“You evidently do not, sir,” replied one gentleman.
“No, sir; you’re right there,” answered Mr. P. But he couldn’t get another word from his companion.
In this delightful round the weeks glide by.
“You must be enjoying yourself immensely,” says the Pacha. “You understand life, my dear Mrs. Potiphar. Here you are, speaking very little French, in a city where the language is an atmosphere, and where you are in no sense acclimated until you can speak it fluently—with all French life shut out from you—living in a hotel—cheated by butcher, baker, and candlestick-maker—going to hear plays that you imperfectly understand—to an opera where you know nobody, and where your box is filled with your own countrymen, who are delightful, indeed, but whom you didn’t come to Paris to see—constantly buying a hundred things because they are pretty, and because you are in Paris—entirely ignorant, and quite as careless, of the historical interests of the city, of the pictures, of the statues, and buildings—surrounded by celebrities of all kinds, of whom you never heard, and therefore lose the opportunity of seeing them—in fact, paying the most extravagant price for everything, and purchasing only the consciousness of being in Paris—why, you ought to be happy, and considered to be having a fine time of it, if you are not? How naturally you will sigh for all this when you return and recur to Paris as the culmination of human bliss! Here’s my honored Potiphar, who has this morning been taken to a darkened room in a grand old house, in a lonely, aristocratic street; and there a picture-agent has shown him a splendid Nicolas Poussin, painted in his prime for the family, whose heir in reduced circumstances must now part with it at a tearful sacrifice. Honored P.‘s friend, the commissionaire, interprets this story, while the agent stands sadly meditating the sacrifice with which his duty acquaints him. He informs the good P., through the friendly commissionaire, that he has been induced to offer him the picture, not only because all Americans have so fine a taste (as his experience has proved to him) in paintings, nor because they are so much more truly munificent than the nobility of other nations, but because the heir in reduced circumstances wishes to think of the picture as entirely removed from the possibility of being seen in France. Family pride, which is almost crushed in disposing of so great and valued a work, would be entirely quenched, if the sale were to be known, and the picture recognized elsewhere in the country. Monsieur is a gentleman, and he will understand the feelings of a gentleman under such circumstances. The commissionaire and the picture-agent therefore preserve a profound silence, and my honored friend feels for his red bandanna, and is not comfortable in the lonely old house, with the picture and the people. The agent says that it is not unusual for the owner to visit the picture about that very hour, to hear what chance there is for its sale. If this knock should be he, it would not be very remarkable. The heir enters. He has a very heavy moustache, dark hair, and a slightly Hebrew cast of countenance.
“Mr. Potiphar is introduced. The heir contemplates the picture sadly, and he and the agent point out its beauties to each other. In fine, my honored Potiphar buys the work of art. To any one else, of course, in France, for instance, the price should be eleven thousand francs. But the French and the Americans have fraternized; a thousand francs shall be deducted.
“You see clearly it’s quite worth while coming to Paris to do this, because I suppose, there are not more than ten or twenty artists at home who could paint ten or twenty times as good a picture for a quarter of the price. But you, dearest Mrs. P., who know all about pictures, naturally don’t want American pictures in your house, any more than you want anything else American there.
“My young friends and allies, Messrs. Boosey, Firkin, and Croesus, say that they come to Paris to see the world. They get the words wrong, you know. They come that the world (that is, their world at home) may not see them. To accompany Mesdames de Papillon and Casta Diva to the opera, then to return to beautifully furnished apartments to sup, and to prolong the entertainment until morning, is what those charming youths mean when they say ‘see the world.’ To attend at that réunion of the Haut Ton, Monsieur Celarius’ dancing academy, is to see good society in Paris, after the manner of those dashing men of the world. It’s amusing enough, and it’s innocent enough in its way. They won’t go very far. They’ll spend a good deal of money for nothing. They’ll be plucked at gaming-houses. They’ll be quietly laughed at by Mesdames de Papillon and Casta Diva, and the male friends of those ladies who enjoy the benefit of the lavish bounty of our young Croesus and Firkins. They’ll swagger a good deal, and take airs, and come home and indulge in foreign habits now grown indispensable. They will pronounce upon the female toilette, and upon the gantier le plus comme il faut, in Paris. They will beg your pardon for expressing a little phrase in French—to which, really the English is inadequate. They will have, necessarily, the foreign air. Some of them will settle away into business men, and be very exemplary. Others will return to Paris, as moths to the light, asserting that the only place for a gentleman to live agreeably, to indulge his tastes, and get the most for his money, is Paris—which is strictly true of such gentlemen as they. A view of life that starts from the dinner-table, inevitably selects Paris for its career. For, obviously, if you live to dine well you must live where there is good cooking.
