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<h2>
<a href="#startoftext">Worldly Ways and Byways, by Eliot Gregory</a>
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The Project Gutenberg eBook, Worldly Ways and Byways, by Eliot Gregory
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Title: Worldly Ways and Byways
Author: Eliot Gregory
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***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WORLDLY WAYS AND BYWAYS***
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<p><a name="startoftext"></a></p>
<p>Transcribed from the 1899 Charles Scribner’s Sons
edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org</p>
<h1>Worldly<br />
Ways<br />
&<br />
Byways</h1>
<p style="text-align: center"><span class="smcap">by</span><br />
Eliot Gregory<br />
(“<i>An Idler</i>”)</p>
<p style="text-align: center"><span class="smcap">new
york</span><br />
<i>Charles Scribner’s Sons</i><br />
<span class="smcap">mdcccxcix</span></p>
<p style="text-align: center"><i>Copyright</i>, 1898,
<i>by</i><br />
<i>Charles Scribner’s Sons</i></p>
<p>To<br />
<i>E. L. Godkin, Esq</i><sup><i>re</i></sup>.</p>
<p><span class="smcap">Sir</span>:</p>
<p>I wish your name to appear on the first page of a volume, the
composition of which was suggested by you.</p>
<p>Gratitude is said to be “the hope of favors to
come;” these lines are written to prove that it may be the
appreciation of kindnesses received.</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Heartily yours</i><br />
<i>Eliot Gregory</i></p>
<h2>A Table of Contents</h2>
<p><i>To the R E A D E R</i></p>
<p>1. Charm</p>
<p>2. The Moth and the Star</p>
<p>3. Contrasted Travelling</p>
<p>4. The Outer and the Inner Woman</p>
<p>5. On Some Gilded Misalliances</p>
<p>6. The Complacency of Mediocrity</p>
<p>7. The Discontent of Talent</p>
<p>8. Slouch</p>
<p>9. Social Suggestion</p>
<p>10. Bohemia</p>
<p>11. Social Exiles</p>
<p>12. “Seven Ages” of Furniture</p>
<p>13. Our Elite and Public Life</p>
<p>14. The Small Summer Hotel</p>
<p>15. A False Start</p>
<p>16. A Holy Land</p>
<p>17. Royalty at Play</p>
<p>18. A Rock Ahead</p>
<p>19. The Grand Prix</p>
<p>20. “The Treadmill”</p>
<p>21. “Like Master Like Man”</p>
<p>22. An English Invasion of the Riviera</p>
<p>23. A Common Weakness</p>
<p>24. Changing Paris</p>
<p>25. Contentment</p>
<p>26. The Climber</p>
<p>27. The Last of the Dandies</p>
<p>28. A Nation on the Wing</p>
<p>29. Husks</p>
<p>30. The Faubourg St. Germain</p>
<p>31. Men’s Manners</p>
<p>32. An Ideal Hostess</p>
<p>33. The Introducer</p>
<p>34. A Question and an Answer</p>
<p>35. Living on Your Friends</p>
<p>36. American Society in Italy</p>
<p>37. The Newport of the Past</p>
<p>38. A Conquest of Europe</p>
<p>39. A Race of Slaves</p>
<p>40. Introspection</p>
<h2>To the Reader</h2>
<p>There existed formerly, in diplomatic circles, a curious
custom, since fallen into disuse, entitled the Pêle
Mêle, contrived doubtless by some distracted Master of
Ceremonies to quell the endless jealousies and quarrels for
precedence between courtiers and diplomatists of contending
pretensions. Under this rule no rank was recognized, each
person being allowed at banquet, fête, or other public
ceremony only such place as he had been ingenious or fortunate
enough to obtain.</p>
<p>Any one wishing to form an idea of the confusion that ensued,
of the intrigues and expedients resorted to, not only in
procuring prominent places, but also in ensuring the integrity of
the Pêle Mêle, should glance over the amusing memoirs
of M. de Ségur.</p>
<p>The aspiring nobles and ambassadors, harassed by this constant
preoccupation, had little time or inclination left for any
serious pursuit, since, to take a moment’s repose or an
hour’s breathing space was to risk falling behind in the
endless and aimless race. Strange as it may appear, the
knowledge that they owed place and preferment more to chance or
intrigue than to any personal merit or inherited right, instead
of lessening the value of the prizes for which all were striving,
seemed only to enhance them in the eyes of the competitors.</p>
<p>Success was the unique standard by which they gauged their
fellows. Those who succeeded revelled in the adulation of
their friends, but when any one failed, the fickle crowd passed
him by to bow at more fortunate feet.</p>
<p>No better picture could be found of the “world” of
to-day, a perpetual Pêle Mêle, where such advantages
only are conceded as we have been sufficiently enterprising to
obtain, and are strong or clever enough to keep—a constant
competition, a daily steeplechase, favorable to daring spirits
and personal initiative but with the defect of keeping frail
humanity ever on the qui vive.</p>
<p>Philosophers tell us, that we should seek happiness only in
the calm of our own minds, not allowing external conditions or
the opinions of others to influence our ways. This lofty
detachment from environment is achieved by very few.
Indeed, the philosophers themselves (who may be said to have
invented the art of “posing”) were generally as vain
as peacocks, profoundly pre-occupied with the verdict of their
contemporaries and their position as regards posterity.</p>
<p>Man is born gregarious and remains all his life a herding
animal. As one keen observer has written, “So great
is man’s horror of being alone that he will seek the
society of those he neither likes nor respects sooner than be
left to his own.” The laws and conventions that
govern men’s intercourse have, therefore, formed a tempting
subject for the writers of all ages. Some have labored
hoping to reform their generation, others have written to offer
solutions for life’s many problems.</p>
<p>Beaumarchais, whose penetrating wit left few subjects
untouched, makes his Figaro put the subject aside with “Je
me presse de rire de tout, de peur d’être
obligè d’en pleurer.”</p>
<p>The author of this little volume pretends to settle no
disputes, aims at inaugurating no reforms. He has lightly
touched on passing topics and jotted down, “to point a
moral or adorn a tale,” some of the more obvious foibles
and inconsistencies of our American ways. If a stray bit of
philosophy has here and there slipped in between the lines, it is
mostly of the laughing “school,” and used more in
banter than in blame.</p>
<p>This much abused “world” is a fairly agreeable
place if you do not take it seriously. Meet it with a
friendly face and it will smile gayly back at you, but do not ask
of it what it cannot give, or attribute to its verdicts more
importance than they deserve.</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Eliot
Gregory</span></p>
<p><i>Newport</i>, <i>November first</i>, 1897</p>
<h2>No. 1—Charm</h2>
<p>Women endowed by nature with the indescribable quality we call
“charm” (for want of a better word), are the supreme
development of a perfected race, the last word, as it were, of
civilization; the flower of their kind, crowning centuries of
growing refinement and cultivation. Other women may unite a
thousand brilliant qualities, and attractive attributes, may be
beautiful as Astarté or witty as Madame de Montespan,
those endowed with the power of charm, have in all ages and under
every sky, held undisputed rule over the hearts of their
generation.</p>
<p>When we look at the portraits of the enchantresses whom
history tells us have ruled the world by their charm, and swayed
the destinies of empires at their fancy, we are astonished to
find that they have rarely been beautiful. From Cleopatra
or Mary of Scotland down to Lola Montez, the tell-tale coin or
canvas reveals the same marvellous fact. We wonder how
these women attained such influence over the men of their day,
their husbands or lovers. We would do better to look around
us, or inward, and observe what is passing in our own hearts.</p>
<p>Pause, reader mine, a moment and reflect. Who has held
the first place in your thoughts, filled your soul, and
influenced your life? Was she the most beautiful of your
acquaintances, the radiant vision that dazzled your boyish
eyes? Has she not rather been some gentle, quiet woman whom
you hardly noticed the first time your paths crossed, but who
gradually grew to be a part of your life—to whom you
instinctively turned for consolation in moments of
discouragement, for counsel in your difficulties, and whose
welcome was the bright moment in your day, looked forward to
through long hours of toil and worry?</p>
<p>In the hurly-burly of life we lose sight of so many things our
fathers and mothers clung to, and have drifted so far away from
their gentle customs and simple, home-loving habits, that one
wonders what impression our society would make on a woman of a
century ago, could she by some spell be dropped into the swing of
modern days. The good soul would be apt to find it rather a
far cry from the quiet pleasures of her youth, to “a
ladies’ amateur bicycle race” that formed the
attraction recently at a summer resort.</p>
<p>That we should have come to think it natural and proper for a
young wife and mother to pass her mornings at golf, lunching at
the club-house to “save time,” returning home only
for a hurried change of toilet to start again on a bicycle or for
a round of calls, an occupation that will leave her just the
half-hour necessary to slip into a dinner gown, and then for her
to pass the evening in dancing or at the card-table, shows, when
one takes the time to think of it, how unconsciously we have
changed, and (with all apologies to the gay hostesses and
graceful athletes of to-day) not for the better.</p>
<p>It is just in the subtle quality of charm that the women of
the last ten years have fallen away from their elder
sisters. They have been carried along by a love of sport,
and by the set of fashion’s tide, not stopping to ask
themselves whither they are floating. They do not realize
all the importance of their acts nor the true meaning of their
metamorphosis.</p>
<p>The dear creatures should be content, for they have at last
escaped from the bondage of ages, have broken their chains, and
vaulted over their prison walls. “Lords and
masters” have gradually become very humble and obedient
servants, and the “love, honour, and obey” of the
marriage service might now more logically be spoken by the man;
on the lips of the women of to-day it is but a graceful
“<i>façon de parler</i>,” and holds only those
who choose to be bound.</p>
<p>It is not my intention to rail against the short-comings of
the day. That ungrateful task I leave to sterner moralists,
and hopeful souls who naïvely imagine they can stem the
current of an epoch with the barrier of their eloquence, or sweep
back an ocean of innovations by their logic. I should like,
however, to ask my sisters one question: Are they quite sure that
women gain by these changes? Do they imagine, these
“sporty” young females in short-cut skirts and
mannish shirts and ties, that it is seductive to a lover, or a
husband to see his idol in a violent perspiration, her draggled
hair blowing across a sunburned face, panting up a long hill in
front of him on a bicycle, frantic at having lost her race?
Shade of gentle William! who said</p>
<blockquote><p><i>A woman moved</i>, <i>is like a fountain
troubled</i>,—<br />
<i>Muddy</i>, <i>ill-seeming</i>, <i>thick</i>, <i>bereft of
beauty</i>.<br />
<i>And while it is so</i>, <i>none so dry or thirsty</i><br />
<i>Will deign to sip or touch one drop of it</i>.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Is the modern girl under the impression that men will be
contented with poor imitations of themselves, to share their
homes and be the mothers of their children? She is throwing
away the substance for the shadow!</p>
<p>The moment women step out from the sanctuary of their homes,
the glamour that girlhood or maternity has thrown around them
cast aside, that moment will they cease to rule mankind.
Women may agitate until they have obtained political recognition,
but will awake from their foolish dream of power, realizing too
late what they have sacrificed to obtain it, that the price has
been very heavy, and the fruit of their struggles bitter on their
lips.</p>
<p>There are few men, I imagine, of my generation to whom the
words “home” and “mother” have not a
penetrating charm, who do not look back with softened heart and
tender thoughts to fireside scenes of evening readings and
twilight talks at a mother’s knee, realizing that the best
in their natures owes its growth to these influences.</p>
<p>I sometimes look about me and wonder what the word
“mother” will mean later, to modern little
boys. It will evoke, I fear, a confused remembrance of some
centaur-like being, half woman, half wheel, or as it did to
neglected little Rawdon Crawley, the vision of a radiant creature
in gauze and jewels, driving away to endless
<i>fêtes</i>—<i>fêtes</i> followed by long
mornings, when he was told not to make any noise, or play too
loudly, “as poor mamma is resting.” What other
memories can the “successful” woman of to-day hope to
leave in the minds of her children? If the child remembers
his mother in this way, will not the man who has known and
perhaps loved her, feel the same sensation of empty futility when
her name is mentioned?</p>
<p>The woman who proposes a game of cards to a youth who comes to
pass an hour in her society, can hardly expect him to carry away
a particularly tender memory of her as he leaves the house.
The girl who has rowed, ridden, or raced at a man’s side
for days, with the object of getting the better of him at some
sport or pastime, cannot reasonably hope to be connected in his
thoughts with ideas more tender or more elevated than
“odds” or “handicaps,” with an
undercurrent of pique if his unsexed companion has
“downed” him successfully.</p>
<p>What man, unless he be singularly dissolute or unfortunate,
but turns his steps, when he can, towards some dainty parlor
where he is sure of finding a smiling, soft-voiced woman, whose
welcome he knows will soothe his irritated nerves and restore the
even balance of his temper, whose charm will work its subtle way
into his troubled spirit? The wife he loves, or the friend
he admires and respects, will do more for him in one such quiet
hour when two minds commune, coming closer to the real man, and
moving him to braver efforts, and nobler aims, than all the
beauties and “sporty” acquaintances of a
lifetime. No matter what a man’s education or taste
is, none are insensible to such an atmosphere or to the grace and
witchery a woman can lend to the simplest surroundings. She
need not be beautiful or brilliant to hold him in lifelong
allegiance, if she but possess this magnetism.</p>
<p>Madame Récamier was a beautiful, but not a brilliant
woman, yet she held men her slaves for years. To know her
was to fall under her charm, and to feel it once was to remain
her adorer for life. She will go down to history as the
type of a fascinating woman. Being asked once by an
acquaintance what spell she worked on mankind that enabled her to
hold them for ever at her feet, she laughingly answered:</p>
<p>“I have always found two words sufficient. When a
visitor comes into my salon, I say, ‘<i>Enfin</i>!’
and when he gets up to go away, I say,
‘<i>Déjà</i>!’”</p>
<p>“What is this wonderful ‘charm’ he is
writing about?” I hear some sprightly maiden inquire
as she reads these lines. My dear young lady, if you ask
the question, you have judged yourself and been found
wanting. But to satisfy you as far as I can, I will try and
define it—not by telling you what it is; that is beyond my
power—but by negatives, the only way in which subtle
subjects can be approached.</p>
<p>A woman of charm is never flustered and never
<i>distraite</i>. She talks little, and rarely of herself,
remembering that bores are persons who insist on talking about
themselves. She does not break the thread of a conversation
by irrelevant questions or confabulate in an undertone with the
servants. No one of her guests receives more of her
attention than another and none are neglected. She offers
to each one who speaks the homage of her entire attention.
She never makes an effort to be brilliant or entertain with her
wit. She is far too clever for that. Neither does she
volunteer information nor converse about her troubles or her
ailments, nor wander off into details about people you do not
know.</p>
<p>She is all things—to each man she likes, in the best
sense of that phrase, appreciating his qualities, stimulating him
to better things.</p>
<blockquote><p>—<i>for his gayer hours</i><br />
<i>She has a voice of gladness and a smile and eloquence of
beauty</i>; <i>and she glides</i><br />
<i>Into his darker musings with a mild and healing sympathy that
steals away</i><br />
<i>Their sharpness ere he is aware</i>.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>No. 2—The Moth and the Star</h2>
<p>The truth of the saying that “it is always the
unexpected that happens,” receives in this country a
confirmation from an unlooked-for quarter, as does the fact of
human nature being always, discouragingly, the same in spite of
varied surroundings. This sounds like a paradox, but is an
exceedingly simple statement easily proved.</p>
<p>That the great mass of Americans, drawn as they are from such
varied sources, should take any interest in the comings and
goings or social doings of a small set of wealthy and fashionable
people, is certainly an unexpected development. That to
read of the amusements and home life of a clique of people with
whom they have little in common, whose whole education and point
of view are different from their own, and whom they have rarely
seen and never expect to meet, should afford the average citizen
any amusement seems little short of impossible.</p>
<p>One accepts as a natural sequence that abroad (where an
hereditary nobility have ruled for centuries, and accustomed the
people to look up to them as the visible embodiment of all that
is splendid and unattainable in life) such interest should
exist. That the home-coming of an English or French
nobleman to his estates should excite the enthusiasm of hundreds
more or less dependent upon him for their amusement or more
material advantages; that his marriage to an
heiress—meaning to them the re-opening of a long-closed
<i>château</i> and the beginning of a period of prosperity
for the district—should excite his neighbors is not to be
wondered at.</p>
<p>It is well known that whole regions have been made prosperous
by the residence of a court, witness the wealth and trade brought
into Scotland by the Queen’s preference for “the Land
of Cakes,” and the discontent and poverty in Ireland from
absenteeism and persistent avoidance of that country by the
court. But in this land, where every reason for interesting
one class in another seems lacking, that thousands of well-to-do
people (half the time not born in this hemisphere), should
delightedly devour columns of incorrect information about New
York dances and Lenox house-parties, winter cruises, or Newport
coaching parades, strikes the observer as the
“unexpected” in its purest form.</p>
<p>That this interest exists is absolutely certain. During
a trip in the West, some seasons ago, I was dumbfounded to find
that the members of a certain New York set were familiarly spoken
of by their first names, and was assailed with all sorts of eager
questions when it was discovered that I knew them. A
certain young lady, at that time a belle in New York, was
currently called <i>Sally</i>, and a well-known sportsman
<i>Fred</i>, by thousands of people who had never seen either of
them. It seems impossible, does it not? Let us look a
little closer into the reason of this interest, and we shall find
how simple is the apparent paradox.</p>
<p>Perhaps in no country, in all the world, do the immense middle
classes lead such uninteresting lives, and have such limited
resources at their disposal for amusement or the passing of
leisure hours.</p>
<p>Abroad the military bands play constantly in the public parks;
the museums and palaces are always open wherein to pass rainy
Sunday afternoons; every village has its religious
<i>fêtes</i> and local fair, attended with dancing and
games. All these mental relaxations are lacking in our
newer civilization; life is stripped of everything that is not
distinctly practical; the dull round of weekly toil is only
broken by the duller idleness of an American Sunday.
Naturally, these people long for something outside of themselves
and their narrow sphere.</p>
<p>Suddenly there arises a class whose wealth permits them to
break through the iron circle of work and boredom, who do
picturesque and delightful things, which appeal directly to the
imagination; they build a summer residence complete, in six
weeks, with furniture and bric-a-brac, on the top of a roadless
mountain; they sail in fairylike yachts to summer seas, and marry
their daughters to the heirs of ducal houses; they float up the
Nile in dahabeeyah, or pass the “month of flowers” in
far Japan.</p>
<p>It is but human nature to delight in reading of these
things. Here the great mass of the people find (and eagerly
seize on), the element of romance lacking in their lives,
infinitely more enthralling than the doings of any novel’s
heroine. It is real! It is taking place!
and—still deeper reason—in every ambitious American
heart lingers the secret hope that with luck and good management
they too may do those very things, or at least that their
children will enjoy the fortunes they have gained, in just those
ways. The gloom of the monotonous present is brightened,
the patient toiler returns to his desk with something definite
before him—an objective point—towards which he can
struggle; he knows that this is no impossible dream. Dozens
have succeeded and prove to him what energy and enterprise can
accomplish.</p>
<p>Do not laugh at this suggestion; it is far truer than you
imagine. Many a weary woman has turned from such reading to
her narrow duties, feeling that life is not all work, and with
renewed hope in the possibilities of the future.</p>
<p>Doubtless a certain amount of purely idle curiosity is mingled
with the other feelings. I remember quite well showing our
city sights to a bored party of Western friends, and failing
entirely to amuse them, when, happening to mention as we drove up
town, “there goes Mr. Blank,” (naming a prominent
leader of cotillions), my guests nearly fell over each other and
out of the carriage in their eagerness to see the gentleman of
whom they had read so much, and who was, in those days, a power
in his way, and several times after they expressed the greatest
satisfaction at having seen him.</p>
<p>I have found, with rare exceptions, and the experience has
been rather widely gathered all over the country, that this
interest—or call it what you will—has been entirely
without spite or bitterness, rather the delight of a child in a
fairy story. For people are rarely envious of things far
removed from their grasp. You will find that a woman who is
bitter because her neighbor has a girl “help” or a
more comfortable cottage, rarely feels envy towards the owners of
opera-boxes or yachts. Such heart-burnings (let us hope
they are few) are among a class born in the shadow of great
wealth, and bred up with tastes that they can neither relinquish
nor satisfy. The large majority of people show only a
good-natured inclination to chaff, none of the “class
feeling” which certain papers and certain politicians try
to excite. Outside of the large cities with their
foreign-bred, semi-anarchistic populations, the tone is perfectly
friendly; for the simple reason that it never entered into the
head of any American to imagine that there <i>was</i> any class
difference. To him his rich neighbors are simply his lucky
neighbors, almost his relations, who, starting from a common
stock, have been able to “get there” sooner than he
has done. So he wishes them luck on the voyage in which he
expects to join them as soon as he has had time to make a
fortune.</p>
<p>So long as the world exists, or at least until we have
reformed it and adopted Mr. Bellamy’s delightful scheme of
existence as described in “Looking Backward,” great
fortunes will be made, and painful contrasts be seen, especially
in cities, and it would seem to be the duty of the press to
soften—certainly not to sharpen—the edge of
discontent. As long as human nature is human nature, and
the poor care to read of the doings of the more fortunate, by all
means give them the reading they enjoy and demand, but let it be
written in a kindly spirit so that it may be a cultivation as
well as a recreation. Treat this perfectly natural and
honest taste honestly and naturally, for, after all, it is</p>
<blockquote><p><i>The desire of the moth for the star</i>,<br />
<i>Of the night for the morrow</i>.<br />
<i>The devotion to something afar</i><br />
<i>From the sphere of our sorrow</i>.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>No. 3—Contrasted Travelling</h2>
<p>When our parents went to Europe fifty years ago, it was the
event of a lifetime—a tour lovingly mapped out in advance
with advice from travelled friends. Passports were
procured, books read, wills made, and finally, prayers were
offered up in church and solemn leave-taking performed.
Once on the other side, descriptive letters were conscientiously
written, and eagerly read by friends at home,—in spite of
these epistles being on the thinnest of paper and with crossing
carried to a fine art, for postage was high in the forties.
Above all, a journal was kept.</p>
<p>Such a journal lies before me as I write. Four little
volumes in worn morocco covers and faded “Italian”
writing, more precious than all my other books combined, their
sight recalls that lost time—my youth—when, as a
reward, they were unlocked that I might look at the drawings, and
the sweetest voice in the world would read to me from them!
Happy, vanished days, that are so far away they seem to have been
in another existence!</p>
<p>The first volume opens with the voyage across the Atlantic,
made in an American clipper (a model unsurpassed the world over),
which was accomplished in thirteen days, a feat rarely equalled
now, by sail. Genial Captain Nye was in command. The
same who later, when a steam propelled vessel was offered him,
refused, as unworthy of a seaman, “to boil a kettle across
the ocean.”</p>
<p>Life friendships were made in those little cabins, under the
swinging lamp the travellers re-read last volumes so as to be
prepared to appreciate everything on landing. Ireland,
England and Scotland were visited with an enthusiasm born of
Scott, the tedium of long coaching journeys being beguiled by the
first “numbers” of “Pickwick,” over which
the men of the party roared, but which the ladies did not care
for, thinking it vulgar, and not to be compared to
“Waverley,” “Thaddeus of Warsaw,” or
“The Mysteries of Udolpho.”</p>
<p>A circular letter to our diplomatic agents abroad was
presented in each city, a rite invariably followed by an
invitation to dine, for which occasions a black satin frock with
a low body and a few simple ornaments, including (supreme
elegance) a diamond cross, were carried in the trunks. In
London a travelling carriage was bought and stocked, the
indispensable courier engaged, half guide, half servant, who was
expected to explore a city, or wait at table, as occasion
required. Four days were passed between Havre and Paris,
and the slow progress across Europe was accomplished, Murray in
one hand and Byron in the other.</p>
<p>One page used particularly to attract my boyish
attention. It was headed by a naïve little drawing of
the carriage at an Italian inn door, and described how, after the
dangers and discomforts of an Alpine pass, they descended by
sunny slopes into Lombardy. Oh! the rapture that breathes
from those simple pages! The vintage scenes, the mid-day
halt for luncheon eaten in the open air, the afternoon start, the
front seat of the carriage heaped with purple grapes, used to
fire my youthful imagination and now recalls Madame de
Staël’s line on perfect happiness: “To be young!
to be in love! to be in Italy!”</p>
<p>Do people enjoy Europe as much now? I doubt it! It
has become too much a matter of course, a necessary part of the
routine of life. Much of the bloom is brushed from foreign
scenes by descriptive books and photographs, that St.
Mark’s or Mt. Blanc has become as familiar to a
child’s eye as the house he lives in, and in consequence
the reality now instead of being a revelation is often a
disappointment.</p>
<p>In my youth, it was still an event to cross. I remember
my first voyage on the old side-wheeled <i>Scotia</i>, and
Captain Judkins in a wheeled chair, and a perpetual bad temper,
being pushed about the deck; and our delight, when the inevitable
female asking him (three days out) how far we were from land, got
the answer “about a mile!”</p>
<p>“Indeed! How interesting! In which
direction?”</p>
<p>“In that direction, madam,” shouted the captain,
pointing downward as he turned his back to her.</p>
<p>If I remember, we were then thirteen days getting to
Liverpool, and made the acquaintance on board of the people with
whom we travelled during most of that winter. Imagine
anyone now making an acquaintance on board a steamer! In
those simple days people depended on the friendships made at
summer hotels or boarding-houses for their visiting list.
At present, when a girl comes out, her mother presents her to
everybody she will be likely to know if she were to live a
century. In the seventies, ladies cheerfully shared their
state-rooms with women they did not know, and often became
friends in consequence; but now, unless a certain deck-suite can
be secured, with bath and sitting-room, on one or two particular
“steamers,” the great lady is in despair. Yet
our mothers were quite as refined as the present generation, only
they took life simply, as they found it.</p>
<p>Children are now taken abroad so young, that before they have
reached an age to appreciate what they see, Europe has become to
them a twice-told tale. So true is this, that a receipt for
making children good Americans is to bring them up abroad.
Once they get back here it is hard to entice them away again.</p>
<p>With each improvement in the speed of our steamers, something
of the glamour of Europe vanishes. The crowds that yearly
rush across see and appreciate less in a lifetime than our
parents did in their one tour abroad. A good lady of my
acquaintance was complaining recently how much Paris bored
her.</p>
<p>“What can you do to pass the time?” she
asked. I innocently answered that I knew nothing so
entrancing as long mornings passed at the Louvre.</p>
<p>“Oh, yes, I do that too,” she replied, “but
I like the ‘Bon Marché’ best!”</p>
<p>A trip abroad has become a purely social function to a large
number of wealthy Americans, including “presentation”
in London and a winter in Rome or Cairo. And just as a
“smart” Englishman is sure to tell you that he has
never visited the “Tower,” it has become good form to
ignore the sight-seeing side of Europe; hundreds of New Yorkers
never seeing anything of Paris beyond the Rue de la Paix and the
Bois. They would as soon think of going to Cluny or St.
Denis as of visiting the museum in our park!</p>
<p>Such people go to Fontainebleau because they are buying
furniture, and they wish to see the best models. They go to
Versailles on the coach and “do” the Palace during
the half-hour before luncheon. Beyond that, enthusiasm
rarely carries them. As soon as they have settled
themselves at the Bristol or the Rhin begins the endless
treadmill of leaving cards on all the people just seen at home,
and whom they will meet again in a couple of months at Newport or
Bar Harbor. This duty and the all-entrancing occupation of
getting clothes fills up every spare hour. Indeed, clothes
seem to pervade the air of Paris in May, the conversation rarely
deviating from them. If you meet a lady you know looking
ill, and ask the cause, it generally turns out to be “four
hours a day standing to be fitted.” Incredible as it
may seem, I have been told of one plain maiden lady, who makes a
trip across, spring and autumn, with the sole object of getting
her two yearly outfits.</p>
<p>Remembering the hundreds of cultivated people whose dream in
life (often unrealized from lack of means) has been to go abroad
and visit the scenes their reading has made familiar, and knowing
what such a trip would mean to them, and how it would be looked
back upon during the rest of an obscure life, I felt it almost a
duty to “suppress” a wealthy female (doubtless an
American cousin of Lady Midas) when she informed me, the other
day, that decidedly she would not go abroad this spring.</p>
<p>“It is not necessary. Worth has my
measures!”</p>
<h2>No. 4—The Outer and the Inner Woman</h2>
<p>It is a sad commentary on our boasted civilization that cases
of shoplifting occur more and more frequently each year, in which
the delinquents are women of education and refinement, or at
least belong to families and occupy positions in which one would
expect to find those qualities! The reason, however, is not
difficult to discover.</p>
<p>In the wake of our hasty and immature prosperity has come (as
it does to all suddenly enriched societies) a love of
ostentation, a desire to dazzle the crowd by displays of luxury
and rich trappings indicative of crude and vulgar
standards. The newly acquired money, instead of being
expended for solid comforts or articles which would afford
lasting satisfaction, is lavished on what can be worn in public,
or the outer shell of display, while the home table and fireside
belongings are neglected. A glance around our theatres, or
at the men and women in our crowded thoroughfares, is sufficient
to reveal to even a casual observer that the mania for fine
clothes and what is costly, <i>per se</i>, has become the
besetting sin of our day and our land.</p>
<p>The tone of most of the papers and of our theatrical
advertisements reflects this feeling. The amount of money
expended for a work of art or a new building is mentioned before
any comment as to its beauty or fitness. A play is spoken
of as “Manager So and So’s thirty-thousand-dollar
production!” The fact that a favorite actress will
appear in four different dresses during the three acts of a
comedy, each toilet being a special creation designed for her by
a leading Parisian house, is considered of supreme importance and
is dwelt upon in the programme as a special attraction.</p>
<p>It would be astonishing if the taste of our women were
different, considering the way clothes are eternally being
dangled before their eyes. Leading papers publish
illustrated supplements devoted exclusively to the subject of
attire, thus carrying temptation into every humble home, and
suggesting unattainable luxuries. Windows in many of the
larger shops contain life-sized manikins loaded with the latest
costly and ephemeral caprices of fashion arranged to catch the
eye of the poorer class of women, who stand in hundreds gazing at
the display like larks attracted by a mirror! Watch those
women as they turn away, and listen to their sighs of discontent
and envy. Do they not tell volumes about petty hopes and
ambitions?</p>
<p>I do not refer to the wealthy women whose toilets are in
keeping with their incomes and the general footing of their
households; that they should spend more or less in fitting
themselves out daintily is of little importance. The point
where this subject becomes painful is in families of small means
where young girls imagine that to be elaborately dressed is the
first essential of existence, and, in consequence, bend their
labors and their intelligence towards this end. Last spring
I asked an old friend where she and her daughters intended
passing their summer. Her answer struck me as being
characteristic enough to quote: “We should much
prefer,” she said, “returning to Bar Harbor, for we
all enjoy that place and have many friends there. But the
truth is, my daughters have bought themselves very little in the
way of toilet this year, as our finances are not in a flourishing
condition. So my poor girls will be obliged to make their
last year’s dresses do for another season. Under
these circumstances, it is out of the question for us to return a
second summer to the same place.”</p>
<p>I do not know how this anecdote strikes my readers. It
made me thoughtful and sad to think that, in a family of
intelligent and practical women, such a reason should be
considered sufficient to outweigh enjoyment, social relations,
even health, and allowed to change the plans of an entire
family.</p>
<p>As American women are so fond of copying English ways they
should be willing to take a few lessons on the subject of raiment
from across the water. As this is not intended to be a
dissertation on “How to Dress Well on Nothing a
Year,” and as I feel the greatest diffidence in approaching
a subject of which I know absolutely nothing, it will be better
to sheer off from these reefs and quicksands. Every one who
reads these lines will know perfectly well what is meant, when
reference is made to the good sense and practical utility of
English women’s dress.</p>
<p>What disgusts and angers me (when my way takes me into our
surface or elevated cars or into ferry boats and local trains) is
the utter dissonance between the outfit of most of the women I
meet and their position and occupation. So universal is
this, that it might almost be laid down as an axiom, that the
American woman, no matter in what walk of life you observe her,
or what the time or the place, is always persistently and
grotesquely overdressed. From the women who frequent the
hotels of our summer or winter resorts, down all the steps of the
social staircase to the char-woman, who consents (spasmodically)
to remove the dust and waste-papers from my office, there seems
to be the same complete disregard of fitness. The other
evening, in leaving my rooms, I brushed against a portly person
in the half-light of the corridor. There was a shimmer of
(what appeared to my inexperienced eyes as) costly stuffs, a huge
hat crowned the shadow itself, “topped by nodding
plumes,” which seemed to account for the depleted condition
of my feather duster.</p>
<p>I found on inquiring of the janitor, that the dressy person I
had met, was the char-woman in street attire, and that a closet
was set aside in the building, for the special purpose of her
morning and evening transformations, which she underwent in the
belief that her social position in Avenue A would suffer, should
she appear in the streets wearing anything less costly than
seal-skin and velvet or such imitations of those expensive
materials as her stipend would permit.</p>
<p>I have as tenants of a small wooden house in Jersey City, a
bank clerk, his wife and their three daughters. He earns in
the neighborhood of fifteen hundred dollars a year. Their
rent (with which, by the way, they are always in arrears) is
three hundred dollars. I am favored spring and autumn by a
visit from the ladies of that family, in the hope (generally
futile) of inducing me to do some ornamental papering or painting
in their residence, subjects on which they have by experience
found my agent to be unapproachable. When those four women
descend upon me, I am fairly dazzled by the splendor of their
attire, and lost in wonder as to how the price of all that finery
can have been squeezed out of the twelve remaining hundreds of
their income. When I meet the father he is shabby to the
outer limits of the genteel. His hat has, I am sure,
supported the suns and snowstorms of a dozen seasons. There
is a threadbare shine on his apparel that suggests a heartache in
each whitened seam, but the ladies are mirrors of fashion, as
well as moulds of form. What can remain for any creature
comforts after all those fine clothes have been paid for?
