A BUNDLE OF LETTERS I FROM MISS MIRANDA HOPE IN PARIS TO MRS. ABRAHAM C. HOPE AT BANGOR MAINE

September 5, 1879.

My dear Mother,

I’ve kept you posted as far as Tuesday week last, and though my letter won’t have reached you yet I’ll begin another before my news accumulates too much. I’m glad you show my letters round in the family, for I like them all to know what I’m doing, and I can’t write to every one, even if I do try to answer all reasonable expectations. There are a great many unreasonable ones, as I suppose you know—not yours, dear mother, for I’m bound to say that you never required of me more than was natural. You see you’re reaping your reward: I write to you before I write to any one else.

There’s one thing I hope—that you don’t show any of my letters to William Platt. If he wants to see any of my letters he knows the right way to go to work. I wouldn’t have him see one of these letters, written for circulation in the family, for anything in the world. If he wants one for himself he has got to write to me first. Let him write to me first and then I’ll see about answering him. You can show him this if you like; but if you show him anything more I’ll never write to you again.I told you in my last about my farewell to England, my crossing the Channel and my first impressions of Paris. I’ve thought a great deal about that lovely England since I left it, and all the famous historic scenes I visited; but I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s not a country in which I should care to reside. The position of woman doesn’t seem to me at all satisfactory, and that’s a point, you know, on which I feel very strongly. It seems to me that in England they play a very faded-out part, and those with whom I conversed had a kind of downtrodden tone, a spiritless and even benighted air, as if they were used to being snubbed and bullied and as if they liked it, which made me want to give them a good shaking. There are a great many people—and a great many things too—over here that I should like to get at for that purpose. I should like to shake the starch out of some of them and the dust out of the others. I know fifty girls in Bangor that come much more up to my notion of the stand a truly noble woman should take than those young ladies in England. But they had the sweetest way of speaking, as if it were a second nature, and the men are remarkably handsome. (You can show that to William Platt if you like.)

I gave you my first impressions of Paris, which quite came up to my expectations, much as I had heard and read about it. The objects of interest are extremely numerous, and the climate remarkably cheerful and sunny. I should say the position of woman here was considerably higher, though by no means up to the American standard. The manners of the people are in some respects extremely peculiar, and I feel at last that I’m indeed in foreign parts. It is, however, a truly elegant city (much more majestic than New York) and I’ve spent a great deal of time in visiting the various monuments and palaces. I won’t give you an account of all my wanderings, though I’ve been most indefatigable; for I’m keeping, as I told you before, a most exhaustive journal, which I’ll allow you the privilege of reading on my return to Bangor. I’m getting on remarkably well, and I must say I’m sometimes surprised at my universal good fortune. It only shows what a little Bangor energy and gumption will accomplish wherever applied. I’ve discovered none of those objections to a young lady travelling in Europe by herself of which we heard so much before I left, and I don’t expect I ever shall, for I certainly don’t mean to look for them. I know what I want and I always go straight for it.

I’ve received a great deal of politeness—some of it really most pressing, and have experienced no drawbacks whatever. I’ve made a great many pleasant acquaintances in travelling round—both ladies and gentlemen—and had a great many interesting and open-hearted, if quite informal, talks. I’ve collected a great many remarkable facts—I guess we don’t know quite everything at Bangor—for which I refer you to my journal. I assure you my journal’s going to be a splendid picture of an earnest young life. I do just exactly as I do in Bangor, and I find I do perfectly right. At any rate I don’t care if I don’t. I didn’t come to Europe to lead a merely conventional society life: I could do that at Bangor. You know I never would do it at Bangor, so it isn’t likely I’m going to worship false gods over here. So long as I accomplish what I desire and make my money hold out I shall regard the thing as a success. Sometimes I feel rather lonely, especially evenings; but I generally manage to interest myself in something or in some one. I mostly read up, evenings, on the objects of interest I’ve visited during the day, or put in time on my journal. Sometimes I go to the theatre or else play the piano in the public parlour. The public parlour at the hotel isn’t much; but the piano’s better than that fearful old thing at the Sebago House. Sometimes I go downstairs and talk to the lady who keeps the books—a real French lady, who’s remarkably polite. She’s very handsome, though in the peculiar French way, and always wears a black dress of the most beautiful fit. She speaks a little English; she tells me she had to learn it in order to converse with the Americans who come in such numbers to this hotel. She has given me lots of points on the position of woman in France, and seems to think that on the whole there’s hope. But she has told me at the same time some things I shouldn’t like to write to you—I’m hesitating even about putting them into my journal—especially if my letters are to be handed round in the family. I assure you they appear to talk about things here that we never think of mentioning at Bangor, even to ourselves or to our very closest; and it has struck me that people are closer—to each other—down in Maine than seems mostly to be expected here. This bright-minded lady appears at any rate to think she can tell me everything because I’ve told her I’m travelling for general culture. Well, I do want to know so much that it seems sometimes as if I wanted to know most everything; and yet I guess there are some things that don’t count for improvement. But as a general thing everything’s intensely interesting; I don’t mean only everything this charming woman tells me, but everything I see and hear for myself. I guess I’ll come out where I want.

I meet a great many Americans who, as a general thing, I must say, are not so polite to me as the people over here. The people over here—especially the gentlemen—are much more what I should call almost oppressively attentive. I don’t know whether Americans are more truly sincere; I haven’t yet made up my mind about that. The only drawback I experience is when Americans sometimes express surprise that I should be travelling round alone; so you see it doesn’t come from Europeans. I always have my answer ready: “For general culture, to acquire the languages and to see Europe for myself”; and that generally seems to calm them. Dear mother, my money holds out very well, and it is real interesting.

II
FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME

September 16.

Since I last wrote to you I’ve left that nice hotel and come to live in a French family—which, however, is nice too. This place is a kind of boarding-house that’s at the same time a kind of school; only it’s not like an American boarding-house, nor like an American school either. There are four or five people here that have come to learn the language—not to take lessons, but to have an opportunity for conversation. I was very glad to come to such a place, for I had begun to realise that I wasn’t pressing onward quite as I had dreamed with the French. Wasn’t I going to feel ashamed to have spent two months in Paris and not to have acquired more insight into the language? I had always heard so much of French conversation, and I found I wasn’t having much more opportunity to practise it than if I had remained at Bangor. In fact I used to hear a great deal more at Bangor from those French-Canadians who came down to cut the ice than I saw I should ever hear at that nice hotel where was no struggle—some fond struggle being my real atmosphere. The lady who kept the books seemed to want so much to talk to me in English (for the sake of practice, too, I suppose)—she kind of yearned to struggle too: we don’t yearn only down in Maine—that I couldn’t bear to show her I didn’t like it. The chambermaid was Irish and all the waiters German, so I never heard a word of French spoken. I suppose you might hear a great deal in the shops; but as I don’t buy anything—I prefer to spend my money for purposes of culture—I don’t have that advantage.

I’ve been thinking some of taking a teacher, but am well acquainted with the grammar already, and over here in Europe teachers don’t seem to think it’s really in their interest to let you press forward. The more you strike out and realise your power the less they’ve got to teach you. I was a good deal troubled anyhow, for I felt as if I didn’t want to go away without having at least got a general idea of French conversation. The theatre gives you a good deal of insight, and as I told you in my last I go a good deal to the brightest places of amusement. I find no difficulty whatever in going to such places alone, and am always treated with the politeness which, as I’ve mentioned—for I want you to feel happy about that—I encounter everywhere from the best people. I see plenty of other ladies alone (mostly French) and they generally seem to be enjoying themselves as much as I. Only on the stage every one talks so fast that I can scarcely make out what they say; and, besides, there are a great many vulgar expressions which it’s unnecessary to learn. But it was this experience nevertheless that put me on the track. The very next day after I wrote to you last I went to the Palais Royal, which is one of the principal theatres in Paris. It’s very small but very celebrated, and in my guide-book it’s marked with two stars, which is a sign of importance attached only to first-class objects of interest. But after I had been there half an hour I found I couldn’t understand a single word of the play, they gabbled it off so fast and made use of such peculiar expressions. I felt a good deal disappointed and checked—I saw I wasn’t going to come out where I had dreamed. But while I was thinking it over—thinking what I would do—I heard two gentlemen talking behind me. It was between the acts, and I couldn’t help listening to what they said. They were talking English, but I guess they were Americans.

