Генри Джеймс
Lady Barbarina, The Siege of London, An International Episode, and Other Tales
VII
FROM LÉON VERDIER IN PARIS TO PROSPER GOBAIN AT LILLE
September 28.
Mon Gros Vieux,
It’s a long time since I’ve given you of my news, and I don’t know what puts it into my head to-night to recall myself to your affectionate memory. I suppose it is that when we’re happy the mind reverts instinctively to those with whom formerly we shared our vicissitudes, and je t’en ai trop dit dans le bon temps, cher vieux, and you always listened to me too imperturbably, with your pipe in your mouth and your waistcoat unbuttoned, for me not to feel that I can count on your sympathy to-day. Nous en sommes-nous flanqués, des confidences?—in those happy days when my first thought in seeing an adventure poindre à l’horizon was of the pleasure I should have in relating it to the great Prosper. As I tell thee, I’m happy; decidedly j’ai de la chance, and from that avowal I trust thee to construct the rest. Shall I help thee a little? Take three adorable girls—three, my good Prosper, the mystic number, neither more nor less. Take them and place in the midst of them thy insatiable little Léon. Is the situation sufficiently indicated, or does the scene take more doing?
You expected perhaps I was going to tell thee I had made my fortune, or that the Uncle Blondeau had at last decided to recommit himself to the breast of nature after having constituted me his universal legatee. But I needn’t remind you for how much women have always been in any happiness of him who thus overflows to you—for how much in any happiness and for how much more in any misery. But don’t let me talk of misery now; time enough when it comes, when ces demoiselles shall have joined the serried ranks of their amiable predecessors. Ah, I comprehend your impatience. I must tell you of whom ces demoiselles consist.
You’ve heard me speak of my cousine de Maisonrouge, that grande belle femme who, after having married, en secondes noces—there had been, to tell the truth, some irregularity about her first union—a venerable relic of the old noblesse of Poitou, was left, by the death of her husband, complicated by the crash of expensive tastes against an income of 17,000 francs, on the pavement of Paris with two little demons of daughters to bring up in the path of virtue. She managed to bring them up; my little cousins are ferociously sages. If you ask me how she managed it I can’t tell you; it’s no business of mine, and a fortiori none of yours. She’s now fifty years old—she confesses to thirty-eight—and her daughters, whom she has never been able to place, are respectively twenty-seven and twenty-three (they confess to twenty and to seventeen). Three years ago she had the thrice-blest idea of opening a well-upholstered and otherwise attractive asile for the blundering barbarians who come to Paris in the hope of picking up a few stray pearls from the écrin of Voltaire—or of Zola. The idea has brought her luck; the house does an excellent business. Until within a few months ago it was carried on by my cousins alone; but lately the need of a few extensions and improvements has caused itself to be felt. My cousin has undertaken them, regardless of expense; in other words she has asked me to come and stay with her—board and lodging gratis—and correct the conversational exercises of her pensionnaire-pupils. I’m the extension, my good Prosper; I’m the improvement. She has enlarged the personnel—I’m the enlargement. I form the exemplary sounds that the prettiest English lips are invited to imitate. The English lips are not all pretty, heaven knows, but enough of them are so to make it a good bargain for me.
Just now, as I told you, I’m in daily relation with three separate pairs. The owner of one of them has private lessons; she pays extra. My cousin doesn’t give me a sou of the money, but I consider nevertheless that I’m not a loser by the arrangement. Also I’m well, very very well, with the proprietors of the two other pairs. One of these is a little Anglaise of twenty—a figure de keepsake; the most adorable miss you ever, or at least I ever, beheld. She’s hung all over with beads and bracelets and amulets, she’s embroidered all over like a sampler or a vestment; but her principal decoration consists of the softest and almost the hugest grey eyes in the world, which rest upon you with a profundity of confidence—a confidence I really feel some compunction in betraying. She has a tint as white as this sheet of paper, except just in the middle of each cheek, where it passes into the purest and most transparent, most liquid, carmine. Occasionally this rosy fluid overflows into the rest of her face—by which I mean that she blushes—as softly as the mark of your breath on the window-pane.
