I sent you a post-card on the 13th and a native newspaper yesterday; I
really have had no time to write. I sent you the newspaper partly
because it contained a report—extremely incorrect—of some remarks I made
at the meeting of the Association of the Teachers of New England; partly
because it’s so curious that I thought it would interest you and the
children. I cut out some portions I didn’t think it well the children
should go into—the passages remaining contain the most striking features.
Please point out to the children the peculiar orthography, which probably
will be adopted in England by the time they are grown up; the amusing
oddities of expression and the like. Some of them are intentional;
you’ll have heard of the celebrated American humour—remind me, by the
way, on my return to Thistleton, to give you a few of the examples of it
that my own experience supplies. Certain other of the journalistic
eccentricities I speak of are unconscious and are perhaps on that account
the more diverting. Point out to the children the difference—in so far
as you’re sure that you yourself perceive it. You must excuse me if
these lines are not very legible; I’m writing them by the light of a
railway lamp which rattles above my left ear; it being only at odd
moments that I can find time to extend my personal researches. You’ll
say this is a very odd moment indeed when I tell you I’m in bed in a
sleeping-car. I occupy the upper berth (I will explain to you the
arrangement when I return) while the lower forms the couch—the jolts are
fearful—of an unknown female. You’ll be very anxious for my explanation,
but I assure you that the circumstance I mention is the custom of the
country. I myself am assured that a lady may travel in this manner all
over the Union (the Union of States) without a loss of consideration. In
case of her occupying the upper berth I presume it would be different,
but I must make inquiries on this point. Whether it be the fact that a
mysterious being of another sex has retired to rest behind the same
curtains, or whether it be the swing of the train, which rushes through
the air with very much the same movement as the tail of a kite, the
situation is at the best so anomalous that I’m unable to sleep. A
ventilator’s open just over my head, and a lively draught, mingled with a
drizzle of cinders, pours in through this dubious advantage. (I will
describe to you its mechanism on my return.) If I had occupied the lower
berth I should have had a whole window to myself, and by drawing back the
blind—a safe proceeding at the dead of night—I should have been able, by
the light of an extraordinary brilliant moon, to see a little better what
I write. The question occurs to me, however, would the lady below me in
that case have ascended to the upper berth? (You know my old taste for
hypothetic questions.) I incline to think (from what I have seen) that
she would simply have requested me to evacuate my own couch. (The ladies
in this country ask for anything they want.) In this case, I suppose, I
should have had an extensive view of the country, which, from what I saw
of it before I turned in (while the sharer of my privacy was going to
bed) offered a rather ragged expanse dotted with little white wooden
houses that resembled in the moonshine large pasteboard boxes. I’ve been
unable to ascertain as precisely as I should wish by whom these modest
residences are occupied; for they are too small to be the homes of
country gentlemen, there’s no peasantry here, and (in New England, for
all the corn comes from the far West) there are no yeomen nor farmers.
The information one receives in this country is apt to be rather
conflicting, but I’m determined to sift the mystery to the bottom.
I’ve already noted down a multitude of facts bearing on the points that
interest me most—the operation of the school-boards, the co-education of
the sexes, the elevation of the tone of the lower classes, the
participation of the latter in political life. Political life indeed is
almost wholly confined to the lower middle class and the upper section of
the lower class. In fact in some of the large towns the lowest order of
all participates considerably—a very interesting phase, to which I shall
give more attention. It’s very gratifying to see the taste for public
affairs pervading so many social strata, but the indifference of the
gentry is a fact not to be lightly considered. It may be objected
perhaps that there are no gentry; and it’s very true that I’ve not yet
encountered a character of the type of Lord Bottomley—a type which I’m
free to confess I should be sorry to see disappear from our English
system, if system it may be called where so much is the growth of blind
and incoherent forces. It’s nevertheless obvious that an idle and
luxurious class exists in this country and that it’s less exempt than in
our own from the reproach of preferring inglorious ease to the
furtherance of liberal ideas. It’s rapidly increasing, and I’m not sure
that the indefinite growth of the dilettante spirit, in connexion with
large and lavishly-expended wealth, is an unmixed good even in a society
in which freedom of development has obtained so many interesting
triumphs. The fact that this body is not represented in the governing
class is perhaps as much the result of the jealousy with which it is
viewed by the more earnest workers as of its own (I dare not perhaps
apply a harsher term than) levity. Such at least is the impression made
on me in the Middle States and in New England; in the South-west, the
North-west and the far West it will doubtless be liable to correction.
