THE POINT OF VIEW
By
Henry James
CONTENTS:
I. FROM MISS AURORA CHURCH, AT SEA, TO MISS
WHITESIDE, IN PARIS. 3
II. MRS. CHURCH, IN NEW YORK, TO MADAME GALOPIN,
AT GENEVA. 8
III. FROM MISS STURDY, AT NEWPORT, TO MRS. DRAPER, IN FLORENCE. 12
IV. FROM THE HONOURABLE EDWARD ANTROBUS, M.P., IN
BOSTON, TO THE HONOURABLE MRS. ANTROBUS. 17
V. FROM LOUIS LEVERETT, IN BOSTON, TO HARVARD
TREMONT, IN PARIS. 22
VI. FROM M. GUSTAVE LEJAUNE, OF THE FRENCH
ACADEMY, TO M. ADOLPHE BOUCHE, IN PARIS. 25
VII. FROM MARCELLUS COCKEREL, IN WASHINGTON, TO
MRS. COOLER, NEE COCKEREL, AT OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA. 28
VIII. FROM MISS AURORA CHURCH, IN NEW YORK, TO MISS
WHITESIDE, IN PARIS. 33
. . . My dear child, the bromide of sodium (if that's what
you call it) proved perfectly useless. I
don't mean that it did me no good, but that I never had occasion to take the
bottle out of my bag. It might have done
wonders for me if I had needed it; but I didn't, simply because I have been a
wonder myself. Will you believe that I
have spent the whole voyage on deck, in the most animated conversation and
exercise? Twelve times round the deck
make a mile, I believe; and by this measurement I have been walking twenty
miles a day. And down to every meal, if
you please, where I have displayed the appetite of a fish-wife. Of course the weather has been lovely; so
there's no great merit. The wicked old Atlantic has been as blue as the sapphire in my only ring
(a rather good one), and as smooth as the slippery floor of Madame Galopin's dining-room. We have been for the last three
hours in sight of land, and we are soon to enter the Bay of New York,
which is said to be exquisitely beautiful.
But of course you recall it, though they say that everything changes so
fast over here. I find I don't remember
anything, for my recollections of our voyage to Europe,
so many years ago, are exceedingly dim; I only have a painful impression that
mamma shut me up for an hour every day in the state-room, and made me learn by
heart some religious poem. I was only
five years old, and I believe that as a child I was extremely timid; on the
other hand, mamma, as you know, was dreadfully severe. She is severe to this day; only I have become
indifferent; I have been so pinched and pushed--morally speaking, bien entendu. It is true, however, that there are children
of five on the vessel today who have been extremely conspicuous--ranging all
over the ship, and always under one's feet.
Of course they are little compatriots, which means
that they are little barbarians. I don't
mean that all our compatriots are barbarous; they seem to improve, somehow,
after their first communion. I don't
know whether it's that ceremony that improves them, especially as so few of
them go in for it; but the women are certainly nicer than the little girls; I
mean, of course, in proportion, you know.
You warned me not to generalise, and you see I
have already begun, before we have arrived.
But I suppose there is no harm in it so long as it is favourable. Isn't it
favourable when I say that I have had the most lovely time? I
have never had so much liberty in my life, and I have been out alone, as you
may say, every day of the voyage. If it
is a foretaste of what is to come, I shall take to that very kindly. When I say that I have been out alone, I mean
that we have always been two. But we two
were alone, so to speak, and it was not like always having mamma, or Madame Galopin, or some lady in the pension, or the temporary
cook. Mamma has been very poorly; she is
so very well on land, it's a wonder to see her at all taken down. She says, however, that it isn't the being at
sea; it's, on the contrary, approaching the land. She is not in a hurry to arrive; she says
that great disillusions await us. I
didn't know that she had any illusions--she's so stern, so philosophic. She is very serious; she sits for hours in
perfect silence, with her eyes fixed on the horizon. I heard her say yesterday to an English
gentleman--a very odd Mr. Antrobus, the only person
with whom she converses--that she was afraid she shouldn't like her native
land, and that she shouldn't like not liking it. But this is a mistake--she will like that
immensely (I mean not liking it). If it
should prove at all agreeable, mamma will be furious, for that will go against
her system. You know all about mamma's
system; I have explained that so often.
It goes against her system that we should come back at all; that was MY
system--I have had at last to invent one!
She consented to come only because she saw that, having no dot, I should
never marry in Europe; and I pretended to be
immensely pre-occupied with this idea, in order to make her start. In reality cela m'est parfaitement
egal. I
am only afraid I shall like it too much (I don't mean marriage, of course, but
one's native land). Say what you will,
it's a charming thing to go out alone, and I have given notice to mamma that I
mean to be always en course. When I tell
her that, she looks at me in the same silence; her eye dilates, and then she
slowly closes it. It's as if the sea
were affecting her a little, though it's so beautifully calm. I ask her if she will try my bromide, which
is there in my bag; but she motions me off, and I begin to walk again, tapping
my little boot-soles upon the smooth clean deck. This allusion to my boot-soles, by the way,
is not prompted by vanity; but it's a fact that at sea one's feet and one's shoes
assume the most extraordinary importance, so that we should take the precaution
to have nice ones. They are all you seem
to see as the people walk about the deck; you get to know them intimately, and
to dislike some of them so much. I am
afraid you will think that I have already broken loose; and for aught I know, I
am writing as a demoiselle bien-elevee should not
write. I don't know whether it's the
American air; if it is, all I can say is that the American air is very
charming. It makes me impatient and
restless, and I sit scribbling here because I am so eager to arrive, and the
time passes better if I occupy myself. I am in the saloon, where we have our meals,
and opposite to me is a big round porthole, wide open, to let in the smell of
the land. Every now and then I rise a
little and look through it, to see whether we are arriving. I mean in the Bay, you know, for we shall not
come up to the city till dark. I don't
want to lose the Bay; it appears that it's so wonderful. I don't exactly understand what it contains,
except some beautiful islands; but I suppose you will know all about that. It is easy to see that these are the last
hours, for all the people about me are writing letters to put into the post as
soon as we come up to the dock. I
believe they are dreadful at the custom-house, and you will remember how many
new things you persuaded mamma that (with my pre-occupation of marriage) I
should take to this country, where even the prettiest girls are expected not to
go unadorned. We ruined ourselves in
Paris (that is part of mamma's solemnity); mais au moins je serai
belle! Moreover, I believe that mamma is
prepared to say or to do anything that may be necessary for escaping from their
odious duties; as she very justly remarks, she can't afford to be ruined twice. I don't know how one approaches these
terrible douaniers, but I mean to invent something
very charming. I mean to say, "Voyons, Messieurs, a young girl like me, brought up in the
strictest foreign traditions, kept always in the background by a very superior
mother--la voila; you can see for yourself!--what is it possible that she
should attempt to smuggle in? Nothing but a few simple relics of her convent!" I won't tell them that my convent was called
the Magasin du Bon Marche. Mamma began to scold me three days ago for
insisting on so many trunks, and the truth is that, between us, we have not
fewer than seven. For relics, that's a
good many! We are all writing very long
letters--or at least we are writing a great number. There is no news of the Bay as yet. Mr. Antrobus, mamma's friend, opposite to me, is beginning on
his ninth. He is an Honourable,
and a Member of Parliament; he has written, during the voyage, about a hundred
letters, and he seems greatly alarmed at the number of stamps he will have to
buy when he arrives. He is full of
information; but he has not enough, for he asks as many questions as mamma when
she goes to hire apartments. He is going to "look into" various
things; he speaks as if they had a little hole for the purpose. He walks almost as much as I,
and he has very big shoes. He asks
questions even of me, and I tell him again and again that I know nothing about America. But it makes no difference; he always begins
again, and, indeed, it is not strange that he should find my ignorance incredible. "Now, how would it be in one of your
South-Western States?"--that's his favourite way
of opening conversation. Fancy me giving
an account of the South-Western States!
I tell him he had better ask mamma--a little to tease that lady, who
knows no more about such places than I.
Mr. Antrobus is very big and black; he speaks
with a sort of brogue; he has a wife and ten children; he is not very
romantic. But he has lots of letters to
people la-bas (I forget that we are just arriving), and mamma, who takes an
interest in him in spite of his views (which are dreadfully advanced, and not
at all like mamma's own), has promised to give him the entree to the best
society. I don't know what she knows
about the best society over here today, for we have not kept up our connections
at all, and no one will know (or, I am afraid, care) anything about us. She has an idea that we shall be immensely recognised; but really, except the poor little Rucks, who are bankrupt, and, I am told, in no society at
all, I don't know on whom we can count. C'est egal. Mamma
has an idea that, whether or not we appreciate America ourselves, we shall at
least be universally appreciated. It's
true that we have begun to be, a little; you would see that by the way that Mr.
Cockerel and Mr. Louis Leverett are always inviting
me to walk. Both of these gentlemen, who
are Americans, have asked leave to call upon me in New York, and I have said, Mon Dieu, oui, if it's the custom of
the country. Of course I have not dared
to tell this to mamma, who flatters herself that we
have brought with us in our trunks a complete set of customs of our own, and
that we shall only have to shake them out a little and put them on when we
arrive. If only the two gentlemen I just
spoke of don't call at the same time, I don't think I shall be too much
frightened. If they do, on the other
hand, I won't answer for it. They have a
particular aversion to each other, and they are ready to fight about poor
little me. I am only the pretext,
however; for, as Mr. Leverett says, it's really the
opposition of temperaments. I hope they
won't cut each other's throats, for I am not crazy about either of them. They are very well for the deck of a ship,
but I shouldn't care about them in a salon; they are not at all distinguished. They think they are, but they are not; at
least Mr. Louis Leverett does; Mr. Cockerel doesn't
appear to care so much. They are
extremely different (with their opposed temperaments), and each very amusing
for a while; but I should get dreadfully tired of passing my life with
either. Neither has proposed that, as
yet; but it is evidently what they are coming to. It will be in a great measure to spite each
other, for I think that au fond they don't quite believe in me. If they don't, it's the only point on which
they agree. They hate each other
awfully; they take such different views.
That is, Mr. Cockerel hates Mr. Leverett--he
calls him a sickly little ass; he says that his opinions are half affectation,
and the other half dyspepsia. Mr. Leverett speaks of Mr. Cockerel as a "strident
savage," but he declares he finds him most diverting. He says there is nothing in which we can't
find a certain entertainment, if we only look at it in the right way, and that
we have no business with either hating or loving; we ought only to strive to
understand. To understand is to forgive,
he says. That is very pretty, but I
don't like the suppression of our affections, though I have no desire to fix
mine upon Mr. Leverett. He is very artistic, and talks like an
article in some review, he has lived a great deal in Paris, and Mr. Cockerel says that is what has
made him such an idiot. That is not
complimentary to you, dear Louisa, and still less to your brilliant brother;
for Mr. Cockerel explains that he means it (the bad effect of Paris) chiefly of the men. In fact, he means the bad effect of Europe altogether.
