“Pooh, pooh, my dear father, you are mercenary; it’s all a whim of
yours.”
“My dear son, I know it,” said he, “the whole thing a whim. You can
live on a hundred dollars a year, if you choose. But you have the whim
of a good dinner, of a statue, of a book. Why not? Only be careful in
following your whims, that they really come to something. Have as many
whims as you please, but don’t follow them all.”
“Certainly not,” said I; and fell in love with the present
Mrs. Potiphar, and married her off-hand. So, if she calls this
genuine influence of association a mere whim--let it go at that. She
is a whim, too. My mistake simply was in not following out the
romantic whim, and marrying Lucy Lamb. At least it seems to me so,
this morning. In fact sitting in my very new “palatial residence,” the
whole business of life seems to me rather whimsical.
For here I am, come into port at last. No longer young,--but worth a
good fortune,--master of a great house,--respected down town,--husband
of Mrs. Potiphar,--and father of Master Frederic ditto. Per contra; I
shall never be in love again,--in getting my fortune I have lost my
real life,--my house is dreary,--Mrs. Potiphar is not Lucy Lamb,--and
Master Frederic--is a good boy.
The game is all up for me, and yet I trust I have good feeling enough
left to sympathize with those who are still playing. I see girls as
lovely and dear as any of which poets have sung--as fresh as
dew-drops, and beautiful as morning. I watch their glances, and
understand them better than they know.--for they do not dream that
“old Potiphar” does any thing more than pay Mrs. P.’s bills. I see the
youths nervous about neckcloths, and anxious that their hair shall be
parted straight behind. I see them all wear the same tie, the same
trowsers, the same boots. I hear them all say the same thing, and
dance with the same partners in the same way. I see them go to Europe
and return--I hear them talk slang to show that they have exhausted
human life in foreign parts and observe them demean themselves
according to their idea of the English nobleman. I watch them go in
strongly for being “manly,” and “smashing the spoonies”--asserting
intimacies with certain uncertain women in Paris, and proving it by
their treatment of ladies at home. I see them fuddle themselves on
fine wines and talk like cooks, play heavily and lose, and win, and
pay, and drink, and maintain a conservative position in politics,
denouncing “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” as a false and fanatical tract; and
declaring that our peculiar institutions are our own affair, and that
John Bull had better keep his eyes at home to look into his coal
mines. I see this vigorous fermentation subside, and much clear
character deposited--and, also, much life and talent muddled forever.
It is whimsical, because this absurd spectacle is presented by
manikins who are made of the same clay as Plutarch’s heroes-because,
deliberately, they prefer cabbages to roses. I am not at all angry
with them. On the contrary, when they dance well I look on with
pleasure. Man ought to dance, but he ought to do something else,
too. All genial gentlemen in all ages have danced. Who quarrels with
dancing? Ask Mrs. Potiphar if I ever objected to it. But then, people
must dance at their own risk. If Lucy Lamb, by dancing with young
Boosey when he is tipsy, shows that she has no self-respect, how can
I, coolly talking with Mrs. Lamb in the corner, and gravely looking
on, respect the young lady? Lucy tells me that if she dances with
James she must with John. I cannot deny it, for I am not sufficiently
familiar with the regulations of the mystery. Only this; if dancing
with sober James makes it necessary to dance with tipsy John--it seems
to me, upon a hasty glance at the subject, that a self-respecting Lucy
would refrain from the dance with James. Why it should be so, I
cannot understand. Why Lucy must dance with every man who asks her,
whether he is in his senses, or knows how to dance, or is agreeable to
her or not, is a profound mystery to Paul Potiphar. Here is a case of
woman’s wrongs, decidedly. We men cull the choicest partners, make the
severest selections, and the innocent Lucys gracefully submit. Lucy
loves James, and a waltz with him (as P. P. knows very well from
experience) is “a little heaven below” to both. Now, dearest Lucy, why
must you pay the awful penance of immediately waltzing with John,
against whom your womanly instinct rebels? And yet the laws of social
life are so stern, that Lucy must make the terrible decision, whether
it is better to waltz with James or worse to waltz with John!