These divisions are probably new to you; but they are the general
denomination of large and flourishing communities, with which I hope to
make myself at least superficially acquainted. The fatigue of
traversing, as I habitually do, three or four hundred miles at a bound,
is of course considerable; but there is usually much to feed the mind by
the way. The conductors of the trains, with whom I freely converse, are
often men of vigorous and original views and even of some social
eminence. One of them a few days ago gave me a letter of introduction to
his brother-in-law, who’s president of a Western University. Don’t have
any fear therefore that I’m not in the best society!
The arrangements for travelling are as a general thing extremely
ingenious, as you will probably have inferred from what I told you above;
but it must at the same time be conceded that some of them are more
ingenious than happy. Some of the facilities with regard to luggage, the
transmission of parcels and the like are doubtless very useful when
thoroughly mastered, but I’ve not yet succeeded in availing myself of
them without disaster. There are on the other hand no cabs and no
porters, and I’ve calculated that I’ve myself carried my
_impedimenta_—which, you know, are somewhat numerous, and from which I
can’t bear to be separated—some seventy or eighty miles. I have
sometimes thought it was a great mistake not to bring Plummeridge—he
would have been useful on such occasions. On the other hand the
startling question would have presented itself of who would have carried
Plummeridge’s portmanteau? He would have been useful indeed for brushing
and packing my clothes and getting me my tub; I travel with a large tin
one—there are none to be obtained at the inns—and the transport of this
receptacle often presents the most insoluble difficulties. It is often
too an object of considerable embarrassment in arriving at private
houses, where the servants have less reserve of manner than in England;
and to tell you the truth I’m by no means certain at the present moment
that the tub has been placed in the train with me. “On board” the train
is the consecrated phrase here; it’s an allusion to the tossing and
pitching of the concatenation of cars, so similar to that of a vessel in
a storm. As I was about to inquire, however, Who would get Plummeridge
_his_ tub and attend to his little comforts? We couldn’t very well make
our appearance, on arriving for a visit, with _two_ of the utensils I’ve
named; even if as regards a single one I have had the courage, as I may
say, of a lifelong habit. It would hardly be expected that we should
both use the same; though there have been occasions in my travels as to
which I see no way of blinking the fact that Plummeridge would have had
to sit down to dinner with me. Such a contingency would completely have
unnerved him, so that on the whole it was doubtless the wiser part to
leave him respectfully touching his hat on the tender in the Mersey. No
one touches his hat over here, and, deem this who will the sign of a more
advanced social order, I confess that when I see poor Plummeridge again
that familiar little gesture—familiar I mean only in the sense of one’s
immemorial acquaintance with it—will give me a measurable satisfaction.
You’ll see from what I tell you that democracy is not a mere word in this
country, and I could give you many more instances of its universal reign.
This, however, is what we come here to look at and, in so far as there
appears proper occasion, to admire; though I’m by no means sure that we
can hope to establish within an appreciable time a corresponding change
in the somewhat rigid fabric of English manners. I’m not even inclined
to believe such a change desirable; you know this is one of the points on
which I don’t as yet see my way to going so far as Lord B. I’ve always
held that there’s a certain social ideal of inequality as well as of
equality, and if I’ve found the people of this country, as a general
thing, quite equal to each other, I’m not quite ready to go so far as to
say that, as a whole, they’re equal to—pardon that dreadful blot! The
movement of the train and the precarious nature of the light—it is close
to my nose and most offensive—would, I flatter myself, long since have
got the better of a less resolute diarist!
What I was distinctly _not_ prepared for is the very considerable body of
aristocratic feeling that lurks beneath this republican simplicity. I’ve
on several occasions been made the confidant of these romantic but
delusive vagaries, of which the stronghold appears to be the Empire
City—a slang name for the rich and predominant, but unprecedentedly
maladministered and disillusioned New York. I was assured in many
quarters that this great desperate eternally-swindled city at least is
ripe, everything else failing, for the monarchical experiment or
revolution, and that if one of the Queen’s sons would come over to sound
the possibilities he would meet with the highest encouragement. This
information was given me in strict confidence, with closed doors, as it
were; it reminded me a good deal of the dreams of the old Jacobites when
they whispered their messages to the king across the water. I doubt,
however, whether these less excusable visionaries will be able to secure
the services of a Pretender, for I fear that in such a case he would
encounter a still more fatal Culloden. I have given a good deal of time,
as I told you, to the educational system, and have visited no fewer than
one hundred and forty-three schools and colleges. It’s extraordinary the
number of persons who are being educated in this country; and yet at the
same time the tone of the people is less scholarly than one might expect.
