Part 58 (1/2)

Newport's more charming even than you remember it; like everything else over here it has improved. It's very exquisite to-day; it's indeed, I think, in all the world the only exquisite watering-place, for I detest the whole genus. The crowd has left it now, which makes it all the better, though plenty of talkers remain in these large light luxurious houses which are planted with a kind of Dutch definiteness all over the green carpet of the cliff. This carpet's very neatly laid and wonderfully well swept, and the sea, just at hand, is capable of prodigies of blue. Here and there a pretty woman strolls over one of the lawns, which all touch each other, you know, without hedges or fences; the light looks intense as it plays on her brilliant dress; her large parasol s.h.i.+nes like a silver dome. The long lines of the far sh.o.r.es are soft and pure, though they are places one hasn't the least desire to visit. Altogether the effect's very delicate, and anything that's delicate counts immensely over here; for delicacy, I think, is as rare as coa.r.s.eness. I'm talking to you of the sea, however, without having told you a word of my voyage. It was very comfortable and amusing; I should like to take another next month. You know I'm almost offensively well at sea-I breast the weather and brave the storm. We had no storm fortunately, and I had brought with me a supply of light literature; so I pa.s.sed nine days on deck in my sea-chair with my heels up-pa.s.sed them reading Tauchnitz novels. There was a great lot of people, but no one in particular save some fifty American girls. You know all about the American girl, however, having been one yourself. They're on the whole very nice, but fifty's too many; there are always too many. There was an inquiring Briton, a radical M.P., by name Mr. Antrobus, who entertained me as much as any one else. He's an excellent man; I even asked him to come down here and spend a couple of days. He looked rather frightened till I told him he shouldn't be alone with me, that the house was my brother's and that I gave the invitation in his name. He came a week ago; he goes everywhere; we've heard of him in a dozen places. The English are strangely simple, or at least they seem so over here. Their old measurements and comparisons desert them; they don't know whether it's all a joke or whether it's too serious by half. We're quicker than they, though we talk so much more slowly. We think fast, and yet we talk as deliberately as if we were speaking a foreign language. They toss off their sentences with an air of easy familiarity with the tongue, and yet they misunderstand two-thirds of what people say to them. Perhaps after all it is only _our_ thoughts they think slowly; they think their own often to a lively tune enough.

Mr. Antrobus arrived here in any case at eight o'clock in the morning; I don't know how he managed it; it appears to be his favourite hour; wherever we've heard of him he has come in with the dawn. In England he would arrive at 5.30 P.M. He asks innumerable questions, but they're easy to answer, for he has a sweet credulity. He made me rather ashamed; he's a better American than so many of us; he takes us more seriously than we take ourselves. He seems to think we've an oligarchy of wealth growing up which he advised me to be on my guard against. I don't know exactly what I can do, but I promised him to look out. He's fearfully energetic; the energy of the people here is nothing to that of the inquiring Briton. If we should devote half the zeal to building up our inst.i.tutions that they devote to obtaining information about them we should have a very satisfactory country. Mr. Antrobus seemed to think very well of us-which surprised me on the whole, since, say what one will, it's far from being so agreeable as England. It's very horrid that this should be; and it's delightful, when one thinks of it, that some things in England are after all so hateful. At the same time Mr.

Antrobus appeared to be a good deal preoccupied with our dangers. I don't understand quite what they are; they seem to me so few on a Newport piazza this bright still day. Yet alas what one sees on a Newport piazza isn't America; it's only the back of Europe. I don't mean to say I haven't noticed any dangers since my return; there are two or three that seem to me very serious, but they aren't those Mr. Antrobus apprehends.

One, for instance, is that we shall cease to speak the English language, which I prefer so to any other. It's less and less spoken; American's crowding it out. All the children speak American, which as a child's language is dreadfully rough. It's exclusively in use in the schools; all the magazines and newspapers are in American. Of course a people of fifty millions who have invented a new civilisation have a right to a language of their own; that's what they tell me, and I can't quarrel with it. But I wish they had made it as pretty as the mother-tongue, from which, when all's said, it's more or less derived. We ought to have invented something as n.o.ble as our country. They tell me it's more expressive, and yet some admirable things have been said in the Queen's English. There can be no question of the Queen over here of course, and American no doubt is the music of the future. Poor dear future, how ”expressive” you'll be! For women and children, as I say, it strikes one as very rough; and, moreover, they don't speak it well, their own though it be. My small nephews, when I first came home, hadn't gone back to school, and it distressed me to see that, though they're charming children, they had the vocal inflexions of little news-boys. My niece is sixteen years old; she has the sweetest nature possible; she's extremely well-bred and is dressed to perfection. She chatters from morning till night; but its helplessness breaks my heart. These little persons are in the opposite case from so many English girls who know how to speak but don't know how to talk. My niece knows how to talk but doesn't know how to speak.