This, however, is compromising to mamma; and I am afraid there is no
doubt that (from what I have told him) he thinks mamma also an idiot. (I am not responsible, you know--I have
always wanted to go home.) If mamma knew
him, which she doesn't, for she always closes her eyes when I pass on his arm,
she would think him disgusting. Mr. Leverett, however, tells me he is nothing to what we shall
see yet. He is from Philadelphia
(Mr. Cockerel); he insists that we shall go and see Philadelphia, but mamma says she saw it in
1855, and it was then affreux. Mr. Cockerel says that mamma is evidently not
familiar with the march of improvement in this country; he speaks of 1855 as if
it were a hundred years ago. Mamma says she knows it goes only too fast--it
goes so fast that it has time to do nothing well; and then Mr. Cockerel, who,
to do him justice, is perfectly good-natured, remarks that she had better wait
till she has been ashore and seen the improvements. Mamma rejoins that she sees them from here,
the improvements, and that they give her a sinking of the heart. (This little exchange of ideas is carried on
through me; they have never spoken to each other.) Mr. Cockerel, as I say, is extremely
good-natured, and he carries out what I have heard said about the men in America being
very considerate of the women. They
evidently listen to them a great deal; they don't contradict them, but it seems
to me that this is rather negative.
There is very little gallantry in not contradicting one; and it strikes
me that there are some things the men don't express. There are others on the ship whom I've noticed. It's as if they were all one's brothers
or one's cousins. But I promised you not
to generalise, and perhaps there will be more
expression when we arrive. Mr. Cockerel
returns to America,
after a general tour, with a renewed conviction that this is the only
country. I left him on deck an hour ago
looking at the coast-line with an opera-glass, and saying it was the prettiest
thing he had seen in all his tour. When
I remarked that the coast seemed rather low, he said it would be all the easier
to get ashore; Mr. Leverett doesn't seem in a hurry
to get ashore; he is sitting within sight of me in a corner of the
saloon--writing letters, I suppose, but looking, from the way he bites his pen
and rolls his eyes about, as if he were composing a sonnet and waiting for a
rhyme. Perhaps the sonnet is addressed
to me; but I forget that he suppresses the affections! The only person in whom mamma takes much
interest is the great French critic, M. Lejaune, whom
we have the honour to carry with us. We have read a few of his works, though mamma
disapproves of his tendencies and thinks him a dreadful materialist. We have
read them for the style; you know he is one of the new Academicians. He is a Frenchman like any other, except that
he is rather more quiet; and he has a gray mustache
and the ribbon of the Legion of Honour. He is the first French writer of distinction
who has been to America
since De Tocqueville; the French, in such matters, are not very
enterprising. Also, he has the air of
wondering what he is doing dans cette
galere. He has
come with his beau-frere, who is an engineer, and is
looking after some mines, and he talks with scarcely any one else, as he speaks
no English, and appears to take for granted that no one speaks French. Mamma would be delighted to assure him of the
contrary; she has never conversed with an Academician. She always makes a little vague inclination,
with a smile, when he passes her, and he answers with a most respectful bow;
but it goes no farther, to mamma's disappointment. He is always with the beau-frere, a rather untidy, fat, bearded man, decorated, too,
always smoking and looking at the feet of the ladies, whom mamma (though she
has very good feet) has not the courage to aborder. I believe M. Lejaune
is going to write a book about America,
and Mr. Leverett says it will be terrible. Mr. Leverett has
made his acquaintance, and says M. Lejaune will put
him into his book; he says the movement of the French intellect is superb. As a general thing, he doesn't care for
Academicians, but he thinks M. Lejaune is an exception, he is so living, so personal. I asked Mr.
Cockerel what he thought of M. Lejaune's plan of
writing a book, and he answered that he didn't see what it mattered to him that
a Frenchman the more should make a monkey of himself. I asked him why he hadn't written a book
about Europe, and he said that, in the first place, Europe isn't worth writing
about, and, in the second, if he said what he thought, people would think it
was a joke. He said they are very
superstitious about Europe over here; he wants people in America to behave as if Europe
didn't exist. I told this to Mr. Leverett, and he answered that if Europe didn't exist America wouldn't, for Europe
keeps us alive by buying our corn. He
said, also, that the trouble with America in the future will be that she will
produce things in such enormous quantities that there won't be enough people in
the rest of the world to buy them, and that we shall be left with our
productions--most of them very hideous--on our hands. I asked him if he thought corn a hideous
production, and he replied that there is nothing more unbeautiful than too much
food. I think that to feed the world too
well, however, that will be, after all, a beau role. Of course I don't understand these things,
and I don't believe Mr. Leverett does; but Mr.
Cockerel seems to know what he is talking about, and he says that America is
complete in herself. I don't know
exactly what he means, but he speaks as if human affairs had somehow moved over
to this side of the world. It may be a
very good place for them, and Heaven knows I am extremely tired of Europe, which mamma has always insisted so on my
appreciating; but I don't think I like the idea of our being so completely cut
off. Mr. Cockerel says it is not we that
are cut off, but Europe, and he seems to think that Europe
has deserved it somehow. That may be;
our life over there was sometimes extremely tiresome, though mamma says it is
now that our real fatigues will begin. I
like to abuse those dreadful old countries myself, but I am not sure that I am
pleased when others do the same. We had
some rather pretty moments there, after all; and at Piacenza we
certainly lived on four francs a day.
Mamma is already in a terrible state of mind about the expenses here;
she is frightened by what people on the ship (the few that she has spoken to)
have told her. There is one comfort, at
any rate--we have spent so much money in coming here that we shall have none
left to get away. I am scribbling along,
as you see, to occupy me till we get news of the islands. Here comes Mr. Cockerel to bring it. Yes, they are in sight; he tells me that they
are lovelier than ever, and that I must come right up right away. I suppose you will think that I am already
beginning to use the language of the country.
It is certain that at the end of a month I shall speak nothing
else. I have picked up every dialect,
wherever we have travelled; you have heard my
Platt-Deutsch and my Neapolitan. But, voyons un peu
the Bay! I have just called to Mr. Leverett to remind him of the islands. "The islands--the
islands? Ah, my dear young lady,
I have seen Capri, I have seen Ischia!" Well, so have I, but that doesn't prevent . .
. (A little later.)--I have seen the
islands; they are rather queer.
II. MRS. CHURCH, IN
NEW YORK, TO MADAME GALOPIN, AT GENEVA.
October 17, 1880.
If I felt far away from you in the middle of that deplorable
Atlantic, chere Madame, how do I feel now, in the
heart of this extraordinary city? We
have arrived,--we have arrived, dear friend; but I don't know whether to tell
you that I consider that an advantage.
If we had been given our choice of coming safely to land or going down
to the bottom of the sea, I should doubtless have chosen the former course; for
I hold, with your noble husband, and in opposition to the general tendency of
modern thought, that our lives are not our own to dispose of, but a sacred
trust from a higher power, by whom we shall be held responsible. Nevertheless, if I had foreseen more vividly
some of the impressions that awaited me here, I am not sure that, for my
daughter at least, I should not have preferred on the spot to hand in our
account. Should I not
have been less (rather than more) guilty in presuming to dispose of HER
destiny, than of my own? There is
a nice point for dear M. Galopin to settle--one of
those points which I have heard him discuss in the pulpit with such
elevation. We are safe, however, as I
say; by which I mean that we are physically safe. We have taken up the thread of our familiar
pension-life, but under strikingly different conditions. We have found a refuge in a boarding-house
which has been highly recommended to me, and where the arrangements partake of
that barbarous magnificence which in this country is the only alternative from
primitive rudeness. The terms, per week,
are as magnificent as all the rest. The
landlady wears diamond ear-rings; and the drawing-rooms are decorated with
marble statues. I should indeed be sorry
to let you know how I have allowed myself to be ranconnee;
and I--should be still more sorry that it should come
to the ears of any of my good friends in Geneva,
who know me less well than you and might judge me more harshly. There is no wine given for dinner, and I have
vainly requested the person who conducts the establishment to garnish her table
more liberally. She says I may have all
the wine I want if I will order it at the merchant's, and settle the matter
with him. But I have never, as you know,
consented to regard our modest allowance of eau rougie
as an extra; indeed, I remember that it is largely to your excellent advice
that I have owed my habit of being firm on this point. There are, however, greater difficulties than
the question of what we shall drink for dinner, chere
Madame. Still, I have never lost
courage, and I shall not lose courage now.
At the worst, we can re-embark again, and seek repose and refreshment on
the shores of your beautiful lake.
(There is absolutely no scenery here!)
We shall not, perhaps, in that case have achieved what we desired, but
we shall at least have made an honourable
retreat. What we desire--I know it is
just this that puzzles you, dear friend; I don't think you ever really
comprehended my motives in taking this formidable step, though you were good
enough, and your magnanimous husband was good enough, to press my hand at
parting in a way that seemed to say that you would still be with me, even if I
was wrong. To be very brief, I wished to
put an end to the reclamations of my daughter. Many Americans had assured her
that she was wasting her youth in those historic lands which it was her
privilege to see so intimately, and this unfortunate conviction had taken
possession of her. "Let me at least
see for myself," she used to say; "if I should dislike it over there
as much as you promise me, so much the better for you. In that case we will come back and make a new
arrangement at Stuttgart." The experiment is a terribly expensive one;
but you know that my devotion never has shrunk from an ordeal. There is another
point, moreover, which, from a mother to a mother, it would be affectation not
to touch upon. I remember the just
satisfaction with which you announced to me the betrothal of your charming
Cecile. You know with what earnest care
my Aurora has
been educated,--how thoroughly she is acquainted with the principal results of
modern research. We have always studied
together; we have always enjoyed together.
