Here I am at Bedford, one of the American watering-places; it is
hardly three days since I arrived, and I am already in haste to quit
it. The Americans, and, still more especially, the American women,
must be desperately listless at home, to be willing to exchange its
quiet comfort for the stupid bustle, and dull wretchedness of such a
residence. It would seem that in a country truly democratic, as is the
case here in the Northern States, nothing like our watering-places can
exist; and you will see that in proportion as Europe grows democratic,
if such is its destiny, your delightful summer resorts will lose their
charm. Man is naturally exclusive; there are few pleasures, which do
not cease to be such, the moment they become accessible to all, and for
that reason only. At Saratoga or at Bedford, the American soon grows
weary, because he sees that there are twenty thousand heads of families
in Philadelphia and New York, who can, as well as he, if the notion
seizes them, and it actually does seize them, have the satisfaction
of bringing their wives and daughters to the same place, and, once
there, of gaping on a chair in the piazza the whole day; of going,
arms in hand (I mean the knife and fork,) to secure their share of a
wretched dinner; of being stifled in the crowd of the ball-room during
the evening, and of sleeping, if it is possible, in the midst of such
a hubbub, upon a miserable pallet in a cell echoing one's tread from
its floor of pine boards. The American passes through the magnificent
landscapes on the Hudson without noticing them, because he is one of
six hundred or a thousand on board the steamer. And to confess the
truth, I have become an American myself in this respect, and I admired
the panorama of West Point and the Highlands, only when I found myself
alone in my boat on the river.
Democracy is too new a comer upon the earth, to have been able as yet
to organise its pleasures and its amusements. In Europe, our pleasures
are essentially exclusive, they are aristocratic like Europe itself,
and cannot, therefore, be at the command and for the use of the
multitude. In this matter, then, as in politics, the American democracy
has yet to create every thing afresh. The problem is difficult, but
it is not insoluble, for it was once resolved among us. The religious
festivals of the Catholic church were eminently democratic; all were
called to them, all took part in them. To what transports of joy did
not all Europe, great and small, nobles, burgesses, and serfs, give
itself up in the time of the crusades, when the victory of Antioch
or the capture of Jerusalem was celebrated by processions and _Te
Deums_? Even to this day, in our southern provinces, where faith is
not yet extinct, there are ceremonies truly popular; such are the
festival of Easter with the representations of the Passion exhibited
in the churches, and the processions with banners and crosses, the
brotherhoods of penitents with their quaint frocks and flowing robes,
and their long files of women and children; with the effigies of the
saints in full dress, and their relics piously carried about; and,
finally, with the military and civil pomp, which, notwithstanding the
atheism of the law, is mingled with the show. This is the poor man's
spectacle, and one which leaves on his mind better and more vivid
recollections, than the atrocious dramas of the _boulevard_ and the
fire-works of the Barrier of the Throne, leave to the suburban of Paris.
Already democracy, especially in the Western States, is beginning
to have its festivals, which thrill its fibres, and stir it with
agreeable emotions. There are religious festivals, the Methodist
camp-meetings, to which the people press with eager delight, in spite
of the philosophical remonstrances of the more refined sects, who
find fault with their heated zeal and noisy ranting, and in spite,
or rather in consequence, of the convulsionary and hysterical scenes
of the _anxious bench_. In the older States of the North, there are
political processions, for the most part mere party exhibitions, but
which are interesting in this respect, that the democracy has a share
in them; for it is the democratic party that gets up the most brilliant
and animated. Beside the camp-meetings, the political processions
are the only things in this country, which bear any resemblance to
festivals. The party dinners, with their speeches and deluge of toasts,
are frigid, if not repulsive; and I have never seen a more miserable
affair, than the dinner given by the Opposition, that is to say, by
the middle class, at Powelton, in the neighbourhood of Philadelphia.
