practically impossible for any one working at a serious profession to sit
up night after night, even if he desired), and at the same time so many
women insist on entertaining to amuse themselves or better their
position, that the men who go about get spoiled and almost come to
consider the obligation conferred, when they dine out. There is no more
amusing sight than poor paterfamilias sitting in the club between six and
seven P.M. pretending to read the evening paper, but really with his eve
on the door; he has been sent down by his wife to "get a man," as she is
one short for her dinner this evening. He must be one who will fit in
well with the other guests; hence papa's anxious look, and the reason the
editorial gets so little of his attention! Watch him as young
"professional" lounges in. There is just his man--if he only happens to
be disengaged! You will see "Pater" cross the room and shake hands,
then, after a few minutes' whispered conversation, he will walk down to
his coupe with such a relieved look on his face. Young "professional,"
who is in faultless evening dress, will ring for a cocktail and take up
the discarded evening paper to pass the time till eight twenty-five.
Eight twenty-five, advisedly, for he will be the last to arrive, knowing,
clever dog, how much _eclat_ it gives one to have a room full of people
asking each other, "Whom are we waiting for?" when the door opens, and he
is announced. He will stay a moment after the other guests have gone and
receive the most cordial pressures of the hand from a grateful hostess
(if not spoken words of thanks) in return for eating an exquisitely
cooked dinner, seated between two agreeable women, drinking
irreproachable wine, smoking a cigar, and washing the whole down with a
glass of 1830 brandy, or some priceless historic madeira.
There is probably a moral to be extracted from all this. But frankly my
ethics are so mixed that I fail to see where the blame lies, and which is
the less worthy individual, the ostentatious axe-grinding host or the
interested guest. One thing, however, I see clearly, viz., that life is
very agreeable to him who starts in with few prejudices, good manners, a
large amount of well-concealed "cheek" and the happy faculty of taking
things as they come.
No. 36--American Society in Italy
The phrase at the head of this chapter and other sentences, such as
"American Society in Paris," or London, are constantly on the lips of
people who should know better. In reality these societies do not exist.
Does my reader pause, wondering if he can believe his eyes? He has
doubtless heard all his life of these delightful circles, and believes in
them. He may even have dined, _en passant_, at the "palace" of some
resident compatriot in Rome or Florence, under the impression that he was
within its mystic limits. Illusion! An effect of mirage, making that
which appears quite tangible and solid when viewed from a distance
dissolve into thin air as one approaches; like the mirage, cheating the
weary traveller with a vision of what he most longs for.
Forty, even fifty years ago, there lived in Rome a group of very
agreeable people; Story and the two Greenoughs and Crawford, the sculptor
(father of the brilliant novelist of to-day); Charlotte Cushman (who
divided her time between Rome and Newport), and her friend Miss Stebbins,
the sculptress, to whose hands we owe the bronze fountain on the Mall in
our Park; Rogers, then working at the bronze doors of our capitol, and
many other cultivated and agreeable people. Hawthorne passed a couple of
winters among them, and the tone of that society is reflected in his
"Marble Faun." He took Story as a model for his "Kenyon," and was the
first to note the exotic grace of an American girl in that strange
setting. They formed as transcendental and unworldly a group as ever
gathered about a "tea" table. Great things were expected of them and
their influence, but they disappointed the world, and, with the exception
of Hawthorne, are being fast forgotten.
Nothing could be simpler than life in the papal capital in those pleasant
days. Money was rare, but living as delightfully inexpensive. It was
about that time, if I do not mistake, that a list was published in New
York of the citizens worth one hundred thousand dollars; and it was not a
long one! The Roman colony took "tea" informally with each other, and
"received" on stated evenings in their studios (when mulled claret and
cakes were the only refreshment offered; very bad they were, too), and
migrated in the summer to the mountains near Rome or to Sorrento. In the
winter months their circle was enlarged by a contingent from home. Among
wealthy New Yorkers, it was the fashion in the early fifties to pass a
winter in Rome, when, together with his other dissipations, paterfamilias
would sit to one of the American sculptors for his bust, which accounts
for the horrors one now runs across in dark corners of country
houses,--ghostly heads in "chin whiskers" and Roman draperies.
