Worldly Ways and Byways

E >> Eliot Gregory >> Worldly Ways and Byways

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I doubted at the time as to the amount of information and
appreciation they brought to bear on their travels, so I took
occasion to draw one of the thin, unsmiling women into
conversation, asking her where they intended stopping next.

"At Buda-Pesth," she answered. I said in some amusement:

"But that was Buda-Pesth we visited so carefully yesterday."

"Oh, was it," she replied, without any visible change on her face,
"I thought we had not got there yet." Apparently it was enough for
her to be travelling; the rest was of little importance. Later in
the day, when asked if she had visited a certain old city in
Germany, she told me she had but would never go there again: "They
gave us such poor coffee at the hotel." Again later in speaking to
her husband, who seemed a trifle vague as to whether he had seen
Nuremberg or not, she said:

"Why, you remember it very well; it was there you bought those nice
overshoes!"

All of which left me with some doubts in my mind as to the
cultivating influences of foreign travel on their minds.

You cannot change a leopard's spots, neither can you alter the
nature of a race, and one of the strongest characteristics of the
Anglo-Saxon, is the nomadic instinct. How often one hears people
say:

"I am not going to sit at home and take care of my furniture. I
want to see something of the world before I am too old." Lately, a
sprightly maiden of uncertain years, just returned from a long trip
abroad, was asked if she intended now to settle down.

"Settle down, indeed! I'm a butterfly and I never expect to settle
down."

There is certainly food here for reflection. Why should we be more
inclined to wander than our neighbors? Perhaps it is in a measure
due to our nervous, restless temperament, which is itself the
result of our climate; but whatever the cause is, inability to
remain long in one place is having a most unfortunate influence on
our social life. When everyone is on the move or longing to be, it
becomes difficult to form any but the most superficial ties; strong
friendships become impossible, the most intimate family relations
are loosened.

If one were of a speculative frame of mind and chose to take as the
basis for a calculation the increase in tourists between 1855, when
the ten pioneers started for Paris, and the number "personally
conducted" over land and sea today, and then glance forward at what
the future will be if this ratio of increase is maintained the
result would be something too awful for words. For if ten have
become a million in forty years, what will be the total in 1955?
Nothing less than entire nations given over to sight-seeing,
passing their lives and incomes in rushing aimlessly about.

If the facilities of communication increase as they undoubtedly
will with the demand, the prospect becomes nearer the idea of a
"Walpurgis Night" than anything else. For the earth and the sea
will be covered and the air filled with every form of whirling,
flying, plunging device to get men quickly from one place to
another.

Every human being on the globe will be flying South for the cold
months and North for the hot season.

As personally conducted tours have been so satisfactory, agencies
will be started to lead us through all the stages of existence.
Parents will subscribe on the birth of their children to have them
personally conducted through life and everything explained as it is
done at present in the galleries abroad; food, lodging and reading
matter, husbands and wives will be provided by contract, to be
taken back and changed if unsatisfactory, as the big stores do with
their goods. Delightful prospect! Homes will become superfluous,
parents and children will only meet when their "tours" happen to
cross each other. Our great-grandchildren will float through life
freed from every responsibility and more perfectly independent than
even that delightful dreamer, Bellamy, ventured to predict.

CHAPTER 29 - Husks

AMONG the Protestants driven from France by that astute and
liberal-minded sovereign Louis XIV., were a colony of weavers, who
as all the world knows, settled at Spitalfields in England, where
their descendants weave silk to this day.

On their arrival in Great Britain, before the looms could be set up
and a market found for their industry, the exiles were reduced to
the last extremity of destitution and hunger. Looking about them
for anything that could be utilized for food, they discovered that
the owners of English slaughter-houses threw away as worthless, the
tails of the cattle they killed. Like all the poor in France,
these wanderers were excellent cooks, and knew that at home such
caudal appendages were highly valued for the tenderness and flavor
of the meat. To the amazement and disgust of the English villagers
the new arrivals proceeded to collect this "refuse" and carry it
home for food. As the first principle of French culinary art is
the POT-AU-FEU, the tails were mostly converted into soup, on which
the exiles thrived and feasted.