And how much is put away for the years when the long-suffering
money maker will be past work, or saved towards the time when
sickness or accident shall appear on the horizon? How those
ladies had the “nerve” to enter a ferry boat or crowd
into a cable car, dressed as they were, has always been a marvel
to me. A landau and two liveried servants would barely have
been in keeping with their appearance.</p>
<p>Not long ago, a great English nobleman, who is also famous in
the yachting world, visited this country accompanied by his two
daughters, high-bred and genial ladies. No self-respecting
American shop girl or fashionable typewriter would have
condescended to appear in the inexpensive attire which those
English women wore. Wherever one met them, at dinner,
<i>fête</i>, or ball, they were always the most simply
dressed women in the room. I wonder if it ever occurred to
any of their gorgeously attired hostesses, that it was because
their transatlantic guests were so sure of their position, that
they contented themselves with such simple toilets knowing that
nothing they might wear could either improve or alter their
standing.</p>
<p>In former ages, sumptuary laws were enacted by parental
governments, in the hope of suppressing extravagance in dress,
the state of affairs we deplore now, not being a new development
of human weakness, but as old as wealth.</p>
<p>The desire to shine by the splendor of one’s trappings
is the first idea of the parvenu, especially here in this
country, where the ambitious are denied the pleasure of acquiring
a title, and where official rank carries with it so little social
weight. Few more striking ways present themselves to the
crude and half-educated for the expenditure of a new fortune than
the purchase of sumptuous apparel, the satisfaction being
immediate and material. The wearer of a complete and
perfect toilet must experience a delight of which the uninitiated
know nothing, for such cruel sacrifices are made and so many
privations endured to procure this satisfaction. When I see
groups of women, clad in the latest designs of purple and fine
linen, stand shivering on street corners of a winter night, until
they can crowd into a car, I doubt if the joy they get from their
clothes, compensates them for the creature comforts they are
forced to forego, and I wonder if it never occurs to them to
spend less on their wardrobes and so feel they can afford to
return from a theatre or concert comfortably, in a cab, as a
foreign woman, with their income would do.</p>
<p>There is a stoical determination about the American point of
view that compels a certain amount of respect. Our
countrywomen will deny themselves pleasures, will economize on
their food and will remain in town during the summer, but when
walking abroad they must be clad in the best, so that no one may
know by their appearance if the income be counted by hundreds or
thousands.</p>
<p>While these standards prevail and the female mind is fixed on
this subject with such dire intent, it is not astonishing that a
weaker sister is occasionally tempted beyond her powers of
resistance. Nor that each day a new case of a well-dressed
woman thieving in a shop reaches our ears. The poor
feeble-minded creature is not to blame. She is but the
reflexion of the minds around her and is probably like the lady
Emerson tells of, who confessed to him “that the sense of
being perfectly well-dressed had given her a feeling of inward
tranquillity which religion was powerless to bestow.”</p>
<h2>No. 5—On Some Gilded Misalliances</h2>
<p>A dear old American lady, who lived the greater part of her
life in Rome, and received every body worth knowing in her
spacious drawing-rooms, far up in the dim vastnesses of a Roman
palace, used to say that she had only known one really happy
marriage made by an American girl abroad.</p>
<p>In those days, being young and innocent, I considered that
remark cynical, and in my heart thought nothing could be more
romantic and charming than for a fair compatriot to assume an
historic title and retire to her husband’s estates, and
rule smilingly over him and a devoted tenantry, as in the last
act of a comic opera, when a rose-colored light is burning and
the orchestra plays the last brilliant chords of a wedding
march.</p>
<p>There seemed to my perverted sense a certain poetic justice
about the fact that money, gained honestly but prosaically, in
groceries or gas, should go to regild an ancient blazon or prop
up the crumbling walls of some stately palace abroad.</p>
<p>Many thoughtful years and many cruel realities have taught me
that my gracious hostess of the “seventies” was
right, and that marriage under these conditions is apt to be much
more like the comic opera after the curtain has been rung down,
when the lights are out, the applauding public gone home, and the
weary actors brought slowly back to the present and the positive,
are wondering how they are to pay their rent or dodge the warrant
in ambush around the corner.</p>
<p>International marriages usually come about from a deficient
knowledge of the world. The father becomes rich, the family
travel abroad, some mutual friend (often from purely interested
motives) produces a suitor for the hand of the daughter, in the
shape of a “prince” with a title that makes the whole
simple American family quiver with delight.</p>
<p>After a few visits the suitor declares himself; the girl is
flattered, the father loses his head, seeing visions of his loved
daughter hob-nobbing with royalty, and (intoxicating thought!)
snubbing the “swells” at home who had shown
reluctance to recognize him and his family.</p>
<p>It is next to impossible for him to get any reliable
information about his future son-in-law in a country where, as an
American, he has few social relations, belongs to no club, and
whose idiom is a sealed book to him. Every circumstance
conspires to keep the flaws on the article for sale out of sight
and place the suitor in an advantageous light. Several
weeks’ “courting” follows, paterfamilias agrees
to part with a handsome share of his earnings, and a marriage is
“arranged.”</p>
<p>In the case where the girl has retained some of her
self-respect the suitor is made to come to her country for the
ceremony. And, that the contrast between European ways and
our simple habits may not be too striking, an establishment is
hastily got together, with hired liveries and new-bought
carriages, as in a recent case in this state. The
sensational papers write up this “international
union,” and publish “faked” portraits of the
bride and her noble spouse. The sovereign of the
groom’s country (enchanted that some more American money is
to be imported into his land) sends an economical present and an
autograph letter. The act ends. Limelight and slow
music!</p>
<p>In a few years rumors of dissent and trouble float vaguely
back to the girl’s family. Finally, either a great
scandal occurs, and there is one dishonored home the more in the
world, or an expatriated woman, thousands of miles from the
friends and relatives who might be of some comfort to her, makes
up her mind to accept “anything” for the sake of her
children, and attempts to build up some sort of an existence out
of the remains of her lost illusions, and the father wakes up
from his dream to realize that his wealth has only served to ruin
what he loved best in all the world.</p>
<p>Sometimes the conditions are delightfully comic, as in a
well-known case, where the daughter, who married into an
indolent, happy-go-lucky Italian family, had inherited her
father’s business push and energy along with his fortune,
and immediately set about “running” her
husband’s estate as she had seen her father do his
bank. She tried to revive a half-forgotten industry in the
district, scraped and whitewashed their picturesque old villa,
proposed her husband’s entering business, and in short
dashed head down against all his inherited traditions and
national prejudices, until her new family loathed the sight of
the brisk American face, and the poor she had tried to help,
sulked in their newly drained houses and refused to be
comforted. Her ways were not Italian ways, and she seemed
to the nun-like Italian ladies, almost unsexed, as she tramped
about the fields, talking artificial manure and subsoil drainage
with the men. Yet neither she nor her husband was to
blame. The young Italian had but followed the teachings of
his family, which decreed that the only honorable way for an
aristocrat to acquire wealth was to marry it. The American
wife honestly tried to do her duty in this new position,
naïvely thinking she could engraft transatlantic
“go” upon the indolent Italian character. Her
work was in vain; she made herself and her husband so unpopular
that they are now living in this country, regretting too late the
error of their ways.</p>
<p>Another case but little less laughable, is that of a Boston
girl with a neat little fortune of her own, who, when married to
the young Viennese of her choice, found that he expected her to
live with his family on the third floor of their
“palace” (the two lower floors being rented to
foreigners), and as there was hardly enough money for a box at
the opera, she was not expected to go, whereas his position made
it necessary for him to have a stall and appear there nightly
among the men of his rank, the astonished and disillusioned
Bostonian remaining at home <i>en
tête-à-tête</i> with the women of his family,
who seemed to think this the most natural arrangement in the
world.</p>
<p>It certainly is astonishing that we, the most patriotic of
nations, with such high opinion of ourselves and our
institutions, should be so ready to hand over our daughters and
our ducats to the first foreigner who asks for them, often
requiring less information about him than we should consider
necessary before buying a horse or a dog.</p>
<p>Women of no other nation have this mania for espousing
aliens. Nowhere else would a girl with a large fortune
dream of marrying out of her country. Her highest ideal of
a husband would be a man of her own kin. It is the rarest
thing in the world to find a well-born French, Spanish, or
Italian woman married to a foreigner and living away from her
country. How can a woman expect to be happy separated from
all the ties and traditions of her youth? If she is taken
abroad young, she may still hope to replace her friends as is
often done. But the real reason of unhappiness (greater and
deeper than this) lies in the fundamental difference of the whole
social structure between our country and that of her adoption,
and the radically different way of looking at every side of
life.</p>
<p>Surely a girl must feel that a man who allows a marriage to be
arranged for him (and only signs the contact because its
pecuniary clauses are to his satisfaction, and who would withdraw
in a moment if these were suppressed), must have an entirely
different point of view from her own on all the vital issues of
life.</p>
<p>Foreigners undoubtedly make excellent husbands for their own
women. But they are, except in rare cases, unsatisfactory
helpmeets for American girls. It is impossible to touch on
more than a side or two of this subject. But as an
illustration the following contrasted stories may be cited:</p>
<p>Two sisters of an aristocratic American family, each with an
income of over forty thousand dollars a year, recently married
French noblemen. They naturally expected to continue abroad
the life they had led at home, in which opera boxes, saddle
horses, and constant entertaining were matters of course.
In both cases, our compatriots discovered that their husbands
(neither of them penniless) had entirely different views.
In the first place, they were told that it was considered
“bad form” in France for young married women to
entertain; besides, the money was needed for improvements, and in
many other ways, and as every well-to-do French family puts aside
at least a third of its income as <i>dots</i> for the children
(boys as well as girls), these brides found themselves cramped
for money for the first time in their lives, and obliged, during
their one month a year in Paris, to put up with hired traps, and
depend on their friends for evenings at the opera.</p>
<p>This story is a telling set-off to the case of an American
wife, who one day received a windfall in the form of a check for
a tidy amount. She immediately proposed a trip abroad to
her husband, but found that he preferred to remain at home in the
society of his horses and dogs. So our fair compatriot
starts off (with his full consent), has her outing, spends her
little “pile,” and returns after three or four months
to the home of her delighted spouse.</p>
<p>Do these two stories need any comment? Let our sisters
and their friends think twice before they make themselves
irrevocably wheels in a machine whose working is unknown to them,
lest they be torn to pieces as it moves. Having the good
luck to be born in the “paradise of women,” let them
beware how they leave it, charm the serpent never so wisely, for
they may find themselves, like the Peri, outside the gate.</p>
<h2>No. 6—The Complacency of Mediocrity</h2>
<p>Full as small intellects are of queer kinks, unexplained
turnings and groundless likes and dislikes, the bland contentment
that buoys up the incompetent is the most difficult of all
vagaries to account for. Rarely do twenty-four hours pass
without examples of this exasperating weakness appearing on the
surface of those shallows that commonplace people so naïvely
call “their minds.”</p>
<p>What one would expect is extreme modesty, in the half-educated
or the ignorant, and self-approbation higher up in the scale,
where it might more reasonably dwell. Experience, however,
teaches that exactly the opposite is the case among those who
have achieved success.</p>
<p>The accidents of a life turned by chance out of the beaten
tracks, have thrown me at times into acquaintanceship with some
of the greater lights of the last thirty years. And not
only have they been, as a rule, most unassuming men and women;
but in the majority of cases positively self-depreciatory;
doubting of themselves and their talents, constantly aiming at
greater perfection in their art or a higher development of their
powers, never contented with what they have achieved, beyond the
idea that it has been another step toward their goal.
Knowing this, it is always a shock on meeting the mediocre people
who form such a discouraging majority in any society, to discover
that they are all so pleased with themselves, their achievements,
their place in the world, and their own ability and
discernment!</p>
<p>Who has not sat chafing in silence while Mediocrity, in a
white waistcoat and jangling fobs, occupied the after-dinner hour
in imparting second-hand information as his personal views on
literature and art? Can you not hear him saying once again:
“I don’t pretend to know anything about art and all
that sort of thing, you know, but when I go to an exhibition I
can always pick out the best pictures at a glance. Sort of
a way I have, and I never make mistakes, you know.”</p>
<p>Then go and watch, as I have, Henri Rochefort as he
laboriously forms the opinions that are to appear later in one of
his “<i>Salons</i>,” realizing the while that he is
<i>facile princeps</i> among the art critics of his day, that
with a line he can make or mar a reputation and by a word draw
the admiring crowd around an unknown canvas. While
Rochefort toils and ponders and hesitates, do you suppose a doubt
as to his own astuteness ever dims the self-complacency of White
Waistcoat? Never!</p>
<p>There lies the strength of the feeble-minded. By a
special dispensation of Providence, they can never see but one
side of a subject, so are always convinced that they are right,
and from the height of their contentment, look down on those who
chance to differ with them.</p>
<p>A lady who has gathered into her dainty salons the fruit of
many years’ careful study and tireless
“weeding” will ask anxiously if you are quite sure
you like the effect of her latest acquisition—some
eighteenth-century statuette or screen (flotsam, probably, from
the great shipwreck of Versailles), and listen earnestly to your
verdict. The good soul who has just furnished her house by
contract, with the latest “Louis Fourteenth Street”
productions, conducts you complacently through her chambers of
horrors, wreathed in tranquil smiles, born of ignorance and that
smug assurance granted only to the—small.</p>
<p>When a small intellect goes in for cultivating itself and
improving its mind, you realize what the poet meant in asserting
that a little learning was a dangerous thing. For
Mediocrity is apt, when it dines out, to get up a subject
beforehand, and announce to an astonished circle, as quite new
and personal discoveries, that the Renaissance was introduced
into France from Italy, or that Columbus in his day made
important “finds.”</p>
<p>When the incompetent advance another step and write or
paint—which, alas! is only too frequent—the world of
art and literature is flooded with their productions. When
White Waistcoat, for example, takes to painting, late in life,
and comes to you, canvas in hand, for criticism (read praise), he
is apt to remark modestly:</p>
<p>“Corot never painted until he was fifty, and I am only
forty-eight. So I feel I should not let myself be
discouraged.”</p>
<p>The problem of life is said to be the finding of a happiness
that is not enjoyed at the expense of others, and surely this
class have solved that Sphinx’s riddle, for they float
through their days in a dream of complacency disturbed neither by
corroding doubt nor harassed by jealousies.</p>
<p>Whole families of feeble-minded people, on the strength of an
ancestor who achieved distinction a hundred years ago, live in
constant thanksgiving that they “are not as other
men.” None of the great man’s descendants have
done anything to be particularly proud of since their remote
progenitor signed the Declaration of Independence or governed a
colony. They have vegetated in small provincial cities and
inter-married into other equally fortunate families, but the
sense of superiority is ever present to sustain them, under
straitened circumstances and diminishing prestige. The
world may move on around them, but they never advance. Why
should they? They have reached perfection. The brains
and enterprise that have revolutionized our age knock in vain at
their doors. They belong to that vast “majority that
is always in the wrong,” being so pleased with themselves,
their ways, and their feeble little lines of thought, that any
change or advancement gives their system a shock.</p>
<p>A painter I know was once importuned for a sketch by a lady of
this class. After many delays and renewed demands he
presented her one day, when she and some friends were visiting
his studio, with a delightful open-air study simply framed.
She seemed confused at the offering, to his astonishment, as she
had not lacked <i>aplomb</i> in asking for the sketch.
After much blushing and fumbling she succeeded in getting the
painting loose, and handing back the frame, remarked:</p>
<p>“I will take the painting, but you must keep the
frame. My husband would never allow me to accept anything
of value from you!”—and smiled on the speechless
painter, doubtless charmed with her own tact.</p>
<p>Complacent people are the same drag on a society that a brake
would be to a coach going up hill. They are the
“eternal negative” and would extinguish, if they
could, any light stronger than that to which their weak eyes have
been accustomed. They look with astonishment and distrust
at any one trying to break away from their tiresome old ways and
habits, and wonder why all the world is not as pleased with their
personalities as they are themselves, suggesting, if you are
willing to waste your time listening to their twaddle, that there
is something radically wrong in any innovation, that both
“Church and State” will be imperilled if things are
altered. No blight, no mildew is more fatal to a plant than
the “complacent” are to the world. They resent
any progress and are offended if you mention before them any new
standards or points of view. “What has been good
enough for us and our parents should certainly be satisfactory to
the younger generations.” It seems to the contented
like pure presumption on the part of their acquaintances to
wander after strange gods, in the shape of new ideals, higher
standards of culture, or a perfected refinement of
surroundings.</p>
<p>We are perhaps wrong to pity complacent people. It is
for another class our sympathy should be kept; for those who
cannot refrain from doubting of themselves and the value of their
work—those unfortunate gifted and artistic spirits who
descend too often the <i>via dolorosa</i> of discontent and
despair, who have a higher ideal than their neighbors, and, in
struggling after an unattainable perfection, fall by the
wayside.</p>
<h2>No. 7—The Discontent of Talent</h2>
<p>The complacency that buoys up self-sufficient souls, soothing
them with the illusion that they themselves, their towns,
country, language, and habits are above improvement, causing them
to shudder, as at a sacrilege, if any changes are suggested, is
fortunately limited to a class of stay-at-home nonentities.
In proportion as it is common among them, is it rare or
delightfully absent in any society of gifted or imaginative
people.</p>
<p>Among our globe-trotting compatriots this defect is much less
general than in the older nations of the world, for the excellent
reason, that the moment a man travels or takes the trouble to
know people of different nationalities, his armor of complacency
receives so severe a blow, that it is shattered forever, the
wanderer returning home wiser and much more modest. There
seems to be something fatal to conceit in the air of great
centres; professionally or in general society a man so soon finds
his level.</p>
<p>The “great world” may foster other faults; human
nature is sure to develop some in every walk of life. Smug
contentment, however, disappears in its rarefied atmosphere,
giving place to a craving for improvement, a nervous alertness
that keeps the mind from stagnating and urges it on to do its
best.</p>
<p>It is never the beautiful woman who sits down in smiling
serenity before her mirror. She is tireless in her efforts
to enhance her beauty and set it off to the best advantage.
Her figure is never slender enough, nor her carriage sufficiently
erect to satisfy. But the “frump” will let
herself and all her surroundings go to seed, not from humbleness
of mind or an overwhelming sense of her own unworthiness, but in
pure complacent conceit.</p>
<p>A criticism to which the highly gifted lay themselves open
from those who do not understand them, is their love of praise,
the critics failing to grasp the fact that this passion for
measuring one’s self with others, like the gad-fly pursuing
poor Io, never allows a moment’s repose in the green
pastures of success, but goads them constantly up the rocky sides
of endeavor. It is not that they love flattery, but that
they need approbation as a counterpoise to the dark moments of
self-abasement and as a sustaining aid for higher flights.</p>
<p>Many years ago I was present at a final sitting which my
master, Carolus Duran, gave to one of my fair compatriots.
He knew that the lady was leaving Paris on the morrow, and that
in an hour, her husband and his friends were coming to see and
criticise the portrait—always a terrible ordeal for an
artist.</p>
<p>To any one familiar with this painter’s moods, it was
evident that the result of the sitting was not entirely
satisfactory. The quick breathing, the impatient tapping
movement of the foot, the swift backward springs to obtain a
better view, so characteristic of him in moments of doubt, and
which had twenty years before earned him the name of <i>le
danseur</i> from his fellow-copyists at the Louvre, betrayed to
even a casual observer that his discouragement and discontent
were at boiling point.</p>
<p>The sound of a bell and a murmur of voices announced the
entrance of the visitors into the vast studio. After the
formalities of introduction had been accomplished the new-comers
glanced at the portrait, but uttered never a word. From it
they passed in a perfectly casual manner to an inspection of the
beautiful contents of the room, investigating the tapestries,
admiring the armor, and finally, after another glance at the
portrait, the husband remarked: “You have given my wife a
jolly long neck, haven’t you?” and, turning to his
friends, began laughing and chatting in English.</p>
<p>If vitriol had been thrown on my poor master’s quivering
frame, the effect could not have been more instantaneous, his
ignorance of the language spoken doubtless exaggerating his
impression of being ridiculed. Suddenly he turned very
white, and before any of us had divined his intention he had
seized a Japanese sword lying by and cut a dozen gashes across
the canvas. Then, dropping his weapon, he flung out of the
room, leaving his sitter and her friends in speechless
consternation, to wonder then and ever after in what way they had
offended him. In their opinions, if a man had talent and
understood his business, he should produce portraits with the
same ease that he would answer dinner invitations, and if they
paid for, they were in no way bound also to praise, his
work. They were entirely pleased with the result, but did
not consider it necessary to tell him so, no idea having crossed
their minds that he might be in one of those moods so frequent
with artistic natures, when words of approbation and praise are
as necessary to them, as the air we breathe is to us, mortals of
a commoner clay.</p>
<p>Even in the theatrical and operatic professions, those hotbeds
of conceit, you will generally find among the “stars”
abysmal depths of discouragement and despair. One great
tenor, who has delighted New York audiences during several
winters past, invariably announces to his intimates on arising
that his “voice has gone,” and that, in consequence
he will “never sing again,” and has to be caressed
and cajoled back into some semblance of confidence before
attempting a performance. This same artist, with an almost
limitless repertoire and a reputation no new successes could
enhance, recently risked all to sing what he considered a higher
class of music, infinitely more fatiguing to his voice, because
he was impelled onward by the ideal that forces genius to
constant improvement and development of its powers.</p>
<p>What the people who meet these artists occasionally at a
private concert or behind the scenes during the intense strain of
a representation, take too readily for monumental egoism and
conceit, is, the greater part of the time, merely the desire for
a sustaining word, a longing for the stimulant of praise.</p>
<p>All actors and singers are but big children, and must be
humored and petted like children when you wish them to do their
best. It is necessary for them to feel in touch with their
audiences; to be assured that they are not falling below the high
ideals formed for their work.</p>
<p>Some winters ago a performance at the opera nearly came to a
standstill because an all-conquering soprano was found crying in
her dressing-room. After many weary moments of consolation
and questioning, it came out that she felt quite sure she no
longer had any talent. One of the other singers had laughed
at her voice, and in consequence there was nothing left to live
for. A half-hour later, owing to judicious
“treatment,” she was singing gloriously and bowing
her thanks to thunders of applause.</p>
<p>Rather than blame this divine discontent that has made man
what he is to-day, let us glorify and envy it, pitying the while
the frail mortal vessels it consumes with its flame. No
adulation can turn such natures from their goal, and in the hour
of triumph the slave is always at their side to whisper the word
of warning. This discontent is the leaven that has raised
the whole loaf of dull humanity to better things and higher
efforts, those privileged to feel it are the suns that illuminate
our system. If on these luminaries observers have
discovered spots, it is well to remember that these blemishes are
but the defects of their qualities, and better far than the total
eclipse that shrouds so large a part of humanity in colorless
complacency.</p>
<p>It will never be known how many master-pieces have been lost
to the world because at the critical moment a friend has not been
at hand with the stimulant of sympathy and encouragement needed
by an overworked, straining artist who was beginning to lose
confidence in himself; to soothe his irritated nerves with the
balm of praise, and take his poor aching head on a friendly
shoulder and let him sob out there all his doubt and
discouragement.</p>
<p>So let us not be niggardly or ungenerous in meting out to
struggling fellow-beings their share, and perchance a little more
than their share of approbation and applause, poor enough return,
after all, for the pleasure their labors have procured us.
What adequate compensation can we mete out to an author for the
hours of delight and self-forgetfulness his talent has brought to
us in moments of loneliness, illness, or grief? What can
pay our debt to a painter who has fixed on canvas the face we
love?</p>
<p>The little return that it is in our power to make for all the
joy these gifted fellow-beings bring into our lives is (closing
our eyes to minor imperfections) to warmly applaud them as they
move upward, along their stony path.</p>
<h2>No. 8—Slouch</h2>
<p>I should like to see, in every school-room of our growing
country, in every business office, at the railway stations, and
on street corners, large placards placed with “Do not
slouch” printed thereon in distinct and imposing
characters. If ever there was a tendency that needed
nipping in the bud (I fear the bud is fast becoming a full-blown
flower), it is this discouraging national failing.</p>
<p>Each year when I return from my spring wanderings, among the
benighted and effete nations of the Old World, on whom the
untravelled American looks down from the height of his
superiority, I am struck anew by the contrast between the trim,
well-groomed officials left behind on one side of the ocean and
the happy-go-lucky, slouching individuals I find on the
other.</p>
<p>As I ride up town this unpleasant impression deepens. In
the “little Mother Isle” I have just left,
bus-drivers have quite a coaching air, with hat and coat of
knowing form. They sport flowers in their button-holes and
salute other bus-drivers, when they meet, with a twist of whip
and elbow refreshingly correct, showing that they take pride in
their calling, and have been at some pains to turn themselves out
as smart in appearance as finances would allow.</p>
<p>Here, on the contrary, the stage and cab drivers I meet seem
to be under a blight, and to have lost all interest in
life. They lounge on the box, their legs straggling
aimlessly, one hand holding the reins, the other hanging
dejectedly by the side. Yet there is little doubt that
these heartbroken citizens are earning double what their London
<i>confrères</i> gain. The shadow of the national
peculiarity is over them.</p>
<p>When I get to my rooms, the elevator boy is reclining in the
lift, and hardly raises his eye-lids as he languidly manoeuvres
the rope. I have seen that boy now for months, but never
when his boots and clothes were brushed or when his cravat was
not riding proudly above his collar. On occasions I have
offered him pins, which he took wearily, doubtless because it was
less trouble than to refuse. The next day, however, his
cravat again rode triumphant, mocking my efforts to keep it in
its place. His hair, too, has been a cause of wonder to
me. How does he manage to have it always so long and so
unkempt? More than once, when expecting callers, I have
bribed him to have it cut, but it seemed to grow in the night,
back to its poetic profusion.</p>
<p>In what does this noble disregard for appearances which
characterizes American men originate? Our climate, as some
suggest, or discouragement at not all being millionaires?
It more likely comes from an absence with us of the military
training that abroad goes so far toward licking young men into
shape.</p>
<p>I shall never forget the surprise on the face of a French
statesman to whom I once expressed my sympathy for his country,
laboring under the burden of so vast a standing army. He
answered:</p>
<p>“The financial burden is doubtless great; but you have
others. Witness your pension expenditures. With us
the money drawn from the people is used in such a way as to be of
inestimable value to them. We take the young hobbledehoy
farm-hand or mechanic, ignorant, mannerless, uncleanly as he may
be, and turn him out at the end of three years with his regiment,
self-respecting and well-mannered, with habits of cleanliness and
obedience, having acquired a bearing, and a love of order that
will cling to and serve him all his life. We do not go so
far,” he added, “as our English neighbors in drilling
men into superb manikins of ‘form’ and
carriage. Our authorities do not consider it
necessary. But we reclaim youths from the slovenliness of
their native village or workshop and make them tidy and mannerly
citizens.”</p>
<p>These remarks came to mind the other day as I watched a group
of New England youths lounging on the steps of the village store,
or sitting in rows on a neighboring fence, until I longed to try
if even a judicial arrangement of tacks, ‘business-end
up,’ on these favorite seats would infuse any energy into
their movements. I came to the conclusion that my French
acquaintance was right, for the only trim-looking men to be seen,
were either veterans of our war or youths belonging to the local
militia. And nowhere does one see finer specimens of
humanity than West Point and Annapolis turn out.</p>
<p>If any one doubts what kind of men slouching youths develop
into, let him look when he travels, at the dejected appearance of
the farmhouses throughout our land. Surely our rural
populations are not so much poorer than those of other
countries. Yet when one compares the dreary homes of even
our well-to-do farmers with the smiling, well-kept hamlets seen
in England or on the Continent, such would seem to be the
case.</p>
<p>If ours were an old and bankrupt nation, this air of
discouragement and decay could not be greater. Outside of
the big cities one looks in vain for some sign of American dash
and enterprise in the appearance of our men and their homes.</p>
<p>During a journey of over four thousand miles, made last spring
as the guest of a gentleman who knows our country thoroughly, I
was impressed most painfully with this abject air. Never in
all those days did we see a fruit-tree trained on some sunny
southern wall, a smiling flower-garden or carefully clipped
hedge. My host told me that hardly the necessary vegetables
are grown, the inhabitants of the West and South preferring
canned food. It is less trouble!</p>
<p>If you wish to form an idea of the extent to which slouch
prevails in our country, try to start a “village
improvement society,” and experience, as others have done,
the apathy and ill-will of the inhabitants when you go about
among them and strive to summon some of their local pride to your
aid.</p>
<p>In the town near which I pass my summers, a large stone,
fallen from a passing dray, lay for days in the middle of the
principal street, until I paid some boys to remove it. No
one cared, and the dull-eyed inhabitants would doubtless be
looking at it still but for my impatience.</p>
<p>One would imagine the villagers were all on the point of
moving away (and they generally are, if they can sell their
land), so little interest do they show in your plans. Like
all people who have fallen into bad habits, they have grown to
love their slatternly ways and cling to them, resenting furiously
any attempt to shake them up to energy and reform.</p>
<p>The farmer has not, however, a monopoly. Slouch seems
ubiquitous. Our railway and steam-boat systems have tried
in vain to combat it, and supplied their employees with a livery
(I beg the free and independent voter’s pardon, a
uniform!), with but little effect. The inherent tendency is
too strong for the corporations. The conductors still
shuffle along in their spotted garments, the cap on the back of
the head, and their legs anywhere, while they chew gum in
defiance of the whole Board of Directors.</p>
<p>Go down to Washington, after a visit to the Houses of
Parliament or the Chamber of Deputies, and observe the contrast
between the bearing of our Senators and Representatives and the
air of their <i>confrères</i> abroad. Our law-makers
seem trying to avoid every appearance of
“smartness.” Indeed, I am told, so great is the
prejudice in the United States against a well-turned-out man that
a candidate would seriously compromise his chances of election
who appeared before his constituents in other than the accustomed
shabby frock-coat, unbuttoned and floating, a pot hat, no gloves,
as much doubtfully white shirt-front as possible, and a wisp of
black silk for a tie; and if he can exhibit also a chin-whisker,
his chances of election are materially increased.</p>
<p>Nothing offends an eye accustomed to our native <i>laisser
aller</i> so much as a well-brushed hat and shining boots.
When abroad, it is easy to spot a compatriot as soon and as far
as you can see one, by his graceless gait, a cross between a
lounge and a shuffle. In reading-, or dining-room, he is
the only man whose spine does not seem equal to its work, so he
flops and straggles until, for the honor of your land, you long
to shake him and set him squarely on his legs.</p>
<p>No amount of reasoning can convince me that outward
slovenliness is not a sign of inward and moral supineness.
A neglected exterior generally means a lax moral code. The
man who considers it too much trouble to sit erect can hardly
have given much time to his tub or his toilet. Having
neglected his clothes, he will neglect his manners, and between
morals and manners we know the tie is intimate.</p>
<p>In the Orient a new reign is often inaugurated by the
construction of a mosque. Vast expense is incurred to make
it as splendid as possible. But, once completed, it is
never touched again. Others are built by succeeding
sovereigns, but neither thought nor treasure is ever expended on
the old ones. When they can no longer be used, they are
abandoned, and fall into decay. The same system seems to
prevail among our private owners and corporations. Streets
are paved, lamp-posts erected, store-fronts carefully adorned,
but from the hour the workman puts his finishing touch upon them
they are abandoned to the hand of fate. The mud may cake up
knee-deep, wind and weather work their own sweet will, it is no
one’s business to interfere.</p>
<p>When abroad one of my amusements has been of an early morning
to watch Paris making its toilet. The streets are taking a
bath, liveried attendants are blacking the boots of the
lamp-posts and newspaper-<i>kiosques</i>, the shop-fronts are
being shaved and having their hair curled, café’s
and restaurants are putting on clean shirts and tying their
cravats smartly before their many mirrors. By the time the
world is up and about, the whole city, smiling freshly from its
matutinal tub, is ready to greet it gayly.</p>
<p>It is this attention to detail that gives to Continental
cities their air of cheerfulness and thrift, and the utter lack
of it that impresses foreigners so painfully on arriving at our
shores.</p>
<p>It has been the fashion to laugh at the dude and his high
collar, at the darky in his master’s cast-off clothes,
aping style and fashion. Better the dude, better the
colored dandy, better even the Bowery “tough” with
his affected carriage, for they at least are reaching blindly out
after something better than their surroundings, striving after an
ideal, and are in just so much the superiors of the foolish souls
who mock them—better, even misguided efforts, than the
ignoble stagnant quagmire of slouch into which we seem to be
slowly descending.</p>
<h2>No. 9—Social Suggestion</h2>
<p>The question of how far we are unconsciously influenced by
people and surroundings, in our likes and dislikes, our opinions,
and even in our pleasures and intimate tastes, is a delicate and
interesting one, for the line between success and failure in the
world, as on the stage or in most of the professions, is so
narrow and depends so often on what humor one’s
“public” happen to be in at a particular moment, that
the subject is worthy of consideration.</p>
<p>Has it never happened to you, for instance, to dine with
friends and go afterwards in a jolly humor to the play which
proved so delightful that you insist on taking your family
immediately to see it; when to your astonishment you discover
that it is neither clever nor amusing, on the contrary rather
dull. Your family look at you in amazement and wonder what
you had seen to admire in such an asinine performance.
There was a case of suggestion! You had been influenced by
your friends and had shared their opinions. The same thing
occurs on a higher scale when one is raised out of one’s
self by association with gifted and original people, a communion
with more cultivated natures which causes you to discover and
appreciate a thousand hidden beauties in literature, art or music
that left to yourself, you would have failed to notice.
Under these circumstances you will often be astonished at the
point and piquancy of your own conversation. This is but
too true of a number of subjects.</p>
<p>We fondly believe our opinions and convictions to be original,
and with innocent conceit, imagine that we have formed them for
ourselves. The illusion of being unlike other people is a
common vanity. Beware of the man who asserts such a
claim. He is sure to be a bore and will serve up to you, as
his own, a muddle of ideas and opinions which he has absorbed
like a sponge from his surroundings.</p>
<p>No place is more propitious for studying this curious
phenomenon, than behind the scenes of a theatre, the last few
nights before a first performance. The whole company is
keyed up to a point of mutual admiration that they are far from
feeling generally. “The piece is charming and sure to
be a success.” The author and the interpreters of his
thoughts are in complete communion. The first night
comes. The piece is a failure! Drop into the
greenroom then and you will find an astonishing change has taken
place. The Star will take you into a corner and assert
that, she “always knew the thing could not go, it was too
imbecile, with such a company, it was folly to expect anything
else.” The author will abuse the Star and the
management. The whole troupe is frankly disconcerted, like
people aroused out of a hypnotic sleep, wondering what they had
seen in the play to admire.</p>
<p>In the social world we are even more inconsistent, accepting
with tameness the most astonishing theories and opinions.
Whole circles will go on assuring each other how clever Miss
So-and-So is, or, how beautiful they think someone else.
Not because these good people are any cleverer, or more
attractive than their neighbors, but simply because it is in the
air to have these opinions about them. To such an extent
does this hold good, that certain persons are privileged to be
vulgar and rude, to say impertinent things and make remarks that
would ostracize a less fortunate individual from the polite world
for ever; society will only smilingly shrug its shoulders and
say: “It is only Mr. So-and-So’s way.” It
is useless to assert that in cases like these, people are in
possession of their normal senses. They are under
influences of which they are perfectly unconscious.</p>
<p>Have you ever seen a piece guyed? Few sadder sights
exist, the human being rarely getting nearer the brute than when
engaged in this amusement. Nothing the actor or actress can
do will satisfy the public. Men who under ordinary
circumstances would be incapable of insulting a woman, will
whistle and stamp and laugh, at an unfortunate girl who is doing
her utmost to amuse them. A terrible example of this was
given two winters ago at one of our concert halls, when a family
of Western singers were subjected to absolute ill-treatment at
the hands of the public. The young girls were perfectly
sincere, in their rude way, but this did not prevent men from
offering them every insult malice could devise, and making them a
target for every missile at hand. So little does the public
think for itself in cases like this, that at the opening of the
performance had some well-known person given the signal for
applause, the whole audience would, in all probability, have been
delighted and made the wretched sisters a success.</p>
<p>In my youth it was the fashion to affect admiration for the
Italian school of painting and especially for the great masters
of the Renaissance. Whole families of perfectly inartistic
English and Americans might then he heard conscientiously
admiring the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel or Leonardo’s
Last Supper (Botticelli had not been invented then) in the
choicest guide-book language.</p>
<p>When one considers the infinite knowledge of technique
required to understand the difficulties overcome by the giants of
the Renaissance and to appreciate the intrinsic qualities of
their creations, one asks one’s self in wonder what our
parents admired in those paintings, and what tempted them to
bring home and adorn their houses with such dreadful copies of
their favorites. For if they appreciated the originals they
never would have bought the copies, and if the copies pleased
them, they must have been incapable of enjoying the
originals. Yet all these people thought themselves
perfectly sincere. To-day you will see the same thing going
on before the paintings of Claude Monet and Besnard, the same
admiration expressed by people who, you feel perfectly sure, do
not realize why these works of art are superior and can no more
explain to you why they think as they do than the sheep that
follow each other through a hole in a wall, can give a reason for
their actions.</p>
<p>Dress and fashion in clothes are subjects above all others,
where the ineptitude of the human mind is most evident. Can
it be explained in any other way, why the fashions of yesterday
always appear so hideous to us,—almost grotesque?
Take up an old album of photographs and glance over the faded
contents. Was there ever anything so absurd? Look at
the top hats men wore, and at the skirts of the women!</p>
<p>The mother of a family said to me the other day: “When I
recall the way in which girls were dressed in my youth, I wonder
how any of us ever got a husband.”</p>
<p>Study a photograph of the Empress Eugénie, that supreme
arbiter of elegance and grace. Oh! those bunchy hooped
skirts! That awful India shawl pinned off the shoulders,
and the bonnet perched on a roll of hair in the nape of the
neck! What were people thinking of at that time? Were
they lunatics to deform in this way the beautiful lines of the
human body which it should be the first object of toilet to
enhance, or were they only lacking in the artistic sense?
Nothing of the kind. And what is more, they were convinced
that the real secret of beauty in dress had been discovered by
them; that past fashions were absurd, and that the future could
not improve on their creations. The sculptors and painters
of that day (men of as great talent as any now living), were
enthusiastic in reproducing those monstrosities in marble or on
canvas, and authors raved about the ideal grace with which a
certain beauty draped her shawl.</p>
<p>Another marked manner in which we are influenced by
circumambient suggestion, is in the transient furore certain
games and pastimes create. We see intelligent people so
given over to this influence as barely to allow themselves time
to eat and sleep, begrudging the hours thus stolen from their
favorite amusement.</p>
<p>Ten years ago, tennis occupied every moment of our young
people’s time; now golf has transplanted tennis in public
favor, which does not prove, however, that the latter is the
better game, but simply that compelled by the accumulated force
of other people’s opinions, youths and maidens, old duffers
and mature spinsters are willing to pass many hours daily in all
kinds of weather, solemnly following an indian-rubber ball across
ten-acre lots.</p>
<p>If you suggest to people who are laboring under the illusion
they are amusing themselves that the game, absorbing so much of
their attention, is not as exciting as tennis nor as clever in
combinations as croquet, that in fact it would be quite as
amusing to roll an empty barrel several times around a plowed
field, they laugh at you in derision and instantly put you down
in their profound minds as a man who does not understand
“sport.”</p>
<p>Yet these very people were tennis-mad twenty years ago and had
night come to interrupt a game of croquet would have ordered
lanterns lighted in order to finish the match so enthralling were
its intricacies.</p>
<p>Everybody has known how to play <i>Bézique</i> in this
country for years, yet within the last eighteen months, whole
circles of our friends have been seized with a midsummer madness
and willingly sat glued to a card-table through long hot
afternoons and again after dinner until day dawned on their
folly.</p>
<p>Certain <i>Mémoires</i> of Louis Fifteenth’s
reign tell of an “unravelling” mania that developed
at his court. It began by some people fraying out old silks
to obtain the gold and silver threads from worn-out stuffs; this
occupation soon became the rage, nothing could restrain the
delirium of destruction, great ladies tore priceless tapestries
from their walls and brocades from their furniture, in order to
unravel those materials and as the old stock did not suffice for
the demand thousands were spent on new brocades and velvets,
which were instantly destroyed, entertainments were given where
unravelling was the only amusement offered, the entire court
thinking and talking of nothing else for months.</p>
<p>What is the logical deduction to be drawn from all this?
Simply that people do not see with their eyes or judge with their
understandings; that an all-pervading hypnotism, an ambient
suggestion, at times envelops us taking from people all free
will, and replacing it with the taste and judgment of the
moment.</p>
<p>The number of people is small in each generation, who are
strong enough to rise above their surroundings and think for
themselves. The rest are as dry leaves on a stream.
They float along and turn gayly in the eddies, convinced all the
time (as perhaps are the leaves) that they act entirely from
their own volition and that their movements are having a profound
influence on the direction and force of the current.</p>
<h2>No. 10—Bohemia</h2>
<p>Lunching with a talented English comedian and his wife the
other day, the conversation turned on Bohemia, the evasive
no-man’s-land that Thackeray referred to, in so many of his
books, and to which he looked back lovingly in his later years,
when, as he said, he had forgotten the road to Prague.</p>
<p>The lady remarked: “People have been more than kind to
us here in New York. We have dined and supped out
constantly, and have met with gracious kindness, such as we can
never forget. But so far we have not met a single painter,
or author, or sculptor, or a man who has explored a corner of the
earth. Neither have we had the good luck to find ourselves
in the same room with Tesla or Rehan, Edison or Drew. We
shall regret so much when back in England and are asked about
your people of talent, being obliged to say, ‘We never met
any of them.’ Why is it? We have not been in
any one circle, and have pitched our tents in many cities, during
our tours over here, but always with the same result. We
read your American authors as much as, if not more than, our
own. The names of dozens of your discoverers and painters
are household words in England. When my husband planned his
first tour over here my one idea was, ‘How nice it will
be! Now I shall meet those delightful people of whom I have
heard so much.’ The disappointment has been
complete. Never one have I seen.”</p>
<p>I could not but feel how all too true were the remarks of this
intelligent visitor, remembering how quick the society of London
is to welcome a new celebrity or original character, how a place
is at once made for him at every hospitable board, a permanent
one to which he is expected to return; and how no Continental
entertainment is considered complete without some bright
particular star to shine in the firmament.</p>
<p>“Lion-hunting,” I hear my reader say with a
sneer. That may be, but it makes society worth the candle,
which it rarely is over here. I realized what I had often
vaguely felt before, that the Bohemia the English lady was
looking for was not to be found in this country, more’s the
pity. Not that the elements are lacking. Far from it,
(for even more than in London should we be able to combine such a
society), but perhaps from a misconception of the true idea of
such a society, due probably to Henry Murger’s dreary book
<i>Scènes de la vie de Bohême</i> which is
chargeable with the fact that a circle of this kind evokes in the
mind of most Americans visions of a scrubby, poorly-fed and
less-washed community, a world they would hardly dare ask to
their tables for fear of some embarrassing unconventionality of
conduct or dress.</p>
<p>Yet that can hardly be the reason, for even in Murger or Paul
de Kock, at their worst, the hero is still a gentleman, and even
when he borrows a friend’s coat, it is to go to a great
house and among people of rank. Besides, we are becoming
too cosmopolitan, and wander too constantly over this little
globe, not to have learned that the Bohemia of 1830 is as
completely a thing of the past as a <i>grisette</i> or a
glyphisodon. It disappeared with Gavarni and the authors
who described it. Although we have kept the word, its
meaning has gradually changed until it has come to mean something
difficult to define, a will-o’-the-wisp, which one tries
vainly to grasp. With each decade it has put on a new form
and changed its centre, the one definite fact being that it
combines the better elements of several social layers.</p>
<p>Drop in, if you are in Paris and know the way, at one of
Madeleine Lemaire’s informal evenings in her studio.
