[Illustration: THE FAMOUS RELIEF OF CLEOPATRA AT TEMPLE OF DENDERAH]
By LILIAN BELL
THE INSTINCT OF STEP-FATHERHOOD. A Novel. 16mo, Cloth, $1.25.
A LITTLE SISTER TO THE WILDERNESS. A Novel. 16mo, Cloth, $1.25.
THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF AN OLD MAID. 16mo, Cloth, $1.25.
THE UNDER SIDE OF THINGS. 16mo, Cloth, $1.25.
FROM A GIRL’S POINT OF VIEW. 16mo, Cloth, $1.25.
TO
THAT MOST INTERESTING SPECK OF HUMANITY, ALL PERPETUAL MOTION AND
KINDLING INTELLIGENCE AND SWEETNESS UNSPEAKABLE, MY LITTLE NEPHEW
BILLY
ABSENCE FROM WHOM RACKED MY SPIRIT WITH ITS MOST UNAPPEASABLE PANGS OF
HOMESICKNESS, AND WHOSE CONSTANT PRESENCE IN MY STUDY SINCE MY RETURN
HAS SPARED THE PUBLIC NO SMALL AMOUNT OF PAIN
AUTHOR’S APOLOGY
The frank conceit of the title to this book will, I hope, not prejudice
my friends against it, and will serve not only to excuse my being my
own Boswell, but will fasten the blame of all inaccuracies, if such
there be, upon the offender—myself. This is not a continuous narrative
of a continuous journey, but covers two years of travel over some
thirty thousand miles, and presents peoples and things, not as you saw
them, perhaps, or as they really are, but only As Seen By Me.
I
FIRST LETTER—ON THE WAY
In this day and generation, when everybody goes to Europe, it is
difficult to discover the only person who never has been there. But I
am that one, and therefore the stir it occasioned in the bosom of my
amiable family when I announced that I, too, was about to join the vast
majority, is not easy to imagine. But if you think that I at once
became a person of importance it only goes to show that you do not know
the family. My mother, to be sure, hovered around me the way she does
when she thinks I am going into typhoid fever. I never have had typhoid
fever, but she is always on the watch for it, and if it ever comes it
will not catch her napping. She will meet it half-way. And lest it
elude her watchfulness, she minutely questions every pain which assails
any one of us, for fear, it may be her dreaded foe. Yet when my
sister’s blessed lamb baby had it before he was a year old, and after
he had got well and I was not afraid he would be struck dead for my
wickedness, I said to her, “Well, mamma, you must have taken solid
comfort out of the first real chance you ever had at your pet fever,”
she said I ought to be ashamed of myself.
My father began to explain international banking to me as his share in
my preparations, but I utterly discouraged him by asking the difference
between a check and a note. He said I reminded him of the juryman who
asked the difference between plaintiff and defendant. I soothed him by
assuring him that I knew I would always find somebody to go to the bank
with me.
“Most likely ’twill be Providence, then, as He watches over children
and fools,” said my cousin, with what George Eliot calls “the brutal
candor of a near relation.”
My brother-in-law lent me ten Baedekers, and offered his hampers and
French trunks to me with such reckless generosity that I had to get my
sister to stop him so that I wouldn’t hurt his feelings by refusing.
My sister said, “I am perfectly sure, mamma, that if I don’t go with
her, she will go about with an ecstatic smile on her face, and let
herself get cheated and lost, and she would just as soon as not tell
everybody that she had never been abroad before. She has no pride.”
“Then you had better come along and take care of me and see that I
don’t disgrace you,” I urged.
“Really, mamma, I do think I had better go,” said my sister. So she
actually consented to leave husband and baby in order to go and take
care of me. I do assure you, however, that I have bought all the
tickets, and carried the common purse, and got her through the
custom-houses, and arranged prices thus far. But she does pack my
trunks and make out the laundry lists—I will say that for her.
My brother’s contribution to my comfort was in this wise: He said, “You
must have a few more lessons on your wheel before you go, and I’ll take
you out for a lesson to-morrow if you’ll get up and go at six o’clock
in the morning—that is, if you’ll wear gloves. But you mortify me half
to death riding without gloves.”
“Nobody sees me but milkmen,” I said, humbly.
“Well, what will the milkmen think?” said my brother.
“Mercy on us, I never thought of that,” I said. “My gloves are all
pretty tight when one has to grip one’s handle-bars as fiercely as I
do. But I’ll get large ones. What tint do you think milkmen care the
most for?”
He sniffed.
“Well, I’ll go and I’ll wear gloves,” I said, “but if I fall off,
remember it will be on account of the gloves.”
“You always do fall off,” he said, with patient resignation. “I’ve seen
you fall off that wheel in more different directions than it has
spokes.”
“I don’t exactly fall,” I explained, carefully. “I feel myself going
and then I get off.”
I was ready at six the next morning, and I wore gloves.
“Now, don’t ride into the holes in the street”—one is obliged to give
such instructions in Chicago—“and don’t look at anything you see. Don’t
be afraid. You’re all right. Now, then! You’re off!”
“Oh, Teddy, don’t ride so close to me,” I quavered.
“I’m forty feet away from you,” he said.
“Then double it,” I said. “You’re choking me by your proximity.”
“Let’s cross the railroad tracks just for practice,” he said, when it
was too late for me to expostulate. “Stand up on your pedals and ride
fast, and—”
“Hold on, please do,” I shrieked. “I’m falling off. Get out of my way.
I seem to be turning—”
He scorched ahead, and I headed straight for the switchman’s hut,
rounded it neatly, and leaned myself and my wheel against the side of
it, helpless with laughter.
A red Irish face, with a short black pipe in its mouth, thrust itself
out of the tiny window just in front of me, and a voice with a rich
brogue exclaimed:
“As purty a bit of riding as iver Oi see!”
“Wasn’t it?” I cried. “You couldn’t do it.”
“Oi wouldn’t thry! Oi’d rather tackle a railroad train going at full
spheed thin wan av thim runaway critturs.”
“Get down from there,” hissed my brother so close to my ear that it
made me bite my tongue.
I obediently scrambled down. Ted’s face was very red.
“You ought to be ashamed of yourself to enter into immediate
conversation with a man like that. What do you suppose that man thought
of you?”
“Oh, perhaps he saw my gloves and took me for a lady,” I pleaded.
Ted grinned and assisted me to mount.
When I successfully turned the corner by making Ted fall back out of
sight, we rode away along the boulevard in silence for a while, for my
conversation when I am on a wheel is generally limited to shrieks,
ejaculations, and snatches of prayer. I never talk to be amusing.
“I say,” said my brother, hesitatingly, “I wear a No. 8 glove and a No.
10 stocking.”
“I’ve always thought you had large hands and feet,” I said, ignoring
the hint.
He giggled.
“No, now, really. I wish you’d write that down somewhere. You can get
those things so cheap in Paris.”
“You are supposing the case of my return, or of Christmas intervening,
or—a present of some kind, I suppose.”
“Well, no; not exactly. Although you know I am always broke—”
“Don’t I, though?”
“And that I am still in debt—”
“Because papa insists upon your putting some money in the bank every
month—”
“Yes, and the result is that I never get my head above water. I owe you
twenty now.”
“Which I never expect to recover, because you know I always get silly
about Christmas and ‘forgive thee thy debts.’”
“You’re awful good—” he began.
“But I’ll be better if I bring you gloves and silk stockings.”
“I’ll give you the money!” he said, heroically. “Will you borrow it of
me or of mamma?” I asked, with a chuckle at the family financiering
which always goes on in this manner.
“Now don’t make fun of me! _You_ don’t know what it is to be hard up.”
“Don’t I, though?” I said, indignantly. “Oh—oh! Catch me!”
He seized my handle-bar and righted me before I fell off.
“See what you did by saying I never was hard up,” I said. “I’ll tell
you what, Teddy. You needn’t give me the money. I’ll bring you some
gloves and stockings!”
“Oh, I say, honest? Oh, but you’re the right kind of a sister! I’ll
never forget that as long as I live. You do look so nice on your wheel.
You sit so straight and—”
I saw a milkman coming. We three were the only objects in sight, yet I
headed for him.
“Get out of my way,” I shrieked at him. “I’m a beginner. Turn off!”
He lashed his horse and cut down a side street.
“What a narrow escape,” I sighed. “How glad I am I happened to think of
that.”