“Whether,” to put it strongly with Father Jerome, “heaven is
pleasanter than hell is painful.”
I say that I watch these graceful gamesters, without bitter
feeling. Sometimes it is sad to see James woo Lucy, win her, marry
her, and then both discover that they have made a mistake. I don’t see
how they could have helped it; and when the world, that loves them
both so tenderly, holds up its pure hands of horror, why, Paul
Potiphar, goes quietly home to Mrs. P., who is dressing for Lucy’s
ball, and says nothing. He prefers to retire into his private room,
and his slippers, and read the last number of _Bleak House_, or a
chapter in _Vanity Fair_. If Mrs. Potiphar catches him at the
latter, she is sure to say:
“There it is again; always reading those exaggerated sketches of
society. Odious man that he is. I am sure he never knew a truly
womanly woman.”
“Polly, when he comes back in September I’ll introduce him to you,” is
the only answer I have time to make, for it is already half past ten,
and Mrs. P. must be off to the ball.
I know that our set is not the world, nor the country, nor the city. I
know that the amiable youths who are in league to crush spooneyism are
not many, and well I know, that in our set (I mean Mrs. P.’s) there
are hearts as noble and characters as lofty as in any time and in any
land. And yet, as the father of a family (viz. Frederic, our son), I
am constrained to believe that our social tendency is to the wildest
extravagance. Here, for instance, is my house. It cost me eighty-five
thousand dollars. It is superbly furnished. Mrs. P. and I don’t know
much about such things. She was only stringent for buhl, and the last
Parisian models, so we delivered our house into the hands of certain
eminent upholsterers to be furnished, as we send Frederic to the
tailor’s to be clothed. To be sure, I asked what proof we had that the
upholsterer was possessed of taste. But Mrs. P. silenced me, by saying
that it was his business to have taste, and that a man who sold
furniture, naturally knew what was handsome and proper for my house.
The furnishing was certainly performed with great splendor and
expense. My drawing-rooms strongly resemble the warehouse of an ideal
cabinetmaker. Every whim of table--every caprice of chair and sofa,
is satisfied in those rooms. There are curtains like rainbows, and
carpets, as if the curtains had dripped all over the floor. There are
heavy cabinets of carved walnut, such as belong in the heavy
wainscotted rooms of old palaces, set against my last French pattern
of wall paper. There are lofty chairs like the thrones of archbishops
in Gothic cathedrals, standing by the side of the elaborately gilded
frames of mirrors. Marble statues of Venus and the Apollo support my
mantels, upon which _or molu_ Louis Quatorze clocks ring the
hours. In all possible places there are statues, statuettes, vases,
plates, teacups, and liquor-cases. The woodwork, when white, is
elaborated in Moresco carving--when oak and walnut, it is heavily
moulded. The contrasts are pretty, but rather sudden. In truth, my
house is a huge curiosity shop of valuable articles,--clustered
without taste, or feeling, or reason. They are there, because my
house was large and I was able to buy them; and because, as
Mrs. P. says, one must have buhl and _or molu_, and new forms of
furniture, and do as well as one’s neighbors, and show that one is
rich, if he is so. They are there, in fact, because I couldn’t help
it. I didn’t want them, but then I don’t know what I did want. Somehow
I don’t feel as if I had a home, merely because orders were given to
the best upholsterers and fancy-men in town to send a sample of all
their wares to my house. To pay a morning call at Mrs. Potiphar’s is,
in some ways, better than going shopping. You see more new and costly
things in a shorter time. People say, “What a love of a chair!” “What
a darling table!” “What a heavenly sofa!” and they all go and tease
their husbands to get things precisely like them. When Kurz Pacha the
Sennaar Minister, came to a dinner at my house, he said:
“Bless my soul! Mr. Potiphar, your house is just like your
neighbor’s.”