There you may find the Prince de Ligne, chatting with
Réjane or Coquelin; or Henri d’Orléans, just
back from an expedition into Africa. A little further on,
Saint-Saens will be running over the keys, preparing an
accompaniment for one of Madame de Trédern’s
songs. The Princess Mathilde (that passionate lover of art)
will surely be there, and—but it is needless to
particularize.</p>
<p>Cross the Channel, and get yourself asked to one of
Irving’s choice suppers after the play. You will find
the bar, the stage, and the pulpit represented there, a
“happy family” over which the “Prince”
often presides, smoking cigar after cigar, until the tardy London
daylight appears to break up the entertainment.</p>
<p>For both are centres where the gifted and the travelled meet
the great of the social world, on a footing of perfect equality,
and where, if any prestige is accorded, it is that of
brains. When you have seen these places and a dozen others
like them, you will realize what the actor’s wife had in
her mind.</p>
<p>Now, let me whisper to you why I think such circles do not
exist in this country. In the first place, we are still too
provincial in this big city of ours. New York always
reminds me of a definition I once heard of California fruit:
“Very large, with no particular flavor.” We are
like a boy, who has had the misfortune to grow too quickly and
look like a man, but whose mind has not kept pace with his
body. What he knows is undigested and chaotic, while his
appearance makes you expect more of him than he can
give—hence disappointment.</p>
<p>Our society is yet in knickerbockers, and has retained all
sorts of littlenesses and prejudices which older civilizations
have long since relegated to the mental lumber room. An
equivalent to this point of view you will find in England or
France only in the smaller “cathedral” cities, and
even there the old aristocrats have the courage of their
opinions. Here, where everything is quite frankly on a
money basis, and “positions” are made and lost like a
fortune, by a turn of the market, those qualities which are
purely mental, and on which it is hard to put a practical value,
are naturally at a discount. We are quite ready to pay for
the best. Witness our private galleries and the opera, but
we say, like the parvenu in Émile Augier’s
delightful comedy <i>Le Gendre de M. Poirier</i>,
“Patronize art? Of course! But the
artists? Never!” And frankly, it would be too
much, would it not, to expect a family only half a generation
away from an iron foundry, or a mine, to be willing to receive
Irving or Bernhardt on terms of perfect equality?</p>
<p>As it would be unjust to demand a mature mind in the overgrown
boy, it is useless to hope for delicate tact and social feeling
from the parvenu. To be gracious and at ease with all
classes and professions, one must be perfectly sure of
one’s own position, and with us few feel this security, it
being based on too frail a foundation, a crisis in the
“street” going a long way towards destroying it.</p>
<p>Of course I am generalizing and doubt not that in many
cultivated homes the right spirit exists, but unfortunately these
are not the centres which give the tone to our
“world.” Lately at one of the most splendid
houses in this city a young Italian tenor had been engaged to
sing. When he had finished he stood alone, unnoticed,
unspoken to for the rest of the evening. He had been paid
to sing. “What more, in common sense, could he
want?” thought the “world,” without reflecting
that it was probably not the <i>tenor</i> who lost by that
arrangement. It needs a delicate hand to hold the reins
over the backs of such a fine-mouthed community as artists and
singers form. They rarely give their best when singing or
performing in a hostile atmosphere.</p>
<p>A few years ago when a fancy-dress ball was given at the
Academy of Design, the original idea was to have it an
artists’ ball; the community of the brush were, however,
approached with such a complete lack of tact that, with hardly an
exception, they held aloof, and at the ball shone conspicuous by
their absence.</p>
<p>At present in this city I know of but two hospitable firesides
where you are sure to meet the best the city holds of either
foreign or native talent. The one is presided over by the
wife of a young composer, and the other, oddly enough, by two
unmarried ladies. An invitation to a dinner or a supper at
either of these houses is as eagerly sought after and as highly
prized in the great world as it is by the Bohemians, though
neither “salon” is open regularly.</p>
<p>There is still hope for us, and I already see signs of better
things. Perhaps, when my English friend returns in a few
years, we may be able to prove to her that we have found the road
to Prague.</p>
<h2>No. 11—Social Exiles</h2>
<p>Balzac, in his <i>Comédie Humaine</i>, has reviewed
with a master-hand almost every phase of the Social World of
Paris down to 1850 and Thackeray left hardly a corner of London
High Life unexplored; but so great have been the changes
(progress, its admirers call it,) since then, that, could Balzac
come back to his beloved Paris, he would feel like a foreigner
there; and Thackeray, who was among us but yesterday, would have
difficulty in finding his bearings in the sea of the London world
to-day.</p>
<p>We have changed so radically that even a casual observer
cannot help being struck by the difference. Among other
most significant “phenomena” has appeared a phase of
life that not only neither of these great men observed (for the
very good reason that it had not appeared in their time), but
which seems also to have escaped the notice of the writers of our
own day, close observers as they are of any new
development. I mean the class of Social Exiles, pitiable
wanderers from home and country, who haunt the Continent, and are
to be found (sad little colonies) in out-of-the-way corners of
almost every civilized country.</p>
<p>To know much of this form of modern life, one must have been a
wanderer, like myself, and have pitched his tent in many queer
places; for they are shy game and not easily raised, frequenting
mostly quiet old cities like Versailles and Florence, or
inexpensive watering-places where their meagre incomes become
affluence by contrast. The first thought on dropping in on
such a settlement is, “How in the world did these people
ever drift here?” It is simple enough and generally
comes about in this way:</p>
<p>The father of a wealthy family dies. The fortune turns
out to be less than was expected. The widow and children
decide to go abroad for a year or so, during their period of
mourning, partially for distraction, and partially (a fact which
is not spoken of) because at home they would be forced to change
their way of living to a simpler one, and that is hard to do,
just at first. Later they think it will be quite
easy. So the family emigrates, and after a little
sight-seeing, settles in Dresden or Tours, casually at first, in
a hotel. If there are young children they are made the
excuse. “The languages are so important!”
Or else one of the daughters develops a taste for music, or a son
takes up the study of art. In a year or two, before a
furnished apartment is taken, the idea of returning is discussed,
but abandoned “for the present.” They begin
vaguely to realize how difficult it will be to take life up again
at home. During all this time their income (like everything
else when the owners are absent) has been slowly but surely
disappearing, making the return each year more difficult.
Finally, for economy, an unfurnished apartment is taken.
They send home for bits of furniture and family belongings, and
gradually drop into the great army of the expatriated.</p>
<p>Oh, the pathos of it! One who has not seen these poor
stranded waifs in their self-imposed exile, with eyes turned
towards their native land, cannot realize all the sadness and
loneliness they endure, rarely adopting the country of their
residence but becoming more firmly American as the years go
by. The home papers and periodicals are taken, the American
church attended, if there happens to be one; the English chapel,
if there is not. Never a French church! In their
hearts they think it almost irreverent to read the service in
French. The acquaintance of a few fellow-exiles is made and
that of a half-dozen English families, mothers and daughters and
a younger son or two, whom the ferocious primogeniture custom has
cast out of the homes of their childhood to economize on the
Continent.</p>
<p>I have in my mind a little settlement of this kind at
Versailles, which was a type. The formal old city, fallen
from its grandeur, was a singularly appropriate setting to the
little comedy. There the modest purses of the exiles found
rents within their reach, the quarters vast and airy. The
galleries and the park afforded a diversion, and then Paris, dear
Paris, the American Mecca, was within reach. At the time I
knew it, the colony was fairly prosperous, many of its members
living in the two or three principal <i>pensions</i>, the others
in apartments of their own. They gave feeble little
entertainments among themselves, card-parties and teas, and dined
about with each other at their respective <i>tables
d’hôte</i>, even knowing a stray Frenchman or two,
whom the quest of a meal had tempted out of their native
fastnesses as it does the wolves in a hard winter. Writing
and receiving letters from America was one of the principal
occupations, and an epistle descriptive of a particular event at
home went the rounds, and was eagerly read and discussed.</p>
<p>The merits of the different <i>pensions</i> also formed a
subject of vital interest. The advantages and disadvantages
of these rival establishments were, as a topic, never
exhausted. <i>Madame une telle</i> gave five o’clock
tea, included in the seven francs a day, but her rival gave one
more meat course at dinner and her coffee was certainly better,
while a third undoubtedly had a nicer set of people. No one
here at home can realize the importance these matters gradually
assume in the eyes of the exiles. Their slender incomes
have to be so carefully handled to meet the strain of even this
simple way of living, if they are to show a surplus for a little
trip to the seashore in the summer months, that an extra franc a
day becomes a serious consideration.</p>
<p>Every now and then a family stronger-minded than the others,
or with serious reasons for returning home (a daughter to bring
out or a son to put into business), would break away from its
somnolent surroundings and re-cross the Atlantic, alternating
between hope and fear. It is here that a sad fate awaits
these modern Rip Van Winkles. They find their native cities
changed beyond recognition. (For we move fast in these
days.) The mother gets out her visiting list of ten years
before and is thunderstruck to find that it contains chiefly
names of the “dead, the divorced, and
defaulted.” The waves of a decade have washed over
her place and the world she once belonged to knows her no
more. The leaders of her day on whose aid she counted have
retired from the fray. Younger, and alas! unknown faces sit
in the opera boxes and around the dinner tables where before she
had found only friends. After a feeble little struggle to
get again into the “swim,” the family drifts back
across the ocean into the quiet back water of a continental town,
and goes circling around with the other twigs and dry leaves,
moral flotsam and jetsam, thrown aside by the great rush of the
outside world.</p>
<p>For the parents the life is not too sad. They have had
their day, and are, perhaps, a little glad in their hearts of a
quiet old age, away from the heat and sweat of the battle; but
for the younger generation it is annihilation. Each year
their circle grows smaller. Death takes away one member
after another of the family, until one is left alone in a foreign
land with no ties around her, or with her far-away
“home,” the latter more a name now than a
reality.</p>
<p>A year or two ago I was taking luncheon with our consul at his
primitive villa, an hour’s ride from the city of Tangier, a
ride made on donkey-back, as no roads exist in that sunny
land. After our coffee and cigars, he took me a
half-hour’s walk into the wilderness around him to call on
his nearest neighbors, whose mode of existence seemed a source of
anxiety to him. I found myself in the presence of two
American ladies, the younger being certainly not less than
seventy-five. To my astonishment I found they had been
living there some thirty years, since the death of their parents,
in an isolation and remoteness impossible to describe, in an Arab
house, with native servants, “the world forgetting, by the
world forgot.” Yet these ladies had names well known
in New York fifty years ago.</p>
<p>The glimpse I had of their existence made me thoughtful as I
rode home in the twilight, across a suburb none too safe for
strangers. What had the future in store for those
two? Or, worse still, for the survivor of those two?
In contrast, I saw a certain humble “home” far away
in America, where two old ladies were ending their lives
surrounded by loving friends and relations, honored and cherished
and guarded tenderly from the rude world.</p>
<p>In big cities like Paris and Rome there is another class of
the expatriated, the wealthy who have left their homes in a
moment of pique after the failure of some social or political
ambition; and who find in these centres the recognition refused
them at home and for which their souls thirsted.</p>
<p>It is not to these I refer, although it is curious to see a
group of people living for years in a country of which they, half
the time, do not speak the language (beyond the necessities of
housekeeping and shopping), knowing but few of its inhabitants,
and seeing none of the society of the place, their acquaintance
rarely going beyond that equivocal, hybrid class that surrounds
rich “strangers” and hangs on to the outer edge of
the <i>grand monde</i>. One feels for this latter class
merely contempt, but one’s pity is reserved for the
former. What object lessons some lives on the Continent
would be to impatient souls at home, who feel discontented with
their surroundings, and anxious to break away and wander
abroad! Let them think twice before they cut the thousand
ties it has taken a lifetime to form. Better monotony at
your own fireside, my friends, where at the worst, you are known
and have your place, no matter how small, than an old age among
strangers.</p>
<h2>No. 12—“Seven Ages” of Furniture</h2>
<p>The progress through life of active-minded Americans is apt to
be a series of transformations. At each succeeding phase of
mental development, an old skin drops from their growing
intelligence, and they assimilate the ideas and tastes of their
new condition, with a facility and completeness unknown to other
nations.</p>
<p>One series of metamorphoses particularly amusing to watch is,
that of an observant, receptive daughter of Uncle Sam who, aided
and followed (at a distance) by an adoring husband, gradually
develops her excellent brain, and rises through fathoms of
self-culture and purblind experiment, to the surface of
dilettantism and connoisseurship. One can generally detect
the exact stage of evolution such a lady has reached by the bent
of her conversation, the books she is reading, and, last but not
least, by her material surroundings; no outward and visible signs
reflecting inward and spiritual grace so clearly as the objects
people collect around them for the adornment of their rooms, or
the way in which those rooms are decorated.</p>
<p>A few years ago, when a young man and his bride set up
housekeeping on their own account, the “old people”
of both families seized the opportunity to unload on the
beginners (under the pretence of helping them along) a quantity
of furniture and belongings that had (as the shopkeepers say)
“ceased to please” their original owners. The
narrow quarters of the tyros are encumbered by ungainly sofas and
arm-chairs, most probably of carved rosewood.
<i>Étagères</i> of the same lugubrious material
grace the corners of their tiny drawing-room, the bits of mirror
inserted between the shelves distorting the image of the owners
into headless or limbless phantoms. Half of their little
dining-room is filled with a black-walnut sideboard, ingeniously
contrived to take up as much space as possible and hold nothing,
its graceless top adorned with a stag’s head carved in wood
and imitation antlers.</p>
<p>The novices in their innocence live contented amid their
hideous surroundings for a year or two, when the wife enters her
second epoch, which, for want of a better word, we will call the
Japanese period. The grim furniture gradually disappears
under a layer of silk and gauze draperies, the bare walls blossom
with paper umbrellas, fans are nailed in groups promiscuously,
wherever an empty space offends her eye. Bows of ribbon are
attached to every possible protuberance of the furniture.
Even the table service is not spared. I remember dining at
a house in this stage of its artistic development, where the
marrow bones that formed one course of the dinner appeared each
with a coquettish little bow-knot of pink ribbon around its
neck.</p>
<p>Once launched on this sea of adornment, the housewife soon
loses her bearings and decorates indiscriminately. Her old
evening dresses serve to drape the mantelpieces, and she passes
every spare hour embroidering, braiding, or fringing some
material to adorn her rooms. At Christmas her friends
contribute specimens of their handiwork to the collection.</p>
<p>The view of other houses and other decorations before long
introduces the worm of discontent into the blossom of our
friend’s contentment. The fruit of her labors becomes
tasteless on her lips. As the finances of the family are
satisfactory, the re-arrangement of the parlor floor is (at her
suggestion) confided to a firm of upholsterers, who make a clean
sweep of the rosewood and the bow-knots, and retire, after some
months of labor, leaving the delighted wife in possession of a
suite of rooms glittering with every monstrosity that an
imaginative tradesman, spurred on by unlimited credit, could
devise.</p>
<p>The wood work of the doors and mantels is an intricate puzzle
of inlaid woods, the ceilings are panelled and painted in
complicated designs. The “parlor” is provided
with a complete set of neat, old-gold satin furniture, puffed at
its angles with peacock-colored plush.</p>
<p>The monumental folding doors between the long, narrow rooms
are draped with the same chaste combination of stuffs.</p>
<p>The dining-room blazes with a gold and purple wall paper, set
off by ebonized wood work and furniture. The conscientious
contractor has neglected no corner. Every square inch of
the ceilings, walls, and floors has been carved, embossed,
stencilled, or gilded into a bewildering monotony.</p>
<p>The husband, whose affairs are rapidly increasing on his
hands, has no time to attend to such insignificant details as
house decoration, the wife has perfect confidence in the taste of
the firm employed. So at the suggestion of the latter, and
in order to complete the beauty of the rooms, a Bouguereau, a
Toulmouche and a couple of Schreyers are bought, and a number of
modern French bronzes scattered about on the multicolored
cabinets. Then, at last, the happy owners of all this
splendor open their doors to the admiration of their friends.</p>
<p>About the time the peacock plush and the gilding begin to show
signs of wear and tear, rumors of a fresh fashion in decoration
float across from England, and the new gospel of the beautiful
according to Clarence Cook is first preached to an astonished
nation.</p>
<p>The fortune of our couple continuing to develop with pleasing
rapidity, the building of a country house is next decided
upon. A friend of the husband, who has recently started out
as an architect, designs them a picturesque residence without a
straight line on its exterior or a square room inside. This
house is done up in strict obedience to the teachings of the new
sect. The dining-room is made about as cheerful as the
entrance to a family vault. The rest of the house bears a
close resemblance to an ecclesiastical junk shop. The
entrance hall is filled with what appears to be a communion table
in solid oak, and the massive chairs and settees of the parlor
suggest the withdrawing room of Rowena, æsthetic shades of
momie-cloth drape deep-set windows, where anæmic and
disjointed females in stained glass pluck conventional roses.</p>
<p>To each of these successive transitions the husband has
remained obediently and tranquilly indifferent. He has in
his heart considered them all equally unfitting and uncomfortable
and sighed in regretful memory of a deep, old-fashioned arm-chair
that sheltered his after-dinner naps in the early rosewood
period. So far he has been as clay in the hands of his
beloved wife, but the anæmic ladies and the communion table
are the last drop that causes his cup to overflow. He
revolts and begins to take matters into his own hands with the
result that the household enters its fifth incarnation under his
guidance, during which everything is painted white and all the
wall-papers are a vivid scarlet. The family sit on bogus
Chippendale and eat off blue and white china.</p>
<p>With the building of their grand new house near the park the
couple rise together into the sixth cycle of their
development. Having travelled and studied the epochs by
this time, they can tell a Louis XIV. from a Louis XV. room, and
recognize that mahogany and brass sphinxes denote furniture of
the Empire. This newly acquired knowledge is, however,
vague and hazy. They have no confidence in themselves, so
give over the fitting of their principal floors to the New York
branch of a great French house. Little is talked of now but
periods, plans, and elevations. Under the guidance of the
French firm, they acquire at vast expense, faked reproductions as
historic furniture.</p>
<p>The spacious rooms are sticky with new gilding, and the
flowered brocades of the hangings and furniture crackle to the
touch. The rooms were not designed by the architect to
receive any special kind of “treatment.”
Immense folding-doors unite the salons, and windows open
anywhere. The decorations of the walls have been applied
like a poultice, regardless of the proportions of the rooms and
the distribution of the spaces.</p>
<p>Building and decorating are, however, the best of
educations. The husband, freed at last from his business
occupations, finds in this new study an interest and a charm
unknown to him before. He and his wife are both vaguely
disappointed when their resplendent mansion is finished, having
already outgrown it, and recognize that in spite of correct
detail, their costly apartments no more resemble the stately and
simple salons seen abroad than the cabin of a Fall River boat
resembles the <i>Galerie des Glaces</i> at Versailles. The
humiliating knowledge that they are all wrong breaks upon them,
as it is doing on hundreds of others, at the same time as the
desire to know more and appreciate better the perfect productions
of this art.</p>
<p>A seventh and last step is before them but they know not how
to make it. A surer guide than the upholsterer is, they
know, essential, but their library contains nothing to help
them. Others possess the information they need, yet they
are ignorant where to turn for what they require.</p>
<p>With singular appropriateness a volume treating of this
delightful “art” has this season appeared at
Scribner’s. “The Decoration of Houses” is
the result of a woman’s faultless taste collaborating with
a man’s technical knowledge. Its mission is to reveal
to the hundreds who have advanced just far enough to find that
they can go no farther alone, truths lying concealed beneath the
surface. It teaches that consummate taste is satisfied only
with a perfected simplicity; that the facades of a house must be
the envelope of the rooms within and adapted to them, as the
rooms are to the habits and requirements of them “that
dwell therein;” that proportion is the backbone of the
decorator’s art and that supreme elegance is fitness and
moderation; and, above all, that an attention to architectural
principles can alone lead decoration to a perfect
development.</p>
<h2>No. 13—Our Elite and Public Life</h2>
<p>The complaint is so often heard, and seems so well founded,
that there is a growing inclination, not only among men of social
position, but also among our best and cleverest citizens, to
stand aloof from public life, and this reluctance on their part
is so unfortunate, that one feels impelled to seek out the causes
where they must lie, beneath the surface. At a first glance
they are not apparent. Why should not the honor of
representing one’s town or locality be as eagerly sought
after with us as it is by English or French men of
position? That such is not the case, however, is
evident.</p>
<p>Speaking of this the other evening, over my after-dinner
coffee, with a high-minded and public-spirited gentleman, who not
long ago represented our country at a European court, he advanced
two theories which struck me as being well worth repeating, and
which seemed to account to a certain extent for this curious
abstinence.</p>
<p>As a first and most important cause, he placed the fact that
neither our national nor (here in New York) our state capital
coincides with our metropolis. In this we differ from
England and all the continental countries. The result is
not difficult to perceive. In London, a man of the world, a
business man, or a great lawyer, who represents a locality in
Parliament, can fulfil his mandate and at the same time lead his
usual life among his own set. The lawyer or the business
man can follow during the day his profession, or those affairs on
which he depends to support his family and his position in the
world. Then, after dinner (owing to the peculiar hours
adopted for the sittings of Parliament), he can take his place as
a law-maker. If he be a London-born man, he in no way
changes his way of life or that of his family. If, on the
contrary, he be a county magnate, the change he makes is all for
the better, as it takes him and his wife and daughters up to
London, the haven of their longings, and the centre of all sorts
of social dissipations and advancement.</p>
<p>With us, it is exactly the contrary. As the District of
Columbia elects no one, everybody living in Washington officially
is more or less expatriated, and the social life it offers is a
poor substitute for the circle which most families leave to go
there.</p>
<p>That, however, is not the most important side of the
question. Go to any great lawyer of either New York or
Chicago, and propose sending him to Congress or the Senate.
His answer is sure to be, “I cannot afford it. I know
it is an honor, but what is to replace the hundred thousand
dollars a year which my profession brings me in, not to mention
that all my practice would go to pieces during my
absence?” Or again, “How should I dare to
propose to my family to leave one of the great centres of the
country to go and vegetate in a little provincial city like
Washington? No, indeed! Public life is out of the
question for me!”</p>
<p>Does any one suppose England would have the class of men she
gets in Parliament, if that body sat at Bristol?</p>
<p>Until recently the man who occupied the position of Lord
Chancellor made thirty thousand pounds a year by his profession
without interfering in any way with his public duties, and at the
present moment a recordership in London in no wise prevents
private practice. Were these gentlemen Americans, they
would be obliged to renounce all hope of professional income in
order to serve their country at its Capital.</p>
<p>Let us glance for a moment at the other reason. Owing to
our laws (doubtless perfectly reasonable, and which it is not my
intention to criticise,) a man must reside in the place he
represents. Here again we differ from all other
constitutional countries. Unfortunately, our clever young
men leave the small towns of their birth and flock up to the
great centres as offering wider fields for their
advancement. In consequence, the local elector finds his
choice limited to what is left—the intellectual skimmed
milk, of which the cream has been carried to New York or other
big cities. No country can exist without a metropolis, and
as such a centre by a natural law of assimilation absorbs the
best brains of the country, in other nations it has been found to
the interests of all parties to send down brilliant young men to
the “provinces,” to be, in good time, returned by
them to the national assemblies.</p>
<p>As this is not a political article the simple indication of
these two causes will suffice, without entering into the question
of their reasonableness or of their justice. The social
bearing of such a condition is here the only side of the question
under discussion; it is difficult to over-rate the influence that
a man’s family exert over his decisions.</p>
<p>Political ambition is exceedingly rare among our women of
position; when the American husband is bitten with it, the wife
submits to, rather than abets, his inclinations. In most
cases our women are not cosmopolitan enough to enjoy being
transplanted far away from their friends and relations, even to
fill positions of importance and honor. A New York woman of
great frankness and intelligence, who found herself recently in a
Western city under these circumstances, said, in answer to a
flattering remark that “the ladies of the place expected
her to become their social leader,” “I don’t
see anything to lead,” thus very plainly expressing her
opinion of the situation. It is hardly fair to expect a
woman accustomed to the life of New York or the foreign capitals,
to look forward with enthusiasm to a term of years passed in
Albany, or in Washington.</p>
<p>In France very much the same state of affairs has been reached
by quite a different route. The aristocracy detest the
present government, and it is not considered “good
form” by them to sit in the Chamber of Deputies or to
accept any but diplomatic positions. They condescend to
fill the latter because that entails living away from their own
country, as they feel more at ease in foreign courts than at the
Republican receptions of the Elysée.</p>
<p>There is a deplorable tendency among our self-styled
aristocracy to look upon their circle as a class apart.
They separate themselves more each year from the life of the
country, and affect to smile at any of their number who honestly
wish to be of service to the nation. They, like the French
aristocracy, are perfectly willing, even anxious, to fill
agreeable diplomatic posts at first-class foreign capitals, and
are naïvely astonished when their offers of service are not
accepted with gratitude by the authorities in Washington.
But let a husband propose to his better half some humble position
in the machinery of our government, and see what the lady’s
answer will be.</p>
<p>The opinion prevails among a large class of our wealthy and
cultivated people, that to go into public life is to descend to
duties beneath them. They judge the men who occupy such
positions with insulting severity, classing them in their minds
as corrupt and self-seeking, than which nothing can be more
childish or more imbecile. Any observer who has lived in
the different grades of society will quickly renounce the puerile
idea that sporting or intellectual pursuits are alone worthy of a
gentleman’s attention. This very political life,
which appears unworthy of their attention to so many men, is, in
reality, the great field where the nations of the world fight out
their differences, where the seed is sown that will ripen later
into vast crops of truth and justice. It is (if rightly
regarded and honestly followed) the battle-ground where
man’s highest qualities are put to their noblest
use—that of working for the happiness of others.</p>
<h2>No. 14—The Small Summer Hotel</h2>
<p>We certainly are the most eccentric race on the surface of the
globe and ought to be a delight to the soul of an explorer, so
full is our civilization of contradictions, unexplained habits
and curious customs. It is quite unnecessary for the
inquisitive gentlemen who pass their time prying into other
people’s affairs and then returning home to write books
about their discoveries, to risk their lives and digestions in
long journeys into Central Africa or to the frozen zones, while
so much good material lies ready to their hands in our own
land. The habits of the “natives” in New
England alone might occupy an active mind indefinitely, offering
as interesting problems as any to be solved by penetrating
Central Asia or visiting the man-eating tribes of Australia.</p>
<p>Perhaps one of our scientific celebrities, before undertaking
his next long voyage, will find time to make observations at home
and collect sufficient data to answer some questions that have
long puzzled my unscientific brain. He would be doing good
work. Fame and honors await the man who can explain why,
for instance, sane Americans of the better class, with money
enough to choose their surroundings, should pass so much of their
time in hotels and boarding houses. There must be a reason
for the vogue of these retreats—every action has a cause,
however remote. I shall await with the deepest interest a
paper on this subject from one of our great explorers, untoward
circumstances having some time ago forced me to pass a few days
in a popular establishment of this class.</p>
<p>During my visit I amused myself by observing the inmates and
trying to discover why they had come there. So far as I
could find out, the greater part of them belonged to our
well-to-do class, and when at home doubtless lived in luxurious
houses and were waited on by trained servants. In the small
summer hotel where I met them, they were living in dreary little
ten by twelve foot rooms, containing only the absolute
necessities of existence, a wash-stand, a bureau, two chairs and
a bed. And such a bed! One mattress about four inches
thick over squeaking slats, cotton sheets, so nicely calculated
to the size of the bed that the slightest move on the part of the
sleeper would detach them from their moorings and undo the
housemaid’s work; two limp, discouraged pillows that had
evidently been “banting,” and a few towels a foot
long with a surface like sand-paper, completed the fittings of
the room. Baths were unknown, and hot water was a luxury
distributed sparingly by a capricious handmaiden. It is
only fair to add that everything in the room was perfectly clean,
as was the coarse table linen in the dining room.</p>
<p>The meals were in harmony with the rooms and furniture,
consisting only of the strict necessities, cooked with a Spartan
disregard for such sybarite foibles as seasoning or
dressing. I believe there was a substantial meal somewhere
in the early morning hours, but I never succeeded in getting down
in time to inspect it. By successful bribery, I induced one
of the village belles, who served at table, to bring a cup of
coffee to my room. The first morning it appeared already
poured out in the cup, with sugar and cold milk added at her
discretion. At one o’clock a dinner was served,
consisting of soup (occasionally), one meat dish and attendant
vegetables, a meagre dessert, and nothing else. At
half-past six there was an equally rudimentary meal, called
“tea,” after which no further food was distributed to
the inmates, who all, however, seemed perfectly contented with
this arrangement. In fact they apparently looked on the act
of eating as a disagreeable task, to be hurried through as soon
as possible that they might return to their aimless rocking and
chattering.</p>
<p>Instead of dinner hour being the feature of the day, uniting
people around an attractive table, and attended by conversation,
and the meal lasting long enough for one’s food to be
properly eaten, it was rushed through as though we were all
trying to catch a train. Then, when the meal was over, the
boarders relapsed into apathy again.</p>
<p>No one ever called this hospitable home a boarding-house, for
the proprietor was furious if it was given that name. He
also scorned the idea of keeping a hotel. So that I never
quite understood in what relation he stood toward us. He
certainly considered himself our host, and ignored the financial
side of the question severely. In order not to hurt his
feelings by speaking to him of money, we were obliged to get our
bills by strategy from a male subordinate. Mine host and
his family were apparently unaware that there were people under
their roof who paid them for board and lodging. We were all
looked upon as guests and “entertained,” and our
rights impartially ignored.</p>
<p>Nothing, I find, is so distinctive of New England as this
graceful veiling of the practical side of life. The
landlady always reminded me, by her manner, of Barrie’s
description of the bill-sticker’s wife who
“cut” her husband when she chanced to meet him
“professionally” engaged. As a result of this
extreme detachment from things material, the house ran itself, or
was run by incompetent Irish and negro “help.”
There were no bells in the rooms, which simplified the service,
and nothing could be ordered out of meal hours.</p>
<p>The material defects in board and lodging sink, however, into
insignificance before the moral and social unpleasantness of an
establishment such as this. All ages, all conditions, and
all creeds are promiscuously huddled together. It is
impossible to choose whom one shall know or whom avoid. A
horrible burlesque of family life is enabled, with all its
inconveniences and none of its sanctity. People from
different cities, with different interests and standards, are
expected to “chum” together in an intimacy that
begins with the eight o’clock breakfast and ends only when
all retire for the night. No privacy, no isolation is
allowed. If you take a book and begin to read in a remote
corner of a parlor or piazza, some idle matron or idiotic girl
will tranquilly invade your poor little bit of privacy and gabble
of her affairs and the day’s gossip. There is no
escape unless you mount to your ten-by-twelve cell and sit (like
the Premiers of England when they visit Balmoral) on the bed, to
do your writing, for want of any other conveniences. Even
such retirement is resented by the boarders. You are
thought to be haughty and to give yourself airs if you do not sit
for twelve consecutive hours each day in unending conversation
with them.</p>
<p>When one reflects that thousands of our countrymen pass at
least one-half of their lives in these asylums, and that
thousands more in America know no other homes, but move from one
hotel to another, while the same outlay would procure them cosy,
cheerful dwellings, it does seem as if these modern Arabs,
Holmes’s “Folding Bed-ouins,” were gradually
returning to prehistoric habits and would end by eating roots
promiscuously in caves.</p>
<p>The contradiction appears more marked the longer one reflects
on the love of independence and impatience of all restraint that
characterize our race. If such an institution had been
conceived by people of the Old World, accustomed to moral slavery
and to a thousand petty tyrannies, it would not be so remarkable,
but that we, of all the races of the earth, should have created a
form of torture unknown to Louis XI. or to the Spanish
Inquisitors, is indeed inexplicable! Outside of this happy
land the institution is unknown. The <i>pension</i> when it
exists abroad, is only an exotic growth for an American
market. Among European nations it is undreamed of; the
poorest when they travel take furnished rooms, where they are
served in private, or go to restaurants or <i>table
d’hôtes</i> for their meals. In a strictly
continental hotel the public parlor does not exist. People
do not travel to make acquaintances, but for health or
recreation, or to improve their minds. The enforced
intimacy of our American family house, with its attendant
quarrelling and back-biting, is an infliction of which Europeans
are in happy ignorance.</p>
<p>One explanation, only, occurs to me, which is that among New
England people, largely descended from Puritan stock, there still
lingers some blind impulse at self-mortification, an hereditary
inclination to make this life as disagreeable as possible by
self-immolation. Their ancestors, we are told by Macaulay,
suppressed bull baiting, not because it hurt the bull, but
because it gave pleasure to the people. Here in New England
they refused the Roman dogma of Purgatory and then with complete
inconsistency, invented the boarding-house, in order, doubtless,
to take as much of the joy as possible out of this life, as a
preparation for endless bliss in the next.</p>
<h2>No. 15—A False Start</h2>
<p>Having had, during a wandering existence, many opportunities
of observing my compatriots away from home and familiar
surroundings in various circles of cosmopolitan society, at
foreign courts, in diplomatic life, or unofficial capacities, I
am forced to acknowledge that whereas my countrywoman invariably
assumed her new position with grace and dignity, my countryman,
in the majority of cases, appeared at a disadvantage.</p>
<p>I take particular pleasure in making this tribute to my
“sisters” tact and wit, as I have been accused of
being “hard” on American women, and some
half-humorous criticisms have been taken seriously by
over-susceptible women—doubtless troubled with guilty
consciences for nothing is more exact than the old French
proverb, “It is only the truth that wounds.”</p>
<p>The fact remains clear, however, that American men, as regards
polish, facility in expressing themselves in foreign languages,
the arts of pleasing and entertaining, in short, the thousand and
one nothings composing that agreeable whole, a cultivated member
of society, are inferior to their womankind. I feel sure
that all Americans who have travelled and have seen their
compatriot in his social relations with foreigners, will agree
with this, reluctant as I am to acknowledge it.</p>
<p>That a sister and brother brought up together, under the same
influences, should later differ to this extent seems
incredible. It is just this that convinces me we have made
a false start as regards the education and ambitions of our young
men.</p>
<p>To find the reasons one has only to glance back at our
past. After the struggle that insured our existence as a
united nation, came a period of great prosperity. When both
seemed secure, we did not pause and take breath, as it were,
before entering a new epoch of development, but dashed ahead on
the old lines. It is here that we got on the wrong
road. Naturally enough too, for our peculiar position on
this continent, far away from the centres of cultivation and art,
surrounded only by less successful states with which to compare
ourselves, has led us into forming erroneous ideas as to the
proportions of things, causing us to exaggerate the value of
material prosperity and undervalue matters of infinitely greater
importance, which have been neglected in consequence.</p>
<p>A man who, after fighting through our late war, had succeeded
in amassing a fortune, naturally wished his son to follow him on
the only road in which it had ever occurred to him that success
was of any importance. So beyond giving the boy a college
education, which he had not enjoyed, his ambition rarely went;
his idea being to make a practical business man of him, or a
lawyer, that he could keep the estate together more
intelligently. In thousands of cases, of course, individual
taste and bent over-ruled this influence, and a career of science
or art was chosen; but in the mass of the American people, it was
firmly implanted that the pursuit of wealth was the only
occupation to which a reasonable human being could devote
himself. A young man who was not in some way engaged in
increasing his income was looked upon as a very undesirable
member of society, and sure, sooner or later, to come to
harm.</p>
<p>Millionaires declined to send their sons to college, saying
they would get ideas there that would unfit them for business, to
Paterfamilias the one object of life. Under such fostering
influences, the ambitions in our country have gradually given way
to money standards and the false start has been made!
