A Frenchman in America: Recollections of Men and Things

The American will lavish attention and luxury on his wife and daughters, but he will save them the trouble of being mixed in his affairs. His business is his, his office is private. His womankind is the sun and glory of his life, whose company he will hasten to enjoy as soon as he can throw away the cares of his business. In France, a wife is a partner, a cashier who takes care of the money, even an adviser on stock and speculations. In the mercantile class, she is both cashier and bookkeeper. Enter a shop in France, Paris included, and behind “Pay Here,” you will see Madame, smiling all over as she pockets the money for the purchase you have made. When I said she is a partner, I might safely have said that she is the active partner, and, as a rule, by far the shrewder of the two. She brings to bear her native suppleness, her fascinating little ways, her persuasive manners, and many a customer whom her husband was allowing to go away without a purchase, has been brought back by the wife, and induced to part with his cash in the shop. Last year I went to Paris, on my way home from Germany, to spend a few days visiting the Exposition. One day I entered a shop on the Boulevards to buy a white hat. The new-fashioned hats, the only hats which the man showed me, were narrow-brimmed, and I declined to buy one. I was just going to leave, when the wife, who, from the back parlor, had listened to my conversation with her husband, stepped in and said: “But, Adolphe, why do you let Monsieur go? Perhaps he does not care to follow the fashion. We have a few white broad-brimmed hats left from last year that we can let Monsieur have à bon compte. They are upstairs, go and fetch them.” And, sure enough, there was one which fitted and pleased me, and I left in that shop a little sum of twenty-five francs, which the husband was going to let me take elsewhere, but which the wife managed to secure for the firm.

No one who has lived in France has failed to be struck with the intelligence of the women, and there exist few Frenchmen who do not readily admit how intellectually inferior they are to their countrywomen, chiefly among the middle and lower classes. And this is not due to any special training, for the education received by the women of that class is of the most limited kind; they are taught to read, write, and reckon, and their education is finished. Shrewdness is inborn in them, as well as a peculiar talent for getting a hundred cents’ worth for every dollar they spend. How to make a house look pretty and attractive with small outlay; how to make a dress or turn out a bonnet with a few knick-knacks; how to make a savory dish out of a small remnant of beef, mutton, and veal; all that is a science not to be despised when a husband, in receipt of a four or five hundred dollar salary, wants to make a good dinner, and see his wife look pretty. No doubt the aristocratic inhabitants of Mayfair and Belgravia in London, and the plutocracy of New York, may think all this very small, and these French people very uninteresting. They can, perhaps, hardly imagine that such people may live on such incomes and look decent. But they do live, and live very happy lives, too. And I will go so far as to say that happiness, real happiness, is chiefly found among people of limited income. The husband, who perhaps for a whole year has put quietly by a dollar every week, so as to be able to give his dear wife a nice present at Christmas, gives her a far more valuable, a far better appreciated present, than the millionaire who orders Tiffany to send a diamond rivière to his wife. That quiet young French couple, whom you see at the upper circle of a theater, and who have saved the money to enable them to come and hear such and such a play, are happier than the occupants of the boxes on the first tier. If you doubt it, take your opera glasses, and “look on this picture, and on this.”

In observing nations, I have always taken more interest in the “million,” who differ in every country, than in the “upper ten,” who are alike all over the world. People who have plenty of money at their disposal generally discover the same way of spending it, and adopt the same mode of living. People who have only a small income show their native instincts in the intelligent use of it. All these differ, and these only are worth studying, unless you belong to the staff of a “society” paper. (As a Frenchman, I am glad to say we have no “society” papers. England and America are the only two countries in the world where these official organs of Anglo-Saxon snobbery can be found, and I should not be surprised to hear that Australia possessed some of these already.)

…

The source of French happiness is to be found in the thrift of the women, from the best middle class to the peasantry. This thrift is also the source of French wealth. A nation is really wealthy when the fortunes are stable, however small. We have no railway kings, no oil kings, no silver kings, but we have no tenement houses, no Unions, no Work-houses. Our lower classes do not yet ape the upper class people, either in their habits or dress. The wife of a peasant or of a mechanic wears a simple snowy cap, and a serge or cotton dress. The wife of a shopkeeper does not wear any jewelry because she cannot afford to buy real stones, and her taste is too good to allow of her wearing false ones. She is not ashamed of her husband’s occupation; she does not play the fine lady while he is at work. She saves him the expense of a cashier or of an extra clerk by helping him in his business. When the shutters are up, she enjoys life with him, and is the companion of his pleasures as well as of his hardships. Club life is unknown in France, except among the upper classes. Man and wife are constantly together, and France is a nation of Darbys and Joans. There is, I believe, no country where men and women go through life on such equal terms as in France.

