Chapter I: Part 1

ELIZABETH VISITS AMERICA

BY

ELINOR GLYN

Author of

"Three Weeks," "The Visits of Elizabeth," "The Reflections of Ambrosine," "The Vicissitudes of Evangeline," "Beyond the Rocks," "The damsel and the Sage"

1909

CONTENTS

Heaviland Manor Tonnerre Cannes Lusitania Plaza Hotel, New York Speistville Plaza Hotel, New York Latour Court, Long Island Plaza Hotel, New York Ringwood, Philadelphia Plaza Hotel, New York Niagara Chicago Going West San Francisco On the Private Car Osages City Camp of Moonbeams On the Private Car Again Osages City Again

Elizabeth Visits America

After a few years of really perfect domestic bliss Elizabeth and her "Harry" had a rather serious quarrel, which ended in Lord Valmond's going off to shoot big game in the wilds of Africa, leaving Elizabeth, who (in the absence of her mother and her favourite cousin, Octavia, abroad) had taken refuge with her great aunt Maria at Heaviland Manor, in an obstinate and disconsolate frame of mind.

Lord Valmond was two days out on his voyage when Elizabeth wrote to her parent:

HEAVILAND MANOR

Heaviland Manor

Dearest Mamma,--I hope you are taking every possible care of Hurstbridge and Ermyntrude and seeing that the sweet angels do not eat pounds of chocolate between meals. If I had known how Harry was going to behave to me over such a simple thing as the Vicomte's letter, I could never have let you take the children with you to Arcachon for these next months--I am feeling so lonely.

I came to great aunt Maria's because on Saturday night when Harry refused to say he was sorry, it seemed the only dignified thing to do. I never thought of course that he would rush off to Africa like this, and although I feel I was perfectly right and should act in the very same way again--still--well, there is no use talking about it, dearest Mamma--and please don't write me a sermon on wifely duty and submission--because it will only make me worse.

I don't know what I shall do next or where I shall go--I mean to take the first chance of having some fun I can get. If he could go off in a huff--but I won't speak of him even--I am going to forget I am married and have a good time like everyone else does. Naturally, I haven't told a soul but you about it all--our quarrel I mean--and Aunt Maria thinks I am a poor ill-used darling to have a husband who wants to shoot lions, but Uncle John said it is quite natural, and Aunt Maria heard that and said, "Tut tut," at once.

There is a tremendous excitement here! Can you imagine it, Mamma? They have actually got an automobile! It came this morning, and if it had been a flying machine it could not have been considered more wonderful. It is Uncle John's fiftieth wedding present to Aunt Maria!--and they are going in it on the same tour they took on their wedding journey! Aunt Maria, as you know, has never been abroad since. We all went into the stable yard to see it. The face of the coachman! (You remember him?--always the same one.) It was a mixture of contempt and defiance. They did suggest having him taught a chauffeur's duties, but the man who came from the place they bought the car wisely suggested it might, at his age, be dangerous, and Aunt Maria also feared it would be bad for his sore throat--it is still sore!--so they have abandoned this idea.

They start on Monday--the anniversary of their wedding--and they have asked me to go with them, and I really think I shall.

The most marvellous preparations are being made. One would think it was a journey to the South Pole. Aunt Maria spends hours each day in writing and rewriting lists of things she must have with her, and then Uncle John protests that only the smallest amount of luggage can be taken. So she consults with Janet Mackintosh, her maid, and then she turns to me and in a loud whisper says that of course she has to be patient with poor Janet as she is a newcomer and does not yet know her ways! She has been with her five years now, ever since her last Methuselah died, so one would have thought that long enough to learn, wouldn't one, Mamma?

The automobile is most remarkable, as it has a rumble on the back, because, as Aunt Maria explained, her maid and Uncle John's valet went in the rumble of the carriage on their wedding journey, and it is the proper place for servants, so she insisted upon the motor being arranged in the same way. Janet and the valet will have a suffocatingly dusty drive--enveloped in complete coverings of leather. Agnès is to sit beside the chauffeur and we three inside. I suppose everyone will scream with laughter as we career through the towns, but what matter! I shall go down to Cannes with them and join Octavia there if I find it too boring, and Harry cannot have a word to say to my travelling with my own relations. I feel like crying, dearest Mamma, so I won't write any more now.

Your affectionate daughter,
ELIZABETH.

TONNERRE

HOTEL DE LA POULE D'OR, TONNERRE. _(Somewhere on the way to Dijon.)_

Dearest Mamma,--We have got this far! Never have you imagined such an affair as our trip is. Coming across the Channel was bad enough. Aunt Maria sniffed chloroform and remained semi-conscious until we got to Boulogne, because she said one never could trust the sea, although it looked smooth enough from the pier; on her honeymoon she recollected just the same deceitful appearance and they took five hours and she was very sick and decided not to chance it again! Uncle John had to hold one of her hands and I the bottle, but we got there safely in the usual time and not a ripple on the water! The motor had been sent on, and after sleeping at Boulogne we started. The little gamins shouted, "Quel drole de char triomphant! Bon voyage, Mesdames," and Aunt Maria smiled and bowed as pleased as possible, not having heard a word.

