Therefore any thoughts which follow must be merely apologized for, as the rapid observations of a traveller, who, in seeing many countries, has loved her own the best, and who puts down these fleeting impressions, merely with a hope to benefit her own, even if sometimes criticising it.
Twenty years ago, Justin McCarthy, than whom there has been no better international critic, wrote an immortal paper called, "English and American Women Compared." It was perhaps the most complimentary, and we are therefore bound to say the fairest, description of our women ever given to the world. It came at a time when the American girl was being served up by Ouida, the American senator by Anthony Trollope, and the American divorcée by Victorien Sardou, in "L'Oncle Sam." There was never a moment when the American needed a friend more.
In that gentle, yet pungent paper, Mr. McCarthy refers to our extravagance, our love of display, our superficial criticisms of the merits of English literary women, judged from the standpoint of dress, and of a singular underlying snobbery which he observed in a few, who wished that the days of titles and of aristocratic customs could come back to the land where Thomas Jefferson tied his horse to the Capitol palings, when he went up to take the Presidential oath. Since that paper was written what a flood of prosperity has deluged the land; what a stride has been made in all the arts of entertaining! What houses we possess; what dinners we give!
What would Horace Walpole say, could he see the collections of some of our really poor people, not to mention those of our billionnaires? Should he go out to dinner in New York, the master of Strawberry Hill and the first great collector could see more curious old furniture, more hawthorn vases, more antique teapots, more rare silver, and more chiffons than he had ever dreamed of; he could see the power which a young, vigorous nation possesses when it takes a kangaroo trick of leaping backward into antiquity, or forward into strange countries, and what it can bring home from its constant globe-trotting, in exchange for some of its own silver and gold. He would also see the power which art has possessed over a nation so suddenly rich that one reads with alarm the axiom of Taine, "When a nation has reached its highest point of prosperity, and begins to decay, then blossoms the consummate flower of art."
We need not go so far back as Horace Walpole; it even astonishes the collector of last year to find that he must come to New York to buy back his Japanese bronzes, and his Capo di Monte, his Majolica and peach-blow vase. We may say that we have the oldest of arts, that of entertaining, wrested from the hands of the oldest of nations, and placed almost recklessly in the hands of the youngest,—as one would take a delicate musical instrument from the hands of a master and put it in the hands of a child. What wonder if in the first essay some chords are missed, some discords struck? Then we must remember that modern life is passing, slowly but decidedly, through a great revolution, now nearly achieved. The relation of equality is gradually eclipsing every other,—that of inequality, where it does survive, taking on its least noble form, as most things do in their decay. In Europe there is still deference to title, although the real power of feudalism was broken by Louis XI. Its shadow remains even in republican France, where if a man has not a title he is apt to buy or to steal one. On this side of the Atlantic there is a deference paid to wealth, however obtained. This is a much greater strain upon character, a more vulgar form of snobbery than the reverence for title; for a title means that sometime, no matter how long ago, some one lived nobly and won his spurs.
We may therefore assume that the great necromancer Prosperity, with his wand, luxury, has suddenly placed our new nation, if not on a footing with the old, certainly as a new knight in the field, whose prowess deserves that he should be mentioned. Or, to change the metaphor, we can imagine some spread-eagle orator comparing us to a David who with his smooth stones from the brook, dug up in California and Nevada, is giving all modern Goliaths a crack in the forehead. When we come to make a comparison, however, let us narrow this down to the giving of a dinner in London, in distinction to giving a dinner in any city in America, and see what our giant can do.
London possesses a regular system of society, a social citadel, around which rally those whose birth, title, and character are all well-known. It is conscious of an identity of interest, which compacts its members, with the force of cement, into a single corporation.
The queen and her drawing-room, the Prince of Wales and his set, the royal family, the nobility and gentry, what is called the aristocracy form a core to this apple, and this central idea goes through all its juices.
Think what it must mean to a man to read that he is descended from Harry Hotspur, Bolingbroke, Clarendon, Sidney, Spenser, Cecil. Imagine what it must have been to have known the men who daily gathered around the tables of the famous dinner-givers. Imagine what the dinners at Holland House were, and then compare such a dinner with one which any American could give. And yet, improbable as it may seem, the American dinner might be the more amusing. The American dinner would have far more flowers; it would be in a brighter room; it would be more "talky," perhaps,—but it could not be so well worth going to. In England, in the greater as well as in the simpler houses, there is a respect for intellect, for intelligence, that we have not. It is the fashion to invite the man or the woman who has done something to meet the most worshipful company, and the young countess just beginning to entertain would receive from her grandmother, who entertained Lord Byron, this advice, "My dear, always have a literary man, or an artist in your set."
The humblest literary man who has done anything well is immediately sought out and is asked to dinner; and the artist of merit, in music, painting, architecture, literature, is sure of recognition in London. One is almost always sure to see, at a grand dinner in London, some quiet elderly woman, who receives the attention of the most distinguished guests, and one learns that she is Mrs. So-and-So, who has written a story, or a few hymns.