It will perhaps surprise you to hear that she makes these very
advantages a reproach to me,--represents them as an injury to herself. "In
this country," she says, "the gentlemen have not those
accomplishments; they care nothing for the results of modern research; and it
will not help a young person to be sought in marriage that she can give an
account of the last German theory of Pessimism." That is possible; and I have never concealed
from her that it was not for this country that I had educated her. If she marries in the United States it is, of course, my intention
that my son-in-law shall accompany us to Europe. But, when she calls my attention more and
more to these facts, I feel that we are moving in a different world. This is more and more the country of the
many; the few find less and less place for them; and the individual--well, the
individual has quite ceased to be recognised. He is recognised as
a voter, but he is not recognised as a
gentleman--still less as a lady. My
daughter and I, of course, can only pretend to constitute a FEW! You know that I have never for a moment
remitted my pretensions as an individual, though, among the agitations of
pension-life, I have sometimes needed all my energy to uphold them. "Oh, yes, I may be poor," I have
had occasion to say, "I may be unprotected, I may be reserved, I may
occupy a small apartment in the quatrieme, and be unable
to scatter unscrupulous bribes among the domestics; but at least I am a PERSON,
with personal rights." In this
country the people have rights, but the person has none. You would have perceived that if you had come
with me to make arrangements at this establishment. The very fine lady who condescends to preside
over it kept me waiting twenty minutes, and then came sailing in without a word
of apology. I had sat very silent, with
my eyes on the clock; Aurora
amused herself with a false admiration of the room,--a wonderful drawing-room,
with magenta curtains, frescoed walls, and photographs of the landlady's
friends--as if one cared anything about her friends! When this exalted personage came in, she
simply remarked that she had just been trying on a dress--that
it took so long to get a skirt to hang. "It seems to take very long
indeed!" I answered. "But I
hope the skirt is right at last. You
might have sent for us to come up and look at it!" She evidently didn't understand, and when I
asked her to show us her rooms, she handed us over to a negro
as degingande as herself. While we looked at them I heard her sit down
to the piano in the drawing-room; she began to sing an air from a comic
opera. I began to fear we had gone quite
astray; I didn't know in what house we could be, and was only reassured by
seeing a Bible in every room. When we came down our musical hostess expressed
no hope that the rooms had pleased us, and seemed quite indifferent to our
taking them. She would not consent,
moreover, to the least diminution, and was inflexible, as I told you, on the
subject of wine. When I pushed this
point, she was so good as to observe that she didn't keep a cabaret. One is not in the least considered; there is
no respect for one's privacy, for one's preferences, for one's reserves. The familiarity is without limits, and I have
already made a dozen acquaintances, of whom I know, and wish to know,
nothing. Aurora tells me that she is the "belle
of the boarding-house." It appears
that this is a great distinction. It
brings me back to my poor child and her prospects. She takes a very critical view of them
herself: she tells me that I have given
her a false education, and that no one will marry her today. No American will marry her, because she is too
much of a foreigner, and no foreigner will marry her because she is too much of
an American. I remind her that scarcely
a day passes that a foreigner, usually of distinction, doesn't select an
American bride, and she answers me that in these cases the young lady is not
married for her fine eyes. Not always, I
reply; and then she declares that she would marry no foreigner who should not
be one of the first of the first. You will
say, doubtless, that she should content herself with advantages that have not
been deemed insufficient for Cecile; but I will not repeat to you the remark
she made when I once made use of this argument.
You will doubtless be surprised to hear that I have ceased to argue; but
it is time I should tell you that I have at last agreed to let her act for
herself. She is to live for three months
a l'Americaine, and I am to
be a mere spectator. You will feel with
me that this is a cruel position for a coeur de
mere. I count the days till our three
months are over, and I know that you will join with me in my prayers. Aurora
walks the streets alone. She goes out in
the tramway; a voiture de place costs five francs for
the least little course. (I beseech you
not to let it be known that I have sometimes had the weakness . . .) My daughter is sometimes accompanied by a
gentleman--by a dozen gentlemen; she remains out for hours, and her conduct
excites no surprise in this establishment.
I know but too well the emotions it will excite in your quiet home. If you betray us, chere
Madame, we are lost; and why, after all, should any one know of these things in
Geneva? Aurora
pretends that she has been able to persuade herself that she doesn't care who
knows them; but there is a strange expression in her face, which proves that
her conscience is not at rest. I watch
her, I let her go, but I sit with my hands clasped. There is a peculiar custom in this country--I
shouldn't know how to express it in Genevese--it is
called "being attentive," and young girls are the object of the
attention. It has not necessarily
anything to do with projects of marriage--though it is the privilege only of
the unmarried, and though, at the same time (fortunately, and this may surprise
you) it has no relation to other projects.
It is simply an invention by which young persons of the two sexes pass
their time together. How shall I muster
courage to tell you that Aurora
is now engaged in this delassement, in company with
several gentlemen? Though it has no
relation to marriage, it happily does not exclude it, and marriages have been
known to take place in consequence (or in spite) of it. It is true that even in this country a young
lady may marry but one husband at a time, whereas she may receive at once the
attentions of several gentlemen, who are equally entitled
"admirers." My daughter, then,
has admirers to an indefinite number.
You will think I am joking, perhaps, when I tell you that I am unable to
be exact--I who was formerly l'exactitude meme. Two of these gentlemen are, to a certain
extent, old friends, having been passengers on the steamer which carried us so
far from you. One of them, still young,
is typical of the American character, but a respectable person, and a lawyer in
considerable practice. Every one in this
country follows a profession; but it must be admitted that the professions are
more highly remunerated than chez vous. Mr. Cockerel, even while I write you, is in
complete possession of my daughter. He
called for her an hour ago in a "boghey,"--a
strange, unsafe, rickety vehicle, mounted on enormous wheels, which holds two
persons very near together; and I watched her from the window take her place at
his side. Then he whirled her away,
behind two little horses with terribly thin legs; the whole equipage--and most
of all her being in it--was in the most questionable taste. But she will return, and she will return very
much as she went. It is the same when
she goes down to Mr. Louis Leverett, who has no
vehicle, and who merely comes and sits with her in the front salon. He has lived a great deal in Europe, and is
very fond of the arts, and though I am not sure I agree with him in his views
of the relation of art to life and life to art, and in his interpretation of
some of the great works that Aurora and I have studied together, he seems to me
a sufficiently serious and intelligent young man. I do not regard him as intrinsically
dangerous; but on the other hand, he offers absolutely no guarantees. I have no means whatever of ascertaining his
pecuniary situation. There is a
vagueness on these points which is extremely embarrassing, and it never occurs
to young men to offer you a reference.
In Geneva I should not be at a loss; I should come to you, chere Madame, with my little inquiry, and what you should
not be able to tell me would not be worth knowing. But no one in New York can give me the smallest
information about the etat de fortune of Mr. Louis Leverett. It is true
that he is a native of Boston, where most of his
friends reside; I cannot, however, go to the expense of a journey to Boston simply to learn,
perhaps, that Mr. Leverett (the young Louis) has an
income of five thousand francs. As I say, however, he does not strike me as
dangerous. When Aurora comes back to me, after having passed
an hour with the young Louis, she says that he has described to her his
emotions on visiting the home of Shelley, or discussed some of the differences
between the Boston Temperament and that of the Italians of the
Renaissance. You will not enter into these
rapprochements, and I can't blame you. But you won't betray me, chere Madame?
III. FROM MISS
STURDY, AT NEWPORT,
TO MRS. DRAPER, IN FLORENCE.
September 30.
I promised to tell you how I like it, but the truth is, I have gone to and fro so often that I have ceased to like
and dislike. Nothing strikes me as
unexpected; I expect everything in its order.
Then, too, you know, I am not a critic; I have
no talent for keen analysis, as the magazines say; I don't go into the reasons
of things. It is true I have been for a
longer time than usual on the wrong side of the water, and I admit that I feel
a little out of training for American life.
They are breaking me in very fast, however. I don't mean that they bully me; I absolutely
decline to be bullied. I say what I
think, because I believe that I have, on the whole, the advantage of knowing
what I think--when I think anything--which is half the battle. Sometimes, indeed, I think nothing at
all. They don't like that over here;
they like you to have impressions. That
they like these impressions to be favourable appears
to me perfectly natural; I don't make a crime to them of that; it seems to me,
on the contrary, a very amiable quality.
When individuals have it, we call them sympathetic; I don't see why we
shouldn't give nations the same benefit.
But there are things I haven't the least desire to have an opinion
about. The privilege of indifference is
the dearest one we possess, and I hold that intelligent people are known by the
way they exercise it. Life is full of
rubbish, and we have at least our share of it over here. When you wake up in
the morning you find that during the night a cartload has been deposited in
your front garden. I decline, however,
to have any of it in my premises; there are thousands of things I want to know
nothing about. I have outlived the
necessity of being hypocritical; I have nothing to gain and everything to
lose. When one is fifty years
old--single, stout, and red in the face--one has outlived a good many
necessities. They tell me over here that
my increase of weight is extremely marked, and though they don't tell me that I
am coarse, I am sure they think me so.
There is very little coarseness here--not quite enough, I think--though
there is plenty of vulgarity, which is a very different thing. On the whole, the country is becoming much
more agreeable. It isn't that the people
are charming, for that they always were (the best of them, I mean, for it isn't
true of the others), but that places and things as well have acquired the art
of pleasing. The houses are extremely
good, and they look so extraordinarily fresh and clean. European interiors, in
comparison, seem musty and gritty. We
have a great deal of taste; I shouldn't wonder if we should end by inventing something
pretty; we only need a little time. Of
course, as yet, it's all imitation, except, by the way, these piazzas. I am sitting on one now; I am writing to you
with my portfolio on my knees. This
broad light loggia surrounds the house with a movement as free as the expanded
wings of a bird, and the wandering airs come up from the deep sea, which
murmurs on the rocks at the end of the lawn.
Newport
is more charming even than you remember it; like everything else over here, it
has improved. It is very exquisite
today; it is, indeed, I think, in all the world, the
only exquisite watering-place, for I detest the whole genus. The crowd has left it now, which makes it all
the better, though plenty of talkers remain in these large, light, luxurious
houses, which are planted with a kind of Dutch definiteness all over the green
carpet of the cliff. This carpet is very neatly laid and wonderfully well
swept, and the sea, just at hand, is capable of prodigies of blue. Here and there a pretty woman strolls over
one of the lawns, which all touch each other, you know, without hedges or
fences; the light looks intense as it plays upon her brilliant dress; her large
parasol shines like a silver dome. The
long lines of the far shores are soft and pure, though they are places that one
hasn't the least desire to visit. Altogether the effect is very delicate, and
anything that is delicate counts immensely over here; for delicacy, I think, is
as rare as coarseness. I am talking to
you of the sea, however, without having told you a word of my voyage. It was very comfortable and amusing; I should
like to take another next month. You know I am almost offensively well at
sea--that I breast the weather and brave the storm. We had no storm fortunately, and I had
brought with me a supply of light literature; so I passed nine days on deck in
my sea-chair, with my heels up, reading Tauchnitz
novels. There was a great lot of people, but no one in
particular, save some fifty American girls.
You know all about the American girl, however, having been one
yourself. They are, on the whole, very
nice, but fifty is too many; there are always too many. There was an inquiring Briton, a radical
M.P., by name Mr. Antrobus, who entertained me as
much as any one else. He is an excellent
man; I even asked him to come down here and spend a couple of days. He looked rather frightened, till I told him
he shouldn't be alone with me, that the house was my brother's, and that I gave
the invitation in his name. He came a
week ago; he goes everywhere; we have heard of him in a dozen places. The English are very simple, or at least they
seem so over here. Their old
measurements and comparisons desert them; they don't know whether it's all a
joke, or whether it's too serious by half.