A lady a few days since described to me her daughter as being always “on
the go,” which I take to be a jocular way of saying that the young lady
was very fond of paying visits. Another person, the wife of a United
States Senator, informed me that if I should go to Washington in January
I should be quite “in the swim.” I don’t regard myself as slow to grasp
new meanings, however whimsical; but in this case the lady’s explanation
made her phrase rather more than less ambiguous. To say that I’m on the
go describes very accurately my own situation. I went yesterday to the
Poganuc High School, to hear fifty-seven boys and girls recite in unison
a most remarkable ode to the American flag, and shortly afterward
attended a ladies’ luncheon at which some eighty or ninety of the sex
were present. There was only one individual in trousers—his trousers, by
the way, though he brought several pair, begin to testify to the fury of
his movements! The men in America absent themselves systematically from
this meal, at which ladies assemble in large numbers to discuss
religious, political and social topics.
Immense female symposia at which every delicacy is provided are one of
the most striking features of American life, and would seem to prove that
our sex is scarcely so indispensable in the scheme of creation as it
sometimes supposes. I’ve been admitted on the footing of an
Englishman—“just to show you some of our bright women,” the hostess
yesterday remarked. (“Bright” here has the meaning of _intellectually
remarkable_.) I noted indeed the frequency of the predominantly
cerebral—as they call it here “brainy”—type. These rather oddly
invidious banquets are organised according to age, for I’ve also been
present as an inquiring stranger at several “girls’ lunches,” from which
married ladies are rigidly excluded, but here the fair revellers were
equally numerous and equally “bright.” There’s a good deal I should like
to tell you about my study of the educational question, but my position’s
now somewhat cramped, and I must dismiss the subject briefly. My leading
impression is that the children are better educated (in proportion of
course) than the adults. The position of a child is on the whole one of
great distinction. There’s a popular ballad of which the refrain, if I’m
not mistaken, is “Make me a child again just for to-night!” and which
seems to express the sentiment of regret for lost privileges. At all
events they are a powerful and independent class, and have organs, of
immense circulation, in the press. They are often extremely “bright.”
I’ve talked with a great many teachers, most of them lady-teachers, as
they are here called. The phrase doesn’t mean teachers of ladies, as you
might suppose, but applies to the sex of the instructress, who often has
large classes of young men under her control. I was lately introduced to
a young woman of twenty-three who occupies the chair of Moral Philosophy
and Belles-Lettres in a Western University and who told me with the
utmost frankness that she’s “just adored” by the undergraduates. This
young woman was the daughter of a petty trader in one of the
South-western States and had studied at Amanda College in Missourah, an
institution at which young people of the two sexes pursue their education
together. She was very pretty and modest, and expressed a great desire
to see something of English country life, in consequence of which I made
her promise to come down to Thistleton in the event of her crossing the
Atlantic. She’s not the least like Gwendolen or Charlotte, and I’m not
prepared to say how they would get on with her; the boys would probably
do better. Still, I think her acquaintance would be of value to dear
Miss Gulp, and the two might pass their time very pleasantly in the
school-room. I grant you freely that those I have seen here are much
less comfortable than the school-room at Thistleton. Has Charlotte, by
the way, designed any more texts for the walls? I’ve been extremely
interested in my visit to Philadelphia, where I saw several thousand
little red houses with white steps, occupied by intelligent artisans and
arranged (in streets) on the rectangular system. Improved
cooking-stoves, rosewood pianos, gas and hot water, esthetic furniture
and complete sets of the British Essayists. A tramway through every
street; every block of exactly equal length; blocks and houses
economically lettered and numbered. There’s absolutely no loss of time
and no need of looking for, or indeed _at_, anything. The mind always on
one’s object; it’s very delightful.
V
FROM LOUIS LEVERETT IN BOSTON TO HARVARD TREMONT IN PARIS
_November_ 1880.
