Elizabeth Visits America Part 2

Even in a week Tom has got so wearied about the Mayflower that yesterday at lunch when some new people came, and one woman began again, he said his father had collected rags and bones, and his great-great-grandfather was hung for sheep stealing! The woman nearly had a fit, and I heard her reproaching our hostess afterwards, as she said she had been invited to meet an English Earl! And the poor hostess looked so unhappy and came and asked me in such a worried voice if it were really true; so I told her I thought not exactly, but that the late Earl had a wonderful collection of Persian carpets and ivories which Tom might be alluding to. Even this did not comfort her, I could see she was still troubled over the sheep stealing, and the only thing I could think of to explain that was about the eighth Earl, don't you remember, Mamma? who was beheaded for the Old Pretender.

But the exquisite part of it all is the lady Tom told the story to was interviewed directly she got home, I suppose, for this morning in most of the papers there are headlines six inches tall:

ENGLISH PEER NO CATCH

FATHER RAG AND BONE MERCHANT

GRANDFATHER HANGED

Tom is so enchanted he is going to have them framed for the smoking room at Chevenix. But our hostess is too unhappy and burns to get him to deny it publicly. "My dear lady," Tom said, "would you have me deny I've got a green nose?" She looked so puzzled, "Oh, Lord Chevenix," she said, "why, of course you have not. A little sunburnt, perhaps--but _green!"_ Think of it, Mamma! Octavia and I nearly collapsed, and she is such a nice woman, too, and not really a fool; bright and cheery and sensible; but I am afraid out here they don't yet quite understand Tom, or Octavia either, for the matter of that.

There is a lovely place in New York called the Riverside Drive, charming houses looking straight out on the Hudson. But if you live in that part none of the Four Hundred or Two Hundred and Fifty, or whatever it is, would visit you, hardly. These people we are staying with now have a mansion there but are soon going to move. The daughter, Natalie, told me to-day, that after this her Poppa would also take a house at Newport, because now they would have no difficulty in getting into the swim!

We came here for the Sunday and it was raining when we arrived--after an odious train journey. Tom's valet and both the maids are perfectly at sea as yet, and while burning with rage over the lack of, and indifference of, the porters, are too scornfully haughty to adapt themselves to circ.u.mstances; so they still bring unnecessary hand luggage and argue with the conductor. We made a mistake in the train and there was no Pullman, so that means there is only one cla.s.s. It really is so quaint. Mamma, having to travel as if it were third. It amused me immensely, two people on a seat on either side and an aisle through the middle down which the ticket collector walks, and for most of the journey a child raced backwards and forwards, jumping with sticky hands clinging to the sides of each seat while it sucked candy. The mother screeched, "Say, Willie, if you don't quit that game, I'll tell your pa when we get home!" However, Willie shouted, "You bet," and paid not the least attention!

Nearly everywhere where you have to come in contact with people in an obviously inferior or menial position, manners don't exist. They seem to think they can demonstrate their equality, if not superiority, by being as rude as possible. Of course if they were really the ladies and gentlemen they are trying to prove they are, they would be courteous and gentle. The att.i.tude is, "I'm as good as you, indeed better!" Either you are a gentleman or woman, aren't you, Mamma? and you do not have to demonstrate it, everyone can see it; or you are not, and no amount of your own a.s.sertion that you are will make anyone believe you. So, of what use to be rude, or clamour, or boast? Doesn't it make you laugh, Mamma? Though it surprises me here because as a people they are certainly more intelligent than any other people on earth, and one would have thought they would have seen how futile and funny that side of them is.

The talk of equality is just as much nonsense in America as in every other place under the sun. How can people be called equal when the Browns won't know the Smiths! And the Van Brounckers won't know either, and Fifth Avenue does not bow to the West Side, and everyone is striving to "go one better"

than his neighbour.

Station is as strictly defined as in England, where the village grocer's daughter at Valmond no longer could speak to a school friend, a little general servant who came to fetch treacle at the shop, when Pappa Grocer bought a piano! So you see, Mamma, it is in human nature, whether you are English or American, if you haven't a sense of humour. I suppose you have to be up where we are for it all to seem nonsense and not to matter; and, who knows? If there were another grade beyond us we might be just the same, too; but it is trash to talk of equality. Even a Socialist leader thinks himself above the crowd--and is, too, though I should imagine that the American middle and lower cla.s.ses would a.s.sert they have no equal but G.o.d--if they don't actually look down on Him.