I looked up pleasantly at Ted. He was biting his lips and he looked
raging.
“You are the most hopeless girl I ever saw!” he burst out. “I wish you
didn’t own a wheel.”
“I don’t,” I said. “The wheel owns me.”
“You haven’t the manners of—”
“Stockings,” I said, looking straight ahead. “Silk stockings with polka
dots embroidered on them, No. 10.”
Ted looked sheepish.
“I ride so well,” I proceeded. “I sit up so straight and look so nice.”
No answer.
“Gloves,” I went on, still without looking at him. “White and pearl
ones for evening, and russet gloves for the street, No. 8.”
“Oh, quit, won’t you? I’m sorry I said that. But if you only knew how
you mortify me.”
“Cheer up, Tedcastle. I am going away, you know. And when I come back
you will either have got over caring so much or I will be more of a
lady.”
“I’m sorry you are going,” said my brother. “But as you are going,
perhaps you will let me use your rooms while you are gone. Your bed is
the best one I ever slept in, and your study would be bully for the
boys when they come to see me.”
I was too stunned to reply. He went on, utterly oblivious of my
consternation:
“And I am going to use your wheel while you are gone, if you don’t
mind, to take the girls out on. I know some awfully nice girls who can
ride, but their wheels are last year’s make, and they won’t ride them.
I’d rather like to be able to offer them a new wheel.”
“I am not going to take all my party dresses. Have you any use for
them?” I said.
“Why, what’s the matter? Won’t you let me have your rooms?”
“Merciful heavens, child! I should say not!”
“Why, I haven’t asked you for much,” said my small, modest brother.
“You offered.”
“Well, just wait till I offer the rest. But I’ll tell you what I will
do, Ted. If you will promise not to go into my rooms and rummage once
while I am gone, and not to touch my wheel, I’ll buy you a tandem, and
then you can take the girls on that.”
“I’d rather have you bring me some things from Europe,” said my
shrinking brother.
“All right. I’ll do that, but let me off this thing. I am so tired I
can’t move. You’ll have to walk it back and give me five cents to ride
home on the car.”
I crawled in to breakfast more dead than alive.
“What’s the matter, dearie? Did you ride too far?” asked mamma.
“I don’t know whether I rode too far or whether it was Ted’s asking if
he couldn’t use my rooms while I was gone, but something has made me
tired. What’s that? Whom is papa talking to over the telephone?”
Papa came in fuming and fretting.
“Who was it this time?” I questioned, with anticipation. Inquiries over
the telephone were sure to be interesting to me just now.
“Somebody who wanted to know what train you were going on, but would
not give his name. He was inquiring for a friend, he said, and wouldn’t
give his friend’s name either.”
“Didn’t you tell him?” I cried, in distress.
“Certainly not. I told him nobody but an idiot would withhold his
name.”
Papa calls such a variety of men idiots.
“Oh, but it was probably only flowers or candy. Why didn’t you tell
him? Have you no sentiment?”
“I won’t have you receiving anonymous communications,” he retorted,
with the liberty fathers have a little way of taking with their
daughters.
“But flowers,” I pleaded. “It is no harm to send flowers without a
card. Don’t you see?” Oh, how hard it is to explain a delicate point
like that to one’s father—in broad daylight! “I am supposed to know who
sent them!”
“But would you know?” asked my practical ancestor.
“Not—not exactly. But it would be almost sure to be one of them.”
Ted shouted. But there was nothing funny in what I said. Boys are so
silly.
“Anyway, I am sorry you didn’t tell him,” I said.
“Well, I’m not,” declared papa.
The rest of the day fairly flew. The last night came, and the baby was
put to bed. I undressed him, which he regarded as such a joke that he
worked himself into a fever of excitement. He loves to scrub like
Josie, the cook. I had bought him a little red pail, and I gave it to
him that night when he was partly undressed, and he was so enchanted
with it that he scampered around hugging it, and saying, “Pile! pile!”
like a little Cockney. He gave such squeals of ecstasy that everybody
came into the nursery to find him scrubbing his crib with a nail-brush
and little red pail.
“Who gave you the pretty pail, Billy?” asked Aunt Lida, who was sitting
by the crib.
“Tattah,” said Billy, in a whisper. He always whispers my name.
“Then go and kiss dear auntie. She is going away on the big boat to
stay such a long time.”
Billy’s face sobered. Then he dropped his precious pail, and came and
licked my face like a little dog, which is his way of kissing.
I squeezed him until he yelled.
“Don’t let him forget me,” I wailed. “Talk to him about me every day.
And buy him a toy out of my money often, and tell him Tattah sent it to
him. Oh, oh, he’ll be grown up when I come home!”
“Don’t cry, dearie,” said Aunt Lida, handing me her handkerchief. “I’ll
see that your grave is kept green.”
My sister appeared at the door. She was all ready to start. She even
had her veil on.
“What do you mean by exciting Billy so at this time of night?” she
said. “Go out, all of you. We’ll lose the train. Hush, somebody’s at
the telephone. Papa’s talking to that same man again.” I jumped up and
ran out.
“Let me answer it, papa dear! Yes, yes, yes, certainly. To-night on the
Pennsylvania. You’re quite welcome. Not at all.” I hung up the
telephone.
I could hear papa in the nursery:
“She actually told him—after all I said this morning! I never heard of
anything like it.”
Two or three voices were raised in my defence. Ted slipped out into the
hall.
“Bully for you,” he whispered. “You’ll get the flowers all right at the
train. Who do you s’pose they’re from? Another box just came for you.
Say, couldn’t you leave that smallest box of violets in the silver box?
I want to give them to a girl, and you’ve got such loads of others.”
“Don’t ask her for those,” answered my dear sister, “they are the most
precious of all!”
“I can’t give you any of mine,” I said, “but I’ll buy you a box for
her—a small box,” I added hastily.
“The carriages have come, dears,” quavered grandmamma, coming out of
the nursery, followed by the family, one after the other.
“Get her satchels, Teddy. Her hat is upstairs. Her flowers are in the
hall. She left her ulster on my bed, and her books are on the
window-sill,” said mamma. She wouldn’t look at me. “Remember, dearie,
your medicines are all labelled, and I put needles in your work-box all
threaded. Don’t sit in draughts and don’t read in a dim light. Have a
good time and study hard and come back soon. Good—bye, my girlie. God
bless you!”
By this time no handkerchief would have sufficed for my tears. I
reached out blindly, and Ted handed me a towel.
“I’ve got a sheet when you’ve sopped that,” he said. Boys are such
brutes.
Aunt Lida said, “Good-bye, my dearest. You are my favorite niece. You
know I love you the best.”
I giggled, for she tells my sister the same thing always.
“Nobody seems to care much that I am going,” said Bee, mournfully.
“But you are coming back so soon, and she is going to stay so long,”
exclaimed grandmamma, patting Bee.
“I’ll bet she doesn’t stay a year,” cried Ted.
“I’ll expect her home by Christmas,” said papa.
“I’ll bet she is here to eat Thanksgiving dinner,” cried my
brother-in-law.
“No, she is sure to stay as long as she has said she would,” said
mamma.
Mothers are the brace of the universe. The family trailed down to the
front door. Everybody was carrying something. There were two carriages,
for they were all going to the station with us.
“For all the world like a funeral, with loads of flowers and everybody
crying,” said my brother, cheerfully.
I never shall forget that drive to the station; nor the last few
moments, when Bee and I stood on the car-steps and talked to those who
were on the platform of the station. Can anybody else remember how she
felt at going to Europe for the first time and leaving everybody she
loved at home? Bee grieved because there were no flowers at the train
after all. But the next morning they appeared, a tremendous box,
arranged as a surprise.
Telegrams came popping in at all the big stations along the way,
enlivening our gloom, and at the steamer there were such loads of
things that we might almost have set up as a florist, or fruiterer, or
bookseller. Such a lapful of steamer letters and telegrams! I read a
few each morning, and some of them I read every morning!
I don’t like ocean travel. They sent grapefruit and confections to my
state-room, which I tossed out of the port-hole. You know there are
some people who think you don’t know what you want. I travelled
horizontally most of the way, and now people roar when I say I wasn’t
ill. Well, I wasn’t, you know. We—well, Teddy would not like me to be
more explicit. I own to a horrible headache which never left me. I deny
everything else. Let them laugh. I was there, and I know.
