Fragments of an Autobiography

by Felix Moscheles

We English are often reproached with our respect for caste. We emphasise the difference of position in the social scale, whereas the American—unless, to be sure, he be a Bostonian—takes every opportunity to emphasise his indifference for such distinction. We think we know a gentleman when we see him; he rather mistrusts his judgment, perhaps because he has seen fewer generations of the species than we have; so he sometimes mistakes a sheep for a wolf in disguise, and only recognises his error when the sheep is formally introduced, and thus guaranteed as the genuine article. Perhaps it is that, by dint of proclaiming that one man is as good as another, the citizen of the Great Republic finds himself arriving at the conclusion that one man is as bad as another, and so it is for the stranger to show cause why he should be allowed to pass the hotel mustard or butter.

All that, I must admit, applies, as far as I know, only to the few cities I visited; I had much too good a time in each of them, painting and lecturing, studying and learning, to go away in a hurry; so I cannot speak of the boys on the ranches or the girls in California; nor can I say whether the fifty or sixty odd millions of Americans to whom I was not introduced would have taken kindly to me or I to them, had we met.

My first visit to the United States was not the mere excursion I had expected it to be. I remained six months, mostly in New York. First I made myself a temporary studio at the Park Avenue Hotel, but soon finding that I wanted more easel and elbow-room, I took a flat and a studio in "The Chelsea," furnished and decorated it right-away, and settled down to a winter's work. When the spring came, I just locked my door, told the clerk in the office to set the burglar alarm, and went off to the other Chelsea, my home in London. So, for three years, I divided my time pretty equally between the two countries.

I look back with pleasure to many an incident connected with the portraits I painted in America. So, too, to my experiences on the platform. Not only was I allowed to lecture, but I was even listened to. To be sure, my lectures were only announced as "Studio-talks," and I took care they should be very much varied according to my audiences. The inexhaustible subject of Art had to be presented in one way when addressing the students in Philadelphia or Chicago, in another when speaking to the select circle of the Thursday Evening Club in New York. Considerations that would be appropriate to put before a large gathering of beautiful and gifted young ladies at one of their great colleges, were not the same that would appeal to upwards of a thousand Negroes and Indians, students at the famous Hampton Schools in Virginia. In each case, however, I illustrated my lecture by painting a life-size head from nature, my subject being mostly selected from the audience.

I cannot refrain from mentioning one instance of the warmth with which my efforts were occasionally rewarded. "Thanks!" said one of the gentlemen officially connected with the Hampton Schools, at the close of my lecture, "a thousand thanks! You cannot realise what pleasure you have given to those young men and women.—Understood it? I should think so. Why, I can assure you, they have enjoyed it as much as if they had been to a circus."

I have often wondered where I found the courage to undertake what I had never attempted before, and whence came the capacity which saved me from discomfiture. I can only imagine that I took my colour from my surroundings, and that where everybody was going ahead, I could not lag behind. I certainly never knew what I really was, till I had been to America. The gentleman at the schools was right; it was clear to me: I was a circus-horse, and America the man with the whip in the middle of the arena. As he urged me on I could clear bars and barriers as never before; the people all around, I knew, were keen judges of horseflesh, and could not be hoodwinked. I must do my best. And then, when sympathetic friends applauded, it was an easy matter to march boldly along on two legs and to hold up my head with the best; my nostrils dilated, and I felt as proud as a man. And when, to reward me, some of the loveliest women of the great Republic patted me on the back and fed me with sweets and kind words, I reciprocated with all my heart, and felt as if I could once for all shake off the yoke of the slow-coaches in the old countries, and start afresh on life's big race in the new one.

I was, from the first, much struck by the cordiality with which a stranger is received. Hospitality is a virtue inherited by the American from his ancestors, a tradition handed down to him. It has not yet had time to become blunted, as it has with us much visited Europeans. One can quite fancy how delighted the first settlers must have been to welcome friends from the old country and to get the latest news, to say nothing of the latest fashions, from home. Now, to be sure, messages get from house to house before they are cabled (as the clocks go); and as for the fashions, it takes a fleet to convey them across the seas. Who can tell how much horse-power is annually needed to convey the creations of a Worth or a Virot to those I would call the loveliest women in the world, were I not afraid of being misunderstood by other sets of loveliest women nearer home. Anyway I do not hesitate to assert that the best productions of the great Parisians become worthier of the fair sex for which they are conceived, by being subjected to the chastening influence of the American lady's taste, and to the subtle touches which she knows how to add.

But however up-to-date the hyper-civilisation imported in dress-baskets and handboxes may be, and however high the hothouse temperature under which the New Englanders force the growths they receive from foreign soil, their good old times are still within easy reach, and many an ancient custom has survived, foremost amongst which, the practice of hospitality.

One of the most practical forms in which it is dispensed is called a Reception, and I most gratefully remember the pleasure and the advantages derived from such gatherings. Introductions are there dealt out wholesale to the individual in whose honour they are held. When a stranger to Chicago, I had delivered a letter to a prominent citizen and his wife from a mutual friend in New York. They knew everybody worth knowing, and kindly offered to introduce me to their circle of friends. On the evening appointed, I stood next to the hostess, and as one after the other of the guests arrived, each was introduced to me by name. "Mr. So-and-so," she said, "Mr. Felix Moscheles." Whereupon I had to shake hands and say blandly, "Mr. So-and-so," whilst he had to repeat "Mr. Felix Moscheles." If he had not caught my name, or had any doubt about its pronunciation, he would make a stand and inquire: "How was that? How do you spell it?" and when once enlightened on those points they would be fixed once for all in his mind. It was there he had the advantage over me, for after a short interval I was sure to have forgotten whether Mr. So-and-so's name spelt Homer D. V. Smith or Plato V. D. Brown, and whether Homer and Plato were men at all, or ought to have been connected in my mind with a Mrs. or a Miss.

But notwithstanding such imperfections of my memory, I had no difficulty in retaining the names of many good friends I made in Chicago. Foremost amongst these is Robert Morse.