Their neighbors, envious at seeing the despised French indulging
daily in savory dishes, unknown to English palates, and tempted
like "Jack's" giant by the smell of "fresh meat," began to inquire
into the matter, and slowly realized how, in their ignorance, they
had been throwing away succulent and delicate food. The news of
this discovery gradually spreading through all classes, "ox-tail"
became and has remained the national English soup.

If this veracious tale could be twisted into a metaphor, it would
serve marvellously to illustrate the position of the entire Anglo-
Saxon race, and especially that of their American descendants as
regards the Latin peoples. For foolish prodigality and reckless,
ignorant extravagance, however, we leave our English cousins far
behind.

Two American hotels come to my mind, as different in their
appearance and management as they are geographically asunder. Both
are types and illustrations of the wilful waste that has recently
excited Mr. Ian Maclaren's comment, and the woeful want (of good
food) that is the result. At one, a dreary shingle construction on
a treeless island, off our New England coast, where the ideas of
the landlord and his guests have remained as unchanged and
primitive as the island itself, I found on inquiry that all
articles of food coming from the first table were thrown into the
sea; and I have myself seen chickens hardly touched, rounds of
beef, trays of vegetables, and every variety of cake and dessert
tossed to the fish.

While we were having soups so thin and tasteless that they would
have made a French house-wife blush, the ingredients essential to
an excellent "stock" were cast aside. The boarders were paying
five dollars a day and appeared contented, the place was packed,
the landlord coining money, so it was foolish to expect any
improvement.

The other hotel, a vast caravansary in the South, where a fortune
had been lavished in providing every modern convenience and luxury,
was the "fad" of its wealthy owner. I had many talks with the
manager during my stay, and came to realize that most of the
wastefulness I saw around me was not his fault, but that of the
public, to whose taste he was obliged to cater. At dinner, after
receiving your order, the waiter would disappear for half an hour,
and then bring your entire meal on one tray, the over-cooked meats
stranded in lakes of coagulated gravy, the entrees cold and the
ices warm. He had generally forgotten two or three essentials, but
to send back for them meant to wait another half-hour, as his other
clients were clamoring to be served. So you ate what was before
you in sulky disgust, and got out of the room as quickly as
possible.

After one of these gastronomic races, being hungry, flustered, and
suffering from indigestion, I asked mine host if it had never
occurred to him to serve a TABLE D'HOTE dinner (in courses) as is
done abroad, where hundreds of people dine at the same moment, each
dish being offered them in turn accompanied by its accessories.

"Of course, I have thought of it," he answered. "It would be the
greatest improvement that could be introduced into American hotel-
keeping. No one knows better than I do how disastrous the present
system is to all parties. Take as an example of the present way,
the dinner I am going to give you to-morrow, in honor of Christmas.
Glance over this MENU. You will see that it enumerates every
costly and delicate article of food possible to procure and a long
list of other dishes, the greater part of which will not even be
called for. As no number of CHEFS could possibly oversee the
proper preparation of such a variety of meats and sauces, all will
be carelessly cooked, and as you know by experience, poorly served.

"People who exact useless variety," he added, "are sure in some way
to be the sufferers; in their anxiety to try everything, they will
get nothing worth eating. Yet that meal will cost me considerably
more than my guests pay for their twenty-four hours' board and
lodging."

"Why do it, you ask? Because it is the custom, and because it will
be an advertisement. These bills of fare will be sown broadcast
over the country in letters to friends and kept as souvenirs. If,
instead of all this senseless superfluity, I were allowed to give a
TABLE D'HOTE meal to-morrow, with the CHEF I have, I could provide
an exquisite dinner, perfect in every detail, served at little
tables as deftly and silently as in a private house. I could also
discharge half of my waiters, and charge two dollars a day instead
of five dollars, and the hotel would become (what it has never been
yet) a paying investment, so great would he the saving."

"Only this morning," he continued, warming to his subject, "while
standing in the dining room, I saw a young man order and then send
away half the dishes on the MENU. A chicken was broiled for him
and rejected; a steak and an omelette fared no better. How much do
you suppose a hotel gains from a guest like that?"

