Гарриет Бичер-Стоу
We and Our Neighbors: or, The Records of an Unfashionable Street
CHAPTER XXXI
WHAT THEY TALKED ABOUT
The dinner party, like many impromptu social ventures, was a success. Mr. Selby proved one of that delightful class of English travelers who travel in America to see and enter into its peculiar and individual life, and not to show up its points of difference from old-world social standards. He seemed to take the sense of a little family dinner, got up on short notice, in which the stereotyped doctrine of courses was steadfastly ignored; where there was no soup or fish, and only a good substantial course of meat and vegetables, with a slight dessert of fruit and confectionery; where there was no black servant, with white gloves, to change the plates, but only respectable, motherly Mary, who had tidied herself and taken the office of waiter, in addition to her services as cook.
A real high-class English gentleman, when he fairly finds himself out from under that leaden pale of conventionalities which weighs down elasticity like London fog and smoke, sometimes exhibits all the hilarity of a boy out of school on a long vacation, and makes himself frisky and gamesome to a degree that would astonish the solemn divinities of insular decorum. Witness the stories of the private fun and frolic of Thackeray and Dickens, on whom the intoxicating sense of social freedom wrought results sometimes surprising to staid Americans; as when Thackeray rode with his heels out of the carriage window through immaculate and gaping Boston and Dickens perpetrated his celebrated walking wager.
Mr. Selby was a rising literary man in the London writing world, who had made his own way up in the world, and known hard times and hard commons, though now in a lucrative position. It would have been quite possible, by spending a suitable sum and deranging the whole house, to set him down to a second-rate imitation of a dull, conventional London dinner, with waiters in white chokers, and protracted and circuitous courses; and in that case Mr. Selby would have frozen into a stiff, well preserved Briton, with immaculate tie and gloves, and a guarded and diplomatic reserve of demeanor. Eva would have been nervously thinking of the various unusual arrangements of the dinner table, and a general stiffness and embarrassment would have resulted. People who entertain strangers from abroad often re-enact the mistake of the two Englishmen who traveled all night in a diligence, laboriously talking broken French to each other, till at dawn they found out by a chance slip of the tongue that they were both English. So, at heart, every true man, especially in a foreign land, is wanting what every true household can give him – sincere homely feeling, the sense of domesticity, the comfort of being off parade and among friends; and Mr. Selby saw in the first ten minutes that this was what he had found in the Hendersons' house.
In the hour before dinner, Eva had shown him her ivies and her ferns and her manner of training them, and found an appreciate observer and listener. Mr. Selby was curious about American interiors and the detail of domestic life among people of moderate fortune. He was interested in the modes of warming and lighting, and arranging furniture, etc.; and soon Eva and he were all over the house, while she eloquently explained to him the working of the furnace, the position of the water pipes, and the various comforts and conveniences which they had introduced into their little territories.
"I've got a little box of my own at Kentish town," Mr. Selby said, in a return burst of confidence, "and I shall tell my wife about some of your contrivances; the fact is," he added, "we literary people need to learn all these ways of being comfortable at small expense. The problem of our age is, that of perfecting small establishments for people of moderate means; and I must say, I think it has been carried further in your country than with us."
In due course followed an introduction to "my wife," whose photograph Mr. Selby wore dutifully in his coat-pocket, over the exact region of the heart; and then came "my son," four years old, with all his playthings round him; and, in short, before an hour, Eva and he were old acquaintances, ready to tell each other family secrets.
Alice and Angelique were delightful girls to reinforce and carry out the home charm of the circle. They had eminently what belongs to the best class of American girls, – that noble frankness of manner, that fearless giving forth of their inner nature, which comes from the atmosphere of free democratic society. Like most high-bred American girls, they had traveled, and had opportunities of observing European society, which added breadth to their range of conversation without taking anything from their frank simplicity. Foreign travel produces two opposite kinds of social effect, according to character. Persons who are narrow in their education, sensitive and self-distrustful, are embarrassed by a foreign experience: they lose their confidence in their home life, in their own country and its social habitudes, and get nothing adequate in return; their efforts at hospitality are repressed by a sort of mental comparison of themselves with foreign models; they shrink from, entertaining strangers, through an indefinite fear that they shall come short of what would be expected somewhere else. But persons of more breadth of thought and more genuine courage see at once that there is a characteristic American home life, and that what a foreigner seeks in a foreign country is the peculiarity of that country, and not an attempt to reproduce that which has become stupid and tedious to him by constant repetition at home.
