disciples of Mr. Ruskin, have an admirable field of investigation in the
contrast of the social, economic, and educational structure of the North
and the South at the close of the war. After a century of free schools,
perpetual intellectual agitation, extraordinary enterprise in every
domain of thought and material achievement, the North presented a
spectacle at once of the highest hope and the gravest anxiety. What
diversity of life! What fulness! What intellectual and even social
emancipation! What reforms, called by one party Heavensent, and by
the other reforms against nature! What agitations, doubts, contempt of
authority! What wild attempts to conduct life on no basis philosophic
or divine! And yet what prosperity, what charities, what a marvellous
growth, what an improvement in physical life! With better knowledge of
sanitary conditions and of the culinary art, what an increase of beauty
in women and of stalwartness in men! For beauty and physical comeliness,
it must be acknowledged (parenthetically), largely depend upon food.
It is in the impoverished parts of the country, whether South or North,
the sandy barrens, and the still vast regions where cooking is an
unknown art, that scrawny and dyspeptic men and women abound—the
sallow-faced, flat-chested, spindle-limbed.
This Northern picture is a veritable nineteenth-century spectacle. Side
by side with it was the other society, also covering a vast domain, that
was in many respects a projection of the eighteenth century into the
nineteenth. It had much of the conservatism, and preserved something
of the manners, of the eighteenth century, and lacked a good deal the
so-called spirit of the age of the nineteenth, together with its doubts,
its isms, its delusions, its energies. Life in the South is still on
simpler terms than in the North, and society is not so complex. I am
inclined to think it is a little more natural, more sincere in manner
though not in fact, more frank and impulsive. One would hesitate to use
the word unworldly with regard to it, but it may be less calculating. A
bungling male observer would be certain to get himself into trouble by
expressing an opinion about women in any part of the world; but women
make society, and to discuss society at all is to discuss them. It is
probably true that the education of women at the South, taken at
large, is more superficial than at the North, lacking in purpose, in
discipline, in intellectual vigor. The aim of the old civilization was
to develop the graces of life, to make women attractive, charming, good
talkers (but not too learned), graceful, and entertaining companions.
When the main object is to charm and please, society is certain to be
agreeable. In Southern society beauty, physical beauty, was and is much
thought of, much talked of. The “belle” was an institution, and is yet.
The belle of one city or village had a wide reputation, and trains
of admirers wherever she went—in short, a veritable career, and was
probably better known than a poetess at the North. She not only ruled
in her day, but she left a memory which became a romance to the next
generation. There went along with such careers a certain lightness and
gayety of life, and now and again a good deal of pathos and tragedy.
With all its social accomplishments, its love of color, its climatic
tendency to the sensuous side of life, the South has been unexpectedly
wanting in a fine-art development—namely, in music and pictorial art.
Culture of this sort has been slow enough in the North, and only
lately has had any solidity or been much diffused. The love of art, and
especially of art decoration, was greatly quickened by the Philadelphia
Exhibition, and the comparatively recent infusion of German music has
begun to elevate the taste. But I imagine that while the South naturally
was fond of music of a light sort, and New Orleans could sustain and
almost make native the French opera when New York failed entirely to
popularize any sort of opera, the musical taste was generally very
rudimentary; and the poverty in respect to pictures and engravings was
more marked still. In a few great houses were fine paintings, brought
over from Europe, and here and there a noble family portrait. But the
traveller to-day will go through city after city, and village after
village, and find no art-shop (as he may look in vain in large cities
for any sort of book-store except a news-room); rarely will see an
etching or a fine engraving; and he will be led to doubt if the taste
for either existed to any great degree before the war. Of course he will
remember that taste and knowledge in the fine arts may be said in the
North to be recent acquirements, and that, meantime, the South has been
impoverished and struggling in a political and social revolution.
Slavery and isolation and a semi-feudal state have left traces that must
long continue to modify social life in the South, and that may not wear
out for a century to come. The new life must also differ from that in
the North by reason of climate, and on account of the presence of the
alien, insouciant colored race. The vast black population, however
it may change, and however education may influence it, must remain a
powerful determining factor. The body of the slaves, themselves inert,
and with no voice in affairs, inevitably influenced life, the character
of civilization, manners, even speech itself. With slavery ended, the
Southern whites are emancipated, and the influence of the alien race
will be other than what it was, but it cannot fail to affect the tone of
life in the States where it is a large element.
When, however, we have made all allowance for difference in climate,
difference in traditions, total difference in the way of looking at life
for a century, it is plain to be seen that a great transformation
is taking place in the South, and that Southern society and Northern
society are becoming every day more and more alike. I know there are
those, and Southerners, too, who insist that we are still two peoples,
with more points of difference than of resemblance—certainly farther
apart than Gascons and Bretons.