“Well,” said one of them, “it all depends on what you’re after. I’m after French; that’s what I’m after.”

“Well,” said the other, “I’m after Art.”

“Well,” said the first, “I’m after Art too; but I’m after French most.”

Then, dear mother, I’m sorry to say the second one swore a little. He said “Oh damn French!”

“No, I won’t damn French,” said his friend. “I’ll acquire it—that’s what I’ll do with it. I’ll go right into a family.”

“What family’ll you go into?”

“Into some nice French family. That’s the only way to do—to go to some place where you can talk. If you’re after Art you want to stick to the galleries; you want to go right through the Louvre, room by room; you want to take a room a day, or something of that sort. But if you want to acquire French the thing is to look out for some family that has got—and they mostly have—more of it than they’ve use for themselves. How can they have use for so much as they seem to have to have? They’ve got to work it off. Well, they work it off on you. There are lots of them that take you to board and teach you. My second cousin—that young lady I told you about—she got in with a crowd like that, and they posted her right up in three months. They just took her right in and let her have it—the full force. That’s what they do to you; they set you right down and they talk at you. You’ve got to understand them or perish—so you strike out in self-defence; you can’t help yourself. That family my cousin was with has moved away somewhere, or I should try and get in with them. They were real live people, that family; after she left my cousin corresponded with them in French. You’ve got to do that too, to make much real head. But I mean to find some other crowd, if it takes a lot of trouble!”

I listened to all this with great interest, and when he spoke about his cousin I was on the point of turning around to ask him the address of the family she was with; but the next moment he said they had moved away, so I sat still. The other gentleman, however, didn’t seem to be affected in the same way as I was.

“Well,” he said, “you may follow up that if you like; I mean to follow up the pictures. I don’t believe there’s ever going to be any considerable demand in the United States for French; but I can promise you that in about ten years there’ll be a big demand for Art! And it won’t be temporary either.”

That remark may be very true, but I don’t care anything about the demand; I want to know French for its own sake. “Art for art,” they say; but I say French for French. I don’t want to think I’ve been all this while without having gained an insight. . . . The very next day, I asked the lady who kept the books at the hotel whether she knew of any family that could take me to board and give me the benefit of their conversation. She instantly threw up her hands with little shrill cries—in their wonderful French way, you know—and told me that her dearest friend kept a regular place of that kind. If she had known I was looking out for such a place she would have told me before; she hadn’t spoken of it herself because she didn’t wish to injure the hotel by working me off on another house. She told me this was a charming family who had often received American ladies—and others, including three Tahitans—who wished to follow up the language, and she was sure I’d fall in love with them. So she gave me their address and offered to go with me to introduce me. But I was in such a hurry that I went off by myself and soon found them all right. They were sitting there as if they kind of expected me, and wouldn’t scarcely let me come round again for my baggage. They seemed to have right there on hand, as those gentlemen of the theatre said, plenty of what I was after, and I now feel there’ll be no trouble about that.

I came here to stay about three days ago, and by this time I’ve quite worked in. The price of board struck me as rather high, but I must remember what a chance to press onward it includes. I’ve a very pretty little room—without any carpet, but with seven mirrors, two clocks and five curtains. I was rather disappointed, however, after I arrived, to find that there are several other Americans here—all also bent on pressing onward. At least there are three American and two English pensioners, as they call them, as well as a German gentleman—and there seems nothing backward about him. I shouldn’t wonder if we’d make a regular class, with “moving up” and moving down; anyhow I guess I won’t be at the foot, but I’ve not yet time to judge. I try to talk with Madame de Maisonrouge all I can—she’s the lady of the house, and the real family consists only of herself and her two daughters. They’re bright enough to give points to our own brightest, and I guess we’ll become quite intimate. I’ll write you more about everything in my next. Tell William Platt I don’t care a speck what he does.

III
FROM MISS VIOLET RAY IN PARIS TO MISS AGNES RICH IN NEW YORK

September 21.

We had hardly got here when father received a telegram saying he would have to come right back to New York. It was for something about his business—I don’t know exactly what; you know I never understand those things and never want to. We had just got settled at the hotel, in some charming rooms, and mother and I, as you may imagine, were greatly annoyed. Father’s extremely fussy, as you know, and his first idea, as soon as he found he should have to go back, was that we should go back with him. He declared he’d never leave us in Paris alone and that we must return and come out again. I don’t know what he thought would happen to us; I suppose he thought we should be too extravagant. It’s father’s theory that we’re always running-up bills, whereas a little observation would show him that we wear the same old rags for months. But father has no observation; he has nothing but blind theories. Mother and I, however, have fortunately a great deal of practice, and we succeeded in making him understand that we wouldn’t budge from Paris and that we’d rather be chopped into small pieces than cross that squalid sea again. So at last he decided to go back alone and to leave us here for three months. Only, to show you how fussy he is, he refused to let us stay at the hotel and insisted that we should go into a family. I don’t know what put such an idea into his head unless it was some advertisement that he saw in one of the American papers that are published here. Don’t think you can escape from them anywhere.

There are families here who receive American and English people to live with them under the pretence of teaching them French. You may imagine what people they are—I mean the families themselves. But the Americans who choose this peculiar manner of seeing Paris must be actually just as bad. Mother and I were horrified—we declared that main force shouldn’t remove us from the hotel. But father has a way of arriving at his ends which is more effective than violence. He worries and goes on; he “nags,” as we used to say at school; and when mother and I are quite worn to the bone his triumph is assured. Mother’s more quickly ground down than I, and she ends by siding with father; so that at last when they combine their forces against poor little me I’ve naturally to succumb. You should have heard the way father went on about this “family” plan; he talked to every one he saw about it; he used to go round to the banker’s and talk to the people there—the people in the post-office; he used to try and exchange ideas about it with the waiters at the hotel. He said it would be more safe, more respectable, more economical; that I should pick up more French; that mother would learn how a French household’s conducted; that he should feel more easy, and that we ourselves should enjoy it when we came to see. All this meant nothing, but that made no difference. It’s positively cruel his harping on our pinching and saving when every one knows that business in America has completely recovered, that the prostration’s all over and that immense fortunes are being made. We’ve been depriving ourselves of the commonest necessities for the last five years, and I supposed we came abroad to reap the benefits of it.

As for my French it’s already much better than that of most of our helpless compatriots, who are all unblushingly destitute of the very rudiments. (I assure you I’m often surprised at my own fluency, and when I get a little more practice in the circumflex accents and the genders and the idioms I shall quite hold my own.) To make a long story short, however, father carried his point as usual; mother basely deserted me at the last moment, and after holding out alone for three days I told them to do with me what they would. Father lost three steamers in succession by remaining in Paris to argue with me. You know he’s like the schoolmaster in Goldsmith’s Deserted Village—“e’en though vanquished” he always argues still. He and mother went to look at some seventeen families—they had got the addresses somewhere—while I retired to my sofa and would have nothing to do with it. At last they made arrangements and I was transported, as in chains, to the establishment from which I now write you. I address you from the bosom of a Parisian mÉnage—from the depths of a second-rate boarding-house.

