It was the 22d of August, and the height of the season at Saratoga.
Familiar as King had been with these Springs, accustomed as the artist
was to foreign Spas, the scene was a surprise to both. They had been
told that fashion had ceased to patronize it, and that its old-time
character was gone. But Saratoga is too strong for the whims of fashion;
its existence does not depend upon its decrees; it has reached the point
where it cannot be killed by the inroads of Jew or Gentile. In ceasing
to be a society centre, it has become in a manner metropolitan; for the
season it is no longer a provincial village, but the meeting-place of
as mixed and heterogeneous a throng as flows into New York from all the
Union in the autumn shopping period.
It was race week, but the sporting men did not give Saratoga their
complexion. It was convention time, but except in the hotel corridors
politicians were not the feature of the place. One of the great hotels
was almost exclusively occupied by the descendants of Abraham, but the
town did not at all resemble Jerusalem. Innumerable boarding-houses
swarmed with city and country clergymen, who have a well-founded
impression that the waters of the springs have a beneficent relation to
the bilious secretions of the year, but the resort had not an oppressive
air of sanctity. Nearly every prominent politician in the State and a
good many from other States registered at the hotels, but no one seemed
to think that the country was in danger. Hundreds of men and women were
there because they had been there every year for thirty or forty years
back, and they have no doubt that their health absolutely requires a
week at Saratoga; yet the village has not the aspect of a sanitarium.
The hotel dining-rooms and galleries were thronged with large,
overdressed women who glittered with diamonds and looked uncomfortable
in silks and velvets, and Broadway was gay with elegant equipages, but
nobody would go to Saratoga to study the fashions. Perhaps the most
impressive spectacle in this lowly world was the row of millionaires
sunning themselves every morning on the piazza of the States, solemn men
in black broadcloth and white hats, who said little, but looked rich;
visitors used to pass that way casually, and the townspeople regarded
them with a kind of awe, as if they were the king-pins of the whole
social fabric; but even these magnates were only pleasing incidents in
the kaleidoscopic show.
The first person King encountered on the piazza of the Grand Union was
not the one he most wished to see, although it could never be otherwise
than agreeable to meet his fair cousin, Mrs. Bartlett Glow. She was in
a fresh morning toilet, dainty, comme il faut, radiant, with that
unobtrusive manner of “society” which made the present surroundings,
appear a trifle vulgar to King, and to his self-disgust forced upon him
the image of Mrs. Benson.
“You here?” was his abrupt and involuntary exclamation.
“Yes--why not?” And then she added, as if from the Newport point of view
some explanation were necessary: “My husband thinks he must come here
for a week every year to take the waters; it's an old habit, and I find
it amusing for a few days. Of course there is nobody here. Will you take
me to the spring? Yes, Congress. I'm too old to change. If I believed
the pamphlets the proprietors write about each other's springs I should
never go to either of them.”
Mrs. Bartlett Glow was not alone in saying that nobody was there. There
were scores of ladies at each hotel who said the same thing, and who
accounted for their own presence there in the way she did. And they
were not there at all in the same way they would be later at Lenox. Mrs.
Pendragon, of New Orleans, who was at the United States, would have said
the same thing, remembering the time when the Southern colony made a
very distinct impression upon the social life of the place; and the
Ashleys, who had put up at the Congress Hall in company with an
old friend, a returned foreign minister, who stuck to the old
traditions--even the Ashleys said they were only lookers-on at the
pageant.
Paying their entrance, and passing through the turnstile in the pretty
pavilion gate, they stood in the Congress Spring Park. The band was
playing in the kiosk; the dew still lay on the flowers and the green
turf; the miniature lake sparkled in the sun. It is one of the most
pleasing artificial scenes in the world; to be sure, nature set the
great pine-trees on the hills, and made the graceful little valley, but
art and exquisite taste have increased the apparent size of the small
plot of ground, and filled it with beauty. It is a gem of a place with a
character of its own, although its prettiness suggests some foreign
Spa. Groups of people, having taken the water, were strolling about the
graveled paths, sitting on the slopes overlooking the pond, or wandering
up the glen to the tiny deer park.
“So you have been at the White Sulphur?” said Mrs. Glow. “How did you
like it?”
“Immensely. It's the only place left where there is a congregate social
life.”