Like every Anglaise she’s rather pinched and prim in public; but it’s easy to see that when no one’s looking elle ne demande qu’à se laisser aller! Whenever she wants it I’m always there, and I’ve given her to understand she can count upon me. I’ve reason to believe she appreciates the assurance, though I’m bound in honesty to confess that with her the situation’s a little less advanced than with the others. Que voulez-vous? The English are heavy and the Anglaises move slowly, that’s all. The movement, however, is perceptible, and once this fact’s established I can let the soup simmer, I can give her time to arrive, for I’m beautifully occupied with her competitors. They don’t keep me waiting, please believe.
These young ladies are Americans, and it belongs to that national character to move fast. “All right—go ahead!” (I’m learning a great deal of English, or rather a great deal of American.) They go ahead at a rate that sometimes makes it difficult for me to keep up. One of them’s prettier than the other; but this latter—the one that takes the extra-private lessons—is really une fille étonnante. Ah par exemple, elle brûle ses vaisseaux, celle-là! She threw herself into my arms the very first day, and I almost owed her a grudge for having deprived me of that pleasure of gradation, of carrying the defences one by one, which is almost as great as that of entering the place. For would you believe that at the end of exactly twelve minutes she gave me a rendezvous? In the Galerie d’Apollon at the Louvre I admit; but that was respectable for a beginning, and since then we’ve had them by the dozen; I’ve ceased to keep the account. Non, c’est une fille qui me dépasse.
The other, the slighter but “smarter” little person—she has a mother somewhere out of sight, shut up in a closet or a trunk—is a good deal prettier, and perhaps on that account elle y met plus de façons. She doesn’t knock about Paris with me by the hour; she contents herself with long interviews in the petit salon, with the blinds half-drawn, beginning at about three o’clock, when every one is à la promenade. She’s admirable, cette petite, a little too immaterial, with the bones rather over-accentuated, yet of a detail, on the whole, most satisfactory. And you can say anything to her. She takes the trouble to appear not to understand, but her conduct, half an hour afterwards, reassures you completely—oh completely!
However, it’s the big bouncer of the extra-private lessons who’s the most remarkable. These private lessons, my good Prosper, are the most brilliant invention of the age, and a real stroke of genius on the part of Miss Miranda! They also take place in the petit salon, but with the doors tightly closed and with explicit directions to every one in the house that we are not to be disturbed. And we’re not, mon gros, we’re not! Not a sound, not a shadow, interrupts our felicity. My cousins are on the right track—such a house must make its fortune. Miss Miranda’s too tall and too flat, with a certain want of coloration; she hasn’t the transparent rougeurs of the little Anglaise. But she has wonderful far-gazing eyes, superb teeth, a nose modelled by a sculptor, and a way of holding up her head and looking every one in the face, which combines apparent innocence with complete assurance in a way I’ve never seen equalled. She’s making the tour du monde, entirely alone, without even a soubrette to carry the ensign, for the purpose of seeing for herself, seeing à quoi s’en tenir sur les hommes et les choses—on les hommes particularly. Dis donc, mon vieux, it must be a drôle de pays over there, where such a view of the right thing for the aspiring young bourgeoises is taken. If we should turn the tables some day, thou and I, and go over and see it for ourselves? Why isn’t it as well we should go and find them chez elles, as that they should come out here after us? Dis donc, mon gros Prosper . . . !
VIII
FROM DR. RUDOLPH STAUB IN PARIS TO DR. JULIUS HIRSCH AT GÖTTINGEN
My dear Brother in Science,
I resume my hasty notes, of which I sent you the first instalment some weeks ago. I mentioned that I intended to leave my hotel, not finding in it real matter. It was kept by a Pomeranian and the waiters without exception were from the Fatherland. I might as well have sat down with my note-book Unter den Linden, and I felt that, having come here for documentation, or to put my finger straight upon the social pulse, I should project myself as much as possible into the circumstances which are in part the consequence and in part the cause of its activities and intermittences. I saw there could be no well-grounded knowledge without this preliminary operation of my getting a near view, as slightly as possible modified by elements proceeding from a different combination of forces, of the spontaneous home-life of the nation.