Leaving aside at once the question of money in its relation to
our politics (although it would be a fruitful subject for
moralizing), and confining ourselves strictly to the social side
of life, we soon see the results of this mammon worship.</p>
<p>In England (although Englishmen have been contemptuously
called the shop-keepers of the world) the extension and
maintenance of their vast empire is the mainspring which keeps
the great machine in movement. And one sees tens of
thousands of well-born and delicately-bred men cheerfully
entering the many branches of public service where the hope of
wealth can never come, and retiring on pensions or half-pay in
the strength of their middle age, apparently without a regret or
a thought beyond their country’s well-being.</p>
<p>In France, where the passionate love of their own land has
made colonial extension impossible, the modern Frenchman of
education is more interested in the yearly exhibition at the
<i>Salon</i> or in a successful play at the
<i>Français</i>, than in the stock markets of the
world.</p>
<p>Would that our young men had either of these bents! They
have copied from England a certain love of sport, without the
English climate or the calm of country and garrison life, to make
these sports logical and necessary. As the young American
millionaire thinks he must go on increasing his fortune, we see
the anomaly of a man working through a summer’s day in Wall
Street, then dashing in a train to some suburban club, and
appearing a half-hour later on the polo field. Next to
wealth, sport has become the ambition of the wealthy classes, and
has grown so into our college life that the number of students in
the freshman class of our great universities is seriously
influenced by that institution’s losses or gains at
football.</p>
<p>What is the result of all this? A young man starts in
life with the firm intention of making a great deal of
money. If he has any time left from that occupation he will
devote it to sport. Later in life, when he has leisure and
travels, or is otherwise thrown with cultivated strangers, he
must naturally be at a disadvantage. “Shop,” he
cannot talk; he knows that is vulgar. Music, art, the
drama, and literature are closed books to him, in spite of the
fact that he may have a box on the grand tier at the opera and a
couple of dozen high-priced “masterpieces” hanging
around his drawing-rooms. If he is of a finer clay than the
general run of his class, he will realize dimly that somehow the
goal has been missed in his life race. His chase after the
material has left him so little time to cultivate the ideal, that
he has prepared himself a sad and aimless old age; unless he can
find pleasure in doing as did a man I have been told about, who,
receiving half a dozen millions from his father’s estate,
conceived the noble idea of increasing them so that he might
leave to each of his four children as much as he had himself
received. With the strictest economy, and by suppressing
out of his life and that of his children all amusements and
superfluous outlay, he has succeeded now for many years in living
on the income of his income. Time will never hang heavy on
this Harpagon’s hands. He is a perfectly happy
individual, but his conversation is hardly of a kind to attract,
and it may be doubted if the rest of the family are as much to be
envied.</p>
<p>An artist who had lived many years of his life in Paris and
London was speaking the other day of a curious phase he had
remarked in our American life. He had been accustomed over
there to have his studio the meeting-place of friends, who would
drop in to smoke and lounge away an hour, chatting as he
worked. To his astonishment, he tells me that since he has
been in New York not one of the many men he knows has ever passed
an hour in his rooms. Is not that a significant fact?
Another remark which points its own moral was repeated to me
recently. A foreigner visiting here, to whom American
friends were showing the sights of our city, exclaimed at last:
“You have not pointed out to me any celebrities except
millionaires. ‘Do you see that man? he is worth ten
millions. Look at that house! it cost one million dollars,
and there are pictures in it worth over three million
dollars. That trotter cost one hundred thousand
dollars,’ etc.” Was he not right? And
does it not give my reader a shudder to see in black and white
the phrases that are, nevertheless, so often on our lips?</p>
<p>This levelling of everything to its cash value is so ingrained
in us that we are unconscious of it, as we are of using slang or
local expressions until our attention is called to them. I
was present once at a farce played in a London theatre, where the
audience went into roars of laughter every time the stage
American said, “Why, certainly.” I was
indignant, and began explaining to my English friend that we
never used such an absurd phrase. “Are you
sure?” he asked. “Why, certainly,” I
said, and stopped, catching the twinkle in his eye.</p>
<p>It is very much the same thing with money. We do not
notice how often it slips into the conversation. “Out
of the fullness of the heart the mouth speaketh.”
Talk to an American of a painter and the charm of his work.
He will be sure to ask, “Do his pictures sell well?”
and will lose all interest if you say he can’t sell them at
all. As if that had anything to do with it!</p>
<p>Remembering the well-known anecdote of Schopenhauer and the
gold piece which he used to put beside his plate at the <i>table
d’hôte</i>, where he ate, surrounded by the young
officers of the German army, and which was to be given to the
poor the first time he heard any conversation that was not about
promotion or women, I have been tempted to try the experiment in
our clubs, changing the subjects to stocks and sport, and feel
confident that my contributions to charity would not ruin me.</p>
<p>All this has had the result of making our men dull companions;
after dinner, or at a country house, if the subject they love is
tabooed, they talk of nothing! It is sad for a rich man
(unless his mind has remained entirely between the leaves of his
ledger) to realize that money really buys very little, and above
a certain amount can give no satisfaction in proportion to its
bulk, beyond that delight which comes from a sense of
possession. Croesus often discovers as he grows old that he
has neglected to provide himself with the only thing that
“is a joy for ever”—a cultivated
intellect—in order to amass a fortune that turns to ashes,
when he has time to ask of it any of the pleasures and resources
he fondly imagined it would afford him. Like
Talleyrand’s young man who would not learn whist, he finds
that he has prepared for himself a dreadful old age!</p>
<h2>No. 16—A Holy Land</h2>
<p>Not long ago an article came under my notice descriptive of
the neighborhood around Grant’s tomb and the calm that
midsummer brings to that vicinity, laughingly referred to as the
“Holy Land.”</p>
<p>As careless fingers wandering over the strings of a violin may
unintentionally strike a chord, so the writer of those lines, all
unconsciously, with a jest, set vibrating a world of tender
memories and associations; for the region spoken of is truly a
holy land to me, the playground of my youth, and connected with
the sweetest ties that can bind one’s thoughts to the
past.</p>
<p>Ernest Renan in his <i>Souvenirs d’Enfance</i>, tells of
a Brittany legend, firmly believed in that wild land, of the
vanished city of “Is,” which ages ago disappeared
beneath the waves. The peasants still point out at a
certain place on the coast the site of the fabled city, and the
fishermen tell how during great storms they have caught glimpses
of its belfries and ramparts far down between the waves; and
assert that on calm summer nights they can hear the bells chiming
up from those depths. I also have a vanished
“Is” in my heart, and as I grow older, I love to
listen to the murmurs that float up from the past. They
seem to come from an infinite distance, almost like echoes from
another life.</p>
<p>At that enchanted time we lived during the summers in an old
wooden house my father had re-arranged into a fairly comfortable
dwelling. A tradition, which no one had ever taken the
trouble to verify, averred that Washington had once lived there,
which made that hero very real to us. The picturesque old
house stood high on a slope where the land rises boldly; with an
admirable view of distant mountain, river and opposing
Palisades.</p>
<p>The new Riverside drive (which, by the bye, should make us
very lenient toward the men who robbed our city a score of years
ago, for they left us that vast work in atonement), has so
changed the neighborhood it is impossible now for pious feet to
make a pilgrimage to those childish shrines. One house,
however, still stands as when it was our nearest neighbor.
It had sheltered General Gage, land for many acres around had
belonged to him. He was an enthusiastic gardener, and
imported, among a hundred other fruits and plants, the
“Queen Claude” plum from France, which was
successfully acclimated on his farm. In New York a plum of
that kind is still called a “green gage.” The
house has changed hands many times since we used to play around
the Grecian pillars of its portico. A recent owner,
dissatisfied doubtless with its classic simplicity, has painted
it a cheerful mustard color and crowned it with a fine new
<i>Mansard</i> roof. Thus disfigured, and shorn of its
surrounding trees, the poor old house stands blankly by the
roadside, reminding one of the Greek statue in Anstey’s
“Painted Venus” after the London barber had decorated
her to his taste. When driving by there now, I close my
eyes.</p>
<p>Another house, where we used to be taken to play, was that of
Audubon, in the park of that name. Many a rainy afternoon I
have passed with his children choosing our favorite birds in the
glass cases that filled every nook and corner of the tumble-down
old place, or turning over the leaves of the enormous volumes he
would so graciously take down from their places for our
amusement. I often wonder what has become of those vast
<i>in-folios</i>, and if any one ever opens them now and admires
as we did the glowing colored plates in which the old
ornithologist took such pride. There is something
infinitely sad in the idea of a collection of books slowly
gathered together at the price of privations and sacrifices,
cherished, fondled, lovingly read, and then at the owner’s
death, coldly sent away to stand for ever unopened on the shelves
of some public library. It is like neglecting poor dumb
children!</p>
<p>An event that made a profound impression on my childish
imagination occurred while my father, who was never tired of
improving our little domain, was cutting a pathway down the steep
side of the slope to the river. A great slab, dislodged by
a workman’s pick, fell disclosing the grave of an Indian
chief. In a low archway or shallow cave sat the skeleton of
the chieftain, his bows and arrows arranged around him on the
ground, mingled with fragments of an elaborate costume, of which
little remained but the bead-work. That it was the tomb of
a man great among his people was evident from the care with which
the grave had been prepared and then hidden, proving how,
hundreds of years before our civilization, another race had
chosen this noble cliff and stately river landscape as the
fitting framework for a great warrior’s tomb.</p>
<p>This discovery made no little stir in the scientific world of
that day. Hundreds came to see it, and as photography had
not then come into the world, many drawings were made and casts
taken, and finally the whole thing was removed to the rooms of
the Historical Society. From that day the lonely little
path held an awful charm for us. Our childish readings of
Cooper had developed in us that love of the Indian and his wild
life, so characteristic of boyhood thirty years ago. On
still summer afternoons, the place had a primeval calm that froze
the young blood in our veins. Although we prided ourselves
on our quality as “braves,” and secretly pined to be
led on the war-path, we were shy of walking in that vicinity in
daylight, and no power on earth, not even the offer of the
tomahawk or snow-shoes for which our souls longed, would have
taken us there at night.</p>
<p>A place connected in my memory with a tragic association was
across the river on the last southern slope of the
Palisades. Here we stood breathless while my father told
the brief story of the duel between Burr and Hamilton, and showed
us the rock stained by the younger man’s life-blood.
In those days there was a simple iron railing around the spot
where Hamilton had expired, but of later years I have been unable
to find any trace of the place. The tide of immigration has
brought so deep a deposit of “saloons” and suburban
“balls” that the very face of the land is changed,
old lovers of that shore know it no more. Never were the
environs of a city so wantonly and recklessly degraded.
Municipalities have vied with millionaires in soiling and
debasing the exquisite shores of our river, that, thirty years
ago, were unrivalled the world over.</p>
<p>The glamour of the past still lies for me upon this landscape
in spite of its many defacements. The river whispers of
boyish boating parties, and the woods recall a thousand childish
hopes and fears, resolute departures to join the pirates, or the
red men in their strongholds—journeys boldly carried out
until twilight cooled our courage and the supper-hour proved a
stronger temptation than war and carnage.</p>
<p>When I sat down this summer evening to write a few lines about
happy days on the banks of the Hudson, I hardly realized how
sweet those memories were to me. The rewriting of the old
names has evoked from their long sleep so many loved faces.
Arms seem reaching out to me from the past. The house is
very still to-night. I seem to be nearer my loved dead than
to the living. The bells of my lost “Is” are
ringing clear in the silence.</p>
<h2>No. 17—Royalty At Play</h2>
<p>Few more amusing sights are to be seen in these days, than
that of crowned heads running away from their dull old courts and
functions, roughing it in hotels and villas, gambling, yachting
and playing at being rich nobodies. With much intelligence
they have all chosen the same Republican playground, where visits
cannot possibly be twisted into meaning any new
“combination” or political move, thus assuring
themselves the freedom from care or responsibility, that seems to
be the aim of their existence. Alongside of well-to-do
Royalties in good paying situations, are those out of a job, who
are looking about for a “place.” One cannot
take an afternoon’s ramble anywhere between Cannes and
Mentone without meeting a half-dozen of these magnates.</p>
<p>The other day, in one short walk, I ran across three
Empresses, two Queens, and an Heir-apparent, and then fled to my
hotel, fearing to be unfitted for America, if I went on
“keeping such company.” They are knowing
enough, these wandering great ones, and after trying many places
have hit on this charming coast as offering more than any other
for their comfort and enjoyment. The vogue of these sunny
shores dates from their annexation to France,—a price
Victor Emmanuel reluctantly paid for French help in his war with
Austria. Napoleon III.’s demand for Savoy and this
littoral, was first made known to Victor Emmanuel at a state ball
at Genoa. Savoy was his birthplace and his home! The
King broke into a wild temper, cursing the French Emperor and
making insulting allusions to his parentage, saying he had not
one drop of Bonaparte blood in his veins. The King’s
frightened courtiers tried to stop this outburst, showing him the
French Ambassador at his elbow. With a superhuman effort
Victor Emmanuel controlled himself, and turning to the
Ambassador, said:</p>
<p>“I fear my tongue ran away with me!” With a
smile and a bow the great French diplomatist remarked:</p>
<p>“<i>Sire</i>, I am so deaf I have not heard a word your
Majesty has been saying!”</p>
<p>The fashion of coming to the Riviera for health or for
amusement, dates from the sixties, when the Empress of Russia
passed a winter at Nice, as a last attempt to prolong the
existence of the dying Tsarewitsch, her son. There also the
next season the Duke of Edinburgh wooed and won her daughter
(then the greatest heiress in Europe) for his bride. The
world moves fast and a journey it required a matter of life and
death to decide on, then, is gayly undertaken now, that a prince
may race a yacht, or a princess try her luck at the gambling
tables. When one reflects that the “royal
caste,” in Europe alone, numbers some eight hundred people,
and that the East is beginning to send out its more enterprising
crowned heads to get a taste of the fun, that beyond drawing
their salaries, these good people have absolutely nothing to do,
except to amuse themselves, it is no wonder that this happy land
is crowded with royal pleasure-seekers.</p>
<p>After a try at Florence and Aix, “the Queen” has
been faithful to Cimiez, a charming site back of Nice. That
gay city is always <i>en fête</i> the day she arrives, as
her carriages pass surrounded by French cavalry, one can catch a
glimpse of her big face, and dowdy little figure, which
nevertheless she can make so dignified when occasion
requires. The stay here is, indeed, a holiday for this
record-breaking sovereign, who potters about her private grounds
of a morning in a donkey-chair, sunning herself and watching her
Battenberg grandchildren at play. In the afternoon, she
drives a couple of hours—in an open carriage—one
outrider in black livery alone distinguishing her turnout from
the others.</p>
<p>The Prince of Wales makes his headquarters at Cannes where he
has poor luck in sailing the Brittania, for which he consoles
himself with jolly dinners at Monte Carlo. You can see him
almost any evening in the <i>Restaurant de Paris</i>, surrounded
by his own particular set,—the Duchess of Devonshire (who
started a penniless German officer’s daughter, and became
twice a duchess); Lady de Grey and Lady Wolverton, both showing
near six feet of slender English beauty; at their side, and
lovelier than either, the Countess of Essex. The husbands
of these “Merry Wives” are absent, but do not seem to
be missed, as the ladies sit smoking and laughing over their
coffee, the party only breaking up towards eleven o’clock
to try its luck at <i>trente et quarante</i>, until a
“special” takes them back to Cannes.</p>
<p>He is getting sadly old and fat, is England’s heir, the
likeness to his mamma becoming more marked each year. His
voice, too, is oddly like hers, deep and guttural, more adapted
to the paternal German (which all this family speak when alone)
than to his native English. Hair, he has none, except a
little fringe across the back of his head, just above a fine
large roll of fat that blushes above his shirt-collar. Too
bad that this discovery of the microbe of baldness comes rather
late for him! He has a pleasant twinkle in his small eyes,
and an entire absence of <i>pose</i>, that accounts largely for
his immense and enduring popularity.</p>
<p>But the Hotel Cap Martin shelters quieter crowned heads.
The Emperor and Empress of Austria, who tramp about the hilly
roads, the King and Queen of Saxony and the fat Arch-duchess
Stephanie. Austria’s Empress looks sadly changed and
ill, as does another lady of whom one can occasionally catch a
glimpse, walking painfully with a crutch-stick in the shadow of
the trees near her villa. It is hard to believe that this
white-haired, bent old woman was once the imperial beauty who
from the salons of the Tuileries dictated the fashions of the
world! Few have paid so dearly for their brief hour of
splendor!</p>
<p>Cannes with its excellent harbor is the centre of interest
during the racing season when the Tsarewitsch comes on his yacht
Czaritza. At the Battle of Flowers, one is pretty sure to
see the Duke of Cambridge, his Imperial Highness, the Grand Duke
Michael, Prince Christian of Denmark, H.R.H. the Duke of Nassau,
H.I.H. the Archduke Ferdinand d’Este, their Serene
Highnesses of Mecklenburg-Schwerin and the Saxe-Coburg-Gothas,
also H.I.H. Marie Valérie and the Schleswig-Holsteins,
pelting each other and the public with <i>confetti</i> and
flowers. Indeed, half the <i>Almanach de Gotha</i>, that
continental “society list,” seems to be sunning
itself here and forgetting its cares, on bicycles or on board
yachts. It is said that the Crown Princess of Honolulu
(whoever she may be) honors Mentone with her presence, and the
newly deposed Queen “Ranavalo” of Madagascar is <i>en
route</i> to join in the fun.</p>
<p>This crowd of royalty reminds me of a story the old sea-dogs
who gather about the “Admirals’ corner” of the
Metropolitan Club in Washington, love to tell you. An
American cockswain, dazzled by a doubly royal visit, with
attending suites, on board the old “Constitution,”
came up to his commanding officer and touching his cap, said:</p>
<p>“Beg pardon, Admiral, but one of them kings has tumbled
down the gangway and broke his leg.”</p>
<p>It has become a much more amusing thing to wear a crown than
it was. Times have changed indeed since Marie Laczinska
lived the fifty lonely years of her wedded life and bore her many
children, in one bed-room at Versailles—a monotony only
broken by visits to Fontainebleau or Marly.
Shakespeare’s line no longer fits the case.</p>
<p>Beyond securing rich matches for their children, and keeping a
sharp lookout that the Radicals at home do not unduly cut down
their civil lists, these great ones have little but their
amusements to occupy them. Do they ever reflect, as they
rush about visiting each other and squabbling over precedence
when they meet, that some fine morning the tax-payers may wake
up, and ask each other why they are being crushed under such
heavy loads, that eight hundred or more quite useless people may
pass their lives in foreign watering-places, away from their
homes and their duties? It will be a bad day for them when
the long-suffering subjects say to them, “Since we get on
so exceedingly well during your many visits abroad, we think we
will try how it will work without you at all!”</p>
<p>The Prince of little Monaco seems to be about the only one up
to the situation, for he at least stays at home, and in
connection with two other gentlemen runs an exceedingly good
hotel and several restaurants on his estates, doing all he can to
attract money into the place, while making the strictest laws to
prevent his subjects gambling at the famous tables. Now if
other royalties instead of amusing themselves all the year round
would go in for something practical like this, they might become
useful members of the community. This idea of
Monaco’s Prince strikes one as most timely, and as opening
a career for other indigent crowned heads. Hotels are
getting so good and so numerous, that without some especial
“attraction” a new one can hardly succeed; but a
“Hohenzollern House” well situated in Berlin, with
William II. to receive the tourists at the door, and his fat wife
at the desk, would be sure to prosper. It certainly would
be pleasanter for him to spend money so honestly earned than the
millions wrested from half-starving peasants which form his
present income. Besides there is almost as much gold lace
on a hotel employee’s livery as on a court costume!</p>
<p>The numerous crowned heads one meets wandering about, can
hardly lull themselves over their “games” with the
flattering unction that they are of use, for, have they not
France before them (which they find so much to their taste)
stronger, richer, more respected than ever since she shook
herself free of such incumbrances? Not to mention our own
democratic country, which has managed to hold its own, in spite
of their many gleeful predictions to the contrary.</p>
<h2>No. 18—A Rock Ahead</h2>
<p>Having had occasion several times during this past season, to
pass by the larger stores in the vicinity of Twenty-third Street,
I have been struck more than ever, by the endless flow of
womankind that beats against the doors of those
establishments. If they were temples where a beneficent
deity was distributing health, learning, and all the good things
of existence, the rush could hardly have been greater. It
saddened me to realize that each of the eager women I saw was, on
the contrary, dispensing something of her strength and brain, as
well as the wearily earned stipend of the men of her family (if
not her own), for what could be of little profit to her.</p>
<p>It occurred to me that, if the people who are so quick to talk
about the elevating and refining influences of women, could take
an hour or two and inspect the centres in question, they might
not be so firm in their beliefs. For, reluctant as I am to
acknowledge it, the one great misfortune in this country, is the
unnatural position which has been (from some mistaken idea of
chivalry) accorded to women here. The result of placing
them on this pedestal, and treating them as things apart, has
been to make women in America poorer helpmeets to their husbands
than in any other country on the face of the globe, civilized or
uncivilized.</p>
<p>Strange as it may appear, this is not confined to the rich,
but permeates all classes, becoming more harmful in descending
the social scale, and it will bring about a disintegration of our
society, sooner than could be believed. The saying on which
we have all been brought up, viz., that you can gauge the point
of civilization attained in a nation by the position it accords
to woman, was quite true as long as woman was considered
man’s inferior. To make her his equal was perfectly
just; all the trouble begins when you attempt to make her
man’s superior, a something apart from his working life,
and not the companion of his troubles and cares, as she was
intended to be.</p>
<p>When a small shopkeeper in Europe marries, the next day you
will see his young wife taking her place at the desk in his
shop. While he serves his customers, his smiling spouse
keeps the books, makes change, and has an eye on the
employees. At noon they dine together; in the evening,
after the shop is closed, are pleased or saddened together over
the results of the day. The wife’s <i>dot</i> almost
always goes into the business, so that there is a community of
interest to unite them, and their lives are passed
together. In this country, what happens? The husband
places his new wife in a small house, or in two or three
furnished rooms, generally so far away that all idea of dining
with her is impossible. In consequence, he has a
“quick lunch” down town, and does not see his wife
between eight o’clock in the morning and seven in the
evening. His business is a closed book to her, in which she
can have no interest, for her weary husband naturally revolts
from talking “shop,” even if she is in a position to
understand him.</p>
<p>His false sense of shielding her from the rude world makes him
keep his troubles to himself, so she rarely knows his financial
position and sulks over his “meanness” to her, in
regard to pin-money; and being a perfectly idle person, her days
are apt to be passed in a way especially devised by Satan for
unoccupied hands. She has learned no cooking from her
mother; “going to market” has become a thing of the
past. So she falls a victim to the allurements of the
bargain-counter; returning home after hours of aimless wandering,
irritable and aggrieved because she cannot own the beautiful
things she has seen. She passes the evening in trying to
win her husband’s consent to some purchase he knows he
cannot afford, while it breaks his heart to refuse her—some
object, which, were she really his companion, she would not have
had the time to see or the folly to ask for.</p>
<p>The janitor in our building is truly a toiler. He rarely
leaves his dismal quarters under the sidewalk, but
“Madam” walks the streets clad in sealskin and silk,
a “Gainsborough” crowning her false
“bang.” I always think of Max
O’Rell’s clever saying, when I see her: “The
sweat of the American husband crystallizes into diamond ear-rings
for the American woman.” My janitress sports a
diminutive pair of those jewels and has hopes of larger
ones! Instead of “doing” the bachelor’s
rooms in the building as her husband’s helpmeet, she
“does” her spouse, and a char-woman works for
her. She is one of the drops in the tide that ebbs and
flows on Twenty-third Street—a discontented woman placed in
a false position by our absurd customs.</p>
<p>Go a little further up in the social scale and you will find
the same “detached” feeling. In a household I
know of only one horse and a <i>coupé</i> can be
afforded. Do you suppose it is for the use of the weary
breadwinner? Not at all. He walks from his home to
the “elevated.” The carriage is to take his
wife to teas or the park. In a year or two she will go
abroad, leaving him alone to turn the crank that produces the
income. As it is, she always leaves him for six months each
year in a half-closed house, to the tender mercies of a
caretaker. Two additional words could be advantageously
added to the wedding service. After “for richer for
poorer,” I should like to hear a bride promise to cling to
her husband “for winter for summer!”</p>
<p>Make another step up and stand in the entrance of a house at
two <span class="smcap">a.m.</span>, just as the cotillion is
commencing, and watch the couples leaving. The husband, who
has been in Wall Street all day, knows that he must be there
again at nine next morning. He is furious at the lateness
of the hour, and dropping with fatigue. His wife, who has
done nothing to weary her, is equally enraged to be taken away
just as the ball was becoming amusing. What a happy, united
pair they are as the footman closes the door and the carriage
rolls off home! Who is to blame? The husband is
vainly trying to lead the most exacting of double lives, that of
a business man all day and a society man all night. You can
pick him out at a glance in a ballroom. His eye shows you
that there is no rest for him, for he has placed his wife at the
head of an establishment whose working crushes him into the mud
of care and anxiety. Has he any one to blame but
himself?</p>
<p>In England, I am told, the man of a family goes up to London
in the spring and gets his complete outfit, down to the smallest
details of hat-box and umbrella. If there happens to be
money left, the wife gets a new gown or two: if not, she
“turns” the old ones and rejoices vicariously in the
splendor of her “lord.” I know one charming
little home over there, where the ladies cannot afford a
pony-carriage, because the three indispensable hunters eat up the
where-withal.</p>
<p>Thackeray was delighted to find one household (Major
Ponto’s) where the governess ruled supreme, and I feel a
fiendish pleasure in these accounts of a country where men have
been able to maintain some rights, and am moved to preach a
crusade for the liberation of the American husband, that the
poor, down-trodden creature may revolt from the slavery where he
is held and once more claim his birthright. If he be prompt
to act (and is successful) he may work such a reform that our
girls, on marrying, may feel that some duties and
responsibilities go with their new positions; and a state of
things be changed, where it is possible for a woman to be pitied
by her friends as a model of abnegation, because she has decided
to remain in town during the summer to keep her husband company
and make his weary home-coming brighter. Or where (as in a
story recently heard) a foreigner on being presented to an
American bride abroad and asking for her husband, could hear in
answer: “Oh, he could not come; he was too busy. I am
making my wedding-trip without him.”</p>
<h2>No. 19—The Grand Prix</h2>
<p>In most cities, it is impossible to say when the
“season” ends. In London and with us in New
York it dwindles off without any special finish, but in Paris it
closes like a trap-door, or the curtain on the last scene of a
pantomime, while the lights are blazing and the orchestra is
banging its loudest. The <i>Grand Prix</i>, which takes
place on the second Sunday in June, is the climax of the spring
gayeties. Up to that date, the social pace has been getting
faster and faster, like the finish of the big race itself, and
fortunately for the lives of the women as well as the horses,
ends as suddenly.</p>
<p>In 1897, the last steeple chase at Auteuil, which precedes the
<i>Grand Prix</i> by one week, was won by a horse belonging to an
actress of the <i>Théâtre Français</i>, a
lady who has been a great deal before the public already in
connection with the life and death of young Lebaudy. This
youth having had the misfortune to inherit an enormous fortune,
while still a mere boy, plunged into the wildest dissipation, and
became the prey of a band of sharpers and blacklegs. Mlle.
Marie Louise Marsy appears to have been the one person who had a
sincere affection for the unfortunate youth. When his
health gave way during his military service, she threw over her
engagement with the <i>Français</i>, and nursed her lover
until his death—a devotion rewarded by the gift of a
million.</p>
<p>At the present moment, four or five of the band of self-styled
noblemen who traded on the boy’s inexperience and
generosity, are serving out terms in the state prisons for
blackmailing, and the <i>Théâtre Français</i>
possesses the anomaly of a young and beautiful actress, who runs
a racing stable in her own name.</p>
<p>The <i>Grand Prix</i> dates from the reign of Napoleon III.,
who, at the suggestion of the great railway companies,
inaugurated this race in 1862, in imitation of the English Derby,
as a means of attracting people to Paris. The city and the
railways each give half of the forty-thousand-dollar prize.
It is the great official race of the year. The President
occupies the central pavilion, surrounded by the members of the
cabinet and the diplomatic corps. On the tribunes and lawn
can be seen the <i>Tout Paris</i>—all the celebrities of
the great and half-world who play such an important part in the
life of France’s capital. The whole colony of the
<i>Rastaquouëres</i>, is sure to be there,
“<i>Rastas</i>,” as they are familiarly called by the
Parisians, who make little if any distinction in their minds
between a South American (blazing in diamonds and vulgar clothes)
and our own select (?) colony. Apropos of this inability of
the Europeans to appreciate our fine social distinctions, I have
been told of a well-born New Yorker who took a French noblewoman
rather to task for receiving an American she thought unworthy of
notice, and said:</p>
<p>“How can you receive her? Her husband keeps a
hotel!”</p>
<p>“Is that any reason?” asked the French-woman;
“I thought all Americans kept hotels.”</p>
<p>For the <i>Grand Prix</i>, every woman not absolutely bankrupt
has a new costume, her one idea being a <i>création</i>
that will attract attention and eclipse her rivals. The
dressmakers have had a busy time of it for weeks before.</p>
<p>Every horse that can stand up is pressed into service for the
day. For twenty-four hours before, the whole city is <i>en
fête</i>, and Paris <i>en fête</i> is always a sight
worth seeing. The natural gayety of the Parisians, a
characteristic noticed (if we are to believe the historians) as
far back as the conquest of Gaul by Julius Cæsar, breaks
out in all its amusing spontaneity. If the day is fine, the
entire population gives itself up to amusement. From early
morning the current sets towards the charming corner of the Bois
where the Longchamps race-course lies, picturesquely encircled by
the Seine (alive with a thousand boats), and backed by the woody
slopes of Suresnes and St. Cloud. By noon every corner and
vantage point of the landscape is seized upon, when, with a blare
of trumpets and the rattle of cavalry, the President arrives in
his turnout <i>à la Daumont</i>, two postilions in blue
and gold, and a <i>piqueur</i>, preceded by a detachment of the
showy <i>Gardes Républicains</i> on horseback, and takes
his place in the little pavilion where for so many years
Eugénie used to sit in state, and which has sheltered so
many crowned heads under its simple roof. Faure’s
arrival is the signal for the racing to begin, from that moment
the interest goes on increasing until the great
“event.” Then in an instant the vast throng of
human beings breaks up and flows homeward across the Bois,
filling the big Place around the Arc de Triomphe, rolling down
the Champs Elysées, in twenty parallel lines of
carriages. The sidewalks are filled with a laughing,
singing, uproarious crowd that quickly invades every restaurant,
<i>café</i>, or chop-house until their little tables
overflow on to the grass and side-walks, and even into the middle
of the streets. Later in the evening the open-air concerts
and theatres are packed, and every little square organizes its
impromptu ball, the musicians mounted on tables, and the crowd
dancing gayly on the wooden pavement until daybreak.</p>
<p>The next day, Paris becomes from a fashionable point of view,
“impossible.” If you walk through the richer
quarters, you will see only long lines of closed windows.
The approaches to the railway stations are blocked with cabs
piled with trunks and bicycles. The “great
world” is fleeing to the seashore or its
<i>châteaux</i>, and Paris will know it no more until
January, for the French are a country-loving race, and since
there has been no court, the aristocracy pass longer and longer
periods on their own estates each year, partly from choice and
largely to show their disdain for the republic and its
entertainments.</p>
<p>The shady drives in the park, which only a day or two ago were
so brilliant with smart traps and spring toilets, are become a
cool wilderness, where will meet, perhaps, a few maiden ladies
exercising fat dogs, uninterrupted except by the watering-cart or
by a few stray tourists in cabs. Now comes a delightful
time for the real amateur of Paris and the country around, which
is full of charming corners where one can dine at quiet little
restaurants, overhanging the water or buried among trees.
You are sure of getting the best of attention from the waiters,
and the dishes you order receive all the cook’s
attention. Of an evening the Bois is alive with a myriad of
bicycles, their lights twinkling among the trees like
many-colored fire-flies. To any one who knows how to live
there, Paris is at its best in the last half of June and
July. Nevertheless, in a couple of days there will not be
an American in Paris, London being the objective point; for we
love to be “in at the death,” and a coronation, a
musical festival, or a big race is sure to attract all our
floating population.</p>
<p>The Americans who have the hardest time in Paris are those who
try to “run with the deer and hunt with the hounds,”
as the French proverb has it, who would fain serve God and
Mammon. As anything especially amusing is sure to take
place on Sunday in this wicked capital, our friends go through
agonies of indecision, their consciences pulling one way, their
desire to amuse themselves the other. Some find a middle
course, it seems, for yesterday this conversation was overheard
on the steps of the American Church:</p>
<p><i>First American Lady</i>: “Are you going to stop for
the sermon?”</p>
<p><i>Second American Lady</i>: “I am so sorry I
can’t, but the races begin at one!”</p>
<h2>No. 20—“The Treadmill.”</h2>
<p>A half-humorous, half-pathetic epistle has been sent to me by
a woman, who explains in it her particular perplexity. Such
letters are the windfalls of our profession! For what is
more attractive than to have a woman take you for her lay
confessor, to whom she comes for advice in trouble? opening her
innocent heart for your inspection!</p>
<p>My correspondent complains that her days are not sufficiently
long, nor is her strength great enough, for the thousand and one
duties and obligations imposed upon her. “If,”
she says, “a woman has friends and a small place in the
world—and who has not in these days?—she must golf or
‘bike’ or skate a bit, of a morning; then she is apt
to lunch out, or have a friend or two in, to that meal.
After luncheon there is sure to be a ‘class’ of some
kind that she has foolishly joined, or a charity meeting,
matinée, or reception; but above all, there are her
‘duty’ calls. She must be home at five to make
tea, that she has promised her men friends, and they will not
leave until it is time for her to dress for dinner,
‘out’ or at home, with often the opera, a supper, or
a ball to follow. It is quite impossible,” she adds,
“under these circumstances to apply one’s self to
anything serious, to read a book or even open a periodical.
The most one can accomplish is a glance at a paper.”</p>
<p>Indeed, it would require an exceptional constitution to carry
out the above programme, not to mention the attention that a
woman must (however reluctantly) give to her house and her
family. Where are the quiet hours to be found for
self-culture, the perusal of a favorite author, or, perhaps, a
little timid “writing” on her own account? Nor
does this treadmill round fill a few months only of her
life. With slight variations of scene and costume, it
continues through the year.</p>
<p>A painter, I know, was fortunate enough to receive, a year or
two ago, the commission to paint a well-known beauty. He
was delighted with the idea and convinced that he could make her
portrait the best work of his life, one that would be the
stepping-stone to fame and fortune. This was in the
spring. He was naturally burning to begin at once, but
found to his dismay that the lady was just about starting for
Europe. So he waited, and at her suggestion installed
himself a couple of months later at the seaside city where she
had a cottage. No one could be more charming than she was,
inviting him to dine and drive daily, but when he broached the
subject of “sitting,” was “too busy just that
day.” Later in the autumn she would be quite at his
disposal. In the autumn, however, she was visiting, never
ten days in the same place. Early winter found her
“getting her house in order,” a mysterious rite
apparently attended with vast worry and fatigue. With
cooling enthusiasm, the painter called and coaxed and
waited. November brought the opera and the full swing of a
New York season. So far she has given him half a dozen
sittings, squeezed in between a luncheon, which made her
“unavoidably late,” for which she is charmingly
“sorry,” and a reception that she was forced to
attend, although “it breaks my heart to leave just as you
are beginning to work so well, but I really must, or the tiresome
old cat who is giving the tea will be saying all sorts of
unpleasant things about me.” So she flits off,
leaving the poor, disillusioned painter before his canvas,
knowing now that his dream is over, that in a month or two his
pretty sitter will be off again to New Orleans for the carnival,
or abroad, and that his weary round of waiting will
recommence. He will be fortunate if some day it does not
float back to him, in the mysterious way disagreeable things do
come to one, that she has been heard to say, “I fear dear
Mr. Palette is not very clever, for I have been sitting to him
for over a year, and he has really done nothing yet.”</p>
<p>He has been simply the victim of a state of affairs that
neither of them were strong enough to break through. It
never entered into Beauty’s head that she could lead a life
different from her friends. She was honestly anxious to
have a successful portrait of herself, but the sacrifice of any
of her habits was more than she could make.</p>
<p>Who among my readers (and I am tempted to believe they are all
more sensible than the above young woman) has not, during a
summer passed with agreeable friends, made a thousand pleasant
little plans with them for the ensuing winter,—the books
they were to read at the same time, the “exhibitions”
they were to see, the visits to our wonderful collections in the
Metropolitan Museum or private galleries, cosy little dinners,
etc.? And who has not found, as the winter slips away, that
few of these charming plans have been carried out? He and
his friends have unconsciously fallen back into their ruts of
former years, and the pleasant things projected have been brushed
aside by that strongest of tyrants, habit.</p>
<p>I once asked a very great lady, whose gracious manner was
never disturbed, who floated through the endless complications of
her life with smiling serenity, how she achieved this Olympian
calm. She was good enough to explain. “I make a
list of what I want to do each day. Then, as I find my day
passing, or I get behind, or tired, I throw over every other
engagement. I could have done them all with hurry and
fatigue. I prefer to do one-half and enjoy what I do.
If I go to a house, it is to remain and appreciate whatever
entertainment has been prepared for me. I never offer to
any hostess the slight of a hurried, <i>distrait</i>
‘call,’ with glances at my watch, and an
‘on-the-wing’ manner. It is much easier not to
go, or to send a card.”</p>
<p>This brings me around to a subject which I believe is one of
the causes of my correspondent’s dilemma. I fear that
she never can refuse anything. It is a peculiar trait of
people who go about to amuse themselves, that they are always
sure the particular entertainment they have been asked to last is
going to “be amusing.” It rarely is different
from the others, but these people are convinced, that to stay
away would be to miss something. A weary-looking girl about
1 <span class="smcap">a.m.</span> (at a house-party) when asked
why she did not go to bed if she was so tired, answered,
“the nights I go to bed early, they always seem to do
something jolly, and then I miss it.”</p>
<p>There is no greater proof of how much this weary round wears
on women than the acts of the few who feel themselves strong
enough in their position to defy custom. They have thrown
off the yoke (at least the younger ones have) doubtless backed up
by their husbands, for men are much quicker to see the
aimlessness of this stupid social routine. First they broke
down the great New-Year-call “grind.” Men over
forty doubtless recall with a shudder, that awful custom which
compelled a man to get into his dress clothes at ten <span
class="smcap">a.m.</span>, and pass his day rushing about from
house to house like a postman. Out-of-town clubs and sport
helped to do away with that remnant of New Amsterdam. Next
came the male revolt from the afternoon “tea” or
“musical.” A black coat is rare now at either
of these functions, or if seen is pretty sure to be on a back
over fifty. Next, we lords of creation refused to call at
all, or leave our cards. A married woman now leaves her
husband’s card with her own, and sisters leave the
“pasteboard” of their brothers and often those of
their brothers’ friends. Any combination is good
enough to “shoot a card.”</p>
<p>In London the men have gone a step further. It is not
uncommon to hear a young man boast that he never owned a visiting
card or made a “duty” call in his life. Neither
there nor with us does a man count as a “call” a
quiet cup of tea with a woman he likes, and a cigarette and quiet
talk until dressing time. Let the young women have courage
and take matters into their own hands. (The older ones are
hopeless and will go on pushing this Juggernaut car over each
other’s weary bodies, until the end of the chapter.)
