Chapter 7
“When the gong sounds,” says he, “I am reminded of the martial music of Sennaar. When I seat myself in the midst of such splendor of toilette, and in an apartment so stately and so appropriate for that display, I recall the taste of the Crim Tartars, to whose ruler I had the honor of being first accredited ambassador. When I behold, with astonished eyes, the entrance of that sable society, the measured echo of whose footfalls so properly silences the conversation of all the nobles, I seem to see the regular army of my beloved Sennaar investing a conquered city. This, I cry to myself, with enthusiasm, this is the height of civilization; and I privately hand one of the privates in that grand army, a gold dollar, to bring me a dish of beans. Each green bean, O greener envoy extraordinary, I say to myself, with rapture, should be well worth its weight in gold, when served to such a congress of kings, queens, and hereditary prince royals as are assembled here. And I find,” continues the Pacha, “that I am right. The guest at this banquet is admitted to the freedom of corn and potatoes, only after negotiations with the sable military. It is quite the perfection of organization. What hints I shall gather for the innocent pleasure-seekers of Sennaar who still fancy that when they bargain for a draught of rose sherbet, they have tacitly agreed for a glass to drink it from!
“Why, the first day I came,” he went on, “I was going to my room, and met the chambermaid coming out. Now, as I had paid a colored gentleman a dollar for my dinner, in addition to the little bill which I settle at the office, I thought it was equally necessary to secure my bed by a slight fee to the goddess of the chambers. I therefore pulled out my purse, and offered her a bill of a small amount. She turned the color of tomatoes.
“‘Sir,’ exclaimed she, and with dignity, ‘do you mean to insult me?’
“‘Good heavens, miss,’ cried I, ‘quite the contrary,’ and thinking it was not enough, I presented another bill of a larger amount.
“‘Sir,’ said she, half sobbing, ‘you are no gentleman; I shall leave the house!’
“I was very much perplexed. I began again:
“‘Miss--my dear--I mean madam--how much _must_ I pay you to secure my room?’
“‘I don’t understand you, sir,’ replied the chambermaid, somewhat mollified.
“‘Why, my dear girl, if I paid Sambo a dollar for my dinner, I expect to pay Dolly something for my chamber, of course.’
“‘Well, sir, you are certainly very kind,--I--with pleasure, I’m sure,’ replied she, entirely appeased, taking the money and vanishing.
“I,” said Kurz Pacha, “entered my room and locked the door. But I believe I was a little hasty about giving her the money. The perfection of civilization has not yet mounted the stairs. It is confined to the dining-room. How beautiful is that strain from the _Favorita_, Miss Minerva, tum, tum, ti ti, tum tum, tee tee,” and the delightful Sennaar ambassador, seeing Mrs. Potiphar in the parlor, danced humming away.
There are few pleasanter men in society. I should think with his experience he would be hard upon us, but he is not. The air of courts does not seem to have spoiled him.
“My dear madam,” he said one evening to Mrs. Potiphar, “if you laugh at anything, your laughing is laughed at next day. Life is short. If you can’t see the jewel in the toad’s head, still believe in it. Take it for granted. The _Parisienne_ says that the English woman has no _je ne sais quoi_, The English woman says the _Parisienne_ has no _aplomb_. Amen! When you are in Turkey--why gobble. Why should I decline to have a good time at the Queen’s drawing-room, because English women have no _je ne sais quoi_, or at the grand opera, because French women lack _aplomb_? Take things smoothly. Life is a merry-go-round. Look at your own grandfather, dear Mrs. Potiphar,--fine old gentleman, I am told,--rather kept in what the artists call the middle-distance, at present,--a capital shoemaker, who did his work well--Alexander and John Howard did no more:--well here you are, you see, with liveries and a pew in the right church, and altogether a front seat in the universe--merry-go-round, you know; here we go up, up, up; here we go down, down, down, etc. By the bye, pretty strain that from Linda; tum tum, ti, tum tum,” and away hopped the Sennaar minister.
Mrs. Potiphar was angry. Who wouldn’t have been? To have the old family shoes thrown in one’s teeth! But our ambassador is an ambassador. One must have the best society, and she swallowed it as she has swallowed it a hundred times before. She quietly remarked--
“Pity Kurz Pacha drinks so abominably. He quite forgets what he’s saying!”