We are quicker than they, though we talk so much more slowly. We think fast, and yet we talk as
deliberately as if we were speaking a foreign language. They toss off their sentences with an air of
easy familiarity with the tongue, and yet they misunderstand two-thirds of what
people say to them. Perhaps, after all,
it is only OUR thoughts they think slowly; they think their own often to a
lively tune enough. Mr. Antrobus arrived here at eight o'clock in the morning; I
don't know how he managed it; it appears to be his favourite
hour; wherever we have heard of him he has come in with the dawn. In England he would arrive at 5.30
p.m. He asks innumerable questions, but they are easy to answer, for he has a
sweet credulity. He made me rather
ashamed; he is a better American than so many of us; he takes us more seriously
than we take ourselves. He seems to
think that an oligarchy of wealth is growing up here, and he advised me to be
on my guard against it. I don't know
exactly what I can do, but I promised him to look out. He is fearfully energetic; the energy of the
people here is nothing to that of the inquiring Briton. If we should devote half the energy to
building up our institutions that they devote to obtaining information about
them, we should have a very satisfactory country. Mr. Antrobus
seemed to think very well of us, which surprised me, on the whole, because, say
what one will, it's not so agreeable as England. It's very horrid that this should be; and
it's delightful, when one thinks of it, that some things in England are,
after all, so disagreeable. At the same
time, Mr. Antrobus appeared to be a good deal
pre-occupied with our dangers. I don't
understand, quite, what they are; they seem to me so few, on a Newport piazza, on this bright, still
day. But, after all, what one sees on a Newport piazza is not America;
it's the back of Europe! I don't mean to say that I haven't noticed
any dangers since my return; there are two or three that seem to me very
serious, but they are not those that Mr. Antrobus
means. One, for instance, is that we shall
cease to speak the English language, which I prefer so much to any other. It's less and less spoken; American is
crowding it out. All the children speak
American, and as a child's language it's dreadfully rough. It's exclusively in
use in the schools; all the magazines and newspapers are in American. Of course, a people of fifty millions, who
have invented a new civilisation, have a right to a
language of their own; that's what they tell me, and I can't quarrel with it.
But I wish they had made it as pretty as the mother-tongue, from which, after
all, it is more or less derived. We
ought to have invented something as noble as our country. They tell me it's more expressive, and yet
some admirable things have been said in the Queen's English. There can be no question of the Queen over
here, of course, and American no doubt is the music of the future. Poor dear future, how "expressive"
you'll be! For women and children, as I
say, it strikes one as very rough; and moreover, they don't speak it well, their
own though it be. My little nephews,
when I first came home, had not gone back to school, and it distressed me to
see that, though they are charming children, they had the vocal inflections of
little news-boys. My niece is sixteen
years old; she has the sweetest nature possible; she is extremely well-bred,
and is dressed to perfection. She
chatters from morning till night; but it isn't a pleasant sound! These little persons are in the opposite case
from so many English girls, who know how to speak, but don't know how to
talk. My niece knows how to talk, but
doesn't know how to speak. A propos of
the young people, that is our other danger; the young people are eating us up,--there
is nothing in America
but the young people. The country is
made for the rising generation; life is arranged for them; they are the
destruction of society. People talk of them, consider them, defer to them, bow down to them. They are always present, and whenever they
are present there is an end to everything else.
They are often very pretty; and physically, they are wonderfully looked
after; they are scoured and brushed, they wear hygienic clothes, they go every
week to the dentist's. But the little boys kick your shins, and the little
girls offer to slap your face! There is
an immense literature entirely addressed to them, in which the kicking of shins
and the slapping of faces is much recommended.
As a woman of fifty, I protest. I
insist on being judged by my peers. It's
too late, however, for several millions of little feet are actively engaged in
stamping out conversation, and I don't see how they can long fail to keep it
under. The future is theirs; maturity
will evidently be at an increasing discount.
Longfellow wrote a charming little poem called "The Children's
Hour," but he ought to have called it "The Children's
Century." And by children, of
course, I don't mean simple infants; I mean everything of less than
twenty. The social importance of the
young American increases steadily up to that age, and then it suddenly
stops. The young girls, of course, are
more important than the lads; but the lads are very important too. I am struck with the way they are known and
talked about; they are little celebrities; they have reputations and pretentions; they are taken very seriously. As for the young girls, as I said just now,
there are too many. You will say,
perhaps, that I am jealous of them, with my fifty years and my red face. I don't think so, because I don't suffer; my
red face doesn't frighten people away, and I always find plenty of
talkers. The young girls themselves, I
believe, like me very much; and as for me, I delight in the young girls. They are often very pretty; not so pretty as people say in the magazines, but pretty
enough. The magazines rather overdo
that; they make a mistake. I have seen
no great beauties, but the level of prettiness is high, and occasionally one
sees a woman completely handsome. (As a
general thing, a pretty person here means a person with a pretty face. The figure is rarely mentioned, though there
are several good ones.) The level of
prettiness is high, but the level of conversation is low; that's one of the
signs of its being a young ladies' country.
There are a good many things young ladies can't talk about; but think of
all the things they can, when they are as clever as most of these. Perhaps one ought to content one's self with
that measure, but it's difficult if one has lived for a while by a larger one. This one is decidedly narrow; I stretch it
sometimes till it cracks. Then it is
that they call me coarse, which I undoubtedly am, thank Heaven! People's talk is of course much more chatiee over here than in Europe;
I am struck with that wherever I go.
There are certain things that are never said at all, certain allusions
that are never made. There are no light
stories, no propos risques. I don't know exactly what people talk about,
for the supply of scandal is small, and it's poor in quality. They don't seem, however, to lack topics. The young girls are always there; they keep
the gates of conversation; very little passes that is not innocent. I find we do very well without wickedness;
and, for myself, as I take my ease, I don't miss my
liberties. You remember what I thought
of the tone of your table in Florence,
and how surprised you were when I asked you why you allowed such things. You
said they were like the courses of the seasons; one couldn't prevent them; also
that to change the tone of your table you would have to change so many other
things. Of course, in your house one
never saw a young girl; I was the only spinster, and no one was afraid of
me! Of course, too, if talk is more
innocent in this country, manners are so, to begin with. The liberty of the young people is the
strongest proof of it. The young girls
are let loose in the world, and the world gets more good
of it than ces demoiselles get harm. In your world--excuse me, but you know what I
mean--this wouldn't do at all. Your
world is a sad affair, and the young ladies would encounter all sorts of
horrors. Over here, considering the way
they knock about, they remain wonderfully simple, and the reason is that
society protects them instead of setting them
traps. There is almost no gallantry, as
you understand it; the flirtations are child's play. People have no time for making love; the men,
in particular, are extremely busy. I am
told that sort of thing consumes hours; I have never had any time for it
myself. If the leisure class should
increase here considerably, there may possibly be a change; but I doubt it, for
the women seem to me in all essentials exceedingly reserved. Great superficial
frankness, but an extreme dread of complications. The men strike me as very good fellows. I think that at bottom they are better than
the women, who are very subtle, but rather hard. They are not so nice
to the men as the men are to them; I mean, of course, in proportion, you
know. But women are not so nice as men, "anyhow," as they say here. The men, of course, are professional,
commercial; there are very few gentlemen pure and simple. This personage needs to be very well done,
however, to be of great utility; and I suppose you won't pretend that he is
always well done in your countries. When he's not, the less
of him the better. It's very much
the same, however, with the system on which the young girls in this country are
brought up. (You see, I have to come
back to the young girls.) When it succeeds, they are the most charming
possible; when it doesn't, the failure is disastrous. If a girl is a very nice girl, the American
method brings her to great completeness--makes all her graces flower; but if
she isn't nice, it makes her exceedingly disagreeable--elaborately and fatally
perverts her. In a word, the American
girl is rarely negative, and when she isn't a great success she is a great
warning. In nineteen cases out of
twenty, among the people who know how to live--I won't say what THEIR
proportion is--the results are highly satisfactory. The girls are not shy, but I don't know why
they should be, for there is really nothing here to be afraid of. Manners are very gentle, very humane; the
democratic system deprives people of weapons that every one doesn't equally
possess. No one is formidable; no one is
on stilts; no one has great pretensions or any recognised
right to be arrogant. I think there is
not much wickedness, and there is certainly less cruelty than with you. Every one can sit; no one is kept standing. One is much less liable to be snubbed, which
you will say is a pity. I think it is to
a certain extent; but, on the other hand, folly is less fatuous, in form, than
in your countries; and as people generally have fewer
revenges to take, there is less need of their being stamped on in
advance. The general good nature, the social equality, deprive them of triumphs on the
one hand, and of grievances on the other.
There is extremely little impertinence; there is almost none. You will say I am describing a terrible
society,--a society without great figures or great social prizes. You have hit
it, my dear; there are no great figures.
(The great prize, of course, in Europe,
is the opportunity to be a great figure.)
You would miss these things a good deal,--you who delight to contemplate
greatness; and my advice to you, of course, is never to come back. You would miss the small people even more
than the great; every one is middle-sized, and you can never have that
momentary sense of tallness which is so agreeable in Europe. There are no brilliant types; the most
important people seem to lack dignity.
They are very bourgeois; they make little jokes; on occasion they make
puns; they have no form; they are too good-natured. The men have no style; the women, who are
fidgety and talk too much, have it only in their coiffure, where they have it
superabundantly. But I console myself
with the greater bonhomie. Have you ever arrived at an English country-house in
the dusk of a winter's day? Have you
ever made a call in London,
when you knew nobody but the hostess?
People here are more expressive, more demonstrative and it is a
pleasure, when one comes back (if one happens, like me, to be no one in
particular), to feel one's social value rise.
They attend to you more; they have you on their mind; they talk to you;
they listen to you. That is, the men do;
the women listen very little--not enough.
They interrupt; they talk too much; one feels their presence too much as
a sound. I imagine it is partly because
their wits are quick, and they think of a good many things to say; not that
they always say such wonders. Perfect
repose, after all, is not ALL self-control; it is also partly stupidity. American women, however, make too many vague
exclamations--say too many indefinite things.
In short, they have a great deal of nature. On the whole, I find very little affectation,
though we shall probably have more as we improve. As yet, people haven't the assurance that
carries those things off; they know too much about each other. The trouble is that over here we have all
been brought up together. You will think
this a picture of a dreadfully insipid society; but I hasten to add that it's
not all so tame as that. I have been speaking of the people that one
meets socially; and these are the smallest part of American life. The others--those one meets on a basis of
mere convenience--are much more exciting; they keep one's temper in healthy
exercise. I mean the people in the
shops, and on the railroads; the servants, the hackmen,
the labourers, every one of whom you buy anything or
have occasion to make an inquiry. With
them you need all your best manners, for you must always have enough for
two. If you think we are TOO democratic,
taste a little of American life in these walks, and you will be reassured. This is the region of inequality, and you will
find plenty of people to make your courtesy to.
You see it from below--the weight of inequality is on your own
back. You asked me to tell you about
prices; they are simply dreadful.
IV. FROM THE
HONOURABLE EDWARD ANTROBUS, M.P., IN BOSTON,
TO THE HONOURABLE MRS. ANTROBUS.
October 17.
