Генри Джеймс
Lady Barbarina, The Siege of London, An International Episode, and Other Tales
“Rather better than a dirty London thing,” said Lord Lambeth, looking down from this altitude after they had rung the bell.
“It depends upon what London thing you mean,” replied his companion. “You’ve a tremendous chance to get wet between the house-door and your carriage.”
“Well,” said Lord Lambeth, glancing at the blaze of the sky, “I ‘guess’ it doesn’t rain so much here!”
The door was opened by a long negro in a white jacket, who grinned familiarly when Lord Lambeth asked for Mr. Westgate. “He ain’t at home, sir; he’s down town at his office.”
“Oh at his office?” said the visitors. “And when will he be at home?”
“Well, when he goes out dis way in de mo’ning he ain’t liable to come home all day.”
This was discouraging; but the address of Mr. Westgate’s office was freely imparted by the intelligent black and was taken down by Percy Beaumont in his pocket-book. The comrades then returned, languidly enough, to their hotel and sent for a hackney-coach; and in this commodious vehicle they rolled comfortably down town. They measured the whole length of Broadway again and found it a path of fire; and then, deflecting to the left, were deposited by their conductor before a fresh light ornamental structure, ten stories high, in a street crowded with keen-faced light-limbed young men who were running about very nimbly and stopping each other eagerly at corners and in doorways. Passing under portals that were as the course of a twofold torrent, they were introduced by one of the keen-faced young men—he was a charming fellow in wonderful cream-coloured garments and a hat with a blue ribbon, who had evidently recognised them as aliens and helpless—to a very snug hydraulic elevator, in which they took their place with many other persons and which, shooting upward in its vertical socket, presently projected them into the seventh heaven, as it were, of the edifice. Here, after brief delay, they found themselves face to face with the friend of their friend in London. His office was composed of several conjoined rooms, and they waited very silently in one of these after they had sent in their letter and their cards. The letter was not one it would take Mr. Westgate very long to read, but he came out to speak to them more instantly than they could have expected; he had evidently jumped up from work. He was a tall lean personage and was dressed all in fresh white linen; he had a thin sharp familiar face, a face suggesting one of the ingenious modern objects with alternative uses, good as a blade or as a hammer, good for the deeps and for the shallows. His forehead was high but expressive, his eyes sharp but amused, and a large brown moustache, which concealed his mouth, made his chin, beneath it, look small. Relaxed though he was at this moment Lord Lambeth judged him on the spot tremendously clever.
“How do you do, Lord Lambeth, how do you do, sir?”—he held the open letter in his hand. “I’m very glad to meet you—I hope you’re very well. You had better come in here—I think it’s cooler”; and he led the way into another room, where there were law-books and papers and where windows opened wide under striped awnings. Just opposite one of the windows, on a line with his eyes, Lord Lambeth observed the weather-vane of a church-steeple. The uproar of the street sounded infinitely far below, and his lordship felt high indeed in the air. “I say it’s cooler,” pursued their host, “but everything’s relative. How do you stand the heat?”
“I can’t say we like it,” said Lord Lambeth; “but Beaumont likes it better than I.”
“Well, I guess it will break,” Mr. Westgate cheerfully declared; “there’s never anything bad over here but it does break. It was very hot when Captain Littledale was here; he did nothing but drink sherry-cobblers. He expresses some doubt in his letter whether I shall remember him—as if I don’t remember once mixing six sherry-cobblers for him in about fifteen minutes. I hope you left him well. I’d be glad to mix him some more.”
“Oh yes, he’s all right—and without them,” said Lord Lambeth.
“I’m always very glad to see your countrymen,” Mr. Westgate pursued. “I thought it would be time some of you should be coming along. A friend of mine was saying to me only a day or two ago, ‘It’s time for the water-melons and the Englishmen.’”
“The Englishmen and the water-melons just now are about the same thing,” Percy Beaumont observed with a wipe of his dripping forehead.
“Ah well, we’ll put you on ice as we do the melons. You must go down to Newport.”
“We’ll go anywhere!” said Lord Lambeth.
“Yes, you want to go to Newport; that’s what you want to do.” Mr. Westgate was very positive. “But let’s see—when did you get here?”