But I stopped involuntarily at the sight of the gigantic hickory-poles
which made their solemn entry on eight wheels, for the purpose of being
planted by the democracy on the eve of the election. I remember one
of these poles, with its top still crowned with green foliage, which
came on to the sound of fifes and drums, and was preceded by ranks
of democrats, bearing no other badge than a twig of the sacred tree
in their hats. It was drawn by eight horses, decorated with ribands
and mottoes; Astride on the tree itself, were a dozen Jackson men of
the first water, waving flags with an air of anticipated triumph, and
shouting, _Hurrah for Jackson!_
But this entry of the hickory was but a by-matter compared with the
procession I witnessed in New York. It was in the night after the
closing of the polls, when victory had pronounced in favour of the
democratic party. (See _Letter XV._) The procession was nearly a mile
long; the democrats marched in good order to the glare of torches; the
banners were more numerous than I had ever seen them in any religious
festival; all were in transparency, on account of the darkness. On
some were inscribed the names of the democratic societies or sections;
_Democratic young men of the ninth or eleventh ward_; others bore
imprecations against the Bank of the United States; _Nick Biddle_
and _Old Nick_ here figured largely, and formed the pendant of our
_libera nos a malo_. Then came portraits of General Jackson afoot and
on horseback; there was one in the uniform of a general, and another
in the person of the Tennessee farmer, with the famous hickory cane in
his hand. Those of Washington and Jefferson, surrounded with democratic
mottoes, were mingled with emblems in all tastes and of all colours.
Among these figured an eagle, not a painting, but a real live eagle,
tied by the legs, surrounded by a wreath of leaves, and hoisted upon
a pole, after the manner of the Roman standards. The imperial bird
was carried by a stout sailor, more pleased than ever was a sergeant
permitted to hold one of the strings of the canopy, in a catholic
ceremony. From further than the eye could reach, came marching on
the democrats. I was struck with the resemblance of their air to the
train that escorts the _viaticum_ in Mexico or Puebla. The American
standard-bearers were as grave as the Mexican Indians who bore the
sacred tapers. The democratic procession, also, like the Catholic
procession, had its halting places; it stopped before the houses of
the Jackson men to fill the air with cheers, and halted at the doors
of the leaders of the Opposition, to give three, six, or nine groans.
If these scenes were to find a painter, they would be admired at a
distance, not less than the triumphs and sacrificial pomps, which the
ancients have left us delineated in marble and brass; for they are not
mere grotesques after the manner of Rembrandt, they belong to history,
they partake of the grand; they are the episodes of a wondrous epic
which will bequeath a lasting memory to posterity; that of the coming
of democracy.
Yet as festivals and spectacles, these processions are much inferior
to revivals, which take place in the camp-meetings. All festivals and
ceremonies in which woman does not take part, are incomplete. Why is it
that our constitutional ceremonies are so entirely devoid of interest?
It is not because the actors are merely commoners, very respectable
citizens surely, but very prosaic, and that the pomp of costumes and
the fascination of the arts, are banished from them; it is rather
because women do not and cannot have a place in them. A wit has said
that women are not poets, but they are poetry itself.
I remember what made the charm and the attraction of the processions
in my provincial city. We opened our eyes with wonder at the red robe
of the chief president; we gazed with delight at the epaulets and
gold lace of the general, and more than one youth was inspired with
military ardour at that show; we stretched forward with impatience
to catch a glimpse of the episcopal train; we threw ourselves on our
knees mechanically, on the approach of the canopy with its escort of
priests, and the venerable bishop, crowned with the mitre, and bearing
the host in his hands; we envied the glory of those boys, who had the
privilege of enacting St. Mark or St. Peter for the day; more than one
tall stripling was glad to sink his fifteen years, in which he prided
himself, for the sake of taking the character of St. John, clad in a
sheepskin; but the whole multitude held their breath, when, beneath the
forest of banners, through the peaked frocks of the penitents and the
bayonets of the garrison, amidst the surplices and albs of the priests,
there appeared in sight one of those young girls in white robes, who
represented the holy women and the Mother of the seven woes; or she,
who in the person of St. Veronica, displayed the handkerchief, with
which the sweat was wiped from the Saviour's brow as he ascended Mount
Calvary; or she, who, loaded with gold chains, ribands, and pearls,
represented the empress at the side of the emperor;[CZ] or those who
had just been confirmed by my lord bishop, and still bore the traces
of the emotions excited by that solemn act. So it is because there are
women in the camp-meetings, and because they take a not less active
part in them than the most rousing preachers, and it is on this account
only, that the American democracy throngs to these assemblages. The
camp-meetings with their raving Pythonissas have made the fortune
of the Methodists, and attracted to their church in America a more
numerous body of adherents than is numbered by any of the English sects
in Europe.