The steamer I went on allows men to smoke on all the decks, and they
all smoked in my face. It did not help me. I must say that I was
unspeakably thankful to get my foot on dry ground once more. When we
got to the dock a special train of toy cars took us through the
greenest of green landscapes, and suddenly, almost before we knew it,
we were at Waterloo Station, and knew that London was at our door.
II
LONDON
People said to me, “What are you going to London for?” I said, “To get
an English point of view.” “Very well,” said one of the knowing ones,
who has lived abroad the larger part of his life, “then you must go to
‘The Insular,’ in Piccadilly. That is not only the smartest hotel in
London, but it is the most typically British. The rooms are let from
season to season to the best country families. There you will find
yourself plunged headlong into English life with not an American
environment to bless yourself with, and you will soon get your English
point of view.”
“Ah-h,” responded the simpleton who goes by my name, “that is what we
want. We will go to ‘The Insular.’”
We wrote at once for rooms, and then telegraphed for them from
Southampton.
The steamer did not land her passengers until the morning of the ninth
day, which shows the vast superiority of going on a fast boat, which
gets you in fully as much as fifteen or twenty minutes ahead of the
slow ones.
Our luggage would not go on even a four-wheeler, so we took a dear
little private bus and proceeded to put our mountainous American trunks
on it. We filled the top of this bus as full as it would hold, and put
everything else inside. After stowing ourselves in there would not have
been room even for another umbrella.
In this fashion we reached “The Insular,” where we were received by
four or five gorgeous creatures in livery, the head one of whom said,
“Miss Columbia?” I admitted it, and we were ushered in, where we were
met by more belonging to this tribe of gorgeousness, another of whom
said, “Miss Columbia?”
“Yes,” I said, firmly, privately wondering if they were trying to trip
me into admitting that I was somebody else.
“The housekeeper will be here presently,” said this person. “She is
expecting you.”
Forth came the housekeeper.
“Miss Columbia?” she said.
Once again I said “Yes,” patiently, standing on my other foot.
“If you will be good enough to come with me I will show you your
rooms.”
A door opened outward, disclosing a little square place with two
cane-bottomed chairs. A man bounced out so suddenly that I nearly
annihilated my sister, who was back of me. I could not imagine what
this little cubbyhole was, but as there seemed to be nowhere else to
go, I went in. The others followed, then the man who had bounced out.
He closed the door and shut us in, where we stood in solemn silence.
About a quarter of an hour afterwards I thought I saw something through
the glass moving slowly downward, and then an infinitesimal thrill in
the soles of my feet led me to suspect the truth.
“Is this thing an elevator?” I whispered to my sister.
“No, they call it a lift over here,” she whispered back.
“I know that,” I murmured, impatiently. “But is this thing it? Are we
moving? Are we going anywhere?”
“Why, of course, my dear. They are slower than ours, that’s all.”
I listened to her with some misgivings, for her information is not
always to be wholly trusted, but this time it happened that she was
right, for after a while we came to the fourth floor, where our rooms
were.
I wish you could have seen the size of them. I shall not attempt to
describe them, for you would not believe me. I had engaged “two rooms
and a bath.” The two rooms were there. “Where is the bath?” I said. The
housekeeper lovingly, removed a gigantic crash towel from a hideous tin
object, and proudly exposed to my vision that object which is next
dearest to his silk hat to an Englishman’s heart—a hip-bath tub. Her
manner said, “Beat that if you can.”
My sister prodded me in the back with her umbrella, which in our sign
language means, “Don’t make a scene.”
“Very well,” I said, rather meekly. “Have our trunks sent up.”
“Very good, madam.”
She went away, and then we rang the bell and began to order what were
to us the barest necessities of life. We were tired and lame and sleepy
from a night spent at the pier landing the luggage, and we wanted
things with which to make ourselves comfortable.
There was a pocket edition of a fireplace, and they brought us a hatful
of the vilest soft coal, which peppered everything in the rooms with
soot.
We climbed over our trunks to sit by this imitation of a fire, only to
find that there was nothing to sit on but the most uncompromising of
straight-backed chairs.
We groaned as we took in the situation. To our poor, racked frames a
coal-hod would not have suggested more discomfort. We dragged up our
hampers, packed with steamer-rugs and pillows, and my sister sat on
hers while I took another turn at the bell. While the maid is answering
this bell I shall have plenty of time to tell you what we afterwards
discovered the process of bell-ringing in an English hotel to be.
We rang our bell. Presently we heard the most horrible gong, such as we
use on our patrol wagons and fire-engines at home. This clanged four
times. Then a second bell down the hall answered it. Then feet flew by
our door. At this juncture my sister and I prepared to let ourselves
down the fire-escape. But we soon discovered that those flying feet
belonged to the poor maid, whom that gong had signalled that she was
wanted on the fourth floor. She flew to a speaking-tube and asked who
on the fourth floor wanted her. She was then given the number of our
room, when she rang a bell to signify that our call was answered, by
which time she was at liberty, and knocked at our door, saying, in her
soft English voice, “Did you ring, miss?”
We told her we wanted rocking-chairs. She said there was not one in the
house. Then easy-chairs, we said, or anything cushioned or low or
comfortable. She said the housekeeper had no easier chairs.
We sat down on our hampers, and my sister leaned against the corner of
the wardrobe with a pillow at her back to keep from being cut in two. I
propped my back against the wash-stand, which did very well, except
that the wash-stand occasionally slid away from me.
“This,” said my sister, impressively, “is England.”
We had been here only half an hour, but I had already got my point of
view.
“Let’s go out and look up a hotel where they take Americans,” I said.
“I feel the need of ice-water.”
Our drinking-water at “The Insular” was on the end of the wash-stand
nearest the fire.
So, feeling a little timid and nervous, but not in the least homesick,
we went downstairs. One of our gorgeous retinue called a cab and we
entered it.
“Where shall we go?” asked my sister.
“I feel like saying to the first hotel we see,” I said.
Just then we raised our eyes and they rested simultaneously upon a
sign, “The Empire Hotel for Cats and Dogs.” This simple solution of our
difficulty put us in such high good humor that we said we wouldn’t look
up a hotel just yet—we would take a drive.
Under these circumstances we took our first drive down Piccadilly, and
Europe to me dates from that moment. The ship, the landing, the
custom-house, the train, the hotel—all these were mere preliminaries to
the Europe, which began then. People told me in America how my heart
would swell at this, and how I would thrill at that, but it was not so.
My first real thrill came to me in Piccadilly. It went all over me in
little shivers and came out at the ends of my fingers, and then began
once more at the base of my brain and did it all over again.
But what is the use of describing one’s first view of London streets
and traffic to the initiated? Can they, who became used to it as
children, appreciate it? Can they look back and recall how it struck
them? No. When I try to tell Americans over here they look at me
curiously and say, “Dear me, how odd!” The way they say it leaves me to
draw any one of three conclusions: either they are not impressionable,
and are therefore honest in denying the feeling; or they think it
vulgar to admit it; or I am the only grown person in America who never
has been to Europe before.
But I am indifferent to their opinion. People are right in saying this
great tremendous rush of feeling can come but once. It is like being in
love for the first time. You like it and yet you don’t like it. You
wish it would go away, yet you fear that it will go all too soon. It
gets into your head and makes you dizzy, and you want to shut your
eyes, but you are afraid if you do that you will miss something. You
cannot eat and you cannot sleep, and you feel that you have two
consciousnesses: one which belongs to the life you have lived hitherto,
and which still is going on, somewhere in the world, unmindful of you,
and you unmindful of it; and the other is this new bliss which is
beating in your veins and sounding in your ears and shining before your
eyes, which no one knows and no one dreams of, but which keeps a smile
on your lips—a smile which has in it nothing of humor, nothing from the
great without, but which-comes from the secret recesses of your own
inner consciousness, where the heart of the matter lies.
I remember nothing definite about that first drive. I, for my part, saw
with unseeing eyes. My sister had seen it all before, so she had the
power of speech. Occasionally she prodded me and cried, “Look, oh! look
quickly.” But I never swerved. “I can’t look. If I do I shall miss
something. You attend to your own window and I’ll attend to mine.
Coming back I will see your side.”
When we got beyond the shops I said to the cabman:
“Do you know exactly the way you have come?”
“Yes, miss,” he said.
“Then go back precisely the same way.”
“Have you lost something, miss?” he inquired.
“Yes,” I said, “I have lost an impression, and I must look till I find
it.”
