PLAZA HOTEL, NEW YORK
BACK IN NEW YORK, PLAZA HOTEL.
DEAREST MAMMA,—All our preparations are made, and we start for the West by Niagara Falls, which I have always wanted to see. The Vicomte is coming with us, and our charming Senator, Elias P. Arden. So I am sure we shall have an agreeable time. "Lola" and the husband have already started, and will join us at Los Angeles from San Francisco; and the Senator says he is "in touch" with Mr. Renour, and he hopes he will "be along" by the time we get to the private car.
These few days in New York have confirmed our opinion of everyone's extraordinary kindness and hospitality. All their peculiarities are just caused by being so young a nation; they are quite natural; whatever their real feelings are come out. As children are touchy, so are they, and as children boast, so do they, and just as children's hearts are warm and generous, so are theirs. So I think this quality of youth is a splendid one, don't you, Mamma?
Valerie's set are practically the same as ours at home in their tone, and way of living, and amusements, so I have not told you anything special of them, the only difference being we never worry in the least about what people think of us, and when we talk seriously it is of politics, and they of Wall Street affairs, which shows, doesn't it, that such things are more interesting to them than the making of laws. We have not heard politics talked about in any class in New York. Attacks on the President often, because he is said to have interfered with trusts by probing their methods, which gets back to the vital point of dollars and cents. People will speak for and against him for hours, but not from a political point of view, and abstract political discussions we have never heard.
I have not yet grasped the difference between "Democrat" and "Republican," and so I don't know if it is just the same as at home, that whichever is Radical wants to snatch each one for his own hand and does not care a rush about the nation; while whichever is Conservative cares nothing for personal advancement—having arrived there already—so has time and experience to look ahead and think of the country.
If you had a delicate baby, Mamma, would not you rather give it into the hands of a thoroughly trained nurse than an ignorant aspiring nursery maid taking her first place, who was more likely to be thinking of the head nurse's wages she was going to get than her duties to the child? That is how I look upon the parties at home, but here I expect it is more as the Whigs and Tories were, each equal in class and experience, only holding different views. I should like to have a peep about five hundred years ahead. I am sure the ignorant nurse-maids will have killed our baby by then, and we shall be a wretched down-trodden commune, while they will be a splendidly governed aristocratic nation under one autocratic king!
I have not told you a thing about the Park, or the general aspect of the houses; we are rushed so it is hard to write. But the Park is a perfectly charming place, as nice as the Bois, and much nicer than our attempt that way, and everyone who goes there seems to be out on a holiday. Fifth Avenue runs beside it like our Park Lane, beginning at Fifty-ninth Street, and about every five years people have to move further up, because of the encroaching shops. So it hardly seems worth while to spend millions on building white marble palaces which may be torn down or converted in so short a time. Nothing is allowed to last. Heaps of the mansions are perfectly beautiful in style, and many simple as well, which is always the prettiest; but you can meet Francois Premier Castles, and Gothic Halls, and all sorts of mixed freaks, too, in half an hour's walk, and it seems to me a pity they can't use their rollers and just cart these into the side streets. But if I were rebuilding Valmond House I would get an American architect to do it for me, and on the American principle, that is, I should get him to study all the best they have done and then "go one better!"
Unless you are quite in the poor parts every creature in the streets is spruce and well dressed; men and women have that look of their things being brushed and ironed to the last state of perfection. And if it is the fashion in Paris to have hats two feet across they will have them a yard; but as they all have the same, one's eye gets accustomed to it, and it does not look ridiculous.
The longer one stays the more one admires that extraordinary quality of "go"—a mental alertness and lucidity they have immeasurably beyond European nations; very few people are intellectual, but all are intelligent and advancing. No one browses like such hundreds do at home, and all are much more amusing companions in consequence.
Last night we went to see China Town with Valerie's brother and some other young men, and two or three women. Valerie would not come because she has done it before and it bores her, and no American woman deliberately does what she finds wearisome. They are sensible. First we dined at the Café Lafayette, which is almost down town, and near Washington Square, and then started in automobiles which we left in the Bowery. One always thought that was a kind of cut throat Whitechapel, did not one? But it is most quiet and respectable, so is China Town, and I am sure we need not have had the two detectives who accompanied us.
Outside there is nothing very lurid to look at. The Mayor met us at the opening of the street, a most entertaining character of what would answer to our Coster class I suppose. He spoke pure Bowery-Irish-Coster-American slang, which the detectives translated for us. It was about this: That he had seen English Lords before, and they weren't half bad when you knew 'em, and he took a particular fancy to Octavia because he said "her Nobs" (his late wife, or one of them) had red hair, too, and "ginger for pluck." He had several teeth missing, lost in fights, I suppose, and a perfectly delicious sense of humour. I wish we could have understood all he said, but our host insinuated it was just as well not! He led us first to "the theatre"—a den underground, with the stage still lower at one end, where a Chinese play was going on. The atmosphere was an unbelievable mixture of heat and smell. And wouldn't you hate to be a Chinese woman, Mamma, packed away in a sort of pen at one corner with all the other women and children and not allowed to sit with the men. We went in there, too, for as long as we could stand it. The audience were too quaint, not in their national dress, but ordinary clothes and pigtails; you couldn't have been sure they were human beings, or of what sex.