I suppose he does, if Mrs. P. says so; but he seems to know well enough all the time: as he did that evening in the library at Mrs. Potiphar’s, when he drew Cerulea Bass to the book-shelves, and began to dispute about a line in Milton, and then suddenly looking up at the books, said--
“Ah! there’s Milton; now we’ll see.” But when he opened the case, which was foolishly left unlocked, he took down only a bit of wood, bound in blue morocco, which he turned slowly over, so that everybody saw it, and then quietly returned it to the shelf saying only--
“I beg pardon.”
Old Pot, as Mrs. P. calls him, happened to be passing at the moment, and cried out in his brusque way--
“Oh! I haven’t laid in my books yet. Those are only samples--pattern-cards, you know. I don’t believe you’ll find there a single book that a gentleman’s library shouldn’t be without. I got old Vellum to do the thing up right, you know. I guess he knows about the books to buy. But I’ve just laid in some claret that you’ll like, and I’ve got a sample of the Steinberg. Old Corque understands that kind of thing, if anybody does.” And the two gentlemen went off to try the wine.
I am astonished that a man of Kurz Pacha’s tact should have opened the book-case. People have no right to suppose that the pretty bindings on one’s shelves are books. Why, they might as well insist upon trying if the bloom on one’s cheek, or the lace on one’s dress, or, in fact, one’s figure, were real. Such things are addressed to the eye. No gentleman uses his hands in good society. I’ve no doubt they were originally put into gloves to keep them out of mischief.
I am as bad as dear Mrs. Potiphar about coming to the point of my story. But the truth is, that in such engrossing places as Saratoga and Newport, it is hardly possible to determine which is the pleasantest and most important thing among so many. I am so fond of that old, droll Kurz Pacha, that if I begin to talk about him I forget everything else. He says such nice things about people that nobody else would dare to say, and that everybody is so glad to hear. He is invaluable in society. And yet one is never safe. People say he isn’t gentlemanly; but when I see the style of man that is called gentlemanly, I am very glad he is not. All the solemn, pompous men who stand about like owls, and never speak, nor laugh, nor move, as if they really had any life or feeling are called “gentlemanly.” Whenever Tabby says of a new man--“But then he is so gentlemanly!” I understand at once. It is another case of the well-dressed wooden image. Good heavens! do you suppose Sir Philip Sidney, or the Chevalier Bayard or Charles Fox, were “gentlemanly” in this way? Confectioners who undertake parties might furnish scores of such gentlemen, with hands and feet of any required size, and warranted to do nothing “ungentlemanly.” For my part, I am inclined to think that a gentleman is something positive, not merely negative. And if sometimes my friend the Pacha says a rousing and wholesome truth, it is none the less gentlemanly because it cuts a little. He says it’s very amusing to observe how coolly we play this little farce of life,--how placidly people get entangled in a mesh at which they all rail, and how fiercely they frown upon anybody who steps out of the ring. “You tickle me and I’ll tickle you; but at all events, you tickle me,” is the motto of the crowd.
“_Allons!_” says he, “who cares? lead off to the right and left--down the middle and up again. Smile all round, and bow gracefully to your partner; then carry your heavy heart up chamber, and drown in your own tears. Cheerfully, cheerfully, my dear Miss Minerva.--Saratoga until August, then Newport till the frost, the city afterwards; and so an endless round of happiness.”
And he steps off humming _Il segreto per esser felice!_
Well, we were all sitting in the great drawing-room at the “United States.” We had been bowling in our morning dresses, and had rushed in to ascertain if the distinguished English party had arrived. They had not. They were in New York, and would not come. That was bad, but we thought of Newport and probable scions of nobility there, and were consoled. But while we were in the midst of the talk, and I was whispering very intimately with that superb and aristocratic Nancy Fungus, who should come in but father, walking towards us with a wearied air, dragging his feet along, but looking very well dressed for him. I smiled sweetly when I saw that he was quite presentable, and had had the good sense to leave that odious white hat in his room, and had buttoned his waistcoat. The party stopped talking as he approached; and he came up to me.
“Minna, my dear,” said he, “I hear everybody is going to Newport.