“Very good, miss,” he said.
If I had said, “I have carelessly let fall my cathedral,” or, “I have
lost my orang-outang. Look for him!” an imperturbable British cabby
would only touch his cap and say, “Very good, miss!”
So we followed our own trail back to “The Insular.” “In this way,” I
said to my sister, “we both get a complete view. To-morrow we will do
it all over again.”
But we found that we could not wait for the morrow. We did it all over
again that afternoon, and that second time I was able in a measure to
detach myself from the hum and buzz and the dizzying effect of foreign
faces, and I began to locate impressions. My first distinct
recollections are of the great numbers of high hats on the men, the
ill-hanging skirts and big feet of the women, the unsteadying effect of
all those thousands of cabs, carriages, and carts all going to the
left, which kept me constantly wishing to shriek out, “Go to the right
or we’ll all be killed,” the absolutely perfect manner in which traffic
was managed, and the majestic authority of the London police.
I have seen the Houses of Parliament and the Tower and Westminster
Abbey, and the World’s Fair, but the most impressive sight I ever
beheld is the upraised hand of a London policeman. I never heard one of
them speak except when spoken to. But let one little blue-coated man
raise his forefinger and every vehicle on wheels stops, and stops
instantly; stops in obedience to law and order; stops without swearing
or gesticulating or abuse; stops with no underhanded trying to drive
out of line and get by on the other side; just stops, that is the end
of it. And why? Because the Queen of England is behind that raised
finger. A London policeman has more power than our President.
Even the Queen’s coachmen obey that forefinger. Not long ago she
dismissed one who dared to drive even the royal carriage on in defiance
of it. Understanding how to obey, that is what makes liberty.
I am the most flamboyant of Americans, the most hopelessly addicted to
my own country, but I must admit that I had my first real taste of
liberty in England.
I will tell you why. In America nobody obeys anybody. We make our laws,
and then most industriously set about studying out a plan by which we
may evade them. America is suffering, as all republics must of
necessity suffer, from liberty in the hands of the multitude. The
multitude are ignorant, and liberty in the hands of the ignorant is
always license.
In America, the land of the free, whom do we fear? The President? No,
God bless him. There is not a true American in the world who would not
stand up as a man or a woman and go into his presence without fear. Are
we afraid of our Senators, our chief rulers? No. But we are afraid of
our servants, of our street-car conductors. We are afraid of
sleeping-car porters, and the drivers of huge trucks. We are afraid
they will drive over us in the streets, and if we dare to assert our
rights and hold them in check we are afraid of what they will say to
us, in the name of liberty, and of the way they will look at us, in the
name of liberty.
English servants, I have discovered, have no more respect for Americans
than the old-time negro of the Southern aristocracy has for
Northerners. I once asked an old black mammy in Georgia why the negroes
had so little respect for the white ladies of the North. “Case dey don’
know how to treat black folks, honey.” “Why don’t they?” I persisted.
“Are they not kind to you?” “Umph,” she responded (and no one who has
never heard a fat old negress say “Umph” knows the eloquence of it).
“Umph. Dat’s it. Dey’s too kin’. Dey don’ know how to mek us min’.” And
that is just the trouble with Americans here. An English servant takes
orders, not requests.
I had such a time to learn that. We could not understand why we were
obeyed so well at first, and presently, without any outward disrespect,
our wants were simply ignored until all the English people had been
attended to.
My sister had told me I was too polite, but one never believes one’s
sister, so I questioned our sweet English friends, and they, with much
delicacy and many apologies, and the prettiest hesitation in the
world—considering the situation—told us the reason.
“But,” I gasped, “if I should speak to our servants in that manner they
would leave. They would not stay over night.” Our English friends tried
not to smile in a superior way, and they succeeded, only I knew the
smile was there, and said, “Oh, no, our servants never leave us. They
apologize for having done it wrong.”
On the way home I plucked up courage. “I am going to try it,” I said,
firmly. My sister laughed in derision.
“Now I could do it,” she said, complaisantly. And so she could. My
sister never plumes herself on a quality she does not possess.
“Are you going to use the tone and everything?” I said, somewhat
timidly.
“You wait and see.”
She hesitated some time, I noticed, before she rang the bell, and she
looked at herself in the glass and cleared her throat. I knew she was
bracing herself.
“I’ll ring the bell if you like,” I said, politely.
She gave one look at me and then rang the bell herself with a firm
hand.
“And I’ll get behind you with a poker in One hand and a pitcher of hot
water in the other. Speak when you need either.”
“You feel very funny when you don’t have to do it yourself,” she said,
witheringly.
“You’ll never put it through. You’ll back down and say ‘please’ before
you have finished,” I said, and just then the maid knocked at the door.
I never heard anything like it. My sister was superb. I doubt if
Bernhardt at her best ever inspired me with more awe. How that maid
flew around. How humble she was. How she apologized. And how, every
time my sister said, “Look sharp, now,” the maid said, “Thank you.” I
thought I should die. I was so much interested in the dramatic
possibilities of my cherished sister that when the door closed behind
the maid we simply looked at each other a moment, then simultaneously
made a bound for the bed, where we choked with laughter among the
pillows. Presently we sat up with flushed faces and rumpled hair. I
reached over and shook hands with her.
“How was that?” she asked.
“’Twas grand,” I said. “The Queen couldn’t have done it more to the
manner born.”
My sister accepted my compliments complaisantly, as one who should say,
“’Tis no more than my deserts.”
“How firm you were,” I said, admiringly.
“Wasn’t I, though?”
“How humble she was.”
“Wasn’t she?”
“You were quite as disagreeable and determined as a real Englishwoman
would have been.”
“So I was.”
A pause full of intense admiration on my part. Then she said, “You
couldn’t have done it.”
“I know that.”
“You are so deadly civil.”
“Not to everybody, only to servants.” I said this apologetically.
“You never keep a steady hand. You either grovel at their feet or snap
their heads off.”
“Quite true,” I admitted, humbly.
“But it was grand, wasn’t it?” she said.
“Unspeakably grand.”
And for Americans it was.
We were still at “The Insular,” when one day I took up a handful of
what had once been a tight bodice, and said to my sister:
“See how thin I’ve grown! I believe I am starving to death.”
“No wonder,” she answered, gloomily, “with this awful English cooking!
I’m nearly dead from your experiment of getting an English point of
view. I want something to eat—something that I _like_. I want a
beefsteak, with mushrooms, and some potatoes _au gratin_, like those we
have in America. I hate the stuff we get here. I wish I could never see
another chop as long as I live.”
“‘The Insular’ is considered very good,” I remarked, pensively.
“Considered!” cried she. “Whose consideration counts, I should like to
know, when you are always hungry for something you can’t get?”
“I know it; and we are paying such prices, too. Who, except ostriches,
could eat their nasty preserves for breakfast when they are having
grape-fruit at home? And then their vile aspic jellies and potted meats
for luncheon, which look like sausage congealed in cold gravy, and
which taste like gum arabic.”
“Let’s move,” said my sister. “Not into another hotel—that wouldn’t be
much better. But lot’s take lodgings. I’ve heard that they were lovely.
Then we can order what we like. Besides, it will be very much cheaper.”
“I didn’t come over here to economize,” I said.
“Well, I wouldn’t say a word if we were getting anything for our money,
but we are not. Besides, when you get to Paris you will wish you hadn’t
been so extravagant here.”
“Are the Paris shops more fascinating than those in Regent Street?” I
asked.
“Much more.”
“More alluring, than Bond Street?”
“More so than any in the world,” she affirmed, with the religious
fervor which always characterizes her tone when she speaks of Paris.
The very leather of her purse fairly squeaks with ecstasy when she
thinks of Paris.
“Heavens!” I murmured, with awe, for whenever she won’t go to Du
Maurier’s grave with me, and when I won’t do the crown jewels in the
Tower with her, we always compromise amiably on Bond Street, and come
home beaming with joy.
“We might go now just to look,” I said. “I have the addresses of some
very good lodgings.”
“We’ll take a cab by the hour,” said she, putting her hat on before the
mirror, and turning her head on one side to view her completed
handiwork.
“Now take off that watch and that belt and that chatelaine if you don’t
want these harpies to think we are ‘rich Americans’ (how I have come to
hate that phrase over here!), because they will charge accordingly.”
She looked at me with genuine admiration.
“Do you know, dear, you are really clever at times?”
