"Talent and worth are the only eternal grounds of distinction. To
these the Almighty has affixed his everlasting patent of nobility;
and these it is which make the bright, 'the immortal names,' to
which our children may aspire, as well as others. It will be our
own fault if, in our own land, society as well as government is not
organised upon a new foundation."
Miss Sedgwick.
It is true that it is better to live for honour than for wealth: but how
much better, depends upon the idea of honour. Where truth and justice
are more than hollow words, the idea of honour is such as to exclude all
fear, except of wrong-doing. Where the honour is to be derived from
present human opinion, there must be fear, ever present, and perpetually
exciting to or withholding from action. In such a case, as painful a
bondage is incurred as in the pursuit of wealth. If riches take to
themselves wings, and fly away, so does popularity. If rich freights are
in danger afar off from storms, and harvests at home from blights, so is
reputation, from differences of opinion, and varieties of views and
tempers. If all that moralists have written, and wise men have
testified, about the vanity and misery of depending on human applause be
true, there can be no true freedom in communities, any more than for
individuals, who live to opinion. The time will come when the Americans
also will testify to this, as a nation, as many individual members of
their society have done already. The time will come when they will be
astonished to discover how they mar their own privileges by allowing
themselves less liberty of speech and action than is enjoyed by the
inhabitants of countries whose political servitude the Americans justly
compassionate and despise.
This regard to opinion shows itself under various forms in different
parts of the country, and under dissimilar social arrangements. In the
south, where the labour itself is capital, and labour cannot therefore
be regarded with due respect, there is much vanity of retinue, much
extravagance, from fear of the imputation of poverty which would follow
upon retrenchment; and great recklessness of life, from fear of the
imputation of cowardice which might follow upon forgiveness of injuries.
Fear of imputation is here the panic, under which men relinquish their
freedom of action and speech. In the north, society has been enabled,
chiefly by the religious influence which has descended from the fathers,
to surmount, in some degree, this low kind of fear, so far as it shows
itself in recklessness of life: but not altogether. I was amazed to hear
a gentleman of New England declare, while complaining of the insolence
of the southern members of Congress to the northern, under shelter of
the northern men not being duellists, that, if he went to Congress, he
would give out that he would fight. I do not believe that he would
actually have proved himself so far behind the society to which he
belonged as to have adopted a bad practice which it had
outgrown,—adopted it from that very fear of imputation which he
despised in the south; but the impulse under which he spoke testified to
the danger of a fear of opinion taking any form, however low, when it
exists under any other.
When I was at Philadelphia, a shocking incident happened in a family
with which I was acquainted. The only son, a fine youth of nineteen, was
insulted by a fellow-student. His father and uncle consulted what must
be done; and actually sent the young man out to fight the person who had
insulted him: the mother being aware of it, and praying that if either
fell, it might be her son. She no doubt felt in her true heart, that it
would be better to die than to murder another from the selfish fear of
imputation. The first aggressor lost a finger; and there, it was said,
the matter ended. But the matter has not ended yet, nor will end; for
the young man has had a lesson of low selfishness, of moral cowardice
impressed upon him by the guardians of his youth, with a force which he
is not likely to surmount: and the society in which he lives has seen
the strongest testimony to false principles borne by two of its most
respected members.
Not by any means as a fair specimen of society, but as an example of
what kind of honour may be enjoyed where the fear of imputation is at
its height, I give the description, as it was given me by a resident, of
what a man may do in an eminently duelling portion of the southern
country. "A man may kill another, and be no worse. He may be shabby in
his money transactions, but may not steal. He may game, but not keep a
gaming-house." It will not do for the duellists of the south to drop in
conversation, as they do, that good manners can exist only where
vengeance is the penalty of bad. The fear of imputation and the dread of
vengeance are at least as contemptible as bad manners; and
unquestionably lower than the fear of opinion prevalent in the north.
In the north there can be little vanity of retinue, as retinue is not
to be had: but there is, instead of it, much ostentation of wealth, in
the commercial cities. It is here that the aristocracy form and collect;
and, as has been before said, the aristocratic is universally the
fearing, while the democratic is the hoping, party. The fear of opinion
takes many forms. There is fear of vulgarity, fear of responsibility;
and above all, fear of singularity. There is something more displeasing,
at the first view, in the caution of the Yankees than in the
recklessness of the cavalier race of the south. Till the individual
exceptions come out from the mass; till the domestic frankness and
generosity of the whole people are apparent, there is something little
short of disgusting to the stranger who has been unused to witness such
want of social confidence, in the caution which presents probably the
strongest aspect of selfishness that he has ever seen.
The Americans of the northern States are, from education and habit, so
accustomed to the caution of which I speak, as to be unaware of its
extent and singularity. They think themselves injured by the remarks
which strangers make upon it, and by the ridicule with which it is
treated by their own countrymen who have travelled abroad. But the
singularity is in themselves. They may travel over the world, and find
no society but their own which will submit to the restraint of perpetual
caution, and reference to the opinions of others. They may travel over
the whole world, and find no country but their own where the very
children beware of getting into scrapes, and talk of the effect of
actions upon people's minds; where the youth of society determine in
silence what opinions they shall bring forward, and what avow only in
the family circle; where women write miserable letters, almost
universally, because it is a settled matter that it is unsafe to commit
oneself on paper; and where elderly people seem to lack almost
universally that faith in principles which inspires a free expression of
them at any time, and under all circumstances.
"Mrs. B.," said a child of eleven to a friend of mine, "what church do
you go to?"—"To Mr. ——'s." "O, Mrs. B. are you a Unitarian?"—"No."
"Then why do you go to that church?"—"Because I can worship best
there." "O, but Mrs. B., think of the example,—the example, Mrs. B.!"
When I had been in the country some time, I remarked to one who knew
well the society in which he lived, that I had not seen a good lady's
letter since I landed; though the conversation of some of the writers
was of a very superior kind. The letters were uniformly poor and guarded
in expression, confined to common-places, and overloaded with flattery.
"There are," replied he, "no good letters written in America. The force
of public opinion is so strong, and the danger of publicity so great,
that men do not write what they think, for fear of getting into bad
hands: and this acts again upon the women, and makes their style
artificial." It is not quite true that there are no good letters written
in America: among my own circle of correspondents there, there are
ladies and gentlemen whose letters would stand a comparison with any for
frankness, grace, and epistolary beauty of every kind. But I am not
aware of any medium between this excellence and the boarding-school
insignificance which characterises the rest.
When the stranger has recovered a little from the first disagreeable
impression of all this caution, he naturally asks what there can be to
render it worth while. To this question, I never could discover a
satisfactory answer. What harm the "force of public opinion," or
"publicity," can do to any individual; what injury "bad hands" can
inflict upon a good man or woman, which can be compared with the evil of
living in perpetual caution, I cannot imagine. If men and women cannot
bear blame, they had better hew out a space for themselves in the
forest, and live there, as the only safe place. If they are afraid of
observation and comment, they should withdraw from society altogether:
for the interest which human beings take in each other is so deep and
universal, that observation and comment are unavoidable wherever there
are eyes to see, and hearts and minds to yearn and speculate. An honest
man will not naturally fear this investigation. If he is not sure of his
opinions on any matter, he will say so, and endeavour to gain light. If
he is sure, he will speak them, and be ready to avow the grounds of
them, as occasion arises. That there should be some who think his
opinions false and dangerous is not pleasant; but it is an evil too
trifling to be mentioned in comparison with the bondage of concealment,
and the torment of fear. This bondage, this torment is worse than the
worst that the "force of public opinion" can inflict, even if such force
should close the prospect of political advancement, of professional
eminence, and of the best of social privileges. There are some members
of society in America who have found persecution, excommunication, and
violence, more endurable than the concealment of their convictions.
Few persons really doubt this when the plain case is set down before
them. They agree to it in church on Sundays, and in conversation by the
fireside: and the reason why they are so backward as they are to act
upon it in the world, is that habit and education are too strong for
them. They have worn their chains so long that they feel them less than
might be supposed. I doubt whether they can even conceive of a state of
society, of its ease and comfort, where no man fears his neighbour, and
it is no evil to be responsible for one's opinions: where men, knowing
how undiscernible consequences are, and how harmless they must be to the
upright, abide them without fear, and do not perplex themselves with
calculating what is incalculable. Whenever the time shall come for the
Americans to discover all this, to perceive how miserable a restraint
they have imposed upon themselves by this servitude to opinion, they
will see how it is that, while outwardly blessed beyond all parallel,
they have been no happier than the rest of the world. I doubt whether,
among the large "uneasy classes" of the Old World, there is so much
heart-eating care, so much nervous anxiety, as among the dwellers in the
towns of the northern States of America, from this cause alone. If I had
to choose, I would rather endure the involuntary uneasiness of the Old
World sufferers, than the self-imposed anxiety of those of the New:
except that the self-imposed suffering may be shaken off at any moment.
There are instances, few, but striking, of strong-minded persons who
have discovered and are practising the true philosophy of ease; who have
openly taken their stand upon principles, and are prepared for all
consequences, meekly and cheerfully defying all possible inflictions of
opinion. Though it does not enter into their calculations, such may
possibly find that they are enjoying more, and suffering less from
opinion, than those who most daintily court it.
There would be something amusing in observing the operation of this
habit of caution, if it were not too serious a misfortune. When Dr.
Channing's work on Slavery came out, the following conversation passed
between a lady of Boston and myself. She began it with—
"Have you seen Dr. Channing's book?"
"Yes. Have you?"
"O no. Do not you think it very ill-timed?"
"No; I think it well-timed; as it did not come out sooner."
"But is it not wrong to increase the public excitement at such a time?"
"That depends upon the nature of the excitement. But this book seems to
have a tranquillising effect: as the exhibition of true principles
generally has."
"But Dr. Channing is not a practical man. He is only a retired student.
He has no real interest in the matter."
"No worldly interest; and this, and his seclusion, enable him to see
more clearly than others, in a case where principles enlighten men, and
practice seems only to blind them."
"Well: I shall certainly read the book, as you like it so much."
"Pray don't, if that is your reason."
A reply to Dr. Channing's book soon appeared;—a pamphlet which savoured
only of fear, dollars, and, consequently, insult. A gentleman of Boston,
who had, on some important occasions, shown that he could exercise a
high moral courage, made no mention of this reply for some time after it
appeared. At length, on hearing another person speak of it as it
deserved, he said, "Now people are so openly speaking of that reply, I
have no objection to say what I think of it. I have held my tongue about
it hitherto; but yesterday I heard —— speak of it as you do; and I no
longer hesitate to declare that I think it an infamous production."
It may be said that such are remarkable cases. Be it so: they still
testify to the habit of society, by the direction which the caution
takes. Elsewhere, the parties might be quite as much afraid of
something else; but they would not dream of refraining from a good book,
or holding their tongues about the badness of a vicious pamphlet, till
supported by the opinions of others.
How strong a contrast to all this the domestic life of the Americans
presents will appear when I come to speak of the spirit of intercourse.
It is an individual, though prevalent, selfishness that I have now been
lamenting.
The traveller should go into the west when he desires to see universal
freedom of manners. The people of the west have a comfortable
self-complacency, equally different from the arrogance of the south, and
the timidity of the north. They seem to unite with this the hospitality
which distinguishes the whole country: so that they are, on the whole, a
very bewitching people. Their self-confidence probably arises from their
being really remarkably energetic, and having testified this by the
conquests over nature which their mere settlement in the west evinces.
They are the freest people I saw in America: and accordingly one enjoys
among them a delightful exemption from the sorrow and indignation which
worldly caution always inspires; and from flattery. If the stranger
finds himself flattered in the west, he may pretty safely conclude that
the person he is talking with comes from New England. "We are apt to
think," said a westerner to me, "that however great and good another
person may be, we are just as great and good." Accordingly, intercourse
goes on without any reference whatever to the merits of the respective
parties. In the sunshine of complacency, their free thoughts ripen into
free deeds, and the world gains largely. There are, naturally, instances
of extreme conceit, here and there: but I do not hesitate to avow that,
prevalent as mock-modesty and moral cowardice are in the present
condition of society, that degree of self-confidence which is commonly
called conceit grows in favour with me perpetually. An over-estimate of
self appears to me a far less hurtful and disagreeable mistake than the
idolatry of opinion. It is a mistake which is sure to be rectified,
sooner or later; and very often, it proves to be no mistake where small
critics feel the most confident that they may safely ridicule it. The
event decides this matter of self-estimate, beyond all question; and
while the event remains undisclosed, it is easy and pleasant to give men
credit for as much as they believe themselves to be capable of:—more
easy and pleasant than to see men restricting their own powers by such
calculation of consequences as implies an equal want of faith in others
and in themselves. If John Milton were now here to avow his hope that he
should produce that which "the world would not willingly let die," what
a shout there would be of "the conceited fellow!" while, the declaration
having been made venerable by the event, it is now cited as an instance
of the noble self-confidence of genius.
