Part 13

“At your pleasure, sir--we expect nothing from England but injustice, in this as in every other respect. After poisoning us with the sensuality of her romances, and the billingsgate of newspapers, she is quite amazed that the child has not the sweet lisp, the ruddy complexion, and the graceful wildness of the infant. After filling our cities with pickpockets, she calls us dishonest; with drunkards, and she calls us intemperate; and with disorderly Irish, and then she tells all the world we are riotous; she has covered our land with negroes, and now she stigmatizes us for keeping slaves!”

“England has this advantage over you; she does not grow angry, when told of her faults. You are so thin skinned in America, you do not bear the least touch of the curry-comb without wincing.”

“England, sir, is surly, proud and phlegmatic, and thinks every one mad who is not as coldblooded as herself. To be done, sir, America did not crouch to the British Lion when an infant, will she do it now that she is grown to maturity?--She stands abreast with Great Britain in the estimation of the world, and to sustain this dignity she wears her sword----”

“A sword is a very bad criterion of merit; why, a highway robber could prove his right to your purse by the same argument----”

My Yankee friend now walked about the room, and upset a chair and picked it up again, and then hummed a tune to show he was not mad. In the meantime, the Englishman had poured out deliberately three glasses--“Come,” said he, “I will be corrected by an American, at least in one particular; I will not drink my champagne alone when I can find two honest countrymen to share it with--we will drink America and England!”

“England and America!” replied my companion with some reluctance.

Before parting, the disputants both agreed that their countries had a mutual interest to cherish good feelings, and to rejoice at each other’s prosperity; both agreed that England now reaped a better profit from our Independence than she could have done from our colonial subjection; and that America, by the service she derived from English commerce, science, and letters, and from English industry in making her canals, working her mines, and improving her manufactures, was much more than overpaid for any injuries she had a right to complain of in asserting and maintaining her liberty.

A cup of coffee now poured its balm upon our national jealousies, and we parted with an invitation to visit our Englishman, who is a student of the Temple, in London.

The packets are in--and have brought several fresh personages from America, notwithstanding the season. They have arrived just in time to have the last snuff of the carnival.

The fire at New York is horrible, but not astonishing. Our shingled roofs are more combustible than any thing I know of--unless perhaps it be gunpowder. There has been but one fire in Paris during the last year.

What you say about the wind blowing off your night-cap in your sleep, I take to be mythology; it means to threaten that if Doctor ---- and I stay away in this manner, Boreas, or Æolus, or some of the gods will be coming to bed to you.--But think only of the vapours, the mud and slough of Paris, and then look out upon your pines, clad in all the snowy magnificence of winter. I can almost see old Hyems with his grisly chin, grinning from the flanks of the Sharp Mountain. My advice is that you dissipate the ice, with mirth, and bright fires and old wine; and that you leave other things to the gods--and give my love to your mother.

LETTER XX.

The Dancing fever.--The Grand Masquerade.--Fooleries of the Carnival.--Mardi Gras.--Splendid Equipages.--Masquerades.--An Adventure.--Educated Women.--The Menus-Plaisirs.--A Fancy Ball.--Porte St. Martin.--The Masked Balls.--Descente de la Courtille.--End of the Carnival.--Birth-Day of Washington.

PARIS, February, 1836.

There has been raging, the whole of this month, a disease which prevails here, usually about this season of the year--a kind of intermitting fever. It affects the whole city with a violent agitation of limbs, and often drives the features entirely out of the human countenance. You can’t recognise your most intimate friends. The fit comes on exactly at midnight, and then the whole of Paris rushes out of doors, like an insurrection.

Men of the most sober habits, but ten minutes before--men and women, who all day long were in the entire possession of their senses--the moment it strikes twelve, pour out like a deluge upon the streets; some scrambling into cabriolets, and others running through the mud up to, I don’t know where, until they get together in the theatre, or some great town-hall, and there they dance the whole night long, as if their legs had taken leave of their senses. Towards morning, they get into a kind of paroxysm--not a galloping consumption, but a _gallopade_--which being over, they recover, and go quietly to bed, and the fit does not return till the next midnight.