Uncle John was as gay and attentive as I suppose he was on the journey--this is how they speak of it--and made one or two quite risqué jokes down the ear trumpet, and Aunt Maria blushed and looked so coy. Apparently she had had hysterics at Folkestone originally--did you have them when you married, Mamma? I never thought of such a thing when Harry and I--but I did not mean to speak of him again. Aunt Maria wears the same shaped bonnet now as she did then, and strangely enough it is exactly like my new lovely chinchilla motor one Caroline sent for me to travel in. We have the car open all the time and in the noise Aunt Maria hears much better, so one has only to speak in an ordinary voice down the trumpet.

Everything went all right until this morning; we left Versailles at dawn--how they were ever ready I don't know, considering the tremendous lot of wraps and pillows and footwarmers and heaven knows what they have;--besides Uncle John saying all the time it is their second honeymoon. However, we got off, and as we have been on the road two days, even Janet, who is naturally as meek as a mouse, is beginning to "turn" at her seat in the rumble; because, it having rained and there being no dust, she and Uncle John's valet are covered with mud instead, each time we arrive at a place, and have to be scraped off before they can even enter a hotel.

Agnès would simply have had a fit of blue rage if one had put her there;--as it is she is having an affair with the chauffeur. There must be an epidemic in the air now for women of forty to play with boys, as they get it even in her class. What was I saying, Oh! yes--Well, the first trouble began with a burst tyre, and we all had to get out while the new one was being put on; and as we were standing near, another car came up from the opposite direction, and would have passed us, only I suppose Aunt Maria looked so unusual the occupants stopped--occupant, I meant--it was an American--and asked if it--he, I mean, could be of any assistance. Uncle John, who thinks it right to gain information whenever he can from travellers, said, No, not materially, but he would be obliged to know if the country we were coming to was smooth or not. Then we knew it was an American! In those big coats one can't tell the nation at first, but directly he said: "It's like a base-ball ground--and I should say you'd find any machine could do it--" we guessed at once. He was so nice looking, Mamma--rather ugly, but good looking all the same; you know what I mean. His nose was crooked but his jaw was so square, and he had such jolly brown eyes--and they twinkled at one, and he was very, very tall. "We hope to get to Dijon tonight," Uncle John said. "Can you tell us, sir, if we shall have any difficulty?" The American did not bother to raise his hat or any fuss, but just got out of his car and told the facts to Uncle John; and then he turned to the chauffeur, who was fumbling with the tyre--it was something complicated, not only just the bursting--and in a minute or two he was down in the mud giving such practical advice. And you never heard such slang! But I believe men like that sort of thing, as the chauffeur was not a bit offended at being interfered with.

When they had finished grovelling, he got in again, and Uncle John insisted upon exchanging cards with the stranger. He got out his from some pocket, but the American had not one. "By the living jingo," he said, "I've no bit of pasteboard handy--but my name is Horatio Thomas Nelson Renour--and you'll find me any day at the Nelson Building, Osages City, Nevada. This is my first visit to Europe." Perhaps I am not repeating exactly the right American, Mamma, but it was something like that. But I wish you could have seen him, I know you would have liked him as I did. Wait till I tell you what he did afterwards, then you will, anyway. "Anyway" is American--you see I have picked it up already!

We waved a kind of grateful goodbye and went our different ways, and beyond its raining most of the time we had a quick journey; but at last we felt in the dusk we were off the right road. Like all chauffeurs ours had whizzed past every notice of the direction--so carefully printed up as they are in France, too. From the way they behave one would think chauffeurs believe themselves to possess a sixth sense and can feel in some occult manner the right turns, as they never bother to look at sign posts, or condescend to ask the way like ordinary mortals. Ours did not so much as stop even when the lane got into a mere track, until, with the weight of Uncle John, Aunt Maria and me in the back seat, and the extra stones in the rumble, as he made a sensational backing turn into a fieldish looking place, (it was dark twilight) our hind wheels sunk in up to their axles,--and the poor machinery groaned in its endeavours to extricate us! We had to get out in the gloom and mud, and Aunt Maria looked almost pathetic in her elastic side "prunella" boots, edged with fur, white silk stockings and red quilted silk petticoat held up very high. But she was so good tempered over it all! She said when one had been married happily for fifty years, and was having one's honeymoon all over again--(she had forgotten the hysterics)--one ought not to grumble at trifles.

Meanwhile the hind wheels of the car sank deeper and deeper. I believe we should never have got out, and it would have been there still, if we had not heard a scream from a siren, and our American friend tore up again! It was pitch dark by now, and the valet, the chauffeur, and Uncle John were shoving and straining, and nothing was happening. Why he was returning this way, right out of the main road, he did not explain, but he jumped out and in a minute took command of the situation. He said, "If we had taken a waggon over the desert, we'd know how to fix up this in a shake." He sent his chauffeur back to the nearest village for some boards and a shovel, and then dug out to firm ground and got the boards under, all so neatly and quickly, and no one thought of disobeying him! And we were soon all packed into the car again none the worse. Then he said he also found he was obliged to go back and would show us the way as far as we liked. Uncle John was so grateful, and we started.