The play seemed to a thrilling one as far as we could see; they had just got to a part where the whole company were going to be beheaded. One of our party felt faint from the heat, and no wonder, so we continued our travels. We descended a kind of ladder near the door, into the bowels of the earth; and I was glad it was almost pitch dark, because Gaston was just below me and made the greatest fuss of the necessity of putting each of my feet safely on the steps for me; and once towards the bottom I am sure he kissed my instep, but as it might have been a bundle of tow which was sticking out on the last step, brushing against me, I did not like to say anything to him about it. We crossed some kind of rat hole rooms in utter darkness, and here one respectful brotherly arm, and one passionate, entreprenant one came round my waist! And while in my right ear the voice of Valerie's brother said kindly, "I'm obliged to hold on to you or you'll have an awful fall"—in my left Gaston was whispering, "Je vous adore, vous savez; n'allez pas si vite!" So I had to be very angry with him, and clung to Valerie's brother, who toward the end of the evening got into being quite a cousin instead of an aunt or father.
We had been burrowing under the auditorium, and presently found ourselves in a large cellar where a Chinese was cooking on a brazier an unspeakable melange of dog, fish, and rat for the actors' supper, with not a scrap of ventilation anywhere!! Finally, up some steps, we emerged behind the scenes, and saw all the performers dressing—rows of false beards and wonderful garments hanging all around the walls; the most indescribable smell of opium, warm eastern humanity, and grease paint, and no air! A tiny baby was there being played with by its proud father. Their lung capacity must be quite different to ours, because if we had not quickly returned I am sure some of us would have fainted. I felt strangely excited; it had a weird, fierce effect. What a fatal mysterious nation the Chinese! Unlike any others on earth. I did not much care who held me going back. I only wanted to rush to the open air, and when we had climbed up again and got outside in the street, we all staggered a little and could not speak.
When breath returned, further down the street, we recommenced burrowing into a passage to the opium den, and this was a most wonderful and terrible sight; a room with a stove in it, not more than ten feet square and about eight feet high, no perceptible ventilation but the door, which the detective put his foot in to keep a little open; a raised platform along one side of the place, and on it four Chinamen lying in different stages of the effects of opium. The first one's eyes were beginning to glaze, the pipe had fallen from his hand, and he was staring in front of him, and clutching some sheets of paper with Chinese writing on them in one hand, a ghastly smile of extraordinary bliss on his poor thin face. He was "happy and dreamin'," the detective told us. I do wonder what about, don't you, Mamma? The next had just begun to smoke, and was angry at our entrance because we let in some air! The detectives made him give us the pipe to smell, and we watched the way it was smoked, the man looking sullen and fierce and resentful, crouching like a beast ready to spring. So Valerie's brother and Gaston both thought it their duty to take care of me. The next man was half asleep, also smoking, and the fourth what they call "quite sick." He was the most dreadful of all, as he might have been a corpse except for the rising and falling of his chest. The Mayor told us, with the most amusing reflections upon this serious subject, that he would lie like that for forty-eight hours and then wake. A fearful looking creature crouched by the stove, cooking some more dog, or preparing something for the opium; and a glaring piece of scarlet cloth hung down from a rail at the top. There were some wicked long knives lying about, and the whole thing, lit up by the light of one lantern, was a grim picture of horror I shall never forget and hope never to see again. And this is called pleasure! What a mercy, Mamma, our idea of joy is different. I am glad to have seen these strange things, but I never want to again.
Everyone's head swam from the smell of the opium, and Tom said he was rather sorry he had let us go there because of that; but Octavia told him not to be ridiculous; experience is what we had come to America for, and this is one of the sights.
After that we just had fun, going to a joss-house to have our fortunes told, where a quaint priest and acolyte went through all sorts of comic mysteries, and finally paired Octavia off with one of the detectives for her fate! (Tom was furious!) and me with Valerie's brother, and Gaston looked in despair at that! Then after buying curiosities at the curio shop, we returned to the automobiles and went to Delmonico's to supper. But the opium had got into our brains I think, for we could only tell gruesome stories, and all felt "afraid to go home in the dark!"
And now, Mamma, in case you have been worrying over us going into awful places, I may as well tell you that at the end of supper our host informed us that the whole show of the opium den had been got up for our benefit, and was not the real thing at all!!! But whether this is true or no I can't say; if it was "got up" it was awfully well done, and I don't want to see any realler.
We can't get enough "drawing-rooms" on the train for everybody to-morrow, so Octavia and I shall have one, and the senator and either Tom or the Vicomte the other, and whoever is left out will have to sleep in the general place. I believe it is too odd, but I will tell you all about it when I have seen it.—If Harry writes to you and asks about me, just say I am enjoying myself awfully, and say I am thinking of becoming a naturalised American! That ought to bring him back at once. I have been dying to cable and make it up with him, but of course as I have determined not to, I can't. I am sorry to hear Hurstbridge got under the piano and then banged the German Governess's head as she tried to pull him out; but what can you expect, Mamma? His temper is the image of Harry's.
Kiss the angels for me, both of them!
Your affectionate daughter,
ELIZABETH.
NIAGARA
NIAGARA.
DEAREST MAMMA,—We got here this morning after such a night!—The sleeping cars are too amusing. Picture to yourself the arrangement of seats I told you about going to the Spleists, with a piece put in between to make into a bed, and then another bed arranged on top, these going all down each side and just divided from the aisle by green curtains; so that if A. likes to take a top berth and B. an underneath one, they can bend over their edges, and chat together all night, and no one would know except for the bump in the curtains. But fancy having to crouch up and dress on one's bed! And when Octavia and I peeped out of our drawing-room this morning we saw heaps of unattractive looking arms and legs protruding, while the struggle to get into clothes was going on.