The son of one of these pioneers, more rich than cultivated, noticed the
other day, while visiting a friend of mine, an exquisite
eighteenth-century bust of Madame de Pompadour, the pride of his
hostess's drawing-room. "Ah!" said Midas, "are busts the fashion again?
I have one of my father, done in Rome in 1850. I will bring it down and
put it in my parlor."
The travellers consulted the residents in their purchases of copies of
the old masters, for there were fashions in these luxuries as in
everything else. There was a run at that time on the "Madonna in the
Chair;" and "Beatrice Cenci" was long prime favorite. Thousands of the
latter leering and winking over her everlasting shoulder, were solemnly
sent home each year. No one ever dreamed of buying an original painting!
The tourists also developed a taste for large marble statues, "Nydia, the
Blind Girl of Pompeii" (people read Bulwer, Byron and the Bible then)
being in such demand that I knew one block in lower Fifth Avenue that
possessed seven blind Nydias, all life-size, in white marble,--a form of
decoration about as well adapted to those scanty front parlors as a steam
engine or a carriage and pair would have been. I fear Bulwer's heroine
is at a discount now, and often wonder as I see those old residences
turning into shops, what has become of the seven white elephants and all
their brothers and sisters that our innocent parents brought so proudly
back from Italy! I have succeeded in locating two statues evidently
imported at that time. They grace the back steps of a rather shabby
villa in the country,--Demosthenes and Cicero, larger than life, dreary,
funereal memorials of the follies of our fathers.
The simple days we have been speaking of did not, however, outlast the
circle that inaugurated them. About 1867 a few rich New Yorkers began
"trying to know the Italians" and go about with them. One family, "up to
snuff" in more senses than one, married their daughter to the scion of a
princely house, and immediately a large number of her compatriots were
bitten with the madness of going into Italian society.
In 1870, Rome became the capital of united Italy. The court removed
there. The "improvements" began. Whole quarters were remodelled, and
the dear old Rome of other days, the Rome of Hawthorne and Madame de
Stael, was swept away. With this new state of things came a number of
Americo-Italian marriages more or less successful; and anything like an
American society, properly so-called, disappeared. To-day families of
our compatriots passing the winter months in Rome are either tourists who
live in hotels, and see sights, or go (as far as they can) into Italian
society.
The Queen of Italy, who speaks excellent English, developed a _penchant_
for Americans, and has attached several who married Italians to her
person in different court capacities; indeed, the old "Black" society,
who have remained true to the Pope, when they wish to ridicule the new
"White" or royal circle, call it the "American court!" The feeling is
bitter still between the "Blacks" and "Whites," and an American girl who
marries into one of these circles must make up her mind to see nothing of
friends or relatives in the opposition ranks. It is said that an
amalgamation is being brought about, but it is slow work; a generation
will have to die out before much real mingling of the two courts will
take place. As both these circles are poor, very little entertainment
goes on. One sees a little life in the diplomatic world, and the King
and Queen give a ball or two during the winter, but since the repeated
defeats of the Italian arms in Africa, and the heavy financial
difficulties (things these sovereigns take very seriously to heart),
there has not been much "go" in the court entertainments.
The young set hope great things of the new Princess of Naples, the bride
of the heir-apparent, a lady who is credited with being full of fun and
life; it is fondly imagined that she will set the ball rolling again. By
the bye, her first lady-in-waiting, the young Duchess del Monte of
Naples, was an American girl, and a very pretty one, too. She enjoyed
for some time the enviable distinction of being the youngest and
handsomest duchess in Europe, until Miss Vanderbilt married Marlborough
and took the record from her. The Prince and Princess of Naples live at
their Neapolitan capital, and will not do much to help things in Rome.
Besides which he is very delicate and passes for not being any too fond
of the world.
What makes things worse is that the great nobles are mostly "land poor,"
and even the richer ones burned their fingers in the craze for
speculation that turned all Rome upside down in the years following 1870
and Italian unity, when they naively imagined their new capital was to
become again after seventeen centuries the metropolis of the world. Whole
quarters of new houses were run up for a population that failed to
appear; these houses now stand empty and are fast going to ruin. So that
little in the way of entertaining is to be expected from the bankrupts.