Angelique and Alice talked readily and freely; Alice with the calm, sustained good sense and dignity which was characteristic of her, and Angelique in those sunny jets and flashes of impulsive gaiety which rise like a fountain at the moment. Given the presence of three female personages like Eva, Alice, and Angelique, and it would not be among the possibilities for a given set of the other sex to be dull or heavy. Then, most of the gentlemen were more or less habitués of the house, and somewhat accorded with each other, like instruments that have been played in unison; and it is not, therefore to be wondered at that Mr. Selby made the mental comment that, taken at home, these Americans are delightful, and that cultivated American women are particularly so from their engaging frankness of manner.
There would be a great deal more obedience to the apostolic injunction, "Be not forgetful to entertain strangers," if it once could be clearly got into the heads of well-intending people what it is that strangers want. What do you want, when away from home, in a strange city? Is it not the warmth of the home fireside, and the sight of people that you know care for you? Is it not the blessed privilege of speaking and acting yourself out unconstrainedly among those who you know understand you? And had you not rather dine with an old friend on simple cold mutton, offered with a warm heart, than go to a splendid ceremonious dinner party among people who don't care a rush for you?
Well, then, set it down in your book that other people are like you; and that the art of entertaining is the art of really caring for people. If you have a warm heart, congenial tastes, and a real interest in your stranger, don't fear to invite him, though you have no best dinner set, and your existing plates are sadly chipped at the edges, and even though there be a handle broken off from the side of your vegetable dish. Set it down in your belief that you can give something better than a dinner, however good, – you can give a part of yourself. You can give love, good will, and sympathy, of which there has, perhaps, been quite as much over cracked plates and restricted table furniture as over Sèvres china and silver.
It soon appeared that Mr. Selby, like other sensible Englishmen, had a genuine interest in getting below the surface life of our American world, and coming to the real "hard-pan" on which our social fabric is founded. He was full of intelligent curiosity as to the particulars of American journalism, its management, its possibilities, its remunerations compared with those of England; and here was where Bolton's experience, and Jim Fellows's many-sided practical observations, came out strongly.
Alice was delighted with the evident impression that Jim made on a man whose good opinion appeared to be worth having; for that young lady, insensibly perhaps to herself, held a sort of right of property in Jim, such as the princesses of the middle ages had in the knights that wore their colors, and Jim, undoubtedly, was inspired by the idea that bright eyes looked on, to do his devoir manfully in the conversation. So they went over all the chances and prospects of income and living for literary men and journalists in the two countries; the facilities for marriage, and the establishment of families, including salaries, rents, prices of goods, etc. In the course of the conversation, Mr. Selby made many frank statements of his own personal experience and observation, which were responded to with equal frankness on the part of Harry and Eva and others, till it finally seemed as if the whole company were as likely to become au courant of each other's affairs as a party of brothers and sisters. Eva, sitting at the head, like a skillful steerswoman, turned the helm of conversation adroitly, now this way and now that, to draw out the forces of all her guests, and bring each into play. She introduced the humanitarian questions of the day; and the subject branched at once upon what was doing by the Christian world: the high church, the ritualists, the broad church, and the dissenters all rose upon the carpet, and St. John was wide awake and earnest in his inquiries. In fact, an eager talking spirit descended upon them, and it was getting dark when Eva made the move to go to the parlor, where a bright fire and coffee awaited them.
"I always hate to drop very dark shades over my windows in the evening," said Eva, as she went in and began letting down the lace curtains; "I like to have the firelight of a pleasant room stream out into the dark, and look cheerful and hospitable outside; for that reason I don't like inside shutters. Do you know, Mr. Selby, how your English arrangements used to impress me? They were all meant to be very delightful to those inside, but freezingly repulsive to those without. Your beautiful grounds that one longs to look at, are guarded by high stone-walls with broken bottles on the top, to keep one from even hoping to get over. Now, I think beautiful grounds are a public charity, and a public education; and a man shouldn't build a high wall round them, so that even the sight of his trees, and the odor of his flowers, should be denied to his poor neighbors."