I colored with pleasure. It is so seldom that she finds anything
practical in me to praise.
“Now mind, we are just going to look,” she cautioned, as we rang a
bell. “We must not do anything in a hurry.”
We came out half an hour afterwards and got into the cab without
looking at each other.
“It was very unbusinesslike,” said she, severely. “You never do
anything right.”
“But it was so gloriously impudent of us,” I urged. “First, we wanted
lodgings. This was a boarding-house. Second, we wanted two bed-rooms
and a drawing-room. They had only one drawing-room in the house; could
we have that? Yes, we could. So we took their whole first floor, and
made them promise to serve our breakfasts in bed, and our other meals
in their best drawing-room, and turned a boarding-house into a
lodging-house, all inside of half an hour. It was lovely!”
“It was bad business,” said she. “We could have got it for less, but
you are always in such a hurry. If you like a thing, and anybody says
you may have it for fifty, you always say, ‘I’ll give you
seventy-five,’ You’re so afraid to think a thing over.”
“Second thoughts are never as much fun as first thoughts,” I urged.
“Second thoughts are always so sensible and reasonable and approved
of.”
“How do you know?” asked my sister, witheringly. “You never waited for
any.”
The next day we moved. Everybody said our rooms were charming, and that
they were cheap, for I told how much we paid, much to my sister’s
disgust. She is _such_ a lady.
“We have cut down our expenses so much,” I said, looking around on the
drab walls and the dun-colored carpets, “don’t you think we might have
a few flowers?”
“I believe you took this place for the balcony, so that you could put
daisies around the edge and in the window-boxes!” she cried.
“No, I didn’t. But the houses in London are so pretty with their
flowers. Don’t you think we might have a few?”
“Well, go and get them. I’ve got to write the home letter to-day if it
is to catch the Southampton boat.”
I came home with six huge palms, two June roses, some pink heather, a
jar of marguerites, and I had ordered the balcony and window-boxes
filled. My sister helped me to place them, but when her back was turned
I arranged them over again. I can’t tie a veil on the way she can, but
I can arrange flowers to look—well, I won’t boast.
Our landladies were two middle-aged, comfortable sisters. We called
them “The Tabbies,” meaning no disrespect to cats, either. I thought
they took rather too violent an interest in our affairs, but I said
nothing until one day after we had been settled nearly a week. I was
seated in my own private room trying to write. My sister came in,
evidently disturbed by something.
“Do you know,” she said, “that our landlady just asked me how much you
paid for those strawberries? And when I told her she said that that
made them come to fourpence apiece, and that they were very dear. Now,
how did she know that they were strawberries, or how many were in each
box, I’d like to know?”
“Probably she opened the package,” I said.
“Exactly what I think. Now I won’t stand that. And then she asked me
not to set things on the mahogany tables. It’s just because we are
Americans! She never would dare treat English people that way. She has
not sufficient respect for us.”
“Then tell her to be more respectful; tell her we are very highly
thought of at home.”
“She wouldn’t care for that.”
“Then tell her we have a few rich relations and quite a number of
influential friends.”
“Pooh!”
“And if that does not fetch her, there is nothing left to do but to be
quite rude to her, and then she will know that we belong to the very
highest society. But what do you care what a middle-class landlady
thinks, just so she lets you alone?”
My sister meditated, and I added:
“If you would just snub her once, in your most ladylike way, it would
settle her. As for me, I am satisfied to think we are paying much less,
and we are twice as comfortable as we were at the hotel; and we get
such good things to eat that our skeletons are filling out, and once
more our clothes fit.”
“That is so,” said she, letting her thoughts wander to the number of
hooks in her closet. “We do have more room, and I think our
drawing-room with its palms and flowers will look lovely to-morrow.”
“Do you think it was wise,” she added, “to ask all those men to come at
once?”
“Oh yes; let them all come together, then we can weed them out
afterwards. You never can have too many men.”
“I am glad you have asked in a few women.”
“Why?” I demanded. “Are you insinuating that we are not equal to a
handful of Englishmen? Recall the Boston tea-party. We will give them
the first strawberries of the season, and plenty of tea. Feed them;
that’s the main thing,” I said, firmly, taking up my pen and looking
steadily at her.
“I’ll go,” she said, hastily. “Do you have to go to the bank to-day?
You know to-morrow we must pay our weekly bill.”
“It won’t be much,” I said, cheerfully; “I am sure I have enough.”
The next day the bill came. Our landlady sent it up on the
breakfast-tray. I opened it, then shrieked for my sister. It covered
four pages of note-paper.
“For heaven’s sake! what is the matter?” she cried. “Has anything
happened to Billy?”
“Billy! This thing is not an American letter. It is the bill for our
cheap lodgings. Look at it! Look at the extras—gas, coals, washing
bed—linen, washing table—linen, washing towels, kitchen fires, service,
oil for three lamps, afternoon tea, and three shillings for sundries on
the fourth page! What can sundries include? She hasn’t skipped anything
but pew-rent.”
My sister looked at the total, and buried her face in the pillows to
smother a groan.
“Ring the bell,” I said; “I want the maid.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to find out what ‘sundries’ are.”
She gave the bell-cord such a pull that she broke the wire, and it fell
down on her head.
“That, too, will go in the bill. Wrap your handkerchief around your
hand and give the wire a jerk. Give it a good one. I don’t care if it
brings the police.”
The maid came.
“Martha, present my compliments to Mrs. Black, and ask her what
‘sundries’ include.”
Martha came back smiling.
“Please, miss, Mrs. Black’s compliments, and ‘sundries’ means that you
complained that the coffee was muddy, and after that she cleared it
with an egg. ‘Sundries’ means the eggs.”
“Martha,” I said, weakly, “give me those Crown salts. No, no, I forgot;
those are Mrs. Black’s salts. Take them out and tell her I only smelled
them once.”
“Martha,” said my sister, dragging my purse out from under my pillow,
“here is sixpence not to tell Mrs. Black anything.” Then when Martha
disappeared she said, “How often have I told you not to jest with
servants?”
“I forgot,” I said, humbly. “But Martha has a sense of humor, don’t you
think?”
“I never thought anything about it. But what are you going to do about
that bill?”
“I’m going to argue about it, and declare I won’t pay it, and then pay
it like a true American. Would you have me upset the traditions? But
I’ve got to go to the bank first.”
I did just as I said. I argued to no avail. Mrs. Black was quite
haughty, and made me feel like a chimney-sweep. I paid her in full, and
when I came up I said:
“You are quite right. She has a poor opinion of us. When I asked her
how long it would take to drive to a house in West End, she said, ‘Why
do you want to know?’ I said I ‘wanted to see the house.’”
“Didn’t you tell her we were _invited_ there?” asked my sister,
scandalized.
“No; I said I had heard a good deal about the house, and she said it
was open to the public on Fridays. So I said we’d go then.”
“I think you are horrid!” cried Bee. “The insolence of that woman! And
you actually think it is funny! You think _everything_ is funny.”
I soothed her by pointing out some of the things which I considered
sad, notably English people trying to enjoy themselves. Then the men
began to drop in for tea, and that succeeded in making her forget her
troubles.
Reggie and the Duke arrived together. My sister at once took charge of
the Duke, while Reggie said to me, “I say, what sort of creature is the
old girl below?”
“Not a very good sort, I am afraid. Why? What has she done now?”
“Why, she stopped Abingdon and me and asked us to wipe our shoes.”
“She asked the Duke of Abingdon to wipe his shoes?” I gasped, in a
whisper.
“Yes; and Freddie, who was just ahead of us, turned back and said, ‘My
good woman, was the cab very dirty, do you think?’”
“Oh, don’t tell my sister! She has almost died of Mrs. Black already
to-day; this would finish her completely.”
“Well, you must give your woman a talking to—a regular going over, d’ye
know? Tell her you’ll be the mistress of the whole blooming house or
you’ll tear it to pieces. That’s the way to talk to ’em. I told my
landlady in Edinburgh once that I’d chuck her out of the window if she
spoke to me until she was spoken to. She came up and rapped on the door
one Saturday night at ten o’clock, when I had some fellows there, and
told me to send those men home and go to bed.”
“Then she isn’t taking advantage of us because we are Americans, the
way the cabmen do?”
“Oh yes, I dare say she is; but you must stand up to her. They’re a set
of thieves, the whole of ’em. I say, that’s a pretty picture you’ve got
pinned up there.”