The doctor was seized with this disorder yesterday, at the usual hour, and I never saw any more of him till this morning. After a little sleep, he feels much calmer, and it is thought he will recover.---- But I am getting alarmed about myself; the disease is catching.--In a word, I am going to-night, exactly at twelve, to the Grand Masquerade, at the Grand Opera; and I am, this minute, going to embellish myself for the occasion. I have two days between me and the packets; and, consequently, time enough for my correspondence. Good night.

What a silly old world this is! Nothing can be farther from my wishes, than to say any thing rude of your dear French people; but, ’pon honour, they are the greatest fools I have seen in my life, and I have seen a good many. If you don’t believe me, you have but to say so; and then I will take you to the mad-house, and prove to you that all the world is reasonable. The Boulevards have been running over with the mob these three days; and the galleries, and windows, and roofs of the adjacent houses are bending under their multitudes; cavalcades, the most fantastic, are passing up one side of the street, and returning by the other for several miles, from the earliest to the latest sun; while the margin, and middle, and all the interstices are filled with a nation of buffoons, trying, each one, by some ridiculous figure, attitude, or action, to outshine his neighbour in foolery: and all are as intent upon this, as if pursuing some main purpose of their existence.

There goes the archbishop, with a pig by the tail; and there a nun on the back of an ass, her heels kicking its sides most ridiculously, without increasing its speed; and there a two-years’ baby, in breeches and silk hose, is giving pap to its papa, a great Irish giant of a man, seven feet or more, in a slobbered bib. I saw, yesterday, a dozen, male and female, carried along upon a platform, leisurely eating their soup out of--what do you think?--If any thing can beggar description altogether ’tis a Carnival.

On the last day, the _Mardi gras_, there is an extraordinary exhibition of sumptuous equipages. An American Colonel keeps immense stables, inferior only to the great Condés, for these occasions. He has thirty-six horses, all of the noblest blood, and on this last day, out he comes, with my Lord S----, who lives also in great circumstances, in elegant rivalry. His and my lord’s faces are well known upon the Boulevards--“Delia is not better known to our dogs.” The Colonel popped out yesterday, seventeen carriages-and-four, and knocked all the other showmen upon the head. He is praised this morning in every one of the newspapers.

Maskers and harlequins are horrid in day-light, especially in Paris with their gay liveries all besmirched in mire; they are only tolerable in moonlight and candlelight when half the mummery is concealed. That which delights me most is the “Masquerades,” which I will now tell you of, though I cannot pretend to describe them in all their pomp and circumstance.

The most frequented are those at Musard’s, and the most fashionable those at the Grand Opera. In the former, conversation is relieved by dancing, and many of the gentlemen are in masks and fancy costume, and every thing is intended here for vivid impressions. The orchestra has the extraordinary addition of the tolling of a bell, and the dragging of a chain, mixed with a full war-whoop of human voices. At this house there is much liberty of action with entire liberty of speech.

I saw here one of the finest figures of a woman I have ever seen, in a cook-maid’s dress, and looking as innocent as if she had lived before Adam and Eve. I dialogued with her now and then as she came over to my side in the dance.--“Have you a place?” “Yes.”--“Do you like your master?” “Very much.”--“Would’nt change?” “No.”--“How much does he give you?” “A hundred francs a month.”--“But if I give you five hundred?” “_Ah! c’est une autre affaire._”

At the Grand Opera the ladies only are masked and all are in the same dress, so as to be undistinguishable. If they choose to be known for special purposes they have then their signals. Here they are the aggressors, and gentlemen are not allowed the first word, and no dancing or noise interrupts the interest of the conversation. The women too, are of the best breeding, but on these occasions, they are permitted to knock off their fetters, and they indemnify themselves not a little for the restraints, which tyrannic fashion imposes upon them under their natural faces.