"It all comes of our national love of privacy," said Mr. Selby; "it isn't stinginess, I beg you to believe, Mrs. Henderson, but shyness, – you find our hearts all right when you get in."
"That we do; but, I beg pardon, Mr. Selby, oughtn't shyness to be put down in the list of besetting sins, and fought against; isn't it the enemy of brotherly kindness and charity?"
"Certainly, Mrs. Henderson, you practice so delightfully, one cannot find fault with your preaching," said Mr. Selby; "but, after all, is it a sin to want to keep one's private life to himself, and unexposed to the comments of vulgar, uncongenial natures? It seems to me, if you will pardon the suggestion, that there is too little of this sense of privacy in America. Your public men, for instance, are required to live in glass cases, so that they may be constantly inspected behind and before. Your press interviewers beset them on every hand, take down their chance observations, record everything they say and do, and how they look and feel at every moment of their lives. I confess that I would rather be comfortably burned at the stake at once than to be one of your public men in America; and all this comes of your not being shy and reserved. It's a state of things impossible in the kind of country that has high walls with glass bottles around its private grounds."
"He has us there, Eva," said Harry; "our vulgar, jolly, democratic level of equality over here produces just these insufferable results; there's no doubt about it."
"Well," said Jim, "I have one word to say about newspaper reporters. Poor boys! everybody is down on them, nobody has a bit of charity for them; and yet, bless you, it isn't their fault if they're impertinent and prying. That is what they are engaged for and paid for, and kicked out if they're not up to. Why, look you, here are four or five big dailies running the general gossip-mill for these great United States, and if any one of them gets a bit of news before another, it's a victory – a 'beat.' Well, if the boys are not sharp, if other papers get things that they don't or can't, off they must go; and the boys have mothers and sisters to support – and want to get wives some day – and the reporting business is the first round of the ladder; if they get pitched off, it's all over with them."
"Precisely," said Mr. Selby; "it is, if you will pardon my saying it, it is your great American public that wants these papers and takes them, and takes the most of those that have the most gossip in them, that are to blame. They make the reporters what they are, and keep them what they are, by the demand they keep up for their wares; and so, I say, if Mrs. Henderson will pardon me, that, as yet, I am unable to put down our national shyness in the catalogue of sins to be fought against. I confess I would rather, if I should ever happen to have any literary fame, I would rather shut my shutters, evenings, and have high walls with glass bottles on top around my grounds, and not have every vulgar, impertinent fellow in the community commenting on my private affairs. Now, in England, we have all arrangements to keep our families to ourselves, and to such intimates as we may approve."
"Oh, yes, I knew it to my cost when I was in England," said Eva. "You might be in a great hotel with all the historic characters of your day, and see no more of them than if you were in America. They came in close family carriages, they passed to close family rooms, they traveled in railroad compartments specially secured to themselves, and you knew no more about them than if you had stayed at home."
"Well," said Mr. Selby, "you describe what I think are very nice, creditable, comfortable ways of managing."
"With not even a newspaper reporter to tell the people what they were talking about, and what gowns their wives and daughters wore," said Bolton, dryly. "I confess, of the two extremes, the English would most accord with my natural man."
"So it is with all of us," said St. John; "the question is, though, whether this strict caste system which links people in certain lines and ruts of social life, doesn't make it impossible to have that knowledge of one another as human beings which Christianity requires. It struck me in England that the high clergy had very little practical comprehension of the feelings of the lower classes, and their wives and daughters less. They were prepared to dispense charity to them from above, but not to study them on the plane of equal intercourse. They never mingle, any more than oil and water; and that, I think, is why so much charity in England is thrown away – the different classes do not understand each other, and never can."
"Yes," said Harry; "with all the disadvantages and disagreeable results of our democratic jumble in society, our common cars where all ride side by side, our hotel parlors where all sit together, and our tables d'hote where all dine together, we do know each other better, and there is less chance of class misunderstandings and jealousies, than in England."
