This morning we had a thunder-storm in the midst of a heavy fog--a
pure white one like those we call a mist in our country, and bearing
no resemblance to the London pea-soup. The lightning flashing through
it had an odd and beautiful effect. Later the fog rolled _down_ the
mountain to the valleys of lower ranges, leaving only a light mist on
the mountains and peak opposite. Through this the sun shone gently, and
the dense low-looking forests on those distant heights looked as if
lightly powdered. I have been down into the forest again. It is wet,
but fresher and greener than ever, and full of sweet smells. The balsam
when wet, fills the woods with a fragrance that seems to cry aloud of
new vitality. Here and there a great tree has fallen, carrying feebler
ones with it. To-day I discovered that the ground is covered in many
places by a running shrub, that looks like its name, “ground pine.” And
in other places, on rocks, I found a stiff dark-green moss that looked
like a mass of tiny stars. There is so much beauty in these woods one
can make only so many discoveries a day. This morning after the storm,
I went out by the road instead of the trail, and walked down for a
mile or more on those dreadful logs. But that wild magnificent avenue,
dropping and turning abruptly, lured me on. Suddenly I saw straight
ahead for many miles, and at the end of that lofty perspective was a
great mountain, powdered with mist; afterward as I stood watching it,
entranced, darkening to a deep rich blue. And between my avenue and
that far mountain, was only another lofty valley, high above the level,
far from the quick impatient sound of cities. I had not before so fully
understood--and revelled in--our isolation.
It sometimes appalls me to be so far from a doctor or a chemist shop,
but after all what the Adirondacks cannot do for Bertie no man can,
and Agatha has a trunk full of physic. And these _friendly_ mountains
make disaster and heartbreak seem impossible. That adjective is one
of their spirit’s keynotes. The post came very late last night and
I spent the earlier morning hours reading the newspapers to Bertie.
I do not know why Americans should be blamed for their extremes of
wealth and poverty, their proneness, indeed, to rush to extremes of all
sorts, when they have such an example in their climate. Imagine, Polly,
people dying in New York City of the heat, while up here, not three
hundred miles away, and in the same State, we were huddled in furs, a
roaring fire in every room. During the past nine days we have had the
thermometer at 34° and at 86°, we have had sultry thunder-storms on one
day and cold rains on the next. To-day it has been heavy and sullen,
but yesterday was full of splendour, with an exhilaration in the air
that filled Bertie with life and youth once more. His very cheeks
seemed to fill out, and his eyes sparkled as they used to do when his
legs would not carry him to the cricket-field fast enough.
By the way, dear, Mr. Rogers came up yesterday with several other men.
(The families follow in about a week.) They have been fishing since
early morn, regardless of the thunder-storm, but have caught little,
as the fish in these lakes have much to eat, and grow cleverer every
year. Hunter, the lake-keeper, told me of their ill-luck, but when I
expressed sympathy he shrugged his shoulders.
“They like it,” he said; “and them as does’d set and fish all day in a
wash-tub.”
But Mr. Rogers arrived quite early yesterday morning, and spent nearly
all of the day and evening with us. Bertie, who improves steadily in
spite of all climatic vagaries, was delighted to see him, and they
exchanged sporting experiences for several hours.