Let them have the courage occasionally to “refuse”
something, to keep themselves free from aimless engagements, and
bring this paste-board war to a close. If a woman is
attractive, she will be asked out all the same, never fear!
If she is not popular, the few dozen of “egg-shell
extra” that she can manage to slip in at the front doors of
her acquaintances will not help her much.</p>
<p>If this matter is, however, so vastly important in
women’s eyes, why not adopt the continental and diplomatic
custom and send cards by post or otherwise? There, if a
new-comer dines out and meets twenty-five people for the first
time, cards must be left the next day at their twenty-five
respective residences. How the cards get there is of no
importance. It is a diplomatic fiction that the new
acquaintance has called in person, and the call will be returned
within twenty-four hours. Think of the saving of time and
strength! In Paris, on New Year’s Day, people send
cards by post to everybody they wish to keep up. That does
for a year, and no more is thought about it. All the time
thus gained can be given to culture or recreation.</p>
<p>I have often wondered why one sees so few women one knows at
our picture exhibitions or flower shows. It is no longer a
mystery to me. They are all busy trotting up and down our
long side streets leaving cards. Hideous vision!
Should Dante by any chance reincarnate, he would find here the
material ready made to his hand for an eighth circle in his
<i>Inferno</i>.</p>
<h2>No. 21—“Like Master Like Man.”</h2>
<p>A frequent and naïve complaint one hears, is of the
unsatisfactoriness of servants generally, and their ingratitude
and astonishing lack of affection for their masters, in
particular. “After all I have done for them,”
is pretty sure to sum up the long tale of a housewife’s
griefs. Of all the delightful inconsistencies that grace
the female mind, this latter point of view always strikes me as
being the most complete. I artfully lead my fair friend on
to tell me all about her woes, and she is sure to be exquisitely
one-sided and quite unconscious of her position.
“They are so extravagant, take so little interest in my
things, and leave me at a moment’s notice, if they get an
idea I am going to break up. Horrid things! I wish I
could do without them! They cause me endless worry and
annoyance.” My friend is very nearly right,—but
with whom lies the fault?</p>
<p>The conditions were bad enough years ago, when servants were
kept for decades in the same family, descending like heirlooms
from father to son, often (abroad) being the foster sisters or
brothers of their masters, and bound to the household by an
hundred ties of sympathy and tradition. But in our day, and
in America, where there is rarely even a common language or
nationality to form a bond, and where households are broken up
with such facility, the relation between master and servant is
often so strained and so unpleasant that we risk becoming (what
foreigners reproach us with being), a nation of
hotel-dwellers. Nor is this class-feeling greatly to be
wondered at. The contrary would be astonishing. From
the primitive household, where a poor neighbor comes in as
“help,” to the “great” establishment
where the butler and housekeeper eat apart, and a group of
plush-clad flunkies imported from England adorn the
entrance-hall, nothing could be better contrived to set one class
against another than domestic service.</p>
<p>Proverbs have grown out of it in every language.
“No man is a hero to his valet,” and
“familiarity breeds contempt,” are clear
enough. Our comic papers are full of the misunderstandings
and absurdities of the situation, while one rarely sees a joke
made about the other ways that the poor earn their living.
Think of it for a moment! To be obliged to attend people at
the times of day when they are least attractive, when from
fatigue or temper they drop the mask that society glues to their
faces so many hours in the twenty-four; to see always the seamy
side of life, the small expedients, the aids to nature; to stand
behind a chair and hear an acquaintance of your master’s
ridiculed, who has just been warmly praised to his face; to see a
hostess who has been graciously urging her guests “not to
go so soon,” blurt out all her boredom and thankfulness
“that those tiresome So-and-So’s” are
“paid off at last,” as soon as the door is closed
behind them, must needs give a curious bent to a servant’s
mind. They see their employers insincere, and copy
them. Many a mistress who has been smilingly assured by her
maid how much her dress becomes her, and how young she is
looking, would be thunderstruck to hear herself laughed at and
criticised (none too delicately) five minutes later in that
servant’s talk.</p>
<p>Servants are trained from their youth up to conceal their true
feelings. A domestic who said what she thought would
quickly lose her place. Frankly, is it not asking a good
deal to expect a maid to be very fond of a lady who makes her sit
up night after night until the small hours to unlace her bodice
or take down her hair; or imagine a valet can be devoted to a
master he has to get into bed as best he can because he is too
tipsy to get there unaided? Immortal “Figaro”
is the type! Supple, liar, corrupt, intelligent,—he
aids his master and laughs at him, feathering his own nest the
while. There is a saying that “horses corrupt whoever
lives with them.” It would be more correct to say
that domestic service demoralizes alike both master and man.</p>
<p>Already we are obliged to depend on immigration for our
servants because an American revolts from the false position,
though he willingly accepts longer hours or harder work where he
has no one around him but his equals. It is the old story
of the free, hungry wolf, and the well-fed, but chained,
house-dog. The foreigners that immigration now brings us,
from countries where great class distinctions exist, find it
natural to “serve.” With the increase in
education and consequent self-respect, the difficulty of getting
efficient and contented servants will increase with us. It
has already become a great social problem in England. The
trouble lies beneath the surface. If a superior class
accept service at all, it is with the intention of quickly
getting money enough to do something better. With them
service is merely the means to an end. A first step on the
ladder!</p>
<p>Bad masters are the cause of so much suffering, that to
protect themselves, the great brother-hood of servants have
imagined a system of keeping run of “places,” and
giving them a “character” which an aspirant can find
out with little trouble. This organization is so complete,
and so well carried out, that a household where the lady has a
“temper,” where the food is poor, or which breaks up
often, can rarely get a first-class domestic. The
“place” has been boycotted, a good servant will
sooner remain idle than enter it. If circumstances are too
much for him and he accepts the situation, it is with his eyes
open, knowing infinitely more about his new employers and their
failings than they dream of, or than they could possibly find out
about him.</p>
<p>One thing never can be sufficiently impressed on people, viz.:
that we are forced to live with detectives, always behind us in
caps or dress-suits, ready to note every careless word, every
incautious criticism of friend or acquaintance—their money
matters or their love affairs—and who have nothing more
interesting to do than to repeat what they have heard, with
embroideries and additions of their own. Considering this,
and that nine people out of ten talk quite oblivious of their
servants’ presence, it is to be wondered at that so little
(and not that so much) trouble is made.</p>
<p>It always amuses me when I ask a friend if she is going abroad
in the spring, to have her say “Hush!” with a
frightened glance towards the door.</p>
<p>“I am; but I do not want the servants to know, or the
horrid things would leave me!”</p>
<p>Poor, simple lady! They knew it before you did, and had
discussed the whole matter over their “tea” while it
was an almost unuttered thought in your mind. If they have
not already given you notice, it is because, on the whole your
house suits them well enough for the present, while they look
about. Do not worry your simple soul, trying to keep
anything from them. They know the amount of your last
dressmaker’s bill, and the row your husband made over
it. They know how much you would have liked young
“Crœsus” for your daughter, and the little
tricks you played to bring that marriage about. They know
why you are no longer asked to dine at Mrs. Swell’s, which
is more than you know yourself. Mrs. Swell explained the
matter to a few friends over her lunch-table recently, and the
butler told your maid that same evening, who was laughing at the
story as she put on your slippers!</p>
<p>Before we blame them too much, however, let us remember that
they have it in their power to make great trouble if they
choose. And considering the little that is made in this
way, we must conclude that, on the whole, they are better than we
give them credit for being, and fill a trying situation with much
good humor and kindliness. The lady who is astonished that
they take so little interest in her, will perhaps feel
differently if she reflects how little trouble she has given
herself to find out their anxieties and griefs, their temptations
and heart-burnings; their material situation; whom they support
with their slowly earned wages, what claims they have on them
from outside. If she will also reflect on the number of
days in a year when she is “not herself,” when
headaches or disappointments ruffle her charming temper, she may
come to the conclusion that it is too much to expect all the
virtues for twenty dollars a month.</p>
<p>A little more human interest, my good friends, a little more
indulgence, and you will not risk finding yourself in the
position of the lady who wrote me that last summer she had been
obliged to keep open house for “‘Cook’
tourists!”</p>
<h2>No. 22—An English Invasion of the Riviera</h2>
<p>When sixty years ago Lord Brougham, <i>en route</i> for Italy,
was thrown from his travelling berline and his leg was broken,
near the Italian hamlet of Cannes, the Riviera was as unknown to
the polite world as the centre of China. The <i>grand
tour</i> which every young aristocrat made with his tutor, on
coming of age, only included crossing from France into Italy by
the Alps. It was the occurrence of an unusually severe
winter in Switzerland that turned Brougham aside into the longer
and less travelled route <i>via</i> the Corniche, the marvellous
Roman road at that time fallen into oblivion, and little used
even by the local peasantry.</p>
<p>During the tedious weeks while his leg was mending, Lord
Brougham amused himself by exploring the surrounding country in
his carriage, and was quick to realize the advantages of the
climate, and appreciate the marvellous beauty of that
coast. Before the broken member was whole again, he had
bought a tract of land and begun a villa. Small seed, to
furnish such a harvest! To the traveller of to-day the
Riviera offers an almost unbroken chain of beautiful residences
from Marseilles to Genoa.</p>
<p>A Briton willingly follows where a lord leads, and Cannes
became the centre of English fashion, a position it holds to-day
in spite of many attractive rivals, and the defection of Victoria
who comes now to Cimiez, back of Nice, being unwilling to visit
Cannes since the sudden death there of the Duke of Albany.
A statue of Lord Brougham, the “discoverer” of the
littoral, has been erected in the sunny little square at Cannes,
and the English have in many other ways, stamped the city for
their own.</p>
<p>No other race carry their individuality with them as they
do. They can live years in a country and assimilate none of
its customs; on the contrary, imposing habits of their own.
It is just this that makes them such wonderful colonizers, and
explains why you will find little groups of English people
drinking ale and playing golf in the shade of the Pyramids or
near the frozen slopes of Foosiyama. The real inwardness of
it is that they are a dull race, and, like dull people despise
all that they do not understand. To differ from them is to
be in the wrong. They cannot argue with you; they simply
know, and that ends the matter.</p>
<p>I had a discussion recently with a Briton on the pronunciation
of a word. As there is no “Institute,” as in
France, to settle matters of this kind, I maintained that we
Americans had as much authority for our pronunciation of this
particular word as the English. The answer was
characteristic.</p>
<p>“I know I am right,” said my Island friend,
“because that is the way I pronounce it!”</p>
<p>Walking along the principal streets of Cannes to-day, you
might imagine yourself (except for the climate) at Cowes or
Brighton, so British are the shops and the crowd that passes
them. Every restaurant advertises “afternoon
tea” and Bass’s ale, and every other sign bears a
London name. This little matter of tea is particularly
characteristic of the way the English have imposed a taste of
their own on a rebellious nation. Nothing is further from
the French taste than tea-drinking, and yet a Parisian lady will
now invite you gravely to “five o’clocker” with
her, although I can remember when that beverage was abhorred by
the French as a medicine; if you had asked a Frenchman to take a
cup of tea, he would have answered:</p>
<p>“Why? I am not ill!”</p>
<p>Even Paris (that supreme and undisputed arbiter of taste) has
submitted to English influence; tailor-made dresses and
low-heeled shoes have become as “good form” in France
as in London. The last two Presidents of the French
Republic have taken the oath of office dressed in frock-coats
instead of the dress clothes to which French officials formerly
clung as to the sacraments.</p>
<p>The municipalities of the little Southern cities were quick to
seize their golden opportunity, and everything was done to detain
the rich English wandering down towards Italy. Millions
were spent in transforming their cramped, dirty, little
towns. Wide boulevards bordered with palm and eucalyptus
spread their sunny lines in all directions, being baptized
<i>Promenade des Anglais</i> or <i>Boulevard Victoria</i>, in
artful flattery. The narrow mountain roads were widened,
casinos and theatres built and carnival <i>fêtes</i>
organized, the cities offering “cups” for yacht- or
horse-races, and giving grounds for tennis and golf clubs.
Clever Southern people! The money returned to them a
hundredfold, and they lived to see their wild coast become the
chosen residence of the wealthiest aristocracy in Europe, and the
rocky hillsides blossom into terrace above terrace of villa
gardens, where palm and rose and geranium vie with the olive and
the mimosa to shade the white villas from the sun. To-day,
no little town on the coast is without its English chapel,
British club, tennis ground, and golf links. On a fair day
at Monte Carlo, Nice, or Cannes, the prevailing conversation is
in English, and the handsome, well-dressed sons of Albion lounge
along beside their astonishing womankind as thoroughly at home as
on Bond Street.</p>
<p>Those wonderful English women are the source of unending
marvel and amusement to the French. They can never
understand them, and small wonder, for with the exception of the
small “set” that surrounds the Prince of Wales, who
are dressed in the Parisian fashion, all English women seem to be
overwhelmed with regret at not being born men, and to have spent
their time and ingenuity since, in trying to make up for
nature’s mistake. Every masculine garment is twisted
by them to fit the female figure; their conversation, like that
of their brothers, is about horses and dogs; their hats and
gloves are the same as the men’s; and when with their fine,
large feet in stout shoes they start off, with that particular
swinging gait that makes the skirt seem superfluous, for a stroll
of twenty miles or so, Englishwomen do seem to the uninitiated to
have succeeded in their ambition of obliterating the difference
between the sexes.</p>
<p>It is of an evening, however, when concealment is no longer
possible, that the native taste bursts forth, the Anglo-Saxon
standing declared in all her plainness. Strong is the
contrast here, where they are placed side by side with all that
Europe holds of elegant, and well-dressed Frenchwomen, whether of
the “world” or the “half-world,” are
invariably marvels of fitness and freshness, the simplest
materials being converted by their skilful touch into toilettes,
so artfully adapted to the wearer’s figure and complexion,
as to raise such “creations” to the level of a fine
art.</p>
<p>An artist feels, he must fix on canvas that particular
combination of colors or that wonderful line of bust and
hip. It is with a shudder that he turns to the British
matron, for she has probably, for this occasion, draped herself
in an “art material,”—principally
“Liberty” silks of dirty greens and blues
(æsthetic shades!). He is tempted to cry out in his
disgust: “Oh, Liberty! Liberty! How many crimes
are committed in thy name!” It is one of the oddest
things in the world that the English should have elected to live
so much in France, for there are probably nowhere two peoples so
diametrically opposed on every point, or who so persistently and
wilfully misunderstand each other, as the English and the
French.</p>
<p>It has been my fate to live a good deal on both sides of the
Channel, and nothing is more amusing than to hear the absurdities
that are gravely asserted by each of their neighbors. To a
Briton, a Frenchman will always be “either tiger or
monkey” according to Voltaire; while to the French mind
English gravity is only hypocrisy to cover every vice.
Nothing pleases him so much as a great scandal in England; he
will gleefully bring you a paper containing the account of it, to
prove how true is his opinion. It is quite useless to
explain to the British mind, as I have often tried to do, that
all Frenchmen do not pass their lives drinking absinthe on the
boulevards; and as Englishmen seem to leave their morals in a
valise at Dover when off for a visit to Paris, to be picked up on
their return, it is time lost to try to make a Gaul understand
what good husbands and fathers the sons of Albion are.</p>
<p>These two great nations seem to stand in the relation to each
other that Rome and Greece held. The English are the
conquerors of the world, and its great colonizers; with a vast
capital in which wealth and misery jostle each other on the
streets; a hideous conglomeration of buildings and monuments,
without form and void, very much as old Rome must have been under
the Cæsars, enormous buildings without taste, and enormous
wealth. The French have inherited the temperament of the
Greeks. The drama, painting, and sculpture are the
preoccupation of the people. The yearly exhibitions are,
for a month before they open, the unique subject of conversation
in drawing-room or club. The state protects the artist and
buys his work. Their <i>conservatoires</i> form the
singers, and their schools the painters and architects of Europe
and America.</p>
<p>The English copy them in their big way, just as the Romans
copied the masterpieces of Greek art, while they despised the
authors. It is rare that a play succeeds in Paris which is
not instantly translated and produced in London, often with the
adapter’s name printed on the programme in place of the
author’s, the Frenchman, who only wrote it, being
ignored. Just as the Greeks faded away and disappeared
before their Roman conquerors, it is to be feared that in our day
this people of a finer clay will succumb. The
“defects of their qualities” will be their
ruin. They will stop at home, occupied with literature and
art, perfecting their dainty cities; while their tougher
neighbors are dominating the globe, imposing their language and
customs on the conquered peoples or the earth. One feels
this on the Riviera. It reminds you of the cuckoo who, once
installed in a robin’s nest, that seems to him convenient
and warmly located in the sunshine, ends by kicking out all the
young robins.</p>
<h2>No. 23—A Common Weakness</h2>
<p>Governments may change and all the conditions of life be
modified, but certain ambitions and needs of man remain
immutable. Climates, customs, centuries, have in no way
diminished the craving for consideration, the desire to be
somebody, to bear some mark indicating to the world that one is
not as other men.</p>
<p>For centuries titles supplied the want. This
satisfaction has been denied to us, so ambitious souls are
obliged to seek other means to feed their vanity.</p>
<p>Even before we were born into the world of nations, an attempt
was made amongst the aristocratically minded court surrounding
our chief magistrate, to form a society that should (without the
name) be the beginning of a class apart.</p>
<p>The order of the Cincinnati was to have been the nucleus of an
American nobility. The tendencies of this society are
revealed by the fact that primogeniture was its fundamental
law. Nothing could have been more opposed to the spirit of
the age, nor more at variance with the declaration of our
independence, than the insertion of such a clause. This
fact was discovered by the far-seeing eye of Washington, and the
society was suppressed in the hope (shared by almost all
contemporaries) that with new forms of government the nature of
man would undergo a transformation and rise above such puerile
ambitions.</p>
<p>Time has shown the fallacy of these dreams. All that has
been accomplished is the displacement of the objective point; the
desire, the mania for a handle to one’s name is as
prevalent as ever. Leave the centres of civilization and
wander in the small towns and villages of our country.
Every other man you meet is introduced as the Colonel or the
Judge, and you will do well not to inquire too closely into the
matter, nor to ask to see the title-deeds to such
distinctions. On the other hand, to omit his prefix in
addressing one of these local magnates, would be to offend him
deeply. The women-folk were quick to borrow a little of
this distinction, and in Washington to-day one is gravely
presented to Mrs. Senator Smith or Mrs. Colonel Jones. The
climax being reached by one aspiring female who styles herself on
her visiting cards, “Mrs. Acting-Assistant-Paymaster
Robinson.” If by any chance it should occur to any
one to ask her motive in sporting such an unwieldy handle, she
would say that she did it “because one can’t be going
about explaining that one is not just ordinary Mrs. Robinson or
Thompson, like the thousand others in town.” A woman
who cannot find an excuse for assuming such a prefix will
sometime have recourse to another stratagem, to particularize an
ordinary surname. She remembers that her husband, who ever
since he was born has been known to everybody as Jim, is the
proud possessor of the middle name Ivanhoe, or Pericles (probably
the result of a romantic mother’s reading); so one fine day
the young couple bloom out as Mr. and Mrs. J. Pericles Sparks, to
the amusement of their friends, their own satisfaction, and the
hopeless confusion of their tradespeople.</p>
<p>Not long ago a Westerner, who went abroad with a travelling
show, was received with enthusiasm in England because it was
thought “The Honorable” which preceded his name on
his cards implied that although an American he was somehow the
son of an earl. As a matter of fact he owed this title to
having sat, many years before in the Senate of a far-western
State. He will cling to that “Honorable” and
print it on his cards while life lasts. I was told the
other day of an American carpet warrior who appeared at court
function abroad decorated with every college badge, and football
medal in his possession, to which he added at the last moment a
brass trunk check, to complete the brilliancy of the
effect. This latter decoration attracted the attention of
the Heir Apparent, who inquired the meaning of the mystic
“416” upon it. This would have been a
“facer” to any but a true son of Uncle Sam.
Nothing daunted, however, our “General” replied
“That, Sir, is the number of pitched battles I have
won.”</p>
<p>I have my doubts as to the absolute veracity of this
tale. But that the son of one of our generals, appeared not
long ago at a public reception abroad, wearing his father’s
medals and decorations, is said to be true. Decorations on
the Continent are official badges of distinction conferred and
recognized by the different governments. An American who
wears, out of his own country, an army or college badge which has
no official existence, properly speaking, being recognized by no
government, but which is made intentionally to look as much as
possible like the “Légion d’Honneur,” is
deliberately imposing on the ignorance of foreigners, and is but
little less of a pretentious idiot than the owners of the trunk
check and the borrowed decorations.</p>
<p>There seems no end to the ways a little ambitious game can be
played. One device much in favor is for the wife to attach
her own family name to that of her husband by means of a
hyphen. By this arrangement she does not entirely lose her
individuality; as a result we have a splendid assortment of
hybrid names, such as Van Cortland-Smith and Beekman-Brown.
Be they never so incongruous these double-barrelled cognomens
serve their purpose and raise ambitious mortals above the level
of other Smiths and Browns. Finding that this arrangement
works well in their own case, it is passed on to the next
generation. There are no more Toms and Bills in these
aspiring days. The little boys are all Cadwalladers or
Carrolls. Their school-fellows, however, work sad havoc
with these high-sounding titles and quickly abbreviate them into
humble “Cad” or “Rol.”</p>
<p>It is surprising to notice what a number of middle-aged
gentlemen have blossomed out of late with decorations in their
button-holes according to the foreign fashion. On inquiry I
have discovered that these ornaments designate members of the
G.A.R., the Loyal Legion, or some local Post, for the rosettes
differ in form and color. When these gentlemen travel
abroad, to reduce their waists or improve their minds, the
effects on the hotel waiters and cabmen must be immense.
They will be charged three times the ordinary tariff instead of
only the double which is the stranger’s usual fate at the
hands of simple-minded foreigners. The satisfaction must be
cheap, however, at that price.</p>
<p>Even our wise men and sages do not seem to have escaped the
contagion. One sees professors and clergymen (who ought to
set a better example) trailing half a dozen letters after their
names, initials which to the initiated doubtless mean something,
but which are also intended to fill the souls of the ignorant
with envy. I can recall but one case of a foreign
decoration being refused by a compatriot. He was a genius
and we all know that geniuses are crazy. This gentleman had
done something particularly gratifying to an Eastern potentate,
who in return offered him one of his second-best orders. It
was at once refused. When urged on him a second time our
countryman lost his temper and answered, “If you want to
give it to somebody, present it to my valet. He is most
anxious to be decorated.” And it was done!</p>
<p>It does not require a deeply meditative mind to discover the
motives of ambitious struggles. The first and strongest
illusion of the human mind is to believe that we are different
from our fellows, and our natural impulse is to try and impress
this belief upon others.</p>
<p>Pride of birth is but one of the manifestations of the
universal weakness—invariably taking stronger and stronger
hold of the people, who from the modest dimension of their
income, or other untoward circumstances, can find no outward and
visible form with which to dazzle the world. You will find
that a desire to shine is the secret of most of the tips and
presents that are given while travelling or visiting, for they
can hardly be attributed to pure spontaneous generosity.</p>
<p>How many people does one meet who talk of their poor and
unsuccessful relatives while omitting to mention rich and
powerful connections? We are told that far from blaming
such a tendency we are to admire it. That it is proper
pride to put one’s best foot forward and keep an offending
member well out of sight, that the man who wears a rosette in the
button-hole of his coat and has half the alphabet galloping after
his name, is an honor to his family.</p>
<p>Far be it from me to deride this weakness in others, for in my
heart I am persuaded that if I lived in China, nothing would
please me more than to have my cap adorned with a coral button,
while if fate had cast my life in the pleasant places of central
Africa, a ring in my nose would doubtless have filled my soul
with joy. The fact that I share this weakness does not,
however, prevent my laughing at such folly in others.</p>
<h2>No. 24—Changing Paris</h2>
<p>Paris is beginning to show signs of the coming
“Exhibition of 1900,” and is in many ways going
through a curious stage of transformation, socially as well as
materially. The <i>Palais De l’Industrie</i>,
familiar to all visitors here, as the home of the <i>Salons</i>,
the Horse Shows, and a thousand gay <i>fêtes</i> and
merry-makings, is being torn down to make way for the new avenue
leading, with the bridge Alexander III., from the Champs
Elysées to the Esplanade des Invalides. This
thoroughfare with the gilded dome of Napoleon’s tomb to
close its perspective is intended to be the feature of the coming
“show.”</p>
<p>Curious irony of things in this world! The <i>Palais De
l’Industrie</i> was intended to be the one permanent
building of the exhibition of 1854. An old
“Journal” I often read tells how the writer saw the
long line of gilded coaches (borrowed from Versailles for the
occasion), eight horses apiece, led by footmen—horses and
men blazing in embroidered trappings—leave the Tuileries
and proceed at a walk to the great gateway of the now
disappearing palace. Victoria and Albert who were on an
official visit to the Emperor were the first to alight; then
Eugénie in the radiance of her perfect beauty stepped from
the coach (sad omen!) that fifty years before had taken Josephine
in tears to Malmaison.</p>
<p>It may interest some ladies to know how an Empress was dressed
on that spring morning forty-four years ago. She wore
rose-colored silk with an over-dress (I think that is what it is
called) of black lace flounces, immense hoops, and a black
<i>Chantilly</i> lace shawl. Her hair, a brilliant golden
auburn, was dressed low on the temples, covering the ears, and
hung down her back in a gold net almost to her waist; at the
extreme back of her head was placed a black and rose-colored
bonnet; open “flowing” sleeves showed her bare arms,
one-buttoned, straw-colored gloves, and ruby bracelets; she
carried a tiny rose-colored parasol not a foot in diameter.</p>
<p>How England’s great sovereign was dressed the writer of
the journal does not so well remember, for in those days
Eugénie was the cynosure of all eyes, and people rarely
looked at anything else when they could get a glimpse of her
lovely face.</p>
<p>It appears, however, that the Queen sported an India shawl,
hoops, and a green bonnet, which was not particularly becoming to
her red face. She and Napoleon entered the building first;
the Empress (who was in delicate health) was carried in an open
chair, with Prince Albert walking at her side, a marvellously
handsome couple to follow the two dowdy little sovereigns who
preceded them. The writer had by bribery succeeded in
getting places in an <i>entresol</i> window under the archway,
and was greatly impressed to see those four great ones laughing
and joking together over Eugénie’s trouble in
getting her hoops into the narrow chair!</p>
<p>What changes have come to that laughing group! Two are
dead, one dying in exile and disgrace; and it would be hard to
find in the two rheumatic old ladies whom one sees pottering
about the Riviera now, any trace of those smiling wives. In
France it is as if a tidal wave had swept over Napoleon’s
court. Only the old palace stood severely back from the
Champs Elysées, as if guarding its souvenirs. The
pick of the mason has brought down the proud gateway which its
imperial builder fondly imagined was to last for ages. The
Tuileries preceded it into oblivion. The Alpha and Omega of
that gorgeous pageant of the fifties vanished like a mirage!</p>
<p>It is not here alone one finds Paris changing. A railway
is being brought along the quais with its dépôt at
the Invalides. Another is to find its terminus opposite the
Louvre, where the picturesque ruin of the Cour des Comptes has
stood half-hidden by the trees since 1870. A line of
electric cars crosses the Rond Point, in spite of the opposition
of all the neighborhood, anxious to keep, at least that fine
perspective free from such desecration. And, last but not
least, there is every prospect of an immense system of elevated
railways being inaugurated in connection with the coming
world’s fair. The direction of this kind of
improvement is entirely in the hands of the Municipal Council,
and that body has become (here in Paris) extremely radical, not
to say communistic; and takes pleasure in annoying the
inhabitants of the richer quarters of the city, under pretext of
improvements and facilities of circulation.</p>
<p>It is easy to see how strong the feeling is against the
aristocratic class. Nor is it much to be wondered at!
The aristocracy seem to try to make themselves unpopular.
They detest the republic, which has shorn them of their splendor,
and do everything in their power (socially and diplomatically
their power is still great) to interfere with and frustrate the
plans of the government. Only last year they seized an
opportunity at the funerals of the Duchesse
d’Alençon and the Duc d’Aumale to make a
royalist manifestation of the most pronounced character.
The young Duchesse d’Orleans was publicly spoken of and
treated as the “Queen of France;” at the private
receptions given during her stay in Paris the same ceremonial was
observed as if she had been really on the throne. The young
Duke, her husband, was not present, being in exile as a
pretender, but armorial bearings of the “reigning
family,” as their followers insist on calling them, were
hung around the Madeleine and on the funeral-cars of both the
illustrious dead.</p>
<p>The government is singularly lenient to the aristocrats.
If a poor man cries “Long live the Commune!” in the
street, he is arrested. The police, however, stood quietly
by and let a group of the old nobility shout “Long live the
Queen!” as the train containing the young Duchesse
d’Orleans moved out of the station. The secret of
this leniency toward the “pretenders” to the throne,
is that they are very little feared. If it amuses a set of
wealthy people to play at holding a court, the strong government
of the republic cares not one jot. The Orleans family have
never been popular in France, and the young pretender’s
marriage to an Austrian Archduchess last year has not improved
matters.</p>
<p>It is the fashion in the conservative Faubourg St. Germain, to
ridicule the President, his wife and their bourgeois
surroundings, as forty years ago the parents of these aristocrats
affected to despise the imperial <i>parvenus</i>. The
swells amused themselves during the official visit of the Emperor
and Empress of Russia last year (which was gall and wormwood to
them) by exaggerating and repeating all the small slips in
etiquette that the President, an intelligent, but simple-mannered
gentleman, was supposed to have made during the sojourn of his
imperial guests.</p>
<p>Both M. and Mme. Faure are extremely popular with the people,
and are heartily cheered whenever they are seen in public.
The President is the despair of the lovers of routine and
etiquette, walking in and out of his Palais of the Elysée,
like a private individual, and breaking all rules and
regulations. He is fond of riding, and jogs off to the Bois
of a morning with no escort, and often of an evening drops in at
the theatres in a casual way. The other night at the
Français he suddenly appeared in the <i>foyer des
artistes</i> (a beautiful greenroom, hung with historical
portraits of great actors and actresses, one of the prides of the
theatre) in this informal manner. Mme. Bartet, who happened
to be there alone at the time, was so impressed at such an
unprecedented event that she fainted, and the President had to
run for water and help revive her. The next day he sent the
great actress a beautiful vase of Sèvres china, full of
water, in souvenir.</p>
<p>To a lover of old things and old ways any changes in the Paris
he has known and loved are a sad trial. Henri Drumont, in
his delightful <i>Mon Vieux Paris</i>, deplores this modern mania
for reform which has done such good work in the new quarters but
should, he thinks, respect the historic streets and shady
squares.</p>
<p>One naturally feels that the sights familiar in youth lose by
being transformed and doubts the necessity of such
improvements.</p>
<p>The Rome of my childhood is no more! Half of Cairo was
ruthlessly transformed in sixty-five into a hideous caricature of
modern Paris. Milan has been remodelled, each city losing
in charm as it gained in convenience.</p>
<p>So far Paris has held her own. The spirit of the city
has not been lost, as in the other capitals. The fair
metropolis of France, in spite of many transformations, still
holds her admirers with a dominating sway. She pours out
for them a strong elixir that once tasted takes the flavor out of
existence in other cities and makes her adorers, when in exile,
thirst for another draught of the subtle nectar.</p>
<h2>No. 25—Contentment</h2>
<p>As the result of certain ideal standards adopted among us when
this country was still in long clothes, a time when the equality
of man was the new “fad” of many nations, and the
prizes of life first came within the reach of those fortunate or
unscrupulous enough to seize them, it became the fashion (and has
remained so down to our day) to teach every little boy attending
a village school to look upon himself as a possible future
President, and to assume that every girl was preparing herself
for the position of first lady in the land. This is very
well in theory, and practice has shown that, as Napoleon said,
“Every private may carry a marshal’s baton in his
knapsack.” Alongside of the good such incentive may
produce, it is only fair, however, to consider also how much harm
may lie in this way of presenting life to a child’s
mind.</p>
<p>As a first result of such tall talking we find in America,
more than in any other country, an inclination among all classes
to leave the surroundings where they were born and bend their
energies to struggling out of the position in life occupied by
their parents. There are not wanting theorists who hold
that this is a quality in a nation, and that it leads to great
results. A proposition open to discussion.</p>
<p>It is doubtless satisfactory to designate first magistrates
who have raised themselves from humble beginnings to that proud
position, and there are times when it is proper to recall such
achievements to the rising generation. But as youth is
proverbially over-confident it might also be well to point out,
without danger of discouraging our sanguine youngsters, that for
one who has succeeded, about ten million confident American
youths, full of ambition and lofty aims, have been obliged to
content themselves with being honest men in humble positions,
even as their fathers before them. A sad humiliation, I
grant you, for a self-respecting citizen, to end life just where
his father did; often the case, nevertheless, in this hard world,
where so many fine qualities go unappreciated,—no societies
having as yet been formed to seek out “mute, inglorious
Miltons,” and ask to crown them!</p>
<p>To descend abruptly from the sublime, to very near the
ridiculous,—I had need last summer of a boy to go with a
lady on a trap and help about the stable. So I applied to a
friend’s coachman, a hard-working Englishman, who was
delighted to get the place for his nephew—an American-born
boy—the child of a sister, in great need. As the
boy’s clothes were hardly presentable, a simple livery was
made for him; from that moment he pined, and finally announced he
was going to leave. In answer to my surprised inquiries, I
discovered that a friend of his from the same tenement-house in
which he had lived in New York had appeared in the village, and
sooner than be seen in livery by his play-fellow he preferred
abandoning his good place, the chance of being of aid to his
mother, and learning an honorable way to earn his living.
Remonstrances were in vain; to the wrath of his uncle, he
departed. The boy had, at his school, heard so much about
everybody being born equal and every American being a gentleman
by right of inheritance, that he had taken himself seriously, and
despised a position his uncle was proud to hold, preferring
elegant leisure in his native tenement-house to the humiliation
of a livery.</p>
<p>When at college I had rooms in a neat cottage owned by an
American family. The father was a butcher, as were his
sons. The only daughter was exceedingly pretty. The
hard-worked mother conceived high hopes for this favorite
child. She was sent to a boarding-school, from which she
returned entirely unsettled for life, having learned little
except to be ashamed of her parents and to play on the
piano. One of these instruments of torture was bought, and
a room fitted up as a parlor for the daughter’s use.
As the family were fairly well-to-do, she was allowed to dress
out of all keeping with her parents’ position, and, egged
on by her mother, tried her best to marry a rich
“student.” Failing in this, she became
discontented, unhappy, and finally there was a scandal, this poor
victim of a false ambition going to swell the vast tide of a
city’s vice. With a sensible education, based on the
idea that her father’s trade was honorable and that her
mission in life was to aid her mother in the daily work until she
might marry and go to her husband, prepared by experience to cook
his dinner and keep his house clean, and finally bring up her
children to be honest men and women, this girl would have found a
happy future waiting for her, and have been of some good in her
humble way.</p>
<p>It is useless to multiply illustrations. One has but to
look about him in this unsettled country of ours. The other
day in front of my door the perennial ditch was being dug for
some gas-pipe or other. Two of the gentlemen who had
consented to do this labor wore frock-coats and top hats—or
what had once been those articles of attire—instead of
comfortable and appropriate overalls. Why? Because,
like the stable-boy, to have worn any distinctive dress would
have been in their minds to stamp themselves as belonging to an
inferior class, and so interfered with their chances of
representing this country later at the Court of St. James, or
presiding over the Senate,—positions (to judge by their
criticism of the present incumbents) they feel no doubt as to
their ability to fill.</p>
<p>The same spirit pervades every trade. The youth who
shaves me is not a barber; he has only accepted this position
until he has time to do something better. The waiter who
brings me my chop at a down-town restaurant would resign his
place if he were requested to shave his flowing mustache, and is
secretly studying law. I lose all patience with my
countrymen as I think over it! Surely we are not such a
race of snobs as not to recognize that a good barber is more to
be respected than a poor lawyer; that, as a French saying goes,
<i>Il n’y a pas de sot métier</i>. It is only
the fool who is ashamed of his trade.</p>
<p>But enough of preaching. I had intended—when I
took up my pen to-day—to write on quite another form of
this modern folly, this eternal struggle upward into circles for
which the struggler is fitted neither by his birth nor his
education; the above was to have been but a preface to the matter
I had in mind, viz., “social climbers,” those
scourges of modern society, the people whom no rebuffs will
discourage and no cold shoulder chill, whose efforts have done so
much to make our countrymen a byword abroad.</p>
<p>As many philosophers teach that trouble only is positive,
happiness being merely relative; that in any case trouble is
pretty equally distributed among the different conditions of
mankind; that, excepting the destitute and physically afflicted,
all God’s creatures have a share of joy in their lives,
would it not be more logical, as well as more conducive to the
general good, if a little more were done to make the young
contented with their lot in life, instead of constantly
suggesting to a race already prone to be unsettled, that nothing
short of the top is worthy of an American citizen?</p>
<h2>No. 26—The Climber</h2>
<p>That form of misplaced ambition, which is the subject of the
preceding chapter, can only be regarded seriously when it occurs
among simple and sincere people, who, however derided, honestly
believe that they are doing their duty to themselves and their
families when they move heaven and earth to rise a few steps in
the world. The moment we find ambition taking a purely
social form, it becomes ridiculous. The aim is so paltry in
comparison with the effort, and so out of proportion with the
energy-exerted to attain it, that one can only laugh and
wonder! Unfortunately, signs of this puerile spirit
(peculiar to the last quarter of the nineteenth century) can be
seen on all hands and in almost every society.</p>
<p>That any man or woman should make it the unique aim and object
of existence to get into a certain “set,” not from
any hope of profit or benefit, nor from the belief that it is
composed of brilliant and amusing people, but simply because it
passes for being exclusive and difficult of access, does at first
seem incredible.</p>
<p>That humble young painters or singers should long to know
personally the great lights of their professions, and should
strive to be accepted among them is easily understood, since the
aspirants can reap but benefit, present and future, from such
companionship. That a rising politician should deem it
all-important to be on friendly terms with the
“bosses” is not astonishing, for those magnates have
it in their power to make or mar his fortune. But in a
<i>milieu</i> as fluctuating as any social circle must
necessarily be, shading off on all sides and changing as
constantly as light on water, the end can never be considered as
achieved or the goal attained.</p>
<p>Neither does any particular result accompany success, more
substantial than the moral one which lies in
self-congratulation. That, however, is enough for a climber
if she is bitten with the “ascending” madness.