I accordingly engaged a room in the house of a lady of pure French extraction and education, who supplements the shortcomings of an income insufficient to the ever-growing demands of the Parisian system of sense-gratification by providing food and lodging for a limited number of distinguished strangers. I should have preferred to have my room here only, and to take my meals in a brewery, of very good appearance, which I speedily discovered in the same street; but this arrangement, though very clearly set out by myself, was not acceptable to the mistress of the establishment—a woman with a mathematical head—and I have consoled myself for the extra expense by fixing my thoughts upon the great chance that conformity to the customs of the house gives me of studying the table-manners of my companions, and of observing the French nature at a peculiarly physiological moment, the moment when the satisfaction of the taste, which is the governing quality in its composition, produces a kind of exhalation, an intellectual transpiration, which, though light and perhaps invisible to a superficial spectator, is nevertheless appreciable by a properly adjusted instrument. I’ve adjusted my instrument very satisfactorily—I mean the one I carry in my good square German head—and I’m not afraid of losing a single drop of this valuable fluid as it condenses itself upon the plate of my observation. A prepared surface is what I need, and I’ve prepared my surface.
Unfortunately here also I find the individual native in the minority. There are only four French persons in the house—the individuals concerned in its management, three of whom are women, and one a man. Such a preponderance of the Weibliche is, however, in itself characteristic, as I needn’t remind you what an abnormally-developed part this sex has played in French history. The remaining figure is ostensibly that of a biped, and apparently that of a man, but I hesitate to allow him the whole benefit of the higher classification. He strikes me as less human than simian, and whenever I hear him talk I seem to myself to have paused in the street to listen to the shrill clatter of a hand-organ, to which the gambols of a hairy homunculus form an accompaniment.
I mentioned to you before that my expectation of rough usage in consequence of my unattenuated, even if not frivolously aggressive, Teutonism was to prove completely unfounded. No one seems either unduly conscious or affectedly unperceiving of my so rich Berlin background; I’m treated on the contrary with the positive civility which is the portion of every traveller who pays the bill without scanning the items too narrowly. This, I confess, has been something of a surprise to me, and I’ve not yet made up my mind as to the fundamental cause of the anomaly. My determination to take up my abode in a French interior was largely dictated by the supposition that I should be substantially disagreeable to its inmates. I wished to catch in the fact the different forms taken by the irritation I should naturally produce; for it is under the influence of irritation that the French character most completely expresses itself. My presence, however, operates, as I say, less than could have been hoped as a stimulus, and in this respect I’m materially disappointed. They treat me as they treat every one else; whereas, in order to be treated differently, I was resigned in advance to being treated worse. A further proof, if any were needed, of that vast and, as it were, fluid waste (I have so often dwelt on to you) which attends the process of philosophic secretion. I’ve not, I repeat, fully explained to myself this logical contradiction; but this is the explanation to which I tend. The French are so exclusively occupied with the idea of themselves that in spite of the very definite image the German personality presented to them by the war of 1870 they have at present no distinct apprehension of its existence. They are not very sure that there are, concretely, any Germans; they have already forgotten the convincing proofs presented to them nine years ago. A German was something disagreeable and disconcerting, an irreducible mass, which they determined to keep out of their conception of things. I therefore hold we’re wrong to govern ourselves upon the hypothesis of the revanche; the French nature is too shallow for that large and powerful plant to bloom in it.
The English-speaking specimens, too, I’ve not been willing to neglect the opportunity to examine; and among these I’ve paid special attention to the American varieties, of which I find here several singular examples. The two most remarkable are a young man who presents all the characteristics of a period of national decadence; reminding me strongly of some diminutive Hellenised Roman of the third century. He’s an illustration of the period of culture in which the faculty of appreciation has obtained such a preponderance over that of production that the latter sinks into a kind of rank sterility, and the mental condition becomes analogous to that of a malarious bog. I hear from him of the existence of an immense number of Americans exactly resembling him, and that the city of Boston indeed is almost exclusively composed of them. (He communicated this fact very proudly, as if it were greatly to the credit of his native country; little perceiving the truly sinister impression it made on me.)