I have not described Mr. Rogers to you, I think. He is what they
call in this country a “great publisher,” by which I infer is meant
a rich and successful one whose prestige is vastly added to by the
fact that he inherited the “great” business, and is not self-made. A
young man, an author, who sat at our table on the Oceanic, told me
that Mr. Rogers’ firm, and three or four others, set the standard for
American literature, and that any book with his hallmark on it would
be accepted as literature whether the public bought it or not. He has
encouraged, helped to create, as it were, the latter-day distinctive
American literature, which Bertie and I have so rebelled against these
rainy days, and was one of the first to make fashionable the story of
locality and dialect. (I think he ought to be hanged for that.) If you
don’t publish with one of these houses, my informant told me, your
struggle will be a long one. But all that is not very interesting, not
nearly so much so as the man himself He is about fifty-two, I should
think, with that tall thin American figure, which when ill-carried is
so ungainly and provincial, but very distinguished, if a little stiff,
when a man has received the proper training. His face is the coldest
I have ever seen; the eyes are grey, the hair and slight moustache
nondescript, the features and general outlines finely cut, the whole
effect, as I said, cold, and--well, aristocratic. I don’t think I ever
used the word before I came to this country, but it is always popping
off my pen here. It exactly describes Mr. Rogers. He would put a prince
of the blood to the blush; refinement (another great American word),
fastidiousness, correctness, the just not self-conscious superiority
over ordinary mortals, fairly radiate from him in so many cold steady
beams. And his voice is admirably modulated. He is a walking protest
against American provincialism, from its various accents to that
glorious principle that all men are free and equal, which I once read
in the Declaration of Independence. (Dad thought so much of that, and
used to say it was the highest expression of the Ideal, put into the
purest English that ever had been contributed to the literature of
Politics.)
Nevertheless, wherever the source of it may lie, Mr. Rogers is
charming. Perhaps it is because while he looks as if mortal woman could
not fascinate him, he has an air of troubling himself to entertain
her. Occasionally he lets her see that her wiles shake his armour just
a trifle and that he does not tighten it up again, but permits her
glance to penetrate in search of a heart. You don’t find a heart--at
least I speak for myself--but you find all sorts of pleasant spots,
and actually experience a sense of flattery when he laughs heartily
at one of your sallies, or keeps his cold eyes fixed steadily on
yours as you talk, the reflection of a smile in them. I know that he
can be sarcastic and sneering, for I overheard a bout between him
and my author acquaintance of the Oceanic; therefore, we who are
favoured should find a deep satisfaction in basking in the smiles of
this austere and fortunate person. And he certainly can say the most
charming things and make you want to please him in return.
As he went through the University of Yale and has alluded to a
great-grandfather I should know, even if I had not been told, that he
is not a “self-made American”--a variety I am still waiting and wanting
to meet. It would be so much like the real thing.
When I thought Bertie had talked enough I took Mr. Rogers for a walk
in the forest--and, by the way, it was he who called my attention to
the ground pine. He was delightfully solicitous lest I get my feet wet,
or catch cold; and when you have been watching over some one else for
two years, who is, also, quite the centre of all that sort of thing,
you find such solicitude rather fascinating. Mr. Rogers is a widower,
by the way, and I have heard that American women train their husbands
excellently.
We talked about ferns and trees and birds for a time, and I had the
good fortune to see two beautiful birds, one a bright corn-flower
blue from tip to tail, the other a deep orange with black wings. But
neither they nor their comrades lifted their voices for a moment. I
suppose they have sore throats, poor things. But I did not notice the
silence particularly, as we talked all the time. I asked him to tell me
something of the people who were coming, and he replied that they were
his intimate friends for the most part; that, indeed, forming a club to
buy the lake, that they might all be together for six or eight weeks in
summer, had been his suggestion. He and a number of other men come for
a fortnight in the early spring to fish, and some of the families stay
on into September for the deer, but not many, and the lake has rather a
bachelor appearance after the last of August.
“I’d like you to define your set,” I said, rather bluntly. “I infer
you would not condescend to belong to the fashionable frivolous
world, and--well--you are not my idea of a Bohemian, nor yet exactly
middle-class--I mean what I imagine the American middle-class to be.”
“No,” he said, smiling, “we are not fashionable in the ‘400’ meaning
of the word, nor are we Bohemians, nor yet middle-class. The set to
which I belong, if you must have all the facts--and you have only to
command me for all the facts on any subject that I understand--embraces
what might vulgarly be called the successful brains of New York--and
those of other cities which have come to us to stay. Mind you, I mean
successful in the right way: editors, publishers and authors, who aim
only to give the world the most fastidious expression of the American
spirit, a few artists--although, as a rule, they herd together; but
there are several fine illustrators who class themselves with us;
also people who do not pretend to give to the public, but who love
literature, music, and art of all sorts and prefer meeting people of
brains and refinement to associating with a class which thinks of
nothing but spending money.”
