Worldly Ways and Byways
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Eliot Gregory >> Worldly Ways and Byways
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What makes things worse is that the great nobles are mostly "land
poor," and even the richer ones burned their fingers in the craze
for speculation that turned all Rome upside down in the years
following 1870 and Italian unity, when they naively imagined their
new capital was to become again after seventeen centuries the
metropolis of the world. Whole quarters of new houses were run up
for a population that failed to appear; these houses now stand
empty and are fast going to ruin. So that little in the way of
entertaining is to be expected from the bankrupts. They are a
genial race, these Italian nobles, and welcome rich strangers and
marry them with much enthusiasm - just a shade too much, perhaps -
the girl counting for so little and her DOT for so much in the
matrimonial scale. It is only necessary to keep open house to have
the pick of the younger ones as your guests. They will come to
entertainments at American houses and bring all their relations,
and dance, and dine, and flirt with great good humor and
persistency; but if there is not a good solid fortune in the
background, in the best of securities, the prettiest American
smiles never tempt them beyond flirtation; the season over, they
disappear up into their mountain villas to wait for a new
importation from the States.
In Rome, as well as in the other Italian cities, there are, of
course, still to be found Americans in some numbers (where on the
Continent will you not find them?), living quietly for study or
economy. But they are not numerous or united enough to form a
society; and are apt to be involved in bitter strife among
themselves.
Why, you ask, should Americans quarrel among themselves?
Some years ago I was passing the summer months on the Rhine at a
tiny German watering-place, principally frequented by English, who
were all living together in great peace and harmony, until one
fatal day, when an Earl appeared. He was a poor Irish Earl, very
simple and unoffending, but he brought war into that town, heart-
burnings, envy, and backbiting. The English colony at once divided
itself into two camps, those who knew the Earl and those who did
not. And peace fled from our little society. You will find in
every foreign capital among the resident Americans, just such a
state of affairs as convulsed that German spa. The native "swells"
have come to be the apple of discord that divides our good people
among themselves. Those who have been successful in knowing the
foreigners avoid their compatriots and live with their new friends,
while the other group who, from laziness, disinclination, or
principle (?) have remained true to their American circle, cannot
resist calling the others snobs, and laughing (a bit enviously,
perhaps) at their upward struggles.
It is the same in Florence. The little there was left of an
American society went to pieces on that rock. Our parents forty
years ago seem to me to have been much more self-respecting and
sensible. They knew perfectly well that there was nothing in
common between themselves and the Italian nobility, and that those
good people were not going to put themselves out to make the
acquaintance of a lot of strangers, mostly of another religion,
unless it was to be materially to their advantage. So they left
them quietly alone. I do not pretend to judge any one's motives,
but confess I cannot help regarding with suspicion a foreigner who
leaves his own circle to mingle with strangers. It resembles too
closely the amiabilities of the wolf for the lamb, or the sudden
politeness of a school-boy to a little girl who has received a box
of candies.
CHAPTER 37 - The Newport of the Past
FEW of the "carriage ladies and gentlemen" who disport themselves
in Newport during the summer months, yachting and dancing through
the short season, then flitting away to fresh fields and pastures
new, realize that their daintily shod feet have been treading
historic ground, or care to cast a thought back to the past. Oddly
enough, to the majority of people the past is a volume rarely
opened. Not that it bores them to read it, but because they, like
children, want some one to turn over its yellow leaves and point
out the pictures to them. Few of the human motes that dance in the
rays of the afternoon sun as they slant across the little Park,
think of the fable which asserts that a sea-worn band of
adventurous men, centuries before the Cabots or the Genoese
discoverer thought of crossing the Atlantic, had pushed bravely out
over untried seas and landed on this rocky coast. Yet one apparent
evidence of their stay tempts our thoughts back to the times when
it is said to have been built as a bower for a king's daughter.
