A Bundle of Letters

CHAPTER VII

September 28th.

My Dear Prosper—It is a long time since I have given you of my news, and I don’t know what puts it into my head to-night to recall myself to your affectionate memory.  I suppose it is that when we are happy the mind reverts instinctively to those with whom formerly we shared our exaltations and depressions, and je t’eu ai trop dit, dans le bon temps, mon gros Prosper, and you always listened to me too imperturbably, with your pipe in your mouth, your waistcoat unbuttoned, for me not to feel that I can count upon your sympathy to-day.  Nous en sommes nous flanquées des confidences—in those happy days when my first thought in seeing an adventure poindre à l’horizon was of the pleasure I should have in relating it to the great Prosper.  As I tell thee, I am happy; decidedly, I am happy, and from this affirmation I fancy you can construct the rest.  Shall I help thee a little?  Take three adorable girls . . . three, my good Prosper—the mystic number—neither more nor less.  Take them and place thy insatiable little Léon in the midst of them!  Is the situation sufficiently indicated, and do you apprehend the motives of my felicity?

You expected, perhaps, I was going to tell you that I had made my fortune, or that the Uncle Blondeau had at last decided to return into the breast of nature, after having constituted me his universal legatee.  But I needn’t remind you that women are always for something in the happiness of him who writes to thee—for something in his happiness, and for a good deal more in his misery.  But don’t let me talk of misery now; time enough when it comes; ces demoiselles have gone to join the serried ranks of their amiable predecessors.  Excuse me—I comprehend your impatience.  I will tell you of whom ces demoiselles consist.

You have heard me speak of my cousine de Maisonrouge, that grande belle femme, who, after having married, en secondes noces—there had been, to tell the truth, some irregularity about her first union—a venerable relic of the old noblesse of Poitou, was left, by the death of her husband, complicated by the indulgence of expensive tastes on an income of 17,000 francs, on the pavement of Paris, with two little demons of daughters to bring up in the path of virtue.  She managed to bring them up; my little cousins are rigidly virtuous.  If you ask me how she managed it, I can’t tell you; it’s no business of mine, and, à fortiori none of yours.  She is now fifty years old (she confesses to thirty-seven), and her daughters, whom she has never been able to marry, are respectively twenty-seven and twenty-three (they confess to twenty and to seventeen).  Three years ago she had the thrice-blessed idea of opening a sort of pension for the entertainment and instruction of the blundering barbarians who come to Paris in the hope of picking up a few stray particles of the language of Voltaire—or of Zola.  The idea lui a porté bonheur; the shop does a very good business.  Until within a few months ago it was carried on by my cousins alone; but lately the need of a few extensions and embellishments has caused itself to be felt.  My cousin has undertaken them, regardless of expense; she has asked me to come and stay with her—board and lodging gratis—and keep an eye on the grammatical eccentricities of her pensionnaires.  I am the extension, my good Prosper; I am the embellishment!  I live for nothing, and I straighten up the accent of the prettiest English lips.  The English lips are not all pretty, heaven knows, but enough of them are so to make it a gaining bargain for me.

Just now, as I told you, I am in daily conversation with three separate pairs.  The owner of one of them has private lessons; she pays extra.  My cousin doesn’t give me a sou of the money; but I make bold, nevertheless, to say that my trouble is remunerated.  But I am well, very well, with the proprietors of the two other pairs.  One of them is a little Anglaise, of about twenty—a little figure de keepsake; the most adorable miss that you ever, or at least that I ever beheld.  She is decorated all over with beads and bracelets and embroidered dandelions; but her principal decoration consists of the softest little gray eyes in the world, which rest upon you with a profundity of confidence—a confidence that I really feel some compunction in betraying.  She has a tint as white as this sheet of paper, except just in the middle of each cheek, where it passes into the purest and most transparent, most liquid, carmine.  Occasionally this rosy fluid overflows into the rest of her face—by which I mean that she blushes—as softly as the mark of your breath on the window-pane.

Like every Anglaise, she is rather pinched and prim in public; but it is very easy to see that when no one is looking elle ne demande qu’à se laisser aller!  Whenever she wants it I am always there, and I have given her to understand that she can count upon me.  I have reason to believe that she appreciates the assurance, though I am bound in honesty to confess that with her the situation is a little less advanced than with the others.  Que voulez-vous?  The English are heavy, and the Anglaises move slowly, that’s all.  The movement, however, is perceptible, and once this fact is established I can let the pottage simmer.  I can give her time to arrive, for I am over-well occupied with her concurrentes.  Celles-ci don’t keep me waiting, par exemple!

These young ladies are Americans, and you know that it is the national character to move fast.  “All right—go ahead!”  (I am learning a great deal of English, or, rather, a great deal of American.)  They go ahead at a rate that sometimes makes it difficult for me to keep up.  One of them is prettier than the other; but this hatter (the one that takes the private lessons) is really une file prodigieuse.  Ah, par exemple, elle brûle ses vais-seux cella-la!  She threw herself into my arms the very first day, and I almost owed her a grudge for having deprived me of that pleasure of gradation, of carrying the defences, one by one, which is almost as great as that of entering the place.