“You women are rather worse off than the young men, Mrs. P.; because you are necessarily so much more confined to the house. Unless, indeed, you imitate Mrs. Vite, who goes wherever the gentlemen go, and who is famous as L’Américaine. If you like that sort of thing, you can do as much of it as you please. It will always surround you with a certain kind of man,—and withdraw from your society a certain kind of woman, and a certain kind of respect.”
{Illustration}
“To conclude my sermon, ladies, Europe is a charmed name to Americans, because in Europe are the fountains of all our education and training. History is the story of that hemisphere; the ruins of empires, arts, and civilizations, are here. Now, if there is any use in living at all, which I am far from asserting, is it worth while to get nothing out of Europe but a prolonged supper with Madame Casta Diva, or a wardrobe of all the charming dresses in Paris, and a facility of scandal which has all the wickedness and none of the wit of the finest French-woman? I beg a thousand pardons for preaching, but the text was altogether too pregnant.”
And so Kurz Pacha whirled out of the room, humming a waltz of Strauss. He has heard of his recall to Sennaar since he has been here—and we shall hear nothing more of him. We, too, leave Paris in a few days for home, and you will not hear from us again. Mrs. Potiphar has been as busy as possible getting up the greatest variety of dresses. You will see that she has not been to Paris for nothing. Kurz Pacha asked us if we had been to the Louvre, where the great pictures are. But when I inquired if there were any of Mr. Düsseldorf’s there, and he said no, why, of course, as he is my favorite, and I know more of his works than I do of any others, I didn’t go. There are some very pretty things there, Mr. Boosey says. But ladies have no time for such matters. Do you know, the other evening we went to the ball at the Tuileries, and oh! it was splendid. There were one duke and three marquesses, and a great many counts, presented to me. They all said, “It’s charming, this evening,” and I said, “very charming, indeed.” Wasn’t it nice?
But you should have seen Mrs. Potiphar when the Emperor Napoleon III. spoke to her. You know what a great man he is, and what a benefactor to his country, and how pure, and noble, and upright his private character and career have been; and how, as Kurz Pacha said, he is radiant with royalty, and honors everybody to whom he speaks. Well, Mrs. P. was presented, and sank almost to the ground in her reverence. But she actually trembled with delight when the Emperor said:
“Madame, I remember with the greatest pleasure the beautiful city of New York.”
I am sure the Emgress Eugenie would have been jealous, could she have heard the tone in which it was said. Wasn’t it affable in such a great monarch towards a mere republican? I wonder how people can slander him so, and tell such stories about him. I never saw a nicer man; only he looks sleepy. I suppose the cares of state oppress him, poor man! But one thing you may be sure of, dear Mrs. Downe, if people at home laugh at the Emperor and condemn him, just find out if they have ever been invited to the Tuileries. If not, you will understand the reason of their hatred. Mrs. Potiphar says to the Americans here that she can’t hear the Emperor spoken against, for they are on the best of terms.
“Of course the French dislike him” says Mr. Firkin, who has a turn for politics, “for they want a republic before they are ready for it.”
How you would enjoy all this, dear, and how sorry I am you are not here. I think Mr. Potiphar is rather disconsolate. He whistles and looks out of the window down into the garden of the Tuileries, where the children play under the trees; and as he looks he stops whistling, and gazes sometimes for half an hour; and whenever he goes out afterward, he is sure to buy something for Freddy. When the shopkeeper asks where it shall be sent, Mr. P. says, in a loud, slow voice—“Hotel Mureece, Kattery-vang-sank-o-trorsyaim.”
It is astonishing, as Kurz Pacha said that we are not more respected abroad. “Foreigners will never know what you really are,” said he to Mr. P., “until they come to you. Your going to them has failed.”
Good bye, dearest Mrs. Downe. We are so sorry to come home! You won’t hear from us again.
Your ever affectionate
CAROLINE
UPON RECEIVING HIS LETTERS OF RECALL.
(NOW FIRST TRANSLATED.)
MOST SABLE AND SERENE MASTER:
I hear and obey. You said to me, Go, and I went. You now say, come, and I am coming, with the readiness that befits a slave, and the cheerfulness that marks the philosopher.