I know it. I am perfectly aware that there is no more difference
between my house and Croesus’s, than there is in two ten dollar bills
of the same bank. He might live in my house and I in his, without any
confusion. He has the same curtains, carpets, chairs, tables, Venuses,
Apollos, busts, vases, etc. And he goes into his room, and thinks
it’s all a devilish bore, just as I do. We have each got to refurnish
every few years, and therefore have no possible opportunity for
attaching ourselves to the objects about us. Unfortunately Kurz Pacha
particularly detested precisely what Mrs. P. most liked, because it is
the fashion to like them. I mean the Louis Quatorze and the Louis
Quinze things.
“Taste, dear Mrs. Potiphar,” said the Pacha, “was a thing not known in
the days of those kings. Grace was entirely supplanted by
grotesqueness, and now, instead of pure and beautiful Greek forms, we
must collect these hideous things. If you are going backward to find
models, why not go as far as the good ones? My dear madame, an _or
molu_ Louis Quatorze clock would have given Pericles a fit. Your
drawing-rooms would have thrown Aspasia into hysterics. Things are
not beautiful because they cost money; nor is any grouping handsome
without harmony. Your house is like a woman dressed in Ninon de
l’Enclos’s bodice, with Queen Anne’s hooped skirt, who limps in
Chinese shoes, and wears an Elizabethan ruff round her neck, and a
Druse’s horn on her head. My dear madam, this is the kind of thing we
go to see in museums. It is the old stock joke of the world.”
By Jove! how mad Mrs. Potiphar was! She rose from table, to the great
dismay of Kurz Pacha, and I could only restrain her by reminding her
that the Sennaar Minister had but an imperfect idea of our language,
and that in Sennaar people probably said what they thought when they
conversed.
“You’d better go to Sennaar, then, yourself, Mr. Potiphar,” said my
wife, as she smoothed her rumpled feathers.
“‘Pon my word, madam, it’s my own opinion,” replied I. -- Kurz Pacha, who is a philosopher (of the Sennaar school), asks me if
people have no ideas of their own in building houses. I answer, none,
that I know of, except that of getting the house built. The fact is,
it is as much as Paul Potiphar can do, to make the money to erect his
palatial residence, and then to keep it going. There are a great many
fine statues in my house, but I know nothing about them: I don’t see
why we should have such heathen images in reputable houses. But
Mrs. P. says:
“Pooh! have you no love for the fine arts?”
There it is. It doesn’t do not to love the fine arts; so Polly is
continually cluttering up the halls and staircases with marble, and
sending me heavy bills for the same.
When the house was ready, and my wife had purchased the furniture, she
came and said to me:
“Now, my dear P., there is one thing we haven’t thought of.”
“What’s that?”
“Pictures, you know, dear.”
“What do you want pictures for?” growled I, rather surlily, I am
afraid.
“Why, to furnish the walls; what do you suppose we want pictures for?”
“I tell you, Polly,” said I, “that pictures are the most extravagant
kind of furniture. Pshaw! a man rubs and dabbles a little upon a
canvas two feet square, and then coolly asks three hundred dollars for
it.”
“Dear me, Pot,” she answered, “I don’t want home-made pictures. What
an idea! Do you think I’d have pictures on my walls that were painted
in this country?--No, my dear husband, let us have some choice
specimens of the old masters. A landscape by Rayfel, for instance; or
one of Angel’s fruit pieces, or a cattle scene by Verynees, or a
Madonna of Giddo’s, or a boar hunt of Hannibal Crackkey’s.”
What was the use of fighting against this sort of thing? I told her to
have it her own way. Mrs. P. consulted Singe the pastry cook, who
told her his cousin had just come out from Italy with a lot of the
very finest pictures in the world, which he had bribed one of the
Pope’s guard to steal from the Vatican, and which he would sell at a
bargain.
