Chapter 6

It is whimsical, because this absurd spectacle is presented by manikins who are made of the same clay as Plutarch’s heroes-because, deliberately, they prefer cabbages to roses. I am not at all angry with them. On the contrary, when they dance well I look on with pleasure. Man ought to dance, but he ought to do something else, too. All genial gentlemen in all ages have danced. Who quarrels with dancing? Ask Mrs. Potiphar if I ever objected to it. But then, people must dance at their own risk. If Lucy Lamb, by dancing with young Boosey when he is tipsy, shows that she has no self-respect, how can I, coolly talking with Mrs. Lamb in the corner, and gravely looking on, respect the young lady? Lucy tells me that if she dances with James she must with John. I cannot deny it, for I am not sufficiently familiar with the regulations of the mystery. Only this; if dancing with sober James makes it necessary to dance with tipsy John--it seems to me, upon a hasty glance at the subject, that a self-respecting Lucy would refrain from the dance with James. Why it should be so, I cannot understand. Why Lucy must dance with every man who asks her, whether he is in his senses, or knows how to dance, or is agreeable to her or not, is a profound mystery to Paul Potiphar. Here is a case of woman’s wrongs, decidedly. We men cull the choicest partners, make the severest selections, and the innocent Lucys gracefully submit. Lucy loves James, and a waltz with him (as P. P. knows very well from experience) is “a little heaven below” to both. Now, dearest Lucy, why must you pay the awful penance of immediately waltzing with John, against whom your womanly instinct rebels? And yet the laws of social life are so stern, that Lucy must make the terrible decision, whether it is better to waltz with James or worse to waltz with John! “Whether,” to put it strongly with Father Jerome, “heaven is pleasanter than hell is painful.”

I say that I watch these graceful gamesters, without bitter feeling. Sometimes it is sad to see James woo Lucy, win her, marry her, and then both discover that they have made a mistake. I don’t see how they could have helped it; and when the world, that loves them both so tenderly, holds up its pure hands of horror, why, Paul Potiphar, goes quietly home to Mrs. P., who is dressing for Lucy’s ball, and says nothing. He prefers to retire into his private room, and his slippers, and read the last number of _Bleak House_, or a chapter in _Vanity Fair_. If Mrs. Potiphar catches him at the latter, she is sure to say:

“There it is again; always reading those exaggerated sketches of society. Odious man that he is. I am sure he never knew a truly womanly woman.”

“Polly, when he comes back in September I’ll introduce him to you,” is the only answer I have time to make, for it is already half past ten, and Mrs. P. must be off to the ball.

I know that our set is not the world, nor the country, nor the city. I know that the amiable youths who are in league to crush spooneyism are not many, and well I know, that in our set (I mean Mrs. P.’s) there are hearts as noble and characters as lofty as in any time and in any land. And yet, as the father of a family (viz. Frederic, our son), I am constrained to believe that our social tendency is to the wildest extravagance. Here, for instance, is my house. It cost me eighty-five thousand dollars. It is superbly furnished. Mrs. P. and I don’t know much about such things. She was only stringent for buhl, and the last Parisian models, so we delivered our house into the hands of certain eminent upholsterers to be furnished, as we send Frederic to the tailor’s to be clothed. To be sure, I asked what proof we had that the upholsterer was possessed of taste. But Mrs. P. silenced me, by saying that it was his business to have taste, and that a man who sold furniture, naturally knew what was handsome and proper for my house.

