FROM LOUIS LEVERETT, IN PARIS, TO HARVARD TREMONT, IN BOSTON.
September 25th.
My dear Harvard--I have carried out my plan, of which I gave you a hint
in my last, and I only regret that I should not have done it before. It
is human nature, after all, that is the most interesting thing in the
world, and it only reveals itself to the truly earnest seeker. There is
a want of earnestness in that life of hotels and railroad trains, which
so many of our countrymen are content to lead in this strange Old World,
and I was distressed to find how far I, myself; had been led along the
dusty, beaten track. I had, however, constantly wanted to turn aside
into more unfrequented ways; to plunge beneath the surface and see what I
should discover. But the opportunity had always been missing; somehow, I
never meet those opportunities that we hear about and read about--the
things that happen to people in novels and biographies. And yet I am
always on the watch to take advantage of any opening that may present
itself; I am always looking out for experiences, for sensations--I might
almost say for adventures.
The great thing is to _live_, you know--to feel, to be conscious of one's
possibilities; not to pass through life mechanically and insensibly, like
a letter through the post-office. There are times, my dear Harvard, when
I feel as if I were really capable of everything--capable _de tout_, as
they say here--of the greatest excesses as well as the greatest heroism.
Oh, to be able to say that one has lived--_qu'on a vecu_, as they say
here--that idea exercises an indefinable attraction for me. You will,
perhaps, reply, it is easy to say it; but the thing is to make people
believe you! And, then, I don't want any second-hand, spurious
sensations; I want the knowledge that leaves a trace--that leaves strange
scars and stains and reveries behind it! But I am afraid I shock you,
perhaps even frighten you.
If you repeat my remarks to any of the West Cedar Street circle, be sure
you tone them down as your discretion will suggest. For yourself; you
will know that I have always had an intense desire to see something of
_real French life_. You are acquainted with my great sympathy with the
French; with my natural tendency to enter into the French way of looking
at life. I sympathise with the artistic temperament; I remember you used
sometimes to hint to me that you thought my own temperament too artistic.
I don't think that in Boston there is any real sympathy with the artistic
temperament; we tend to make everything a matter of right and wrong. And
in Boston one can't _live--on ne peut pas vivre_, as they say here. I
don't mean one can't reside--for a great many people manage that; but one
can't live aesthetically--I may almost venture to say, sensuously. This
is why I have always been so much drawn to the French, who are so
aesthetic, so sensuous. I am so sorry that Theophile Gautier has passed
away; I should have liked so much to go and see him, and tell him all
that I owe him. He was living when I was here before; but, you know, at
that time I was travelling with the Johnsons, who are not aesthetic, and
who used to make me feel rather ashamed of my artistic temperament. If I
had gone to see the great apostle of beauty, I should have had to go
clandestinely--_en cachette_, as they say here; and that is not my
nature; I like to do everything frankly, freely, _naivement, au grand
jour_. That is the great thing--to be free, to be frank, to be _naif_.
Doesn't Matthew Arnold say that somewhere--or is it Swinburne, or Pater?
When I was with the Johnsons everything was superficial; and, as regards
life, everything was brought down to the question of right and wrong.
They were too didactic; art should never be didactic; and what is life
but an art? Pater has said that so well, somewhere. With the Johnsons I
am afraid I lost many opportunities; the tone was gray and cottony, I
might almost say woolly. But now, as I tell you, I have determined to
take right hold for myself; to look right into European life, and judge
it without Johnsonian prejudices. I have taken up my residence in a
French family, in a real Parisian house. You see I have the courage of
my opinions; I don't shrink from carrying out my theory that the great
thing is to _live_.
You know I have always been intensely interested in Balzac, who never
shrank from the reality, and whose almost _lurid_ pictures of Parisian
life have often haunted me in my wanderings through the old
wicked-looking streets on the other side of the river. I am only sorry
that my new friends--my French family--do not live in the old city--_au
coeur du vieux Paris_, as they say here. They live only in the Boulevard
Haussman, which is less picturesque; but in spite of this they have a
great deal of the Balzac tone. Madame de Maisonrouge belongs to one of
the oldest and proudest families in France; but she has had reverses
which have compelled her to open an establishment in which a limited
number of travellers, who are weary of the beaten track, who have the
sense of local colour--she explains it herself; she expresses it so
well--in short, to open a sort of boarding-house. I don't see why I
should not, after all, use that expression, for it is the correlative of
the term _pension bourgeoise_, employed by Balzac in the _Pere Goriot_.