The people of the west have a right to so much self-confidence as arises
from an ascertainment of what they can actually achieve. They come from
afar, with some qualities which have force enough to guide them into a
new region. They subdue this region to their own purposes; and, if they
do often forget that the world elsewhere is progressing; if they do
suppose themselves as relatively great in present society as they were
formerly in the wilderness, it should be remembered, on their behalf,
that they have effectually asserted their manhood in the conquest of
circumstances.
If we are not yet to see, except in individual instances, the exquisite
union of fearlessness with modesty, of self-confidence with
meekness;—if there must be either the love of being grand in one's own
eyes, or the fear of being little in other people's,—the friends of the
Americans would wish that their error should be that which is allied to
too much, rather than too little freedom.
As for the anxiety about foreign opinions of America, I found it less
striking than I expected. In the south, there is the keenest sensibility
to the opinion of the world about slavery; and in New England, the
veneration for England is greater than I think any one people ought to
feel for any other. The love of the mother country, the filial pride in
her ancient sages, are natural and honourable: and so, perhaps, is a
somewhat exalted degree of deference for the existing dwellers upon the
soil of that mother country, and on the spot where those sages lived and
thought and spoke. But, as long as no civilised nation is, or can be
ascertained to be, far superior or inferior to any other; as the human
heart and human life are generally alike and equal, on this side
barbarism, the excessive reverence with which England is regarded by the
Americans seems to imply a deficiency of self-respect. This is an
immeasurably higher and more healthy state of feeling than that which
has been exhibited by a small portion of the English towards the
Americans;—the contempt which, again, a sprinkling of Americans have
striven to reciprocate. But the despisers in each nation, though so
noisy as to produce some effect, are so few as to need no more than a
passing allusion. If any English person can really see and know the
Americans on their own ground, and fail to honour them as a nation, and
love them as personal friends, he is no fair sample of the people whose
name he bears; and is probably incapable of unperverted reverence: and
if any American, having really seen and known the English on their own
ground, does not reverence his own home exactly in proportion as he
loves what is best in the English, he is unworthy of his home.
When I was on my voyage out, the Americans on board amused themselves
with describing to me how incessantly I should be met by the question
how I liked America. When we arrived within a few miles of New York, a
steam-boat met us, bringing the friends of some of the passengers. On
board this steam-boat, the passengers went up to the city. It happened
to be the smallest, dirtiest, and most clumsy steamer belonging to the
port. A splashing rain drove us down into the cabin, where there was
barely standing room for our company. We saw each other's faces by the
dim light of a single shabby lamp. "Now, Miss M." said some of the
American passengers, "how do you like America?" This was the first time
of my being asked the question which I have had to answer almost daily
since. Yet I do not believe that many of my interrogators seriously
cared any more for my answer than those who first put the question in
the dirty cabin; or than my little friend Charley, who soon caught the
joke, and with grave face, asked me, every now and then, "How do you
like this country?" I learned to regard it as a method of beginning
conversation, like our meteorological observations in England; which are
equally amusing to foreigners. My own impression is, that while the
Americans have too exalted a notion of England, and too little
self-respect as a nation, they are far less anxious about foreign
opinions of themselves than the behaviour of American travellers in
England would lead the English to suppose. The anxiety arises on English
ground. At home, the generality of Americans seem to see clearly enough
that it is yet truer with regard to nations than individuals that,
though it is very pleasant to have the favourable opinion of one's
neighbours, yet, if one is good and happy within oneself, the rest does
not much matter. I met with a few who spoke with a disgusting
affectation of candour, (some, as if they expected to please me thereby,
and others under the influence of sectional prejudice,) of what they
called the fairness of the gross slanders with which they have been
insulted through the English press: but I was thankful to meet with more
who did not acknowledge the jurisdiction of observers disqualified by
prejudice, or by something worse, for passing judgment on a nation. The
irritability of their vanity has been much exaggerated, partly to serve
paltry purposes of authorship; and yet more from the ridiculous
exhibitions of some Americans in England, who are no more to be taken as
specimens of the nation to which they belong than a young Englishman
who, when I was at New York, went up the Hudson in a drizzling rain,
pronounced that West Point was not so pretty as Richmond; descended the
river in the dark, and declared on his return that the Americans were
wonderfully proud of scenery that was nothing particular in any way.
It will be well for the Americans, particularly those of the east and
south, when their idea of honour becomes as exalted as that which
inspired their revolutionary ancestors. Whenever they possess themselves
of the idea of their democracy, as it was possessed by their statesmen
of 1801, they will moderate their homage of human opinion, and enhance
their worship of humanity. Not till then will they live up to their
institutions, and enjoy that internal freedom and peace to which the
external are but a part of the means. In such improvement, they will be
much assisted by the increasing intercourse between Britain and America;
for, however fascinating to Americans may be the luxury, conversational
freedom, and high intellectual cultivation of some portions of English
society, they cannot fail to be disgusted with the aristocratic
insolence which is the vice of the whole. The puerile and barbaric
spirit of contempt is scarcely known in America: the English insolence
of class to class, of individuals towards each other, is not even
conceived of, except in the one highly disgraceful instance of the
treatment of the people of colour. Nothing in American civilisation
struck me so forcibly and so pleasurably as the invariable respect paid
to man, as man. Nothing since my return to England has given me so much
pain as the contrast there. Perhaps no Englishman can become fully
aware, without going to America, of the atmosphere of insolence in which
he dwells; of the taint of contempt which infects all the intercourses
of his world. He cannot imagine how all that he can say that is truest
and best about the treatment of people of colour in America is
neutralised on the spot, by its being understood how the same contempt
is spread over the whole of society here, which is there concentrated
upon the blacks.
This word, at least its meaning, is no more likely to become obsolete in
a republic than among the Hindoos themselves. The distinctive
characteristics may vary; but there will be rank, and tenacity of rank,
wherever there is society. As this is natural, inevitable, it is of
course right. The question must be what is to entitle to rank.
As the feudal qualifications for rank are absolutely non-existent in
America, (except in the slave States, where there are two classes,
without any minor distinctions,) it seems absurd that the feudal remains
of rank in Europe should be imitated in America. Wherever the appearance
of a conventional aristocracy exists in America, it must arise from
wealth, as it cannot from birth. An aristocracy of mere wealth is vulgar
everywhere. In a republic, it is vulgar in the extreme.
This is the only kind of vulgarity I saw in the United States. I imagine
that the English who have complained the most copiously of the vulgarity
of American manners, have done so from two causes: from using their own
conventional notions as a standard of manners, (which is a vulgarism in
themselves;) and also from their intercourses with the Americans having
been confined to those who consider themselves the aristocracy of the
United States; the wealthy and showy citizens of the Atlantic ports.
Foreign travellers are most hospitably received by this class of
society; introduced to "the first people in Boston,"—"in New
York,"—"in Philadelphia;" and taught to view the country with the eyes
of their hosts. No harm is intended here: it is very natural: but it is
not the way for strangers to obtain an understanding of the country and
the people. The traveller who chooses industriously to see for himself,
not with European or aristocratic merely, but with human eyes, will find
the real aristocracy of the country, not only in ball-rooms and
bank-parlours, but also in fishing-boats, in stores, in college
chambers, and behind the plough. Till he has seen all this, and studied
the natural manners of the natural aristocracy, he is no more justified
in applying the word "vulgar" to more than a class, than an American
would be who should call all the English vulgar, when he had seen only
the London alderman class.
I had the opportunity of perceiving what errors might arise from this
cause. I was told a great deal about "the first people in Boston:" which
is perhaps as aristocratic, vain, and vulgar a city, as described by its
own "first people," as any in the world. Happily, however, Boston has
merits which these people know not of. I am far from thinking it, as
they do, the most religious, the most enlightened, and the most virtuous
city in the world. There are other cities in the United States which, on
the whole, I think more virtuous and more enlightened: but I certainly
am not aware of so large a number of peculiarly interesting and valuable
persons living in near neighbourhood, anywhere else but in London. But
it happens that these persons belong chiefly to the natural, very few to
the conventional, aristocracy. They have little perceptible influence.
Society does not seem to be much the better for them. They save their
own souls; but, as regards society, the salt appears to have lost its
savour. It is so sprinkled as not to season the body. With men and women
enough on the spot to redeem society from false morals, and empty
religious profession, Boston is the head-quarters of Cant.
Notwithstanding its superior intelligence, its large provision of
benevolent institutions, and its liberal hospitality, there is an
extraordinary and most pernicious union, in more than a few scattered
instances, of profligacy and the worst kind of infidelity, with a strict
religious profession, and an outward demeanour of remarkable propriety.
The profligacy and infidelity might, I fear, be found in all other
cities, on both sides the water; but nowhere, probably, in absolute
co-existence with ostensible piety. This is not the connexion in which
to speak of the religious aspect of the matter; but, as regards the
cant, I believe that it proceeds chiefly from the spirit of caste which
flourishes in a society which on Sundays and holidays professes to have
abjured it. It is true that the people of New England have put away
duelling; but the feelings which used to vent themselves by the practice
of duelling are cherished by the members of the conventional
aristocracy. This is revealed, not only by the presence of cant, but by
the confessions of some who are bold enough not to pretend to be either
republicans or christians. There are some few who openly desire a
monarchy; and a few more who constantly insinuate the advantages of a
monarchy, and the distastefulness of a republic. It is observable that
such always argue on the supposition that if there were a monarchy, they
should be the aristocracy: a point in which I imagine they would find
themselves mistaken, if so impossible an event could happen at all. This
class, or coterie, is a very small one, and not influential; though a
gentleman of the kind once ventured to give utterance to his aspirations
after monarchy in a fourth of July oration; and afterwards to print
them. There is something venerable in his intrepidity, at least. The
reproach of cant does not attach to him.
The children are such faithful reflectors of this spirit as to leave no
doubt of its existence, even amidst the nicest operations of cant.
Gentlemen may disguise their aristocratic aspirations under sighs for
the depressed state of literature and science; supposing that wealth and
leisure are the constituents of literature; and station the proximate
cause of science; and committing the slight mistake of assuming that the
natural aristocracy of England, her philosophers and poets, have been
identical with, or originated by, her conventional aristocracy. The
ladies may conceal their selfish pride of caste, even from themselves,
under pretensions to superior delicacy and refinement. But the children
use no such disguises. Out they come with what they learn at home. A
school-girl told me what a delightful "set" she belonged to at her
school: how comfortable they all were once, without any sets, till
several grocers' daughters began to come in, as their fathers grew rich;
and it became necessary for the higher girls to consider what they
should do, and to form themselves into sets. She told me how the
daughter of a lottery office-keeper came to the school; and no set would
receive her; how unkindly she was treated, and how difficult it was for
any individual to help her, because she had not spirit or temper enough
to help herself. My informant went on to mention how anxious she and her
set, of about sixty young people, were to visit exclusively among
themselves, how "delightful" it would be to have no grocers' daughters
among them; but that it was found to be impossible.
Here is an education to be going on in the middle of a republic! Much
solace, however, lies in the last clause of the information above
quoted. The Exclusives do find their aims 'impossible.' They will
neither have a monarchy, nor be able to complete and close their 'sets:'
least of all will any republican functions be discharged by those who
are brought up to have any respect of occupations,—to regard a grocer
as beneath a banker. The chief effect of the aristocratic spirit in a
democracy is to make those who are possessed by it exclusives in a
double sense; in being excluded yet more than in excluding. The republic
suffers no further than by having within it a small class acting upon
anti-republican morals, and becoming thereby its perverse children,
instead of its wise and useful friends and servants.
