A Frenchman in America Part 26

I arrived in Chicago at five o'clock in the afternoon yesterday, dined, dressed, and lectured at the Music Hall under the auspices of the Drexel free Kindergarten. There was a large audience, and all pa.s.sed off very well. After the lecture, I went to the Grand Pacific Hotel, changed clothes, and went on board the sleeping car bound for Cleveland, O.

The criticisms of my lecture in this morning's Chicago papers are lively.

The _Herald_ calls me:

A dapper little Frenchman. Five feet eleven in height, and two hundred pounds in weight!

The _Times_ says:

That splendid trinity of the American peerage, the colonel, the judge, and the professor, turned out in full force at Central Music Hall last night. The lecturer is a magician who serves up your many little defects, peculiar to the auditors' own country, on a silver salver, so artistically garnished that one forgets the sarcasm in admiration of the sauce.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A CELEBRATED EXECUTIONER.]

The _Tribune_ is quite as complimentary and quite as lively:

His satire is as keen as the blade of the celebrated executioner who could cut a man's head off, and the unlucky person not know it until a pinch of snuff would cause a sneeze, and the decapitated head would, much to its surprise, find itself rolling over in the dust.

And after a good breakfast at Toledo station, I enjoyed an hour poring over the Chicago papers.

I lecture in Cleveland to-night, and am still in "the neighborhood of Chicago."

[Ill.u.s.tration]

FOOTNOTE:

[3] Very strange, that church with its stalls, galleries, and boxes--a perfect theater. From the platform it was interesting to watch the immense throng, packing the place from floor to ceiling, in front, on the sides, behind, everywhere.

CHAPTER XXVII.

THE MONOTONY OF TRAVELING IN THE STATES--"MANON LESCAUT" IN AMERICA.

_In the train from Cleveland to Albany, February 27._

Am getting tired and ill. I am not bed-ridden, but am fairly well rid of a bed. I have lately spent as many nights in railway cars as in hotel beds.

Am on my way to Albany, just outside "the neighborhood of Chicago." I lecture in that place to-night, and shall get to New York to-morrow.

I am suffering from the monotony of life. My greatest objection to America (indeed I do not believe I have any other) is the sameness of everything. I understand the Americans who run away to Europe every year to see an old church, a wall covered with moss and ivy, some good old-fashioned peasantry not dressed like the rest of the world.

What strikes a European most, in his rambles through America, is the absence of the picturesque. The country is monotonous, and eternally the same. Burned-up fields, stumps of trees, forests, wooden houses all built on the same pattern. All the stations you pa.s.s are alike. All the towns are alike. To say that an American town is ten times larger than another simply means that it has ten times more blocks of houses. All the streets are alike, with the same telegraph poles, the same "Indian"

as a sign for tobacconists, the same red, white, and blue pole as a sign for barbers. All the hotels are the same, all the _menus_ are the same, all the plates and dishes the same--why, all the ink-stands are the same. All the people are dressed in the same way. When you meet an American with all his beard, you want to shake his hands and thank him for not shaving it, as ninety-nine out of every hundred Americans do. Of course I have not seen California, the Rocky Mountains, and many other parts of America where the scenery is very beautiful; but I think my remarks can apply to those States most likely to be visited by a lecturer, that is, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and others, during the winter months, after the Indian summer, and before the renewal of verdure in May.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "THE SAME 'INDIAN.'"]

After breakfast, that indefatigable man of business, that intolerable bore, who incessantly bangs the doors and brings his stock-in-trade to the cars, came and whispered in my ears:

"New book--just out--a forbidden book!"

"A forbidden book! What is that?" I inquired.

He showed it to me. It was "Manon Lescaut."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "NEW BOOK JUST OUT--A FORBIDDEN BOOK!"]

Is it possible? That literary and artistic _chef-d'oeuvre_, which has been the original type of "Paul et Virginie" and "Atala"; that touching drama, which the prince of critics, Jules Janin, declared would be sufficient to save contemporary literature from complete oblivion, dragged in the mire, clothed in a dirty coa.r.s.e English garb! and advertised as a forbidden book! Three generations of French people have wept over the pathetic story. Here it is now, stripped of its unique style and literary beauty, sold to the American public as an improper book--a libel by translation on a genius. British authors have complained for years that their books were stolen in America. They have suffered in pockets, it is true, but their reputation has spread through an immense continent. What is their complaint compared to that of the French authors who have the misfortune to see their works translated into American? It is not only their pockets that suffer, but their reputation. The poor French author is at the mercy of incapable and malicious translators hired at starvation wages by the American pirate publisher. He is liable to a species of defamation ten times worse than robbery.

And as I looked at that copy of "Manon Lescaut," I almost felt grateful that Prevost was dead.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

CHAPTER XXVIII.

FOR THE FIRST TIME I SEE AN AMERICAN PAPER ABUSE ME--ALBANY TO NEW YORK--A LECTURE AT DALY'S THEATER--AFTERNOON AUDIENCES.

_New York, February 23._

The American press has always been very good to me. Fairness one has a right to expect, but kindness is an extra that is not always thrown in, and therefore the uniform amiability of the American press toward me could not fail to strike me most agreeably.

Up to yesterday I had not seen a single unkind notice or article, but in the Albany _Express_ of yesterday morning I read:

This evening the people of Albany are asked to listen to a lecture by Max O'Rell, who was in this country two years ago, and was treated with distinguished courtesy. When he went home he published a book filled with deliberate misstatements and willful exaggerations of the traits of the American people.

This paper "has reason," as the French say. My book contained one misstatement, at all events, and that was that "all Americans have a great sense of humor." You may say that the French are a witty people, but that does not mean that France contains no fools. It is rather painful to have to explain such things, but I do so for the benefit of that editor and with apologies to the general reader.

In spite of this diverting little "par," I had an immense audience last night in Harma.n.u.s Bleecker Hall, a new and magnificent construction in Albany, excellent, no doubt, for music, but hardly adapted for lecturing in, on account of its long and narrow shape.

[Ill.u.s.tration: RIP VAN WINKLE.]

I should have liked to stay longer in Albany, which struck me as being a remarkably beautiful place, but having to lecture in New York this afternoon, I took the vestibule train early this morning for New York.

This journey is exceedingly picturesque along the Hudson River, traveling as you do between two ranges of wooded hills, dotted over with beautiful habitations, and now and then pa.s.sing a little town bathing its feet in the water. In the distance one gets good views of the Catskill Mountains, immortalized by Washington Irving in "Rip Van Winkle."

On boarding the train, the first thing I did was to read the news of yesterday. Imagine my amus.e.m.e.nt, on opening the Albany _Express_ to read the following extract from the report of my lecture:

He has an agreeable but not a strong voice. This was the only point that could be criticised in his lecture, which consisted of many clever sketches of the humorous side of the character of different Anglo-Saxon nations. His humor is keen. He evidently is a great admirer of America and Americans, only bringing into ridicule some of their most conspicuously objectionable traits.... His lecture was entertaining, clever, witty and thoroughly enjoyable.