If I allude to the young people, that's our other danger; the young people are eating us up-there's nothing in America but the young people.

The country's made for the rising generation; life's arranged for them; they're the destruction of society. People talk of them, consider them, defer to them, bow down to them. They're always present, and whenever they're present nothing else of the smallest interest is. They're often very pretty, and physically are wonderfully looked after; they're scoured and brushed, they wear hygienic clothes, they go every week to the dentist's. But the little boys kick your s.h.i.+ns and the little girls offer to slap your face. There's an immense literature entirely addressed to them in which the kicking of s.h.i.+ns and the slapping of faces carries the day. As a woman of fifty I protest, I insist on being judged by my peers. It's too late, however, for several millions of little feet are actively engaged in stamping out conversation, and I don't see how they can long fail to keep it under. The future's theirs; adult forms will evidently be at an increasing discount. Longfellow wrote a charming little poem called ”The Children's Hour,” but he ought to have called it ”The Children's Century.” And by children I naturally don't mean simple infants; I mean everything of less than twenty. The social importance of the young American increases steadily up to that age and then suddenly stops. The little girls of course are more important than the lads, but the lads are very important too. I'm struck with the way they're known and talked about; they're small celebrities; they have reputations and pretensions; they're taken very seriously. As for the little girls, as I just said, they're ever so much too many. You'll say perhaps that my fifty years and my red face are jealous of them. I don't think so, because I don't suffer; my red face doesn't frighten people away, and I always find plenty of talkers. The young things themselves, I believe, like me very much, and I delight in the young things. They're often very pretty; not so pretty as people say in the magazines, but pretty enough.

The magazines rather overdo that; they make a mistake. I've seen no great beauties, but the level of prettiness is high, and occasionally one sees a woman completely handsome. (As a general thing, a pretty person here means a person with a pretty face. The figure's rarely mentioned, though there are several good ones.) The level of prettiness is high, but the level of conversation is low; that's one of the signs of its being a young ladies' country. There are a good many things young ladies can't talk about, but think of all the things they can when they are as clever as most of these. Perhaps one ought to content one's self with that measure, but it's difficult if one has lived long by a larger one.

This one's decidedly narrow-I stretch it sometimes till it cracks. Then it is they call me coa.r.s.e, which I undoubtedly am, thank goodness.

What it comes to, obviously, is that people's talk is much less conveniently free than in Europe; I'm struck with that wherever I go.

There are certain things that are never said at all, certain allusions that are never made. There are no light stories, no propos risques. I don't know exactly what people find to bite into, for the supply of scandal's small and it's little more than twaddle at that. They don't seem, however, to lack topics. The little girls are always there; they keep the gates of conversation; very little pa.s.ses that's not innocent.

I find we do very well without wickedness, and for myself, as I take my ease, I don't miss my liberties. You remember what I thought of the tone of your table in Florence last year, and how surprised you were when I asked you why you allowed such things. You said they were like the courses of the seasons; one couldn't prevent them; also that to change the tone of your table you'd have to change so many other things. Of course in your house one never saw a little girl; I was the only spinster and no one was afraid of me. Likewise if talk's more innocent in this country manners are so to begin with. The liberty of the young people is the strongest proof of it. The little girls are let loose in the world, and the world gets more good of it than ces demoiselles get harm. In your world-pardon me, but you know what I mean-this wouldn't do at all.

Your world's a sad affair-the young ladies would encounter all sorts of horrors. Over here, considering the way they knock about, they remain wonderfully simple, and the reason is that society protects them instead of setting them traps. There's almost no gallantry as you understand it; the flirtations are child's play. People have no time for making love; the men in particular are extremely busy. I'm told that sort of thing consumes hours; I've never had any time for it myself. If the leisure cla.s.s should increase here considerably there may possibly be a change; but I doubt it, for the women seem to me in all essentials exceedingly reserved. Great superficial frankness, but an extreme dread of complications. The men strike me as very good fellows. I find them at bottom better than the women, who if not inveterately hard haven't at least the European, the (as I heard some one once call it) chemical softness. They're not so nice to the men as the men are to them; I mean of course in proportion, you know. But women aren't so nice as men ”anyway,” as they say here.

