  Is Polite Society Polite? |
| Preface | |
| Is Polite Society Polite | Page 3 |
| Paris | 37 |
| Greece Revisited | 77 |
| The Salon in America | 113 |
| Aristophanes | 133 |
| The Halfness of Nature | 161 |
| Dante and Beatrice | 181 |
Is Polite Society Polite?
WHY do we ask this question? For reasons which I shall endeavor to make evident.
The life in great cities awakens a multitude of ambitions. Some people are very unscrupulous in following these ambitions, attaining their object either by open force and pushing, or by artful and cunning manoeuvres. And so it will happen that in the society which considers itself entitled to rank above all other circles one may meet with people whose behavior is guided by no sincere and sufficient rule of conduct. Observing their shortcomings, we may stand still and ask, Are these people what they should be? Is polite society polite?
For this society, which is supposed to be nothing if not polite, does assume, in every place, to set up the standard of taste and to regulate the tone of manners. It aims to be what Hamlet once was in Ophelia's eyes—"the glass of fashion and the mould of form." Its forms and fashions change, of course, from age to age, and yet it is a steadfast institution in the development of human civilization.
I should be sorry to overstate its shortcomings, but I wish I might help it to feel its obligations and to fulfil them.
What shall we accept in the ordinary sense of men as politeness? Shall we consider it a mere surface polish—an attitude expressive of deference—corresponding to no inward grace of good feeling? Will you like to live with the person who, in the great world, can put on fine manners, but who, in the retirement of home, manifests the vulgarity of a selfish heart and an undisciplined temper?
No, you will say; give me for my daily companions those who always wear the best manners they have. For manners are not like clothes: you can mend them best when you have them on.
We may say at the outset that sincerity is the best foundation upon which to build the structure of a polite life. The affectation of deference does not impose upon people of mature experience. It carries its own contradiction with it. When I hear the soft voice, a little too soft, I look into the face to see whether the two agree. But I need scarcely do that. The voice itself tells the story, is sincere or insincere. Flattery is, in itself, an offence against politeness. It is oftenest administered to people who are already suffering the intoxication of vanity. When I see this, I wish that I could enforce a prohibitory ordinance against it, and prosecute those who use it mostly to serve their own selfish purposes. But people can be trained never to offer nor to receive this dangerous drug of flattery, and I think that, in all society which can be called good, it becomes less and less the mode to flavor one's dishes with it.
Having spoken of flattery, I am naturally led to say a word about its opposite, detraction.
The French have a witty proverb which says that "the absent are always in the wrong," and which means that the blame for what is amiss is usually thrown upon those who are not present to defend themselves. It seems to me that the rules of politeness are to be as carefully observed toward the absent as toward those in whose company we find ourselves. The fact that they cannot speak in their own defence is one which should appeal to our nicest sense of honor. Good breeding, or its reverse, is as much to be recognized in the way in which people speak of others as in the way in which they speak to them.
Have we not all felt the tone of society to be lowered by a low view of the conduct and motives of those who are made the subjects of discussion?
Those unfortunate men and women who delight in talk of this sort always appear to me degraded by it. No matter how clever they may be, I avoid their society, which has in it a moral malaria most unwholesome in character.
I am glad to say that, although frivolous society constantly shows its low estimate of human nature, I yet think that the gay immolation of character which was once considered a legitimate source of amusement has gone somewhat out of fashion. Sheridan's "School for Scandal" gives us some notion of what this may once have been. I do think that the world has grown more merciful in later years, and that even people who meet only for their own amusement are learning to seek it without murdering the reputation of their absent friends.
There is a mean impulse in human nature which leads some people to toss down the reputation of their fellows just as the Wall Street bear tosses down the value of the investments whose purchase he wishes to command at his own price. But in opposition to this, God has set within us a power which reacts against such base estimates of mankind. The utterance of this false tone often calls out the better music, and makes us admire the way in which good springs up in the very footsteps of evil and effaces them as things of nought.
Does intercourse with great society make us more or less polite? Elizabeth Browning says:—
| First time he kissed me he but only kissed |
| The fingers of this hand wherewith I write, |
| Which ever thence did grow more clean and white, |
| Slow to world greetings, quick with its "Oh, list," |
| When the angels speak. |
This clearly expresses the sanctification of a new and noble interest. How is it with those on whom the great world has set its seal of superior position, which is derived from a variety of sources, among which wealth, recognized talent, and high descent are the most important?
I must say in answer that this social recognition does not affect all people in the same manner. One passes the ordeal unscathed, is as fresh in affection, as genuine in relation and intercourse, as faithful to every fine and true personal obligation in the fiery furnace of wealth and fashion and personal distinction as he or she was in the simple village or domestic life, in which there was no question of greatness or smallness, all being of nearly the same dimensions.
The great world may boast of its jewels which no furnace blast can melt or dim, but they are rare. Madame de StaËl and Madame RÉcamier seem to have been among these undimmed gems; so, also, was Madame de SÉvignÉ, with a heart warm with love for her children and her friends in all the dazzle of a brilliant court. So I have seen a vessel of the finest glass, thin as paper, which a chemist left over his spirit-lamp, full of boiling liquid, and, returning the next day, found uninjured, so perfect was the temper of the glass. But for one such unspoiled world-favorite, I can show you twenty men and women who, at the first lift of fortune, forsake their old friends, neglect their near relations, and utterly ignore their poor ones.
Romance is full of such shameful action; and let me say here, in passing, that in my opinion Romance often wears off our horror of what is wicked and heartless by showing it as a permanent and recognized element of society. This is the reverse of what it should do. But in these days it so exceeds its office in the hunt after the exhausted susceptibilities of a novel-reading public that it really thumps upon our aversion to vice until it wears it out.
De Balzac's novel called "Father Goriot" tells the story of a man of humble origin who grows rich by trade, educates his daughters for fashionable life, marries them to men of condition, portions them abundantly, and is in return kept carefully out of what the world knows of their lives. They seek him only when they want money, which they always do, in spite of the rich dowry settled on them at their marriage. Father Goriot sells his last piece of silver to help them, and dies in a low boarding-house, tended by the charity of strangers, tormented to the last by the bickering of his children, but not cheered for one moment by their affection.
I have heard on good authority that people of wealth and position in our large cities sometimes deposit their aged and helpless parents in asylums where they may have all that money can buy for them, but nothing of what gratitude and affection should give them. How detestable such a course is I need not say; my present business is to say that it is far from polite.