My Dear Susan--I sent you a post-card on the 13th and a
native newspaper yesterday; I really have had no time to write. I sent you the newspaper partly because it
contained a report--extremely incorrect--of some remarks I made at the meeting
of the Association of the Teachers of New England; partly because it is so
curious that I thought it would interest you and the children. I cut out some portions which I didn't think
it would be well for the children to see; the parts remaining contain the most
striking features. Please point out to
the children the peculiar orthography, which probably will be adopted in England by the
time they are grown up; the amusing oddities of expression, etc. Some of them are intentional; you will have
heard of the celebrated American humour, etc. (remind
me, by the way, on my return to Thistleton, to give
you a few examples of it); others are unconscious, and are perhaps on that
account the more diverting. Point out to
the children the difference (in so far as you are sure that you yourself
perceive it). You must excuse me if
these lines are not very legible; I am writing them by the light of a railway
lamp, which rattles above my left ear; it being only at odd moments that I can
find time to look into everything that I wish to. You will say that this is a very odd moment,
indeed, when I tell you that I am in bed in a sleeping-car. I occupy the upper berth (I will explain to
you the arrangement when I return), while the lower forms the couch--the jolts
are fearful--of an unknown female. You
will be very anxious for my explanation; but I assure you that it is the custom
of the country. I myself am assured that
a lady may travel in this manner all over the Union
(the Union of States) without a loss of consideration. In case of her occupying the upper berth I
presume it would be different; but I must make inquiries on this point. Whether
it be the fact that a mysterious being of another sex has retired to rest
behind the same curtains, or whether it be the swing of the train, which rushes
through the air with very much the same movement as the tail of a kite, the
situation is, at any rate, so anomalous that I am unable to sleep. A ventilator is open just over my head, and a
lively draught, mingled with a drizzle of cinders, pours in through this
ingenious orifice. (I will describe to
you its form on my return.) If I had
occupied the lower berth I should have had a whole window to myself, and by
drawing back the blind (a safe proceeding at the dead of night), I should have
been able, by the light of an extraordinary brilliant moon, to see a little
better what I write. The question occurs
to me, however,--Would the lady below me in that case have ascended to the
upper berth? (You know my old taste for
contingent inquiries.) I incline to
think (from what I have seen) that she would simply have requested me to
evacuate my own couch. (The ladies in
this country ask for anything they want.)
In this case, I suppose, I should have had an extensive view of the
country, which, from what I saw of it before I turned in (while the lady
beneath me was going to bed), offered a rather ragged expanse, dotted with
little white wooden houses, which looked in the moonshine like pasteboard
boxes. I have been unable to ascertain
as precisely as I should wish by whom these modest residences are occupied; for
they are too small to be the homes of country gentlemen, there is no peasantry
here, and (in New England, for all the corn comes from the far West) there are
no yeomen nor farmers. The information
that one receives in this country is apt to be rather conflicting, but I am
determined to sift the mystery to the bottom.
I have already noted down a multitude of facts bearing upon the points
that interest me most--the operation of the school-boards, the co-education of
the sexes, the elevation of the tone of the lower classes, the participation of
the latter in political life. Political
life, indeed, is almost wholly confined to the lower middle class, and the
upper section of the lower class. In
some of the large towns, indeed, the lowest order of all participates
considerably--a very interesting phrase, to which I shall give more attention. It is very gratifying to see the taste for
public affairs pervading so many social strata; but the indifference of the
gentry is a fact not to be lightly considered. It may be objected, indeed, that
there are no gentry; and it is very true that I have not yet encountered a
character of the type of Lord Bottomley,--a type
which I am free to confess I should be sorry to see disappear from our English
system, if system it may be called, where so much is the growth of blind and
incoherent forces. It is nevertheless
obvious that an idle and luxurious class exists in this country, and that it is
less exempt than in our own from the reproach of preferring inglorious ease to
the furtherance of liberal ideas. It is
rapidly increasing, and I am not sure that the indefinite growth of the dilettante
spirit, in connection with large and lavishly-expended wealth, is an unmixed
good, even in a society in which freedom of development has obtained so many
interesting triumphs. The fact that this
body is not represented in the governing class, is perhaps as much the result
of the jealousy with which it is viewed by the more earnest workers as of its
own--I dare not, perhaps, apply a harsher term than--levity. Such, at least, is the impression I have
gathered in the Middle States and in New England;
in the South-west, the North-west, and the far West, it will doubtless be
liable to correction. These divisions
are probably new to you; but they are the general denomination of large and
flourishing communities, with which I hope to make myself at least
superficially acquainted. The fatigue of
traversing, as I habitually do, three or four hundred miles at a bound, is, of
course, considerable; but there is usually much to inquire into by the
way. The conductors of the trains, with
whom I freely converse, are often men of vigorous and original minds, and even
of some social eminence. One of them, a
few days ago, gave me a letter of introduction to his brother-in-law, who is
president of a Western
University. Don't have any fear, therefore, that I am not
in the best society! The arrangements
for travelling are, as a general thing, extremely
ingenious, as you will probably have inferred from what I told you above; but
it must at the same time be conceded that some of them are more ingenious than
happy. Some of the facilities, with
regard to luggage, the transmission of parcels, etc., are doubtless very useful
when explained, but I have not yet succeeded in mastering the intricacies. There are, on the other hand, no cabs and no
porters, and I have calculated that I have myself carried my impedimenta--which,
you know, are somewhat numerous, and from which I cannot bear to be
separated--some seventy, or eighty miles.
I have sometimes thought it was a great mistake not to bring Plummeridge; he would have been useful on such
occasions. On the other hand, the
startling question would have presented itself--Who would have carried Plummeridge's portmanteau?
He would have been useful, indeed, for brushing and packing my clothes,
and getting me my tub; I travel with a large tin one--there are none to be
obtained at the inns--and the transport of this receptacle often presents the
most insoluble difficulties. It is
often, too, an object of considerable embarrassment in arriving at private
houses, where the servants have less reserve of manner than in England; and to
tell you the truth, I am by no means certain at the present moment that the tub
has been placed in the train with me.
"On board" the train is the consecrated phrase here; it is an
allusion to the tossing and pitching of the concatenation of cars, so similar
to that of a vessel in a storm. As I was
about to inquire, however, Who would get Plummeridge HIS tub, and attend to his little
comforts? We could not very well make
our appearance, on coming to stay with people, with TWO of the utensils I have
named; though, as regards a single one, I have had the courage, as I may say,
of a life-long habit. It would hardly be
expected that we should both use the same; though there have been occasions in
my travels, as to which I see no way of blinking the fact, that Plummeridge would have had to sit down to dinner with
me. Such a contingency would completely
have unnerved him; and, on the whole, it was doubtless the wiser part to leave
him respectfully touching his hat on the tender in the Mersey. No one touches his hat over here, and though
it is doubtless the sign of a more advanced social order, I confess that when I
see poor Plummeridge again, this familiar little
gesture--familiar, I mean, only in the sense of being often seen--will give me
a measurable satisfaction. You will see
from what I tell you that democracy is not a mere word in this country, and I
could give you many more instances of its universal reign. This, however, is what we come here to look
at, and, in so far as there seems to be proper occasion, to admire; though I am
by no means sure that we can hope to establish within an appreciable time a
corresponding change in the somewhat rigid fabric of English manners. I am not even prepared to affirm that such a
change is desirable; you know this is one of the points on which I do not as
yet see my way to going as far as Lord B-- . I have always held that there is a certain
social ideal of inequality as well as of equality, and if I have found the
people of this country, as a general thing, quite equal to each other, I am not
sure that I am prepared to go so far as to say that, as a whole, they are equal
to--excuse that dreadful blot! The
movement of the train and the precarious nature of the light--it is close to my
nose, and most offensive--would, I flatter myself, long since have got the
better of a less resolute diarist! What
I was not prepared for was the very considerable body of aristocratic feeling
that lurks beneath this republican simplicity.
I have on several occasions been made the confidant of these romantic
but delusive vagaries, of which the stronghold appears to be the Empire City,--a
slang name for New York. I was assured in many quarters that that
locality, at least, is ripe for a monarchy, and if one of the Queen's sons
would come and talk it over, he would meet with the highest encouragement. This information was given me in strict
confidence, with closed doors, as it were; it reminded me a good deal of the
dreams of the old Jacobites, when they whispered
their messages to the king across the water.
I doubt, however, whether these less excusable visionaries will be able
to secure the services of a Pretender, for I fear that in such a case he would
encounter a still more fatal Culloden. I
have given a good deal of time, as I told you, to the educational system, and
have visited no fewer than one hundred and forty--three schools and
colleges. It is extraordinary, the
number of persons who are being educated in this country; and yet, at the same
time, the tone of the people is less scholarly than one might expect. A lady, a few days since, described to me her
daughter as being always "on the go," which I take to be a jocular
way of saying that the young lady was very fond of paying visits. Another person, the wife of a United States senator, informed me that if I
should go to Washington
in January, I should be quite "in the swim." I inquired the meaning of the phrase, but her
explanation made it rather more than less ambiguous. To say that I am on the go
describes very accurately my own situation.
I went yesterday to the Pognanuc High School,
to hear fifty-seven boys and girls recite in unison a most remarkable ode to
the American flag, and shortly afterward attended a ladies' lunch, at which
some eighty or ninety of the sex were present.
There was only one individual in trousers--his trousers, by the way,
though he brought a dozen pair, are getting rather seedy. The men in America do not partake of this
meal, at which ladies assemble in large numbers to discuss religions,
political, and social topics. These
immense female symposia (at which every delicacy is provided) are one of the
most striking features of American life, and would seem to prove that men are
not so indispensable in the scheme of creation as they
sometimes suppose. I have been admitted
on the footing of an Englishman--"just to show you some of our bright
women," the hostess yesterday remarked.
("Bright" here has the meaning of INTELLECTUAL.) I perceived, indeed, a great many
intellectual foreheads. These curious
collations are organised according to age. I have
also been present as an inquiring stranger at several "girls'
lunches," from which married ladies are rigidly excluded, but where the
fair revellers are equally numerous and equally bright. There is a good deal I should like to tell
you about my study of the educational question, but my position is somewhat
cramped, and I must dismiss it briefly.
My leading impression is that the children in this country are better
educated than the adults. The position
of a child is, on the whole, one of great distinction. There is a popular ballad of which the
refrain, if I am not mistaken, is "Make me a child again, just for
to-night!" and which seems to express the sentiment of regret for lost privileges. At all events they are a powerful and
independent class, and have organs, of immense circulation, in the press. They are often extremely "bright." I have talked with a great many teachers,
most of them lady-teachers, as they are called in this country. The phrase does not mean teachers of ladies,
as you might suppose, but applies to the sex of the instructress, who often has
large classes of young men under her control.
I was lately introduced to a young woman of twenty-three, who occupies
the chair of Moral Philosophy and Belles-Lettres in a
Western college, and who told me with the utmost frankness that she was adored
by the undergraduates. This young woman
was the daughter of a petty trader in one of the South western States, and had
studied at Amanda
College, in Missourah, an institution at which young people of the two
sexes pursue their education together.