"The reason Americans put up with such poor viands in hotels is,
that home cooking in this country is so rudimentary, consisting
principally of fried dishes, and hot breads. So little is known
about the proper preparation of food that tomorrow's dinner will
appear to many as the NE PLUS ULTRA of delicate living. One of the
charms of a hotel for people who live poorly at home, lies in this
power to order expensive dishes they rarely or never see on their
own tables."

"To be served with a quantity of food that he has but little desire
to eat is one of an American citizen's dearest privileges, and a
right he will most unwillingly relinquish. He may know as well as
you and I do, that what he calls for will not be worth eating; that
is of secondary importance, he has it before him, and is
contented."

"The hotel that attempted limiting the liberty of its guests to the
extent of serving them a TABLE D'HOTE dinner, would be emptied in a
week."

"A crowning incongruity, as most people are delighted to dine with
friends, or at public functions, where the meal is invariably
served A LA RUSSE (another name for a TABLE D'HOTE), and on these
occasions are only too glad to have their MENU chosen for them.
The present way, however, is a remnant of 'old times' and the
average American, with all his love of change and novelty, is very
conservative when it comes to his table."

What this manager did not confide to me, but what I discovered
later for myself, was that to facilitate the service, and avoid
confusion in the kitchens, it had become the custom at all the
large and most of the small hotels in this country, to carve the
joints, cut up the game, and portion out vegetables, an hour or two
before meal time. The food, thus arranged, is placed in vast steam
closets, where it simmers gayly for hours, in its own, and fifty
other vapors.

Any one who knows the rudiments of cookery, will recognize that
with this system no viand can have any particular flavor, the
partridges having a taste of their neighbor the roast beef, which
in turn suggests the plum pudding it has been "chumming" with.

It is not alone in a hotel that we miss the good in grasping after
the better. Small housekeeping is apparently run on the same
lines.

A young Frenchman, who was working in my rooms, told me in reply to
a question regarding prices, that every kind of food was cheaper
here than abroad, but the prejudice against certain dishes was so
strong in this country that many of the best things in the markets
were never called for. Our nation is no longer in its "teens" and
should cease to act like a foolish boy who has inherited (what
appears to him) a limitless fortune; not for fear of his coming,
like his prototype in the parable, to live on "husks" for he is
doing that already, but lest like the dog of the fable, in grasping
after the shadow of a banquet he miss the simple meal that is
within his reach.

One of the reasons for this deplorable state of affairs lies in the
foolish education our girls receive. They learn so little
housekeeping at home, that when married they are obliged to begin
all over again, unless they prefer, like a majority of their
friends, to let things as go at the will and discretion of the
"lady" below stairs.

At both hotels I have referred to, the families of the men
interested considered it beneath them to know what was taking
place. The "daughter" of the New England house went semi-weekly to
Boston to take violin lessons at ten dollars each, although she had
no intention of becoming a professional, while the wife wrote
poetry and ignored the hotel side of her life entirely.

The "better half" of the Florida establishment hired a palace in
Rome and entertained ambassadors. Hotels divided against
themselves are apt to be establishments where you pay for riotous
living and are served only with husks.

We have many hard lessons ahead of us, and one of the hardest will
be for our nation to learn humbly from the thrifty emigrants on our
shores, the great art of utilizing the "tails" that are at this
moment being so recklessly thrown away.

As it is, in spite of markets overflowing with every fish,
vegetable, and tempting viand, we continue to be the worst fed,
most meagrely nourished of all the wealthy nations on the face of
the earth. We have a saying (for an excellent reason unknown on
the Continent) that Providence provides us with food and the devil
sends the cooks! It would be truer to say that the poorer the food
resources of a nation, the more restricted the choice of material,
the better the cooks; a small latitude when providing for the table
forcing them to a hundred clever combinations and mysterious
devices to vary the monotony of their cuisine and tempt a palate,
by custom staled.

