THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES / fy '' *^ . sr IMPRESSIONS OF LONDON SOCIAL LIFE. IMPRESSIONS OF LONDON SOCIAL LIFE WITH OTHER PAPERS SUGGESTED BY AN ENGLISH RESIDENCE. BY E. S. NADAL. NEW YORK: SCRIBNER, ARMSTRONG & CO. 1875- COPYRIGHT, 1875, BY SCRIBNER, ARMSTRONG & CO. JOHN F. TROW & Sow, PRINTERS AND HOOKBINOERS, 005-313 East iittt St., NEW VUKK. TO THAT CHIVALROUS GENTLEMAN AND HONEST FRIEND, JUDGE JOHN P. O'SULLIVAN, i btQ to Unistnbt this little aak, WITH THE ASSURANCE THAT IN WHATEVER PART OF TH a EARTH HIS FEET NOW STRAY OR TARRY, HE BEARS WITH HIM THE WARM RECOLLECTIONS OF THE AUTHOR. 1293856 PREFACE. THIS volume of Essays records the impressions received during a residence in London, Where the Author was for some eighteen months a secretary of legation. It also describes things here as they appear to one who returns to this country after a stay in England. A number of these papers have already been printed in American periodicals. NEW YORK: January, 1875, CONTENTS. L FACE IMPRESSIONS OF LONDON SOCIAL LIFE i II. ENGLISH SUNDAYS AND LONDON CHURCHES . . . 33 III. Two VISITS TO OXFORD ...64 IV. THE BRITISH UPPER CLASS IN FICTION . . ; . 90 Y. PRESUMPTION * 105 VI. ENGLISH COURT FESTIVITIES . no VII. ENGLISH TRADITION AND THE ENGLISH FUTURE . . 131 VIII. CHILDHOOD AND ENGLISH TRADITION . . 141 x Contents. IX. PAGE THE DANCING SCHOOL IN TAVISTOCK SQUARE . . 148 X. CONTRASTS OF SCENERY . . . ,161 XI. NEW YORK AND LONDON WINTERS . . .173 XII. THE EVENING CALL .... i ..176 XIII. OUR LATEST NOTIONS OF REPUBLICS . . . 186 XIV. ENGLISH CONSERVATIVE TEMPER . . . . . 193 XV. ENGLISH AND AMERICAN NEWSPAPER-WRITING . . 197 XVL AMERICANS ABROAD ......... 209 XVII. SOCIETY IN NEW YORK, AND FICTION . . .217 Some Impressions of London Social Life. I WISH to record some impressions of London social life, and of that particular phase of it we call society. I may dwell upon some faults which, I should explain, are shared by society in all times and places indeed, are quite in- separable from it, while others to be described are the peculiarities not so much of the country as of the age. Whatever be the defects and drawbacks of society, scholars and thinkers would wish to establish something like it, did they not see that, in many respects, that already established was unfit for their uses. Were it possible, they would want some common ground where men and women might meet to talk and see and be seen. What they, with their 2 Some Impressions of [i. very high intentions, would desire, the rest of us would find enjoyable. When the gods had brought man into existence, they were still puzzled by the formidable problem of how he was to be amused. It was supposed that some- thing more extended and complex than the original race would be required for that pur- pose ; and numerous plans were submitted to the council of the gods, and were one by one rejected. At length one Olympian inventor arose and sug- gested that the members of the new race should find their amusement in looking at each other. This novel and audacious suggestion, though at first received with merriment and wonder, was finally adopted, and on trial was discovered to work admirably. It has certainly since proved itself to be the completest of all inventions, at once the most perfect and the simpfest and most labour-saving. I have often wondered if something like the Athenian Agora could not be devised. One of the great features of Athens, I fancy, was the active intellectual interest the people took in their society as a spectacle. The liveliest i.] London Social Life. 3 curiosity everywhere pervaded the community, and the stimulus of a public place of resort must have been great. Hither came men of all ranks and professions merchants, poets, soldiers, sophists, and statesmen. When Socrates or Cleon passed, every pedlar had his jibe and every huckster his bit of scandal. The whole market-place was full of mirth, movement, gaiety, gossip, and curiosity. There is, at least, one modern institution which has some points of similarity to the Agora : I mean London society. The resemblance is one more of form than of character. It is like it in the fact that it brings numbers of people into association, or rather contiguity, and that in it we see con- stantly all the noted people of the day. Here the likeness ends : the life and variety are not there. Yet, easy as it is to find fault with, London society is far the most perfect thing of the kind in the world, and it must be a dull man who would fail to extract amusement and pleasure from it. Were it a little less hard and rude, and were there a little more liberty for individualities, [t one might spend a lifetime in it with profit. As a spectacle, it is valuable for its profuseness, its pomp of life, the beautiful women and famous men we see. There is, moreover, something of moral education in it. We get a certain strength of a kind, indeed, which we should not take long to acquire, and, having acquired, should not take a lifetime to practise, but still a kind of strength silent resistance, and ease in the presence of people who are indifferent and critical. The dowagers are the persons in con- versing with whom one experiences the greatest growth of character. Some large and listless mother, whose eyes are following the fortunes of her charges over the field, and who has asked you for the fourth time the question you have already answered for the third to go on discoursing to such a person as calmly and fluently as Cato does to the universe is a great and difficult thing. There is not a pleasure in it, nor indeed a rapture, but there is real growth and building up in a certain amount of it. But the moral education of society is scarcely its i.] London Social Life. 5 most important-, service. There is a large class of men to whom success in it is the main object of life. To them it furnishes a profession, and one in which they are sure in time to succeed. He who in the bloom of youth is bidden to dance at some great lady's ball is sure, with average luck and persistence, to go to breakfast in his toupee. It gives the swell something to live for. When he has attained the Marquis of This, the Duke of That shines yet ahead of him. The way is plain, and there is no limit to the possibilities of its extension. From round to round of the Jacob's ladder of fashion the aspiring climber may ascend indefinitely. There is always something a little ahead. To tread all the ways of Mayfair, to sound all the depths and shoals of Belgravia, were indeed a hopeless task. But it has many sorts of uses for many sorts of people. Mothers there exhibit their marriageable wares. Politicians put their heads together. The Earl of Barchester asks a Cabinet minister to appoint a friend. But the old gentle- men who go to look on and take their daughters get the most out of it. It is especially pleasant 6 Some Impressions of [i. for them by contrast with the treatment they receive in this country. Here the fathers of families creep about among their daughters' suitors in a very abject and humble manner. "What talk is there of fathers when there is such a man as Orlando ? " The old men in England are much more defiant and unmanage- able. They do not strike their flags to the young ones, as is their habit with us. They confront age with fine clothes, the locks right from the hand of the hair-dresser, and the air of success and authority. The condition of an Englishman who has grown grey in honours, who has a star and a decoration and the health and vanity to wear them properly, is by no means an unhappy one. (Decorations should be given to suit complexions ; kings and colleges should award blue ribbons to blond men and red ribbons to dark men.) If, besides his fortunate accidents, he has humour, sensibility, and an individuality, his is really an enviable lot. In the most rigid of societies, wealth, rank, and success clear a way for individuality. They make one elbow-room. An eccentric clerk in the Admiralty would very i.] London Social Life. 7 soon find himself on the curbstone ; the eccentric nobleman, on the contrary, is a popular personage, and has a recognised position in all the novels. Even hard and supercilious people are not apt to question the wit and manners of one whom kings and learned societies have indorsed. A stare need not make him check his humour. He may be a strong and a natural person, if he chooses. It used to delight me to watch one old man who had run a career in literature and politics, and to whom the world had given all its good things. He protected himself with the best of Poole's tailoring. He wore a decoration which suited his complexion perfectly. He was none of your cravens. He met old age with hand gaily extended in the jauntiest, boldest way in the world. With a bearing humorously perverse and imperious, with a pair of yellow-grey eyes flashing over his eagle beak, he moved through the throng ; shaking hands pleasantly with many, complimenting the mammas, and hectoring the maidens, whose conversation he corrected with mock severity, and whom he cautioned against slang. Such of the young ladies as received his reproof 8 Some Impressions of [L demurely, he looked down on with approbation ; while those who were saucy pleased quite as well, as they gave him opportunity for more extended reprimand. If age ever retains the vanity, humour, and kindness of youth, this old man must have had a pleasant time. The only drawback is, that the people who to-night are flattered by his smile may, a week hence, be reading his obituary with that contempt we instinctively feel for a man who has just ceased to live. The death of a successful man of the world affects our way of thinking of him much as any other reverse in his affairs the loss of his fortune, for instance, or the favour of his party. We cannot help reflecting that he must now take in a little sail, that he must in future abate a little his demand upon society. But for the average man the very last thing society does is to give him an opportunity to express himself. Self-suppression is the lesson it inculcates by precept and by very strong example. The man of society must imitate the patience of the processes of nature. He must act as though he intended to go out for ever, L] London Social Life. g and was in no hurry to get the good of it. No wise man attempts to hurry London society. The people who compose it never hurry. But if the