[69] The ladies of New York, and all lady-like people there, have agreed to call this eddy Hurl-gate. The superior propriety of this name is not to be questioned; for hell is a shocking bad word, no doubt: but, being infinitely more appropriate to the place and its qualities, I have ventured to mention it.
[70] The ladies here have an extreme aversion to being called women, I don't exactly understand why. Their idea is, that that term designates only the lower or less-refined classes of female human-kind. This is a mistake which I wonder they should fall into; for in all countries in the world, queens, duchesses, and countesses, are called women; but in this one alone, washerwomen, sempstresses, and housemaids are entitled ladies; so that, in fact, here woman is by far the more desirable appellation of the two.
[71] The established succession of figures which form the one French quadrille, in executing which the ball-rooms of Paris and London have spent so many satisfactory hours ever since it was invented, by no means satisfies the Americans. At the close of almost every quadrille, a fancy figure is danced, which, depending entirely upon the directions of the leader of the band, is a very curious medley of all the rest. The company not being gifted with second sight, and of course not knowing at every step what next they may be called upon to do, go fearfully sliding along, looking at each other, asking, "how does it go on?" some en avant deux-ing, while others are starting off en promenade, the whole being a complete confusion of purpose and execution. The common French figure, the Trénis, is very seldom danced at all,—they do not appear to know it.
[72] This terrible nuisance has often made me wish for that "still small voice," which has become the universal tone of good society in England, and which, however inconvenient sometimes from its utter inaudibility, at least did not send one to bed with one's ears ringing and one's head splitting. I was in a society of about twelve ladies, the other evening, and the uproar was so excessive that I felt my eyebrows contracting from a sense of perfect bewilderment, occasioned by the noise all round me, and more than once was obliged to request the person with whom I was conversing to stop till the noise had subsided a little, that I might be able to distinguish what he was saying to me. Were the women here large and masculine in their appearance, this defect would appear less strange, though not less disagreeable; but they are singularly delicate and feminine in their style of beauty; and the noise they make strikes one with surprise as something monstrous and unnatural—like mice roaring. They frequently talk four or five at a time, and directly across each other; neither of which proceedings is exactly according to my ideas of good breeding.
[73] Unromantic as these birds are in their external appearance, there is something poetical in their love of sunny skies. Many attempts have been made to rear them in England; but I am told that they will not sing there, or indeed any where but where the sun shines as it does here.
[74] In speaking of the bad and disagreeable results of the political institutions of this country, as exhibited in the feelings and manners of the lower orders, I have every where dwelt upon those which, from my own disposition, and the opinions and sentiments in which I have been educated, have struck me most, and most unfavourably. But I should be sorry to be so blind, or so prejudiced, as not to perceive the great moral goods which arise from the very same source, and display themselves strongly in the same class of people: honesty and truth, excellences so great, that the most bigoted worshipper of the forms and divisions of societies in the old world would surely be ashamed to weigh them in the balance against the deference there paid to rank or riches, or even the real and very agreeable qualities of civility and courtesy. Americans (I speak now of the people, not the gentlemen and ladies, they are neither so honest and true, nor quite so rude,) are indeed independent. Every man that will work a little can live extremely well. No portion of the country is yet overstocked with followers of trades, not even the Atlantic cities. Living is cheap—labour is dear. To conclude, as the Irish woman said, "It is a darling country for poor folks; for if I work three days in the week, can't I lie in my bed the other three if I plase?" This being so, all dealings between handicraftsmen and those who employ them; tradesmen and those who buy of them; servants and those who are served by them; are conducted upon the most entire system of reciprocity of advantage; indeed, if any thing, the obligation appears always to lie on that party which, with us, is generally supposed to confer it. Thus,—my shoemaker, a person with whom I have now dealt largely for two years, said to me the other day, upon my remonstrating about being obliged regularly to come to his shop and unboot, whenever I order a new pair of walking-boots—"Well, ma'am, we can keep your measure certainly, to oblige you, but, as a rule, we don't do it for any of our customers, it's so very troublesome." These people are, then, as I said before, most truly independent; they are therefore never servile, and but seldom civil, but for the very same reason they do not rob you; they do not need to do so; neither do they lie to you, for your favour or displeasure in no way affects their interest. If you entrust to their care materials of any sort to make up, you are sure, no matter how long you may leave them in their hands, or how entirely you may have forgotten the quantity originally given, to have every inch of them returned to you: and you are also generally sure that any question you ask, with regard to the quality of what you purchase, will be answered without any endeavour to impose upon you, or palm upon your ignorance that which is worse for that which is better. Two circumstances, which have come under my own knowledge, will serve to illustrate the spirit of the people; and they are good illustrations to quote, for similar circumstances are of daily and hourly occurrence.
A farmer who is in the habit of calling at our house on his way to market, with eggs, poultry, etc., being questioned as to whether the eggs were new-laid, replied, without an instant's hesitation, "No, not the very fresh ones, we eat all those ourselves."