Tonnerre was all as far as we could get to-night, and about six o'clock we arrived at this hotel I am writing from.

Mr. Horatio Thomas Nelson Renour was a few yards in front of us. "Say, Lord Wordon," he said to Uncle John, "I guess this is no kind of a place your ladies have been accustomed to, but it's probably pretty decent in spite of appearances. I know these sort of little shanties, and they aren't half as bad as they look."

He took as much pains to shout down Aunt Maria's trumpet as Harry used in the beginning when he wanted to please me, and when we got upstairs she said she had no idea Americans were such "superior persons." "One of Nature's gentlemen, my dear, which are the only sort of true gentlemen you will find."

Such a hotel, Mamma! And Uncle John and Aunt Maria had to have the only big bedroom on the first floor, and Mr. Renour and I were given two little ones communicating on the back part. They thought of course we were of the same party, and married.

"Madame" could have the inner one, they explained, and "Monsieur" the outer! Aunt Maria, who thought, I suppose, they said Agnès, not "Monsieur," smiled pleasantly and agreed--that would be "tout à fait bien." Of course if Horatio Thomas Nelson Renour had been a Frenchman, or even heaps of Englishmen we know, he would have been delighted; instead of which he got perfectly crimson all over his bronzed face and explained in fearful French to the landlady he could not sleep except on a top floor. Wasn't it nice of him, Mamma?

Dinner was at seven o'clock in the table d'hôte, and about eight commercial travellers were already seated when we got down. We had glass racks to put our forks and knives on, and that wrung out kind of table linen, not ironed, but all beautifully clean; and wonderfully good food.

Uncle John made one end of our party and Mr. Renour the other, with Aunt Maria and me in the middle, and the commercial travellers, who all tucked in their table napkins under their chins, beyond. The American was so amusing:--it was his language, not exactly what he said. I shall get into it soon and tell you some of the sentences, but at first it is too difficult. Presently he said he did not understand about English titles; he supposed I had one, but he was not "kinder used to them," so did I mind his calling me Lady Elizabeth, as he heard Aunt Maria calling me Elizabeth, and he felt sure "Miss" wouldn't be all right, but would "Lady" be near enough? I said, quite, I was so enchanted, Mamma, to be taken for a young girl, after having been married nearly seven years and being twenty-four last month! I would not undeceive him for the world, and as we shall never see him again it won't matter. Think, too, how cross Harry--but I won't speak of him!

Aunt Maria had an amiable smile on all the time. Can you imagine them dining in a public room in an English hotel! The idea would horrify her, but she says no one should make fusses travelling, and I believe she would look just as pleased if we were shipwrecked on a desert island.

There was no salon to sit in after dinner, and the moon came out, so Mr. Renour suggested we ought to see the church, which is one of the things marked in the guide book. Uncle John said he would light his cigar and come with us, while Aunt Maria went to bed, but when we got outside the dear old fellow seemed tired and was quite glad to return when I suggested it; so the American and I went on alone. I must say, Mamma, it is lovely being married, when one comes to think of it, being able to stroll out like this with a young man all alone;--and I have never had the chance before, with Harry always so jealous, and forever at my heels. I shall make hay while the sun shines! He was so nice. He told me all about himself--he is a very rich mine owner--out West in America, and began as a poor boy without any education, who went out first as a cow-boy on a ranch and then took to mining and got a stroke of luck, and now owns the half of the great Osage Mine. And he is only twenty-nine. "I kinder felt I ought to see Europe," he said, "never having been further East than Chicago; so I came over at Christmas time and have been around in this machine ever since." He calls his automobile, an immense 90 h.p. Charon, his "machine!" He said all this so simply, as if it were quite natural to tell a stranger his life story, and he is perfectly direct--only you have to speak to him with the meaning you intend in the words. Metaphor is not the least use: he answers literally.

The church was shut, and as we had no excuse to stay out longer we strolled back. He was intensely respectful, and he ended up by saying he found me just the nicest girl he had seen "this side." I was so pleased. I hope he will come on the rest of the way with us; we start at dawn. So good night, dearest Mamma.

Your affectionate daughter,
ELIZABETH.

CANNES

CANNES. HOTEL DU PARC.

Dearest Mamma,--You will be surprised to hear my plans! Octavia came over from Monte Carlo directly we arrived, and in less than ten minutes had got most of the story of Harry's and my quarrel out of me. I never meant to tell her anything, but she is such a dear. She said at once that she should take care of me, as she could not have me running about alone. And I really can't stand any more of the honeymoon pair--and sitting three in the back seat. So prepare yourself for a great surprise, Mamma! I am going to America with Tom and Octavia! They sail in the Lusitania next Saturday and we are flying back to England tonight. I shan't have any clothes but I don't care; I shall not worry over that. We are going to see New York and then go right out to California, where Tom is going on to Mexico to kill tarpons or shoot turtles or whatever they do there.