A frightful thing happened to poor Agnès. Tom's valet, who took our tickets, did not get enough, not understanding the ways, and Tom and the senator and the Vicomte had tossed up which two were to have the drawing-room, and Tom lost; so when Hopkins, who is a timid creature, found a berth did not mean a section, he of course gave up his without saying anything to Tom, and as the conductor told him there was not another on the train he wandered along and at last came to Agnès's. She had a lower berth next our door, and was away undressing me. Hopkins says he thought it was an unoccupied one the conductor had overlooked, so he took it, and when Agnès got back and crawled in in the dark she found him there!! There was a dreadful scene!! We heard Hopkins scream, and I believe he ran for his life, and no one knows where he slept.
Agnès said it was too ridiculous and "très mauvais gout" on his part to make such a fuss over "un petit accident de voyage." "Je puis assurer Madame la Marquise," she said, "que s'il était resté c'eut été la même chose. Son type ne me dit rien!" At the same time she does not think these trains "comme il faut!"
We were just in time for an early breakfast when we arrived at this hotel, and the quaintest coloured gentlemen waited on us; they were rather aged, and had a shambling way of dragging their feet, but the most sympathetic manners, just suited to the four honeymoon pairs who were seated at little tables round. That was a curious coincidence, wasn't it, Mamma, to find four pairs in one hotel in that state. None of the bridegrooms were over twenty-five, and the brides varied from about eighteen to twenty-eight; we got the senator to ask about them, and one lot had been married a week, and they each read a paper propped up against their cups, and did not speak much, and you would have thought they were quite indifferent; but from where I sat I could see their right and left hands clasped under the table! Another pair with a dour Scotch look ate an enormous meal in solemn silence, and then they went off and played tennis! Their wedding took place three days ago!! The third had been there a fortnight, and seemed very jaded and bored, while the last were mere children, and only married yesterday! She was too sweet, and got crimson when she poured out his tea, and asked him if he took sugar? I suppose up till now they had only been allowed nursery bread and milk.
I don't believe I should like to have had my honeymoon breakfasts in public, would you, Mamma? Because I remember Harry always wanted—but I really must not let myself think of him or all my pride will vanish, and I shall not be able to resist cabling.
I find the senator too attractive. He does not speak much generally, and never boasts of anything he has done. We have to drag stories out of him, but he must have had such a life, and I am sure there is some tragedy in his past connected with his wife. He has such a whimsical sense of humour, and yet underneath there is a ring of melancholy sometimes. I know he and I are going to be the greatest friends. Gaston is getting seriously in love, which is perfectly ridiculous; he almost threatened to throw himself into the falls when we went to look at them; but fortunately I said only the very curly-haired could look well when picked up drowned, so that put him off.
I was not half so impressed with the falls as I ought to have been. They don't seem so high as in the pictures, and the terrible buildings on one side distract one so it seems as if even the water can't be natural, and must be just arranged by machinery. But it was fun going under them, and those oilskin coats and caps are most becoming. You go down in a lift and then walk along passages scooped out of the rock until you are underneath the volume of water, which pours over in front of you like a curtain. It was here Gaston suggested his suicide, and all because I had told the senator that he was to arrange for us to have a drive alone in the afternoon, and he overheard in the echo the place makes. I had never asked him to drive alone he said, and I said, certainly not, the senator and I would talk philosophy, whereas he would make love to me, I knew, and it would not be safe. That pacified him a good deal, and as I had been rather unsympathetic and horrid all the morning, I was lovely to him for the rest of the day; and he is really quite a dear, Mamma, as I have always told you.
Octavia says she thinks it rather hard my grabbing everybody like this, and she had wanted the senator for herself on our trip, so we have agreed to share him, and Tom says it is mean no one has been asked for him. So the senator has wired to "Lola" to bring two cousins to meet us at Los Angeles. He says they are the sweetest girls in the world, and would keep anyone alive. I am rather longing to get there and begin our fun. After the falls we did the rapids, and they impressed me far more deeply; they are rushing, wicked-looking things if you like, Mamma, and how anyone ever swam them I can't imagine. The spring is all too beautiful, only just beginning, and some of the bends of the river and views are exquisite. I felt quite romantic on the way back, and allowed Gaston to repeat poetry to me. We are just starting to get on to Chicago, so good-bye, dear Mamma.
Love from your affectionate daughter,
ELIZABETH.
P.S.—Octavia says she thinks I am leading Gaston on, but I don't, do you, Mamma? Considering I stop him every time he begins any long sentence about love—what more can I do, eh?
CHICAGO.
CHICAGO.
DEAREST MAMMA,—We had such an interesting dinner on the train the night we left Niagara, and here we are. A millionaire travelling also, whom the senator knew, joined us for the meal, so we sat four at one table, and Gaston and Octavia alone at the other side. He was such a wonderful person, the first of just this kind we have met yet, although we are told there are more like him in Pittsburg and Chicago.
