I
Original AM an American Girl. Therefore, perhaps, you will not be surprised at anything further I may have to say for myself. I have observed, since I came to England, that this statement, made by a third person in connection with any question of my own conduct, is always broadly explanatory. And as my own conduct will naturally enter more or less into this volume, I may as well make it in the beginning, to save complications.
It may be necessary at this point to explain further. I know that in
England an unmarried person, of my age, is not expected to talk
much, especially about herself. This was a little difficult for me to
understand at first, as I have always talked a great deal, and, one
might say, been encouraged to do it; but I have at length been brought
to understand it, and lately I have spoken with becoming infrequency,
and chiefly about the Zoo. I find the Zoo to be a subject which is
almost certain to be received with approval; and in animal nature there
is, fortunately, a good deal of variety. I do not intend, however, in
this book, to talk about the Zoo, or anything connected with it, but
about the general impressions and experiences I have received in your
country; and one of my reasons for departing from approved models
of discussion for young ladies and striking out, as it were, into
subject-matter on my own account, is that I think you may find it more
or less interesting. I have noticed that you are pleased, over here, to
bestow rather more attention upon the American Girl than upon any other
kind of American that we produce. You have taken the trouble to form
opinions about her--I have heard quantities of them. Her behaviour
and her bringing-up, her idioms and her 'accent'--above all her
'accent'--have made themes for you, and you have been good enough to
discuss them--Mr. James, in your midst, correcting and modifying your
impressions--with a good deal of animation, for you. I observe that
she is almost the only frivolous subject that ever gets into your
newspapers. I have become accustomed to meeting her there, usually at
the breakfast-table, dressed in green satin and diamonds. The encounter
had quite a shock of novelty for me at first, but that wore off in time;
the green satin and diamonds were so invariable.
Being an American girl myself, I do not, naturally, quite see the reason
of this, and it is a matter I feel a delicacy about inquiring into, on
personal grounds. Privately, I should think that the number of us that
come over here every summer to see the Tower of London and the National
Gallery, and visit Stratford-upon-Avon, to say nothing of those who
marry and stay in England, would have made you familiar with the kind
of young women we are long ago; and to me it is very curious that you
should go on talking about us. I can't say that we object very much,
because, while you criticise us considerably as a class, you are very
polite to us individually, and nobody minds being criticised as a noun
of multitude. But it has occurred to me that, since so much is to be
said about the American Girl, it might be permissible for her to say
some of it herself.
Original I have learned that in England you like to know a great deal about people who are introduced to you--who their fathers and mothers are, their grandfathers and grandmothers, and even further back than that.
So I will gratify you at once on this point, so far as I am able. My
father is Mr. Joshua P. Wick, of Chicago, Ill.--you may have seen his
name in connection with the baking-powder interest in that city. That is
how he made his fortune--in baking-powder; as he has often said, it is
to baking-powder that we owe everything. He began by putting it up
in small quantities, but it is an article that is so much used in the
United States, and ours was such a very good kind, that the demand for
it increased like anything; and though we have not become so rich as a
great many people in America, it is years since poppa gave his personal
superintendence to the business. You will excuse my spelling it 'poppa';
I have called him that all my life, and 'papa' doesn't seem to mean
anything to me.
Lately he has devoted himself to politics; he is in Congress now, and
at the next election momma particularly wishes him to run for senator.
There is a great deal of compliance about poppa, and I think he will
run.
Momma was a Miss Wastgaggle, of Boston, and she was teaching school in
Chicago when poppa met her. Her grandfather, who educated her, was a
manufacturer of glass eyes. There are Wastgaggles in Boston now, but
they spell the name with one 'g,' and lately they have been wanting
momma to write hers 'Mrs. Wastgagle-Wick; but momma says that since she
never liked the name well enough to give it to any of her children, she
is certainly not going to take it again herself. These Wastgagles speak
of our great-grandfather as a well-known oculist, and I suppose, in a
sense, he was one.