Our heedless people, with great variety at their disposition, are
unequal to the situation, wasting and discarding the best, and
making absolutely nothing of their advantages.

If we were enjoying our prodigality by living on the fat of the
land, there would be less reason to reproach ourselves, for every
one has a right to live as he pleases. But as it is, our foolish
prodigals are spending their substance, while eating the husks!

CHAPTER 30 - The Faubourg of St. Germain

THERE has been too much said and written in the last dozen years
about breaking down the "great wall" behind which the aristocrats
of the famous Faubourg, like the Celestials, their prototypes, have
ensconced themselves. The Chinese speak of outsiders as
"barbarians." The French ladies refer to such unfortunates as
being "beyond the pale." Almost all that has been written is
arrant nonsense; that imaginary barrier exists to-day on as firm a
foundation, and is guarded by sentinels as vigilant as when, forty
years ago, Napoleon (third of the name) and his Spanish spouse
mounted to its assault.

Their repulse was a bitter humiliation to the PARVENUE Empress,
whose resentment took the form (along with many other curious
results) of opening the present Boulevard St. Germain, its line
being intentionally carried through the heart of that quarter,
teeming with historic "Hotels" of the old aristocracy, where
beautiful constructions were mercilessly torn down to make way for
the new avenue. The cajoleries which Eugenie first tried and the
blows that followed were alike unavailing. Even her worship of
Marie Antoinette, between whom and herself she found imaginary
resemblances, failed to warm the stony hearts of the proud old
ladies, to whom it was as gall and wormwood to see a nobody crowned
in the palace of their kings. Like religious communities,
persecution only drew this old society more firmly together and
made them stand by each other in their distress. When the Bois was
remodelled by Napoleon and the lake with its winding drive laid
out, the new Court drove of an afternoon along this water front.
That was enough for the old swells! They retired to the remote
"Allee of the Acacias," and solemnly took their airing away from
the bustle of the new world, incidentally setting a fashion that
has held good to this day; the lakeside being now deserted, and the
"Acacias" crowded of an afternoon, by all that Paris holds of
elegant and inelegant.

Where the brilliant Second Empire failed, the Republic had little
chance of success. With each succeeding year the "Old Faubourg"
withdrew more and more into its shell, going so far, after the fall
of Mac Mahon, as to change its "season" to the spring, so that the
balls and FETES it gave should not coincide with the "official"
entertainments during the winter.

The next people to have a "shy" at the "Old Faubourg's" Gothic
battlements were the Jews, who were victorious in a few light
skirmishes and succeeded in capturing one or two illustrious
husbands for their daughters. The wily Israelites, however,
discovered that titled sons-in-law were expensive articles and
often turned out unsatisfactorily, so they quickly desisted. The
English, the most practical of societies, have always left the
Faubourg alone. It has been reserved for our countrywomen to lay
the most determined siege yet recorded to that untaken stronghold.

It is a characteristic of the American temperament to be unable to
see a closed door without developing an intense curiosity to know
what is behind; or to read "No Admittance to the Public" over an
entrance without immediately determining to get inside at any
price. So it is easy to understand the attraction an hermetically
sealed society would have for our fair compatriots. Year after
year they have flung themselves against its closed gateways.
Repulsed, they have retired only to form again for the attack, but
are as far away to-day from planting their flag in that citadel as
when they first began. It does not matter to them what is inside;
there may be (as in this case) only mouldy old halls and a group of
people with antiquated ideas and ways. It is enough for a certain
type of woman to know that she is not wanted in an exclusive
circle, to be ready to die in the attempt to get there. This point
of view reminds one of Mrs. Snob's saying about a new arrival at a
hotel: "I am sure she must be 'somebody' for she was so rude to me
when I spoke to her;" and her answer to her daughter when the girl
said (on arriving at a watering-place) that she had noticed a very
nice family "who look as if they wanted to know us, Mamma:"

"Then, my dear," replied Mamma Snob, "they certainly are not people
we want to meet!"

