Streets and shops in New York--Literature--A funeral--Dinner
at Mr. H----’s--Dinner at Mr. Bancroft’s--Political and social
features--Literary breakfast; Heenan and Sayers.
_March 20th._--The papers are still full of Sumter and Pickens.
The reports that they are or are not to be relieved are stated
and contradicted in each paper without any regard to individual
consistency. The “Tribune” has an article on my speech at the St.
Patrick’s dinner, to which it is pleased to assign reasons and
motives which the speaker, at all events, never had in making it.
Received several begging letters, some of them apparently with
only too much of the stamp of reality about their tales of
disappointment, distress, and suffering. In the afternoon went down
Broadway, which was crowded, notwithstanding the piles of blackened
snow by the kerbstones, and the sloughs of mud, and half frozen
pools at the crossings. Visited several large stores or shops--some
rival the best establishments in Paris or London in richness and
in value, and far exceed them in size and splendour of exterior.
Some on Broadway, built of marble, or of fine cut stone, cost from
6000_l._ to 8000_l._ a year in mere rent. Here, from the base to
the fourth or fifth story, are piled collections of all the world
can produce, often in excess of all possible requirements of the
country; indeed I was told that the United States have always
imported more goods than they could pay for. Jewellers’ shops are
not numerous, but there are two in Broadway which have splendid
collections of jewels, and of workmanship in gold and silver,
displayed to the greatest advantage in fine apartments decorated
with black marble, statuary, and plate glass.
New York has certainly all the air of a “nouveau riche.” There is
about it an utter absence of any appearance of a grandfather--one
does not see even such evidences of eccentric taste as are afforded
in Paris and London, by the existence of shops where the old
families of a country cast off their “exuviæ” which are sought
by the new, that they may persuade the world they are old; there
is no curiosity shop, not to speak of a Wardour Street, and such
efforts as are made to supply the deficiency reveal an enormous
amount of ignorance or of bad taste. The new arts, however,
flourish; the plague of photography has spread through all the
corners of the city, and the shop-windows glare with flagrant
displays of the most tawdry art. In some of the large book-sellers’
shops--Appleton’s for example--are striking proofs of the activity
of the American press, if not of the vigour and originality of
the American intellect. I passed down long rows of shelves laden
with the works of European authors, for the most part, oh shame!
stolen and translated into American type without the smallest
compunction or scruple, and without the least intention of ever
yielding the most pitiful deodand to the authors. Mr. Appleton
sells no less than one million and a half of Webster’s spelling
books a year; his tables are covered with a flood of pamphlets,
some for, others against coercion; some for, others opposed to
slavery,--but when I asked for a single solid, substantial work
on the present difficulty, I was told there was not one published
worth a cent. With such men as Audubon and Wilson in natural
history, Prescott and Motley in history, Washington Irving and
Cooper in fiction, Longfellow and Edgar Poe in poetry, even Bryant
and the respectabilities in rhyme, and Emerson as essayist, there
is no reason why New York should be a paltry imitation of Leipsig,
without the good faith of Tauchnitz.
I dined with a litterateur well known in England to many people
a year or two ago--sprightly, loquacious, and well-informed, if
neither witty nor profound--now a Southern man with Southern
proclivities, as Americans say; once a Southern man with such
strong anti-slavery convictions, that his expression of them in
an English quarterly had secured him the hostility of his own
people--one of the emanations of American literary life for which
their own country finds no fitting receiver. As the best proof of
his sincerity, he has just now abandoned his connection with one
of the New York papers on the republican side, because he believed
that the course of the journal was dictated by anti-Southern
fanaticism. He is, in fact, persuaded that there will be a civil
war, and that the South will have much of the right on its side in
the contest. At his rooms were Mons. B----, Dr. Gwin, a Californian
ex-senator, Mr. Barlow, and several of the leading men of a certain
clique in New York. The Americans complain, or assert, that we do
not understand them, and I confess the reproach, or statement,
was felt to be well founded by myself at all events, when I heard
it declared and admitted that “if Mons. Belmont had not gone to
the Charleston Convention, the present crisis would never have
occurred.”
