Chapter II: Part 2

The next day both the Tabbies were curtsying in the hall when we started out. We were going on a coach to Richmond with Julia and her husband, and another American girl, and then Julia’s husband was going to row us up the Thames to Hampton Court for tea, and they were all going to dine with us at Scott’s when we got home.

It was a lovely day. The trees were a mass of bloom, and everybody ought to have enjoyed himself. We were having a very good time of it among ourselves reading the absurd signs, until we noticed the three girls who sat opposite to us. They had serious faces, and long, consumptive teeth, which they never succeeded in completely hiding. I knew just how they would look when they were dead; I knew that those two long front teeth would still— They listened to all we said without a flicker of the eyelashes. Occasionally they looked down at the size of the American girl’s little feet and then involuntarily drew their own back out of sight.

Presently I espied a sign, “Funerals, for this week only, at half price.” I seized Julia’s hand. “Stop, oh, stop the coach and let’s get a funeral! We may never have an opportunity to get a bargain in funerals again. And the sale lasts only one week. Everybody told me before I came away to get what I wanted at the moment I saw it; not to wait, thinking I would come back. So unless we order one now we may have to pay the full price. And a funeral would be such a good investment; it would keep forever. You’d never feel like using it before you actually needed it. Do let me get one now!”

Of course, Julia, my sister, and Julia’s husband were in gales of laughter; but what finished me off was to see three serious creatures opposite rise as if pulled by one string, look in an anxious way at me and then at the sign, while the teeth began to say to each other: “What did she say? What does she mean? What does she want a funeral for?”

We had a lovely day, but everybody we met on the river looked very unhappy, and nobody seemed to be at all glad that we were there or that we were rising to the occasion. When we got home I was too tired to notice things, but my sister, who sees everything, whispered:

“I verily believe they’ve put down a new stair-carpet to-day.”

The next morning such a sight met our astonished eyes. There was a new carpet on the hall. There were new curtains in our drawing-room. All the covers had been removed from their sacred furniture. Brass andirons replaced the old ones. The piano had a new cover. There was a rocking-chair for each (we had only one before), and while we were still speechless with amazement Mrs. Black came in with our bill.

“I have been thinking this over since yesterday, and I have decided that as long as you did not understand about the extras, it would be no more than right that I should take them off. So I owe you this.”

I took the money, and it dropped from my nerveless fingers. Mrs. Black picked it up and put it on the table—the mahogany table.

“You see I propped your palms for you in your absence, and I repotted four of them. I thought they would grow better. Here are some periodicals I sent to the library for, thinking you might like to look at them, and I put my new calendar over your writing-desk. Now, is there any little delicacy you would like for your luncheon?”

While Bee was getting rid of her I made a few rapid mental calculations.

“Bee,” I said, “we are going to stay over here two years. Let’s buy the Duke and take him with us.”

The reaction has come. I knew it would. It always does. It is a mortification to be obliged to admit it in the face of London, and all that we have had done for us, but the fact is we are homesick—wretchedly, bitterly homesick. I remember how, when other people have been here and written that they were homesick, I have sniffed with contempt and have said to myself, “What poor taste! Just wait until _my_ turn comes to go to Europe! I’ll show them what it is to enjoy every moment of my stay!”

But now—dear me, I can remember that I have made invidious remarks about New York, and have objected to the odors in Chicago, and have hated the Illinois Central turnstiles. But if I could be back in America I would not mind being caught in a turnstile all day. Dear America! Dear Lake Michigan! Dear Chicago!

I have talked the matter over with my sister, and we have decided that it must be the people, for certainly the novelty is not yet worn off of this marvellous London. We like individually nearly every one whom we have met, but as a nation the English are to me an acquired taste—just like olives and German opera.

To explain. My friendly, volatile American feelings are constantly being shocked at the massed and consolidated indifference of English men and women to each other. They care for nobody but themselves. In a certain sense this indifference to other people’s opinions is very satisfactory. It makes you feel that no matter how outrageous you wanted to be you could not cause a ripple of excitement or interest—unless Royalty noticed your action. Then London would tread itself to death in its efforts to see and hear you. But if an Englishman entered a packed theatre on his hands with his feet in the air, and thus proceeded to make the rounds of the house, the audience would only give one glance, just to make sure that it was nothing more abnormal than a man in evening dress, carrying his crush-hat between his feet and walking on his hands, and then they would return to their exciting conversation of where they were “going to show after the play.” Even the maids who usher would not smile, but would stoop and put his programme between his teeth for him, and turn to the next comer.

The English mind their own business, and we Americans are so used to interfering with each other, and minding everybody’s business as well as our own, it makes us very homesick indeed, to find that we can do precisely as we please and be let entirely alone.