In Philadelphia, I was much in society. Some of my hospitable
acquaintances lived in Chesnut Street, some in Arch Street, and many in
other places. When I had been a few weeks in the city, I found to my
surprise that some of the ladies who were my admiration had not only
never seen or heard of other beautiful young ladies whom I admired quite
as much, but never would see or hear of them. I inquired again and again
for a solution of this mystery. One person told me that a stranger could
not see into the usages of their society. This was just what I was
feeling to be true; but it gave me no satisfaction. Another said that
the mutual ignorance was from the fathers of the Arch Street ladies
having made their fortunes, while the Chesnut Street ladies owed theirs
to their grandfathers. Another, who was amused with a new fashion of
curtseying, just introduced, declared it was from the Arch Street ladies
rising twice on their toes before curtseying, while the Chesnut Street
ladies rose thrice. I was sure of only one thing in the matter; that it
was a pity that the parties should lose the pleasure of admiring each
other, for no better reasons than these: and none better were apparent.
It is not to be supposed that the mere circumstance of living in a
republic will ever eradicate that kind of self-love which takes the form
of family pride. It is a stage in the transit from selfishness to
benevolence; and therefore natural and useful in its proper time and
place. As every child thinks his father the wisest man in the world, the
loving member of a family thinks his relations the greatest, best and
happiest of people, till he gets an intimate knowledge of some others.
This species of exclusiveness exists wherever there are families. An
eminent public man, travelling in a somewhat retired part of his State,
told us how he had been amused with an odd instance of family pride
which had just come under his notice. Some plain farmers, brothers, had
claimed to be his cousins; and he found they were so. They introduced
each other to him; and one brought his son,—a hideous little
Flibbertigibbet, with a shock of carroty hair. His father complacently
stroked his hair, and declared he was exactly like his uncle Richard:
his uncle Richard over again; 'twas wonderful how like his uncle Richard
he was in all respects: the hair was the very same; and his uncle
Richard was dumb till very late, and then stammered: "and this little
fellow," said the father, with a complacent smile,—"this little fellow
is six years old, and he can't speak a word."
No one will find fault with the pride of connexion in this stage.
Supposing it to remain in its present state, it is harmless from its
extreme smallness. In a city, under the stimulus of society, the same
pride may be either perverted into the spirit of caste, or exalted into
the affection of pure republican brotherhood. The alternative is
significant as to the state of the republic, and all-important to the
individual.
The extent and influence of the conventional aristocracy in the United
States are significant of the state of the republic so far as that they
afford an accurate measure of the anti-republican spirit which exists.
Such an aristocracy must remain otherwise too insignificant to be
dangerous. It cannot choose its own members, restrict its own numbers,
or keep its gentility from contamination; for it must be perpetuated,
not by hereditary transmission, but by accessions from below. Grocers
grow rich, and mechanics become governors of States; and happily there
is no law, nor reason, nor desire that it should be otherwise. This
little cloud will always overhang the republic, like the perpetual
vapour which hovers above Niagara, thrown up by the force and regularity
of the movement below. Some observers may be sorry that the heaven is
never to be quite clear: but none will dread the little cloud. It would
be about as reasonable to fear that the white vapour should drown the
cataract from whence it issues as that the conventional aristocracy of
America should swamp the republic.
I found it an admitted truth, throughout the United States, that
enormous private wealth is inconsistent with the spirit of
republicanism. Wealth is power; and large amounts of power ought not to
rest in the hands of individuals.
Admitted truths are not complained of as hardships. I never met with any
one who quarrelled with public opinion for its enmity to large fortunes:
on the contrary, every one who spoke with me on the subject was of the
same mind with everybody else. Amidst the prevalent desire of gain,
against which divines are preaching, and moralists are writing in vain,
there seems to be no desire to go beyond what public opinion approves.
The desire of riches merges in a regard to opinion. There is more of the
spirit of competition and of ostentation in it, than desire of
accumulation. It has been mentioned that there are not more than four or
five hundred affluent men,—worth 100,000 dollars and upwards,—in all
the six States of New England; in a population of above two millions.
The popular feeling is so strong against transmitting large estates, and
favouring one child, that nobody attempts to do it. The rare endeavours
made by persons of feudal prepossessions to perpetuate this vicious
custom, have been all happily frustrated. Much ridicule was occasioned
by the manœuvres of one such testator, who provided for the portions
of a large estate reverting periodically; forgetting that the reversions
were as saleable as anything else; and that, under a democracy, there
can be no settling the private, any more than the public, affairs of
future generations. The present Patroon of Albany, the story of whose
hereditary wealth is universally known, intends to divide his property
among his children,—in number, I believe, thirteen. Under him has
probably expired the practice of favouring one child for the
preservation of a large estate.
This remote approach to an equalisation of property is, as far as it
goes, an improvement upon the state of affairs in the Old World, where
the accumulation of wealth into masses, the consequent destitution of
large portions of society, and the divisions which thus are established
between class and class, between man and man, constitute a system too
absurd and too barbarous to endure. The remote approach made by the
Americans to an equalisation of wealth is yet more important as
indicating the method by which society is to be eventually redeemed from
its absurdity and barbarism in respect of property. This method is as
yet perceived by only a few: but the many who imitate as far as they can
the modes of the Old World, and cherish to the utmost its feudal
prepossessions, will only for a time be able to resist the convictions
which the working of republican principles will force upon them, that
there is no way of securing perfect social liberty on democratic
principles but by community of property.
There is, as there ought to be, as great a horror in America as
everywhere else of the despotism that would equalise property
arbitrarily. Such a despotism can never become more than the ghost of a
fancy. The approach to equalisation now required by public opinion is
that required by justice; it is required that no man should encroach on
his neighbours for the sake of enriching himself; that no man should
encroach on his younger children for the sake of enriching the eldest;
that no man should encroach on the present generation for the sake of
enriching a future one. All this is allowed and required. But by the
same rule, and for the sake of the same principle, no one will ever be
allowed to take from the industrious man the riches won by his industry,
and give them to the idle: to take from the strong to give to the weak:
to take from the wise to give to the foolish. Such aggression upon
property can never take place, or be seriously apprehended in a republic
where all, except drunkards and slaves, are proprietors, and where the
Declaration of Independence claims for every one, with life and liberty,
the pursuit of happiness in his own way. There will be no attacks on
property in the United States.
But it appears to me inevitable that there will be a general agreement,
sooner or later, on a better principle of property than that under which
all are restless; under which the wisdom and peace of the community fall
far below what their other circumstances would lead themselves and their
well-wishers to anticipate.
Their moralists are dissatisfied. "Our present civilisation," says Dr.
Channing, "is characterised and tainted by a devouring greediness of
wealth; and a cause which asserts right against wealth, must stir up
bitter opposition, especially in cities where this divinity is most
adored." ... "The passion for gain is everywhere sapping pure and
generous feeling, and everywhere raises up bitter foes against any
reform which may threaten to turn aside a stream of wealth. I sometimes
feel as if a great social revolution were necessary to break up our
present mercenary civilisation, in order that Christianity, now repelled
by the almost universal worldliness, may come into new contact with the
soul, and may reconstruct society after its own pure and disinterested
principles."[20] This is a prophecy. Men to whom truth and justice are
not "hollow words" are the prophets of the times to come.
The scholars of America are dissatisfied. They complain of the
superficial character of scholarship; of the depression, or rather of
the non-existence, of literature. Some hope that matters will be better
hereafter, merely from the nation having grown older. The greater number
ascribe the mischief to men having to work at their employments; and
some few of these believe that America would have a literature if only
she had a hereditary aristocracy; this being supposed the only method of
leaving to individuals the leisure and freedom of spirit necessary for
literary pursuits. It has been pointed out that this is a mistake.
Nature and social economy do not so agree as that genius is usually
given to those who have hereditary wealth. The capability has so much
more frequently shown itself among the busy and poor than among the rich
who have leisure, as to mock the human presumption which would dictate
from whose lips the oracles of Heaven should issue. One needs but to
glance over the array of geniuses, of philosophers, of scientific men,
and even of the far lower order of scholars, to see how few of the best
benefactors of mankind have issued from "classic shades," "learned
leisure," "scientific retreats," &c., and how many more have sent up
their axioms, their song, their prophecy, their hallelujah, from the
very press of the toiling multitude. What tale is commoner than the
poverty of poets; the need that philosophers have usually had of
philosophy; the embarrassments and destitution of inventors; the straits
of scholars? The history of society shows that the highest intellect is
no more to be looked for especially amidst opulent leisure, than the
highest devotion in the cloister. The divine breath of genius bloweth
where it listeth. Men may hold out empty bags for it for ages, and not
catch it; while it fans the temples of some maimed soldier, toiling in
chains as an Algerine slave, or some rustic, treading
"In glory and in joy,
Behind his plough, upon the mountain side."
It is clearly a mistake that hereditary property, opportunity, leisure,
and such things, will make a literature, or secure scholarship: as great
a, mistake as that of the American newspaper editor who triumphantly
anticipated an age of statuary from there being an arrival at New York
of a statue by Canova, at the same time with a discovery of marble
quarries. It is true that the statue lies in the marble quarry: but it
is also true that it lies sepulchred in the far deeper recesses of some
one unfathomable human intellect: and to bring the one right intellect
to the quarry is the problem which is not given to be solved by mortal
skill,—by devices of hereditary ease and scientific retreats. This kind
of guidance is just that which the supreme Artist does not confide to
created hands.
It is true, however, that though opportunity and leisure are not
everything; that without union with useful toil, they are nothing,—yet,
with this union they are something,—much. The first attempt to advocate
leisure as the birthright of every human being was made now some
half-century ago.[21] The plea then advanced is a sound one on behalf of
other things besides philosophy, literature and scholarship. Leisure,
some degree of it, is necessary to the health of every man's spirit. Not
only intellectual production, but peace of mind cannot flourish without
it. It may be had under the present system, but it is not. With
community of property, it would be secured to every one. The requisite
amount of work would bear a very small proportion to that of disposable
time. It would then be fairly seen how much literature may owe to
leisure.
The professional men of America are dissatisfied. The best of them
complain that professions rank lower than in Europe; and the reasons
they assign for this are, that less education is required; and that
every man who desires to get on must make himself a party man, in
theology, science, or law. Professional service is not well paid in the
United States, compared with other countries, and with other occupations
on the spot. Very severe toil is necessary to maintain a respectable
appearance, except to those who have climbed the heights of their
profession; and to them it has been necessary. One of these last, a man
whom the world supposes to be blessed in all conceivable respects, told
me that he had followed a mistaken plan of life; and that if he could
begin again, he would spend his life differently. He had chosen his
occupation rightly enough, and been wholly satisfied with his domestic
lot: but his life had been one of toil and care in the pursuit of what
he now found would have done all it could for him in half the quantity.
If he could set himself back twenty years, he would seek far less
diligently for money and eminence, stipulate for leisure, and cultivate
mirth. Though this gentleman cares for money only that he may have it to
give away; though his generosity of spirit is the most remarkable
feature of his character, he would gladly exchange the means of
gratifying his liberal affections, for more capacity for mirth, more
repose of spirit. The present mercenary and competitive system does not
suit him.
I know of one professional man who has found this repose of spirit by
retiring from the competitive system, and devoting himself to an object
in which there was, when he entered upon it, but too little competition.
He had, some time ago, earned a competence for himself and his family. A
friend who visited him on his estate made some inquiries about
investments in the region where his host lived. "I am the worst person
you could ask," replied the host: "I know nothing about investments
here. We are very happy with the money we have; and we do not know that
we should be so happy if we had more: so I do not put myself in the way
of hearing about profitable investments." He has most profitably
invested his time and energy in the anti-slavery cause. He has been
perhaps the most eminent defender of the liberty of speech and of the
press in the United States; and is setting an example, not only to his
own children, but to the whole country, of what it is to follow after
life itself, instead of the mere means of living.
The merchants are dissatisfied. If money, if success, apart from the
object, could give happiness, who would be so happy as the merchants of
America? In comparison with merchants generally, they are happy: but in
comparison with what men are made to be, they are shackled, careworn,
and weary as the slave. I obtained many a glimpse into the condition of
mind of this class; and, far superior as it is to what the state of
large classes is in the Old World, it is yet full of toil and trouble.