The rest of our journey after Tonnerre was simple. At each place Mr. Renour was just in front of us, and showed us the way, and we grew quite to feel he was one of our party. Uncle John is devoted to him--and Aunt Maria, too. She says considering he speaks a foreign language--he does almost!--it is wonderful how he makes her hear!

Avignon interested me. It looks so wally and fortified, but I am greatly disappointed, the romantic story of Pétrarque and his Laure is all nonsense. I find Laure had eleven children in about fifteen years, the guide said, and Pétrarque continued making sonnets to her, never minding that a bit. Now do you believe it, Mamma? A man to stay in love for twenty years with a woman who kept on having eleven children all the image of the husband as good as gold! I don't! Pétrarque was probably some tiresome prig like all poets, and thought her a suitable peg to hang his verses on.

Mr. Renour and I are so friendly. He is not with us now because he had to go to Monte Carlo, so he does not yet know I am going to America. He still thinks I am not married--and do you know, Mamma, I believe he is falling in love with me--and I feel rather mean--but I expect we shan't see him before we start, so it will not so much matter. This morning quantities of flowers came up to my room with his card, and just written underneath, "got to meet a man at Monte Carlo, shan't be gone long." I am leaving him a note thanking him and saying we are off to his country. I have signed it, "Elizabeth Valmond" of course, so that may illuminate him--but I still feel rather mean.

We are only to be away two months and I think the change will do me good, and I know you will take every care of Hurstbridge and Ermyntrude. I hate not having time to run over to see you and them, but Octavia says it can't possibly be done, and I am not to be silly; that two months is nothing, and I shall be back again at the original time you were to bring them to England--so I suppose she is right. I shall send Harry a cable to meet him at Zanzibar. He can't stop me then because we shall be on the sea, and if he is furious I shall be doubly pleased.

Aunt Maria and Uncle John have been so kind, but I can see are relieved Octavia is going to take me. They have grown more sentimental. At each place we come to they recollect some tender passage of their former trip. It seems Aunt Maria's hysterics ended at Folkstone. Octavia says she means really to see America and not only go to the houses of the smart people one knows when they are in England, because she is sure there are lots of other kinds quite as interesting and more original. We are to stay in New York and then go West. I shall not have a moment to write until I am on the ship, and trust I shall not be seasick.

Fondest love to my two angels and yourself,

Your affectionate daughter,
ELIZABETH.

LUSITANIA

LUSITANIA. _Fourth day out_.

Dearest Mamma,--It is perfectly delightful being at sea--in this ship--because you don't really know you are on the hateful element. We have a charming suite with two real windows and beds, and even Agnès has not grumbled. There are lots of American on board, and really these travelling ones are quite as bad as the awful English people one meets on the Continent, only instead of having stick out teeth and elephants' feet, their general shapes are odd. It appears as if in the beginning Peter, or someone, called up to the Creator that so many thousands of arms and legs and bodies and heads were wanted to make this new nation, and so the requisite amount were pitched down and then joined up without anyone's worrying to get them en suite. Thus A seems to have received B's head with C's arms, his own body and D's legs--and so on; not the least thought shown in their construction. They seem rough-hewn--with foreheads too prominent or noses too big, or too square shoulders or too deep set eyes, nearly always too something--and the women the same; whereas the children (there are only a few of them fortunately) are really impossible. There is one family of the fattest boys you ever saw--simply like the pictures of the fat boy of Peckham, and a little girl of six called Matilda. Matilda is certainly over thirty in her conversation--she told me she was sick of ocean travelling--her eighth voyage; and she was sick of the Continent, too--you get no good candy there and her Momma did nothing but shop. She has the voice of a young peacock and the repartee of a Dublin car driver--absolutely "all there." They are fairly rich "store keepers" from Buffalo. The mother has nerves, the father dyspepsia and the nurse is seasick, so Matilda is quite her own mistress, and rushes over the entire ship conversing with everyone. She is most amusing for a short time, if it were not pathetic. She plays off one fat boy (cousins they are of hers) against the other, and one steward against another for biscuits and figs--with the most consummate skill. It is no wonder if this quality can be perfected so young by Americans that they can snatch all our best young men from us when they grow up.

I don't know how it is the most unattractive creatures of every nation seem to be the ones who travel. There is a family of English who have the next table to us, for instance; they make us blush for our country. The two young men are the most impossible bounders one could meet, and I am sure their names must be Percy and Ernest! When there was a dance last night they smoked pipes in the faces of their partners between the valses, and altogether were unspeakably aggressive. No American in the world would behave like that to women. I really think the English middle classes are the most odious--except, perhaps, the Germans--of any people on earth. And as these are the ones other nations see most of, no wonder they hate us.

