CHAPTER VII.
Late Hours kept in New York.—The Oyster-shops of New York compared to those of Philadelphia.—Important Schism on that Subject.—The Café de l’Indépendance.—A French Character.—Description of a Fashionable Oyster-shop.—A Sensible American just returned from Paris.—His Account of American Aristocracy abroad.—Mr. L*** and Mr. Thistle.—A shrewd Yankee Tailor in Paris.—His Advice to his Countrymen.—An American Senator scorning to become the fee’d Advocate of the Mob, after the manner of O’Connell.
Mons. Jourdain.—“Et comme l’on parle, qu’est-ce que c’est donc que cela?”
Le maître de philosophie.—“De la prose.”
Mons. Jourdain.—“Quoi! quand je dis, ‘Nicole, apportez-moi mes pantoufles, et me donnez mon bonnet de nuit,’ c’est de la prose?”
Le maître de philosophie.—“Oui, monsieur.”
Mons. Jourdain.—“Par ma foi! il y a plus de quarante ans que je dis de la prose sans que j’en susse rien; et je vous suis le plus obligé du monde de m’avoir appris cela.”
Moliere’s Bourgeois Gentilhomme, Act ii. Scene 5.
Those of my readers who are not aware of the fact that New York is an excellent place for shell-fish, know in all probability little or nothing of the many elegant subterraneous establishments called “oyster-cellars” which adorn the principal avenues and public places of the great American Persepolis. The good people of New York swear that their oysters are the best in the world; and though I, for my own part, greatly prefer the delicate little “natives” of Colchester, or the still more savoury “green oysters of Ostend,” I never before now dared to express my opinion on so delicate a subject, for fear of becoming unpopular, and being eventually excluded from society. One thing, however, I can testify; which is, that the Americans display, in the different modes of cooking and dressing them, a degree of refinement altogether incommensurate with the little progress they have thus far made in other equally useful and important branches of the culinary art.
The New-Yorkers alone have, I believe, twenty different ways of cooking oysters; the Philadelphians, who will not suffer themselves to be in anything outdone by their neighbours, twenty-one; and the Baltimorians boast of a still greater variety of dishes prepared of that most excellent shell-fish. This, in a country in which there is but one way of dressing meat, and precisely the same number of sorts of gravy, is certainly a most extraordinary phenomenon, and betokens an aristocratic predilection in favour of that slippery friandise, sufficient to establish its vast superiority over roast beef, the standing dish of the great mass of the American people. Oysters, in fact, have acquired a patrician reputation; though, like most of the distinctions lately introduced into the United States, they are only to be found along the sea-coast, and for the most part bedded in sand. Some of them occasionally find their way to the “Western Country;” but they seldom remain there long in good odour. I could tell a number of crack stories on this subject; but, my diary having already grown longer than I at first anticipated, I am obliged to omit them, and content myself with mentioning the important schism, which, ever since the quakers established themselves in Philadelphia, separated the respectable inhabitants of that city from the enterprising descendants of the great Knickerbocker.
The Philadelphians maintain that their oyster-cellars are by far the most elegant, the most costly, and the most select in point of company, of any in the United States; which, they say, must strike any one who will take the trouble of spending the hours from ten in the evening till one in the morning in one of the splendid subterraneous vaults of that sort in Chesnut-street. “Not only,” say the Philadelphians, “would he be astonished at the taste and splendour of all the arrangements,—at the vastness, and even magnificence of the rooms, the excellence of the wines, &c.—but also at the number of respectable young men, sons of the first families, who, by their nightly presence, give a high ton to these establishments. An oyster-cellar may, indeed, be considered as a school for good breeding; and is, in a singularly felicitous manner, emblematic of the happiness, quiet, and self-sufficiency of the peaceable inhabitants of the city ‘of brotherly love.’ Besides, the oyster-cellars in Philadelphia are mostly kept by white men; which fact would of itself be sufficient to establish their superiority over the negro and mulatto establishments of that kind in the comparatively dirty city of New York.”
Hereupon the New-Yorkers remark “that the company which frequent their oyster-cellars, though perhaps not quite so respectable and numerous in the evening, is nevertheless a great deal more so in day-time; that the Philadelphia company is often mixed, and in some instances absolutely vulgar, owing to the low price of oysters; whereas in New York, where good oysters cannot be procured for less than 37¹⁄₂ cents (equal to about 1s. 6d.) a dozen, loafers (this is the American term for blackguards) are completely excluded, and sent to the more plebeian beef-shops. As regards the stigma of having their oyster-shops kept by negroes and mulattoes, it is to be observed that of late a number of ‘clever white men’ have taken that lucrative business out of the hands of the Africans, by whom it has been too long degraded, and introduced a series of improvements in every respect worthy of the high reputation which distinguishes New York among her sister cities.”