Apropos of this suggestion, I remember that I was once invited to read this essay to a village audience in one of the New England States. My theme was probably one quite remote from the general thought of my hearers. As I went on, their indifference began to affect me, and my thought was that I might as well have appealed to a set of wooden tenpins as to those who were present on that occasion.
In this, I afterwards learned that I was mistaken. After the conclusion of the evening's exercise, a young man, well known in the community, was heard to inquire urgently where he could find the lecturer. Friends asked, what did he want of her? He replied: "Well, I did put my brother in the poorhouse, and now that I have heard Mrs. Howe, I suppose that I must take him out."
Need I say that I felt myself amply repaid for the trouble I had taken? On the other hand, this same theme was once selected from my list by a lecture association in a small town buried in the forests of the far West. As I surveyed my somewhat home-spun audience, I feared that a discussion of the faults of polite society would interest my hearers very little. I was surprised after my reading to hear, from more than one of those present, that this lecture appeared to them the very thing that was most needed in that place.
There is to my mind something hideous in the concealment and disregard of real connections which involve real obligations.
If you are rich, take up your poor relations. Assist them at least to find the way of earning a competence. Use the power you have to bring them within the sphere of all that is refining. You can embellish the world to them and them to the world. Do so, and you will be respected by those whose respect is valuable. On the contrary, repudiate those who really belong to you and the mean world itself will laugh at you and despise you. It is clever and cunning enough to find out your secret, and when it has done so, it will expose you pitilessly.
I have known men and women whose endeavors and successes have all been modelled upon the plane of social ambition. Starting with a good common-school education, which is a very good thing to start with, they have improved opportunities of culture and of desirable association until they stand conspicuous, far away from the sphere of their village or homemates, having money to spend, able to boast of wealthy acquaintances, familiar guests at fashionable entertainments.
Now sometimes these individuals wander so far away from their original belongings that these latter are easily lost sight of. And I assure you that they are left in the dark, in so far as concerns the actions of the friends we are now considering. Many a painstaking mother at a distance, many a plain but honest old father, many a sister working in a factory to help a brother at college, is never spoken of by such persons, and is even thought of with a blush of shame and annoyance.
Oh! shame upon the man or woman of us who is guilty of such behavior as this! These relatives are people to be proud of, as we should know if we had the heart to know what is true, good, and loyal. Even were it not so, were your relative a criminal, never deny the bond of nature. Stand beside him in the dock or at the gallows. You have illustrious precedent for such association in one whom men worship, but forget to imitate.
Let me here relate a little story of my early years. I had a nursery governess when I was a small child. She came from some country town, and probably regarded her position in my father's family as a promotion. One evening, while we little folks gathered about her in our nursery, she wept bitterly. "What is the matter?" we asked; and she took me up in her lap, and said: "My poor old father came here to see me to-day, and I would not see him. I bade them tell him that he had mistaken the house, and he went away, and as he went I saw him looking up at the windows so wistfully!" Poor woman! We wept with her, feeling that this was indeed a tragical event, and not knowing what she could do to make it better.
But could I see that woman now, I would say to her: "If you were serving the king at his table, and held his wine-cup in your hand, and your father stood without, asking for you, you should set down the cup, and go out from the royal presence to honor your father, so much the more if he is poor, so much the more if he is old." And all that is really polite in polite society would say so too.
Now this action which I report of my governess corresponds to something in human nature, and to something which polite society fosters.
For polite society bases itself upon exclusions. In this it partly appeals to that antagonism of our nature through which the desire to possess something is greatly exaggerated by the difficulty of becoming possessed of it. If every one can come to your house, no one, you think, will consider it a great object of desire to go there. Theories of supply and demand come in here. People would gladly destroy things that give pleasure, in order to enhance their value in the hands of the few.
I once heard a lady, herself quite new in society, say of a Parisian dame who had shown her some attention: "Ah! the trouble with Madame—— is that she is too good-natured. She entertains everybody." "Indeed," thought I, "if she had been less good-natured, is it certain that she would have entertained you?"
But of course the justifiable side of exclusion is choice, selection of one's associates. No society can confer the absolute right or power to make this selection. Tiresome and unacceptable people are everywhere entangled in relations with wise and agreeable ones. There is no bore nor torment who has not the right to incommode some fireside or assembly with his or her presence. You cannot keep wicked, foolish, tiresome, ugly people out of society, however you and your set may delight in good conduct, grace, and beauty. You cannot keep poor people out of the society of the rich. Those whom you consider your inferiors feed your cherished stomach, and drape your sacred person, and stand behind your chair at your feasts, judging your manners and conversation.
Let us remember Mr. Dickens's story of "Little Dorrit," in which Mr. Murdle, a new-rich man, sitting with guests at his own sumptuous table, is described as dreading the disapprobation of his butler. This he might well do, as the butler was an expert, well aware of the difference between a gentleman of breeding and education and a worldling, lifted by the possession of wealth alone.
Very genial in contrast with this picture appears the response of Abraham Lincoln, who, on being asked by the head waiter at his first state dinner whether he would take white wine or red, replied: "I don't know; which would you?"
Well, what can society do, then? It can decree that those who come of a certain set of families, that those who have a certain education, and above all, a certain income, shall associate together on terms of equality. And with this decree there comes to foolish human nature a certain irrational desire to penetrate the charmed circle so formed.
The attempt to do this encounters resistance; there is pushing in and shoving out,—coaxing and wheedling on the one hand, and cold denial or reluctant assent on the other. So a fight is perpetually going on in the realm of fashion. Those not yet recognized are always crowding in. Those first in occupation are endeavoring to crowd these out. In the end, perseverance usually conquers.
But neither of these processes is polite—neither the crowding in nor the crowding out—and this last especially, as many of those who are in were once out, and are trying to keep other people from doing what they themselves have been very glad to do. In Mr. Thackeray's great romance, "The Newcomes," young Ethel Newcome asks her grandmother, Lady Kew, "Well then, grandmother, who is of a good family?" And the old lady replies: "Well, my dear, mostly no one." But I would reply: Mostly every one, if people are disposed to make their family good.
There is an obvious advantage in society's possession of a recognized standard of propriety in general deportment; but the law of good breeding should nowhere be merely formal, nor should its application be petty and captious. The externals of respectability are most easily aped when they are of the permanent and stereotyped kind, and may be used to conceal gross depravity; while the constant, fresh, gracious inspiration of a pure, good heart is unmistakable, and cannot be successfully counterfeited.