Take women from the tournaments, and they become nothing more than a
fencing-bout; from camp-meetings take away the _anxious bench_, remove
those women who fall into convulsions, shriek, and roll on the ground,
who, pale, dishevelled, and haggard, cling to the minister from whom
they inhale the holy spirit, or seize the hardened sinner at the door
of the tent, or in the passage-way, and strive to melt his stony
heart; it will be in vain, that a majestic forest overshadows the
scene, of a beautiful summer's night, under a sky that need not fear a
comparison with a Grecian heavens; in vain, will you be surrounded with
tents and numberless chariots, that recall to mind the long train of
Israel fleeing from Egypt; in vain the distant fires, gleaming amongst
the trees, will reveal the forms of the preachers gesticulating above
the crowd; in vain, will the echo of the woods fling back the tones of
their voice; you will be weary of the spectacle in an hour. But the
camp-meetings, as they are now conducted, have the power of holding the
people of the West for whole weeks; some have lasted a month.
I allow that the camp-meetings and political processions are as yet
only exceptions in America. A people has not a complete national
character, until it has its peculiar and appropriate amusements,
national festivals, poetry. In this respect, it will not be easy to
create American nationality; the American has no past from which to
draw inspiration. On quitting the old soil of Europe, on breaking off
from England, his fathers left behind them the national chronicles, the
traditions, the legends, all that constitutes country, that country
which is not carried about on the soles of one's feet. The American,
then, has become poor in ideality, in proportion as he has become rich
in material wealth. But a democracy always has some resource, so far as
imagination is concerned. I cannot pretend to decide how the American
democracy will supply the want of a past and of old recollections, any
more than I can undertake to pronounce, in what manner it will bridle
itself, and curb its own humours. But I am sure that America will have
her festivals, her ceremonies, and her art, as I am that society in
America will assume a regular organisation; for I believe in the future
of American society, or, to speak more correctly, of the beginnings of
society, whose growth is visible on the east and still more on the
west of the Alleghanies.
In France we have been for more than a century struggling against
ourselves, in the attempt to lay aside our national originality. We
are striving to become reasonable according to what we imagine to be
the English pattern; and after our example the Southern Europeans are
endeavouring to torture themselves into a parliamentary and calculating
demeanour. Imagination is treated as a lunatic. Noble sentiments,
enthusiasm, chivalric loftiness of soul, all that made the glory of
France, and gave Spain half the world, is regarded with contempt and
derision. The public festivals and popular ceremonies have become the
laughing-stock of the free thinkers. Love of the fine arts is nothing
more than a frivolous passion. We make the most desperate efforts to
starve the heart and soul, conformably to the prescriptions of our
religious and political Sangrados. To strip life of the last vestige
of taste and art, we have gone so far as to exchange the majestic
elegance of the costume, which we borrowed from the Spaniards when they
ruled Europe, for the undress of the English, which may be described
in one word, as suited to the climate of Great Britain. This could be
borne, if we had merely flung away our tournaments, our carousals, our
jubilees, our religious festivals, our elegance of garb. But unhappily
we have gone to the sources of all national and social poetry, to
religion itself, and tried to dry them up. Our manners and customs
scarcely retain the slightest tincture of their boasted grace. Politics
is abandoned to the dryest matter of fact. The national genius would
have to be given over as past cure, did not now and then some gleams
and outbursts prove that it is not dead but sleeps, and that the holy
fire is yet smouldering beneath the ashes.
