smith's last, or to
have the conversation after dinner monopolized by Jones and his
eternal "Speaking of coffee, I remember once," etc. added an
additional hardship to existence. But the opposite pose, which
became the fashion among the reformers, was hardly less wearisome.
To sit among a group of perfectly mute men, with an occasional word
dropping into the silence like a stone in a well, was surely little
better.
A girl told me she had once sat through an entire cotillion with a
youth whose only remark during the evening had been (after absorbed
contemplation of the articles in question), "How do you like my
socks?"
On another occasion my neighbor at table said to me:
"I think the man on my right has gone to sleep. He is sitting with
his eyes closed!" She was mistaken. He was practising his newly
acquired "repose of manner," and living up to the standard of his
set.
The model young man of that period had another offensive habit, his
pose of never seeing you, which got on the nerves of his elders to
a considerable extent. If he came into a drawing-room where you
were sitting with a lady, he would shake hands with her and begin a
conversation, ignoring your existence, although you may have been
his guest at dinner the night before, or he yours. This was also a
tenet of his creed borrowed from trans-Atlantic cousins, who, by
the bye, during the time I speak of, found America, and especially
our Eastern states, a happy hunting-ground, - all the clubs,
country houses, and society generally opening their doors to the
"sesame" of English nationality. It took our innocent youths a
good ten years to discover that there was no reciprocity in the
arrangement; it was only in the next epoch (the list of the three
referred to) that our men recovered their self-respect, and assumed
towards foreigners in general the attitude of polite indifference
which is their manner to us when abroad. Nothing could have been
more provincial and narrow than the ideas of our "smart" men at
that time. They congregated in little cliques, huddling together
in public, and cracking personal old jokes; but were speechless
with MAUVAISE HONTE if thrown among foreigners or into other
circles of society. All this is not to be wondered at considering
the amount of their general education and reading. One charming
little custom then greatly in vogue among our JEUNESSE DOREE was to
remain at a ball, after the other guests had retired, tipsy, and
then break anything that came to hand. It was so amusing to throw
china, glass, or valuable plants, out of the windows, to strip to
the waist and box or bait the tired waiters.
I look at the boys growing up around me with sincere admiration,
they are so superior to their predecessors in breeding, in
civility, in deference to older people, and in a thousand other
little ways that mark high-bred men. The stray Englishman, of no
particular standing at home no longer finds our men eager to
entertain him, to put their best "hunter" at his disposition, to
board, lodge, and feed him indefinitely, or make him honorary
member of all their clubs. It is a constant source of pleasure to
me to watch this younger generation, so plainly do I see in them
the influence of their mothers - women I knew as girls, and who
were so far ahead of their brothers and husbands in refinement and
culture. To have seen these girls marry and bring up their sons so
well has been a satisfaction and a compensation for many
disillusions. Woman's influence will always remain the strongest
lever that can be brought to bear in raising the tone of a family;
it is impossible not to see about these young men a reflection of
what we found so charming in their mothers. One despairs at times
of humanity, seeing vulgarity and snobbishness riding triumphantly
upward; but where the tone of the younger generation is as high as
I have lately found it, there is still much hope for the future.
CHAPTER 32 - An Ideal Hostess
THE saying that "One-half of the world ignores how the other half
lives" received for me an additional confirmation this last week,
when I had the good fortune to meet again an old friend, now for
some years retired from the stage, where she had by her charm and
beauty, as well as by her singing, held all the Parisian world at
her pretty feet.
Our meeting was followed on her part by an invitation to take
luncheon with her the next day, "to meet a few friends, and talk
over old times." So half-past twelve (the invariable hour for the
"second breakfast," in France) the following day found me entering
a shady drawing-room, where a few people were sitting in the cool
half-light that strayed across from a canvas-covered balcony
furnished with plants and low chairs. Beyond one caught a glimpse
of perhaps the gayest picture that the bright city of Paris offers,
- the sweep of the Boulevard as it turns to the Rue Royale, the
flower market, gay with a thousand colors in the summer sunshine,
while above all the color and movement, rose, cool and gray, the
splendid colonnade of the Madeleine. The rattle of carriages, the
roll of the heavy omnibuses and the shrill cries from the street
below floated up, softened into a harmonious murmur that in no way
interfered with our conversation, and is sweeter than the finest
music to those who love their Paris.
Five or six rooms EN SUITE opening on the street, and as many more
on a large court, formed the apartment, where everything betrayed
the ARTISTE and the singer. The walls, hung with silk or tapestry,
held a collection of original drawings and paintings, a fortune in
themselves; the dozen portraits of our hostess in favorite roles
were by men great in the art world; a couple of pianos covered with
well-worn music and numberless photographs signed with names that
would have made an autograph-fiend's mouth water.
After a gracious, cooing welcome, more whispered than spoken, I was
presented to the guests I did not know. Before this ceremony was
well over, two maids in black, with white caps, opened a door into
the dining-room and announced luncheon. As this is written on the
theme that "people know too little how their neighbors live," I
give the MENU. It may amuse my readers and serve, perhaps, as a
little object lesson to those at home who imagine that quantity and
not quality is of importance.
Our gracious hostess had earned a fortune in her profession (and I
am told that two CHEFS preside over her simple meals); so it was
not a spirit of economy which dictated this simplicity. At first,
HORS D'OEUVRES were served, - all sorts of tempting little things,
- very thin slices of ham, spiced sausages, olives and caviar, and
eaten - not merely passed and refused. Then came the one hot dish
of the meal. "One!" I think I hear my reader exclaim. Yes, my
friend, but that one was a marvel in its way. Chicken A
L'ESPAGNOLE, boiled, and buried in rice and tomatoes cooked whole -
a dish to be dreamed of and remembered in one's prayers and
thanksgivings! After at least two helpings each to this CHEF-
D'OEUVRE, cold larded fillet and a meat pate were served with the
salad. Then a bit of cheese, a beaten cream of chocolate, fruit,
and bon-bons. For a drink we had the white wine from which
champagne is made (by a chemical process and the addition of many
injurious ingredients); in other words, a pure BRUT champagne with
just a suggestion of sparkle at the bottom of your glass. All the
party then migrated together into the smoking-room for cigarettes,
coffee, and a tiny glass of LIQUEUR.
These details have been given at length, not only because the meal
seemed to me, while I was eating it, to be worthy of whole columns
of print, but because one of the besetting sins of our dear land is
to serve a profusion of food no one wants and which the hostess
would never have dreamed of ordering had she been alone.
Nothing is more wearisome than to sit at table and see course after
course, good, bad, and indifferent, served, after you have eaten
what you want. And nothing is more vulgar than to serve them; for
either a guest refuses a great deal of the food and appears
uncivil, or he must eat, and regret it afterwards. If we ask
people to a meal, it should be to such as we eat, as a general
thing, ourselves, and such as they would have at home. Otherwise
it becomes ostentation and vulgarity. Why should one be expelled
to eat more than usual because a friend has been nice enough to ask
one to take one's dinner with him, instead of eating it alone? It
is the being among friends that tempts, not the food; the fact at
skilful waiters have been able to serve a dozen varieties of fish,
flesh, and fowl during the time you were at table has added little
to any one's pleasure. On the contrary! Half the time one eats
from pure absence of mind, a number of most injurious mixtures and
so prepares an awful to-morrow and the foundation of many
complicated diseases.
I see Smith and Jones daily at the club, where we dine cheerfully
together on soup, a cut of the joint, a dessert, and drink a pint
of claret. But if either Mrs. Smith or Mrs. Jones asks me to
dinner, we have eight courses and half as many wines, and Smith
will say quite gravely to me, "Try this '75 'Perrier Jouet'," as if
he were in the habit of drinking it daily. It makes me smile, for
he would as soon think of ordering a bottle of that wine at the
club as he would think of ordering a flask of nectar.
But to return to our "mutton." As we had none of us eaten too much
(and so become digesting machines), we were cheerful and sprightly.
A little music followed and an author repeated some of his poetry.
I noticed that during the hour before we broke up our hostess
contrived to have a little talk with each of her guests, which she
made quite personal, appearing for the moment as though the rest of
the world did not exist for her, than which there is no more subtle
flattery, and which is the act of a well-bred and appreciative
woman. Guests cannot be treated EN MASSE any more than food; to
ask a man to your house is not enough. He should be made to feel,
if you wish him to go away with a pleasant remembrance of the
entertainment, that his presence has in some way added to it and
been a personal pleasure to his host.
A good soul that all New York knew a few years ago, whose
entertainments were as though the street had been turned into a
SALON for the moment, used to go about among her guests saying,
"There have been one hundred and seventy-five people here this
Thursday, ten more than last week," with such a satisfied smile,
that you felt that she had little left to wish for, and found
yourself wondering just which number you represented in her mind.
When you entered she must have murmured a numeral to herself as she
shook your hand.