_March 22nd._--A snow-storm worthy of Moscow or Riga flew through
New York all day, depositing more food for the mud. I paid a visit
to Mr. Horace Greeley, and had a long conversation with him. He
expressed great pleasure at the intelligence that I was going to
visit the Southern States. “Be sure you examine the slave-pens.
_They_ will be afraid to refuse you, and you can tell the truth.”
As the capital and the South form the chief attractions at present,
I am preparing to escape from “the divine calm” and snows of New
York. I was recommended to visit many places before I left New
York, principally hospitals and prisons. Sing-Sing, the state
penitentiary, is “claimed,” as the Americans say, to be the first
“institution” of its kind in the world. Time presses, however, and
Sing-Sing is a long way off. I am told a system of torture prevails
there for hardened or obdurate offenders--torture by dropping
cold water on them, torture by thumb-screws, and the like--rather
opposed to the views of prison philanthropists in modern days.
_March 23rd._--It is announced positively that the authorities
in Pensacola and Charleston have refused to allow any further
supplies to be sent to Fort Pickens, the United States fleet in
the Gulf, and to Fort Sumter. Everywhere the Southern leaders
are forcing on a solution with decision and energy, whilst the
Government appears to be helplessly drifting with the current
of events, having neither bow nor stern, neither keel nor deck,
neither rudder, compass, sails, or steam. Mr. Seward has declined
to receive or hold any intercourse with the three gentlemen called
Southern Commissioners, who repaired to Washington accredited by
the Government and Congress of the Seceding States now sitting at
Montgomery, so that there is no channel of mediation or means of
adjustment left open. I hear, indeed, that Government is secretly
preparing what force it can to strengthen the garrison at Pickens,
and to reinforce Sumter at any hazard; but that its want of men,
ships, and money compels it to temporise, lest the Southern
authorities should forestall their designs by a vigorous attack on
the enfeebled forts.
There is, in reality, very little done by New York to support or
encourage the Government in any decided policy, and the journals
are more engaged now in abusing each other, and in small party
aggressive warfare, than in the performance of the duties of
a patriotic press, whose mission at such a time is beyond all
question the resignation of little differences for the sake of the
whole country, and an entire devotion to its safety, honour, and
integrity. But the New York people must have their intellectual
drams every morning, and it matters little what the course of
Government may be, so long as the aristocratic democrat can
be amused by ridicule of the Great Rail Splitter, or a vivid
portraiture of Mr. Horace Greeley’s old coat, hat, breeches, and
umbrella. The coarsest personalities are read with gusto, and
attacks of a kind which would not have been admitted into the
“Age” or “Satirist” in their worst days, form the staple leading
articles of one or two of the most largely circulated journals in
the city. “Slang” in its worst Americanised form is freely used
in sensation headings and leaders, and a class of advertisements
which are not allowed to appear in respectable English papers, have
possession of columns of the principal newspapers, few, indeed,
excluding them. It is strange, too, to see in journals which
profess to represent the civilisation and intelligence of the most
enlightened and highly educated people on the face of the earth,
advertisements of sorcerers, wizards, and fortune-tellers by the
score--“wonderful clairvoyants,” “the seventh child of a seventh
child,” “mesmeristic necromancers,” and the like, who can tell your
thoughts as soon as you enter the room, can secure the affections
you prize, give lucky numbers in lotteries, and make everybody’s
fortunes but their own. Then there are the most impudent quack
programmes--very doubtful “personals” addressed to “the young lady
with black hair and blue eyes, who got out of the omnibus at the
corner of 7th Street”--appeals by “a lady about to be confined” to
any “respectable person who is desirous of adopting a child:” all
rather curious reading for a stranger, or for a family.