He was thick-set everywhere, a bull neck and fierce moustache and bushy eyebrows, and gave one the impression of sledge-hammer force. The whole character seemed to be so dominated and obsessed by an immense personal laudation, that his conversation created in our minds the doubt that qualities which required so much vaunting could really be there. It was his wonderful will which had won his game, his wonderful diplomacy, his wonderful knowledge of men, his clever perception, his supreme tact; in short, his everything in the world. The slightest show of a contrary opinion to anything he said was instantly pounced upon and annihilated. I do wonder, Mamma, if two of his sort got together what their conversation would be about? Would they shout one another down, each saying he was perfect, and so end in thunder or silence? Or would they contradict each other immediately and come to blows, or would they realise it was no use boasting to one of their own species, and so talk business or be quiet?
We, being strangers, were splendid victims for him, and I am sure he spent a dinner of pure joy. After each speech of self appreciation he would look round the table in a triumphant challenging way, and say, "Say, senator, isn't that so?" and the dear senator, with a twinkle in his grey eye, would reply:
"Why, certainly, Governor." (He was a governor of some place once, the senator knew.)
Finally he got on to his marvellous cleverness in the training of the young. He had no children himself, he said, but he had "raised" two young men in his office, and as a proof of their wonderful astuteness from his teaching, "I give you my word, Ma'am," he said, "either of them could draw a contract now for me, out of which I could slip at any moment!!!"
Isn't that a superb idea, Mamma! And the complete frankness with which it was said! What we would call sharp practice he considered "smart," and no doubt that is the way to get rich; for when he had gone on to the smoking car, the senator told us he was five times a millionaire, and really a good fellow underneath.
"We've got to have all sorts to make a nation, and he's the kind of machine that does the rough-hewing," he said. "He did no bragging when he was under dog; he just bottled it up and pushed on, but it was that spirit which caused him to rise. Now he's made good, won his millions, and it bursts out."—(It certainly did!)
The Senator always sees straight. He said also: "He rough-hews everything he handles, including his neighbours' nerves; he has no mercy or pity or consideration for anyone serving him, and yet he's the kindest heart towards children and animals, and the good he does to them is about the only thing he don't brag about."
It interested me immensely, but Tom had got so ruffled that I am sure even his sense of humour could not have kept him from contradicting Craik Purdy, his name is—Craik V. Purdy, I mean!
The Senator told us lots more about him and his methods, succeeding by sheer brute force and shouting all opposition down. Don't you wish, Mamma, we had some like him at home to deal with the socialists? These men are the real autocrats of the world, even though America is a republic. But wouldn't it be frightful to be married to a person like that! Octavia, who even in the noise of the train had heard some of it, asked the Senator what the wife was like, and he told us she had been a girl of his own class who had never risen with him, and was a rare exception in American women, who rise quicker than the men as a rule.
"She's been every sort of drawback to him," he said, "and yet he is almighty kind to her and covers her with diamonds; and she is a dullish sort of woman with a cold in her head."
Octavia said at once that was the kind she wanted to see in Chicago. Of what use to meet more charming and refined people like in New York or Philadelphia. She wanted to sample the "rough-hewn." And we both felt, Mamma, one must have a nice streak in one to go on being kind to a person who has a continual cold in her head.
The Senator said he would arrange a luncheon party for us in Chicago unlike anything we had had in any place yet, and it is coming off to-morrow. But first I must tell you of Detroit, where we stopped the night before last, and of our arrival here. The whole train goes over in a ferry boat from the Canadian to the American side and dinner and screaming tram cars under the window are the only distinct memories I have after our arrival, until next day, when we took a motor and went for a drive.
Detroit is really the most perfectly laid out city one could imagine, and such an enchanting park and lake,—infinitely better than any town I know in Europe. It ought to be a paradise in about fifty years when it has all matured. That is where the Americans are clever, in the beautiful laying-out of their towns; but then, as I said, they have not old débris to contend with, though I shall always think it looks queer and unfinished to see houses standing just in a mown patch unseparated from the road by any fence. I should hate the idea of strangers being able to peep into my windows.
We left about twelve, after being interviewed by several reporters in the hall of the hotel. These halls are apparently meeting places for countless men, simply crammed like one could have imagined a portico in the Roman days,—not people necessarily staying there, but herds of others from outside. The type gets thicker as one leaves New York. It reminds one of a funny man I once saw in the pantomime who put on about six suits, one after another, growing gradually larger, though no taller or fatter—just thick. All these in the hall were meaty, not one with that lean look of the pictures of "Uncle Sam," but more like our "John Bull," only not portly and complacent as he is, but just thick all over, at about the three coat stage; thick noses, thick hair, thick arms, thick legs, and nearly invariably clean-shaven and keen looking. The Senator said they were the ordinary business people and might any of them rise to be President of the Republic. We are perfectly overcome with admiration and respect for their enormous advancing and adaptive power, because just to look at we should not call these of the Senator's class. But think what brains they must have, and what vitality; and those things matter a great deal more than looks to a country.
The Senator said the type would culminate in Chicago, and gradually get finer again out in the far West. And he seemed right, from the impression we got of the crowd in this hotel. It was rather like a Christmas nightmare, when everyone had turned into a plum pudding, or those gingerbread men the old woman by the Wavebeach pier used to sell. Do you remember, Mamma? Perfectly square and solid. They are ahead of Detroit, and at the six coat stage here. Probably all as good as gold, and kind and nice and full of virtues; but for strangers who don't know all these things, just to look at, they make one think one is dreaming.