“You mean provincial life. Everybody knows everybody else.”
“Well,” King retorted, with some spirit, “it is not a place where people
pretend not to know each other, as if their salvation depended on it.”
“Oh, I see; hospitable, frank, cordial-all that. Stanhope, do you know,
I think you are a little demoralized this summer. Did you fall in love
with a Southern belle? Who was there?”
“Well, all the South, pretty much. I didn't fall in love with all the
belles; we were there only two weeks. Oh! there was a Mrs. Farquhar
there.”
“Georgiana Randolph! Georgie! How did she look? We were at Madame
Sequin's together, and a couple of seasons in Paris. Georgie! She was
the handsomest, the wittiest, the most fascinating woman I ever saw. I
hope she didn't give you a turn?”
“Oh, no. But we were very good friends. She is a very handsome
woman--perhaps you would expect me to say handsome still; but that seems
a sort of treason to her mature beauty.”
“And who else?”
“Oh, the Storbes from New Orleans, the Slifers from Mobile--no end of
people--some from Philadelphia--and Ohio.”
“Ohio? Those Bensons!” said she, turning sharply on him.
“Yes, those Bensons, Penelope. Why not?”
“Oh, nothing. It's a free country. I hope, Stanhope, you didn't
encourage her. You might make her very unhappy.”
“I trust not,” said King stoutly. “We are engaged.”
“Engaged!” repeated Mrs. Glow, in a tone that implied a whole world of
astonishment and improbability.
“Yes, and you are just in time to congratulate us. There they are!” Mr.
Benson, Mrs. Benson, and Irene were coming down the walk from the deer
park. King turned to meet them, but Mrs. Glow was close at his side, and
apparently as pleased at seeing them again as the lover. Nothing
could be more charming than the grace and welcome she threw into her
salutations. She shook hands with Mr. Benson; she was delighted to
meet Mrs. Benson again, and gave her both her little hands; she almost
embraced Irene, placed a hand on each shoulder, kissed her on the cheek,
and said something in a low voice that brought the blood to the girl's
face and suffused her eyes with tenderness.
When the party returned to the hotel the two women were walking lovingly
arm in arm, and King was following after, in the more prosaic atmosphere
of Cyrusville, Ohio. The good old lady began at once to treat King as
one of the family; she took his arm, and leaned heavily on it, as
they walked, and confided to him all her complaints. The White Sulphur
waters, she said, had not done her a mite of good; she didn't know
but she'd oughter see a doctor, but he said that it warn't nothing but
indigestion. Now the White Sulphur agreed with Irene better than any
other place, and I guess that I know the reason why, Mr. King, she said,
with a faintly facetious smile. Meantime Mrs. Glow was talking to Irene
on the one topic that a maiden is never weary of, her lover; and so
adroitly mingled praises of him with flattery of herself that the girl's
heart went out to her in entire trust.
“She is a charming girl,” said Mrs. Glow to King, later. “She needs a
little forming, but that will be easy when she is separated from her
family. Don't interrupt me. I like her. I don't say I like it. But if
you will go out of your set, you might do a great deal worse. Have you
written to your uncle and to your aunt?”
“No; I don't know why, in a matter wholly personal to myself, I should
call a family council. You represent the family completely, Penelope.”
“Yes. Thanks to my happening to be here. Well, I wouldn't write to them
if I were you. It's no use to disturb the whole connection now. By the
way, Imogene Cypher was at Newport after you left; she is more beautiful
than ever--just lovely; no other girl there had half the attention.”
“I am glad to hear it,” said King, who did not fancy the drift their
conversation was taking. “I hope she will make a good match. Brains are
not necessary, you know.”
“Stanhope, I never said that--never. I might have said she wasn't a bas
bleu. No more is she. But she has beauty, and a good temper, and money.
It isn't the cleverest women who make the best wives, sir.”
“Well, I'm not objecting to her being a wife. Only it does not follow
that, because my uncle and aunts are in love with her, I should want to
marry her.”
“I said nothing about marriage, my touchy friend. I am not advising
you to be engaged to two women at the same time. And I like Irene
immensely.”
It was evident that she had taken a great fancy to the girl. They were
always together; it seemed to happen so, and King could hardly admit
to himself that Mrs. Glow was de trop as a third. Mr. Bartlett Glow
was very polite to King and his friend, and forever had one excuse and
another for taking them off with him--the races or a lounge about town.