They hang on my walls now. They represent nothing in particular; but
in certain lights, if you look very closely, you can easily recognize
something in them that looks like a lump of something brown. There is
one very ugly woman with a convulsive child in her arms, to which
Mrs. P. directly takes all her visitors, and asks them to admire the
beautiful Shay douver of Giddo’s. When I go out to dinner with people
that talk pictures and books, and that kind of thing, I don’t like to
seem behind, so I say, in a critical way, that Giddo was a good
painter. None of them contradict me, and one day when somebody asked,
“Which of his pictures do you prefer?” I answered straight, “His Shay
douver,” and no more questions were asked.
They hang all about the house now. The Giddo is in the dining room. I
asked the Sennaar Minister if it wasn’t odd to have a religious
picture in the dining-room. He smiled, and said that it was perfectly
proper if I liked it, and if the picture of such an ugly woman didn’t
take away my appetite.
“What difference does it make,” said he, in the Sennaar manner, “it
would be equally out of keeping with every other room in your
house. My dear Potiphar, it is a perfectly unprincipled house, this of
yours. If your mind were in the condition of your house, so
ill-assorted, so confused, so overloaded with things that don’t belong
together, you would never make another cent. You have order,
propriety, harmony, in your dealings with the Symmes’s Hole Bore Co.,
and they are the secrets of your success. Why not have the same
elements in your house? Why pitch every century, country, and fashion,
higgledy-piggledly into your parlors and dining-room? Have everything
you can get, in heaven’s name, but have everything in its place. If
you are a plodding tradesman, knowing and caring nothing about
pictures, or books, or statuary, or _objets de vertu_; don’t have
them. Suppose your neighbor chooses to put them in his house. If he
has them merely because he had the money to pay for them, he is the
butt of every picture and book he owns.”
When I meet Mr. Croesus in Wall street, I respect him as I do a king
in his palace, or a scholar in his study. He is master of the
occasion. He commands like Nelson at the Nile. I, who am merely a
diplomatist, skulk and hurry along, and if Mr. Croesus smiles, I
inwardly thank him for his charity. Wall street is Croesus’s sphere,
and all his powers play there perfectly. But when I meet him in his
house, surrounded by objects of art, by the triumphs of a skill which
he does not understand, and for which he cares nothing,--of which, in
fact, he seems afraid, because he knows any chance question about them
would trip him up,--my feeling is very much changed. If I should ask
him what _or molu_ is, I don’t believe he could answer, though
his splendid _or molu_ clock rang, indignant, from the mantel.
But if I should say, ‘Invest me this thousand dollars,’ he would
secure me eight per cent. It certainly isn’t necessary to know what
_or molu_ is, nor to have any other _objet de vertu_ but
your wife. Then why should you barricade yourself behind all these
things that you really cannot enjoy, because you don’t understand? If
you could not read Italian, you would be a fool to buy Dante, merely
because you knew he was a great poet. And, in the same way, if you
know nothing about matters of art, it is equally foolish for you to
buy statues and pictures, although you hear on all sides that, as
Mrs. P. says, one must love art.
“As for learning from your own pictures, you know perfectly well, that
until you have some taste in the matter, you will be paying money for
your pictures blindly, so that the only persons upon whom your display
of art would make any impression, will be the very ones to see that
you know nothing about it.
“In Sennaar, a man is literally ‘the master of the house.’ He isn’t
surrounded by what he does not understand; he is not obliged to talk
book, and picture, when he knows nothing about these matters. He is
not afraid of his parlor, and you feel instantly upon entering the
house, the character of the master. Please, my dear Mr. Potiphar,
survey your mansion, and tell me what kind of a man it indicates. If
it does not proclaim (in your case) the President of the Patagonia
Junction, a man shrewd, and hard, and solid, without taste or liberal
cultivation, it is a painted deceiver. If it tries to insinuate by
this chaotic profusion of rich and rare objects, that you are a
cultivated, accomplished, tasteful, and generous man, it is a bad lie,
because a transparent one. Why, my dear old Pot., the moment your
servant opens the front door, a man of sense perceives the whole
thing. You and Mrs. Potiphar are bullied by all the brilliancy you
have conjured up. It is the old story of the fisherman and the
genii. And your guests all see it. They are too well-bred to speak of
it; but I come from Sennaar, where we do not lay so much stress upon
that kind of good-breeding.