Do you suppose it is, if they have to be so much among pork and meat generally, perhaps that makes them solid? We did not know a soul to speak to, nor did the Senator either, though he said he was acquainted with many nice people in Chicago; so perhaps they were just travellers like us after all, and we have no right to judge of a place by them.
We supped—we had arrived very late—and watched the world in from the theatres. We don't know of what class they were, or of what society, only they were not the least like New York. The women were, some of them, very wonderfully dressed, though not that exquisite Paris look of the New Yorkers, and they had larger hats and brighter colours; and numbers of them were what the Senator calls "homely." We were very silent,—naturally, we did not like to say our thoughts aloud to the Senator, an American; but he spoke of it to us himself.
He said his eye, accustomed to the slender lean cowboys and miners, found them just as displeasing as he was sure we must. "Lordy," he said, "they look a set of qualifying prize-fighters gorged with sausage-meat, and then soaked in cocktails." And though that sounds frightfully coarse to write, Mamma, it is rather true. Then he added, "And yet some of the brightest brains of our country have come from Chicago. I guess they kept pretty clear of this crowd."
One of the strangest things is that no one is old, never more than sixty and generally younger; the majority from eighteen to thirty-five, and also, something we have remarked everywhere, everyone seems happy. You do not see weary, tired, bored faces, like in Europe, and no one is shabby or dejected, and they are all talking and drinking and laughing with the same intent concentrated force they bring to everything they do, and it is simply splendid.
To-morrow we are going to drive about and see everything. The aristocracy live in fine houses just outside the town, we are told, and the Senator has arranged with Mr. Craik Purdy for us all to go and have lunch with him in his mansion. This is the party he promised us, which would be different to what we had seen before, and we are looking forward to it. And there is one thing I feel sure: even if they are odd, we shall find a generous welcome, original ideas, and kind hearts; and the more I see the more I think these qualities matter most.
Now I must go to bed, dearest Mamma.
You haven't heard from Harry, I suppose? Because if you have you might let me know.
Your affectionate daughter,
ELIZABETH.
GOING WEST
In the train going West.
DEAREST MAMMA,—Forgive this shaky writing, but I had no time before we left, and I feel I must tell you at once about our luncheon at the Purdy Castle, in case anything gets dulled in my memory. It was a unique experience. We spent the morning seeing the town, an immense busy place with colossal blocks of houses, and some really fine architecture, all giving the impression of a mighty prosperous and advancing nation, and quite the best shops one could wish for, not too crowded, and polite assistants—even at the ribbon counter!
Octavia and I made ourselves look as smart as we could in travelling dresses, because there would be no time to change after the lunch; we had to go straight to the train. I always think it is such impertinence imposing your customs upon other nations when you are travelling among them, like the English people who will go to the Paris restaurants without hats, and one Englishwoman we met at a party at Sherry's in New York in a draggled tweed skirt and coat, when all the other women were in long afternoon dresses. One should do as one's hosts do, but we could not help it this time and did not look at all bad considering.
However, when we got there we felt we were indeed out of it! But I must begin from the very door-step.
We drove a little way beyond the town to rows of dwelling mansions more or less important and growing in magnificence until we arrived at one inside some gates, a cross between a robber's castle on the stage, and a Henri III. château, mixed with a "little English Gothic." Huge, un-nameable animals were carved on top of the gates. Tom said the fathers of them must have been "gazeekas," and their mothers "slithy toves," out of "Through the Looking-glass." They were Mr. Purdy's crest, we suppose. Then came a short gravel path and a robber's castle, nail-studded door. All the down-stairs windows had the shutters shut, so we were rather nervous ringing the bell in case there had been a death since our invitation came; but the door was opened immediately by a German butler—one of those people one sees at sea-side hotels, who have come over to learn English, with a slow sort of walk and stentorian breathing.
The hall was full of pictures in the widest gold frames, all sorts: landscapes, portraits, cats, dogs, groups of still life, good, bad, and indifferent massed together on a wall covered with large-patterned scarlet and gilt Japanese leather paper. Guarding the doors and staircase were imitation suits of armour on dummy men, standing under some really beautiful Toledo blades crossed above their heads. Then, through crimson plush curtains with gold appliqué Florentine patterned borders, we were ushered into the drawing-room.
It was so original! Think, Mamma, of a sarcophagus for a drawing-room! Stone walls and floor, tombstone mantlepieces (mixed Gothic), really good Persian rugs, and the very most carved, brand new gilt Louis Philippe suite of furniture, helped out by mammoth armchairs and sofa, covered in gold brocade. These had the same shape and look for furniture as the men in the hotel hall had for men, so colossally stuffed out and large. The Vicomte said, "Dieu! Un salon d'Hippopotames!" It was a glorious sunny day, but from the hall onwards all daylight had been excluded, and the drawing-room was a blaze of electric light, flashing from countless gilt branches; while the guests to meet us were drawn up on the hearth rug, the women in full restaurant evening dress, a little decolleté, and hats, and glittering with jewels.
Octavia and I felt miserably cheap creatures. Mr. Craik V. Purdy, simply gorgeous about waistcoat and watchchain, presented us to his wife, a short, red-haired woman (I do dislike red hair, don't you, Mamma?). She was very stout, but I don't understand why she was such a "drawback." She had the jolliest face and laugh, even if her voice was the voice of the Lusitania's siren.