The men at any rate are professional, commercial; there are very few gentlemen pure and simple. This personage needs to be very well done, however, to be of great utility; and I suppose you won't pretend he's always well done in your countries. When he's not, the less of him the better. It's very much the same indeed with the system on which the female young are brought up. (You see I have to come back to the female young.) When it succeeds they're the most charming creatures possible; when it doesn't the failure's disastrous. If a girl's a very nice girl the American method brings her to great completeness-makes all her graces flower; but if she isn't nice it plays the devil with any possible compromise or _biais_ in the interest of social convenience. In a word the American girl's rarely negative, and when she isn't a great success she's a great warning. In nineteen cases out of twenty, among the people who know how to live-I won't say what _their_ proportion is-the results are highly satisfactory. The girls aren't shy, but I don't know why they should be, for there's really nothing here to be afraid of. Manners are very gentle, very humane; the democratic system deprives people of weapons that every one doesn't equally possess. No one's formidable; no one's on stilts; no one has great pretensions or any recognised right to be arrogant. I think there's not much wickedness, and there's certainly less human or social cruelty-less than in ”good” (that is in more amusing) society. Every one can sit-no one's kept standing. One's much less liable to be snubbed, which you will say is a pity. I think it is-to a certain extent; but on the other hand folly's less fatuous in form than in your countries; and as people generally have fewer revenges to take there's less need of their being squashed in advance. The general good nature, the social equality, deprive them of triumphs on the one hand and of grievances on the other. There's extremely little impertinence, there's almost none. You'll say I'm describing a terrible world, a world without great figures or great social prizes. You've hit it, my dear-there are no great figures. (The great prize of course in Europe is the opportunity to _be_ a great figure.) You'd miss these things a good deal-you who delight to recognise greatness; and my advice to you therefore is never to come back. You'd miss the small people even more than the great; every one's middle-sized, and you can never have that momentary sense of profiting by the elevation of your cla.s.s which is so agreeable in Europe. I needn't add that you don't, either, languish with its depression. There are at all events no brilliant types-the most important people seem to lack dignity. They're very bourgeois; they make little jokes; on occasion they make puns; they've no form; they're too good-natured. The men have no style; the women, who are fidgety and talk too much, have it only in their tournures, where they have it superabundantly.

Well, I console myself-since consolation is needed-with the greater bonhomie. Have you ever arrived at an English country-house in the dusk of a winter's day? Have you ever made a call in London when you knew n.o.body but the hostess? People here are more expressive, more demonstrative; and it's a pleasure, when one comes back-if one happens, like me, to be no one in particular-to feel one's merely personal and uncla.s.sified value rise. They attend to you more; they have you on their mind; they talk to you; they listen to you. That is the men do; the women listen very little-not enough. They interrupt, they prattle, one feels their presence too much as importunate and untrained sound. I imagine this is partly because their wits are quick and they think of a good many things to say; not indeed that they always say such wonders!

Perfect repose, after all, is not _all_ self-control; it's also partly stupidity. American women, however, make too many vague exclamations-say too many indefinite things, have in short still a great deal of nature.

The American order or climate or whatever gives them a nature they _can_ let loose. Europe has to protect itself with more art. On the whole I find very little affectation, though we shall probably have more as we improve. As yet people haven't the a.s.surance that carries those things off; they know too much about each other. The trouble is that over here we've all been brought up together. You'll think this a picture of a dreadfully insipid society; but I hasten to add that it's not all so tame as that. I've been speaking of the people that one meets socially, and these're the smallest part of American life. The others-those one meets on a basis of mere convenience-are much more exciting; they keep one's temper in healthy exercise. I mean the people in the shops and on the railroads; the servants, the hack-men, the labourers, the conductors; every one of whom you buy anything or have occasion to make an inquiry.

With them you need all your best manners, for you must always have enough for two. If you think we're _too_ democratic taste a little of American life in these walks and you'll be rea.s.sured. This is the region of inequality, and you'll find plenty of people to make your curtsey to.

You see it from below-the weight of inequality's on your own back. You asked me to tell you about prices. They're unspeakable.

IV FROM THE RIGHT HON. EDWARD ANTROBUS, M.P., IN BOSTON TO THE HONOURABLE MRS. ANTROBUS

_November_ 1880.

MY DEAR SUSAN,

I sent you a post-card on the 13th and a native newspaper yesterday; I really have had no time to write. I sent you the newspaper partly because it contained a report-extremely incorrect-of some remarks I made at the meeting of the a.s.sociation of the Teachers of New England; partly because it's so curious that I thought it would interest you and the children. I cut out some portions I didn't think it well the children should go into-the pa.s.sages remaining contain the most striking features.