“Mr. Paul Potiphar, it is one thing to have plenty of money, and quite
another to know how to spend it.”
{Illustration}
Now, as I told him, this kind of talk may do very well in Sennaar, but
it is absurd in a country like ours. How are people to know that I’m
rich, unless I show it? I’m sorry for it, but how shall I help it,
having Mrs. P. at hand?
“How about the library?” said she one day.
“What library?” inquired I. -- “Why, our library, of course.”
“I haven’t any.”
“Do you mean to have such a house as this without a library?”
“Why,” said I plaintively, “I don’t read books--I never did, and I
never shall; and I don’t care anything about them. Why should I have a
library?”
“Why, because it’s part of a house like this.”
“Mrs. P., are you fond of books?”
“No, not particularly. But one must have some regard to
appearances. Suppose we are Hottentots, you don’t want us to look so,
do you?”
I thought that it was quite as barbarous to imprison a lot of books
that we should never open, and that would stand in gilt upon the
shelves, silently laughing us to scorn, as not to have them if we
didn’t want them. I proposed a compromise.
“Is it the looks of the thing, Mrs. P.?” said I. -- “That’s all,” she answered.
“Oh! well, I’ll arrange it.”
So I had my shelves built, and my old friends Matthews and Rider
furnished me with complete sets of handsome gilt covers to all the
books that no gentleman’s library should be without, which I arranged
carefully, upon the shelves, and had the best looking library in
town. I locked ‘em in, and the key is always lost when anybody wants
to take down a book. However, it was a good investment in leather, for
it brings me in the reputation of a reading man and a patron of
literature.
Mrs. P. is a religious woman--the Rev. Cream Cheese takes care of
that--but only yesterday she proposed something to me that smells very
strongly of candlesticks.
“Pot., I want a _prie-dieu_.”
“Pray-do what?” answered I. -- “Stop, you wicked man. I say I want a kneeling-chair.”
“A kneeling-chair?” I gasped, utterly confused.
“A _prie-dieu_--a _prie-dieu_--to pray in, you
know.”
My Sennaar friend, who was at table, choked. When he recovered, and
we were sipping the “Blue seal,” he told me that he thought
Mrs. Potiphar in a _prie-dieu_ was rather a more amusing idea
than Giddo’s Madonna in the dining-room.
“She will insist upon its being carved handsomely in walnut. She will
not pray upon pine. It is a romantic, not a religious, whim. She’ll
want a missal next; vellum or no prayers. This is piety of the ‘Lady
Alice’ school. It belongs to a fine lady aid a fine house precisely as
your library does, and it will be precisely as genuine. Mrs. Potiphar
in a _prie-dieu_ is like that blue morocco Comus in your
library. It is charming to look at, but there’s nothing in it. Let her
have the _prie-dieu_ by all means, and then begin to build a
chapel. No gentleman’s house should be without a chapel. You’ll have
to come to it, Potiphar. You’ll have to hear Cream Cheese read morning
prayers in a purple chasuble,--_que sais-je_? You’ll see
religion made a part of the newest fashion in houses, as you already
see literature and art, and with just as much reality and reason.”
Privately, I am glad the Sennaar minister has gone out of town. It’s
bad enough to be uncomfortable in your own house without knowing why;
but to have a philosopher of the Sennaar school show you why you are
so, is cutting it rather too fat. I am gradually getting resigned to
my house. I’ve got one more struggle to go through next week in Mrs.
Potiphar’s musical party. The morning soirees are over for the season,
and Mrs. P. begins to talk of the watering places. I am getting
gradually resigned; but only gradually.