The scales have turned, my sympathetic Harvard, and the beam that has
lifted you up has dropped me again on this terribly hard spot. I’m
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’m consumed with the love of the
further shore. I’ve been so long away that I’ve dropped out of my place
in this little Boston world and the shallow tides of New England life
have closed over it. I’m a stranger here and find it hard to believe I
ever was a native. It’s very hard, very cold, very vacant. I think of
your warm rich Paris; I think of the Boulevard Saint-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. The sense is of a supreme splendour and an
incomparable arrangement, yet there’s a kind of tone, of body, in the
radiance; 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’ve a little book in my pocket; it’s exquisitely
printed, a modern Elzevir. It consists of a lyric cry from the heart of
young France and is full of the sentiment of form. There’s no form here,
dear Harvard; I had no idea how little form there is. 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’ve not got back my rooms in West Cedar Street; they’re occupied by a
mesmeric healer. I’m staying at an hotel and it’s all 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 “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’s all done in silence; there’s no
answer to your own wild wail—“What’s to be done with me, please?” “Wait
and you’ll see” the awful silence seems to say. There’s a great crowd
round you, but there’s 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’s
lighted by a thousand gas-jets and heated by cast-iron screens which
vomit forth torrents of scorching air. The temperature’s terrible; the
atmosphere’s more so; the furious light and heat seem to intensify the
dreadful definiteness. When things are so ugly they shouldn’t be so
definite, and they’re terribly ugly here. There’s no mystery in the
corners, there’s 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 under 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’ve no manners; they address but 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’ll bring you; if you look round to summon
them they’ve 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.
Then 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 that he
thrusts into my spine as he goes. It’s laden with large white jugs; they
tinkle as he moves, and I recognise the unconsoling fluid. We’re dying
of iced water, of hot air, of flaring 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 I
thus employ for 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 on
the covers of my book but not upon the page—the little French Elzevir I
love so well. I rise and put out the gas—when 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’s accompanied by the most vulgar,
though the most human, sounds. I spring up to call for some help, some
remedy; but there’s no bell and I feel desolate and weak. There’s 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 an awful 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 barbarous 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 haven’t a creature to assist me. I fling myself back on
my couch and for a long time afterwards the orifice in the wall emits
strange murmurs and rumblings. It seems unsatisfied and indignant and 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’s a terrible
absence of variety of type. Every one’s Mr. Jones, Mr. Brown, and every
one looks like Mr. Jones and Mr. Brown. They’re thin, they’re diluted in
the great tepid bath of Democracy! They lack completeness of identity;
they’re quite without modelling. No, they’re not beautiful, my poor
Harvard; it must be whispered that they’re not beautiful. You may say
that they’re 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’re only plain. Many of
the girls are pretty, but to be only pretty is (to my sense) to be plain.
Yet I’ve had some talk. I’ve seen a young woman. She was on the
steamer, and I afterwards saw her in New York—a mere maiden thing, yet a
peculiar type, a real personality: a great deal of modelling, a great
deal of colour, and withal something elusive and ambiguous. 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’ve lost her now; I’m 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 IN WASHINGTON TO M. ADOLPHE
BOUCHE IN PARIS
_December_ 1880.
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
suddenly discharge their revolver. If you fall they empty your pockets;
the only chance is to shoot them first. With this no amenities, no
preliminaries, no manners, no care for the appearance. I wander about
while my brother’s 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’s
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’s 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’ve 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’s only one, they’re 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’ll serve; but they don’t want what you might think (_du moines on me
l’assure_); they only want the husband. A Frenchman may mistake; he
needs to be sure he’s 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 by that time found him 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’s 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 regrets. There’s no imagination, no sensibility, no
desire for the convent.
We’ve made several journeys—few of less than three hundred miles.
Enormous trains, enormous _wagons_, with beds and lavatories, with
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 hurling pamphlets and sweetmeats into
your face: that’s an American journey. There are windows in the
_wagons_—enormous like everything else; but there’s nothing to see. The
country’s a void—no features, no objects, no details, nothing to show you
that you’re in one place more than another. _Aussi_ you’re not in one
place, you’re 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’ve opened some of the books—_ils ne se
laissent pas lire_. No form, no matter, no style, no general ideas: they
seem written for children and young ladies. The most successful (those
that they praise most) are the facetious; they sell in thousands of
editions. I’ve looked into some of the most _vantés_; but you need to be
forewarned to know they’re amusing; grins through a horse-collar,
burlesques of the Bible, _des plaisanteries de croquemort_. They’ve 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 primeval 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’m 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 find _au beau milieu_, apropos 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’ve 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’s abolished, but they’ve 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 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; the Englishman ceases to
understand. It encourages me to find I’m 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 will explode. It is
true that you’d never suspect 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 reservations, no authority—nothing but a crowd of
shabby people circulating in a labyrinth of spittoons. We’re too much
governed perhaps in France; but at least we have a certain incarnation of
the national conscience, of the national dignity. The dignity’s absent
here, and I’m told the public conscience is an abyss. “_L’état c’est
moi_” even—I like that better than the spittoons. These implements are
architectural, monumental; they’re the only monuments. _En somme_ the
country’s interesting, now that we too have the Republic; it is the
biggest illustration, the biggest warning. It’s the last word of
democracy, and that word is—platitude. It’s 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 one has nothing to
appreciate. As for the people, they’re 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’s probable I shall see again. She’s 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’ve said, may
mistake, and he needs to be sure he’s right. _Aussi_ I always make sure!