Octavia is so entertained at everything. We have not spoken to anyone except one family who sit near us on the deck, and they have asked us to stay with them at their country place on the New Jersey shore. But--Oh! I forgot to tell you, Mamma, Mr. Renour is on board. Is it not a strange coincidence? He seemed very surprised to see us, and for a moment it was quite awkward when I introduced him to Octavia--because she, not being deaf like Aunt Maria, I knew would hear him calling me Lady Elizabeth and think it odd, and he would be certain to discover from her that I am married. So the best thing to do seemed to be to take a walk with him at once on the top deck and explain matters--this was just before dinner in the twilight.

He told me it was unkind to have given him the slip as we did, and that he had had "quite a worry" to "come up with" us--but if I imagined he was going to let me get out of range again I was mistaken! You can't think, Mamma, how difficult it was to screw up my courage to tell him I was married--he has such nice brown eyes;--and although his language is more remarkable than anything you ever heard, he is not the least little bit common. At last I blurted it out straight and explained and asked him to forgive me. He looked away at the sea for quite five minutes and his jaw was square as a box. Then he turned round and held out his hand. "Say," he said, "I expect you didn't mean to play a low down trick on me but it has hit pretty straight anyway. We'll shake hands and I reckon I'll keep out of your track for a day or so till I size up things and put them on the new elevation." And then he went away, saying, "Good evening, Lady Valmond." I could have cried, Mamma, I felt so small and paltry. He is a great big splendid creature and I wish I had not been so silly as to pretend in the beginning. Octavia thinks him delightful. He never appeared for two days--then he came up as if nothing had happened; only he looks at my hat or my chin or my feet now and never into my eyes as before, and he calls me Lady Valmond every other minute--and that is irritating. We shall get in to-morrow and this will be posted at Sandy Hook, so good-night, dearest Mamma.

Your affectionate daughter,
ELIZABETH.

PLAZA HOTEL, NEW YORK

PLAZA HOTEL, _NEW YORK._

Dearest Mamma,--We are here now, so this is where to address your letters. We went to another hotel first but we could not stand the impudence of the servants, and having to shout down the telephone for everything instead of ringing a bell--and here it is much nicer and one is humanly waited on.

America is too quaint. Crowds of reporters came on board to interview us! We never dreamed that they would bother just private people, but it was because of the titles, I suppose. Tom was furious but Octavia was delighted. She said she wanted to see all the American customs and if talking to reporters was one of them, she wanted that, too. So she was sweetly gracious and never told them a word of truth.

They were perfectly polite, but they asked direct questions, how we liked America (we had not landed!), how long we were going to stay, what was our object in coming there, what we thought of the American divorce, etc., etc. All but two were the same type: very prominent foreheads, deep set eyes, white faces, origin South of France or Corsican mixed with Jew to look at, with the astounding American acuteness added, and all had the expression of a good terrier after a rat--the most intense concentration.

When we actually landed female ones attacked us, but Octavia who, as you know, doesn't really care for women, was not nearly so nice to them, and their articles in the papers about us are virulent!

"Lady Chevenix is a homely looking person with henna-assisted hair and the true British haughty manner," they put! They were not so disagreeable about me, but not flattering. Then they snap-shotted us, and Octavia really does look rather odd, as her nose got out of focus, I suppose, and appears like Mr. Punch's; underneath is written, "An English Peeress and Society Beauty." We laughed so!

New York Harbour is a wonderful sight, but you have read all about it often. The streets by it are awful, badly paved and hideous architecture, immense tall houses here and there, gaunt and staring like giants who have seen Medusa's head and been turned into stone. Farther up town the buildings are all much the same, so their huge height does not show so greatly as with a few lower ones in between.

Every creature in the street has got a purposeful determined air, and even the horses, many of them without blinkers, have it, too, I wonder if we shall catch it before we leave. Nobody appears English--I mean of origin, even if their name is Smith or Brown; every other nation, with the strong stamp of "American" dominating whatever country they originally hailed from, but not English. They have all the appearance of rushing to some special place, not just taking a walk to nowhere.

You would have to come here to understand the insolence of the servants in most places. We naturally ordered tea (down the telephone) when we arrived, and presently a waiter brought a teapot and two cups and nothing else; and when we remonstrated he picked his teeth and grinned and said, "If you don't ask for what you want you won't get it. You said tea, and you've got tea, you never mentioned sugar and milk." Then he bounced off, and when the lift boy whistled as he brought me up, and the Irish chambermaid began to chat to Octavia, she said she could not bear it any longer, and Tom must go out and find another hotel. So late last night we got here, which is charming; perhaps the attendants are paid extra for manners. But even here they call Octavia "Lady Chevenix" and me "Lady Valmond" every minute--never just "My Lady" like at home, and I am sure they would rather die than say "Your Ladyship!"

Mr. Renour had to leave us; we were so sorry, but he got a telegram as we landed, saying the superintendent of his mine had been shot and there was "trouble" out there, so he had to fly off at once. However, we have promised to go and stay with him presently and he is going to show us all the mining camps.