But there is one point in which the New-Yorkers have an immeasurable advantage over the Philadelphians,—an advantage which proves their city as much superior to Philadelphia as Paris is to a country town of France, or London to a rotten borough; viz. the New York oyster-cellars remain open until three or four in the morning, whereas the Philadelphians close theirs very soon after one: a custom which is vulgar and provincial in the extreme; and prevents many a gentleman, who has made but an indifferent supper at a party, from procuring himself the gratification of the nightmare.
These preliminaries, I think, will be sufficient to introduce the gentle reader to the sort of establishment towards which my friend and I were now wending our way. The city hall clock had long ago struck the hour of one; the crowd, which till late in the evening renders Broadway a scene of busy activity, had dispersed to their respective homes; and the inhabitants of the great commercial emporium of the New World actually appeared to have gone to rest for the night; when, on approaching the Café de l’Indépendance, the mingled sound of voices and instruments convinced us that a certain portion of the Americans at least were in the habit of keeping later hours than even the Parisians.[11]
“Let us look in,” proposed my friend. “It’s quite a nice establishment. The furniture alone cost more than fifty thousand dollars.”
“Is it not too late?” demanded I. “I thought I heard you say you wanted some oysters: will they not shut up in the mean time?”
“No danger of that,” replied he: “the oyster-cellars of this city are on the plan of the early breakfast houses in London; they give you a supper or a breakfast, whichever you please.”
On entering the coffee-room, we found ourselves enveloped in a dense cloud of smoke, which at first prevented us from discerning the corps of German musicians that were regaling a motley group of Europeans and Americans with some of the best compositions of their countrymen. In justice to the Americans, I am bound to say that nine-tenths of the whole company present were foreigners,—principally Frenchmen and Spaniards, who seemed to be very little afflicted with home-sickness,—enjoying, perhaps for the first time in their lives, their petit verre and cigar without the surveillance of the haute police, or the disagreeable intrusion of some municipal guards.
“These Frenchmen,” said my friend, “cannot be happy without cafés and estaminets. Deprive them of their demi-tasse, their petit verre, and their partie de domino, and you set them at once in a state of rebellion; and yet I never saw a place in which they appear to be more at home than in New York.”
“I have heard it said this morning that a Frenchman would rather live in New York than in any town of France, except Paris.”
“And well he may,” rejoined my friend. “There is nothing more tiresome than a residence in a provincial town of France.”
“What surprises me most,” resumed I, “is that the French in this country take so little interest in politics.”
“That is easily accounted for,” observed my friend. “Politics, in France, are the exclusive occupation of editors, from whom the people receive their daily allowance, with such seasoning as suits the peculiarity of their taste: in America, on the contrary, every man is called upon to take an active part in them, which is more than a man is willing to do who is as fond of amusement as a Frenchman.”
While he was delivering his opinion in this manner, an elderly gentleman rose from behind a marble slab table, and, seizing the hand of my friend, exclaimed, in an accent which very strongly resembled the Gascon,
“Que diable! faites-vous ici à cette heure-ci? Je croyais toujours qu’il n’y avait que les Français qui se tenaient débout après minuit! Et n’avez-vous pas peur qu’on vous dénonce demain dans les journaux,—vous qui êtes un homme public?”
“Taisez-vous donc, monsieur,” whispered my friend; “vous me trahissez.”
“Is de gentleman vid you an American?” demanded the Frenchman in a low voice, and in broken English.
“To all intents and purposes he is,” answered my friend.
“Je vous comprends,” said the Frenchman with a significant nod. “’Tis is a very fine evening, sar!”
“Very fine, indeed,” responded I.
“Do you tink it vil rain to-morrow?”
“I hope it may; it is most excessively warm.”
“Dat is de reason I am ’ere,” said the Frenchman; “I cannot slip ven it is so very ’ot!”
“And how is your lady?” demanded my friend.
“Very vel, I tank you, sar! Madame D***, you know, is most happy ven she is alone. C’est son caractère Bréton.”
“Have you been at the theatre this evening?” continued my friend in his interrogatory.
“No, sar! I never go to de teatre,” replied the Frenchman. “I have given lessons until very late, and just came ’ere to read le Courier des Etats-Unis before going to bed. Puis-je vous offrir quelque chose?”
“I am much obliged to you; but it is too late,” replied my friend.