VII
FROM MARCELLUS COCKEREL IN WASHINGTON TO MRS. COOLER, NÉE COCKEREL, AT
OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA
_October_ 1880.
I ought to have written you long before this, for I’ve had your last
excellent letter these four months in my hands. The first half of that
time I was still in Europe, the last I’ve spent on my native soil. I
think accordingly my silence is owing to the fact that over there I was
too miserable to write and that here I’ve been too happy. I got back the
1st of September—you’ll have seen it in the papers. Delightful country
where one sees everything in the papers—the big familiar vulgar
good-natured delightful papers, none of which has any reputation to keep
up for anything but getting the news! I really think that has had as
much to do as anything else with my satisfaction at getting home—the
difference in what they call the “tone of the press.” In Europe it’s too
dreary—the sapience, the solemnity, the false respectability, the
verbosity, the long disquisitions on superannuated subjects. Here the
newspapers are like the railroad-trains which carry everything that comes
to the station and have only the religion of punctuality. As a woman,
however, you probably detest them; you think they’re (the great word)
vulgar. I admitted it just now, and I’m very happy to have an early
opportunity to announce to you that that idea has quite ceased to have
any terrors for me. There are some conceptions to which the female mind
can never rise. Vulgarity’s a stupid superficial question-begging
accusation, which has become to-day the easiest refuge of mediocrity.
Better than anything else it saves people the trouble of thinking, and
anything which does that succeeds. You must know that in these last
three years in Europe I’ve become terribly vulgar myself; that’s one
service my travels have rendered me. By three years in Europe I mean
three years in foreign parts altogether, for I spent several months of
that time in Japan, India and the rest of the East. Do you remember when
you bade me good-bye in San Francisco the night before I embarked for
Yokohama? You foretold that I’d take such a fancy to foreign life that
America would never see me more, and that if you should wish to see me
(an event you were good enough to regard as possible) you’d have to make
a rendezvous in Paris or in Rome. I think we made one—which you never
kept; but I shall never make another for those cities. It was in Paris,
however, that I got your letter; I remember the moment as well as if it
were (to my honour) much more recent. You must know that among many
places I dislike Paris carries the palm. I’m bored to death there; it’s
the home of every humbug. The life is full of that false comfort which
is worse than discomfort, and the small fat irritable people give me the
shivers.
I had been making these reflexions even more devoutly than usual one very
tiresome evening toward the beginning of last summer when, as I
re-entered my hotel at ten o’clock, the little reptile of a portress
handed me your gracious lines. I was in a villainous humour. I had been
having an overdressed dinner in a stuffy restaurant and had gone from
there to a suffocating theatre, where, by way of amusement, I saw a play
in which blood and lies were the least of the horrors. The theatres over
there are insupportable; the atmosphere’s pestilential. People sit with
their elbows in your sides; they squeeze past you every half hour. It
was one of my bad moments—I have a great many in Europe. The
conventional mechanical play, all in falsetto, which I seemed to have
seen a thousand times; the horrible faces of the people, the pushing
bullying _ouvreuse_ with her false politeness and her real rapacity,
drove me out of the place at the end of an hour; and as it was too early
to go home, I sat down before a café on the Boulevard, where they served
me a glass of sour watery beer. There on the Boulevard, in the summer
night, life itself was even uglier than the play, and it wouldn’t do for
me to tell you what I saw. Besides, I was sick of the Boulevard, with
its eternal grimace and the deadly sameness of the _article de Paris_,
which pretends to be so various—the shop-windows a wilderness of rubbish
and the passers-by a procession of manikins. Suddenly it came over me
that I was supposed to be amusing myself—my face was a yard long—and that
you probably at that moment were saying to your husband: “He stays away
so long! What a good time he must be having!” The idea was the first
thing that had made me smile for a month; I got up and walked home,
reflecting as I went that I was “seeing Europe” and that after all one
_must_ see Europe. It was because I had been convinced of this that I
had come out, and it’s because the operation has been brought to a close
that I’ve been so happy for the last eight weeks. I was very
conscientious about it, and, though your letter that night made me
abominably homesick, I held out to the end, knowing it to be once for
all. I shan’t trouble Europe again; I shall see America for the rest of
my days. My long delay has had the advantage that now at least I can
give you my impressions—I don’t mean of Europe; impressions of Europe are
easy to get—but of this country as it strikes the reinstated exile. Very
likely you’ll think them queer; but keep my letter and twenty years hence
they’ll be quite commonplace. They won’t even be vulgar. It was very
deliberate, my going round the world. I knew that one ought to see for
one’s self and that I should have eternity, so to speak, to rest. I
travelled energetically; I went everywhere and saw everything; took as
many letters as possible and made as many acquaintances. In short I held
my nose to the grindstone and here I am back.
