A Frenchman in America: Recollections of Men and Things
TextCHAPTER XXVI
Milwaukee – A Well-filled Day – Reflections on the Scotch in America – Chicago Criticisms
Milwaukee, February 25.
Arrived here from Detroit yesterday. Milwaukee is a city of over two hundred thousand inhabitants, a very large proportion of whom are Germans, who have come here to settle down, and wish good luck to the Vaterland, at the respectful distance of five thousand miles.
At the station I was met by Mr. John L. Mitchell, the railway king, and by a compatriot of mine, M. A. de Guerville, a young enthusiast who has made up his mind to check the German invasion of Milwaukee, and has succeeded in starting a French society, composed of the leading inhabitants of the city. On arriving, I found a heavy but delightful programme to go through during the day: a lunch to be given me by the ladies at Milwaukee College at one o’clock; a reception by the French Club at Mrs. John L. Mitchell’s house at four; a dinner at six; my lecture at eight, and a reception and a supper by the Press Club at half-past ten; the rest of the evening to be spent as circumstances would allow or suggest. I was to be the guest of Mr. Mitchell at his magnificent house in town.
“Good,” I said, “let us begin.”
…
Went through the whole programme. The reception by the French Club, in the beautiful Moorish-looking rooms of Mrs. John L. Mitchell’s superb mansion, was a great success. I was amazed to meet so many French-speaking people, and much amused to see my young compatriot go from one group to another, to satisfy himself that all the members of the club were speaking French; for I must tell you that, among the statutes of the club, there is one that imposes a fine of ten cents on any member caught in the act of speaking English at the gatherings of the association.
The lecture was a great success. The New Plymouth Church3 was packed, and the audience extremely warm and appreciative. The supper offered to me by the Press Club proved most enjoyable. And yet, that was not all. At one o’clock the Press Club repaired to a perfect German Brauerei, where we spent an hour in Bavaria, drinking excellent Bavarian beer while chatting, telling stories, etc.
I will omit to mention at what time we returned home, so as not to tell tales about my kind host.
In spite of the late hours we kept last night, breakfast was punctually served at eight this morning. First course, porridge. Thanks to the kind, thoroughly Scotch hospitality of Mr. John L. Mitchell and his charming family, thanks to the many friends and sympathizers I met here, I shall carry away a most pleasant recollection of this large and beautiful city. I shall leave Milwaukee with much regret. Indeed, the worst feature of a thick lecturing tour is to feel, almost every day, that you leave behind friends whom you may never see again.
I lecture at the Central Music Hall, Chicago, this evening; but Chicago is reached from here in two hours and a half, and I will go as late in the day as I can.
No more beds for me now, until I reach Albany, in three days.
…
The railway king in Wisconsin is a Scotchman. I was not surprised to hear it. The iron king in Pennsylvania is a Scotchman, Mr. Andrew Carnegie. The oil king of Ohio is a Scotchman, Mr. Alexander Macdonald. The silver king of California is a Scotchman, Mr. Mackay. The dry-goods-store king of New York – he is dead now – was a Scotchman, Mr. Stewart. It is just the same in Canada, just the same in Australia, and all over the English-speaking world. The Scotch are successful everywhere, and the new countries offer them fields for their industry, their perseverance, and their shrewdness. There you see them landowners, directors of companies, at the head of all the great enterprises. In the lower stations of life, thanks to their frugality and saving habits, you find them thriving everywhere. You go to the manufactory, you are told that the foremen are Scotch.
I have, perhaps, a better illustration still.
If you travel in Canada, either by the Grand Trunk or the Canadian Pacific, you will meet in the last parlor car, near the stove, a man whose duty consists in seeing that, all along the line, the workmen are at their posts, digging, repairing, etc. These workmen are all day exposed to the Canadian temperature, and often have to work knee-deep in the snow. Well, you will find that the man with small, keen eyes, who is able to do his work in the railroad car, warming himself comfortably by the stove, is invariably a Scotchman. There is only one berth with a stove in the whole business; it is he who has got it. Many times I have had a chat with that Scotchman on the subject of old Scotland. Many times I have sat with him in the little smoking-room of the parlor car, listening to the history of his life, or, maybe, a few good Scotch anecdotes.
…
In the train from Chicago to Cleveland, February 26.