In New York, some friends, wishing to impress me with a conviction of
the enviable lives of American ladies, told me how the rich merchants
take handsome houses in the upper part of the city, and furnish them
splendidly for their wives: how these gentlemen rise early, snatch their
breakfasts, hurry off two or three miles to their counting-houses,
bustle about in the heat and dust, noise and traffic of Pearl Street all
the long summer's day, and come home in the evening, almost too wearied
to eat or speak; while their wives, for whose sake they have thus been
toiling after riches, have had the whole day to water their flowers,
read the last English novel, visit their acquaintance, and amuse
themselves at the milliner's; paying, perhaps, 100 dollars for the
newest Paris bonnet. The representation had a different effect from what
was expected. It appeared to me that if the ladies prefer their
husbands' society to that of morning visitors and milliners, they are
quite as much to be pitied as their husbands, that such a way of
consuming life is considered necessary or honourable. If they would
prefer to wear bonnets costing a dollar a-piece, and having some
enjoyment of domestic life, their fate is mournful; if they prefer
hundred dollar bonnets to the enjoyment of domestic life, their lot is
the most mournful of all. In either case, they and their husbands cannot
but be restless and dissatisfied.
I was at a ball in New York, the splendour of which equalled that of
any entertainment I ever witnessed. A few days after, the lady who gave
the ball asked me whether I did not disapprove of the show and luxury of
their society. I replied, that of whatever was done for mere show, I did
disapprove; but that I liked luxury, and approved of it, as long as the
pleasures of some did not encroach on the rights of others.
"But," said she, "our husbands have to pay for it all. They work very
hard."
"I suppose it is their own choice to do so. I should make a different
choice, perhaps; but if they prefer hard work and plenty of money to
indulge their families with, to moderate work and less money, I do not
see how you can expect me to blame them."
"O, but we all live beyond our incomes."
"In that case, your pleasures encroach on the rights of others, and I
have no more to say."
If this be true, how should this class be otherwise than restless and
dissatisfied?
Are the mechanic and farming classes satisfied? No: not even they:
outwardly blessed as they are beyond any class that society has ever
contained. They, too, are aware that life must be meant to be passed far
otherwise than in providing the outward means of living. They must be
aware that though, by great industry, they can obtain some portion of
time for occupations which are not money-getting, there must be
something wrong in the system which compels men to devote almost the
whole of their waking hours to procure that which, under a different
combination of labour, might be obtained at a saving of three-fourths of
the time. Whether their thoughts have been expressly turned to this
subject or not, almost all the members of society are conscious that
care for their external wants is so engrossing as to absorb almost all
other cares; and that they would most thankfully agree to work in their
vocation for the community for a short portion of every day, on
condition of being spared all future anxiety about their physical
necessities. They who best know the blessings inseparable from toil; who
are aware that the inner life is nourished by the activity of the outer,
yet perceive of what infinite consequence it is to their progress that
this activity should be varied in its objects, and separated as far as
possible from association with physical necessities, and selfish
possession. The poor man is rightly instructed, in the present state of
things, when he is told that it is his first duty to provide for his own
wants. The lesson is at present true, because the only alternative is
encroachment on the rights of others: but it is a very low lesson in
comparison with that which will be taught in the days when mutual and
self-perfection will be the prevalent idea which the civilisation of the
time will express. No thinking man or woman, who reflects on the amount
of time, thought, and energy, which would be set free by the pressure of
competition and money-getting being removed,—time, thought, and energy
now spent in wearing out the body, and in partially stimulating and
partially wasting the mind, can be satisfied under the present system.
In England, the prevalent dissatisfaction must subsist a long time
before anything effectual can be done to relieve it. The English are
hampered with institutions in which the rights of individual property
are involved in almost hopeless intricacy. Though clear-sighted persons
perceive that property is the great harbourage of crime and misery, the
adversary of knowledge, the corrupter of peace, the extinguisher of
faith and charity; though they perceive that institutions for the
regulation of outward affairs all follow the same course, being first
necessary, then useful, then useless, pernicious, and finally
intolerable,—that property is thus following the same course as
slavery, which was once necessary, and is now intolerable,—as monarchy,
which was once necessary, and is now useless, if not pernicious: though
all this is clearly perceived by many far-seeing persons in England,
they can do nothing but wait till the rest of society sees it too. They
must be and are well content to wait; since no changes are desirable but
those which proceed from the ripened mind and enlightened will of
society. Thus it is in England. In America the process will be more
rapid. The democratic principles of their social arrangements, operating
already to such an equalisation of property as has never before been
witnessed, are favourable to changes which are indeed necessary to the
full carrying out of the principles adopted. When the people become
tired of their universal servitude to worldly anxiety,—when they have
fully meditated and discussed the fact that ninety-nine hundredths of
social offences arise directly out of property; that the largest
proportion of human faults bear a relation to selfish possession; that
the most formidable classes of diseases are caused by over or under
toil, and by anxiety of mind; they will be ready for the inquiry whether
this tremendous incubus be indeed irremovable; and whether any
difficulties attending its removal can be comparable to the evils it
inflicts. In England, the people have not only to rectify the false
principles of barbarous policy, but to surmount the accumulation of
abuses which they have given out: a work, perhaps, of ages. In America,
the people have not much more to do (the will being once ripe) than to
retrace the false steps which their imitation of the old world has led
them to take. Their accumulation of abuses is too small to be a serious
obstacle in the way of the united will of a nation.
It is objected that the majority of society in America would have a
horror of any great change like that contemplated: and that, though in
bondage to worldly anxiety, they are unconscious of their servitude, or
reconciled to it. Well: as long as this is the case, they have no change
to dread; for all such alteration must proceed from their own will.
There is no power upon earth from which they have any compulsion to
fear. Yet it may be allowed to their friends to speculate upon the
better condition which is believed to await them. When we look at a
caterpillar, we like to anticipate the bright day when it will be a
butterfly. If we could talk about it with the caterpillar, it would
probably be terrified at the idea, and plead the exceeding danger of
being high up in the air. We do not desire or endeavour to force or
hasten the process: yet the caterpillar becomes a butterfly, without any
final objection on its own part.
The principal fear, expressed or concealed, of those who dislike the
mere mention of the outgrowth of individual property is lest they should
be deprived of their occupations, objects, and interests. But no such
deprivation can take place till they will have arrived at preferring
other interests than money, and at pursuing their favourite occupation
with other views than of obtaining wealth. "O, what shall I ever do
without my currant leaves?" might the caterpillar exclaim. "How shall I
ever get rid of the day, if I must not crawl along the twigs any more?"
By the time it has done with crawling, it finds a pair of wings
unfolding, which make crawling appear despicable in comparison. It is
conscious, also, of a taste for nectar, which is better than
currant-leaves, be they of the juiciest. Men may safely dismiss all
care about the future gratification of their tastes under new
circumstances, as long as it happens to be the change of tastes which
brings about the change of circumstances, the incompatibility between
the two being lessened at every transition.
As for the details of the future economy indicated, it will be time
enough for them when the idea which now burns like a taper in scattered
minds shall have caught, and spread, and lighted up all into an
illumination sufficient to do the work by. Whenever a healthy hunger
enables the popular mind to assimilate a great principle, there are
always strong and skilful hands enough to do the requisite work.
The manners of the Americans (in America) are the best I ever saw: and
these are seen to the greatest advantage in their homes, and as to the
gentlemen, in travelling. But for the drawback of inferior health, I
know of no such earthly paradise as some of the homes in which I have
had the honour and blessing of spending portions of the two years of my
absence. The hospitality of the country is celebrated; but I speak now
of more than usually meets the eye of a stranger; of the family manners,
which travellers have rarely leisure or opportunity to observe. If I am
asked what is the peculiar charm, I reply with some hesitation: there
are so many. But I believe it is not so much the outward plenty, or the
mutual freedom, or the simplicity of manners, or the incessant play of
humour, which characterise the whole people, as the sweet temper which
is diffused like sunshine over the land. They have been called the most
good-tempered people in the world: and I think they must be so. The
effect of general example is here most remarkable. I met, of course,
with persons of irritable temperament; with hot-tempered, and with
fidgetty people; with some who were disposed to despotism, and others to
contradiction: but it was delightful to see how persons thus afflicted
were enabled to keep themselves in order; were so wrought upon by the
general example of cheerful helpfulness as to be restrained from
clouding their homes by their moods. I have often wondered what the
Americans make of European works of fiction in which ailing tempers are
exhibited. European fiction does not represent such in half the extent
and variety in which they might be truly and profitably exhibited: but I
have often wondered what the Americans make of them, such as they are.
They possess the initiatory truth, in the variety of temperaments which
exists among themselves, as everywhere else; and in the moods of
children: but the expansion of deformed tempers in grown people must
strike them as monstrous caricatures.
Of course, there must be some general influence which sweetens or
restrains the temper of a whole nation, of the same Saxon race which is
not everywhere so amiable. I imagine that the practice of forbearance
requisite in a republic is answerable for this pleasant peculiarity. In
a republic, no man can in theory overbear his neighbour; nor, as he
values his own rights, can he do it much or long in practice. If the
moral independence of some, of many, sinks under this equal pressure
from all sides, it is no little set-off against such an evil that the
outbreaks of domestic tyranny are thereby restrained; and that the
respect for mutual rights which citizens have perpetually enforced upon
them abroad, comes thence to be observed towards the weak and
unresisting in the privacy of home.
Some may find it difficult to reconcile this prevalence of good temper
with the amount of duelling in the United States; with the recklessness
of life which is not confined to the semi-barbarous parts of the
country. When it is understood that in New Orleans there were fought, in
1834, more duels than there are days in the year, fifteen on one Sunday
morning; that in 1835, there were 102 duels fought in that city between
the 1st of January and the end of April; and that no notice is taken of
shooting in a quarrel; when the world remembers the duel between Clay
and Randolph; that Hamilton fell in a duel; and several more such
instances, there may be some wonder that a nation where such things
happen, should be remarkably good-tempered. But New Orleans is no rule
for any place but itself. The spirit of caste, and the fear of
imputation, rage in that abode of heathen licentiousness. The duels
there are, almost without exception, between boys for frivolous causes.
All but one of the 102 were so. And even on the spot, there is some
feeling of disgust and shame at the extent of the practice. A Court of
Honour was instituted for the restraint of the practice; of course,
without effectual result. Its function degenerated into choosing weapons
for the combatants, so that it ended by sanctioning, instead of
repressing, duelling. Those who fight the most frequently and fatally
are the French creoles, who use small swords.
The extreme cases which afford the clearest reading of the folly and
wickedness of the practice,—of the meanness of the fear which lies at
the bottom of it,—are producing their effect. The young men who go
into the west to be the founders of new societies are in some instances
taking their responsibility to heart, and resolving to use well their
great opportunity for substituting a true for a false, a moral for a
physical courage. The dreadful affair at Philadelphia, never to be
forgotten there, when a quiet, inoffensive young man, the only child of
a widowed mother, was forced out into the field, against his strongest
remonstrances, made to stand up, and shot through the heart, could not
but produce its effect. One of the principal agents was degraded in the
American navy, (but has been since reinstated,) and none of the parties
concerned has ever stood as well with society as other men since.
Hamilton's fall, again, has opened men's eyes to the philosophy of
duelling, and is working to that purpose, more and more. At the time, it
was pretty generally agreed that he could not help fighting; now, there
are few who think so. His correspondence with his murderer, previous to
the duel, is remarkable. Having been told, on my entrance into the
country, that Hamilton had been its "greatest man," I was interested in
seeing what a greater than Washington could say in excuse for risking
his life in so paltry a way. I read his correspondence with Colonel Burr
with pain. There is fear in every line of it; a complicated, disgraceful
fear. He was obviously perishing between two fears—of losing his life,
and of not being able to guard his own honour against the attacks of a
ruffian. Between these two fears he fell. I was talking over the
correspondence with a duelling gentleman, "O," said he, "Hamilton went
out like a capuchin." So the "greatest man" did not obtain even that for
which he threw away what he knew was considered the most valuable life
in the country. This is as it should be. When contempt becomes the
wages of slavery to a false idea of honour, it will cease to stand in
the way of the true; and "greatest men" will not end their lives in
littleness.