To-day we have rested, and quantities of the people one knows in London sent us flowers, and they are the best I have ever seen--roses so enormous they look like peonies, and on colossal stalks--in fact, everything is twice the size of at home.

We are going to dine at Sherry's to-night with a party. It is the fashionable restaurant, and I will finish when I come back.

1:30 A.M.

Everything is so amusing! and we have had a delightful evening. It is more like Paris than England, because one wears a hat at dinner, which I always think looks so much better in a restaurant. The party was about eighteen, and I sat next the host. American men; as far as I have yet seen, are of quite another sex to English or French--I mean you feel more as if you were out with kind Aunts or Grandmothers or benevolent Uncles than just men. They don't try to make the least love to you or say things with two meanings, and they are perfectly brotherly and serious, unless they are telling anecdotes with American humour--and that is not subtle. It is something that makes you laugh the moment you hear it, you have not to think a scrap. When they are not practically English, like the ones we see in London every season, they wear such funny clothes--often velvet collars on their coats! and the shoulders padded out so that every man is perfectly square; but everything looks extraordinarily well sewn and ironed and everybody is clean shaven; and Octavia says it takes at least two hundred years of gently bred ancestors to look like a gentleman clean shaven in evening dress, so perhaps that is why lots of them have the appearance of actors. Tom, with his ugly face and his long lean limbs, seemed as some other species of animal, or a Derby winner let loose among a pen of prize hackneys and cobs. Many of them are splendid of their kind, but it is perfectly absurd to pretend they look thoroughbred. One would not expect it of animals, with their mixed ancestry, so why of human beings.

Octavia says they would be insulted to hear me saying that, but I am sure they are far too sensible and logical; for if you were a mixture of cart horse, hunter, thoroughbred, Shetland and cob, you might have the good qualities of all and be a magnificent splendid creature, but you could not expect to look like one of the direct descendants of the Godolphin Arabian, could you, Mamma?

I don't mind that part in the least, but I would rather they had a more outdoor expression. As I looked round the room numbers of their faces seemed pasty, and their shapes thick through, and soft, as if they would bruise easily if one touched them, and lived a good deal in the dark. Also they don't have "flowers and honey" on their hair, so it does not shine and keep tidy, and it is not brushed smartly; and after our lovely guardsmen they look a little ungroomed about the head. This, of course, is only my first impression, after seeing the fashionable restaurant one evening. I may be quite wrong, generally speaking.

The women are so exquisitely dressed that it is difficult to form an opinion. They have whatever is the latest fashion, perfectly made; all their hair is done exactly alike in the way it is worn in Paris. Their figures have the last "look" and their jewels are simply divine. With all this beyond criticism, it is very difficult to say whether they are beautiful or not, naturally; the general effect is so perfect. They, as far as grooming and superlative "turnedoutness" is concerned (I had to make a new word), are the counterpart of our guardsmen.

The food was exquisite and we had terrapin and canvas back ducks; and they are both the best things you ever tasted, only when you cut the duck you have to look the other way, and take the first bite with your eyes shut, because it has only run through the kitchen. And one would prefer to have the terrapin alone in one's room, because of the bones--a greater test in nice eating than the bunch of grapes which were given to the young diplomat in the story book.

But to begin with, I have not told you of the cocktail! I had to have one. You are handed it before anything else, while you are waiting for the soup, and it tastes like ipecacuanha wine mixed with brandy and something bitter and a touch of orange; but you have not swallowed it five minutes when you feel you have not a care in the world and nothing matters. You can't think, Mamma, how insidious and delightful--but of course I could not possibly have drunk anything after it, and I was so surprised to see everyone else swallowing champagne all through dinner; so I suppose it is a thing one gets accustomed to.

Now I am very sleepy, so good-night, dear Mamma.

Kisses to my angels.

Your affectionate daughter,
ELIZABETH.

SPLEISTVILLE

SPLEISTVILLE, _Up the Hudson_.

Dearest Mamma,--A whole week since we landed! and we are terribly amused ("terribly" is American for "much"); and do you know that describes almost everything in comparison to at home. Everything is "colossalised"--events, fortunes, accidents, climate, conversation, ambitions--everything is in the extreme--all en-gros, not en-detail. They can't even have a tram run off a line, which in England or France might kill one or two people, without its making a holocaust of half a street full. Even in their hospitality they are twice the size of other nations, simply too kind and generous for words. They have loaded us with invitations; we have been out morning, noon and night.

The thing which surprises me is they should still employ animals of normal size; one would expect to see elephants and mammoths drawing the hansoms and carts!