Please point out to the children the peculiar orthography, which probably will be adopted in England by the time they are grown up; the amusing oddities of expression and the like. Some of them are intentional; you'll have heard of the celebrated American humour-remind me, by the way, on my return to Thistleton, to give you a few of the examples of it that my own experience supplies. Certain other of the journalistic eccentricities I speak of are unconscious and are perhaps on that account the more diverting. Point out to the children the difference-in so far as you're sure that you yourself perceive it. You must excuse me if these lines are not very legible; I'm writing them by the light of a railway lamp which rattles above my left ear; it being only at odd moments that I can find time to extend my personal researches. You'll say this is a very odd moment indeed when I tell you I'm in bed in a sleeping-car. I occupy the upper berth (I will explain to you the arrangement when I return) while the lower forms the couch-the jolts are fearful-of an unknown female. You'll be very anxious for my explanation, but I a.s.sure you that the circ.u.mstance I mention is the custom of the country. I myself am a.s.sured that a lady may travel in this manner all over the Union (the Union of States) without a loss of consideration. In case of her occupying the upper berth I presume it would be different, but I must make inquiries on this point. Whether it be the fact that a mysterious being of another s.e.x has retired to rest behind the same curtains, or whether it be the swing of the train, which rushes through the air with very much the same movement as the tail of a kite, the situation is at the best so anomalous that I'm unable to sleep. A ventilator's open just over my head, and a lively draught, mingled with a drizzle of cinders, pours in through this dubious advantage. (I will describe to you its mechanism on my return.) If I had occupied the lower berth I should have had a whole window to myself, and by drawing back the blind-a safe proceeding at the dead of night-I should have been able, by the light of an extraordinary brilliant moon, to see a little better what I write. The question occurs to me, however, would the lady below me in that case have ascended to the upper berth? (You know my old taste for hypothetic questions.) I incline to think (from what I have seen) that she would simply have requested me to evacuate my own couch. (The ladies in this country ask for anything they want.) In this case, I suppose, I should have had an extensive view of the country, which, from what I saw of it before I turned in (while the sharer of my privacy was going to bed) offered a rather ragged expanse dotted with little white wooden houses that resembled in the moons.h.i.+ne large pasteboard boxes. I've been unable to ascertain as precisely as I should wish by whom these modest residences are occupied; for they are too small to be the homes of country gentlemen, there's no peasantry here, and (in New England, for all the corn comes from the far West) there are no yeomen nor farmers.

The information one receives in this country is apt to be rather conflicting, but I'm determined to sift the mystery to the bottom.

I've already noted down a mult.i.tude of facts bearing on the points that interest me most-the operation of the school-boards, the co-education of the s.e.xes, the elevation of the tone of the lower cla.s.ses, the partic.i.p.ation of the latter in political life. Political life indeed is almost wholly confined to the lower middle cla.s.s and the upper section of the lower cla.s.s. In fact in some of the large towns the lowest order of all partic.i.p.ates considerably-a very interesting phase, to which I shall give more attention. It's very gratifying to see the taste for public affairs pervading so many social strata, but the indifference of the gentry is a fact not to be lightly considered. It may be objected perhaps that there are no gentry; and it's very true that I've not yet encountered a character of the type of Lord Bottomley-a type which I'm free to confess I should be sorry to see disappear from our English system, if system it may be called where so much is the growth of blind and incoherent forces. It's nevertheless obvious that an idle and luxurious cla.s.s exists in this country and that it's less exempt than in our own from the reproach of preferring inglorious ease to the furtherance of liberal ideas. It's rapidly increasing, and I'm not sure that the indefinite growth of the dilettante spirit, in connexion with large and lavishly-expended wealth, is an unmixed good even in a society in which freedom of development has obtained so many interesting triumphs. The fact that this body is not represented in the governing cla.s.s is perhaps as much the result of the jealousy with which it is viewed by the more earnest workers as of its own (I dare not perhaps apply a harsher term than) levity. Such at least is the impression made on me in the Middle States and in New England; in the South-west, the North-west and the far West it will doubtless be liable to correction.

These divisions are probably new to you; but they are the general denomination of large and flouris.h.i.+ng communities, with which I hope to make myself at least superficially acquainted. The fatigue of traversing, as I habitually do, three or four hundred miles at a bound, is of course considerable; but there is usually much to feed the mind by the way. The conductors of the trains, with whom I freely converse, are often men of vigorous and original views and even of some social eminence. One of them a few days ago gave me a letter of introduction to his brother-in-law, who's president of a Western University. Don't have any fear therefore that I'm not in the best society!