Father only left Paris after he had seen us what he calls comfortably settled here and had informed Madame de Maisonrouge—the mistress of the establishment, the head of the “family”—that he wished my French pronunciation especially attended to. The pronunciation, as it happens, is just what I’m most at home in; if he had said my genders or my subjunctives or my idioms there would have been some sense. But poor father has no native tact, and this deficiency has become flagrant since we’ve been in Europe. He’ll be absent, however, for three months, and mother and I shall breathe more freely; the situation will be less tense. I must confess that we breathe more freely than I expected in this place, where we’ve been about a week. I was sure before we came that it would prove to be an establishment of the lowest description; but I must say that in this respect I’m agreeably disappointed. The French spirit is able to throw a sort of grace even over a swindle of this general order. Of course it’s very disagreeable to live with strangers, but as, after all, if I weren’t staying with Madame de Maisonrouge I shouldn’t be vautrÉe in the Faubourg Saint-Germain, I don’t know that from the point of view of exclusiveness I’m much the loser.

Our rooms are very prettily arranged and the table’s remarkably good. Mamma thinks the whole thing—the place and the people, the manners and customs—very amusing; but mamma can be put off with any imposture. As for me, you know, all that I ask is to be let alone and not to have people’s society forced upon me. I’ve never wanted for society of my own choosing, and, so long as I retain possession of my faculties, I don’t suppose I ever shall. As I said, however, the place seems to scramble along, and I succeed in doing as I please, which, you know, is my most cherished pursuit. Madame de Maisonrouge has a great deal of tact—much more than poor floundering father. She’s what they call here a grande belle femme, which means that she’s high-shouldered and short-necked and literally hideous, but with a certain quantity of false type. She has a good many clothes, some rather bad; but a very good manner—only one, and worked to death, but intended to be of the best. Though she’s a very good imitation of a femme du monde I never see her behind the dinner-table in the evening, never see her smile and bow and duck as the people come in, really glaring all the while at the dishes and the servants, without thinking of a dame de comptoir blooming in a corner of a shop or a restaurant. I’m sure that in spite of her beau nom she was once a paid book-keeper. I’m also sure that in spite of her smiles and the pretty things she says to every one, she hates us all and would like to murder us. She is a hard clever Frenchwoman who would like to amuse herself and enjoy her Paris, and she must be furious at having to pass her time grinning at specimens of the stupid races who mumble broken French at her. Some day she’ll poison the soup or the vin rouge, but I hope that won’t be until after mother and I shall have left her. She has two daughters who, except that one’s decidedly pretty, are meagre imitations of herself.

The “family,” for the rest, consists altogether of our beloved compatriots and of still more beloved Englanders. There’s an Englander with his sister, and they seem rather decent. He’s remarkably handsome, but excessively affected and patronising, especially to us Americans; and I hope to have a chance of biting his head off before long. The sister’s very pretty and apparently very nice, but in costume Britannia incarnate. There’s a very pleasant little Frenchman—when they’re nice they’re charming—and a German doctor, a big blond man who looks like a great white bull; and two Americans besides mother and me. One of them’s a young man from Boston—an esthetic young man who talks about its being “a real Corot day,” and a young woman—a girl, a female, I don’t know what to call her—from Vermont or Minnesota or some such place. This young woman’s the most extraordinary specimen of self-complacent provinciality that I’ve ever encountered; she’s really too horrible and too humiliating. I’ve been three times to ClÉmentine about your underskirt, etc.

IV
FROM LOUIS LEVERETT IN PARIS TO HARVARD TREMONT IN BOSTON

September 25.

My dear Harvard,

I’ve carried out my plan, of which I gave you a hint in my last, and I only regret I shouldn’t have done it before. It’s human nature, after all, that’s the most interesting thing in the world, and it only reveals itself to the truly earnest seeker. There’s a want of earnestness in that life of hotels and railroad-trains which so many of our countrymen are content to lead in this strange rich elder world, and I was distressed to find how far I myself had been led along the dusty beaten track. I had, however, constantly wanted to turn aside into more unfrequented ways—to plunge beneath the surface and see what I should discover. But the opportunity had always been missing; somehow I seem never to meet those opportunities that we hear about and read about—the things that happen to people in novels and biographies. And yet I’m always on the watch to take advantage of any opening that may present itself; I’m always looking out for experiences, for sensations—I might almost say for adventures.

The great thing is to live, you know—to feel, to be conscious of one’s possibilities; not to pass through life mechanically and insensibly, even as a letter through the post-office. There are times, my dear Harvard, when I feel as if I were really capable of everything—capable de tout, as they say here—of the greatest excesses as well as the greatest heroism. Oh to be able to say that one has lived—qu’on a vÉcu, as they say here—that idea exercises an indefinable attraction for me. You’ll perhaps reply that nothing’s easier than to say it! Only the thing’s to make people believe you—to make above all one’s self. And then I don’t want any second-hand spurious sensations; I want the knowledge that leaves a trace—that leaves strange scars and stains, ineffable reveries and aftertastes, behind it! But I’m afraid I shock you, perhaps even frighten you.

If you repeat my remarks to any of the West Cedar Street circle be sure you tone them down as your discretion will suggest. For yourself you’ll know that I have always had an intense desire to see something of real French life. You’re acquainted with my great sympathy with the French; with my natural tendency to enter into their so supremely fine exploitation of the whole personal consciousness. I sympathise with the artistic temperament; I remember you used sometimes to hint to me that you thought my own temperament too artistic. I don’t consider that in Boston there’s any real sympathy with the artistic temperament; we tend to make everything a matter of right and wrong. And in Boston one can’t live—on ne peut pas vivre, as they say here. I don’t mean one can’t reside—for a great many people manage that; but one can’t live esthetically—I almost venture to say one can’t live sensuously. This is why I’ve always been so much drawn to the French, who are so esthetic, so sensuous, so entirely living. I’m so sorry dear ThÉophile Gautier has passed away; I should have liked so much to go and see him and tell him all I owe him. He was living when I was here before; but, you know, at that time I was travelling with the Johnsons, who are not esthetic and who used to make me feel rather ashamed of my love and my need of beauty. If I had gone to see the great apostle of that religion I should have had to go clandestinely—en cachette, as they say here; and that’s not my nature; I like to do everything frankly, freely, naÏvement, au grand jour. That’s the great thing—to be free, to be frank, to be naÏf. Doesn’t Matthew Arnold say that somewhere—or is it Swinburne or Pater?

When I was with the Johnsons everything was superficial, and, as regards life, everything was brought down to the question of right and wrong. They were eternally didactic; art should never be didactic; and what’s life but the finest of arts? Pater has said that so well somewhere. With the Johnsons I’m afraid I lost many opportunities; the whole outlook or at least the whole medium—of feeling, of appreciation—was grey and cottony, I might almost say woolly. Now, however, as I tell you, I’ve determined to take right hold for myself; to look right into European life and judge it without Johnsonian prejudices. I’ve taken up my residence in a French family, in a real Parisian house. You see I’ve the courage of my opinions; I don’t shrink from carrying out my theory that the great thing is to live.

You know I’ve always been intensely interested in Balzac, who never shrank from the reality and whose almost lurid pictures of Parisian life have often haunted me in my wanderings through the old wicked-looking streets on the other side of the river. I’m only sorry that my new friends—my French family—don’t live in the old city, au cour de vieux Paris, as they say here. They live only on the Boulevard Haussmann, which is a compromise, but in spite of this they have a great deal of the Balzac tone. Madame de Maisonrouge belongs to one of the oldest and proudest families in France, but has had reverses which have compelled her to open an establishment in which a limited number of travellers, who are weary of the beaten track, who shun the great caravanseries, who cherish the tradition of the old French sociability—she explains it herself, she expresses it so well—in short to open a “select” boarding-house. I don’t see why I shouldn’t after all use that expression, for it’s the correlative of the term pension bourgeoise, employed by Balzac in Le PÈre Goriot. Do you remember the pension bourgeoise of Madame Vauquer nÉe de Conflans? But this establishment isn’t at all like that, and indeed isn’t bourgeois at all; I don’t quite know how the machinery of selection operates, but we unmistakably feel we’re select. The Pension Vauquer was dark, brown, sordid, graisseuse; but this is in quite a different tone, with high clear lightly-draped windows and several rather good Louis Seize pieces—family heirlooms, Madame de Maisonrouge explains. She recalls to me Madame Hulot—do you remember “la belle Madame Hulot”?—in Les Parents Pauvres. She has a great charm—though a little artificial, a little jaded and faded, with a suggestion of hidden things in her life. But I’ve always been sensitive to the seduction of an ambiguous fatigue.