Would you believe that at the end of exactly twelve minutes she gave me a rendezvous?  It is true it was in the Galerie d’Apollon, at the Louvre; but that was respectable for a beginning, and since then we have had them by the dozen; I have ceased to keep the account.  Non, c’est une file qui me dépasse.

The little one (she has a mother somewhere, out of sight, shut up in a closet or a trunk) is a good deal prettier, and, perhaps, on that account elle y met plus de façons.  She doesn’t knock about Paris with me by the hour; she contents herself with long interviews in the petit salon, with the curtains half-drawn, beginning at about three o’clock, when every one is à la promenade.  She is admirable, this little one; a little too thin, the bones rather accentuated, but the detail, on the whole, most satisfactory.  And you can say anything to her.  She takes the trouble to appear not to understand, but her conduct, half an hour afterwards, reassures you completely—oh, completely!

However, it is the tall one, the one of the private lessons, that is the most remarkable.  These private lessons, my good Prosper, are the most brilliant invention of the age, and a real stroke of genius on the part of Miss Miranda!  They also take place in the petit salon, but with the doors tightly closed, and with explicit directions to every one in the house that we are not to be disturbed.  And we are not, my good Prosper; we are not!  Not a sound, not a shadow, interrupts our felicity.  My cousine is really admirable; the shop deserves to succeed.  Miss Miranda is tall and rather flat; she is too pale; she hasn’t the adorable rougeurs of the little Anglaise.  But she has bright, keen, inquisitive eyes, superb teeth, a nose modelled by a sculptor, and a way of holding up her head and looking every one in the face, which is the most finished piece of impertinence I ever beheld.  She is making the tour du monde entirely alone, without even a soubrette to carry the ensign, for the purpose of seeing for herself à quoi s’en tenir sur les hommes et les choses—on les hommes particularly.  Dis donc, Prosper, it must be a drôle de pays over there, where young persons animated by this ardent curiosity are manufactured!  If we should turn the tables, some day, thou and I, and go over and see it for ourselves.  It is as well that we should go and find them chez elles, as that they should come out here after us.  Dis donc, mon gras Prosper . . .

CHAPTER VIII

My dear brother in Science—I resume my hasty notes, of which I sent you the first instalment some weeks ago.  I mentioned then that I intended to leave my hotel, not finding it sufficiently local and national.  It was kept by a Pomeranian, and the waiters, without exception, were from the Fatherland.  I fancied myself at Berlin, Unter den Linden, and I reflected that, having taken the serious step of visiting the head-quarters of the Gallic genius, I should try and project myself; as much as possible, into the circumstances which are in part the consequence and in part the cause of its irrepressible activity.  It seemed to me that there could be no well-grounded knowledge without this preliminary operation of placing myself in relations, as slightly as possible modified by elements proceeding from a different combination of causes, with the spontaneous home-life of the country.

I accordingly engaged a room in the house of a lady of pure French extraction and education, who supplements the shortcomings of an income insufficient to the ever-growing demands of the Parisian system of sense-gratification, by providing food and lodging for a limited number of distinguished strangers.  I should have preferred to have my room alone in the house, and to take my meals in a brewery, of very good appearance, which I speedily discovered in the same street; but this arrangement, though very lucidly proposed by myself; was not acceptable to the mistress of the establishment (a woman with a mathematical head), and I have consoled myself for the extra expense by fixing my thoughts upon the opportunity that conformity to the customs of the house gives me of studying the table-manners of my companions, and of observing the French nature at a peculiarly physiological moment, the moment when the satisfaction of the taste, which is the governing quality in its composition, produces a kind of exhalation, an intellectual transpiration, which, though light and perhaps invisible to a superficial spectator, is nevertheless appreciable by a properly adjusted instrument.

I have adjusted my instrument very satisfactorily (I mean the one I carry in my good square German head), and I am not afraid of losing a single drop of this valuable fluid, as it condenses itself upon the plate of my observation.  A prepared surface is what I need, and I have prepared my surface.

Unfortunately here, also, I find the individual native in the minority.  There are only four French persons in the house—the individuals concerned in its management, three of whom are women, and one a man.  This preponderance of the feminine element is, however, in itself characteristic, as I need not remind you what an abnormally—developed part this sex has played in French history.  The remaining figure is apparently that of a man, but I hesitate to classify him so superficially.  He appears to me less human than simian, and whenever I hear him talk I seem to myself to have paused in the street to listen to the shrill clatter of a hand-organ, to which the gambols of a hairy homunculus form an accompaniment.