“Oh! dear me, I wonder if this is the “home, sweet home” business the
girls used to sing about! Music does certainly alter cases. I can’t
quite get used to it. Last week I was one morning in the basement
breakfast-room, and I heard an extra cried. I ran out of the area
door--dear me!--before I thought what I was bout, I emerged bareheaded
from under the steps, and ran a little way after the boy. I know it
wasn’t proper. I am sorry, very sorry. I am afraid Mrs. Croesus saw
me; I know Mrs. Gnu told it all about that morning: and Mrs. Settum
Downe called directly upon Mrs. Potiphar, to know if it were really
true that I had lost my wits, as everybody was saying. I don’t know
what Mrs. P. answered. I am sorry to have compromised her so. I went
immediately and ordered a pray-do of the blackest walnut. My
resignation is very gradual. Kurz Pacha says they put on gravestones
in Sennaar three Latin words--do you know Latin? if you don’t come and
borrow some of my books. The words are: _ora pro me!_”
IV. -- FROM THE SUMMER DIARY OF MINERVA
TATTLE.
NEWPORT, _August_.
It certainly is not papa’s fault that he doesn’t understand French;
but he ought not to pretend to. It does put one in such uncomfortable
situations occasionally. In fact, I think it would be quite as well if
we could sometimes “sink the paternal,” as Timon Croesus says. I
suppose everybody has heard of the awful speech pa made in the parlor
at Saratoga. My dearest friend, Tabby Dormouse, told me she had heard
of it everywhere, and that it was ten times as absurd each time it was
repeated. By the by, Tabby is a dear creature, isn’t she? It’s so
nice to have a spy in the enemy’s camp, as it were, and to hear
everything that everybody says about you. She is not handsome,--poor,
dear Tabby! There’s no denying it but she can’t help it. I was
obliged to tell young Downe so, quite decidedly, for I really think he
had an idea she was good-looking. The idea of Tabby Dormouse being
handsome! But she is a useful little thing in her way; one of my
intimates.
The true story is this.
Ma and I had persuaded pa to take us to Saratoga, for we heard the
English party were to be there, and we were anxious they should see
_some_ good society at least. It seems such a pity they shouldn’t
know what handsome dresses we really do have in this country! And I
mentioned to some of the most English of our young men, that there
might be something to be done at Saratoga. But they shrugged their
shoulders, especially Timon Croesus and Gauche Boosey, and said--
“Well, really, the fact is, Miss Tattle, all the Englishmen I have
ever met are--in fact--a little snobbish. However.”
That was about what they said. But I thought, considering their
fondness of the English model in dress and manner, that they might
have been more willing to meet some genuine aristocracy. Yet, perhaps,
that handsome Col. Abattew is right in saying with his grand military
air,--
“The British aristocracy, madam,--the British aristocracy is vulgar.”
Well, we all went up to Saratoga. But the distinguished strangers did
not come. I held back that last muslin of mine, the yellow one,
embroidered with the Alps, and a distant view of the isles of Greece
worked on the flounces, until it was impossible to wait longer. I
meant to wear it at dinner the first day they came, with the pearl
necklace and the opal studs, and that heavy ruby necklace (it is a
low-necked dress). The dining-room at the “United States” is so large
that it shows off those dresses finely, and if the waiter doesn’t let
the soup or the gravy slip, and your neighbor, (who is, like as not,
what Tabby Dormouse, with her incapacity to pronounce the _r_,
calls “some ‘aw, ‘uff man from the country,”) doesn’t put the leg of
his chair through the dress, and if you don’t muss it sitting
down--why, I should like to know a prettier place to wear a low-necked
muslin, with jewels, than the dining-room of the “United States” at
Saratoga.
Kurz Pacha, the Sennaar minister, who was up there, and who is so
smitten with Mrs. Potiphar, said that he had known few happier moments
in this country than the dining hour at the “United States.”