This seems to me not true in general, though it may be of a portion of
the passing generation. Of course there is difference in temperament,
and peculiarities of speech and manner remain and will continue, as they
exist in different portions of the North—the accent of the Bostonian
differs from that of the Philadelphian, and the inhabitant of Richmond
is known by his speech as neither of New Orleans nor New York. But the
influence of economic laws, of common political action, of interest
and pride in one country, is stronger than local bias in such an age of
intercommunication as this. The great barrier between North and South
having been removed, social assimilation must go on. It is true that
the small farmer in Vermont, and the small planter in Georgia, and the
village life in the two States, will preserve their strong contrasts.
But that which, without clearly defining, we call society becomes
yearly more and more alike North and South. It is becoming more and more
difficult to tell in any summer assembly—at Newport, the White Sulphur,
Saratoga, Bar Harbor—by physiognomy, dress, or manner, a person’s
birthplace. There are noticeable fewer distinctive traits that enable
us to say with certainty that one is from the South, or the West, or the
East. No doubt the type at such a Southern resort as the White Sulphur
is more distinctly American than at such a Northern resort as Saratoga.
We are prone to make a good deal of local peculiarities, but when we
look at the matter broadly and consider the vastness of our territory
and the varieties of climate, it is marvellous that there is so little
difference in speech, manner, and appearance. Contrast us with Europe
and its various irreconcilable races occupying less territory. Even
little England offers greater variety than the United States. When we
think of our large, widely scattered population, the wonder is that we
do not differ more.
Southern society has always had a certain prestige in the North. One
reason for this was the fact that the ruling class South had more
leisure for social life. Climate, also, had much to do in softening
manners, making the temperament ardent, and at the same time producing
that leisurely movement which is essential to a polished life. It is
probably true, also, that mere wealth was less a passport to social
distinction than at the North, or than it has become at the North; that
is to say, family, or a certain charm of breeding, or the talent
of being agreeable, or the gift of cleverness, or of beauty, were
necessary, and money was not. In this respect it seems to be true that
social life is changing at the South; that is to say, money is getting
to have the social power in New Orleans that it has in New York. It is
inevitable in a commercial and industrial community that money should
have a controlling power, as it is regrettable that the enjoyment of
its power very slowly admits a sense of its responsibility. The
old traditions of the South having been broken down, and nearly all
attention being turned to the necessity of making money, it must follow
that mere wealth will rise as a social factor. Herein lies one danger to
what was best in the old régime. Another danger is that it must be put
to the test of the ideas, the agitations, the elements of doubt and
disintegration that seem inseparable to “progress,” which give Northern
society its present complexity, and just cause of alarm to all who watch
its headlong career. Fulness of life is accepted as desirable, but it
has its dangers.
Within the past five years social intercourse between North and South
has been greatly increased. Northerners who felt strongly about the
Union and about slavery, and took up the cause of the freedman, and were
accustomed all their lives to absolute free speech, were not comfortable
in the post-reconstruction atmosphere. Perhaps they expected too much of
human nature—a too sudden subsidence of suspicion and resentment. They
felt that they were not welcome socially, however much their capital and
business energy were desired. On the other hand, most Southerners were
too poor to travel in the North, as they did formerly. But all these
points have been turned. Social intercourse and travel are renewed. If
difficulties and alienations remain they are sporadic, and melting away.
The harshness of the Northern winter climate has turned a stream of
travel and occupation to the Gulf States, and particularly to Florida,
which is indeed now scarcely a Southern State except in climate. The
Atlanta and New Orleans Exhibitions did much to bring people of all
sections together socially. With returning financial prosperity all the
Northern summer resorts have seen increasing numbers of Southern people
seeking health and pleasure. I believe that during the past summer more
Southerners have been travelling and visiting in the North than ever
before.
This social intermingling is significant in itself, and of the utmost
importance for the removal of lingering misunderstandings. They who
learn to like each other personally will be tolerant in political
differences, and helpful and unsuspicious in the very grave problems
that rest upon the late slave States. Differences of opinion and
different interests will exist, but surely love is stronger than hate,
and sympathy and kindness are better solvents than alienation and
criticism. The play of social forces is very powerful in such a republic
as ours, and there is certainly reason to believe that they will be
exerted now in behalf of that cordial appreciation of what is good and
that toleration of traditional differences which are necessary to a
people indissolubly bound together in one national destiny. Alienated
for a century, the society of the North and the society of the South
have something to forget but more to gain in the union that every day
becomes closer.
III.—NEW ORLEANS.