“In short,” I exclaimed, “you are the true aristocracy of New York.”
“Yes,” he replied unsuspiciously. “I think we are. There was a time
when to be in the fashionable set of New York argued birth and
breeding; money was no passport in those days. But to-day there is
no other; the ‘400,’ as it is absurdly called, has so few family
trees that they could all be stored in one linen closet; it is money,
money--and--consequently--the sort of vulgarity one most wants to
avoid.”
“But many of your set must have money,” I said, determined to get to
the bottom of these puzzling distinctions; “all of these cottages must
have cost a great deal of money, particularly on top of a mountain with
corduroy roads; and the keeper has often let fall remarks from which I
have inferred that no economy is practised by your friends.”
“Oh, yes,” he replied with that flicker of humour in his eyes and voice
which makes him transiently human, “there are several respectable
millions among us, but the point is, we none of us are disgustingly
rich. We are not known by our wealth, it is not invariably mentioned
coincidently with our names, and, indeed, we stand on quite another
basis. And many of these delightful people you will meet in a few days
are only comfortably off--although they all have enough to entertain
with in their own individual fashion.”
“You don’t mean that some are eccentric?” I demanded. “Surely you would
not countenance eccentricity.”
“Certainly not!” he exclaimed, quite as emphatically as I had expected;
“no cultivated person ever was eccentric and ‘Bohemians’ are welcome
to the monopoly of it for their vulgar advertising. I mean that each
entertains according to his--or shall I say her?--means, and manages so
to stamp her affairs with her own individuality that one never thinks
of the amount expended.”
“It sounds very alluring, but a little alarming,” I said. “Do they
_all_ come up here?”
“Oh, no, and many more men than women. Our women have their delicious
frivolities, I assure you, and are always running over to Europe to
replenish their really splendid wardrobes, while others seem never to
tire of travel. But those who do come are very representative and I
want you to like them better than those whose highest ambition is to
get into your own set in England.”
“I have met some charming Americans,” I replied, “and they always
seemed bright and full of talk. It was only when they tried to be
English that I didn’t like them. Bertie adores American women, but
whether he will like this superior intellectual variety----”
“Oh, do not form an erroneous impression,” he said, hastily. “I assure
you they do not in any way resemble the poor Bostonians who have been
so severely caricatured. They have accomplished the happy combination
of intellectual activity and appreciation, with a light worldliness and
a love of the best that their money and opportunities can buy, which
makes them unique in their country.”
“I infer that your set is quite exclusive, difficult to get into.”
“It is--much more so than the fashionable set, for money is far more
plentiful in this country than that peculiar combination of brains,
culture, and pecuniary success which I may say is the hallmark of our
set. I have a theory that the right sort of gifts always is successful;
by that I mean those gifts which are distinctively American in the
highest sense--Americanism in all its wonderful distinctiveness, but
polished, refined, cultivated, purified of dross. The exponents of it
naturally are successful with the large increasing number throughout
the country who possess the instinct to rise higher and strive for the
best; therefore, when these exponents are gathered together anywhere,
they form a fastidious circle which excludes inharmonious spirits,
and constitutes what is now the real aristocracy of the country. But,
I can assure you, we are perfectly normal,” he added, with his rare
delightful smile. “We dine and wine each other, have many a game of
poker, love sport, have our boxes at the opera, and know the world
pretty thoroughly.”
“It sounds profoundly interesting,” I said, but when I repeated the
conversation to Bertie he growled that it was “jolly rot.”
“I shall like the men if they are like Rogers,” he added; “for he’s
a jolly good sort inside that chain-mail armour of his; but I feel
sure I shall hate the women. I’ll be bound they are rotters, every
one of them--the personification of their self-conscious provincial
literature. If they are I’ll make a public scandal by flirting with
Jemima.”