FROM DR. RUDOLF STAUB, IN PARIS, TO DR. JULIUS HIRSCH, AT GOTTINGEN.
My dear brother in Science--I resume my hasty notes, of which I sent you
the first instalment some weeks ago. I mentioned then that I intended to
leave my hotel, not finding it sufficiently local and national. It was
kept by a Pomeranian, and the waiters, without exception, were from the
Fatherland. I fancied myself at Berlin, Unter den Linden, and I
reflected that, having taken the serious step of visiting the
head-quarters of the Gallic genius, I should try and project myself; as
much as possible, into the circumstances which are in part the
consequence and in part the cause of its irrepressible activity. It
seemed to me that there could be no well-grounded knowledge without this
preliminary operation of placing myself in relations, as slightly as
possible modified by elements proceeding from a different combination of
causes, with the spontaneous home-life of the country.
I accordingly engaged a room in the house of a lady of pure French
extraction and education, who supplements the shortcomings of an income
insufficient to the ever-growing demands of the Parisian system of sense-
gratification, by providing food and lodging for a limited number of
distinguished strangers. I should have preferred to have my room alone
in the house, and to take my meals in a brewery, of very good appearance,
which I speedily discovered in the same street; but this arrangement,
though very lucidly proposed by myself; was not acceptable to the
mistress of the establishment (a woman with a mathematical head), and I
have consoled myself for the extra expense by fixing my thoughts upon the
opportunity that conformity to the customs of the house gives me of
studying the table-manners of my companions, and of observing the French
nature at a peculiarly physiological moment, the moment when the
satisfaction of the _taste_, which is the governing quality in its
composition, produces a kind of exhalation, an intellectual
transpiration, which, though light and perhaps invisible to a superficial
spectator, is nevertheless appreciable by a properly adjusted instrument.
I have adjusted my instrument very satisfactorily (I mean the one I carry
in my good square German head), and I am not afraid of losing a single
drop of this valuable fluid, as it condenses itself upon the plate of my
observation. A prepared surface is what I need, and I have prepared my
surface.
Unfortunately here, also, I find the individual native in the minority.
There are only four French persons in the house--the individuals
concerned in its management, three of whom are women, and one a man. This
preponderance of the feminine element is, however, in itself
characteristic, as I need not remind you what an abnormally--developed
part this sex has played in French history. The remaining figure is
apparently that of a man, but I hesitate to classify him so
superficially. He appears to me less human than simian, and whenever I
hear him talk I seem to myself to have paused in the street to listen to
the shrill clatter of a hand-organ, to which the gambols of a hairy
_homunculus_ form an accompaniment.
I mentioned to you before that my expectation of rough usage, in
consequence of my German nationality, had proved completely unfounded. No
one seems to know or to care what my nationality is, and I am treated, on
the contrary, with the civility which is the portion of every traveller
who pays the bill without scanning the items too narrowly. This, I
confess, has been something of a surprise to me, and I have not yet made
up my mind as to the fundamental cause of the anomaly. My determination
to take up my abode in a French interior was largely dictated by the
supposition that I should be substantially disagreeable to its inmates. I
wished to observe the different forms taken by the irritation that I
should naturally produce; for it is under the influence of irritation
that the French character most completely expresses itself. My presence,
however, does not appear to operate as a stimulus, and in this respect I
am materially disappointed. They treat me as they treat every one else;
whereas, in order to be treated differently, I was resigned in advance to
be treated worse. I have not, as I say, fully explained to myself this
logical contradiction; but this is the explanation to which I tend. The
French are so exclusively occupied with the idea of themselves, that in
spite of the very definite image the German personality presented to them
by the war of 1870, they have at present no distinct apprehension of its
existence. They are not very sure that there are any Germans; they have
already forgotten the convincing proofs of the fact that were presented
to them nine years ago. A German was something disagreeable, which they
determined to keep out of their conception of things. I therefore think
that we are wrong to govern ourselves upon the hypothesis of the
_revanche_; the French nature is too shallow for that large and powerful
plant to bloom in it.
The English-speaking specimens, too, I have not been willing to neglect
the opportunity to examine; and among these I have paid special attention
to the American varieties, of which I find here several singular
examples. The two most remarkable are a young man who presents all the
characteristics of a period of national decadence; reminding me strongly
of some diminutive Hellenised Roman of the third century. He is an
illustration of the period of culture in which the faculty of
appreciation has obtained such a preponderance over that of production
that the latter sinks into a kind of rank sterility, and the mental
condition becomes analogous to that of a malarious bog. I learn from him
that there is an immense number of Americans exactly resembling him, and
that the city of Boston, indeed, is almost exclusively composed of them.
(He communicated this fact very proudly, as if it were greatly to the
credit of his native country; little perceiving the truly sinister
impression it made upon me.)
What strikes one in it is that it is a phenomenon to the best of my
knowledge--and you know what my knowledge is--unprecedented and unique in
the history of mankind; the arrival of a nation at an ultimate stage of
evolution without having passed through the mediate one; the passage of
the fruit, in other words, from crudity to rottenness, without the
interposition of a period of useful (and ornamental) ripeness. With the
Americans, indeed, the crudity and the rottenness are identical and
simultaneous; it is impossible to say, as in the conversation of this
deplorable young man, which is one and which is the other; they are
inextricably mingled. I prefer the talk of the French _homunculus_; it
is at least more amusing.
It is interesting in this manner to perceive, so largely developed, the
germs of extinction in the so-called powerful Anglo-Saxon family. I find
them in almost as recognisable a form in a young woman from the State of
Maine, in the province of New England, with whom I have had a good deal
of conversation. She differs somewhat from the young man I just
mentioned, in that the faculty of production, of action, is, in her, less
inanimate; she has more of the freshness and vigour that we suppose to
belong to a young civilisation. But unfortunately she produces nothing
but evil, and her tastes and habits are similarly those of a Roman lady
of the lower Empire. She makes no secret of them, and has, in fact,
elaborated a complete system of licentious behaviour. As the
opportunities she finds in her own country do not satisfy her, she has
come to Europe "to try," as she says, "for herself." It is the doctrine
of universal experience professed with a cynicism that is really most
extraordinary, and which, presenting itself in a young woman of
considerable education, appears to me to be the judgment of a society.
Another observation which pushes me to the same induction--that of the
premature vitiation of the American population--is the attitude of the
Americans whom I have before me with regard to each other. There is
another young lady here, who is less abnormally developed than the one I
have just described, but who yet bears the stamp of this peculiar
combination of incompleteness and effeteness. These three persons look
with the greatest mistrust and aversion upon each other; and each has
repeatedly taken me apart and assured me, secretly, that he or she only
is the real, the genuine, the typical American. A type that has lost
itself before it has been fixed--what can you look for from this?
Add to this that there are two young Englanders in the house, who hate
all the Americans in a lump, making between them none of the distinctions
and favourable comparisons which they insist upon, and you will, I think,
hold me warranted in believing that, between precipitate decay and
internecine enmities, the English-speaking family is destined to consume
itself; and that with its decline the prospect of general pervasiveness,
to which I alluded above, will brighten for the deep-lunged children of
the Fatherland!