The first time I saw New Orleans was on a Sunday morning in the month of
March. We alighted from the train at the foot of Esplanade Street, and
walked along through the French Market, and by Jackson Square to the
Hotel Royal. The morning, after rain, was charming; there was a fresh
breeze from the river; the foliage was a tender green; in the balconies
and on the mouldering window-ledges flowers bloomed, and in the decaying
courts climbing-roses mingled their perfume with the orange; the shops
were open; ladies tripped along from early mass or to early market;
there was a twittering in the square and in the sweet old gardens; caged
birds sang and screamed the songs of South America and the tropics; the
language heard on all sides was French or the degraded jargon which
the easy-going African has manufactured out of the tongue of Bienville.
Nothing could be more shabby than the streets, ill-paved, with
undulating sidewalks and open gutters green with slime, and both
stealing and giving odor; little canals in which the cat, become the
companion of the crawfish, and the vegetable in decay sought in vain a
current to oblivion; the streets with rows of one-story houses, wooden,
with green doors and batten window-shutters, or brick, with the painted
stucco peeling off, the line broken often by an edifice of two stories,
with galleries and delicate tracery of wrought-iron, houses pink and
yellow and brown and gray—colors all blending and harmonious when we get
a long vista of them and lose the details of view in the broad artistic
effect. Nothing could be shabbier than the streets, unless it is the
tumble-down, picturesque old market, bright with flowers and vegetables
and many-hued fish, and enlivened by the genial African, who in the New
World experiments in all colors, from coal black to the pale pink of the
sea-shell, to find one that suits his mobile nature. I liked it all
from the first; I lingered long in that morning walk, liking it more and
more, in spite of its shabbiness, but utterly unable to say then or ever
since wherein its charm lies. I suppose we are all wrongly made up and
have a fallen nature; else why is it that while the most thrifty and
neat and orderly city only wins our approval, and perhaps gratifies us
intellectually, such a thriftless, battered and stained, and lazy old
place as the French quarter of New Orleans takes our hearts?
I never could find out exactly where New Orleans is. I have looked
for it on the map without much enlightenment. It is dropped down there
somewhere in the marshes of the Mississippi and the bayous and lakes. It
is below the one, and tangled up among the others, or it might some
day float out to the Gulf and disappear. How the Mississippi gets out
I never could discover. When it first comes in sight of the town it is
running east; at Carrollton it abruptly turns its rapid, broad, yellow
flood and runs south, turns presently eastward, circles a great portion
of the city, then makes a bold push for the north in order to avoid
Algiers and reach the foot of Canal Street, and encountering there the
heart of the town, it sheers off again along the old French quarter and
Jackson Square due east, and goes no one knows where, except perhaps Mr.
Eads.
The city is supposed to lie in this bend of the river, but it in fact
extends eastward along the bank down to the Barracks, and spreads
backward towards Lake Pontchartrain over a vast area, and includes some
very good snipe-shooting.
Although New Orleans has only about a quarter of a million of
inhabitants, and so many only in the winter, it is larger than Pekin,
and I believe than Philadelphia, having an area of about one hundred and
five square miles. From Carrollton to the Barracks, which are not far
from the Battle-field, the distance by the river is some thirteen miles.
From the river to the lake the least distance is four miles. This vast
territory is traversed by lines of horse-cars which all meet in Canal
Street, the most important business thoroughfare of the city, which
runs north-east from the river, and divides the French from the American
quarter. One taking a horse-car in any part of the city will ultimately
land, having boxed the compass, in Canal Street. But it needs a person
of vast local erudition to tell in what part of the city, or in what
section of the home of the frog and crawfish, he will land if he takes
a horse-ear in Canal Street. The river being higher than the city, there
is of course no drainage into it; but there is a theory that the water
in the open gutters does move, and that it moves in the direction of
the Bayou St. John, and of the cypress swamps that drain into Lake
Pontchartrain. The stranger who is accustomed to closed sewers, and to
get his malaria and typhoid through pipes conducted into his house by
the most approved methods of plumbing, is aghast at this spectacle
of slime and filth in the streets, and wonders why the city is not in
perennial epidemic; but the sun and the wind are great scavengers, and
the city is not nearly so unhealthy as it ought to be with such a city
government as they say it endures.