“Oh! yes, dear father,” I replied, and Nancy Fungus smiled. Father looked pleased to see me so intimate with a girl he always calls “so aristocratic and high-bred looking,” and he said to her--
“I believe your mother is going, Miss Fungus?”
“Oh! yes, we always go,” replied she, “one must have a few weeks at Newport.”
“Precisely, my dear,” said poor papa, as if he rather dreaded it, but must consent to the hard necessity of fashion. “They say, Minna, that all the _parvenus_ are going this year, so I suppose we shall have to go along.”
There was a blow! There was perfect silence for a moment, while poor pa looked amiable as if he couldn’t help embellishing his conversation with French graces. I waited in horror; for I knew that the girls were all tittering inside, and every moment it became more absurd. Then out it came. Nancy Fungus leaned her head on my shoulder, and fairly shook with laughter. The others hid behind their fans, and the men suddenly walked off to the windows and slipped on to the piazza. Papa looked bewildered, and half smiled. But it was a very melancholy business, and I told him that he had better go up and dress for dinner.
It was impossible to stay after that. The unhappy slip became the staple of Saratoga conversation. Young Boosey (Mrs. Potiphar’s witty friend) asked Morris audibly at dinner, “Where do the _parvenus sit?_ I want to sit among the _parvenus_.”
“Of course you do, sir,” answered Morris, supposing he meant the circle of the _crême de la crême_.
{Illustration}
And so the thing went on multiplying itself. Poor papa doesn’t understand it yet, I don’t dare to explain. Old Fungus who prides himself so upon his family (it is one of the very ancient and honorable Virginia families, that came out of the ark with Noah, as Kurz Pacha says of his ancestors when he hears that the founder of a family “came over with the Conqueror,”) and who cannot deny himself a joke, came up to pa in the bar-room, while a large party of gentlemen were drinking cobblers, and said to him with a loud laugh:
“So all the _parvenus_ are going to Newport: are they, Tattle?”
“Yes!” replied pa, innocently, “that’s what they say. So I suppose we shall all have to go, Fungus.”
There was another roar that time, but not from the representative of Noah’s Ark. It was rather thin joking but it did very well for the warm weather, and I was glad to hear a laugh against anybody but poor pa.
We came to Newport, but the story came before us, and I have been very much annoyed at it. I know it is foolish for me to think of it. Kurz Pacha said:
“My dear Miss Minerva, I have no doubt it would pain you more to be thought ignorant of French than capable of deceit. Yet it is a very innocent ignorance of your father’s. Nobody is bound to know French; but you all lay so much stress upon it, as if it were the whole duty of women to have an ‘air’ and to speak French, that any ignorance becomes at once ludicrous. It’s all your own doing. You make a very natural thing absurd, and then grieve because some friend becomes a victim. There is your friend Nancy Fungus, who speaks ‘French as well as she does English.’ That may be true; but you ought to add, that one is of just as much use to her as the other--that is of no use at all, except to communicate platitudes. What is the use of a girl’s learning French to be able to say to young _Téle de Choux_, that it is a very warm day, and that will hardly be _spirituelle_ in her exotic French. It edge of French is going to supply her with ideas to express. A girl who is flat in her native English will hardly be _spirituelle_ in her exotic French. It is a delightful language for the natives, and for all who have thoroughly mastered its spirit. Its genius is airy and sparkling. It is especially the language of society, because society is, theoretically, the playful encounter of sprightliness and wit. It is the worst language I know of for poetry, ethics, and the habit of the Saxon mind. It is wonderful in the hands of such masters as Balzac and George Sand, and is especially adapted to their purposes. Yet their books are forbidden to Nancy Fungus, Tabby Dormouse, Daisy Clover, and all their relations. They read _Telemaque_, and long to be married, that they may pry into _Leila and Indiana_: their French meanwhile, even if they wanted to know anything of French literature,--which is too absurd an idea,--serves them only to say nothing to uncertain hairy foreigners who haunt society, and to understand their nothings, in response. I am really touched for this Ariel, this tricksy sprite of speech when I know that it must do the bidding of those who can never fit its airy felicity to any worthy purpose. I have tried these accomplishel damsels who speak French and