The men in French society are willing enough to make acquaintance
with foreigners. You may see the youth of the Faubourg dancing at
American balls in Paris, or running over for occasional visits to
this country. But when it comes to taking their women-kind with
them, it is a different matter. Americans who have known well-born
Frenchmen at school or college are surprised, on meeting them
later, to be asked (cordially enough) to dine EN GARCON at a
restaurant, although their Parisian friend is married. An
Englishman's or American's first word would be on a like occasion:

"Come and dine with me to-night. I want to introduce you to my
wife." Such an idea would never cross a Frenchman's mind!

One American I know is a striking example of this. He was born in
Paris, went to school and college there, and has lived in that city
all his life. His sister married a French nobleman. Yet at this
moment, in spite of his wealth, his charming American wife, and
many beautiful entertainments, he has not one warm French friend,
or the ENTREE on a footing of intimacy to a single Gallic house.

There is no analogy between the English aristocracy and the French
nobility, except that they are both antiquated institutions; the
English is the more harmful on account of its legislative power,
the French is the more pretentious. The House of Lords is the most
open club in London, the payment of an entrance-fee in the shape of
a check to a party fund being an all-sufficient sesame. In France,
one must be born in the magic circle. The spirit of the Emigration
of 1793 is not yet extinct. The nobles live in their own world
(how expressive the word is, seeming to exclude all the rest of
mankind), pining after an impossible RESTAURATION, alien to the
present day, holding aloof from politics for fear of coming in
touch with the masses, with whom they pride themselves on having
nothing in common.

What leads many people astray on this subject is that there has
formed around this ancient society a circle composed of rich
"outsiders," who have married into good families; and of eccentric
members of the latter, who from a love of excitement or for
interested motives have broken away from their traditions. Newly
arrived Americans are apt to mistake this "world" for the real
thing. Into this circle it is not difficult for foreigners who are
rich and anxious to see something of life to gain admission. To be
received by the ladies of this outer circle, seems to our
compatriots to be an achievement, until they learn the real
standing of their new acquaintances.

No gayer houses, however, exist than those of the new set. At
their city or country houses, they entertain continually, and they
are the people one meets toward five o'clock, on the grounds of the
Polo Club, in the Bois, at FETES given by the Island Club of
Puteaux, attending the race meetings, or dining at American houses.
As far as amusement and fun go, one might seek much further and
fare worse.

It is very, very rare that foreigners get beyond this circle.
Occasionally there is a marriage between an American girl and some
Frenchman of high rank. In these cases the girl is, as it were,
swallowed up. Her family see little of her, she rarely appears in
general society, and, little by little, she is lost to her old
friends and relations. I know of several cases of this kind where
it is to be doubted if a dozen Americans outside of the girls'
connections know that such women exist. The fall in rents and land
values has made the French aristocracy poor; it is only by the
greatest economy (and it never entered into an American mind to
conceive of such economy as is practised among them) that they
succeed in holding on to their historical chateaux or beautiful
city residences; so that pride plays a large part in the isolation
in which they live.

The fact that no titles are recognized officially by the French
government (the most they can obtain being a "courtesy"
recognition) has placed these people in a singularly false
position. An American girl who has married a Duke is a good deal
astonished to find that she is legally only plain "Madame So and
So;" that when her husband does his military service there is no
trace of the high-sounding title to be found in his official
papers. Some years ago, a colonel was rebuked because he allowed
the Duc d'Alencon to be addressed as "Monseigneur" by the other
officers of his regiment. This ought to make ambitious papas
reflect, when they treat themselves to titled sons-in-law. They
should at least try and get an article recognized by the law.

Most of what is written here is perfectly well known to resident
Americans in Paris, and has been the cause of gradually splitting
that once harmonious settlement into two perfectly distinct camps,
between which no love is lost. The members of one, clinging to
their countrymen's creed of having the best or nothing, have been
contented to live in France and know but few French people,
entertaining among themselves and marrying their daughters to
Americans. The members of the other, who have "gone in" for French
society, take what they can get, and, on the whole, lead very jolly
lives. It often happens (perhaps it is only a coincidence) that
ladies who have not been very successful at home are partial to
this circle, where they easily find guests for their entertainments
and the recognition their souls long for.

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