I mentioned to you before that my expectation of rough usage, in consequence of my German nationality, had proved completely unfounded.  No one seems to know or to care what my nationality is, and I am treated, on the contrary, with the civility which is the portion of every traveller who pays the bill without scanning the items too narrowly.  This, I confess, has been something of a surprise to me, and I have not yet made up my mind as to the fundamental cause of the anomaly.  My determination to take up my abode in a French interior was largely dictated by the supposition that I should be substantially disagreeable to its inmates.  I wished to observe the different forms taken by the irritation that I should naturally produce; for it is under the influence of irritation that the French character most completely expresses itself.  My presence, however, does not appear to operate as a stimulus, and in this respect I am materially disappointed.  They treat me as they treat every one else; whereas, in order to be treated differently, I was resigned in advance to be treated worse.  I have not, as I say, fully explained to myself this logical contradiction; but this is the explanation to which I tend.  The French are so exclusively occupied with the idea of themselves, that in spite of the very definite image the German personality presented to them by the war of 1870, they have at present no distinct apprehension of its existence.  They are not very sure that there are any Germans; they have already forgotten the convincing proofs of the fact that were presented to them nine years ago.  A German was something disagreeable, which they determined to keep out of their conception of things.  I therefore think that we are wrong to govern ourselves upon the hypothesis of the revanche; the French nature is too shallow for that large and powerful plant to bloom in it.

The English-speaking specimens, too, I have not been willing to neglect the opportunity to examine; and among these I have paid special attention to the American varieties, of which I find here several singular examples.  The two most remarkable are a young man who presents all the characteristics of a period of national decadence; reminding me strongly of some diminutive Hellenised Roman of the third century.  He is an illustration of the period of culture in which the faculty of appreciation has obtained such a preponderance over that of production that the latter sinks into a kind of rank sterility, and the mental condition becomes analogous to that of a malarious bog.  I learn from him that there is an immense number of Americans exactly resembling him, and that the city of Boston, indeed, is almost exclusively composed of them.  (He communicated this fact very proudly, as if it were greatly to the credit of his native country; little perceiving the truly sinister impression it made upon me.)

What strikes one in it is that it is a phenomenon to the best of my knowledge—and you know what my knowledge is—unprecedented and unique in the history of mankind; the arrival of a nation at an ultimate stage of evolution without having passed through the mediate one; the passage of the fruit, in other words, from crudity to rottenness, without the interposition of a period of useful (and ornamental) ripeness.  With the Americans, indeed, the crudity and the rottenness are identical and simultaneous; it is impossible to say, as in the conversation of this deplorable young man, which is one and which is the other; they are inextricably mingled.  I prefer the talk of the French homunculus; it is at least more amusing.

It is interesting in this manner to perceive, so largely developed, the germs of extinction in the so-called powerful Anglo-Saxon family.  I find them in almost as recognisable a form in a young woman from the State of Maine, in the province of New England, with whom I have had a good deal of conversation.  She differs somewhat from the young man I just mentioned, in that the faculty of production, of action, is, in her, less inanimate; she has more of the freshness and vigour that we suppose to belong to a young civilisation.  But unfortunately she produces nothing but evil, and her tastes and habits are similarly those of a Roman lady of the lower Empire.  She makes no secret of them, and has, in fact, elaborated a complete system of licentious behaviour.  As the opportunities she finds in her own country do not satisfy her, she has come to Europe “to try,” as she says, “for herself.”  It is the doctrine of universal experience professed with a cynicism that is really most extraordinary, and which, presenting itself in a young woman of considerable education, appears to me to be the judgment of a society.

Another observation which pushes me to the same induction—that of the premature vitiation of the American population—is the attitude of the Americans whom I have before me with regard to each other.  There is another young lady here, who is less abnormally developed than the one I have just described, but who yet bears the stamp of this peculiar combination of incompleteness and effeteness.  These three persons look with the greatest mistrust and aversion upon each other; and each has repeatedly taken me apart and assured me, secretly, that he or she only is the real, the genuine, the typical American.  A type that has lost itself before it has been fixed—what can you look for from this?

Add to this that there are two young Englanders in the house, who hate all the Americans in a lump, making between them none of the distinctions and favourable comparisons which they insist upon, and you will, I think, hold me warranted in believing that, between precipitate decay and internecine enmities, the English-speaking family is destined to consume itself; and that with its decline the prospect of general pervasiveness, to which I alluded above, will brighten for the deep-lunged children of the Fatherland!

CHAPTER IX

October 22d

Dear Mother—I am off in a day or two to visit some new country; I haven’t yet decided which.  I have satisfied myself with regard to France, and obtained a good knowledge of the language.  I have enjoyed my visit to Madame de Maisonrouge deeply, and feel as if I were leaving a circle of real friends.  Everything has gone on beautifully up to the end, and every one has been as kind and attentive as if I were their own sister, especially Mr. Verdier, the French gentleman, from whom I have gained more than I ever expected (in six weeks), and with whom I have promised to correspond.  So you can imagine me dashing off the most correct French letters; and, if you don’t believe it, I will keep the rough draft to show you when I go back.

The German gentleman is also more interesting, the more you know him; it seems sometimes as if I could fairly drink in his ideas.  I have found out why the young lady from New York doesn’t like me!  It is because I said one day at dinner that I admired to go to the Louvre.  Well, when I first came, it seemed as if I did admire everything!

Tell William Platt his letter has come.  I knew he would have to write, and I was bound I would make him!  I haven’t decided what country I will visit yet; it seems as if there were so many to choose from.  But I shall take care to pick out a good one, and to meet plenty of fresh experiences.