“Too late!” exclaimed the Frenchman with affected astonishment; then suddenly recollecting himself, and taking out his watch, “Upon my honneur,” cried he, “it is past two a clock. I ’ad no idee dat it vos so late;” and, without saying another word, the poor fellow took up his hat and cane, and vanished through the back entry.
“That Frenchman,” observed my friend, “is one of the most arrant cowards I ever saw in this country. He has married an American lady; and is afraid lest his being seen at a public-house should exclude him from the society of his wife’s acquaintance. We have a good many foreigners among us, on whom the dread of public opinion, and the peculiar fashions of our people, act as a similar restraint. You can hardly say of any man in this country that he is master in his own house; much less is he at liberty to act as he pleases in public; but there are very few Frenchmen among us, I assure you, at least among the wealthier classes, who do not think with Molière’s Tartuffe, ‘que ce n’est pas pêcher que de pêcher en silence.’ But it’s now high time to leave this place if we wish to take aught before going to bed.” So saying, he threw some change on the plate which one of the musicians presented to him, and, snatching up his hat, opened the door for our exit.
When we re-entered Broadway, the moon had spread her mantle over the house-tops; a delicious breeze, which during the heat of day had been sleeping on the breast of the ocean, whispered comfort to the weary citizens; the dim noise of the multitude had wholly subsided; and the rattle of carriages, growing fainter and fainter, gradually died away at a distance. On approaching the neighbourhood of the Park, however, new traces of life appeared, until at last the brilliant façade of the theatre, surrounded by a host of liquor-shops, eating-houses, and oyster-cellars, presented itself through the dark-green foliage with the magic light of an enchanted castle.
“This part of the town,” observed my friend, “is never quiet; it is the perpetuum mobile of America.”
Accordingly, as we came near the corner, everything appeared to be animated: hackney-coaches stood in readiness to convey those who either did not feel disposed or were no longer able to walk, to any part of the city; and the doors of the eating-houses, tap-rooms, and oyster-cellars were thrown open for the reception of company.
My friend, who happened to be somewhat acquainted in New York, selected the establishment in the corner; which we entered, by descending six or seven steps into a capacious bar-room, furnished in very good style, and lit with gas as brilliantly as any saloon in London. This was a sort of reception hall, intended for those who drank without stopping; the real supper-rooms, with something like eighteen or twenty boxes to preserve the incognito of the visiters, being lodged in another part of the building.
The first thing which struck our attention was a large black board, on which there were printed, in the shape of a bill of fare, the nice little items of “wild duck,” “wild turkey with oyster sauce,” “roast chicken,” “chicken salad,” “roast oysters,” “fried oysters,” “stewed oysters,” “scolloped oysters,” &c. &c. &c.
We naturally took this as a favourable omen, and were about to betake ourselves to the only empty box that was yet left, when my friend recognised, in a gentleman that was entering the room, one of his former classmates, who had just returned from Paris, where he had devoted himself for several years to the study of medicine.
After the usual manifestations of joy, shaking of hands, and asking of questions, which neither of them pretended to answer but by asking fresh ones,—for my friend and his schoolfellow were both Southerners, and not in the habit of finishing a thing of that sort by a laconic “How d’ye do? I am very glad to see you,”—my friend at last succeeded in getting the companion of his youth seated by his side, and eliciting from him, as far as I am able to remember, the following honest confession of his experience in foreign parts, and the state of things he found on his return to his native country.
“I must freely confess to you,” said he, “that what I saw of my countrymen abroad did not materially contribute to increase my respect for them; neither did I think it calculated to enhance the respect with which Europeans are wont to look upon the untried institutions of our country. They hunt men of hereditary titles and privileges just as much, and even more, than the English; the highest ambition which I ever knew them guilty of being the desire of associating with a count or a prince. And so different are their notions of rank and titles, of superiority and inferiority, from those of Europeans in general, that they make themselves not only hated by the admirers of republican principles, but also ridiculous in the eyes of every sensible Tory.
“If one of our business men were to-day invited to a prince’s, and to-morrow to a count’s or a baron’s, you might be sure of his playing the aristocrat at the baron’s house, merely because he was before asked to a prince’s; and if, by accident, he had the day following met with one of his countrymen ‘not yet as high up in society as himself,’ he would have deemed it a duty due to his new standing ‘to cut him dead,’ though he might have known him from his infancy.