There is more than one house in New York where I have grave doubts
if the host and hostess are quite sure of my name when I dine
there; after an abstracted welcome, they rarely put themselves out
to entertain their guests. Black coats and evening dresses
alternate in pleasing perspective down the long line of their
table. Their gold plate is out, and the CHEF has been allowed to
work his own sweet will, so they give themselves no further
trouble.
Why does not some one suggest to these amphitrions to send fifteen
dollars in prettily monogrammed envelopes to each of their friends,
requesting them to expend it on a dinner. The compliment would be
quite as personal, and then the guests might make up little parties
to suit themselves, which would be much more satisfactory than
going "in" with some one chosen at hazard from their host's
visiting list, and less fatiguing to that gentleman and his family.
CHAPTER 33 - The Introducer
WE all suffer more or less from the perennial "freshness" of
certain acquaintances - tiresome people whom a misguided Providence
has endowed with over-flowing vitality and an irrepressible love of
their fellowmen, and who, not content with looking on life as a
continual "spree," insist on making others happy in spite of
themselves. Their name is legion and their presence ubiquitous,
but they rarely annoy as much as when disguised under the mask of
the "Introducer." In his clutches one is helpless. It is
impossible to escape from such philanthropic tyranny. He, in his
freshness, imagines that to present human beings to each other is
his mission in this world and moves through life making these
platonic unions, oblivious, as are other match-makers, of the
misery he creates.
If you are out for a quiet stroll, one of these genial gentlemen is
sure to come bounding up, and without notice or warning present you
to his "friend," - the greater part of the time a man he has met
only an hour before, but whom he endows out of the warehouse of his
generous imagination with several talents and all the virtues. In
order to make the situation just one shade more uncomfortable, this
kindly bore proceeds to sing a hymn of praise concerning both of
you to your faces, adding, in order that you may both feel quite
friendly and pleasant:
"I know you two will fancy each other, you are so alike," - a
phrase neatly calculated to nip any conversation in the bud. You
detest the unoffending stranger on the spot and would like to kill
the bore. Not to appear an absolute brute you struggle through
some commonplace phrases, discovering the while that your new
acquaintance is no more anxious to know you, than you are to meet
him; that he has not the slightest idea who you are, neither does
he desire to find out. He classes you with the bore, and his one
idea, like your own, is to escape. So that the only result of the
Introducer's good-natured interference has been to make two fellow-
creatures miserable.
A friend was telling me the other day of the martyrdom he had
suffered from this class. He spoke with much feeling, as he is the
soul of amiability, but somewhat short-sighted and afflicted with a
hopelessly bad memory for faces. For the last few years, he has
been in the habit of spending one or two of the winter months in
Washington, where his friends put him up at one club or another.
Each winter on his first appearance at one of these clubs, some
kindly disposed old fogy is sure to present him to a circle of the
members, and he finds himself indiscriminately shaking hands with
Judges and Colonels. As little or no conversation follows these
introductions to fix the individuality of the members in his mind,
he unconsciously cuts two-thirds of his newly acquired circle the
next afternoon, and the following winter, after a ten-months'
absence, he innocently ignores the other third. So hopelessly has
he offended in this way, that last season, on being presented to a
club member, the latter peevishly blurted out:
"This is the fourth time I have been introduced to Mr. Blank, but
he never remembers me," and glared coldly at him, laying it all
down to my friend's snobbishness and to the airs of a New Yorker
when away from home. If instead of being sacrificed to the
introducer's mistaken zeal my poor friend had been left quietly to
himself, he would in good time have met the people congenial to him
and avoided giving offence to a number of kindly gentlemen.
This introducing mania takes an even more aggressive form in the
hostess, who imagines that she is lacking in hospitality if any two
people in her drawing-room are not made known to each other. No
matter how interested you may be in a chat with a friend, you will
see her bearing down upon you, bringing in tow the one human being
you have carefully avoided for years. Escape seems impossible, but
as a forlorn hope you fling yourself into conversation with your
nearest neighbor, trying by your absorbed manner to ward off the
calamity. In vain! With a tap on your elbow your smiling hostess
introduces you and, having spoiled your afternoon, flits off in
search of other prey.
The question of introductions is one on which it is impossible to
lay down any fixed rules. There must constantly occur situations
where one's acts must depend upon a kindly consideration for other
people's feelings, which after all, is only another name for tact.
Nothing so plainly shows the breeding of a man or woman as skill in
solving problems of this kind without giving offence.
Foreigners, with their greater knowledge of the world, rarely fall
into the error of indiscriminate introducing, appreciating what a
presentation means and what obligations it entails. The English
fall into exactly the contrary error from ours, and carry it to
absurd lengths. Starting with the assumption that everybody knows
everybody, and being aware of the general dread of meeting
"detrimentals," they avoid the difficulty by making no
introductions. This may work well among themselves, but it is
trying to a stranger whom they have been good enough to ask to
their tables, to sit out the meal between two people who ignore his
presence and converse across him; for an Englishman will expire
sooner than speak to a person to whom he has not been introduced.
The French, with the marvellous tact that has for centuries made
them the law-givers on all subjects of etiquette and breeding, have
another way of avoiding useless introductions. They assume that
two people meeting in a drawing-room belong to the same world and
so chat pleasantly with those around them. On leaving the SALON
the acquaintance is supposed to end, and a gentleman who should at
another time or place bow or speak to the lady who had offered him
a cup of tea and talked pleasantly to him over it at a friend's
reception, would commit a gross breach of etiquette.
I was once present at a large dinner given in Cologne to the
American Geographical Society. No sooner was I seated than my two
neighbors turned towards me mentioning their names and waiting for
me to do the same. After that the conversation flowed on as among
friends. This custom struck me as exceedingly well-bred and
calculated to make a foreigner feel at his ease.
Among other curious types, there are people so constituted that
they are unhappy if a single person can be found in the room to
whom they have not been introduced. It does not matter who the
stranger may be or what chance there is of finding him congenial.
They must be presented; nothing else will content them. If you are
chatting with a friend you feel a pull at your sleeve, and in an
audible aside, they ask for an introduction. The aspirant will
then bring up and present the members of his family who happen to
be near. After that he seems to be at ease, and having absolutely
nothing to say will soon drift off. Our public men suffer terribly
from promiscuous introductions; it is a part of a political career;
a good memory for names and faces and a cordial manner under fire
have often gone a long way in floating a statesman on to success.
Demand, we are told, creates supply. During a short stay in a
Florida hotel last winter, I noticed a curious little man who
looked like a cross between a waiter and a musician. As he spoke
to me several times and seemed very officious, I asked who he was.
The answer was so grotesque that I could not believe my ears. I
was told that he held the position of official "introducer," or
master of ceremonies, and that the guests under his guidance became
known to each other, danced, rode, and married to their own and
doubtless to his satisfaction. The further west one goes the more
pronounced this mania becomes. Everybody is introduced to
everybody on all imaginable occasions. If a man asks you to take a
drink, he presents you to the bar-tender. If he takes you for a
drive, the cab-driver is introduced. "Boots" makes you acquainted
with the chambermaid, and the hotel proprietor unites you in the
bonds of friendship with the clerk at the desk. Intercourse with
one's fellows becomes one long debauch of introduction. In this
country where every liberty is respected, it is a curious fact that
we should be denied the most important of all rights, that of
choosing our acquaintances.
CHAPTER 34 - A Question and an Answer
DEAR IDLER:
I HAVE been reading your articles in The Evening Post. They are
really most amusing! You do know such a lot about people and
things, that I am tempted to write and ask you a question on a
subject that is puzzling me. What is it that is necessary to
succeed - socially? There! It is out! Please do not laugh at me.
Such funny people get on and such clever, agreeable ones fail, that
I am all at sea. Now do be nice and answer me, and you will have a
very grateful
ADMIRER.
The above note, in a rather juvenile feminine hand, and breathing a
faint perfume of VIOLETTE DE PARME, was part of the morning's mail
that I found lying on my desk a few days ago, in delightful
contrast to the bills and advertisements which formed the bulk of
my correspondence. It would suppose a stoicism greater than I
possess, not to have felt a thrill of satisfaction in its perusal.
There was, then, some one who read with pleasure what I wrote, and
who had been moved to consult me on a question (evidently to her)
of importance. I instantly decided to do my best for the
edification of my fair correspondent (for no doubt entered my head
that she was both young and fair), the more readily because that
very question had frequently presented itself to my own mind on
observing the very capricious choice of Dame "Fashion" in the
distribution of her favors.
That there are people who succeed brilliantly and move from success
to success, amid an applauding crowd of friends and admirers, while
others, apparently their superiors in every way, are distanced in
the race, is an undeniable fact. You have but to glance around the
circle of your acquaintances and relations to be convinced of this
anomaly. To a reflecting mind the question immediately presents
itself, Why is this? General society is certainly cultivated
enough to appreciate intelligence and superior endowments. How
then does it happen that the social favorites are so often lacking
in the qualities which at a first glance would seem indispensable
to success?