man of society be unselfish and be careful to retain his sanity, its chief good is in what it offers him to look at the carriages flashing back and forth at the dinner-hour, looking like caskets or Christmas-boxes with ^the most wonderful lining and furniture (the drapery and lace almost floating out of the windows), the balls and parties, the acres of fair-armed British maidens through which he may wander as in a wilderness, the odours of the midnight gardens, the breath of the dawn, and the first flush of sun- rise over Hyde Park as the drowsy cabman wheels him homeward and to bed. Every spring he may watch for the reappearance of some queen of the last season, as for the coming of the flowers. To a mind capable of pleasure it must often be a joyous and delightful spectacle, and always an amusing one. But if a man be subject to feelings of pique and envy, and allow fortunes better than his own to make him wretched, there could hardly be a worse place for him. I knew io Some Impressions of [i. one man, foolish fellow ! who, instead of giving himself up to the admiration of the ladies, and the graces and peculiarities of the dancers, had held aloof and had been unhappy because people took so little notice of him. He told me that, when he saw other men successful and smiled upon, he used to stand back and try to look " devilish deserving." " Wisdom and worth were all he had." " I have since found out," he re- marked, "what a very poor expedient it was. For success in society, either here or anywhere else, I had as lief be accused of forgery as of modest merit/' I found everywhere an excessive respect of the individual for the sentiment of the mass I mean in regard to behaviour. In matters of opinion there is greater latitude than with us. Now- adays a man in England may believe anything he chooses ; the reason being, I suppose, that beliefs have not much root or practical im- portance. Authority seems to have left the domain of thought and literature, and to have invaded that of manners. Of the two sorts of tyranny, I think I should prefer the first I i.] London Social Life. n should rather be compelled to write my poetry in pentameters, and to speak with respect of the Church and the Government, than to be for- ever made to behave as other people dictate. I know Englishmen do not accept this as true of themselves. One of them, to whom I had hinted something of the sort, said, " Oh, I don't know ; we do about as we please." Precisely ; but they have lived so constantly in the eyes of other people, have got so used to conforming, that they never think of wanting to do what society would disapprove of. They have been so in the habit of subduing whatever native individuality they possess, that they have at last got rid of it. Of course, it would be impossible to make them believe this. They mistake their inattention, the hostile front they present to the world, and their indifference to the strictures of foreigners when they are abroad, for real independence and a self-reliant adherence to nature. But there seems to me to be something conventional even about the rude and lounging manners of which they are so proud. It is like the " stand-at-ease " of soldiers. It would be highly 12 Some Impressions of [i. improper and contrary to orders to do anything else. Englishmen appeared to me to be criticising themselves away. It is not only among Englishmen of fashion, nor solely in England, that this is the case. The age everywhere partakes of it. It has come to attach great importance to proper externals, to seemliness, to a dignified and har- monious behaviour. What unexceptionable people in their private lives are the writers of the day! Artists used to be envious and backbiting : if they retain such feelings at present, they are certainly not candid. It cannot be that the world has made such progress in a few years as to have quite got rid of the passions of spite and envy. We fear the age has caught cold and the disease has been driven in. Certainly we have come to devote an exceedingly parti- cular and microscopic care to externals ; we give such attention to our walk and conversation, we are so careful to avoid faults and littlenesses of demeanour, that we seem to have acquired some sort of negative Puritanism or Pharisaism. This is true of ourselves, and it is true of all i.] London Social Life. 13 educated English people ; but the disease reaches its extremest form among Englishmen of fashion and quality. I once asked one of the kindest and cleverest of them I knew, " Can a young man in this country read poetry to the ladies not his own, of course, but out of a book ? " "No," said he, "that would be rather com-pro- mis-ing " (shaking his head and pronouncing the word slowly). On reflection, I did not remember having done that thing myself for some years, but I hardly had it classified as one of the things not to be done under any circum- stances. In this very great self-consciousness and doubt as to what to say and do, it was an advantage to have some particular tone set and the range of conversation narrowed within some well- understood limits. By this, language, as a medium of expression, is abolished, and becomes a means of getting along comfortably with friends. Certain things are set apart as good for men to converse upon the races, horse- flesh, politics, anything in short, providing it is not discussed in a definite or original manner. 14 Some Impressions of [i. No man should say anything which might not be very well said by any one else. Each man has an infallible guide in the rest. He must set his clock by them, and regulate it carefully when it inclines to go faster. The following is a simple and easily-understood specimen of a club conversation : First Speaker. "Are you going to Aldershot to-morrow?" Second Speaker. " No." Here follows a pause of several minutes. First Speaker. " Why aren't you going to Al Jershot to-morrow ? " Second Speaker. "O, I hate Aldershot." Here follows a pause of longer duration, during which the first speaker reads over the Pall Mall Gazette for the third tims. Second Speaker. "Waiter, bring me gin and seltzer." This one might call the unit of a club conver- sation, upon which more elaborate remark may be superadded at will. We are of course always bound to pitch our voices to the ears of those around us. As a i.] London Social Life. 15 rule, we must expect people to talk about trivial matters ; it would be a great bore if they did otherwise. But now and then we need not be surprised at a little genuine laughter or a hearty greeting between friends. But in the clubs, from what I saw, there rarely seemed to be any abandon or heartiness. There was roseate youth with the finest health, with beauty, with a flower in the button-hole, with horses to ride in the Row, with fine raiment and sumptuous living every day, with the smiles of mammas and the shy adoration of the maidens. Yet I have seen old men who seemed far more happily self- forgetful and with more enthusiasm for enjoy- ment. The young men have deteriorated from the energy of their fathers of forty years ago, who must have been a very amusing class of men. The strong pressure of public sentiment prevents these young men from acquiring the old physical vigour and freedom of the British upper class ; and as they have no task set them they are driven unavoidably into dulness. They never swear, or rarely. The " demmes " and " egads " of their ancestors are quite out of em- 1 6 Some Impressions of [L ployment They even sin with a certain decorum. For instance, it is very " bad form " to dance with the ladies at the casinos, though there is no impropriety in leaving those places in their company. The few men who are literary and intellectual make, perhaps, the weakest im- pression. The thin wash of opinion which forms their conversation evaporates, and leaves a very slight sediment. They have that contagious weariness I have noticed in the agricultural population along the water-courses of Illinois and Missouri. In the latter it is the result of fever and ague, and the long eating of half-baked bread. The voices of those people seemed to struggle up from a region below their lungs, and in them the peculiarity, besides wearying, in- tensely repelled and disgusted. In men as charmingly dressed and beautifully clean as these Englishmen, the offensive quality was missed, but there was the same weariness and a vapidity that inoculated and subdued you. There often seemed to me an effeminate sound in the talk, not only of the intellectual sort, but even of the faster men. Should the ghosts i.] London Social Life. 17 of their uproarious ancestors ever rustle through those halls of Pall Mall and St. James's Street, they must marvel, I fancy, to see the young bloods of the present sitting about and compar- ing experiences of vaccination with the minute- ness of old ladies at a religious tea-party. It is an old folly, it may be said, that of de- crying the present, and I may be reminded that most men are human, no matter what the age or the country in which they live. There is truth in that ; but we may easily see how very different men may be whom centuries divide, when we consider that most important fact of the human mind mood. How diverse are the thoughts and passions which rule the fast fol- lowing movements of a single human life ! How diverse the lives of individual men ! How widely separate from our own may be the feelings of men between whom and ourselves many years intervene, and of whom no living soul remains to speak. There was a day when people were less suspicious of each other than nowadays, when they were freer and far brighter. Talk like that of which we read in Bos well's " Life of 1 8 Some Impressions of [i. Johnson," " The Vicar of Wakefield," and the "Set- wyn Correspondence" is not heard now. I have noticed the fluency of some very charming old ladies. They address you with an unhesitating talkativeness, which is not of this time. They have never asked themselves, " How did I appear when I said this?" or "Was not that gesture or that expression of countenance' peculiar ?" It would seem, then, that the monologue which is so characteristic of the novel of fifty years ago was no invention of the novelist, but that people really talked in that way. They did - not skirmish behind wary short sentences as do the lovers in Mr. Trollope's books. Why, if you proposed to one of the young ladies of that period, she