A Frenchman in America: Recollections of Men and Things

I listened to the different groups of people in the hotel. Some gave advice as to how the firemen should set about their work, or criticised. Others related the big fires they had witnessed, a few indulging in the recital of the exploits they performed thereat. There are a good many Gascons among the Americans. At four o’clock all danger was over, and we all retired.

…

I was longing to read the descriptions of the fire in this morning’s papers. I have now read them and am not at all disappointed. On the contrary, they are beyond my most sanguine expectations. Wonderful; simply perfectly wonderful! I am now trying to persuade myself that I really saw all that the reporters saw, and that I really ran great danger last night. For, “at every turn,” it appears, “the noble hotel seemed as if it must become the prey of the fierce element, and could only be saved by a miracle.” Columns and columns of details most graphically given, sensational, blood-curdling. But all that is nothing. You should read about the panic, and the scenes of wild confusion in the Burnet House, when all the good folks, who had all dressed and were looking quietly at the fire from the windows, are described as a crowd of people in despair: women disheveled, in their night-dresses, running wild, and throwing themselves in the arms of men to seek protection, and all shrieking and panic-stricken. Such a scene of confusion and terror you can hardly imagine. Wonderful!

CHAPTER XXXIV

A Journey if you Like – Terrible Encounter with an American Interviewer

In the train to Brushville, March 11.

Left Cincinnati this morning at ten o’clock and shall not arrive at Brushville before seven o’clock to-night. I am beginning to learn how to speak American. As I asked for my ticket this morning at the railroad office, the clerk said to me:

“C. H. D. or C. C. C. St. L. and St. P.?”

“C. H. D.,” I replied, with perfect assurance.

I happened to hit on the right line for Brushville.

By this time I know pretty well all those combinations of the alphabet by which the different railroad lines of America are designated.

No hope of comfort or of a dinner to-day. I shall have to change trains three times, but none of them, I am grieved to hear, have parlor cars or dining cars. There is something democratic about uniform cars for all alike. I am a democrat myself, yet I have a weakness for the parlor cars – and the dining cars.

At noon we stopped five minutes at a place which, two years ago, counted six wooden huts. To-day it has more than 5000 inhabitants, the electric light in the streets, a public library, two hotels, four churches, two banks, a public school, a high school, cuspidores, toothpicks, and all the signs of American civilization.

I changed trains at one o’clock at Castle Green Junction. No hotel in the place. I inquired where food could be obtained. A little wooden hut, on the other side of the depot, bearing the inscription “Lunch Room,” was pointed out to me. Lunch in America has not the meaning that it has in England, as I often experienced to my despair. The English are solid people. In England lunch means something. In America, it does not. However, as there was no Beware written outside, I entered the place. Several people were eating pies, fruit pies, pies with crust under, and crust over: sealed mysteries.

“I want something to eat,” I said to a man behind the counter, who was in possession of only one eye, and hailed from Old Oireland.

“What ’d ye loike?” replied he, winking with the eye that was not there.

“Well, what have you got?”

“Peach poy, apricot poy, apple poy, and mince poy.”

“Is that all?”

“And, shure, what more do you want?”

I have always suspected something mysterious about mince pies. At home, I eat mince pies. I also trust my friends’ cooks. Outside, I pass. I think that mince pies and sausages should be made at home.

“I like a little variety,” I said to the Irishman, “give me a small slice of apple pie, one of apricot pie, and another of peach pie.”

The Irishman stared at me.

“What’s the matter with the mince poy?” he seemed to say.

I could see from his eye that he resented the insult offered to his mince pies.

I ate my pies and returned on the platform. I was told that the train was two hours behind time, and I should be too late to catch the last Brushville train at the next change.

I walked and smoked.

The three pies began to get acquainted with each other.

…

Brushville, March 12.

Oh, those pies!

At the last change yesterday, I arrived too late. The last Brushville train was gone.

The pies were there.

A fortune I would have given for a dinner and a bed, which now seemed more problematic than ever.

I went to the station-master.

“Can I have a special train to take me to Brushville to-night?”

“A hundred dollars.”

“How much for a locomotive alone?”