She was very pretty and modest, and expressed a great desire to see
something of English country life, in consequence of which I made her promise
to come down to Thistleton in the event of her
crossing the Atlantic. She is not the
least like Gwendolen or Charlotte, and I am not
prepared to say how they would get on with her; the boys would probably do
better. Still, I think her acquaintance
would be of value to Miss Bumpus, and the two might
pass their time very pleasantly in the school-room. I grant you freely that those I have seen
here are much less comfortable than the school-room at Thistleton. Has Charlotte,
by the way, designed any more texts for the walls? I have been extremely interested in my visit
to Philadelphia, where I saw several thousand little red houses with white
steps, occupied by intelligent artizans, and arranged
(in streets) on the rectangular system.
Improved cooking-stoves, rosewood pianos, gas, and hot water, aesthetic
furniture, and complete sets of the British Essayists. A tramway through every street; every block
of equal length; blocks and houses scientifically lettered and numbered. There is absolutely no loss of time, and no
need of looking for anything, or, indeed, at anything. The mind always on one's object; it is very
delightful.
November.
The scales have turned, my sympathetic Harvard, and the beam
that has lifted you up has dropped me again on this terribly hard spot. I am
extremely sorry to have missed you in London,
but I received your little note, and took due heed of your injunction to let
you know how I got on. I don't get on at
all, my dear Harvard--I am consumed with the love of the farther shore. I have been so long away that I have dropped
out of my place in this little Boston world, and
the shallow tides of New England life have
closed over it. I am a stranger here,
and I find it hard to believe that I ever was a native. It is very hard, very cold, very vacant. I think
of your warm, rich Paris;
I think of the Boulevard St. Michel on the mild spring evenings. I see the little corner by the window (of the
Cafe de la Jeunesse)--where I used to sit; the doors
are open, the soft deep breath of the great city comes in. It is brilliant, yet there is a kind of tone,
of body, in the brightness; the mighty murmur of the ripest civilisation
in the world comes in; the dear old peuple de Paris,
the most interesting people in the world, pass
by. I have a little book in my pocket;
it is exquisitely printed, a modern Elzevir. It is a lyric cry from the heart of young France, and is
full of the sentiment of form. There is
no form here, dear Harvard; I had no idea how little form there was. I don't know what I shall do; I feel so
undraped, so uncurtained, so uncushioned;
I feel as if I were sitting in the centre of a mighty
"reflector." A terrible crude
glare is over everything; the earth looks peeled and excoriated; the raw
heavens seem to bleed with the quick hard light. I have not got back my rooms
in West Cedar Street;
they are occupied by a mesmeric healer.
I am staying at an hotel, and it is very
dreadful. Nothing for one's self;
nothing for one's preferences and habits.
No one to receive you when you arrive; you push in through a crowd, you
edge up to a counter; you write your name in a horrible book, where every one
may come and stare at it and finger it.
A man behind the counter stares at you in silence; his stare seems to
say to you, "What the devil do YOU want?" But after this stare he never looks at you
again. He tosses down a key at you; he
presses a bell; a savage Irishman arrives.
"Take him away," he seems to say to the Irishman; but it is
all done in silence; there is no answer to your own speech,--"What is to
be done with me, please?"
"Wait and you will see," the awful silence seems to say. There is a great crowd around you, but there
is also a great stillness; every now and then you hear some one
expectorate. There are a thousand people
in this huge and hideous structure; they feed together in a big white-walled
room. It is lighted by a thousand
gas-jets, and heated by cast-iron screens, which vomit forth torrents of
scorching air. The temperature is
terrible; the atmosphere is more so; the furious light and heat seem to
intensify the dreadful definiteness.
When things are so ugly, they should not be so definite; and they are
terribly ugly here. There is no mystery
in the corners; there is no light and shade in the types. The people are haggard and joyless; they look
as if they had no passions, no tastes, no senses. They sit feeding in silence, in the dry hard
light; occasionally I hear the high firm note of a child. The servants are black and familiar; their
faces shine as they shuffle about; there are blue tones in their dark
masks. They have no manners; they
address you, but they don't answer you; they plant themselves at your elbow (it
rubs their clothes as you eat), and watch you as if your proceedings were
strange. They deluge you with iced
water; it's the only thing they will bring you; if you look round to summon
them, they have gone for more. If you
read the newspaper--which I don't, gracious Heaven! I can't--they hang over your shoulder and
peruse it also. I always fold it up and
present it to them; the newspapers here are indeed for an African taste. There are long corridors defended by gusts of
hot air; down the middle swoops a pale little girl on parlour
skates. "Get out of my way!"
she shrieks as she passes; she has ribbons in her hair and frills on her dress;
she makes the tour of the immense hotel.
I think of Puck, who put a girdle round the earth in forty minutes, and
wonder what he said as he flitted by. A
black waiter marches past me, bearing a tray, which he thrusts into my spine as
he goes. It is laden with large white
jugs; they tinkle as he moves, and I recognise the unconsoling fluid.
We are dying of iced water, of hot air, of gas. I sit in my room thinking of these
things--this room of mine which is a chamber of pain. The walls are white and bare,
they shine in the rays of a horrible chandelier of imitation bronze, which
depends from the middle of the ceiling.
It flings a patch of shadow on a small table covered with white marble,
of which the genial surface supports at the present moment the sheet of paper
on which I address you; and when I go to bed (I like to read in bed, Harvard)
it becomes an object of mockery and torment. It dangles at inaccessible
heights; it stares me in the face; it flings the light upon the covers of my
book, but not upon the page--the little French Elzevir
that I love so well. I rise and put out
the gas, and then my room becomes even lighter than before. Then a crude illumination from the hall, from
the neighbouring room, pours through the glass
openings that surmount the two doors of my apartment. It covers my bed, where I toss and groan; it
beats in through my closed lids; it is accompanied by the most vulgar, though
the most human, sounds. I spring up to
call for some help, some remedy; but there is no bell, and I feel desolate and
weak. There is only a strange orifice in
the wall, through which the traveller in distress may
transmit his appeal. I fill it with
incoherent sounds, and sounds more incoherent yet come
back to me. I gather at last their
meaning; they appear to constitute a somewhat stern inquiry. A hollow impersonal voice wishes to know what
I want, and the very question paralyses me.
I want everything--yet I want nothing--nothing this hard impersonality
can give! I want my little corner of Paris; I want the rich, the deep, the dark Old World; I want to be out of this horrible place. Yet I can't confide all this to that mechanical
tube; it would be of no use; a mocking laugh would come up from the
office. Fancy appealing in these sacred,
these intimate moments, to an "office"; fancy calling out into
indifferent space for a candle, for a curtain!
I pay incalculable sums in this dreadful house, and yet I haven't a
servant to wait upon me. I fling myself
back on my couch, and for a long time afterward the orifice in the wall emits
strange murmurs and rumblings. It seems
unsatisfied, indignant; it is evidently scolding me for my vagueness. My vagueness, indeed, dear Harvard! I loathe
their horrible arrangements; isn't that definite enough? You asked me to tell
you whom I see, and what I think of my friends. I haven't very many; I don't
feel at all en rapport. The people are
very good, very serious, very devoted to their work; but there is a terrible
absence of variety of type. Every one is
Mr. Jones, Mr. Brown; and every one looks like Mr. Jones and Mr. Brown. They are thin; they are diluted in the great
tepid bath of Democracy! They lack
completeness of identity; they are quite without modelling.
No, they are not beautiful, my poor Harvard; it must be whispered that they are
not beautiful. You may say that they are
as beautiful as the French, as the Germans; but I can't agree with you there.
The French, the Germans, have the greatest beauty of all--the beauty of their
ugliness--the beauty of the strange, the grotesque. These people are not even ugly; they are only
plain. Many of the girls are pretty; but
to be only pretty is (to my sense) to be plain.
Yet I have had some talk. I have
seen a woman. She was on the steamer,
and I afterward saw her in New York--a
peculiar type, a real personality; a great deal of modelling,
a great deal of colour, and yet a great deal of
mystery. She was not, however, of this
country; she was a compound of far-off things.
But she was looking for something here--like me. We found each other, and for a moment that
was enough. I have lost her now; I am
sorry, because she liked to listen to me.
She has passed away; I shall not see her again. She liked to listen to me; she almost
understood!
VI. FROM M. GUSTAVE
LEJAUNE, OF THE FRENCH ACADEMY, TO M. ADOLPHE BOUCHE, IN PARIS.
Washington,
October 5.
I give you my little notes; you must make allowances for
haste, for bad inns, for the perpetual scramble, for ill-humour. Everywhere the same
impression--the platitude of unbalanced democracy intensified by the platitude
of the spirit of commerce. Everything on an immense scale--everything illustrated by millions
of examples. My brother-in-law is always busy; he has appointments,
inspections, interviews, disputes. The
people, it appears, are incredibly sharp in conversation, in argument; they
wait for you in silence at the corner of the road, and then they suddenly
discharge their revolver. If you fall, they empty your pockets; the only chance
is to shoot them first. With that, no amenities, no preliminaries, no manners, no care for
the appearance. I wander about
while my brother is occupied; I lounge along the streets; I stop at the
corners; I look into the shops; je regarde passer les femmes.
It's an easy country to see; one sees everything there is; the civilisation is skin deep; you don't have to dig. This positive, practical, pushing bourgeoisie
is always about its business; it lives in the street, in the hotel, in the
train; one is always in a crowd--there are seventy-five people in the
tramway. They sit in your lap; they
stand on your toes; when they wish to pass they simply push you. Everything in
silence; they know that silence is golden, and they have the worship of
gold. When the conductor wishes your
fare he gives you a poke, very serious, without a word. As for the types--but there is only one--they
are all variations of the same--the commis-voyageur
minus the gaiety. The women are often
pretty; you meet the young ones in the streets, in the trains, in search of a
husband. They look at you frankly,
coldly, judicially, to see if you will serve; but they don't want what you might
think (du moins on me l'assure); they only want the husband. A Frenchman may mistake; he needs to be sure
he is right, and I always make sure. They begin at fifteen; the mother sends
them out; it lasts all day (with an interval for dinner at a pastry-cook's);
sometimes it goes on for ten years. If
they haven't found the husband then, they give it up; they make place for the cadettes, as the number of women is enormous. No salons, no society, no conversation;
people don't receive at home; the young girls have to look for the husband
where they can. It is no disgrace not to
find him--several have never done so.