On the other hand, young persons should be desirous to learn the opinion of older ones as to what should and should not be done on the ground of general decorum and good taste. Youth is in such hot haste to obtain what it desires that it often will not wait to analyze the spirit of an occasion, but classes opposition to its inclinations as prejudice and antiquated superstition. But the very individual who in youth thus scoffs at restraint often pays homage to it in later days, having meanwhile ascertained the weighty reasons which underlie the whole law of reserve upon which the traditions of good society are based.
How much trouble, then, might it save if the young people, as a rule, were to come to the elders and ask at least why this thing or that is regarded as unbecoming or of doubtful propriety. And how much would it assist this good understanding if the elders, to the last, were careful to keep up with the progress of the time, examining tendencies, keeping a vigilant eye upon fashions, books, and personages, and, above all, encouraging the young friends to exercise their own powers of discrimination in following usages and customs, or in departing from them.
This last suggestion marks how far the writer of these pages is behind the progress of the age. In her youth, it was customary for sons and daughters both to seek and to heed the counsel of elders in social matters. In these days, a grandmother must ask her granddaughter whether such or such a thing is considered "good form," to which the latter will often reply, "O dear! no."
It is sad that we should carry all the barbarism of our nature into our views of the divine, and make our form of faith an occasion of ill-will to others, instead of drawing from it the inspiration of a wide and comprehensive charity. The world's Christianity is greatly open to this accusation, in dealing with which we are forced to take account of the slow rate of human progress.
A friend lately told me of a pious American, familiar in Hong Kong, who at the close of his last visit there, took a formal and eternal leave of one of the principal native merchants with whom he had long been acquainted. Mr. C—— alluded to his advanced age, and said that it was almost certain he could never return to China. "We shall not meet again in this world," he said, "and as you have never embraced the true religion, I can have no hope of meeting you in a better one."
I ask whether this was polite, from one sinner to another?
A stupid, worldly old woman of fashion in one of our large cities once said of a most exemplary acquaintance, a liberal Christian saint of thirty years or more ago: "I am very fond of Mrs. S—— but she is a Unitarian. What a pity we cannot hope to meet in heaven!" The wicked bystanders had their own view of the reason why this meeting would appear very improbable.
What shall we say of the hospitality which in some churches renders each man and woman the savage guardian of a seat or pew? Is this God's house to you, when you turn with fury on a stranger who exercises a stranger's right to its privileges? Whatever may be preached from the pulpit of such a church, there is not much of heaven in the seats so maintained and defended. I remember an Episcopal church in one of our large cities which a modest looking couple entered one Sunday, taking seats in an unoccupied pew near the pulpit. And presently comes in the plumed head of the family, followed by its other members. The strangers are warned to depart, which they do, not without a smile of suppressed amusement. The church-woman afterwards learned that the persons whom she had turned out of her pew were the English ambassador and his wife, the accomplished Lord and Lady Napier.
St. Paul tells us that in an unknown guest we may entertain an angel unawares. But I will say that in giving way to such evil impulses, people entertain a devil unawares.
Polite religion has to do both with manners and with doctrine. Tolerance is the external condition of this politeness, but charity is its interior source. A doctrine which allows and encourages one set of men to exclude another set from claim to the protection and inspiration of God is in itself impolite. Christ did not reproach the Jews for holding their own tenets, but for applying these tenets in a superficial and narrow spirit, neglecting to practise true devotion and benevolence, and refusing to learn the providential lessons which the course of time should have taught them. At this day of the world, we should all be ready to admit that salvation lies not so much in the prescriptions of any religion as in the spirit in which these are followed.
It is the fashion to-day to decry missions. I believe in them greatly. But a missionary should start with a polite theory concerning the religion which he hopes to supersede by the introduction of one more polite. If he studies rightly, he will see that all religions seek after God, and will imitate the procedure of Paul, who, before instructing the Athenians in the doctrines of the new religion, was careful to recognize the fact that they had a religion of their own.
I wish to speak here of the so-called rudeness of reform; and to say that I think we should call this roughness rather than rudeness. A true reformer honors human nature by recognizing in it a higher power than is shown in its average action. The man or woman who approaches you, urging upon you a more fervent faith, a more impartial justice, a braver resolve than you find in your own mind, comes to you really in reverence, and not in contempt. Such a person sees in you the power and dignity of manhood or womanhood, of which you, perhaps, have an insufficient sense. And he will strike and strike until he finds in you that better nature, that higher sense to which he appeals, and which in the end is almost sure to respond to such appealing.
I remember having thought in my youth that the Presbyterian preacher, John Knox, was probably very impolite in his sermons preached before poor Queen Mary Stuart. But when we reflect upon the follies which, more than aught else, wrecked her unhappy life, we may fancy the stern divine to have seen whither her love of pleasure and ardent temperament would lead her, and to have striven, to the best of his knowledge and power, to pluck her as a brand from the burning, and to bring her within the sober sphere of influence and reflection which might have saved her kingdom and her life.
With all its advances, society still keeps some traces of its original barbarism. I see these traces in the want of respect for labor, where this want exists, and also in the position which mere Fashion is apt to assign to teachers in the community.
That those who must be intellectually looked up to should be socially looked down upon is, to say the least, very inconsistent. That the performance of the helpful offices of the household should be held as degrading to those who perform them is no less so. We must seek the explanation of these anomalies in the distant past. When the handiwork of society was performed by slaves, the world's estimate of labor was naturally lowered. In the feudal and military time, the writer ranked below the fighter, and the skill of learning below the prowess of arms. The mind of to-day has only partially outgrown this very rude standard of judgment. I was asked, some fifteen years ago, in England, by people of education, whether women teachers ranked in America with ladies or with working women. I replied: "With ladies, certainly," which seemed to occasion surprise.
I remember having heard that a relative of Theodore Parker's wife, who disliked him, would occasionally taunt him with having kept school. She said to him one day: "My father always told me to avoid a schoolmaster." Parker replied: "It is evident that you have."
I think that as Americans we should all feel an especial interest in the maintenance of polite feeling in our community. The theory of a government of the people, by the people, and for the people is in itself the most polite of theories. The fact that under such a government no man has a position of absolute inferiority forced upon him for life ought to free us from mean subserviency on the one hand, and from haughty and brutal assumption on the other.