What strikes one in it is that it is a phenomenon to the best of my knowledge—and you know what my knowledge is—unprecedented and unique in the history of mankind; the arrival of a nation at an ultimate stage of evolution without having passed through the mediate one; the passage of the fruit, in other words, from crudity to rottenness, without the interposition of a period of useful (and ornamental) ripeness. With the Americans indeed the crudity and the rottenness are identical and simultaneous; it is impossible to say, as in the conversation of this deplorable young man, which is the one and which the other: they’re inextricably confused. Homunculus for homunculus I prefer that of the Frenchman; he’s at least more amusing.
It’s interesting in this manner to perceive, so largely developed, the germs of extinction in the so-called powerful Anglo-Saxon family. I find them in almost as recognisable a form in a young woman from the State of Maine, in the province of New England, with whom I have had a good deal of conversation. She differs somewhat from the young man I just mentioned in that the state of affirmation, faculty of production and capacity for action are things, in her, less inanimate; she has more of the freshness and vigour that we suppose to belong to a young civilisation. But unfortunately she produces nothing but evil, and her tastes and habits are similarly those of a Roman lady of the lower Empire. She makes no secret of them and has in fact worked out a complete scheme of experimental adventure, that is of personal licence, which she is now engaged in carrying out. As the opportunities she finds in her own country fail to satisfy her she has come to Europe “to try,” as she says, “for herself.” It’s the doctrine of universal “unprejudiced” experience professed with a cynicism that is really most extraordinary, and which, presenting itself in a young woman of considerable education, appears to me to be the judgement of a society.
Another observation which pushes me to the same induction—that of the premature vitiation of the American population—is the attitude of the Americans whom I have before me with regard to each other. I have before me a second flower of the same huge so-called democratic garden, who is less abnormally developed than the one I have just described, but who yet bears the stamp of this peculiar combination of the barbarous and, to apply to them one of their own favourite terms, the ausgespielt, the “played-out.” These three little persons look with the greatest mistrust and aversion upon each other; and each has repeatedly taken me apart and assured me secretly, that he or she only is the real, the genuine, the typical American. A type that has lost itself before it has been fixed—what can you look for from this?
Add to this that there are two young Englanders in the house who hate all the Americans in a lump, making between them none of the distinctions and favourable comparisons which they insist upon, and for which, as involving the recognition of shades and a certain play of the critical sense, the still quite primitive insular understanding is wholly inapt, and you will, I think, hold me warranted in believing that, between precipitate decay and internecine enmities, the English-speaking family is destined to consume itself, and that with its decline the prospect of successfully-organised conquest and unarrested incalculable expansion, to which I alluded above, will brighten for the deep-lunged children of the Fatherland!
IX
MIRANDA HOPE TO HER MOTHER
October 22.
Dear Mother,
I’m off in a day or two to visit some new country; I haven’t yet decided which. I’ve satisfied myself with regard to France, and obtained a good knowledge of the language. I’ve enjoyed my visit to Madame de Maisonrouge deeply, and feel as if I were leaving a circle of real friends. Everything has gone on beautifully up to the end, and every one has been as kind and attentive as if I were their own sister, especially Mr. Verdier, the French gentleman, from whom I have gained more than I ever expected (in six weeks) and with whom I have promised to correspond. So you can imagine me dashing off the liveliest and yet the most elegant French letters; and if you don’t believe in them I’ll keep the rough drafts to show you when I go back.
The German gentleman is also more interesting the more you know him; it seems sometimes as if I could fairly drink in his ideas. I’ve found out why the young lady from New York doesn’t like me! It’s because I said one day at dinner that I admired to go to the Louvre. Well, when I first came it seemed as if I did admire everything! Tell William Platt his letter has come. I knew he’d have to write, and I was bound I’d make him! I haven’t decided what country I’ll visit next; it seems as if there were so many to choose from. But I must take care to pick out a good one and to meet plenty of fresh experiences. Dearest mother, my money holds out, and it is most interesting!