I’m rather disappointed, I confess, in the society I find here; it isn’t so richly native, of so indigenous a note, as I could have desired. Indeed, to tell the truth, it’s not native at all; though on the other hand it is furiously cosmopolite, and that speaks to me too at my hours. We’re French and we’re English; we’re American and we’re German; I believe too there are some Spaniards and some Hungarians expected. I’m much interested in the study of racial types; in comparing, contrasting, seizing the strong points, the weak points, in identifying, however muffled by social hypocrisy, the sharp keynote of each. It’s interesting to shift one’s point of view, to despoil one’s self of one’s idiotic prejudices, to enter into strange exotic ways of looking at life.

The American types don’t, I much regret to say, make a strong or rich affirmation, and, excepting my own (and what is my own, dear Harvard, I ask you?), are wholly negative and feminine. We’re thin—that I should have to say it! we’re pale, we’re poor, we’re flat. There’s something meagre about us; our line is wanting in roundness, our composition in richness. We lack temperament; we don’t know how to live; nous ne savons pas vivre, as they say here. The American temperament is represented—putting myself aside, and I often think that my temperament isn’t at all American—by a young girl and her mother and by another young girl without her mother, without either parent or any attendant or appendage whatever. These inevitable creatures are more or less in the picture; they have a certain interest, they have a certain stamp, but they’re disappointing too: they don’t go far; they don’t keep all they promise; they don’t satisfy the imagination. They are cold slim sexless; the physique’s not generous, not abundant; it’s only the drapery, the skirts and furbelows—that is, I mean in the young lady who has her mother—that are abundant. They’re rather different—we have our little differences, thank God: one of them all elegance, all “paid bills” and extra-fresh gants de SuÈde, from New York; the other a plain pure clear-eyed narrow-chested straight-stepping maiden from the heart of New England. And yet they’re very much alike too—more alike than they would care to think themselves; for they face each other with scarcely disguised opposition and disavowal. They’re both specimens of the practical positive passionless young thing as we let her loose on the world—and yet with a certain fineness and knowing, as you please, either too much or too little. With all of which, as I say, they have their spontaneity and even their oddity; though no more mystery, either of them, than the printed circular thrust into your hand on the street-corner.

The little New Yorker’s sometimes very amusing; she asks me if every one in Boston talks like me—if every one’s as “intellectual” as your poor correspondent. She’s for ever throwing Boston up at me; I can’t get rid of poor dear little Boston. The other one rubs it into me too, but in a different way; she seems to feel about it as a good Mahommedan feels toward Mecca, and regards it as a focus of light for the whole human race. Yes, poor little Boston, what nonsense is talked in thy name! But this New England maiden is in her way a rare white flower; she’s travelling all over Europe alone—“to see it,” she says, “for herself.” For herself! What can that strangely serene self of hers do with such sights, such depths! She looks at everything, goes everywhere, passes her way with her clear quiet eyes wide open; skirting the edge of obscene abysses without suspecting them; pushing through brambles without tearing her robe; exciting, without knowing it, the most injurious suspicions; and always holding her course—without a stain, without a sense, without a fear, without a charm!

Then by way of contrast there’s a lovely English girl with eyes as shy as violets and a voice as sweet!—the difference between the printed, the distributed, the gratuitous hand-bill and the shy scrap of a billet-doux dropped where you may pick it up. She has a sweet Gainsborough head and a great Gainsborough hat with a mighty plume in front of it that makes a shadow over her quiet English eyes. Then she has a sage-green robe, “mystic wonderful,” all embroidered with subtle devices and flowers, with birds and beasts of tender tint; very straight and tight in front and adorned behind, along the spine, with large strange iridescent buttons. The revival of taste, of the sense of beauty, in England, interests me deeply; what is there in a simple row of spinal buttons to make one dream—to donner À rÊver, as they say here? I believe a grand esthetic renascence to be at hand and that a great light will be kindled in England for all the world to see. There are spirits there I should like to commune with; I think they’d understand me.

This gracious English maiden, with her clinging robes, her amulets and girdles, with something quaint and angular in her step, her carriage, something medieval and Gothic in the details of her person and dress, this lovely Evelyn Vane (isn’t it a beautiful name?) exhales association and implication. She’s so much a woman—elle est bien femme, as they say here; simpler softer rounder richer than the easy products I spoke of just now. Not much talk—a great sweet silence. Then the violet eye—the very eye itself seems to blush; the great shadowy hat making the brow so quiet; the strange clinging clutched pictured raiment! As I say, it’s a very gracious tender type. She has her brother with her, who’s a beautiful fair-haired grey-eyed young Englishman. He’s purely objective, but he too is very plastic.

V
FROM MIRANDA HOPE TO HER MOTHER

September 26.

You mustn’t be frightened at not hearing from me oftener; it isn’t because I’m in any trouble, but because I’m getting on so well. If I were in any trouble I don’t think I’d write to you; I’d just keep quiet and see it through myself. But that’s not the case at present; and if I don’t write to you it’s because I’m so deeply interested over here that I don’t seem to find time. It was a real providence that brought me to this house, where, in spite of all obstacles, I am able to press onward. I wonder how I find time for all I do, but when I realise I’ve only got about a year left, all told, I feel as if I wouldn’t sacrifice a single hour.

The obstacles I refer to are the disadvantages I have in acquiring the language, there being so many persons round me speaking English, and that, as you may say, in the very bosom of a regular French family. It seems as if you heard English everywhere; but I certainly didn’t expect to find it in a place like this. I’m not discouraged, however, and I exercise all I can, even with the other English boarders. Then I’ve a lesson every day from Mademoiselle—the elder daughter of the lady of the house and the intellectual one; she has a wonderful fearless mind, almost like my friend at the hotel—and French give-and-take every evening in the salon, from eight to eleven, with Madame herself and some friends of hers who often come in. Her cousin, Mr. Verdier, a young French gentleman, is fortunately staying with her, and I make a point of talking with him as much as possible. I have extra-private lessons from him, and I often ramble round with him. Some night soon he’s to accompany me to the comic opera. We’ve also a most interesting plan of visiting the galleries successively together and taking the schools in their order—for they mean by “the schools” here something quite different from what we do. Like most of the French Mr. Verdier converses with great fluency, and I feel I may really gain from him. He’s remarkably handsome, in the French style, and extremely polite—making a great many speeches which I’m afraid it wouldn’t always do to pin one’s faith on. When I get down in Maine again I guess I’ll tell you some of the things he has said to me. I think you’ll consider them extremely curious—very beautiful in their French way.