Before going any further let us stop a moment, and look at the
subject from another side, for it is more serious than appears to
be on the surface. To be loved by those around us, to stand well
in the world, is certainly the most legitimate as well as the most
common of ambitions, as well as the incentive to most of the
industry and perseverance in life. Aside from science, which is
sometimes followed for itself alone, and virtue, which we are told
looks for no other reward, the hope which inspires a great deal of
the persistent efforts we see, is generally that of raising one's
self and those one loves by one's efforts into a sphere higher than
where cruel fate had placed them; that they, too, may take their
place in the sunshine and enjoy the good things of life. This
ambition is often purely disinterested; a life of hardest toil is
cheerfully borne, with the hope (for sole consolation) that dear
ones will profit later by all the work, and live in a circle the
patient toiler never dreams of entering. Surely he is a stern
moralist who would deny this satisfaction to the breadwinner of a
family.
There are doubtless many higher motives in life, more elevated
goals toward which struggling humanity should strive. If you
examine the average mind, however, you will be pretty sure to find
that success is the touchstone by which we judge our fellows and
what, in our hearts, we admire the most. That is not to be
wondered at, either, for we have done all we can to implant it
there. From a child's first opening thought, it is impressed upon
him that the great object of existence is to succeed. Did a parent
ever tell a child to try and stand last in his class? And yet
humility is a virtue we admire in the abstract. Are any of us
willing to step aside and see our inferiors pass us in the race?
That is too much to ask of poor humanity. Were other and higher
standards to be accepted, the structure of civilization as it
exists to-day would crumble away and the great machine run down.
In returning to my correspondent and her perfectly legitimate
desire to know the road to success, we must realize that to a large
part of the world social success is the only kind they understand.
The great inventors and benefactors of mankind live too far away on
a plane by themselves to be the object of jealousy to any but a
very small circle; on the other hand, in these days of equality,
especially in this country where caste has never existed, the
social world seems to hold out alluring and tangible gifts to him
who can enter its enchanted portals. Even politics, to judge by
the actions of some of our legislators, of late, would seem to be
only a stepping-stone to its door!
"But my question," I hear my fair interlocutor saying. "You are
not answering it!"
All in good time, my dear. I am just about to do so. Did you ever
hear of Darwin and his theory of "selection?" It would be a slight
to your intelligence not to take it for granted that you had.
Well, my observations in the world lead me to believe that we
follow there unconsciously, the same rules that guide the wild
beasts in the forest. Certain individuals are endowed by nature
with temperaments which make them take naturally to a social life
and shine there. In it they find their natural element. They
develop freely just where others shrivel up and disappear. There
is continually going on unseen a "natural selection," the
discarding of unfit material, the assimilation of new and congenial
elements from outside, with the logical result of a survival of the
fittest. Aside from this, you will find in "the world," as
anywhere else, that the person who succeeds is generally he who has
been willing to give the most of his strength and mind to that one
object, and has not allowed the flowers on the hillside to distract
him from his path, remembering also that genius is often but the
"capacity for taking infinite pains."
There are people so constituted that they cheerfully give the
efforts of a lifetime to the attainment of a brilliant social
position. No fatigue is too great, and no snubs too bitter to be
willingly undergone in pursuit of the cherished object. You will
never find such an individual, for instance, wandering in the
flowery byways that lead to art or letters, for that would waste
his time. If his family are too hard to raise, he will abandon the
attempt and rise without them, for he cannot help himself. He is
but an atom working as blindly upward as the plant that pushes its
mysterious way towards the sun. Brains are not necessary. Good
looks are but a trump the more in the "hand." Manners may help,
but are not essential. The object can be and is attained daily
without all three. Wealth is but the oil that makes the machinery
run more smoothly. The all-important factor is the desire to
succeed, so strong that it makes any price seem cheap, and that can
pay itself by a step gained, for mortification and weariness and
heart-burnings.
There, my dear, is the secret of success! I stop because I feel
myself becoming bitter, and that is a frame of mind to be carefully
avoided, because it interferes with the digestion and upsets one's
gentle calm! I have tried to answer your question. The answer
resolves itself into these two things; that it is necessary to be
born with qualities which you may not possess, and calls for
sacrifices you would doubtless be unwilling to make. It remains
with you to decide if the little game is worth the candle. The
delightful common sense I feel quite sure you possess reassures me
as to your answer.
Take gayly such good things as may float your way, and profit by
them while they last. Wander off into all the cross-roads that
tempt you. Stop often to lend a helping hand to a less fortunate
traveller. Rest in the heat of the day, as your spirit prompts
you. Sit down before the sunset and revel in its beauty and you
will find your voyage through life much more satisfactory to look
back to and full of far sweeter memories than if by sacrificing any
of these pleasures you had attained the greatest of "positions."
CHAPTER 35 - Living on your Friends
THACKERAY devoted a chapter in "Vanity Fair" to the problem "How to
Live Well on Nothing a Year." It was neither a very new nor a very
ingenious expedient that "Becky" resorted to when she discounted
her husband's position and connection to fleece the tradespeople
and cheat an old family servant out of a year's rent. The author
might more justly have used his clever phrase in describing "Major
Pendennis's" agreeable existence. We have made great progress in
this, as in almost every other mode of living, in the latter half
of the Victorian era; intelligent individuals of either sex, who
know the ropes, can now as easily lead the existence of a multi-
millionaire (with as much satisfaction to themselves and their
friends) as though the bank account, with all its attendant
worries, stood in their own names. This subject is so vast, its
ramifications so far-reaching and complicated, that one hesitates
before launching into an analysis of it. It will be better simply
to give a few interesting examples, and a general rule or two, for
the enlightenment and guidance of ingenious souls.
Human nature changes little; all that our educational and social
training has accomplished is a smoothing of the surface. One of
the most striking proofs of this is, that here in our primitive
country, as soon as accumulation of capital allowed certain
families to live in great luxury, they returned to the ways of
older aristocracies, and, with other wants, felt the necessity of a
court about them, ladies and gentlemen in waiting, pages and
jesters. Nature abhors a vacuum, so a class of people immediately
felt an irresistible impulse to rush in and fill the void. Our
aristocrats were not even obliged to send abroad to fill these
vacancies, as they were for their footmen and butlers; the native
article was quite ready and willing and, considering the little
practice it could have had, proved wonderfully adapted to the work.
When the mania for building immense country houses and yachts (the
owning of opera boxes goes a little further back) first attacked
this country, the builders imagined that, once completed, it would
be the easiest, as well as the most delightful task to fill them
with the pick of their friends, that they could get all the
talented and agreeable people they wanted by simply making a sign.
To their astonishment, they discovered that what appeared so simple
was a difficult, as well as a thankless labor. I remember asking a
lady who had owned a "proscenium" at the old Academy, why she had
decided not to take a box in the (then) new opera-house.
"Because, having passed thirty years of my life inviting people to
sit in my box, I intend now to rest." It is very much the same
thing with yachts. A couple who had determined to go around the
world, in their lately finished boat, were dumbfounded to find
their invitations were not eagerly accepted. After exhausting the
small list of people they really wanted, they began with others
indifferent to them, and even then filled out their number with
difficulty. A hostess who counts on a series of house parties
through the autumn months, must begin early in the summer if she is
to have the guests she desires.
It is just here that the "professional," if I may be allowed to use
such an expression, comes to the front. He is always available.
It is indifferent to him if he starts on a tour around the world or
for a winter spree to Montreal. He is always amusing, good-
humored, and can be counted on at the last moment to fill any
vacant place, without being the least offended at the tardy
invitation, for he belongs to the class who have discovered "how to
live well on nothing a year." Luxury is as the breath of his
nostrils, but his means allow of little beyond necessities. The
temptation must be great when everything that he appreciates most
(and cannot afford) is urged upon him. We should not pose as too
stern moralists, and throw stones at him; for there may enter more
"best French plate" into the composition of our own houses than we
imagine.
It is here our epoch shows its improvement over earlier and cruder
days. At present no toad-eating is connected with the acceptance
of hospitality, or, if occasionally a small "batrachian" is
offered, it is so well disguised by an accomplished CHEF, and
served on such exquisite old Dresden, that it slips down with very
little effort. Even this rarely occurs, unless the guest has
allowed himself to become the inmate of a residence or yacht. Then
he takes his chance with other members of the household, and if the
host or hostess happens to have a bad temper as a set-off to their
good table, it is apt to fare ill with our friend.
So far, I have spoken of this class in the masculine, which is an
error, as the art is successfully practised by the weaker sex, with
this shade of difference. As an unmarried woman is in less general
demand, she is apt to attach herself to one dear friend, always
sure to be a lady in possession of fine country and city houses and
other appurtenances of wealth, often of inferior social standing;
so that there is give and take, the guest rendering real service to
an ambitious hostess. The feminine aspirant need not be handsome.