Yet I doubt whether politeness is as much considered in American education as it ought to be. Perhaps our theory of the freedom and equality of all men leads some of us to the mistaken conclusion that all people equally know how to behave themselves, which is far from being the fact.
One result of our not being well instructed in the nature of politeness is that we go to the wrong sources to learn it. People who have been modestly bred think they shall acquire fine manners by consorting with the world's great people, and in this way often unlearn what they already know of good manners, instead of adding to their knowledge.
Rich Americans seem latterly to have taken on a sort of craze about the aristocracies of other countries. One form of this craze is the desire of ambitious parents to marry their daughters to titled individuals abroad. When we consider that these counts, marquises, and barons scarcely disguise the fact that the young lady's fortune is the object of their pursuit, and that the young lady herself is generally aware of this, we shall not consider marriage under such circumstances a very polite relation.
What does make our people polite, then? Partly the inherited blood of men who would not submit to the rude despotism of old England and old Europe, and who thought a better state of society worth a voyage in the Mayflower and a tussle with the wild forest and wilder Indian. Partly, also, the necessity of the case. As we recognize no absolute social superiority, no one of us is entirely at liberty to assume airs of importance which do not belong to him. No matter how selfish we may be, it will not do for us to act upon the supposition that the comfort of other people is of less consequence than our own. If we are rude, our servants will not live with us, our tradespeople will not serve us.
This is good as far as it goes, but I wish that I could oftener see in our young people a desire to know what is perfectly and beautifully polite. And I feel sure that more knowledge in this direction would save us from the vulgarity of worshipping rank and wealth.
Who have been the polite spirits of our day? I can mention two of them, Mr. Longfellow and Mr. Emerson, as persons in whose presence it was impossible to be rude. But our young people of to-day consider the great fortunes rather than the great examples.
In order to be polite, it is important to cultivate polite ways of thinking. Great social troubles and even crimes grow out of rude and selfish habits of mind. Let us take the case of the Anarchists who were executed in Chicago some years ago. Before their actions became wicked, their thoughts became very impolite. They were men who had to work for their living. They wanted to be so rich that they should not be under this necessity. Their mode of reasoning was something like this: "I want money. Who has got it? The capitalist. What protects him in keeping it? The laws. Down with the laws, then!"
He who reasons thus forgets, foolish man, that the laws protect the poor as well as the rich. The laws compel the capitalist to make roads for the use of the poor man, and to build schoolhouses for the education of his children. They make the person of the poor man as sacred as that of the rich man. They secure to both the enjoyment of the greatest benefits of civilization. The Anarchist puts all this behind him, and only reasons that he, being poor, wants to be rich, and will overthrow, if he can, the barriers which keep him from rushing like a wild beast upon the rich man and despoiling him of his possessions.
And this makes me think of that noble man Socrates, whom the Athenians sentenced to death for impiety, because he taught that there was one God, while the people about him worshipped many deities. Some of the friends of this great man made a plan for his escape from prison to a place of safety. But Socrates refused to go, saying that the laws had hitherto protected him as they protected other citizens, and that it would be very ungrateful for him to show them the disrespect of running away to evade their sentence. He said: "It is better for me to die than to set the example of disrespect to the laws." How noble were these sentiments, and how truly polite!
Whoever brings up his children to be sincere, self-respecting, and considerate of others brings them up to good manners. Did you ever see an impolite Quaker? I never did. Yet the Friends are a studiously plain people, no courtiers nor frequenters of great entertainments. What makes them polite? The good education and discipline which are handed down among them from one generation to another.
The eminent men of our own early society were simple in their way of living, but when public duty called them abroad to mingle with the elegant people of the Old World, they did us great credit. Benjamin Franklin was much admired at the court of Louis XVI. Jay and Jefferson and Morris and Adams found their manners good enough to content the highest European society. They were educated men; but besides book-learning, and above it, they had been bred to have the thoughts and, more than all, the feelings of gentlemen.
The assumption of special merit, either by an individual or a class, is not polite. We notice this fault when some dressy young lady puts on airs, and struts in fine clothes, or condescends from an elegant carriage. Elder women show it in hardness and hauteur of countenance, or in unnecessary patronage.
But we allow classes of people to assume special merit on false grounds. It may very easily be shown that it requires more talent and merit to earn money than to spend it. Yet, by almost common consent of the fashionable world, those who inherit or marry money are allowed to place themselves above those who earn it.
If this is the case so far as men are concerned, much more is it the case with women. Good society often feels itself obliged to apologize for a lady who earns money. The fact, however explained, is a badge of discredit. She could not help it, poor thing! Her father failed, or her trustee lost the investments made for her. He usually does. So she has—oh, sad alternative!—to make herself useful.
Now in America the judgment of the Old World in this respect has come to be somewhat reversed. We do not like idle inheritors here; and so the moneyed aristocracy of our country is a tolerably energetic and industrious body. But in the case of womankind, I could wish to see a very different standard adopted from that now existing. I could wish that the fact of an idle and useless life should need apology—not that of a laborious and useful one. Idleness is a pregnant source of demoralization to rich women. The hurry and excitement of fashionable engagements, and the absorbing nature of entirely selfish and useless pursuits, such as dancing, dress, and flirtation, cannot take the place of healthful work. Dr. Watts warns us that
| Satan finds some mischief still |
| For idle hands to do. |
And Tennyson has some noble lines in one of his noblest poems:—
| I know you, Clara Vere de Vere, |
| You pine among your halls and towers; |
| The languid light of your proud eyes |
| Is wearied of the rolling hours. |
| In glowing health, with boundless wealth, |
| But sickening of a vague disease, |
| You know so ill to deal with time, |
| You needs must play such pranks as these. |
As I am speaking of England, I will say that some things in the constitution of English society seem to tend to impoliteness.
The English are a most powerful and energetic race, with immense vitality, cruelly divided up in their own country by absolute social conditions, handed down from generation to generation. So a sense of superiority, more or less lofty and exaggerated, characterizes the upper classes, while the lower partly rest in a dogged compliance, partly indulge the blind instinct of reverence, partly detest and despise those whom birth and fate have set over them. In England, people assert their own rank and look down upon that of others all the way from the throne to the peasant's hut. I asked an English visitor, the other day, what inferior the lowest man had,—the man at the bottom of the social pile. I answered him myself: "His wife, of course."