(I say “she,” because this form of ambition is more
frequent among women, although by no means unknown to the sterner
sex.)</p>
<p>It amuses me vastly to sit in my corner and watch one of these
<i>fin-de-siècle</i> diplomatists work out her little
problem. She generally comes plunging into our city from
outside, hot for conquest, making acquaintances right and left,
indiscriminately; thus falling an easy prey to the wolves that
prowl around the edges of society, waiting for just such lambs to
devour. Her first entertainments are worth attending for
she has ingeniously contrived to get together all the people she
should have left out, and failed to attract the social lights and
powers of the moment. If she be a quick-witted lady, she
soon sees the error of her ways and begins a process of
“weeding”—as difficult as it is unwise, each
rejected “weed” instantly becoming an enemy for life,
not to speak of the risk she, in her ignorance, runs of mistaking
for “detrimentals” the <i>fines fleurs</i> of the
worldly parterre. Ah! the way of the Climber is hard; she
now begins to see that her path is not strewn with flowers.</p>
<p>One tactful person of this kind, whose gradual
“unfolding” was watched with much amusement and
wonder by her acquaintances, avoided all these errors by going in
early for a “dear friend.” Having, after mature
reflection, chosen her guide among the most exclusive of the
young matrons, she proceeded quietly to pay her court <i>en
règle</i>. Flattering little notes, boxes of candy,
and bunches of flowers were among the forms her devotion
took. As a natural result, these two ladies became
inseparable, and the most hermetically sealed doors opened before
the new arrival.</p>
<p>A talent for music or acting is another aid. A few years
ago an entire family were floated into the desired haven on the
waves of the sister’s voice, and one young couple achieved
success by the husband’s aptitude for games and
sports. In the latter case it was the man of the family who
did the work, dragging his wife up after him. A polo pony
is hardly one’s idea of a battle-horse, but in this case it
bore its rider on to success.</p>
<p>Once climbers have succeeded in installing themselves in the
stronghold of their ambitions, they become more exclusive than
their new friends ever dreamed of being, and it tries one’s
self-restraint to hear these new arrivals deploring “the
levelling tendencies of the age,” or wondering “how
nice people can be beginning to call on those horrid
So-and-Sos. Their father sold shoes, you know.”
This ultra-exclusiveness is not to be wondered at. The only
attraction the circle they have just entered has for the climbers
is its exclusiveness, and they do not intend that it shall lose
its market value in their hands. Like Baudelaire, they
believe that “it is only the small number saved that makes
the charm of Paradise.” Having spent hard cash in
this investment, they have every intention of getting their
money’s worth.</p>
<p>In order to give outsiders a vivid impression of the footing
on which they stand with the great of the world, all the women
they have just met become Nellys and Jennys, and all the men
Dicks and Freds—behind their backs, <i>bien
entendu</i>—for Mrs. “Newcome” has not yet
reached that point of intimacy which warrants using such
abbreviations directly to the owners.</p>
<p>Another amiable weakness common to the climber is that of
knowing everybody. No name can be mentioned at home or
abroad but Parvenu happens to be on the most intimate terms with
the owner, and when he is conversing, great names drop out of his
mouth as plentifully as did the pearls from the pretty lips of
the girl in the fairy story. All the world knows how such a
gentleman, being asked on his return from the East if he had seen
“the Dardanelles,” answered, “Oh, dear,
yes! I dined with them several times!” thus settling
satisfactorily his standing in the Orient!</p>
<p>Climbing, like every other habit, soon takes possession of the
whole nature. To abstain from it is torture.
Napoleon, we are told, found it impossible to rest contented on
his successes, but was impelled onward by a force stronger than
his volition. In some such spirit the ambitious souls here
referred to, after “the Conquest of America” and the
discovery that the fruit of their struggles was not worth very
much, victory having brought the inevitable satiety in its wake,
sail away in search of new fields of adventure. They have
long ago left behind the friends and acquaintances of their
childhood. Relations they apparently have none, which
accounts for the curious phenomenon that a parvenu is never in
mourning. As no friendships bind them to their new circle,
the ties are easily loosened. Why should they care for one
city more than for another, unless it offer more of the sport
they love? This continent has become tame, since there is
no longer any struggle, while over the sea vast hunting grounds
and game worthy of their powder, form an irresistible
temptation—old and exclusive societies to be besieged, and
contests to be waged compared to which their American experiences
are but light skirmishes. As the polo pony is supposed to
pant for the fray, so the hearts of social conquerors warm within
them at the prospect of more brilliant victories.</p>
<p>The pleasure of following them on their hunting parties abroad
will have to be deferred, so vast is the subject, so full of
thrilling adventure and, alas! also of humiliating defeat.</p>
<h2>No. 27—The Last of the Dandies</h2>
<p>So completely has the dandy disappeared from among us, that
even the word has an old-time look (as if it had strayed out of
some half-forgotten novel or “keepsake”), raising in
our minds the picture of a slender, clean-shaven youth, in very
tight unmentionables strapped under his feet, a dark green
frock-coat with a collar up to the ears and a stock whose folds
cover his chest, butter-colored gloves, and a hat—oh! a hat
that would collect a crowd in two minutes in any
neighborhood! A gold-headed stick, and a quizzing glass,
with a black ribbon an inch wide, complete the toilet. In
such a rig did the swells of the last generation stroll down Pall
Mall or drive their tilburys in the Bois.</p>
<p>The recent illness of the Prince de Sagan has made a strange
and sad impression in many circles in Paris, for he has always
been a favorite, and is the last surviving type of a now extinct
species. He is the last Dandy! No understudy will be
found to fill his rôle—the dude and the swell are
whole generations away from the dandy, of which they are but
feeble reflections—the comedy will have to be continued
now, without its leading gentleman. With his head of
silvery hair, his eye-glass and his wonderful waistcoats, he held
the first place in the “high life” of the French
capital.</p>
<p>No first night or ball was complete without him, Sagan.
The very mention of his name in their articles must have kept the
wolf from the door of needy reporters. No
<i>débutante</i>, social or theatrical, felt sure of her
success until it had received the hall-mark of his
approval. When he assisted at a dress rehearsal, the actors
and the managers paid him more attention than Sarcey or Sardou,
for he was known to be the real arbiter of their fate. His
word was law, the world bowed before it as before the will of an
autocrat. Mature matrons received his dictates with the
same reverence that the Old Guard evinced for Napoleon’s
orders. Had he not led them on to victory in their
youth?</p>
<p>On the boulevards or at a race-course, he was the one person
always known by sight and pointed out. “There goes
Sagan!” He had become an institution. One does
not know exactly how or why he achieved the position, which made
him the most followed, flattered, and copied man of his
day. It certainly was unique!</p>
<p>The Prince of Sagan is descended from Maurice de Saxe (the
natural son of the King of Saxony and Aurora of
Kœnigsmark), who in his day shone brilliantly at the French
court and was so madly loved by Adrienne Lecouvreur. From
his great ancestor, Sagan inherited the title of Grand Duke Of
Courland (the estates have been absorbed into a neighboring
empire). Nevertheless, he is still an R.H., and when
crowned heads visit Paris they dine with him and receive him on a
footing of equality. He married a great fortune, and the
daughter of the banker Selliere. Their house on the
Esplanade des Invalides has been for years the centre of
aristocratic life in Paris; not the most exclusive circle, but
certainly the gayest of this gay capital, and from the days of
Louis Philippe he has given the keynote to the fast set.</p>
<p>Oddly enough, he has always been a great favorite with the
lower classes (a popularity shared by all the famous dandies of
history). The people appear to find in them the
personification of all aspirations toward the elegant and the
ideal. Alcibiades, Buckingham, the Duc de Richelieu, Lord
Seymour, Comte d’Orsay, Brummel, Grammont-Caderousse,
shared this favor, and have remained legendary characters, to
whom their disdain for everything vulgar, their worship of their
own persons, and many costly follies gave an ephemeral
empire. Their power was the more arbitrary and despotic in
that it was only nominal and undefined, allowing them to rule
over the fashions, the tastes, and the pastimes of their
contemporaries with undivided sway, making them envied, obeyed,
loved, but rarely overthrown.</p>
<p>It has been asserted by some writers that dandies are
necessary and useful to a nation (Thackeray admired them and
pointed out that they have a most difficult and delicate
rôle to play, hence their rarity), and that these
butterflies, as one finds them in the novels of that day, the de
Marsys, the Pelhams, the Maxime de Trailles, are indispensable to
the perfection of society. It is a great misfortune to a
country to have no dandies, those supreme virtuosos of taste and
distinction. Germany, which glories in Mozart and Kant,
Goethe and Humboldt, the country of deep thinkers and brave
soldiers, never had a great dandy, and so has remained behind
England or France in all that constitutes the graceful side of
life, the refinements of social intercourse, and the art of
living. France will perceive too late, after he has
disappeared, the loss she has sustained when this Prince, Grand
Seigneur, has ceased to embellish by his presence her
race-courses and “first nights.” A reputation
like his cannot be improvised in a moment, and he has no
pupils.</p>
<p>Never did the aristocracy of a country stand in greater need
of such a representation, than in these days of tramcars and
“fixed-price” restaurants. An entire
“art” dies with him. It has been whispered that
he has not entirely justified his reputation, that the accounts
of his exploits as a <i>haut viveur</i> have gained in the
telling. Nevertheless he dominated an epoch, rising above
the tumultuous and levelling society of his day, a tardy Don
Quixote, of the knighthood of pleasures, <i>fêtes</i>,
loves and prodigalities, which are no longer of our time.
His great name, his grand manner, his elderly graces, his serene
carelessness, made him a being by himself. No one will
succeed this master of departed elegances. If he does not
recover from his attack, if the paralysis does not leave that
poor brain, worn out with doing nothing, we can honestly say that
he is the last of his kind.</p>
<p>An original and independent thinker has asserted that
civilizations, societies, empires, and republics go down to
posterity typified for the admiration of mankind, each under the
form of some hero. Emerson would have given a place in his
Pantheon to Sagan. For it is he who sustained the
traditions and became the type of that distinguished and
frivolous society, which judged that serious things were of no
importance, enthusiasm a waste of time, literature a bore; that
nothing was interesting and worthy of occupying their attention
except the elegant distractions that helped to pass their
days-and nights! He had the merit (?) in these days of the
practical and the commonplace, of preserving in his gracious
person all the charming uselessness of a courtier in a country
where there was no longer a court.</p>
<p>What a strange sight it would be if this departing dandy
could, before he leaves for ever the theatre of so many triumphs,
take his place at some street corner, and review the shades of
the companions his long life had thrown him with, the endless
procession of departed belles and beaux, who, in their youth,
had, under his rule, helped to dictate the fashions and lead the
sports of a world.</p>
<h2>No. 28—A Nation on the Wing</h2>
<p>On being taken the other day through a large and costly
residence, with the thoroughness that only the owner of a new
house has the cruelty to inflict on his victims, not allowing
them to pass a closet or an electric bell without having its
particular use and convenience explained, forcing them to look up
coal-slides, and down air-shafts and to visit every secret place,
from the cellar to the fire-escape, I noticed that a peculiar
arrangement of the rooms repeated itself on each floor, and
several times on a floor. I remarked it to my host.</p>
<p>“You observe it,” he said, with a blush of pride,
“it is my wife’s idea! The truth is, my
daughters are of a marrying age, and my sons starting out for
themselves; this house will soon be much too big for two old
people to live in alone. We have planned it so that at any
time it can be changed into an apartment house at a nominal
expense. It is even wired and plumbed with that end in
view!”</p>
<p>This answer positively took my breath away. I looked at
my host in amazement. It was hard to believe that a man
past middle age, who after years of hardest toil could afford to
put half a million into a house for himself and his children, and
store it with beautiful things, would have the courage to look so
far into the future as to see all his work undone, his home
turned to another use and himself and his wife afloat in the
world without a roof over their wealthy old heads.</p>
<p>Surely this was the Spirit of the Age in its purest
expression, the more strikingly so that he seemed to feel pride
rather than anything else in his ingenious combination.</p>
<p>He liked the city he had built in well enough now, but nothing
proved to him that he would like it later. He and his wife
had lived in twenty cities since they began their brave fight
with Fortune, far away in a little Eastern town. They had
since changed their abode with each ascending rung of the ladder
of success, and beyond a faded daguerreotype or two of their
children and a few modest pieces of jewelry, stored away in
cotton, it is doubtful if they owned a single object belonging to
their early life.</p>
<p>Another case occurs to me. Near the village where I pass
my summers, there lived an elderly, childless couple on a
splendid estate combining everything a fastidious taste could
demand. One fine morning this place was sold, the important
library divided between the village and their native city, the
furniture sold or given away,—everything went; at the end
the things no one wanted were made into a bon-fire and
burned.</p>
<p>A neighbor asking why all this was being done was told by the
lady, “We were tired of it all and have decided to be
‘Bohemians’ for the rest of our lives.”
This couple are now wandering about Europe and half a dozen
trunks contain their belongings.</p>
<p>These are, of course, extreme cases and must be taken for what
they are worth; nevertheless they are straws showing which way
the wind blows, signs of the times that he who runs may
read. I do not run, but I often saunter up our principal
avenue, and always find myself wondering what will be the future
of the splendid residences that grace that thoroughfare as it
nears the Park; the ascending tide of trade is already circling
round them and each year sees one or more crumble away and
disappear.</p>
<p>The finer buildings may remain, turned into clubs or
restaurants, but the greater part of the newer ones are so
ill-adapted to any other use than that for which they are built
that their future seems obscure.</p>
<p>That fashion will flit away from its present haunts there can
be little doubt; the city below the Park is sure to be given up
to business, and even the fine frontage on that green space will
sooner or later be occupied by hotels, if not stores; and he who
builds with any belief in the permanency of his surroundings must
indeed be of a hopeful disposition.</p>
<p>A good lady occupying a delightful corner on this same avenue,
opposite a one-story florist’s shop, said:</p>
<p>“I shall remain here until they build across the way;
then I suppose I shall have to move.”</p>
<p>So after all the man who is contented to live in a future
apartment house, may not be so very far wrong.</p>
<p>A case of the opposite kind is that of a great millionaire,
who, dying, left his house and its collections to his eldest son
and his grandson after him, on the condition that they should
continue to live in it.</p>
<p>Here was an attempt to keep together a home with its memories
and associations. What has been the result? The
street that was a charming centre for residences twenty years ago
has become a “slum;” the unfortunate heirs find
themselves with a house on their hands that they cannot live in
and are forbidden to rent or sell. As a final result the
will must in all probability be broken and the matter ended.</p>
<p>Of course the reason for a great deal of this is the
phenomenal growth of our larger cities. Hundreds of
families who would gladly remain in their old homes are fairly
pushed out of them by the growth of business.</p>
<p>Everything has its limits and a time must come when our cities
will cease to expand or when centres will be formed as in London
or Paris, where generations may succeed each other in the same
homes. So far, I see no indications of any such
crystallization in this our big city; we seem to be condemned
like the “Wandering Jew” or poor little
“Joe” to be perpetually “moving on.”</p>
<p>At a dinner of young people not long ago a Frenchman visiting
our country, expressed his surprise on hearing a girl speak of
“not remembering the house she was born in.”
Piqued by his manner the young lady answered:</p>
<p>“We are twenty-four at this table. I do not
believe there is one person here living in the house in which he
or she was born.” This assertion raised a murmur of
dissent around the table; on a census being taken it proved,
however, to be true.</p>
<p>How can one expect, under circumstances like these, to find
any great respect among young people for home life or the
conservative side of existence? They are born as it were on
the wing, and on the wing will they live.</p>
<p>The conditions of life in this country, although contributing
largely to such a state of affairs, must not be held, however,
entirely responsible. Underlying our civilization and
culture, there is still strong in us a wild nomadic strain
inherited from a thousand generations of wandering ancestors,
which breaks out so soon as man is freed from the restraint
incumbent on bread-winning for his family. The moment there
is wealth or even a modest income insured, comes the inclination
to cut loose from the dull routine of business and duty,
returning instinctively to the migratory habits of primitive
man.</p>
<p>We are not the only nation that has given itself up to
globe-trotting; it is strong in the English, in spite of their
conservative education, and it is surprising to see the number of
formerly stay-at-home French and Germans one meets wandering in
foreign lands.</p>
<p>In 1855, a Londoner advertised the plan he had conceived of
taking some people over to visit the International Exhibition in
Paris. For a fixed sum paid in advance he offered to
provide everything and act as courier to the party, and succeeded
with the greatest difficulty in getting together ten
people. From this modest beginning has grown the vast
undertaking that to-day covers the globe with tourists, from the
frozen seas where they “do” the midnight sun, to the
deserts three thousand miles up the Nile.</p>
<p>As I was returning a couple of years ago <i>via</i> Vienna
from Constantinople, the train was filled with a party of our
compatriots conducted by an agency of this kind—simple
people of small means who, twenty years ago, would as soon have
thought of leaving their homes for a trip in the East as they
would of starting off in balloons en route for the inter-stellar
spaces.</p>
<p>I doubted at the time as to the amount of information and
appreciation they brought to bear on their travels, so I took
occasion to draw one of the thin, unsmiling women into
conversation, asking her where they intended stopping next.</p>
<p>“At Buda-Pesth,” she answered. I said in
some amusement:</p>
<p>“But that was Buda-Pesth we visited so carefully
yesterday.”</p>
<p>“Oh, was it,” she replied, without any visible
change on her face, “I thought we had not got there
yet.” Apparently it was enough for her to be
travelling; the rest was of little importance. Later in the
day, when asked if she had visited a certain old city in Germany,
she told me she had but would never go there again: “They
gave us such poor coffee at the hotel.” Again later
in speaking to her husband, who seemed a trifle vague as to
whether he had seen Nuremberg or not, she said:</p>
<p>“Why, you remember it very well; it was there you bought
those nice overshoes!”</p>
<p>All of which left me with some doubts in my mind as to the
cultivating influences of foreign travel on their minds.</p>
<p>You cannot change a leopard’s spots, neither can you
alter the nature of a race, and one of the strongest
characteristics of the Anglo-Saxon, is the nomadic
instinct. How often one hears people say:</p>
<p>“I am not going to sit at home and take care of my
furniture. I want to see something of the world before I am
too old.” Lately, a sprightly maiden of uncertain
years, just returned from a long trip abroad, was asked if she
intended now to settle down.</p>
<p>“Settle down, indeed! I’m a butterfly and I
never expect to settle down.”</p>
<p>There is certainly food here for reflection. Why should
we be more inclined to wander than our neighbors? Perhaps
it is in a measure due to our nervous, restless temperament,
which is itself the result of our climate; but whatever the cause
is, inability to remain long in one place is having a most
unfortunate influence on our social life. When everyone is
on the move or longing to be, it becomes difficult to form any
but the most superficial ties; strong friendships become
impossible, the most intimate family relations are loosened.</p>
<p>If one were of a speculative frame of mind and chose to take
as the basis for a calculation the increase in tourists between
1855, when the ten pioneers started for Paris, and the number
“personally conducted” over land and sea to-day, and
then glance forward at what the future will be if this ratio of
increase is maintained the result would be something too awful
for words. For if ten have become a million in forty years,
what will be the total in 1955? Nothing less than entire
nations given over to sight-seeing, passing their lives and
incomes in rushing aimlessly about.</p>
<p>If the facilities of communication increase as they
undoubtedly will with the demand, the prospect becomes nearer the
idea of a “Walpurgis Night” than anything else.
For the earth and the sea will be covered and the air filled with
every form of whirling, flying, plunging device to get men
quickly from one place to another.</p>
<p>Every human being on the globe will be flying South for the
cold months and North for the hot season.</p>
<p>As personally conducted tours have been so satisfactory,
agencies will be started to lead us through all the stages of
existence. Parents will subscribe on the birth of their
children to have them personally conducted through life and
everything explained as it is done at present in the galleries
abroad; food, lodging and reading matter, husbands and wives will
be provided by contract, to be taken back and changed if
unsatisfactory, as the big stores do with their goods.
Delightful prospect! Homes will become superfluous, parents
and children will only meet when their “tours” happen
to cross each other. Our great-grandchildren will float
through life freed from every responsibility and more perfectly
independent than even that delightful dreamer, Bellamy, ventured
to predict.</p>
<h2>No. 29—Husks</h2>
<p>Among the Protestants driven from France by that astute and
liberal-minded sovereign Louis XIV., were a colony of weavers,
who as all the world knows, settled at Spitalfields in England,
where their descendants weave silk to this day.</p>
<p>On their arrival in Great Britain, before the looms could be
set up and a market found for their industry, the exiles were
reduced to the last extremity of destitution and hunger.
Looking about them for anything that could be utilized for food,
they discovered that the owners of English slaughter-houses threw
away as worthless, the tails of the cattle they killed.
Like all the poor in France, these wanderers were excellent
cooks, and knew that at home such caudal appendages were highly
valued for the tenderness and flavor of the meat. To the
amazement and disgust of the English villagers the new arrivals
proceeded to collect this “refuse” and carry it home
for food. As the first principle of French culinary art is
the <i>pot-au-feu</i>, the tails were mostly converted into soup,
on which the exiles thrived and feasted.</p>
<p>Their neighbors, envious at seeing the despised French
indulging daily in savory dishes, unknown to English palates, and
tempted like “Jack’s” giant by the smell of
“fresh meat,” began to inquire into the matter, and
slowly realized how, in their ignorance, they had been throwing
away succulent and delicate food. The news of this
discovery gradually spreading through all classes,
“ox-tail” became and has remained the national
English soup.</p>
<p>If this veracious tale could be twisted into a metaphor, it
would serve marvellously to illustrate the position of the entire
Anglo-Saxon race, and especially that of their American
descendants as regards the Latin peoples. For foolish
prodigality and reckless, ignorant extravagance, however, we
leave our English cousins far behind.</p>
<p>Two American hotels come to my mind, as different in their
appearance and management as they are geographically
asunder. Both are types and illustrations of the wilful
waste that has recently excited Mr. Ian Maclaren’s comment,
and the woeful want (of good food) that is the result. At
one, a dreary shingle construction on a treeless island, off our
New England coast, where the ideas of the landlord and his guests
have remained as unchanged and primitive as the island itself, I
found on inquiry that all articles of food coming from the first
table were thrown into the sea; and I have myself seen chickens
hardly touched, rounds of beef, trays of vegetables, and every
variety of cake and dessert tossed to the fish.</p>
<p>While we were having soups so thin and tasteless that they
would have made a French house-wife blush, the ingredients
essential to an excellent “stock” were cast
aside. The boarders were paying five dollars a day and
appeared contented, the place was packed, the landlord coining
money, so it was foolish to expect any improvement.</p>
<p>The other hotel, a vast caravansary in the South, where a
fortune had been lavished in providing every modern convenience
and luxury, was the “fad” of its wealthy owner.
I had many talks with the manager during my stay, and came to
realize that most of the wastefulness I saw around me was not his
fault, but that of the public, to whose taste he was obliged to
cater. At dinner, after receiving your order, the waiter
would disappear for half an hour, and then bring your entire meal
on one tray, the over-cooked meats stranded in lakes of
coagulated gravy, the entrees cold and the ices warm. He
had generally forgotten two or three essentials, but to send back
for them meant to wait another half-hour, as his other clients
were clamoring to be served. So you ate what was before you
in sulky disgust, and got out of the room as quickly as
possible.</p>
<p>After one of these gastronomic races, being hungry, flustered,
and suffering from indigestion, I asked mine host if it had never
occurred to him to serve a <i>table d’hôte</i> dinner
(in courses) as is done abroad, where hundreds of people dine at
the same moment, each dish being offered them in turn accompanied
by its accessories.</p>
<p>“Of course, I have thought of it,” he
answered. “It would be the greatest improvement that
could be introduced into American hotel-keeping. No one
knows better than I do how disastrous the present system is to
all parties. Take as an example of the present way, the
dinner I am going to give you to-morrow, in honor of
Christmas. Glance over this <i>menu</i>. You will see
that it enumerates every costly and delicate article of food
possible to procure and a long list of other dishes, the greater
part of which will not even be called for. As no number of
<i>chefs</i> could possibly oversee the proper preparation of
such a variety of meats and sauces, all will be carelessly
cooked, and as you know by experience, poorly served.</p>
<p>“People who exact useless variety,” he added,
“are sure in some way to be the sufferers; in their anxiety
to try everything, they will get nothing worth eating. Yet
that meal will cost me considerably more than my guests pay for
their twenty-four hours’ board and lodging.”</p>
<p>“Why do it, you ask? Because it is the custom, and
because it will be an advertisement. These bills of fare
will be sown broadcast over the country in letters to friends and
kept as souvenirs. If, instead of all this senseless
superfluity, I were allowed to give a <i>table
d’hôte</i> meal to-morrow, with the <i>chef</i> I
have, I could provide an exquisite dinner, perfect in every
detail, served at little tables as deftly and silently as in a
private house. I could also discharge half of my waiters,
and charge two dollars a day instead of five dollars, and the
hotel would become (what it has never been yet) a paying
investment, so great would he the saving.”</p>
<p>“Only this morning,” he continued, warming to his
subject, “while standing in the dining room, I saw a young
man order and then send away half the dishes on the
<i>menu</i>. A chicken was broiled for him and rejected; a
steak and an omelette fared no better. How much do you
suppose a hotel gains from a guest like that?”</p>
<p>“The reason Americans put up with such poor viands in
hotels is, that home cooking in this country is so rudimentary,
consisting principally of fried dishes, and hot breads. So
little is known about the proper preparation of food that
to-morrow’s dinner will appear to many as the <i>ne plus
ultra</i> of delicate living. One of the charms of a hotel
for people who live poorly at home, lies in this power to order
expensive dishes they rarely or never see on their own
tables.”</p>
<p>“To be served with a quantity of food that he has but
little desire to eat is one of an American citizen’s
dearest privileges, and a right he will most unwillingly
relinquish. He may know as well as you and I do, that what
he calls for will not be worth eating; that is of secondary
importance, he has it before him, and is contented.”</p>
<p>“The hotel that attempted limiting the liberty of its
guests to the extent of serving them a <i>table
d’hôte</i> dinner, would be emptied in a
week.”</p>
<p>“A crowning incongruity, as most people are delighted to
dine with friends, or at public functions, where the meal is
invariably served <i>à la russe</i> (another name for a
<i>table d’hôte</i>), and on these occasions are only
too glad to have their <i>menu</i> chosen for them. The
present way, however, is a remnant of ‘old times’ and
the average American, with all his love of change and novelty, is
very conservative when it comes to his table.”</p>
<p>What this manager did not confide to me, but what I discovered
later for myself, was that to facilitate the service, and avoid
confusion in the kitchens, it had become the custom at all the
large and most of the small hotels in this country, to carve the
joints, cut up the game, and portion out vegetables, an hour or
two before meal time. The food, thus arranged, is placed in
vast steam closets, where it simmers gayly for hours, in its own,
and fifty other vapors.</p>
<p>Any one who knows the rudiments of cookery, will recognize
that with this system no viand can have any particular flavor,
the partridges having a taste of their neighbor the roast beef,
which in turn suggests the plum pudding it has been
“chumming” with.</p>
<p>It is not alone in a hotel that we miss the good in grasping
after the better. Small housekeeping is apparently run on
the same lines.</p>
<p>A young Frenchman, who was working in my rooms, told me in
reply to a question regarding prices, that every kind of food was
cheaper here than abroad, but the prejudice against certain
dishes was so strong in this country that many of the best things
in the markets were never called for. Our nation is no
longer in its “teens” and should cease to act like a
foolish boy who has inherited (what appears to him) a limitless
fortune; not for fear of his coming, like his prototype in the
parable, to live on “husks” for he is doing that
already, but lest like the dog of the fable, in grasping after
the shadow of a banquet he miss the simple meal that is within
his reach.</p>
<p>One of the reasons for this deplorable state of affairs lies
in the foolish education our girls receive. They learn so
little housekeeping at home, that when married they are obliged
to begin all over again, unless they prefer, like a majority of
their friends, to let things as go at the will and discretion of
the “lady” below stairs.</p>
<p>At both hotels I have referred to, the families of the men
interested considered it beneath them to know what was taking
place. The “daughter” of the New England house
went semi-weekly to Boston to take violin lessons at ten dollars
each, although she had no intention of becoming a professional,
while the wife wrote poetry and ignored the hotel side of her
life entirely.</p>
<p>The “better half” of the Florida establishment
hired a palace in Rome and entertained ambassadors. Hotels
divided against themselves are apt to be establishments where you
pay for riotous living and are served only with husks.</p>
<p>We have many hard lessons ahead of us, and one of the hardest
will be for our nation to learn humbly from the thrifty emigrants
on our shores, the great art of utilizing the “tails”
that are at this moment being so recklessly thrown away.</p>
<p>As it is, in spite of markets overflowing with every fish,
vegetable, and tempting viand, we continue to be the worst fed,
most meagrely nourished of all the wealthy nations on the face of
the earth. We have a saying (for an excellent reason
unknown on the Continent) that Providence provides us with food
and the devil sends the cooks! It would be truer to say
that the poorer the food resources of a nation, the more
restricted the choice of material, the better the cooks; a small
latitude when providing for the table forcing them to a hundred
clever combinations and mysterious devices to vary the monotony
of their cuisine and tempt a palate, by custom staled.</p>
<p>Our heedless people, with great variety at their disposition,
are unequal to the situation, wasting and discarding the best,
and making absolutely nothing of their advantages.</p>
<p>If we were enjoying our prodigality by living on the fat of
the land, there would be less reason to reproach ourselves, for
every one has a right to live as he pleases. But as it is,
our foolish prodigals are spending their substance, while eating
the husks!</p>
<h2>No. 30—The Faubourg of St. Germain</h2>
<p>There has been too much said and written in the last dozen
years about breaking down the “great wall” behind
which the aristocrats of the famous Faubourg, like the
Celestials, their prototypes, have ensconced themselves.
The Chinese speak of outsiders as “barbarians.”
The French ladies refer to such unfortunates as being
“beyond the pale.” Almost all that has been
written is arrant nonsense; that imaginary barrier exists to-day
on as firm a foundation, and is guarded by sentinels as vigilant
as when, forty years ago, Napoleon (third of the name) and his
Spanish spouse mounted to its assault.</p>
<p>Their repulse was a bitter humiliation to the <i>parvenue</i>
Empress, whose resentment took the form (along with many other
curious results) of opening the present Boulevard St. Germain,
its line being intentionally carried through the heart of that
quarter, teeming with historic “Hotels” of the old
aristocracy, where beautiful constructions were mercilessly torn
down to make way for the new avenue. The cajoleries which
Eugénie first tried and the blows that followed were alike
unavailing. Even her worship of Marie Antoinette, between
whom and herself she found imaginary resemblances, failed to warm
the stony hearts of the proud old ladies, to whom it was as gall
and wormwood to see a nobody crowned in the palace of their
kings. Like religious communities, persecution only drew
this old society more firmly together and made them stand by each
other in their distress. When the Bois was remodelled by
Napoleon and the lake with its winding drive laid out, the new
Court drove of an afternoon along this water front. That
was enough for the old swells! They retired to the remote
“Allée of the Acacias,” and solemnly took
their airing away from the bustle of the new world, incidentally
setting a fashion that has held good to this day; the lakeside
being now deserted, and the “Acacias” crowded of an
afternoon, by all that Paris holds of elegant and inelegant.</p>
<p>Where the brilliant Second Empire failed, the Republic had
little chance of success. With each succeeding year the
“Old Faubourg” withdrew more and more into its shell,
going so far, after the fall of Mac Mahon, as to change its
“season” to the spring, so that the balls and
<i>fêtes</i> it gave should not coincide with the
“official” entertainments during the winter.</p>
<p>The next people to have a “shy” at the “Old
Faubourg’s” Gothic battlements were the Jews, who
were victorious in a few light skirmishes and succeeded in
capturing one or two illustrious husbands for their
daughters. The wily Israelites, however, discovered that
titled sons-in-law were expensive articles and often turned out
unsatisfactorily, so they quickly desisted. The English,
the most practical of societies, have always left the Faubourg
alone. It has been reserved for our countrywomen to lay the
most determined siege yet recorded to that untaken
stronghold.</p>
<p>It is a characteristic of the American temperament to be
unable to see a closed door without developing an intense
curiosity to know what is behind; or to read “No Admittance
to the Public” over an entrance without immediately
determining to get inside at any price. So it is easy to
understand the attraction an hermetically sealed society would
have for our fair compatriots. Year after year they have
flung themselves against its closed gateways. Repulsed,
they have retired only to form again for the attack, but are as
far away to-day from planting their flag in that citadel as when
they first began. It does not matter to them what is
inside; there may be (as in this case) only mouldy old halls and
a group of people with antiquated ideas and ways. It is
enough for a certain type of woman to know that she is not wanted
in an exclusive circle, to be ready to die in the attempt to get
there. This point of view reminds one of Mrs. Snob’s
saying about a new arrival at a hotel: “I am sure she must
be ‘somebody’ for she was so rude to me when I spoke
to her;” and her answer to her daughter when the girl said
(on arriving at a watering-place) that she had noticed a very
nice family “who look as if they wanted to know us,
Mamma:”</p>
<p>“Then, my dear,” replied Mamma Snob, “they
certainly are not people we want to meet!”</p>
<p>The men in French society are willing enough to make
acquaintance with foreigners. You may see the youth of the
Faubourg dancing at American balls in Paris, or running over for
occasional visits to this country. But when it comes to
taking their women-kind with them, it is a different
matter. Americans who have known well-born Frenchmen at
school or college are surprised, on meeting them later, to be
asked (cordially enough) to dine <i>en garçon</i> at a
restaurant, although their Parisian friend is married. An
Englishman’s or American’s first word would be on a
like occasion:</p>
<p>“Come and dine with me to-night. I want to
introduce you to my wife.” Such an idea would never
cross a Frenchman’s mind!</p>
<p>One American I know is a striking example of this. He
was born in Paris, went to school and college there, and has
lived in that city all his life. His sister married a
French nobleman. Yet at this moment, in spite of his
wealth, his charming American wife, and many beautiful
entertainments, he has not one warm French friend, or the
<i>entrée</i> on a footing of intimacy to a single Gallic
house.</p>
<p>There is no analogy between the English aristocracy and the
French nobility, except that they are both antiquated
institutions; the English is the more harmful on account of its
legislative power, the French is the more pretentious. The
House of Lords is the most open club in London, the payment of an
entrance-fee in the shape of a check to a party fund being an
all-sufficient sesame. In France, one must be born in the
magic circle. The spirit of the Emigration of 1793 is not
yet extinct. The nobles live in their own world (how
expressive the word is, seeming to exclude all the rest of
mankind), pining after an impossible <i>restauration</i>, alien
to the present day, holding aloof from politics for fear of
coming in touch with the masses, with whom they pride themselves
on having nothing in common.</p>
<p>What leads many people astray on this subject is that there
has formed around this ancient society a circle composed of rich
“outsiders,” who have married into good families; and
of eccentric members of the latter, who from a love of excitement
or for interested motives have broken away from their
traditions. Newly arrived Americans are apt to mistake this
“world” for the real thing. Into this circle it
is not difficult for foreigners who are rich and anxious to see
something of life to gain admission. To be received by the
ladies of this outer circle, seems to our compatriots to be an
achievement, until they learn the real standing of their new
acquaintances.</p>
<p>No gayer houses, however, exist than those of the new
set. At their city or country houses, they entertain
continually, and they are the people one meets toward five
o’clock, on the grounds of the Polo Club, in the Bois, at
<i>fêtes</i> given by the Island Club of Puteaux, attending
the race meetings, or dining at American houses. As far as
amusement and fun go, one might seek much further and fare
worse.</p>
<p>It is very, very rare that foreigners get beyond this
circle. Occasionally there is a marriage between an
American girl and some Frenchman of high rank. In these
cases the girl is, as it were, swallowed up. Her family see
little of her, she rarely appears in general society, and, little
by little, she is lost to her old friends and relations. I
know of several cases of this kind where it is to be doubted if a
dozen Americans outside of the girls’ connections know that
such women exist. The fall in rents and land values has
made the French aristocracy poor; it is only by the greatest
economy (and it never entered into an American mind to conceive
of such economy as is practised among them) that they succeed in
holding on to their historical châteaux or beautiful city
residences; so that pride plays a large part in the isolation in
which they live.</p>
<p>The fact that no titles are recognized officially by the
French government (the most they can obtain being a
“courtesy” recognition) has placed these people in a
singularly false position. An American girl who has married
a Duke is a good deal astonished to find that she is legally only
plain “Madame So and So;” that when her husband does
his military service there is no trace of the high-sounding title
to be found in his official papers. Some years ago, a
colonel was rebuked because he allowed the Duc
d’Alençon to be addressed as
“Monseigneur” by the other officers of his
regiment. This ought to make ambitious papas reflect, when
they treat themselves to titled sons-in-law. They should at
least try and get an article recognized by the law.</p>
<p>Most of what is written here is perfectly well known to
resident Americans in Paris, and has been the cause of gradually
splitting that once harmonious settlement into two perfectly
distinct camps, between which no love is lost. The members
of one, clinging to their countrymen’s creed of having the
best or nothing, have been contented to live in France and know
but few French people, entertaining among themselves and marrying
their daughters to Americans. The members of the other, who
have “gone in” for French society, take what they can
get, and, on the whole, lead very jolly lives. It often
happens (perhaps it is only a coincidence) that ladies who have
not been very successful at home are partial to this circle,
where they easily find guests for their entertainments and the
recognition their souls long for.</p>
<p>What the future of the “Great Faubourg” will be,
it is hard to say. All hope of a possible
<i>restauration</i> appears to be lost. Will the proud
necks that refused to bend to the Orleans dynasty or the two
“empires” bow themselves to the republican
yoke? It would seem as if it must terminate in this way,
for everything in this world must finish. But the end is
not yet; one cannot help feeling sympathy for people who are
trying to live up to their traditions and be true to such
immaterial idols as “honor” and “family”
in this discouragingly material age, when everything goes down
before the Golden Calf. Nor does one wonder that men who
can trace their ancestors back to the Crusades should hesitate to
ally themselves with the last rich <i>parvenu</i> who has raised
himself from the gutter, or resent the ardor with which the
latest importation of American ambition tries to chum with them
and push its way into their life.</p>
<h2>No. 31—Men’s Manners</h2>
<p>Nothing makes one feel so old as to wake up suddenly, as it
were, and realize that the conditions of life have changed, and
that the standards you knew and accepted in your youth have been
raised or lowered. The young men you meet have somehow
become uncomfortably polite, offering you armchairs in the club,
and listening with a shade of deference to your stories.