Now we are staying in a country palace with the family we met on the boat, whom the Americans we know in England would not speak to; in fact, I am sure they are rather hurt at our coming here; but Octavia says she prefers to see something we do not see in England. The Van Verdens, and Courtfields and Latours are almost like us, only they are richer and have better French furniture. So she says she wants to see the others, the American Americans we don't meet at home. If people are nice in themselves how can it matter who they are or if "fashionable" or not. The whole thing is nonsense and if you belong to a country where the longest tradition is sixteen hundred and something, and your ancestor got there then through being a middle class puritan, or a ne'er-do-weel shipped off to colonise a savage land, it is too absurd to boast about ancestry or worry in the least over such things. The facts to be proud of are the splendid, vivid, vital, successful creatures they are now, no matter what their origin; but just like Hurstbridge and Ermyntrude in the nursery, the one thing they can't have they think immensely of. Nearly everyone tells you here, their great-great-grandfather came over in the Mayflower. (How absurd of the Cunard line to be proud of the Mauretania! The Mayflower, of course, must have been twice the size.) I wonder if in Virginia they would inform us theirs were the original cavaliers. I don't expect so, because cavaliers always were gentlemen, and puritans of any century only of the middle classes. Fancy if we had to announce to strangers that Tom's ancestor carried the standard at Agincourt and Octavia's and mine came over with the Conqueror!

Even in a week Tom has got so wearied about the Mayflower that yesterday at lunch when some new people came, and one woman began again, he said his father had collected rags and bones, and his great-great-grandfather was hung for sheep stealing! The woman nearly had a fit, and I heard her reproaching our hostess afterwards, as she said she had been invited to meet an English Earl! And the poor hostess looked so unhappy and came and asked me in such a worried voice if it were really true; so I told her I thought not exactly, but that the late Earl had a wonderful collection of Persian carpets and ivories which Tom might be alluding to. Even this did not comfort her, I could see she was still troubled over the sheep stealing, and the only thing I could think of to explain that was about the eighth Earl, don't you remember, Mamma? who was beheaded for the Old Pretender.

But the exquisite part of it all is the lady Tom told the story to was interviewed directly she got home, I suppose, for this morning in most of the papers there are headlines six inches tall:

ENGLISH PEER NO CATCH

FATHER RAG AND BONE MERCHANT

GRANDFATHER HANGED

Tom is so enchanted he is going to have them framed for the smoking room at Chevenix. But our hostess is too unhappy and burns to get him to deny it publicly. "My dear lady," Tom said, "would you have me deny I've got a green nose?" She looked so puzzled, "Oh, Lord Chevenix," she said, "why, of course you have not. A little sunburnt, perhaps--but _green!"_ Think of it, Mamma! Octavia and I nearly collapsed, and she is such a nice woman, too, and not really a fool; bright and cheery and sensible; but I am afraid out here they don't yet quite understand Tom, or Octavia either, for the matter of that.

There is a lovely place in New York called the Riverside Drive, charming houses looking straight out on the Hudson. But if you live in that part none of the Four Hundred or Two Hundred and Fifty, or whatever it is, would visit you, hardly. These people we are staying with now have a mansion there but are soon going to move. The daughter, Natalie, told me to-day, that after this her Poppa would also take a house at Newport, because now they would have no difficulty in getting into the swim!

We came here for the Sunday and it was raining when we arrived--after an odious train journey. Tom's valet and both the maids are perfectly at sea as yet, and while burning with rage over the lack of, and indifference of, the porters, are too scornfully haughty to adapt themselves to circumstances; so they still bring unnecessary hand luggage and argue with the conductor. We made a mistake in the train and there was no Pullman, so that means there is only one class. It really is so quaint. Mamma, having to travel as if it were third. It amused me immensely, two people on a seat on either side and an aisle through the middle down which the ticket collector walks, and for most of the journey a child raced backwards and forwards, jumping with sticky hands clinging to the sides of each seat while it sucked candy. The mother screeched, "Say, Willie, if you don't quit that game, I'll tell your pa when we get home!" However, Willie shouted, "You bet," and paid not the least attention!

Nearly everywhere where you have to come in contact with people in an obviously inferior or menial position, manners don't exist. They seem to think they can demonstrate their equality, if not superiority, by being as rude as possible. Of course if they were really the ladies and gentlemen they are trying to prove they are, they would be courteous and gentle. The attitude is, "I'm as good as you, indeed better!" Either you are a gentleman or woman, aren't you, Mamma? and you do not have to demonstrate it, everyone can see it; or you are not, and no amount of your own assertion that you are will make anyone believe you. So, of what use to be rude, or clamour, or boast? Doesn't it make you laugh, Mamma? Though it surprises me here because as a people they are certainly more intelligent than any other people on earth, and one would have thought they would have seen how futile and funny that side of them is.

The talk of equality is just as much nonsense in America as in every other place under the sun. How can people be called equal when the Browns won't know the Smiths! And the Van Brounckers won't know either, and Fifth Avenue does not bow to the West Side, and everyone is striving to "go one better" than his neighbour.

Station is as strictly defined as in England, where the village grocer's daughter at Valmond no longer could speak to a school friend, a little general servant who came to fetch treacle at the shop, when Pappa Grocer bought a piano! So you see, Mamma, it is in human nature, whether you are English or American, if you haven't a sense of humour. I suppose you have to be up where we are for it all to seem nonsense and not to matter; and, who knows? If there were another grade beyond us we might be just the same, too; but it is trash to talk of equality. Even a Socialist leader thinks himself above the crowd--and is, too, though I should imagine that the American middle and lower classes would assert they have no equal but God--if they don't actually look down on Him.