My father's father lived in England, and was also a manufacturer, poppa
says, always adding, 'in a plain way;' so I suppose whatever he made
he made himself. It may have been boots, or umbrellas, or pastry--poppa
never states; though I should be disposed to think, from his taking up
the baking-powder idea, that it was pastry.
I am sorry that I am not able to give you fuller satisfaction about my
antecedents. I know that I must have had more than I have mentioned, but
my efforts to discover them--and I have made efforts since I decided
to introduce myself to you--have been entirely futile. I am inclined to
think that they were not people who achieved any great distinction in
life; but I have never held anything against them on that account, for I
have no reason to believe that they would not have been distinguished
if they could. I cannot think that it has ever been in the nature of the
Wicks, or the Wastgaggles either, to let the opportunity for distinction
pass through any criminal negligence on their part. I am perfectly
willing to excuse them on this ground, therefore; and if I, who am most
intimately concerned in the matter, can afford to do this, perhaps it is
not unreasonable to expect it of you.
In connections we do better. A grand-aunt of some early Wastgaggles was
burned as a witch in Salem, Mass.--a thing very few families can point
back to, even in England, I should think; and a second cousin of
momma's was the first wife of one of our Presidents. He was a Democratic
President, though, and as poppa always votes the Republican ticket,
we don't think much of that. Besides, as we are careful to point out
whenever we mention the subject, she was in the cemetery years before
he was in the White House. And there is Mrs. Portheris, of Half-Moon
Street, Hyde Park, who is poppa's aunt by her first marriage.
We were all coming at first, poppa, and momma, and I--the others are
still in school--and it had appeared among the 'City Personals' of the
'Chicago Tribune' that 'Colonel and Mrs. Joshua P. Wick, accompanied
by Miss Mamie Wick'--I forgot to say that poppa was in the Civil
War--'would have a look at monarchical institutions this summer.' Our
newspapers do get hold of things so. But just a week before we were
to sail something arose--I think it was a political complication--to
prevent poppa's going, and momma is far too much of an invalid to
undertake such a journey without him. I must say that both my parents
are devoted to me, and when I said I thought I'd prefer going alone to
giving up the trip, neither of them opposed it. Momma said she thought
I ought to have the experience, because, though I'd been a good deal in
society in Chicago, she didn't consider that that in itself was enough.
Poppa said that the journey was really nothing nowadays, and he could
easily get me a letter of introduction to the captain. Besides, in a
shipful of two or three hundred there would be sure to be some pleasant
people I could get acquainted with on the voyage. Mrs. Von Stuvdidyl,
who lives next door to us, and has been to Europe several times,
suggested that I should take a maid, and momma rather liked the idea,
but I persuaded her out of it. I couldn't possibly have undertaken the
care of a maid.
And then we all thought of Mrs. Portheris.
None of us had ever seen her, and there had been very little
correspondence; in fact, we had not had a letter from her since several
years ago, when she wrote a long one to poppa, something about some
depressed California mining stock, I believe, which she thought poppa,
as her nephew and an American, ought to take off her hands before it
fell any lower. And I remember that poppa obliged her: whether as an
American or as her nephew I don't know. After that she sent us every
year a Christmas card, with an angel or a bunch of forget-me-nots on it,
inscribed, 'To my nephew and niece, Joshua Peter and Mary Wick, and all
their dear ones.' Her latest offering was lying in the card-basket on
the table then, and I am afraid we looked at it with more interest than
we had ever done before.
The 'dear ones' read so sympathetically that momma said she knew we
could depend upon Mrs. Portheris to take me round and make me enjoy
myself, and she wanted to cable that I was coming. But poppa said No,
his aunt must be getting up in years now, and an elderly English lady
might easily be frightened into apoplexy by a cablegram. It was a pity
there was no time to write, but I must just go and see her immediately,
and say that I was the daughter of Joshua P. Wick, of Chicago, and she
would be certain to make me feel at home at once. But, as I said, none
of us knew Mrs. Portheris.