How I am rambling on, and I wanted to tell you heaps of things! I shall never get them all into this letter.

When we arrived at this palace it was, as I say, raining, but that did not prevent the marble steps from being decorated with three footmen at equal distances to usher us into the care of a cabinet minister-looking butler, and then through a porphyry hall hung with priceless tapestry and some shockingly glaring imitation Elizabethan oak chairs--to the library, where our hostess awaited us in a magnificent decollete tea gown, and at least forty thousand pounds' worth of pearls. Natalie had the sweetest of frocks possible and was quite simple and nice, and there is not the least difference in her to the daughters of any of our "smart" friends.

The library was a library because they told us so, but there were not any books there, only groups of impossible furniture covered with magnificent brocade, and the finest flowers one ever saw, most perfectly put in huge vases by a really clever gardener; no subtle arrangement of colours, but every blossom the largest there could be in nature. The tea seemed to get mostly poured out by the servants, and the table was covered with a cloth so encrusted with Venetian lace one's cup was unsteady on it. That is one of the most remarkable points here--I mean America--as far as I have seen.

The table cloths at every meal are ma.s.ses of lace, and every sort of wonderful implement in the way of different gold forks and knives for every dish lie by your plate; and such exquisite gla.s.s; and some even have old polished tables like Aunt Maria, but instead of the simple slips they have mats and centrepieces and squares of magnificent lace. Only the very highest cream of the inner elect have plain table cloths and a little silver like we do at home. And it is always a "party"--everyone is conscious they are there, and they either a.s.sume bad manners or good ones, but n.o.body is sans gene. Octavia says it takes as long to be that as to look like a gentleman clean shaven in evening dress. The rooms are awfully hot, steam heated up to about 75, and it makes your head swim after a while. There is only the son and a married daughter and husband in the house besides ourselves and two young men. We should call them bank clerks at home, and that is, I suppose, what they are here; only it is all different. Every man works just like our middle cla.s.ses; it is not the least unaristocratic to be a lawyer or a doctor or a wholesale store-keeper, or any profession you can name, so long as it makes you rich.

A man who does nothing is not considered to "amount to anything," and he generally doesn't, either! And I suppose it must be the climate, because directly they get immensely rich, so that the sons need not work, when it gets to the third generation, they often are invalids or weaklings, or have some funny vice or mania, and lots of them die of drink; which shows it is intended in some climates for men to work. Octavia says it takes centuries of wielding battle-axes and commanding va.s.sals to give the consciousness of superiority which enables people to be idle without being vicious; but Tom says it is because they don't hunt and shoot, and go to the bench, and attend to their estates and county business; so instead they have to go crazy over fast motoring or flying machines, or any fad which is uppermost, not having any traditions of how their forefathers pa.s.sed their time.

Last night there was a dinner party and some such clever men came. They were great financiers or business men or heads of Trusts. That means you have a splendid opportunity to speculate, only if anything goes wrong you have to chance all your other a.s.sociates on the trust turning against you and saying it was all your fault, and then you generally have to commit suicide; but while you are head you can become frightfully rich and respected. I sat between two of the most successful of different things, and they talked all the time. They don't want to hear what you have to say, only to tell you about themselves and their ideas, so it is most interesting. They are not the least cultivated in literature or art or anything decorative, but full of ideas upon the future evolution of schemes and things; really intensely clever, some of them. Only the odd part of it is they don't seem to speculate upon what the marvellous conglomeration of false proportions, unbalance and luxury are going to bring their nation to, if they are not careful.

Mr. Spleist (that is our host's name) is so kind! He spoils his wife and Natalie more even than Harry spoils Ermyntrude; and the son-in-law is just the same to his wife. American husbands fetch and carry and come to heel like trained spaniels, and it is perfectly lovely; everything is so simple.

