Chapter XIX: V. Chevillere to B. Randolph

"New-York, 18--.

"DEAR FRIEND,

"Certainly I must be one of the most unfortunate fellows that ever
lived. And none the less so because the bitter strokes come upon
me in the midst of apparent prosperity; but before I tell you of
one disappointment, I must tell you of the things which preceded
it, in the order of their occurrence.

"On the evening after the assemblage of our little party at
Hazlehurst's, Lamar, Damon, and myself went to the Italian Opera;
and to please Lamar no less than Damon, we took seats in the pit.

"The assemblage was brilliant beyond any thing I have seen, in the
two lower tiers of boxes. All the fashion, and wealth, and beauty
of this fair city seemed to be assembled around us, with their gay
plumage and foreign head-attire, and opera-glasses. As a shading
to this gay picture, there were the gentlemen, with enormous
whiskers and mustaches curling sentimentally and greasily over
the upper lip; their teeth glistening through the bristles,
ghastly as Peale's mummy itself.

"The passion for hairy visages is a singular characteristic of
this phrenological age. Large and frizzled locks puffed out on
each side of the head to hide the absence of development are
easily enough accounted for; but this supererogatory disfiguration
of ugly faces is altogether unaccountable on the same principles.

"'I'll be dad shamed if it ain't all cowardice, and I hate to see
it practised,' said Damon.

"There is, perhaps, more truth in this remark than you would at
first suppose. No man is so desirous to appear fierce, courageous,
and even piratical as he that is a dastard in his heart. Indeed
most men are fond of making a parade of those qualifications with
which they are least endowed by nature.

"There is one bewhiskered class, however, from whom we ought to
expect better things; I mean young and thoughtless men, who are
led away by fashion; many of whom have rubbed through the walls,
if not through the studies, of college; and whose taste ought to
have been more refined by associating with gentlemen, however
great their stolidity or idleness.

"Finally, as to whiskers, I have seen most of the American naval
and military heroes; and I cannot now recall a single one of them
who ever wore remarkable whiskers, or bristles on the upper lip.
Nor have I ever seen a polished southern gentleman remarkable for
either. There is one fact which, if generally known, would root
out the evil at its source; and that is, that men who flourish
large whiskers are very apt to become _bald_!

"'O! corn-stalks and jews-harps!' said Damon, after worrying on
his seat during the performance of the overture by the orchestra;
'will they tune their banjoes all night, and never get to playin?'

"'That is called fine Italian music,' said Lamar.

"'Yes! yes!' replied he, 'there's 'four-and-twenty fiddlers' sure
enough! but I rather suspicion that it would puzzle some of our
Kentuck gals to dance a reel to that music. O my grandmother! what
jaunty heels they would have to sling after such elbow-greese as
that. But you are stuffing me with soft corn--I see you are by
your laughing. They know better than to pass that for music; no,
no, catch a weasel asleep!'

"The opera now commenced, and I must own that I saw more of Damon
than I did of the play. He was struck dumb with astonishment;
seemed scarcely to believe his own senses, but looking round the
house after an unusual silence, and seeing the audience serious
and apparently attentive, he burst into a cachinnation.

"'Well,' said he, with a long breath, 'I wish I may be tetotally
smashed in a cider-mill, if that don't out-Cherokee old Kentuck;
why that ain't a chaw-tobacco better nor Cherokee! Just wait a
minute, and they'll raise the whoop, it's likely; and if they do,
if I don't give them a touch of Kentuck pipes that'll make them
think somebody's busted their biler. Look! some of the men have
got rings in their ears too; and leather skinned. Now I'm snagged
if I was to meet that feller in a Mississip cane-brake, and my
rifle on my arm, if I wouldn't be apt to let the wind through his
whistle cross-ways.'

"'Not if he was to speak to you, and tell you he was a Christian
like yourself?'

"'Speak to me! he would do a devilish sight better to play dummy:
for sure as he spoke, I should let fly at him, because I wouldn't
know but he belonged to some of those far away tribes of
Black-feet, or the likes of that.'

"'But you do not really think that they look and speak any thing
like the western savages, Damon?' said I.

"'I'm smashed if I don't bet that I can put blankets and leggins
on the whole tribe, and pass them through the Cherokee nation for
friendly Black-feet.'

"The incomparable Prima Donna (as she is called here) now made her
first appearance; her voice is exquisite, Randolph, and her
execution beyond the conception of an unsophisticated student.

"The music is pleasing to the ear, and may touch an Italian heart,
but it found no response from mine. I tell this to you in all
sincerity and confidence, but it would lower a man, I fear, to
say so in the fashionable circles.

"'Well, Damon, would the Italian ladies pass for squaws?'

"'No, no; they are better than the men, and they are right pretty
too, if they didn't talk such outlandish gibberish; but that dark
skinn'd man there, I swear Pete Ironsides would kick him if he was
to go in my stable; for he hates an Injin, as I do an allegator;
poor Pete! I reckon he thinks I'm skulped.'

"'Pete is well cared for, I will guaranty,' said Lamar, very
pathetically.

"'Look! look!' exclaimed Damon; 'what's that under the green
umbrella there, at the front of the stage among the lights?'

"'That is the prompter, to put them right when they go wrong.'

"'Yes, yes! I see, I see!' continued he; 'he gives them a wink
every now and then.'

"In the operas it is very frequently the case that one of the
subordinate characters comes to the front of the stage after the
principals have made their exit, and explains what rare sport is
coming.

"'What does that fellow slip out here every now and then like a
dropped stitch for?'