“Only yesterday,” said Percy Beaumont.
“Ah yes, by the Russia. Where are you staying?”
“At the Hanover, I think they call it.”
“Pretty comfortable?” inquired Mr. Westgate.
“It seems a capital place, but I can’t say we like the gnats,” said Lord Lambeth.
Mr. Westgate stared and laughed. “Oh no, of course you don’t like the gnats. We shall expect you to like a good many things over here, but we shan’t insist on your liking the gnats; though certainly you’ll admit that, as gnats, they’re big things, eh? But you oughtn’t to remain in the city.”
“So we think,” said Lord Lambeth. “If you’d kindly suggest something—”
“Suggest something, my dear sir?”—and Mr. Westgate looked him over with narrowed eyelids. “Open your mouth and shut your eyes! Leave it to me and I’ll fix you all right. It’s a matter of national pride with me that all Englishmen should have a good time, and as I’ve been through a good deal with them I’ve learned to minister to their wants. I find they generally want the true thing. So just please consider yourselves my property; and if any one should try to appropriate you please say, ‘Hands off—too late for the market.’ But let’s see,” continued the American with his face of toil, his voice of leisure and his general intention, apparently, of everything; “let’s see: are you going to make something of a stay, Lord Lambeth?”
“Oh dear no,” said the young Englishman; “my cousin was to make this little visit, so I just came with him, at an hour’s notice, for the lark.”
“Is it your first time over here?”
“Oh dear yes.”
“I was obliged to come on some business,” Percy Beaumont explained, “and I brought Lambeth along for company.”
“And you have been here before, sir?”
“Never, never!”
“I thought from your referring to business—” Mr. Westgate threw off.
“Oh you see I’m just acting for some English shareholders by way of legal advice. Some of my friends—well, if the truth must be told,” Mr. Beaumont laughed—“have a grievance against one of your confounded railways, and they’ve asked me to come and judge, if possible, on the spot, what they can hope.”
Mr. Westgate’s amused eyes grew almost tender. “What’s your railroad?” he asked.
“The Tennessee Central.”
The American tilted back his chair and poised it an instant. “Well, I’m sorry you want to attack one of our institutions. But I guess you had better enjoy yourself first!”
“I’m certainly rather afraid I can’t work in this weather,” the young emissary confessed.
“Leave that to the natives,” said Mr. Westgate. “Leave the Tennessee Central to me, Mr. Beaumont. I guess I can tell you more about it than most any one. But I didn’t know you Englishmen ever did any work—in the upper classes.”
“Oh we do a lot of work, don’t we, Lambeth?” Percy Beaumont appealed.
“I must certainly be back early for my engagements,” said his companion irrelevantly but gently.
“For the shooting, eh? or is it the yachting or the hunting or the fishing?” inquired his entertainer.
“Oh I must be in Scotland,”—and Lord Lambeth just amiably blushed.
“Well, then,” Mr. Westgate returned, “you had better amuse yourself first also. You must go right down and see Mrs. Westgate.”
“We should be so happy—if you’d kindly tell us the train,” said Percy Beaumont.
“You don’t take any train. You take a boat.”
“Oh I see. And what is the name of—a—the—a—town?”
“It’s a regular old city—don’t you let them hear you call it a village or a hamlet or anything of that kind. They’d half-kill you. Only it’s a city of pleasure—of lawns and gardens and verandahs and views and, above all, of good Samaritans,” Mr. Westgate developed. “But you’ll see what Newport is. It’s cool. That’s the principal thing. You’ll greatly oblige me by going down there and putting yourself in the hands of Mrs. Westgate. It isn’t perhaps for me to say it, but you couldn’t be in better ones. Also in those of her sister, who’s staying with her. She’s half-crazy about Englishmen. She thinks there’s nothing like them.”
“Mrs. Westgate or—a—her sister?” asked Percy Beaumont modestly, yet in the tone of a collector of characteristic facts.
“Oh I mean my wife,” said Mr. Westgate. “I don’t suppose my sister-in-law knows much about them yet. You’ll show her anyhow. She has always led a very quiet life. She has lived in Boston.”
Percy Beaumont listened with interest. “That, I believe, is the most intellectual centre.”