How I am rambling on, and I wanted to tell you heaps of things! I shall never get them all into this letter.

When we arrived at this palace it was, as I say, raining, but that did not prevent the marble steps from being decorated with three footmen at equal distances to usher us into the care of a cabinet minister-looking butler, and then through a porphyry hall hung with priceless tapestry and some shockingly glaring imitation Elizabethan oak chairs--to the library, where our hostess awaited us in a magnificent décollete tea gown, and at least forty thousand pounds' worth of pearls. Natalie had the sweetest of frocks possible and was quite simple and nice, and there is not the least difference in her to the daughters of any of our "smart" friends.

The library was a library because they told us so, but there were not any books there, only groups of impossible furniture covered with magnificent brocade, and the finest flowers one ever saw, most perfectly put in huge vases by a really clever gardener; no subtle arrangement of colours, but every blossom the largest there could be in nature. The tea seemed to get mostly poured out by the servants, and the table was covered with a cloth so encrusted with Venetian lace one's cup was unsteady on it. That is one of the most remarkable points here--I mean America--as far as I have seen. The table cloths at every meal are masses of lace, and every sort of wonderful implement in the way of different gold forks and knives for every dish lie by your plate; and such exquisite glass; and some even have old polished tables like Aunt Maria, but instead of the simple slips they have mats and centrepieces and squares of magnificent lace. Only the very highest cream of the inner elect have plain table cloths and a little silver like we do at home. And it is always a "party"--everyone is conscious they are there, and they either assume bad manners or good ones, but nobody is sans gêne. Octavia says it takes as long to be that as to look like a gentleman clean shaven in evening dress. The rooms are awfully hot, steam heated up to about 75, and it makes your head swim after a while. There is only the son and a married daughter and husband in the house besides ourselves and two young men. We should call them bank clerks at home, and that is, I suppose, what they are here; only it is all different. Every man works just like our middle classes; it is not the least unaristocratic to be a lawyer or a doctor or a wholesale store-keeper, or any profession you can name, so long as it makes you rich. A man who does nothing is not considered to "amount to anything," and he generally doesn't, either! And I suppose it must be the climate, because directly they get immensely rich, so that the sons need not work, when it gets to the third generation, they often are invalids or weaklings, or have some funny vice or mania, and lots of them die of drink; which shows it is intended in some climates for men to work. Octavia says it takes centuries of wielding battle-axes and commanding vassals to give the consciousness of superiority which enables people to be idle without being vicious; but Tom says it is because they don't hunt and shoot, and go to the bench, and attend to their estates and county business; so instead they have to go crazy over fast motoring or flying machines, or any fad which is uppermost, not having any traditions of how their forefathers passed their time.

Last night there was a dinner party and some such clever men came. They were great financiers or business men or heads of Trusts. That means you have a splendid opportunity to speculate, only if anything goes wrong you have to chance all your other associates on the trust turning against you and saying it was all your fault, and then you generally have to commit suicide; but while you are head you can become frightfully rich and respected. I sat between two of the most successful of different things, and they talked all the time. They don't want to hear what you have to say, only to tell you about themselves and their ideas, so it is most interesting. They are not the least cultivated in literature or art or anything decorative, but full of ideas upon the future evolution of schemes and things; really intensely clever, some of them. Only the odd part of it is they don't seem to speculate upon what the marvellous conglomeration of false proportions, unbalance and luxury are going to bring their nation to, if they are not careful.

Mr. Spleist (that is our host's name) is so kind! He spoils his wife and Natalie more even than Harry spoils Ermyntrude; and the son-in-law is just the same to his wife. American husbands fetch and carry and come to heel like trained spaniels, and it is perfectly lovely; everything is so simple. If you happen to get bored with your husband, or he has a cold in his head, or anything that gets on your nerves, or you suddenly fancy some other man, you have not got all the bother and subterfuge of taking him for a lover and chancing a scandal like in England. You simply get your husband to let _you_ divorce _him,_ and make him give you heaps of money, and you keep the children if you happen to want them; or--there is generally only one--you agree to give that up for an extra million if he fancies it; and then you go off and marry your young man when he is free; because all American men are married, and he will have had to get his wife to divorce him. But when it is all "through," then it is comfortable and tidy, only the families get mixed after a while, and people have to be awfully careful not to ask them out to dinner together. One little girl at a dancing class is reported to have said to another: "What do you think of your new Papa? I think he is a mean cuss. He gave me no candy when he was mine."

Octavia says, from a morality standard, she does not see there is the least difference to our lovers in England and France, but I do, because here they have the comforting sense of the law finding it all right. The only tiresome part of it is, it must quite take away the zest of forbidden fruit that European nations get out of such affairs.