Longfellow, in the swinging verse of his "Skeleton in Armor,"
breathing of the sea and the Norseman's fatal love, has thrown such
a glamour of poetry around the tower, that one would fain believe
all he relates. The hardy Norsemen, if they ever came here,
succumbed in their struggle with the native tribes, or, discouraged
by death and hardships, sailed away, leaving the clouds of oblivion
to close again darkly around this continent, and the fog of
discussion to circle around the "Old Mill."
The little settlement of another race, speaking another tongue,
that centuries later sprang up in the shadow of the tower, quickly
grew into a busy and prosperous city, which, like New York, its
rival, was captured and held by the English. To walk now through
some of its quaint, narrow streets is to step back into
Revolutionary days. Hardly a house has changed since the time when
the red coats of the British officers brightened the prim
perspectives, and turned loyal young heads as they passed.
At the corner of Spring and Pelham Streets, still stands the
residence of General Prescott, who was carried away prisoner by his
opponents, they having rowed down in whale-boats from Providence
for the attack. Rochambeau, our French ally, lodged lower down in
Mary Street. In the tower of Trinity, one can read the epitaph of
the unfortunate Chevalier de Ternay, commander of the sea forces,
whose body lies near by. Many years later his relative, the Duc de
Noailles, when Minister to this country, had this simple tablet
repaired and made a visit to the spot.
A long period of prosperity followed the Revolution, during which
Newport grew and flourished. Our pious and God-fearing "forbears,"
having secured personal and religious liberty, proceeded to
inaugurate a most successful and remunerative trade in rum and
slaves. It was a triangular transaction and yielded a three-fold
profit. The simple population of that day, numbering less than ten
thousand souls, possessed twenty distilleries; finding it a
physical impossibility to drink ALL the rum, they conceived the
happy thought of sending the surplus across to the coast of Africa,
where it appears to have been much appreciated by the native
chiefs, who eagerly exchanged the pick of their loyal subjects for
that liquid. These poor brutes were taken to the West Indies and
exchanged for sugar, laden with which, the vessels returned to
Newport.
Having introduced the dusky chieftains to the charms of delirium
tremens and their subjects to life-long slavery, one can almost see
these pious deacons proceeding to church to offer up thanks for the
return of their successful vessels. Alas! even "the best laid
schemes of mice and men" come to an end. The War of 1812, the
opening of the Erie Canal and sundry railways struck a blow at
Newport commerce, from which it never recovered. The city sank
into oblivion, and for over thirty years not a house was built
there.
It was not until near 1840 that the Middletons and Izzards and
other wealthy and aristocratic Southern families were tempted to
Newport by the climate and the facilities it offered for bathing,
shooting and boating. A boarding-house or two sufficed for the
modest wants of the new-comers, first among which stood the
Aquidneck, presided over by kind Mrs. Murray. It was not until
some years later, when New York and Boston families began to
appreciate the place, that the first hotels were built, - the
Atlantic on the square facing the old mill, the Bellevue and
Fillmore on Catherine Street, and finally the original Ocean House,
destroyed by fire in 1845 and rebuilt as we see it to-day. The
croakers of the epoch considered it much too far out of town to be
successful, for at its door the open fields began, a gate there
separating the town from the country across which a straggling,
half-made road, closed by innumerable gates, led along the cliffs
and out across what is now the Ocean Drive. The principal roads at
that time led inland; any one wishing to drive seaward had to
descend every two or three minutes to open a gate. The youth of
the day discovered a source of income in opening and closing these
for pennies.
Fashion had decreed that the correct hour for dancing was 11 A.M.,
and MATINEES DANSANTES were regularly given at the hotels, our
grandmothers appearing in DECOLLETE muslin frocks adorned with
broad sashes, and disporting themselves gayly until the dinner
hour. Low-neck dresses were the rule, not only for these informal
entertainments, but as every-day wear for young girls, - an old
lady only the other day telling me she had never worn a "high-body"
until after her marriage. Two o'clock found all the beauties and
beaux dining. How incredulously they would have laughed if any one
had prophesied that their grandchildren would prefer eight forty-
five as a dinner hour!
