lifted you up has dropped me again on this terribly hard spot. I am
extremely sorry to have missed you in London, but I received your little
note, and took due heed of your injunction to let you know how I got on.
I don’t get on at all, my dear Harvard—I am consumed with the love of the
farther shore. I have been so long away that I have dropped out of my
place in this little Boston world, and the shallow tides of New England
life have closed over it. I am a stranger here, and I find it hard to
believe that I ever was a native. It is very hard, very cold, very
vacant. I think of your warm, rich Paris; I think of the Boulevard St.
Michel on the mild spring evenings. I see the little corner by the
window (of the Café de la Jeunesse)—where I used to sit; the doors are
open, the soft deep breath of the great city comes in. It is brilliant,
yet there is a kind of tone, of body, in the brightness; the mighty
murmur of the ripest civilisation in the world comes in; the dear old
_peuple de Paris_, the most interesting people in the world, pass by. I
have a little book in my pocket; it is exquisitely printed, a modern
Elzevir. It is a lyric cry from the heart of young France, and is full
of the sentiment of form. There is no form here, dear Harvard; I had no
idea how little form there was. I don’t know what I shall do; I feel so
undraped, so uncurtained, so uncushioned; I feel as if I were sitting in
the centre of a mighty “reflector.” A terrible crude glare is over
everything; the earth looks peeled and excoriated; the raw heavens seem
to bleed with the quick hard light. I have not got back my rooms in West
Cedar Street; they are occupied by a mesmeric healer. I am staying at an
hotel, and it is very dreadful. Nothing for one’s self; nothing for
one’s preferences and habits. No one to receive you when you arrive; you
push in through a crowd, you edge up to a counter; you write your name in
a horrible book, where every one may come and stare at it and finger it.
A man behind the counter stares at you in silence; his stare seems to say
to you, “What the devil do _you_ want?” But after this stare he never
looks at you again. He tosses down a key at you; he presses a bell; a
savage Irishman arrives. “Take him away,” he seems to say to the
Irishman; but it is all done in silence; there is no answer to your own
speech,—“What is to be done with me, please?” “Wait and you will see,”
the awful silence seems to say. There is a great crowd around you, but
there is also a great stillness; every now and then you hear some one
expectorate. There are a thousand people in this huge and hideous
structure; they feed together in a big white-walled room. It is lighted
by a thousand gas-jets, and heated by cast-iron screens, which vomit
forth torrents of scorching air. The temperature is terrible; the
atmosphere is more so; the furious light and heat seem to intensify the
dreadful definiteness. When things are so ugly, they should not be so
definite; and they are terribly ugly here. There is no mystery in the
corners; there is no light and shade in the types. The people are
haggard and joyless; they look as if they had no passions, no tastes, no
senses. They sit feeding in silence, in the dry hard light; occasionally
I hear the high firm note of a child. The servants are black and
familiar; their faces shine as they shuffle about; there are blue tones
in their dark masks. They have no manners; they address you, but they
don’t answer you; they plant themselves at your elbow (it rubs their
clothes as you eat), and watch you as if your proceedings were strange.
They deluge you with iced water; it’s the only thing they will bring you;
if you look round to summon them, they have gone for more. If you read
the newspaper—which I don’t, gracious Heaven! I can’t—they hang over
your shoulder and peruse it also. I always fold it up and present it to
them; the newspapers here are indeed for an African taste. There are
long corridors defended by gusts of hot air; down the middle swoops a
pale little girl on parlour skates. “Get out of my way!” she shrieks as
she passes; she has ribbons in her hair and frills on her dress; she
makes the tour of the immense hotel. I think of Puck, who put a girdle
round the earth in forty minutes, and wonder what he said as he flitted
by. A black waiter marches past me, bearing a tray, which he thrusts
into my spine as he goes. It is laden with large white jugs; they tinkle
as he moves, and I recognise the unconsoling fluid. We are dying of iced
water, of hot air, of gas. I sit in my room thinking of these
things—this room of mine which is a chamber of pain. The walls are white
and bare, they shine in the rays of a horrible chandelier of imitation
bronze, which depends from the middle of the ceiling. It flings a patch
of shadow on a small table covered with white marble, of which the genial
surface supports at the present moment the sheet of paper on which I
address you; and when I go to bed (I like to read in bed, Harvard) it
becomes an object of mockery and torment. It dangles at inaccessible
heights; it stares me in the face; it flings the light upon the covers of
my book, but not upon the page—the little French Elzevir that I love so
well. I rise and put out the gas, and then my room becomes even lighter
than before. Then a crude illumination from the hall, from the
neighbouring room, pours through the glass openings that surmount the two
doors of my apartment. It covers my bed, where I toss and groan; it
beats in through my closed lids; it is accompanied by the most vulgar,
though the most human, sounds. I spring up to call for some help, some
remedy; but there is no bell, and I feel desolate and weak. There is
only a strange orifice in the wall, through which the traveller in
distress may transmit his appeal. I fill it with incoherent sounds, and
sounds more incoherent yet come back to me. I gather at last their
meaning; they appear to constitute a somewhat stern inquiry. A hollow
impersonal voice wishes to know what I want, and the very question
paralyses me. I want everything—yet I want nothing—nothing this hard
impersonality can give! I want my little corner of Paris; I want the
rich, the deep, the dark Old World; I want to be out of this horrible
place. Yet I can’t confide all this to that mechanical tube; it would be
of no use; a mocking laugh would come up from the office. Fancy
appealing in these sacred, these intimate moments, to an “office”; fancy
calling out into indifferent space for a candle, for a curtain! I pay
incalculable sums in this dreadful house, and yet I haven’t a servant to
wait upon me. I fling myself back on my couch, and for a long time
afterward the orifice in the wall emits strange murmurs and rumblings.