The customs are so quaint! She introduced us to each guest (not the guests to us!) and they each repeated our names after her like this:
"Lady Chevenix and Lady Valmond, I want to present you to Mrs. Colonel Prodgers." Then Mrs. Colonel Prodgers repeated, "Lady Chevenix, Lady Valmond," and so on all down the line, until our poor names rang in our heads; and Tom and the Senator and the Vicomte just the same. The company were about seven women besides our hostess, and only three young, the others verging on forty; and all the men were husbands, whom the wives spoke of as "Mr." So and So when they mentioned them—just as the townspeople do when they come out to the Conservative meetings or bazaars at home; and the husbands did the same. But they do this in New York even, unless in the very highest set; no man is spoken of by his wife as "Bob" or "Charlie" or "my husband;" always "Mr." So and So.
Is it not odd, Mamma, that they who are so wonderfully quick and adaptive should not have noticed that this is a purely middle class peculiarity? Mr. Purdy had just time to tell us he had paid $40,000 for a large Dutch picture hanging against the Gothic stone of one panel of the wall, and $50,000 for a Gainsborough on the next (yes, Mamma, a beautiful powdered lady in a white robe was smiling down with whimsical sorrow upon us). Then luncheon was announced and we went in.
The dining-room had been decorated, he told us, a year or two ago, when taste was even different to what it is now! And he was thinking of altering it and having it pure Louis XIV. At present it was composed of saddle-bag coverings, varnished mahogany and a stencilled fleur-de-lys wall with crossed battle-axes upon it, between pictures and some china plates, while the table was lit by two huge lamps from the ceiling, shaded by old gold silk shades with frills. It was as gay as possible, and the time flew. Here the implements to eat with were more varied and numerous than even at the Spleists, and the tablecloths more lacy, and quantities of gold dishes full of almonds and olives and candies and other nice things, were by one's plate, and one could eat them all through the meal. Everyone else did, so we did, too, Mamma! and I think it is a splendid idea. Our host spent his time in telling, first Octavia, then me, of his fortune and possessions, and how there was no picture in Europe he could not buy if he wished it, and he intended to start a gallery. Octavia said he was quite right, as he evidently had a most original taste; and he was delighted.
The cold in the wife's head could be heard quite plainly even where we were, and the host shouted so kindly: "Say, Anabel, be careful of that draught."
Fancy an English husband bothering to think of a draught after a catarrh had been there for fifteen years!
I admired her diamond dog collar and splendid pearls, and he replied with open-hearted pride, "They came from Tiffany's in New York, Ma'am. I don't hold with buying foreign goods for American ladies; Mrs. Purdy has got as first-class stones as any Princess in the world, and they are every one purchased in America!"
The man at my other hand was very young, but even so a husband. I asked him how it was all the men were married, and he said he "didn't kinder know"; it was a habit they dropped into on leaving college; but for his part he though perhaps it was a pity not to be able to have a look round a little longer. And then he said thoughtfully, "I guess you're right. I don't recollect many single men. Why, there's not one here!"
And I said we had found it like that everywhere; they all seemed married except in Philadelphia.
"But you see we can quit if we want to," he added, "though we don't start out with that idea." And probably they don't, but I think it must give an underneath, comforting sort of feeling to know, when you are trotting up the aisle, or walking across the drawing-room to a lovely rigged-up altar to swear fidelity to the person who is waiting for you there, that if he annoys you in a fortnight, you can get free; and all the experience gained, and not a stain upon your character. I do wish we were half as sensible in England.
Just think of it, Mamma! I could have divorced Harry by now for quarrelling with me. I might then marry someone else, divorce him, and then presently make up with Harry and have the fun of getting married all over again. Just imagine what stories we could then tell one another! I could say "My intermediate husband never did such and such," or, "Jack would not have spoken in that tone; he made love quite differently;" and so on, and Harry could say, "You are far sweeter than Clara; I am glad we have returned to one another." Don't you think it is a splendid plan? Or are you ridiculously old fashioned like most English people, who think their worn out old laws the only ones in the universe?
I hope I am not being impertinent, Mamma, to you, but really, after being in America for a while, where everything is so progressive, I get impatient with our solidity of thought. It is quite as wearisome to contemplate, as the Chicago solid body is unattractive to look at.
When we got back the Senator told us that the very young man I had been talking to had had a quarrel with his wife, and they were actually settling the divorce proceedings when Mr. Purdy's invitation to meet the English travellers came the evening before, and they had sent off the lawyers and made it up to be able to come, and now they may go on happily for another two years, he says!
Our host told us all sorts of interesting things of his greatness, and how acquired. He is really a wonderful person, almost a socialist in politics, and a complete autocrat in his life and methods. Tom and the Vicomte sat at each side of the hostess, of course, and they told us she practically did not hear a word they said, she was so anxious that the servants should do their duty and ply them with food.
"Mr. Purdy would never forgive me if you didn't get just what you fancy," she said; and however quaint the idea, the spirit which prompted it was so kind; they said they just gorged everything which was put in front of them, to please her.
"An admirable woman, and first class wife," Tom told Octavia afterwards; so she said she would ask Mr. Purdy to arrange a divorce and they would have an exchange, she becoming Mrs. Purdy and Mrs. Purdy Countess of Chevenix for a while; but Tom would not agree to that. Men are selfish, aren't they, Mamma?