The opening of Bellevue Avenue marked another epoch in the history
of Newport. About that time Governor Lawrence bought the whole of
Ochre Point farm for fourteen thousand dollars, and Mr. de Rham
built on the newly opened road the first "cottage," which stands
to-day modestly back from the avenue opposite Perry Street. If
houses have souls, as Hawthorne averred, and can remember and
compare, what curious thoughts must pass through the oaken brain of
this simple construction as it sees its marble neighbors rearing
their vast facades among trees. The trees, too, are an innovation,
for when the de Rham cottage was built and Mrs. Cleveland opened
her new house at the extreme end of Rough Point (the second summer
residence in the place) it is doubtful if a single tree broke the
rocky monotony of the landscape from the Ocean House to Bateman's
Point.
Governor Lawrence, having sold one acre of his Ochre Point farm to
Mr. Pendleton for the price he himself had paid for the whole,
proceeded to build a stone wall between the two properties down to
the water's edge. The population of Newport had been accustomed to
take their Sunday airings and moonlight rambles along "the cliffs,"
and viewed this obstruction of their favorite walk with dismay. So
strong was their feeling that when the wall was completed the young
men of the town repaired there in the night and tore it down. It
was rebuilt, the mortar being mixed with broken glass. This
infuriated the people to such an extent that the whole populace, in
broad daylight, accompanied by the summer visitors, destroyed the
wall and threw the materials into the sea. Lawrence, bent on
maintaining what he considered his rights, called the law to his
aid. It was then discovered that an immemorial riverain right gave
the fishermen and the public generally, access to the shore for
fishing, and also to collect seaweed, - a right of way that no one
could obstruct.
This was the beginning of the long struggle between the cliff-
dwellers and the townspeople; each new property-owner, disgusted at
the idea that all the world can stroll at will across his well-kept
lawns, has in turn tried his hand at suppressing the now famous
"walk." Not only do the public claim the liberty to walk there,
but also the right to cross any property to get to the shore. At
this moment the city fathers and the committee of the new buildings
at Bailey's Beach are wrangling as gayly as in Governor Lawrence's
day over a bit of wall lately constructed across the end of
Bellevue Avenue. A new expedient has been hit upon by some of the
would-be exclusive owners of the cliffs; they have lowered the
"walk" out of sight, thus insuring their own privacy and in no way
interfering with the rights of the public.
Among the gentlemen who settled in Newport about Governor
Lawrence's time was Lord Baltimore (Mr. Calvert, he preferred to
call himself), who remained there until his death. He was shy of
referring to his English peerage, but would willingly talk of his
descent through his mother from Peter Paul Rubens, from whom had
come down to him a chateau in Holland and several splendid
paintings. The latter hung in the parlor of the modest little
dwelling, where I was taken to see them and their owner many years
ago. My introducer on this occasion was herself a lady of no
ordinary birth, being the daughter of Stuart, our greatest portrait
painter. I have passed many quiet hours in the quaint studio (the
same her father had used), hearing her prattle - as she loved to do
if she found a sympathetic listener - of her father, of Washington
and his pompous ways, and the many celebrities who had in turn
posed before Stuart's easel. She had been her father's companion
and aid, present at the sittings, preparing his brushes and colors,
and painting in backgrounds and accessories; and would willingly
show his palette and explain his methods and theories of color, his
predilection for scrumbling shadows thinly in black and then
painting boldly in with body color. Her lessons had not profited
much to the gentle, kindly old lady, for the productions of her own
brush were far from resembling her great parent's work. She,
however, painted cheerfully on to life's close, surrounded by her
many friends, foremost among whom was Charlotte Cushman, who also
passed the last years of her life in Newport. Miss Stuart was over
eighty when I last saw her, still full of spirit and vigor,
beginning the portrait of a famous beauty of that day, since the
wife and mother of dukes.
Miss Stuart's death seems to close one of the chapters in the
history of this city, and to break the last connecting link with
its past. The world moves so quickly that the simple days and
modest amusements of our fathers and grandfathers have already
receded into misty remoteness. We look at their portraits and
wonder vaguely at their graceless costumes. We know they trod
these same streets, and laughed and flirted and married as we are
doing to-day, but they seem to us strangely far away, like
inhabitants of another sphere!