The English who have been in America, or those who have a single blessed drop of Irish or Scotch blood in their veins, will quite understand what I mean. Fortunately for us we have found a few of these different sorts, and they have kept us from suicide. They warned us of the differences we would find. One man said to me: “We English do not understand the meaning of the word hospitality compared to you Americans. Now in the States—”

“Stop right there, if you please,” I begged, “and say ‘America.’ It offends me to be called ‘the States’ quite as much as if you called me ‘the Colonies’ or ‘the Provinces!’”

“You speak as if you were America,” he said.

“I am,” I replied.

“Now that is just it. You Americans come over here nationally. We English travel individually.”

I was so startled at this acute analysis from a man whom I had always regarded as an Englishman that I forgot my manners and I said, “Good heavens, you are not all English, are you?”

“My father was Irish,” he said.

“I knew it!” I cried with joy. “Please shake hands with me again. I knew you weren’t entirely English after that speech!”

He laughed.

“I will shake hands with you, of course. But I am a typical Britisher. Please believe that.”

“I shall not. You are not typical. That was really a clever distinction and quite true.”

He looked as if he were going to argue the point with me, so I hurried on. I always get the worst of an argument, so I tried to take his mind off his injury. “Now please go on,” I urged. “It sounded so interesting.”

“Well, I was only going to say that in America you are, as hosts, quite sincere in wishing us to enjoy ourselves and to like America. Here we will only do our duty by you if you bring letters to us, and we don’t care a hang whether you like England or not. We like it, and that’s enough.”

“I see,” I said, with cold chills of aversion for England as a nation creeping over my enthusiasm.

“Now in America,” he proceeded, “your host sends his carriage for you, or calls for you, takes you with him, stays by you, introduces you to the people he thinks you would most care to meet, and tells them who and what you are; sees that you have everything that’s going, and that you see everything that’s going, and then takes you back to your club.”

“Then he asks you if you have had a good time, and if you like America!” I supplemented.

“Oh, Lord, yes! He asks you that all the time, and so does everybody else,” he said, with a groan.

“Now, you were unkind if you didn’t tell him all he wanted you to, for I do assure you it was pure American kindness of heart which made him take all that trouble for you. I know, too, without your telling me, that he introduced you to all the prettiest girls, and gave you a chance to talk to each of them, and only hovered around waiting to take you on to the next one, as soon as he could catch you with ease.”

“He did just that. How did you know?”

“Because he was a typical American host, God bless him, and that is the way we do things over there.”

“Now here,” he went on, “we consider our duty done if we take a man to dine, and then to some reception, where we turn him loose after one or two introductions.”

“What a hateful way of doing!” I said, politely.

“It is. It must seem barbarous to you.”

“It does.”

“Or if you are a woman we send our carriages to let you drive where you like. Or we send you invitations to go to needlework exhibitions where you have to pay five shillings admission.”

I said nothing, and he laughed.

“I know they have done that to you,” he exclaimed. “Haven’t they?”

“I have been delightfully entertained at luncheons and dinners and teas, and I have been introduced to as charming people in London as I ever hope to meet anywhere,” I said, stolidly.

“But you won’t tell about the needlework. Oh, I say, but that’s jolly! Fancy what you said when you began to get those beastly things!” And he laughed again.

“I didn’t say anything,” I said. Then he roared. Yet he claimed to be a “typical Britisher.”

“We mean kindly,” he went on. “You mustn’t lay it up against us.”

“Oh, we don’t. We are having a lovely time.”

There are times when the truth would be brutal.

Then this oasis of a man, this “typical Britisher,” went away, and my sister and I dressed for the theatre. A friend had sent us her box, and assured us that it was perfectly proper for us to go alone. So we went. Up to this time we had not hinted to each other that we were homesick. The play was most amusing, yet we couldn’t help watching the audience. Such a bored-looking set, the women with frizzled hair held down by invisible nets, mingling with their eyebrows, and done hideously in the back. Low-necked gowns, exhibiting the most beautiful shoulders in the world. Gorgeous jewels in their hair and gleaming all over their bodices, but among half a dozen emerald, turquoise, and diamond bracelets there would appear a silver-watch bracelet which cost not over ten dollars, and spoiled the effect of all the others.

English women as a race are the worst-dressed women in the world. I saw thousands of them in Piccadilly and Regent Street, and at Church Parade in the Park, with high, French-heeled slippers over colored stockings. And as to sizes, I should say nines were the average. There are some smaller, but the most are larger.

The Prince of Wales was in the box opposite to ours, and when we were not looking at him we gazed at the impassive faces of the audience. They never smiled. They never laughed. The subtlest points in the play went unnoticed, yet it is one which has had a record run and bids fair to keep the boards for the rest of the season.

Suddenly my sister, although we had not spoken of the homesickness that was weighing us down, touched my arm and said, “Look quick! There’s one!”

“Where? Where?”

“Down there just in front of the pit, talking to that bald-headed idiot with the monocle.”

“Do you think she is American?” I said, dubiously. I couldn’t see her feet. “She might be French. She talks all over.”

