PLAZA HOTEL. NEW YORK, Tuesday.
DEAREST MAMMA,—I have a theatre and dance to tell you of in this letter. To begin with, the theatres themselves are far better built than ours; everyone can see, and there is no pit, and the boxes are in graduated heights so that you have not to crane your neck,—but the decorations in every one we have yet been to are unspeakable. This one last night had grouped around the proscenium what looked exactly like a turkey's insides (I hope you aren't shocked, Mamma!). I once saw the marmiton taken out at Arrachon, when I was a little girl and got into the kitchen,—just those awful colours, and strange long, twisted, curled-up tuby-looking things. They are massed on the boxes, too, and were, I suppose, German "Art Nouveau."
I always think Art Nouveau must have been originated by a would-be artist who got drunk on absinthe after eating too much pâté de foie gras in a bâtard-Louis XV. room, then slept, then woke, and in a fit of D.T. conceived it. He saw impossible flowers and almost rats running up the furniture, and every leg and line out of balance and twisted; and fancy, if one could avoid it, putting it in a theatre! The play itself was very well acted, but, as is nearly always the case here, unless it is a lovely blood-and-shooting, far West play, the heroine is drawn to be a selfish puny character, full of egotism and thinking of her own feelings. The men were perfectly splendid actors, but they distracted my eye so with their padded shoulders it quite worried me. The hero was a small person, and when he appeared in tennis flannels his shoulders were sloping, and in proportion to his little body; but when the coat got on again they were at least eight inches wider, and, as he lifted his arms to clasp his lady, one saw where the padding ended; it was absolutely ridiculous and made me laugh in a serious place.
When one looks down at the audience, the women not being in evening dress gives the coup d'oeil a less festive note, but I think people in theatres look perfectly awful anywhere, don't you, Mamma? One wonders where they come from.
This was a play about "Graft," which as far as I can understand means,—supposing you wanted to be elected a member of the Government, you could agree with some large contractor, who had influence over countless votes, to get the order for him to put up a public building which millions had been voted for; and instead of making it of solid marble, to face it and fill it up with rubbish, and you and he would pocket the difference. I think that would be "graft," and there seems to a lot of it about, judging from the play and the papers; and we were told some of the splendid buildings in San Francisco showed all these tricks when they fell down in the earthquake. I should hate to live in an earthquake country, shouldn't you, Mamma? It could interrupt one in such awkward or agreeable moments,—and one would feel one ought to be ready and looking as attractive as possible all the time. It would be so wearing.
I think English people are stodgy and behind-hand about things. Why don't they come here and take a few hints before they build any more theatres? You can't think how infinitely better these are to see in.
The difference in the comic operas to ours is, they have no refinement or colours or subtleties to please the eye—all is gaudy and blatant. The "Merry Widow," for instance, could make one weep, it is so vulgar and changed, especially the end. But if the people prefer it like that the managers are quite right to let them have what they want.
After the theatre we went, a huge party, to sup at such a funny place which was all mirrors; and a man at the next table, who was perhaps a little beyond "fresh," got perfectly furious thinking another man was staring at him, and wanted to get up and fight him. The lady next him pulled his sleeve, and had to keep telling him, "Hush, Bob, hush! Can't you see it's yourself?" "Certainly not!" shouted the man, so loud we could not help hearing. "I'll fight anyone who says I am that ugly mug!" and he gesticulated at the reflection and it gesticulated back at him. It was the funniest sight you can imagine, Mamma, and it was not until the lady meekly demanded if the person he saw sitting by the "ugly mug" resembled her that he could be convinced, and be got to go on quietly with his supper. And all the rest of the time he kept glancing at the glass and muttering to himself like distant thunder, just as Agnès does when things displease her.
In Paris, at the restaurants one goes to, there is only the one class—unless, of course, one is doing Montmartre, but I mean the best ones bourgeoises would not think of thrusting themselves in; and in London there is only the Ritz and Carlton where one goes, and it is the rarest thing certainly at the Ritz to see any awful people there. But here, heaps of the most ordinary are very rich and think they have the best right, which of course they have if they pay, to enter the most select places; so the conglomeration even at Sherry's sometimes is too amusing, and at the mirror place, which society would only go to as a freak, the company is beyond description. But they all seem such kindly, jolly people, all amusing themselves, and gay and happy. I like it, and the courtesy and fatherly kindness of the men to the women is beautiful, and a lesson to the male creatures of other nations. I have not yet seen an American man who is not the cavalier servante of his wife and sisters and daughters. And what flowers they send one! Everything is generous and opulent.
The dance was such fun, a bal blanc, as only young people were asked, and they all come without chaperones, so sensible, and all seemed to have a lovely romp, and enjoy themselves in a far, far greater degree than we do. It was more like a tenants' ball or a children's party, they seemed so happy; and towards the end lots of the girls' hair became untidy and their dresses torn, and the young men's faces damp and their collars limp.