In his extreme youth the adulation of all with whom he came in contact
was not a cross to Fitzhugh Williams. It was the fear of expatriation
that darkened his soul. From the age of five to the age of fourteen he
was dragged about Europe by the hair of his head. I use his own
subsequent expression. His father wanted him to be a good American; his
mother wanted him to be a polite American, And to be polite, in her
mind, was to be at home in French and German, to speak English (or
American) with the accent of no particular locality, to know famous
pictures when you saw them, and, if little, to be bosom friends with
little dukes and duchesses and counts of the Empire, to play in the
gravel gardens of St. Germain, to know French history, and to have for
exercise the mild English variations of American games--cricket instead
of base-ball; instead of football, Rugby, or, in winter, lugeing above
Montreux. To luge upon a sled you sit like a timid, sheltered girl, and
hold the ropes in your hand as if you were playing horse, and descend
inclines; whereas, as Fitzhugh Williams well knew, in America rich boys
and poor take their hills head first, lying upon the democratic turn.
It wasn't always Switzerland in winter. Now and again it was Nice or
Cannes. And there you were taught by a canny Scot to hit a golf ball
cunningly from a pinch of sand. But you blushed with shame the while,
for in America at that time golf had not yet become a manly game, the
maker young of men as good as dead, the talk of cabinets But there was
lawn tennis also, which you might play without losing caste "at home,"
Fitzhugh Williams never used that term but with the one meaning. He
would say, for instance, to the little Duchess of Popinjay--or one just
as good--having kissed her to make up for having pushed her into her
ancestral pond, "Now I am going to the house," meaning Perth House, that
Mrs. Williams had taken for the season. But if he had said, "Now I am
going home," the little Duchess would have known that he was going to
sail away in a great ship to a strange, topsy-turvy land known in her
set as "the States," a kind of deep well from which people hoist gold in
buckets, surrounded by Indians. Home did not mean even his father's
house. Let Fitzhugh Williams but catch sight of the long, white shore of
Long Island, or the Brooklyn Bridge, or the amazing Liberty, and the
word fluttered up from his heart even if he spoke it not. Ay, let him
but see the Fire Island light-ship alone upon the deep, and up leaped
the word, or the sensation, which was the same thing.
One Fourth of July they were in Paris (you go to Paris for tea-gowns to
wear grouse-shooting in Scotland), and when his valet, scraping and
bowing, informed Fitzhugh Williams, aged nine, that it was time to get
up, and tub, and go forth in a white sailor suit, and be of the world
worldly, Fitzhugh declined. A greater personage was summoned--Aloys,
"the maid of madame," a ravishing creature--to whom you and I, good
Americans though we are, could have refused nothing. But Fitzhugh would
not come out of his feather-bed. And when madame herself came, looking
like a princess even at that early hour, he only pulled the bedclothes a
little higher with an air of finality.
"Are you sick, Fitzhugh?"
"No, mamma."
"Why won't you get up?"
His mother at least was entitled to an explanation.
"I won't get up," said he, "because I'm an American."
"But, my dear, it's the glorious Fourth. All good Americans are up."
"All good Americans," said Fitzhugh, "are at home letting off
fire-crackers."
"Still," said his mother, "I think I'd get up if I were you. It's lovely
out. Not hot."
"I won't get up," said Fitzhugh, "because it's the Fourth, because I'm
an American, and because I have nothing but English clothes to put on."
His mother, who was the best sort in the world, though obstinate about
bringing-up, and much the prettiest woman, sat down on the bed and
laughed till the tears came to her eyes. Fitzhugh laughed, too. His mind
being made up, it was pleasanter to laugh than to sulk.
"But," said his mother, "what's the difference? Your pajamas are
English, too."
Fitzhugh's beautiful brown eyes sparkled with mischief.
"What!" exclaimed his mother. "You wretched boy, do you mean to tell me
that you haven't your pajamas on?"
Fitzhugh giggled, having worsted his mother in argument, and pushed down
the bedclothes a few inches, disclosing the neck and shoulders of that
satiny American suit in which he had been born.
Mrs. Williams surrendered at once.
"My dear," she exclaimed, "if you feel so strongly about it I will send
your man out at once to buy you some French things. They were our
allies, you know."
"Thank you, mamma," said Fitz, "and if you'll give me the pad and pencil
on the table I'll write to granny."
Thus compromise was met with compromise, as is right. Fitz wrote a very
short letter to granny, and drew a very long picture of crossing the
Delaware, with Nathan Hale being hanged from a gallows on the bank; and
Mrs. Williams sent Benton for clothes, and wrote out a cable to her
husband, a daily cable being the one thing that he who loved others to
have a good time was wont to exact "Dear Jim," ran the cable, at I
forget what the rates were then per word, "I wish you were here. It's
bright and beautiful; not too hot. Fitz would not get up and put on
English clothes, being too patriotic. You will run over soon if you can,
won't you, if only for a minute," etc., etc.
I know one thing of which the reader has not as yet got an inkling, The
Williamses were rich. They were rich, passing knowledge, passing belief.
Sums of which you and I dream in moments of supreme excitement would not
have paid one of Mrs. Williams's cable bills; would not have supported
Granny Williams's hot-houses and Angora cat farm through a late spring
frost. James Williams and his father before him were as magnets where
money was concerned. And it is a fact of family history that once James,
returning from a walk in the mud, found a dime sticking to the heel of
his right boot.