If you happen to get bored with your husband, or he has a cold in his head, or anything that gets on your nerves, or you suddenly fancy some other man, you have not got all the bother and subterfuge of taking him for a lover and chancing a scandal like in England. You simply get your husband to let _you_ divorce _him,_ and make him give you heaps of money, and you keep the children if you happen to want them; or--there is generally only one--you agree to give that up for an extra million if he fancies it; and then you go off and marry your young man when he is free; because all American men are married, and he will have had to get his wife to divorce him. But when it is all "through," then it is comfortable and tidy, only the families get mixed after a while, and people have to be awfully careful not to ask them out to dinner together. One little girl at a dancing cla.s.s is reported to have said to another: "What do you think of your new Papa? I think he is a mean cuss. He gave me no candy when he was mine."

Octavia says, from a morality standard, she does not see there is the least difference to our lovers in England and France, but I do, because here they have the comforting sense of the law finding it all right. The only tiresome part of it is, it must quite take away the zest of forbidden fruit that European nations get out of such affairs.

Our bedrooms are marvels. Mine is immense, with two suites of impossible rococo Louis XV. furniture in it; the richest curtains with heaps of arranged draperies and fringe, grand writing table things, a few embroidered cushions; but no new books, or comfy sofas, or look of cosy anywhere. The bathrooms to each room are superb; miles beyond one's ideas of them in general at home. Tom says he can't sleep because the embroidered monograms on the pillows and things scratch his cheek, and the lace frills tickle his nose, while he catches his toes in the Venetian insertion in the sheets. The linen itself is the finest you ever saw, Mamma, and would be too exquisite plain. Now one knows where all those marvellously over-worked things in the Paris shops go to, and all the wonderful gold incrusted Carlsbad gla.s.s. You meet it here in every house.

The gardens are absurd, as compared with ours in England, but they have far better gla.s.s houses and forcing processes and perfection of each plant; because you see even the gardener would feel his had to be just one better than the people's next door. They are far prouder of these imported things than their divine natural trees, or the perfectly glorious view over the Hudson, and insisted upon us examining all that, while Mr. Spleist told us how much it all cost and would not let us linger to get the lovely picture of the river and the opposite sh.o.r.e; until Octavia said we had a few greenhouses at home and some fairly fine gardens, but nowhere had we so n.o.ble a river or so vast a view, and he seemed to be quite hurt at all that, because he had not bought them, I suppose! And yet, Mamma, I cannot tell you what kind, nice people the Spleists really are; only the strange quality of boast and application of personal material gain is most extraordinary.

The outside of the house is brownish red sandstone, and is a wonderful mixture of all styles.

There is no room in it where there is any look of what we call "home," and not one shabby thing. Mrs. Spleist has a "boudoir"--and it is a boudoir! It is as if you went into the best shop and said, "I want a boudoir;" just as you would, "I want a hat," and paid for it and brought it home with you.

Natalie has a sitting-room, and it is just the same. They are not quite far enough up yet on the social ladder to have every corner of the establishment done by Duveen, and the result is truly appalling.

The food is wonderful, extraordinarily good; but although the footmen are English they don't wait anything like as well as if they had remained at home; and Octavia's old maid, Wilbor, told her the hurly burly downstairs is beyond description; s.n.a.t.c.hing their meals anywhere, with no time or etiquette or housekeeper's room; all, everyone for himself, and the devil take the hindmost. And the absolutely disrespectful way they speak of their master and mistress--machines to make money out of, they seem to think--perfectly astonished Wilbor, who highly disapproves of it all.

Agnes, having a French woman's eye to the main chance, says, "N'importe, ici on gagne beaucoup d'argent!" So probably she will leave me before we return.

What volumes I have written, dearest Mamma!

Best love from your,

Affectionate daughter, ELIZABETH.

PLAZA HOTEL, NEW YORK

PLAZA HOTEL, NEW YORK, _Friday._

Dearest Mamma,--Octavia and I feel we are growing quite "rattled." (Do forgive me for using such a word, but it is American and describes us.) The telephone rings from the moment we wake until we go out, and reporters wait to pounce upon us if we leave our rooms. We are entertained at countless feasts, and to-morrow we are going down town to lunch at a city restaurant, after seeing the Stock Exchange, so I will tell you of that presently. We can't do or say a thing that a totally different and garbled version of it does not appear in the papers, often with pictures; and yesterday, while Octavia was out with me, she was made to have given an interview upon whether or no Mr. Roosevelt should propose a law to enforce American wives to each have at least six children! It is printed that she asked how many husbands they were allowed, and the reporter lady who writes the interview expresses herself as quite shocked; but Octavia said, when she read it this morning, that she thought whoever was speaking for her asked a very sensible question. What do you think, Mamma? Octavia is enchanted with all these things, and is keeping a large sc.r.a.p book. But the one we like best was in the Sunday's paper, when there was a full sheet with dark hints as to our private lives by "One Who Knows."