They are of another generation; their ways are not your ways, nor
their ambitions those you had in younger days. One is
tempted to look a little closer, to analyze what the change is,
in what this subtle difference consists, which you feel between
your past and their present. You are surprised and a little
angry to discover that, among other things, young men have better
manners than were general among the youths of fifteen years
ago.</p>
<p>Anyone over forty can remember three epochs in men’s
manners. When I was a very young man, there were still
going about in society a number of gentlemen belonging to what
was reverently called the “old school,” who had
evidently taken Sir Charles Grandison as their model, read Lord
Chesterfield’s letters to his son with attention, and been
brought up to commence letters to their fathers, “Honored
Parent,” signing themselves “Your humble servant and
respectful son.” There are a few such old gentlemen
still to be found in the more conservative clubs, where certain
windows are tacitly abandoned to these elegant-mannered
fossils. They are quite harmless unless you happen to find
them in a reminiscent mood, when they are apt to be a little
tiresome; it takes their rusty mental machinery so long to get
working! Washington possesses a particularly fine
collection among the retired army and navy officers and
ex-officials. It is a fact well known that no one drawing a
pension ever dies.</p>
<p>About 1875, a new generation with new manners began to make
its appearance. A number of its members had been educated
at English universities, and came home burning to upset old ways
and teach their elders how to live. They broke away from
the old clubs and started smaller and more exclusive circles
among themselves, principally in the country. This was a
period of bad manners. True to their English model, they
considered it “good form” to be uncivil and to make
no effort towards the general entertainment when in
society. Not to speak more than a word or two during a
dinner party to either of one’s neighbors was the supreme
<i>chic</i>. As a revolt from the twice-told tales of their
elders they held it to be “bad form” to tell a story,
no matter how fresh and amusing it might be. An unfortunate
outsider who ventured to tell one in their club was crushed by
having his tale received in dead silence. When it was
finished one of the party would “ring the bell,” and
the circle order drinks at the expense of the man who had dared
to amuse them. How the professional story-teller must have
shuddered—he whose story never was ripe until it had been
told a couple of hundred times, and who would produce a certain
tale at a certain course as surely as clock-work.</p>
<p>That the story-telling type was a bore, I grant. To be
grabbed on entering your club and obliged to listen to
Smith’s last, or to have the conversation after dinner
monopolized by Jones and his eternal “Speaking of coffee, I
remember once,” etc. added an additional hardship to
existence. But the opposite pose, which became the fashion
among the reformers, was hardly less wearisome. To sit
among a group of perfectly mute men, with an occasional word
dropping into the silence like a stone in a well, was surely
little better.</p>
<p>A girl told me she had once sat through an entire cotillion
with a youth whose only remark during the evening had been (after
absorbed contemplation of the articles in question), “How
do you like my socks?”</p>
<p>On another occasion my neighbor at table said to me:</p>
<p>“I think the man on my right has gone to sleep. He
is sitting with his eyes closed!” She was
mistaken. He was practising his newly acquired
“repose of manner,” and living up to the standard of
his set.</p>
<p>The model young man of that period had another offensive
habit, his pose of never seeing you, which got on the nerves of
his elders to a considerable extent. If he came into a
drawing-room where you were sitting with a lady, he would shake
hands with her and begin a conversation, ignoring your existence,
although you may have been his guest at dinner the night before,
or he yours. This was also a tenet of his creed borrowed
from trans-Atlantic cousins, who, by the bye, during the time I
speak of, found America, and especially our Eastern states, a
happy hunting-ground,—all the clubs, country houses, and
society generally opening their doors to the “sesame”
of English nationality. It took our innocent youths a good
ten years to discover that there was no reciprocity in the
arrangement; it was only in the next epoch (the list of the three
referred to) that our men recovered their self-respect, and
assumed towards foreigners in general the attitude of polite
indifference which is their manner to us when abroad.
Nothing could have been more provincial and narrow than the ideas
of our “smart” men at that time. They
congregated in little cliques, huddling together in public, and
cracking personal old jokes; but were speechless with <i>mauvaise
honte</i> if thrown among foreigners or into other circles of
society. All this is not to be wondered at considering the
amount of their general education and reading. One charming
little custom then greatly in vogue among our <i>jeunesse
dorée</i> was to remain at a ball, after the other guests
had retired, tipsy, and then break anything that came to
hand. It was so amusing to throw china, glass, or valuable
plants, out of the windows, to strip to the waist and box or bait
the tired waiters.</p>
<p>I look at the boys growing up around me with sincere
admiration, they are so superior to their predecessors in
breeding, in civility, in deference to older people, and in a
thousand other little ways that mark high-bred men. The
stray Englishman, of no particular standing at home no longer
finds our men eager to entertain him, to put their best
“hunter” at his disposition, to board, lodge, and
feed him indefinitely, or make him honorary member of all their
clubs. It is a constant source of pleasure to me to watch
this younger generation, so plainly do I see in them the
influence of their mothers—women I knew as girls, and who
were so far ahead of their brothers and husbands in refinement
and culture. To have seen these girls marry and bring up
their sons so well has been a satisfaction and a compensation for
many disillusions. Woman’s influence will always
remain the strongest lever that can be brought to bear in raising
the tone of a family; it is impossible not to see about these
young men a reflection of what we found so charming in their
mothers. One despairs at times of humanity, seeing
vulgarity and snobbishness riding triumphantly upward; but where
the tone of the younger generation is as high as I have lately
found it, there is still much hope for the future.</p>
<h2>No. 32—An Ideal Hostess</h2>
<p>The saying that “One-half of the world ignores how the
other half lives” received for me an additional
confirmation this last week, when I had the good fortune to meet
again an old friend, now for some years retired from the stage,
where she had by her charm and beauty, as well as by her singing,
held all the Parisian world at her pretty feet.</p>
<p>Our meeting was followed on her part by an invitation to take
luncheon with her the next day, “to meet a few friends, and
talk over old times.” So half-past twelve (the
invariable hour for the “second breakfast,” in
France) the following day found me entering a shady drawing-room,
where a few people were sitting in the cool half-light that
strayed across from a canvas-covered balcony furnished with
plants and low chairs. Beyond one caught a glimpse of
perhaps the gayest picture that the bright city of Paris
offers,—the sweep of the Boulevard as it turns to the Rue
Royale, the flower market, gay with a thousand colors in the
summer sunshine, while above all the color and movement, rose,
cool and gray, the splendid colonnade of the Madeleine. The
rattle of carriages, the roll of the heavy omnibuses and the
shrill cries from the street below floated up, softened into a
harmonious murmur that in no way interfered with our
conversation, and is sweeter than the finest music to those who
love their Paris.</p>
<p>Five or six rooms <i>en suite</i> opening on the street, and
as many more on a large court, formed the apartment, where
everything betrayed the <i>artiste</i> and the singer. The
walls, hung with silk or tapestry, held a collection of original
drawings and paintings, a fortune in themselves; the dozen
portraits of our hostess in favorite rôles were by men
great in the art world; a couple of pianos covered with well-worn
music and numberless photographs signed with names that would
have made an autograph-fiend’s mouth water.</p>
<p>After a gracious, cooing welcome, more whispered than spoken,
I was presented to the guests I did not know. Before this
ceremony was well over, two maids in black, with white caps,
opened a door into the dining-room and announced luncheon.
As this is written on the theme that “people know too
little how their neighbors live,” I give the
<i>menu</i>. It may amuse my readers and serve, perhaps, as
a little object lesson to those at home who imagine that quantity
and not quality is of importance.</p>
<p>Our gracious hostess had earned a fortune in her profession
(and I am told that two <i>chefs</i> preside over her simple
meals); so it was not a spirit of economy which dictated this
simplicity. At first, <i>hors d’œuvres</i> were
served,—all sorts of tempting little things,—very
thin slices of ham, spiced sausages, olives and caviar, and
eaten—not merely passed and refused. Then came the
one hot dish of the meal. “One!” I think
I hear my reader exclaim. Yes, my friend, but that one was
a marvel in its way. Chicken <i>a l’espagnole</i>,
boiled, and buried in rice and tomatoes cooked whole—a dish
to be dreamed of and remembered in one’s prayers and
thanksgivings! After at least two helpings each to this
<i>chef-d’œuvre</i>, cold larded fillet and a meat
<i>pâté</i> were served with the salad. Then a
bit of cheese, a beaten cream of chocolate, fruit, and
bon-bons. For a drink we had the white wine from which
champagne is made (by a chemical process and the addition of many
injurious ingredients); in other words, a pure <i>brut</i>
champagne with just a suggestion of sparkle at the bottom of your
glass. All the party then migrated together into the
smoking-room for cigarettes, coffee, and a tiny glass of
<i>liqueur</i>.</p>
<p>These details have been given at length, not only because the
meal seemed to me, while I was eating it, to be worthy of whole
columns of print, but because one of the besetting sins of our
dear land is to serve a profusion of food no one wants and which
the hostess would never have dreamed of ordering had she been
alone.</p>
<p>Nothing is more wearisome than to sit at table and see course
after course, good, bad, and indifferent, served, after you have
eaten what you want. And nothing is more vulgar than to
serve them; for either a guest refuses a great deal of the food
and appears uncivil, or he must eat, and regret it
afterwards. If we ask people to a meal, it should be to
such as we eat, as a general thing, ourselves, and such as they
would have at home. Otherwise it becomes ostentation and
vulgarity. Why should one be expelled to eat more than
usual because a friend has been nice enough to ask one to take
one’s dinner with him, instead of eating it alone? It
is the being among friends that tempts, not the food; the fact at
skilful waiters have been able to serve a dozen varieties of
fish, flesh, and fowl during the time you were at table has added
little to any one’s pleasure. On the contrary!
Half the time one eats from pure absence of mind, a number of
most injurious mixtures and so prepares an awful to-morrow and
the foundation of many complicated diseases.</p>
<p>I see Smith and Jones daily at the club, where we dine
cheerfully together on soup, a cut of the joint, a dessert, and
drink a pint of claret. But if either Mrs. Smith or Mrs.
Jones asks me to dinner, we have eight courses and half as many
wines, and Smith will say quite gravely to me, “Try this
’75 ‘Perrier Jouët’,” as if he were
in the habit of drinking it daily. It makes me smile, for
he would as soon think of ordering a bottle of that wine at the
club as he would think of ordering a flask of nectar.</p>
<p>But to return to our “mutton.” As we had
none of us eaten too much (and so become digesting machines), we
were cheerful and sprightly. A little music followed and an
author repeated some of his poetry. I noticed that during
the hour before we broke up our hostess contrived to have a
little talk with each of her guests, which she made quite
personal, appearing for the moment as though the rest of the
world did not exist for her, than which there is no more subtle
flattery, and which is the act of a well-bred and appreciative
woman. Guests cannot be treated <i>en masse</i> any more
than food; to ask a man to your house is not enough. He
should be made to feel, if you wish him to go away with a
pleasant remembrance of the entertainment, that his presence has
in some way added to it and been a personal pleasure to his
host.</p>
<p>A good soul that all New York knew a few years ago, whose
entertainments were as though the street had been turned into a
<i>salon</i> for the moment, used to go about among her guests
saying, “There have been one hundred and seventy-five
people here this Thursday, ten more than last week,” with
such a satisfied smile, that you felt that she had little left to
wish for, and found yourself wondering just which number you
represented in her mind. When you entered she must have
murmured a numeral to herself as she shook your hand.</p>
<p>There is more than one house in New York where I have grave
doubts if the host and hostess are quite sure of my name when I
dine there; after an abstracted welcome, they rarely put
themselves out to entertain their guests. Black coats and
evening dresses alternate in pleasing perspective down the long
line of their table. Their gold plate is out, and the
<i>chef</i> has been allowed to work his own sweet will, so they
give themselves no further trouble.</p>
<p>Why does not some one suggest to these amphitrions to send
fifteen dollars in prettily monogrammed envelopes to each of
their friends, requesting them to expend it on a dinner.
The compliment would be quite as personal, and then the guests
might make up little parties to suit themselves, which would be
much more satisfactory than going “in” with some one
chosen at hazard from their host’s visiting list, and less
fatiguing to that gentleman and his family.</p>
<h2>No. 33—The Introducer</h2>
<p>We all suffer more or less from the perennial
“freshness” of certain acquaintances—tiresome
people whom a misguided Providence has endowed with over-flowing
vitality and an irrepressible love of their fellowmen, and who,
not content with looking on life as a continual
“spree,” insist on making others happy in spite of
themselves. Their name is legion and their presence
ubiquitous, but they rarely annoy as much as when disguised under
the mask of the “Introducer.” In his clutches
one is helpless. It is impossible to escape from such
philanthropic tyranny. He, in his freshness, imagines that
to present human beings to each other is his mission in this
world and moves through life making these platonic unions,
oblivious, as are other match-makers, of the misery he
creates.</p>
<p>If you are out for a quiet stroll, one of these genial
gentlemen is sure to come bounding up, and without notice or
warning present you to his “friend,”—the
greater part of the time a man he has met only an hour before,
but whom he endows out of the warehouse of his generous
imagination with several talents and all the virtues. In
order to make the situation just one shade more uncomfortable,
this kindly bore proceeds to sing a hymn of praise concerning
both of you to your faces, adding, in order that you may both
feel quite friendly and pleasant:</p>
<p>“I know you two will fancy each other, you are so
alike,”—a phrase neatly calculated to nip any
conversation in the bud. You detest the unoffending
stranger on the spot and would like to kill the bore. Not
to appear an absolute brute you struggle through some commonplace
phrases, discovering the while that your new acquaintance is no
more anxious to know you, than you are to meet him; that he has
not the slightest idea who you are, neither does he desire to
find out. He classes you with the bore, and his one idea,
like your own, is to escape. So that the only result of the
Introducer’s good-natured interference has been to make two
fellow-creatures miserable.</p>
<p>A friend was telling me the other day of the martyrdom he had
suffered from this class. He spoke with much feeling, as he
is the soul of amiability, but somewhat short-sighted and
afflicted with a hopelessly bad memory for faces. For the
last few years, he has been in the habit of spending one or two
of the winter months in Washington, where his friends put him up
at one club or another. Each winter on his first appearance
at one of these clubs, some kindly disposed old fogy is sure to
present him to a circle of the members, and he finds himself
indiscriminately shaking hands with Judges and Colonels. As
little or no conversation follows these introductions to fix the
individuality of the members in his mind, he unconsciously cuts
two-thirds of his newly acquired circle the next afternoon, and
the following winter, after a ten-months’ absence, he
innocently ignores the other third. So hopelessly has he
offended in this way, that last season, on being presented to a
club member, the latter peevishly blurted out:</p>
<p>“This is the fourth time I have been introduced to Mr.
Blank, but he never remembers me,” and glared coldly at
him, laying it all down to my friend’s snobbishness and to
the airs of a New Yorker when away from home. If instead of
being sacrificed to the introducer’s mistaken zeal my poor
friend had been left quietly to himself, he would in good time
have met the people congenial to him and avoided giving offence
to a number of kindly gentlemen.</p>
<p>This introducing mania takes an even more aggressive form in
the hostess, who imagines that she is lacking in hospitality if
any two people in her drawing-room are not made known to each
other. No matter how interested you may be in a chat with a
friend, you will see her bearing down upon you, bringing in tow
the one human being you have carefully avoided for years.
Escape seems impossible, but as a forlorn hope you fling yourself
into conversation with your nearest neighbor, trying by your
absorbed manner to ward off the calamity. In vain!
With a tap on your elbow your smiling hostess introduces you and,
having spoiled your afternoon, flits off in search of other
prey.</p>
<p>The question of introductions is one on which it is impossible
to lay down any fixed rules. There must constantly occur
situations where one’s acts must depend upon a kindly
consideration for other people’s feelings, which after all,
is only another name for tact. Nothing so plainly shows the
breeding of a man or woman as skill in solving problems of this
kind without giving offence.</p>
<p>Foreigners, with their greater knowledge of the world, rarely
fall into the error of indiscriminate introducing, appreciating
what a presentation means and what obligations it entails.
The English fall into exactly the contrary error from ours, and
carry it to absurd lengths. Starting with the assumption
that everybody knows everybody, and being aware of the general
dread of meeting “detrimentals,” they avoid the
difficulty by making no introductions. This may work well
among themselves, but it is trying to a stranger whom they have
been good enough to ask to their tables, to sit out the meal
between two people who ignore his presence and converse across
him; for an Englishman will expire sooner than speak to a person
to whom he has not been introduced.</p>
<p>The French, with the marvellous tact that has for centuries
made them the law-givers on all subjects of etiquette and
breeding, have another way of avoiding useless
introductions. They assume that two people meeting in a
drawing-room belong to the same world and so chat pleasantly with
those around them. On leaving the <i>salon</i> the
acquaintance is supposed to end, and a gentleman who should at
another time or place bow or speak to the lady who had offered
him a cup of tea and talked pleasantly to him over it at a
friend’s reception, would commit a gross breach of
etiquette.</p>
<p>I was once present at a large dinner given in Cologne to the
American Geographical Society. No sooner was I seated than
my two neighbors turned towards me mentioning their names and
waiting for me to do the same. After that the conversation
flowed on as among friends. This custom struck me as
exceedingly well-bred and calculated to make a foreigner feel at
his ease.</p>
<p>Among other curious types, there are people so constituted
that they are unhappy if a single person can be found in the room
to whom they have not been introduced. It does not matter
who the stranger may be or what chance there is of finding him
congenial. They must be presented; nothing else will
content them. If you are chatting with a friend you feel a
pull at your sleeve, and in an audible aside, they ask for an
introduction. The aspirant will then bring up and present
the members of his family who happen to be near. After that
he seems to be at ease, and having absolutely nothing to say will
soon drift off. Our public men suffer terribly from
promiscuous introductions; it is a part of a political career; a
good memory for names and faces and a cordial manner under fire
have often gone a long way in floating a statesman on to
success.</p>
<p>Demand, we are told, creates supply. During a short stay
in a Florida hotel last winter, I noticed a curious little man
who looked like a cross between a waiter and a musician. As
he spoke to me several times and seemed very officious, I asked
who he was. The answer was so grotesque that I could not
believe my ears. I was told that he held the position of
official “introducer,” or master of ceremonies, and
that the guests under his guidance became known to each other,
danced, rode, and married to their own and doubtless to his
satisfaction. The further west one goes the more pronounced
this mania becomes. Everybody is introduced to everybody on
all imaginable occasions. If a man asks you to take a
drink, he presents you to the bar-tender. If he takes you
for a drive, the cab-driver is introduced.
“Boots” makes you acquainted with the chambermaid,
and the hotel proprietor unites you in the bonds of friendship
with the clerk at the desk. Intercourse with one’s
fellows becomes one long debauch of introduction. In this
country where every liberty is respected, it is a curious fact
that we should be denied the most important of all rights, that
of choosing our acquaintances.</p>
<h2>No. 34—A Question and an Answer</h2>
<blockquote><p>DEAR IDLER:</p>
<p>I have been reading your articles in <i>The Evening
Post</i>. They are really most amusing! You do know
such a lot about people and things, that I am tempted to write
and ask you a question on a subject that is puzzling me.
What is it that is necessary to succeed—socially?
There! It is out! Please do not laugh at me.
Such funny people get on and such clever, agreeable ones fail,
that I am all at sea. Now do be nice and answer me, and you
will have a very grateful</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span
class="smcap">Admirer</span>.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The above note, in a rather juvenile feminine hand, and
breathing a faint perfume of <i>violette de Parme</i>, was part
of the morning’s mail that I found lying on my desk a few
days ago, in delightful contrast to the bills and advertisements
which formed the bulk of my correspondence. It would
suppose a stoicism greater than I possess, not to have felt a
thrill of satisfaction in its perusal. There was, then,
some one who read with pleasure what I wrote, and who had been
moved to consult me on a question (evidently to her) of
importance. I instantly decided to do my best for the
edification of my fair correspondent (for no doubt entered my
head that she was both young and fair), the more readily because
that very question had frequently presented itself to my own mind
on observing the very capricious choice of Dame
“Fashion” in the distribution of her favors.</p>
<p>That there are people who succeed brilliantly and move from
success to success, amid an applauding crowd of friends and
admirers, while others, apparently their superiors in every way,
are distanced in the race, is an undeniable fact. You have
but to glance around the circle of your acquaintances and
relations to be convinced of this anomaly. To a reflecting
mind the question immediately presents itself, Why is this?
General society is certainly cultivated enough to appreciate
intelligence and superior endowments. How then does it
happen that the social favorites are so often lacking in the
qualities which at a first glance would seem indispensable to
success?</p>
<p>Before going any further let us stop a moment, and look at the
subject from another side, for it is more serious than appears to
be on the surface. To be loved by those around us, to stand
well in the world, is certainly the most legitimate as well as
the most common of ambitions, as well as the incentive to most of
the industry and perseverance in life. Aside from science,
which is sometimes followed for itself alone, and virtue, which
we are told looks for no other reward, the hope which inspires a
great deal of the persistent efforts we see, is generally that of
raising one’s self and those one loves by one’s
efforts into a sphere higher than where cruel fate had placed
them; that they, too, may take their place in the sunshine and
enjoy the good things of life. This ambition is often
purely disinterested; a life of hardest toil is cheerfully borne,
with the hope (for sole consolation) that dear ones will profit
later by all the work, and live in a circle the patient toiler
never dreams of entering. Surely he is a stern moralist who
would deny this satisfaction to the breadwinner of a family.</p>
<p>There are doubtless many higher motives in life, more elevated
goals toward which struggling humanity should strive. If
you examine the average mind, however, you will be pretty sure to
find that success is the touchstone by which we judge our fellows
and what, in our hearts, we admire the most. That is not to
be wondered at, either, for we have done all we can to implant it
there. From a child’s first opening thought, it is
impressed upon him that the great object of existence is to
succeed. Did a parent ever tell a child to try and stand
last in his class? And yet humility is a virtue we admire
in the abstract. Are any of us willing to step aside and
see our inferiors pass us in the race? That is too much to
ask of poor humanity. Were other and higher standards to be
accepted, the structure of civilization as it exists to-day would
crumble away and the great machine run down.</p>
<p>In returning to my correspondent and her perfectly legitimate
desire to know the road to success, we must realize that to a
large part of the world social success is the only kind they
understand. The great inventors and benefactors of mankind
live too far away on a plane by themselves to be the object of
jealousy to any but a very small circle; on the other hand, in
these days of equality, especially in this country where caste
has never existed, the social world seems to hold out alluring
and tangible gifts to him who can enter its enchanted
portals. Even politics, to judge by the actions of some of
our legislators, of late, would seem to be only a stepping-stone
to its door!</p>
<p>“But my question,” I hear my fair interlocutor
saying. “You are not answering it!”</p>
<p>All in good time, my dear. I am just about to do
so. Did you ever hear of Darwin and his theory of
“selection?” It would be a slight to your
intelligence not to take it for granted that you had. Well,
my observations in the world lead me to believe that we follow
there unconsciously, the same rules that guide the wild beasts in
the forest. Certain individuals are endowed by nature with
temperaments which make them take naturally to a social life and
shine there. In it they find their natural element.
They develop freely just where others shrivel up and
disappear. There is continually going on unseen a
“natural selection,” the discarding of unfit
material, the assimilation of new and congenial elements from
outside, with the logical result of a survival of the
fittest. Aside from this, you will find in “the
world,” as anywhere else, that the person who succeeds is
generally he who has been willing to give the most of his
strength and mind to that one object, and has not allowed the
flowers on the hillside to distract him from his path,
remembering also that genius is often but the “capacity for
taking infinite pains.”</p>
<p>There are people so constituted that they cheerfully give the
efforts of a lifetime to the attainment of a brilliant social
position. No fatigue is too great, and no snubs too bitter
to be willingly undergone in pursuit of the cherished
object. You will never find such an individual, for
instance, wandering in the flowery byways that lead to art or
letters, for that would waste his time. If his family are
too hard to raise, he will abandon the attempt and rise without
them, for he cannot help himself. He is but an atom working
as blindly upward as the plant that pushes its mysterious way
towards the sun. Brains are not necessary. Good looks
are but a trump the more in the “hand.” Manners
may help, but are not essential. The object can be and is
attained daily without all three. Wealth is but the oil
that makes the machinery run more smoothly. The
all-important factor is the desire to succeed, so strong that it
makes any price seem cheap, and that can pay itself by a step
gained, for mortification and weariness and heart-burnings.</p>
<p>There, my dear, is the secret of success! I stop because
I feel myself becoming bitter, and that is a frame of mind to be
carefully avoided, because it interferes with the digestion and
upsets one’s gentle calm! I have tried to answer your
question. The answer resolves itself into these two things;
that it is necessary to be born with qualities which you may not
possess, and calls for sacrifices you would doubtless be
unwilling to make. It remains with you to decide if the
little game is worth the candle. The delightful common
sense I feel quite sure you possess reassures me as to your
answer.</p>
<p>Take gayly such good things as may float your way, and profit
by them while they last. Wander off into all the
cross-roads that tempt you. Stop often to lend a helping
hand to a less fortunate traveller. Rest in the heat of the
day, as your spirit prompts you. Sit down before the sunset
and revel in its beauty and you will find your voyage through
life much more satisfactory to look back to and full of far
sweeter memories than if by sacrificing any of these pleasures
you had attained the greatest of “positions.”</p>
<h2>No. 35—Living on your Friends</h2>
<p>Thackeray devoted a chapter in “Vanity Fair” to
the problem “How to Live Well on Nothing a
Year.” It was neither a very new nor a very ingenious
expedient that “Becky” resorted to when she
discounted her husband’s position and connection to fleece
the tradespeople and cheat an old family servant out of a
year’s rent. The author might more justly have used
his clever phrase in describing “Major
Pendennis’s” agreeable existence. We have made
great progress in this, as in almost every other mode of living,
in the latter half of the Victorian era; intelligent individuals
of either sex, who know the ropes, can now as easily lead the
existence of a multi-millionaire (with as much satisfaction to
themselves and their friends) as though the bank account, with
all its attendant worries, stood in their own names. This
subject is so vast, its ramifications so far-reaching and
complicated, that one hesitates before launching into an analysis
of it. It will be better simply to give a few interesting
examples, and a general rule or two, for the enlightenment and
guidance of ingenious souls.</p>
<p>Human nature changes little; all that our educational and
social training has accomplished is a smoothing of the
surface. One of the most striking proofs of this is, that
here in our primitive country, as soon as accumulation of capital
allowed certain families to live in great luxury, they returned
to the ways of older aristocracies, and, with other wants, felt
the necessity of a court about them, ladies and gentlemen in
waiting, pages and jesters. Nature abhors a vacuum, so a
class of people immediately felt an irresistible impulse to rush
in and fill the void. Our aristocrats were not even obliged
to send abroad to fill these vacancies, as they were for their
footmen and butlers; the native article was quite ready and
willing and, considering the little practice it could have had,
proved wonderfully adapted to the work.</p>
<p>When the mania for building immense country houses and yachts
(the owning of opera boxes goes a little further back) first
attacked this country, the builders imagined that, once
completed, it would be the easiest, as well as the most
delightful task to fill them with the pick of their friends, that
they could get all the talented and agreeable people they wanted
by simply making a sign. To their astonishment, they
discovered that what appeared so simple was a difficult, as well
as a thankless labor. I remember asking a lady who had
owned a “proscenium” at the old Academy, why she had
decided not to take a box in the (then) new opera-house.</p>
<p>“Because, having passed thirty years of my life inviting
people to sit in my box, I intend now to rest.” It is
very much the same thing with yachts. A couple who had
determined to go around the world, in their lately finished boat,
were dumbfounded to find their invitations were not eagerly
accepted. After exhausting the small list of people they
really wanted, they began with others indifferent to them, and
even then filled out their number with difficulty. A
hostess who counts on a series of house parties through the
autumn months, must begin early in the summer if she is to have
the guests she desires.</p>
<p>It is just here that the “professional,” if I may
be allowed to use such an expression, comes to the front.
He is always available. It is indifferent to him if he
starts on a tour around the world or for a winter spree to
Montreal. He is always amusing, good-humored, and can be
counted on at the last moment to fill any vacant place, without
being the least offended at the tardy invitation, for he belongs
to the class who have discovered “how to live well on
nothing a year.” Luxury is as the breath of his
nostrils, but his means allow of little beyond necessities.
The temptation must be great when everything that he appreciates
most (and cannot afford) is urged upon him. We should not
pose as too stern moralists, and throw stones at him; for there
may enter more “best French plate” into the
composition of our own houses than we imagine.</p>
<p>It is here our epoch shows its improvement over earlier and
cruder days. At present no toad-eating is connected with
the acceptance of hospitality, or, if occasionally a small
“batrachian” is offered, it is so well disguised by
an accomplished <i>chef</i>, and served on such exquisite old
Dresden, that it slips down with very little effort. Even
this rarely occurs, unless the guest has allowed himself to
become the inmate of a residence or yacht. Then he takes
his chance with other members of the household, and if the host
or hostess happens to have a bad temper as a set-off to their
good table, it is apt to fare ill with our friend.</p>
<p>So far, I have spoken of this class in the masculine, which is
an error, as the art is successfully practised by the weaker sex,
with this shade of difference. As an unmarried woman is in
less general demand, she is apt to attach herself to one dear
friend, always sure to be a lady in possession of fine country
and city houses and other appurtenances of wealth, often of
inferior social standing; so that there is give and take, the
guest rendering real service to an ambitious hostess. The
feminine aspirant need not be handsome. On the contrary, an
agreeable plainness is much more acceptable, serving as a
foil. But she must be excellent in all games, from golf to
piquet, and willing to play as often and as long as
required. She must also cheerfully go in to dinner with the
blue ribbon bore of the evening, only asked on account of his
pretty wife (by the bye, why is it that Beauty is so often
flanked by the Beast?), and sit between him and the “second
prize” bore. These two worthies would have been the
portion of the hostess fifteen years ago; she would have
considered it her duty to absorb them and prevent her other
guests suffering. <i>Mais nous avons changé tout
cela</i>. The lady of the house now thinks first of amusing
herself, and arranges to sit between two favorites.</p>
<p>Society has become much simpler, and especially less
expensive, for unmarried men than it used to be. Even if a
hostess asks a favor in return for weeks of hospitality, the
sacrifice she requires of a man is rarely greater than a
cotillion with an unattractive débutante whom she is
trying to launch; or the sitting through a particularly dull
opera in order to see her to the carriage, her lord and master
having slipped off early to his club and a quiet game of
pool. Many people who read these lines are old enough to
remember that prehistoric period when unmarried girls went to the
theatre and parties, alone with the men they knew. This
custom still prevails in our irrepressible West. It was an
arrangement by which all the expenses fell on the
man—theatre tickets, carriages if it rained, and often a
bit of supper after. If a youth asked a girl to dance the
cotillion, he was expected to send a bouquet, sure to cost
between twenty and twenty-five dollars. What a blessed
change for the impecunious swell when all this went out of
fashion! New York is his paradise now; in other parts of
the world something is still expected of him. In France it
takes the form of a handsome bag of bon-bons on New Year’s
Day, if he has accepted hospitality during the past year.
While here he need do absolutely nothing (unless he wishes to),
the occasional leaving of a card having been suppressed of late
by our <i>jeunesse dorée</i>, five minutes of their
society in an opera box being estimated (by them) as ample return
for a dinner or a week in a country house.</p>
<p>The truth of it is, there are so few men who “go
out” (it being practically impossible for any one working
at a serious profession to sit up night after night, even if he
desired), and at the same time so many women insist on
entertaining to amuse themselves or better their position, that
the men who go about get spoiled and almost come to consider the
obligation conferred, when they dine out. There is no more
amusing sight than poor paterfamilias sitting in the club between
six and seven <span class="smcap">p.m.</span> pretending to read
the evening paper, but really with his eve on the door; he has
been sent down by his wife to “get a man,” as she is
one short for her dinner this evening. He must be one who
will fit in well with the other guests; hence papa’s
anxious look, and the reason the editorial gets so little of his
attention! Watch him as young “professional”
lounges in. There is just his man—if he only happens
to be disengaged! You will see “Pater” cross
the room and shake hands, then, after a few minutes’
whispered conversation, he will walk down to his coupé
with such a relieved look on his face. Young
“professional,” who is in faultless evening dress,
will ring for a cocktail and take up the discarded evening paper
to pass the time till eight twenty-five.</p>
<p>Eight twenty-five, advisedly, for he will be the last to
arrive, knowing, clever dog, how much <i>éclat</i> it
gives one to have a room full of people asking each other,
“Whom are we waiting for?” when the door opens, and
he is announced. He will stay a moment after the other
guests have gone and receive the most cordial pressures of the
hand from a grateful hostess (if not spoken words of thanks) in
return for eating an exquisitely cooked dinner, seated between
two agreeable women, drinking irreproachable wine, smoking a
cigar, and washing the whole down with a glass of 1830 brandy, or
some priceless historic madeira.</p>
<p>There is probably a moral to be extracted from all this.
But frankly my ethics are so mixed that I fail to see where the
blame lies, and which is the less worthy individual, the
ostentatious axe-grinding host or the interested guest. One
thing, however, I see clearly, viz., that life is very agreeable
to him who starts in with few prejudices, good manners, a large
amount of well-concealed “cheek” and the happy
faculty of taking things as they come.</p>
<h2>No. 36—American Society in Italy</h2>
<p>The phrase at the head of this chapter and other sentences,
such as “American Society in Paris,” or London, are
constantly on the lips of people who should know better. In
reality these societies do not exist. Does my reader pause,
wondering if he can believe his eyes? He has doubtless
heard all his life of these delightful circles, and believes in
them. He may even have dined, <i>en passant</i>, at the
“palace” of some resident compatriot in Rome or
Florence, under the impression that he was within its mystic
limits. Illusion! An effect of mirage, making that
which appears quite tangible and solid when viewed from a
distance dissolve into thin air as one approaches; like the
mirage, cheating the weary traveller with a vision of what he
most longs for.</p>
<p>Forty, even fifty years ago, there lived in Rome a group of
very agreeable people; Story and the two Greenoughs and Crawford,
the sculptor (father of the brilliant novelist of to-day);
Charlotte Cushman (who divided her time between Rome and
Newport), and her friend Miss Stebbins, the sculptress, to whose
hands we owe the bronze fountain on the Mall in our Park; Rogers,
then working at the bronze doors of our capitol, and many other
cultivated and agreeable people. Hawthorne passed a couple
of winters among them, and the tone of that society is reflected
in his “Marble Faun.” He took Story as a model
for his “Kenyon,” and was the first to note the
exotic grace of an American girl in that strange setting.
They formed as transcendental and unworldly a group as ever
gathered about a “tea” table. Great things were
expected of them and their influence, but they disappointed the
world, and, with the exception of Hawthorne, are being fast
forgotten.</p>
<p>Nothing could be simpler than life in the papal capital in
those pleasant days. Money was rare, but living as
delightfully inexpensive. It was about that time, if I do
not mistake, that a list was published in New York of the
citizens worth one hundred thousand dollars; and it was not a
long one! The Roman colony took “tea”
informally with each other, and “received” on stated
evenings in their studios (when mulled claret and cakes were the
only refreshment offered; very bad they were, too), and migrated
in the summer to the mountains near Rome or to Sorrento. In
the winter months their circle was enlarged by a contingent from
home. Among wealthy New Yorkers, it was the fashion in the
early fifties to pass a winter in Rome, when, together with his
other dissipations, paterfamilias would sit to one of the
American sculptors for his bust, which accounts for the horrors
one now runs across in dark corners of country
houses,—ghostly heads in “chin whiskers” and
Roman draperies.</p>
<p>The son of one of these pioneers, more rich than cultivated,
noticed the other day, while visiting a friend of mine, an
exquisite eighteenth-century bust of Madame de Pompadour, the
pride of his hostess’s drawing-room.
“Ah!” said Midas, “are busts the fashion
again? I have one of my father, done in Rome in 1850.
I will bring it down and put it in my parlor.”</p>
<p>The travellers consulted the residents in their purchases of
copies of the old masters, for there were fashions in these
luxuries as in everything else. There was a run at that
time on the “Madonna in the Chair;” and
“Beatrice Cenci” was long prime favorite.