Fitzhugh was the heir of all this, and that was why it was necessary for
him to be superior in other ways as well. But Europeanize him as she
would, he remained the son of his fathers. French history was drummed
in through his ears by learned tutors, and could be made for the next
few days to come out of his mouth. But he absorbed American history
through the back of his head, even when there was none about to be
absorbed, and that came out often, I am afraid, when people didn't
especially want it to. Neither could any amount of aristocratic training
and association turn the blood in his veins blue. If one had taken the
trouble to look at a specimen of it under a microscope I believe one
would have discovered a resemblance between the corpuscles thereof and
the eagles that are the tails of coins; and the color of it was
red--bright red. And this was proven, that time when little Lord Percy
Pumps ran at Fitz, head down like a Barbadoes nigger, and butted him in
the nose. The Honorable Fifi Grey, about whom the quarrel arose, was
witness to the color of that which flowed from the aforementioned nose;
and witness also to the fact that during the ensuing cataclysm no blood
whatever, neither blue nor red, came from Lord Percy Pumps--nothing but
howls. But, alas! we may not now call upon the Honorable Fifi Grey for
testimony. She is no longer the Honorable Fifi. Quite the reverse. I had
her pointed out to me last summer (she is Lady Khorset now), and my
informant wriggled with pleasure and said, "Now, there _is_ somebody."
"You mean that slim hedge-fence in lavender?" I asked.
"By jove, yes!" said he. "That's Lady Khorset, the wickedest woman in
London, with the possible exception of Lady Virginia Pure--the
Bicyclyste, you know."
I did know. Had I not that very morning seen in a Piccadilly window a
photograph of almost all of her?
Fortunately for Fitzhugh Williams's health and sanity, little children
are pretty much the same all the world over, dwelling in the noble
democracy of mumps, measles, and whooping-cough. Little newsboys, tiny
grandees, infinitesimal sons of coachmen, picayune archdukes,
honorableines, marquisettes, they are all pretty much alike under their
skins. And so are their sisters. Naturally your free-born American child
despises a nation that does not fight with its fists. But he changes his
mind when some lusty French child of his own size has given him a good
beating in fair fight. And the English games have their beauties (I dare
say), and we do know that they can fight--or can make the Irish and the
Scots fight for them, which is just as good. And it isn't race and blue
blood that keeps little Lady Clara Vere de Vere's stockings from coming
down. It's garters. And _they_ don't always do it. Point the finger of
scorn at little Archibald Jamison Purdue Fitzwilliams Updyke
Wrennfeather, who will be Duke of Chepstow one day; for only last night
his lordship's noble mother rubbed his hollow chest with goose grease
and tied a red flannel round his neck, and this morning his gerfalcon
nose is running, as the British would have run at Waterloo had not
"would-to-God-Blücher-would-come" come up.
Peace, little bootblack; others bite their nails. See yonder night
garment laid out for the heir of a kingdom. It is of Canton flannel, a
plain, homely thing, in one piece, buttoning ignominiously down the
back, and having no apertures for the august hands and feet to come
through. In vain the little king-to-be may mumble the Canton flannel
with his mouth. He cannot bite his royal nails; and, hush! in the next
crib a princess asleep. Why that cruel, tight cap down over her ears?
It's because she _will_ double them forward and lie on them, so that if
something isn't done about it they will stick straight out.
So Fitzhugh Williams was brought up among and by children, fashionable
children, if you like. Snobs, many of them, but children all the same.
Some good, some bad, some rough, some gentle, some loving and faithful
with whom he is friends to this day, some loving and not faithful.
The dangers that he ran were not from the foreign children with whom
he played, fought, loved, and dreamed dreams; but from foreign
customs, foreign ways of doing things, foreign comfort, foreign
take-the-world-easiness, and all. For they _do_ live well abroad; they
do have amusing things to do. They eat well, drink well, smoke well, are
better waited on than we are and have more time. So Fitzhugh was in
danger of these things which have hurt the Americanism of more than one
American to the death, but he ran the dangerous gauntlet and came out at
the other end unscathed--into the open.
He could rattle off French and German like a native; he could imitate an
Englishman's intonation to perfection; and yet he came to manhood with
his own honest Ohio accent untouched. And where had he learned it? Not
in Ohio, surely. He had been about as much in Ohio as I have in the
moon. It was in his red blood, I suppose, to speak as the men of his
family spoke--less so, for his vocabulary was bigger, but plainly,
straightly, honestly, and with some regard for the way in which words
are spelled. So speak the men who are the backbone of liberty, each with
the honest accent that he is born to. Don't you suppose that Washington
himself held forth in the molten, golden tones of Virginia? Do you think
Adams said _bought_ and _caught_? He said _bot_ and _cot_. Did Lincoln
use the broad A at Gettysburg? I think that in the words he there spoke
the A's were narrow as heaven's gate. I think some of them struck
against the base of his nose before they came out to strengthen the
hearts of men, to rejoice God, and to thunder forever down the ages.
It is, of course, more elegant to speak as we New Yorkers do. Everybody
knows that. And I should advise all men to cultivate the accent and
intonation--all men who are at leisure to perfect themselves. But
honesty compels me to state that there has never been a truly great
American who spoke any speech but his own--except that superlatively
great Philadelphian, Benjamin Franklin--of Boston. He didn't talk
Philadelphianese. And you may cotton to that!