The whole incident was infinitely pathetic to me; and yet we must not
romance the poor, or imagine that they are morally better than the
rich; we must not fancy that a poor man, when he ceases to be a poor
man, would be kinder for having been poor. He would perhaps oftener,
and certainly more logically, be unkinder, for there would be mixed
with his vanity of possession a quality of cruel fear, an apprehension
of loss, which the man who had always been rich would not feel. The
self-made man when he has made himself of money, seems to have been
deformed by his original destitution, and I think that if I were in
need I would rather take my chance of pity from the man who had never
been poor. Of course, this is generalization, and there are instances
to the contrary, which at once occur to me. But what is absolutely true
is that our prosperity, the selfish joy of having, at the necessary
cost of those who cannot have, is blighted by the feeling of insecurity
which every man has in his secret soul, and which the man who has known
want must have in greater measure than the man who has never known want.
There is, indeed, no security for wealth, which we think the chief
good of life, in the system that warrants it. When a man has gathered
his millions, he cannot be reduced to want, probably; but while he is
amassing them, while he is in the midst of the fight, or the game, as
most men are, there are ninety-five chances out of a hundred that he
will be beaten. Perhaps it is best so, and I should be glad it was
so if I could be sure that the common danger bred a common kindness
between the rich and the poor, but it seems not to do so. As far as I
can see, the rule of chance, which they all live under, does nothing
more than reduce them to a community of anxieties.
To the eye of the observer they have the monotony of the sea, where
some tenth wave runs a little higher than the rest, but sinks at last,
or breaks upon the rocks or sands, as inevitably as the other nine.
Our inequality is without picturesqueness and without distinction.
The people in the carriages are better dressed than those on foot,
especially the women; but otherwise they do not greatly differ from the
most of these. The spectacle of the driving in the Park has none of
that dignity which characterizes such spectacles in European capitals.
This may be because many people of the finest social quality are
seldom seen there, or it may be because the differences growing out of
money can never have the effect of those growing out of birth; that
a plutocracy can never have the last wicked grace of an aristocracy.
It would be impossible for instance, to weave any romance about the
figures you see in our carriages; they do not even suggest the poetry
of ages of prescriptive wrong; they are of to-day, and there is no
guessing whether they will be of to-morrow or not.
In Europe, this sort of tragi-comedy is at least well played; but in
America, you always have the feeling that the performance is that of
second-rate amateurs, who, if they would really live out the life
implied by America, would be the superiors of the whole world. I
am moved to laughter by some of the things I see among them, when
perhaps I ought to be awed, as, for instance, by the sight of a little,
lavishly dressed lady, lolling in the corner of a ponderous landau,
with the effect of holding fast lest she should be shaken out of it,
while two powerful horses, in jingling, silver-plated harness, with
due equipment of coachman and footman, seated on their bright-buttoned
overcoats on the box together, get her majestically over the ground at
a slow trot. This is what I sometimes see, with not so much reverence
as I feel for the simple mother pushing her baby-carriage on the
asphalt beside me and doubtless envying the wonderful creature in the
landau. Sometimes it is a fat old man in the landau; or a husband and
wife, not speaking; or a pair of grim old ladies, who look as if they
had lived so long aloof from their unluckier sisters that they could
not be too severe with the mere sight of them. Generally speaking, the
people in the carriages do not seem any happier for being there, though
I have sometimes seen a jolly party of strangers in a public carriage,
drawn by those broken-kneed horses which seem peculiarly devoted to
this service.
The best place to see the driving is at a point where the different
driveways converge, not far from the Egyptian obelisk which the
Khedive gave us some years ago, and which we have set up here in one
of the finest eminences of the Park. He had of course no moral right
to rob his miserable land of any one of its characteristic monuments,
but I do not know that it is not as well in New York as in Alexandria.
If its heart of aged stone could feel the continuity of conditions, it
must be aware of the essential unity of the civilizations beside the
Nile and beside the Hudson; and if Cleopatra’s needle had really an eye
to see, it must perceive that there is nothing truly civic in either.
As the tide of dissatisfied and weary wealth rolls by its base here, in
the fantastic variety of its equipages, does the needle discern so much
difference between their occupants and the occupants of the chariots
that swept beneath it in the capital of the Ptolemies two thousand
years ago? I can imagine it at times winking such an eye and cocking in
derision the gilded cap with which the New-Yorkers have lately crowned
it. They pass it in all kinds of vehicles, and there are all kinds of
people in them, though there are sometimes no people at all, as when
the servants have been sent out to exercise the horses, for nobody’s
good or pleasure, and in the spirit of that atrocious waste which
runs through our whole life. I have now and then seen a gentleman
driving a four-in-hand, with everything to minister to his vanity in
the exact imitation of a nobleman driving a four-in-hand over English
roads, and with no one to be drawn by his crop-tailed bays or blacks
except himself and the solemn groom on his perch; I have wondered how
much more nearly equal they were in their aspirations and instincts
than either of them imagined. A gentleman driving a pair, abreast or
tandem, with a groom on the rumble, for no purpose except to express
his quality, is a common sight enough; and sometimes you see a lady
illustrating her consequence in like manner. A lady driving, while a
gentleman occupies the seat behind her, is a sight which always affects
me like the sight of a man taking a woman’s arm, in walking, as the man
of an underbred sort is apt to do.
Horsey-looking women, who are, to ladies at least, what horsey-looking
men are to gentlemen, drive together; often they are really ladies,
and sometimes they are nice young girls, out for an innocent dash and
chat. They are all very much and very unimpressively dressed, whether
they sit in state behind the regulation coachman and footman, or
handle the reins themselves. Now and then you see a lady with a dog
on the seat beside her, for an airing, but not often a child; once
or twice I have seen one with a large spaniel seated comfortably in
front of her, and I have asked myself what would happen if, instead
of the dog, she had taken into her carriage some pale woman or weary
old man, such as I sometimes see gazing patiently after her. But the
thing would be altogether impossible. I should be the first to feel
the want of keeping in it; for, however recent wealth may be here, it
has equipped itself with all the apparatus of long-inherited riches,
which it is as strongly bound to maintain intact as if it were really
old and hereditary--perhaps more strongly. I must say that, mostly,
its owners look very tired of it, or of something, in public, and
that our American plutocrats, if they have not the distinction of an
aristocracy, have at least the ennui.