…

In England (and here again I speak of the masses only), the man thinks himself a much superior being to the woman. It is the same in Germany. In America, I should feel inclined to believe that a woman looks down upon a man with a certain amount of contempt. She receives at his hands attentions of all sorts, but I cannot say, as I have remarked before, that I have ever discovered in her the slightest trace of gratitude to man.

I have often tried to explain to myself this gentle contempt of American ladies for the male sex; for, contrasting it with the lovely devotion of Jonathan to his womankind, it is a curious enigma. Have I found the solution at last? Does it begin at school? In American schools, boys and girls, from the age of five, follow the same path to learning, and sit side by side on the same benches. Moreover, the girls prove themselves capable of keeping pace with the boys. Is it not possible that those girls, as they watched the performances of the boys in the study, learned to say, “Is that all?” While the young lords of creation, as they have looked on at what “those girls” can do, have been fain to exclaim: “Who would have thought it!” And does not this explain the two attitudes: the great respect of men for women, and the mild contempt of women for men?

Very often, in New York, when I had time to saunter about, I would go up Broadway and wait until a car, well crammed with people, came along. Then I would jump on board and stand near the door. Whenever a man wanted to get out, he would say to me “Please,” or “Excuse me,” or just touch me lightly to warn me that I stood in his way. But the women! Oh, the women! why, it was simply lovely. They would just push me away with the tips of their fingers, and turn up such disgusted and haughty noses! You would have imagined it was a heap of dirty rubbish in their way.

…

Would you have a fair illustration of the respective positions of woman in France, in England, and in America?

Go to a hotel, and watch the arrival of couples in the dining-room.

Now don’t go to the Louvre, the Grand Hotel, or the Bristol, in Paris. Don’t go to the Savoy, the Victoria, or the Metropole, in London. Don’t go to the Brunswick, in New York, because in all these hotels you will see that all behave alike. Go elsewhere and, I say, watch.

In France, you will see the couples arrive together, walk abreast toward the table assigned to them, very often arm in arm, and smiling at each other – though married.

In England, you will see John Bull leading the way. He does not like to be seen eating in public, and thinks it very hard that he should not have the dining-room all to himself. So he enters, with his hands in his pockets, looking askance at everybody right and left. Then, meek and demure, with her eyes cast down, follows Mrs. John Bull.

In America, behold the dignified, nay, the majestic entry of Mrs. Jonathan, a perfect queen going toward her throne, bestowing a glance on her subjects right and left – and Jonathan behind!

They say in France that Paris is the paradise of women. If so, there is a more blissful place than paradise; there is another word to invent to give an idea of the social position enjoyed by American ladies.

If I had to be born again, and might choose my sex and my birthplace, I would shout at the top of my voice:

“Oh, make me an American woman!”

CHAPTER XIII

More about Journalism in America – A Dinner at Delmonico’s – My First Appearance in an American Church

New York, Sunday Night, January 19.

Have been spending the whole day in reading the Sunday papers.

I am never tired of reading and studying the American newspapers. The whole character of the nation is there: Spirit of enterprise, liveliness, childishness, inquisitiveness, deep interest in everything that is human, fun and humor, indiscretion, love of gossip, brightness.

Speak of electric light, of phonographs and graphophones, if you like; speak of those thousand and one inventions which have come out of the American brain; but if you wish to mention the greatest and most wonderful achievement of American activity, do not hesitate for a moment to give the palm to American journalism; it is simply the ne plus ultra.

You will find some people, even in America, who condemn its loud tone; others who object to its meddling with private life; others, again, who have something to say of its contempt for statements which are not in perfect accordance with strict truth. I even believe that a French writer, whom I do not wish to name, once said that very few statements to be found in an American paper were to be relied upon – beyond the date. People may say this and may say that about American journalism; I confess that I like it, simply because it will supply you with twelve – on Sundays with thirty – pages that are readable from the first line to the last. Yes, from the first line to the last, including the advertisements.

The American journalist may be a man of letters, but, above all, he must possess a bright and graphic pen, and his services are not wanted if he cannot write a racy article or paragraph out of the most trifling incident. He must relate facts, if he can, but if he cannot, so much the worse for the facts; he must be entertaining and turn out something that is readable.