The arrangements for travelling are as a general thing extremely ingenious, as you will probably have inferred from what I told you above; but it must at the same time be conceded that some of them are more ingenious than happy. Some of the facilities with regard to luggage, the transmission of parcels and the like are doubtless very useful when thoroughly mastered, but I've not yet succeeded in availing myself of them without disaster. There are on the other hand no cabs and no porters, and I've calculated that I've myself carried my _impedimenta_-which, you know, are somewhat numerous, and from which I can't bear to be separated-some seventy or eighty miles. I have sometimes thought it was a great mistake not to bring Plummeridge-he would have been useful on such occasions. On the other hand the startling question would have presented itself of who would have carried Plummeridge's portmanteau? He would have been useful indeed for brus.h.i.+ng and packing my clothes and getting me my tub; I travel with a large tin one-there are none to be obtained at the inns-and the transport of this receptacle often presents the most insoluble difficulties. It is often too an object of considerable embarra.s.sment in arriving at private houses, where the servants have less reserve of manner than in England; and to tell you the truth I'm by no means certain at the present moment that the tub has been placed in the train with me. ”On board” the train is the consecrated phrase here; it's an allusion to the tossing and pitching of the concatenation of cars, so similar to that of a vessel in a storm. As I was about to inquire, however, Who would get Plummeridge _his_ tub and attend to his little comforts? We couldn't very well make our appearance, on arriving for a visit, with _two_ of the utensils I've named; even if as regards a single one I have had the courage, as I may say, of a lifelong habit. It would hardly be expected that we should both use the same; though there have been occasions in my travels as to which I see no way of blinking the fact that Plummeridge would have had to sit down to dinner with me. Such a contingency would completely have unnerved him, so that on the whole it was doubtless the wiser part to leave him respectfully touching his hat on the tender in the Mersey. No one touches his hat over here, and, deem this who will the sign of a more advanced social order, I confess that when I see poor Plummeridge again that familiar little gesture-familiar I mean only in the sense of one's immemorial acquaintance with it-will give me a measurable satisfaction.

You'll see from what I tell you that democracy is not a mere word in this country, and I could give you many more instances of its universal reign.

This, however, is what we come here to look at and, in so far as there appears proper occasion, to admire; though I'm by no means sure that we can hope to establish within an appreciable time a corresponding change in the somewhat rigid fabric of English manners. I'm not even inclined to believe such a change desirable; you know this is one of the points on which I don't as yet see my way to going so far as Lord B. I've always held that there's a certain social ideal of inequality as well as of equality, and if I've found the people of this country, as a general thing, quite equal to each other, I'm not quite ready to go so far as to say that, as a whole, they're equal to-pardon that dreadful blot! The movement of the train and the precarious nature of the light-it is close to my nose and most offensive-would, I flatter myself, long since have got the better of a less resolute diarist!

What I was distinctly _not_ prepared for is the very considerable body of aristocratic feeling that lurks beneath this republican simplicity. I've on several occasions been made the confidant of these romantic but delusive vagaries, of which the stronghold appears to be the Empire City-a slang name for the rich and predominant, but unprecedentedly maladministered and disillusioned New York. I was a.s.sured in many quarters that this great desperate eternally-swindled city at least is ripe, everything else failing, for the monarchical experiment or revolution, and that if one of the Queen's sons would come over to sound the possibilities he would meet with the highest encouragement. This information was given me in strict confidence, with closed doors, as it were; it reminded me a good deal of the dreams of the old Jacobites when they whispered their messages to the king across the water. I doubt, however, whether these less excusable visionaries will be able to secure the services of a Pretender, for I fear that in such a case he would encounter a still more fatal Culloden. I have given a good deal of time, as I told you, to the educational system, and have visited no fewer than one hundred and forty-three schools and colleges. It's extraordinary the number of persons who are being educated in this country; and yet at the same time the tone of the people is less scholarly than one might expect.

A lady a few days since described to me her daughter as being always ”on the go,” which I take to be a jocular way of saying that the young lady was very fond of paying visits. Another person, the wife of a United States Senator, informed me that if I should go to Was.h.i.+ngton in January I should be quite ”in the swim.” I don't regard myself as slow to grasp new meanings, however whimsical; but in this case the lady's explanation made her phrase rather more than less ambiguous. To say that I'm on the go describes very accurately my own situation. I went yesterday to the Poganuc High School, to hear fifty-seven boys and girls recite in unison a most remarkable ode to the American flag, and shortly afterward attended a ladies' luncheon at which some eighty or ninety of the s.e.x were present. There was only one individual in trousers-his trousers, by the way, though he brought several pair, begin to testify to the fury of his movements! The men in America absent themselves systematically from this meal, at which ladies a.s.semble in large numbers to discuss religious, political and social topics.