“Sixty dollars.”

“Have you a freight train going to Brushville?”

“What will you do with it?”

“Board it.”

“Board it! I can’t stop the train.”

“I’ll take my chance.”

“Your life is insured?”

“Yes; for a great deal more than it is worth.”

“Very well,” he said, “I’ll let you do it for five dollars.”

And he looked as if he was going to enjoy the fun. The freight train arrived, slackened speed, and I boarded, with my portmanteau and my umbrella, a car loaded with timber. I placed my handbag on the timber – you know, the one I had when traveling in “the neighborhood of Chicago” – sat on it, opened my umbrella, and waved a “tata” to the station-master.

It was raining fast, and I had a journey of some thirty miles to make at the rate of about twelve miles an hour.

Oh, those pies! They now seemed to have resolved to fight it out. Sacrebleu! De bleu! de bleu!

A few miles from Brushville I had to get out, or rather, get down, and take a ticket for Brushville on board a local train.

Benumbed with cold, wet through, and famished, I arrived here at ten o’clock last night. The peach pie, the apple pie, and the apricot pie had settled their differences and become on friendly and accommodating terms.

I was able, on arriving at the hotel, to enjoy some light refreshments, which I only obtained, at that time of night, thanks to the manager, whom I had the pleasure of knowing personally.

At eleven o’clock I went to bed, or, to use a more proper expression for my Philadelphia readers, I retired.

I had been “retiring” for about half an hour, when I heard a knock at the door.

“Who’s there?” I grumbled from under the bedclothes.

“A representative of the Brushville Express.”

“Oh,” said I, “I am very sorry – but I’m asleep.”

“Please let me in; I won’t detain you very long.”

“I guess you won’t. Now, please do not insist. I am tired, upset, ill, and I want rest. Come to-morrow morning.”

“No, I can’t do that,” answered the voice behind the door; “my paper appears in the morning, and I want to put in something about you.”

“Now, do go away,” I pleaded, “there’s a good fellow.”

“I must see you,” insisted the voice.

“You go!” I cried, “you go – ” without mentioning any place.

For a couple of minutes there was silence, and I thought the interviewer was gone. The illusion was sweet, but short. There was another knock, followed by a “I really must see you to-night.” Seeing that there would be no peace until I had let the reporter in, I unbolted the door, and jumped back into my – you know.

It was pitch dark.

The door opened; and I heard the interviewer’s steps in the room. By and by, the sound of a pocket being searched was distinct. It was his own. A match was pulled out and struck; the premises examined and reconnoitered.

A chandelier with three lights hung in the middle of the room. The reporter, speechless and solemn, lighted one burner, then two, then three, chose the most comfortable seat, and installed himself in it, looking at me with an air of triumph.

I was sitting up, wild and desheveled, in my “retiring” clothes.

“Que voulez-vous?” I wanted to yell, my state of drowsiness allowing me to think only in French.

Instead of translating this query by “What do you want?” as I should have done, if I had been in the complete enjoyment of my intellectual faculties, I shouted to him:

“What will you have?”

“Oh, thanks, I’m not particular,” he calmly replied. “I’ll have a little whisky and soda – rye whisky, please.”

My face must have been a study as I rang for whisky and soda.

The mixture was brought – for two.

“I suppose you have no objection to my smoking?” coolly said the man in the room.

“Not at all,” I remarked; “this is perfectly lovely; I enjoy it all.”

He pulled out his pocket-book and his pencil, crossed his legs, and having drawn a long whiff from his cigar, he said:

“I see that you have no lecture to deliver in Brushville; may I ask you what you have come here for?”

“Now,” said I, “what the deuce is that to you? If this is the kind of questions you have to ask me, you go – ”

He pocketed the rebuff, and went on undisturbed:

“How are you struck with Brushville?”

“I am struck,” said I, “with the cheek of some of the inhabitants. I have driven to this hotel from the depot in a closed carriage, and I have seen nothing of your city.”

The man wrote down something.

“I lecture to-morrow night,” I continued, “before the students of the State University, and I have come here for rest.”

He took this down.

“All this, you see, is very uninteresting; so, good-night.”