“That’s to hide a hole in the lace curtain,” I explained, gratuitously.
Then I remembered, and glanced apprehensively at my sister, but
fortunately she had not heard me. “That is one of the pictures from
_Truth_, an American magazine. I always save the middle picture when it
is pretty, and pin it up on the wall.”
“That is one thing where the States are away ahead of us—in their
illustrated magazines.”
“Don’t say ‘the States!’ I’ve told you before. I didn’t know you ever
admitted that anything was better in America.”
Reggie only smiled affably. He ignored my offer of battle, and said:
“Abingdon is asking your sister to dine. I’m asked, and Freddie and his
wife, and I think you will enjoy it.”
When they were all gone I marched downstairs to Mrs. Black without
saying a word to any one. When I came up I found my sister hanging over
the banisters.
“What is the matter? What have you done? I knew you were angry by the
way you looked.”
“It was lovely!” I said. “I sent for Mrs. Black, and said, ‘Mrs. Black,
do you know the name of the gentleman whom you asked to wipe his shoes
to-day?’ ‘No,’ said she. ‘It was the Duke of Abingdon,’ I said,
sternly, well knowing the unspeakable reverence which the middle-class
English have for a title. She turned purple. She fell back against the
wall, muttering, ‘The Duke of Abingdon! The Duke of Abingdon!’ I
believe she is still leaning up against the wall muttering that holy
name. A title to Mrs. Black!”
The next day both the Tabbies were curtsying in the hall when we
started out. We were going on a coach to Richmond with Julia and her
husband, and another American girl, and then Julia’s husband was going
to row us up the Thames to Hampton Court for tea, and they were all
going to dine with us at Scott’s when we got home.
It was a lovely day. The trees were a mass of bloom, and everybody
ought to have enjoyed himself. We were having a very good time of it
among ourselves reading the absurd signs, until we noticed the three
girls who sat opposite to us. They had serious faces, and long,
consumptive teeth, which they never succeeded in completely hiding. I
knew just how they would look when they were dead; I knew that those
two long front teeth would still— They listened to all we said without
a flicker of the eyelashes. Occasionally they looked down at the size
of the American girl’s little feet and then involuntarily drew their
own back out of sight.
Presently I espied a sign, “Funerals, for this week only, at half
price.” I seized Julia’s hand. “Stop, oh, stop the coach and let’s get
a funeral! We may never have an opportunity to get a bargain in
funerals again. And the sale lasts only one week. Everybody told me
before I came away to get what I wanted at the moment I saw it; not to
wait, thinking I would come back. So unless we order one now we may
have to pay the full price. And a funeral would be such a good
investment; it would keep forever. You’d never feel like using it
before you actually needed it. Do let me get one now!”
Of course, Julia, my sister, and Julia’s husband were in gales of
laughter; but what finished me off was to see three serious creatures
opposite rise as if pulled by one string, look in an anxious way at me
and then at the sign, while the teeth began to say to each other: “What
did she say? What does she mean? What does she want a funeral for?”
We had a lovely day, but everybody we met on the river looked very
unhappy, and nobody seemed to be at all glad that we were there or that
we were rising to the occasion. When we got home I was too tired to
notice things, but my sister, who sees everything, whispered:
“I verily believe they’ve put down a new stair-carpet to-day.”
The next morning such a sight met our astonished eyes. There was a new
carpet on the hall. There were new curtains in our drawing-room. All
the covers had been removed from their sacred furniture. Brass andirons
replaced the old ones. The piano had a new cover. There was a
rocking-chair for each (we had only one before), and while we were
still speechless with amazement Mrs. Black came in with our bill.
“I have been thinking this over since yesterday, and I have decided
that as long as you did not understand about the extras, it would be no
more than right that I should take them off. So I owe you this.”
I took the money, and it dropped from my nerveless fingers. Mrs. Black
picked it up and put it on the table—the mahogany table.
“You see I propped your palms for you in your absence, and I repotted
four of them. I thought they would grow better. Here are some
periodicals I sent to the library for, thinking you might like to look
at them, and I put my new calendar over your writing-desk. Now, is
there any little delicacy you would like for your luncheon?”
While Bee was getting rid of her I made a few rapid mental
calculations.
“Bee,” I said, “we are going to stay over here two years. Let’s buy the
Duke and take him with us.”
The reaction has come. I knew it would. It always does. It is a
mortification to be obliged to admit it in the face of London, and all
that we have had done for us, but the fact is we are
homesick—wretchedly, bitterly homesick. I remember how, when other
people have been here and written that they were homesick, I have
sniffed with contempt and have said to myself, “What poor taste! Just
wait until _my_ turn comes to go to Europe! I’ll show them what it is
to enjoy every moment of my stay!”
But now—dear me, I can remember that I have made invidious remarks
about New York, and have objected to the odors in Chicago, and have
hated the Illinois Central turnstiles. But if I could be back in
America I would not mind being caught in a turnstile all day. Dear
America! Dear Lake Michigan! Dear Chicago!
I have talked the matter over with my sister, and we have decided that
it must be the people, for certainly the novelty is not yet worn off of
this marvellous London. We like individually nearly every one whom we
have met, but as a nation the English are to me an acquired taste—just
like olives and German opera.
To explain. My friendly, volatile American feelings are constantly
being shocked at the massed and consolidated indifference of English
men and women to each other. They care for nobody but themselves. In a
certain sense this indifference to other people’s opinions is very
satisfactory. It makes you feel that no matter how outrageous you
wanted to be you could not cause a ripple of excitement or
interest—unless Royalty noticed your action. Then London would tread
itself to death in its efforts to see and hear you. But if an
Englishman entered a packed theatre on his hands with his feet in the
air, and thus proceeded to make the rounds of the house, the audience
would only give one glance, just to make sure that it was nothing more
abnormal than a man in evening dress, carrying his crush-hat between
his feet and walking on his hands, and then they would return to their
exciting conversation of where they were “going to show after the
play.” Even the maids who usher would not smile, but would stoop and
put his programme between his teeth for him, and turn to the next
comer.
The English mind their own business, and we Americans are so used to
interfering with each other, and minding everybody’s business as well
as our own, it makes us very homesick indeed, to find that we can do
precisely as we please and be let entirely alone.
The English who have been in America, or those who have a single
blessed drop of Irish or Scotch blood in their veins, will quite
understand what I mean. Fortunately for us we have found a few of these
different sorts, and they have kept us from suicide. They warned us of
the differences we would find. One man said to me: “We English do not
understand the meaning of the word hospitality compared to you
Americans. Now in the States—”
“Stop right there, if you please,” I begged, “and say ‘America.’ It
offends me to be called ‘the States’ quite as much as if you called me
‘the Colonies’ or ‘the Provinces!’”
“You speak as if you were America,” he said.
“I am,” I replied.
“Now that is just it. You Americans come over here nationally. We
English travel individually.”
I was so startled at this acute analysis from a man whom I had always
regarded as an Englishman that I forgot my manners and I said, “Good
heavens, you are not all English, are you?”
“My father was Irish,” he said.
“I knew it!” I cried with joy. “Please shake hands with me again. I
knew you weren’t entirely English after that speech!”
He laughed.
“I will shake hands with you, of course. But I am a typical Britisher.
Please believe that.”
“I shall not. You are not typical. That was really a clever distinction
and quite true.”
He looked as if he were going to argue the point with me, so I hurried
on. I always get the worst of an argument, so I tried to take his mind
off his injury. “Now please go on,” I urged. “It sounded so
interesting.”
“Well, I was only going to say that in America you are, as hosts, quite
sincere in wishing us to enjoy ourselves and to like America. Here we
will only do our duty by you if you bring letters to us, and we don’t
care a hang whether you like England or not. We like it, and that’s
enough.”
“I see,” I said, with cold chills of aversion for England as a nation
creeping over my enthusiasm.
“Now in America,” he proceeded, “your host sends his carriage for you,
or calls for you, takes you with him, stays by you, introduces you to
the people he thinks you would most care to meet, and tells them who
and what you are; sees that you have everything that’s going, and that
you see everything that’s going, and then takes you back to your club.”
“Then he asks you if you have had a good time, and if you like
America!” I supplemented.
“Oh, Lord, yes! He asks you that all the time, and so does everybody
else,” he said, with a groan.
