DEAREST MAMMA,--All our preparations are made, and we start for the
West by Niagara Falls, which I have always wanted to see. The Vicomte
is coming with us, and our charming Senator, Elias P. Arden. So I am
sure we shall have an agreeable time. "Lola" and the husband have
already started, and will join us at Los Angeles from San Francisco;
and the Senator says he is "in touch" with Mr. Renour, and he hopes he
will "be along" by the time we get to the private car.
These few days in New York have confirmed our opinion of everyone's
extraordinary kindness and hospitality. All their peculiarities are
just caused by being so young a nation; they are quite natural;
whatever their real feelings are come out. As children are touchy, so
are they, and as children boast, so do they, and just as children's
hearts are warm and generous, so are theirs. So I think this quality of
youth is a splendid one, don't you, Mamma?
Valerie's set are practically the same as ours at home in their tone,
and way of living, and amusements, so I have not told you anything
special of them, the only difference being we never worry in the least
about what people think of us, and when we talk seriously it is of
politics, and they of Wall Street affairs, which shows, doesn't it,
that such things are more interesting to them than the making of laws.
We have not heard politics talked about in any class in New York.
Attacks on the President often, because he is said to have interfered
with trusts by probing their methods, which gets back to the vital
point of dollars and cents. People will speak for and against him for
hours, but not from a political point of view, and abstract political
discussions we have never heard.
I have not yet grasped the difference between "Democrat" and
"Republican," and so I don't know if it is just the same as at home,
that whichever is Radical wants to snatch each one for his own hand and
does not care a rush about the nation; while whichever is Conservative
cares nothing for personal advancement--having arrived there
already--so has time and experience to look ahead and think of the
country.
If you had a delicate baby, Mamma, would not you rather give it into
the hands of a thoroughly trained nurse than an ignorant aspiring
nursery maid taking her first place, who was more likely to be thinking
of the head nurse's wages she was going to get than her duties to the
child? That is how I look upon the parties at home, but here I expect
it is more as the Whigs and Tories were, each equal in class and
experience, only holding different views. I should like to have a peep
about five hundred years ahead. I am sure the ignorant nurse-maids will
have killed our baby by then, and we shall be a wretched down-trodden
commune, while they will be a splendidly governed aristocratic nation
under one autocratic king!
I have not told you a thing about the Park, or the general aspect of
the houses; we are rushed so it is hard to write. But the Park is a
perfectly charming place, as nice as the Bois, and much nicer than our
attempt that way, and everyone who goes there seems to be out on a
holiday. Fifth Avenue runs beside it like our Park Lane, beginning at
Fifty-ninth Street, and about every five years people have to move
further up, because of the encroaching shops. So it hardly seems worth
while to spend millions on building white marble palaces which may be
torn down or converted in so short a time. Nothing is allowed to last.
Heaps of the mansions are perfectly beautiful in style, and many simple
as well, which is always the prettiest; but you can meet Francois
Premier Castles, and Gothic Halls, and all sorts of mixed freaks, too,
in half an hour's walk, and it seems to me a pity they can't use their
rollers and just cart these into the side streets. But if I were
rebuilding Valmond House I would get an American architect to do it for
me, and on the American principle, that is, I should get him to study
all the best they have done and then "go one better!"
Unless you are quite in the poor parts every creature in the streets is
spruce and well dressed; men and women have that look of their things
being brushed and ironed to the last state of perfection. And if it is
the fashion in Paris to have hats two feet across they will have them a
yard; but as they all have the same, one's eye gets accustomed to it,
and it does not look ridiculous.
The longer one stays the more one admires that extraordinary quality of
"go"--a mental alertness and lucidity they have immeasurably beyond
European nations; very few people are intellectual, but all are
intelligent and advancing. No one browses like such hundreds do at
home, and all are much more amusing companions in consequence.
Last night we went to see China Town with Valerie's brother and some
other young men, and two or three women. Valerie would not come because
she has done it before and it bores her, and no American woman
deliberately does what she finds wearisome. They are sensible. First we
dined at the Café Lafayette, which is almost down town, and near
Washington Square, and then started in automobiles which we left in the
Bowery. One always thought that was a kind of cut throat Whitechapel,
did not one? But it is most quiet and respectable, so is China Town,
and I am sure we need not have had the two detectives who accompanied
us.
Outside there is nothing very lurid to look at. The Mayor met us at the
opening of the street, a most entertaining character of what
would answer to our Coster class I suppose. He spoke pure
Bowery-Irish-Coster-American slang, which the detectives translated for
us. It was about this: That he had seen English Lords before, and they
weren't half bad when you knew 'em, and he took a particular fancy to
Octavia because he said "her Nobs" (his late wife, or one of them) had
red hair, too, and "ginger for pluck." He had several teeth missing,
lost in fights, I suppose, and a perfectly delicious sense of humour. I
wish we could have understood all he said, but our host insinuated it
was just as well not! He led us first to "the theatre"--a den
underground, with the stage still lower at one end, where a Chinese
play was going on. The atmosphere was an unbelievable mixture of heat
and smell. And wouldn't you hate to be a Chinese woman, Mamma, packed
away in a sort of pen at one corner with all the other women and
children and not allowed to sit with the men. We went in there, too,
for as long as we could stand it. The audience were too quaint, not in
their national dress, but ordinary clothes and pigtails; you couldn't
have been sure they were human beings, or of what sex.