It seems unsatisfied, indignant; it is evidently scolding me for my
vagueness. My vagueness, indeed, dear Harvard! I loathe their horrible
arrangements; isn’t that definite enough? You asked me to tell you whom
I see, and what I think of my friends. I haven’t very many; I don’t feel
at all _en rapport_. The people are very good, very serious, very
devoted to their work; but there is a terrible absence of variety of
type. Every one is Mr. Jones, Mr. Brown; and every one looks like Mr.
Jones and Mr. Brown. They are thin; they are diluted in the great tepid
bath of Democracy! They lack completeness of identity; they are quite
without modelling. No, they are not beautiful, my poor Harvard; it must
be whispered that they are not beautiful. You may say that they are as
beautiful as the French, as the Germans; but I can’t agree with you
there. The French, the Germans, have the greatest beauty of all—the
beauty of their ugliness—the beauty of the strange, the grotesque. These
people are not even ugly; they are only plain. Many of the girls are
pretty; but to be only pretty is (to my sense) to be plain. Yet I have
had some talk. I have seen a woman. She was on the steamer, and I
afterward saw her in New York—a peculiar type, a real personality; a
great deal of modelling, a great deal of colour, and yet a great deal of
mystery. She was not, however, of this country; she was a compound of
far-off things. But she was looking for something here—like me. We
found each other, and for a moment that was enough. I have lost her now;
I am sorry, because she liked to listen to me. She has passed away; I
shall not see her again. She liked to listen to me; she almost
understood!
VI.
FROM M. GUSTAVE LEJAUNE, OF THE FRENCH ACADEMY,
TO M. ADOLPHE BOUCHE, IN PARIS.
WASHINGTON, October 5.
I GIVE you my little notes; you must make allowances for haste, for bad
inns, for the perpetual scramble, for ill-humour. Everywhere the same
impression—the platitude of unbalanced democracy intensified by the
platitude of the spirit of commerce. Everything on an immense
scale—everything illustrated by millions of examples. My brother-in-law
is always busy; he has appointments, inspections, interviews, disputes.
The people, it appears, are incredibly sharp in conversation, in
argument; they wait for you in silence at the corner of the road, and
then they suddenly discharge their revolver. If you fall, they empty
your pockets; the only chance is to shoot them first. With that, no
amenities, no preliminaries, no manners, no care for the appearance. I
wander about while my brother is occupied; I lounge along the streets; I
stop at the corners; I look into the shops; _je regarde passer les
femmes_. It’s an easy country to see; one sees everything there is; the
civilisation is skin deep; you don’t have to dig. This positive,
practical, pushing _bourgeoisie_ is always about its business; it lives
in the street, in the hotel, in the train; one is always in a crowd—there
are seventy-five people in the tramway. They sit in your lap; they stand
on your toes; when they wish to pass they simply push you. Everything in
silence; they know that silence is golden, and they have the worship of
gold. When the conductor wishes your fare he gives you a poke, very
serious, without a word. As for the types—but there is only one—they are
all variations of the same—the _commis-voyageur_ minus the gaiety. The
women are often pretty; you meet the young ones in the streets, in the
trains, in search of a husband. They look at you frankly, coldly,
judicially, to see if you will serve; but they don’t want what you might
think (_du moins on me l’assure_); they only want the husband. A
Frenchman may mistake; he needs to be sure he is right, and I always make
sure. They begin at fifteen; the mother sends them out; it lasts all day
(with an interval for dinner at a pastry-cook’s); sometimes it goes on
for ten years. If they haven’t found the husband then, they give it up;
they make place for the _cadettes_, as the number of women is enormous.
No _salons_, no society, no conversation; people don’t receive at home;
the young girls have to look for the husband where they can. It is no
disgrace not to find him—several have never done so. They continue to go
about unmarried—from the force of habit, from the love of movement,
without hopes, without regret—no imagination, no sensibility, no desire
for the convent. We have made several journeys—few of less than three
hundred miles. Enormous trains, enormous _waggons_, with beds and
lavatories, and negroes who brush you with a big broom, as if they were
grooming a horse. A bounding movement, a roaring noise, a crowd of
people who look horribly tired, a boy who passes up and down throwing
pamphlets and sweetmeats into your lap—that is an American journey.
