Jonathan and His Continent Part 12

The wives of men with middle-cla.s.s incomes imitate the luxury of the millionaire's wife. I expected to find it so: in a Democratic country the frogs all try to swell into oxen. They puff themselves out until they burst; or, rather, until their husbands burst.

In France always, and in England when he will let her, a wife keeps an eye on her husband's interests. In America, she often lays hands on his capital.

It must be said that vulgarity is not the monopoly of the middle-cla.s.s woman in America. I extract the following from a Boston paper:

"The extreme of vulgarity has lately been attained in a gorgeous Southern hotel, where the wife of a much-millionaired inventor holds state with a courier, another man-servant who dances attendance on a superannuated pug (whose teeth are said to be gold-fitted--the pug's teeth, remember, not the man's), and several maids. The courier manages the private palace-car of the family, which stands ready on the rails for use at any time and in any direction, and attends to the securing of rooms and steamer berths, as well as private dining privileges, when the family moves; and it always moves _en prince_."

All this is well enough if one can afford it; but the innate vulgarity of the thing is shown in fantastic and absurd costuming of the children, including satin breeches for the boys, and the gorgeous getting-up of the maids, two of these menials being told off to attend constantly on each child.

CHAPTER XVI.

_High Cla.s.s Humour.--Mr. Chauncey Depew and General Horace Porter.--Corneille had no Humour.--A Woman "sans pere et sans proche."--Mark Twain._

Humour is an una.s.suming form of wit, by turns gay, naive, grim, and pathetic, that you will never come across in a vain, affected man.

What, for instance, could be more naive than the following remark I heard made by Mark Twain at a dinner in New York, one evening? It was given, of course, in his inimitable drawl:

"I was in the war too--for a fortnight--but I found I was on the strong side--so I retired--to make the fight even."

There is no country where you hear so many good anecdotes, and no country where they are so well told.

The Americans are delightful _raconteurs_; they are past-masters in the art of making those light, graceful, witty little speeches, which give to their dinners such a unique charm. Then the humour is delicate, the wit of the brightest. Irony and elegance combine to make these discourses veritable little literary gems. The Americans have their heads full of anecdotes and reminiscences; and it little matters in honour of whom or of what the dinner is given, they are sure to be ready with anecdotes and reminiscences that are suitable to the occasion.

The chronicler who draws upon his fertile brain for an interesting column for his paper every day may choose his own subject, and the task, difficult as it is, is not insurmountable; but to be able, night after night, throughout a whole season, to make a witty speech on a given subject, not chosen by the speaker--this appears to me to be a wonderful feat. Nevertheless, it is done every year by a goodly number of Americans, foremost among whom must be named Mr. Chauncey Depew and General Horace Porter. A banquet is not complete without the presence of one of these delightful orators.

Here is a specimen of General Porter's drollery--a portrait of an old typical Puritan, given at a "New England" dinner.

"The old Puritan was not the most rollicking, the jolliest, the most playful of men. He at times amused himself sadly. He was given to a mild disregard of the conventionalities. He had suppressed bear-baiting, not, it is believed, because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the audience. He found the Indians were the proprietors of the land, and he felt himself constrained to move against them with his gun, with a view to increasing the number of absentee landlords. He found Indians on one side and witches on the other. He was surrounded with troubles. He had to keep the Indians under fire and the witches over it. These were some of the things that reconciled that good man to sudden death. He never let the sun go down upon his wrath, but he, no doubt, often wished himself in that region near the Pole, where the sun does not go down for six months at a time, and gives wrath a fair chance to materialize. He was a thoughtful man. He spent his days inventing snow ploughs, and his evenings in sipping hot rum, and ruminating upon the probable strength of the future prohibition vote. Those were times when the wives remonstrated with their husbands regarding the unfortunate and disappointing results of too much drink, particularly when it led the men to go out and shoot at Indians--and miss them. These men generally began drinking on account of a bite of a snake, and usually had to quit on account of attacks from the same reptiles."

General Porter was good enough to introduce me to a New York audience on one occasion.

"Ladies and gentlemen," began the General, without relaxing a muscle of his face, "I claim your indulgence on behalf of the speaker who is going to address you; he has to speak in a language not his own, and, besides, he has not the resource of some of our countrymen, who, when their throats are tired, can speak through their noses."

Mr. Depew has not a very high opinion of English sense of humour.

This is an anecdote which he tells on the subject.

Mr. Depew and General Porter were present one evening at a dinner in London. The General had just terminated a speech, and Mr. Depew was called upon for one in his turn.

"Gentlemen," said he, rising, "I am in a great state of embarra.s.sment. I had prepared a speech which General Porter, to my great surprise, has just given you word for word. The General and I occupied the same cabin on board the boat which brought us to England, and I strongly suspect he must have stolen my notes."

At this, it appears Mr. Depew heard an Englishman say to his neighbour:

"It is not the act of a gentleman."

I have sometimes heard it said that no man is really great who has no sense of humour and cannot see through a joke. If this is a rule, the French form an exception.

Corneille was one night looking on at a representation of Racine's "Plaideurs." When he heard the fine verse from the _Cid_, parodied, and applied by Racine to an old lawyer:

"_Les rides sur son front gravaient tous ses exploits_,"

it is said that Corneille exclaimed, in bourgeois style:

"I don't think people ought to be allowed to steal your verses like that."

American ladies run their husbands and fathers very close in the matter of wit. Their wit is apt to be a little more sarcastic, perhaps. They are not women for nothing.

Some people were talking one day, in a New York drawing-room, of a lady who was making herself conspicuous in society, but of whom no one seemed to know the antecedents.

"Oh, don't speak to me of her," said one lady as witty as uncharitable; "she is _sans pere et sans proche_."

Since the death of Artemus Ward, Mr. Samuel Clemens, whose pseudonym of "Mark Twain" is a household word among every English-speaking people, has held unchallenged the position of first American humorist.

Mark Twain is a man of about fifty years of age, thin, of medium height, and having well-marked features. His face, almost surly, is grave to severity, and rarely relaxes.

The profile is Jewish. The eyes, small and keen, are almost entirely hidden by thick bushy eyebrows; the well-shaped head is covered with thick bushy hair. A few yards off, Mark Twain's head looks like a crow's nest. The voice is drawling and has a decidedly nasal tone. When he slowly gets on his feet to speak, "tosses his frontlet to the sky,"

twists his head sidewise, frowning all the while, you little guess that in a few moments this man will convulse you with laughter.

Truly nothing could be more droll than Mark Twain's manner of telling an anecdote. His jokes, which he seems to twirl out from under his ears, make straight for your sides, tickle them unmercifully, and set you twisting on your chair.

Mark Twain has ama.s.sed a considerable fortune, not--as he says himself--in writing his own books, but in publishing those of other people.[7] If there had been an international copyright between England and America, Mark Twain would have made a considerable fortune without going into business.

[7] Mark Twain is the chief partner in the firm of Charles Webster and Co., New York.

This writer excels specially in accounts of travels. He will not give you deep thoughts or serious information. He is a charming guide, who makes you see the comic side of the life he describes, who will pilot you wherever there is something for his keen observation to glean. His caricatures are so perfectly hit off that you recognise the original immediately.

This man of merriment is, it appears, also a deep student of serious things. His father was long anxious to have him write a life of Christ, and if he has never complied with his parent's wish, it is only from a feeling that a volume of the kind, coming from his pen, might not be read with the reverence such a subject demands.

Mark Twain inhabits a delightful cottage in Hartford, in the State of Connecticut.