It is humiliating to think how soon we, too, shall have become the
ancestors of a new and careless generation; fresh faces will
replace our faded ones, young voices will laugh as they look at our
portraits hanging in dark corners, wondering who we were, and
(criticising the apparel we think so artistic and appropriate) how
we could ever have made such guys of ourselves.
CHAPTER 38 - A Conquest of Europe
THE most important event in modern history is the discovery of
Europe by the Americans. Before it, the peoples of the Old World
lived happy and contented in their own countries, practising the
patriarchal virtues handed down to them from generations of
forebears, ignoring alike the vices and benefits of modern
civilization, as understood on this side of the Atlantic. The
simple-minded Europeans remained at home, satisfied with the rank
in life where they had been born, and innocent of the ways of the
new world.
These peoples were, on the whole, not so much to be pitied, for
they had many pleasing crafts and arts unknown to the invaders,
which had enabled them to decorate their capitals with taste in a
rude way; nothing really great like the lofty buildings and
elevated railway structures, executed in American cities, but
interesting as showing what an ingenious race, deprived of the
secrets of modern science, could accomplish.
The more aesthetic of the newcomers even affected to admire the
antiquated places of worship and residences they visited abroad,
pointing out to their compatriots that in many cases marble, bronze
and other old-fashioned materials had been so cleverly treated as
to look almost like the superior cast-iron employed at home, and
that some of the old paintings, preserved with veneration in the
museums, had nearly the brilliancy of modern chromos. As their
authors had, however, neglected to use a process lending itself to
rapid reproduction, they were of no practical value. In other
ways, the continental races, when discovered, were sadly behind the
times. In business, they ignored the use of "corners," that
backbone of American trade, and their ideas of advertising were but
little in advance of those known among the ancient Greeks.
The discovery of Europe by the Americans was made about 1850, at
which date the first bands of adventurers crossed the seas in
search of amusement. The reports these pioneers brought back of
the NAIVETE, politeness, and gullibility of the natives, and the
cheapness of existence in their cities, caused a general exodus
from the western to the eastern hemisphere. Most of the Americans
who had used up their credit at home and those whose incomes were
insufficient for their wants, immediately migrated to these happy
hunting grounds, where life was inexpensive and credit unlimited.
The first arrivals enjoyed for some twenty years unique
opportunities. They were able to live in splendor for a pittance
that would barely have kept them in necessaries on their own side
of the Atlantic, and to pick up valuable specimens of native
handiwork for nominal sums. In those happy days, to belong to the
invading race was a sufficient passport to the good graces of the
Europeans, who asked no other guarantees before trading with the
newcomers, but flocked around them, offering their services and
their primitive manufactures, convinced that Americans were all
wealthy.
Alas! History ever repeats itself. As Mexicans and Peruvians,
after receiving their conquerors with confidence and enthusiasm,
came to rue the day they had opened their arms to strangers, so the
European peoples, before a quarter of a century was over, realized
that the hordes from across the sea who were over-running their
lands, raising prices, crowding the native students out of the
schools, and finally attempting to force an entrance into society,
had little to recommend them or justify their presence except
money. Even in this some of the intruders were unsatisfactory.
Those who had been received into the "bosom" of hotels often forgot
to settle before departing. The continental women who had provided
the wives of discoverers with the raiment of the country (a luxury
greatly affected by those ladies) found, to their disgust, that
their new customers were often unable or unwilling to offer any
remuneration.
In consequence of these and many other disillusions, Americans
began to be called the "Destroyers," especially when it became
known that nothing was too heavy or too bulky to be carried away by
the invaders, who tore the insides from the native houses, the
paintings from the walls, the statues from the temples, and
transported this booty across the seas, much in the same way as the
Romans had plundered Greece. Elaborate furniture seemed especially
to attract the new arrivals, who acquired vast quantities of it.