I arrived in Chicago at five o’clock in the afternoon yesterday, dined, dressed, and lectured at the Music Hall under the auspices of the Drexel free Kindergarten. There was a large audience, and all passed off very well. After the lecture, I went to the Grand Pacific Hotel, changed clothes, and went on board the sleeping car bound for Cleveland, O.
…
The criticisms of my lecture in this morning’s Chicago papers are lively.
The Herald calls me:
A dapper little Frenchman. Five feet eleven in height, and two hundred pounds in weight!
The Times says:
That splendid trinity of the American peerage, the colonel, the judge, and the professor, turned out in full force at Central Music Hall last night. The lecturer is a magician who serves up your many little defects, peculiar to the auditors’ own country, on a silver salver, so artistically garnished that one forgets the sarcasm in admiration of the sauce.
The Tribune is quite as complimentary and quite as lively:
His satire is as keen as the blade of the celebrated executioner who could cut a man’s head off, and the unlucky person not know it until a pinch of snuff would cause a sneeze, and the decapitated head would, much to its surprise, find itself rolling over in the dust.
And after a good breakfast at Toledo station, I enjoyed an hour poring over the Chicago papers.
I lecture in Cleveland to-night, and am still in “the neighborhood of Chicago.”
CHAPTER XXVII
The Monotony of Traveling in the States – “Manon Lescaut” in America
In the train from Cleveland to Albany, February 27.
Am getting tired and ill. I am not bed-ridden, but am fairly well rid of a bed. I have lately spent as many nights in railway cars as in hotel beds.
Am on my way to Albany, just outside “the neighborhood of Chicago.” I lecture in that place to-night, and shall get to New York to-morrow.
I am suffering from the monotony of life. My greatest objection to America (indeed I do not believe I have any other) is the sameness of everything. I understand the Americans who run away to Europe every year to see an old church, a wall covered with moss and ivy, some good old-fashioned peasantry not dressed like the rest of the world.
What strikes a European most, in his rambles through America, is the absence of the picturesque. The country is monotonous, and eternally the same. Burned-up fields, stumps of trees, forests, wooden houses all built on the same pattern. All the stations you pass are alike. All the towns are alike. To say that an American town is ten times larger than another simply means that it has ten times more blocks of houses. All the streets are alike, with the same telegraph poles, the same “Indian” as a sign for tobacconists, the same red, white, and blue pole as a sign for barbers. All the hotels are the same, all the menus are the same, all the plates and dishes the same – why, all the ink-stands are the same. All the people are dressed in the same way. When you meet an American with all his beard, you want to shake his hands and thank him for not shaving it, as ninety-nine out of every hundred Americans do. Of course I have not seen California, the Rocky Mountains, and many other parts of America where the scenery is very beautiful; but I think my remarks can apply to those States most likely to be visited by a lecturer, that is, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and others, during the winter months, after the Indian summer, and before the renewal of verdure in May.
…
After breakfast, that indefatigable man of business, that intolerable bore, who incessantly bangs the doors and brings his stock-in-trade to the cars, came and whispered in my ears:
“New book – just out – a forbidden book!”
“A forbidden book! What is that?” I inquired.
He showed it to me. It was “Manon Lescaut.”
Is it possible? That literary and artistic chef-d’œuvre, which has been the original type of “Paul et Virginie” and “Atala”; that touching drama, which the prince of critics, Jules Janin, declared would be sufficient to save contemporary literature from complete oblivion, dragged in the mire, clothed in a dirty coarse English garb! and advertised as a forbidden book! Three generations of French people have wept over the pathetic story. Here it is now, stripped of its unique style and literary beauty, sold to the American public as an improper book – a libel by translation on a genius. British authors have complained for years that their books were stolen in America. They have suffered in pockets, it is true, but their reputation has spread through an immense continent. What is their complaint compared to that of the French authors who have the misfortune to see their works translated into American? It is not only their pockets that suffer, but their reputation. The poor French author is at the mercy of incapable and malicious translators hired at starvation wages by the American pirate publisher. He is liable to a species of defamation ten times worse than robbery.
And as I looked at that copy of “Manon Lescaut,” I almost felt grateful that Prevost was dead.