Certain extreme cases which occur on the semi-barbarous confines of the
country come occasionally in aid of such lessons as those I have cited.
A passenger on board the "Henry Clay," in which I ascended the
Mississippi, showed in perfection the results of a false idea of honour.
He belonged to one of the first families in Kentucky, had married well,
and settled at Natchez, Mississippi. His wife was slandered by a
resident of Natchez, who, refusing to retreat, was shot dead by the
husband, who fled to Texas. The wife gathered their property together,
followed her husband, was shipwrecked below New Orleans, and lost all.
Her wants were supplied by kind persons at New Orleans, and she was
forwarded by them to her destination, but soon died of cholera. Her
husband went up into Missouri, and settled in a remote part of it to
practise law; but with a suspicion that he was dogged by the relations
of the man he had shot. One day he met a man muffled in a cloak, who
engaged with him, shot him in both sides, and stabbed him with an
Arkansas knife. The victim held off the knife from wounding him mortally
till help came, and his foe fled. The wounded man slowly recovered; but
his right arm was so disabled as to compel him to postpone his schemes
of revenge. He ascertained that his enemy had fled to Texas; followed
him there; at length met him, one fine evening, riding, with his
double-barrelled gun before him. They knew each other instantly: the
double-barrelled gun was raised and pointed; but before it could be
fired, its owner fell from the saddle, shot dead like the brother he had
sought to avenge. The murderer was flying up the river once more when I
saw him, not doubting that he should again be dogged by some relation of
the brothers he had shot. Some of the gentlemen on board believed that
if he surrendered himself at Natchez, he would be let off with little or
no punishment, and allowed to settle again in civilised society; but he
was afraid of the gallows, and intended to join some fur company in the
north-west, if he could; and if he failed in this, to make himself a
chief of a tribe of wandering Indians.
This story may be useful to those (if such there be) for whom the
catastrophe of Hamilton is not strong enough. The two cases differ in
degree, not in kind.
That such hubbub as this is occasioned by a false idea of honour, and
not by fault of temper, is made clear by the amiability shown by
Americans, in all cases where their idea of honour is not concerned. In
circumstances of failure and disappointment, delay, difficulty, and
other provocation, they show great self-command. In all cases that I
witnessed, from the New York fire, and baffled legislation, down to the
being "mired" in bad roads, they appeared to be proof against
irritation. Sometimes this went further than I could quite understand.
While travelling in Virginia, we were anxious one day to push on, and
waste no time. Our "exclusive extra" drew up before a single house,
where we were to breakfast. We told the landlady that we were
excessively hungry, and in some hurry, and that we should be obliged by
her giving us anything she happened to have cooked, without waiting for
the best she could do for us. The woman was the picture of laziness, of
the most formal kind. She kept us waiting till we thought of going on
without eating. When summoned to table, at length, we asked the driver
to sit down with us, to save time. Never did I see a more ludicrous
scene than that breakfast. The lady at the tea-tray, tossing the great
bunch of peacocks' feathers, to keep off the flies, and as solemn as
Rhadamanthus. So was our whole party, for fear of laughter from which we
should not be able to recover. Everything on the table was sour; it
seemed as if studiously so. The conflict between our appetites and the
disgust of the food was ridiculous. We all presently gave up but the
ravenous driver. He tried the bread, the coffee, the butter, and all
were too sour for a second mouthful; so were the eggs, and the ham, and
the steak. No one ate anything, and the charge was as preposterous as
the delay; yet our paymaster made no objection to the way we were
treated. When we were off again, I asked him why he had been so gracious
as to appear satisfied.
"This is a newly-opened road," he replied; "the people do not know yet
how the world lives. They have probably no idea that there is better
food than they set before us."
"But do not you think it would be a kindness to inform them?"
"They did their best for us, and I should be sorry to hurt their
feelings."
"Then you would have them go through life on bad food, and inflicting it
on other people, lest their feelings should be hurt at their being told
how to provide better. Do you suppose that all the travellers who come
this way will be as tender of the lady's feelings?"
"Yes, I do. You see the driver took it very quietly."
When we were yet worse treated, however, just after, when spending a
night at Woodstock, our paymaster did remonstrate, (though very
tenderly,) and his remonstrance was received with great candour by the
master of the house; his wife being the one most to blame.
With this forbearance is united the most cheerful and generous
helpfulness. If a farmer is burned out, his neighbours collect, and
never leave him till he is placed in a better house than the one he has
lost. His barns, in like case, are filled with contributions from their
crops. Though there is nothing that men prize there so much as time,
there is nothing that they are more ready to give to the service of
others. Their prevalent generosity in the giving of money is known, and
sufficiently estimated, considering how plentiful wealth is in the
country. The expenditure of time, thought, and ingenuity, is a far
better test of the temper from which the helpfulness proceeds. I am
sorry that it is impossible to describe what this temper is in America;
its manifestations being too incessant and minute for description. If
this great virtue could be exhibited as clearly as it is possible to
exhibit their faults, the heart of society would warm towards the
Americans more readily than it has ever been alienated from them by
their own faults, or the ill-offices of strangers.
It seems to me that the Americans are generally unaware how one bad
habit of their own, springing out of this very temper, goes to aggravate
the evil offices of strangers. It is to me the most prominent of their
bad habits; but one so likely to be cured by their being made aware of
it, that I cannot but wish that some of the English vituperation which
has been expended upon tobacco and its effects had been directed upon
the far more serious fault of flattery. It will be seen at once how the
practice of flattery is almost a necessary result of the combination of
a false idea of honour with kindliness of temper. Its prevalence is so
great as to tempt one to call it a necessary result. There is no
getting out of the way of it. A gentleman, who was a depraved
school-boy, a fiendish husband, father, and slave-owner, whose
reputation for brutality was as extensive as the country, was eulogised
in the newspapers at his death. Every book that comes out is exalted to
the skies. The public orators flatter the people; the people flatter the
orators. Clergymen praise their flocks; and the flocks stand amazed at
the excellence of their clergymen. Sunday-school teachers admire their
pupils; and the scholars magnify their teachers. As to guests,
especially from abroad, hospitality requires that some dark corner
should be provided in every room where they may look when their own
praises are being told to their own faces. Even in families, where, if
anywhere, it must be understood that love cannot be sweetened by praise,
there is a deficiency of that modesty, "simplicity and godly sincerity,"
in regard to mutual estimate, which the highest fidelity of affection
inspires.
Passing over the puerility and vulgarity of the practice,—I think, if
the Americans were convinced of its selfishness,—of its being actually
a breach of benevolence, they would exercise the same command over their
tongues that they do over their tempers, and suppress painful praises,
as they rise to the lips. It was pleaded to me that the admiration is
real, the praise sincere. Be it so: but why are they to be expressed,
more than any other real thoughts whose expression would give pain? Let
the admiration by all means be enjoyed: but what a pity to destroy
sympathy with the person admired, by talking on the very subject at
which sympathy must cease! Is it not clear that if praise be not painful
to the person praised, it must be injurious? If he be modest, it is
torture: if not, it is poison. Or, if there be a third case, and it is
indifferent, such indifference to the praise is very nearly allied to
contempt for the praiser. When once the decencies of friendship are
violated, and the modesty of mutual estimate is gone, the holiness of
friendship is gone too; and there is every danger that selfish,
conscious passion will overbear unconscious, disinterested affection.
Enough. I would only put it to any person whether the friendship he
values most is not that which is least coarsened by praise; and in which
he and his friend are led the least frequently to think of their opinion
of each other. I would put it to the intimates of such a man as Dr.
Channing, for instance, whether their warmest affections do not spring
towards and repose upon him in the delicious certainty, that while he is
sympathising with every pure and true emotion, he will refrain from
disturbing its flow by introducing a consciousness, a self and mutual
reference, from which it is the highest privilege in life to escape.
Praise may help some common-minded persons over the difficulties of a
new and superficial intercourse: at least, so I am told: but intimate
communion and permanent friendship require a purity and repose with
which the interchange of expressed admiration is absolutely
incompatible.
With regard to the spirit of intercourse, nothing more remains to be
said here, but that the frankness practised in private life, within the
doors of home, is as remarkable as the caution and reserve which prevail
elsewhere. Nothing can be more delightful than the familiarity and
confidence with which I was invariably treated; and to which I saw few
exceptions in the cases of other persons. Everything was discussed in
every house I staid in: religion, philosophy, literature; and, with
quite as much freedom, character, public and private, national and
individual. The language being the same as my own, I was apt to forget
that I was on my travels, till some visitor dropped in whose inquiries
how I liked the country reminded me that I was a foreigner. Even now,
having performed the voyage home, and having all manner of evidence that
I have left the country three thousand miles behind me, I find it
difficult to bring in my personal friends as elements of the society
whose condition I am pondering. They are too like brothers and sisters
to be subjects for analysis: and I perpetually feel the want of them at
hand, to assist me by their controverting or corroborating judgments.
They and I know what their homes are, and how happy we have been in
them: and this is all that in my affection for them I can say of their
domestic life, without putting a force upon their feelings and my own.
If I am not much mistaken, society in the new world is wakening up,
under the stimulus of the slave-question, to a sense of its want of
practical freedom, owing to its too great regard to opinion. The
examples of those who can and do assert and maintain their liberty in
these times of fiery trial, are venerable and beautiful in the eyes of
the young. Those in the cities who have grown old in the practice of
mistrust are unconscious of the extent of their privations: but the free
yeomanry, and the youth of the towns, have an eye for the right, and a
heart for the true, amid the mists and subtleties in which truth and
liberty have been of late involved. The young men of Boston, especially,
seem to be roused: and it is all-important that they should be. Boston
is looked to throughout the Union, as the superior city she believes
herself to be: and nowhere is the entrance upon life more perilous to
the honesty and consistency of young aspirants after the public service.
Massachusetts is the head-quarters of federalism. Federalism is
receding before democracy, even there; but that State has still a
federal majority. A Massachusetts man has little chance of success in
public life, unless he starts a federalist: and he has no chance of
rising above a certain low point, unless, when he reaches that point, he
makes a transition into democracy. The trial is too great for the moral
independence of most ambitious men: and it fixes the eyes of the world
on the youth of Boston. They are watched, that it may be seen whether
they who now burn with ardour for complete freedom will hereafter
"reverence the dreams of their youth," or sink down into cowardice,
apathy, and intolerance, as they reach the middle of life.
If they will only try, they will find how great are the ease and peace
attendant on the full exercise of rights, even though it should shut the
career of politics, and possibly of wealth, against them for a time. If
they will look in the faces of the few who dare to live in the midst of
Boston as freely as if they were in the centre of the prairies, they
will see in those countenances a brightness and serenity which a sense
of mere safety could never impart. The pursuit of safety,—safety from
outward detriment,—is of all in this world the most hopeless. The only
attainable safety is that which usually bears another name,—repose in
absolute truth. Where there is a transparency of character which defies
misrepresentation, a faith in men which disarms suspicion, an
intrepidity which overawes malice, and a spirit of love which wins
confidence, there is safety; and in nothing short of all these. If any
of them are deficient, in the same proportion does safety give place to
danger; and no substitution of prudence will be of more than temporary
avail. Prudence is now reigning supreme over the elderly classes of
Boston generally, and too many of the young. Independence is animating
the rest. It remains to be seen which will have succumbed when the
present youth of the city shall have become her legislators,
magistrates, and social representatives.
As a specimen of the thoughts and feelings of some on the spot, I give
the following.