“No. She is an American girl. See how thin she is. The French are short and fat.”

“Look at her face,” I said, enviously. “How animated it is. See how it seems to stand out among all the other faces.”

“Yet she is only amusing herself. See how stolid that creature looks that she is wasting all her vitality on.”

“She has told him some joke and she is laughing at it. He has put his monocle in his other eye in his effort to see the point. He will get it by the next boat. Wish she’d come and tell that joke to me. I’d laugh at it.”

My sister eyed me critically.

“You don’t look as if you could laugh,” she said.

“I wonder what would happen if I should fall dead and drop over into the lap of that fat elephant in pink silk with the red neck,” I said, musingly.

“She wouldn’t even wink,” said my sister, laughingly. “But if you struck her just right you would bounce clear up here again and I could catch you.”

“It is just four o’clock in Chicago,” I said.

My sister promptly turned her back on me.

“And Billy has just wakened from his nap, and Katy is giving him his food,” I went on. (Billy is my sister’s baby.) “And then mamma will come into the nursery presently and take him while Katy gets his carriage out, and she will show him my picture and ask him who it is (because she wrote me she always did it at this time), and then he will say, ‘Tattah,’ which is the sweetest baby word for ‘Auntie’ I ever heard from mortal lips, and then he will kiss it of his own accord. Mamma wrote that he had blistered it with his kisses, and it’s one of the big ones, but I don’t care; I’ll order a dozen more if he will blister them all. And then she will say, ‘Where did mamma and Tattah go?’ and he will wave his precious little square hand and say, ‘Big boat,’ and she says he tries to say, ‘Way off’—and, oh, dear, we are ‘way off’—”

“Stop talking, you fiend,” said my sister, from the depths of her handkerchief. “You know I look like a fright when I cry.”

“Boo-hoo,” was my only reply. And once started, I couldn’t stop. That deadly English atmosphere of indifference—and, oh—and everything!

Have you ever been homesick when you couldn’t get home? Have you ever wanted to see your mother so that every bone in your body ached? Have you ever been in the state where to see the baby for five minutes you would give everything on earth you had? That was the way I felt about Billy that grewsome night at this amusing play in an English theatre. I had on my best clothes, but after my handkerchief ceased to avail the tears slopped down on my satin gown, and the blisters will remain as a lasting tribute to the contagion of a company of English people out enjoying themselves.

My sister’s stern sense of decorum caused her to contain herself until she got home, but I am free to confess that after I once loosed my hold over myself and found what a relief it was, I realized the truth of what our old negro cook used to say when I was a child in the South, and asked her why she howled and cried in such an alarming manner when she “got religion.” She used to say, “Lawd, chile, you don’t know how soovin’ it is to jest bust out awn ’casions lake dese!”

Happy negroes! Happy children, who can “bust out” when their feelings get the better of them! Civilization robs us of many of our acutest pleasures.

That night on the way home from the theatre I learned something. Nobody had ever told me that it is the custom to give the cabby an extra sixpence when one takes a cab late at night, so, on alighting in front of our flower-trimmed lodgings, I reached up, deposited my shilling in his hand, and was turning away, when my footsteps were arrested by my cabby’s voice.

Turning, I saw him tossing the despised shilling in his curved palm and saying:

“A shillin’! Twelve o’clock at night! Two ladies in evenin’ dress! _You_ ought to ’a’ gone in a ’bus! A cab’s too expensive for _you_! _I_ wish you’d ’a’ _walked_ and I wish it had _rained_!”

With that parting shot he gathered up the lines and drove off, while I leaned up against the door shaking with a laughter which my sister in no wise shared with me. Poor Bee! Things like that jar her so that she can’t get any amusement out of them. To her it was terrifying impudence. To me it was a heart-to-heart talk with a London cabby!

Oh, the sweet viciousness of that “_I_ wish it had _rained_!” I wonder if that man beats his wife, or if he just converses with her as he does with a recreant fare! Anyway, I loved him.

But if I have discovered nothing else in the brief time since I left my native land, it is worth while to realize the truth of all the poetry and song written on foreign shores about home.

To one accustomed to travel only in America, and to feel at home with all the different varieties of one’s countrymen, such sentiments are no more than _vers de société_. _But_ now I know what _Heimweh_ is—the home-pain. I can understand that the Swiss really die of it sometimes. The home-pain! Neuralgia, you know, and most other acute pains, attack only one set of nerves. But _Heimweh_ hurts all over. There is not a muscle of the body, nor the most remote fibre of the brain, nor a tissue of the heart that does not ache with it. You can’t eat. You can’t sleep. You can’t read or write or talk. It begins with the protoplasm of your soul—and reaches forward to the end of time, and aches every step of the way along. You want to hide your face in a pillow away from everybody and do nothing but weep, but even that does not cure. It seems to be too private to help materially. The only thing I can recommend is to “bust out.”