CHAPTER XXVIII
For the First Time I See an American Paper Abuse Me – Albany to New York – A Lecture at Daly’s Theater – Afternoon Audiences
New York, February 23.
The American press has always been very good to me. Fairness one has a right to expect, but kindness is an extra that is not always thrown in, and therefore the uniform amiability of the American press toward me could not fail to strike me most agreeably.
Up to yesterday I had not seen a single unkind notice or article, but in the Albany Express of yesterday morning I read:
This evening the people of Albany are asked to listen to a lecture by Max O’Rell, who was in this country two years ago, and was treated with distinguished courtesy. When he went home he published a book filled with deliberate misstatements and willful exaggerations of the traits of the American people.
This paper “has reason,” as the French say. My book contained one misstatement, at all events, and that was that “all Americans have a great sense of humor.” You may say that the French are a witty people, but that does not mean that France contains no fools. It is rather painful to have to explain such things, but I do so for the benefit of that editor and with apologies to the general reader.
In spite of this diverting little “par,” I had an immense audience last night in Harmanus Bleecker Hall, a new and magnificent construction in Albany, excellent, no doubt, for music, but hardly adapted for lecturing in, on account of its long and narrow shape.
I should have liked to stay longer in Albany, which struck me as being a remarkably beautiful place, but having to lecture in New York this afternoon, I took the vestibule train early this morning for New York. This journey is exceedingly picturesque along the Hudson River, traveling as you do between two ranges of wooded hills, dotted over with beautiful habitations, and now and then passing a little town bathing its feet in the water. In the distance one gets good views of the Catskill Mountains, immortalized by Washington Irving in “Rip Van Winkle.”
On boarding the train, the first thing I did was to read the news of yesterday. Imagine my amusement, on opening the Albany Express to read the following extract from the report of my lecture:
He has an agreeable but not a strong voice. This was the only point that could be criticised in his lecture, which consisted of many clever sketches of the humorous side of the character of different Anglo-Saxon nations. His humor is keen. He evidently is a great admirer of America and Americans, only bringing into ridicule some of their most conspicuously objectionable traits… His lecture was entertaining, clever, witty and thoroughly enjoyable.
The most amusing part of all this is that the American sketches which I introduced into my lecture last night, and which seemed to have struck the Albany Express so agreeably, were all extracts from the book “filled with deliberate misstatements and willful exaggerations of the traits of the American people.” Well, after all, there is humor, unconscious humor, in the Albany Express.
…
Arrived at the Grand Central Station in New York at noon, I gave up my check to a transfer man, but learned to my chagrin that the vestibule train from Albany had carried no baggage, and that my things would only arrive by the next train at about three o’clock. Pleasant news for a man who was due to address an audience at three!
There was only one way out of the difficulty. Off I went post-haste to a ready-made tailor’s, who sold me a complete fit-out from head to foot. I did not examine the cut and fit of each garment very minutely, but went off satisfied that I was presenting a neat and respectable appearance. Before going on the stage, however, I discovered that the sleeves of the new coat, though perfectly smooth and well-behaved so long as the arms inside them were bent at the elbow, developed a remarkable cross-twist as soon as I let my arms hang straight down.
By means of holding it firm with the middle finger, I managed to keep the recalcitrant sleeve in position, and the affair passed off very well. Only my friends remarked, after the lecture, that they thought I looked a little bit stiff, especially when making my bow to the audience.
…
My lecture at Daly’s Theater this afternoon was given under the auspices of the Bethlehem Day Nursery, and I am thankful to think that this most interesting association is a little richer to-day than it was yesterday. For an afternoon audience it was remarkably warm and responsive.
I have many times lectured to afternoon audiences, but have not, as a rule, enjoyed it. Afternoon “shows” are a mistake. Do not ask me why; but think of those you have ever been to, and see if you have a lively recollection of them. There is a time for everything. Fancy playing the guitar under your lady love’s window by daylight, for instance!