On the contrary, an agreeable plainness is much more acceptable,
serving as a foil. But she must be excellent in all games, from
golf to piquet, and willing to play as often and as long as
required. She must also cheerfully go in to dinner with the blue
ribbon bore of the evening, only asked on account of his pretty
wife (by the bye, why is it that Beauty is so often flanked by the
Beast?), and sit between him and the "second prize" bore. These
two worthies would have been the portion of the hostess fifteen
years ago; she would have considered it her duty to absorb them and
prevent her other guests suffering. MAIS NOUS AVONS CHANGE TOUT
CELA. The lady of the house now thinks first of amusing herself,
and arranges to sit between two favorites.
Society has become much simpler, and especially less expensive, for
unmarried men than it used to be. Even if a hostess asks a favor
in return for weeks of hospitality, the sacrifice she requires of a
man is rarely greater than a cotillion with an unattractive
debutante whom she is trying to launch; or the sitting through a
particularly dull opera in order to see her to the carriage, her
lord and master having slipped off early to his club and a quiet
game of pool. Many people who read these lines are old enough to
remember that prehistoric period when unmarried girls went to the
theatre and parties, alone with the men they knew. This custom
still prevails in our irrepressible West. It was an arrangement by
which all the expenses fell on the man - theatre tickets, carriages
if it rained, and often a bit of supper after. If a youth asked a
girl to dance the cotillion, he was expected to send a bouquet,
sure to cost between twenty and twenty-five dollars. What a
blessed change for the impecunious swell when all this went out of
fashion! New York is his paradise now; in other parts of the world
something is still expected of him. In France it takes the form of
a handsome bag of bon-bons on New Year's Day, if he has accepted
hospitality during the past year. While here he need do absolutely
nothing (unless he wishes to), the occasional leaving of a card
having been suppressed of late by our JEUNESSE DOREE, five minutes
of their society in an opera box being estimated (by them) as ample
return for a dinner or a week in a country house.
The truth of it is, there are so few men who "go out" (it being
practically impossible for any one working at a serious profession
to sit up night after night, even if he desired), and at the same
time so many women insist on entertaining to amuse themselves or
better their position, that the men who go about get spoiled and
almost come to consider the obligation conferred, when they dine
out. There is no more amusing sight than poor paterfamilias
sitting in the club between six and seven P.M. pretending to read
the evening paper, but really with his eve on the door; he has been
sent down by his wife to "get a man," as she is one short for her
dinner this evening. He must be one who will fit in well with the
other guests; hence papa's anxious look, and the reason the
editorial gets so little of his attention! Watch him as young
"professional" lounges in. There is just his man - if he only
happens to be disengaged! You will see "Pater" cross the room and
shake hands, then, after a few minutes' whispered conversation, he
will walk down to his coupe with such a relieved look on his face.
Young "professional," who is in faultless evening dress, will ring
for a cocktail and take up the discarded evening paper to pass the
time till eight twenty-five.
Eight twenty-five, advisedly, for he will be the last to arrive,
knowing, clever dog, how much eCLAT it gives one to have a room
full of people asking each other, "Whom are we waiting for?" when
the door opens, and he is announced. He will stay a moment after
the other guests have gone and receive the most cordial pressures
of the hand from a grateful hostess (if not spoken words of thanks)
in return for eating an exquisitely cooked dinner, seated between
two agreeable women, drinking irreproachable wine, smoking a cigar,
and washing the whole down with a glass of 1830 brandy, or some
priceless historic madeira.
There is probably a moral to be extracted from all this. But
frankly my ethics are so mixed that I fail to see where the blame
lies, and which is the less worthy individual, the ostentatious
axe-grinding host or the interested guest. One thing, however, I
see clearly, viz., that life is very agreeable to him who starts in
with few prejudices, good manners, a large amount of well-concealed
"cheek" and the happy faculty of taking things as they come.
CHAPTER 36 - American Society in Italy
THE phrase at the head of this chapter and other sentences, such as
"American Society in Paris," or London, are constantly on the lips
of people who should know better. In reality these societies do
not exist. Does my reader pause, wondering if he can believe his
eyes? He has doubtless heard all his life of these delightful
circles, and believes in them. He may even have dined, EN PASSANT,
at the "palace" of some resident compatriot in Rome or Florence,
under the impression that he was within its mystic limits.
Illusion! An effect of mirage, making that which appears quite
tangible and solid when viewed from a distance dissolve into thin
air as one approaches; like the mirage, cheating the weary
traveller with a vision of what he most longs for.
Forty, even fifty years ago, there lived in Rome a group of very
agreeable people; Story and the two Greenoughs and Crawford, the
sculptor (father of the brilliant novelist of today); Charlotte
Cushman (who divided her time between Rome and Newport), and her
friend Miss Stebbins, the sculptress, to whose hands we owe the
bronze fountain on the Mall in our Park; Rogers, then working at
the bronze doors of our capitol, and many other cultivated and
agreeable people. Hawthorne passed a couple of winters among them,
and the tone of that society is reflected in his "Marble Faun." He
took Story as a model for his "Kenyon," and was the first to note
the exotic grace of an American girl in that strange setting. They
formed as transcendental and unworldly a group as ever gathered
about a "tea" table. Great things were expected of them and their
influence, but they disappointed the world, and, with the exception
of Hawthorne, are being fast forgotten.
Nothing could be simpler than life in the papal capital in those
pleasant days. Money was rare, but living as delightfully
inexpensive. It was about that time, if I do not mistake, that a
list was published in New York of the citizens worth one hundred
thousand dollars; and it was not a long one! The Roman colony took
"tea" informally with each other, and "received" on stated evenings
in their studios (when mulled claret and cakes were the only
refreshment offered; very bad they were, too), and migrated in the
summer to the mountains near Rome or to Sorrento. In the winter
months their circle was enlarged by a contingent from home. Among
wealthy New Yorkers, it was the fashion in the early fifties to
pass a winter in Rome, when, together with his other dissipations,
paterfamilias would sit to one of the American sculptors for his
bust, which accounts for the horrors one now runs across in dark
corners of country houses, - ghostly heads in "chin whiskers" and
Roman draperies.
The son of one of these pioneers, more rich than cultivated,
noticed the other day, while visiting a friend of mine, an
exquisite eighteenth-century bust of Madame de Pompadour, the pride
of his hostess's drawing-room. "Ah!" said Midas, "are busts the
fashion again? I have one of my father, done in Rome in 1850. I
will bring it down and put it in my parlor."
The travellers consulted the residents in their purchases of copies
of the old masters, for there were fashions in these luxuries as in
everything else. There was a run at that time on the "Madonna in
the Chair;" and "Beatrice Cenci" was long prime favorite.
Thousands of the latter leering and winking over her everlasting
shoulder, were solemnly sent home each year. No one ever dreamed
of buying an original painting! The tourists also developed a
taste for large marble statues, "Nydia, the Blind Girl of Pompeii"
(people read Bulwer, Byron and the Bible then) being in such demand
that I knew one block in lower Fifth Avenue that possessed seven
blind Nydias, all life-size, in white marble, - a form of
decoration about as well adapted to those scanty front parlors as a
steam engine or a carriage and pair would have been. I fear
Bulwer's heroine is at a discount now, and often wonder as I see
those old residences turning into shops, what has become of the
seven white elephants and all their brothers and sisters that our
innocent parents brought so proudly back from Italy! I have
succeeded in locating two statues evidently imported at that time.
They grace the back steps of a rather shabby villa in the country,
- Demosthenes and Cicero, larger than life, dreary, funereal
memorials of the follies of our fathers.
The simple days we have been speaking of did not, however, outlast
the circle that inaugurated them. About 1867 a few rich New
Yorkers began "trying to know the Italians" and go about with them.
One family, "up to snuff" in more senses than one, married their
daughter to the scion of a princely house, and immediately a large
number of her compatriots were bitten with the madness of going
into Italian society.
In 1870, Rome became the capital of united Italy. The court
removed there. The "improvements" began. Whole quarters were
remodelled, and the dear old Rome of other days, the Rome of
Hawthorne and Madame de Stael, was swept away. With this new state
of things came a number of Americo-Italian marriages more or less
successful; and anything like an American society, properly so-
called, disappeared. To-day families of our compatriots passing
the winter months in Rome are either tourists who live in hotels,
and see sights, or go (as far as they can) into Italian society.
The Queen of Italy, who speaks excellent English, developed a
PENCHANT for Americans, and has attached several who married
Italians to her person in different court capacities; indeed, the
old "Black" society, who have remained true to the Pope, when they
wish to ridicule the new "White" or royal circle, call it the
"American court!" The feeling is bitter still between the "Blacks"
and "Whites," and an American girl who marries into one of these
circles must make up her mind to see nothing of friends or
relatives in the opposition ranks. It is said that an amalgamation
is being brought about, but it is slow work; a generation will have
to die out before much real mingling of the two courts will take
place. As both these circles are poor, very little entertainment
goes on. One sees a little life in the diplomatic world, and the
King and Queen give a ball or two during the winter, but since the
repeated defeats of the Italian arms in Africa, and the heavy
financial difficulties (things these sovereigns take very seriously
to heart), there has not been much "go" in the court
entertainments.