“The petty jealousies among the Americans have equally disgusted me in every part of Europe; and appeared to me the more ludicrous, as the being admitted into society depended frequently on circumstances altogether beyond their control. In one instance it was owing to a letter of introduction, for which they were indebted to the politeness of a friend, or the kind interference of a third person, to whom they were entirely unknown; in the other, to a high regard for the country of which they were, nominally at least, the representatives; and, in not a few cases, I can assure you, to mere curiosity. And yet you ought to have heard those people, who were thus by mere chance brought in contact with persons enjoying hereditary distinctions, talk ‘of the different orders of society,’ with the same degree of earnestness as if, by associating with the higher classes, they had actually partaken of their qualities!”
“And, then, what American, if he sets out to do it, cannot force himself into the best society by having recourse to a stratagem? which, I believe, is altogether of our own invention, and consists in the practice of asking people to whom we are recommended, to introduce us to others with whom they are acquainted; and so on. Not only does our acquaintance, in this manner, wonderfully increase; but, as every one of our friends must necessarily know some two or three persons above him, we cannot but ‘get up by degrees,’ until we reach a point infinitely above the level of our first introduction.[12] Some conceited Englishmen have called this practice ‘the method of begging one’s-self into society;’ but, with our élite, nothing is deemed unfair which is not absolutely opposed to the established laws of the country.”
“But some of our people keep elegant establishments in Paris, and, I am told, actually ruin themselves by entertaining the nobility,” observed my friend.
“Some may injure themselves in that way,” replied the young physician; “but I am sure others make money by it. Trust a Yankee to himself!”
“I do not quite understand you,” observed my friend.
“The thing is plain enough,” rejoined the physician; “the society of the nobility procures them the custom of their own countrymen, who consider a man of that sort as ‘a stepping-stone to something better;’ and he, poor innocent soul! makes them pay for the use they make of him.”
“A propos,” demanded my friend, “have you dined with Mr. L***?”
“I was invited to dine there; but merely listened to the gentleman’s own eulogy of his wines, and the eloquent description of every dish that was put upon the table, in order, afterwards, quietly to sneak off, and appease the cravings of my stomach at some snug little restaurant on the other side of the water. The gentleman you allude to has, moreover, lately turned jockey, and is now entertaining clergymen and physicians with nothing but horse-flesh. He probably thinks that this will ingratiate him with the English, and, in some respects, place him on the same footing with Lord S—r.”
“All I have heard of that extraordinary little man, who, as I understand, has already risen to the dignity of ‘un homme de passage,’[13] convinces me that he is acting the bourgeois gentilhomme, for the peculiar gratification of the less rich, but more refined, gentlemen of the old régime; only that he is not quite so generous as his original in the inimitable comedy of Molière.”
“Neither does he trouble himself with so many masters. He is, in this respect at least, a true independent American, whose conversation would convince you in a moment that he has never had a master in his life. So far from it, he has himself turned schoolmaster, teaching a certain portion of his raw countrymen, not indeed the art of eating, but of preparing savoury dishes. Let one of those persons have the most trifling advantage over any of his fellow beings, and he is sure to use it as a means of establishing his superiority; for the scrambling for rank is born with them, and is only increased by a residence in Europe.”
“Neither does it merely apply to such ordinary characters as you have just mentioned,” added my friend. “I have known American editors assume in Paris—seldom, I believe, in London—an air of supercilious dignity, which would have been amusing if it had not been too absurd to be tolerated. They would allow Chevalier, and other writers of the French periodical press, to cultivate their acquaintance, and occasionally ‘condescend to receiving them at their houses;’ as if the hospitality they had received in Paris, and the willingness of certain people of fashion to come to their soirées, had actually given to their talents—which, if they had remained in America, would, in all probability, have never been known to the world—an additional lustre, that outshone the merits of their European contemporaries.”
“There might have been another reason for the aristocratic presumption of the American editor,” observed the physician. “The American may have kept a valet, while his French colleague was probably satisfied with the service of the garçon of his hotel. A thing of this sort separates an American man of letters from an European as effectually as if the ocean rolled its waves between them.”
“That must be the case,” resumed my friend; “for, if literary reputation were the sole basis of their respective ranks, I think our American editors would be obliged to give in.”
“And yet they pretend to pity the political ignorance of the French, and even the English; forgetting that those nations have two thousand years’ history on their backs, which must necessarily form the precedent to the great majority of their conclusions.”
“But have you not seen the famous Mr. Thistle?” demanded my friend. “I understand he keeps the crack house in Paris.”