All the history of the little dancer Ottalie Cheveny was tacked on to Octavia's past! The name sounding something the same is quite enough reason for its being Octavia's story here! Tom is having this one put with his collection for the smoking-room, because he says when Octavia "fluffs"

(that, I think, means "ruffles") him, he will be able to look up at it and think of "what might have been!"

I am said to be here while a divorce is being arranged by my family because Harry has gone off to India with a fair haired widow!!! Think, Mamma, of his rage when I send him a copy. Isn't it lovely?

We are enjoying ourselves more than I can say, and they are perfect dears, most of the people who entertain us;--so gay and merry and kind;--and we are growing quite accustomed to the voices and the odd grammar and phrasing. At first you get a singing in your head from the noise of a room full of people speaking. They simply scream, and it makes a peculiar echo, as if the walls were metal. Everyone talks at once, and no one ever listens to anything the person near them says.

A ladies' lunch is like this: Octavia and I arrive at a gorgeous mansion, and are ushered into a marvellous Louis XV. morning room, with wonderful tapestry furniture and beautiful pictures arranged rather like a museum.

There is never a look of the mistress of the house having settled anything herself, or chosen a pillow because the colours in a certain sofa required it; or, in fact, there is never the expression of any individuality of ownership; anyone could have just such another house if he or she were rich enough to give carte blanche to the best antique art shop; but the things all being really good and beautiful do not jar like the mixture at the Spleists did. Often whole rooms have been brought out, just as they were, from foreign palaces, panelling, pictures and all, and it gives such a quaint sense of unreality to feel the old atmosphere in this young, vigorous country. The hostess's bedroom and boudoir and bath room are often shown to us, and they are all masterpieces of decoration and luxury; and I can't think how they can keep on feeling as good as gold in them! Perfectly lovely luxurious surroundings always make me long for Harry to play with, or some other nice young man--did not they you, Mamma, when you were young and felt things?

About twenty other women are probably there besides us, all dressed in the most expensive magnificent afternoon frocks; and they all have lovely Cartier jewelled watches, and those beautiful black ribbon and diamond chains round their necks, like Harry gave me last birthday. No one wears old fashioned or ugly jewels, all are in exquisite taste, while the pearls at one lunch would have paid for a kingdom.

When everyone has been presented to us, being the strangers, luncheon is announced, and we go into a magnificent dining-room, sometimes with the blinds so much drawn that we have to have electric lights. The footmen are in full dress, with silk stockings, and one or two places they had them powdered, and that did make Octavia smile. I don't think one ought to have powder unless it has been the custom of the family for generations, do you, Mamma? Well, then, beside each person's plate, beyond the countless food implements lying on the lace-encrusted cloth, are lovely bunches of orchids, or whatever is the most rare and difficult to get; and c.o.c.ktails have sometimes been handed in the salon before, and sometimes are handed in the dining-room, but at the ladies' lunches in very small gla.s.ses.

With such heaps of divorces, in a very large party you can't help having some what Mrs. Van Brounker-Courtfield (a perfect old darling of nearly eighty whom we lunched with on Wednesday) calls "court relations,"

together; by that meaning, supposing Mrs. A. has divorced Mr. A., and re-married Mr. B., who has been divorced by Mrs. B., who has re-married Mr.

C., who happened to be a widower with grown up married daughters--then the daughters and the present Mrs. B., late Mrs. A., would be "court relations," and might meet at lunch. Mr. A. himself and his present wife would also be the late Mrs. B.'s and present Mrs. C.'s court relations. Do you understand, Mamma? It is the sort of ones connected with the case whom it would be unpleasant to speak about it to, but not the actual princ.i.p.als.

And when I asked Mrs. Van Brounker-Courtfield why she called them "court relations" she said because the divorce court was their common ground of connection, and it was a very good reason, and quite as true as calling people blood relations in London or Paris! And that pleased Octavia very much, because she said it was the first subtle thing she had heard in New York. But I must get on with the lunch.