The young set hope great things of the new Princess of Naples, the
bride of the heir-apparent, a lady who is credited with being full
of fun and life; it is fondly imagined that she will set the ball
rolling again. By the bye, her first lady-in-waiting, the young
Duchess del Monte of Naples, was an American girl, and a very
pretty one, too. She enjoyed for some time the enviable
distinction of being the youngest and handsomest duchess in Europe,
until Miss Vanderbilt married Marlborough and took the record from
her. The Prince and Princess of Naples live at their Neapolitan
capital, and will not do much to help things in Rome. Besides
which he is very delicate and passes for not being any too fond of
the world.
What makes things worse is that the great nobles are mostly "land
poor," and even the richer ones burned their fingers in the craze
for speculation that turned all Rome upside down in the years
following 1870 and Italian unity, when they naively imagined their
new capital was to become again after seventeen centuries the
metropolis of the world. Whole quarters of new houses were run up
for a population that failed to appear; these houses now stand
empty and are fast going to ruin. So that little in the way of
entertaining is to be expected from the bankrupts. They are a
genial race, these Italian nobles, and welcome rich strangers and
marry them with much enthusiasm - just a shade too much, perhaps -
the girl counting for so little and her DOT for so much in the
matrimonial scale. It is only necessary to keep open house to have
the pick of the younger ones as your guests. They will come to
entertainments at American houses and bring all their relations,
and dance, and dine, and flirt with great good humor and
persistency; but if there is not a good solid fortune in the
background, in the best of securities, the prettiest American
smiles never tempt them beyond flirtation; the season over, they
disappear up into their mountain villas to wait for a new
importation from the States.
In Rome, as well as in the other Italian cities, there are, of
course, still to be found Americans in some numbers (where on the
Continent will you not find them?), living quietly for study or
economy. But they are not numerous or united enough to form a
society; and are apt to be involved in bitter strife among
themselves.
Why, you ask, should Americans quarrel among themselves?
Some years ago I was passing the summer months on the Rhine at a
tiny German watering-place, principally frequented by English, who
were all living together in great peace and harmony, until one
fatal day, when an Earl appeared. He was a poor Irish Earl, very
simple and unoffending, but he brought war into that town, heart-
burnings, envy, and backbiting. The English colony at once divided
itself into two camps, those who knew the Earl and those who did
not. And peace fled from our little society. You will find in
every foreign capital among the resident Americans, just such a
state of affairs as convulsed that German spa. The native "swells"
have come to be the apple of discord that divides our good people
among themselves. Those who have been successful in knowing the
foreigners avoid their compatriots and live with their new friends,
while the other group who, from laziness, disinclination, or
principle (?) have remained true to their American circle, cannot
resist calling the others snobs, and laughing (a bit enviously,
perhaps) at their upward struggles.
It is the same in Florence. The little there was left of an
American society went to pieces on that rock. Our parents forty
years ago seem to me to have been much more self-respecting and
sensible. They knew perfectly well that there was nothing in
common between themselves and the Italian nobility, and that those
good people were not going to put themselves out to make the
acquaintance of a lot of strangers, mostly of another religion,
unless it was to be materially to their advantage. So they left
them quietly alone. I do not pretend to judge any one's motives,
but confess I cannot help regarding with suspicion a foreigner who
leaves his own circle to mingle with strangers. It resembles too
closely the amiabilities of the wolf for the lamb, or the sudden
politeness of a school-boy to a little girl who has received a box
of candies.
CHAPTER 37 - The Newport of the Past
FEW of the "carriage ladies and gentlemen" who disport themselves
in Newport during the summer months, yachting and dancing through
the short season, then flitting away to fresh fields and pastures
new, realize that their daintily shod feet have been treading
historic ground, or care to cast a thought back to the past. Oddly
enough, to the majority of people the past is a volume rarely
opened. Not that it bores them to read it, but because they, like
children, want some one to turn over its yellow leaves and point
out the pictures to them. Few of the human motes that dance in the
rays of the afternoon sun as they slant across the little Park,
think of the fable which asserts that a sea-worn band of
adventurous men, centuries before the Cabots or the Genoese
discoverer thought of crossing the Atlantic, had pushed bravely out
over untried seas and landed on this rocky coast. Yet one apparent
evidence of their stay tempts our thoughts back to the times when
it is said to have been built as a bower for a king's daughter.
Longfellow, in the swinging verse of his "Skeleton in Armor,"
breathing of the sea and the Norseman's fatal love, has thrown such
a glamour of poetry around the tower, that one would fain believe
all he relates. The hardy Norsemen, if they ever came here,
succumbed in their struggle with the native tribes, or, discouraged
by death and hardships, sailed away, leaving the clouds of oblivion
to close again darkly around this continent, and the fog of
discussion to circle around the "Old Mill."
The little settlement of another race, speaking another tongue,
that centuries later sprang up in the shadow of the tower, quickly
grew into a busy and prosperous city, which, like New York, its
rival, was captured and held by the English. To walk now through
some of its quaint, narrow streets is to step back into
Revolutionary days. Hardly a house has changed since the time when
the red coats of the British officers brightened the prim
perspectives, and turned loyal young heads as they passed.
At the corner of Spring and Pelham Streets, still stands the
residence of General Prescott, who was carried away prisoner by his
opponents, they having rowed down in whale-boats from Providence
for the attack. Rochambeau, our French ally, lodged lower down in
Mary Street. In the tower of Trinity, one can read the epitaph of
the unfortunate Chevalier de Ternay, commander of the sea forces,
whose body lies near by. Many years later his relative, the Duc de
Noailles, when Minister to this country, had this simple tablet
repaired and made a visit to the spot.
A long period of prosperity followed the Revolution, during which
Newport grew and flourished. Our pious and God-fearing "forbears,"
having secured personal and religious liberty, proceeded to
inaugurate a most successful and remunerative trade in rum and
slaves. It was a triangular transaction and yielded a three-fold
profit. The simple population of that day, numbering less than ten
thousand souls, possessed twenty distilleries; finding it a
physical impossibility to drink ALL the rum, they conceived the
happy thought of sending the surplus across to the coast of Africa,
where it appears to have been much appreciated by the native
chiefs, who eagerly exchanged the pick of their loyal subjects for
that liquid. These poor brutes were taken to the West Indies and
exchanged for sugar, laden with which, the vessels returned to
Newport.
Having introduced the dusky chieftains to the charms of delirium
tremens and their subjects to life-long slavery, one can almost see
these pious deacons proceeding to church to offer up thanks for the
return of their successful vessels. Alas! even "the best laid
schemes of mice and men" come to an end. The War of 1812, the
opening of the Erie Canal and sundry railways struck a blow at
Newport commerce, from which it never recovered. The city sank
into oblivion, and for over thirty years not a house was built
there.
It was not until near 1840 that the Middletons and Izzards and
other wealthy and aristocratic Southern families were tempted to
Newport by the climate and the facilities it offered for bathing,
shooting and boating. A boarding-house or two sufficed for the
modest wants of the new-comers, first among which stood the
Aquidneck, presided over by kind Mrs. Murray. It was not until
some years later, when New York and Boston families began to
appreciate the place, that the first hotels were built, - the
Atlantic on the square facing the old mill, the Bellevue and
Fillmore on Catherine Street, and finally the original Ocean House,
destroyed by fire in 1845 and rebuilt as we see it to-day. The
croakers of the epoch considered it much too far out of town to be
successful, for at its door the open fields began, a gate there
separating the town from the country across which a straggling,
half-made road, closed by innumerable gates, led along the cliffs
and out across what is now the Ocean Drive. The principal roads at
that time led inland; any one wishing to drive seaward had to
descend every two or three minutes to open a gate. The youth of
the day discovered a source of income in opening and closing these
for pennies.
Fashion had decreed that the correct hour for dancing was 11 A.M.,
and MATINEES DANSANTES were regularly given at the hotels, our
grandmothers appearing in DECOLLETE muslin frocks adorned with
broad sashes, and disporting themselves gayly until the dinner
hour. Low-neck dresses were the rule, not only for these informal
entertainments, but as every-day wear for young girls, - an old
lady only the other day telling me she had never worn a "high-body"
until after her marriage. Two o'clock found all the beauties and
beaux dining. How incredulously they would have laughed if any one
had prophesied that their grandchildren would prefer eight forty-
five as a dinner hour!
The opening of Bellevue Avenue marked another epoch in the history
of Newport. About that time Governor Lawrence bought the whole of
Ochre Point farm for fourteen thousand dollars, and Mr. de Rham
built on the newly opened road the first "cottage," which stands
to-day modestly back from the avenue opposite Perry Street. If
houses have souls, as Hawthorne averred, and can remember and
compare, what curious thoughts must pass through the oaken brain of
this simple construction as it sees its marble neighbors rearing
their vast facades among trees. The trees, too, are an innovation,
for when the de Rham cottage was built and Mrs. Cleveland opened
her new house at the extreme end of Rough Point (the second summer
residence in the place) it is doubtful if a single tree broke the
rocky monotony of the landscape from the Ocean House to Bateman's
Point.