It is not to be expected, of course, that New York is a very pure
city, for more than London or Paris it is the sewer of nations. It
is a city of luxury also--French and Italian cooks and milliners,
German and Italian musicians, high prices, extravagant tastes and
dressing, money readily made, a life in hotels, bar-rooms, heavy
gambling, sporting, and prize-fighting flourish here, and combine
to lower the standard of the _bourgeoisie_ at all events. Where
wealth is the sole aristocracy, there is great danger of mistaking
excess and profusion for elegance and good taste. To-day as I was
going down Broadway, some dozen or more of the most over-dressed
men I ever saw were pointed out to me as “sports;” that is, men who
lived by gambling-houses and betting on races; and the class is so
numerous that it has its own influence, particularly at elections,
when the power of a hard-hitting prizefighter with a following
makes itself unmistakeably felt. Young America essays to look like
martial France in mufti, but the hat and the coat suited to the
Colonel of Carabiniers _en retraite_ do not at all become the thin,
tall, rather long-faced gentlemen one sees lounging about Broadway.
It is true, indeed, the type, though not French, is not English.
The characteristics of the American are straight hair, keen,
bright, penetrating eyes, and want of colour in the cheeks.
_March 25th._--I had an invitation to meet several members of
the New York press association at breakfast. Among the company
were--Mr. Bayard Taylor, with whose extensive notes of travel his
countrymen are familiar--a kind of enlarged Inglis, full of the
genial spirit which makes travelling in company so agreeable,
but he has come back as travellers generally do, satisfied
there is no country like his own--Prince Leeboo loved his own
isle the best after all--Mr. Raymond, of the “New York Times”
(formerly Lieutenant-Governor of the State); Mr. Olmsted, the
indefatigable, able, and earnest writer, whom to describe simply
as an Abolitionist would be to confound with ignorant if zealous,
unphilosophical, and impracticable men; Mr. Dana, of the “Tribune;”
Mr. Hurlbert, of the “Times;” the Editor of the “Courier des
Etats Unis;” Mr. Young, of the “Albion,” which is the only English
journal published in the States; and others. There was a good
deal of pleasant conversation, though every one differed with
his neighbour, as a matter of course, as soon as he touched on
politics. There was talk _de omnibus rebus et quibusdam aliis_,
such as Heenan and Sayers, Secession and Sumter, the press,
politicians, New York life, and so on. The first topic occupied a
larger place than it was entitled to, because in all likelihood the
sporting editor of one of the papers who was present expressed,
perhaps, some justifiable feeling in reference to the refusal
of the belt to the American. All admitted the courage and great
endurance of his antagonist, but seemed convinced that Heenan, if
not the better man, was at least the victor in that particular
contest. It would be strange to see the great tendency of Americans
to institute comparisons with ancient and recognised standards, if
it were not that they are adopting the natural mode of judging of
their own capabilities. The nation is like a growing lad who is
constantly testing his powers in competition with his elders. He
is in his youth and nonage, and he is calling down the lanes and
alleys to all comers to look at his muscle, to run against or to
fight him. It is a sign of youth, not a proof of weakness, though
it does offend the old hands and vex the veterans.
Then one finds that Great Britain is often treated very much as an
old Peninsula man may be by a set of young soldiers at a club. He
is no doubt a very gallant fellow, and has done very fine things in
his day, and he is listened to with respectful endurance, but there
is a secret belief that he will never do anything very great again.
One of the gentlemen present said that England might dispute the
right of the United States Government to blockade the ports of
her own States, to which she was entitled to access under treaty,
and might urge that such a blockade was not justifiable; but
then, it was argued, that the President could open and shut ports
as he pleased; and that he might close the Southern ports by a
proclamation in the nature of an Order of Council. It was taken
for granted that Great Britain would only act on sordid motives,
but that the well known affection of France for the United States
is to check the selfishness of her rival, and prevent a speedy
recognition.