[CY] In most of the provinces in France servants' wages are from 12 to 15 dollars a year; here they are from 10 to 12 dollars a month, and one servant in France does the work of two in this country.
[LETTER XXV.]
BEDFORD SPRINGS.
Bedford Springs, (Pa.) Aug. 7, 1835.
Here I am at Bedford, one of the American watering-places; it is hardly three days since I arrived, and I am already in haste to quit it. The Americans, and, still more especially, the American women, must be desperately listless at home, to be willing to exchange its quiet comfort for the stupid bustle, and dull wretchedness of such a residence. It would seem that in a country truly democratic, as is the case here in the Northern States, nothing like our watering-places can exist; and you will see that in proportion as Europe grows democratic, if such is its destiny, your delightful summer resorts will lose their charm. Man is naturally exclusive; there are few pleasures, which do not cease to be such, the moment they become accessible to all, and for that reason only. At Saratoga or at Bedford, the American soon grows weary, because he sees that there are twenty thousand heads of families in Philadelphia and New York, who can, as well as he, if the notion seizes them, and it actually does seize them, have the satisfaction of bringing their wives and daughters to the same place, and, once there, of gaping on a chair in the piazza the whole day; of going, arms in hand (I mean the knife and fork,) to secure their share of a wretched dinner; of being stifled in the crowd of the ball-room during the evening, and of sleeping, if it is possible, in the midst of such a hubbub, upon a miserable pallet in a cell echoing one's tread from its floor of pine boards. The American passes through the magnificent landscapes on the Hudson without noticing them, because he is one of six hundred or a thousand on board the steamer. And to confess the truth, I have become an American myself in this respect, and I admired the panorama of West Point and the Highlands, only when I found myself alone in my boat on the river.
Democracy is too new a comer upon the earth, to have been able as yet to organise its pleasures and its amusements. In Europe, our pleasures are essentially exclusive, they are aristocratic like Europe itself, and cannot, therefore, be at the command and for the use of the multitude. In this matter, then, as in politics, the American democracy has yet to create every thing afresh. The problem is difficult, but it is not insoluble, for it was once resolved among us. The religious festivals of the Catholic church were eminently democratic; all were called to them, all took part in them. To what transports of joy did not all Europe, great and small, nobles, burgesses, and serfs, give itself up in the time of the crusades, when the victory of Antioch or the capture of Jerusalem was celebrated by processions and Te Deums? Even to this day, in our southern provinces, where faith is not yet extinct, there are ceremonies truly popular; such are the festival of Easter with the representations of the Passion exhibited in the churches, and the processions with banners and crosses, the brotherhoods of penitents with their quaint frocks and flowing robes, and their long files of women and children; with the effigies of the saints in full dress, and their relics piously carried about; and, finally, with the military and civil pomp, which, notwithstanding the atheism of the law, is mingled with the show. This is the poor man's spectacle, and one which leaves on his mind better and more vivid recollections, than the atrocious dramas of the boulevard and the fire-works of the Barrier of the Throne, leave to the suburban of Paris.
Already democracy, especially in the Western States, is beginning to have its festivals, which thrill its fibres, and stir it with agreeable emotions. There are religious festivals, the Methodist camp-meetings, to which the people press with eager delight, in spite of the philosophical remonstrances of the more refined sects, who find fault with their heated zeal and noisy ranting, and in spite, or rather in consequence, of the convulsionary and hysterical scenes of the anxious bench. In the older States of the North, there are political processions, for the most part mere party exhibitions, but which are interesting in this respect, that the democracy has a share in them; for it is the democratic party that gets up the most brilliant and animated. Beside the camp-meetings, the political processions are the only things in this country, which bear any resemblance to festivals. The party dinners, with their speeches and deluge of toasts, are frigid, if not repulsive; and I have never seen a more miserable affair, than the dinner given by the Opposition, that is to say, by the middle class, at Powelton, in the neighbourhood of Philadelphia. But I stopped involuntarily at the sight of the gigantic hickory-poles which made their solemn entry on eight wheels, for the purpose of being planted by the democracy on the eve of the election. I remember one of these poles, with its top still crowned with green foliage, which came on to the sound of fifes and drums, and was preceded by ranks of democrats, bearing no other badge than a twig of the sacred tree in their hats. It was drawn by eight horses, decorated with ribands and mottoes; Astride on the tree itself, were a dozen Jackson men of the first water, waving flags with an air of anticipated triumph, and shouting, Hurrah for Jackson!