They are a genial race, these Italian nobles, and welcome rich strangers
and marry them with much enthusiasm--just a shade too much, perhaps--the
girl counting for so little and her _dot_ for so much in the matrimonial
scale. It is only necessary to keep open house to have the pick of the
younger ones as your guests. They will come to entertainments at
American houses and bring all their relations, and dance, and dine, and
flirt with great good humor and persistency; but if there is not a good
solid fortune in the background, in the best of securities, the prettiest
American smiles never tempt them beyond flirtation; the season over, they
disappear up into their mountain villas to wait for a new importation
from the States.
In Rome, as well as in the other Italian cities, there are, of course,
still to be found Americans in some numbers (where on the Continent will
you not find them?), living quietly for study or economy. But they are
not numerous or united enough to form a society; and are apt to be
involved in bitter strife among themselves.
Why, you ask, should Americans quarrel among themselves?
Some years ago I was passing the summer months on the Rhine at a tiny
German watering-place, principally frequented by English, who were all
living together in great peace and harmony, until one fatal day, when an
Earl appeared. He was a poor Irish Earl, very simple and unoffending,
but he brought war into that town, heart-burnings, envy, and backbiting.
The English colony at once divided itself into two camps, those who knew
the Earl and those who did not. And peace fled from our little society.
You will find in every foreign capital among the resident Americans, just
such a state of affairs as convulsed that German spa. The native
"swells" have come to be the apple of discord that divides our good
people among themselves. Those who have been successful in knowing the
foreigners avoid their compatriots and live with their new friends, while
the other group who, from laziness, disinclination, or principle (?) have
remained true to their American circle, cannot resist calling the others
snobs, and laughing (a bit enviously, perhaps) at their upward struggles.
It is the same in Florence. The little there was left of an American
society went to pieces on that rock. Our parents forty years ago seem to
me to have been much more self-respecting and sensible. They knew
perfectly well that there was nothing in common between themselves and
the Italian nobility, and that those good people were not going to put
themselves out to make the acquaintance of a lot of strangers, mostly of
another religion, unless it was to be materially to their advantage. So
they left them quietly alone. I do not pretend to judge any one's
motives, but confess I cannot help regarding with suspicion a foreigner
who leaves his own circle to mingle with strangers. It resembles too
closely the amiabilities of the wolf for the lamb, or the sudden
politeness of a school-boy to a little girl who has received a box of
candies.
No. 37--The Newport of the Past
Few of the "carriage ladies and gentlemen" who disport themselves in
Newport during the summer months, yachting and dancing through the short
season, then flitting away to fresh fields and pastures new, realize that
their daintily shod feet have been treading historic ground, or care to
cast a thought back to the past. Oddly enough, to the majority of people
the past is a volume rarely opened. Not that it bores them to read it,
but because they, like children, want some one to turn over its yellow
leaves and point out the pictures to them. Few of the human motes that
dance in the rays of the afternoon sun as they slant across the little
Park, think of the fable which asserts that a sea-worn band of
adventurous men, centuries before the Cabots or the Genoese discoverer
thought of crossing the Atlantic, had pushed bravely out over untried
seas and landed on this rocky coast. Yet one apparent evidence of their
stay tempts our thoughts back to the times when it is said to have been
built as a bower for a king's daughter. Longfellow, in the swinging
verse of his "Skeleton in Armor," breathing of the sea and the Norseman's
fatal love, has thrown such a glamour of poetry around the tower, that
one would fain believe all he relates. The hardy Norsemen, if they ever
came here, succumbed in their struggle with the native tribes, or,
discouraged by death and hardships, sailed away, leaving the clouds of
oblivion to close again darkly around this continent, and the fog of
discussion to circle around the "Old Mill."
The little settlement of another race, speaking another tongue, that
centuries later sprang up in the shadow of the tower, quickly grew into a
busy and prosperous city, which, like New York, its rival, was captured
and held by the English. To walk now through some of its quaint, narrow
streets is to step back into Revolutionary days. Hardly a house has
changed since the time when the red coats of the British officers
brightened the prim perspectives, and turned loyal young heads as they
passed.
