Recollections of Europe

by James Fenimore Cooper

Among other wonders in the exhibition, was the coronation coach of Charles X. This carriage is truly magnificent. It is quite large, as indeed are all the royal carriages, perhaps as large as an American stage-coach; the glass, pure and spotless as air, goes all round the upper compartments, so as to admit of a view of the whole interior; the panels are beautifully painted in design; the top has gilded and well-formed angels blowing trumpets, and the crown of France surmounts the centre. The wheels, and train, and pole, are red, striped with gold. All the leather is red morocco, gilt, as is the harness. Plumes of ostrich feathers ornament the angles, and, altogether, it is a most glittering and gorgeous vehicle. The paintings, the gildings, and all the details are well executed, except the running gear, which struck me as clumsy and imperfect. The cost is said to have been about sixty thousand dollars.

Many new rooms in the Louvre were thrown open on this occasion, in order that the paintings on their ceilings might be viewed; and as I walked through this gorgeous magnificence, I felt how small were our highest pretensions to anything like elegance or splendour. The very extreme of art, of this nature, may, of itself, be of no great direct benefit, it is true; but is should be remembered, that the skill which produces these extraordinary fruits, in its road to the higher points of magnificence, produces all that embellishes life in the intermediate gradations.

In America, in the eagerness of gain, and with the contracted habits that a love of gain engenders, which by their own avidity, as is usual with the grosser passions, too often defeat their own ends, we overlook the vast importance of cultivating the fine arts, even in a pecuniary sense, to say nothing of the increased means of enjoying the very money that is so blindly pursued, which their possession entails. France is at this moment laying all Christendom under contribution, simply by means of her taste. Italy, where the arts have flourished still longer, and where they have still more effectually penetrated society, would drive the English and French out of every market on earth, were the national energy at all equal to the national tastes. These things do not as exclusively belong to extreme luxury as they may at first seem. Science, skill of the nicest investigation, and great research, are all enlisted in their behalf; and, in time, implements of the most homely uses derive perfection, as by-plays, from the investigations consequent on the production of luxuries. It is true, that, by blending a certain amount of information with practice, as in the case of the American labourer, our wants find the means of furnishing their own supplies; but, apart from the fact that the man who makes a chair is not obliged to sit in it, and is therefore content to consult his profits merely, the impulses of practice are much aided by the accumulated knowledge of study. The influence that the arts of design have had on the French manufactures is incalculable. They have brought in the aid of chemistry, and mathematics, and a knowledge of antiquity; and we can trace the effects in the bronzes, the porcelain, the hangings, the chintzes, the silks, down to the very ribands of the country. We shall in vain endeavour to compete with the great European nations, unless we make stronger efforts to cultivate the fine arts. Of what avails our beautiful glass, unless we know how to cut it? or of what great advantage, in the strife of industry, will be even the skilful glass-cutter, should he not also be the tasteful glass-cutter? It is true that classical forms and proportions are, as yet, of no great account among us; and the great mass of the American people still cling to their own uninstructed fancies, in preference to the outlines and proportions of the more approved models, and to those hues which art has demonstrated to be harmonious. This is the history of every society in its progress to perfection; and, cut off as we are from the rest of the civilized world, it is not to be expected that we are to make an extraordinary exception. But, while we may be satisfied with our own skill and taste, the happy lot of all ignorance, our customers will not have the same self-complacency, to induce them to become purchasers. We find this truth already. We beat all nations in the fabrication of common unstamped cottons. Were trade as free as some political economists pretend, we should drive all our competitors out of every market, as respects this one article. But the moment we attempt to print, or to meddle with that part of the business which requires taste, we find ourselves inferior to the Europeans, whose forms we are compelled to imitate, and of course to receive when no longer novel, and whose hues defy our art.

