"After an examination of some minutes' duration," says Madame de Merlin, "they seized upon the tapestry without looking at me or making the least apology, as if the knees on which it rested had been the tray of a work-box; then alternately taking possession of wools, scissors, thimble, they passed them from hand to hand without taking the slightest heed of the person to whom they belonged. At last the boldest amongst them carried off the embroidery and disappeared. I begged my companion to follow her, and ascertain what she meant to do with it. In a few minutes she brought it back, after showing it to her friends, who were below in the cabin. Soon a second group of women accosted me; one of them, without the slightest preamble or polite preface, asked me if I were French. On my reply in the affirmative,—'We never see your countrywomen in these parts,' said she; 'you please us. Do all Frenchwomen resemble you?' Then she ran to fetch her husband, and planted him before me like a sentry, showing me to him as she might have done a curious bird. What think you of this savage curiosity of the women of the West, of these strange manners and artless avowals? They have something confiding and primitive which pleases me."
Lenient to the deficiencies of American women, the amiable and accomplished Countess Merlin expresses plainly and forcibly her disgust at the manners of the men. M. Marmier echoes her complaints. Not so Mr Taylor, who visited America at an age when all that is novel pleases, and who can see no fault in the natives. He reluctantly admits their dress to be a little precise, and their manners rather graver than he likes; in their cities and societies he complains of a lack of cordiality, and of the scarcity of dinner-parties. He thinks tobacco-chewing a nasty habit, although he doubts not that to others it may seem just the reverse. But he totally denies that Americans are at all inquisitive, and refutes, quite to his own satisfaction, the rash assertions of those European travellers who have declared the bulk of them to be coarse and gluttonous feeders. In the enthusiasm of his vindication, he says that, "far from being guilty of gluttony, they appear to eat merely to live, and may be blamed rather for seeming to care too little for the good things of this life." The Englishman, according to Mr Taylor, is the exact opposite of the American in this respect, and the Spaniard has hit the happy medium. Here is what M. Marmier says upon the subject:—
"Whilst I thus gossip with you, as if I were seated in an arm-chair at your chimney corner, I forget the dining-room already noted, the bill of fare printed on vellum paper, the smart waiters in round jackets and white aprons, exactly like those at Vefour's. My fellow-travellers, are far from a similar forgetfulness of one of the chief enjoyments of the steamer. Some of them, as soon as they came on board, paid it a long visit, and soon returned thither for the second time. Is it not Brillat-Savarin who has said—'Elsewhere men eat, at Paris only do they know how to dine.' Had he seen this country, he would have said—'Here men do not eat, they devour.' The word is hardly expressive enough. Better to understand the full force I wish to give it, please to refer to Buffon under the heading Pike and Shark. You will then, perhaps, have some idea of American voracity. Here is the usual order of the daily meals in the United States:—Between seven and eight o'clock in the morning, a bell, a gong, or some other noisy instrument, announces breakfast. This consists of joints of roast-beef, ox-tongues, ducks, and fowls, accompanied with potatoes, bread and butter, and other light dishes. The Americans rush to table like starving animals. It is really the only suitable comparison. Heedless of his neighbours, careless of the most ordinary rules of European politeness, each man draws towards himself every dish within his reach, and piles upon one or two plates enormous pyramids of meat, butter, and vegetables. Then he works away with hands and teeth, as if his moments were numbered, without speaking, almost without drawing breath, but following with haggard eyes the dishes that travel away from him, and harpooning them as soon as they come within reach, to seize upon a fresh supply.
This first operation finished, the American lights a cigar; goes to the place where spirits are sold, which is here called the bar-room; tosses off a glass of whisky or Madeira, and sets himself to ruminate till the hour of noon. Noon is very far off, and many are unable to get through this mortal interval of four hours without a second and third visit to the dear bar-room, after which they ruminate again. The bell announces luncheon, consisting of soup, a box of sardines, cold meat, butter, and a lump of cheese. At three o'clock, another tap on the tom-tom—the best, the most desired of all; it proclaims dinner, of which the two preceding repasts were but the modest preface. This time the table is covered from one end to the other with vast dishes, containing enormous roasted joints, highly-spiced sauces, prodigious puddings. The same appetite as at breakfast, the same universal silence. No sounds but the clatter of knife and fork, and the crunching of bones between impatient jaws. So great is the hurry in which this third repast is got through, that the diners do not even think of wiping their knives before plunging them into the salt or butter, and napkins are habitually thrown aside, for the manifest reason that the use of the napkin entails a loss of time. Yet these people laugh at Turks for using neither spoons nor forks at their meals. I remember to have eaten a few dinners with Turks, and I declare that they were models of cleanliness compared to those at which I have been compelled to assist in American hotels and steamers.
Dinner over, the rest of the day is long to get through. Accordingly, towards seven o'clock, you hear, for the fourth time, the blessed bell inviting the inmates of the building to a cup of tea or coffee, accompanied by cold game or salted meats, after which visits to the bar-room may be recommenced ad libitum.