"We explained to him the meaning of it, as well as we understood
it ourselves.

"'Ay, ay! I see it now; he is the Nota Bene!'

"We found great difficulty in getting Damon to understand, with
his shrewd natural view of things, that an opera was nothing more
than a common play; the parts being sung, instead of spoken.

"'Now I wish my head may be knocked into a cocked-hat, if a man
had told this to me of the Yorkers in old Kentuck, if I wouldn't
have thought he was spinnin long yarns; there is no sense in it,
nor there's no fun in it, as they all take it up there in the
pews; if so moutbe now that they were all of my way of thinking,
and would only join in a _leetle_ touch of the warwhoop, why we
might show them fellers a little of the real Cherokee, that I
rather suspicion they haven't seen.'

"'Why, what would you do, Damon?'

"'_Jist_ set them four-and-twenty fiddlers to playin of something
like Christian reels; hand the gals down on the floor; then I
reckon there would be a little sort of a regular hand-round!
Confound their jimmy simequivers, and their supple elbows! Smash
me, if they don't think the whole cream of the ball lies in
rattlin the bones of their elbows. Give me your long sweeping bow
hands, that saws the music right in under your ribs, and sets your
legs to dancin, whether they will or not. Do you think them
fellers ever made anybody feel in the humour for a hand-round?'

"'I can't say that I think they ever did.'

"'No, nor they never will! they may set people's teeth on a wire
edge, or make their flesh crawl, or set them into an ague fit with
their shakin, and grindin, and squawkin. And now I think of it,
the whole business sounds more like grinding ramrods in an
armory, than any thing I ever come across; there's the squeakin of
the wheels, that would go for them goose guzzles them fellers are
pipin on. The ramrods on the grindstones will go for the
fiddles,--only I don't see any fire flyin out of the catgut, but
I've been watchin sharp for it some time. Then there's the old
leather bellows groanin and gruntin away, jist like those two
fellers seesawin there, on them two big-bellied fiddles, and the
leather bands flappin every time they come round, keeps the time
for the whole concern.'

"'Well, have you seen any fire yet?' after a long pause.

"'Yes, plenty of it! they make it fly out of my eyes, if they
don't out of the catguts; confound them, I say, they keep me all
the time drawin down first one eye and then another, first one
corner of my mouth and then another, jist as if a horse was on a
dead strain, and you were bowing your neck and stickin your leg
straight in the ground, and then strainin with all your might as
if you could help him; but this is worse! a confounded sight
worse! for every now and then all the fiddlers and trumpeters
comes rattlin down their tinklin quivers, like a four-horse load
of china, goin to the devil down a steep hill at the rate of ten
knots an hour; and then it all dies away agin, as if horses,
wagon, and chinaware had all gone over a bank as high as a church
steeple. Then! I begin to draw a long breath agin, and feel a
little comfortable. But here's a dyin away sound! hop and come
agin, rising and whooping, until the whole team's going full tilt,
pull dick, pull devil, here they go again! old Nick take the
hindmost. See their elbows now, how they move out and in, out and
in, like spinning jinnies. And see that feller that sets at the
top of the mob, on the high chair in the middle, how his head
goes. See how he looks at that book before him, as if that stuff
could be put down there in black and white.'

"'It _is_ all down there, Damon.'

"'Come, come, now, strangers, you have stuffed me enough! I can't
swallow that exactly neither! All the lawyers in Philadelphia
couldn't write down half the wriggle-ma-rees one of them chaps has
made since I set here! Smash my apple-cart, if I wouldn't like
jist to see a goosequill goin at the rate of one of them elbows.
Ink would fly like mud at a scrub-race, and when it was done it
would look like my copy-book used to do at school; more stops than
words.'

"'But you keep your eye on the orchestra all the while; why not
look on the stage?'

"'I do, I do; and that puzzles me the blamedest,--how they all
come out square at the stops, fiddlers and all. Every now and then
they seem to git into a fair race, and one feller's eye is poppin
out of his head, and the veins on the woman's neck is ready to
burst, and the fiddlers and the pipers and the trumpeters are all
puffin and blowin, like our Kentuck jockeys at a pony
sweepstakes; and then all at once, jist as there begins to be a
little sport, to see who has the wind and the bottom, their heads
begin to move first one side and then the other all so kind, and
ready to make a draw game of it, blabbering all the time; till the
trumpeter sees they're pretty well blown, then he begins to come
down a little with his toot! toot! toot! That's to call all hands
off, you see, and they slip down as easy and as quiet as if it had
all been in fun. Then they all clear out but one, and he watches
his chance till they're all gone. Then he comes here to the front,
and flaps his wings and crows over them, as if he had done some
great things, if we hadn't been here to show fair play.'

"I am sure, Randolph, that I give you but a poor idea of the
reality, but you must supply the deficiencies by your imagination.
Damon talked incessantly, and I enjoyed it far more than I could
have done the opera, even if I had been a perfect Italian scholar.
I find that I must defer the account of our disappointment till
another time, when I will tell you some matters of interest.

"Truly yours,

"V. CHEVILLERE."

END OF VOL. I.

* * * * *

Transcriber's note:

Alternate, archaic, and inconsistent spelling of some words have
been retained.

Punctuation has been made consistent including the use of
quotation marks.

page 36: "faintin" changed to "faintin'" (a faintin' spell).

page 57: "ear" changed to "dear" (Believe me, dear lady,).

page 114: "doggrel" changed to "doggerel" so as to be consistent
with other places this word is used (and singing doggerel to the
music).

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