At the corner of Spring and Pelham Streets, still stands the residence of
General Prescott, who was carried away prisoner by his opponents, they
having rowed down in whale-boats from Providence for the attack.
Rochambeau, our French ally, lodged lower down in Mary Street. In the
tower of Trinity, one can read the epitaph of the unfortunate Chevalier
de Ternay, commander of the sea forces, whose body lies near by. Many
years later his relative, the Duc de Noailles, when Minister to this
country, had this simple tablet repaired and made a visit to the spot.
A long period of prosperity followed the Revolution, during which Newport
grew and flourished. Our pious and God-fearing "forbears," having
secured personal and religious liberty, proceeded to inaugurate a most
successful and remunerative trade in rum and slaves. It was a triangular
transaction and yielded a three-fold profit. The simple population of
that day, numbering less than ten thousand souls, possessed twenty
distilleries; finding it a physical impossibility to drink _all_ the rum,
they conceived the happy thought of sending the surplus across to the
coast of Africa, where it appears to have been much appreciated by the
native chiefs, who eagerly exchanged the pick of their loyal subjects for
that liquid. These poor brutes were taken to the West Indies and
exchanged for sugar, laden with which, the vessels returned to Newport.
Having introduced the dusky chieftains to the charms of delirium tremens
and their subjects to life-long slavery, one can almost see these pious
deacons proceeding to church to offer up thanks for the return of their
successful vessels. Alas! even "the best laid schemes of mice and men"
come to an end. The War of 1812, the opening of the Erie Canal and
sundry railways struck a blow at Newport commerce, from which it never
recovered. The city sank into oblivion, and for over thirty years not a
house was built there.
It was not until near 1840 that the Middletons and Izzards and other
wealthy and aristocratic Southern families were tempted to Newport by the
climate and the facilities it offered for bathing, shooting and boating.
A boarding-house or two sufficed for the modest wants of the new-comers,
first among which stood the Aquidneck, presided over by kind Mrs. Murray.
It was not until some years later, when New York and Boston families
began to appreciate the place, that the first hotels were built,--the
Atlantic on the square facing the old mill, the Bellevue and Fillmore on
Catherine Street, and finally the original Ocean House, destroyed by fire
in 1845 and rebuilt as we see it to-day. The croakers of the epoch
considered it much too far out of town to be successful, for at its door
the open fields began, a gate there separating the town from the country
across which a straggling, half-made road, closed by innumerable gates,
led along the cliffs and out across what is now the Ocean Drive. The
principal roads at that time led inland; any one wishing to drive seaward
had to descend every two or three minutes to open a gate. The youth of
the day discovered a source of income in opening and closing these for
pennies.
Fashion had decreed that the correct hour for dancing was 11 A.M., and
_matinees dansantes_ were regularly given at the hotels, our grandmothers
appearing in _decollete_ muslin frocks adorned with broad sashes, and
disporting themselves gayly until the dinner hour. Low-neck dresses were
the rule, not only for these informal entertainments, but as every-day
wear for young girls,--an old lady only the other day telling me she had
never worn a "high-body" until after her marriage. Two o'clock found all
the beauties and beaux dining. How incredulously they would have laughed
if any one had prophesied that their grandchildren would prefer eight
forty-five as a dinner hour!
The opening of Bellevue Avenue marked another epoch in the history of
Newport. About that time Governor Lawrence bought the whole of Ochre
Point farm for fourteen thousand dollars, and Mr. de Rham built on the
newly opened road the first "cottage," which stands to-day modestly back
from the avenue opposite Perry Street. If houses have souls, as
Hawthorne averred, and can remember and compare, what curious thoughts
must pass through the oaken brain of this simple construction as it sees
its marble neighbors rearing their vast facades among trees. The trees,
too, are an innovation, for when the de Rham cottage was built and Mrs.
Cleveland opened her new house at the extreme end of Rough Point (the
second summer residence in the place) it is doubtful if a single tree
broke the rocky monotony of the landscape from the Ocean House to
Bateman's Point.
Governor Lawrence, having sold one acre of his Ochre Point farm to Mr.
