TRANSATLANTIC TOURISTS.[3]
Books of European travel beyond the Atlantic, of rare appearance only a few years ago, bid fair to become plentiful as snags in the Mississippi or buffaloes on the prairies of the West. Emigration, Californian gold, and the perfection of steam-navigation, have brought America to our door. The falls of Niagara now behold as many European visitors as did those of Schaffhausen half a century since; and Broadway is as familiar a word as were the Boulevards before the Peace. Even amidst her own revolutions, embroilments, and alarms, the eyes of Europe have of late been fixed with unusual attention upon the New World. Mexico, California, Cuba—aggrandising wars, treasure-seeking enterprise, piratical aggression—in turn have filled the columns of our newspapers and occupied a large share of our thoughts.
Mr X. Marmier is a French gentleman who has devoted his life to wandering in foreign lands, and writing narratives of his peregrinations. North and south, east and west, nothing is too hot or too cold for him. To-day, in frozen Iceland, he studies Scandinavian history; to-morrow, on Algerine sands, he rambles in the footsteps of Bugeaud. Behold him, in the sweet springtime, strolling beneath blossoms on the sunny banks of Rhine: autumn comes, and he pensively roams by the mystical waters of Nile. Russia, Sweden and Holland, Lapland and Poland, have in turn had the happiness to possess him. Europe, to him, is thrice-trodden ground, and Asia bears the print of his foot. His travels are reckoned by thousands of leagues, his writings by dozens of volumes. No wonder that his erratic tastes have at last driven him across the Atlantic. There he adheres to his magnificent contempt of space. His is no limited excursion to Boston and New York, Washington and New Orleans: the St Lawrence and the Mississippi are boundaries too narrow for his aspiring soul and many-leagued boots. One vast continent is insufficient to satisfy his craving after locomotion. North America explored, Cuba visited, he pauses and hesitates. The quay of the Havana is the last place where a professed wanderer can be expected to cut short his rambles and go home. There sea and sky are both so bright and calm, that recollections of past tempests and less hospitable shores fade into indistinctness. There, too, are facilities of departure for almost any part of the globe. "Thence," says M. Marmier, in an ecstasy of perplexity, "sail the English packets which coast, in their rapid course, the whole emerald chain of the Antilles; thence, the American steamers, transporting to Chagres the legions of pilgrims attracted by the worship of gold to the Californian shrine; thence, French and English vessels, which in a few weeks convey their passengers to the noble city of Nantes or the spacious harbour of Cadiz." Beset by so many seductions, M. Marmier could not be expected to choose the nearest way to Paris. Nor did he; and therefore is it that, upon the title-page of his book, Rio de la Plata succeeds the names of Canada, United States, Havana.
Mr John Glanville Taylor is a traveller of a very different stamp. No amateur wanderer, in quest of novelty or with a view to a book, he crossed the Atlantic (in the spring of 1841) when a lad of eighteen, to seek his fortune—as appears from his own account of the matter—but with mining more particularly in view. Finding nothing to do in the States, he proceeded, after a short sojourn, to Cuba, to investigate the prospects of a newly-discovered gold-vein. This proving unproductive, he entered into partnership with a planter and slave-owner, was ruined by the drought and famine of 1843-4, served as overseer of a sugar plantation, and, finally, after upwards of three years' residence in the island, returned to England via New York. The volume containing such portions of his adventures and observations, during his absence from this country, as he has deemed worth recording, is manly in tone, tolerably interesting in substance, and contains, here and there, scraps of useful information, although the author's opinions are sometimes crude and hastily formed—the fault of a young writer, and yet younger traveller. His downright matter-of-fact views often contrast amusingly with those of the more experienced and literary Frenchman. As a traveller sentimental rather than adventurous—as a writer we have usually found M. Marmier facile rather than fascinating, and oftener insipid than graphic. In his books of European travel there is a lack of the vivid and lively; and his style, correct and not ungraceful, has yet a monotony that acts somniferously on the reader. His work on America is an improvement on his previous publications. The nine hundred pages might perhaps have been compressed, with advantage, into two-thirds of the space; but still, amidst a superabundance of words, we find pointed and interesting passages, and occasionally an original view of men and things Transatlantic.