replied in a speech covering full a page and a half of Miss Edgeworth, per- fectly fluent and grammatical, every word of which could be parsed from beginning to end. If she rejected you, the discourse was sure to contain many and most irreproachable moral sentiments. Yet those very young ladies upon occasions could very nearly swear. On the de- corous pages of Miss Austin we find expressions i.] London Social Life. 19 which nowadays would be considered wicked. The proper and satirical Emma, and the very charming Elizabeth, say "Good God!" " My God!" Exquisite profanity! It would have wheedled the heart out of a travelling colporteur with a bundle of tracts. Ah, fresh blooming maidens with the blue waving plumes, what joy it would have been to have met you, and to have heard from your own lips those shocking expressions some blissful morning long ago, on a breezy hill- top, and near the foliage of a rustling oak ! The complete banishment of profanity from the conversation of men of fashion seemed to me a curious phenomenon. I do not believe it could have been accomplished in any country where example had less authority. The common modern oaths you hear very little ; as to the archaic and Homeric forms, they have quite gone out. I never met a man, however aged, who used those expressions. I used constantly to see one old gentleman who always came arrayed in the traditional blue coat and brass buttons, buff waistcoat, and great neckcloth of the Regency. I fancied he might be like that 2O Some Impressions of [i. South American parrot of which Humboldt tells, that was the sole remaining creature to speak the language of a lost tribe. I never had the pleasure, however, of hearing him express him- self. He silently surveyed the moving throng. The present, perhaps, seemed dull to him. He had heard, a fine May morning long ago, in Piccadilly, the horn of the coachman ringing up the street, and had awaited the stopping of the coach at Hatchett's, to see such blooming faces looking merrily out of the windows, and the ladies in the short waists and petticoats of the time alighting from the top. Somewhere away in one of those shires whose name recalls the green fields and the sound of the milk in the pail, he had kissed a country cousin under one of the big bonnets they wore when the century and he and his sweetheart were all in their teens. In the parlours the narrow range of thought and conversation is even more noticeable than at the clubs. Here the ladies set the tone ; and kind as they usually are, bright and pretty as they often are, there is unmistakably among them an unconsciousness of all outside certain i.] London Social Life. 21 narrow limits that custom has prescribed for them. The freedom and gaiety which are not uncommon in the parlours of Americans of the best class will be hard to find in the drawing- rooms of English fashionables. They talk, pro- fessedly. Upon those common topics which should form the ordinary conversation they do very well, and, among the brighter of them, a kind of wit and wisdom is permitted. But that is apt to be d la mode. The wit is badly watered. I am not sure, however, that fashionable wisdom and watered wit are peculiar to London. All society-wit is somewhat diseased. The wit of rich and idle men is poor. It is curious that they who have nothing to do but to make jokes should make such very poor ones. There are a few recipes afloat from which most of these fine things are evidently prepared. The fashionable joke is usually accompanied by the fashionable gesture, and an expression of inward illumination which the state of the mind hardly justifies. Though as to artificial pantomime and vocal inflection, there is less of that among the English "respectables" than among our own. It may 22 Some Impressions of [i. seem to contradict this, but really does not, when I say that our own fashionable manners are borrowed from the English. English people must speak in some way, and their peculiarities, as a rule, are proper and natural. Our imitative and impressible society leaders, seeing something admirable in English aristocratical style, copy the accents and gestures, forgetting that they too would seem admirable to others were they to speak naturally. As a rule, women in English society are remarkably natural negatively natural, I mean. English girls are particularly simple and un- assuming. They are innocent of all effort to impress or astonish. As all womankind does and should do, they make themselves as pretty as they can ; but as to personal superiorities, their educators do not lay enough stress upon such things to make them ambitious to excel in that way. All young ladies are taught a certain mode of deportment, which is excellent so far as it goes. The chief precept of the code, whether inculcated openly or by the silent feeling of society, is that each young lady must do as the i.] London Social Life. 23 rest. That "young English girl," who is the theme of the novelists and the magazine bards and artists, easily merits all the adulation she receives. Does not all the world know, is it not almost an impertinence to say, that for dignity, modesty, propriety, sense, and a certain soft self- possession, she has hardly her equal anywhere? But the British maiden is taught that ambition in character is not a desirable thing. The natural- ness and propriety which accompany this state of mind are not particularly admirable. It is very different from that propriety which is the result of elevation of character, of conclusions intimately known and constantly practised. People who have activity and ambition are very apt to be affected, and very apt to unduly crave recogni- tion. That we ask to be thought superior, shows at least that we prize superiority. When the young are left to their own growth, and no restric- tive tariff is put upon individuality, we may expect a little nonsense. Society will certainly do a good thing for the young if it teaches them the folly of a desire for recognition. But this society does not do, I fear. It merely instructs 24 Some Impressions of [i. them not to ask for recognition, because bv so doing they make a bad impression. It has done them a still more doubtful service, if, in giving them this very good trait, it has also taught them to emphasise less strongly the superiorities of character and conduct. I have said that English-society people make but little effort to impress or astonish ; and I ex- plained that they have no wish to be thought individually remarkable, because that sort of ambition among them is a very exceptional thing. What they do value is the "getting on ;" and the inevitable effect of living among them is to make one think that that is the best thing one can do. Certainly those old familiar ideas of the poets and moralists, " truth, innocence, fidelity, affection, &c.," which one always felt at home with in the snug corners of the parlours at the village sewing-circles, suddenly became strange to me .and very unreal and whimsical. They danced off at a distance in the oddest and most fantastical manner. If anybody sneered at "upholstery," or spoke contemptuously of rank and fashion, you at once fancied some one had i.] London Social Life. 25 snubbed him ; if he praised virtue, you suspected him of wanting a dinner. But while the lust of the eyes and the pride of life are everything to upper-class Englishmen, you hear wonderfully little said about these things. Carlyle and Thackeray, the poets and satirists and the goody old maids who write the novels, though they have quite shut the mouths of these brave gentlemen, have by no means driven such thoughts out of their hearts. To give you to understand that they are persons of consequence, they would think the last degree of vulgarity. Yet, if they do not claim consequence, it is not because they do not value consequence. They know that to assert openly their demand is not the best way to have it accorded them. The avidity of Mrs. Governor Brown and Mrs. Judge Jones for the best rooms at the hotels, and the recognition and sympathy of all the railway conductors, is unknown in England. But the two manners, so different apparently, are not so different essentially. Both demand consideration and consequence the one only more successfully than the other. The quiet demeanour, the 26 Some Impressions of [L sedulous avoidance of self-assertion, the critical look, the slightly reserved bearing, say very plainly, " See, I am a person of consequence." Both make the same inferior claim. The one ^ makes it in a wise, refined, and successful way ; the other in a foolish, vulgar, and unsuccessful way. " Pose " is the name given to this wise, refined, and successful manner of self-assertion. It may be defined as the quality of absolute quiescence. By the aid of it we move with the semblance of unconsciousness through a throng of which we are inspecting every individual. Society has dis- covered (what the young find it so hard fo learn) that by looking quite blank we may keep people altogether in the dark as to what we are think- ing about. That which Mr. Phunky found so difficult to look as though no one were looking at him London society has learned to do. Yet I think that some other quality besides mere qui- escence is necessary to "pose." That we will suppose to be some beauty (whether physical or spiritual) of face or form. An unconscious coster- monger would not be imposing. I have seen i.] London Social Life. 27 flunkies who possessed the quality to a greater degree than their masters, and who were yet not admirable. A thing must be beautiful absolutely before it can be beautiful in any one condition particularly in that of rest. No doubt the young men are as fine-looking a lot of fellows as can be found. They have good physiques, which they keep in good condition ; they have had an edu- cation among people of breeding and cultivation ; they have been at the best schools, and brought away such culture as they could not help getting ; they have had respect and consideration from their cradles ; they know very well they have nothing to ask of society. But besides all this, they owe most to the pains which they lavish upon their exteriors. That last is an important point. Let Carlyle deride the Stultz swallow-tail. The Stultz swallow-tail and the white waistcoats, and the gold chains, and the wonderful linen, and the silk stockings, and the beautiful boots these between them do work wonders. The