Afternoon audiences are kid-gloved ones. There is but a sprinkling of men, and so the applause, when it comes, is a feeble affair, more chilling almost than silence. In some fashionable towns it is bad form to applaud at all in the afternoon. I have a vivid recollection of the effect produced one afternoon in Cheltenham by the vigorous applause of a sympathizing friend of mine, sitting in the reserved seats. How all the other reserved seats craned their necks in credulous astonishment to get a view of this innovator, this outer barbarian! He was new to the wondrous ways of the Chillitonians. In the same audience was a lady, Irish and very charming, as I found out on later acquaintance, who showed her appreciation from time to time by clapping the tips of her fingers together noiselessly, while her glance said: “I should very much like to applaud, but you know I can’t do it; we are in Cheltenham, and such a thing is bad form, especially in the afternoon.”
Afternoon audiences in the southern health resorts of England are probably the least inspiriting and inspiring of all. There are the sick, the lame, the halt. Some of them are very interesting people, but a large proportion appear to be suffering more from the boredom of life than any other complaint, and look as if it would do them good to follow out the well-known advice, “Live on sixpence a day, and earn it.” It is hard work entertaining people who have done everything, seen everything, tasted everything, been everywhere – people whose sole aim is to kill time. A fair sprinkling are gouty. They spend most of their waking hours in a bath-chair. As a listener, the gouty man is sometimes decidedly funny. He gives signs of life from time to time by a vigorous slap on his thigh and a vicious looking kick. Before I began to know him, I used to wonder whether it was my discourse producing some effect upon him.
I am not afraid of meeting these people in America. Few people are bored here, all are happy to live, and all work and are busy. American men die of brain fever, but seldom of the gout. If an American saw that he must spend his life wheeled in a bath-chair, he would reflect that rivers are numerous in America, and he would go and take a plunge into one of them.
CHAPTER XXIX
Wanderings through New York – Lecture at the Harmonie Club – Visit to the Century Club
New York, March 1.
The more I see New York, the more I like it.
After lunch I had a drive through Central Park and Riverside Park, along the Hudson, and thoroughly enjoyed it. I returned to the Everett House through Fifth Avenue. I have never seen Central Park in summer, but I can realize how beautiful it must be when the trees are clothed. To have such a park in the heart of the city is perfectly marvelous. It is true that, with the exception of the superb Catholic Cathedral, Fifth Avenue has no monument worth mentioning, but the succession of stately mansions is a pleasant picture to the eye. What a pity this cathedral cannot stand in a square in front of some long thoroughfare, it would have a splendid effect. I know this was out of the question. Built as New York is, the cathedral could only take the place of a block. It simply represents so many numbers between Fiftieth and Fifty-first streets on Fifth Avenue.
In the Park I saw statues of Shakespeare, Walter Scott, and Robert Burns. I should have liked to see those of Longfellow, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and many other celebrities of the land. Washington, Franklin, and Lincoln are practically the only Americans whose statues you see all over the country. They play here the part that Wellington and Nelson play in England. After all, the “bosses” and the local politicians who run the towns probably never heard of Longfellow, Bryant, Poe, etc.
…
At four o’clock, Mr. Thomas Nast, the celebrated caricaturist, called. I was delighted to make his acquaintance, and found him a most charming man.
I dined with General Horace Porter and a few other friends at the Union League Club. The witty general was in his best vein.
At eight o’clock I lectured at the Harmonie Club, and had a large and most appreciative audience, composed of the pick of the Israelite community in New York.
After the lecture I attended one of the “Saturdays” at the Century Club, and met Mr. Kendal, who, with his talented wife, is having a triumphant progress through the United States.
There is no gathering in the world where you can see so many beautiful, intelligent faces as at the Century Club. There you see gathered together the cleverest men of a nation whose chief characteristic is cleverness.
CHAPTER XXX
Visit to the Brooklyn Academy of Music – Rev. Dr. Talmage
New York, March 2.
Went to hear Dr. T. de Witt Talmage this morning at the Academy of Music, Brooklyn.
What an actor America has lost by Dr. Talmage choosing the pulpit in preference to the stage!
The Academy of Music was crowded. Standing-room only. For an old-fashioned European, to see a theater, with its boxes, stalls, galleries, open for divine service was a strange sight; but we had not gone very far into the service before it became plain to me that there was nothing divine about it. The crowd had come there, not to worship God, but to hear Mr. Talmage.
At the door the programme was distributed. It consisted of six hymns to be interluded with prayers by the doctor. Between the fifth and sixth, he delivered the lecture, or the sermon, if you insist on the name, and during the sixth there was the collection, that hinge on which the whole service turns in Protestant places of worship.