Italian as well as they do English. But our conversation was only a clumsy translation of English commonplace. And yet, Miss Minerva, I think even so sensible a woman as you, looks with honor and respect upon one of that class. Dear me! excuse me! What am I thinking of? I’m engaged to drive little Daisy Clover on the beach at six o’clock. She is one of those who garnish their conversation with French scraps. Really you must pardon me, if she is a friend of yours; but that dry gentlemanly fellow, D’Orsay Firkin, says that Miss Clover’s conversation is a dish of _téte de veau farci_. Aren’t you coming to the beach? Everybody goes to-day. Mrs. Gnu has arrived, and the Potiphars are here,--that is, Mrs. P. Old Pot. arrives on Sunday morning early, and is off again on Monday evening. He’s grown very quiet and docile. Mrs. P. usually takes him a short drive on Monday morning, and he comes to dinner in a white waistcoat. In fact, as Mrs. Potiphar says, ‘My husband has not the air _distingué_ which I should be pleased to see in him, but he is quite as well as could be expected.’ Upon which Firkin twirls his hat in a significant way; you and I smile intelligently, dear Miss Minerva; Mrs. Green and Mrs Settum Downe exchange glances; we all understand Mrs. Potiphar and each other, and Mrs. Potiphar understands us, and it is all very sweet and pleasant, and the utmost propriety is observed, and we don’t laugh loud until we’re out of hearing, and then say in the very softest whispers, that it was a remarkably true observation. This is the way to take life, my dear lady. Let us go gently. Here we go backwards and forwards. You tickle, and I’ll tickle, and we’ll all tickle, and here we go round--round--roundy!”
And the Sennaar minister danced out of the room.
He is a droll man, and I don’t quite understand him. Of course I don’t entirely like him for it always seems as if he meant something a little different from what he says. Laura Larmes, who reads all the novels, and rolls her great eyes around the ball room,--who laughs at the idea of such a girl as Blanche Amory in Pendennis,--who would be pensive if she were not so plump,--who likes “nothing so much as walking on the cliff by moonlight,”--who wonders that girls should want to dance on warm summer nights when they have Nature, “and such nature” before them,--who, in fact, would be a mere emotion if she were not a bouncing girl,--Laura Larmes wonders that any man can be so happy as Kurz Pacha.
“Ah! Kurz Pacha,” she says to him as they stroll upon the piazza, after he has been dancing (for the minister dances, and swears it is essential to diplomacy to dance well), “are you really so very happy? Is it possible you can be so gay? Do you find nothing mournful in life?”
“Nothing, my best Miss Laura,” he replies, “to speak of; as somebody said of religion. You, who devote yourself to melancholy, the moon, and the source of tears, are not so very sad as you think. You cry a good deal, I don’t doubt. But when grief goes below tears, and forces you in self-defence to try to forget it, not to sit and fondle it,--then you will understand more than you do now. I pity those of your sex upon whom has fallen the reaction of wealth,--for whom there is no career,--who must sit at home and pine in a splendid ennui,--who have learned and who know, spite of sermons and ‘sound sensible view of things,’ that to enjoy the high ‘privilege of reading books,--of cultivating their minds; and, when they are married, minding their babies, and ministering to the drowsy, after-dinner ease of their husbands, is not the fulfilment of their powers and hopes. But, my amiable Miss Larmes, this is a class of girls and women who are not solicitous about wearing black when their great-aunt in Denmark dies, whom they never saw, nor when the only friend who made heaven possible to them, falls dead at their sides. Nor do they avoid Mrs. Potiphar’s balls as a happiness which they are not happy enough to enjoy--nor do they suppose that all who attend that festivity--dancing to Mrs. P.’s hired music and drinking Mr. P.’s fines wines--are utterly given over to hilarity and superficial enjoyment. I do not even think they would be likely to run--with rounded eyes, deep voice, and in very exuberant health--to any one of us jaded votaries of fashion, and say, How can you be so happy? My considerate young friend, ‘strong walls do not a prison make’--nor is a man necessarily happy because he hops. You are certainly not unhappy because you make eyes at the moon, and adjudge life to be vanity and vexation. Your mind is only obscured by a few morning vapors. They are evanescent as the dew, and when you remember them at evening they will seem to you but as pensive splendors of the dawn.”