The conversation in the parlour (from eight to eleven) ranges over many subjects—I sometimes feel as if it really avoided none; and I often wish you or some of the Bangor folks could be there to enjoy it. Even though you couldn’t understand it I think you’d like to hear the way they go on; they seem to express so much. I sometimes think that at Bangor they don’t express enough—except that it seems as if over there they’ve less to express. It seems as if at Bangor there were things that folks never tried to say; but I seem to have learned here from studying French that you’ve no idea what you can say before you try. At Bangor they kind of give it up beforehand; they don’t make any effort. (I don’t say this in the least for William Platt in particular.)I’m sure I don’t know what they’ll think of me when I get back anyway. It seems as if over here I had learned to come out with everything. I suppose they’ll think I’m not sincere; but isn’t it more sincere to come right out with things than just to keep feeling of them in your mind—without giving any one the benefit? I’ve become very good friends with every one in the house—that is (you see I am sincere) with almost every one. It’s the most interesting circle I ever was in. There’s a girl here, an American, that I don’t like so much as the rest; but that’s only because she won’t let me. I should like to like her, ever so much, because she’s most lovely and most attractive; but she doesn’t seem to want to know me or to take to me. She comes from New York and she’s remarkably pretty, with beautiful eyes and the most delicate features; she’s also splendidly stylish—in this respect would bear comparison with any one I’ve seen over here. But it seems as if she didn’t want to recognise me or associate with me, as if she wanted to make a difference between us. It is like people they call “haughty” in books. I’ve never seen any one like that before—any one that wanted to make a difference; and at first I was right down interested, she seemed to me so like a proud young lady in a novel. I kept saying to myself all day “haughty, haughty,” and I wished she’d keep on so. But she did keep on—she kept on too long; and then I began to feel it in a different way, to feel as if it kind of wronged me. I couldn’t think what I’ve done, and I can’t think yet. It’s as if she had got some idea about me or had heard some one say something. If some girls should behave like that I wouldn’t make any account of it; but this one’s so refined, and looks as if she might be so fascinating if I once got to know her, that I think about it a good deal. I’m bound to find out what her reason is—for of course she has got some reason; I’m right down curious to know.

I went up to her to ask her the day before yesterday; I thought that the best way. I told her I wanted to know her better and would like to come and see her in her room—they tell me she has got a lovely one—and that if she had heard anything against me perhaps she’d tell me when I came. But she was more distant than ever and just turned it off; said she had never heard me mentioned and that her room was too small to receive visitors. I suppose she spoke the truth, but I’m sure she has some peculiar ground, all the same. She has got some idea; which I’ll die if I don’t find out soon—if I have to ask every one in the house. I never could be happy under an appearance of wrong. I wonder if she doesn’t think me refined—or if she had ever heard anything against Bangor? I can’t think it’s that. Don’t you remember when Clara Barnard went to visit in New York, three years ago, how much attention she received? And you know Clara is Bangor, to the soles of her shoes. Ask William Platt—so long as he isn’t native—if he doesn’t consider Clara Barnard refined.

Apropos, as they say here, of refinement, there’s another American in the house—a gentleman from Boston—who’s just crammed with it. His name’s Mr. Louis Leverett (such a beautiful name I think) and he’s about thirty years old. He’s rather small and he looks pretty sick; he suffers from some affection of the liver. But his conversation leads you right on—they do go so far over here: even our people seem to strain ahead in Europe, and perhaps when I get back it may strike you I’ve learned to keep up with them. I delight to listen to him anyhow—he has such beautiful ideas. I feel as if these moments were hardly right, not being in French; but fortunately he uses a great many French expressions. It’s in a different style from the dazzle of Mr. Verdier—not so personal, but much more earnest: he says the only earnestness left in the world now is French. He’s intensely fond of pictures and has given me a great many ideas about them that I’d never have gained without him; I shouldn’t have known how to go to work to strike them. He thinks everything of pictures; he thinks we don’t make near enough of them. They seem to make a good deal of them here, but I couldn’t help telling him the other day that in Bangor I really don’t think we do.

If I had any money to spend I’d buy some and take them back to hang right up. Mr. Leverett says it would do them good—not the pictures, but the Bangor folks (though sometimes he seems to want to hang them up too). He thinks everything of the French, anyhow, and says we don’t make nearly enough of them. I couldn’t help telling him the other day that they certainly make enough of themselves. But it’s very interesting to hear him go on about the French, and it’s so much gain to me, since it’s about the same as what I came for. I talk to him as much as I dare about Boston, but I do feel as if this were right down wrong—a stolen pleasure.

I can get all the Boston culture I want when I go back, if I carry out my plan, my heart’s secret, of going there to reside. I ought to direct all my efforts to European culture now, so as to keep Boston to finish off. But it seems as if I couldn’t help taking a peep now and then in advance—with a real Bostonian. I don’t know when I may meet one again; but if there are many others like Mr. Leverett there I shall be certain not to lack when I carry out my dream. He’s just as full of culture as he can live. But it seems strange how many different sorts there are.There are two of the English who I suppose are very cultivated too; but it doesn’t seem as if I could enter into theirs so easily, though I try all I can. I do love their way of speaking, and sometimes I feel almost as if it would be right to give up going for French and just try to get the hang of English as these people have got it. It doesn’t come out in the things they say so much, though these are often rather curious, but in the sweet way they say them and in their kind of making so much, such an easy lovely effect, of saying almost anything. It seems as if they must try a good deal to sound like that; but these English who are here don’t seem to try at all, either to speak or do anything else. They’re a young lady and her brother, who belong, I believe, to some noble family. I’ve had a good deal of intercourse with them, because I’ve felt more free to talk to them than to the Americans—on account of the language. They often don’t understand mine, and then it’s as if I had to learn theirs to explain.

I never supposed when I left Bangor that I was coming to Europe to improve in our old language—and yet I feel I can. If I do get where I may in it I guess you’ll scarcely understand me when I get back, and I don’t think you’ll particularly see the point. I’d be a good deal criticised if I spoke like that at Bangor. However, I verily believe Bangor’s the most critical place on earth; I’ve seen nothing like it over here. Well, tell them I’ll give them about all they can do. But I was speaking about this English young lady and her brother; I wish I could put them before you. She’s lovely just to see; she seems so modest and retiring. In spite of this, however, she dresses in a way that attracts great attention, as I couldn’t help noticing when one day I went out to walk with her. She was ever so much more looked at than what I’d have thought she’d like; but she didn’t seem to care, till at last I couldn’t help calling attention to it. Mr. Leverett thinks everything of it; he calls it the “costume of the future.” I’d call it rather the costume of the past—you know the English have such an attachment to the past. I said this the other day to Madame de Maisonrouge—that Miss Vane dressed in the costume of the past. De l’an passÉ, vous voulez dire? she asked in her gay French way. (You can get William Platt to translate this; he used to tell me he knows so much French.)

You know I told you, in writing some time ago, that I had tried to get some insight into the position of woman in England, and, being here with Miss Vane, it has seemed to me to be a good opportunity to get a little more. I’ve asked her a great deal about it, but she doesn’t seem able to tell me much. The first time I asked her she said the position of a lady depended on the rank of her father, her eldest brother, her husband—all on somebody else; and they, as to their position, on something quite else (than themselves) as well. She told me her own position was very good because her father was some relation—I forget what—to a lord. She thinks everything of this; and that proves to me their standing can’t be really good, because if it were it wouldn’t be involved in that of your relations, even your nearest. I don’t know much about lords, and it does try my patience—though she’s just as sweet as she can live—to hear her talk as if it were a matter of course I should.

I feel as if it were right to ask her as often as I can if she doesn’t consider every one equal; but she always says she doesn’t, and she confesses that she doesn’t think she’s equal to Lady Something-or-Other, who’s the wife of that relation of her father. I try and persuade her all I can that she is; but it seems as if she didn’t want to be persuaded, and when I ask her if that superior being is of the same opinion—that Miss Vane isn’t her equal—she looks so soft and pretty with her eyes and says “How can she not be?” When I tell her that this is right down bad for the other person it seems as if she wouldn’t believe me, and the only answer she’ll make is that the other person’s “awfully nice.” I don’t believe she’s nice at all; if she were nice she wouldn’t have such ideas as that. I tell Miss Vane that at Bangor we think such ideas vulgar, but then she looks as though she had never heard of Bangor. I often want to shake her, though she is so sweet. If she isn’t angry with the people who make her feel that way at least I’m angry for her. I’m angry with her brother too, for she’s evidently very much afraid of him, and this gives me some further insight into the subject. She thinks everything of her brother; she thinks it natural she should be afraid of him not only physically—for that is natural, as he’s enormously tall and strong, and has very big fists—but morally and intellectually. She seems unable, however, to take in any argument, and she makes me realise what I’ve often heard—that if you’re timid nothing will reason you out of it.