And I disappeared.

The interviewer rose and came to my side.

“Really, now that I am here, you may as well let me have a chat with you.”

“You wretch!” I exclaimed. “Don’t you see that I am dying for sleep? Is there nothing sacred for you? Have you lost all sense of charity? Have you no mother? Don’t you believe in future punishment? Are you a man or a demon?”

“Tell me some anecdotes, some of your reminiscences of the road,” said the man, with a sardonic grin.

I made no reply. The imperturbable reporter resumed his seat and smoked.

“Are you gone?” I sighed, from under the blankets.

The answer came in the following words:

“I understand, sir, that when you were a young man – ”

“When I was what?” I shouted, sitting up once more.

“I understand, sir, that when you were quite a young man,” repeated the interviewer, with the sentence improved, “you were an officer in the French army.”

“I was,” I murmured, in the same position.

“I also understand you fought during the Franco-Prussian war.”

“I did,” I said, resuming a horizontal position.

“May I ask you to give me some reminiscences of the Franco-Prussian war – just enough to fill about a column?”

I rose and again sat up.

“Free citizen of the great American Republic,” said I, “beware, beware! There will be blood shed in this room to-night.”

And I seized my pillow.

“You are not meaty,” exclaimed the reporter.

“May I inquire what the meaning of this strange expression is?” I said, frowning; “I don’t speak American fluently.”

“It means,” he replied, “that there is very little to be got out of you.”

“Are you going?” I said, smiling.

“Well, I guess I am.”

“Good-night.”

“Good-night.”

I bolted the door, turned out the gas, and “re-retired.”

“Poor fellow,” I thought; “perhaps he relied on me to supply him with material for a column. I might have chatted with him. After all, these reporters have invariably been kind to me. I might as well have obliged him. What is he going to do?”

And I dreamed that he was dismissed.

I ought to have known better.

This morning I opened the Brushville Express, and, to my stupefaction, saw a column about me. My impressions of Brushville, that I had no opportunity of looking at, were there. Nay, more. I would blush to record here the exploits I performed during the Franco-Prussian war, as related by my interviewer, especially those which took place at the battle of Gravelotte, where, unfortunately, I was not present. The whole thing was well written. The reference to my military services began thus: “Last night a hero of the great Franco-Prussian war slept under the hospitable roof of Morrison Hotel, in this city.”

“Slept!” This was adding insult to injury.

…

This morning I had the visit of two more reporters.

“What do you think of Brushville?” they said; and, seeing that I would not answer the question, they volunteered information on Brushville, and talked loud on the subject. I have no doubt that the afternoon papers will publish my impressions of Brushville.

CHAPTER XXXV

The University of Indiana – Indianapolis – The Veterans of the Grand Army of the Republic on the Spree – A Marvelous Equilibrist

Bloomington, Ind., March 13.

Lectured yesterday before the students of the University of Indiana, and visited the different buildings this morning. The university is situated on a hill in the midst of a wood, about half a mile from the little town of Bloomington.

In a few days I shall be at Ann Arbor, the University of Michigan, the largest in America, I am told. I will wait till then to jot down my impressions of university life in this country.

…

I read in the papers: “Prince Saunders, colored, was hanged here (Plaquemine, Fla.) yesterday. He declared he had made his peace with God, and his sins had been forgiven. Saunders murdered Rhody Walker, his sweetheart, last December, a few hours after he had witnessed the execution of Carter Wilkinson.”

If Saunders has made his peace with God, I hope his executioners have made theirs with God and man. What an indictment against man! What an argument against capital punishment! Here is a man committing a murder on returning from witnessing an execution. And there are men still to be found who declare that capital punishment deters men from committing murder!

…

Indianapolis, March 14.

Arrived here yesterday afternoon. Met James Whitcomb Riley, the Hoosier poet. Mr. Riley is a man of about thirty, a genuine poet, full of pathos and humor, and a great reciter. No one, I imagine, could give his poetry as he does himself. He is a born actor, who holds you in suspense, and makes you cry or laugh just as he pleases. I remember, when two years ago Mr. Augustin Daly gave a farewell supper to Mr. Henry Irving and Miss Ellen Terry at Delmonico’s, Mr. Riley recited one of his poems at table. He gave most of us a big lump in our throats, and Miss Terry had tears rolling down her cheeks.