Accustomed from my youth to breathe the scented air of Sennaar saloons, and to lounge in listless idleness with young Sennaar, I am weary of the simple purity of manners that distinguishes this people, and long for the pleasing, if pointless frivolities of your court.
Coming, as you commanded, to observe and report the social state of the metropolis of a people who, in the presence of the world, have renounced the feudal organization of society, I have found them, as you anticipated, totally free from the petty ambitions, the bitter resolves, and the hollow pretences, that characterize the society of older states.
The people of the first fashion unite the greatest simplicity of character with the utmost variety of intelligence, and the most graceful elegance of manner. Knowing that for an American the only nobility is that of feeling; the only grace, generosity; and the only elegance, simplicity; they have achieved a society which is a blithe Arcadia, illustrating to the world the principles they profess, and making the friend of man rejoice.
We, who are reputed savages, might well be astonished and fascinated with the results of civilization, as they are here displayed. The universal courtesy and consideration—the gentle charity, which does not consider the appearance but the substance—the republican independence, which teaches foreign lords and ladies the worthlessness of mere rank, by obviously respecting the character and not the title—the eagerness with which foreign habits are subdued, by the positive nature of American manners—the readiness to assist—the total want of coarse social emulation—the absence of ignorance, prejudice and vulgarity, in the selecter circles—the broad, sweet, catholic welcome to all that is essentially national and characteristic, which sends the young American abroad only that he may return eschewing European habits, and with a confidence in man and his country, chastened by experience—these have most interested and charmed me in the observation of this pleasing people.
It is here the pride of every man to bear his part in the universal labor. The young men, instead of sighing for other institutions, and the immunities of rank, prefer to deserve, by earning, their own patents of Nobility. They are industrious, temperate, and frugal, as becomes the youth to whom the destinies of so great a nation, and the hopes of the world, are committed. They are proud to have raised themselves from poverty, and they are never ashamed to confess that they are poor. They acknowledge the equal dignity of all kinds of labor, and do not presume upon any social differences between their baker and themselves. Knowing that luxury enervates a nation, they aim to show in their lives, as in their persons, that simplicity is the finest ornament of dress, as health best decorates the body. They are cheerfully obedient to those who command them, and gentle to those they command. Full of charity, and knowing that if every man has some sore weakness, he has also a human soul latent in him, they trust each man as if that soul might, at any moment, look out of his eyes, and acknowledge with tears, the sympathy that unites them.
They show in all this social independence and originality, the shrewd common-sense which we have so often heard ascribed to them. For if, by some fatal error, they should undertake a social rivalry, in kind, with the old world and all its splendid accessories of antiquity, wealth and hereditary refinement, the observer would see, what now is never beheld, foolish parvenus frenzied in the pursuit of an elegance which, in its nature, is inaccessible to them. We should see lavish and unmeaning displays. We should see a gaudy ostentation,—serving only as a magnificent frame to the vanity of the subject. We should see the grave and thoughtful, the witty and accomplished, the men and women whose genius fitted them for society, withdrawing from its saloons, and preferring privacy to a vulgar and profuse publicity. We should see society become a dancing school, and men and women degenerated into dull and dandified boys and girls, content with (pardon me, sable sir, but it would be the truth) “style.” We should see, as if in an effete civilization, marriages of convenience. We should hear the heirs, or the holders, of great fortunes, called “gentlemanly,” if they were dull, and “a little wild” if they were debauched. We should see parents panting to “marry off” their dear daughters to the richest youths, and the richest youths affecting a “jolly” and “stunning” life,—reputed to know the world because they are licentious, and to have seen life because they have tasted foreign dissipation. We should hear insipidity praised as good-humor, and nonchalance as ease. We should have boorishness accounted manliness, and impudence wit. We should gradually lose faith in man as we associated with men, and soon perceive that the only safety for the city was in its constant recruiting from the simplicity and strength of the country.
The sharp common-sense of this people prevents so melancholy a spectacle. In fact, you have only to consider that this society does not remind you of the best characteristics of any other, to judge how unique it is.