Where worldliness gives the tone to character, it corrupts the source of good manners, and the outward polish is purchased by the inward corruption of the heart. The crucial experiment of character is found in the transition from modest competency to conspicuous wealth and fashion. Most of us may desire this; but I should rather say: Dread it. I have seen such sweetness and beauty impaired by the process, such relinquishment of the genuine, such gradual adoption of the false and meretricious!
Such was a house in which I used to meet all the muses of the earlier time,—in which economy was elegant; frugality, tasteful and thrifty. My heart recalls the golden hours passed there, the genial, home atmosphere, the unaffected music, the easy, brilliant conversation. Time passes. A or B is the head of a great mercantile house now. I meet him after a lapse of years. He is always genial, and pities all who are not so rich as he is. But when I go to his great feast, I pity him. All the tiresome and antiquated furniture of fashionable society fills his rooms. Those empty bores whom I remember in my youth, and many new ones of their kind, float their rich clothing through his rooms. The old good-hearted greeting is replaced by the distant company bow. The moderate banquet, whose special dishes used to have the care of the young hostess, is replaced by a grand confectioner's avalanche, cold, costly, and comfortless. And I sigh, and go home feeling, as Browning says, "chilly and grown old."
This is not one case, but many. And since I have observed this page of human experience, I say to all whom I love and who are in danger of becoming very wealthy: Do not, oh! do not be too fashionable. "Love not the world."
Most of us know the things men really say to us beneath the disguise of the things they seem to say. And So-and-So, taking my hand, expresses to me: "How much more cordial should I be to you if your father's real estate had not been sold off before the rise." And such another would, if he could, say: "I am really surprised to see you at this house, and in such good clothes. Pray have you any income that I don't happen to know about?" The tax-gatherer is not half so vigilant about people's worldly goods as these friends are. No matter how they bow and smile, their real impoliteness everywhere penetrates its thin disguise.
What is this impoliteness? To what is it shown? To God's image,—the true manhood and true womanhood, which you may strip or decorate, but which you cannot destroy. Human values cannot be raised or lowered at will. "Thou canst not, by taking thought, add one cubit to thy stature." I derive impoliteness from two sources,—indifference to the divine, and contempt for the human.
The king of Wall Street, some little time since, was a man who had risen from a humble beginning to the eminence of a successful stock-gambler. He had been fortunate and perhaps skilful in his play, and was supposed to be possessed of immense wealth. Immediately, every door was opened to him. No assemblage was perfect without him. Every designing mother wanted him for her son-in-law. One unlucky throw overturned all this. Down went his fortune; down, his eminence. No more bowing and cringing and smiling now. No more plotting against his celibacy—he was welcome to it. No more burthensome hospitality. He was dropped as coldly and selfishly as he was taken up,—elbowed aside, left out in the cold. When I heard of all this, I said: "Is it ever necessary in these times to preach about the meanness of the great world?"
Let us, in our new world, lay aside altogether the theory of human superiority as conferred by special birth or fortune. Let us recognize in all people human right, capacity, and dignity.
Having adopted this equal human platform, and with it the persuasion that the society of good people is always good society, let us organize our circles by real tastes and sympathies. Those who love art can follow it together; those who love business, and science, and theology, and belles-lettres, can group themselves harmoniously around the object which especially attracts them.
But people shall, in this new order, seek to fill their own place as they find it. No crowding up or down, or in or out. A quiet reference to the standard of education and to the teachings of Nature will show each one where he belongs. Religion shall show the supreme source of power and of wisdom near to all who look for it. And this final unity of the religious sense shall knit together the happy human variety into one great complex interest, one steadfast faith, one harmonious effort.
The present essay, I must say, was written in great part for this very society which, assuming to take the lead in social attainment, often falls lamentably short of its promise. But let us enlarge the ground of our remarks by a more general view of American society.
I have travelled in this country North and South, East and West. I have seen many varieties of our national life. I think that I have seen everywhere the capacity for social enjoyment. In many places, I have found the notion of co-operation for good ends, which is a most important element in any society. What I have seen makes me think that we Americans start from a vantage-ground compared with other nations. As mere social units, we are ranked higher than Britons or continental Europeans.
This higher estimation begins early in life. Every child in this country is considered worth educating. The State will rescue the child of the pauper or criminal from the ignorance which has been a factor in the condition of its parents. Even the idiot has a school provided for him, in which he may receive such training as he can profit by. This general education starts us on a pretty high level. We have, no doubt, all the faults of our human nature, but we know, too, how and why these should be avoided.
Then the great freedom of outlook which our institutions give us is in our favor. We need call no man Master. We can pursue the highest aims, aspire to the noblest distinctions. We have no excuse for contenting ourselves with the paltry objects and illusory ambitions which play so large a part in Old-World society.
The world grows better and not worse, but it does not grow better everywhere all the time. Wherever human effort to a given end is intermitted, society does not attain that end, and is in danger of gradually losing it from view, and thus of suffering an unconscious deterioration which it may become difficult to retrieve. I do not think that the manners of so-called polite society to-day are quite so polite as they were in my youth. Young women of fashion seem to me to have lost in dignity of character and in general tone and culture. Young men of fashion seem to regard the young ladies with less esteem and deference, and a general cheap and easy standard of manners is the result.
On the other hand, outside this charmed circle of fashion, I find the tone of taste and culture much higher than I remember it to have been in my youth. I find women leading nobler and better lives, filling larger and higher places, enjoying the upper air of thought where they used to rest upon the very soil of domestic care and detail. So the community gains, although one class loses,—and that, remember, the class which assumes to give to the rest the standard of taste.
Instead of dwelling too much upon the faults of our neighbors, let us ask whether we are not, one and all of us, under sacred obligations to carry our race onward toward a nobler social ideal. In Old-World countries, people lack room for new ideas. The individual who would introduce and establish these may be imprisoned, or sent to Siberia, or may suffer, at the least, a social ostracism which is a sort of martyrdom.
Here we have room enough; we cannot excuse ourselves on that ground. And we have strength enough—we, the people. Let us only have the royal will which good Mr. Whittier has celebrated in "Barbara Frietchie," and we shall be able, by a resolute and persevering effort, to place our civilization where no lingering trace of barbarism shall deform and disgrace it.
Paris.
AN old woman's tale will always begin with a reminiscence of some period more or less remote.