…

The veterans of the Grand Army of the Republic are having a great field day in Indianapolis. They have come here to attend meetings and ask for pensions, so as to reduce that unmanageable surplus. Indianapolis is full, and the management of Denison House does not know which way to turn. All these veterans have large, broad-brimmed soft hats and are covered all over with badges and ribbons. Their wives and daughters, members of some patriotic association, have come with them. It is a huge picnic. The entrance hall is crowded all day. The spittoons have been replaced by tubs for the occasion. Chewing is in favor all over America, but the State of Indiana beats, in that way, everything I have seen before.

…

Went to see Clara Morris in Adolphe Belot’s “Article 47,” at the Opera House, last night. Clara Morris is a powerful actress, but, like most actors and actresses who go “starring” through America, badly supported. I watched the audience with great interest. Nineteen mouths out of twenty were chewing – the men tobacco, the women gum impregnated with peppermint. All the jaws were going like those of so many ruminants grazing in a field. From the box I occupied the sight was most amusing.

On returning to Denison House from the theater, I went to have a smoke in a quiet corner of the hall, far from the crowd. By and by two men, most smartly dressed, with diamond pins in their cravats, and flowers embroidered on their waistcoats, came and sat opposite me. I thought they had chosen the place to have a quiet chat together. Not so. One pushed a cuspidore with his foot and brought it between the two chairs. There, for half an hour, without saying one word to each other, they chewed, hawked, and spat – and had a good time before going to bed.

…

Trewey is nowhere as an equilibrist, compared to a gallant veteran who breakfasted at my table, this morning. Among the different courses brought to him were two boiled eggs, almost raw, poured into a tumbler according to the American fashion. Without spilling a drop, he managed to eat those eggs with the end of his knife. It was marvelous. I have never seen the like of it, even in Germany, where the knife trick is practiced from the tenderest age.

In Europe, swaggering little boys smoke; here they chew and spit, and look at you, as if to say: “See what a big man I am!”

CHAPTER XXXVI

Chicago (Second Visit) – Vassili Vereschagin’s Exhibition – The “Angelus” – Wagner and Wagnerites – Wanderings About the Big City – I Sit on the Tribunal

Chicago, March 15.

Arrived here this morning and put up at the Grand Pacific Hotel. My lecture to-night at the Central Music Hall is advertised as a causerie. My local manager informs me that many people have inquired at the box-office what the meaning of that French word is. As he does not know himself, he could not enlighten them, but he thinks that curiosity will draw a good crowd to-night.

This puts me in mind of a little incident which took place about a year ago. I was to make my appearance before an afternoon audience in the fashionable town of Eastbourne. Not wishing to convey the idea of a serious and prosy discourse, I advised my manager to call the entertainment “A causerie.” The room was full and the affair passed off very well. But an old lady, who was a well-known patroness of such entertainments, did not put in an appearance. On being asked the next day why she was not present, she replied: “Well, to tell you the truth, when I saw that they had given the entertainment a French name, I was afraid it might be something not quite fit for me to hear.” Dear soul!

…

March 16.

My manager’s predictions were realized last night. I had a large audience, one of the keenest and the most responsive and appreciative I have ever had. I was introduced by Judge Elliott Anthony, of the Superior Court, in a short, witty, and graceful little speech. He spoke of Lafayette and of the debt of gratitude America owes to France for the help she received at her hands during the War of Independence. Before taking leave of me, Judge Anthony kindly invited me to pay a visit to the Superior Court next Wednesday.

…

March 17.