The play seemed to a thrilling one as far as we could see; they had
just got to a part where the whole company were going to be beheaded.
One of our party felt faint from the heat, and no wonder, so we
continued our travels. We descended a kind of ladder near the door,
into the bowels of the earth; and I was glad it was almost pitch dark,
because Gaston was just below me and made the greatest fuss of the
necessity of putting each of my feet safely on the steps for me; and
once towards the bottom I am sure he kissed my instep, but as it might
have been a bundle of tow which was sticking out on the last step,
brushing against me, I did not like to say anything to him about it. We
crossed some kind of rat hole rooms in utter darkness, and here one
respectful brotherly arm, and one passionate, _entreprenant_ one came
round my waist! And while in my right ear the voice of Valerie's
brother said kindly, "I'm obliged to hold on to you or you'll have an
awful fall"--in my left Gaston was whispering, "Je vous adore, vous
savez; n'allez pas si vite!" So I had to be very angry with him, and
clung to Valerie's brother, who toward the end of the evening got into
being quite a cousin instead of an aunt or father.
We had been burrowing under the auditorium, and presently found
ourselves in a large cellar where a Chinese was cooking on a brazier an
unspeakable melange of dog, fish, and rat for the actors' supper, with
not a scrap of ventilation anywhere!! Finally, up some steps, we
emerged behind the scenes, and saw all the performers dressing--rows of
false beards and wonderful garments hanging all around the walls; the
most indescribable smell of opium, warm eastern humanity, and grease
paint, and no _air_! A tiny baby was there being played with by its
proud father. Their lung capacity must be quite different to ours,
because if we had not quickly returned I am sure some of us would have
fainted. I felt strangely excited; it had a weird, fierce effect. What
a fatal mysterious nation the Chinese! Unlike any others on earth. I
did not much care who held me going back. I only wanted to rush to the
open air, and when we had climbed up again and got outside in the
street, we all staggered a little and could not speak.
When breath returned, further down the street, we recommenced burrowing
into a passage to the opium den, and this was a most wonderful and
terrible sight; a room with a stove in it, not more than ten feet
square and about eight feet high, no perceptible ventilation but the
door, which the detective put his foot in to keep a little open; a
raised platform along one side of the place, and on it four Chinamen
lying in different stages of the effects of opium. The first one's eyes
were beginning to glaze, the pipe had fallen from his hand, and he was
staring in front of him, and clutching some sheets of paper with
Chinese writing on them in one hand, a ghastly smile of extraordinary
bliss on his poor thin face. He was "happy and dreamin'," the detective
told us. I do wonder what about, don't you, Mamma? The next had just
begun to smoke, and was angry at our entrance because we let in some
air! The detectives made him give us the pipe to smell, and we watched
the way it was smoked, the man looking sullen and fierce and resentful,
crouching like a beast ready to spring. So Valerie's brother and Gaston
both thought it their duty to take care of me. The next man was half
asleep, also smoking, and the fourth what they call "quite sick." He
was the most dreadful of all, as he might have been a corpse except for
the rising and falling of his chest. The Mayor told us, with the most
amusing reflections upon this serious subject, that he would lie like
that for forty-eight hours and then wake. A fearful looking creature
crouched by the stove, cooking some more dog, or preparing something
for the opium; and a glaring piece of scarlet cloth hung down from a
rail at the top. There were some wicked long knives lying about, and
the whole thing, lit up by the light of one lantern, was a grim picture
of horror I shall never forget and hope never to see again. And this is
called pleasure! What a mercy, Mamma, our idea of joy is different. I
am glad to have seen these strange things, but I never want to again.
Everyone's head swam from the smell of the opium, and Tom said he was
rather sorry he had let us go there because of that; but Octavia told
him not to be ridiculous; experience is what we had come to America
for, and this is one of the sights.
After that we just had fun, going to a joss-house to have our fortunes
told, where a quaint priest and acolyte went through all sorts of comic
mysteries, and finally paired Octavia off with one of the detectives
for her fate! (Tom was furious!) and me with Valerie's brother, and
Gaston looked in despair at that! Then after buying curiosities at the
curio shop, we returned to the automobiles and went to Delmonico's to
supper. But the opium had got into our brains I think, for we could
only tell gruesome stories, and all felt "afraid to go home in the
dark!"
And now, Mamma, in case you have been worrying over us going into awful
places, I may as well tell you that at the end of supper our host
informed us that the whole show of the opium den had been got up for
our benefit, and was not the real thing at all!!! But whether this is
true or no I can't say; if it was "got up" it was awfully well done,
and I don't want to see any realler.
We can't get enough "drawing-rooms" on the train for everybody
to-morrow, so Octavia and I shall have one, and the senator and either
Tom or the Vicomte the other, and whoever is left out will have to
sleep in the general place. I believe it is too odd, but I will tell
you all about it when I have seen it.--If Harry writes to you and asks
about me, just say I am enjoying myself awfully, and say I am thinking
of becoming a naturalised American! That ought to bring him back at
once. I have been dying to cable and make it up with him, but of course
as I have determined not to, I can't. I am sorry to hear Hurstbridge
got under the piano and then banged the German Governess's head as she
tried to pull him out; but what can you expect, Mamma? His temper is
the image of Harry's.
Kiss the angels for me, both of them!
Your affectionate daughter,