The furnishing was certainly performed with great splendor and expense. My drawing-rooms strongly resemble the warehouse of an ideal cabinetmaker. Every whim of table--every caprice of chair and sofa, is satisfied in those rooms. There are curtains like rainbows, and carpets, as if the curtains had dripped all over the floor. There are heavy cabinets of carved walnut, such as belong in the heavy wainscotted rooms of old palaces, set against my last French pattern of wall paper. There are lofty chairs like the thrones of archbishops in Gothic cathedrals, standing by the side of the elaborately gilded frames of mirrors. Marble statues of Venus and the Apollo support my mantels, upon which _or molu_ Louis Quatorze clocks ring the hours. In all possible places there are statues, statuettes, vases, plates, teacups, and liquor-cases. The woodwork, when white, is elaborated in Moresco carving--when oak and walnut, it is heavily moulded. The contrasts are pretty, but rather sudden. In truth, my house is a huge curiosity shop of valuable articles,--clustered without taste, or feeling, or reason. They are there, because my house was large and I was able to buy them; and because, as Mrs. P. says, one must have buhl and _or molu_, and new forms of furniture, and do as well as one’s neighbors, and show that one is rich, if he is so. They are there, in fact, because I couldn’t help it. I didn’t want them, but then I don’t know what I did want. Somehow I don’t feel as if I had a home, merely because orders were given to the best upholsterers and fancy-men in town to send a sample of all their wares to my house. To pay a morning call at Mrs. Potiphar’s is, in some ways, better than going shopping. You see more new and costly things in a shorter time. People say, “What a love of a chair!” “What a darling table!” “What a heavenly sofa!” and they all go and tease their husbands to get things precisely like them. When Kurz Pacha the Sennaar Minister, came to a dinner at my house, he said:

“Bless my soul! Mr. Potiphar, your house is just like your neighbor’s.”

I know it. I am perfectly aware that there is no more difference between my house and Croesus’s, than there is in two ten dollar bills of the same bank. He might live in my house and I in his, without any confusion. He has the same curtains, carpets, chairs, tables, Venuses, Apollos, busts, vases, etc. And he goes into his room, and thinks it’s all a devilish bore, just as I do. We have each got to refurnish every few years, and therefore have no possible opportunity for attaching ourselves to the objects about us. Unfortunately Kurz Pacha particularly detested precisely what Mrs. P. most liked, because it is the fashion to like them. I mean the Louis Quatorze and the Louis Quinze things.

“Taste, dear Mrs. Potiphar,” said the Pacha, “was a thing not known in the days of those kings. Grace was entirely supplanted by grotesqueness, and now, instead of pure and beautiful Greek forms, we must collect these hideous things. If you are going backward to find models, why not go as far as the good ones? My dear madame, an _or molu_ Louis Quatorze clock would have given Pericles a fit. Your drawing-rooms would have thrown Aspasia into hysterics. Things are not beautiful because they cost money; nor is any grouping handsome without harmony. Your house is like a woman dressed in Ninon de l’Enclos’s bodice, with Queen Anne’s hooped skirt, who limps in Chinese shoes, and wears an Elizabethan ruff round her neck, and a Druse’s horn on her head. My dear madam, this is the kind of thing we go to see in museums. It is the old stock joke of the world.”

By Jove! how mad Mrs. Potiphar was! She rose from table, to the great dismay of Kurz Pacha, and I could only restrain her by reminding her that the Sennaar Minister had but an imperfect idea of our language, and that in Sennaar people probably said what they thought when they conversed.

“You’d better go to Sennaar, then, yourself, Mr. Potiphar,” said my wife, as she smoothed her rumpled feathers.

“‘Pon my word, madam, it’s my own opinion,” replied I. -- Kurz Pacha, who is a philosopher (of the Sennaar school), asks me if people have no ideas of their own in building houses. I answer, none, that I know of, except that of getting the house built. The fact is, it is as much as Paul Potiphar can do, to make the money to erect his palatial residence, and then to keep it going. There are a great many fine statues in my house, but I know nothing about them: I don’t see why we should have such heathen images in reputable houses. But Mrs. P. says:

“Pooh! have you no love for the fine arts?”

There it is. It doesn’t do not to love the fine arts; so Polly is continually cluttering up the halls and staircases with marble, and sending me heavy bills for the same.

When the house was ready, and my wife had purchased the furniture, she came and said to me:

“Now, my dear P., there is one thing we haven’t thought of.”

“What’s that?”

“Pictures, you know, dear.”

“What do you want pictures for?” growled I, rather surlily, I am afraid.

“Why, to furnish the walls; what do you suppose we want pictures for?”