“Well, yes—Boston knows it’s central and feels it’s intellectual. I don’t go there much—I stay round here,” Mr. Westgate more loosely pursued.
“I say, you know, we ought to go there,” Lord Lambeth broke out to his companion.
“Oh Lord Lambeth, wait till the great heat’s over!” Mr. Westgate interposed. “Boston in this weather would be very trying; it’s not the temperature for intellectual exertion. At Boston, you know, you have to pass an examination at the city limits, and when you come away they give you a kind of degree.”
Lord Lambeth flushed himself, in his charming way, with wonder, though his friend glanced to make sure he wasn’t looking too credulous—they had heard so much about American practices. He decided in time, at any rate, to take a safe middle course. “I daresay it’s very jolly.”
“I daresay it is,” Mr. Westgate returned. “Only I must impress on you that at present—to-morrow morning at an early hour—you’ll be expected at Newport. We have a house there—many of our most prominent citizens and society leaders go there for the summer. I’m not sure that at this very moment my wife can take you in—she has a lot of people staying with her. I don’t know who they all are—only she may have no room. But you can begin with the hotel and meanwhile you can live at my house. In that way—simply sleeping at the hotel—you’ll find it tolerable. For the rest you must make yourself at home at my place. You mustn’t be shy, you know; if you’re only here for a month that will be a great waste of time. Mrs. Westgate won’t neglect you, and you had better not undertake to resist her. I know something about that. I guess you’ll find some pretty girls on the premises. I shall write to my wife by this afternoon’s mail, and to-morrow she and Miss Alden will look out for you. Just walk right in and get into touch. Your steamer leaves from this part of the city, and I’ll send right out and get you a cabin. Then at half-past four o’clock just call for me here, and I’ll go with you and put you on board. It’s a big boat; you might get lost. A few days hence, at the end of the week, I don’t know but I’ll come down myself and see how you are.”
The two young Englishmen inaugurated the policy of not resisting Mrs. Westgate by submitting, with great docility and thankfulness, to her husband. He was evidently a clear thinker, and he made an impression on his visitors; his hospitality seemed to recommend itself consciously—with a friendly wink, as might be, hinting judicially that you couldn’t make a better bargain. Lord Lambeth and his cousin left their entertainer to his labours and returned to their hotel, where they spent three or four hours in their respective shower-baths. Percy Beaumont had suggested that they ought to see something of the town, but “Oh damn the town!” his noble kinsman had rejoined. They returned to Mr. Westgate’s office in a carriage, with their luggage, very punctually; but it must be reluctantly recorded that this time he so kept them waiting that they felt themselves miss their previous escape and were deterred only by an amiable modesty from dispensing with his attendance and starting on a hasty scramble to embark. But when at last he appeared and the carriage plunged into the purlieus of Broadway they jolted and jostled to such good purpose that they reached the huge white vessel while the bell for departure was still ringing and the absorption of passengers still active. It was indeed, as Mr. Westgate had said, a big boat, and his leadership in the innumerable and interminable corridors and cabins, with which he seemed perfectly acquainted and of which any one and every one appeared to have the entrée, was very grateful to the slightly bewildered voyagers. He showed them their state-room—a luxurious retreat embellished with gas-lamps, mirrors en pied and florid furniture—and then, long after they had been intimately convinced that the steamer was in motion and launched upon the unknown stream they were about to navigate, he bade them a sociable farewell.
“Well, good-bye, Lord Lambeth,” he said. “Goodbye, Mr. Percy Beaumont. I hope you’ll have a good time. Just let them do what they want with you. Take it as it’s meant. Renounce your own personality. I’ll come down by and by and enjoy what’s left of you.”