Suppose, for example, a reporter has to send to his paper the account of a police-court proceeding. There is nothing more important to bring to the office than the case of a servant girl who has robbed her mistress of a pair of diamond earrings. The English reporter will bring to his editor something in the following style:

Mary Jane So-and-So was yesterday charged before the magistrate with stealing a pair of diamond earrings from her mistress. It appears [always it appears, that is the formula] that, last Monday, as Mrs. X. went to her room to dress for dinner, she missed a pair of diamond earrings, which she usually kept in a little drawer in her bedroom. On questioning her maid on the subject, she received incoherent answers. Suspicion that the maid was the thief arose in her mind, and —

A long paragraph in this dry style will be published in the Times, or any other London morning paper.

Now, the American reporter will be required to bring something a little more entertaining if he hopes to be worth his salt on the staff of his paper, and he will probably get up an account of the case somewhat in the following fashion:

Mary Jane So-and-so is a pretty little brunette of some twenty summers. On looking in the glass at her dainty little ears, she fancied how lovely a pair of diamond earrings would look in them. So one day she thought she would try on those of her mistress. How lovely she looked! said the looking-glass, and the Mephistopheles that is hidden in the corner of every man or woman’s breast suggested that she should keep them. This is how Mary Jane found herself in trouble, etc., etc.

The whole will read like a little story, probably entitled something like “Another Gretchen gone wrong through the love of jewels.”

The heading has to be thought of no less than the paragraph. Not a line is to be dull in a paper sparkling all over with eye-ticklers of all sorts. Oh! those delicious headings that would resuscitate the dead, and make them sit up in their graves!

A Tennessee paper which I have now under my eyes announces the death of a townsman with the following heading:

“At ten o’clock last night Joseph W. Nelson put on his angel plumage.”

…

“Racy, catching advertisements supplied to the trade,” such is the announcement that I see in the same paper. I understand the origin of such literary productions as the following, which I cull from a Colorado sheet:

This morning our Saviour summoned away the jeweler William T. Sumner, of our city, from his shop to another and a better world. The undersigned, his widow, will weep upon his tomb, as will also his two daughters, Maud and Emma, the former of whom is married, and the other is open to an offer. The funeral will take place to-morrow. Signed. His disconsolate widow, Mathilda Sumner.

P. S.– This bereavement will not interrupt our business, which will be carried on as usual, only our place of business will be removed from Washington Street to No. 17 St. Paul Street, as our grasping landlord has raised our rent. – M. S.

The following advertisement probably emanates from the same firm:

Personal – His Love Suddenly Returned. – Recently they had not been on the best of terms, owing to a little family jar occasioned by the wife insisting on being allowed to renovate his wearing apparel, and which, of course, was done in a bungling manner; in order to prevent the trouble, they agreed to send all their work hereafter to D., the tailor, and now everything is lovely, and peace and happiness again reign in their household.

All this is lively. Never fail to read the advertisements of an American paper, or you will not have got out of it all the fun it supplies.

Here are a few from the Cincinnati Enquirer, which tell different stories:

1. The young Madame J. C. Antonia, just arrived from Europe, will remain a short time; tells past, present, and future; tells by the letters in hand who the future husband or wife will be; brings back the husband or lover in so many days, and guarantees to settle family troubles; can give good luck and success; ladies call at once; also cures corns and bunions. Hours 10 A. M. and 9 P. M.

“Also cures corns and bunions” is a poem!

2. The acquaintance desired of lady passing along Twelfth Street at three o’clock Sunday afternoon, by blond gent standing at corner. Address Lou K., 48, Enquirer Office.

3. Will the three ladies that got on the electric car at the Zoo Sunday afternoon favor three gents that got off at Court and Walnut Streets with their address? Address Electric Car, Enquirer Office.

4. Will two ladies on Clark Street car, that noticed two gents in front of Grand Opera House about seven last evening, please address Jands, Enquirer Office.

…

A short time ago a man named Smith was bitten by a rattlesnake and treated with whisky at a New York hospital. An English paper would have just mentioned the fact, and have the paragraph headed: “A Remarkable Cure”; or, “A Man Cured of a Rattlesnake Bite by Whisky”; but a kind correspondent sends me the headings of this bit of intelligence in five New York papers. They are as follows:

1. “Smith Is All Right!”

2. “Whisky Does It!”

3. “The Snake Routed at all Points!”

4. “The Reptile is Nowhere!”

5. “Drunk for Three Days and Cured.”