Do you remember the _pension bourgeoise_ of Madame Vauquer _nee_ de
Conflans? But this establishment is not at all like that: and indeed it
is not at all _bourgeois_; there is something distinguished, something
aristocratic, about it. The Pension Vauquer was dark, brown, sordid,
_graisseuse_; but this is in quite a different tone, with high, clear,
lightly-draped windows, tender, subtle, almost morbid, colours, and
furniture in elegant, studied, reed-like lines. Madame de Maisonrouge
reminds me of Madame Hulot--do you remember "la belle Madame Hulot?"--in
_Les Barents Pauvres_. She has a great charm; a little artificial, a
little fatigued, with a little suggestion of hidden things in her life;
but I have always been sensitive to the charm of fatigue, of duplicity.
I am rather disappointed, I confess, in the society I find here; it is
not so local, so characteristic, as I could have desired. Indeed, to
tell the truth, it is not local at all; but, on the other hand, it is
cosmopolitan, and there is a great advantage in that. We are French, we
are English, we are American, we are German; and, I believe, there are
some Russians and Hungarians expected. I am much interested in the study
of national types; in comparing, contrasting, seizing the strong points,
the weak points, the point of view of each. It is interesting to shift
one's point of view--to enter into strange, exotic ways of looking at
life.
The American types here are not, I am sorry to say, so interesting as
they might be, and, excepting myself; are exclusively feminine. We are
_thin_, my dear Harvard; we are pale, we are sharp. There is something
meagre about us; our line is wanting in roundness, our composition in
richness. We lack temperament; we don't know how to live; _nous ne
savons pas vivre_, as they say here. The American temperament is
represented (putting myself aside, and I often think that my temperament
is not at all American) by a young girl and her mother, and another young
girl without her mother--without her mother or any attendant or appendage
whatever. These young girls are rather curious types; they have a
certain interest, they have a certain grace, but they are disappointing
too; they don't go far; they don't keep all they promise; they don't
satisfy the imagination. They are cold, slim, sexless; the physique is
not generous, not abundant; it is only the drapery, the skirts and
furbelows (that is, I mean in the young lady who has her mother) that are
abundant. They are very different: one of them all elegance, all
expensiveness, with an air of high fashion, from New York; the other a
plain, pure, clear-eyed, straight-waisted, straight-stepping maiden from
the heart of New England. And yet they are very much alike too--more
alike than they would care to think themselves for they eye each other
with cold, mistrustful, deprecating looks. They are both specimens of
the emancipated young American girl--practical, positive, passionless,
subtle, and knowing, as you please, either too much or too little. And
yet, as I say, they have a certain stamp, a certain grace; I like to talk
with them, to study them.
The fair New Yorker is, sometimes, very amusing; she asks me if every one
in Boston talks like me--if every one is as "intellectual" as your poor
correspondent. She is for ever throwing Boston up at me; I can't get rid
of Boston. The other one rubs it into me too; but in a different way;
she seems to feel about it as a good Mahommedan feels toward Mecca, and
regards it as a kind of focus of light for the whole human race. Poor
little Boston, what nonsense is talked in thy name! But this New England
maiden is, in her way, a strange type: she is travelling all over Europe
alone--"to see it," she says, "for herself." For herself! What can that
stiff slim self of hers do with such sights, such visions! She looks at
everything, goes everywhere, passes her way, with her clear quiet eyes
wide open; skirting the edge of obscene abysses without suspecting them;
pushing through brambles without tearing her robe; exciting, without
knowing it, the most injurious suspicions; and always holding her course,
passionless, stainless, fearless, charmless! It is a little figure in
which, after all, if you can get the right point of view, there is
something rather striking.
By way of contrast, there is a lovely English girl, with eyes as shy as
violets, and a voice as sweet! She has a sweet Gainsborough head, and a
great Gainsborough hat, with a mighty plume in front of it, which makes a
shadow over her quiet English eyes. Then she has a sage-green robe,
"mystic, wonderful," all embroidered with subtle devices and flowers, and
birds of tender tint; very straight and tight in front, and adorned
behind, along the spine, with large, strange, iridescent buttons. The
revival of taste, of the sense of beauty, in England, interests me
deeply; what is there in a simple row of spinal buttons to make one
dream--to _donnor a rever_, as they say here? I think that a great
aesthetic renascence is at hand, and that a great light will be kindled
in England, for all the world to see. There are spirits there that I
should like to commune with; I think they would understand me.
This gracious English maiden, with her clinging robes, her amulets and
girdles, with something quaint and angular in her step, her carriage
something mediaeval and Gothic, in the details of her person and dress,
this lovely Evelyn Vane (isn't it a beautiful name?) is deeply,
delightfully picturesque. She is much a woman--elle _est bien femme_, as
they say here; simpler, softer, rounder, richer than the young girls I
spoke of just now. Not much talk--a great, sweet silence. Then the
violet eye--the very eye itself seems to blush; the great shadowy hat,
making the brow so quiet; the strange, clinging, clutching, pictured
raiment! As I say, it is a very gracious, tender type. She has her
brother with her, who is a beautiful, fair-haired, gray-eyed young
Englishman. He is purely objective; and he, too, is very plastic.