The Bacchanal ladies of the Greeks used to let off the steam of their too great vivacity once a year in the same manner. The Opera contains many thousands, and yet on all these masquerades it is filled. The Orchestra is at the nether end, so that the music comes from afar, and its harmony reaches the great saloon so softened that the gentlest lady-whisper falls distinctly upon the ear. The parterre, which is floored, and the immense stage, form an area apart for the more noisy and romping world; and the boxes overhead have their company. The upper ones of all are close and _grillées_, with locks, and keys, and attendants, for persons of retired habits.

Several exquisite nymphs exhibit themselves mounted on a platform at the extremity of the pit, having their innocent alabaster arms, and marble necks and shoulders, naked; and other charms are trying to hide themselves modestly behind a light gauze, but do not always succeed. These dispose of various kinds of merchandise by lottery.

The hot-houses too pour out their treasures through the lobbies, and amidst the blushing roses and dahlias, gallant gentlemen and ladies whisper their loves in each others’ ears, or repose about in groves that are full of ravishment.

----“Jamais les jardins d’Armide, Non, jamais les jardins d’Armide, N’ont vu de tels enchantements!”

A lady, of what beauty I know not, but from a sweet voice and pretty eyes, was pleased to give me here a half hour of her company and chat; who is she? She would not tell me her name, nor even her country, but, said in taking leave, “Give my compliments to Miss C----, or if you like better her conjugal name, Mrs. G----, the only person I know in Philadelphia.”

I begged much her name or some feature by which I might hope, in the accidents and recontres of life, to recognise her; I asked her a single line of poetry, or even a word, and she gave,--the malicious thing! two French words only, which added nothing to the information I already possessed of her person--she gave me “_beaux yeux_,” which I, like a gallant knight, promised to carve upon the highest rock of the Alleghany. She had like to have carved them some where else herself.

A half hour’s conversation with this lady would certainly be in the mind of any one, of even less taste than I may modestly pretend to, a very sensible regret at an endless or hopeless separation. Where there are sense and sentiment, fine eyes, harmony of voice, and elegance of form, it is difficult not to imagine the association of every other perfection.

I was no sooner forsaken by this amiable lady, than I had the luck to find almost a consolation for her absence, in another, who was not less remarkable for wit, than for sentiment, and good sense. This second had all the easy unembarrassed air of a fashionable Frenchwoman; was exceedingly graceful, and had a shape, that to any lady of my acquaintance, except one, would be unpardonable.

She mystified me, and (not a difficult thing for a woman) made a fool of me.--“How could you exchange,” said she, “the sober Luxembourg, for the frivolous Tuileries, and how the demure philosophy of the Faubourg St. Germain for the gaieties and levities of the Rue Neuve des Maturins?”--“You sorceress, how can you know where I live, or have lived?”--“In the Luxembourg you had a better look; and there the angels hovered over you to protect you. I sent you a volume to divert you under the shade from your melancholy, and my servant to pick you up from the ice.--When do you go home to America? You should have gone long ago, and not be running about Europe getting vagabond habits in this manner; you have now been absent eight months.” I offered her at last the New World for her name.

“You are not the first of your profession who has offered worlds that did not belong to him. * * * I cannot, I am afraid of your rattlesnakes.”

“One encounters greater dangers daily in the midst of Paris.”

“The ladies?”

“They resemble snakes only in the power of charming.”

“I have seen gentlemen, sometimes, bit by them.”

“Yes, both young and rich.--What an impertinent question!--For the beauty you shall judge for yourself; and I will not place you in the unpleasant predicament of Paris; you will incur no displeasure of Minerva or Juno in giving me the prize.” She then removed her mask, under the light of a brillant lamp, and discovered, not only the prettiest face I have seen in Europe, but the one I was most anxious to see--the face of my quondam “wife of two minutes,” whom I had once met at the Louvre, and of whom I have spoken in a former letter.