But, for myself, as milk disagrees with my constitution, and my mind tires of this pastoral sweetness, I am too glad to obey your summons. In my younger days when I loved to press the stops of oaten pipes, and—a plaintive swain—fancied every woman what she seemed, and every man my friend,—I should have hailed the prospect of a life in an Arcadia like this. How gladly I should have climbed its Pisgah-peaks of hope, and have looked off into the Future, flowing with milk and honey. I would grieve (if I could) that my sated appetite refuses more,—that I must lay down my crook and play the shepherd no longer. Yet I know well enough that in the perfumed atmosphere of the circle to which I return, I shall recur often, with more than regret, to the humane, polished, intelligent, and simple society I leave behind me,—shall wonder if Miss Minerva Tattle still prattles kindly among the birds and flowers,—if Mrs. Potiphar still leads, by her innate nobility, and not by the accident of wealth, the swarm of gay, and graceful, and brilliant men and women that surround her.
I humbly trust, sable son of midnight, my lord and master, that my present report and summary will be found worthy of that implicit confidence immemorially accorded to diplomatic communications. I could ask for it no other reception.
Your slave,
KURZ PACHA.
(PRIVATE.)
EDENSIDE.
MY DEAR MRS. POTIPHAR:
I am very anxious that you should allow me to receive your son Frederic as a pupil, at my parsonage, here in the country. I have not lived in the city without knowing something about it, despite my cloth, and I am concerned at the peril to which every young man is there exposed. There is a proud philosophy in vogue that everything that can be injured had better be destroyed as rapidly as possible, and put out of the way at once. But I recall a deeper and tenderer wisdom which declared, “A bruised reed will he not break.” The world is not made for the prosperous alone, nor for the strong. We may wince at the truth, but we must at length believe it,—that the poor in spirit, and the poor in will, and the poor in success, are appointed as pensioners upon our care.
In my house your son will miss the luxuries of his home, but he will, perhaps, find as cordial a sympathy in his little interests, and as careful a consultation of his desires and aims. He will have pure air, a tranquil landscape, a pleasant society; my books, variously selected, my direction and aid in his studies, and a neighborhood to town that will place its resources within his reach. A city, it seems to me, is mainly valuable as a gallery of opportunities. But a man should not live exclusively in his library, nor among his pictures. Letters and art may well decorate his life. But if they are not subsidiary to the man, and his character, then he is a sadder spectacle than a vain book or a poor picture. The eager whirl of a city tends either to beget a thirst that can only be sated by strong, yet dangerous excitement, or to deafen a man’s ear, and harden his heart, to the really noble attractions around him.
It is well to know men. But men are not learned at the billiard table, nor in the barroom, nor by meeting them in an endless round of debauch, nor does a man know the world because he has been to Paris. It is a sad thing for a young man to seek applause by surpassing his companions in that which makes them contemptible. The best men of our own time have little leisure, and the best of other days have committed their better part to books, wherein we may know and love them.
There is nothing more admirable than good society, as there is nothing so fine as a noble man, nor so lovely as a beautiful woman. And to the perfect enjoyment of such society an ease and grace are necessary, which are hardly to be acquired, but are rather, like beauty and talent, the gift of Nature. That ease and grace will certainly run great risk of disappearing, in the embrace of a fashion unchastened by common sense; and it is observable that the sensitive gaucherie of a countryman is more agreeable than the pert composure of a citizen.
I do not deny that your son must lose something, if you accede to my request, but I assuredly believe that he will gain more than he will lose. My profession makes me more dogmatic, probably, than is strictly courteous. But I have observed, in my recent visits to town, that Courtesy, also, is getting puny and unmanly, and that a counterfeit, called Compliment, is often mistaken for it. You will smile, probably at my old-fashioned whims, and regret that I am behind my time. But really, it strikes me, that the ineffectual imitation of an exploded social organization is, at least, two centuries behind my time. The youth who, socially speaking, are termed Young America, represent, in character and conduct, anything but their own time and their own country.
I will not deny that the secret of my interest in your son, is an earlier interest in yourself—a wild dream we dreamed together, so long ago that it seems not to be a part of my life. The companion of those other days I do not recognize in the glittering lady I sometimes see. But in her child I trace the likeness of the girl I knew, and it is to the memory of that girl—whose lovely traits I will still believe are not destroyed, but are somewhere latent in the woman—that I consecrate the task I wish to undertake. I am married, and I am happy. But sometimes through the sweet tranquillity of my life streams the pensive splendor of that long-vanished summer, and I cannot deny the heart that will dream of what might have been.
Madame, I can wish you nothing more sincerely than that as your lot is with the rich in this world, it may be with the poor in the world to come.
Your obedient servant,
HENRY DOVE.