II
The young Englishmen emerged from their cabin and amused themselves with wandering about the immense labyrinthine ship, which struck them as a monstrous floating hotel or even as a semi-submerged kindergarten. It was densely crowded with passengers, the larger number of whom appeared to be ladies and very young children; and in the big saloons, ornamented in white and gold, which followed each other in surprising succession, beneath the swinging gas-lights and among the small side-passages where the negro domestics of both sexes assembled with an air of amused criticism, every one was moving to and fro and exchanging loud and familiar observations. Eventually, at the instance of a blackamoor more closely related to the scene than his companions, our friends went and had “supper” in a wonderful place arranged like a theatre, where, from a gilded gallery upon which little boxes appeared to open, a large orchestra played operatic selections and, below, people handed about bills of fare in the manner of programmes. All this was sufficiently curious; but the agreeable thing, later, was to sit out on one of the great white decks in the warm breezy darkness and, the vague starlight aiding, make out the line of low mysterious coast. Our travellers tried American cigars—those of Mr. Westgate—and conversed, as they usually conversed, with many odd silences, lapses of logic and incongruities of transition; like a pair who have grown old together and learned to guess each other’s sense; or, more especially, like persons so conscious of a common point of view that missing links and broken lights and loose ends, the unexpressed and the understood, could do the office of talk.
“We really seem to be going out to sea,” Percy Beaumont observed. “Upon my honour we’re going back to England. He has shipped us off again. I call that ‘real mean.’”
“I daresay it’s all right,” said Lord Lambeth. “I want to see those pretty girls at Newport. You know he told us the place was an island, and aren’t all islands in the sea?”
“Well,” resumed the elder traveller after a while, “if his house is as good as his cigars I guess we shall muddle through.”
“I fancy he’s awfully ‘prominent,’ you know, and I rather liked him,” Lord Lambeth pursued as if this appreciation of Mr. Westgate had but just glimmered on him.
His comrade, however, engaged in another thought, didn’t so much as appear to catch it. “I say, I guess we had better remain at the inn. I don’t think I like the way he spoke of his house. I rather object to turning in with such a tremendous lot of women.”
“Oh I don’t mind,” said Lord Lambeth. And then they smoked a while in silence. “Fancy his thinking we do no work in England!” the young man resumed.
But it didn’t rouse his friend, who only replied: “I daresay he didn’t really a bit think so.”
“Well, I guess they don’t know much about England over here!” his lordship humorously sighed. After which there was another long pause. “He has got us out of a hole,” observed the young nobleman.
Percy Beaumont genially assented. “Nobody certainly could have been more civil.”
“Littledale said his wife was great fun,” Lord Lambeth then contributed.
“Whose wife—Littledale’s?”
“Our benefactor’s. Mrs. Westgate. What’s his name? J. L. It ‘kind of’ sounds like a number. But I guess it’s a high number,” he continued with freshened gaiety.
The same influences appeared, however, with Mr. Beaumont to make rather for anxiety. “What was fun to Littledale,” he said at last a little sententiously, “may be death to us.”
“What do you mean by that?” his companion asked. “I’m as good a man as Littledale.”
“My dear boy, I hope you won’t begin to flirt,” said the elder man.
His friend smoked acutely. “Well, I daresay I shan’t begin.”
“With a married woman, if she’s bent upon it, it’s all very well,” Mr. Beaumont allowed. “But our friend mentioned a young lady—a sister, a sister-in-law. For God’s sake keep free of her.”
“How do you mean, ‘free’?”
“Depend upon it she’ll try to land you.”
“Oh rot!” said Lord Lambeth.
“American girls are very ‘cute,’” the other urged.
“So much the better,” said the young man.
“I fancy they’re always up to some wily game,” Mr. Beaumont developed.
“They can’t be worse than they are in England,” said Lord Lambeth judicially.
“Ah, but in England you’ve got your natural protectors. You’ve got your mother and sisters.”
“My mother and sisters—!” the youth began with a certain energy. But he stopped in time, puffing at his cigar.
“Your mother spoke to me about it with tears in her eyes,” said his monitor. “She said she felt very nervous. I promised to keep you out of mischief.”
“You had better take care of yourself!” cried Mr. Beaumont’s charge.
“Ah,” the responsible party returned, “I haven’t the expectation of—whatever it is you expect. Not to mention other attractions.”
“Well,” said Lord Lambeth, “don’t cry out before you’re hurt!”