After lunch we were taken to see the pictures in the hall and different rooms, and some of them were really beautiful, and I have no doubt in a few years' time, when Mr. Purdy has travelled more, and educated his eye, he really will collect a gallery worth having, and eliminate the atrocities. His feeling was more to have a better collection than anyone else in Chicago, or indeed America, rather than the joy of the possession of the exquisite pictures themselves. But even this spirit gets together lovely things, which will benefit future, and more highly cultured people; so it all has good in it.
They were so kind we could hardly get away to catch our train, and we have promised to go again if ever we pass this way. The women after lunch talked among themselves, and were deeply intent and confidential when we got back to the drawing-room after seeing the pictures; but they made way for us and were most agreeable. All of them had set views on every subject, not any hesitation or indecision, and they all used each other's names in every sentence. They were full of practical common sense, and rigid virtue; and did not worry about intellectual conversation.
At this moment the Vicomte has peeped in to call Octavia and me to dinner; we were resting in our drawing-room. So I must stop. I will post this to-morrow when we get to a big station.
Your affectionate daughter,
ELIZABETH.
Morning.
P.S.—These sleeping cars are really wonderful. Such a thing happened last night! But it shows how comfortable the beds are, and how soundly people can sleep. At the station where we stopped after dinner, two couples got in, an uncle and nephew, married to an aunt and niece; only the uncle's wife was the niece, and the nephew's the aunt, a plain elderly person with a fierce commanding glance and a mole on her upper lip, while he was a nice-looking boy with droopy grey eyes. The train was very crowded, and they could only get two single berths—lower ones, but they are quite wide enough for two people to sleep in at a pinch. It appears the husbands went off to smoke while the wives undressed and got into bed, and when they returned the coloured conductor showed them to their places, naturally thinking, as they were the same name, the old ones were a pair and the young ones another. And fancy, Mamma, they never found out till the morning, when the whole car was awakened by the old lady's yells! And the old gentleman flew out like Hopkins and wanted to nearly murder the conductor. But it was not the least his fault, was it? And the nephew, such a nice, generous fellow, gave the poor nigger twenty-five dollars to make up for being roughly handled. The niece still slept on through all this noise, and Tom, who was passing at the time the old gentleman lifted the curtains to climb in there, said she looked the sweetest thing possible with her long eyelashes on her cheek.
The four had the next table to us at lunch, and they seemed all at sixes and sevens with one another, the elderly lady glaring at her young husband, and the uncle frowning at the niece, while the nephew had just the look of Hurstbridge when Mademoiselle scolds him unjustly. It was dreadful for them, wasn't it, Mamma? and not a soul to blame.
Still in the train.
DEAREST MAMMA,—You can't think what interesting country we are going through. We woke yesterday morning and peeped out about five to see the most perfect desolation one could imagine,—much more grim than the Egyptian desert: vast unending plains of uneven ground, with a rough dried drab grass in splodges, and high scrub. Not a bird or animal in all these hundreds of miles, only desolation; generally perfectly flat, but here and there rising ground and rough hills. The Senator says it is the end of the ranch country, but we have seen no sign of cattle or any beast, and what could they eat? At long intervals we have passed a few board shanties like card houses grouped together near the track; just fancy living there, Mamma! Even with the nicest young man in the world it would be a trial, wouldn't it? And those Mormons crossed it all in waggons! And we are finding it quite long in a train! It is still going on, and now the surface is a little different; low hills are sticking up just like elephants' backs, and the same colour; no ranches are here or any living thing. We get into our drawing-room, all of us, and the Senator tells us stories of his young days, too exciting, they must have been, when he came through here before all the railway was built. No wonder he is so splendid a character now, having had to be so strong and fearless all his life. Every word he says is interesting, and perfectly vivid and true; and his views on every subject that is discussed are common-sense and exact. He has no prejudices, and is not touchy. He can see his own nation's faults as well as ours, and his first thought is to appreciate the good qualities.
He says there is a very grave danger to the country in the liberty of the press, which has a most debasing influence by printing all the sensational news, and encouraging the interest in these things in the youthful mind. It must bring a paltry taint into the glorious freedom of the true American spirit, but that will right itself. He says: "They are too darned sane to suffer a scourge when once they begin to see its fruits." And while the rest were in the observation car after tea he talked to me of happiness. Happiness, he said, was the main and chief object in life, and yet nine-tenths of the people of the world throw it away for such imitation pleasure; and you can't often catch it again once you have lost it.
I asked him what the greatest was, and he said perfect happiness was to be close to the woman you loved. If that was impossible there were several substitutes of a secondary sort—your children, ambition, success, and even rest. Then his eyes grew all misty and sad, and he looked out on the desert, and at that moment we were passing a group of a few shanties close to the rails. They were tumbled down and deserted, and nearby lay the skeleton of a horse. "It was in just such a place as that, only a good bit farther west, I first saw my Hearts-ease," he said. "The boys called her 'Hearts-ease' because she was the sweetest English flower, drifted out to the mines with the people who had adopted her." He paused, and I slipped my hand into his, he looked so sad, and then he told me all the story, Mamma, and it has touched me so, I tell it to you.
He had gone to this small rough camp, about thirty miles short of the Great Eagles, with only ten cents in his pocket, from the ranch where he had been a cowboy. He had ridden for days, and there his horse had died. He crept up half dead, carrying his saddle bags, and these people, "human devils," he called them, who owned Hearts-ease, let him come in and lie in a shed. They kept a sort of a gambling den, all of the most primitive, and the worst rogues of the world congregated there in the evenings.