They continue to go about unmarried--from the force of habit, from the
love of movement, without hopes, without regret--no imagination, no sensibility,
no desire for the convent. We have made
several journeys--few of less than three hundred miles. Enormous trains,
enormous waggons, with beds and lavatories, and negroes who brush you with a big broom, as if they were
grooming a horse. A bounding movement, a
roaring noise, a crowd of people who look horribly tired, a boy who passes up
and down throwing pamphlets and sweetmeats into your lap--that is an American
journey. There are windows in the waggons--enormous, like everything else; but there is
nothing to see. The country is a
void--no features, no objects, no details, nothing to show you that you are in
one place more than another. Aussi, you are not in one place, you are everywhere,
anywhere; the train goes a hundred miles an hour. The cities are all the same; little houses
ten feet high, or else big ones two hundred; tramways, telegraph-poles,
enormous signs, holes in the pavement, oceans of mud, commis-voyageurs,
young ladies looking for the husband. On the other hand, no beggars and no cocottes--none, at least, that
you see. A colossal mediocrity,
except (my brother-in-law tells me) in the machinery, which is
magnificent. Naturally, no architecture
(they make houses of wood and of iron), no art, no literature, no theatre. I have opened some of the books; mais ils
ne se laissent pas
lire. No form, no matter, no style, no
general ideas! they seem to be written for children
and young ladies. The most successful
(those that they praise most) are the facetious; they sell in thousands of
editions. I have looked into some of the
most vantes; but you need to be forewarned, to know
that they are amusing; des plaisanteries de croquemort. They
have a novelist with pretensions to literature, who writes about the chase for
the husband and the adventures of the rich Americans in our corrupt old Europe, where their primaeval candour puts the Europeans to shame. C'est proprement ecrit; but it's
terribly pale. What isn't pale is the
newspapers--enormous, like everything else (fifty columns of advertisements),
and full of the commerages of a continent. And such a tone, grand Dieu! The amenities, the personalities, the
recriminations, are like so many coups de revolver. Headings six inches tall; correspondences
from places one never heard of; telegrams from Europe about Sarah Bernhardt;
little paragraphs about nothing at all; the menu of the neighbour's
dinner; articles on the European situation a pouffer
de rire; all the tripotage
of local politics. The reportage is
incredible; I am chased up and down by the interviewers. The matrimonial infelicities of M. and Madame
X. (they give the name), tout au long, with every detail--not in six lines,
discreetly veiled, with an art of insinuation, as with us; but with all the
facts (or the fictions), the letters, the dates, the places, the hours. I open a paper at hazard, and I find au beau
milieu, a propos of nothing, the announcement--"Miss Susan Green has the
longest nose in Western New York." Miss Susan Green (je
me renseigne) is a celebrated authoress; and the
Americans have the reputation of spoiling their women. They spoil them a coups de poing. We have seen
few interiors (no one speaks French); but if the newspapers give an idea of the
domestic moeurs, the moeurs
must be curious. The passport is
abolished, but they have printed my signalement in
these sheets,--perhaps for the young ladies who look for the husband. We went one night to the theatre; the piece
was French (they are the only ones), but the acting was American--too American;
we came out in the middle. The want of
taste is incredible. An Englishman whom
I met tells me that even the language corrupts itself from day to day; an
Englishman ceases to understand. It
encourages me to find that I am not the only one. There are things every day that one can't
describe. Such is Washington,
where we arrived this morning, coming from Philadelphia.
My brother-in-law wishes to see the Bureau of Patents,
and on our arrival he went to look at his machines, while I walked about the
streets and visited the Capitol! The
human machine is what interests me most.
I don't even care for the political--for that's what they call their
Government here--"the machine."
It operates very roughly, and some day, evidently, it will explode. It is true that you would never suspect that
they have a government; this is the principal seat, but, save for three or four
big buildings, most of them affreux, it looks like a
settlement of negroes.
No movement, no officials, no authority, no embodiment of the
state. Enormous streets, comme toujours, lined with little
red houses where nothing ever passes but the tramway. The Capitol--a vast structure, false classic,
white marble, iron and stucco, which has assez grand
air--must be seen to be appreciated. The
goddess of liberty on the top, dressed in a bear's skin; their liberty over
here is the liberty of bears. You go
into the Capitol as you would into a railway station; you walk about as you
would in the Palais Royal. No functionaries, no door-keepers, no
officers, no uniforms, no badges, no restrictions, no authority--nothing but a
crowd of shabby people circulating in a labyrinth of spittoons. We are too much governed, perhaps, in France; but at
least we have a certain incarnation of the national conscience, of the national
dignity. The dignity is absent here, and I am told that the conscience is an
abyss. "L'etat
c'est moi" even--I
like that better than the spittoons.
These implements are architectural, monumental; they are the only
monuments. En somme, the country is interesting, now that we too
have the Republic; it is the biggest illustration, the biggest warning. It is the last word of democracy, and that
word is--flatness. It is very big, very
rich, and perfectly ugly. A Frenchman
couldn't live here; for life with us, after all, at the worst is a sort of
appreciation. Here, there is nothing to
appreciate. As for the people, they are
the English MINUS the conventions. You
can fancy what remains. The women, pourtant, are sometimes--rather well turned. There was one at Philadelphia--I made her acquaintance by
accident--whom it is probable I shall see again. She is not looking for the husband; she has
already got one. It was at the hotel; I think the husband doesn't matter. A Frenchman, as I have said, may mistake, and
he needs to be sure he is right. Aussi, I always make sure!
VII. FROM MARCELLUS
COCKEREL, IN WASHINGTON, TO MRS. COOLER, NEE
COCKEREL, AT OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA.
October 25.
I ought to have written to you long before this, for I have
had your last excellent letter for four months in my hands. The first half of that time I was still in Europe; the last I have spent on my native soil. I think, therefore, my silence is owing to
the fact that over there I was too miserable to write,
and that here I have been too happy. I
got back the 1st of September--you will have seen it in the papers. Delightful country, where one sees everything
in the papers--the big, familiar, vulgar, good-natured, delightful papers, none
of which has any reputation to keep up for anything but getting the news! I really think that has had as much to do as
anything else with my satisfaction at getting home--the difference in what they
call the "tone of the press."
In Europe it's too dreary--the
sapience, the solemnity, the false respectability, the verbosity, the long
disquisitions on superannuated subjects.
Here the newspapers are like the railroad trains, which carry everything
that comes to the station, and have only the religion of punctuality. As a woman, however, you probably detest
them; you think they are (the great word) vulgar. I admitted it just now, and I am very happy
to have an early opportunity to announce to you that that idea has quite ceased
to have any terrors for me. There are
some conceptions to which the female mind can never rise. Vulgarity is a stupid, superficial,
question-begging accusation, which has become today the easiest refuge of
mediocrity. Better than anything else,
it saves people the trouble of thinking, and anything which does that,
succeeds. You must know that in these
last three years in Europe I have become
terribly vulgar myself; that's one service my travels
have rendered me. By three years in
Europe I mean three years in foreign parts altogether, for I spent several months
of that time in Japan, India, and the
rest of the East. Do you remember when
you bade me good-bye in San Francisco, the night
before I embarked for Yokohama? You foretold that I should take such a fancy
to foreign life that America
would never see me more, and that if YOU should wish to see me (an event you
were good enough to regard as possible), you would have to make a rendezvous in
Paris or in Rome.
I think we made one (which you never kept), but I shall never make
another for those cities. It was in Paris, however, that I
got your letter; I remember the moment as well as if it were (to my honour) much more recent.
You must know that, among many places I dislike, Paris carries the palm. I am bored to death there; it's the home of
every humbug. The life is full of that
false comfort which is worse than discomfort, and the small, fat, irritable
people, give me the shivers. I had been
making these reflections even more devoutly than usual one very tiresome
evening toward the beginning of last summer, when, as I re-entered my hotel at
ten o'clock, the little reptile of a portress handed
me your gracious lines. I was in a
villainous humour.
I had been having an over-dressed dinner in a stuffy restaurant, and had
gone from there to a suffocating theatre, where, by way of amusement, I saw a
play in which blood and lies were the least of the horrors. The theatres over there are insupportable;
the atmosphere is pestilential. People sit with their elbows in your sides;
they squeeze past you every half-hour.
It was one of my bad moments; I have a great many in Europe. The conventional perfunctory play, all in
falsetto, which I seemed to have seen a thousand times; the horrible faces of
the people; the pushing, bullying ouvreuse, with her
false politeness, and her real rapacity, drove me out of the place at the end
of an hour; and, as it was too early to go home, I sat down before a cafe on
the Boulevard, where they served me a glass of sour, watery beer. There on the Boulevard, in the summer night,
life itself was even uglier than the play, and it wouldn't do for me to tell
you what I saw. Besides, I was sick of
the Boulevard, with its eternal grimace, and the deadly sameness of the article
de Paris, which pretends to be so various--the shop-windows a wilderness of
rubbish, and the passers-by a procession of manikins. Suddenly it came over me
that I was supposed to be amusing myself--my face was a yard long--and that you
probably at that moment were saying to your husband: "He stays away so long! What a good time he must be
having!" The idea was the first
thing that had made me smile for a month; I got up and walked home, reflecting,
as I went, that I was "seeing Europe," and that, after all, one MUST
see Europe.
It was because I had been convinced of this that I came out, and it is
because the operation has been brought to a close that I have been so happy for
the last eight weeks. I was very
conscientious about it, and, though your letter that night made me abominably
homesick, I held out to the end, knowing it to be once for all. I sha'n't trouble
Europe again; I shall see America
for the rest of my days. My long delay
has had the advantage that now, at least, I can give you my impressions--I
don't mean of Europe; impressions of Europe are easy to get--but of this
country, as it strikes the re-instated exile.
Very likely you'll think them queer; but keep my letter, and twenty
years hence they will be quite commonplace.
They won't even be vulgar. It was
very deliberate, my going round the world.
I knew that one ought to see for one's self, and that I should have
eternity, so to speak, to rest. I travelled energetically; I went everywhere and saw
everything; took as many letters as possible, and made as many
acquaintances. In short, I held my nose
to the grindstone. The upshot of it all
is that I have got rid of a superstition.
We have so many, that one the less--perhaps the biggest of all--makes a
real difference in one's comfort. The
superstition in question--of course you have it--is that there is no salvation
but through Europe. Our salvation is here, if we have eyes to see
it, and the salvation of Europe into the bargain; that is, if Europe
is to be saved, which I rather doubt. Of
course you'll call me a bird of freedom, a braggart, a waver of the stars and
stripes; but I'm in the delightful position of not minding in the least what
any one calls me. I haven't a mission; I
don't want to preach; I have simply arrived at a state of mind; I have got Europe off my back.
You have no idea how it simplifies things, and how jolly it makes me
feel. Now I can live; now I can
talk. If we wretched Americans could
only say once for all, "Oh, Europe be hanged!" we should attend much better to our proper
business. We have simply to live our
life, and the rest will look after itself.