Governor Lawrence, having sold one acre of his Ochre Point farm to
Mr. Pendleton for the price he himself had paid for the whole,
proceeded to build a stone wall between the two properties down to
the water's edge. The population of Newport had been accustomed to
take their Sunday airings and moonlight rambles along "the cliffs,"
and viewed this obstruction of their favorite walk with dismay. So
strong was their feeling that when the wall was completed the young
men of the town repaired there in the night and tore it down. It
was rebuilt, the mortar being mixed with broken glass. This
infuriated the people to such an extent that the whole populace, in
broad daylight, accompanied by the summer visitors, destroyed the
wall and threw the materials into the sea. Lawrence, bent on
maintaining what he considered his rights, called the law to his
aid. It was then discovered that an immemorial riverain right gave
the fishermen and the public generally, access to the shore for
fishing, and also to collect seaweed, - a right of way that no one
could obstruct.
This was the beginning of the long struggle between the cliff-
dwellers and the townspeople; each new property-owner, disgusted at
the idea that all the world can stroll at will across his well-kept
lawns, has in turn tried his hand at suppressing the now famous
"walk." Not only do the public claim the liberty to walk there,
but also the right to cross any property to get to the shore. At
this moment the city fathers and the committee of the new buildings
at Bailey's Beach are wrangling as gayly as in Governor Lawrence's
day over a bit of wall lately constructed across the end of
Bellevue Avenue. A new expedient has been hit upon by some of the
would-be exclusive owners of the cliffs; they have lowered the
"walk" out of sight, thus insuring their own privacy and in no way
interfering with the rights of the public.
Among the gentlemen who settled in Newport about Governor
Lawrence's time was Lord Baltimore (Mr. Calvert, he preferred to
call himself), who remained there until his death. He was shy of
referring to his English peerage, but would willingly talk of his
descent through his mother from Peter Paul Rubens, from whom had
come down to him a chateau in Holland and several splendid
paintings. The latter hung in the parlor of the modest little
dwelling, where I was taken to see them and their owner many years
ago. My introducer on this occasion was herself a lady of no
ordinary birth, being the daughter of Stuart, our greatest portrait
painter. I have passed many quiet hours in the quaint studio (the
same her father had used), hearing her prattle - as she loved to do
if she found a sympathetic listener - of her father, of Washington
and his pompous ways, and the many celebrities who had in turn
posed before Stuart's easel. She had been her father's companion
and aid, present at the sittings, preparing his brushes and colors,
and painting in backgrounds and accessories; and would willingly
show his palette and explain his methods and theories of color, his
predilection for scrumbling shadows thinly in black and then
painting boldly in with body color. Her lessons had not profited
much to the gentle, kindly old lady, for the productions of her own
brush were far from resembling her great parent's work. She,
however, painted cheerfully on to life's close, surrounded by her
many friends, foremost among whom was Charlotte Cushman, who also
passed the last years of her life in Newport. Miss Stuart was over
eighty when I last saw her, still full of spirit and vigor,
beginning the portrait of a famous beauty of that day, since the
wife and mother of dukes.
Miss Stuart's death seems to close one of the chapters in the
history of this city, and to break the last connecting link with
its past. The world moves so quickly that the simple days and
modest amusements of our fathers and grandfathers have already
receded into misty remoteness. We look at their portraits and
wonder vaguely at their graceless costumes. We know they trod
these same streets, and laughed and flirted and married as we are
doing to-day, but they seem to us strangely far away, like
inhabitants of another sphere!
It is humiliating to think how soon we, too, shall have become the
ancestors of a new and careless generation; fresh faces will
replace our faded ones, young voices will laugh as they look at our
portraits hanging in dark corners, wondering who we were, and
(criticising the apparel we think so artistic and appropriate) how
we could ever have made such guys of ourselves.
CHAPTER 38 - A Conquest of Europe
THE most important event in modern history is the discovery of
Europe by the Americans. Before it, the peoples of the Old World
lived happy and contented in their own countries, practising the
patriarchal virtues handed down to them from generations of
forebears, ignoring alike the vices and benefits of modern
civilization, as understood on this side of the Atlantic. The
simple-minded Europeans remained at home, satisfied with the rank
in life where they had been born, and innocent of the ways of the
new world.
These peoples were, on the whole, not so much to be pitied, for
they had many pleasing crafts and arts unknown to the invaders,
which had enabled them to decorate their capitals with taste in a
rude way; nothing really great like the lofty buildings and
elevated railway structures, executed in American cities, but
interesting as showing what an ingenious race, deprived of the
secrets of modern science, could accomplish.
The more aesthetic of the newcomers even affected to admire the
antiquated places of worship and residences they visited abroad,
pointing out to their compatriots that in many cases marble, bronze
and other old-fashioned materials had been so cleverly treated as
to look almost like the superior cast-iron employed at home, and
that some of the old paintings, preserved with veneration in the
museums, had nearly the brilliancy of modern chromos. As their
authors had, however, neglected to use a process lending itself to
rapid reproduction, they were of no practical value. In other
ways, the continental races, when discovered, were sadly behind the
times. In business, they ignored the use of "corners," that
backbone of American trade, and their ideas of advertising were but
little in advance of those known among the ancient Greeks.
The discovery of Europe by the Americans was made about 1850, at
which date the first bands of adventurers crossed the seas in
search of amusement. The reports these pioneers brought back of
the NAIVETE, politeness, and gullibility of the natives, and the
cheapness of existence in their cities, caused a general exodus
from the western to the eastern hemisphere. Most of the Americans
who had used up their credit at home and those whose incomes were
insufficient for their wants, immediately migrated to these happy
hunting grounds, where life was inexpensive and credit unlimited.
The first arrivals enjoyed for some twenty years unique
opportunities. They were able to live in splendor for a pittance
that would barely have kept them in necessaries on their own side
of the Atlantic, and to pick up valuable specimens of native
handiwork for nominal sums. In those happy days, to belong to the
invading race was a sufficient passport to the good graces of the
Europeans, who asked no other guarantees before trading with the
newcomers, but flocked around them, offering their services and
their primitive manufactures, convinced that Americans were all
wealthy.
Alas! History ever repeats itself. As Mexicans and Peruvians,
after receiving their conquerors with confidence and enthusiasm,
came to rue the day they had opened their arms to strangers, so the
European peoples, before a quarter of a century was over, realized
that the hordes from across the sea who were over-running their
lands, raising prices, crowding the native students out of the
schools, and finally attempting to force an entrance into society,
had little to recommend them or justify their presence except
money. Even in this some of the intruders were unsatisfactory.
Those who had been received into the "bosom" of hotels often forgot
to settle before departing. The continental women who had provided
the wives of discoverers with the raiment of the country (a luxury
greatly affected by those ladies) found, to their disgust, that
their new customers were often unable or unwilling to offer any
remuneration.
In consequence of these and many other disillusions, Americans
began to be called the "Destroyers," especially when it became
known that nothing was too heavy or too bulky to be carried away by
the invaders, who tore the insides from the native houses, the
paintings from the walls, the statues from the temples, and
transported this booty across the seas, much in the same way as the
Romans had plundered Greece. Elaborate furniture seemed especially
to attract the new arrivals, who acquired vast quantities of it.
Here, however, the wily natives (who were beginning to appreciate
their own belongings) had revenge. Immense quantities of worthless
imitations were secretly manufactured and sold to the travellers at
fabulous prices. The same artifice was used with paintings, said
to be by great masters, and with imitations of old stuffs and bric-
a-brac, which the ignorant and arrogant invaders pretended to
appreciate and collect.
Previous to our arrival there had been an invasion of the Continent
by the English about the year 1812. One of their historians,
called Thackeray, gives an amusing account of this in the opening
chapters of his "Shabby Genteel Story." That event, however, was
unimportant in comparison with the great American movement,
although both were characterized by the same total disregard of the
feelings and prejudices of indigenous populations. The English
then walked about the continental churches during divine service,
gazing at the pictures and consulting their guide-books as
unconcernedly as our compatriots do to-day. They also crowded into
theatres and concert halls, and afterwards wrote to the newspapers
complaining of the bad atmosphere of those primitive establishments
and of the long ENTR'ACTES.
As long as the invaders confined themselves to such trifles, the
patient foreigners submitted to their overbearing and uncouth ways
because of the supposed benefit to trade. The natives even went so
far as to build hotels for the accommodation and delight of the
invaders, abandoning whole quarters to their guests.
There was, however, a point at which complacency stopped. The
older civilizations had formed among themselves restricted and
exclusive societies, to which access was almost impossible to
strangers. These sanctuaries tempted the immigrants, who offered
their fairest virgins and much treasure for the privilege of
admission. The indigenous aristocrats, who were mostly poor,
yielded to these offers and a few Americans succeeded in forcing an
entrance. But the old nobility soon became frightened at the
number and vulgarity of the invaders, and withdrew severely into
their shells, refusing to accept any further bribes either in the
form of females or finance.