Thousands of the latter leering and winking over her everlasting
shoulder, were solemnly sent home each year. No one ever
dreamed of buying an original painting! The tourists also
developed a taste for large marble statues, “Nydia, the
Blind Girl of Pompeii” (people read Bulwer, Byron and the
Bible then) being in such demand that I knew one block in lower
Fifth Avenue that possessed seven blind Nydias, all life-size, in
white marble,—a form of decoration about as well adapted to
those scanty front parlors as a steam engine or a carriage and
pair would have been. I fear Bulwer’s heroine is at a
discount now, and often wonder as I see those old residences
turning into shops, what has become of the seven white elephants
and all their brothers and sisters that our innocent parents
brought so proudly back from Italy! I have succeeded in
locating two statues evidently imported at that time. They
grace the back steps of a rather shabby villa in the
country,—Demosthenes and Cicero, larger than life, dreary,
funereal memorials of the follies of our fathers.</p>
<p>The simple days we have been speaking of did not, however,
outlast the circle that inaugurated them. About 1867 a few
rich New Yorkers began “trying to know the Italians”
and go about with them. One family, “up to
snuff” in more senses than one, married their daughter to
the scion of a princely house, and immediately a large number of
her compatriots were bitten with the madness of going into
Italian society.</p>
<p>In 1870, Rome became the capital of united Italy. The
court removed there. The “improvements”
began. Whole quarters were remodelled, and the dear old
Rome of other days, the Rome of Hawthorne and Madame de
Staël, was swept away. With this new state of things
came a number of Americo-Italian marriages more or less
successful; and anything like an American society, properly
so-called, disappeared. To-day families of our compatriots
passing the winter months in Rome are either tourists who live in
hotels, and see sights, or go (as far as they can) into Italian
society.</p>
<p>The Queen of Italy, who speaks excellent English, developed a
<i>penchant</i> for Americans, and has attached several who
married Italians to her person in different court capacities;
indeed, the old “Black” society, who have remained
true to the Pope, when they wish to ridicule the new
“White” or royal circle, call it the “American
court!” The feeling is bitter still between the
“Blacks” and “Whites,” and an American
girl who marries into one of these circles must make up her mind
to see nothing of friends or relatives in the opposition
ranks. It is said that an amalgamation is being brought
about, but it is slow work; a generation will have to die out
before much real mingling of the two courts will take
place. As both these circles are poor, very little
entertainment goes on. One sees a little life in the
diplomatic world, and the King and Queen give a ball or two
during the winter, but since the repeated defeats of the Italian
arms in Africa, and the heavy financial difficulties (things
these sovereigns take very seriously to heart), there has not
been much “go” in the court entertainments.</p>
<p>The young set hope great things of the new Princess of Naples,
the bride of the heir-apparent, a lady who is credited with being
full of fun and life; it is fondly imagined that she will set the
ball rolling again. By the bye, her first lady-in-waiting,
the young Duchess del Monte of Naples, was an American girl, and
a very pretty one, too. She enjoyed for some time the
enviable distinction of being the youngest and handsomest duchess
in Europe, until Miss Vanderbilt married Marlborough and took the
record from her. The Prince and Princess of Naples live at
their Neapolitan capital, and will not do much to help things in
Rome. Besides which he is very delicate and passes for not
being any too fond of the world.</p>
<p>What makes things worse is that the great nobles are mostly
“land poor,” and even the richer ones burned their
fingers in the craze for speculation that turned all Rome upside
down in the years following 1870 and Italian unity, when they
naïvely imagined their new capital was to become again after
seventeen centuries the metropolis of the world. Whole
quarters of new houses were run up for a population that failed
to appear; these houses now stand empty and are fast going to
ruin. So that little in the way of entertaining is to be
expected from the bankrupts. They are a genial race, these
Italian nobles, and welcome rich strangers and marry them with
much enthusiasm—just a shade too much, perhaps—the
girl counting for so little and her <i>dot</i> for so much in the
matrimonial scale. It is only necessary to keep open house
to have the pick of the younger ones as your guests. They
will come to entertainments at American houses and bring all
their relations, and dance, and dine, and flirt with great good
humor and persistency; but if there is not a good solid fortune
in the background, in the best of securities, the prettiest
American smiles never tempt them beyond flirtation; the season
over, they disappear up into their mountain villas to wait for a
new importation from the States.</p>
<p>In Rome, as well as in the other Italian cities, there are, of
course, still to be found Americans in some numbers (where on the
Continent will you not find them?), living quietly for study or
economy. But they are not numerous or united enough to form
a society; and are apt to be involved in bitter strife among
themselves.</p>
<p>Why, you ask, should Americans quarrel among themselves?</p>
<p>Some years ago I was passing the summer months on the Rhine at
a tiny German watering-place, principally frequented by English,
who were all living together in great peace and harmony, until
one fatal day, when an Earl appeared. He was a poor Irish
Earl, very simple and unoffending, but he brought war into that
town, heart-burnings, envy, and backbiting. The English
colony at once divided itself into two camps, those who knew the
Earl and those who did not. And peace fled from our little
society. You will find in every foreign capital among the
resident Americans, just such a state of affairs as convulsed
that German spa. The native “swells” have come
to be the apple of discord that divides our good people among
themselves. Those who have been successful in knowing the
foreigners avoid their compatriots and live with their new
friends, while the other group who, from laziness,
disinclination, or principle (?) have remained true to their
American circle, cannot resist calling the others snobs, and
laughing (a bit enviously, perhaps) at their upward
struggles.</p>
<p>It is the same in Florence. The little there was left of
an American society went to pieces on that rock. Our
parents forty years ago seem to me to have been much more
self-respecting and sensible. They knew perfectly well that
there was nothing in common between themselves and the Italian
nobility, and that those good people were not going to put
themselves out to make the acquaintance of a lot of strangers,
mostly of another religion, unless it was to be materially to
their advantage. So they left them quietly alone. I
do not pretend to judge any one’s motives, but confess I
cannot help regarding with suspicion a foreigner who leaves his
own circle to mingle with strangers. It resembles too
closely the amiabilities of the wolf for the lamb, or the sudden
politeness of a school-boy to a little girl who has received a
box of candies.</p>
<h2>No. 37—The Newport of the Past</h2>
<p>Few of the “carriage ladies and gentlemen” who
disport themselves in Newport during the summer months, yachting
and dancing through the short season, then flitting away to fresh
fields and pastures new, realize that their daintily shod feet
have been treading historic ground, or care to cast a thought
back to the past. Oddly enough, to the majority of people
the past is a volume rarely opened. Not that it bores them
to read it, but because they, like children, want some one to
turn over its yellow leaves and point out the pictures to
them. Few of the human motes that dance in the rays of the
afternoon sun as they slant across the little Park, think of the
fable which asserts that a sea-worn band of adventurous men,
centuries before the Cabots or the Genoese discoverer thought of
crossing the Atlantic, had pushed bravely out over untried seas
and landed on this rocky coast. Yet one apparent evidence
of their stay tempts our thoughts back to the times when it is
said to have been built as a bower for a king’s
daughter. Longfellow, in the swinging verse of his
“Skeleton in Armor,” breathing of the sea and the
Norseman’s fatal love, has thrown such a glamour of poetry
around the tower, that one would fain believe all he
relates. The hardy Norsemen, if they ever came here,
succumbed in their struggle with the native tribes, or,
discouraged by death and hardships, sailed away, leaving the
clouds of oblivion to close again darkly around this continent,
and the fog of discussion to circle around the “Old
Mill.”</p>
<p>The little settlement of another race, speaking another
tongue, that centuries later sprang up in the shadow of the
tower, quickly grew into a busy and prosperous city, which, like
New York, its rival, was captured and held by the English.
To walk now through some of its quaint, narrow streets is to step
back into Revolutionary days. Hardly a house has changed
since the time when the red coats of the British officers
brightened the prim perspectives, and turned loyal young heads as
they passed.</p>
<p>At the corner of Spring and Pelham Streets, still stands the
residence of General Prescott, who was carried away prisoner by
his opponents, they having rowed down in whale-boats from
Providence for the attack. Rochambeau, our French ally,
lodged lower down in Mary Street. In the tower of Trinity,
one can read the epitaph of the unfortunate Chevalier de Ternay,
commander of the sea forces, whose body lies near by. Many
years later his relative, the Duc de Noailles, when Minister to
this country, had this simple tablet repaired and made a visit to
the spot.</p>
<p>A long period of prosperity followed the Revolution, during
which Newport grew and flourished. Our pious and
God-fearing “forbears,” having secured personal and
religious liberty, proceeded to inaugurate a most successful and
remunerative trade in rum and slaves. It was a triangular
transaction and yielded a three-fold profit. The simple
population of that day, numbering less than ten thousand souls,
possessed twenty distilleries; finding it a physical
impossibility to drink <i>all</i> the rum, they conceived the
happy thought of sending the surplus across to the coast of
Africa, where it appears to have been much appreciated by the
native chiefs, who eagerly exchanged the pick of their loyal
subjects for that liquid. These poor brutes were taken to
the West Indies and exchanged for sugar, laden with which, the
vessels returned to Newport.</p>
<p>Having introduced the dusky chieftains to the charms of
delirium tremens and their subjects to life-long slavery, one can
almost see these pious deacons proceeding to church to offer up
thanks for the return of their successful vessels. Alas!
even “the best laid schemes of mice and men” come to
an end. The War of 1812, the opening of the Erie Canal and
sundry railways struck a blow at Newport commerce, from which it
never recovered. The city sank into oblivion, and for over
thirty years not a house was built there.</p>
<p>It was not until near 1840 that the Middletons and Izzards and
other wealthy and aristocratic Southern families were tempted to
Newport by the climate and the facilities it offered for bathing,
shooting and boating. A boarding-house or two sufficed for
the modest wants of the new-comers, first among which stood the
Aquidneck, presided over by kind Mrs. Murray. It was not
until some years later, when New York and Boston families began
to appreciate the place, that the first hotels were
built,—the Atlantic on the square facing the old mill, the
Bellevue and Fillmore on Catherine Street, and finally the
original Ocean House, destroyed by fire in 1845 and rebuilt as we
see it to-day. The croakers of the epoch considered it much
too far out of town to be successful, for at its door the open
fields began, a gate there separating the town from the country
across which a straggling, half-made road, closed by innumerable
gates, led along the cliffs and out across what is now the Ocean
Drive. The principal roads at that time led inland; any one
wishing to drive seaward had to descend every two or three
minutes to open a gate. The youth of the day discovered a
source of income in opening and closing these for pennies.</p>
<p>Fashion had decreed that the correct hour for dancing was 11
<span class="smcap">a.m.</span>, and <i>matinées
dansantes</i> were regularly given at the hotels, our
grandmothers appearing in <i>décolleté</i> muslin
frocks adorned with broad sashes, and disporting themselves gayly
until the dinner hour. Low-neck dresses were the rule, not
only for these informal entertainments, but as every-day wear for
young girls,—an old lady only the other day telling me she
had never worn a “high-body” until after her
marriage. Two o’clock found all the beauties and
beaux dining. How incredulously they would have laughed if
any one had prophesied that their grandchildren would prefer
eight forty-five as a dinner hour!</p>
<p>The opening of Bellevue Avenue marked another epoch in the
history of Newport. About that time Governor Lawrence
bought the whole of Ochre Point farm for fourteen thousand
dollars, and Mr. de Rham built on the newly opened road the first
“cottage,” which stands to-day modestly back from the
avenue opposite Perry Street. If houses have souls, as
Hawthorne averred, and can remember and compare, what curious
thoughts must pass through the oaken brain of this simple
construction as it sees its marble neighbors rearing their vast
facades among trees. The trees, too, are an innovation, for
when the de Rham cottage was built and Mrs. Cleveland opened her
new house at the extreme end of Rough Point (the second summer
residence in the place) it is doubtful if a single tree broke the
rocky monotony of the landscape from the Ocean House to
Bateman’s Point.</p>
<p>Governor Lawrence, having sold one acre of his Ochre Point
farm to Mr. Pendleton for the price he himself had paid for the
whole, proceeded to build a stone wall between the two properties
down to the water’s edge. The population of Newport
had been accustomed to take their Sunday airings and moonlight
rambles along “the cliffs,” and viewed this
obstruction of their favorite walk with dismay. So strong
was their feeling that when the wall was completed the young men
of the town repaired there in the night and tore it down.
It was rebuilt, the mortar being mixed with broken glass.
This infuriated the people to such an extent that the whole
populace, in broad daylight, accompanied by the summer visitors,
destroyed the wall and threw the materials into the sea.
Lawrence, bent on maintaining what he considered his rights,
called the law to his aid. It was then discovered that an
immemorial riverain right gave the fishermen and the public
generally, access to the shore for fishing, and also to collect
seaweed,—a right of way that no one could obstruct.</p>
<p>This was the beginning of the long struggle between the
cliff-dwellers and the townspeople; each new property-owner,
disgusted at the idea that all the world can stroll at will
across his well-kept lawns, has in turn tried his hand at
suppressing the now famous “walk.” Not only do
the public claim the liberty to walk there, but also the right to
cross any property to get to the shore. At this moment the
city fathers and the committee of the new buildings at
Bailey’s Beach are wrangling as gayly as in Governor
Lawrence’s day over a bit of wall lately constructed across
the end of Bellevue Avenue. A new expedient has been hit
upon by some of the would-be exclusive owners of the cliffs; they
have lowered the “walk” out of sight, thus insuring
their own privacy and in no way interfering with the rights of
the public.</p>
<p>Among the gentlemen who settled in Newport about Governor
Lawrence’s time was Lord Baltimore (Mr. Calvert, he
preferred to call himself), who remained there until his
death. He was shy of referring to his English peerage, but
would willingly talk of his descent through his mother from Peter
Paul Rubens, from whom had come down to him a château in
Holland and several splendid paintings. The latter hung in
the parlor of the modest little dwelling, where I was taken to
see them and their owner many years ago. My introducer on
this occasion was herself a lady of no ordinary birth, being the
daughter of Stuart, our greatest portrait painter. I have
passed many quiet hours in the quaint studio (the same her father
had used), hearing her prattle—as she loved to do if she
found a sympathetic listener—of her father, of Washington
and his pompous ways, and the many celebrities who had in turn
posed before Stuart’s easel. She had been her
father’s companion and aid, present at the sittings,
preparing his brushes and colors, and painting in backgrounds and
accessories; and would willingly show his palette and explain his
methods and theories of color, his predilection for scrumbling
shadows thinly in black and then painting boldly in with body
color. Her lessons had not profited much to the gentle,
kindly old lady, for the productions of her own brush were far
from resembling her great parent’s work. She,
however, painted cheerfully on to life’s close, surrounded
by her many friends, foremost among whom was Charlotte Cushman,
who also passed the last years of her life in Newport. Miss
Stuart was over eighty when I last saw her, still full of spirit
and vigor, beginning the portrait of a famous beauty of that day,
since the wife and mother of dukes.</p>
<p>Miss Stuart’s death seems to close one of the chapters
in the history of this city, and to break the last connecting
link with its past. The world moves so quickly that the
simple days and modest amusements of our fathers and grandfathers
have already receded into misty remoteness. We look at
their portraits and wonder vaguely at their graceless
costumes. We know they trod these same streets, and laughed
and flirted and married as we are doing to-day, but they seem to
us strangely far away, like inhabitants of another sphere!</p>
<p>It is humiliating to think how soon we, too, shall have become
the ancestors of a new and careless generation; fresh faces will
replace our faded ones, young voices will laugh as they look at
our portraits hanging in dark corners, wondering who we were, and
(criticising the apparel we think so artistic and appropriate)
how we could ever have made such guys of ourselves.</p>
<h2>No. 38—A Conquest of Europe</h2>
<p>The most important event in modern history is the discovery of
Europe by the Americans. Before it, the peoples of the Old
World lived happy and contented in their own countries,
practising the patriarchal virtues handed down to them from
generations of forebears, ignoring alike the vices and benefits
of modern civilization, as understood on this side of the
Atlantic. The simple-minded Europeans remained at home,
satisfied with the rank in life where they had been born, and
innocent of the ways of the new world.</p>
<p>These peoples were, on the whole, not so much to be pitied,
for they had many pleasing crafts and arts unknown to the
invaders, which had enabled them to decorate their capitals with
taste in a rude way; nothing really great like the lofty
buildings and elevated railway structures, executed in American
cities, but interesting as showing what an ingenious race,
deprived of the secrets of modern science, could accomplish.</p>
<p>The more æsthetic of the newcomers even affected to
admire the antiquated places of worship and residences they
visited abroad, pointing out to their compatriots that in many
cases marble, bronze and other old-fashioned materials had been
so cleverly treated as to look almost like the superior cast-iron
employed at home, and that some of the old paintings, preserved
with veneration in the museums, had nearly the brilliancy of
modern chromos. As their authors had, however, neglected to
use a process lending itself to rapid reproduction, they were of
no practical value. In other ways, the continental races,
when discovered, were sadly behind the times. In business,
they ignored the use of “corners,” that backbone of
American trade, and their ideas of advertising were but little in
advance of those known among the ancient Greeks.</p>
<p>The discovery of Europe by the Americans was made about 1850,
at which date the first bands of adventurers crossed the seas in
search of amusement. The reports these pioneers brought
back of the <i>naïveté</i>, politeness, and
gullibility of the natives, and the cheapness of existence in
their cities, caused a general exodus from the western to the
eastern hemisphere. Most of the Americans who had used up
their credit at home and those whose incomes were insufficient
for their wants, immediately migrated to these happy hunting
grounds, where life was inexpensive and credit unlimited.</p>
<p>The first arrivals enjoyed for some twenty years unique
opportunities. They were able to live in splendor for a
pittance that would barely have kept them in necessaries on their
own side of the Atlantic, and to pick up valuable specimens of
native handiwork for nominal sums. In those happy days, to
belong to the invading race was a sufficient passport to the good
graces of the Europeans, who asked no other guarantees before
trading with the newcomers, but flocked around them, offering
their services and their primitive manufactures, convinced that
Americans were all wealthy.</p>
<p>Alas! History ever repeats itself. As Mexicans and
Peruvians, after receiving their conquerors with confidence and
enthusiasm, came to rue the day they had opened their arms to
strangers, so the European peoples, before a quarter of a century
was over, realized that the hordes from across the sea who were
over-running their lands, raising prices, crowding the native
students out of the schools, and finally attempting to force an
entrance into society, had little to recommend them or justify
their presence except money. Even in this some of the
intruders were unsatisfactory. Those who had been received
into the “bosom” of hotels often forgot to settle
before departing. The continental women who had provided
the wives of discoverers with the raiment of the country (a
luxury greatly affected by those ladies) found, to their disgust,
that their new customers were often unable or unwilling to offer
any remuneration.</p>
<p>In consequence of these and many other disillusions, Americans
began to be called the “Destroyers,” especially when
it became known that nothing was too heavy or too bulky to be
carried away by the invaders, who tore the insides from the
native houses, the paintings from the walls, the statues from the
temples, and transported this booty across the seas, much in the
same way as the Romans had plundered Greece. Elaborate
furniture seemed especially to attract the new arrivals, who
acquired vast quantities of it.</p>
<p>Here, however, the wily natives (who were beginning to
appreciate their own belongings) had revenge. Immense
quantities of worthless imitations were secretly manufactured and
sold to the travellers at fabulous prices. The same
artifice was used with paintings, said to be by great masters,
and with imitations of old stuffs and bric-a-brac, which the
ignorant and arrogant invaders pretended to appreciate and
collect.</p>
<p>Previous to our arrival there had been an invasion of the
Continent by the English about the year 1812. One of their
historians, called Thackeray, gives an amusing account of this in
the opening chapters of his “Shabby Genteel
Story.” That event, however, was unimportant in
comparison with the great American movement, although both were
characterized by the same total disregard of the feelings and
prejudices of indigenous populations. The English then
walked about the continental churches during divine service,
gazing at the pictures and consulting their guide-books as
unconcernedly as our compatriots do to-day. They also
crowded into theatres and concert halls, and afterwards wrote to
the newspapers complaining of the bad atmosphere of those
primitive establishments and of the long
<i>entr’actes</i>.</p>
<p>As long as the invaders confined themselves to such trifles,
the patient foreigners submitted to their overbearing and uncouth
ways because of the supposed benefit to trade. The natives
even went so far as to build hotels for the accommodation and
delight of the invaders, abandoning whole quarters to their
guests.</p>
<p>There was, however, a point at which complacency
stopped. The older civilizations had formed among
themselves restricted and exclusive societies, to which access
was almost impossible to strangers. These sanctuaries
tempted the immigrants, who offered their fairest virgins and
much treasure for the privilege of admission. The
indigenous aristocrats, who were mostly poor, yielded to these
offers and a few Americans succeeded in forcing an
entrance. But the old nobility soon became frightened at
the number and vulgarity of the invaders, and withdrew severely
into their shells, refusing to accept any further bribes either
in the form of females or finance.</p>
<p>From this moment dates the humiliation of the
discoverers. All their booty and plunder seemed worthless
in comparison with the Elysian delights they imagined were
concealed behind the closed doors of those holy places, visions
of which tortured the women from the western hemisphere and
prevented their taking any pleasure in other victories. To
be received into those inner circles became their chief
ambition. With this end in view they dressed themselves in
expensive costumes, took the trouble to learn the
“lingo” spoken in the country, went to the extremity
of copying the ways of the native women by painting their faces,
and in one or two cases imitated the laxity of their morals.</p>
<p>In spite of these concessions, our women were not received
with enthusiasm. On the contrary, the very name of an
American became a byword and an abomination in every continental
city. This prejudice against us abroad is hardly to be
wondered at on reflecting what we have done to acquire it.
The agents chosen by our government to treat diplomatically with
the conquered nations, owe their selection to political motives
rather than to their tact or fitness. In the large majority
of cases men are sent over who know little either of the habits
or languages prevailing in Europe.</p>
<p>The worst elements always follow in the wake of
discovery. Our settlements abroad gradually became the
abode of the compromised, the divorced, the socially and
financially bankrupt.</p>
<p>Within the last decade we have found a way to revenge the
slights put upon us, especially those offered to Americans in the
capital of Gaul. Having for the moment no playwrights of
our own, the men who concoct dramas, comedies, and burlesques for
our stage find, instead of wearying themselves in trying to
produce original matter, that it is much simpler to adapt from
French writers. This has been carried to such a length that
entire French plays are now produced in New York signed by
American names.</p>
<p>The great French playwrights can protect themselves by taking
out American copyright, but if one of them omits this formality,
the “conquerors” immediately seize upon his work and
translate it, omitting intentionally all mention of the real
author on their programmes. This season a play was produced
of which the first act was taken from Guy de Maupassant, the
second and third “adapted” from Sardou, with episodes
introduced from other authors to brighten the mixture. The
piece thus patched together is signed by a well-known Anglo-Saxon
name, and accepted by our moral public, although the original of
the first act was stopped by the Parisian police as too immoral
for that gay capital.</p>
<p>Of what use would it be to “discover” a new
continent unless the explorers were to reap some such
benefits? Let us take every advantage that our proud
position gives us, plundering the foreign authors, making penal
settlements of their capitals, and ignoring their foolish customs
and prejudices when we travel among them! In this way shall
we effectually impress on the inferior races across the Atlantic
the greatness of the American nation.</p>
<h2>No. 39—A Race of Slaves</h2>
<p>It is all very well for us to have invaded Europe, and
awakened that somnolent continent to the lights and delights of
American ways; to have beautified the cities of the old world
with graceful trolleys and illuminated the catacombs at Rome with
electricity. Every true American must thrill with
satisfaction at these achievements, and the knowledge that he
belongs to a dominating race, before which the waning
civilization of Europe must fade away and disappear.</p>
<p>To have discovered Europe and to rule as conquerors abroad is
well, but it is not enough, if we are led in chains at
home. It is recorded of a certain ambitious captain whose
“Commentaries” made our school-days a burden, that
“he preferred to be the first in a village rather than
second at Rome.” Oddly enough, <i>we</i> are
contented to be slaves in our villages while we are conquerors in
Rome. Can it be that the struggles of our ancestors for
freedom were fought in vain? Did they throw off the yoke of
kings, cross the Atlantic, found a new form of government on a
new continent, break with traditions, and sign a declaration of
independence, only that we should succumb, a century later,
yielding the fruits of their hard-fought battles with craven
supineness into the hands of corporations and municipalities;
humbly bowing necks that refuse to bend before anointed
sovereigns, to the will of steamboat subordinates, the insolence
of be-diamonded hotel-clerks, and the captious conductor?</p>
<p>Last week my train from Washington arrived in Jersey City on
time. We scurried (like good Americans) to the ferry-boat,
hot and tired and anxious to get to our destination; a hope
deferred, however, for our boat was kept waiting forty long
minutes, because, forsooth, another train from somewhere in the
South was behind time. Expostulations were in vain.
Being only the paying public, we had no rights that those
autocrats, the officials, were bound to respect. The
argument that if they knew the southern train to be so much
behind, the ferry-boat would have plenty of time to take us
across and return, was of no avail, so, like a cargo of
“moo-cows” (as the children say), we submitted
meekly. In order to make the time pass more pleasantly for
the two hundred people gathered on the boat, a dusky potentate
judged the moment appropriate to scrub the cabin floors.
So, aided by a couple of subordinates, he proceeded to deluge the
entire place in floods of water, obliging us to sit with our feet
tucked up under us, splashing the ladies’ skirts and our
wraps and belongings.</p>
<p>Such treatment of the public would have raised a riot anywhere
but in this land of freedom. Do you suppose any one
murmured? Not at all. The well-trained public had the
air of being in church. My neighbors appeared astonished at
my impatience, and informed me that they were often detained in
that way, as the company was short of boats, but they hoped to
have a new one in a year or two. This detail did not
prevent that corporation advertising our train to arrive in New
York at three-thirteen, instead of which we landed at four
o’clock. If a similar breach of contract had happened
in England, a dozen letters would have appeared in the
“Times,” and the grievance been well aired.</p>
<p>Another infliction to which all who travel in America are
subjected is the brushing atrocity. Twenty minutes before a
train arrives at its destination, the despot who has taken no
notice of any one up to this moment, except to snub them, becomes
suspiciously attentive and insists on brushing everybody.
The dirt one traveller has been accumulating is sent in clouds
into the faces of his neighbors. When he is polished off
and has paid his “quarter” of tribute, the next man
gets up, and the dirt is then brushed back on to number one, with
number two’s collection added.</p>
<p>Labiche begins one of his plays with two servants at work in a
salon. “Dusting,” says one of them, “is
the art of sending the dirt from the chair on the right over to
the sofa on the left.” I always think of that remark
when I see the process performed in a parlor car, for when it is
over we are all exactly where we began. If a man should
shampoo his hair, or have his boots cleaned in a salon, he would
be ejected as a boor; yet the idea apparently never enters the
heads of those who soil and choke their fellow-passengers that
the brushing might be done in the vestibule.</p>
<p>On the subject of fresh air and heat we are also in the hands
of officials, dozens of passengers being made to suffer for the
caprices of one of their number, or the taste of some captious
invalid. In other lands the rights of minorities are often
ignored. With us it is the contrary. One sniffling
school-girl who prefers a temperature of 80 degrees can force a
car full of people to swelter in an atmosphere that is death to
them, because she refuses either to put on her wraps or to have a
window opened.</p>
<p>Street railways are torture-chambers where we slaves are made
to suffer in another way. You must begin to reel and plunge
towards the door at least two blocks before your destination, so
as to leap to the ground when the car slows up; otherwise the
conductor will be offended with you, and carry you several
squares too far, or with a jocose “Step lively,” will
grasp your elbow and shoot you out. Any one who should sit
quietly in his place until the vehicle had come to a full stop,
would be regarded by the slave-driver and his cargo as a
<i>poseur</i> who was assuming airs.</p>
<p>The idea that cars and boats exist for the convenience of the
public was exploded long ago. We are made, dozens of times
a day, to feel that this is no longer the case. It is, on
the contrary, brought vividly home to us that such conveyances
are money making machines in the possession of powerful
corporations (to whom we, in our debasement, have handed over the
freedom of our streets and rivers), and are run in the interest
and at the discretion of their owners.</p>
<p>It is not only before the great and the powerful that we bow
in submission. The shop-girl is another tyrant who has
planted her foot firmly on the neck of the nation. She
respects neither sex nor age. Ensconced behind the bulwark
of her counter, she scorns to notice humble aspirants until they
have performed a preliminary penance; a time she fills up in
cheerful conversation addressed to other young tyrants, only
deciding to notice customers when she sees their last grain of
patience is exhausted. She is often of a merry mood, and if
anything about your appearance or manner strikes her critical
sense as amusing, will laugh gayly with her companions at your
expense.</p>
<p>A French gentleman who speaks our language correctly but with
some accent, told me that he found it impossible to get served in
our stores, the shop-girls bursting with laughter before he could
make his wants known.</p>
<p>Not long ago I was at the Compagnie Lyonnaise in Paris with a
stout American lady, who insisted on tipping her chair forward on
its front legs as she selected some laces. Suddenly the
chair flew from under her, and she sat violently on the polished
floor in an attitude so supremely comic that the rest of her
party were inwardly convulsed. Not a muscle moved in the
faces of the well-trained clerks. The proprietor assisted
her to rise as gravely as if he were bowing us to our
carriage.</p>
<p>In restaurants American citizens are treated even worse than
in the shops. You will see cowed customers who are anxious
to get away to their business or pleasure sitting mutely patient,
until a waiter happens to remember their orders. I do not
know a single establishment in this city where the waiters take
any notice of their customers’ arrival, or where the
proprietor comes, toward the end of the meal, to inquire if the
dishes have been cooked to their taste. The interest so
general on the Continent or in England is replaced here by the
same air of being disturbed from more important occupations, that
characterizes the shop-girl and elevator boy.</p>
<p>Numbers of our people live apparently in awe of their servants
and the opinion of the tradespeople. One middle-aged lady
whom I occasionally take to the theatre, insists when we arrive
at her door on my accompanying her to the elevator, in order that
the youth who presides therein may see that she has an escort,
the opinion of this subordinate apparently being of supreme
importance to her. One of our “gilded youths”
recently told me of a thrilling adventure in which he had
figured. At the moment he was passing under an awning on
his way to a reception, a gust of wind sent his hat gambolling
down the block. “Think what a situation,” he
exclaimed. “There stood a group of my friends’
footmen watching me. But I was equal to the situation and
entered the house as if nothing had happened!” Sir
Walter Raleigh sacrificed a cloak to please a queen. This
youth abandoned a new hat, fearing the laughter of a half-dozen
servants.</p>
<p>One of the reasons why we have become so weak in the presence
of our paid masters is that nowhere is the individual allowed to
protest. The other night a friend who was with me at a
theatre considered the acting inferior, and expressed his opinion
by hissing. He was promptly ejected by a policeman.
The man next me was, on the contrary, so pleased with the piece
that he encored every song. I had paid to see the piece
once, and rebelled at being obliged to see it twice to suit my
neighbor. On referring the matter to the box-office, the
caliph in charge informed me that the slaves he allowed to enter
his establishment (like those who in other days formed the court
of Louis XIV.) were permitted to praise, but were suppressed if
they murmured dissent. In his <i>Mémoires</i>,
Dumas, <i>père</i>, tells of a “first night”
when three thousand people applauded a play of his and one
spectator hissed. “He was the only one I
respected,” said Dumas, “for the piece was bad, and
that criticism spurred me on to improve it.”</p>
<p>How can we hope for any improvement in the standard of our
entertainments, the manners of our servants or the ways of
corporations when no one complains? We are too much in a
hurry to follow up a grievance and have it righted.
“It doesn’t pay,” “I haven’t got
the time,” are phrases with which all such subjects are
dismissed. We will sit in over-heated cars, eat vilely
cooked food, put up with insolence from subordinates, because it
is too much trouble to assert our rights. Is the spirit
that prompted the first shots on Lexington Common becoming
extinct? Have the floods of emigration so diluted our
Anglo-Saxon blood that we no longer care to fight for
liberty? Will no patriot arise and lead a revolt against
our tyrants?</p>
<p>I am prepared to follow such a leader, and have already marked
my prey. First, I will slay a certain miscreant who sits at
the receipt of customs in the box-office of an up-town
theatre. For years I have tried to propitiate that satrap
with modest politeness and feeble little jokes. He has
never been softened by either, but continues to
“chuck” the worst places out to me (no matter how
early I arrive, the best have always been given to the
speculators), and to frown down my attempts at
self-assertion.</p>
<p>When I have seen this enemy at my feet, I shall start down
town (stopping on the way to brain the teller at my bank, who is
perennially paring his nails, and refuses to see me until that
operation is performed), to the office of a night-boat line,
where the clerk has so often forced me, with hundreds of other
weary victims, to stand in line like convicts, while he chats
with a “lady friend,” his back turned to us and his
leg comfortably thrown over the arm of his chair. Then I
will take my blood-stained way—but, no! It is better
not to put my victims on their guard, but to abide my time in
silence! Courage, fellow-slaves, our day will come!</p>
<h2>Chapter 40—Introspection <a name="citation276"></a><a
href="#footnote276" class="citation">[276]</a></h2>
<p>The close of a year must bring even to the careless and the
least inclined toward self-inspection, an hour of thoughtfulness,
a desire to glance back across the past, and set one’s
mental house in order, before starting out on another stage of
the journey for that none too distant bourne toward which we all
are moving.</p>
<p>Our minds are like solitary dwellers in a vast residence, whom
habit has accustomed to live in a few only of the countless
chambers around them. We have collected from other parts of
our lives mental furniture and bric-à-brac that time and
association have endeared to us, have installed these meagre
belongings convenient to our hand, and contrived an entrance
giving facile access to our living-rooms, avoiding the effort of
a long detour through the echoing corridors and disused salons
behind. No acquaintances, and but few friends, penetrate
into the private chambers of our thoughts. We set aside a
common room for the reception of visitors, making it as cheerful
as circumstances will allow and take care that the conversation
therein rarely turns on any subject more personal than the view
from the windows or the prophecies of the barometer.</p>
<p>In the old-fashioned brick palace at Kensington, a little
suite of rooms is carefully guarded from the public gaze, swept,
garnished and tended as though the occupants of long ago were
hourly expected to return. The early years of
England’s aged sovereign were passed in these simple
apartments and by her orders they have been kept unchanged, the
furniture and decorations remaining to-day as when she inhabited
them. In one corner, is assembled a group of dolls, dressed
in the quaint finery of 1825. A set of miniature cooking
utensils stands near by. A child’s scrap-books and
color-boxes lie on the tables. In one sunny chamber stands
the little white-draped bed where the heiress to the greatest
crown on earth dreamed her childish dreams, and from which she
was hastily aroused one June morning to be saluted as
Queen. So homelike and livable an air pervades the place,
that one almost expects to see the lonely little girl of seventy
years ago playing about the unpretending chambers.</p>
<p>Affection for the past and a reverence for the memory of the
dead have caused the royal wife and mother to preserve with the
same care souvenirs of her passage in other royal
residences. The apartments that sheltered the first happy
months of her wedded life, the rooms where she knew the joys and
anxieties of maternity, have become for her consecrated
sanctuaries, where the widowed, broken old lady comes on certain
anniversaries to evoke the unforgotten past, to meditate and to
pray.</p>
<p>Who, as the year is drawing to its close, does not open in
memory some such sacred portal, and sit down in the familiar
rooms to live over again the old hopes and fears, thrilling anew
with the joys and temptations of other days? Yet, each year
these pilgrimages into the past must become more and more lonely
journeys; the friends whom we can take by the hand and lead back
to our old homes become fewer with each decade. It would be
a useless sacrilege to force some listless acquaintance to
accompany us. He would not hear the voices that call to us,
or see the loved faces that people the silent passages, and would
wonder what attraction we could find in the stuffy, old-fashioned
quarters.</p>
<p>Many people have such a dislike for any mental privacy that
they pass their lives in public, or surrounded only by sporting
trophies and games. Some enjoy living in their pantries,
composing for themselves succulent dishes, and interested in the
doings of the servants, their companions. Others have
turned their salons into nurseries, or feel a predilection for
the stable and the dog-kennels. Such people soon weary of
their surroundings, and move constantly, destroying, when they
leave old quarters, all the objects they had collected.</p>
<p>The men and women who have thus curtailed their belongings
are, however, quite contented with themselves. No doubts
ever harass them as to the commodity or appropriateness of their
lodgements and look with pity and contempt on friends who remain
faithful to old habitations. The drawback to a migratory
existence, however, is the fact that, as a French saying has put
it, <i>Ceux qui se refusent les pensées sérieuses
tombent dans les idées noires</i>. These people are
surprised to find as the years go by that the futile amusements
to which they have devoted themselves do not fill to their
satisfaction all the hours of a lifetime. Having provided
no books nor learned to practise any art, the time hangs heavily
on their hands. They dare not look forward into the future,
so blank and cheerless does it appear. The past is even
more distasteful to them. So, to fill the void in their
hearts, they hurry out into the crowd as a refuge from their own
thoughts.</p>
<p>Happy those who care to revisit old abodes, childhood’s
remote wing, and the moonlit porches where they knew the rapture
of a first-love whisper. Who can enter the chapel where
their dead lie, and feel no blush of self-reproach, nor burning
consciousness of broken faith nor wasted opportunities? The
new year will bring to them as near an approach to perfect
happiness as can be attained in life’s journey. The
fortunate mortals are rare who can, without a heartache or
regret, pass through their disused and abandoned dwellings; who
dare to open every door and enter all the silent rooms; who do
not hurry shudderingly by some obscure corners, and return with a
sigh of relief to the cheerful sunlight and murmurs of the
present.</p>
<p>Sleepless midnight hours come inevitably to each of us, when
the creaking gates of subterranean passages far down in our
consciousness open of themselves, and ghostly inhabitants steal
out of awful vaults and force us to look again into their faces
and touch their unhealed wounds.</p>
<p>An old lady whose cheerfulness under a hundred griefs and
tribulations was a marvel and an example, once told a man who had
come to her for counsel in a moment of bitter trouble, that she
had derived comfort when difficulties loomed big around her by
writing down all her cares and worries, making a list of the
subjects that harassed her, and had always found that, when
reduced to material written words, the dimensions of her troubles
were astonishingly diminished. She recommended her
procedure to the troubled youth, and prophesied that his
anxieties would dwindle away in the clear atmosphere of pen and
paper.</p>
<p>Introspection, the deliberate unlatching of closed wickets,
has the same effect of stealing away the bitterness from thoughts
that, if left in the gloom of semi-oblivion, will grow until they
overshadow a whole life. It is better to follow the example
of England’s pure Queen, visiting on certain anniversaries
our secret places and holding communion with the past, for it is
by such scrutiny only</p>
<blockquote><p><i>That men may rise on stepping-stones</i><br />
<i>Of their dead selves to higher things</i>.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Those who have courage to perform thoroughly this task will
come out from the silent chambers purified and chastened, more
lenient to the faults and shortcomings of others, and better
fitted to take up cheerfully the burdens of a new year.</p>
<h2>Footnotes:</h2>
<p><a name="footnote276"></a><a href="#citation276"
class="footnote">[276]</a> December thirty-first, 1888.</p>
<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WORLDLY WAYS AND BYWAYS***</p>
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