The Potiphar Papers

by George William Curtis

There was another roar that time, but not from the representative of Noah’s Ark. It was rather thin joking but it did very well for the warm weather, and I was glad to hear a laugh against anybody but poor pa.

We came to Newport, but the story came before us, and I have been very much annoyed at it. I know it is foolish for me to think of it. Kurz Pacha said:

“My dear Miss Minerva, I have no doubt it would pain you more to be thought ignorant of French than capable of deceit. Yet it is a very innocent ignorance of your father’s. Nobody is bound to know French; but you all lay so much stress upon it, as if it were the whole duty of women to have an ‘air’ and to speak French, that any ignorance becomes at once ludicrous. It’s all your own doing. You make a very natural thing absurd, and then grieve because some friend becomes a victim. There is your friend Nancy Fungus, who speaks ‘French as well as she does English.’ That may be true; but you ought to add, that one is of just as much use to her as the other—that is of no use at all, except to communicate platitudes. What is the use of a girl’s learning French to be able to say to young Téle de Choux, that it is a very warm day, and that will hardly be spirituelle in her exotic French. It edge of French is going to supply her with ideas to express. A girl who is flat in her native English will hardly be spirituelle in her exotic French. It is a delightful language for the natives, and for all who have thoroughly mastered its spirit. Its genius is airy and sparkling. It is especially the language of society, because society is, theoretically, the playful encounter of sprightliness and wit. It is the worst language I know of for poetry, ethics, and the habit of the Saxon mind. It is wonderful in the hands of such masters as Balzac and George Sand, and is especially adapted to their purposes. Yet their books are forbidden to Nancy Fungus, Tabby Dormouse, Daisy Clover, and all their relations. They read Telemaque, and long to be married, that they may pry into Leila and Indiana: their French meanwhile, even if they wanted to know anything of French literature,—which is too absurd an idea,—serves them only to say nothing to uncertain hairy foreigners who haunt society, and to understand their nothings, in response. I am really touched for this Ariel, this tricksy sprite of speech when I know that it must do the bidding of those who can never fit its airy felicity to any worthy purpose. I have tried these accomplishel damsels who speak French and Italian as well as they do English. But our conversation was only a clumsy translation of English commonplace. And yet, Miss Minerva, I think even so sensible a woman as you, looks with honor and respect upon one of that class. Dear me! excuse me! What am I thinking of? I’m engaged to drive little Daisy Clover on the beach at six o’clock. She is one of those who garnish their conversation with French scraps. Really you must pardon me, if she is a friend of yours; but that dry gentlemanly fellow, D’Orsay Firkin, says that Miss Clover’s conversation is a dish of téte de veau farci. Aren’t you coming to the beach? Everybody goes to-day. Mrs. Gnu has arrived, and the Potiphars are here,—that is, Mrs. P. Old Pot. arrives on Sunday morning early, and is off again on Monday evening. He’s grown very quiet and docile. Mrs. P. usually takes him a short drive on Monday morning, and he comes to dinner in a white waistcoat. In fact, as Mrs. Potiphar says, ‘My husband has not the air distingué which I should be pleased to see in him, but he is quite as well as could be expected.’ Upon which Firkin twirls his hat in a significant way; you and I smile intelligently, dear Miss Minerva; Mrs. Green and Mrs Settum Downe exchange glances; we all understand Mrs. Potiphar and each other, and Mrs. Potiphar understands us, and it is all very sweet and pleasant, and the utmost propriety is observed, and we don’t laugh loud until we’re out of hearing, and then say in the very softest whispers, that it was a remarkably true observation. This is the way to take life, my dear lady. Let us go gently. Here we go backwards and forwards. You tickle, and I’ll tickle, and we’ll all tickle, and here we go round—round—roundy!”

And the Sennaar minister danced out of the room.

He is a droll man, and I don’t quite understand him. Of course I don’t entirely like him for it always seems as if he meant something a little different from what he says. Laura Larmes, who reads all the novels, and rolls her great eyes around the ball room,—who laughs at the idea of such a girl as Blanche Amory in Pendennis,—who would be pensive if she were not so plump,—who likes “nothing so much as walking on the cliff by moonlight,”—who wonders that girls should want to dance on warm summer nights when they have Nature, “and such nature” before them,—who, in fact, would be a mere emotion if she were not a bouncing girl,—Laura Larmes wonders that any man can be so happy as Kurz Pacha.

“Ah! Kurz Pacha,” she says to him as they stroll upon the piazza, after he has been dancing (for the minister dances, and swears it is essential to diplomacy to dance well), “are you really so very happy? Is it possible you can be so gay? Do you find nothing mournful in life?”

“Nothing, my best Miss Laura,” he replies, “to speak of; as somebody said of religion. You, who devote yourself to melancholy, the moon, and the source of tears, are not so very sad as you think. You cry a good deal, I don’t doubt. But when grief goes below tears, and forces you in self-defence to try to forget it, not to sit and fondle it,—then you will understand more than you do now. I pity those of your sex upon whom has fallen the reaction of wealth,—for whom there is no career,—who must sit at home and pine in a splendid ennui,—who have learned and who know, spite of sermons and ‘sound sensible view of things,’ that to enjoy the high ‘privilege of reading books,—of cultivating their minds; and, when they are married, minding their babies, and ministering to the drowsy, after-dinner ease of their husbands, is not the fulfilment of their powers and hopes. But, my amiable Miss Larmes, this is a class of girls and women who are not solicitous about wearing black when their great-aunt in Denmark dies, whom they never saw, nor when the only friend who made heaven possible to them, falls dead at their sides. Nor do they avoid Mrs. Potiphar’s balls as a happiness which they are not happy enough to enjoy—nor do they suppose that all who attend that festivity—dancing to Mrs. P.‘s hired music and drinking Mr. P.‘s fines wines—are utterly given over to hilarity and superficial enjoyment. I do not even think they would be likely to run—with rounded eyes, deep voice, and in very exuberant health—to any one of us jaded votaries of fashion, and say, How can you be so happy? My considerate young friend, ‘strong walls do not a prison make’—nor is a man necessarily happy because he hops. You are certainly not unhappy because you make eyes at the moon, and adjudge life to be vanity and vexation. Your mind is only obscured by a few morning vapors. They are evanescent as the dew, and when you remember them at evening they will seem to you but as pensive splendors of the dawn.”

Laura has her revenge for all this snubbing, of course. She does not attempt to disguise her opinion that Kurz Pacha is a man of “foreign morals,” as she well expresses it. “A very gay, agreeable man, who glides gently over the surface of things, but knows nothing of the real trials and sorrows of life,” says the melancholy Laura Larmes, whose appetite continues good, and who fills a large armchair comfortably.

It is my opinion, however, that people of a certain size should cultivate the hilarious rather than the unhappy. Diogenes, with the proportions of Alderman Gobble, could not have succeeded as a Cynic.

Here at Newport there is endless opportunity of detecting these little absurdities of our fellow-creatures. In fact, one of the greatest charms of a watering-place, to me, is the facility one enjoys of understanding the whole game, which is somewhat concealed in the city. Watering-place life is a full dress parade of social weaknesses. We all enjoy a kind of false intimacy, an accidental friendship. Old Carbuncle and young Topaz meet on the common ground of a good cigar. Mrs. Peony and Daisy Clover are intimate at all hours. Why? Because, on the one hand, Mrs. P. knows that youth, and grace and beauty, are attractive to men, and that if Miss Rosa Peony, her daughter, has not those advantages, it is well to have in the neighborhood a magnet strong enough to draw the men.