From this moment dates the humiliation of the discoverers. All
their booty and plunder seemed worthless in comparison with the
Elysian delights they imagined were concealed behind the closed
doors of those holy places, visions of which tortured the women
from the western hemisphere and prevented their taking any pleasure
in other victories. To be received into those inner circles became
their chief ambition. With this end in view they dressed
themselves in expensive costumes, took the trouble to learn the
"lingo" spoken in the country, went to the extremity of copying the
ways of the native women by painting their faces, and in one or two
cases imitated the laxity of their morals.
In spite of these concessions, our women were not received with
enthusiasm. On the contrary, the very name of an American became a
byword and an abomination in every continental city. This
prejudice against us abroad is hardly to be wondered at on
reflecting what we have done to acquire it. The agents chosen by
our government to treat diplomatically with the conquered nations,
owe their selection to political motives rather than to their tact
or fitness. In the large majority of cases men are sent over who
know little either of the habits or languages prevailing in Europe.
The worst elements always follow in the wake of discovery. Our
settlements abroad gradually became the abode of the compromised,
the divorced, the socially and financially bankrupt.
Within the last decade we have found a way to revenge the slights
put upon us, especially those offered to Americans in the capital
of Gaul. Having for the moment no playwrights of our own, the men
who concoct dramas, comedies, and burlesques for our stage find,
instead of wearying themselves in trying to produce original
matter, that it is much simpler to adapt from French writers. This
has been carried to such a length that entire French plays are now
produced in New York signed by American names.
The great French playwrights can protect themselves by taking out
American copyright, but if one of them omits this formality, the
"conquerors" immediately seize upon his work and translate it,
omitting intentionally all mention of the real author on their
programmes. This season a play was produced of which the first act
was taken from Guy de Maupassant, the second and third "adapted"
from Sardou, with episodes introduced from other authors to
brighten the mixture. The piece thus patched together is signed by
a well-known Anglo-Saxon name, and accepted by our moral public,
although the original of the first act was stopped by the Parisian
police as too immoral for that gay capital.
Of what use would it be to "discover" a new continent unless the
explorers were to reap some such benefits? Let us take every
advantage that our proud position gives us, plundering the foreign
authors, making penal settlements of their capitals, and ignoring
their foolish customs and prejudices when we travel among them! In
this way shall we effectually impress on the inferior races across
the Atlantic the greatness of the American nation.
CHAPTER 39 - A Race of Slaves
IT is all very well for us to have invaded Europe, and awakened
that somnolent continent to the lights and delights of American
ways; to have beautified the cities of the old world with graceful
trolleys and illuminated the catacombs at Rome with electricity.
Every true American must thrill with satisfaction at these
achievements, and the knowledge that he belongs to a dominating
race, before which the waning civilization of Europe must fade away
and disappear.
To have discovered Europe and to rule as conquerors abroad is well,
but it is not enough, if we are led in chains at home. It is
recorded of a certain ambitious captain whose "Commentaries" made
our school-days a burden, that "he preferred to be the first in a
village rather than second at Rome." Oddly enough, WE are
contented to be slaves in our villages while we are conquerors in
Rome. Can it be that the struggles of our ancestors for freedom
were fought in vain? Did they throw off the yoke of kings, cross
the Atlantic, found a new form of government on a new continent,
break with traditions, and sign a declaration of independence, only
that we should succumb, a century later, yielding the fruits of
their hard-fought battles with craven supineness into the hands of
corporations and municipalities; humbly bowing necks that refuse to
bend before anointed sovereigns, to the will of steamboat
subordinates, the insolence of be-diamonded hotel-clerks, and the
captious conductor?
Last week my train from Washington arrived in Jersey City on time.
We scurried (like good Americans) to the ferry-boat, hot and tired
and anxious to get to our destination; a hope deferred, however,
for our boat was kept waiting forty long minutes, because,
forsooth, another train from somewhere in the South was behind
time. Expostulations were in vain. Being only the paying public,
we had no rights that those autocrats, the officials, were bound to
respect. The argument that if they knew the southern train to be
so much behind, the ferry-boat would have plenty of time to take us
across and return, was of no avail, so, like a cargo of "moo-cows"
(as the children say), we submitted meekly. In order to make the
time pass more pleasantly for the two hundred people gathered on
the boat, a dusky potentate judged the moment appropriate to scrub
the cabin floors. So, aided by a couple of subordinates, he
proceeded to deluge the entire place in floods of water, obliging
us to sit with our feet tucked up under us, splashing the ladies'
skirts and our wraps and belongings.
Such treatment of the public would have raised a riot anywhere but
in this land of freedom. Do you suppose any one murmured? Not at
all. The well-trained public had the air of being in church. My
neighbors appeared astonished at my impatience, and informed me
that they were often detained in that way, as the company was short
of boats, but they hoped to have a new one in a year or two. This
detail did not prevent that corporation advertising our train to
arrive in New York at three-thirteen, instead of which we landed at
four o'clock. If a similar breach of contract had happened in
England, a dozen letters would have appeared in the "Times," and
the grievance been well aired.
Another infliction to which all who travel in America are subjected
is the brushing atrocity. Twenty minutes before a train arrives at
its destination, the despot who has taken no notice of any one up
to this moment, except to snub them, becomes suspiciously attentive
and insists on brushing everybody. The dirt one traveller has been
accumulating is sent in clouds into the faces of his neighbors.
When he is polished off and has paid his "quarter" of tribute, the
next man gets up, and the dirt is then brushed back on to number
one, with number two's collection added.
Labiche begins one of his plays with two servants at work in a
salon. "Dusting," says one of them, "is the art of sending the
dirt from the chair on the right over to the sofa on the left." I
always think of that remark when I see the process performed in a
parlor car, for when it is over we are all exactly where we began.
If a man should shampoo his hair, or have his boots cleaned in a
salon, he would be ejected as a boor; yet the idea apparently never
enters the heads of those who soil and choke their fellow-
passengers that the brushing might be done in the vestibule.
On the subject of fresh air and heat we are also in the hands of
officials, dozens of passengers being made to suffer for the
caprices of one of their number, or the taste of some captious
invalid. In other lands the rights of minorities are often
ignored. With us it is the contrary. One sniffling school-girl
who prefers a temperature of 80 degrees can force a car full of
people to swelter in an atmosphere that is death to them, because
she refuses either to put on her wraps or to have a window opened.
Street railways are torture-chambers where we slaves are made to
suffer in another way. You must begin to reel and plunge towards
the door at least two blocks before your destination, so as to leap
to the ground when the car slows up; otherwise the conductor will
be offended with you, and carry you several squares too far, or
with a jocose "Step lively," will grasp your elbow and shoot you
out. Any one who should sit quietly in his place until the vehicle
had come to a full stop, would be regarded by the slave-driver and
his cargo as a POSEUR who was assuming airs.
The idea that cars and boats exist for the convenience of the
public was exploded long ago. We are made, dozens of times a day,
to feel that this is no longer the case. It is, on the contrary,
brought vividly home to us that such conveyances are money making
machines in the possession of powerful corporations (to whom we, in
our debasement, have handed over the freedom of our streets and
rivers), and are run in the interest and at the discretion of their
owners.
It is not only before the great and the powerful that we bow in
submission. The shop-girl is another tyrant who has planted her
foot firmly on the neck of the nation. She respects neither sex
nor age. Ensconced behind the bulwark of her counter, she scorns
to notice humble aspirants until they have performed a preliminary
penance; a time she fills up in cheerful conversation addressed to
other young tyrants, only deciding to notice customers when she
sees their last grain of patience is exhausted. She is often of a
merry mood, and if anything about your appearance or manner strikes
her critical sense as amusing, will laugh gayly with her companions
at your expense.
A French gentleman who speaks our language correctly but with some
accent, told me that he found it impossible to get served in our
stores, the shop-girls bursting with laughter before he could make
his wants known.
Not long ago I was at the Compagnie Lyonnaise in Paris with a stout
American lady, who insisted on tipping her chair forward on its
front legs as she selected some laces. Suddenly the chair flew
from under her, and she sat violently on the polished floor in an
attitude so supremely comic that the rest of her party were
inwardly convulsed. Not a muscle moved in the faces of the well-
trained clerks. The proprietor assisted her to rise as gravely as
if he were bowing us to our carriage.
In restaurants American citizens are treated even worse than in the
shops. You will see cowed customers who are anxious to get away to
their business or pleasure sitting mutely patient, until a waiter
happens to remember their orders. I do not know a single
establishment in this city where the waiters take any notice of
their customers' arrival, or where the proprietor comes, toward the
end of the meal, to inquire if the dishes have been cooked to their
taste. The interest so general on the Continent or in England is
replaced here by the same air of being disturbed from more
important occupations, that characterizes the shop-girl and
elevator boy.