Here, however, the wily natives (who were beginning to appreciate
their own belongings) had revenge. Immense quantities of worthless
imitations were secretly manufactured and sold to the travellers at
fabulous prices. The same artifice was used with paintings, said
to be by great masters, and with imitations of old stuffs and bric-
a-brac, which the ignorant and arrogant invaders pretended to
appreciate and collect.
Previous to our arrival there had been an invasion of the Continent
by the English about the year 1812. One of their historians,
called Thackeray, gives an amusing account of this in the opening
chapters of his "Shabby Genteel Story." That event, however, was
unimportant in comparison with the great American movement,
although both were characterized by the same total disregard of the
feelings and prejudices of indigenous populations. The English
then walked about the continental churches during divine service,
gazing at the pictures and consulting their guide-books as
unconcernedly as our compatriots do to-day. They also crowded into
theatres and concert halls, and afterwards wrote to the newspapers
complaining of the bad atmosphere of those primitive establishments
and of the long ENTR'ACTES.
As long as the invaders confined themselves to such trifles, the
patient foreigners submitted to their overbearing and uncouth ways
because of the supposed benefit to trade. The natives even went so
far as to build hotels for the accommodation and delight of the
invaders, abandoning whole quarters to their guests.
There was, however, a point at which complacency stopped. The
older civilizations had formed among themselves restricted and
exclusive societies, to which access was almost impossible to
strangers. These sanctuaries tempted the immigrants, who offered
their fairest virgins and much treasure for the privilege of
admission. The indigenous aristocrats, who were mostly poor,
yielded to these offers and a few Americans succeeded in forcing an
entrance. But the old nobility soon became frightened at the
number and vulgarity of the invaders, and withdrew severely into
their shells, refusing to accept any further bribes either in the
form of females or finance.
From this moment dates the humiliation of the discoverers. All
their booty and plunder seemed worthless in comparison with the
Elysian delights they imagined were concealed behind the closed
doors of those holy places, visions of which tortured the women
from the western hemisphere and prevented their taking any pleasure
in other victories. To be received into those inner circles became
their chief ambition. With this end in view they dressed
themselves in expensive costumes, took the trouble to learn the
"lingo" spoken in the country, went to the extremity of copying the
ways of the native women by painting their faces, and in one or two
cases imitated the laxity of their morals.
In spite of these concessions, our women were not received with
enthusiasm. On the contrary, the very name of an American became a
byword and an abomination in every continental city. This
prejudice against us abroad is hardly to be wondered at on
reflecting what we have done to acquire it. The agents chosen by
our government to treat diplomatically with the conquered nations,
owe their selection to political motives rather than to their tact
or fitness. In the large majority of cases men are sent over who
know little either of the habits or languages prevailing in Europe.
The worst elements always follow in the wake of discovery. Our
settlements abroad gradually became the abode of the compromised,
the divorced, the socially and financially bankrupt.
Within the last decade we have found a way to revenge the slights
put upon us, especially those offered to Americans in the capital
of Gaul. Having for the moment no playwrights of our own, the men
who concoct dramas, comedies, and burlesques for our stage find,
instead of wearying themselves in trying to produce original
matter, that it is much simpler to adapt from French writers. This
has been carried to such a length that entire French plays are now
produced in New York signed by American names.
The great French playwrights can protect themselves by taking out
American copyright, but if one of them omits this formality, the
"conquerors" immediately seize upon his work and translate it,
omitting intentionally all mention of the real author on their
programmes. This season a play was produced of which the first act
was taken from Guy de Maupassant, the second and third "adapted"
from Sardou, with episodes introduced from other authors to
brighten the mixture. The piece thus patched together is signed by
a well-known Anglo-Saxon name, and accepted by our moral public,
although the original of the first act was stopped by the Parisian
police as too immoral for that gay capital.
Of what use would it be to "discover" a new continent unless the
explorers were to reap some such benefits? Let us take every
advantage that our proud position gives us, plundering the foreign
authors, making penal settlements of their capitals, and ignoring
their foolish customs and prejudices when we travel among them! In
this way shall we effectually impress on the inferior races across
the Atlantic the greatness of the American nation.
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