Dined yesterday with Mr. James W. Scott, proprietor of the Chicago Herald, one of the most flourishing newspapers in the United States, and in the evening went to see Richard Mansfield in “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.” The play is a repulsive one, but the double impersonation gives the great actor a magnificent opportunity for the display of his histrionic powers. The house was crowded, though it was Sunday. The pick of Chicago society was not there, of course. Some years ago, I was told, a Sunday audience was mainly composed of men. To-day the women go as freely as the men. The “horrible” always has a great fascination for the masses, and Mansfield held his popular audience in a state of breathless suspense. There was a great deal of disappointment written on the faces when the light was turned down on the appearance of “Mr. Hyde,” with his horribly distorted features. A woman, sitting in a box next to the one I occupied, exclaimed, as “Hyde” came to explain his terrible secret to the doctor, in the fourth act, “What a shame, they are turning down the light again!”

…

March 18.

Spent yesterday in recreation intellectual – and otherwise. I like to see everything, and I have no objection to entering a dime museum. I went to one yesterday morning, and saw a bearded lady, a calf with two heads, a gorilla (stuffed), a girl with no arms, and other freaks of nature. The bearded lady had very, very masculine features, but honi soit qui mal y pense. I could not help thinking of one of General Horace Porter’s good stories. A school-master asks a little boy what his father is.

“Please, sir, papa told me not to tell.”

“Oh, never mind, it’s all right with me.”

“Please, sir, he is the bearded lady at the dime museum.”

From the museum I went to the free library in the City Hall. Dime museums and free libraries – such is America. The attendance at the free libraries increases rapidly every day, and the till at the dime museums diminishes with proportionate rapidity.

After lunch I paid a visit to the exhibition of Vassili Vereschagin’s pictures. What on earth could possess the talented Russian artist, whose coloring is so lovely, to expend his labor on such subjects! Pictures like those, which show the horrors of a campaign in all their hideousness, may serve a good purpose in creating a detestation of war in all who see them. Nothing short of such a motive in the artist could excuse the portrayal of such infamies. These pictures are so many nightmares which will certainly haunt my eyes and brain for days and nights to come. Battle scenes portrayed with a realism that is revolting, because, alas, only too true. The execution of nihilists in a dim, dreary, snow-covered waste. An execution of sepoys, the doomed rebels tied to the mouths of cannon about to be fired off. Scenes of torture, illustrative of the extent to which human suffering can be carried, give you cold shudders in every fiber of your body. One horrid canvas shows a deserted battlefield, the snow-covered ground littered with corpses that ravens are tearing and fighting for. But, perhaps worst of all, is a picture of a field, where, in the snow, lie the human remains of a company of Russian soldiers who have been surprised and slain by Turks. Among the bodies, outraged by horrible and nameless mutilations, walks a priest, swinging a censer. One seems to be pursued by, and impregnated with, a smell of cadaverous putrefaction. This collection of pictures is installed in a place which has been used for stabling horses in, and is reeking with stable odors and the carbolic acid that has been employed to neutralize them. Your sense of smell is in full sympathy with your horrified sense of sight: both are revolted.

…

Now, behind the three large rooms devoted to the Russian artist’s works was a small one, in which hung a single picture. You little guess that that picture was no other than Jean Francois Millet’s “Angelus.” Millet’s dear little “Angelus,” that hymn of resignation and peace, alongside of all this roar and carnage of battle! The exhibitor thought, perhaps, that a sedative might be needed after the strong dose of Vassili Vereschagin, but I imagine that no one who went into that little room after the others was in a mood to listen to Millet’s message.

…

March 19.

Yesterday morning I went to see the Richmond Libby Prison, a four-story, huge brick building which has been removed here from Richmond, over a distance of more than a thousand miles, across the mountains of Pennsylvania. This is, perhaps, as the circular says, an unparalleled feat in the history of the world. The prison has been converted into a museum, illustrating the Civil War and African Slavery in America. The visit proved very interesting. In the afternoon I had a drive through the beautiful parks of the city.

In the evening I went to see “Tannhäuser” at the Auditorium. Outside, the building looks more like a penitentiary than a place of amusement – a huge pile of masonry, built of great, rough, black-looking blocks of stone. Inside, it is magnificent. I do not know anything to compare with it for comfort, grandeur, and beauty. It can hold seven thousand people. The decorations are white and gold. The lighting is done by means of arc electric lights in the enormously lofty roof – lights which can be lowered at will. Mr. Peck kindly took me to see the inner workings of the stage. I should say “stages,” for there are three. The hydraulic machinery for raising and lowering them cost $200,000.