“I tell you, Polly,” said I, “that pictures are the most extravagant kind of furniture. Pshaw! a man rubs and dabbles a little upon a canvas two feet square, and then coolly asks three hundred dollars for it.”

“Dear me, Pot,” she answered, “I don’t want home-made pictures. What an idea! Do you think I’d have pictures on my walls that were painted in this country?--No, my dear husband, let us have some choice specimens of the old masters. A landscape by Rayfel, for instance; or one of Angel’s fruit pieces, or a cattle scene by Verynees, or a Madonna of Giddo’s, or a boar hunt of Hannibal Crackkey’s.”

What was the use of fighting against this sort of thing? I told her to have it her own way. Mrs. P. consulted Singe the pastry cook, who told her his cousin had just come out from Italy with a lot of the very finest pictures in the world, which he had bribed one of the Pope’s guard to steal from the Vatican, and which he would sell at a bargain.

They hang on my walls now. They represent nothing in particular; but in certain lights, if you look very closely, you can easily recognize something in them that looks like a lump of something brown. There is one very ugly woman with a convulsive child in her arms, to which Mrs. P. directly takes all her visitors, and asks them to admire the beautiful Shay douver of Giddo’s. When I go out to dinner with people that talk pictures and books, and that kind of thing, I don’t like to seem behind, so I say, in a critical way, that Giddo was a good painter. None of them contradict me, and one day when somebody asked, “Which of his pictures do you prefer?” I answered straight, “His Shay douver,” and no more questions were asked.

They hang all about the house now. The Giddo is in the dining room. I asked the Sennaar Minister if it wasn’t odd to have a religious picture in the dining-room. He smiled, and said that it was perfectly proper if I liked it, and if the picture of such an ugly woman didn’t take away my appetite.

“What difference does it make,” said he, in the Sennaar manner, “it would be equally out of keeping with every other room in your house. My dear Potiphar, it is a perfectly unprincipled house, this of yours. If your mind were in the condition of your house, so ill-assorted, so confused, so overloaded with things that don’t belong together, you would never make another cent. You have order, propriety, harmony, in your dealings with the Symmes’s Hole Bore Co., and they are the secrets of your success. Why not have the same elements in your house? Why pitch every century, country, and fashion, higgledy-piggledly into your parlors and dining-room? Have everything you can get, in heaven’s name, but have everything in its place. If you are a plodding tradesman, knowing and caring nothing about pictures, or books, or statuary, or _objets de vertu_; don’t have them. Suppose your neighbor chooses to put them in his house. If he has them merely because he had the money to pay for them, he is the butt of every picture and book he owns.”

When I meet Mr. Croesus in Wall street, I respect him as I do a king in his palace, or a scholar in his study. He is master of the occasion. He commands like Nelson at the Nile. I, who am merely a diplomatist, skulk and hurry along, and if Mr. Croesus smiles, I inwardly thank him for his charity. Wall street is Croesus’s sphere, and all his powers play there perfectly. But when I meet him in his house, surrounded by objects of art, by the triumphs of a skill which he does not understand, and for which he cares nothing,--of which, in fact, he seems afraid, because he knows any chance question about them would trip him up,--my feeling is very much changed. If I should ask him what _or molu_ is, I don’t believe he could answer, though his splendid _or molu_ clock rang, indignant, from the mantel. But if I should say, ‘Invest me this thousand dollars,’ he would secure me eight per cent. It certainly isn’t necessary to know what _or molu_ is, nor to have any other _objet de vertu_ but your wife. Then why should you barricade yourself behind all these things that you really cannot enjoy, because you don’t understand? If you could not read Italian, you would be a fool to buy Dante, merely because you knew he was a great poet. And, in the same way, if you know nothing about matters of art, it is equally foolish for you to buy statues and pictures, although you hear on all sides that, as Mrs. P. says, one must love art.

“As for learning from your own pictures, you know perfectly well, that until you have some taste in the matter, you will be paying money for your pictures blindly, so that the only persons upon whom your display of art would make any impression, will be the very ones to see that you know nothing about it.

