16th

Mr. Carlisle was called suddenly to Newport last night by the illness

of his mother. A man rode thirty miles with the telegram, left his

horse at a farm house and walked the trail--which is so full of rocks

logs and mud-holes that no strange horse could cover it without

breaking a leg, and, likely as not, his neck. It was just after dinner

and we were all grouped in the little spruce grove before the camps

watching the sunset, when the man, looking so hot and tired, came

hurrying out of the woods. I am sure every one of us had a fright when

we saw the yellow envelope, a telegram is such a rare interloper in the

peace of these mountain camps; and when the man said “Mr. Carlisle,” I

am equally sure that every one of us wanted to hold Mr. C.’s hand. He

went rather pale, but said it was doubtless a false alarm as his mother

had been very nervous ever since the war--during which her nerves had

been on the rack between apprehension of Cervera’s fleet and his own

demise--and hastened away to get his things together. The keeper was

sent out to bring a buckboard in and Mr. C. left at three this morning.

I am sorry to say, Polly, that before he left I had rather a painful

interview with him. I tried to avoid it, but these American men are

very determined, my dear, and he managed to detain me on the veranda

after the others had gone in. How I hate men to be serious! It hurts

my conscience so that I don’t get over it for weeks. I had not the

slightest intention of making him love me, I only wanted to punish

that woman for her contemptible conduct in regard to Mr. N. Now I feel

quite as bad myself and wish that I had simply contented myself with

showing her that I had a string tied to Mr. N. Mr. C. is really a fine

manly fellow and I felt like petting him as I would Bertie and telling

him not to mind, but of course I couldn’t. He vows he’ll come back the

moment he is free, and gently insinuated contempt for a suitor who

was ten years too old to win me. How funny these men are! What I am

to do with them all I am sure I cannot imagine, but I would rather he

went away hoping, and accepted his fate by degrees; for heaven knows

I do not wish to add too heavily to his troubles. Not that I gave him

any encouragement. Heaven forbid. But they are so determined, these

Americans.

The buckboard awoke me at three o’clock, and I got up and peered out of

my high window. The woods looked so grey and ghostly, filled with mist

that was like a wet cobweb. The keeper was driving and Mr. C. sat on

the back seat muffled in a winter great coat. Mr. Latimer went out with

him to the end of the trail; and presently they disappeared into the

forest and the mist; and the silence was as if the world were dead.

But I have not told you of the new arrival. She has come to spend the

last of our camping days here with Mrs. Wilbur Garrison, and she is

quite the most imposing, nay, overwhelming person I have met in this

extraordinary jumble of democracy and caste, known--infelicitously, I

gather--as the United States. She is Mrs. Earle wife of ---- ---- ----

----,[A] and of course, a personage of vast importance in Washington.

But she is no mushroom; she has belonged for heaven knows how many

generations--eight, perhaps--to the haute noblesse of the country

and was born into an equally imposing number of dollars. But, Oh,

Polly! she is so cold, so haughty, so frozen! Her handsome little

head is set so far back on her mountainous body, her backbone is so

rigid and her upper lip so proudly curled, there is such a touch

of icy peremptoriness in her manner, as if it were her daily task

to dismiss pushing aspirants for social recognition--that I feel I

have looked upon the walking embodiment of the aristocratic idea as

it is interpreted by Americans. Heaven knows she has been sweet to

me, she has even invited me to spend a month with her in Washington

next winter; but I know that after a consecutive month of that chill

presence I should return to Bertie a sort of hysterical iceberg, my

marrow frozen and my humour on the verge of insanity. And, although

not in the least clever, she would be quite an agreeable woman were

it not for her tragic self-consciousness, for she must know the world

of Washington like a book; and it is a book I should like to read.

But she will not talk. All she has said of Washington is to intimate

her scorn of all “new-comers,” her boundless _ennui_ of the duties of

her official position, her sacrifice of her own inherited desire for

segregation from the common herd to the interests of her distinguished

husband. And yet she is not ill-natured. She is as placid as Chipmunk

Lake, and, I am told, an exemplary wife and mother, if _not_ a radiant

and fascinating hostess. Her only fault is--well--her aristocracy!

I tried to interest her in the vivid people of Boulder Lake, in the

farmers of the valley, in Jemima, in the various strange beings I have

met in this strange country. All by way of experiment, and in vain. Her

mind could not respond to the fact of their existence. They had not

been born in her original circle nor thrust upon her by the exigencies

of public life. She betrayed a flicker of interest in Mrs. Opp and

remarked vaguely that she should have imagined blood would count for

more than that, then curled her lip and relapsed into silence. Polly,

what are _we_? I am oppressed sometimes with the suspicion that those

countries which are not the United States are like diseases in the

creed of the Christian Scientists--they do not exist. We merely imagine

we are, they know we are not, but tolerate our whim. We have lost caste

because we have lost our consciousness of birth, and are therefore

degenerate. Upon my word, Polly, I begin to think that the snobs who

run after us in England are the truest Republicans, after all. However,

I have nothing to say against my other friends of Chipmunk Lake--always

excepting Mrs. Coward--for they are wholly charming, and unaffected,

and not afraid to let you see they know the world. Miss Page does not,

and thinks well of all the world--happy, happy girl.

There is another point on which these people greatly differ from those

of Boulder Lake--that is a certain homogeneity. Men and women, they

are like one large family and evidently have been brought up together;

and Mrs. Van Worden says that with most of her set it is quite the

same. They all call each other by their first names, and there is

that same utter absence of formality as with us when we are quite

among ourselves. In the set at Boulder Lake there is a formality that

never relaxes, they all seem to have an abnormal respect for each

other, and I vow I never heard the first name of one of them. They

have accumulated each and all with care, but their set is stamped with

the heterogeneity of a new incident in civilisation. And they have a

bourgeois timidity about expressing their real opinion--if they have

any--against the ruling opinion--or fad. Each thinks as the other

thinks--how often I have disconcerted them!

Mrs. Coward, by the way, preserves her unruffled demeanour and has

never so much as put out a little claw and scratched me. A woman of

twenty-seven with that amount of self-control should be capable of

great things. She never has overdone it, never for a moment. (I wonder

if she has anything up her sleeve.)

I did not tell you, she informed me the other day that she is a

“Colonial Dame,” and _has her family tree_--with two Presidents and

ten statesmen on collateral twigs--_framed and hung in her library at

Newport_. Polly, what _do_ you make of that. I ventured to speak to

Mrs. Van Worden about it, and she said:

“Rot. Fads. We all think that the Almighty made Heaven first and the

United States just after--pickling it till Europe and Asia were old

enough to appreciate--but some of us have the decency to do less

talking than thinking. Nettie Coward is fairly mum as a rule, but she

can’t help showing off to you--wants to impress you with the fact that

you’ve not got a monopoly on all the blood there is. She’s a clever

woman, but everybody makes an ass of himself one way or another. When

we’ve got twenty generations to the good we’ll be just as unconscious

about it as you are. But aristocracy will be a sort of itch with us

till then. Quantities of idiots have their family trees framed.”