Hearts-ease was about sixteen, and they looked upon her as a promising decoy-duck, but she was "just the purest flower of the prairies," he said, and so they beat and starved her in consequence, for not falling in with their views.
That night when he lay in the straw, she crept out of some corner where she slept, and warned him not to remain, if he had gold in the bags, or they would certainly murder him before morning; and she gave him some water, and half her wretched supper, because he had been too tired to eat when he arrived. Then he told her he was only a poor cowboy, hoping to get on to the Great Eagles Camp and make his fortune; and they stayed there talking till dawn, and she bathed his poor feet, all bleeding from his long tramp, and must have been too sweet and adorable, Mamma. And when the morning came and her adopted parents found he was still there and had only ten cents to pay with, they tried to make him leave, and beat Hearts-ease before his eyes, which made him so mad he got out his gun (that means revolver) and would have shot the man, only Hearts-ease clung to him, and begged him not to. Then they called in some more brutes, who had been drinking and gambling all night in the bar, and overpowered him, and threw him out, and the girl, too, and said he might take her to hell with him, they would shelter her no more. And one of the brutes said he would fight him for her, and they made a ring and the brute tried to get his pistol off first; but it hit another man, and before he could shoot again, the Senator fired and wounded him in the side; and as he fell, and the others, angry at his hitting one of them, all began to quarrel together, the Senator and the girl slipped away, and ran and hid in the scrub. If you could have heard him telling all this, Mamma, in the dying light, his strong face and quiet voice so impressive! I shall never forget it. Well, the girl had brought some bread in a handkerchief, which he had not eaten, and they shared that together, and when it was dark they slept under the stars; and "by then I'd just grown to love her," he said, and "we were quite content to die together if we couldn't push on to the big camp; but we meant to make an almighty try."
They did get there, finally, and the sheriff married them, and here his voice broke a little and was so low I could hardly hear him. There were no two people ever so happy, he said. He built a little shack of boards not twelve feet long, "way up on the mountain," and she kept it like a new pin, and was dainty and sweet and loving, and when he came in from the mines she would run to meet him "as gentle as a fawn," and he never wanted to go to the saloons or drink like the other men, "though I was always pretty handy with my gun," he said, "and had been through the whole ugly show."
And presently he began to make a little money and would contrive to give her small things for the house; it gave her more pleasure than anything in the world to make it pretty, so that the little shed was the admiration of all the other miners' wives. And once he was able to buy some flower seeds, and she grew a pansy in a pot because there is no green thing in that barren land, and she tended it and watched it as it came through the earth, and no one was so joyous as she. "It hurts me to look at pansies even now," he said; and I was glad, Mamma, it was getting dark, because I felt the tears coming in my eyes. They were perfectly happy like this for about three years, and then Lola was born and they were happier still; but before that she used to take him up on the mountains, above their shack, to look down at the camps, and watch the stars, and she always used to see things in the future—how they would be very rich, and he would be a great man. "And this is where blood tells," he said. "She was nothing but the love-child of some young English lord, drifted out to our land with her servant-girl mother. And she'd spent all her life in gambling hells among rogues, but her soul was the daintiest lady angel that ever walked this earth, though she could hardly read or write, and all the stars were her friends, and even a rattlesnake wouldn't have wounded her." Mustn't she have been a darling, Mamma? She had hair like gold, and little ears, pink as sea shells, and big blue eyes and a flower for a mouth. No wonder he loved her so. He said her baby was even more pleasure to her than the pansy had been, and they both were "just kind of foolish over it." Well, when Lola was about three months old a gang of desperadoes came to the camp, and among them the man the Senator had wounded for his wife. Before the Senator came in from the mine Hearts-ease heard the other miners' wives talking of this, and how this man had boasted he would kill him. She knew her husband was unarmed, having left his gun behind him that day because his second one was broken, and he would not leave her with none in the shack; quite unsuspiciously he returned with his comrades, and went into a bar to have a drink on his way back, as he often did to hear the news of the day. And when Hearts-ease could not find him on the road, she ran down there, carrying the gun and the baby, to warn him and give him his weapon, and got into the saloon just as the desperado and his following entered by another door.
The enemy called out to the Senator that he meant to "do for him this time," and as Hearts-ease rushed up to her husband with no fear for herself, holding out the gun, the brute fired and shot her through the heart, and she fell forward with Lola, dead in the Senator's arms. "And then the heavens turned to blood," he said, "and I took the gun out of her dead clasp and killed him like a dog." But by this time, Mamma, I really was crying so I could hardly hear what he said. No wonder his eyes have a sad look sometimes, or his hair is gray.
We neither of us spoke for a while. I could only press his strong kind hand. Then he recovered his voice, and went on as if dreaming: "It all came true what she prophesied. I am rich beyond her uttermost fancyings, and I've sampled pretty well most all the world, but I've always tried to do the things she would have liked me to do. I guess you've wondered at my dandy clothes, and shiny finger nails. Well, it's just to please her—if she's looking on." Wasn't he a man worth loving, Mamma! And of course she did not mind dying for him, and how happy and glad she must be now, if she is "looking on." Somehow the whole story has made me so long for Harry, that I have been perfectly miserable all the evening, and if you think you could cable to him and tell him to come back I think perhaps you might, and I will say I am sorry.
Your affectionate daughter,