Let a batch of officials be dismissed. Do not suppose that an American editor will accept the news with such a heading as “Dismissal of Officials.” The reporter will have to bring some label that will fetch the attention. “Massacre at the Custom House,” or, “So Many Heads in the Basket,” will do. Now, I maintain that it requires a wonderful imagination – something little short of genius, to be able, day after day, to hit on a hundred of such headings. But the American journalist does it.

An American paper is a collection of short stories. The Sunday edition of the New York World, the New York Herald, the Boston Herald, the Boston Globe, the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Herald, and many others, is something like ten volumes of miscellaneous literature, and I do not know of any achievement to be compared to it.

I cannot do better than compare an American paper to a large store, where the goods, the articles, are labeled so as to immediately strike the customer.

A few days ago, I heard my friend, Colonel Charles H. Taylor, editor of the Boston Globe, give an interesting summary of an address on journalism which he is to deliver next Saturday before the members of the New England Club of Boston. He maintained that the proprietor of a newspaper has as much right to make his shop-window attractive to the public as any tradesman. If the colonel is of opinion that journalism is a trade, and the journalist a mere tradesman, I agree with him. If journalism is not to rank among the highest and noblest of professions, and is to be nothing more than a commercial enterprise, I agree with him.

Now, if we study the evolution of journalism for the last forty or fifty years, we shall see that daily journalism, especially in a democracy, has become a commercial enterprise, and that journalism, as it was understood forty years ago, has become to-day monthly journalism. The dailies have now no other object than to give the news – the latest – just as a tradesman that would succeed must give you the latest fashion in any kind of business. The people of a democracy like America are educated in politics. They think for themselves, and care but little for the opinions of such and such a journalist on any question of public interest. They want news, not literary essays on news. When I hear some Americans say that they object to their daily journalism, I answer that journalists are like other people who supply the public – they keep the article that is wanted.

A free country possesses the government it deserves, and the journalism it wants. A people active and busy as the Americans are, want a journalism that will keep their interest awake and amuse them; and they naturally get it. The average American, for example, cares not a pin for what his representatives say or do in Washington; but he likes to be acquainted with what is going on in Europe, and that is why the American journalist will give him a far more detailed account of what is going on in the Palace at Westminster than of what is being said in the Capitol.

In France, journalism is personal. On any great question of the day, domestic or foreign, the Frenchman will want to read the opinion of John Lemoinne in the Journal des Débats, or the opinion of Edouard Lockroy in the Rappel, or maybe that of Paul de Cassagnac or Henri Rochefort. Every Frenchman is more or less led by the editor of the newspaper which he patronizes. But the Frenchman is only a democrat in name and aspirations, not in fact. France made the mistake of establishing a republic before she made republicans of her sons. A French journalist signs his articles, and is a leader of public opinion, so much so that every successful journalist in France has been, is now, and ever will be, elected a representative of the people.

In America, as in England, the journalist has no personality outside the literary classes. Who, among the masses, knows the names of Bennett, Dana, Whitelaw Reid, Medill, Childs, in the United States? Who, in England, knows the names of Lawson, Mudford, Robinson, and other editors of the great dailies? If it had not been for his trial and imprisonment, Mr. W. T. Stead himself, though a most brilliant journalist, would never have seen his name on anybody’s lips.

A leading article in an American or an English newspaper will attract no notice at home. It will only be quoted on the European Continent.

It is the monthly and the weekly papers and magazines that now play the part of the dailies of bygone days. An article in the Spectator or Saturday Review, or especially in one of the great monthly magazines, will be quoted all over the land, and I believe that this relatively new journalism, which is read only by the cultured, has now for ever taken the place of the old one.

In a country where everybody reads, men as well as women; in a country where nobody takes much interest in politics outside of the State and the city in which he lives, the journalist has to turn out every day all the news he can gather, and present them to the reader in the most readable form. Formerly daily journalism was a branch of literature; now it is a news store, and is so not only in America. The English press shows signs of the same tendency, and so does the Parisian press. Take the London Pall Mall Gazette and Star, and the Paris Figaro, as illustrations of what I advance.

As democracy makes progress in England, journalism will become more and more American, although the English reporter will have some trouble in succeeding to compete with his American confrère in humor and liveliness.

Under the guidance of political leaders, the newspapers of Continental Europe direct public opinion. In a democracy, the newspapers follow public opinion and cater to the public taste; they are the servants of the people. The American says to his journalists: “I don’t care a pin for your opinions on such a question. Give me the news and I will comment on it myself. Only don’t forget that I am an overworked man, and that before, or after, my fourteen hours’ work, I want to be entertained.”