"Liberty of thought and opinion is strenuously maintained: in this proud
land it has become almost a wearisome cant: our speeches and journals,
religious and political, are made nauseous by the vapid and
vain-glorious reiteration. But does it, after all, characterise any
community among us? Is there any one to which a qualified observer
shall point, and say, There opinion is free? On the contrary, is it
not a fact, a sad and deplorable fact, that in no land on this earth is
the mind more fettered than it is here? that here what we call public
opinion has set up a despotism, such as exists nowhere else? Public
opinion,—a tyrant, sitting in the dark, wrapt up in mystification and
vague terrors of obscurity; deriving power no one knows from whom; like
an Asian monarch, unapproachable, unimpeachable, undethronable, perhaps
illegitimate,—but irresistible in its power to quell thought, to
repress action, to silence conviction,—and bringing the timid
perpetually under an unworthy bondage of mean fear to some impostor
opinion, some noisy judgment, which gets astride on the popular breath
for a day, and controls, through the lips of impudent folly, the speech
and actions of the wise. From this influence and rule, from this bondage
to opinion, no community, as such, is free; though doubtless individuals
are. But your community, brethren, based on the principles which you
profess, is bound to be so."[22]
So much for the spirit of intercourse. As for the modes in which the
spirit is manifested, their agreeableness, or the contrary, is a matter
of taste. No nation can pretend to judge another's manners; for the
plain reason that there is no standard to judge by: and if an individual
attempts to pronounce upon them, his sentence amounts to nothing more
than a declaration of his own particular taste. If such a declaration
from an individual is of any consequence, I am ready to acknowledge that
the American manners please me, on the whole, better than any that I
have seen.
The circumstances which strike a stranger unpleasantly are the apparent
coldness and indifference of persons in hotels and shops; the use of
tobacco, and consequent spitting; the tone of voice, especially among
the New England ladies; and at first, but not afterwards, the style of
conversation. The great charm is the exquisite mutual respect and
kindliness.
Of the tobacco and its consequences, I will say nothing but that the
practice is at too bad a pass to leave hope that anything that could be
said in books would work a cure. If the floors of boarding-houses, and
the decks of steam-boats, and the carpets of the Capitol, do not sicken
the Americans into a reform; if the warnings of physicians are of no
avail, what remains to be said? I dismiss the nauseous subject.
A great unknown pleasure remains to be experienced by the Americans in
the well-modulated, gentle, healthy, cheerful voices of women. It is
incredible that there should not, in all time to come, be any other
alternative than that which now exists, between a whine and a twang.
When the health of the American women improves, their voices will
improve. In the meantime, they are unconscious how the effect of their
remarkable and almost universal beauty is injured by their mode of
speech.
The peculiarity is less remarkable in manly conversation. The
conversation of the gentlemen strikes one at first as being dull and
prosy. They converse with much evenness of tone, slowly and at great
length: so as to leave the observer without any surprise that the
Americans think English conversation hasty, sharp, and rough. I found
also a prevalent idea that conversation is studied as an art in England:
and many of my friends were so positive on this point as to make me
doubt the correctness of my own conviction that it is not so. If there
be any such study, I can only say that I have detected no instances of
it; nor did the idea ever enter my mind except in reading of Lady
Angelica Headingham, in 'Patronage.' In the whole course of my life,
perhaps, I never met with so many particular instances of an artificial
mode of conversing as during the two years that I was in America: but I
could see the reason in every case; and that all were exceptions to the
rule of natural though peculiar communication. The conversation of the
great public men was generally more instructive than pleasing, till they
forgot that they were public men, and talked on other things than public
affairs. One could never conceal that he designed to effect a particular
persuasion in your mind: a design against which all the listener's
faculties are sure to rise up in instant rebellion. Another did not
intend you should see that he was speaking from a map of the subject in
his brain; bringing contrasts and comparisons to bear, as it might seem
accidentally, upon your imagination. Two or three or more, willing to
conceal from themselves, I really believe, as well as from the stranger,
that logic is not their forte, dart off after every will-o'-the-wisp of
an analogy; and talk almost wholly in figures. This is bad policy; for
some of the figures were so beautiful and apparently illustrative, as to
fix the attention, instead of passing over the ear, and give one time
to discover that they were not satisfactory. The most remarkable
instances of this were in the south, where I had the pleasure of hearing
more of every thing than of logic. Perhaps the most singular style of
all was one which struck me so much that I wrote down pages of it for
subsequent study:—a slow, impressive style, a succession of clever
figures, a somewhat pompous humour, and a wrapping round of inconvenient
considerations with an impenetrable cloud of the plainest-seeming words.
The gushing talk of Judge Story, the brimmings of a full head and heart,
natural, lively, fresh, issuing from the supposition that you can
understand, and wish to understand everything that is interesting to
him, and from a simple psychological curiosity, is perfectly delightful
after the measured communications of some other public men.
I may here mention Dr. Channing's conversation. I do so because it has
been the occasion of his being much misunderstood and consequently
misrepresented. I never knew a case where the conversation of an
individual did him so much injustice at first, and such eminent service
in the affections of his hearers at last. Unfortunately, those who
report him generally see him only once or twice; and then they are
pretty sure to leave him with less real knowledge of him than they
probably had three thousand miles off. This circumstance may justify my
speaking here of one whom I revere and regard too much to feel it easy
to say anything of him publicly beyond the mere testimony which it is an
honour to bear to such men. Dr. Channing has an unfortunate habit of
suiting his conversation to the supposed state of mind of the person he
is conversing with, or to that person's supposed knowledge on a subject
on which he wants information. The adaptation, not being natural, cannot
be true, and something is thus given out which is the reflection of
nobody's mind; and the conversation is fruitless or worse. This is
merely a habit of drawing out. If the visitor goes away upon this, he
reports the things which are reported of Dr. Channing's opinions; which
are no more like his than they are like Aristotle's. If the visitor
stays long enough, or comes again often enough to catch some of his
thoughts as they issue from his heart, he finds a strange power in them
to move and kindle. His words become deeds when they proceed from
impulse. Not a tone nor a syllable can be ever forgotten. The reason is
that unseen things are to him realities; and material things are but
shadows. After continued and open communication with him, it becomes an
inexplicable wonder that anything but truth, justice, and charity should
be made objects of serious pursuit in the world.
Mr. Madison's conversation has been already mentioned as being full of
graces. The sprightliness, rapidity, and variety were remarkable in a
man of eighty-four, confined to two rooms, and subject to various
infirmities. He was a highly favourable specimen of the accomplished
gentleman of the revolutionary times.
There are persons whom it seems to myself strange to name in this
connexion, when there are things in them which I value much more highly
than their eloquence. But as eloquent beyond all others, they must be
mentioned here. I refer to Dr. and Mrs. Follen, late of Boston.—Dr.
Follen is a German: well known in Germany for his patriotism; as
troublesome to its princes as animating to their subjects. He has been
thirteen years in America, and seven years a citizen of Massachusetts.
His mastery of the language has been perfect for some years: but, as he
brought a rich and matured mind to the first employment of it, he uses
it differently from any to whom it is the mother tongue. It is an
instrument of extraordinary power in his hands, as a mere instrument.
But he is a man of learning which I do not pretend to estimate in any
department. The great mass of his knowledge is vivified by a spirit
which seems to have passed through all human experiences, appropriating
whatever is true and pure, and leaving behind all else. With not only a
religious love of liberty, but an unerring perception of the true
principle of liberty in every case as it arises, with an intrepidity
which excites rage where his gentleness is not known, and a gentleness
which disarms those who fear his intrepidity, he is the most valuable
acquisition that the United States, in their present condition, can well
be conceived to have appropriated from the Old World, in the person of
an individual citizen. I certainly think him the most remarkable, and
the greatest man I saw in the country. Dr. Follen has pledged himself to
the anti-slavery cause; and declared himself in other ways in favour of
freedom of thought, action, and speech, so as to make himself
feared,—(or rather his opinions, for no one can fear himself,)—by some
of the society of his State in whom the idea of honour most wants
rectifying: but, as he becomes more known to the true-hearted among his
fellow-citizens, he will be regarded by them all with the pride and
admiration, mixed with tender affection, which he inspires in those who
have the honour and blessing of being his friends. He has married a
Boston lady; a woman of genius, and of those large and kindly affections
which are its natural element. What the intercourses of their home are,
their guests can never forget; nor ever describe.
The most common mode of conversation in America I should distinguish as
prosy, but withal rich and droll. For some weeks, I found it difficult
to keep awake during the entire reply to any question I happened to ask.
The person questioned seemed to feel himself put upon his conscience to
give a full, true, and particular reply; and so he went back as near to
the Deluge as the subject would admit, and forward to the millennium,
taking care to omit nothing of consequence in the interval. There was,
of course, one here and there, as there is everywhere, to tell me
precisely what I knew before, and omit what I most wanted: but this did
not happen often: and I presently found the information I obtained in
conversation so full, impartial, and accurate, and the shrewdness and
drollery with which it was conveyed so amusing, that I became a great
admirer of the American way of talking before six months were over.
Previous to that time, a gentleman in the same house with me expressed
pleasantly his surprise at my asking so few questions: saying that if he
came to England, he should be asking questions all day long. I told him
that there was no need of my seeking information as long as more was
given me in the course of the day than my head would carry. I did not
tell him that I had not power of attention sufficient for such
information as came in answer to my own desire. I can scarcely believe
now that I ever felt such a difficulty.
They themselves are, however, aware of their tendency to length, and
also to something of the literal dulness which Charles Lamb complains of
in relation to the Scotch. They have stories of American travellers
which exceed all I ever heard of them anywhere else: such as that an
American gentleman, returned from Europe, was asked how he liked Rome:
to which he replied that Rome was a fine city; but that he must
acknowledge he thought the public buildings were very much out of
repair. Again, it is told against a lady that she made some undeniably
true remarks on a sermon she heard. A preacher, discoursing on the
blindness of men to the future, remarked "how few men, in building a
house, consider that a coffin is to go down the stairs!" The lady
observed with much emphasis, on coming out, that ministers had got into
the strangest way of choosing subjects for the pulpit! It was true that
wide staircases are a great convenience: but she did think Christian
ministers might find better subjects to preach upon than narrow
staircases. And so forth. An eminent Senator told me that he was too
often on the one horn or the other of a dilemma: sometimes a gentleman
getting up in the Senate, and talking as if he would never sit down: and
sometimes a gentleman sitting down in his study, and talking as if he
would never get up.
Yet there is an epigrammatic turn in the talk of those who have never
heard of "the art of conversation" which is supposed to be studied by
the English. A reverend divine,—no other than Dr. Channing,—was one
day paying toll, when he perceived a notice of gin, rum, tobacco, &c.,
on a board which bore a strong resemblance to a grave-stone. "I am glad
to see," said the Dr. to the girl who received the toll, "that you have
been burying those things."—"And if we had," said the girl, "I don't
doubt you would have gone chief mourner."
Some young men, travelling on horseback among the White Mountains,
became inordinately thirsty, and stopped for milk at a house by the
road-side. They emptied every basin that was offered, and still wanted
more. The woman of the house at length brought an enormous bowl of milk,
and set it down on the table, saying, "One would think, gentlemen, you
had never been weaned."
Of the same kind was the reply made by a gentleman of Virginia to a
silly question by a lady. "Who made the Natural Bridge?"—"God knows,
madam."
I was struck with repeated instances of new versions, generally much
improved, of old fables. I think the following an improvement upon Sour
Grapes. Noah warned his neighbours of what was coming, and why he was
building his ark; but nobody minded him. When people on the high grounds
were up to their chins, an old acquaintance of Noah's was very eager to
be taken into the ark: but Noah refused again and again. "Well," said
the man, when he found it was in vain, "go, get along, you and your old
ark! I don't believe we are going to have much of a shower." I tried to
ascertain whether this story was American. I could trace it no further
off than Plymouth, Massachusetts.
There cannot be a stronger contrast than between the fun and simplicity
of the usual domestic talk of the United States, and the solemn pedantry
of which the extremest examples are to be found there; exciting as much
ridicule at home as they possibly can elsewhere. I was solemnly assured
by a gentleman that I was quite wrong on some point, because I differed
from him. Everybody laughed: when he went on, with the utmost gravity,
to inform us that there had been a time when he believed, like other
people, that he might be mistaken; but that experience had convinced him
that he never was; and he had in consequence cast behind him the fear of
error. I told him I was afraid the place he lived in must be terribly
dull,—having an oracle in it to settle everything. He replied that the
worst of it was, other people were not so convinced of his being always
in the right as he was himself. There was no joke here. He is a literal
and serious-minded man. Another gentleman solemnly remarked upon the
weather of late having been "uncommonly mucilaginous." Another pointed
out to me a gentleman on board a steam-boat as "a blue stocking of the
first class." A lady asked me many questions about my emotions at
Niagara, to which I gave only one answer of which she could make
anything. "Did you not," was her last inquiry, "long to throw yourself
down, and mingle with your mother earth?"—"No."—Another asked me
whether I did not think the sea might inspire vast and singular
ideas.—Another, an instructress of youth, in examining my ear-trumpet,
wanted to know whether its length made any difference in its efficiency.