To see these men of business thus rush to table, and stow away a whole cargo of miscellaneous viands in less time than a Spaniard takes to imbibe a single cup of chocolate, one might imagine that they consider every minute passed in the dining-room as so much time lost, and that they are in desperate haste to return to their counting-house, and bury themselves in ledgers and day-books. Unfortunately, as on leaving the eating-room I have almost invariably found every man of them with his body on one chair, and his feet, raised to a level with his head, on the back of another, I am bound to conclude that it is not business, but an unparalleled voracity, which induces them to feed at steeple-chase pace.
Many travellers who here, in the States, are considered very impertinent, but who nevertheless write with the most amiable intentions, attribute the cold taciturnity of Americans to their preoccupation with commercial combinations or political affairs. I believe that, without doing them injustice, one might very often attribute it to the labour of the digestive organs, put four times a-day to a severe task, and which frequently, in their fatigue, require the employment of soda-water, and almost continually the acrid and hideous mastication of a roll of tobacco. The fact is, that in general the American is much more silent than the Turk. There is also this difference between them—the Turk, seated on a carpet, with his silken vest, his long beard, his large turban, appears nobly indolent or gently meditative, and the stranger's eye may rest with pleasure on his calm and benevolent physiognomy; the silence of the American, on the contrary, is gloomy and uneasy, dry and hard, (sec et dur.) His countenance is pointed, his movements are stiff and angular. His repose is not the happy placidity of the Oriental, or of the southern European—the enjoyment of kief, the pleasure of the siesta; it is a sort of prostration, agitated from time to time by a feverish movement."
The following sketch is certainly not very flattering. After laying down the rather novel proposition, that man is one of the ugliest of created animals, M. Marmier proceeds to prove the American the ugliest of all civilised races of men:—
"Picture to yourself, if you please, a lean figure with bony wrists, feet of dimensions that would for ever tarnish the scutcheon of a gentleman, a hat stuck upon the back of the head, straight hair; a cheek swollen, not by an accidental cold, but from morning till night by a lump of tobacco; lips stained yellow by the juice of the same plant; a black coat with narrow skirts, a tumbled shirt, the gloves of a gendarme,[5] trousers in harmony with the rest of the equipment, and you will have before you the exact portrait of a thoroughbred Yankee."
All this would shock Mr Taylor. Substantially, however, it is true enough. Sealsfield, himself a naturalised American, and a warm admirer of the institutions of his adopted country, has sketched scenes very similar to M. Marmier's delineations of hotel and steamboat life—life in those places of resort being pretty equally divided between the dining-table, the bar, and the spittoon. Hamilton, Marryat, Mrs Trollope, and other keen observers and able writers,[6] have enabled us to dispense with the accounts of foreign travellers in the States. But still the verdict passed upon the citizens of the Great Republic by an educated and intelligent Frenchman must always possess weight and interest. Were M. Marmier an irritable or grumbling traveller, one might think it right to receive his impressions with caution; but, on the contrary, in all his previous books that we have seen, he has shown himself so indulgent and easy to please, that it is impossible to refuse him credit when he adopts a different tone, and abandons his habitual suavity for such severity of sarcasm as he may have at command. We have seen him annoyed and disgusted on board the steamers; presently we find him put to the torture in an American stage:—
"The railway left me at Cumberland, and handed me over to the stage-coach. Probably you do not know what a stage-coach is in this country. It is a wooden box placed on four wheels, and intended to convey travellers along roads which the locomotive has not yet favoured with its visits. But what a box, and what a road! We were nine, packed together like herrings in a barrel, jolting through the ruts and bounding over the stones as if we had been afflicted with St Vitus's dance. Add to these comforts the delightful society of seven graceful Americans, chewing, spitting, and (in order to be more at their ease) taking off their boots. A timid, delicate young girl, seated in one of the corners of this infamous box, suffered in silence, and the next morning we found her in a swoon. For my part, I passed the night in tossing to one side or the other an enormous dirty body which constantly fell back upon me, and two enormous legs which seemed determined to crush mine. Assuredly, if a severe penance can, according to expiatory dogmas, cleanse us from our sins, my soul ought, after these twenty-four hours of coaching, to be as pure as that of the newborn child; and if ever I meet an Indian fakeer in quest of a new torture wherewith to propitiate the goddess Siwa, I will send him to America, to travel by the Cumberland stage."
Madame de Merlin, certainly a very amiable and hardy traveller, slow to feel small annoyances or to censure foreign habits, is unable to conceal her disgust at some of the practices which so shocked M. Marmier. She went out to New York in the same vessel with Fanny Elssler, and was present at her first appearance in that city.
"The enthusiasm," she says, "was immense; I thought myself at Rome, and had difficulty in recognising the nation that talks by measure and walks by springs. But soon these men, with hat on head and coat off, lying down upon their seats, and who, after placing their heavy-nailed shoes on the ground, carelessly rested their woollen-stockinged feet on the back of their neighbours' chairs, reminded me that I was in the United States."
On entering the railway between New York and Philadelphia, the Countess found it—