Well, the upshot of it all is that I’ve got rid of a superstition. We
have so many that one the less—perhaps the biggest of all—makes a real
difference in one’s comfort. The one in question—of course you have
it—is that there’s no salvation but through Europe. Our salvation is
here, if we have eyes to see it, and the salvation of Europe into the
bargain; that is if Europe’s to be saved, which I rather doubt. Of
course you’ll call me a bird of freedom, a vulgar patriot, a waver of the
stars and stripes; but I’m in the delightful position of not minding in
the least what any one calls me. I haven’t a mission; I don’t want to
preach; I’ve simply arrived at a state of mind. I’ve got Europe off my
back. You’ve no idea how it simplifies things and how jolly it makes me
feel. Now I can live, now I can talk. If we wretched Americans could
only say once for all “Oh Europe be hanged!” we should attend much better
to our proper business. We’ve simply to mind that business and the rest
will look after itself. You’ll probably inquire what it is I like better
over here, and I’ll answer that it’s simply—life. Disagreeables for
disagreeables I prefer our own. The way I’ve been bored and bullied in
foreign parts, and the way I’ve had to say I found it pleasant! For a
good while this appeared to be a sort of congenital obligation, but one
fine day it occurred to me that there was no obligation at all and that
it would ease me immensely to admit to myself that (for me at least) all
those things had no importance. I mean the things they rub into you over
there; the tiresome international topics, the petty politics, the stupid
social customs, the baby-house scenery. The vastness and freshness of
this American world, the great scale and great pace of our development,
the good sense and good nature of the people, console me for there being
no cathedrals and no Titians. I hear nothing about Prince Bismarck and
Gambetta, about the Emperor William and the Czar of Russia, about Lord
Beaconsfield and the Prince of Wales. I used to get so tired of their
Mumbo-Jumbo of a Bismarck, of his secrets and surprises, his mysterious
intentions and oracular words. They revile us for our party politics;
but what are all the European jealousies and rivalries, their armaments
and their wars, their rapacities and their mutual lies, but the intensity
of the spirit of party? What question, what interest, what idea, what
need of mankind, is involved in any of these things? Their big pompous
armies drawn up in great silly rows, their gold lace, their salaams,
their hierarchies, seem a pastime for children: there’s a sense of humour
and of reality over here that laughs at all that.
Yes, we’re nearer the reality, nearer what they’ll all have to come to.
The questions of the future are social questions, which the Bismarcks and
Beaconsfields are very much afraid to see settled; and the sight of a row
of supercilious potentates holding their peoples like their personal
property and bristling all over, to make a mutual impression, with
feathers and sabres, strikes us as a mixture of the grotesque and the
abominable. What do we care for the mutual impressions of potentates who
amuse themselves with sitting on people? Those things are their own
affair, and they ought to be shut up in a dark room to have it out
together. Once one feels, over here, that the great questions of the
future are social questions, that a mighty tide is sweeping the world to
democracy, and that this country is the biggest stage on which the drama
can be enacted, the fashionable European topics seem petty and parochial.
They talk about things that we’ve settled ages ago, and the solemnity
with which they propound to you their little domestic embarrassments
makes a heavy draft on one’s good nature. In England they were talking
about the Hares and Rabbits Bill, about the extension of the County
Franchise, about the Dissenters’ Burials, about the Deceased Wife’s
Sister, about the abolition of the House of Lords, about heaven knows
what ridiculous little measure for the propping-up of their ridiculous
little country. And they call _us_ provincial! It’s hard to sit and
look respectable while people discuss the utility of the House of Lords
and the beauty of a State Church, and it’s only in a dowdy musty
civilisation that you’ll find them doing such things. The lightness and
clearness of the social air—_that’s_ the great relief in these parts.
The gentility of bishops, the propriety of parsons, even the
impressiveness of a restored cathedral, give less of a charm to life than
that. I used to be furious with the bishops and beadles, with the
humbuggery of the whole affair, which every one was conscious of but
which people agreed not to expose because they’d be compromised all
round. The convenience of life in our conditions, the quick and simple
arrangements, the absence of the spirit of routine, are a blessed change
from the stupid stiffness with which I struggled for two long years.