Mr. Vane also, the brother, seems to have the same prejudices, and when I tell him, as I often think it right to do, that his sister’s not his subordinate, even if she does think so, but his equal, and perhaps in some respects his superior, and that if my brother in Bangor were to treat me as he treats this charming but abject creature, who has not spirit enough to see the question in its true light, there would be an indignation-meeting of the citizens to protest against such an outrage to the sanctity of womanhood—when I tell him all this, at breakfast or dinner, he only bursts out laughing so loud that all the plates clatter on the table.

But at such a time as this there’s always one person who seems interested in what I say—a German gentleman, a professor, who sits next to me at dinner and whom I must tell you more about another time. He’s very learned, but wants to push further and further all the time; he appreciates a great many of my remarks, and after dinner, in the salon, he often comes to me to ask me questions about them. I have to think a little sometimes to know what I did say or what I do think. He takes you right up where you left off, and he’s most as fond of discussing things as William Platt ever was. He’s splendidly educated, in the German style, and he told me the other day that he was an “intellectual broom.” Well, if he is he sweeps clean; I told him that. After he has been talking to me I feel as if I hadn’t got a speck of dust left in my mind anywhere. It’s a most delightful feeling. He says he’s a remorseless observer, and though I don’t know about remorse—for a bright mind isn’t a crime, is it?—I’m sure there’s plenty over here to observe. But I’ve told you enough for to-day. I don’t know how much longer I shall stay here; I’m getting on now so fast that it has come to seem sometimes as if I shouldn’t need all the time I’ve laid out. I suppose your cold weather has promptly begun, as usual; it sometimes makes me envy you. The fall weather here is very dull and damp, and I often suffer from the want of bracing.

VI
FROM MISS EVELYN VANE IN PARIS TO THE LADY AUGUSTA FLEMING AT BRIGHTON

Paris, September 30.

Dear Lady Augusta,

I’m afraid I shall not be able to come to you on January 7th, as you kindly proposed at Homburg. I’m so very very sorry; it’s an immense disappointment. But I’ve just heard that it has been settled that mamma and the children come abroad for a part of the winter, and mamma wishes me to go with them to HyÈres, where Georgina has been ordered for her lungs. She has not been at all well these three months, and now that the damp weather has begun she’s very poorly indeed; so that last week papa decided to have a consultation, and he and mamma went with her up to town and saw some three or four doctors. They all of them ordered the south of France, but they didn’t agree about the place; so that mamma herself decided for HyÈres, because it’s the most economical. I believe it’s very dull, but I hope it will do Georgina good. I’m afraid, however, that nothing will do her good until she consents to take more care of herself; I’m afraid she’s very wild and wilful, and mamma tells me that all this month it has taken papa’s positive orders to make her stop indoors. She’s very cross (mamma writes me) about coming abroad, and doesn’t seem at all to mind the expense papa has been put to—talks very ill-naturedly about her loss of the hunting and even perhaps of the early spring meetings. She expected to begin to hunt in December and wants to know whether anybody keeps hounds at HyÈres. Fancy that rot when she’s too ill to sit a horse or to go anywhere. But I daresay that when she gets there she’ll be glad enough to keep quiet, as they say the heat’s intense. It may cure Georgina, but I’m sure it will make the rest of us very ill.

Mamma, however, is only going to bring Mary and Gus and Fred and Adelaide abroad with her: the others will remain at Kingscote till February (about the 3rd) when they’ll go to Eastbourne for a month with Miss Turnover, the new governess, who has proved such a very nice person. She’s going to take Miss Travers, who has been with us so long, but is only qualified for the younger children, to HyÈres, and I believe some of the Kingscote servants. She has perfect confidence in Miss T.; it’s only a pity the poor woman has such an odd name. Mamma thought of asking her if she would mind taking another when she came; but papa thought she might object. Lady Battledown makes all her governesses take the same name; she gives £5 more a year for the purpose. I forget what it is she calls them; I think it’s Johnson (which to me always suggests a lady’s maid). Governesses shouldn’t have too pretty a name—they shouldn’t have a nicer name than the family.

I suppose you heard from the Desmonds that I didn’t go back to England with them. When it began to be talked about that Georgina should be taken abroad mamma wrote to me that I had better stop in Paris for a month with Harold, so that she could pick me up on their way to HyÈres. It saves the expense of my journey to Kingscote and back, and gives me the opportunity to “finish” a little in French.

You know Harold came here six weeks ago to get up his French for those dreadful exams that he has to pass so soon. He came to live with some French people that take in young men (and others) for this purpose; it’s a kind of coaching-place, only kept by women. Mamma had heard it was very nice, so she wrote to me that I was to come and stop here with Harold. The Desmonds brought me and made the arrangement or the bargain or whatever you call it. Poor Harold was naturally not at all pleased, but he has been very kind and has treated me like an angel. He’s getting on beautifully with his French, for though I don’t think the place is so good as papa supposed, yet Harold is so immensely clever that he can scarcely help learning. I’m afraid I learn much less, but fortunately I haven’t to go up for anything—unless perhaps to mamma if she takes it into her head to examine me. But she’ll have so much to think of with Georgina that I hope this won’t occur to her. If it does I shall be, as Harold says, in a dreadful funk.

This isn’t such a nice place for a girl as for a gentleman, and the Desmonds thought it exceedingly odd that mamma should wish me to come here. As Mrs. Desmond said, it’s because she’s so very unconventional. But you know Paris is so very amusing, and if only Harold remains good-natured about it I shall be content to wait for the caravan—which is what he calls mamma and the children. The person who keeps the establishment, or whatever they call it, is rather odd and exceedingly foreign; but she’s wonderfully civil and is perpetually sending to my door to see if I want anything. She’s tremendously pretentious and of course isn’t a lady. The servants are not at all like English ones and come bursting in, the footman—they’ve only one—and the maids alike, at all sorts of hours, in the most sudden way. Then when one rings it takes ages. Some of the food too is rather nasty. All of which is very uncomfortable, and I daresay will be worse at HyÈres. There, however, fortunately, we shall have our own people.

There are some very odd Americans here who keep throwing Harold into fits of laughter. One’s a dreadful little man whom indeed he also wants to kick and who’s always sitting over the fire and talking about the colour of the sky. I don’t believe he ever saw the sky except through the window-pane. The other day he took hold of my frock—that green one you thought so nice at Homburg—and told me that it reminded him of the texture of the Devonshire turf. And then he talked for half an hour about the Devonshire turf, which I thought such a very extraordinary subject. Harold firmly believes him mad. It’s rather horrid to be living in this way with people one doesn’t know—I mean doesn’t know as one knows them in England.

The other Americans, beside the madman, are two girls about my own age, one of whom is rather nice. She has a mother; but the mother always sits in her bedroom, which seems so very odd. I should like mamma to ask them to Kingscote, but I’m afraid mamma wouldn’t like the mother, who’s awfully vulgar. The other girl is awfully vulgar herself—she’s travelling about quite alone. I think she’s a middle-class schoolmistress—sacked perhaps for some irregularity; but the other girl (I mean the nicer one, with the objectionable mother) tells me she’s more respectable than she seems. She has, however, the most extraordinary opinions—wishes to do away with the aristocracy, thinks it wrong that Arthur should have Kingscote when papa dies, etc. I don’t see what it signifies to her that poor Arthur should come into the property, which will be so delightful—except for papa dying. But Harold says she’s mad too. He chaffs her tremendously about her radicalism, and he’s so immensely clever that she can’t answer him, though she has a supply of the most extraordinary big words.

There’s also a Frenchman, a nephew or cousin or something of the person of the house, who’s a horrid low cad; and a German professor or doctor who eats with his knife and is a great bore. I’m so very sorry about giving up my visit. I’m afraid you’ll never ask me again.

VII
FROM LÉON VERDIER IN PARIS TO PROSPER GOBAIN AT LILLE

September 28.