You will probably inquire what it is that I like better over here, and I
will answer that it's simply--life. Disagreeables for
disagreeables, I prefer our own. The way I have been bored and bullied in
foreign parts, and the way I have had to say I found it pleasant! For a good while this appeared to be a sort
of congenital obligation, but one fine day it occurred to me that there was no
obligation at all, and that it would ease me immensely to admit to myself that
(for me, at least) all those things had no importance. I mean the things they rub into you in Europe; the tiresome international topics, the petty
politics, the stupid social customs, the baby-house scenery. The vastness and freshness of this American
world, the great scale and great pace of our development, the good sense and
good nature of the people, console me for there being no cathedrals and no
Titians. I hear nothing about Prince
Bismarck and Gambetta, about the Emperor William and
the Czar of Russia, about Lord Beaconsfield and the Prince of Wales. I used to get so tired of their Mumbo-Jumbo
of a Bismarck,
of his secrets and surprises, his mysterious intentions and oracular
words. They revile us for our party
politics; but what are all the European jealousies and rivalries, their
armaments and their wars, their rapacities and their
mutual lies, but the intensity of the spirit of party? what
question, what interest, what idea, what need of mankind, is involved in any of
these things? Their big, pompous armies, drawn up in great silly rows, their
gold lace, their salaams, their hierarchies, seem a pastime for children;
there's a sense of humour and of reality over here
that laughs at all that. Yes, we are
nearer the reality--we are nearer what they will all have to come to. The questions of the future are social
questions, which the Bismarcks and Beaconsfields are very much afraid to see settled; and the
sight of a row of supercilious potentates holding their peoples like their
personal property, and bristling all over, to make a mutual impression, with
feathers and sabres, strikes us as a mixture of the
grotesque and the abominable. What do we care for the mutual impressions of
potentates who amuse themselves with sitting on people? Those things are their own affair, and they
ought to be shut up in a dark room to have it out together. Once one feels, over here, that the great
questions of the future are social questions, that a mighty tide is sweeping
the world to democracy, and that this country is the biggest stage on which the
drama can be enacted, the fashionable European topics seem petty and
parochial. They talk about things that
we have settled ages ago, and the solemnity with which they propound to you their
little domestic embarrassments makes a heavy draft on one's good nature. In England
they were talking about the Hares and Rabbits Bill, about the extension of the County Franchise,
about the Dissenters' Burials, about the Deceased Wife's Sister, about the
abolition of the House of Lords, about heaven knows what ridiculous little
measure for the propping-up of their ridiculous little country. And they call US provincial! It is hard to sit and look respectable while
people discuss the utility of the House of Lords, and the beauty of a State Church,
and it's only in a dowdy musty civilisation that
you'll find them doing such things. The
lightness and clearness of the social air, that's the great relief in these
parts. The gentility of bishops, the
propriety of parsons, even the impressiveness of a restored cathedral, give less of a charm to life than that. I used to be furious with the bishops and
parsons, with the humbuggery of the whole affair, which every one was conscious
of, but which people agreed not to expose, because they would be compromised
all round. The convenience of life over
here, the quick and simple arrangements, the absence of the spirit of routine,
are a blessed change from the stupid stiffness with which I struggled for two
long years. There were people with
swords and cockades, who used to order me about; for the simplest operation of
life I had to kootoo to some bloated official. When it was a question of my doing a little
differently from others, the bloated official gasped as if I had given him a
blow on the stomach; he needed to take a week to think of it. On the other hand, it's impossible to take an
American by surprise; he is ashamed to confess that he has not the wit to do a
thing that another man has had the wit to think of. Besides being as good as his neighbour, he must therefore be as clever--which is an
affliction only to people who are afraid he may be cleverer. If this general efficiency and spontaneity of
the people--the union of the sense of freedom with the love of knowledge--isn't
the very essence of a high civilisation, I don't know
what a high civilisation is. I felt this greater ease on my first railroad
journey--felt the blessing of sitting in a train where I could move about,
where I could stretch my legs, and come and go, where I had a seat and a window
to myself, where there were chairs, and tables, and food, and drink. The villainous little boxes on the European
trains, in which you are stuck down in a corner, with doubled-up knees,
opposite to a row of people--often most offensive types, who stare at you for
ten hours on end--these were part of my two years' ordeal. The large free way of doing things here is
everywhere a pleasure. In London, at my hotel, they
used to come to me on Saturday to make me order my Sunday's dinner, and when I
asked for a sheet of paper, they put it into the bill. The meagreness, the
stinginess, the perpetual expectation of a sixpence, used to exasperate
me. Of course, I saw a great many people
who were pleasant; but as I am writing to you, and not to one of them, I may
say that they were dreadfully apt to be dull.
The imagination among the people I see here is more flexible; and then
they have the advantage of a larger horizon.
It's not bounded on the north by the British aristocracy,
and on the south by the scrutin de liste. (I mix up the
countries a little, but they are not worth the keeping apart.) The absence of little conventional
measurements, of little cut-and-dried judgments, is an
immense refreshment. We are more
analytic, more discriminating, more familiar with
realities. As for manners, there are bad
manners everywhere, but an aristocracy is bad manners organised. (I don't mean that they may not be polite
among themselves, but they are rude to every one else.) The sight of all these growing millions
simply minding their business, is impressive to me,--more so than all the gilt
buttons and padded chests of the Old World; and there is a certain powerful
type of "practical" American (you'll find him chiefly in the West)
who doesn't brag as I do (I'm not practical), but who quietly feels that he has
the Future in his vitals--a type that strikes me more than any I met in your favourite countries.
Of course you'll come back to the cathedrals and Titians, but there's a
thought that helps one to do without them--the thought that though there's an
immense deal of plainness, there's little misery, little squalor, little
degradation. There is no regular
wife-beating class, and there are none of the stultified peasants of whom it
takes so many to make a European noble.
The people here are more conscious of things; they invent, they act,
they answer for themselves; they are not (I speak of social matters) tied up by
authority and precedent. We shall have
all the Titians by and by, and we shall move over a few cathedrals. You had better stay here if you want to have
the best. Of course, I am a roaring
Yankee; but you'll call me that if I say the least, so I may as well take my
ease, and say the most. Washington's a most
entertaining place; and here at least, at the seat of government, one isn't overgoverned. In
fact, there's no government at all to speak of; it seems too good to be
true. The first day I was here I went to
the Capitol, and it took me ever so long to figure to myself that I had as good
a right there as any one else--that the whole magnificent pile (it IS
magnificent, by the way) was in fact my own.
In Europe one doesn't rise to such conceptions, and my spirit had been
broken in Europe. The doors were gaping
wide--I walked all about; there were no door-keepers, no officers, nor
flunkeys--not even a policeman to be seen. It seemed strange not to see a uniform, if
only as a patch of colour. But this isn't government by livery. The
absence of these things is odd at first; you seem to miss something, to fancy
the machine has stopped. It hasn't,
though; it only works without fire and smoke.
At the end of three days this simple negative impression--the fact is,
that there are no soldiers nor spies, nothing but plain black coats--begins to
affect the imagination, becomes vivid, majestic, symbolic. It ends by being more impressive than the
biggest review I saw in Germany. Of course, I'm a roaring Yankee; but one has
to take a big brush to copy a big model.
The future is here, of course; but it isn't only that--the present is
here as well. You will complain that I
don't give you any personal news; but I am more modest for myself than for my
country. I spent a month in New York,
and while I was there I saw a good deal of a rather interesting girl who came
over with me in the steamer, and whom for a day or two I thought I should like
to marry. But I shouldn't. She has been spoiled by Europe!
VIII. FROM MISS AURORA
CHURCH, IN NEW YORK, TO MISS WHITESIDE, IN PARIS.
January 9.
I told you (after we landed) about my agreement with
mamma--that I was to have my liberty for three months, and if at the end of
this time I shouldn't have made a good use of it, I was to give it back to
her. Well, the time is up today, and I
am very much afraid I haven't made a good use of it. In fact, I haven't made any use of it at
all--I haven't got married, for that is what mamma meant by our little
bargain. She has been trying to marry me
in Europe, for years, without a dot, and as
she has never (to the best of my knowledge) even come near it,
she thought at last that, if she were to leave it to me, I might do
better. I couldn't certainly do
worse. Well, my dear, I have done very
badly--that is, I haven't done at all. I
haven't even tried. I had an idea that
this affair came of itself over here; but it hasn't come to me. I won't say I am disappointed, for I haven't,
on the whole, seen any one I should like to marry. When you marry people over here, they expect
you to love them, and I haven't seen any one I should like to love. I don't know what the reason is, but they are
none of them what I have thought of. It
may be that I have thought of the impossible; and yet I have seen people in Europe whom I should have liked to marry. It is true,
they were almost always married to some one else. What I AM disappointed in is
simply having to give back my liberty.
I don't wish particularly to be married; and I do wish to do as I
like--as I have been doing for the last month.
All the same, I am sorry for poor mamma, as nothing has happened that
she wished to happen. To begin with, we
are not appreciated, not even by the Rucks, who have
disappeared, in the strange way in which people over here seem to vanish from
the world. We have made no sensation; my
new dresses count for nothing (they all have better ones); our philological and
historical studies don't show. We have
been told we might do better in Boston; but, on
the other hand, mamma hears that in Boston
the people only marry their cousins.
Then mamma is out of sorts because the country is exceedingly dear and
we have spent all our money. Moreover, I
have neither eloped, nor been insulted, nor been talked about, nor--so far as I
know--deteriorated in manners or character; so that mamma is wrong in all her
previsions. I think she would have
rather liked me to be insulted. But I have been insulted as little as I have
been adored. They don't adore you over
here; they only make you think they are going to. Do you remember the two gentlemen who were on
the ship, and who, after we arrived here, came to see me a tour de role? At first I never dreamed they were making
love to me, though mamma was sure it must be that; then, as it went on a good
while, I thought perhaps it WAS that; and I ended by seeing that it wasn't
anything! It was simply conversation;
they are very fond of conversation over here. Mr. Leverett
and Mr. Cockerel disappeared one fine day, without the smallest pretension to
having broken my heart, I am sure, though it only depended on me to think they had! All the gentlemen are like that; you can't
tell what they mean; everything is very confused; society appears to consist of
a sort of innocent jilting. I think, on
the whole, I AM a little disappointed--I don't mean about one's not marrying; I
mean about the life generally. It seems
so different at first, that you expect it will be very exciting; and then you
find that, after all, when you have walked out for a week or two by yourself,
and driven out with a gentleman in a buggy, that's about all there is of it, as
they say here. Mamma is very angry at
not finding more to dislike; she admitted yesterday that, once one has got a
little settled, the country has not even the merit of being hateful. This has evidently something to do with her
suddenly proposing three days ago that we should go to the West. Imagine my
surprise at such an idea coming from mamma!
The people in the pension--who, as usual, wish immensely to get rid of
her--have talked to her about the West, and she has taken it up with a kind of
desperation. You see, we must do
something; we can't simply remain here.
We are rapidly being ruined, and we are not--so to speak--getting
married. Perhaps it will be easier in
the West; at any rate, it will be cheaper, and the country will have the
advantage of being more hateful. It is a
question between that and returning to Europe, and for the moment mamma is balancing. I say nothing: I am really indifferent; perhaps I shall
marry a pioneer. I am just thinking how I shall give back my liberty. It really won't be possible; I haven't got it
any more; I have given it away to others.
Mamma may recover it, if she can, from THEM! She comes in at this moment to say that we
must push farther--she has decided for the West. Wonderful mamma! It appears that my real chance is for a
pioneer--they have sometimes millions.
But, fancy us in the West!
THE END