There were people with swords and cockades who used to order me about;
for the simplest operation of life I had to kootoo to some bloated
official. When it was a question of my doing a little differently from
others the bloated official gasped as if I had given him a blow on the
stomach; he needed to take a week to think of it.
On the other hand it’s impossible to take an American by surprise; he’s
ashamed to confess he hasn’t the wit to do a thing another man has had
the wit to think of. Besides being as good as his neighbour he must
therefore be as clever—which is an affliction only to people who are
afraid he may be cleverer. If this general efficiency and spontaneity of
the people—the union of the sense of freedom with the love of
knowledge—isn’t the very essence of a high civilisation I don’t know what
a high civilisation is. I felt this greater ease on my first railroad
journey—felt the blessing of sitting in a train where I could move about,
where I could stretch my legs and come and go, where I had a seat and a
window to myself, where there were chairs and tables and food and drink.
The villainous little boxes on the European trains, in which you’re stuck
down in a corner with doubled-up knees, opposite to a row of people,
often most offensive types, who stare at you for ten hours on end—these
were part of my two years’ ordeal. The large free way of doing things
here is everywhere a pleasure. In London, at my hotel, they used to come
to me on Saturday to make me order my Sunday’s dinner, and when I asked
for a sheet of paper they put it into the bill. The meagreness, the
stinginess, the perpetual expectation of a sixpence, used to exasperate
me. Of course I saw a great many people who were pleasant; but as I’m
writing to you and not to one of them I may say that they were dreadfully
apt to be dull. The imagination among the people I see here is more
flexible, and then they have the advantage of a larger horizon. It’s not
bounded on the north by the British aristocracy and on the south by the
_scrutin de liste_. (I mix up the countries a little, but they’re not
worth the keeping apart.) The absence of little conventional
measurements, of little cut-and-dried judgements, is an immense
refreshment. We’re more analytic, more discriminating, more familiar
with realities. As for manners, there are bad manners everywhere, but an
aristocracy is bad manners organised. (I don’t mean that they mayn’t be
polite among themselves, but they’re rude to every one else.) The sight
of all these growing millions simply minding their business is impressive
to me—more so than all the gilt buttons and padded chests of the Old
World; and there’s a certain powerful type of “practical” American
(you’ll find him chiefly in the West) who doesn’t “blow” as I do (I’m not
practical) but who quietly feels that he has the Future in his vitals—a
type that strikes me more than any I met in your favourite countries.
Of course you’ll come back to the cathedrals and Titians, but there’s a
thought that helps one to do without them—the thought that, though we’ve
an immense deal of pie-eating plainness, we’ve little misery, little
squalor, little degradation. There’s no regular wife-beating class, and
there are none of the stultified peasants of whom it takes so many to
make a European noble. The people here are more conscious of things;
they invent, they act, they answer for themselves; they’re not (I speak
of social matters) tied up by authority and precedent. We shall have all
the Titians by and by, and we shall move over a few cathedrals. You had
better stay here if you want to have the best. Of course I’m a roaring
Yankee; but you’ll call me that if I say the least, so I may as well take
my ease and say the most. Washington’s a most entertaining place; and
here at least, at the seat of government, one isn’t overgoverned. In
fact there’s no government at all to speak of; it seems too good to be
true. The first day I was here I went to the Capitol, and it took me
ever so long to figure to myself that I had as good a right there as any
one else—that the whole magnificent pile (it _is_ magnificent, by the
way) was in fact my own. In Europe one doesn’t rise to such conceptions,
and my spirit had been broken in Europe. The doors were gaping wide—I
walked all about; there were no door-keepers, no officers nor flunkeys,
there wasn’t even a policeman to be seen. It seemed strange not to see a
uniform, if only as a patch of colour. But this isn’t government by
livery. The absence of these things is odd at first; you seem to miss
something, to fancy the machine has stopped. It hasn’t, though; it only
works without fire and smoke. At the end of three days this simple
negative impression, the fact that there are no soldiers nor spies,
nothing but plain black coats, begins to affect the imagination, becomes
vivid, majestic, symbolic. It ends by being more impressive than the
biggest review I saw in Germany. Of course I’m a roaring Yankee; but one
has to take a big brush to copy a big model. The future’s here of
course, but it isn’t only that—the present’s here as well. You’ll
complain that I don’t give you any personal news, but I’m more modest for
myself than for my country. I spent a month in New York and while there
saw a good deal of a rather interesting girl who came over with me in the
steamer and whom for a day or two I thought I should like to marry. But
I shouldn’t. She has been spoiled by Europe—and yet the prime stuff
struck me as so right.