There are windows in the waggons—enormous, like everything else; but
there is nothing to see. The country is a void—no features, no objects,
no details, nothing to show you that you are in one place more than
another. _Aussi_, you are not in one place, you are everywhere,
anywhere; the train goes a hundred miles an hour. The cities are all the
same; little houses ten feet high, or else big ones two hundred;
tramways, telegraph-poles, enormous signs, holes in the pavement, oceans
of mud, _commis-voyageurs_, young ladies looking for the husband. On the
other hand, no beggars and no _cocottes_—_none_, at least, that you see.
A colossal mediocrity, except (my brother-in-law tells me) in the
machinery, which is magnificent. Naturally, no architecture (they make
houses of wood and of iron), no art, no literature, no theatre. I have
opened some of the books; _mais ils ne se laissent pas lire_. No form,
no matter, no style, no general ideas! they seem to be written for
children and young ladies. The most successful (those that they praise
most) are the facetious; they sell in thousands of editions. I have
looked into some of the most _vantés_; but you need to be forewarned, to
know that they are amusing; _des plaisanteries de croquemort_. They have
a novelist with pretensions to literature, who writes about the chase for
the husband and the adventures of the rich Americans in our corrupt old
Europe, where their primæval candour puts the Europeans to shame. _C’est
proprement écrit_; but it’s terribly pale. What isn’t pale is the
newspapers—enormous, like everything else (fifty columns of
advertisements), and full of the _commérages_ of a continent. And such a
tone, _grand Dieu_! The amenities, the personalities, the
recriminations, are like so many _coups de revolver_. Headings six
inches tall; correspondences from places one never heard of; telegrams
from Europe about Sarah Bernhardt; little paragraphs about nothing at
all; the _menu_ of the neighbour’s dinner; articles on the European
situation _à pouffer de rire_; all the _tripotage_ of local politics.
The _reportage_ is incredible; I am chased up and down by the
interviewers. The matrimonial infelicities of M. and Madame X. (they
give the name), _tout au long_, with every detail—not in six lines,
discreetly veiled, with an art of insinuation, as with us; but with all
the facts (or the fictions), the letters, the dates, the places, the
hours. I open a paper at hazard, and I find _au beau milieu_, _à propos_
of nothing, the announcement—“Miss Susan Green has the longest nose in
Western New York.” Miss Susan Green (_je me renseigne_) is a celebrated
authoress; and the Americans have the reputation of spoiling their women.
They spoil them _à coups de poing_. We have seen few interiors (no one
speaks French); but if the newspapers give an idea of the domestic
_mœurs_, the _mœurs_ must be curious. The passport is abolished, but
they have printed my _signalement_ in these sheets,—perhaps for the young
ladies who look for the husband. We went one night to the theatre; the
piece was French (they are the only ones), but the acting was
American—too American; we came out in the middle. The want of taste is
incredible. An Englishman whom I met tells me that even the language
corrupts itself from day to day; an Englishman ceases to understand. It
encourages me to find that I am not the only one. There are things every
day that one can’t describe. Such is Washington, where we arrived this
morning, coming from Philadelphia. My brother-in-law wishes to see the
Bureau of Patents, and on our arrival he went to look at his machines,
while I walked about the streets and visited the Capitol! The human
machine is what interests me most. I don’t even care for the
political—for that’s what they call their Government here—“the machine.”
It operates very roughly, and some day, evidently, it will explode. It
is true that you would never suspect that they have a government; this is
the principal seat, but, save for three or four big buildings, most of
them _affreux_, it looks like a settlement of negroes. No movement, no
officials, no authority, no embodiment of the state. Enormous streets,
_comme toujours_, lined with little red houses where nothing ever passes
but the tramway. The Capitol—a vast structure, false classic, white
marble, iron and stucco, which has _assez grand air_—must be seen to be
appreciated. The goddess of liberty on the top, dressed in a bear’s
skin; their liberty over here is the liberty of bears. You go into the
Capitol as you would into a railway station; you walk about as you would
in the Palais Royal. No functionaries, no door-keepers, no officers, no
uniforms, no badges, no restrictions, no authority—nothing but a crowd of
shabby people circulating in a labyrinth of spittoons. We are too much
governed, perhaps, in France; but at least we have a certain incarnation
of the national conscience, of the national dignity. The dignity is
absent here, and I am told that the conscience is an abyss. “_L’état
c’est moi_” even—I like that better than the spittoons. These implements
are architectural, monumental; they are the only monuments. _En somme_,
the country is interesting, now that we too have the Republic; it is the
biggest illustration, the biggest warning. It is the last word of
democracy, and that word is—flatness. It is very big, very rich, and
perfectly ugly. A Frenchman couldn’t live here; for life with us, after
all, at the worst is a sort of appreciation. Here, there is nothing to
appreciate. As for the people, they are the English _minus_ the
conventions. You can fancy what remains. The women, _pourtant_, are
sometimes—rather well turned. There was one at Philadelphia—I made her
acquaintance by accident—whom it is probable I shall see again. She is
not looking for the husband; she has already got one. It was at the
hotel; I think the husband doesn’t matter. A Frenchman, as I have said,
may mistake, and he needs to be sure he is right. _Aussi_, I always make
sure!
VII.
FROM MARCELLUS COCKEREL, IN WASHINGTON, TO MRS.
COOLER, NEE COCKEREL, AT OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA.
October 25.