young dons at the universities and the young clergy of England than whom no finer race of gentlemen exists, candid, catholic, modest, learned, courteous are 28 Some Impressions of [i. yet not so beautiful as the men of Pall Mall and St. James's Street. The reason is that they do not so generally seek the outdoor life, and especially that they give no such scrupulous and continuous care to the decoration of the ambrosial person. In English ladies, "pose" is particularly admired, yet I am not sure that the novelists do not make too much of it. The female phenomenon at a circus is trained to stand with one foot on the back of a galloping horse, and yet not for a moment lose her equable expression of counte- nance. Surely, then, it were no such great thing to teach a lady to move amid a throng of well- disposed people with the appearance of equanimity and unconsciousness. The ladies are beautiful, especially the younger and softer of them ; they choose to stand still, and the impression which is really due to some quality of face or form or spirit is ascribed to attitude. But I doubt if quiescence is the highest attainable condition of mind and body. Grace is beauty become ex- pressive and vital. That is the quality which must delight us while we move upon the earth, and we are not content with any state of things i.] London Social Life. 29 which robs us of it. We shall not always be here, and we are impatient that whatever there is lovely in life should be in haste to express itself. Grace, I should say, was the expression of a beautiful past. It finds egress, we know, in any sort of action walking, sewing, reading, or singing but most of all in dancing. Here, fortunately, the baneful influence of "pose" is counteracted. The ball seems to be the invention of some good friend of humanity to force people to be quite themselves. Self-indulgence and conceit generate ugliness ; virtue and self-denial beget beauty, and we know how necessary it is that people should always be expressing these things. No training of the body can eradicate vulgarity ; no awkward- ness or inexperience of limb can suppress grace. With what odious sensations the trained dancing- girls of the Alhambra afflict us ! What inde- scribable pleasure some little creature's mistakes who blunders in the Lancers afford us ! " Pose " has been adopted by English people of fashion in self-defence. London and Texan societies have this one point in common they all go armed, even to the women. As acquaint- 3O Some Impressions of |'i. ances in the South-west discuss politics over their slings and cocktails, with knives and revolvers half hidden in their belts, so the London swell, as you meet him at the club or the party, hardly conceals under his waistcoat and watch-chains the handles of his weapons of defence ; and, set like jewels in the girdle that zones a lady's waist, you detect the dearest little gemmed and mounted implements of destruction. The Englishman con- ducts himself as though he were in an enemy's country. In the strictest apostolic sense he regards this life as a warfare. " And well he may," he would say. " Consider what people we meet, what dangers we encounter by sea and land, on the promenade, in the park, and at the watering-place. The parvenu walks abroad in daylight. All about us are people who don't know their grandfathers. Everywhere rich con- tractors and lotion-sellers lie in ambush. It behoves us to tread cautiously. And not only are we in constant dread of these people, but we must be for ever on our guard against those of our own sort. If we are affable to our superiors, they may think us familiar ; if we are civil to i.] London Social Life. 31 our equals, they may fancy we think them better than ourselves. So, amid imminent perils from the insults of the great, from the snubs of equals, and the familiarities of inferiors, we move through this dangerous wilderness of society." Of the external advantage of London society I have already spoken. Its machinery is nearly perfect. One meets numbers of persons who not only bear themselves perfectly, but seem to think and feel almost with perfection ; women sensible and gracious, men from whom reflection and high purpose have removed every trace of triviality. Parties and receptions have this ad- vantage ; we have the perfection of social ease with those to whom we are under no obligation to be agreeable. The guests cannot be uncon- scious and oblivious of the host, nor the host of the guests. But between those who meet on common ground there may be silence or con- versation, just as is most comfortable. Hence the benefit of such an organised social establish- ment as London possesses. The great distinction which rank and money obtain in England may perhaps be irksome to those who spend their lives 32 London Social Lift* [i. in the midst of its society. To a stranger or sojourner, it is a novel and interesting feature. One felt that here was company which, however it might be in Saturn and Jupiter, no set of tellurians at least could affect to despise. You enjoyed this sensation. All round this wide planet, through the continents and the islands of the sea, among the Franks and the Arabs, the Scandinavians, the Patagonians, and the Poly- nesians, there were none who could give them- selves airs over this. The descendants of Adam, the world over, could show nothing better. English Sundays and London Churches. I DOUBT if there is, upon the outside, an uglier or more unattractive holiday in the world than Sunday in an English or American town. There is something in the spectacle of the closed shops and barred windows, the long, deserted business thoroughfare, and in the ringing of the iron cellar doors over which your feet rattle drearily, to the last degree desolate and inhospitable. Even in the parks and city squares the day does not lose its disconsolate aspect. The shoemaker and his wife trundling their baby carriage afflict us with a sense of commiseration. His Sunday clothes and his wife's parasol and their solemn, circum- spect walking about, suggest most vividly his unhappy, shabby toil, his unending drudgery. J> 34 English Sundays [n. Can there be anything but ugliness in a city- square upon a Sunday, with an iron bench to sit upon, a gravel path to walk upon, a policeman near at hand, and the sight of three or four smart young clerks condemned to spend the day in each other's company. There is, however, in many American towns (I never saw anything of the kind in London), a street where the nice people walk up and down on Sunday afternoons. The young ladies are pretty and gay and loqua- cious, and the young gentlemen, though a trifle overdressed, are happy and endeavour to be agreeable. On a winter or autumn afternoon, the fine promenade of an American city is bright and splendid. There is something a little hard, something not quite warm and generous, in the spectacle of the long, cold, gay street. Yet the scene is not unpleasing. The polished window- pane is now and then lit up with a flickering ray of the firelight within. Certainly the day is not without austerity even here. But the neighbour- hood of friends in a great city finds one well contented with the severity and peculiarity of the religious festival of the week. I am willing to put ii.] and London Churches. 35 up with the abolition of the shop-windows, and the desolation of streets so bright on other days, with the depressing hilarities of the people, and the dismal bits of green grass, with fountains, iron benches, policemen, and baby-carriages. The tinge of gloom which hangs over the elegant quarter of the town is agreeable rather than otherwise. I am glad of the Puritan reminiscence which yet hangs about our Sunday. It is well that there should be one day in the week which we are under some vague obligation not to give to trivialities, when at times we shall even repress that laughter and joking at the sound of which dreams and emotions are apt to break away and vanish, when the lights are lowered and fingers wander over the keys, and " The spacious firma- ment on high," and " By cool Siloam's shady rill/' are sung by the voices of the kind and good. The English Sunday is more sombre than our own. Here the day wears more of a holiday aspect ; the people in the streets look happier and are better dressed. The genteel English think it common and snobbish to dress much on Sunday. Of course they ascribe this notion to 36 English Sundays [H. their nicer sense of propriety ; but how much of it is due to superior taste and sanctity, and how much to the tradition that snobs dress on Sunday because persons of their station are com- pelled to work on other days, I do not pretend to decide. One may say that the English, as a rule, regard Sunday with rather more sobriety and strictness than ourselves. They think it is godless to stay away from church ; and it is to the churches one must go to see the English Sunday. We, in this country, have always had a poetic curiosity and interest in the churches and parson- ages of England. The "decent church" (inimitable adjective!) when, for the first time, on the road from Liverpool to London, one sees it crowning a well-clipped, humid hill-top, softly returns to the imagination as something known in infancy and forgotten. Ever since childhood our minds have been filled with innumerable stories and poems about the parsons and parsonages. There is the Vicar of Wakefield, and there is the clergyman in the " Deserted Village ; " and, later, we are familiar with many admirable or amusing parsons or parsons' wives and daughters on the pages of ii. 1 and London Churches. 