On returning home late from the play one night, I could not find my slippers any where, and, after some useless searching, performed my toilet for bed without them. The next morning, on enquiring of my maid if she knew any thing of them, she replied with perfect equanimity, that having walked home through the snow, and got her feet extremely wet, she had put them on, and forgotten to restore them to their place before my return. Nobody, I think, will doubt that an English farmer, and an English servant, might sell stale eggs, and use their mistress's slippers; but I think it highly doubtful, that either fact would have been acknowledged with such perfect honesty any where but here. As to the servants here, except the blacks, and the poor Irish bread-hunters who come over, there are scarcely any to be found: the very name seems repugnant to an American; and however high their wages, and easy their situation, they seem hardly to be able to endure the bitterness of subserviency and subordination.
[75] The bridges here are all made of wood, and for the most part covered. Those which are so are by no means unpicturesque objects. The one-arched bridge at Fair Mount is particularly light and graceful in its appearance: at a little distance, it looks like a scarf, rounded by the wind, flung over the river.
[76] The time of locking of doors at gentlemen's dinner parties, and drinking till the company dropped one by one under the table, has, with the equally disgusting habit of spitting about the floors, long vanished in England before a more rational hospitality, and a better understanding of the very first rule of good breeding, not to do that which is to offend others. Spirituous liquors are the fashion alone among the numerous frequenters of the gin-palaces of Holborn, and St. Giles's; even the old-fashioned favourites of our country gentlemen, port, madeira, and sherry, are found too heavy and strongly-flavoured for the palate of our modern exquisites,—and the fragrant and delicate wines of Burgundy, Bordeaux, the Rhine, and its tributary streams, are the wines now preferred before all others, by persons of refined taste and moderate indulgence. This in itself is a great improvement. The gross desire of excitement by a quantity of powerful stimulants has given place to a temperate enjoyment of things, in themselves certainly the most excellent in the world. Wine-drinking in England is become altogether a species of dilettante taste, instead of the disgusting excess it used to be; it is indulged in with extreme moderation,—and so much have all coarse and thick-blooded drinks gone out of fashion, that even liqueurs are very seldom taken after coffee but by foreigners. Our gentlemen have learnt to consider hard and gross drinking ungentlemanly. I wish I could say the same of American gentlemen. The quantity and the quality of their potations are as destructive of every thing like refinement of palate, as detrimental to their health. Americans are, generally speaking, the very worst judges of wine in the world, always excepting madeira, which they have in great perfection, and is the only wine of which they are tolerable judges. One reason of their ignorance upon this subject is the extremely indifferent quality of the foreign wines imported here, and a still more powerful reason, is the total loss of all niceness of taste consequent upon their continual swallowing of mint julaps, gin slings, brandy cocktails, and a thousand strong messes which they take even before breakfast, and indifferently at all hours of the day,—a practice as gross in taste as injurious to health. Burgundy I have never seen at an American table: I believe it will not stand the sea voyage. Claret they have now in very great perfection, thanks to Mr. ——, who has introduced it among them, and deserves to be considered a public benefactor therefor. Hock is, generally speaking, utterly undrinkable, and champagne (the only foreign wine of which they seem generally fond), though some of a good quality is occasionally presented to you, is for the most part a very nauseous compound, in which sugar is the only perceptible flavour. Although the American gentlemen do not indeed lock the doors upon their guests, they have two habits equally fatal to their sobriety, of which I have heard several Englishmen complain bitterly. The one is mixing their wines in a most unorthodox manner, equally distressing to the palate and the stomach; i. e. giving you to drink by turns, after dinner, claret, madeira, sherry, hock, champagne, all and each of which you are pressed to take as specimens of excellence in their various ways, forming altogether a vinous hotch-potch, which confounds alike the taste and the brain. The second ordeal, to which the sobriety of Englishmen dining out here is exposed, is at the close of all these various libations,—which of course last some time,—an instantaneous removal from the dinner to the supper table, where strong whisky punch effectually finishes the wits of their guests, and sends them home to repent for two days the excess of a few hours. Perhaps, when the real meaning of the word society becomes better understood in this country, absurd display and disgusting intemperance will no more be resorted to as its necessary accompaniments; but of course the real material of which society should be formed must increase a little first. I have been told that the women in this country drink. I never saw but one circumstance which would lead me to believe the assertion. At the baths in New York, one day, I saw the girl who was waiting upon the rooms carry mint julaps (a preparation of mint, sugar, and brandy,) into three of them. I was much surprised, and asked her if this was a piece of service she often performed for the ladies who visited the baths? She said, "Yes, pretty often." Bar-rooms are annexed to every species of public building,—in the theatres, in the hotels, in the bath-houses, on board the steam-boats,—and there are even temporary buildings which serve this purpose erected at certain distances along the rail-roads. Though the gentlemen drink more than any other gentlemen, the lower orders here are more temperate than with us. The appearance of a drunken man in the streets is comparatively rare here; and certainly Sunday is not, as with us, the appointed day for this disgusting vice among the lower classes here. Fortunately, most fortunately, it is not with them as with us, the only day on which the poor have rest, or drunkenness the only substitute they can find for every other necessary or comfort of life. Our poor are indeed intemperate. Alas! that vice of theirs will surely be visited on others; for it is the offspring of their misery. The effects of habitual intemperance in this country are lamentably visible in many young men of respectable stations and easy circumstances; and it is by no means uncommon to hear of young gentlemen—persons who rank as such here—destroying their health, their faculties, and eventually their lives, at a most untimely age, by this debasing habit.