Homesickness is an inexplicable thing. I have heard brides relate how it attacked them unmercifully and without cause in the midst of their honeymoon. Girl students, whose sole aim in life has been to come abroad to study, and who, in finally coming, have fondly dreamed that the gates of Paradise had swung open before their delighted eyes, have been among its earliest and most acutely afflicted victims. No success, no realized ambitions ward it off. Like death, it comes to high and low alike. One woman, whose name became famous with her first concert, told me that she spent the first year over here in tears. Nothing that friends can do, no amount of kindness or hospitality avails as a preventive. You can take bromides and cure insomnia. You can take chloroform, and enough of it will prevent seasickness, but nothing avails for _Heimweh_. And like pride, “let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall.” I have been in the midst of an animated, recital of how homesick I had been the day before, ridiculing myself and my malady with unctuous freedom, when suddenly Billy’s little face would seem to rise out of the flowers on the dinner-table, or the patter of his little flying feet as they used to sound in my ear as he fluttered down the long hall to my study, or the darling way he used to ran towards me when I held out my arms and said, “Come, Billy, let Tattah show you the doves,” with such an expectant face, and that little scarlet mouth opened to kiss me—oh, it is nothing to anybody else, but it is home to me, and I was only recalled to London and my dinner party when a fresh attack was made on America, and I was called once more to battle for my country.

I have “fought, bled, and died” for home and country more times than I can count since I have been here. I ought to come home with honorable scars and the rank of field-marshal, at least. I never knew how many objectionable features America presented to Englishmen until I became their guest and broke bread at their tables. I cannot eat very much at their dinner parties—I am too busy thinking how to parry their attacks on my America, and especially my Chicago, and my West generally. The English adore Americans, but they loathe America, and I, for one, will not accept a divided allegiance. “Love me, love my dog,” is my motto. I go home from their dinners as hungry as a wolf, but covered with Victoria crosses. I am puzzled to know if they really hate Chicago more than any other spot on earth, or if they simply love to hear me fight for it, or if their manners need improving.

I myself may complain of the horrors of our filthy streets, or of the way we tear up whole blocks at once (here in London they only mend a teaspoonful of pavement at a time), or of our beastly winds which tear your soul from your body, but I hope never to sink so low as to permit a lot of foreigners to do it. For even as a Parisian loves his Paris, and as a New Yorker loves his London, so do I love my Chicago.

III PARIS

It was a fortunate thing, after all, that I went to London first, and had my first great astonishment there. It broke Paris to me gently.

For a month I have been in this city of limited republicanism; this extraordinary example of outward beauty and inward uncleanness; this bewildering cosmopolis of cheap luxuries and expensive necessities; this curious city of contradictions, where you might eat your breakfast from the streets—they are so clean—but where you must close your eyes to the spectacles of the curbstones; this beautiful, whited sepulchre, where exists the unwritten law, “Commit any offence you will, provided you submerge it in poetry and flowers”; this exponent of outward observances, where a gentleman will deliberately push you into the street if he wishes to pass you in a crowd, but where his action is condoned by his inexpressible manner of raising his hat to you, and the heartfelt sincerity of his apology; where one man will run a mile to restore a lost franc, but if you ask him to change a gold piece he will steal five; where your eyes are ravished with the beauty, and the greenness, and the smoothness and apparent ease of living of all its inhabitants; where your mind is filled with the pictures, the music, the art, the general atmosphere of culture and wit; where the cooking is so good but so elusive, and where the shops are so bewitching that you have spent your last dollar without thinking, and you are obliged to cable for a new letter of credit from home before you know it—this is Paris.

Paris is very educational. I can imagine its influence broadening some people so much that their own country could never be ample enough to cover them again. I can imagine it narrowing others so that they would return to America more of Puritans than ever. It is amusing, it is fascinating, it is exciting, it is corrupting. The French must be the most curious people on earth. How could even heavenly ingenuity create a more uncommon or bewildering contradiction and combination? Make up your mind that they are as simple as children when you see their innocent picnicking along the boulevards and in the parks with their whole families, yet you dare not trust yourself to hear what they are saying. Believe that they are cynical, and _fin de siècle_, and skeptical of all women when you hear two men talk, and the next day you hear that one of them has shot himself on the grave of his sweetheart. Believe that politeness is the ruling characteristic of the country because a man kisses your hand when he takes leave of you. But marry him, and no insult as regards other women is too low for him to heap upon you. Believe that the French men are sympathetic because they laugh and cry openly at the theatre. But appeal to their chivalry, and they will rescue you from one discomfort only to offer you a worse. The French have sentimentality, but not sentiment. They have gallantry, but not chivalry. They have vanity, but not pride. They have religion, but not morality. They are a combination of the wildest extravagance and the strictest parsimony. They cultivate the ground so close to the railroad tracks that the trains almost run over their roses, and yet they leave a Place de la Concorde in the heart of the city.