Laura has her revenge for all this snubbing, of course. She does not attempt to disguise her opinion that Kurz Pacha is a man of “foreign morals,” as she well expresses it. “A very gay, agreeable man, who glides gently over the surface of things, but knows nothing of the real trials and sorrows of life,” says the melancholy Laura Larmes, whose appetite continues good, and who fills a large armchair comfortably.
It is my opinion, however, that people of a certain size should cultivate the hilarious rather than the unhappy. Diogenes, with the proportions of Alderman Gobble, could not have succeeded as a Cynic.
Here at Newport there is endless opportunity of detecting these little absurdities of our fellow-creatures. In fact, one of the greatest charms of a watering-place, to me, is the facility one enjoys of understanding the whole game, which is somewhat concealed in the city. Watering-place life is a full dress parade of social weaknesses. We all enjoy a kind of false intimacy, an accidental friendship. Old Carbuncle and young Topaz meet on the common ground of a good cigar. Mrs. Peony and Daisy Clover are intimate at all hours. Why? Because, on the one hand, Mrs. P. knows that youth, and grace and beauty, are attractive to men, and that if Miss Rosa Peony, her daughter, has not those advantages, it is well to have in the neighborhood a magnet strong enough to draw the men.
On the other hand, Daisy Clover is a girl of good sense enough to know--even if she didn’t know it by instinct--that men in public places like the prestige of association with persons of acknowledged social position, which, by hook or by crook, Mrs. Peony undoubtedly enjoys. Therefore, to be of Mrs. P.’s party is to be well placed in the catalogue--the chances are fairer--the gain is surer. Upon seeing Daisy Clover with quiet little Mrs. Clover, or plain old aunt Honeysuckle,--people would inquire, Who are the Clovers? And no one would know. But to be with Mrs. Peony, morning, noon, and night, is to answer all questions of social position.
But, unhappily, in the city things are changed. There no attraction is necessary but the fine house, gay parties, and understood rank of Mrs. Peony to draw men to Miss Rosa’s side. In Newport it does very well not to dance with her. But in the city it doesn’t do not to be at Mrs. Peony’s ball. Who knows it so well as that excellent lady? Therefore darling Daisy is dropped a little when we all return.
“Sweet girl,” Mrs. P. says, “really a delightful companion for Rosa in the summer, and the father and mother are such nice, excellent people. Not exactly people that one knows, to be sure--but Miss Daisy is really amiable and quite accomplished.”
Daisy goes to an occasional party at the Peonys. But at the opera and the theatre, and at the small intimate parties of Rosa and her friends, the darling Daisy of Newport is not visible. However, she has her little revenges. She knows the Peonys well: and can talk intelligently about them, which puts her quite on a level with them in the estimation of her own set. She rules in the lower sphere if not in the higher, and Daisy Clover is in the way of promotion. Yes, and if she be very rich, and papa and mamma are at all presentable, or if they can be dexterously hushed up, there is no knowing but Miss Daisy Clover will suddenly bloom upon the world as Mrs. P.’s daughter-in-law, wife of that “gentlemanly” young man, Mr. Puffer Peony.
Naturally it pains me very much to be obliged to think so of the people with whom I associate. But I suppose they are as good as any. As Kurz Pacha says: “If I fly from a Chinaman because he wears his hair long like a woman, I must equally fly the Frenchman because he shaves his like a lunatic. The story of Jack Spratt is the apologue of the world.” It is astonishing how intimate he is with our language and literature. By-the-bye, that Polly Potiphar has been mean enough to send out to Paris for the very silk that I relied upon as this summer’s _cheval de bataille_, and has just received it superbly made up. The worst of it is that it is just the thing for her. She wore it at the hall the other night, and expected to have crushed me, in mine. Not she! I have not summered it at Newport for--well, for several years, for nothing, and although I am rather beyond the strict white muslin age, I thought I could yet venture a bold stroke. So I arrayed _à la_ Daisy Clover--not too much, _pas trop jeune_. And awaited the onset.
Kurz Pacha saw me across the room, and came up, with his peculiar smile. He did not look at my dress, but he said to me, rather wickedly, looking at my bouquet:
“Dear me! I hardly hoped to see spring flowers so late in the summer.”
Then he raised his eyes to mine, and I am conscious that I blushed.
“It’s very warm. You feel very warm, I am sure, my dear Miss Tattle,” he continued, looking straight at my face.