"For my part, I sympathize with Mr. Selby, according to the flesh," said Mr. St. John. "The sheltered kind of life one leads in English good society is what I prefer; but, if our Christianity is good for anything, we cannot choose what we prefer."
"I have often thought," said Eva, "that the pressure of vulgar notoriety, the rush of the crowd around our Saviour, was evidently the same kind of trial to him that it must be to every refined and sensitive nature; and yet how constant and how close was his affiliation with the lowest and poorest in his day. He lived with them, he gave them just what we shrink from giving – his personal presence – himself."
Eva spoke with a heightened color and with a burst of self-forgetful enthusiasm. There was a little pause afterwards, as if a strain of music had suddenly broken into the conversation, and Mr. Selby, after a moment's pause, said:
"Mrs. Henderson, I give way to that suggestion. Sometimes, for a moment, I get a glimpse that Christianity is something higher and purer than any conventional church shows forth, and I feel that we nominal Christians are not living on that plane, and that if we only could live thus, it would settle the doubts of modern skeptics faster than any Bampton Lectures."
"Well," said Eva, "it does seem as if that which is best for society on the whole is always gained by a sacrifice of what is agreeable. Think of the picturesque scenery, and peasantry, and churches, and ceremonials in Italy, and what a perfect scattering and shattering of all such illusions would be made by a practical, common-sense system of republican government, that would make the people thrifty, prosperous, and happy! The good is not always the beautiful."
"Yes," said Bolton to Mr. Selby, "and you Liberals in England are assuredly doing your best to bring on the very state of society which produces the faults that annoy you here. The reign of the great average masses never can be so agreeable to taste as that of the cultured few."
But we will not longer follow a conversation which was kept up till a late hour around the blazing hearth. The visit was one of those happy ones in which a man enters a house a stranger and leaves it a friend. When all were gone, Harry and Eva sat talking it over by the decaying brands.
"Harry, you venturesome creature, how dared you send such a company in upon me on washing day?"
"Because, my dear, I knew you were the one woman in a thousand that could face an emergency and never lose either temper or presence of mind; and you see I was right."
"But it isn't me that you should praise, Harry; it's my poor, good Mary. Just think how patiently she turned out of her way and changed all her plans, and worked and contrived for me, when her poor old heart was breaking! I must run up now and say how much I thank her for making everything go off so well."
Eva tapped softly at the door of Mary's room. There was no answer. She opened it softly. Mary was kneeling with clasped hands before her crucifix, and praying softly and earnestly; so intent that she did not hear Eva coming in. Eva waited a moment, and then kneeled down beside her and softly put her arm around her.
"Oh, dear, Miss Eva!" said Mary, "my heart's just breaking."
"I know it, I know it, my poor Mary."
"It's so cold and dark out-doors, and where is she?" said Mary, with a shudder. "Oh, I wish I'd been kinder to her, and not scolded her."
"Oh, dear Mary, don't reproach yourself; you did it for the best. We will pray for her, and the dear Father will hear us, I know he will. The Good Shepherd will go after her and find her."
CHAPTER XXXII
A MISTRESS WITHOUT A MAID
[Eva to Harry's Mother.]
Valley of Humiliation.
Dear Mother: I have kept you well informed of all our prosperities in undertaking and doing: how everything we have set our hand to has turned out beautifully; how "our evenings" have been a triumphant success; and how we and our neighbors are all coming into the spirit of love and unity, getting acquainted, mingling and melting into each other's sympathy and knowledge. I have had the most delightful run of compliments about my house, as so bright, so cheerful, so social and cosy, and about my skill in managing to always have every thing so nice, and in entertaining with so little parade and trouble, that I really began to plume myself on something very uncommon in the way of what Aunt Prissy Diamond calls "faculty." Well, you know, next in course after the Palace Beautiful comes the Valley of Humiliation – whence my letter is dated – where I am at this present writing. Honest old John Bunyan says that, although people do not descend into this place with a very good grace, but with many a sore bruise and tumble, yet the air thereof is mild and refreshing, and many sweet flowers grow here that are not found in more exalted regions.