France, and the peoples of Southern Europe, of whom she is the
coryphæus, certainly owe much to the philosophy of the 18th century;
for that was our Protest, that raised the standard of liberty amongst
us, opened a career for the progress of mind, and established
individuality. But it must be confessed that it is inferior to German,
English, and American Protestantism, because it is irreligious. The
writings of the Apostles of that great revolution will survive as
literary monuments, but not as lessons of morality; for whatever is
irreligious, can have but a transient social value. Place the remains
of Voltaire and Montesquieu, of Rousseau and Diderot, in the Pantheon;
but on their monuments deposit their works veiled under a shroud. Teach
the people to bless their memory; but do not teach it their doctrines,
and do net permit it to learn them from servile followers, whom those
great writers would disavow, if they could return to the earth; for men
like them belong to the present or a future age, but never to the past.
In return for all that has been taken from us, we have received the
representative system. This, it has been supposed, would satisfy
all our wants, would meet all our wishes in moral and intellectual,
as well as in physical things. Far be it from me to undervalue the
representative system! I believe in its permanency, although I doubt
whether we have yet discovered the form, under which it is suited to
the character of the French and the Southern Europeans; but whatever
may be its political value, it cannot be denied that it does not, that
it never can, of itself alone, make good the place of all that the
reformers have robbed us of. It has its ceremonies and its festivals;
but these smell too much of the parchment not to disgust our senses. It
has, to a certain degree, its dogmas and its mysteries, but it has no
hold on the imagination. Art has no sympathy with it; it has not the
power to move the heart; and it embraces, therefore, but one fourth of
our existence.
I can conceive how representative government should here be made the
key-stone of the social arch. An American of fifteen years of age is
as reasonable as a Frenchman of forty. Then society here is wholly
masculine; woman, who in all countries has little of the spirit of
the representative system, here possesses no authority; there are
no saloons in the United States. But even here the system no longer
exists in its primitive purity except on paper. The field of religion,
although much narrowed, it is true, still remains open here, and the
imagination still finds food, however meagre, within its limits. But
among us, it would be sheer fanaticism to set up the representative
system as the pivot of social life. All of us, God be thanked, have
a period of youth! Among us, women have a real power, although not
enumerated in the articles of the Charter; and our national character
has many feminine, I will not say effeminate, features. In vain would
you decimate France, and leave only the burghers of forty years, who
have the senses calmed, the mind clear of illusions, that is to say,
unpoetical and dry; you would hardly then have a community that would
be satisfied with constitutional emotions.
This is the cause why France is the theatre of a perpetual struggle
between the old and the middle-aged on one side, and the young, who
find their bounds too narrow, on the other. Youth accuses age of narrow
views, of timidity, of selfishness; the old complain of the greedy
ambition which devours the young, and of their ungovernable turbulence.
That is the only good government, which satisfies at once the demands
for order, regularity, stability and physical prosperity on the part
of those of riper years, and fills the longings of the young, and of
that portion of society which always continues youthful, for lively
sensations, brilliant schemes, and lofty aspirations. By the side of
their parliament, the English have their vast colonies, by which this
spirit finds vent, over the remotest seas. The Anglo-Americans have
the West, and also, like Great Britain, the ocean. This double invasion
of the East by the fathers, and of the West by the emancipated sons, is
a spectacle of gigantic magnitude and sublime interest. To suppose that
we, who stand in need of some vast enterprise, in which some may play a
part before the eyes of the world, and others may enjoy the spectacle
of their prowess,--to suppose that we shall be content to be forever
imprisoned within our own territory, with no other occupation than
that of watching or turning the wheels of the representative machine,
would be to wish that a man of taste, confined to this paltry hamlet of
Bedford, should imagine himself in paradise.