“In Sennaar, a man is literally ‘the master of the house.’ He isn’t surrounded by what he does not understand; he is not obliged to talk book, and picture, when he knows nothing about these matters. He is not afraid of his parlor, and you feel instantly upon entering the house, the character of the master. Please, my dear Mr. Potiphar, survey your mansion, and tell me what kind of a man it indicates. If it does not proclaim (in your case) the President of the Patagonia Junction, a man shrewd, and hard, and solid, without taste or liberal cultivation, it is a painted deceiver. If it tries to insinuate by this chaotic profusion of rich and rare objects, that you are a cultivated, accomplished, tasteful, and generous man, it is a bad lie, because a transparent one. Why, my dear old Pot., the moment your servant opens the front door, a man of sense perceives the whole thing. You and Mrs. Potiphar are bullied by all the brilliancy you have conjured up. It is the old story of the fisherman and the genii. And your guests all see it. They are too well-bred to speak of it; but I come from Sennaar, where we do not lay so much stress upon that kind of good-breeding.

“Mr. Paul Potiphar, it is one thing to have plenty of money, and quite another to know how to spend it.”

{Illustration}

Now, as I told him, this kind of talk may do very well in Sennaar, but it is absurd in a country like ours. How are people to know that I’m rich, unless I show it? I’m sorry for it, but how shall I help it, having Mrs. P. at hand?

“How about the library?” said she one day.

“What library?” inquired I. -- “Why, our library, of course.”

“I haven’t any.”

“Do you mean to have such a house as this without a library?”

“Why,” said I plaintively, “I don’t read books--I never did, and I never shall; and I don’t care anything about them. Why should I have a library?”

“Why, because it’s part of a house like this.”

“Mrs. P., are you fond of books?”

“No, not particularly. But one must have some regard to appearances. Suppose we are Hottentots, you don’t want us to look so, do you?”

I thought that it was quite as barbarous to imprison a lot of books that we should never open, and that would stand in gilt upon the shelves, silently laughing us to scorn, as not to have them if we didn’t want them. I proposed a compromise.

“Is it the looks of the thing, Mrs. P.?” said I. -- “That’s all,” she answered.

“Oh! well, I’ll arrange it.”

So I had my shelves built, and my old friends Matthews and Rider furnished me with complete sets of handsome gilt covers to all the books that no gentleman’s library should be without, which I arranged carefully, upon the shelves, and had the best looking library in town. I locked ‘em in, and the key is always lost when anybody wants to take down a book. However, it was a good investment in leather, for it brings me in the reputation of a reading man and a patron of literature.

Mrs. P. is a religious woman--the Rev. Cream Cheese takes care of that--but only yesterday she proposed something to me that smells very strongly of candlesticks.

“Pot., I want a _prie-dieu_.”

“Pray-do what?” answered I. -- “Stop, you wicked man. I say I want a kneeling-chair.”

“A kneeling-chair?” I gasped, utterly confused.

“A _prie-dieu_--a _prie-dieu_--to pray in, you know.”

My Sennaar friend, who was at table, choked. When he recovered, and we were sipping the “Blue seal,” he told me that he thought Mrs. Potiphar in a _prie-dieu_ was rather a more amusing idea than Giddo’s Madonna in the dining-room.

“She will insist upon its being carved handsomely in walnut. She will not pray upon pine. It is a romantic, not a religious, whim. She’ll want a missal next; vellum or no prayers. This is piety of the ‘Lady Alice’ school. It belongs to a fine lady aid a fine house precisely as your library does, and it will be precisely as genuine. Mrs. Potiphar in a _prie-dieu_ is like that blue morocco Comus in your library. It is charming to look at, but there’s nothing in it. Let her have the _prie-dieu_ by all means, and then begin to build a chapel. No gentleman’s house should be without a chapel. You’ll have to come to it, Potiphar. You’ll have to hear Cream Cheese read morning prayers in a purple chasuble,--_que sais-je_? You’ll see religion made a part of the newest fashion in houses, as you already see literature and art, and with just as much reality and reason.”