It was certainly very much cooler at Newport, where the travellers found themselves assigned to a couple of diminutive bedrooms in a far-away angle of an immense hotel. They had gone ashore in the early summer twilight and had very promptly put themselves to bed; thanks to which circumstance and to their having, during the previous hours, in their commodious cabin, slept the sleep of youth and health, they began to feel, towards eleven o’clock, very alert and inquisitive. They looked out of their windows across a row of small green fields, bordered with low stone dykes of rude construction, and saw a deep blue ocean lying beneath a deep blue sky and flecked now and then with scintillating patches of foam. A strong fresh breeze came in through the curtainless apertures and prompted our young men to observe generously that it didn’t seem half a bad climate. They made other observations after they had emerged from their rooms in pursuit of breakfast—a meal of which they partook in a huge bare hall where a hundred negroes in white jackets shuffled about on an uncarpeted floor; where the flies were superabundant and the tables and dishes covered over with a strange voluminous integument of coarse blue gauze; and where several little boys and girls, who had risen late, were seated in fastidious solitude at the morning repast. These young persons had not the morning paper before them, but were engaged in languid perusal of the bill of fare.
This latter document was a great puzzle to our friends, who, on reflecting that its bewildering categories took account of breakfast alone, had the uneasy prevision of an encyclopedic dinner-list. They found copious diversion at their inn, an enormous wooden structure for the erection of which it struck them the virgin forests of the West must have been quite laid waste. It was perforated from end to end with immense bare corridors, through which a strong draught freely blew, bearing along wonderful figures of ladies in white morning-dresses and clouds of Valenciennes lace, who floated down the endless vistas on expanded furbelows very much as angels spread their wings. In front was a gigantic verandah on which an army might have encamped—a vast wooden terrace with a roof as high as the nave of a cathedral. Here our young men enjoyed, as they supposed, a glimpse of American society, which was distributed over the measureless expanse in a variety of sedentary attitudes and appeared to consist largely of pretty young girls, dressed as for a fête champêtre, swaying to and fro in rocking-chairs, fanning themselves with large straw fans and enjoying an enviable exemption from social cares. Lord Lambeth had a theory, which it might be interesting to trace to its origin, that it would be not only agreeable, but easily possible, to enter into relations with one of these young ladies; and his companion found occasion to check his social yearning.
“You had better take care—else you’ll have an offended father or brother pulling out a bowie-knife.”
“I assure you it’s all right,” Lord Lambeth replied. “You know the Americans come to these big hotels to make acquaintances.”
“I know nothing about it, and neither do you,” said his comrade, who, like a clever man, had begun to see that the observation of American society demanded a readjustment of their standard.
“Hang it, then, let’s find out!” he cried with some impatience. “You know I don’t want to miss anything.”
“We will find out,” said Percy Beaumont very reasonably. “We’ll go and see Mrs. Westgate and make all the proper inquiries.”
And so the inquiring pair, who had this lady’s address inscribed in her husband’s hand on a card, descended from the verandah of the big hotel and took their way, according to direction, along a large straight road, past a series of fresh-looking villas, embosomed in shrubs and flowers and enclosed in an ingenious variety of wooden palings. The morning shone and fluttered, the villas stood up bravely in their smartness, and the walk of the young travellers turned all to confidence. Everything looked as if it had received a coat of fresh paint the day before—the red roofs, the green shutters, the clean bright browns and buffs of the house-fronts. The flower-beds on the little lawns sparkled in the radiant air and the gravel in the short carriage-sweeps flashed and twinkled. Along the road came a hundred little basket-phaetons in which, almost always, a couple of ladies were sitting—ladies in white dresses and long white gloves, holding the reins and looking at the two Englishmen, whose nationality was not elusive, through fine blue veils, tied tightly about their faces as if to guard their complexions. At last the visitors came within sight of the sea again, and then, having interrogated a gardener over the paling of a villa, turned into an open gate. Here they found themselves face to face with the ocean and with a many-pointed much-balconied structure, resembling a magnified chalet, perched on a green embankment just above it. The house had a verandah of extraordinary width all round, and a great many doors and windows standing open to the verandah. These various apertures had, together, such an accessible hospitable air, such a breezy flutter, within, of light curtains, such expansive thresholds and reassuring interiors, that our friends hardly knew which was the regular entrance and, after hesitating a moment, presented themselves at one of the windows. The room within was indistinct, but in a moment a graceful figure vaguely shaped itself in the rich-looking gloom—a lady came to meet them. Then they saw she had been seated at a table writing, and that, hearing them, she had got up. She stepped out into the light; she wore a frank charming smile, with which she held out her hand to Percy Beaumont.