In accordance with this law of nature, I find that I cannot begin to speak of Paris without going back to the projection which the fashions and manners of that ancient capital were able to cast upon my own native city of New York. My recollections of the latter reach back, let me say, to the year 1826. I was then seven years old; and, beginning to take notice of things around me, I saw the social eminences of the day lit up with the far-off splendors of Parisian taste.
To speak French with ease was, in those days, considered the most desirable of accomplishments. The elegance of French manners was commended in all polite circles. The services of General Lafayette were held up to children as deserving their lifelong remembrance and gratitude.
But the culmination of the Gallomania was seen in the millinery of the period; and I must confess that my earliest views of this were enjoyed within the precincts of a certain Episcopal sanctuary which then stood first upon the dress-list, and, like Jove among the gods, without a second. This establishment retained its pre-eminence of toilet for more than thirty years after the time of which I speak, and perhaps does so still. I have now lived so long in Boston that I should be obliged to consult New York authorities if I wished to be able to say decidedly whether the well-known Grace Church of that city still deserves to be called "The Church of the Holy Milliner." A little child's fancy naturally ran riot in a field of bonnets so splendid and showy, and, however admonished to listen to the minister, I am afraid that a raid upon the flowers and plumes so lavishly displayed before me would have offered more attractions to my tender mind than any itinerary of the celestial journey of which I should have been likely to hear in that place.
The French dancing-master of that period taught us gambols and flourishes long since banished from the domain of social decorum. Being light and alert, I followed his prescriptions with joy, and learned with patience the lessons set me by the French mistress, who, while leading us through Florian's tales and La Fontaine's fables, did not forget to impress upon us her conviction that to be French was to be virtuous, but to be Parisian was to be perfect.
Let me now pass on to the years of my youngladyhood, when New York reflected Paris on a larger scale. The distinguished people of the society to which my youth was related either had been to Paris or expected to go there very shortly. Our circles were sometimes electrified by the appearance of a well-dressed and perfumed stranger, wearing the moustache which was then strictly contraband in the New York business world, and talking of manners and customs widely different from our own.
These elegant gentlemen were sometimes adventurers in pursuit of a rich wife, sometimes intelligent and well-informed travellers, and sometimes the agents of some foreign banking-house, for the drummer was not yet invented. If they were furnished with satisfactory credentials, the fathers of Gotham introduced them into their domestic circle, usually warning their daughters never to think of them as husbands,—a warning which, naturally, would sometimes defeat its own object.
I must here be allowed to say one word concerning the French novel, which, since that time, has here and there affected the tone of our society. In the days of which I speak, brothers who returned from Europe brought with them the romances of Balzac and Victor Hugo, which their sisters surreptitiously read. We heard also with a sort of terror of George Sand, the evil woman, who wrote such somnambulic books. We pictured to ourselves the wicked delight of reading them; and presently some friend confidentially lent us the forbidden volumes, which our Puritan nurture and habit of life did much to render harmless and not quite clear in meaning.
I should say that the works of Balzac, George Sand, Victor Hugo, and EugÈne Sue had each exerted an appreciable influence upon the social atmosphere of this country. Of these four, Balzac was the least popular, having long been known only to readers acquainted with the French language. George Sand first became widely recognized through her "Consuelo." Victor Hugo's popular fame dates from "Les Miserables," and "The Mysteries of Paris" opened the doors to EugÈne Sue, and Rigolette and Fleur de Marie, new types of character to most of us, appeared upon the stage.
Still nearer was Paris brought to us by Carlyle's work on the French Revolution, which, falling like a compact and burning coal upon the American imagination, reddened the sober twilight of our firesides with the burning passion and frenzy of that great drama of enthusiasm and revenge. And here, lest I should entirely reverse the order in which historic things should be spoken of, let me dismiss those early memories, and, having shown you something of the far-reaching influence of the city, let me speak of it from nearer sight and study.
History must come first. I find it written in a certain record that Paris, in the time of Julius CÆsar, was a collection of huts built upon an island in the Seine, and bearing the name of Lutetia. Its inhabitants were called Parisii, which was the name of their tribe, supposed to be an offshoot from the BelgÆ. I do not know whether this primitive settlement lay within the bounds of Gallia Bracchiata; but, if it did, how natural that to the other indebtedness of polite life, that of the trouser should be added! The city still possesses some interesting remains of the Roman period. The Hotel Cluny is also called "The Hotel of the Baths," and whoever visits it may at the same time explore a massive ruin which is said to have covered beneath its roof the baths of the Emperor Julian, surnamed "The Apostate."
A rapid panoramic retrospect will give us briefly the leading points of the city's many periods of interest. First must be named Paris of the early saints: Saint Genevieve, who saved it from the hands of Attila; Saint Denis, famous for having walked several miles after his head was cut off, carrying that deposed member under his arm.
A well-known French proverb was suggested some time in the last century by the relation of this mediÆval miracle. The celebrated Madame Dudeffant, a wit and beauty of Horace Walpole's time, was told one day that the Archbishop of Paris had said that every one knew that Saint Denis had walked some distance after his decapitation, but that few people were aware that he had walked several miles on that occasion. Madame Dudeffant said, in reply: "Indeed, in such a case, it is the first step only that costs,"—"Ce n'est que le premier pas qui coÛte."
Paris of the sleepy Merovingians,—do-nothing kings, a race made to be kicked out, and fulfilling its destiny,—Paris of Hugh Capet, in whose reign were laid the foundations of the Cathedral of Notre Dame. Paris of 1176, whereof the old chronicler, John of Salisbury, writes: "When I saw the abundance of provisions, the gaiety of the people, the good condition of the clergy, the majesty and glory of all the church, the diverse occupations of men admitted to the study of philosophy, I seemed to see that Jacob's ladder whose summit reached heaven, and on which the angels ascended and descended. I must confess that truly the Lord was in this place. This passage also of a poet came to my mind: 'Happy is the man whose exile is to this place.'"
This suggests the familiar saying of our own time,—that good Bostonians, when they die, go to Paris.
Paris of Louis XI., he of the strong hand, the stony heart, the superstitious mind. Scott has seized the features of the time and of the man in his novel of "Quentin Durward." His hat, full of leaden images of saints, his cunning and pitiless diplomacy, and the personages of his brilliant court are brought vividly before us by the magician of the North.
Paris of Louis XIII., and its Richelieu live for us in Bulwer's vivid play, in which I have often seen the fine impersonation of Edwin Booth.