Mon Gros Vieux,

It’s a long time since I’ve given you of my news, and I don’t know what puts it into my head to-night to recall myself to your affectionate memory. I suppose it is that when we’re happy the mind reverts instinctively to those with whom formerly we shared our vicissitudes, and je t’en ai trop dit dans le bon temps, cher vieux, and you always listened to me too imperturbably, with your pipe in your mouth and your waistcoat unbuttoned, for me not to feel that I can count on your sympathy to-day. Nous en sommes-nous flanquÉs, des confidences?—in those happy days when my first thought in seeing an adventure poindre À l’horizon was of the pleasure I should have in relating it to the great Prosper. As I tell thee, I’m happy; decidedly j’ai de la chance, and from that avowal I trust thee to construct the rest. Shall I help thee a little? Take three adorable girls—three, my good Prosper, the mystic number, neither more nor less. Take them and place in the midst of them thy insatiable little LÉon. Is the situation sufficiently indicated, or does the scene take more doing?

You expected perhaps I was going to tell thee I had made my fortune, or that the Uncle Blondeau had at last decided to recommit himself to the breast of nature after having constituted me his universal legatee. But I needn’t remind you for how much women have always been in any happiness of him who thus overflows to you—for how much in any happiness and for how much more in any misery. But don’t let me talk of misery now; time enough when it comes, when ces demoiselles shall have joined the serried ranks of their amiable predecessors. Ah, I comprehend your impatience. I must tell you of whom ces demoiselles consist.

You’ve heard me speak of my cousine de Maisonrouge, that grande belle femme who, after having married, en secondes noces—there had been, to tell the truth, some irregularity about her first union—a venerable relic of the old noblesse of Poitou, was left, by the death of her husband, complicated by the crash of expensive tastes against an income of 17,000 francs, on the pavement of Paris with two little demons of daughters to bring up in the path of virtue. She managed to bring them up; my little cousins are ferociously sages. If you ask me how she managed it I can’t tell you; it’s no business of mine, and a fortiori none of yours. She’s now fifty years old—she confesses to thirty-eight—and her daughters, whom she has never been able to place, are respectively twenty-seven and twenty-three (they confess to twenty and to seventeen). Three years ago she had the thrice-blest idea of opening a well-upholstered and otherwise attractive asile for the blundering barbarians who come to Paris in the hope of picking up a few stray pearls from the Écrin of Voltaire—or of Zola. The idea has brought her luck; the house does an excellent business. Until within a few months ago it was carried on by my cousins alone; but lately the need of a few extensions and improvements has caused itself to be felt. My cousin has undertaken them, regardless of expense; in other words she has asked me to come and stay with her—board and lodging gratis—and correct the conversational exercises of her pensionnaire-pupils. I’m the extension, my good Prosper; I’m the improvement. She has enlarged the personnel—I’m the enlargement. I form the exemplary sounds that the prettiest English lips are invited to imitate. The English lips are not all pretty, heaven knows, but enough of them are so to make it a good bargain for me.

Just now, as I told you, I’m in daily relation with three separate pairs. The owner of one of them has private lessons; she pays extra. My cousin doesn’t give me a sou of the money, but I consider nevertheless that I’m not a loser by the arrangement. Also I’m well, very very well, with the proprietors of the two other pairs. One of these is a little Anglaise of twenty—a figure de keepsake; the most adorable miss you ever, or at least I ever, beheld. She’s hung all over with beads and bracelets and amulets, she’s embroidered all over like a sampler or a vestment; but her principal decoration consists of the softest and almost the hugest grey eyes in the world, which rest upon you with a profundity of confidence—a confidence I really feel some compunction in betraying. She has a tint as white as this sheet of paper, except just in the middle of each cheek, where it passes into the purest and most transparent, most liquid, carmine. Occasionally this rosy fluid overflows into the rest of her face—by which I mean that she blushes—as softly as the mark of your breath on the window-pane.

Like every Anglaise she’s rather pinched and prim in public; but it’s easy to see that when no one’s looking elle ne demande qu’À se laisser aller! Whenever she wants it I’m always there, and I’ve given her to understand she can count upon me. I’ve reason to believe she appreciates the assurance, though I’m bound in honesty to confess that with her the situation’s a little less advanced than with the others. Que voulez-vous? The English are heavy and the Anglaises move slowly, that’s all. The movement, however, is perceptible, and once this fact’s established I can let the soup simmer, I can give her time to arrive, for I’m beautifully occupied with her competitors. They don’t keep me waiting, please believe.

These young ladies are Americans, and it belongs to that national character to move fast. “All right—go ahead!” (I’m learning a great deal of English, or rather a great deal of American.) They go ahead at a rate that sometimes makes it difficult for me to keep up. One of them’s prettier than the other; but this latter—the one that takes the extra-private lessons—is really une fille Étonnante. Ah par exemple, elle brÛle ses vaisseaux, celle-lÀ! She threw herself into my arms the very first day, and I almost owed her a grudge for having deprived me of that pleasure of gradation, of carrying the defences one by one, which is almost as great as that of entering the place. For would you believe that at the end of exactly twelve minutes she gave me a rendezvous? In the Galerie d’Apollon at the Louvre I admit; but that was respectable for a beginning, and since then we’ve had them by the dozen; I’ve ceased to keep the account. Non, c’est une fille qui me dÉpasse.

The other, the slighter but “smarter” little person—she has a mother somewhere out of sight, shut up in a closet or a trunk—is a good deal prettier, and perhaps on that account elle y met plus de faÇons. She doesn’t knock about Paris with me by the hour; she contents herself with long interviews in the petit salon, with the blinds half-drawn, beginning at about three o’clock, when every one is À la promenade. She’s admirable, cette petite, a little too immaterial, with the bones rather over-accentuated, yet of a detail, on the whole, most satisfactory. And you can say anything to her. She takes the trouble to appear not to understand, but her conduct, half an hour afterwards, reassures you completely—oh completely!

However, it’s the big bouncer of the extra-private lessons who’s the most remarkable. These private lessons, my good Prosper, are the most brilliant invention of the age, and a real stroke of genius on the part of Miss Miranda! They also take place in the petit salon, but with the doors tightly closed and with explicit directions to every one in the house that we are not to be disturbed. And we’re not, mon gros, we’re not! Not a sound, not a shadow, interrupts our felicity. My cousins are on the right track—such a house must make its fortune. Miss Miranda’s too tall and too flat, with a certain want of coloration; she hasn’t the transparent rougeurs of the little Anglaise. But she has wonderful far-gazing eyes, superb teeth, a nose modelled by a sculptor, and a way of holding up her head and looking every one in the face, which combines apparent innocence with complete assurance in a way I’ve never seen equalled. She’s making the tour du monde, entirely alone, without even a soubrette to carry the ensign, for the purpose of seeing for herself, seeing À quoi s’en tenir sur les hommes et les choses—on les hommes particularly. Dis donc, mon vieux, it must be a drÔle de pays over there, where such a view of the right thing for the aspiring young bourgeoises is taken. If we should turn the tables some day, thou and I, and go over and see it for ourselves? Why isn’t it as well we should go and find them chez elles, as that they should come out here after us? Dis donc, mon gros Prosper . . . !

My dear Brother in Science,

I resume my hasty notes, of which I sent you the first instalment some weeks ago. I mentioned that I intended to leave my hotel, not finding in it real matter. It was kept by a Pomeranian and the waiters without exception were from the Fatherland. I might as well have sat down with my note-book Unter den Linden, and I felt that, having come here for documentation, or to put my finger straight upon the social pulse, I should project myself as much as possible into the circumstances which are in part the consequence and in part the cause of its activities and intermittences. I saw there could be no well-grounded knowledge without this preliminary operation of my getting a near view, as slightly as possible modified by elements proceeding from a different combination of forces, of the spontaneous home-life of the nation.

