Every one is extremely well dressed, in spite of the panic. The hair is worn plain and off the brow, let us thank the genius of Fashion, so that every woman has a purer, better look. Nothing destroys the expression of a good woman like breaking over that line which Nature has made about the forehead. Our women have made themselves into wicked Faustinas and vulgar Anonymas long enough with their frizzes and short curls and "banging," as the square-cut straight lock on the forehead is called. Let us see the Madonna brow once more. The high ruff, the sleeve to the elbow, the dress cut to show the figure, all bring-back the days of our great-grandmothers: the opera is filled with Copley's portraits. The bonnets, too, are delightfully large, with long feathers. Every new fashion brings out a new crop of beauties, but I could not see what beauties were brought out by those bold bonnets of last year, which were hung on at the back of the head.
We expect great fun from Dundreary rehearsing Hamlet for private theatricals. Mr. Sothern has been asked to write down Dundreary, that so great an eccentric conception may not be lost to the world. He answers that he has twelve volumes of Dundreary literature! That shows how much industry goes to even an "inconsiderate trifle." This fine actor and most accomplished and agreeable man has been playing in two of the poorest plays ever presented to a New York audience. Nothing but a capital "make up," resembling one of the most fashionable men in town, who is Sothern's particular friend, has given them point—even then only to New Yorkers. Sothern's fondness for practical joking has brought about so many false charges that he is getting very tired of being fathered with every stupid trick which any one chooses to play, and will probably drop that form of wit, so really unworthy of his great genius and true refinement, for the man who could invent Dundreary and who can play Garrick is a genius.
I assisted with four thousand others at the first representation of the Magic Flute at the Grand Opera House, where the late James Fisk's monogram is decently covered up by Gothic shields, hastily improvised after that distinguished actor met the reward of his crimes. I heard lima di Murska for the first time. She is an unpleasant miracle, compelling your reluctant astonishment. Such vocal gymnastics I never heard. The flute and the musical-box are left in the background, but her voice is nasal and disagreeable at first. Lucca's splendid, rich, full organ rang out gloriously by contrast, although her constitutional jealousy showed itself unpleasantly in some parts of the opera where Murska was so deliriously applauded. Lucca, little woman, conquered herself at last, and handed the flowers up to her rival with a pretty grace which was loudly applauded. It is strange that the tact of woman, usually so apprehensive, does not more often see the good effect of generosity.
One effect of the panic, it is to be hoped, will be to make the dinners less magnificently heavy. I am sure every lady in New York who was last winter constrained to sit from seven o'clock until eleven at those monstrously elaborate and expensive dinners which have become so much the fashion, will be glad to dine in a more simple manner, in a shorter time, with less display, and with fewer courses, and fewer excitements. One entertainer last winter introduced live swans and small canaries to enliven his dinner. The swans splashed rather disagreeably.
"Do you know why he had the swans?" said a lady to a gentleman.
"I suppose, he wanted the Ledas of society," said the gentleman.
"Well, yes," said the lady, "but I did not know, although he is as rich as a Jew, that he was a Jupiter."
The faces of the "panicstricken" seem to look brighter, although everybody talks of "shrinkage" and ruin. Meanwhile the beautiful weather keeps the carriages going and Fifth Avenue looking gay. "I shall fail, but my wife need not give up her horses," said a young broker the other day. The old days of commercial morality, when people reduced their style of living because they had failed, seem to have gone out of fashion.
A letter from New York, this Queen of Commerce, is almost necessarily mercantile, as is our conversation.
"How you all talk stocks and money!" said a gentleman just arrived from a ten years' sojourn in Europe. "When I went away you were talking of books, of art, of social ethics, of fine women, of good dinners, of whist and bezique: now you are all talking of longs and shorts, bulls and bears, a fraction of per cent., etc. etc.—all of you, men, women and children."