I would give you more of her conversation; but who, but a simpleton relates dialogues with himself? Besides, what fop is there who writes a play, or a novel, or a letter of travels, who does not promulgate some foolish adventure of his, at a masquerade? * * * “You cannot either in propriety or humanity leave me without your name or address.”

“_D’accord_,--the name _or_ the address?” I foolishly chose the latter; and she gave me her residence, with an invitation to visit her at her No.---- in the _Via di Sancto Spirito_, Florence.

“One might as well have an eel by the tail.”

“Better have an eel by the tail than a wolf by the ears;” with this proverb she dropped into the great ocean, and all was smooth again. This woman, notwithstanding my immense prudence, was near pinching me by the heart. Love was just chirping, but Duty breathed her cold breath upon him--and he remained unhatched.

I know of nothing that communicates half so much enjoyment to human life, as an educated woman. I mean one who joins social accomplishment, to literary instruction. Her conversation,

“More glad to me than to a miser money is.”

And a woman, I believe, is nowhere so admirable in wit, as under cover of a mask. She then expresses her own thoughts; the rein and curb are removed from her imagination, which expatiates more wildly from its previous restraints.

Nor are her triumphs merely intellectual, though not shared with feature or complexion, for in such cases the fancy outruns even the most vivid reality. Pliny thought Apelles had improved his Venus by leaving her unfinished; for the spectator would bring out beauties from the unformed marble, beyond the skill even of the divine artist.

There is besides, the emotion, the excitement of curiosity, of mystery, of adventure, and the interest of a first meeting and conversation, not cooled by a gradual acquaintance, which lend many new attractions to a woman, and which give a charm to the amusement of the masquerade, to which few minds can be insensible.

But why have not our Solons allowed you ladies masks in Pennsylvania?--Because they thought you better disguised in your own faces. No such thing; they thought them dangerous to your morals. Ladies think, like partridges, if their heads are hid, all is safe; but our legislators, who were wise and provident, looked out for a better security.

I have myself found one or two of the Christian virtues at a masquerade, very inconvenient, to say the least of them. Such amusements add but little to the immoralities of these old and refined communities; but the later the day the better to introduce them into a new country,--especially into the cloisters of your too innocent Hills. The folly, the nonsense, the wickedness of the world is far beyond the conception of you shepherdesses.

I placed myself last night under the escort of persons well versed in all the menus-plaisirs of the town, and passed the night out to see human nature in a part of her great book, which I had not yet perused. I followed the two biggest rogues of Paris for information, as one follows the pigs to get truffles.

The Palais Royal had our first visit. Here were both sexes in their fancy dresses and masks, and here was the dance in all its wantonness;

“Motus doceri gaudet Ionicos Matura Virgo;”

not gross absolutely, but indecency could not easily conceal herself under a thinner covering. Ladies do not venture here for the world, unless sometimes for mere curiosity, and well masked, as the Pagan deities used to travel about in mortal disguises to see the iniquities of men.

Near this place we descended into an immense room under ground. Here were trulls in visors, and scavengers in lily-tinctured cravats. It was the rabble in its court dresses. At the farthest end of the room rushed out a savage upon a stage and puffed upon twenty instruments; beat furiously a range of drums with his toes, hands, head, heels, &c. to the infinite delight of the merry spectators. Don’t think, gentlemen, you have all the fun at the Tuileries.--My companions did not think it safe to abide long in this place. “We are not concerned for ourselves,” said they, “but we are afraid you might be mistaken for a gentleman;” and we set out for Porte St. Martin.

Here we introduced ourselves to the Masked Balls. It was near morning and the common world had danced itself into languors. The dance here is _unique_; every motion of the limbs is an eloquent and pathetic language, especially the _gallopade_. You would go a long way to see a French woman of the Porte St. Martin _gallop_. The gray hairs, too, of both sexes, dance here.