You begin your clam broth (such an "exquit" soup, as Ermyntrude would call it), and the lady next you says she has been "just crazy" to meet you, and heaps of nice things that make you pleased with yourself and ready to enjoy your food. You are just going to say something civil in return, and get a few words out, when your neighbour interrupts you with more nice things, and stacks of questions, and remarks about herself, all rather disconnected, and before you can speak again, the lady beyond, or even across the table, has interpolated with a sentence beginning always like this, "Now let me tell you something;" and long before she can get to the end of that, the person at her side has interrupted her. And so it goes on.

It sounds as if I were telling you of another Mad Hatter's tea party, Mamma, but it is not at all; and it is wonderful how much sense you can get out of it, and what amusing and clever bright things they say, though at the end you feel a little confused; and what with the smell of the innumerable flowers and the steam heated rooms, and the cigarettes, I can't think how they have wits enough left to play bridge all the afternoon, as they do, with never a young man to wake them up. Of course it is amusing for Octavia and me to see all this, as we are merely visitors, but fancy, Mamma! doing it as a part of one's life! Dressing up and making oneself splendid and attractive to meet only _women!_

They are not the least interested in politics or the pursuits of their husbands or brothers, and hardly any of them have the duties we have to do, like opening bazaars and giving away prizes and being heads of all sorts of organisations, nor do they have quant.i.ties of tenants' welfare to look after, or be responsible for anything. Of course they must pa.s.s the time somehow, and they all have secretaries who take every sort of ordinary trouble of notes and letters and things off their shoulders, so they ought to be awfully happy, oughtn't they? But they often have nerves or some imaginary disease or fad, and are frightfully restless, and Octavia says it is because in the natural development of the female of any country, numbers of these are really at the stage when they should be doing manual labour, according to their ancestry, and so having nothing to occupy them and living in every dreamed-of luxury, they get nerves instead. But I think it is because they never have nice young men to play with, everyone being busy working down town in the day time. We are told that even when the husbands do come home before dinner they are too tired to talk much, and as I said before nearly all the men, married or single, make you feel as good as gold, so it is no wonder such numbers of beautiful Americans come to Europe. I am quite sure if we had to lead their life we would turn into the most awful creatures. It is greatly to their credit they remain so nice.

When you can get one or two alone to have a connected conversation they are perfectly charming, and often very cultivated, and nearly always knowing about music; but sometimes, supposing one is discussing a phaze of the Renaissance, say, they will suddenly speak of something as belonging to it of quite another period, and you feel perfectly nonplussed, it seems so remarkable with the clever things they have just said they can make such mistakes. Perhaps it's that they do not study any one subject very deeply.

One thing is noticeable and nice. The conversations everywhere are all absolutely "jeune fille"; never anything the least "risque," though it is often amusing.

Among the "smart set" (do forgive this awful term, Mamma, but I mean by that the ones who are "in the swim" and whose society is the goal of the other's desire: I don't know what else to call them) they don't often tell you about the Mayflower and their ancestors; though on Wednesday a frightfully rich person who has only lately been admitted into this inner circle because her daughters have both married foreign Princes, said to me, she loved the English, and was indeed English herself and some distant connection of our King, being descended from Queen Elizabeth!!! It was rather unfortunate her having pitched upon our Virgin Queen, wasn't it, Mamma!? But perhaps as she had rather an Italian look it was the affair of the Venetian attache, and when I suggested that to her, she gazed at me blankly and said, "Why, no, there never has been any side-tracking in our family; we've always been virtuous and always shall be."

Now that you know, generally, what a luncheon is, I must tell you of the particular one at Mrs. Van Brounker-Courtfield's. She is the dearest old lady you ever met, Mamma--witty and quaint and downright, with an immense chic--grey hair brushed up into the most elaborate coiffure, jet black eyes with the wickedest twinkle in them, and a strong cleft in a double chin.

She is rather stout but has Paris clothes and perfect jewels. She is not a bit like English old ladies, sticking to their hideous early Victorian settings for their diamonds; hers are the very latest, and although she is seventy-eight, she crosses the ocean twice a year to have her frocks fitted, and see what is going on.