So, as I have said elsewhere, the American journalist must be spicy, lively, and bright. He must know how, not merely to report, but to relate in a racy, catching style, an accident, a trial, a conflagration, and be able to make up an article of one or two columns upon the most insignificant incident. He must be interesting, readable. His eyes and ears must be always open, every one of his five senses on the alert, for he must keep ahead in this wild race for news. He must be a good conversationalist on most subjects, so as to bring back from his interviews with different people a good store of materials. He must be a man of courage, to brave rebuffs. He must be a philosopher, to pocket abuse cheerfully.

He must be a man of honor, to inspire confidence in the people he has to deal with. Personally I can say this of him, that wherever I have begged him, for instance, to kindly abstain from mentioning this or that which might have been said in conversation with him, I have invariably found that he kept his word.

But if the matter is of public interest, he is, before and above all, the servant of the public; so, never challenge his spirit of enterprise, or he will leave no stone unturned until he has found out your secret and exhibited it in public.

I do not think that American journalism needs an apology.

It is the natural outcome of circumstances and the democratic times we live in. The Théâtre-Français is not now, under a Republic, and probably never again will be, what it was when it was placed under the patronage and supervision of the French Court. Democracy is the form of government least of all calculated to foster literature and the fine arts. To that purpose, Monarchy, with its Court and its fashionable society, is the best. This is no reason to prefer a monarchy to a republic. Liberty, like any other luxury, has to be paid for.

Journalism cannot be now what it was when papers were read by people of culture. In a democracy, the stage and journalism have to please the masses of the people. As the people become better and better educated, the stage and journalism will rise with them. What the people want, I repeat it, is news, and journals are properly called news papers.

Speaking of American journalism, no man need use apologetic language.

Not when the proprietor of an American paper will not hesitate to spend thousands of dollars to provide his readers with the minutest details about some great European event.

Not when an American paper will, at its own expense, send Henry M. Stanley to Africa in search of Livingstone.

Not so long as the American press is vigilant, and keeps its thousand eyes open on the interests of the American people.

…

Midnight.

Dined this evening with Richard Mansfield at Delmonico’s. I sat between Mr. Charles A. Dana, the first of American journalists, and General Horace Porter, and had what my American friends would call “a mighty elegant time.” The host was delightful, the dinner excellent, the wine “extra dry,” the speeches quite the reverse. “Speeches” is rather a big word for what took place at dessert. Every one supplied an anecdote, a story, a reminiscence, and contributed to the general entertainment of the guests.

The Americans have too much humor to spoil their dinners with toasts to the President, the Senate, the House of Representatives, the army, the navy, the militia, the volunteers, and the reserved forces.

I once heard Mr. Chauncey M. Depew referring to the volunteers, at some English public dinner, as “men invincible – in peace, and invisible – in war.” After dinner I remarked to an English peer:

“You have heard to-night the great New York after-dinner speaker; what do you think of his speech?”

“Well,” he said, “it was witty; but I think his remark about our volunteers was not in very good taste.”

I remained composed, and did not burst.

…

Newburgh, N. Y., January 21.

I lectured in Melrose, near Boston, last night, and had the satisfaction of pleasing a Massachusetts audience for the second time. After the lecture, I had supper with Mr. Nat Goodwin, a very good actor, who is now playing in Boston in a new play by Mr. Steele Mackaye. Mr. Nat Goodwin told many good stories at supper. He can entertain his friends in private as well as he can the public.

…

To-night I have appeared in a church, in Newburgh. The minister, who took the chair, had the good sense to refrain from opening the lecture with prayer. There are many who have not the tact necessary to see that praying before a humorous lecture is almost as irreverent as praying before a glass of grog. It is as an artist, however, that I resent that prayer. After the audience have said Amen, it takes them a full quarter of an hour to realize that the lecture is not a sermon; that they are in a church, but not at church; and the whole time their minds are in that undecided state, all your points fall flat and miss fire. Even without the preliminary prayer, I dislike lecturing in a church. The very atmosphere of a church is against the success of a light, humorous lecture, and many a point, which would bring down the house in a theater, will be received only with smiles in a lecture hall, and in respectful silence in a church. An audience is greatly influenced by surroundings.

Now, I must say that the interior of an American church, with its lines of benches, its galleries, and its platform, does not inspire in one such religious feelings as the interior of a European Catholic church. In many American towns, the church is let for meetings, concerts, exhibitions, bazaars, etc., and so far as you can see, there is nothing to distinguish it from an ordinary lecture hall.

Yet it is a church, and both lecturer and audience feel it.