“Oh you must be Lord Lambeth and Mr. Beaumont. I’ve heard from my husband that you were coming. I make you warmly welcome.” And she shook hands with each of her guests. Her guests were a little shy, but they made a gallant effort; they responded with smiles and exclamations, they apologised for not knowing the front door. The lady returned with vivacity that when she wanted to see people very much she didn’t insist on those distinctions, and that Mr. Westgate had written to her of his English friends in terms that made her really anxious. “He says you’re so terribly prostrated,” she reported.
“Oh you mean by the heat?”—Percy Beaumont rose to it. “We were rather knocked up, but we feel wonderfully better. We had such a jolly—a—voyage down here. It’s so very good of you to mind.”
“Yes, it’s so very kind of you,” murmured Lord Lambeth.
Mrs. Westgate stood smiling; Mrs. Westgate was pretty. “Well, I did mind, and I thought of sending for you this morning to the Ocean House. I’m very glad you’re better, and I’m charmed you’re really with us. You must come round to the other side of the piazza.” And she led the way, with a light smooth step, looking back at the young men and smiling.
The other side of the piazza was, as Lord Lambeth presently remarked, a very jolly place. It was of the most liberal proportions and, with its awnings, its fanciful chairs, its cushions and rugs, its view of the ocean close at hand and tumbling along the base of the low cliffs whose level tops intervened in lawnlike smoothness, formed a charming complement to the drawing-room. As such it was in course of employment at the present hour; it was occupied by a social circle. There were several ladies and two or three gentlemen, to whom Mrs. Westgate proceeded to introduce the distinguished strangers. She mentioned a great many names, very freely and distinctly; the young Englishmen, shuffling about and bowing, were rather bewildered. But at last they were provided with chairs—low wicker chairs, gilded and tied with a great many ribbons—and one of the ladies (a very young person with a little snub nose and several dimples) offered Percy Beaumont a fan. The fan was also adorned with pink love-knots, but the more guarded of our couple declined it, though he was very hot. Presently, however, everything turned to ease; the breeze from the sea was delicious and the view charming; the people sitting about looked fresh and fair. Several of the younger ladies were clearly girls, and the gentlemen slim bright youths such as our friends had seen the day before in New York. The ladies were working on bands of tapestry, and one of the young men had an open book in his lap. Percy afterwards learned from a lady that this young man had been reading aloud—that he was from Boston and was very fond of reading aloud. Percy pronounced it a great pity they had interrupted him; he should like so much (from all he had heard) to listen to a Bostonian read. Couldn’t the young man be induced to go on?
“Oh no,” said this informant very freely; “he wouldn’t be able to get the young ladies to attend to him now.”
There was something very friendly, Beaumont saw, in the attitude of the company; they looked at their new recruits with an air of animated sympathy and interest; they smiled, brightly and unanimously, at everything that dropped from either. Lord Lambeth and his companion felt they were indeed made cordially welcome. Mrs. Westgate seated herself between them, and while she talked continuously to each they had occasion to observe that she came up to their friend Littledale’s promise. She was thirty years old, with the eyes and the smile of a girl of seventeen, and was light and graceful—elegant, exquisite. Mrs. Westgate was, further, what she had occasion to describe some person, among her many winged words, as being, all spontaneity. Frank and demonstrative, she appeared always—while she looked at you delightedly with her beautiful young eyes—to be making sudden confessions and concessions, breaking out after momentary wonders.