Privately, I am glad the Sennaar minister has gone out of town. It’s bad enough to be uncomfortable in your own house without knowing why; but to have a philosopher of the Sennaar school show you why you are so, is cutting it rather too fat. I am gradually getting resigned to my house. I’ve got one more struggle to go through next week in Mrs. Potiphar’s musical party. The morning soirees are over for the season, and Mrs. P. begins to talk of the watering places. I am getting gradually resigned; but only gradually.

“Oh! dear me, I wonder if this is the “home, sweet home” business the girls used to sing about! Music does certainly alter cases. I can’t quite get used to it. Last week I was one morning in the basement breakfast-room, and I heard an extra cried. I ran out of the area door--dear me!--before I thought what I was bout, I emerged bareheaded from under the steps, and ran a little way after the boy. I know it wasn’t proper. I am sorry, very sorry. I am afraid Mrs. Croesus saw me; I know Mrs. Gnu told it all about that morning: and Mrs. Settum Downe called directly upon Mrs. Potiphar, to know if it were really true that I had lost my wits, as everybody was saying. I don’t know what Mrs. P. answered. I am sorry to have compromised her so. I went immediately and ordered a pray-do of the blackest walnut. My resignation is very gradual. Kurz Pacha says they put on gravestones in Sennaar three Latin words--do you know Latin? if you don’t come and borrow some of my books. The words are: _ora pro me!_”

IV. -- FROM THE SUMMER DIARY OF MINERVA TATTLE.

NEWPORT, _August_.

It certainly is not papa’s fault that he doesn’t understand French; but he ought not to pretend to. It does put one in such uncomfortable situations occasionally. In fact, I think it would be quite as well if we could sometimes “sink the paternal,” as Timon Croesus says. I suppose everybody has heard of the awful speech pa made in the parlor at Saratoga. My dearest friend, Tabby Dormouse, told me she had heard of it everywhere, and that it was ten times as absurd each time it was repeated. By the by, Tabby is a dear creature, isn’t she? It’s so nice to have a spy in the enemy’s camp, as it were, and to hear everything that everybody says about you. She is not handsome,--poor, dear Tabby! There’s no denying it but she can’t help it. I was obliged to tell young Downe so, quite decidedly, for I really think he had an idea she was good-looking. The idea of Tabby Dormouse being handsome! But she is a useful little thing in her way; one of my intimates.

The true story is this.

Ma and I had persuaded pa to take us to Saratoga, for we heard the English party were to be there, and we were anxious they should see _some_ good society at least. It seems such a pity they shouldn’t know what handsome dresses we really do have in this country! And I mentioned to some of the most English of our young men, that there might be something to be done at Saratoga. But they shrugged their shoulders, especially Timon Croesus and Gauche Boosey, and said--

“Well, really, the fact is, Miss Tattle, all the Englishmen I have ever met are--in fact--a little snobbish. However.”

That was about what they said. But I thought, considering their fondness of the English model in dress and manner, that they might have been more willing to meet some genuine aristocracy. Yet, perhaps, that handsome Col. Abattew is right in saying with his grand military air,--

“The British aristocracy, madam,--the British aristocracy is vulgar.”

Well, we all went up to Saratoga. But the distinguished strangers did not come. I held back that last muslin of mine, the yellow one, embroidered with the Alps, and a distant view of the isles of Greece worked on the flounces, until it was impossible to wait longer. I meant to wear it at dinner the first day they came, with the pearl necklace and the opal studs, and that heavy ruby necklace (it is a low-necked dress). The dining-room at the “United States” is so large that it shows off those dresses finely, and if the waiter doesn’t let the soup or the gravy slip, and your neighbor, (who is, like as not, what Tabby Dormouse, with her incapacity to pronounce the _r_, calls “some ‘aw, ‘uff man from the country,”) doesn’t put the leg of his chair through the dress, and if you don’t muss it sitting down--why, I should like to know a prettier place to wear a low-necked muslin, with jewels, than the dining-room of the “United States” at Saratoga.

Kurz Pacha, the Sennaar minister, who was up there, and who is so smitten with Mrs. Potiphar, said that he had known few happier moments in this country than the dining hour at the “United States.”