He showed them one night, I am sorry to say, the inside of the Temple of
Chance and its decorous society, its splendid buffet, the quiet tables
of rouge et noir, and the highly respectable attendants--aged men,
whitehaired, in evening costume, devout and almost godly in appearance,
with faces chastened to resignation and patience with a wicked world,
sedate and venerable as the deacons in a Presbyterian church. He was
lonesome and wanted company, and, besides, the women liked to be by
themselves occasionally.
One might be amused at the Saratoga show without taking an active part
in it, and indeed nobody did seem to take a very active part in it.
Everybody was looking on. People drove, visited the springs--in a
vain expectation that excessive drinking of the medicated waters would
counteract the effect of excessive gormandizing at the hotels--sat about
in the endless rows of armchairs on the piazzas, crowded the heavily
upholstered parlors, promenaded in the corridors, listened to the music
in the morning, and again in the afternoon, and thronged the stairways
and passages, and blocked up the entrance to the ballrooms. Balls? Yes,
with dress de rigueur, many beautiful women in wonderful toilets, a few
debutantes, a scarcity of young men, and a delicious band--much better
music than at the White Sulphur.
And yet no society. But a wonderful agglomeration, the artist was
saying. It is a robust sort of place. If Newport is the queen of the
watering-places, this is the king. See how well fed and fat the
people are, men and women large and expansive, richly dressed,
prosperous--looking! What a contrast to the family sort of life at the
White Sulphur! Here nobody, apparently, cares for anybody else--not
much; it is not to be expected that people should know each other in
such a heterogeneous concern; you see how comparatively few greetings
there are on the piazzas and in the parlors. You notice, too, that the
types are not so distinctively American as at the Southern resort--full
faces, thick necks--more like Germans than Americans. And then the
everlasting white hats. And I suppose it is not certain that every man
in a tall white hat is a politician, or a railway magnate, or a sporting
man.
These big hotels are an epitome of expansive, gorgeous American life. At
the Grand Union, King was No. 1710, and it seemed to him that he walked
the length of the town to get to his room after ascending four stories.
He might as well, so far as exercise was concerned, have taken an
apartment outside. And the dining-room. Standing at the door, he had a
vista of an eighth of a mile of small tables, sparkling with brilliant
service of glass and porcelain, chandeliers and frescoed ceiling. What
perfect appointments! what well-trained waiters!--perhaps they were not
waiters, for he was passed from one “officer” to another “officer”
down to his place. At the tables silent couples and restrained family
parties, no hilarity, little talking; and what a contrast this was to
the happy-go-lucky service and jollity of the White Sulphur! Then the
interior parks of the United States and the Grand Union, with corridors
and cottages, close-clipped turf, banks of flowers, forest trees,
fountains, and at night, when the band filled all the air with seductive
strains, the electric and the colored lights, gleaming through the
foliage and dancing on fountains and greensward, made a scene of
enchantment. Each hotel was a village in itself, and the thousands of
guests had no more in common than the frequenters of New York hotels and
theatres. But what a paradise for lovers!
“It would be lonesome enough but for you, Irene,” Stanhope said, as
they sat one night on the inner piazza of the Grand Union, surrendering
themselves to all the charms of the scene.
“I love it all,” she said, in the full tide of her happiness.
On another evening they were at the illumination of the Congress Spring
Park. The scene seemed the creation of magic. By a skillful arrangement
of the colored globes an illusion of vastness was created, and the
little enclosure, with its glowing lights, was like the starry heavens
for extent. In the mass of white globes and colored lanterns of
paper the eye was deceived as to distances. The allies stretched
away interminably, the pines seemed enormous, and the green hillsides
mountainous. Nor were charming single effects wanting. Down the winding
walk from the hill, touched by a distant electric light, the loitering
people, in couples and in groups, seemed no more in real life than
the supernumeraries in a scene at the opera. Above, in the illuminated
foliage, were doubtless a castle and a broad terrace, with a row of
statues, and these gay promenaders were ladies and cavaliers in an
old-time masquerade. The gilded kiosk on the island in the centre of the
miniature lake and the fairy bridge that leads to it were outlined
by colored globes; and the lake, itself set about with brilliants,
reflected kiosk and bridge and lights, repeating a hundredfold the
fantastic scene, while from their island retreat the band sent out
through the illumined night strains of sentiment and gayety and sadness.