37 Miss Austin and Trollope. The clergyman seems to have been the best man in their society to unite in his person virtue and gentility with tragical poverty. On the other hand, there is in the lives of many clergymen's families just that plenum of earthly comfort which is alluring for the gentler uses of literature, just that happy balance of circumstances which equally removes the household from the ugliness of want, and from the pretension which is the peril of too much success. The parson has been called the " centre of English society." High and low, rich and poor, all group themselves about him, and compute their position by reference to him. He touches the community at every point ; he may know everybody, though his place is a very variable and accidental one. His importance, of course other things being equal, is in proportion to his income. He is a greater man in the country than in town. Some parsons are very much greater than others. Between a bishop and a poor curate there exists what the novelists would call a "gulf." Indeed, I am told that a young curate, when speaking to a bishop in the street, 38 English Sundays [IL would be likely to take off his hat and stand bareheaded. In London, the priest appears to lose himself amidst the crowd ; but even there he retains an intrinsic identity and distinctiveness which nobody else possesses. We have, besides, been attracted by the artistic and poetical qualities of the Church of England. It possesses these attractions, not because it is a State Church, but because it is a National Church. It is the Church of all, and, because the people in humble and middle life outnumber the great and the fortunate, it is more the church of the poor than of the rich. This fact gives it substance and depth, and a sombre strength, like the chill scd and damp winds of their autumn evening. In the Church the people have for ages been christened, married, and buried ; indeed, any other kind of religious establishment has a look either shabby or glaringly brand-new. With us it is always the particular church, say, at the corner of Moyomen- sing Avenue and iSth Street, which attracts or repels one. Is it a good place to go? Do we like the clergyman, and do we like the people ? One of the best parts of any Church Service here, ii.] and London Churches. 39 I take it, is shaking hands with acquaintances going down the aisles. We go here to those houses which attract and please, which are the brightest and happiest-looking. The minified cathedrals, where gloom was secured by the same cheap means by which one can get it in any pantry, namely, by having no windows, are re- placed by houses of worship more fit and sensible. We have no old churches ; and antiquity here is so weak and unimportant, that people do well in ceasing altogether to imitate its solemn and pathetic impressions. How slight and feeble is our past, the man will feel who loiters in Trinity church-yard, or strolls for an hour in St. Paul's, the interior of which wonderfully resembles an old English church. What comes to us from pre- revolutionary times is scarcely more inspiring than the rubbish left in an attic by the people who move out to those who move in. Who that drops his ticket at Wall Street Ferry cares to remember that, on that spot, George and Martha Washington landed from Virginia ninety years ago ; or who of the crowds that flock hourly about the Exchange calls to mind that, on the balcony of a building 40 English Sundays [n. which once stood there, the first president was inaugurated? The mighty To-Day of the con- tinent is scarcely conscious of these trifles. It is different in England. George III., with his tumultuous, triumphant Empire, and his thunder- ing Waterloos and Trafalgars, curbs the conceit and insolence of the living. So far as duration goes, America has had the very respectable past of nearly four centuries. But, whatever is ancient in point of time by association with this continent, seems to partake of its newness. What is old here does not at all become precious because it is rare. It is rather swallowed up in the all-pervading, all-forgetting present. A tomb-stone with 1790 scratched upon it is a less impressive object here than in Europe. The occupant has no con- stituency ;* there are too few of him to make it worth while to take him into account. But even the recent past in Europe is strong, because of the multitudes which disappear with a generation, and of the ages full of life and history upon which it lies. The names over the chancel of men who fell with Nelson, and the tablets upon the walls, not a half century old, appeal to us with a strange earnestness. ii.] and London Churches. 41 There is no doubt that these English temples possess sublime and fervid impressions which houses of worship of yesterday cannot produce. Yet the services in many of them, particularly in the West-End, are very dull and vapid. The churches were a third full, with pretty much every- body asleep or inattentive. The most devout and enthusiastic worship is to be found in those parts of London inhabited mainly by the lower middle classes people who live by trades and small shops. In some churches, where the pews are reserved until the time for the service to begin, the outside public range themselves along the aisle, waiting to take the unoccupied seats when the moment comes. In other churches the pews are thrown open during the evening service, and anybody can come in and take a seat, the only precedence being such as long occupation and courtesy give. I remember a young lady who hustled me out of a comfortable corner on the plea that it was " hers." There she sat and opened her prayer- book and surrendered herself almost greedily to her ecstasy and meditation. How she valued that snug corner I could tell from the warlike 42 English Sundays [n. expression of her countenance, when for a moment I looked sceptical of her right to eject me. This was at St. Dominic's, with the curate of which church I had the good fortune to contract an acquaintance. The curate of St. Dominic's was a very good, laborious, and capable man. He preached two or three sermons on Sunday ; his evenings were occupied with lectures and charities ; during five days of the week he taught a great city school. The rest of the time he took in writing his two sermons, visiting the sick and burying the dead, in reading the Bible to all the bed-ridden old women in the parish, and in bap- tising certain red and blue-faced, black-haired and very tender babies. How shall I describe him a saint without a feebleness, a humorist without scepticism, an Englishman without a trace of the egotist, a tireless worker and an unquestioning child of duty; yet with the most generous sense of enjoyment, and a most modest charity for the indolent and the semi- virtuous. I had a note to him from a friend who had met him in Switzerland. With his countenance I saw a good deal of St. Dominic's. ii.] and London Churches. 43 Often on Sunday evenings at 7 o'clock I used to call at the curate's lodgings for the chance of a walk with him to church, or rather a trot, for we were nearly always late, the parson stopping to tack a tail on to his sermon. It was a mile away, and the chimes of St. Dominic's were clanging as we brought up the vestibule. It was an ancient building, standing in what is called the " City," a district inclosed by the old walls and now entirely taken up by trade. I got my seat in church, and when the bell stopped, the procession of choristers, dressed in white, began to move up the aisle, the youngest and tenderest coming first, the older and taller following. The little ones were often beautiful boys, with the soft tender English complexion, and looked like angels, though I often saw them nudging each other when they were responding the loudest, and communicating by dumb show, with spelling upon their fingers and with grimaces. Their faces were so clean, and they had their hair so well brushed, that it was easy to see that some neat and proud mother had inspected every one of them. One little fellow in particular looked as 44 English Sundays [n. if his mother had followed him all about the room, holding him by the chin, brushing his forehead and temples violently as he retreated, and, perhaps, giving him now and then a crack on the head with the hair-brush. The procession grew coarser as it grew older ; the difference between the little and the big choristers was much like that between young and tender leeks and onions gone to seed. The choristers were, I suppose, taken almost en- tirely from the families of small shopkeepers and mechanics. Directly behind the grown choristers, and attired very much like them, came the clergy; and the contrast between their countenances showed more plainly than anything I remember seeing, the unmistakable unlikencss of gentle- men to persons who are not gentlemen. There were the well-defined, educated faces of two or three young clergymen, and in a singular contrast was the loutish, indistinct chaos in the counte- nances of the overgrown singers. The curate preached always in the evenings, and led a good part of the service. His sermons were delivered in a low, musical monotone or recitative. They were thoughtful and well ex- ii.] and London Churches. 45 pressed, excellent sermons, among the best I heard in London ; but what made them especially admir- able was the manifest purity of the man, the reality of his goodness. Whether he read or preached, or prayed, or sat silent, you felt the influence of a devoted spirit. It is the sort of man he is, not so much what he says, that makes a clergyman a good one. You would not care to have a vulgar, superficial, or conceited person sit in your room and occupy your attention for an hour. It is just as unpleasant to have any such man moving constantly before your eyes in church, praying, reading, and exhorting. Of vul- garity one sees very little among the English clergy, but, of course, most clergymen, like most other people, do not possess very clear ideas, and it is necessary that they be exhibiting their lack of strength during the whole time they occupy the eyes of the congregation. Their manner of read- ing the Bible seems to be altogether without sense or reason. They take the promises, the revelations, the ecstasies, the lamentations, and the genealogies all in the same voice, and at the same pace. I remember once to have heard, in the afternoon 46 English Sundays [n. service at Westminster Abbey, a clergyman reading the Scriptures in a heavy, sonorous voice, with which he was obviously very well contented. Paul, in the chapter read, has been speaking in a lofty, Apostolic strain, which the agreeable bari- tone suited very well. But he closes the epistle with some commonplace messages, which are manifestly not to be read with the same sub- limity of enunciation as the other parts of the chapter. But the clergyman grandly intoned, " Bring Zenas, the lawyer-r-r-r-r-r," and the ca- dences of this bathetic expression rolled among the arches of the cathedral and over the heads of the people. The curate of St. Dominic's intoned the service also, and with the motions of his voice his large congregation was instinctively in sym- pathy. His reading was affecting, as I have said, owing, not so much to any grace of manner, or agreeable vocal cadences (though his voice was a sweet one), as to the purity and devotion of his spirit. Some more modern sorts of sin, I used to think, though, might have very well found their way into his liturgy. Could he not have elided " From false doctrine, heresy and schism," ii.] and London Churches. 