VIII
FROM MISS AURORA CHURCH IN NEW YORK TO MISS WHITESIDE IN PARIS
_January_ 1881.
I told you (after we landed) about my agreement with mamma—that I was to
have my liberty for three months and that if at the end of this time I
shouldn’t have made a good use of it I was to give it back to her. Well,
the time’s up to-day, and I’m very much afraid I haven’t made a good use
of it. In fact I haven’t made any use of it at all—I haven’t got
married, for that’s what mamma meant by our little bargain. She has been
trying to marry me in Europe for years, without a _dot_, and as she has
never (to the best of my knowledge) even come near it, she thought at
last that if she were to leave it to me I might possibly do better. I
couldn’t certainly do worse. Well, my dear, I’ve done very badly—that is
I haven’t done at all. I haven’t even tried. I had an idea that the
_coup_ in question came of itself over here; but it hasn’t come to _me_.
I won’t say I’m disappointed, for I haven’t on the whole seen any one I
should like to marry. When you marry people in these parts they expect
you to love them, and I haven’t seen any one I should like to love. I
don’t know what the reason is, but they’re none of them what I’ve thought
of. It may be that I’ve thought of the impossible; and yet I’ve seen
people in Europe whom I should have liked to marry. It’s true they were
almost always married to some one else. What I _am_ disappointed in is
simply having to give back my liberty. I don’t wish particularly to be
married, and I do wish to do as I like—as I’ve been doing for the last
month. All the same I’m sorry for poor mamma, since nothing has happened
that she wished to happen. To begin with, we’re not appreciated, not
even by the Rucks, who have disappeared in the strange way in which
people over here seem to vanish from the world. We’ve made no sensation;
my new dresses count for nothing (they all have better ones); our
philological and historical studies don’t show. We’ve been told we might
do better in Boston; but on the other hand mamma hears that in Boston the
people only marry their cousins. Then mamma’s out of sorts because the
country’s exceedingly dear and we’ve spent all our money. Moreover, I’ve
neither eloped, nor been insulted, nor been talked about, nor—so far as I
know—deteriorated in manners or character; so that she’s wrong in all her
previsions. I think she would have rather liked me to be insulted. But
I’ve been insulted as little as I’ve been adored. They don’t adore you
over here; they only make you think they’re going to.
Do you remember the two gentlemen who were on the ship, and who, after we
arrived, came to see me _à tour de rôle_? At first I never dreamed they
were making love to me, though mamma was sure it must be that; then, as
it went on a good while, I thought perhaps it _was_ that—after which I
ended by seeing it wasn’t anything! It was simply conversation—and
conversation a precocious child might have listened to at that. Mr.
Leverett and Mr. Cockerel disappeared one fine day without the smallest
pretension to having broken my heart, I’m sure—though it only depended on
me to think they must have tried to. All the gentlemen are like that;
you can’t tell what they mean; the “passions” don’t rage, the appearances
don’t matter—nobody believes them. Society seems oddly to consist of a
sort of innocent jilting. I think on the whole I _am_ a little
disappointed—I don’t mean about one’s not marrying; I mean about the life
generally. It looks so different at first that you expect it will be
very exciting; and then you find that after all, when you’ve walked out
for a week or two by yourself and driven out with a gentleman in a buggy,
that’s about all there is to it, as they say here. Mamma’s very angry at
not finding more to dislike; she admitted yesterday that, once one has
got a little settled, the country hasn’t even the merit of being hateful.
This has evidently something to do with her suddenly proposing three days
ago that we should “go West.” Imagine my surprise at such an idea coming
from mamma! The people in the pension—who, as usual, wish immensely to
get rid of her—have talked to her about the West, and she has taken it up
with a kind of desperation. You see we must do something; we can’t
simply remain here. We’re rapidly being ruined and we’re not—so to
speak—getting married. Perhaps it will be easier in the West; at any
rate it will be cheaper and the country will have the advantage of being
more hateful. It’s a question between that and returning to Europe, and
for the moment mamma’s balancing. I say nothing: I’m really indifferent;
perhaps I shall marry a pioneer. I’m just thinking how I shall give back
my liberty. It really won’t be possible; I haven’t got it any more; I’ve
given it away to others. Mamma may get it back if she can from _them_!
She comes in at this moment to announce that we must push further—she has
decided for the West. Wonderful mamma! It appears that my real chance
is for a pioneer—they’ve sometimes millions. But fancy us at Oshkosh!
* * * * *
_Printed in Great Britain by_ R. & R. CLARKE, LIMITED, _Edinburgh_.