Frenchmen are very apt to express great sympathy with, and admiration of, the people of the United States. This arises from various causes. Some are smitten with their democratic institutions; some exult in American independence as a triumph over England; others assume a share in that triumph, on account of French auxiliaries in the American War; whilst others, again, suffer their imaginations to be captivated by the wonderfully rapid rise and prodigious development of American wealth and power. It does not require any great amount of sentiment and fancy to get up this kind of love-at-a-distance. Many of our readers remember Miss Edgeworth's clever tale of L'Amie Inconnue, where a romantic young lady conceives a violent attachment for the authoress of a sentimental novel, corresponds with her under the name of Araminta, makes a pilgrimage to Wales to seek her in a cottage amidst honeysuckles, and finally has her illusions destroyed by discovering her in a two-pair-back at Bristol, putting brandy in her tea, and bullying a lover named Nathaniel. This is exactly the sort of disenchantment in store for those Frenchmen who, after picturing to themselves the United States as a democratic Utopia, the very paradise of the worshippers of Liberty, have occasion to visit the unseen land of their affections. On arrival in the States, nineteen out of twenty of them find themselves about as comfortable as a cat in a kennel of terriers. They are not spitefully worried, certainly, but unintentionally they are most awfully annoyed. In fact, no two characters can be more antagonistic than those of the Frenchman and American. However strong his predetermination, the former finds it impossible to be pleased in the country where he had fondly anticipated so much gratification. The most he can do is to laud Yankee energy and enterprise, and to pass lightly over the details of manners and customs that jar with all his notions of propriety and enjoyment of life.
"Before I put foot on shore," says M. Marmier, "I felt disposed to love that American land whose mere aspect makes so many hearts beat, and gives birth to so many hopes." He may love the land, but he very soon lets us see that he does not much like the dwellers upon it. After sketching their busy habits and feverish activity, their unremitting pursuit of lucre and contempt of an intellectual far niente, he thus continues his epistle to the unknown lady-correspondent to whom all the Lettres sur l'Amérique are addressed:
"It would be false to say that such vigorous commercial faculties, and such habits, constitute an amiable people; and truly I would not wish you to live amongst them, nor do I imagine that they will ever leave in my heart one of those tender memories which I still retain of the dear natives of Germany and Scandinavia, and even of the Turks, who are such worthy people."
M. Marmier, we may here observe, is constitutionally tender. A pensive softness is the general characteristic of his writings. He is addicted to moonlight; the sight of a wooden hut in a sunny nook of the Hudson sets him dreaming about love in a cottage, and quoting Tom Moore with indifferent orthography; in his moments of melancholy he loves to muse by the river-side, and repeat to himself a certain ditty about roses, rivulets, and nightingales, which he picked up in Canada. With such gentle tastes, something more than a trifle is needed to betray him into wrath and sarcasm. On the other hand, the delicacy of his organisation evidently makes him peculiarly liable to be shocked by certain Yankee qualities and habits. One of the first annoyances he experiences is from the curiosity of his fellow-passengers on board a Hudson steamboat. He feels it the more that he has just suffered from their taciturnity, and found it impossible to obtain from them other than monosyllabic replies to his questions concerning the places they pass.
"With a phlegm, compared to which British phlegm is jovial vivacity, the American combines an inquisitiveness worthy of a savage; and the attention which was denied me when I sought a few details concerning the scenes we traversed, was soon fixed upon me, to my great discomfort, by various parts of my dress. One of them took hold of my watch-chain, without the least ceremony, turned and twisted it about between his dirty fingers, then, satisfied with the examination, walked away without uttering a word. Another, seated beside me, suddenly exclaimed—'You have got a Paris hat,' and forthwith took it off my head, closed and opened the springs, showed it to one of his neighbours, and, when they had both looked at it inside and out, gave it back into my hands. A moment later, having to pay my bill to the steward, I was so unfortunate as to open my purse—a beautiful little purse of cherry-coloured silk and gold. Forthwith an American fell violently in love with it, pulled out a horrible knitted bag, and proposed a barter. I laughed in his face. I hid my purse, but he still persecuted me. At last I ground between my teeth, Yankee fashion, a d——, which made him step back a pace or two. To avoid being thus beset, I put my hat into its box, and covered my head with a cap; I put my watch-chain into my pocket, buttoned my waistcoat over my breast-pin, and, thanks to these precautions, I could at last walk about and sit on deck without being exposed to stupid importunity."
It may be said that M. Marmier is hardly indulgent enough to the honest Yankees, to whose curiosity the sight of a live Frenchman, in trinkets and a Gibus hat, and 'fresh as imported,' was doubtless a strong stimulant. A countrywoman of his (by connections, habits, and residence, although not by birth) has described, in a very charming work,[4] similar traits in a more tolerant tone. She also was in a steamboat on the Hudson, when she suddenly found herself surrounded, or rather assailed, by a crowd of women, who wonderingly contemplated an embroidery in brilliant colours with which she was occupied.