I have not found the flowers yet, and feel only the soreness and bruises of the descent. To drop the metaphor: I have been now three days conducting my establishment without Mary, and with no other assistant than her daughter, the little ten-year-old midget I told you about. You remember about poor Maggie, and what we were trying to do for her, and how she fled from our house? Well, Jim Fellows set the detectives upon her track, and the last that was heard of her, she had gone up to Poughkeepsie; and, as Mary has relations somewhere in that neighborhood, she thought, perhaps, if she went immediately, she should find her among them. The dear, faithful soul felt dreadfully about leaving me, knowing that, as to all practical matters, I am a poor "sheep in the wilderness;" and if I had made any opposition, or argued against it, I suppose that I might have kept her from going, but I did not. I did all I could to hurry her off, and talked heroically about how I would try to get along without her, and little Midge swelled with importance, and seemed to long for the opportunity to display her latent powers; and so Mary departed suddenly one morning, and left me in possession of the field.
The situation was the graver that we had a gentleman invited to dinner, and Mary had not time even to stuff the turkey, as she had to hurry off to the cars. "What will you do, Miss Eva?" she said, ruefully; and I said cheerily: "Oh, never fear, Mary; I never found a situation yet that I was not adequate to," and I saw her out of the door, and then turned to my kitchen and my turkey. My soul was fired with energy. I would prove to Harry what a wonderful and unexplored field of domestic science lay in my little person. Everything should be so perfect that the absence of Mary should not even be suspected!
So I came airily upon the stage of action, and took an observation of the field. This turkey should be stuffed, of course; turkeys always were stuffed; but what with? How very shadowy and indefinite my knowledge grew, as I contemplated those yawning rifts and caverns which were to be filled up with something savory – I didn't precisely know what! But the cook-book came to my relief. I read and studied the directions, and proceeded to explore for the articles. "Midge, where does your mother keep the sweet herbs?" Midge was prompt and alert in her researches and brought them to light, and I proceeded gravely to measure and mix, while Midge, delighted at the opportunity of exploring forbidden territory, began a miscellaneous system of rummaging and upsetting in Mary's orderly closets. "Here's the mustard, ma'am, and here's the French mustard, and here's the vanilla, and the cloves is here, and the nutmeg-grater, ma'am, and the nutmegs is here;" and so on, till I was half crazy.
"Midge, put all those things back and shut the cupboard door, and stop talking," said I, decisively. And Midge obeyed.
"Now," said I, "I wonder where Mary keeps her needles; this must be sewed up."
Midge was on hand again, and pulled forth needles, and thread, and twine, and after some pulling and pinching of my fingers, and some unsuccessful struggles with the stiff wings that wouldn't lie down, and the stiff legs that would kick out, my turkey was fairly bound and captive, and handsomely awaiting his destiny.
"Now, Midge," said I, triumphant; "open the oven door!"
"Oh! please, ma'am, it's only ten o'clock. You don't want to roast him all day."
Sure enough; I had not thought of that. Our dinner hour was five o'clock; and, for the first time in my life, the idea of time as connected with a roast turkey rose in my head.
"Midge, when does your mother put the turkey in?"
"Oh! not till some time in the afternoon," said Midge, wisely.
"How long does it take a turkey to roast?" said I.
"Oh! a good while," said Midge, confidently, "'cordin' as how large they is."
I turned to my cook-book, and saw that so much time must be given to so many pounds; but I had not the remotest idea how many pounds there were in the turkey. So I set Midge to cleaning the silver, and ran across the way, to get light of Miss Dorcas.
How thankful I was for the neighborly running-in terms on which I stood with my old ladies; it stood me in good stead in this time of need. I ran in at the back door and found Miss Dorcas in her kitchen, presiding over some special Eleusinian mysteries in the way of preserves. The good soul had on a morning-cap calculated to strike terror into an inexperienced beholder, but her face beamed with benignity, and she entered into the situation at once.
"Cookery books are not worth a fly in such cases," she remarked, sententiously. "You must use your judgment."
"But what if you haven't got any judgment to use?" said I. "I haven't a bit."