Every here and there we saw an old thing of a woman, whose follies long ago have gone to seed, tricked out in all the magnificence of ribbons, and kindling her last efforts in the dance. In the private rooms, many, fagged out by the labours of the week, were strewed about upon chairs and sofas, or upon the floor, either faint and languishing, or wrapped in sleep. One, a beautiful woman, lay outstretched, her petticoats dishevelled, her head upon the crossed-legs of her beau, a half sloven, half fop in silk breeches and a dirty shirt, who slept upright upon a chair; another supine, her mouth open, snored towards Heaven; and every where were plenty of legs, arms and bosoms, disdaining any other covering than the sky.--They are gloriously jolly at the _Porte St. Martin_, of a _Mardigras_, that’s certain.

About daylight we arrived at the “_Descente de la Courtille_.” This is the blackguard rendezvous outside the gate so celebrated. All the élite of the Parisian ragamuffins was here.--“Stand out of the way, you fellow without a shirt.”--“Stand out of the way yourself, you sloven. When you die they’ll not think it necessary to bury you. You can’t smell worse.”

We got through this crowd with long struggles in a close carriage; for the custom is to bespatter with filth any one appearing in a decent garb. Paris furnishes for her general parades the most genteel rabble in the world, and I was not aware she could rake together such an ungodly multitude for this occasion.

I went from the street into some of their retired places of revelry. Here many a one had lost his “upright shape,” and was sprawling, male and female, about the rooms and entries; brawny men and weather beaten _poissardes_, half covered with rags. In the streets were various entertaining sights. One (a sober man by some miracle) was running after his tipsy wife, and as unhappy about her as a hen that has hatched a duck.

Another had come to an equilibrium, and was struggling forward, yet standing still, as one in a night-mare, or as a weather-cock taking resolutions against the wind; and another was rendering up to Bacchus an account of the night’s debauch. Finally, there was one administering a kicking to a retreating enemy, which seemed quite a novelty in Paris, and excited great interest. I was glad to see that the French, when they do resort to violence, prefer that which alone is founded on principles of humanity.

This is the “_Descente de la Courtille_.” It is one of the places where one sees the nearest approach of our race to the lower animals; it is the connecting link.

We returned home at eight, the fashionable hour. To go to bed at night, or rise in the morning, is all out of fashion. The sun was made for the rabble.... _Carnival_ means, farewell to flesh, and indeed there will be not much flesh on my bones when it is over. _Lent_ means quiet and rest, and comes very properly immediately after it.

It is to-day the birth-day of Washington, and you are no doubt honouring it with wine and mirth and festivity. I have paid also my tribute to its sacred memory; and who knows but this humble respect, in the “Rue Neuve des Maturins,” is as welcome to his great spirit, which is now above the reach of human vanities, as the pomp of your national festivals.

It is purity of heart that makes devotion acceptable in Heaven, and not the magnificence of the worship. I told my two French convives at table (their glasses being filled) it was Washington’s _fête_, and they stood up instinctively and drank to his memory, pronouncing his name only, in looking towards Heaven.--To Heaven he has gone by the general consent of mankind. “Not as Mahomet, for he needed not the fiction of a miracle to make him immortal; nor as Elijah, since recorded time has not pointed out the being upon whom his mantle may descend; but (in humble imitation) as the Great Architect from created universe, to contemplate the stupendous monument his wisdom had erected.” After this I may leave the rest of this page blank. I bid you affectionately good night.

LETTER XXI.

Evening Parties at the Duchess d’Abrantes’.--Mode of admission.--The Weather.--Suicides.--Madame le Norman the Sibyl.--Parisian Réunions.--Manners of Frenchwomen.--American Soirées.--Furniture.--Hints on Etiquette.--Manners in Parisian High Life.--Conversation.--Dress.--Qualifications for an Exquisite.--Smoking.--Rules for dinner.