It is not necessary to dwell much upon the external features of New
Orleans, for innumerable descriptions and pictures have familiarized
the public with them. Besides, descriptions can give the stranger little
idea of the peculiar city. Although all on one level, it is a town of
contrasts. In no other city of the United States or of Mexico is the
old and romantic preserved in such integrity and brought into such
sharp contrast to the modern. There are many handsome public buildings,
churches, club-houses, elegant shops, and on the American side a great
area of well-paved streets solidly built up in business blocks. The
Square of the original city, included between the river and canal,
Rampart and Esplanade streets, which was once surrounded by a wall, is
as closely built, but the streets are narrow, the houses generally are
smaller, and although it swarms with people, and contains the cathedral,
the old Spanish buildings, Jackson Square, the French Market, the French
Opera-house, and other theatres, the Mint, the Custom-house, the old
Ursuline convent (now the residence of the archbishop), old banks, and
scores of houses of historic celebrity, it is a city of the past, and
specially interesting in its picturesque decay. Beyond this, eastward
and northward extend interminable streets of small houses, with now and
then a flowery court or a pretty rose garden, occupied mainly by people
of French and Spanish descent. The African pervades all parts of the
town, except the new residence portion of the American quarter. This,
which occupies the vast area in the bend of the river west of the
business blocks as far as Carrollton, is in character a great village
rather than a city. Not all its broad avenues and handsome streets
are paved (and those that are not are in some seasons impassable), its
houses are nearly all of wood, most of them detached, with plots of
ground and gardens, and as the quarter is very well shaded, the effect
is bright and agreeable. In it are many stately residences, occupying a
square or half a square, and embowered in foliage and flowers. Care
has been given lately to turf-culture, and one sees here thick-set
and handsome lawns. The broad Esplanade Street, with its elegant
old-fashioned houses, and double rows of shade trees, which has
long been the rural pride of the French quarter, has now rivals in
respectability and style on the American side.
New Orleans is said to be delightful in the late fall months, before the
winter rains set in, but I believe it looks its best in March and April.
This is owing to the roses. If the town was not attached to the name
of the Crescent City, it might very well adopt the title of the City of
Roses. So kind are climate and soil that the magnificent varieties of
this queen of flowers, which at the North bloom only in hot-houses, or
with great care are planted out-doors in the heat of our summer, thrive
here in the open air in prodigal abundance and beauty. In April the town
is literally embowered in them; they fill door-yards and gardens, they
overrun the porches, they climb the sides of the houses, they spread
over the trees, they take possession of trellises and fences and walls,
perfuming the air and entrancing the heart with color. In the outlying
parks, like that of the Jockey Club, and the florists’ gardens at
Carrollton, there are fields of them, acres of the finest sorts waving
in the spring wind. Alas! can beauty ever satisfy? This wonderful
spectacle fills one with I know not what exquisite longing. These
flowers pervade the town, old women on the street corners sit behind
banks of them, the florists’ windows blush with them, friends despatch
to each other great baskets of them, the favorites at the theatre and
the amateur performers stand behind high barricades of roses which the
good-humored audience piles upon the stage, everybody carries roses
and wears roses, and the houses overflow with them. In this passion for
flowers you may read a prominent trait of the people. For myself I like
to see a spot on this earth where beauty is enjoyed for itself and
let to run to waste, but if ever the industrial spirit of the
French-Italians should prevail along the littoral of Louisiana and
Mississippi, the raising of flowers for the manufacture of perfumes
would become a most profitable industry.
New Orleans is the most cosmopolitan of provincial cities. Its
comparative isolation has secured the development of provincial traits
and manners, has preserved the individuality of the many races that
give it color, morals, and character, while its close relations with
France—an affiliation and sympathy which the late war has not altogether
broken—and the constant influx of Northern men of business and affairs
have given it the air of a metropolis. To the Northern stranger the
aspect and the manners of the city are foreign, but if he remains long
enough he is sure to yield to its fascinations, and become a partisan
of it. It is not altogether the soft and somewhat enervating and
occasionally treacherous climate that beguiles him, but quite as much
the easy terms on which life can be lived. There is a human as well as a
climatic amiability that wins him. No doubt it is better for a man to
be always braced up, but no doubt also there is an attraction in a
complaisance that indulges his inclinations.
Socially as well as commercially New Orleans is in a transitive state.
The change from river to railway transportation has made her levees
vacant; the shipment of cotton by rail and its direct transfer to ocean
carriage have nearly destroyed a large middle-men industry; a large
part of the agricultural tribute of the South-west has been diverted;
plantations have either not recovered from the effects of the war or
have not adjusted themselves to new productions, and the city waits
the rather blind developments of the new era. The falling off of law
business, which I should like to attribute to the growth of common-sense
and good-will is, I fear, rather due to business lassitude, for it is
observed that men quarrel most when they are most actively engaged in
acquiring each other’s property. The business habits of the Creoles were
conservative and slow; they do not readily accept new ways, and in
this transition time the American element is taking the lead in all
enterprises. The American element itself is toned down by the climate
and the contagion of the leisurely habits of the Creoles, and loses
something of the sharpness and excitability exhibited by business men in
all Northern cities, but it is certainly changing the social as well as
the business aspect of the city. Whether these social changes will make
New Orleans a more agreeable place of residence remains to be seen.