47 and have intoned instead, " From inconstancy and vain obliviousness, from ennui, lassitude, and all self-admiration ! " St. Dominic's was one of the oldest of the city sanctuaries, its history stretching way back before Elizabeth. The church was destroyed and re- built at the time of the great fire. Its aisles have been the resting-place of city worthies as long as London has had Lord Mayors, or London women have been comely. Their quaint memorials were upon the windows " Thomas Watson, citizen, of Milk Street, 1513." How many generations of listless children, lying back in these pews during tlie long service, have spelt out his virtues on the marble underneath, and wondered what a quaint old fellow he was, and how strange it must be to be dead so long, and have one's name scratched in such queer characters under the painted figures of saints and martyrs, then sighed to think what an age it would oe till dinner. St. Dominic's was just such a church as old City magnates should have worshipped and grown rich in. The place had a look of tarnished bullion and dingy guineas ; it made one think of the dark corners 48 English Sundays [n. of old counting-rooms. On the walls and over the chancel, upward-gazing saints aspired with the faith of long-gone ages. The glad singing of the choristers and the murmurings of the people arose incessantly ; from the tablets upon the walls the past gave testimony. There, with the dark wilderness of London trade without, the people knelt and worshipped in the same old place which had been a landmark to their be- lieving fathers. After church the curate used to guide me through all sorts of strange lanes and arcades, and openings, and narrow passages through which we could scarcely get abreast, to the vicarage, which was a third of a mile away, where half-a- dozen of the parsons of the neighbourhood gathered for supper. Incessant and indefatigable as he was, he yet seemed to have more time for his friends than many men who do not accom- plish a fourth of his work. I took advantage of all tne time I could get of him. He was always to be found after church on Sunday when the samfe group that gathered at the vicar- age came to him to lunch. These meetings were ii.] and London Chzirches. 49 marked by a friendship and abandon rare, I should have supposed, among Englishmen. This we owed to the hospitality of the curate's spirit, and his laugh, which, I think, was one of the most delightful I ever heard. He possessed a most capacious nature. His humour, of which he had a great deal, was just like his frame, large and ruddy. He was from the farmer class ; and, it seemed to me, that he had in his blood the jollity of a hundred Christmas Eves, and in his voice the warmth and volume of centuries of roaring Yule-logs upon the hearth. He had perfect health ; he was three-and-thirty, indeed, but he had that other youth the youth of purity and simplicity. On Sundays he usually came back from church in great spirits. His talk with his clerical friends ran upon parish matters, the peculiarities of some familiar people, an odd answer of a charity scholar to a question in the catechism, or what had been seen and heard among the poor during the week. For instance (this was told me in a subdued voice, as if to apologise for its profanity), the curate ha.d called upon a poor girl who had lost her baby. He 5our appear good than be good. He has special temptations to this sort of work. He is paid less for the inherent than for the apparent value of his contributions. A lawyer's work is good when he wins his case, a doctor's when he cures his patient ; but there is no such test for the work of an editor. " Do people like to read it?" is the ultimate question; and what people like to read cannot easily be known with certainty. As we are confident, however, that sense and thoroughness must be acknowledged, we marvel that writers are not more willing to rely upon honest work and to be content with it. But that is the last thing they are willing to rely upon. They must have an out-of-the-way title. They must torture the jaded humour into some feverish antics. They must put their trust in affected wisdom and affected fine moral senti- ments. One peculiarity of their way of writing is a certain tone of infinite knowingness. A fact is told you, but it is parenthetically insinuated that the writer's general knowledge of the sub- ject is simply boundless. Is he to write upon the Eastern question, and has he heard for the 206 English and American [xv. first time of General Ignatieff, he begins as follows : "Well, in spite of the wily Russian who repre- sents the Czar in Constantinople," &c. Very few of the English papers, except the vulgarest, exhibit this peculiar form of nonsense in their treatment of questions of politics ; but the best papers occa- sionally do something very like it in their criticisms of art and literature. The imitators of these critics in this country are, however, quite even with them. A friend of mine, who is an editor, sent me a book of poems to review, with the request that I should make the article "dignified." I knew very well what he meant by this prescription. I was to talk as if I were not only familiar with the subject in hand, but with pretty much every other. I was to be very confident ; here and there derisive, here and there ecstatic, but always absolute ; and each paragraph, as I left it, was to stand up and quiver with a gelatinous consistency, galvanised by the energy of my mind and hand. One would naturally wish to speak only when one can speak strongly, and with precision and certainty. The seemly man is he who is silent when his thought is immature. He is not likely xv.] Nezvspaper-writing. 207 to offend his own self-esteem, nor to lower him- self in the opinion of the clear-sighted. But the seemly silent man and the unseemly speaker are alike immature. We merely see the one state of mind, while we do not see the other. One confesses the mental condition, which the other equally possesses. So long as the speaker does not lay claim to a certainty which he has not, he is really as good a man, and, if not so seemly, as dignified as the other. It is one's duty at times to write ill. A newspaper contributor must constantly write upon subjects of which his know- ledge is imperfect, and of which his opinion is immature. It cannot be otherwise. And why should writers wish to make it appear otherwise ? You consult a paper with the same intent with which you ask the opinion of an intelligent friend. You do not wish your wiser friend to decide the matter for you ; you ask him to throw light upon it. If he has no definite opinion to give you, you wish the stimulus of a common sympathy and a common curiosity. You ask the same of a newspaper. The writer need not be omnis- cient ; if he be eager and interested the reader 208 English and American Newspapers, [xv. will be eager and interested. The disposition in newspapers to appear wiser than they are is therefore not only immoral, but, I believe, inex- pedient Americans Abroad. MANY sorts of Americans are to be seen in Europe. There are those who live there and have a hold upon society. These are the privileged few; and some of them are very nice people and do us credit. But even these are not quite so nice and certainly not so useful and considerable as if they lived at home. For a foreigner is always at a disadvantage. He is tied to the country in which he is resident neither by his past nor by his future, and is therefore not important to it Even an eminent foreigner cannot hold abroad the place he has at home. He has done something in his own country, and is of some value there ; he will be apt to be of very little value elsewhere. So that it is certainly true that a man loses in social density by having his residence in a land other 2io Americans Abroad. [xvi. than his own. Men who desire achievement and consideration should live at home. No country, not even our own, is hospitable to foreigners as such ; our ladies are glad enough to have a count at their houses, but I never hear that they put themselves to much trouble to seek out young strangers who are over here making their way. But there are certain other Americans (and this class is much larger than the foregoing) who count upon their ringers the grafs and princes they know. They are vefy unhappy people. Their unhappi- ness does not consist in the illusive and unsatis- factory nature of the phantoms they pursue so much as in the agonising self-inquiry of which they are the subjects. They never cease to interrogate themselves with one form of ancient question, "What am I?" They ask not "Am I virtuous?" "Am I right?" but "Am I genteel?" " Do I possess that peculiar constitution of mind which, in the illustrious circles of the Old World, makes me ' one of them ? ' ' This question is never answered. If it were only a tangible society the inquirer was in search of, his condition would not be so wretched ; he is condemned, however, to XVL] Americans Abroad. 