“Now, you were unkind if you didn’t tell him all he wanted you to, for
I do assure you it was pure American kindness of heart which made him
take all that trouble for you. I know, too, without your telling me,
that he introduced you to all the prettiest girls, and gave you a
chance to talk to each of them, and only hovered around waiting to take
you on to the next one, as soon as he could catch you with ease.”
“He did just that. How did you know?”
“Because he was a typical American host, God bless him, and that is the
way we do things over there.”
“Now here,” he went on, “we consider our duty done if we take a man to
dine, and then to some reception, where we turn him loose after one or
two introductions.”
“What a hateful way of doing!” I said, politely.
“It is. It must seem barbarous to you.”
“It does.”
“Or if you are a woman we send our carriages to let you drive where you
like. Or we send you invitations to go to needlework exhibitions where
you have to pay five shillings admission.”
I said nothing, and he laughed.
“I know they have done that to you,” he exclaimed. “Haven’t they?”
“I have been delightfully entertained at luncheons and dinners and
teas, and I have been introduced to as charming people in London as I
ever hope to meet anywhere,” I said, stolidly.
“But you won’t tell about the needlework. Oh, I say, but that’s jolly!
Fancy what you said when you began to get those beastly things!” And he
laughed again.
“I didn’t say anything,” I said. Then he roared. Yet he claimed to be a
“typical Britisher.”
“We mean kindly,” he went on. “You mustn’t lay it up against us.”
“Oh, we don’t. We are having a lovely time.”
There are times when the truth would be brutal.
Then this oasis of a man, this “typical Britisher,” went away, and my
sister and I dressed for the theatre. A friend had sent us her box, and
assured us that it was perfectly proper for us to go alone. So we went.
Up to this time we had not hinted to each other that we were homesick.
The play was most amusing, yet we couldn’t help watching the audience.
Such a bored-looking set, the women with frizzled hair held down by
invisible nets, mingling with their eyebrows, and done hideously in the
back. Low-necked gowns, exhibiting the most beautiful shoulders in the
world. Gorgeous jewels in their hair and gleaming all over their
bodices, but among half a dozen emerald, turquoise, and diamond
bracelets there would appear a silver-watch bracelet which cost not
over ten dollars, and spoiled the effect of all the others.
English women as a race are the worst-dressed women in the world. I saw
thousands of them in Piccadilly and Regent Street, and at Church Parade
in the Park, with high, French-heeled slippers over colored stockings.
And as to sizes, I should say nines were the average. There are some
smaller, but the most are larger.
The Prince of Wales was in the box opposite to ours, and when we were
not looking at him we gazed at the impassive faces of the audience.
They never smiled. They never laughed. The subtlest points in the play
went unnoticed, yet it is one which has had a record run and bids fair
to keep the boards for the rest of the season.
Suddenly my sister, although we had not spoken of the homesickness that
was weighing us down, touched my arm and said, “Look quick! There’s
one!”
“Where? Where?”
“Down there just in front of the pit, talking to that bald-headed idiot
with the monocle.”
“Do you think she is American?” I said, dubiously. I couldn’t see her
feet. “She might be French. She talks all over.”
“No. She is an American girl. See how thin she is. The French are short
and fat.”
“Look at her face,” I said, enviously. “How animated it is. See how it
seems to stand out among all the other faces.”
“Yet she is only amusing herself. See how stolid that creature looks
that she is wasting all her vitality on.”
“She has told him some joke and she is laughing at it. He has put his
monocle in his other eye in his effort to see the point. He will get it
by the next boat. Wish she’d come and tell that joke to me. I’d laugh
at it.”
My sister eyed me critically.
“You don’t look as if you could laugh,” she said.
“I wonder what would happen if I should fall dead and drop over into
the lap of that fat elephant in pink silk with the red neck,” I said,
musingly.
“She wouldn’t even wink,” said my sister, laughingly. “But if you
struck her just right you would bounce clear up here again and I could
catch you.”
“It is just four o’clock in Chicago,” I said.
My sister promptly turned her back on me.
“And Billy has just wakened from his nap, and Katy is giving him his
food,” I went on. (Billy is my sister’s baby.) “And then mamma will
come into the nursery presently and take him while Katy gets his
carriage out, and she will show him my picture and ask him who it is
(because she wrote me she always did it at this time), and then he will
say, ‘Tattah,’ which is the sweetest baby word for ‘Auntie’ I ever
heard from mortal lips, and then he will kiss it of his own accord.
Mamma wrote that he had blistered it with his kisses, and it’s one of
the big ones, but I don’t care; I’ll order a dozen more if he will
blister them all. And then she will say, ‘Where did mamma and Tattah
go?’ and he will wave his precious little square hand and say, ‘Big
boat,’ and she says he tries to say, ‘Way off’—and, oh, dear, we are
‘way off’—”
“Stop talking, you fiend,” said my sister, from the depths of her
handkerchief. “You know I look like a fright when I cry.”
“Boo-hoo,” was my only reply. And once started, I couldn’t stop. That
deadly English atmosphere of indifference—and, oh—and everything!
Have you ever been homesick when you couldn’t get home? Have you ever
wanted to see your mother so that every bone in your body ached? Have
you ever been in the state where to see the baby for five minutes you
would give everything on earth you had? That was the way I felt about
Billy that grewsome night at this amusing play in an English theatre. I
had on my best clothes, but after my handkerchief ceased to avail the
tears slopped down on my satin gown, and the blisters will remain as a
lasting tribute to the contagion of a company of English people out
enjoying themselves.
My sister’s stern sense of decorum caused her to contain herself until
she got home, but I am free to confess that after I once loosed my hold
over myself and found what a relief it was, I realized the truth of
what our old negro cook used to say when I was a child in the South,
and asked her why she howled and cried in such an alarming manner when
she “got religion.” She used to say, “Lawd, chile, you don’t know how
soovin’ it is to jest bust out awn ’casions lake dese!”
Happy negroes! Happy children, who can “bust out” when their feelings
get the better of them! Civilization robs us of many of our acutest
pleasures.
That night on the way home from the theatre I learned something. Nobody
had ever told me that it is the custom to give the cabby an extra
sixpence when one takes a cab late at night, so, on alighting in front
of our flower-trimmed lodgings, I reached up, deposited my shilling in
his hand, and was turning away, when my footsteps were arrested by my
cabby’s voice.
Turning, I saw him tossing the despised shilling in his curved palm and
saying:
“A shillin’! Twelve o’clock at night! Two ladies in evenin’ dress!
_You_ ought to ’a’ gone in a ’bus! A cab’s too expensive for _you_! _I_
wish you’d ’a’ _walked_ and I wish it had _rained_!”
With that parting shot he gathered up the lines and drove off, while I
leaned up against the door shaking with a laughter which my sister in
no wise shared with me. Poor Bee! Things like that jar her so that she
can’t get any amusement out of them. To her it was terrifying
impudence. To me it was a heart-to-heart talk with a London cabby!
Oh, the sweet viciousness of that “_I_ wish it had _rained_!” I wonder
if that man beats his wife, or if he just converses with her as he does
with a recreant fare! Anyway, I loved him.
But if I have discovered nothing else in the brief time since I left my
native land, it is worth while to realize the truth of all the poetry
and song written on foreign shores about home.
To one accustomed to travel only in America, and to feel at home with
all the different varieties of one’s countrymen, such sentiments are no
more than _vers de société_. _But_ now I know what _Heimweh_ is—the
home-pain. I can understand that the Swiss really die of it sometimes.
The home-pain! Neuralgia, you know, and most other acute pains, attack
only one set of nerves. But _Heimweh_ hurts all over. There is not a
muscle of the body, nor the most remote fibre of the brain, nor a
tissue of the heart that does not ache with it. You can’t eat. You
can’t sleep. You can’t read or write or talk. It begins with the
protoplasm of your soul—and reaches forward to the end of time, and
aches every step of the way along. You want to hide your face in a
pillow away from everybody and do nothing but weep, but even that does
not cure. It seems to be too private to help materially. The only thing
I can recommend is to “bust out.”