Numbers of our people live apparently in awe of their servants and
the opinion of the tradespeople. One middle-aged lady whom I
occasionally take to the theatre, insists when we arrive at her
door on my accompanying her to the elevator, in order that the
youth who presides therein may see that she has an escort, the
opinion of this subordinate apparently being of supreme importance
to her. One of our "gilded youths" recently told me of a thrilling
adventure in which he had figured. At the moment he was passing
under an awning on his way to a reception, a gust of wind sent his
hat gambolling down the block. "Think what a situation," he
exclaimed. "There stood a group of my friends' footmen watching
me. But I was equal to the situation and entered the house as if
nothing had happened!" Sir Walter Raleigh sacrificed a cloak to
please a queen. This youth abandoned a new hat, fearing the
laughter of a half-dozen servants.
One of the reasons why we have become so weak in the presence of
our paid masters is that nowhere is the individual allowed to
protest. The other night a friend who was with me at a theatre
considered the acting inferior, and expressed his opinion by
hissing. He was promptly ejected by a policeman. The man next me
was, on the contrary, so pleased with the piece that he encored
every song. I had paid to see the piece once, and rebelled at
being obliged to see it twice to suit my neighbor. On referring
the matter to the box-office, the caliph in charge informed me that
the slaves he allowed to enter his establishment (like those who in
other days formed the court of Louis XIV.) were permitted to
praise, but were suppressed if they murmured dissent. In his
MEMOIRES, Dumas, PERE, tells of a "first night" when three thousand
people applauded a play of his and one spectator hissed. "He was
the only one I respected," said Dumas, "for the piece was bad, and
that criticism spurred me on to improve it."
How can we hope for any improvement in the standard of our
entertainments, the manners of our servants or the ways of
corporations when no one complains? We are too much in a hurry to
follow up a grievance and have it righted. "It doesn't pay," "I
haven't got the time," are phrases with which all such subjects are
dismissed. We will sit in over-heated cars, eat vilely cooked
food, put up with insolence from subordinates, because it is too
much trouble to assert our rights. Is the spirit that prompted the
first shots on Lexington Common becoming extinct? Have the floods
of emigration so diluted our Anglo-Saxon blood that we no longer
care to fight for liberty? Will no patriot arise and lead a revolt
against our tyrants?
I am prepared to follow such a leader, and have already marked my
prey. First, I will slay a certain miscreant who sits at the
receipt of customs in the box-office of an up-town theatre. For
years I have tried to propitiate that satrap with modest politeness
and feeble little jokes. He has never been softened by either, but
continues to "chuck" the worst places out to me (no matter how
early I arrive, the best have always been given to the
speculators), and to frown down my attempts at self-assertion.
When I have seen this enemy at my feet, I shall start down town
(stopping on the way to brain the teller at my bank, who is
perennially paring his nails, and refuses to see me until that
operation is performed), to the office of a night-boat line, where
the clerk has so often forced me, with hundreds of other weary
victims, to stand in line like convicts, while he chats with a
"lady friend," his back turned to us and his leg comfortably thrown
over the arm of his chair. Then I will take my blood-stained way -
but, no! It is better not to put my victims on their guard, but to
abide my time in silence! Courage, fellow-slaves, our day will
come!
CHAPTER 40 - Introspection *
THE close of a year must bring even to the careless and the least
inclined toward self-inspection, an hour of thoughtfulness, a
desire to glance back across the past, and set one's mental house
in order, before starting out on another stage of the journey for
that none too distant bourne toward which we all are moving.
* December thirty-first, 1888.
Our minds are like solitary dwellers in a vast residence, whom
habit has accustomed to live in a few only of the countless
chambers around them. We have collected from other parts of our
lives mental furniture and bric-a-brac that time and association
have endeared to us, have installed these meagre belongings
convenient to our hand, and contrived an entrance giving facile
access to our living-rooms, avoiding the effort of a long detour
through the echoing corridors and disused salons behind. No
acquaintances, and but few friends, penetrate into the private
chambers of our thoughts. We set aside a common room for the
reception of visitors, making it as cheerful as circumstances will
allow and take care that the conversation therein rarely turns on
any subject more personal than the view from the windows or the
prophecies of the barometer.
In the old-fashioned brick palace at Kensington, a little suite of
rooms is carefully guarded from the public gaze, swept, garnished
and tended as though the occupants of long ago were hourly expected
to return. The early years of England's aged sovereign were passed
in these simple apartments and by her orders they have been kept
unchanged, the furniture and decorations remaining to-day as when
she inhabited them. In one corner, is assembled a group of dolls,
dressed in the quaint finery of 1825. A set of miniature cooking
utensils stands near by. A child's scrap-books and color-boxes lie
on the tables. In one sunny chamber stands the little white-draped
bed where the heiress to the greatest crown on earth dreamed her
childish dreams, and from which she was hastily aroused one June
morning to be saluted as Queen. So homelike and livable an air
pervades the place, that one almost expects to see the lonely
little girl of seventy years ago playing about the unpretending
chambers.
Affection for the past and a reverence for the memory of the dead
have caused the royal wife and mother to preserve with the same
care souvenirs of her passage in other royal residences. The
apartments that sheltered the first happy months of her wedded
life, the rooms where she knew the joys and anxieties of maternity,
have become for her consecrated sanctuaries, where the widowed,
broken old lady comes on certain anniversaries to evoke the
unforgotten past, to meditate and to pray.
Who, as the year is drawing to its close, does not open in memory
some such sacred portal, and sit down in the familiar rooms to live
over again the old hopes and fears, thrilling anew with the joys
and temptations of other days? Yet, each year these pilgrimages
into the past must become more and more lonely journeys; the
friends whom we can take by the hand and lead back to our old homes
become fewer with each decade. It would be a useless sacrilege to
force some listless acquaintance to accompany us. He would not
hear the voices that call to us, or see the loved faces that people
the silent passages, and would wonder what attraction we could find
in the stuffy, old-fashioned quarters.
Many people have such a dislike for any mental privacy that they
pass their lives in public, or surrounded only by sporting trophies
and games. Some enjoy living in their pantries, composing for
themselves succulent dishes, and interested in the doings of the
servants, their companions. Others have turned their salons into
nurseries, or feel a predilection for the stable and the dog-
kennels. Such people soon weary of their surroundings, and move
constantly, destroying, when they leave old quarters, all the
objects they had collected.
The men and women who have thus curtailed their belongings are,
however, quite contented with themselves. No doubts ever harass
them as to the commodity or appropriateness of their lodgements and
look with pity and contempt on friends who remain faithful to old
habitations. The drawback to a migratory existence, however, is
the fact that, as a French saying has put it, CEUX QUI SE REFUSENT
LES PENSEES SERIEUSES TOMBENT DANS LES IDEES NOIRES. These people
are surprised to find as the years go by that the futile amusements
to which they have devoted themselves do not fill to their
satisfaction all the hours of a lifetime. Having provided no books
nor learned to practise any art, the time hangs heavily on their
hands. They dare not look forward into the future, so blank and
cheerless does it appear. The past is even more distasteful to
them. So, to fill the void in their hearts, they hurry out into
the crowd as a refuge from their own thoughts.
Happy those who care to revisit old abodes, childhood's remote
wing, and the moonlit porches where they knew the rapture of a
first-love whisper. Who can enter the chapel where their dead lie,
and feel no blush of self-reproach, nor burning consciousness of
broken faith nor wasted opportunities? The new year will bring to
them as near an approach to perfect happiness as can be attained in
life's journey. The fortunate mortals are rare who can, without a
heartache or regret, pass through their disused and abandoned
dwellings; who dare to open every door and enter all the silent
rooms; who do not hurry shudderingly by some obscure corners, and
return with a sigh of relief to the cheerful sunlight and murmurs
of the present.
Sleepless midnight hours come inevitably to each of us, when the
creaking gates of subterranean passages far down in our
consciousness open of themselves, and ghostly inhabitants steal out
of awful vaults and force us to look again into their faces and
touch their unhealed wounds.
An old lady whose cheerfulness under a hundred griefs and
tribulations was a marvel and an example, once told a man who had
come to her for counsel in a moment of bitter trouble, that she had
derived comfort when difficulties loomed big around her by writing
down all her cares and worries, making a list of the subjects that
harassed her, and had always found that, when reduced to material
written words, the dimensions of her troubles were astonishingly
diminished. She recommended her procedure to the troubled youth,
and prophesied that his anxieties would dwindle away in the clear
atmosphere of pen and paper.
Introspection, the deliberate unlatching of closed wickets, has the
same effect of stealing away the bitterness from thoughts that, if
left in the gloom of semi-oblivion, will grow until they overshadow
a whole life. It is better to follow the example of England's pure
Queen, visiting on certain anniversaries our secret places and
holding communion with the past, for it is by such scrutiny only
THAT MEN MAY RISE ON STEPPING-STONES
OF THEIR DEAD SELVES TO HIGHER THINGS.
Those who have courage to perform thoroughly this task will come
out from the silent chambers purified and chastened, more lenient
to the faults and shortcomings of others, and better fitted to take
up cheerfully the burdens of a new year.
End of the Project Gutenberg eText Worldly Ways and Byways