“When the gong sounds,” says he, “I am reminded of the martial music
of Sennaar. When I seat myself in the midst of such splendor of
toilette, and in an apartment so stately and so appropriate for that
display, I recall the taste of the Crim Tartars, to whose ruler I had
the honor of being first accredited ambassador. When I behold, with
astonished eyes, the entrance of that sable society, the measured echo
of whose footfalls so properly silences the conversation of all the
nobles, I seem to see the regular army of my beloved Sennaar investing
a conquered city. This, I cry to myself, with enthusiasm, this is the
height of civilization; and I privately hand one of the privates in
that grand army, a gold dollar, to bring me a dish of beans. Each
green bean, O greener envoy extraordinary, I say to myself, with
rapture, should be well worth its weight in gold, when served to such
a congress of kings, queens, and hereditary prince royals as are
assembled here. And I find,” continues the Pacha, “that I am right.
The guest at this banquet is admitted to the freedom of corn and
potatoes, only after negotiations with the sable military. It is quite
the perfection of organization. What hints I shall gather for the
innocent pleasure-seekers of Sennaar who still fancy that when they
bargain for a draught of rose sherbet, they have tacitly agreed for a
glass to drink it from!
“Why, the first day I came,” he went on, “I was going to my room, and
met the chambermaid coming out. Now, as I had paid a colored gentleman
a dollar for my dinner, in addition to the little bill which I settle
at the office, I thought it was equally necessary to secure my bed by
a slight fee to the goddess of the chambers. I therefore pulled out my
purse, and offered her a bill of a small amount. She turned the color
of tomatoes.
“‘Sir,’ exclaimed she, and with dignity, ‘do you mean to insult me?’
“‘Good heavens, miss,’ cried I, ‘quite the contrary,’ and thinking it
was not enough, I presented another bill of a larger amount.
“‘Sir,’ said she, half sobbing, ‘you are no gentleman; I shall leave
the house!’
“I was very much perplexed. I began again:
“‘Miss--my dear--I mean madam--how much _must_ I pay you to
secure my room?’
“‘I don’t understand you, sir,’ replied the chambermaid, somewhat
mollified.
“‘Why, my dear girl, if I paid Sambo a dollar for my dinner, I expect
to pay Dolly something for my chamber, of course.’
“‘Well, sir, you are certainly very kind,--I--with pleasure, I’m
sure,’ replied she, entirely appeased, taking the money and vanishing.
“I,” said Kurz Pacha, “entered my room and locked the door. But I
believe I was a little hasty about giving her the money. The
perfection of civilization has not yet mounted the stairs. It is
confined to the dining-room. How beautiful is that strain from the
_Favorita_, Miss Minerva, tum, tum, ti ti, tum tum, tee tee,” and
the delightful Sennaar ambassador, seeing Mrs. Potiphar in the parlor,
danced humming away.
There are few pleasanter men in society. I should think with his
experience he would be hard upon us, but he is not. The air of courts
does not seem to have spoiled him.
“My dear madam,” he said one evening to Mrs. Potiphar, “if you laugh
at anything, your laughing is laughed at next day. Life is short. If
you can’t see the jewel in the toad’s head, still believe in it. Take
it for granted. The _Parisienne_ says that the English woman has
no _je ne sais quoi_, The English woman says the _Parisienne_ has no
_aplomb_. Amen! When you are in Turkey--why gobble. Why should I
decline to have a good time at the Queen’s drawing-room, because
English women have no _je ne sais quoi_, or at the grand opera,
because French women lack _aplomb_? Take things smoothly. Life is a
merry-go-round. Look at your own grandfather, dear Mrs.
Potiphar,--fine old gentleman, I am told,--rather kept in what the
artists call the middle-distance, at present,--a capital shoemaker, who
did his work well--Alexander and John Howard did no more:--well here you
are, you see, with liveries and a pew in the right church, and
altogether a front seat in the universe--merry-go-round, you know; here
we go up, up, up; here we go down, down, down, etc. By the bye, pretty
strain that from Linda; tum tum, ti, tum tum,” and away hopped the
Sennaar minister.