“He certainly does,” replied the physician; “and there is at least something in his manner of entertaining people which appears to be frank and generous, though a great many of our first society think him excessively vulgar for not inviting them. The fact is, he can command better company in Paris than that of his own countrymen; and, under these circumstances, he is not to be censured for excluding those who otherwise would have excluded him. On the whole, I am rather glad that a character like his should be somewhere established in Europe; it is a living parody of the leading features of our aristocracy, illustrative of the true principle on which our ‘first people’ claim equality with the noblesse of Europe, and the conditions on which the latter are willing to admit it. Mr. Thistle, moreover, has quite a patrician bearing, which is truly burlesque when compared to the less than ordinary carriage of those who will have nothing to do with him, because they never associated with him in his own country.”
“And what does Mr. Thistle care for the slander-hurling tongues of his countrymen?—he whose mansion has been repeatedly graced by the presence of princes of the blood? And where is the fashionable American who, in spite of his fox-like protestations to the contrary, would not be glad to have the entrée of a house, the réunion of the best and most ancient society of Paris?”
“Mr. Thistle is not merely admitted into the best society, he is actually one of them; though the preliminary steps of his promotion are kept as secret as those of the candidates for admission into the oldest fraternity on earth, and perhaps somewhat humiliating, as are said to be the first introductions to that honourable body. One little fact, however, could not entirely be concealed from the world; which is this, that when the élite of the faubourg St. Germain, who first took him by the hand, put it to the vote what persons should be admitted to his parties, the master of the house himself was excluded.
“The most sensible American I met in Paris,” continued the physician, “was Mr. ***, a tailor from Boston; and the most insipid of my countrymen were those for whom he made the uniforms for presentation at court. These, in the absence of any fixed rule, (I have no doubt that, in case of Mr. Van Buren’s being ousted, a bill will be introduced into Congress prescribing the uniforms to be worn by American citizens abroad,) were altogether left to the fancy of the artist, who never failed to recommend to every inexperienced Yankee courtier to put a star on his coat, in opposition to the eagle worn by the servants of the American minister. In this manner, he assured his patrons, they would neither risk being taken for servants, nor would they have to be ashamed of wearing plain coats by the side of persons all decorated with ribbons. Those who held a high rank in the militia he always advised to be presented in the uniform of colonel, that being the lowest title a respectable American ought ever to assume in Europe; and a military dress being the best excuse for the natural brusquerie of men fresh taken from business. In this manner the shrewd Yankee tailor not only acquires a fortune, but also sees his reputation travel, with his coats, from shore to shore; there being Americans that will never cross the British Channel without a suit of military clothes, in case they should be invited to dine or breakfast with a nobleman.
“But I do not wish to dwell any longer on the absurdities of our people abroad, for we are in this respect just like the English; our true character being only to be found at home, where it developes itself under the immediate influence of our institutions. Nothing, therefore, could be more preposterous than to judge us by the specimens we send abroad; and it was a wise remark of Thomas Jefferson, though, I believe, sufficiently misunderstood by his countrymen, that an American who has lived above seven years in Europe is a stranger to his own country, and no longer fit for any office of responsibility, even if he should have been employed during all that time as a diplomatic agent of his government.”
“Thomas Jefferson,” observed my friend, “has said a number of clever things, and warned us against a great many mistakes into which we have since fallen. He particularly dreaded the influence of British example on our public and private character; and the result has proved that he was not mistaken.”
“And yet how little did he suspect that our political partisans would find professional statesmen willing to become the fee’d advocates of their doctrines, after the manner of O’Connell!” rejoined the physician.
“What do you mean?” interrupted I, astonished at the boldness of the remark.
“I mean what I say,” replied he; “I know a senator for whom the manufacturers of his district are said to make an annual purse, on the ground that his Congressional duties interfere with the exercise of his profession as a lawyer.”
“I cannot believe it,” interrupted my friend with some vehemence; “and I will not believe it: but, even if it were true,” added he, with a sardonic smile, “the honourable senator would, for the honour of his State, be the very reverse of the vulgar Irish agitator; one is paid by his rich and respectable constituents, the other by the very beggars of his country! None of our Whig senators, I am sure, would ever condescend to become the hired advocates of the mob.”
“A fine piece of news this!” ejaculated the physician; “but I suspected as much as this when I saw the change wrought on the manners and customs of our people since my absence; how the simple, unsophisticated habits of our citizens have given way to cold formality and conceit,—and how the generous hospitality which was wont to grace our people is fast yielding to a vulgar and ostentatious display of wealth.
“I am actually afraid of meeting my old acquaintance, and it is for this reason you see me play the owl at this late hour; at which, at least, I am allowed to have my own way, without being intruded upon by my friends, or pushed aside by the busy multitude, to whom I must for ever remain an unprofitable stranger.”