The wisest thing the United States could do, would be to appropriate thirty or forty millions to the formation of a marine, not to secure the coast, as our hen-roost statesmen are always preaching, but to keep in our own hands the control of our own fortunes, by rendering our enmity or friendship of so much account to Europe that no power shall ever again dare trespass on our national rights:—and one of the next wisest measures, I honestly believe, would be to appropriate at once a million to the formation of a National Gallery, in which copies of the antique, antiques themselves, pictures, bronzes, arabesques, and other models of true taste, might be collected, before which the young aspirants for fame might study, and with which become imbued, as the preliminary step to an infusion of their merits into society. Without including the vast influence of such a cultivation on the manners, associations, intellects, and habits of the people—an influence that can scarcely be appreciated too highly—fifty years would see the first cost returned fifty-fold in the shape of the much-beloved dollars. Will this happen? Not till men of enlightened minds—statesmen, instead of political partizans—are sent to Washington. It is the misfortune of America to lie so remote from the rest of the civilized world, as to feel little of the impulses of a noble competition, our rivalry commonly limiting itself to the vulgar exhibitions of individual vanity; and this the more to our disadvantage, as, denied access to the best models for even this humble species of contention with the antagonists we are compelled to choose, victory is as bad as defeat.

One of the great impediments to a high class of improvement in America, is the disposition to resent every intimation that we can be any better than we are at present. Few, perhaps no country, has ever enduced so much evil-disposed and unmerited abuse as our own. It is not difficult to trace the reasons, and every American should meet it with a just and manly indignation. But, being deemed a nation of rogues, barbarous, and manifesting the vices of an ancestry of convicts, is a very different thing from standing at the head of civilization. This tendency to repel every suggestion of inferiority is one of the surest signs of provincial habits; it is exactly the feeling with which the resident of the village resents what he calls the airs of the town, and that which the inland trader brings with him among those whom he terms the "dandies" of the sea-board. In short, it is the jealousy of inferiority on the exciting points; whatever may be the merits of its subject in other matters, and furnishes of itself the best possible proof that there is room for amendment. The French have a clever and pithy saying, that of—"On peut tout dire à un grand peuple." "One may tell all to a great nation."[17]

[Footnote 17:—Every one was telling me that I should find the country so altered after an absence of eight years, that I should not know it. Altered, indeed, I found it, but not quite so evidently improved. It struck me that there was a vast expansion of mediocrity that was well enough in itself, but which was so overwhelming as nearly to overshadow everything that once stood prominent as more excellent. This was perhaps no more than a natural consequence of the elasticity and growth of a young, vigorous community, which, in its agregate character, as in that of its individuals, must pass through youth to arrive at manhood. Still it was painful and doubly so to one coming from Europe. I saw the towns increased, more tawdry than ever, but absolutely with less real taste than they had in my youth. The art of painting alone appeared to me to have made any material advances in the right direction, if one excepts increase in wealth, and in the facilities to create wealth. The steam-boats were the only objects that approached magnificence; but while they had increased in show, they had less comfort and respectability. The taverns, as a whole, had deteriorated; though the three first I happened to enter might well compete with a very high class of European inns, viz. Head's, Barnum's, and Gadsby's.]

LETTER XIV.

False Notions.—Continental Manners.—People of Paris.—Parisian Women.
—French Beauty.—Men of France.—French Soldiers.

To JAMES STEVENSON, ESQUIRE, ALBANY.

I cannot tell you whence the vulgar notions that we entertain of the French, which, with many other pernicious prejudices, have made a part of our great inheritance from England, have been originally obtained. Certainly I have seen no thing, nor any person, after a long residence in the country, to serve as models to the flippant marquis, the overdressed courtiers, or the petites maîtresses of the English dramatists. Even a French perruquier is quite as homely and plain a personage as an English or an American barber. But these Athenians grossly caricature themselves as well as their neighbours. Although Paris is pretty well garnished with English of all degrees, from the Duke down, it has never yet been my luck to encounter an English dandy. Now and then one meets with a "dresser," a man who thinks more of his appearance than becomes his manhood, or than comports with good breeding; and occasionally a woman is seen who is a mere appendage to her attire; but I am persuaded, that, as a rule, neither of these vulgar classes exists among people of any condition, in either country. It is impossible for me to say what changes the revolution, and the wars and the new notions, may have produced in France, but there is no sufficient reason for believing that the present cropped and fringeless, bewhiskered, and laceless generation of France, differs more from their bewigged, belaced, and powdered predecessors, than the men and women of any other country differ from their particular ancestors. Boys wore cocked hats, and breaches, and swords, in America, previously to the revolution; and our immediate fathers flourished in scarlet coats, powder, ruffled fingers, and embroidered waistcoats.