Pendleton for the price he himself had paid for the whole, proceeded to
build a stone wall between the two properties down to the water's edge.
The population of Newport had been accustomed to take their Sunday
airings and moonlight rambles along "the cliffs," and viewed this
obstruction of their favorite walk with dismay. So strong was their
feeling that when the wall was completed the young men of the town
repaired there in the night and tore it down. It was rebuilt, the mortar
being mixed with broken glass. This infuriated the people to such an
extent that the whole populace, in broad daylight, accompanied by the
summer visitors, destroyed the wall and threw the materials into the sea.
Lawrence, bent on maintaining what he considered his rights, called the
law to his aid. It was then discovered that an immemorial riverain right
gave the fishermen and the public generally, access to the shore for
fishing, and also to collect seaweed,--a right of way that no one could
obstruct.
This was the beginning of the long struggle between the cliff-dwellers
and the townspeople; each new property-owner, disgusted at the idea that
all the world can stroll at will across his well-kept lawns, has in turn
tried his hand at suppressing the now famous "walk." Not only do the
public claim the liberty to walk there, but also the right to cross any
property to get to the shore. At this moment the city fathers and the
committee of the new buildings at Bailey's Beach are wrangling as gayly
as in Governor Lawrence's day over a bit of wall lately constructed
across the end of Bellevue Avenue. A new expedient has been hit upon by
some of the would-be exclusive owners of the cliffs; they have lowered
the "walk" out of sight, thus insuring their own privacy and in no way
interfering with the rights of the public.
Among the gentlemen who settled in Newport about Governor Lawrence's time
was Lord Baltimore (Mr. Calvert, he preferred to call himself), who
remained there until his death. He was shy of referring to his English
peerage, but would willingly talk of his descent through his mother from
Peter Paul Rubens, from whom had come down to him a chateau in Holland
and several splendid paintings. The latter hung in the parlor of the
modest little dwelling, where I was taken to see them and their owner
many years ago. My introducer on this occasion was herself a lady of no
ordinary birth, being the daughter of Stuart, our greatest portrait
painter. I have passed many quiet hours in the quaint studio (the same
her father had used), hearing her prattle--as she loved to do if she
found a sympathetic listener--of her father, of Washington and his
pompous ways, and the many celebrities who had in turn posed before
Stuart's easel. She had been her father's companion and aid, present at
the sittings, preparing his brushes and colors, and painting in
backgrounds and accessories; and would willingly show his palette and
explain his methods and theories of color, his predilection for
scrumbling shadows thinly in black and then painting boldly in with body
color. Her lessons had not profited much to the gentle, kindly old lady,
for the productions of her own brush were far from resembling her great
parent's work. She, however, painted cheerfully on to life's close,
surrounded by her many friends, foremost among whom was Charlotte
Cushman, who also passed the last years of her life in Newport. Miss
Stuart was over eighty when I last saw her, still full of spirit and
vigor, beginning the portrait of a famous beauty of that day, since the
wife and mother of dukes.
Miss Stuart's death seems to close one of the chapters in the history of
this city, and to break the last connecting link with its past. The
world moves so quickly that the simple days and modest amusements of our
fathers and grandfathers have already receded into misty remoteness. We
look at their portraits and wonder vaguely at their graceless costumes.
We know they trod these same streets, and laughed and flirted and married
as we are doing to-day, but they seem to us strangely far away, like
inhabitants of another sphere!
It is humiliating to think how soon we, too, shall have become the
ancestors of a new and careless generation; fresh faces will replace our
faded ones, young voices will laugh as they look at our portraits hanging
in dark corners, wondering who we were, and (criticising the apparel we
think so artistic and appropriate) how we could ever have made such guys
of ourselves.
No. 38--A Conquest of Europe
The most important event in modern history is the discovery of Europe by
the Americans. Before it, the peoples of the Old World lived happy and
contented in their own countries, practising the patriarchal virtues
handed down to them from generations of forebears, ignoring alike the
vices and benefits of modern civilization, as understood on this side of
the Atlantic. The simple-minded Europeans remained at home, satisfied
with the rank in life where they had been born, and innocent of the ways
of the new world.