On my answering, "None at all"—"O certainly not," said she, very
deliberately; "for, sound being a material substance, can only be
overcome by a superior force." The mistakes of unconscious ignorance
should be passed over with a silent smile: but affectation should be
exposed, as a service to a young society.
I rarely, if ever, met with instances of this pedantry among the
yeomanry or mechanic classes; or among the young. The most numerous and
the worst pedants were middle-aged ladies. One instance struck me as
being unlike anything that could happen in England. A literary and very
meritorious village mantua-maker declared that it was very hard if her
gowns did not fit the ladies of the neighbourhood. She had got the exact
proportions of the Venus de Medici, to make them by: and what more could
she do? Again. A sempstress was anxious that her employer should request
me to write something about Mount Auburn: (the beautiful cemetery near
Boston.) Upon her being questioned as to what kind of composition she
had in her fancy, she said she would have Mount Auburn considered under
three points of view:—as it was on the day of creation,—as it is
now,—as it will be on the day of resurrection. I liked the idea so well
that I got her to write it for me, instead of my doing it for her.
As for the peculiarities of language of which so much has been made,—I
am a bad judge: but the fact is, I should have passed through the
country almost without observing any, if my attention had not been
previously directed to them. Next to the well-known use of the word
"sick," instead of "ill," (in which they are undoubtedly right,) none
struck me so much as the few following. They use the word "handsome"
much more extensively than we do: saying that Webster made a handsome
speech in the Senate: that a lady talks handsomely, (eloquently:) that a
book sells handsomely. A gentleman asked me on the Catskill Mountain,
whether I thought the sun handsomer there than at New York. When they
speak of a fine woman, they refer to mental or moral, not at all to
physical superiority. The effect was strange, after being told, here and
there, that I was about to see a very fine woman, to meet in such cases
almost the only plain women I saw in the country. Another curious
circumstance is, that this is almost the only connexion in which the
word woman is used. This noble word, spirit-stirring as it passes over
English ears, is in America banished, and "ladies" and "females"
substituted: the one to English taste mawkish and vulgar; the other
indistinctive and gross. So much for difference of taste. The effect is
odd. After leaving the men's wards of the prison at Nashville,
Tennessee, I asked the warden whether he would not let me see the women.
"We have no ladies here, at present, madam. We have never had but two
ladies, who were convicted for stealing a steak; but, as it appeared
that they were deserted by their husbands, and in want, they were
pardoned." A lecturer, discoursing on the characteristics of women, is
said to have expressed himself thus. "Who were last at the cross?
Ladies. Who were first at the sepulchre? Ladies."
A few other ludicrous expressions took me by surprise occasionally. A
gentleman in the west, who had been discussing monarchy and
republicanism in a somewhat original way, asked me if I would "swap" my
king for his. We were often told that it was "a dreadful fine day;" and
a girl at a hotel pronounced my trumpet to be "terrible handy."[23] In
the back of Virginia these superlative expressions are the most rife. A
man who was extremely ill, in agonizing pain, sent for a friend to come
to him. Before the friend arrived, the pain was relieved, but the
patient felt much reduced by it. "How do you find yourself?" inquired
the friend. "I'm powerful weak; but cruel easy."
The Kentucky bragging is well known. It is so ingenious as to be very
amusing sometimes: but too absurd in the mouth of a dull person. One
such was not satisfied with pointing out to me how fine the woods were,
but informed me that the intimate texture of the individual leaves was
finer and richer in Kentucky than anywhere else. I much prefer the
off-hand air with which a dashing Kentuckian intimates to you the
richness of the soil; saying "if you plant a nail at night, 'twill come
up a spike next morning."
However much may be the fault of strangers, in regard to the coldness of
manners which is complained of in those who serve travellers in
America, and however soon it may be dissipated by a genial address on
the part of the stranger, it certainly is very disagreeable at the first
moment. We invariably found ourselves well-treated; and in no instance
that I remember failed to dissipate the chill by showing that we were
ready to help ourselves, and to be sociable. The instant we attacked the
reserve, it gave way. But I do not wonder that strangers who are not
prepared to make the concession, and especially gentlemen travelling
from hotel to hotel, find the constraint extremely irksome. It should
never be forgotten that it is usually a matter of necessity or of
favour, seldom of choice, (except in the towns,) that the wife and
daughters of American citizens render service to travellers. Such a
breaking in upon their domestic quiet, such an exposure to the society
of casual travellers, must be so distasteful to them generally as to
excuse any apparent want of cordiality. Some American travellers, won by
the empressement of European waiters, declare themselves as willing to
pay for civility as for their dinner. I acknowledge a different taste. I
had rather have indifference than civility which bears a reference to
the bill: but I prefer to either the cordiality which brightens up at
your offer to make your own bed, mend your own fire, &c.—the cordiality
which brings your hostess into your parlour, to draw her chair, and be
sociable, not only by asking where you are going, but by telling you all
that interests her in her neighbourhood. A girl at a Meadville hotel, in
Pennsylvania, urged us to change our route, that we might visit some
friends of hers,—"a beautiful bachelor that had lately lost his wife,
and his fine son"—to whom she would give us a letter of introduction.
At Maysville, Kentucky, the landlady sent repeated apologies for not
being able to wait on us herself, her attendance being necessary at the
bedside of her sick child. On our expressing our concern that, in such
circumstances, she should trouble herself about us, her substitute said
we were very unlike the generality of travellers who came. The ladies
were usually offended if the landlady did not wait upon them herself,
and would not open or shut the window with their own hands; but rang to
have the landlady to do it for them. Such persons have probably been
accustomed to be waited on by slaves; or, perhaps, not at all; so that
they like to make the most of the opportunity. Our landlady at
Nashville, Tennessee, treated us extremely well; and on parting kissed
the ladies of the party all round.
I had an early lesson in the art of distinguishing coldness from
inhospitality. Our party of six was traversing the State of New York. We
left Syracuse at dawn one morning, intending to breakfast at Skaneatles.
By the time we reached Elbridge, however, having been delayed on the
road, we were too hungry to think of going further without food. An
impetuous young Carolinian, who was of the party, got out first, and
returned to say we had better proceed; for the house and the people
looked so cold, we should never be able to achieve a comfortable meal.
Caring less, however, for comfort than for any sort of meal, we
persisted in stopping.—The first room we were shown into was wet, and
had no fire; and we were already shivering with cold. I could discern
that the family were clearing out of the next room. It was offered to
us, and logs were piled upon the fire. Two of the young women, in cotton
gowns and braided and bowed hair, followed their mother into the cooking
apartment, sailing about with quiet movements and solemn faces. Two more
staid in the room; and, after putting up their hair before the glass in
our presence, began to arrange the table, knitting between times. One or
another was almost all the while sitting with us, knitting, and replying
with grave simplicity to our conversation. Presently, one of the best
breakfasts we had in America was ready: a pie-dish full of buttered
toast; hot biscuits and coffee; beef-steak, applesauce, hot potatoes,
cheese, butter, and two large dishes of eggs. We were attentively waited
upon by the four knitting young ladies and their knitting mother, and
kindly dismissed with a charge of only two dollars and a quarter for the
whole party. "Did you ever see such girls?" cried the young Carolinian,
just landed from Europe: "stepping about like four captive princesses!"
We all called out that we would not hear a word against the young
ladies. They had treated us with all kindness; and no one could tell
whether their reserve was any greater than their situation and
circumstances require.
So much more has naturally been observed by travellers of American
manners in stages and steam-boats than in private-houses, that all has
been said, over and over again, that the subject deserves. I need only
testify that I do not think the Americans eat faster than other people,
on the whole. The celerity at hotel-tables is remarkable; but so it is
in stage-coach travellers in England, who are allowed ten minutes or a
quarter of an hour for dining. In private houses, I was never aware of
being hurried. The cheerful, unintermitting civility of all gentlemen
travellers, throughout the country, is very striking to a stranger. The
degree of consideration shown to women is, in my opinion, greater than
is rational, or good for either party; but the manners of an American
stage-coach might afford a valuable lesson and example to many classes
of Europeans who have a high opinion of their own civilisation. I do
not think it rational or fair that every gentleman, whether old or
young, sick or well, weary or untired, should, as a matter of course,
yield up the best places in the stage to any lady passenger. I do not
think it rational or fair that five gentlemen should ride on the top of
the coach, (where there is no accommodation for holding on, and no
resting-place for the feet,) for some hours of a July day in Virginia,
that a young lady, who was slightly delicate, might have room to lay up
her feet, and change her posture as she pleased. It is obvious that, if
she was not strong enough to travel on common terms in the stage, her
family should have travelled in an extra; or staid behind; or done
anything rather than allow five persons to risk their health, and
sacrifice their comfort, for the sake of one. Whatever may be the good
moral effects of such self-renunciation on the tempers of the gentlemen,
the custom is very injurious to ladies. Their travelling manners are
anything but amiable. While on a journey, women who appear well enough
in their homes, present all the characteristics of spoiled children.
Screaming and trembling at the apprehension of danger are not uncommon:
but there is something far worse in the cool selfishness with which they
accept the best of everything, at any sacrifice to others, and usually,
in the south and west, without a word or look of acknowledgment. They
are as like spoiled children when the gentlemen are not present to be
sacrificed to them;—in the inn parlour, while waiting for meals or the
stage; and in the cabin of a steam-boat. I never saw any manner so
repulsive as that of many American ladies on board steam-boats. They
look as if they supposed you mean to injure them, till you show to the
contrary. The suspicious side-glance, or the full stare; the cold,
immovable observation; the bristling self-defence the moment you come
near; the cool pushing to get the best places,—everything said and done
without the least trace of trust or cheerfulness,—these are the
disagreeable consequences of the ladies being petted and humoured as
they are. The New England ladies, who are compelled by their superior
numbers to depend less upon the care of others, are far happier and
pleasanter companions in a journey than those of the rest of the
country. This shows the evil to be altogether superinduced: and I always
found that if I could keep down my spirit, and show that I meant no
harm, the apathy began to melt, the pretty ladies forgot their
self-defence, and appeared somewhat like what I conclude they are at
home, when managing their affairs, in the midst of familiar
circumstances. If these ladies would but inquire of themselves what it
is that they are afraid of, and whether there is any reason why people
should be less cheerful, less obliging, and less agreeable, when
casually brought into the society of fifty people, whose comfort depends
mainly on their mutual good offices, than among half-a-dozen neighbours
at home, they might remove an unpleasant feature of the national
manners, and add another to the many charms of their country.
Much might be said of village manners in America: but Miss Sedgwick's
pictures of them in her two best works, "Home," and "The Rich Poor Man,
and the Poor Rich Man," are so true and so beautiful, and so sure of
being well-known where they have not already reached, that no more is
necessary than to mention them as some of the best and sweetest pictures
of manners in existence. To the English reader they are full as
interesting as to Americans, from the purity and fidelity of the
democratic spirit which they breathe throughout. The woman who so
appreciates the blessing of living in such a society as she describes,
deserves the honour of being the first to commend it to the affections
of humanity.