But this entry of the hickory was but a by-matter compared with the procession I witnessed in New York. It was in the night after the closing of the polls, when victory had pronounced in favour of the democratic party. (See Letter XV.) The procession was nearly a mile long; the democrats marched in good order to the glare of torches; the banners were more numerous than I had ever seen them in any religious festival; all were in transparency, on account of the darkness. On some were inscribed the names of the democratic societies or sections; Democratic young men of the ninth or eleventh ward; others bore imprecations against the Bank of the United States; Nick Biddle and Old Nick here figured largely, and formed the pendant of our libera nos a malo. Then came portraits of General Jackson afoot and on horseback; there was one in the uniform of a general, and another in the person of the Tennessee farmer, with the famous hickory cane in his hand. Those of Washington and Jefferson, surrounded with democratic mottoes, were mingled with emblems in all tastes and of all colours. Among these figured an eagle, not a painting, but a real live eagle, tied by the legs, surrounded by a wreath of leaves, and hoisted upon a pole, after the manner of the Roman standards. The imperial bird was carried by a stout sailor, more pleased than ever was a sergeant permitted to hold one of the strings of the canopy, in a catholic ceremony. From further than the eye could reach, came marching on the democrats. I was struck with the resemblance of their air to the train that escorts the viaticum in Mexico or Puebla. The American standard-bearers were as grave as the Mexican Indians who bore the sacred tapers. The democratic procession, also, like the Catholic procession, had its halting places; it stopped before the houses of the Jackson men to fill the air with cheers, and halted at the doors of the leaders of the Opposition, to give three, six, or nine groans. If these scenes were to find a painter, they would be admired at a distance, not less than the triumphs and sacrificial pomps, which the ancients have left us delineated in marble and brass; for they are not mere grotesques after the manner of Rembrandt, they belong to history, they partake of the grand; they are the episodes of a wondrous epic which will bequeath a lasting memory to posterity; that of the coming of democracy.
Yet as festivals and spectacles, these processions are much inferior to revivals, which take place in the camp-meetings. All festivals and ceremonies in which woman does not take part, are incomplete. Why is it that our constitutional ceremonies are so entirely devoid of interest? It is not because the actors are merely commoners, very respectable citizens surely, but very prosaic, and that the pomp of costumes and the fascination of the arts, are banished from them; it is rather because women do not and cannot have a place in them. A wit has said that women are not poets, but they are poetry itself.
I remember what made the charm and the attraction of the processions in my provincial city. We opened our eyes with wonder at the red robe of the chief president; we gazed with delight at the epaulets and gold lace of the general, and more than one youth was inspired with military ardour at that show; we stretched forward with impatience to catch a glimpse of the episcopal train; we threw ourselves on our knees mechanically, on the approach of the canopy with its escort of priests, and the venerable bishop, crowned with the mitre, and bearing the host in his hands; we envied the glory of those boys, who had the privilege of enacting St. Mark or St. Peter for the day; more than one tall stripling was glad to sink his fifteen years, in which he prided himself, for the sake of taking the character of St. John, clad in a sheepskin; but the whole multitude held their breath, when, beneath the forest of banners, through the peaked frocks of the penitents and the bayonets of the garrison, amidst the surplices and albs of the priests, there appeared in sight one of those young girls in white robes, who represented the holy women and the Mother of the seven woes; or she, who in the person of St. Veronica, displayed the handkerchief, with which the sweat was wiped from the Saviour's brow as he ascended Mount Calvary; or she, who, loaded with gold chains, ribands, and pearls, represented the empress at the side of the emperor;[CZ] or those who had just been confirmed by my lord bishop, and still bore the traces of the emotions excited by that solemn act. So it is because there are women in the camp-meetings, and because they take a not less active part in them than the most rousing preachers, and it is on this account only, that the American democracy throngs to these assemblages. The camp-meetings with their raving Pythonissas have made the fortune of the Methodists, and attracted to their church in America a more numerous body of adherents than is numbered by any of the English sects in Europe.