211 imitate the pursuit of the dog who ran round after his own tail. Alas, if men could but devote to the pursuit of goodness and knowledge the sensi- tiveness of conscience, the earnestness, the profound desire and dissatisfaction with which they ask to be genteel ! Some thirty years ago the English were the great travellers of Europe. They overran the Continent. Many of these tourists were of a sort to make Frenchmen and Italians wonder what manner of men the English were. But the fact of such people getting abroad was altogether to the advantage of the English. Persons of corresponding position on the Continent would never have got beyond their own thresholds. Of late years, however, the Americans send abroad more travellers and spend more money in foreign lands than any other people. Wealth having in this country, far more than in England, lost significance, any sort of people here go abroad. It is greatly to the credit, or, at least, to the advantage of this country, that such people can prosper and be happy. It is true, however, that we have very often cause to be ashamed of our brethren in 212 Americans Abroad. Europe. Why is it that Americans look so much worse abroad than at home? The truth is, I suppose, that we see a worse class than we see at home, or see more of them, and that we see them under circumstances which are not in their favour. As I have before said, any foreigner is seen at a disadvantage in a country not his own. He is especially at a disadvantage, if he lacks social education. He is amid circumstances to which he is not accustomed, and if there is any vulgarity in him it is sure to come out. Indeed, if he have none, he is likely to adopt a little for present use. A civilised instinct is possibly the cause of some of his mistakes. He is alone, would like acquaint- ance, and is not judicious in his advances. There are some things which the wariest traveller will have to learn. One is that it will not do to be candid ; an Englishman, Frenchman, or German quite as much objects to be told anything ill of his country as an American. A foreigner should admire ; even guarded and discriminating praise from him is not usually acceptable. I believe that one other mistake with which an American xvi.] Americans Abroad. 213 goes abroad for the first time is, that because he lives in an important country he is entitled to more respect than men who live in smaller countries like Holland or Belgium. A little thought should teach him that this cannot be ; that one's nationality must be, of course, a very small ingredient among the considerations that go to make up his pre- sentibility. Is he good-looking, is he rich, well- mannered, amusing, learned, clever? These are the questions which society asks, and not, "What is his country ?" But an American's chief danger in Europe is that his energy and want of occupation may hurry him into improprieties and vulgarities. I know it is true that Americans who have lived long about the European capitals, and who have nothing to do, are not energetic people. There are many of our countrymen, loiterers in the foreign cities, who have learned to suffer in silence the ennui and stupefaction which idleness generates. Never having learned the pleasure of labour, and fancying that they cannot work as other men do, they give themselves up to an unhealthful indo- lence, of which they do not admit to themselves even the wretchedness. I have seen a man kept 214 Americans Abroad. [xvi. out of Paris by circumstances he could not control, varying the monotony of existence in the fol- lowing manner : One day he has his chop at Simpson's in the Strand, and his supper at the Pall Mall Restaurant ; the next he has lunch at the Rainbow (calling for porter which he does not like, but which he understands should be had at the Rainbow) ; in the evening he dines at the Blue Post and has whitebait. So he goes on from day to day, exhausting one by one the experiences of the universe. But the usual American abroad is not this sort of man, and has temptations of a different kind. The more he is able to rest the better for him. One danger is that his impatience and activity will carry him into scenes livelier than the above, but not so moral. Especially he should beware of too great a desire to know the world and to "study society/' Every reader is familiar with that strong feeling of obligation resting upon him to acquaint himself with certain French novels ("an educated man should know these things") before he has read much more famous works of a less peculiar character. In the same xvi.] Americans Abroad. 215 way it is surprising to find what opportunities for the student of man the casinos and other places of the kind seem to afford. It is not unusual to see at the Argyll, just when the dancing is the wildest, and the dull electricity in the atmosphere the most palpable, the really honest traveller from America a Sunday-school teacher, likely "sur- veying mankind from China to Peru," &c., and looking on with a countenance expressive of edification and enlightenment. I had here better amend a remark made above. I spoke of the innocent and dull delights of certain feeble idlers. I meant to pass no encomiums upon the morality of American idlers in Europe. The tendency of the sort of life led by these persons, especially when unmarried, is to produce a certain type of man of which one sees a great deal a sort of cross between a rout and an old maid. It is certainly true that our people do not look to such advantage abroad as at home. I presume the reason of that is, in part, that here we form intimate acquaintanceships with people whom we like, and these stand for America to our minds and " wall us out " from the inferior sort we meet 216 Americans Abroad. [xvi. abroad. What a delight it is for the sojourner m a foreign land to meet a really charming American family, with beauty, sense, refinement, and kind- ness ! These people are happy to see the fine things Europe has to show them, and will be happy, likewise, to go back to the land which their absence has made lonely. I have no words to offer such as these. But other good persons, with minds less firm and hearts less refined, may reflect with advantage to themselves concerning the manners and the state of mind with which to travel. Society in New York and Fiction. I HAVE heard young persons who contemplate writing an American novel, or who are interested in the literature of this country, speak of the material there is in New York society for the writer of fiction. It seems to be thought that certain people living among us may be made to have, as members of society, an interest separate from that we feel in them as men and women. A great many good and amusing books have been written about London and Paris society ; why may not such books be written about New York society ? Now I wish to show that there is no society in New York which corresponds to that of London or Paris, and that any writer who attempts to make the idea that there is the key- note of his work will be likely to produce a silly, 2 1 8 Society in New York and Fiction, [xvn. vulgar book. Apart from the harm to the writer of such a misconception, it is not well to be putting into the heads of people, the country through, notions which have no actual truth. And be it observed that I am now discussing only a question of fact Whether or no there should be such societies, or whether, where they exist, they do good or harm, I do not say. I only say that there is no such society among us, and that novelists should not write as if there were. But the fact is not of literary importance only ; if it be a fact, it should be recognised and accepted by the country. It would be difficult to discuss this subject without some reference to democracy, the triumph of which in this country has been so complete. There are yet some unreasonable discriminations concerning employments among us, but it is certain that the movement of public sentiment has been strongly and rapidly towards democracy. There was, during the early years of our existence, an approach to a national aristocratic society in this country. A governor or a senator, a judge, commodore, or a general, was an aristocrat. Any- XVJL] Society in New York and Fiction. 219 body who represented or reflected the dignity of government was an aristocrat. This feeling con- tinued till near the middle of the century, or until the second generation of statesmen had dis- appeared. It has gone now " where the woodbine twineth," to use the significant expression of the significant Jim Fisk. The extreme weakness of the aristocratic, element among us at present is in part in very small part to be explained by the want of respect in our people. A plain man in this country cares nothing for the man who is above him; is rather proud, and believes it to be a virtue, that he does not care. Nor does it appear a thing to be regretted that such a state of mind exists in the humbler citizen towards the greater one. It is well to have A admire B, if B is a person of superior rectitude, energy, and intelligence. But what advantage will it be to society to have A admire B because B lives in a better house, and may have a better dinner than A? There is no need to put the cart before the horse. The value of veneration among the masses of men is obvious where they have anything to 220 Society in New York and Fiction, [xvn. venerate. And there can be no want of the capacity for respect among our people. Some story now and then is told which discloses the vast reverence in which Hamilton and Jefferson, and later, Clay and Webster, were held by the Americans of their time. " Break up the great Whig party/' said Webster on one occasion, " and where am I to go ? " I remember to have heard my father, who was an old-line Whig and an adherent of Webster, say that Webster admired Isaiah. The impression made upon me at the time was very distinct. I thought how conceited the prophet would be were he only aware of the great man's eccentric partiality. A writer has spoken of this country as one in which superiorities are neither coveted nor re- spected. That is not true ; real superiorities are certainly respected. The few that we have are, perhaps, respected too much. Americans having acquired the just idea that Mr. Emerson is a great man, proceed to let him do their thinking for them. The bulk of our reading people know enough to recognise what is excellent, but have not the critical self-confidence which is the property of xvii.] Society in New York and Fiction. 221 educated men. They therefore fail to insist upon the fact that the greatest men have their limita- tions and .cannot include everything, but in a kind of dazed reverie, like that of a patient in typhoid, accept whatever is told them. So it is not true that there is a want of respect among people in this country to those who deserve respect : the contrary is the fact The national aristocratic society has disappeared with the disappearance of respect for the politician. What is called " position " is in this country now altogether local. This is necessarily true. A is known among his neighbours as a rich and decent person ; his wife and daughters are " nice " (the American for "noble"), either absolutely or rela- tively to the people about them. A has position, therefore, in his own town ; if he moves elsewhere he does not inevitably take it with him. Now, in very little and very simple communities, these ideas of position and precedence are not important. In a very great place, on the other hand, few men are large enough to be seen over the whole town. As a consequence, we see that New York is perhaps the most democratic town in the country. 