You can buy the wing of a chicken at a butcher’s and take it home to cook it. But your bill at a restaurant will appall you. Water is the most precious and exclusive drink you can order in Paris. Imagine that—you who let the water run to cool it! In Paris they actually pay for water in their houses by the quart.

Artichokes, and truffles, and mushrooms, and silk stockings, and kid gloves are so cheap here that it makes you blink your eyes. But eggs, and cream, and milk are luxuries. Silks and velvets are bewilderingly inexpensive. But cotton stuffs are from America, and are extravagances. They make them up into “costumes,” and trim them with velvet ribbon. Never by any chance could you be supposed to send cotton frocks to be washed every week. The luxury of fresh, starched muslin dresses and plenty of shirt-waists is unknown.

I never shall overcome the ecstasies of laughter which assail me when I see varieties of coal exhibited in tiny shop windows, set forth in high glass dishes, as we exploit chocolates at home. But well they may respect it, for it is really very much cheaper to freeze to death than to buy coal in Paris.

The reason of all this is the city tax on every chicken, every carrot, every egg brought into Paris. Every mouthful of food is taxed. This produces an enormous revenue, and this is why the streets are so clean; it is why the asphalt is as smooth as a ballroom floor; it is why the whole of Paris is as beautiful as a dream.

In fact, the city has ideas of cleanliness which its middle-class inhabitants do not share. On a rainy day in Paris the absurdly hoisted dresses will expose to your view all varieties of trimmed, ruffled, and lace petticoats, which would undeniably be benefited by a bath. All the _lingerie_ has ribbons in it, and sometimes I think they are never intended to be taken out.

When I was at the château of a friend not long ago she overheard her maid apologizing to two sisters of charity, for the presence of a bath-tub in her mistress’s dressing-room: “You must not blame madame la marquise for bathing every day. She is not more untidy than I, and I, God knows, wash myself but twice a year. It is just a habit of hers which she caught from the English.”

My friend called to her sharply, and told her she need not apologize for her bathing, to which the maid replied, in a tone of meek justification, “But if madame la marquise only knew how she was regarded by the people for this habit of hers!”

I like the way the French take their amusements. At the theatre they laugh and applaud the wit of the hero and hiss the villain. They shout their approval of a duel and weep aloud over the death of the aged mother. When they drive in the Bois they smile and have an air of enjoyment quite at variance with the bored expression of English and Americans who have enough money to own carriages. We drove in Hyde Park in London the day before we came to Paris, and nearly wept with sympathy for the unspoken grief in the faces of the unfortunate rich who were at such pains to enjoy themselves.

The second day from that we had a delightful drive in the Bois in Paris.

“How glad everybody seems to be we have come!” I said to my sister. “See how pleased they all look.”

I was enchanted at their gay faces. I felt like bowing right and left to them, the way queens and circus girls do.

I never saw such handsome men as I saw in London. I never saw such beautiful women as I see in Paris.

The Bois has never been so smart as it was the past season, for the horrible fire of the Bazar de la Charité put an end to the Paris season, and left those who were not personally bereaved no solace but the Bois. Consequently, the costumes one saw between five and seven on that one beautiful boulevard were enough to set one wild. I always wished that my neck turned on a pivot and that I had eyes set like a coronet all around my head. My sister and I were in a constant state of ecstasy and of clutching each other’s gowns, trying to see every one who passed. But it was of no use. Although they drove slowly on purpose to be seen, if you tried to focus your glance on each one it seemed as if they drove like lightning, and you got only astigmatism for your pains. I always came home from the Bois with a headache and a stiff neck.

I never dreamed of such clothes even in my dreams of heaven. But the French are an extravagant race. There was hardly a gown worn last season which was not of the most delicate texture, garnished with chiffon and illusion and tulle—the most crushable, airy, inflammable, unserviceable material one can think of. Now, I am a utilitarian. When I see a white gown I always wonder if it will wash. If I see lace on the foot ruffle of a dress I think how it will sound when the wearer steps on it going up-stairs. But anything would be serviceable to wear driving in a victoria in the Bois between five and seven, and as that is where I have seen the most beautiful costumes I have no right to complain, or to thrust at them my American ideas of usefulness. This rage of theirs for beauty is what makes a perpetual honeymoon for the eyes of every inch of France. The way they study color and put greens together in their landscape gardening makes one think with horror of our prairies and sagebrush.

The eye is ravished with beauty all over Paris. The clean streets, the walks between rows of trees for pedestrians, the lanes for bicyclists, the paths through tiny forests, right in Paris, for equestrians, and on each side the loveliest trees—trees everywhere except where there are fountains—but what is the use of trying to describe a beauty which has staggered braver pens than mine, and which, after all, you must see to appreciate?

The Catholic observances one sees everywhere in Paris are most interesting. When a funeral procession passes, every man takes off his hat and stands watching it with the greatest respect.