Paris of Louis XIV., the handsome young king, the idol, the absolute sovereign, who said: "L'État, c'est moi;" the old man before whom Madame de Maintenon is advised to say her prayers, in order to make upon his mind a serious impression; the revoker of the edict of Nantes; he who tried to extinguish Dutch freedom with French blood; a god in his own time, a figure now faded, pompous, self-adoring.
Paris of Louis XV., the reign of license, the Parc aux cerfs, the period of the courtesan, Madame de Pompadour, and a host of rivals and successors,—a hateful type of womanhood, justly odious and gladly forgotten.
Paris of Louis XVI., the days of progress and of good intentions; the deficit, the ministry of Neckar, the states general, Mirabeau, Lafayette, Robespierre, the fall of the monarch, the reign of terror; the guillotine in permanence, science, virtue, every distinction supplying its victims.
Paris of Napoleon I.; a whiff of grape-shot that silences the last grumblings of the Revolution; the mighty marches, the strategy of Ulysses, the labors of Hercules, the glory of Jupiter, ending in the fate of Prometheus.
Paris of the returned Bourbons, Charles X., the Duc de Berri, the Duchess d'AngoulÊme; Paris of the Orleans dynasty, civil, civic, free, witty; wise here, and wicked there; the Mecca of students in all sciences; a region problematic to parents, who fear its vices and expense, but who desire its opportunities and elegance for their sons. This was in the days in which a visit to Paris was the ne plus ultra of what parents could do to forward a son's studies, or perfect a daughter's accomplishments.
Having made my connections in this breathless review, I must return to speak of two modern works of art which treat of matters upon which my haste did not allow me, in the first instance, to dwell.
The first of these is Victor Hugo's picture of mediÆval Paris, given in his famous romance entitled "Notre Dame de Paris." This remarkable novel preserves valuable details of the architecture of the ancient cathedral from which it takes its name. It paints the society of the time in gloomy colors. The clergy are corrupt, the soldiery licentious, the people forlorn and friendless. Here is a brief outline of the story. The beautiful gipsy, Esmeralda, dances and twirls her tambourine in the public streets. Her companion is a little goat, which she has taught to spell her lover's name, by putting together the letters which compose it. This lover is Phoebus, captain of the guard. Claude Frollo, the cunning, wicked priest of the period, has cast his evil eye upon the girl. He manages to surprise her when alone with her lover, and stabs the latter so as to endanger his life. A hideous dwarf, named Quasimodo, also loves Esmeralda, with humble, faithful affection. As the story develops, he turns out to have been the changeling laid in the place of the lovely girl-infant whom gipsies stole from her cradle. Esmeralda finds her distracted parent, but only to be torn from her arms again. The priest, Claude Frollo, foiled in his unlawful passion, stirs up the wrath of the populace against Esmeralda, accusing her of sorcery. She is seized by the mob, and hanged in the public street. The narrative is powerful and graphic, but it shows the disease of Victor Hugo's mind,—a morbid imagination which heightens the color of human crimes in order to give a melodramatic brilliancy to the virtue which contrasts with them. According to his view, suffering through the fault of others is necessarily the lot of all good people. French romance has in it much of this despair of the cause of virtue. It springs, however remotely, from the dark days of absolutism, whose bitter secrets were masked over by the frolic fancy of the people who invented the joyous science of minstrelsy.
The other work which I have now in mind is Meyerbeer's opera of "The Huguenots," which I mention here because it brings so vividly to mind the features of another period in the history of Paris. It represents, as an opera may, the frightful days in which a king's hospitality was made a trap for the wholesale butchery of as many Protestants as could be lured within the walls of Paris,—the massacre which bears the name of Saint Bartholomew. Nobles and leaders were shot down in the streets, or murdered in their beds, while the hollow phrases of the royal favor still rang in their ears. I have seen, near the church of St. Germain l'Auxerois, the palace window from which the kerchief of Catherine de Medici gave the signal for the fatal onslaught. "Do you not believe my word?" asked the Queen Mother one day of the English ambassador. "No, by Saint Bartholomew, Madam," was the sturdy reply.
Meyerbeer's opera is truly a Protestant work of art, vigorous and noble. Through all the intensity of its dramatic situations runs the grand choral of Luther:—
A mighty fortress is our God.
So true faith holds its own, and sails its silver boat upon the bloody sea of martyrdom.
Am I obliged to have recourse to a novel and an opera in order to bring before your eyes a vision of Paris in those distant ages? Such are our indebtednesses to art and literature. And here I must again mention, as a great master in both of these, Thomas Carlyle, who has given us so vivid and graphic a picture of the Revolution in France, which followed so nearly upon our own War of Independence.
I, a grandmother of to-day, recall the impression which this great conflict had made upon the grandparents of my childhood. Most wicked and cruel did they esteem it, in all of its aspects. To people of our day, it appears the inevitable crisis of a most malignant state of national disease. Much of political quackery was swept away forever, one may hope, by its virulent outbreak. No half-way nostrums, no outside tinkering, answered for this fiery patient, whose fever set the whole continent of Europe in a blaze. War itself was gentle in comparison with the acts of its savage delirium, in which the vengeance of defrauded ages fell upon victims most of whom were innocent of personal offence. The reign of humanitarian theory led strangely to a period of military predominance which has had no parallel since the days of Alexander of Macedon. Then War itself died of exhaustion. The stupor of reaction quenched the dream of civil and religious liberty. But the patient stirred again in 1830 and 1848, and the dream, scarcely yet realized, became more and more the settled purpose of his heart.
Now the government in 1830 was manifestly in the wrong. The stupid old Bourbon Prince, Charles X., had learned nothing, and forgotten nothing, but the French people had learned and unlearned many things. They had learned the illusion of Monarchy, the corruption of the demagogue, the futility of the sentimentalist. The impotence of the aristocracy was one of the lessons of the day. Was ever a people more rapidly educated? Take the canaille of the pre-revolutionary history, and the peuple of the Revolution. What a contrast! It is the lion asleep in the toils, and the lion awake, and turning upon his captors in fury. The French people have never gone back to what they were before that great outbreak. The mighty, volcanic heart has made its pulsations felt through all assumptions, through all restraints. Yet the French people are easily tricked. They are easily led to receive pedantry for education, bigotry for religion, constraint for order, and successful pretension for glory.