In the intervals of the music there was silence, as if the great throng
were too deeply enjoying this feast of the senses to speak. Perhaps a
foreigner would have been impressed with the decorous respectability of
the assembly; he would have remarked that there were no little tables
scattered about the ground, no boys running about with foaming mugs of
beer, no noise, no loud talking; and how restful to all the senses!
Mrs. Bartlett Glow had the whim to devote herself to Mrs. Benson, and
was repaid by the acquisition of a great deal of information concerning
the social and domestic, life in Cyrusville, Ohio, and the maternal
ambition for Irene. Stanhope and Irene sat a little apart from the
others, and gave themselves up to the witchery of the hour. It would
not be easy to reproduce in type all that they said; and what was most
important to them, and would be most interesting to the reader, are the
things they did not say--the half exclamations, the delightful silences,
the tones, the looks that are the sign language of lovers. It was Irene
who first broke the spell of this delightful mode of communication, and
in a pause of the music said, “Your cousin has been telling me of your
relatives in New York, and she told me more of yourself than you ever
did.”
“Very likely. Trust your friends for that. I hope she gave me a good
character.”
“Oh, she has the greatest admiration for you, and she said the family
have the highest expectations of your career. Why didn't you tell me you
were the child of such hopes? It half frightened me.”
“It must be appalling. What did she say of my uncle and aunts?”
“Oh, I cannot tell you, except that she raised an image in my mind of an
awful vision of ancient family and exclusiveness, the most fastidious,
delightful, conventional people, she said, very old family, looked down
upon Washington Irving, don't you know, because he wrote. I suppose she
wanted to impress me with the value of the prize I've drawn, dear. But I
should like you just as well if your connections had not looked down on
Irving. Are they so very high and mighty?”
“Oh, dear, no. Much like other people. My aunts are the dearest old
ladies, just a little nearsighted, you know, about seeing people that
are not--well, of course, they live in a rather small world. My uncle is
a bachelor, rather particular, not what you would call a genial old man;
been abroad a good deal, and moved mostly in our set; sometimes I think
he cares more for his descent than for his position at the bar, which is
a very respectable one, by the way. You know what an old bachelor is
who never has had anybody to shake him out of his contemplation of his
family?”
“Do you think,” said Irene, a little anxiously, letting her hand rest a
moment upon Stanhope's, “that they will like poor little me? I believe I
am more afraid of the aunts than of the uncle. I don't believe they will
be as nice as your cousin.”
“Of course they will like you. Everybody likes you. The aunts are just
a little old-fashioned, that is all. Habit has made them draw a social
circle with a small radius. Some have one kind of circle, some another.
Of course my aunts are sorry for any one who is not descended from the
Van Schlovenhovens--the old Van Schlovenhoven had the first brewery of
the colony in the time of Peter Stuyvesant. In New York it's a family
matter, in Philadelphia it's geographical. There it's a question whether
you live within the lines of Chestnut Street and Spruce Street--outside
of these in the city you are socially impossible: Mrs. Cortlandt told
me that two Philadelphia ladies who had become great friends at a summer
resort--one lived within and the other without the charmed lines--went
back to town together in the autumn. At the station when they parted,
the 'inside' lady said to the other: 'Good-by. It has been such
a pleasure to know you! I suppose I shall see you sometimes at
Moneymaker's!' Moneymaker's is the Bon Marche of Philadelphia.”
The music ceased; the band were hurrying away; the people all over the
grounds were rising to go, lingering a little, reluctant to leave the
enchanting scene. Irene wished, with a sigh, that it might never end;
unreal as it was, it was more native to her spirit than that future
which her talk with Stanhope had opened to her contemplation. An
ill-defined apprehension possessed her in spite of the reassuring
presence of her lover and her perfect confidence in the sincerity of
his passion; and this feeling was somehow increased by the appearance of
Mrs. Glow with her mother; she could not shake off the uneasy suggestion
of the contrast.