The manners of the wealthy classes depend, of course, upon the character
of their objects and interests: but they are not, on the whole, so
agreeable as those of their less opulent neighbours. The restless
ostentation of such as live for grandeur and show is vulgar;—as I have
said, the only vulgarity to be seen in the country. Nothing can exceed
the display of it at watering-places. At Rockaway, on Long Island, I saw
in one large room, while the company was waiting for dinner, a number of
groups which would have made a good year's income for a clever
caricaturist. If any lady, with an eye and a pencil adequate to the
occasion, would sketch the phenomena of affectation that might be seen
in one day in the piazza and drawing-room at Rockaway, she might be a
useful censor of manners. But the task would be too full of sorrow and
shame for any one with the true republican spirit. For my own part, I
felt bewildered in such company. It was as if I had been set down on a
kind of debatable land between the wholly imaginary society of the
so-called fashionable novels of late years, and the broad sketches of
citizen-life given by Madame D'Arblay. It was like nothing real. When I
saw the young ladies tricked out in the most expensive finery, flirting
over the backgammon-board, tripping affectedly across the room,
languishing with a seventy-dollar cambric handkerchief, starting up in
ecstasy at the entrance of a baby; the mothers as busy with affectations
of another kind; and the brothers sidling hither and thither, now with
assiduity, and now with nonchalance; and no one imparting the
refreshment of a natural countenance, movement, or tone, I almost
doubted whether I was awake. The village scenes that I had witnessed
rose up in strong contrast;—the mirthful wedding, the wagon-drives, the
offerings of wild-flowers to the stranger; the unintermitting, simple
courtesy of each to all;—and it was scarcely credible that these
contrasting scenes could both be existing in the same republic.
Such watering-place manners as I saw at Rockaway are considered and
called vulgar on the spot:—of course, for the majority are far superior
to them. They deserve notice no further than as they are absolutely
anti-republican in their whole principle and spirit: and no deviation
from the republican principle in any class should be passed over by the
moralist without notice. The brand of contempt should be fixed upon any
unprincipled or false-principled style of manners, in a community based
upon avowed principles. The contempt thus inflicted upon the mode may
possibly save the persons who would otherwise render themselves liable
to it. The practice of ostentation may be lessened in America, as that
of suicide was in France, by ridicule and contempt. It is desirable for
all parties that this should be the method. The weak and vain had better
be deterred from entering upon the race of vanity, than exposed when it
is too late: and, for those of clearer and stronger minds, it is safer
to despise things than persons: for, however necessary and virtuous the
contempt of abstract vice and folly may be, there is no mind clear and
strong enough to entertain with safety contempt of persons.
The best sort of rich persons, those whose principles and spirit are
democratic, their desires moderate, their pursuits rational, drop out of
sight of the mind's eye in considering the manners of the rich. Their
wealth becomes only a comparatively unimportant circumstance connected
with them. They support more beneficent objects than others, and perhaps
have houses and libraries that it is a luxury to go to: but these things
are not associated with themselves in the minds of their friends, as
long as they are not so in their own. They fall into the ranks of the
honourable, independent, thorough-bred classes of the country, (its true
glory,) just as if they were not rich. The next best order of rich
people,—those who put their time and money to good uses, but who are
not blessed with the true democratic spirit of faith, have
manners,—infinitely better than the Rockaway style,—but not so good as
those of more faithful republicans. They are above the vanity of show
and the struggle for fashion: but they dread the ascendency of
ignorance, and distrust the classes whom they do not know. They are
readers: their imaginations live in the Old World; and they have
insensibly adopted the old-world prejudice, that "the people" must be
ignorant, passionate, and rapacious. The conversation of such gives
utterance to an assumption, and their bearing betrays an uneasiness,
which are highly unfavourable to good manners. This small class are so
respectable in the main, and for some great objects so useful, that it
is much to be desired that they could be referred back perpetually to
the democratic principles which would relieve their anxiety, and give to
their manners that cheerfulness which should belong to honest
republicans who have everything to hope, and little to fear.
One of the most remarkable sights in the country is the President's
levee. Nothing is easier than to laugh at it. There is probably no mode
in which a number of human beings can assemble which may not be
laughable from one point of view or another. The President's levee
presents many facilities for ridicule. Men go there in plain cloaks and
leather belts, with all manner of wigs, and offer a large variety of
obeisance to the chief magistrate. Women go in bonnets and shawls, talk
about the company, stand upon chairs to look over people's heads, and
stare at the large rooms. There was a story of two girls, thus dressed,
being lifted up by their escorting gentlemen, and seated on the two ends
of the mantel-piece, like lustres, where they could obtain a view of the
company as they entered. To see such people mixed in with foreign
ambassadors and their suites, to observe the small mutual knowledge of
classes and persons who thus meet on terms of equality, is amusing
enough. But, amidst much that was laughable, I certainly felt that I was
seeing a fine spectacle. If the gentry of Washington desire to do away
with the custom, they must be unaware of the dignity which resides in
it, and which is apparent to the eye of a stranger, through any
inconveniences which it may have. I am sorry that its recurrence is no
longer annual. I am sorry that the practice of distributing refreshments
is relinquished: though this is a matter of less importance and of more
inconvenience. If the custom itself should ever be given up, the bad
taste of such a surrender will be unquestionable. There should be some
time and place where the chief magistrate and the people may meet to
exchange their respects, all other business being out of the question:
and I should like to see the occasion made annual again.
I saw no bad manners at the President's levee, except on the part of a
silly, swaggering Englishman. All was quiet and orderly; and there was
an air of gaiety which rather surprised me. The great people were amused
at the aspect of the assembly: and the humbler at the novelties that
were going on before their eyes. Our party went at eight o'clock. As we
alighted from the carriage, I saw a number of women, well attended,
going up the steps in the commonest morning walking-dress. In the hall,
were parties of young men, exhibiting their graces in a walk from end to
end: and ladies throwing off their shawls, and displaying the most
splendid dresses. The President, with some members of his cabinet on
either hand, stood in the middle of the first room, ready to bow to all
the ladies, and shake hands with all the gentlemen who presented
themselves. The company then passed on to the fire-place, where stood
the ladies of the President's family, attended by the Vice-president,
and the Secretary of the Treasury. From this point, the visitors
dispersed themselves through the rooms, chatting in groups in the
Blue-room, or joining the immense promenade in the great East room.
After two circuits there, I went back to the reception-room; by far the
most interesting to an observer. I saw one ambassador after another
enter with his suite; the Judges of the Supreme Court; the majority of
the members of both Houses of Congress; and intermingled with these, the
plainest farmers, storekeepers, and mechanics, with their primitive
wives and simple daughters. Some looked merry; some looked busy; but
none bashful. I believe there were three thousand persons present. There
was one deficiency,—one drawback, as I felt at the time. There were no
persons of colour. Whatever individuals or classes may choose to do
about selecting their society according to rules of their own making,
here there should be no distinction. I know the pleas that would be
urged,—the levee being held in a slave district; the presence of
slave-holders from the south; and many others; but such pleas will not
stand before the plain fact that this levee is the appointed means by
which citizens of the United States of all degrees may, once in a time,
meet together, to pay their equal respects to their chief magistrate.
Every man of colour who is a citizen of the United States has a right to
as free an admission as any other man; and it would be a dignity added
to the White House if such were seen there. It is not to its credit that
there is any place in the country where its people are more free to meet
on equal terms. There is such a place. In the Catholic cathedral in New
Orleans, I saw persons of every shade of colour kneeling on the
pavement, without separation or distinction. I would fain have seen also
some one secular house where, by general consent, all kinds of men might
meet as brethren. But not even in republican America is there yet such
an one.
The Americans possess an advantage in regard to the teaching of manners
which they do not yet appreciate. They have before their eyes, in the
manners of the coloured race, a perpetual caricature of their own
follies; a mirror of conventionalism from which they can never escape.
The negroes are the most imitative set of people living. While they are
in a degraded condition, with little principle, little knowledge, little
independence, they copy the most successfully those things in their
superiors which involve the least principle, knowledge, and
independence; viz. their conventionalisms. They carry their mimicry far
beyond any which is seen among the menials of the rich in Europe. The
black footmen of the United States have tiptoe graces, stiff cravats,
and eye-catching flourishes, like the footmen in London: but the
imitation extends into more important matters. As the slaves of the
south assume their masters' names and military titles, they assume their
methods of conducting the courtesies and gaieties of life. I have in my
possession a note of invitation to a ball, written on pink paper with
gilt edges.[24] When the lady invited came to her mistress for the
ticket which was necessary to authorise her being out after nine at
night, she was dressed in satin with muslin over it, satin shoes, and
white kid gloves:—but, the satin was faded, the muslin torn: the shoes
were tied upon the extremities of her splay feet, and the white gloves
dropping in tatters from her dark fingers. She was a caricature, instead
of a fine lady. A friend of mine walked a mile or two in the dusk behind
two black men and a woman whom they were courting. He told me that
nothing could be more admirable than the coyness of the lady, and the
compliments of the gallant and his friend. It could not be very amusing
to those who reflect that holy and constant love, free preference, and
all that makes marriage a blessing instead of a curse, were here out of
the question: but the resemblance in the mode of courtship to that
adopted by whites, when meditating marriage of a not dissimilar
virtue,—a marriage of barter,—could not be overlooked.
Even in their ultimate, funereal courtesies, the coloured race imitate
the whites. An epitaph on a negro baby at Savannah begins, "Sweet
blighted lily!"—They have few customs which are absolutely peculiar.
One of these is refusing to eat before whites. When we went long
expeditions, carrying luncheon, or procuring it by the road-side, the
slaves always retired with their share behind trees or large stones, or
other hiding-places.
The Americans may be considered secure of good manners generally while
intellect is so reverenced among them as it is, above all other claims
to honour. Whatever follies and frivolities the would-be fashionable
classes may perpetrate, they will never be able to degrade the national
manners, or to make themselves the first people in the republic.
Intellect carries all before it in social intercourse, and will continue
to do so. I was struck by the fact that, in country villages, the most
enlightened members of a family may be cultivated as acquaintance,
without the rest. They may be invited to a superior party, and the
others left for an inferior one. As for the cities, Washington, with its
motley population in time of Session, is an exception to all rules; and
I certainly saw some uncommonly foolish people treated with more
attention, of a temporary kind, than some very wise ones. But in other
cities I am not aware of having seen any great influence possessed by
persons who had not sufficient intellectual desert. A Washington belle
related to me the sad story of the death of a young man who fell from a
small boat into the Potomac in the night,—it is supposed in his sleep.
She told where and how his body was found; and what relations he had
left; and finished with "he will be much missed at parties." Washington
is a place where a young man may be thus mourned: but elsewhere there
would have been a better reason given, or none at all. In the capitals
of States, men rank according to their supposed intellect. Many mistakes
are made in the estimate; and (far worse) many pernicious allowances are
made for bad morals, for the sake of the superior intellect: but still
the taste is a higher one, the gradation a more rational one, than is to
be found elsewhere: and, where such a taste and a gradation subsist, the
essentials of good manners can never be wanting. It is refreshing to
witness the village homage paid to the author and the statesman, as to
the highest of human beings. Whatever the author and the statesman may
be, the homage is honourable to those who offer it. It is no less
refreshing in the cities to see how the vainest fops and the most solid
capitalists readily succumb before men and women who are distinguished
for nothing but their minds. The worst of manners,—those which fly off
the furthest from nature, and do the most violence to the
affections—are such as arise from a surpassing regard to things outward
and shadowy: the best are those which manifest a pursuit of things
invisible and real. The Americans are better mannered than others, in as
far as they reverence intellect more than wealth and fashion. It remains
for them to enlarge their notions, and exalt their tests of intellect,
till it shall identify itself with morals. National manners, national
observances of rank graduated on such a principle would be no subject of
controversy, but would command the admiration, and gradually form the
taste, of the world. I cannot but think that a beginning of this change
is visible in the intercourses of those Americans who have rejected the
prevalent false idea of honour, and in the spirit of love borne witness
to unpopular truths. The freedom, gentleness, and earnestness of the
manners of such offer a realisation of grace which no conventional
training can secure. A southern gentleman was on board a steam-boat,
proceeding from New York to Philadelphia. He engaged in conversation
with two unknown gentlemen; and soon plunged into the subject of
slavery. He was a slave-holder, and they were abolitionists. With one of
them, he was peculiarly pleased; and they discussed their subject for a
great length of time. He at last addressed the other abolitionist thus:
"How easy and pleasant it is to argue this matter with such a man as
your friend! If all you abolitionists were like him, how soon we and you
might come to an understanding! But you are generally so coarse and
violent! You are all so like Garrison! Pray give me your friend's name."
"You have just spoken it. It is Mr. Garrison."
"Impossible! This gentleman is so mild, so gentlemanly."
"Ask the captain if it be not Mr. Garrison."
It was an important point. The captain was asked. This mild, courteous,
simple, sprightly, gentlemanly person was Garrison.