I took a seat and awaited with the rest the entrance of Dr. Talmage. There was subdued conversation going on all around, just as there would be at a theater or concert: in fact, throughout the whole of the proceedings, there was no sign of a silent lifting up of the spirit in worship. Not a person in that strange congregation, went on his or her knees to pray. Most of them put one hand in front of the face, and this was as near as they got that morning to an attitude of devotion. Except for this, and the fact that they did not applaud, there was absolutely no difference between them and any other theater audience I ever saw.
The monotonous hymns were accompanied by a cornet-à-piston, which lent a certain amount of life to them, but very little religious harmony. That cornet was the key-note of the whole performance. The hymns, composed, I believe, for Dr. Talmage’s flock, are not of high literary value. “General” Booth would probably hesitate to include such in the répertoire of the Salvation Army. Judge of them for yourself. Here are three illustrations culled from the programme:
Sing, O sing, ye heirs of glory!
Shout your triumphs as you go:
Zion’s gates will open for you,
You shall find an entrance through.
’Tis the promise of God, full salvation to give
Unto him who on Jesus, his Son, will believe.
Though the pathway be lonely, and dangerous too, (sic)
Surely Jesus is able to carry me thro’.
This is poetry such as you find inside Christmas crackers.
Another hymn began:
One more day’s work for Jesus,
One less of life for me!
I could not help thinking that there would be good employment for a prophet of God, with a stout whip, in the congregations of the so-called faithful of to-day. I have heard them by hundreds shouting at the top of their voices:
O Paradise, O Paradise!
’Tis weary waiting here;
I long to be where Jesus is,
To feel, to see him near.
O Paradise, O Paradise!
I greatly long to see
The special place my dearest Lord,
In love, prepares for me!
Knowing something of those people outside the church doors, I have often thought what an edifying sight it would be if the Lord deigned to listen and take a few of them at their word. If the fearless Christ were here on earth again, what crowds of cheats and humbugs he would drive out of the Temple! And foremost, I fancy, would go the people who, instead of thanking their Maker who allows the blessed sun to shine, the birds to sing, and the flowers to grow for them here, howl and whine lies about longing for the joy of moving on to the better world, to the “special place” that is prepared for them. If there be a better world, it will be too good for hypocrites.
After hymn the fifth, Dr. Talmage takes the floor. The audience settled in their seats in evident anticipation of a good time, and it was soon clear to me that the discourse was not to be dull at any rate. But I waited in vain for a great thought, a lofty idea, or refined language. There came none. Nothing but commonplaces given out with tricks of voice and the gestures of a consummate actor. The modulations of the voice have been studied with care, no single platform trick was missing.
The doctor comes on the stage, which is about forty feet wide. He begins slowly. The flow of language is great, and he is never at a loss for a word. Motionless, in his lowest tones, he puts a question to us. Nobody replies, of course. Thereupon he paces wildly up and down the whole length of the stage. Then, bringing up in full view of his auditors, he stares at them, crosses his arms, gives a double and tremendous stamp on the boards, and in a terrific voice he repeats the question, and answers it. The desired effect is produced: he never misses fire.
Being an old stager of several years’ standing myself, I admire him professionally. Nobody is edified, nobody is regenerated, nobody is improved, but all are entertained. It is not a divine service, but it is a clever performance, and the Americans never fail to patronize a clever performance. All styles go down with them. They will give a hearing to everybody but the bore, especially on Sundays, when other forms of entertainment are out of the running.
It is not only the Brooklyn public that are treated to the discourses of Dr. Talmage, but the whole of America. He syndicates his sermons, and they are published in Monday’s newspapers in all quarters of America. I have also seen them reproduced in the Australian papers.
The delivery of these orations by Dr. Talmage is so superior to the matter they are made of, that to read them is slow indeed compared to hearing them.
At the back of the programme was a flaring advertisement of Dr. Talmage’s paper, called:
CHRISTIAN HERALD AND SIGNS OF OUR TIMES
A live, undenominational, illustrated Christian paper, with a weekly circulation of fifty thousand copies, and rapidly increasing. Every State of the Union, every Province of Canada, and every country in the world is represented on its enormous subscription list. Address your subscription to Mr. N., treasurer, etc.
“Signs of our times,” indeed!