At the hour when the ladies went to their rooms the day was just
beginning for a certain class of the habitues. The parlors were nearly
deserted, and few chairs were occupied on the piazzas, but the ghosts
of another generation seemed to linger, especially in the offices and
barroom. Flitting about were to be seen the social heroes who had a
notoriety thirty and forty years ago in the newspapers. This dried-up
old man in a bronze wig, scuffling along in list slippers, was a famous
criminal lawyer in his day; this gentleman, who still wears an air
of gallantry, and is addressed as General, had once a reputation for
successes in the drawing-room as well as on the field of Mars; here is
a genuine old beau, with the unmistakable self-consciousness of one who
has been a favorite of the sex, but who has slowly decayed in the midst
of his cosmetics; here saunter along a couple of actors with the air
of being on the stage. These people all have the “nightcap” habit, and
drift along towards the bar-room--the last brilliant scene in the drama
of the idle day, the necessary portal to the realm of silence and sleep.
This is a large apartment, brightly lighted, with a bar extending across
one end of it. Modern taste is conspicuous here, nothing is gaudy,
colors are subdued, and its decorations are simple even the bar itself
is refined, substantial, decorous, wanting entirely the meretricious
glitter and barbarous ornamentation of the old structures of this sort,
and the attendants have wholly laid aside the smart antics of the former
bartender, and the customers are swiftly and silently served by the
deferential waiters. This is one of the most striking changes that King
noticed in American life.
There is a certain sort of life-whether it is worth seeing is a question
that we can see nowhere else, and for an hour Mr. Glow and King and
Forbes, sipping their raspberry shrub in a retired corner of the
bar-room, were interested spectators of the scene. Through the padded
swinging doors entered, as in a play, character after character. Each
actor as he entered stopped for a moment and stared about him, and in
this act revealed his character-his conceit, his slyness, his bravado,
his self-importance. There was great variety, but practically one
prevailing type, and that the New York politician. Most of them were
from the city, though the country politician apes the city politician as
much as possible, but he lacks the exact air, notwithstanding the black
broadcloth and the white hat. The city men are of two varieties--the
smart, perky-nosed, vulgar young ward worker, and the heavy-featured,
gross, fat old fellow. One after another they glide in, with an always
conscious air, swagger off to the bar, strike attitudes in groups, one
with his legs spread, another with a foot behind on tiptoe, another
leaning against the counter, and so pose, and drink “My respects”--all
rather solemn and stiff, impressed perhaps by the decorousness of the
place, and conscious of their good clothes. Enter together three stout
men, a yard across the shoulders, each with an enormous development
in front, waddle up to the bar, attempt to form a triangular group
for conversation, but find themselves too far apart to talk in
that position, and so arrange themselves side by side--a most
distinguished-looking party, like a portion of a swell-front street
in Boston. To them swaggers up a young sport, like one of Thackeray's
figures in the “Irish Sketch-Book”--short, in a white hat, poor face,
impudent manner, poses before the swell fronts, and tosses off his
glass. About a little table in one corner are three excessively “ugly
mugs,” leering at each other and pouring down champagne. These men are
all dressed as nearly like gentlemen as the tailor can make them, but
even he cannot change their hard, brutal faces. It is not their fault
that money and clothes do not make a gentleman; they are well fed and
vulgarly prosperous, and if you inquire you will find that their women
are in silks and laces. This is a good place to study the rulers of New
York; and impressive as they are in appearance, it is a relief to notice
that they unbend to each other, and hail one another familiarly as
“Billy” and “Tommy.” Do they not ape what is most prosperous and
successful in American life? There is one who in make-up, form, and air,
even to the cut of his side-whiskers, is an exact counterpart of the
great railway king. Here is a heavy-faced young fellow in evening dress,
perhaps endeavoring to act the part of a gentleman, who has come from an
evening party unfortunately a little “slewed,” but who does not know
how to sustain the character, for presently he becomes very familiar
and confidential with the dignified colored waiter at the buffet,
who requires all his native politeness to maintain the character of a
gentleman for two.
If these men had millions, could they get any more enjoyment out of
life? To have fine clothes, drink champagne, and pose in a fashionable
bar-room in the height of the season--is not this the apotheosis of
the “heeler” and the ward “worker”? The scene had a fascination for the
artist, who declared that he never tired watching the evolutions of the
foreign element into the full bloom of American citizenship.