Homesickness is an inexplicable thing. I have heard brides relate how
it attacked them unmercifully and without cause in the midst of their
honeymoon. Girl students, whose sole aim in life has been to come
abroad to study, and who, in finally coming, have fondly dreamed that
the gates of Paradise had swung open before their delighted eyes, have
been among its earliest and most acutely afflicted victims. No success,
no realized ambitions ward it off. Like death, it comes to high and low
alike. One woman, whose name became famous with her first concert, told
me that she spent the first year over here in tears. Nothing that
friends can do, no amount of kindness or hospitality avails as a
preventive. You can take bromides and cure insomnia. You can take
chloroform, and enough of it will prevent seasickness, but nothing
avails for _Heimweh_. And like pride, “let him that thinketh he
standeth take heed lest he fall.” I have been in the midst of an
animated, recital of how homesick I had been the day before, ridiculing
myself and my malady with unctuous freedom, when suddenly Billy’s
little face would seem to rise out of the flowers on the dinner-table,
or the patter of his little flying feet as they used to sound in my ear
as he fluttered down the long hall to my study, or the darling way he
used to ran towards me when I held out my arms and said, “Come, Billy,
let Tattah show you the doves,” with such an expectant face, and that
little scarlet mouth opened to kiss me—oh, it is nothing to anybody
else, but it is home to me, and I was only recalled to London and my
dinner party when a fresh attack was made on America, and I was called
once more to battle for my country.
I have “fought, bled, and died” for home and country more times than I
can count since I have been here. I ought to come home with honorable
scars and the rank of field-marshal, at least. I never knew how many
objectionable features America presented to Englishmen until I became
their guest and broke bread at their tables. I cannot eat very much at
their dinner parties—I am too busy thinking how to parry their attacks
on my America, and especially my Chicago, and my West generally. The
English adore Americans, but they loathe America, and I, for one, will
not accept a divided allegiance. “Love me, love my dog,” is my motto. I
go home from their dinners as hungry as a wolf, but covered with
Victoria crosses. I am puzzled to know if they really hate Chicago more
than any other spot on earth, or if they simply love to hear me fight
for it, or if their manners need improving.
I myself may complain of the horrors of our filthy streets, or of the
way we tear up whole blocks at once (here in London they only mend a
teaspoonful of pavement at a time), or of our beastly winds which tear
your soul from your body, but I hope never to sink so low as to permit
a lot of foreigners to do it. For even as a Parisian loves his Paris,
and as a New Yorker loves his London, so do I love my Chicago.
III
PARIS
It was a fortunate thing, after all, that I went to London first, and
had my first great astonishment there. It broke Paris to me gently.
For a month I have been in this city of limited republicanism; this
extraordinary example of outward beauty and inward uncleanness; this
bewildering cosmopolis of cheap luxuries and expensive necessities;
this curious city of contradictions, where you might eat your breakfast
from the streets—they are so clean—but where you must close your eyes
to the spectacles of the curbstones; this beautiful, whited sepulchre,
where exists the unwritten law, “Commit any offence you will, provided
you submerge it in poetry and flowers”; this exponent of outward
observances, where a gentleman will deliberately push you into the
street if he wishes to pass you in a crowd, but where his action is
condoned by his inexpressible manner of raising his hat to you, and the
heartfelt sincerity of his apology; where one man will run a mile to
restore a lost franc, but if you ask him to change a gold piece he will
steal five; where your eyes are ravished with the beauty, and the
greenness, and the smoothness and apparent ease of living of all its
inhabitants; where your mind is filled with the pictures, the music,
the art, the general atmosphere of culture and wit; where the cooking
is so good but so elusive, and where the shops are so bewitching that
you have spent your last dollar without thinking, and you are obliged
to cable for a new letter of credit from home before you know it—this
is Paris.
Paris is very educational. I can imagine its influence broadening some
people so much that their own country could never be ample enough to
cover them again. I can imagine it narrowing others so that they would
return to America more of Puritans than ever. It is amusing, it is
fascinating, it is exciting, it is corrupting. The French must be the
most curious people on earth. How could even heavenly ingenuity create
a more uncommon or bewildering contradiction and combination? Make up
your mind that they are as simple as children when you see their
innocent picnicking along the boulevards and in the parks with their
whole families, yet you dare not trust yourself to hear what they are
saying. Believe that they are cynical, and _fin de siècle_, and
skeptical of all women when you hear two men talk, and the next day you
hear that one of them has shot himself on the grave of his sweetheart.
Believe that politeness is the ruling characteristic of the country
because a man kisses your hand when he takes leave of you. But marry
him, and no insult as regards other women is too low for him to heap
upon you. Believe that the French men are sympathetic because they
laugh and cry openly at the theatre. But appeal to their chivalry, and
they will rescue you from one discomfort only to offer you a worse. The
French have sentimentality, but not sentiment. They have gallantry, but
not chivalry. They have vanity, but not pride. They have religion, but
not morality. They are a combination of the wildest extravagance and
the strictest parsimony. They cultivate the ground so close to the
railroad tracks that the trains almost run over their roses, and yet
they leave a Place de la Concorde in the heart of the city.
You can buy the wing of a chicken at a butcher’s and take it home to
cook it. But your bill at a restaurant will appall you. Water is the
most precious and exclusive drink you can order in Paris. Imagine
that—you who let the water run to cool it! In Paris they actually pay
for water in their houses by the quart.
Artichokes, and truffles, and mushrooms, and silk stockings, and kid
gloves are so cheap here that it makes you blink your eyes. But eggs,
and cream, and milk are luxuries. Silks and velvets are bewilderingly
inexpensive. But cotton stuffs are from America, and are extravagances.
They make them up into “costumes,” and trim them with velvet ribbon.
Never by any chance could you be supposed to send cotton frocks to be
washed every week. The luxury of fresh, starched muslin dresses and
plenty of shirt-waists is unknown.
I never shall overcome the ecstasies of laughter which assail me when I
see varieties of coal exhibited in tiny shop windows, set forth in high
glass dishes, as we exploit chocolates at home. But well they may
respect it, for it is really very much cheaper to freeze to death than
to buy coal in Paris.
The reason of all this is the city tax on every chicken, every carrot,
every egg brought into Paris. Every mouthful of food is taxed. This
produces an enormous revenue, and this is why the streets are so clean;
it is why the asphalt is as smooth as a ballroom floor; it is why the
whole of Paris is as beautiful as a dream.
In fact, the city has ideas of cleanliness which its middle-class
inhabitants do not share. On a rainy day in Paris the absurdly hoisted
dresses will expose to your view all varieties of trimmed, ruffled, and
lace petticoats, which would undeniably be benefited by a bath. All the
_lingerie_ has ribbons in it, and sometimes I think they are never
intended to be taken out.
When I was at the château of a friend not long ago she overheard her
maid apologizing to two sisters of charity, for the presence of a
bath-tub in her mistress’s dressing-room: “You must not blame madame la
marquise for bathing every day. She is not more untidy than I, and I,
God knows, wash myself but twice a year. It is just a habit of hers
which she caught from the English.”
My friend called to her sharply, and told her she need not apologize
for her bathing, to which the maid replied, in a tone of meek
justification, “But if madame la marquise only knew how she was
regarded by the people for this habit of hers!”
I like the way the French take their amusements. At the theatre they
laugh and applaud the wit of the hero and hiss the villain. They shout
their approval of a duel and weep aloud over the death of the aged
mother. When they drive in the Bois they smile and have an air of
enjoyment quite at variance with the bored expression of English and
Americans who have enough money to own carriages. We drove in Hyde Park
in London the day before we came to Paris, and nearly wept with
sympathy for the unspoken grief in the faces of the unfortunate rich
who were at such pains to enjoy themselves.
The second day from that we had a delightful drive in the Bois in
Paris.
“How glad everybody seems to be we have come!” I said to my sister.
“See how pleased they all look.”
I was enchanted at their gay faces. I felt like bowing right and left
to them, the way queens and circus girls do.
I never saw such handsome men as I saw in London. I never saw such
beautiful women as I see in Paris.
The Bois has never been so smart as it was the past season, for the
horrible fire of the Bazar de la Charité put an end to the Paris
season, and left those who were not personally bereaved no solace but
the Bois. Consequently, the costumes one saw between five and seven on
that one beautiful boulevard were enough to set one wild. I always
wished that my neck turned on a pivot and that I had eyes set like a
coronet all around my head. My sister and I were in a constant state of
ecstasy and of clutching each other’s gowns, trying to see every one
who passed. But it was of no use. Although they drove slowly on purpose
to be seen, if you tried to focus your glance on each one it seemed as
if they drove like lightning, and you got only astigmatism for your
pains. I always came home from the Bois with a headache and a stiff
neck.