In May the streets are full of sweet-faced little girls on their way to their first communion. They were all in white, bareheaded, except for their white veils, white shoes, white gloves, and the dearest look of importance on their earnest little faces. It was most touching.

In all months, however, one sees the comical sight of a French bride and bridegroom, in all the glory of their bridal array—white satin, veil, and orange blossoms—driving through the streets in open cabs, and hugging and kissing each other with an unctuous freedom which is apt to throw a conservative American into a spasm of laughter. Indeed, the frank and candid way that love-making goes on in public among the lower classes is so amazing that at first you think you never in this world will become accustomed to it, but you get accustomed to a great many strange sights in Paris. If a kiss explodes with unusual violence in a cab near mine it sometimes scares the horse, but it no longer disturbs me in the least. My nervousness over that sort of thing has entirely worn off.

I have had but one adventure, and that was of a simple and primitive character, which seemed to excite no one but myself. They say that there is no drunkenness in France. If that is so then this cabman of mine had a fit of some kind. Perhaps, though, he was only a beast. Most of the cabmen here are beasts. They beat their poor horses so unmercifully that I spend quite a good portion of my time standing up in the cab and arguing with them. But the only efficacious argument I have discovered is to tell them that they will get no _pourboire_ if they beat the horse. That seems to infuse more humanity into them than any number of Scripture texts.

On this occasion my cabman, for no reason whatever, suddenly began to beat his horse in the hatefulest way, leaning down with his whip and striking the horse underneath, as we were going downhill on the Rue de Freycinet. I screamed at him, but he pretended not to hear. The cab rocked from side to side, the horse was galloping, and this brute beating him like a madman. It made me wild. I was being bounced around like corn in a popper and in imminent danger of being thrown to the pavement.

People saw my danger, but nobody did anything—just looked, that was all. I saw that I must save myself if there was any saving going to be done. So with one last trial of my lungs I shrieked at the cabman, but the cobblestones were his excuse, and he kept on. So I just stood up and knocked his hat off with my parasol!—his big, white, glazed hat. It was glorious! He turned around in a fury and pulled up his horse, with a torrent of French abuse and impudence which scared me nearly to death. I thought he might strike me.

So I pulled my twitching lips into a distortion which passed muster with a Paris cabman for a smile, and begged his pardon so profusely that he relented and didn’t kill me.

I often blush for the cheap Americans with loud voices and provincial speech, and general commonness, whom one meets over here; but with all their faults they cannot approach the vulgarities at table which I have seen in Paris. In all America we have no such vulgar institution as their _rince-bouche_—an affair resembling a two-part finger-bowl, with the water in a cup in the middle. At fashionable tables, men and women in gorgeous clothes, who speak four or five languages, actually rinse their mouths and gargle at the table, and then slop the water thus used back into these bowls. The first time I saw this I do assure you I would not have been more astonished if the next course had been stomach pumps.

And as for the toothpick habit! Let no one ever tell me that that atrocity is American! Here it goes with every course, and without the pretended decency of holding one’s _serviette_ before one’s mouth, which, in my opinion, is a mere affectation, and aggravates the offence.

But the most shameless thing in all Europe is the marriage question. To talk with intelligent, clever, thinking men and women, who know the secret history of all the famous international marriages, as well as the high contracting parties, who will relate the price paid for the husband, and who the intermediary was, and how much commission he or she received, is to make you turn faint and sick at the mere thought, especially if you happen to come from a country where they once fought to abolish the buying and selling of human beings. But our black slaves were above buying and selling themselves or their children. It remains for civilized Europe of our time to do this, and the highest and proudest of her people at that.

It is not so shocking to read about it in glittering generalities. I knew of it in a vague way, just as I knew the history of the massacre of Saint Bartholomew. I thought it was too bad that so many people were killed, and I also thought it a pity that Frenchmen never married without a _dot_. But when it comes to meeting the people who had thus bargained, and the moment their gorgeous lace and satin backs were turned to hear some one say, “You are always so interested in that sort of thing, have you heard what a scandal was caused by the marriage of those two?”—then it ceases to be history; then it becomes almost a family affair.

“How could a marriage between two unattached young people cause a scandal?” I asked, with my stupid, primitive American ideas.

“Oh, the bride’s mother refused to pay the commission to the intermediary,” was the airy reply. “It came near getting into the papers.”

At the Jubilee garden party at Lady Monson’s I saw the most beautiful French girl I have seen in Paris. She was superb. In America she would have been a radiant, a triumphant beauty, and probably would have acquired the insolent manners of some of our spoiled beauties. Instead of that, however, she was modest, even timid-looking, except for her queenly carriage. Her gown was a dream, and a dream of a dress at a Paris garden party means something.

“What a tearing beauty!” I said to my companion. “Who is she?”

“Yes, poor girl!” he said. “She is the daughter of the Comtesse N——. One of the prettiest girls in Paris. Not a sou, however; consequently she will never marry. She will probably go into a convent.”