The Revolution of 1848 was justified in all but its method. And method has often been the weak point in French politics. Methods are handed down more surely than ideas are inherited. The violent measures whose record forms so large a part of French history have left behind them a belief in military, rather than in moral, action. The coup d'État would seem by its name to be a French invention; but it is a method abhorred of Justice. Justice recognizes two sides, and gives ear to both. Passion sees but one, and blots out in blood the representatives of the other. The Revolution of 1848 was the rather premature explosion of a wide and subtle conspiracy. But if the conflicting opinions and interests then current could have encountered each other, as in England or America, in open daylight, trusting only in the weapons of reason, a very different result would have been achieved. Do not conspire, is one of the lessons which Paris teaches by her history. Do not say, nor teach others to say: "If we cannot have our way, we will have your life." Say, rather: "Let both sides state their case, and plead their cause, and let the weight of Reason decide which shall prevail."
Paris as I first knew it, half a century ago, was a place imposing for its good taste and good manners. A stranger passing through it with ever so little delay would necessarily have been impressed with the general intelligence, and with the Æsthetic invention and nicety which, more than anything else, have given the city its social and commercial prestige.
In those days, Chateaubriand and Madame RÉcamier were still alive. The traditions of society were polite. The theatres were vivacious schools of morality. The salon was still an institution. This was not what we should call a party, but the habitual meeting of friends in a friend's house,—a good institution, if kept up in a good spirit.
The natural sociability of the French made the salon an easy and natural thing for them. Salons were of all sorts. Some shone in true glory; some disguised evil purposes and passions with artificial graces. I think the institution of the salon indigenous to Paris, although it has by no means stopped there.
The great point in administering a salon is to do it sincerely. Where the children are put out of the way, the old friends neglected, the rich courted, and celebrities impaled and exhibited, the institution is demoralizing, and answers no end of permanent good. A friendly house, that opens its doors as often and as widely as the time and fortune of its inmates can afford, is a boon and blessing to many people.
I suppose that the French salons were of both sorts. Sydney Smith speaks of a certain historical set of Parisian women who dealt very lightly with the Decalogue, but who, on the other hand, gave very pleasant little suppers. French society, no doubt, afforded many occasions of this sort, but far different were the meetings in which the literary world of Paris listened to the unpublished memoirs of Chateaubriand; far different was the throng that gathered, twice a day, around the hearth of the wise and devout Madame Swetchine.
In the days just mentioned, I passed through Paris, returning from my bridal journey, which had carried me to Rome. I was eager to explore every corner of the enchanted region. What I did see, I have never forgotten,—the brilliant shops, the tempting cafÉs, the varied and entertaining theatres. I attended a sÉance of the Chamber of Deputies, a lecture of Edgar de Quinet, and one of Philarete Charles. De Quinet's lecture was given at the Sorbonne. I remember of it only the enthusiasm of the audience,—the faces at once fiery and thoughtful, the occasional cries of "De Quinet," when any passage particularly stirred the feelings of the auditors. Of Philarete Charles, I remember that his theme was "English Literature," and that at the close of his lecture he took occasion to reprobate the whole literary world of America. The bon homme Franklin, he said, had outwitted the French Court. The country of Franklin was utterly without interest from an intellectual point of view. "When," said he, "we take into account the late lamentable disorders in New York (some small election riot, in 1844), we shall agree upon the low state of American civilization and the small prospect of good held out by the republic." He was unaware, of course, that Americans were among his hearers; but a certain tidal wave of anger arose in my heart, and had not my graver companion held me down, I should have arisen then, as I certainly should now, to say: "Monsieur Philarete Charles, you are uttering falsehoods."
In those days, I first saw Rachel, then in the full affluence of her genius. The trenchant manner, the statuesque drapery, the chain-lightning effects, were much as they were afterwards seen in this country. But when I saw her, seven years after that first time, in London, I thought that her unrivalled powers had bloomed to a still fuller perfection than before. Of finest clay, thrilled by womanly passion and tempered by womanly tact, we need not remember the faults of the person in the perfection of the artist. Alfred de Musset has left a charming account of a supper at her house. I certainly have never seen on the boards a tragic conception equal to hers. Ristori, able as she was, seemed to me to fall short in Rachel's great parts, if we except the last scene of "Marie Stuart," in which the Christian woman, following the crucifix to her death, showed a sense of its value which the Jewish woman could neither feel nor counterfeit.
The gallery of the Louvre recalls the finest palaces of Italy, and equals, in value and interest, any gallery in the world. Venice is far richer in Titian's pictures, and Rome and Florence keep the greatest works of Raphael and Michael Angelo. To understand Quintin Matsys and Rubens, you must go to Antwerp, where their finest productions remain. But the Louvre has an unsurpassed variety and interest, and exhibits not a few of the chief treasures of ancient and modern art. Among these are some of the masterpieces of Titian, Raphael, and Leonardo da Vinci, the Conception of Murillo, Paul Veronese's great picture of the marriage at Cana in Galilee, and the ever-famous Venus of Milo.
In one of the principal galleries of Venice, I was once shown a large picture by the French artist David. I do not remember much about its merits, but, on asking how it came there, I was told that its place had formerly been occupied by a famous picture by Paul Veronese. Napoleon I., it will be remembered, robbed the galleries of Italy of many of their finest pictures. After his downfall, most of these stolen treasures were restored to their rightful owners; but the French never gave up the Paul Veronese picture, which was this very one that now hangs in the Louvre, where its vivid coloring and rich grouping look like a piece of Venice, bright and glorious like herself.
The student of art, returning from Italy, is possessed with the mediÆval gloom and glory which there have filled his eyes and his imagination. With a sigh, looking toward our Western world, so rich in action, so poor as yet in art, he pauses here in surprise, to view a cosmopolitan palace of her splendors. It consoles him to think that the Beautiful has made so brave a stand upon the nearer borders of the Seine. Encouraged by the noble record of French achievement, he carries with him across the ocean the traditions of Jerome, of Rosa Bonheur, of Horace Vernet.
In historical monuments, Paris is rich indeed. The oldest of these that I remember was the Temple,—the ancient stronghold of the Knights Templar, who were cruelly extirpated in the year 1307. It was a large, circular building, occupied, when I visited it, as a place for the sale of second-hand commodities. I remember making purchases of lace within its walls which were nearly black with age. You will remember that Louis XVI. and his family were confined here for some time, and that here took place the sad parting between the King and the dear ones he was never to see again. I will subjoin a brief extract from the diary of my grandfather, Col. Samuel Ward, of the Revolutionary War, who was in Paris at the time of the King's execution:—