REMINISCENCES OF WATERING-PLACES.
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BY FRANCIS J. GRUND.
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Whatever our political independence may be, we are slavish imitators of Europe in every thing appertaining to society. We may boast of being republicans—we may beard England and France, conquer the Mexicans and annex Cuba, but we dare not get up a coat or a pantaloon, or a morning-dress, or a peignoir of a lady, without first waiting for the fashion plates of Paris. What is taste but a sense of the fitness of things—the intuition of propriety—and why should we not lay claim to it as well as other nations. John Bull, in that respect, is a much more remarkable man; not only is he stock-English at home, but an Englishman wherever he goes—in Canton and St. Petersburgh, in Constantinople or Paris—wherever he sojourns he founds, or assists in founding, an English colony, governed by English laws, English fashions, English tastes, and all the substantial customs of his foggy and smoky island. Nothing tempts him to forego his Anglicism. He breakfasts on a steak in India, as he does on Ludgate Hill, and has made the establishment of butchers’ shops in the Asiatic possessions of England an important item of legislation;—he has established coffee-houses in Paris, where you get, par excellence, a biftec à l’anglaise—he has established Hotels d’Angleterre in every habitable town and village of Europe, and he has colonized the world with English shoemakers, tailors, and other artisans of every description. Let him go where he may, he prefers the productions of his country to every other, and even deals in preference with his countrymen, though he knows they cheat him. He would rather be circumvented by his own countrymen than pay an additional frank to a Frenchman.
Wherever half a dozen English families are congregated, there is a loyal English association for the preservation of the purity of English manners, English patriotism, and the holy and essential connection of Church and State. As a matter of course, whenever they can afford to pay for a preacher, they have their English chapel, and if a nobleman happens to get among them, they have their English genealogies, their court and their toadies. In former days they were at least obliged, when traveling, to study French, or some other European language, but since English is spoken all over the world, from the lady in the drawing-room to the garçon of the hotel and the café, the incoherent monosyllables of which English conversation is usually composed, will answer for an overland journey to Calcutta. Even in this country the English remain attached to their habits and customs, and to the fashions of their own modern Babylon.
Alas! it is not so with us. We imitate the whole world; we are the slaves of fashions set by other people, and yet, we are the only country on earth which has a written declaration of independence.
But the worst of it is, that in imitating Europe, we select generally that which is least fit for our use, and omit those laudable customs and manners which, being founded on the experience of centuries, give to the old continent the only real advantage it has over us. We copy aristocratic prudery and exclusiveness, and omit the graceful provenance of the higher orders, wherever their rank or title is not drawn into question, and the agreeable equality which is the essential charm of society. We cannot unbend for a single moment—we carry our personal dignity, our wealth, and our connections into the humblest walk of life, and by that very means deprive ourselves of a thousand little enjoyments which constitute the great aggregate of human happiness.
I will here allude only to one instance—the manner in which we spend our summers. Our summers are, in general, hotter than those of Europe and, in consequence, drive a much larger portion of the population into the country and to the watering-places. The facilities of locomotion, too, are very great, and traveling comparatively cheap; because we are in a habit of doing it in caravans, whether it be by rail-roads[[1]] or in floating palaces. How delightfully might we not spend the warm season, and the delicious autumn which follows, if we only knew how!