“But why? Why won’t she marry? Why aren’t all the men crazy about her? Why don’t you marry her?”

“Marry a girl without a _dot_? Thank you, mademoiselle. I am an expense to myself. My wife must not be an additional encumbrance.”

“But surely,” I said, “somebody will want to marry her, if no nobleman will.”

“Ah, yes, but she is of noble blood, and she must not marry beneath her. No one in her own class will marry her, so”—a shrug—“the convent! See, her chances are quite gone. She has been out five years now.”

I could have cried. Every word of it was quite true. I thought of the dozens of susceptible and rich American men I knew who would have gone through fire and water for her, and who, although they have no title to give her, would have made her adoring and adorable husbands, and I seriously thought of offering a few of them to her for consideration! But alas, there are so many ifs and ands, and—well, I didn’t.

I only sighed and said, “Well, I suppose such things are common in France, but I do assure you such things are impossible in America.”

“Such things as what, mademoiselle?”

“This cold-blooded bartering,” I said. “American men are above it.”

“Are American girls above selling themselves, mademoiselle? Do you see that poor, pitifully plain little creature there, in that dress which cost a fortune? Do you see how ill she carries it? Do you see her unformed, uncertain manner? Her husband is the one I just had the honor of presenting to you, who is now talking to the beauty you so much admire.”

“He shows good taste in spite of his marriage,” I said.

“Certainly. But his wife is your countrywoman. That is the last famous international marriage, and the most vulgar of the whole lot. Listen, mademoiselle, and I will tell you the exact truth of the whole affair.

“She came over here with letters to Paris friends, and when it became known that one of the richest heiresses in America was here, naturally all the mammas with marriageable sons were anxious to see her. She was invited everywhere, but as she could not speak French, and as she was as you see her, her success could not be said to be great. No, but that made no difference. The Duchesse de Z—— was determined that her son should marry the rich heiress. As she expected to remain here a year or more, and the young Duc de Z—— made a wry face, she did not press the matter. Then the heiress went into a convent to learn French, and the Duchesse went to see her very often and took her to drive, and did her son’s part as well as she could.

“Suddenly, to the amazement of everybody, the heiress sailed for America without a word of warning. The Duchesse was furious. ‘You must follow her,’ she said to her son. ‘We cannot let so much money escape.’ The son said he would be hanged if he went to America, or if he would marry such a monkey, and as for her money, she could go anywhere she pleased with it, or words to that effect. So that ended the affair of the Duc de Z——. When the other impecunious young nobles heard that the Duchesse no longer had any claims upon the American’s money they got together and said, ‘Somebody must marry her and divide with the rest. We can’t all marry her, but we can all have a share from whoever does. Now we will draw lots to see who must go to America and marry her.’ The lot fell to the Baron de X——, but he had no money for the journey. So all the others raised what money they could and loaned it to him, and took his notes for it, with enormous interest, payable after his marriage. He sailed away, and within eight months he had married her, but he has not paid those notes because his wife won’t give him the money! And these gentlemen are furious! Good joke, I call it.”

“What a shameful thing!” I said. “I wonder if that girl knew how she was being married!”

“Of course she knew! At least, she might have known. She was rich and she was plain. How could she hope to gain one of the proudest titles in France without buying it?”

“I wonder if she could have known!” I said, again.

“It would not have prevented the marriage, would it, mademoiselle, if she had?”

“Indeed it would!” I said (but I don’t know whether it would or not). He shrugged his shoulders.

“America is very different from Europe, then, mademoiselle. Here it would have made no difference. When a great amount of money is to be placed, one must not have too many scruples.”

“If she did know,” I said, with a fervor which was lost upon him, “believe this, whether you can understand it or not: she was not a typical American girl.”

I had, as usual, many more words which he deserved to have had said to him, but education along this line takes too much time. I ought to have begun this great work with his great-grandparents.

What any one can see about Dinard to like is a mystery to me! Is it possible that one who has spent a month there could ever be lured back again? There is a beautiful journey from Paris across France southwesterly to the coast, through odd little French villages, vineyards, poppy-fields, and rose-gardens, across shining rivulets and through an undulating landscape, all so lovely that it is no wonder that one expects all this beauty to lead up to a climax. But what a disappointment Dinard is to one’s enthusiastic anticipations! This famous watering-place has to my mind not one solitary redeeming feature. It has no excuse for being famous. It has not even one happy accident about it as a peg to hang its fame upon, like some writers’ first novels. Dinard simply goes on being famous, nobody knows why. And to go there, after reading pages about it in the papers and hearing people speak of Dinard as Mohammedans whisper sacredly of Mecca, is like meeting celebrities. You wonder what under the sun—what in the world—how in the name of Heaven such ugly, stupid, uninteresting, heavy, dull, and insufferably ordinary persons are allowed to become famous by an overruling and beneficent Providence! I have met many celebrities, and I have been to Dinard. I have had my share of disappointments.