“We shall expect to see a great deal of you,” she said to Lord Lambeth with her bland intensity. “We’re very fond of Englishmen here; that is, there are a great many we’ve been fond of. After a day or two you must come and stay with us; we hope you’ll stay a nice long while. Newport’s quite attractive when you come really to know it, when you know plenty of people. Of course you and Mr. Beaumont will have no difficulty about that. Englishmen are very well received here; there are almost always two or three of them about. I think they always like it, and I must say I should think they would. They receive particular attention—I must say I think they sometimes get spoiled; but I’m sure you and Mr. Beaumont are proof against that. My husband tells me you’re friends of Captain Littledale’s; he was such a charming man. He made himself so agreeable here that I wonder he didn’t stay. That would have carried out his system. It couldn’t have been pleasanter for him in his own country. Though I suppose it’s very pleasant in England too—for English people. I don’t know myself; I’ve been there very little. I’ve been a great deal abroad, but I always cling to the Continent. I must say I’m extremely fond of Paris; you know we Americans always are; we go there when we die. Did you ever hear that before?—it was said by a great wit. I mean the good Americans; but we’re all good—you’ll see that for yourself. All I know of England is London, and all I know of London is that place—on that little corner, you know—where you buy jackets, jackets with that coarse braid and those big buttons. They make very good jackets in London, I’ll do you the justice to say that. And some people like the hats. But about the hats I was always a heretic; I always got my hats in Paris. You can’t wear an English hat—at least, I never could—unless you dress your hair à l’anglaise; and I must say that’s a talent I never possessed. In Paris they’ll make things to suit your peculiarities; but in England I think you like much more to have—how shall I say it?—one thing for everybody. I mean as regards dress. I don’t know about other things; but I’ve always supposed that in other things everything was different. I mean according to the people—according to the classes and all that. I’m afraid you’ll think I don’t take a very favourable view; but you know you can’t take a very favourable view in Dover Street and the month of November. That has always been my fate. Do you know Jones’s Hotel in Dover Street? That’s all I know of England. Of course every one admits that the English hotels are your weak point. There was always the most frightful fog—I couldn’t see to try my things on. When I got over to America—into the light—I usually found they were twice too big. The next time I mean to go at the right season; I guess I’ll go next year. I want very much to take my sister; she has never been to England. I don’t know whether you know what I mean by saying that the Englishmen who come here sometimes get spoiled. I mean they take things as a matter of course—things that are done for them. Now naturally anything’s a matter of course only when the Englishmen are very nice. But you’ll say—oh yes you will, or you would if some of you ever did say much!—they’re almost always very nice. You can’t expect this to be nearly such an interesting country as England; there are not nearly so many things to see, and we haven’t your country life. I’ve never seen anything of your country life; when I’m in Europe I’m always on the Continent. But I’ve heard a great deal about it; I know that when you’re among yourselves in the country you have the most beautiful time. Of course we’ve nothing of that sort, we’ve nothing on that scale. I don’t apologise, Lord Lambeth; some Americans are always apologising; you must have noticed that. We’ve the reputation of always boasting and ‘blowing’ and waving the American flag; but I must say that what strikes me is that we’re perpetually making excuses and trying to smooth things over. The American flag has quite gone out of fashion; it’s very carefully folded up, like a tablecloth the worse for wear. Why should we apologise? The English never apologise—do they? No, I must say I never apologise. You must take us as we come—with all our imperfections on our heads. Of course we haven’t your country life and your old ruins and your great estates and your leisure-class and all that—though I don’t really know anything about them, because when I go over I always cling to the Continent. But if we haven’t I should think you might find it a pleasant change—I think any country’s pleasant where they have pleasant manners. Captain Littledale told me he had never seen such pleasant manners as at Newport, and he had been a great deal in European society. Hadn’t he been in the diplomatic service? He told me the dream of his life was to get appointed to a diplomatic post in Washington. But he doesn’t seem to have succeeded. Perhaps that was only a part of his pleasant manners. I suppose at any rate that in England promotion—and all that sort of thing—is fearfully slow. With us, you know, it’s a great deal too quick. You see I admit our drawbacks. But I must confess I think Newport an ideal place. I don’t know anything like it anywhere. Captain Littledale told me he didn’t know anything like it anywhere. It’s entirely different from most watering-places; it’s a much more refined life. I must say I think that when one goes to a foreign country one ought to enjoy the differences. Of course there are differences; otherwise what did one come abroad for? Look for your pleasure in the differences, Lord Lambeth; that’s the way to do it; and then I am sure you’ll find American society—at least the Newport phase quite unique. I wish very much Mr. Westgate were here; but he’s dreadfully confined to New York. I suppose you think that’s very strange—for a gentleman. Only you see we haven’t any leisure-class.”