222 Society in New York and Fiction, [xvn. It has become so during the years in which it has been shooting into a position of such national and cosmopolitan importance. It is now quite as democratic a place as the inevitable varieties of accident and talent among men will permit it to be. The artifice of exclusiveness, which is sure to succeed in a smaller place, will not do here. People greatly desire to do what they find difficult to do. They do not care at all to do what they know they may do. Accordingly, in a town, or city of moderate size, the people who wish to be thought better than their neighbours, and who have some little advantages to start with, are wise to keep to themselves. They thus prevent their neighbours from finding out that the excluded and the exclusives are just alike. They have for their ally that profound want of confidence of ordinary people in their own perceptions. But this is a device which will not do in a city of the size and wide-reaching importance of New York. What will some mover of commerce or politics over the face of the country care for the opinion of the gentlewoman round the corner, who thinks him vulgar ? xvir.] Society in New York and Fiction. 223 Thus we see it to be impossible that any domi- nant society may exist in this country. The recognition of this fact should teach quiet to people inclined to be restless. It need not be unwelcome to the friend of man, for he will remember that democracy does not mean the triumph of utility over dignity and refinement, but that it means dignity and refinement for the many. Writers of fiction may regret the want of diversity and picturesqueness which the fact involves, but it is always well to know the truth ; if they desire to avoid vulgarity and the waste of such opportunities as they have, they must heed it. To make men and women interesting as members of society is denied them ; but should these writers have the wit to paint men and women as they are, the field is wide enough. There are on all sides people who are charming to contemplate, and whom it should be a pleasure to describe. THE END. "Infinite riches In a little room." MARLOWE. THE BRIC-A-BRAC SERIES. Personal Eeminiscences of Pamous Poets and Novelists, Wits and Humorists, Artists, Actors, Musicians, and the like, EDITED BY RICHARD HENRY STODDARD. The volumes already issued have insured the BRIC-A-BRAC SERIES wide and permanent popularity. New volumes quite as interesting and valuable as those already published will be issued at intervals. It is the aim to gather up in this collection, from the numerous biog- raphies, autobiographies, and memoirs that have lately appeared, all the reminiscences ivorlh preservation of the men and women who have done so much to make this century one of the most brilliant in the annals of English Literature' Occasionally, too, place will be found in the volumes for some of the more notable papers regarding distinguished men and women, which form so important a part of t lie magazine literature of the day. Each volume will be complete in itself. A careful index will furnish a ready guide to tlie contents of the differ- ent volumes, in which, under the capable editorship of M R. R. H. STODDARD, it may safely be asserted there will be brought together a fund of choice and fresh anecdote and gossip, enough not only to justify the general title of the Series, but the line of Marlowe which has been selected as its moito, '' Infinite riches in a little room.''' Just issued: PERSONAL REMINISCENCES OF LAMB, HAZLITT, AND OTH- ERS. PERSONAL REMINISCENCES BY O'KEEFFE, KELLY, AND TAYLOR. PERSONAL REMINISCENCES BY CORNELIA KNIGHT AND THOMAS RAIKES. PERSONAL REMINISCENCES BY MOORE AND JERDAN. THE GREVILLE MEMOIRS : A JOURNAL OF THE REIGNS OF KINGS GEORGE THE FOURTH AND WILLIAM THE FOURTH. PERSONAL REMINISCENCES BY BARHAM, HARNESS, AND HODDER. PROSPER MERIMEE'S LETTERS TO AN INCOGNITA; WITH RECOLLECTIONS BY LAMARTINE AND GEORGE SAND. ANECDOTE BIOGRAPHIES OF THACKERAY AND DICKENS. PERSONAL REMINISCENCES BY CHORLEY, PLANCHE, AND YOUNG. Each one volume, square I2mo, cloth, $1.50. Sent to any address, post-paid, upon receipt of the price, by SORIBNEE, ARMSTRONG, & CO. SSnripitf Ijisforg from A TIMELY AND VALUABLE SERIES FOR THE Biblical Student and for the General Reader. From the Egyptian, Assyrian, and Persian monuments and tablets archaeologists have, during the past few years, derived a mass of illustration and evidence on the manners, customs, languages, and literature of the ancient peoples at whose history we have glimpses in the Old Testament. This knowledge is of the greatest interest to the student of antiquity and of striking significance tj the entire Christian world, ': of the light which it throws upon the earlier books of the Bible. Up to roi however, this information had been inaccessible, in the main, save to scholars. In these volumes the results of these researches, so far as they have progressed, are for the first time brought fully within popular comprehension. Each treatise has been prepared by a specialist who is a master in his own department. The methods and the men by whom discoveries have been made are subordinated to a plain, popular, and concise statement of the facts developed which are narrated in connection with those previously established Occasional illustrations give all necessary clearness and precision to the text. To the general reader and to the historical student these volumes are alike interesting and valuable. NOW READY: I. EGYPT the Earliest Times to B. C. 3OO. By S. BIRCH, LL.D. One vol., I2mo, cloth, with 12 illustrations $i oo II. ASSYRIA. FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES TO THE FALL OF NINEVEH. By GEORGE SMITH, Of the Department of Oriental Antiquities, British Museum; author of "Assyrian Discoveries," etc. With 13 Illustrations. III. PERSIA. FROM THE EARLIEST PERIOD TO THK ARAB CONQUKST. By WM. VAUX, M.A., F.R.S., Author of" Sketch of Ancient Assyria and Persia," " Nineveh and Persepolis De- scribt-il," " Hand-book of Antiquities in the British Museum," etc., etc. With 5 Illustrations. NEARLY READY: BABYLONIA. By GEORGE SMITH. "Each, 1 vol., 12mo, cloth $1.OO *t*Sent fast J>aid, vpon receift of price, ly SCRIBNEB, ARMSTRONG & CO., 743 & 745 Broadway, New York. A New Narrative Poem BY Dr. J. G. HOLLAND. THE MISTRESS OF THE MANSE. BY DR. J. G. HOLLAND, Author of "Bitter-Sweet," " Kathrina, "Titcomb's Letters," " Arthur Bonnicastle," ., &>c. One Vol., lamo, Cloth ....... $1.50. THIS is the first narrative poem written by DR. HOLLAND since the appearance of " KATHRINA," and it is sure to take its place at once beside that and "BiTTER-SwEET." The scene of the "MISTRESS OF THE MANSE " is laid on the banks of the Hudson. It is a love-story beginr.ing where so many leave off, at marriage ; it abounds in striking pictures of natural scenery ; it is full of the philosophy of life which comes from a pure experience ; and it is distinguished by all that compre- hension of the poetic in every-day life, and all that impulse and vitality which have from the beginning characterized the writings of its author. This is the first long poem by DR. HOLLAND written in rhyme instead of blank verse, the stanza chosen being the same as that used by him in the introduction to " BITTER-SWEET." . HOLLAND'S WORKS. Each, in One Volume 12mo. ABTHtTR BONNICASTLE. One vol. 12mo, $1.75. *BITTER-SWEET ; a Poem, . 1 50 *1CATHRINA ; a Poem, . 1 50 *LETTERS TO YOUNG- PEOPLE, 1 50 GOLD FOIL, hammered from Popular Proverbs, . *LESSONS IN LIFE, *PLAIN TALKS on Familiar Sub- jects, 'LETTERS TO THE JONESES, 1 75 1 75 1 75 1 75 2 00 2 00 1 50 MISS GILBERT'S CAREER, BAY PATH, . . . . THE MARBLE PROPHECY, and other Poems, . . . . GARNERED SHEAVES, Complete Poetical Works, "Bitter-Sweet," j " Kathrina," " Marble Prophecy," red line edition, beautifully illus- trated, ..... 4 00 * These six volumes are issued in Cabinet size (16mo), "Brightwood Edition," at the same prices as above. HOURS IN A LIBRARY. By LESLIE STEPHEN. One rot., 72mo, cloth, THE taking title of this volume is most admirably sustained by Its contents. " De Foe's Novels," " Richardsoji's Novels," "Pope as a Moralist," "Some Words about Sir Walter Scott," "Nathaniel Hawthorne," " Balzac's Novels," and " De Quincey," are the authors at:d the subjects discussed. No recent writer has developed the true critical instinct at all in the degree which this volume proves that Mr. Leslie Stephen possesses.it. His judgments are the result of the closest and most careful study. They are, moreover, compre- hensive, and are expressed in a style so incisive and brilliant as to place their author in the front rank of living essayists. Estimate of the " Nation." "They are the writings of a thoroughly sensible, acute, and unpretentious critic. Tlicy read like the conversations of a clever, well-educated man, and thoughtless readers may overlook the fact that the conversation with which Mr. Stephen whiles away the hours in a library is exactly that kind of 'good talk" which, as every one knows on reflection, is one of the greatest and, at the same time, rarest intellectual enjoyments. Half Mr. Stephen's readers, perhaps, think they could talk as he writes. In matter of fact, they probably could not sustain for ten minutes a literary conversation of which, were it printed down, they would not be heartily ashamed But persons who would find it an impossible task to imitate what seems in Mr. Stephen's hands so easy an achieve- ment, may yet gain a great deal both of interest and instruction from his essays. Mr. Stephen's great merit, in our judgment, is the care with which he studies the objects ol his criticism, and the skill with which he applies to them the calm good-sense of a well- educated, clear-sighted man, who possesses just that kind of humor, the absence of which constantly renders worthless the meritorious labors of industrious critic*." Sent postpaid, on receipt of the price, by the publishers, SCRIBNER, ARMSTRONG & CO., NEW YORK. UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY Los Angeles Thii.book is DUE on the last date stamped below MAR 1 1972 ORION Form L9-Series 444 DA 688 N12i UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY AA 000395358 5