Madame Lehmann sang grandly. I imagine that she is the finest lady exponent of Wagner’s music alive. She not only sings the parts, but looks them. Built on grand lines and crowned with masses of blond hair, she seems, when she gives forth those volumes of clear tones, a Norse goddess strayed into the nineteenth century.

M. Gounod describes Wagner as an astounding prodigy, an aberration of genius, a dreamer haunted by the colossal. For years I had listened to Wagner’s music, and, like most of my compatriots, brought up on the tuneful airs of Bellini, Donizetti, Rossini, Verdi, Auber, etc., I entirely failed to appreciate the music of the future. All I could say in its favor was some variation of the sentiment once expressed by Mr. Edgar W. Nye (“Bill Nye”) who, after giving the subject his mature consideration, said he came to the conclusion that Wagner’s music was not so bad as it sounded. But I own that since I went to Bayreuth and heard and saw the operas as there given, I began not only to see that they are beautiful, but why they are beautiful.

Wagnerian opera is a poetical and musical idealization of speech.

The fault that I, like many others, have fallen into, was that of listening to the voices instead of listening to the orchestra. The fact is, the voices could almost be dispensed with altogether. The orchestra gives you the beautiful poem in music, and the personages on the stage are really little more than illustrative puppets. They play about the same part in the work that pictures play in a book. Wagner’s method was something so new, so different to all we had been accustomed to, that it naturally provoked much indignation and enmity – not because it was bad, but because it was new. It was the old story of the Classicists and Romanticists over again.

If you wanted to write a symphony, illustrative of the pangs and miseries of a sufferer from toothache, you would, if you were a disciple of Wagner, write your orchestral score so that the instruments should convey to the listener the whole gamut of groans – the temporary relief, the return of the pain, the sudden disappearance of it on ringing the bell at the dentist’s door, the final wrench of extraction gone through by the poor patient. On the boards you would put a personage who, with voice and contortions, should help you, as pictorial illustrations help an author. Such is the Wagnerian method.

After the play I met a terrible Wagnerite. Most Wagnerites are terrible. They will not admit that anything can be discussed, much less criticised, in the works of the master. They are not admirers, disciples; they are worshipers. To them Wagner’s music is as perfect as America is to many a good-humored American. They will tell you that never have horses neighed so realistically as they do in the “Walküre.” Answer that this is almost lowering music to the level of ventriloquism, and they will declare you a profane, unworthy to live. My Wagnerite friend told me last night that Wagner’s work constantly improved till it reached perfection in “Parsifal.” “There,” he said, quite seriously, “the music has reached such a state of perfection that, in the garden scene, you can smell the violets and the roses.”

“Well,” I interrupted, “I heard ‘Parsifal’ in Bayreuth, and I must confess that it is, perhaps, the only work of Wagner’s that I cannot understand.”

“I have heard it thirty-four times,” he said, “and enjoyed it more the thirty-fourth time than I did the thirty-third.”

“Then,” I remarked, “perhaps it has to be heard fifty times before it can be thoroughly appreciated. In which case, you must own that life is too short to enable one to see an opera fifty times in order to enjoy it as it should really be enjoyed. I don’t care what science there is about music, or what labors a musician should have to go through. As one of the public, I say that music is a recreation, and should be understood at once. Auber, for example, with his delightful airs, that three generations of men have sung on their way home from the opera house, has been a greater benefactor of the human race than Wagner. I prefer music written for the heart to music written for the mind.”

On hearing me mention Auber’s name in one breath with Wagner’s, the Wagnerite threw a glance of contempt at me that I shall never forget.

“Well,” said I, to regain his good graces, “I may improve yet – I will try again.”

As a rule, the Wagnerite is a man utterly destitute of humor.

…

March 20.

Yesterday morning I called on Judge Elliott Anthony, at the Superior Court. The Judge invited me to sit by his side on the tribunal, and kindly explained to me the procedure, as the cases went on. Certainly kindness is not rare in Europe, but such simplicity in a high official is only to be met with in America.