To begin with, Dinard is not sufficiently picturesque. There are but one or two pretty vistas and three or four points of view. Then it is not typically French. It is inhabited partly by English families who cross the Channel yearly from Southampton and Portsmouth, and who take with them their nine uninteresting daughters, with long front teeth and ill-hanging duck skirts, and partly by Americans who go to Dinard as they go to the Eiffel Tower; not that either is particularly interesting, but they had heard of these places before they came over. The only really interesting thing within five miles of Dinard is that, off St. Malo, on the island of Grand Bé, Châteaubriand is buried. But as this really belongs more to the attractions of St. Malo than to Dinard, and nobody who spends summers at Dinard ever mentioned Châteaubriand in my presence, or honored his tomb by a visit, it is pure charity on my part to ascribe this solitary point of real interest to Dinard. For, after all, Châteaubriand does not belong to it. Which logic reminds me forcibly of the plea entered by the defence in a suit for borrowing a kettle: “In the first place, I never borrowed his kettle; in the second place, it was whole when I returned it; and, in the third place, it was cracked when I got it.”

So with Châteaubriand and Dinard. Then Dinard has none of the dash and go of other watering-places. There is nothing to do except to bathe mornings and watch the people win or lose two francs at _petits chevaux_ in the evenings. Not wildly exciting, that. Consequently, you soon begin to stagnate with the rest.

You grow more and more stupid as the weeks pass, and at the end of a month you cease to think. From that time on you do not have such a bad time—that is to say, you do not suffer so acutely, because you have now got down to the level of the people who go back to Dinard the next year.

We came away. The hotels are among the worst on earth—musty, old-fashioned, and villainously expensive—and one of the happiest moments in my life was the day when I left Dinard for Mont St. Michel. Mont St. Michel is one of the most out-of-the-way, un-get-at-able places I found in all Europe; but, oh, how it rewards one who arrives!

Mont St. Michel is too well known to need a description. But to go from Dinard requires, first of all, that one must go by boat over to St. Malo, thence by train; change cars, and alight finally at a lonely little station, behind which stands a sort of vehicle—a cross between a London omnibus and a hay-wagon. You scramble to the top of this as best you may. Nobody helps you. The Frenchman behind you crowds forward and climbs up ahead of you and holds you back with his umbrella while he hauls his fat wife up beside him. Then you clamber up by the hub of the wheel and by sundry awkward means which remind you of climbing a stone wall when you were a child. You take any seat left, which the Frenchmen do not want, the horses are put to, and away you go over a smooth sandy road for eleven miles, with the sea crawling up on each side of you over the dunes.

Suddenly, without warning, you come squarely upon Mont St. Michel, rising solidly five hundred feet from nowhere. There is a whole town in this fortress, built upon this rock, street above street, like a flight of stairs, and house piled up behind house, until on the very top there is one of the most famous cathedrals in the world; and as you thread its maze of vaulted chambers and dungeons and come to its gigantic tower you are lost in absolute wonder at the building of it.

Where did they get the material? And when got, what human ingenuity could raise those enormous blocks of stone to that vast height? How those cannon swept all approach by land or sea as far as the eye could reach! It would require superb courage in an enemy to come within reach of that grim sentinel of France, manned by her warrior monks. What secrets those awful dungeons might relate! Here political crimes were avenged with all the cruelty of Siberian exile. Here prisoners wore their lives away in black solitude, no ray of light penetrating their darkness.

The story is told that one poor wretch was eaten alive by gigantic rats, and they have a ghastly reproduction of it in wax, which makes you creepy for a week after you have seen it. Nowhere in all Europe did I see a place which impressed its wonder and its history of horror upon me as did the cathedral dungeon of Mont St. Michel. Its situation was so impregnable, its capacity so vast, its silence and isolation from the outer world so absolute.

All Russia does not boast a situation so replete with possible and probable misery and anguish such as were suggested to my mind here.

But the wonder and charm of the compact little town which clings like a limpet to its base are more than can be expressed on the written page. It is like climbing the uneven stairs of some vast and roofless ancient palace, upon each floor of which dwell families who have come in and roofed over the suites of rooms and made houses out of them. The stairs lead you, not from floor to floor, but from bakery to carpenter-shop, from the blacksmith’s to the telegraph-office.

The streets are paved with large cobblestones, to prevent cart-wheels from slipping, and are so narrow that I often had to stand up at afternoon tea with my cup in one hand and my chair in the other, to let a straining, toiling little donkey pass me, gallantly hauling his load of fagots up an incline of forty-five degrees.

The famous inn here is kept by Madame Poularde, who can cook so marvellously that she is one of the wonders of Normandy. Her kitchen faces the main street; you simply step over the threshold as you hear the beating of eggs, and there, over an immense open fire, which roars gloriously up the chimney, are the fowls twirling on their strings and dripping deliciously into the pans which sizzle complainingly on the coals beneath.