Mrs. Potiphar was angry. Who wouldn’t have been? To have the old
family shoes thrown in one’s teeth! But our ambassador is an
ambassador. One must have the best society, and she swallowed it as
she has swallowed it a hundred times before. She quietly remarked--
“Pity Kurz Pacha drinks so abominably. He quite forgets what he’s
saying!”
I suppose he does, if Mrs. P. says so; but he seems to know well
enough all the time: as he did that evening in the library at
Mrs. Potiphar’s, when he drew Cerulea Bass to the book-shelves, and
began to dispute about a line in Milton, and then suddenly looking up
at the books, said--
“Ah! there’s Milton; now we’ll see.” But when he opened the case,
which was foolishly left unlocked, he took down only a bit of wood,
bound in blue morocco, which he turned slowly over, so that everybody
saw it, and then quietly returned it to the shelf saying only--
“I beg pardon.”
Old Pot, as Mrs. P. calls him, happened to be passing at the moment,
and cried out in his brusque way--
“Oh! I haven’t laid in my books yet. Those are only
samples--pattern-cards, you know. I don’t believe you’ll find there a
single book that a gentleman’s library shouldn’t be without. I got old
Vellum to do the thing up right, you know. I guess he knows about the
books to buy. But I’ve just laid in some claret that you’ll like, and
I’ve got a sample of the Steinberg. Old Corque understands that kind
of thing, if anybody does.” And the two gentlemen went off to try the
wine.
I am astonished that a man of Kurz Pacha’s tact should have opened the
book-case. People have no right to suppose that the pretty bindings on
one’s shelves are books. Why, they might as well insist upon trying if
the bloom on one’s cheek, or the lace on one’s dress, or, in fact,
one’s figure, were real. Such things are addressed to the eye. No
gentleman uses his hands in good society. I’ve no doubt they were
originally put into gloves to keep them out of mischief.
I am as bad as dear Mrs. Potiphar about coming to the point of my
story. But the truth is, that in such engrossing places as Saratoga
and Newport, it is hardly possible to determine which is the
pleasantest and most important thing among so many. I am so fond of
that old, droll Kurz Pacha, that if I begin to talk about him I forget
everything else. He says such nice things about people that nobody
else would dare to say, and that everybody is so glad to hear. He is
invaluable in society. And yet one is never safe. People say he isn’t
gentlemanly; but when I see the style of man that is called
gentlemanly, I am very glad he is not. All the solemn, pompous men who
stand about like owls, and never speak, nor laugh, nor move, as if
they really had any life or feeling are called “gentlemanly.” Whenever
Tabby says of a new man--“But then he is so gentlemanly!” I
understand at once. It is another case of the well-dressed wooden
image. Good heavens! do you suppose Sir Philip Sidney, or the
Chevalier Bayard or Charles Fox, were “gentlemanly” in this way?
Confectioners who undertake parties might furnish scores of such
gentlemen, with hands and feet of any required size, and warranted to
do nothing “ungentlemanly.” For my part, I am inclined to think that a
gentleman is something positive, not merely negative. And if sometimes
my friend the Pacha says a rousing and wholesome truth, it is none the
less gentlemanly because it cuts a little. He says it’s very amusing
to observe how coolly we play this little farce of life,--how placidly
people get entangled in a mesh at which they all rail, and how
fiercely they frown upon anybody who steps out of the ring. “You
tickle me and I’ll tickle you; but at all events, you tickle me,” is
the motto of the crowd.
“_Allons!_” says he, “who cares? lead off to the right and
left--down the middle and up again. Smile all round, and bow
gracefully to your partner; then carry your heavy heart up chamber,
and drown in your own tears. Cheerfully, cheerfully, my dear Miss
Minerva.--Saratoga until August, then Newport till the frost, the city
afterwards; and so an endless round of happiness.”