"Well, then, dear child, you must use Dinah's, as I do. Dinah can tell to a T, how long a turkey takes to roast, by looking at it. Here, Dinah, run over, and 'talk turkey' to Mrs. Henderson."
Dinah went back with me, boiling over with giggle. She laughed so immoderately over my turkey that I began to fear I had made some disgraceful blunder; but I was relieved by a facetious poke in the side which she gave me, declaring:
"Lord's sakes alive, Mis' Henderson, you's dun it like a bawn cook, you has. Land sake! but it just kills me to see ladies work," she added, going into another chuckle of delight. "Waall, now, Mis' Henderson, dat 'are turkey'll want a mighty sight of doin'. Tell ye what – I'll come over and put him in for you, 'bout three o'clock," she concluded, giving me a matronizing pat on the back.
"Besides," said little Midge, wisely, "there's all the chambers and the parlors to do."
Sure enough! I had forgotten that beds do not make themselves, nor chambers arrange themselves, as always had seemed to me before. But I went at the work, with little Midge for handmaid, guiding her zeal and directing and superintending her somewhat erratic movements, till bedrooms, parlors, house, were all in wonted order. In the course of this experience, it occurred to me a number of times how much activity, and thought, and care and labor of some one went to make the foundation on which the habitual ease, quiet and composure of my daily life was built; and I mentally voted Mary a place among the saints.
Punctually to appointment, Dinah came over and lifted my big turkey into the oven, and I shut the door on him, and thought my dinner was fairly under way.
But the kitchen stove, which always seemed to me the most matter-of-fact, simple, self-evident verity in nature, suddenly became an inscrutable labyrinth of mystery in my eyes. After putting in my turkey, I went on inspecting my china-closet, and laying out napkins, and peering into preserve-jars, till half an hour had passed, when I thought of taking a peep at him. There he lay, scarcely warmed through, with a sort of chilly whiteness upon him.
"Midge," I cried, "why don't this fire burn? This turkey isn't cooking."
"Oh, dear me, mum! you've forgot the drafts is shut," said Midge, just as if I had ever thought of drafts, or supposed there was any craft or mystery about them.
Midge, however, proceeded to open certain mysterious slides, whereat the stove gave a purr of satisfaction, which soon broadened into a roar.
"That will do splendidly," said I; "and now, Midge, go and get the potatoes and turnips, peel them, and have them ready."
The stove roared away merrily, and I went on with my china-closet arrangements, laying out a dessert, till suddenly I smelled a smell of burning. I went into the kitchen, and found the stove raging like a great red dragon, and the top glowing hot, and, opening the oven door, a puff of burning fume flew in my face.
"Oh, Midge, Midge," I cried, "what is the matter? The turkey is all burning up!" and Midge came running from the cellar.
"Why, mother shuts them slides part up, when the fire gets agoing too fast," said Midge – "so;" and Midge manipulated the mysterious slides, and the roaring monster grew calm.
But my turkey needed to be turned, and I essayed to turn him – a thing which seems the simplest thing in life, till one tries it and becomes convinced of the utter depravity of matter. The wretched contrary bird of evil! how he slipped and slid, and went every way but the right way! How I wrestled with him, getting hot and combative, outwardly and inwardly! How I burned my hand on the oven door, till finally over he flounced, spattering hot gravy all over my hand and the front breadth of my dress. I had a view then that I never had had before of the amount of Christian patience needed by a cook. I really got into quite a vengeful state of feeling with the monster, and shut the oven door with a malignant bang, as Hensel and Gretel did when they burned the old witch in the fairy story.
But now came the improvising of my dessert! I had projected an elegant arrangement of boiled custard, with sponge-cake at the bottom, and feathery snow of egg-froth on top – a showy composition, which, when displayed in a high cut-glass dish, strikingly ornaments the table.
I felt entirely equal to boiled custard. I had seen Mary make it dozens of times. I knew just how many eggs went to the quart of milk, and that it must be stirred gently all the time, in a kettle of boiling water, till the golden moment of projection arrived. So I stirred and stirred, with a hot face and smarting hands; for the burned places burned so much worse in the heat as to send a doubt through my mind whether I ever should have grace enough to be a martyr at the stake, for any faith or cause whatever.
