“And those only at a very late hour, just in time for supper.”
“I should not care for all that,” resumed the Bostonian, “if one could get away from that sort of society; but this is actually impossible, unless one emigrate to the South or West. The same artificial distinctions exist at the South: but then in the Southern States the distinctions are real, not imaginary; they date from the time of the colonies, and, being in part based on the possession of real estate, do not change with every fluctuation of trade. A man may there visit ten years in the same circle without seeing a single new face, except that of a stranger; while in New York every new quotation of exchange excludes a dozen families from the pale of fashion, and creates a dozen new candidates for its imaginary honours. Every commercial loss or gain,” he continued, “exercises a controlling influence on the happiness and prospects of our families. It changes at once their friends, their associates, and often their nearest relations, into strangers. How many ties are thus broken by a single failure in business! and how many failures occur, because the heads of those families dare not retrench,—have not the courage to live within their income,—cannot bring themselves to lead their children out of a higher circle into a lower one,—have not the heart to blight their prospects in life! No! they must play the hypocrite,—live as though they were men of fortune; marry their daughters, who are brought up in the most expensive habits, to young spendthrifts, who expect them to inherit fortunes; and then die, without leaving to their heirs wherewith to procure for them a decent funeral! This, sir, is a picture of our first society, established on the system of credit! And then how much real happiness is lost in the foolish endeavour to get into the first society of our Atlantic cities; which, after all, differs from the second and third, from which it is necessarily daily recruited, in nothing that could strike an European except in the greater display of wealth and waste. The little Miss at school is already panting for the society of ‘the higher girls,’ and cuts her old playmates the moment her father can dress her well enough for better company. No sooner has she left school than she teases and torments her parents until they allow her to give a party, to which, of course, none but her new acquaintances are invited; and which, with her, is the beginning of a new era,—the commencement of her formal separation for life from all her early friends, relatives, and often her own parents. This, sir, is the first act of a young fascinating creature of seventeen, introducing her to the attractions of fashionable life. At that tender age, when girls in other countries are considered as mere children, she has already learned to check the better impulses of her nature, in order to conform to the customs and usages of the world. But this is not all. The bold, sophisticated girl, who has struck out her independent course of life, is no longer conducted and watched by her parents, whose inferior rank in society does not allow them to accompany her to any of the balls and parties to which she is now invited: her mother ceases to be the repository of her secrets, her guardian, and friend; she is barely asked her consent when the young heroine is at last going to be married. If, under these circumstances, and despite of the perverse rules of society, the conduct of our women remains still unexceptionable, it must be ascribed to the force of religion, to the constant occupation of the men, the practice of early marriages, and, above all, to that all-embracing power of public opinion, which in no other country punishes the vicious and guilty with the same unrelenting severity.”
“And a good deal perhaps also to that part of public opinion which punishes the gentlemen as severely as the ladies,” observed the doctor, finishing his glass.
“You may perhaps object,” continued the Bostonian, who appeared to be bent on a homily, “that a similar sort of toad-eating to the higher classes exists also in England; the lower order of the English being even more submissive to those above them than the same classes in America: but on the Continent you seldom see a man or woman pay their court to a superior, except for a special object; the mere admission into fashionable society rarely induces a man to throw away his self-respect, and to cringe and fawn before titled personages.”
“It is for this reason that the manners of certain classes of the English are less free and natural than those of the same orders on the Continent; the former being only easy and agreeable in the society of their native town, where their character is known and understood. Go and visit all the courts of Europe, from Paris to St. Petersburg, and from Stockholm to Naples, and if you find a toad-eater caressing the feet of majesty, and exercising his utmost ingenuity to be on good terms with the most distinguished noble families, you may be sure he is either English or American. But the American will outdo the Englishman. He will be twice as humble before ribands and stars, and three times as insolent to an inferior, as honest John Bull. He will feast six months on the breakfast of a duke, and then regale his countrymen six months longer with the recital of its splendours. He will actually beg himself into society, solicit letters of introduction on the most humiliating terms, pocket quietly a thousand refusals, and, when finally he succeeds in being smuggled into the drawing-room of a princess, is the first to betray her hospitality in publishing her foibles to the world!
“Very few Englishmen will go as far as that; and, if there be some that forget to stand sentinel on their dignity, there are fortunately enough of those whose rank, title, and fortune, readily procure them the distinction others are obliged to court. But the Americans who go to Europe leave their self-assumed rank in society behind; they go thither as plain citizens of a republic, dependent entirely on their letters of introduction, and the civility of those to whom these letters are directed. Their first care, therefore, is to impress all with whom they come in contact with the belief that, though the spirit of the American constitution recognises no nobility, such an order of society nevertheless exists de facto; and that they themselves belong to the ‘few select’ of that ‘large Augean stable.’ I assure you I quote the very words of Americans, as I have often heard them; for railing against their country constitutes one of the chief amusements of our Yankee exquisites at home and abroad.
“In this manner they hope to ingratiate themselves with the old aristocracy of Europe, whom they flatter and console with repeated assurances that the ‘mob government of America’ will not last half a century; and that they themselves are so far converted to the ancient and noble doctrines as to be determined to leave their country for the purpose of sojourning amongst civilized men. On the principle, then, that one repentant sinner is more acceptable in the eye of the Lord than a hundred just men, these Americans are admitted into favour; but, notwithstanding their partial success, few of them understand the art of se laisser aller. One can always see that they are not brought up for sociable idleness; and when a bill is presented,—were it even for a patent of nobility,—you would see them wax pale with horror as they thrust their hands into their pockets.”
“I often remarked the penuriousness of fashionable Americans in Europe; but I cannot say that this is a fault to which they are much addicted at home,” observed my friend, with a sarcastic look on the New-Yorker, who, I understood, had just commenced a wholesale business without capital.
“In the United States,” rejoined the Bostonian, “a man will frequently be liberal with the money that is not precisely his own; the credit system allows him to spend more than his income: but in Europe, where he is obliged to pay for everything as he goes along, he soon learns to hold on to the cash.”
“That is one reason,” said my friend; “and the second is, he does not know how to spend his money. He lays it out on things Europeans value but little, and is most parsimonious where Europeans are most liberal. I knew a Bostonian in Paris who would pay twelve francs a day for his fire, and in the evening drive in a common hackney-coach to a party; another would give his wife a shawl of a thousand francs, but refuse her some Nancy embroidery; and a third would purchase for his wife and daughters pocket-handkerchiefs at a hundred francs a-piece, but object to their being washed. I was present when an American lady, who was told by a French gentleman that at a certain shop on the Boulevards there were very nice embroidered ladies’ handkerchiefs to be had at two napoleons a-piece, exclaimed, ‘Comment! et vous croyez que je puisse porter des mouchoirs à quarante francs?’