I accordingly engaged a room in the house of a lady of pure French extraction and education, who supplements the shortcomings of an income insufficient to the ever-growing demands of the Parisian system of sense-gratification by providing food and lodging for a limited number of distinguished strangers. I should have preferred to have my room here only, and to take my meals in a brewery, of very good appearance, which I speedily discovered in the same street; but this arrangement, though very clearly set out by myself, was not acceptable to the mistress of the establishment—a woman with a mathematical head—and I have consoled myself for the extra expense by fixing my thoughts upon the great chance that conformity to the customs of the house gives me of studying the table-manners of my companions, and of observing the French nature at a peculiarly physiological moment, the moment when the satisfaction of the taste, which is the governing quality in its composition, produces a kind of exhalation, an intellectual transpiration, which, though light and perhaps invisible to a superficial spectator, is nevertheless appreciable by a properly adjusted instrument. I’ve adjusted my instrument very satisfactorily—I mean the one I carry in my good square German head—and I’m not afraid of losing a single drop of this valuable fluid as it condenses itself upon the plate of my observation. A prepared surface is what I need, and I’ve prepared my surface.

Unfortunately here also I find the individual native in the minority. There are only four French persons in the house—the individuals concerned in its management, three of whom are women, and one a man. Such a preponderance of the Weibliche is, however, in itself characteristic, as I needn’t remind you what an abnormally-developed part this sex has played in French history. The remaining figure is ostensibly that of a biped, and apparently that of a man, but I hesitate to allow him the whole benefit of the higher classification. He strikes me as less human than simian, and whenever I hear him talk I seem to myself to have paused in the street to listen to the shrill clatter of a hand-organ, to which the gambols of a hairy homunculus form an accompaniment.

I mentioned to you before that my expectation of rough usage in consequence of my unattenuated, even if not frivolously aggressive, Teutonism was to prove completely unfounded. No one seems either unduly conscious or affectedly unperceiving of my so rich Berlin background; I’m treated on the contrary with the positive civility which is the portion of every traveller who pays the bill without scanning the items too narrowly. This, I confess, has been something of a surprise to me, and I’ve not yet made up my mind as to the fundamental cause of the anomaly. My determination to take up my abode in a French interior was largely dictated by the supposition that I should be substantially disagreeable to its inmates. I wished to catch in the fact the different forms taken by the irritation I should naturally produce; for it is under the influence of irritation that the French character most completely expresses itself. My presence, however, operates, as I say, less than could have been hoped as a stimulus, and in this respect I’m materially disappointed. They treat me as they treat every one else; whereas, in order to be treated differently, I was resigned in advance to being treated worse. A further proof, if any were needed, of that vast and, as it were, fluid waste (I have so often dwelt on to you) which attends the process of philosophic secretion. I’ve not, I repeat, fully explained to myself this logical contradiction; but this is the explanation to which I tend. The French are so exclusively occupied with the idea of themselves that in spite of the very definite image the German personality presented to them by the war of 1870 they have at present no distinct apprehension of its existence. They are not very sure that there are, concretely, any Germans; they have already forgotten the convincing proofs presented to them nine years ago. A German was something disagreeable and disconcerting, an irreducible mass, which they determined to keep out of their conception of things. I therefore hold we’re wrong to govern ourselves upon the hypothesis of the revanche; the French nature is too shallow for that large and powerful plant to bloom in it.

The English-speaking specimens, too, I’ve not been willing to neglect the opportunity to examine; and among these I’ve paid special attention to the American varieties, of which I find here several singular examples. The two most remarkable are a young man who presents all the characteristics of a period of national decadence; reminding me strongly of some diminutive Hellenised Roman of the third century. He’s an illustration of the period of culture in which the faculty of appreciation has obtained such a preponderance over that of production that the latter sinks into a kind of rank sterility, and the mental condition becomes analogous to that of a malarious bog. I hear from him of the existence of an immense number of Americans exactly resembling him, and that the city of Boston indeed is almost exclusively composed of them. (He communicated this fact very proudly, as if it were greatly to the credit of his native country; little perceiving the truly sinister impression it made on me.)

What strikes one in it is that it is a phenomenon to the best of my knowledge—and you know what my knowledge is—unprecedented and unique in the history of mankind; the arrival of a nation at an ultimate stage of evolution without having passed through the mediate one; the passage of the fruit, in other words, from crudity to rottenness, without the interposition of a period of useful (and ornamental) ripeness. With the Americans indeed the crudity and the rottenness are identical and simultaneous; it is impossible to say, as in the conversation of this deplorable young man, which is the one and which the other: they’re inextricably confused. Homunculus for homunculus I prefer that of the Frenchman; he’s at least more amusing.

It’s interesting in this manner to perceive, so largely developed, the germs of extinction in the so-called powerful Anglo-Saxon family. I find them in almost as recognisable a form in a young woman from the State of Maine, in the province of New England, with whom I have had a good deal of conversation. She differs somewhat from the young man I just mentioned in that the state of affirmation, faculty of production and capacity for action are things, in her, less inanimate; she has more of the freshness and vigour that we suppose to belong to a young civilisation. But unfortunately she produces nothing but evil, and her tastes and habits are similarly those of a Roman lady of the lower Empire. She makes no secret of them and has in fact worked out a complete scheme of experimental adventure, that is of personal licence, which she is now engaged in carrying out. As the opportunities she finds in her own country fail to satisfy her she has come to Europe “to try,” as she says, “for herself.” It’s the doctrine of universal “unprejudiced” experience professed with a cynicism that is really most extraordinary, and which, presenting itself in a young woman of considerable education, appears to me to be the judgement of a society.

Another observation which pushes me to the same induction—that of the premature vitiation of the American population—is the attitude of the Americans whom I have before me with regard to each other. I have before me a second flower of the same huge so-called democratic garden, who is less abnormally developed than the one I have just described, but who yet bears the stamp of this peculiar combination of the barbarous and, to apply to them one of their own favourite terms, the ausgespielt, the “played-out.” These three little persons look with the greatest mistrust and aversion upon each other; and each has repeatedly taken me apart and assured me secretly, that he or she only is the real, the genuine, the typical American. A type that has lost itself before it has been fixed—what can you look for from this?

Add to this that there are two young Englanders in the house who hate all the Americans in a lump, making between them none of the distinctions and favourable comparisons which they insist upon, and for which, as involving the recognition of shades and a certain play of the critical sense, the still quite primitive insular understanding is wholly inapt, and you will, I think, hold me warranted in believing that, between precipitate decay and internecine enmities, the English-speaking family is destined to consume itself, and that with its decline the prospect of successfully-organised conquest and unarrested incalculable expansion, to which I alluded above, will brighten for the deep-lunged children of the Fatherland!

IX
MIRANDA HOPE TO HER MOTHER

October 22.

Dear Mother,

I’m off in a day or two to visit some new country; I haven’t yet decided which. I’ve satisfied myself with regard to France, and obtained a good knowledge of the language. I’ve enjoyed my visit to Madame de Maisonrouge deeply, and feel as if I were leaving a circle of real friends. Everything has gone on beautifully up to the end, and every one has been as kind and attentive as if I were their own sister, especially Mr. Verdier, the French gentleman, from whom I have gained more than I ever expected (in six weeks) and with whom I have promised to correspond. So you can imagine me dashing off the liveliest and yet the most elegant French letters; and if you don’t believe in them I’ll keep the rough drafts to show you when I go back.

The German gentleman is also more interesting the more you know him; it seems sometimes as if I could fairly drink in his ideas. I’ve found out why the young lady from New York doesn’t like me! It’s because I said one day at dinner that I admired to go to the Louvre. Well, when I first came it seemed as if I did admire everything! Tell William Platt his letter has come. I knew he’d have to write, and I was bound I’d make him! I haven’t decided what country I’ll visit next; it seems as if there were so many to choose from. But I must take care to pick out a good one and to meet plenty of fresh experiences. Dearest mother, my money holds out, and it is most interesting!