Jonathan and His Continent Part 2

The Englishman makes less noise over it. In his provokingly calm manner, he is perfectly persuaded that England is the first country in the world, and that everybody admits it, and the idea of asking an outsider for his opinion of it would never enter his head. He would think it so ridiculous, so amusing, so grotesque, that anyone should tell him England was not at the head of all nations, that he would not take the trouble to resent it. He would pity the person, and there the matter would end.

CHAPTER IV.

_Types.--Manly Beauty.--The Indian Type.--Second Beauty in the Women of the New World.--Something Wanting in the Beauty of Most American Women._

The American men are generally thin. Their faces glow with intelligence and energy, and in this mainly consists their handsomeness. I do not think it can be possible to see anywhere a finer a.s.semblage of men than that which meets at the Century Club of New York every first Sat.u.r.day of the month. It is not male beauty such as the Greeks portrayed it, but a manly beauty in all its intellectual force. The hair, often abundant, is _neglige_, sometimes even almost disordered-looking; the dress displays taste and care without aiming at elegance; the face is pale and serious, but lights up with an amiable smile: you divine that resolution and gentleness live in harmony in the American character.

The features are bony, the forehead straight, the nose sharp and often pinched-looking in its thinness. One seems at times to recognise in the faces something of the Indian type: the temples indented, the cheek-bones prominent, the eyes small, keen, and deepset.

The well-bred American is, to my mind, a happy combination of the Frenchman and the Englishman, having less stiffness than the latter, and more simplicity than the former.

As for the women, I do not hesitate to say that in the east, in New York especially, they might be taken for Frenchwomen. It is the same type, the same gait, the same vivacity, the same petulance, the same amplitude of proportions.

The beauty of the American women, like that of the men, is due much more to the animation of the face than to form or colouring. The average of good looks is very high, indeed. I do not remember to have seen one hopelessly plain woman during my six months' ramble in the States.

American women generally enjoy that second youth which Nature bestows also on numbers of Frenchwomen. At forty, they bloom out into a more majestic beauty. The eyes retain their fire and l.u.s.tre, the skin does not wrinkle, the hands, neck, and arms remain firm and white. It is true that, in America, hair turns grey early; but, so far from detracting from the American woman's charms, it gives her an air of distinction, and is often positively an attraction.

If the Americans descend from the English, their women have not inherited from their grandmothers either their teeth, their hands, or their feet. I have seen, in America, the daintiest little hands and feet in the world (this is not an Americanism).

The New Yorkers and Bostonians will have it to be that Chicago women have enormous feet and hands. I was willing to believe this, up to the day I went to Chicago. I found the Chicago women, and those of the west generally, pretty, with more colour than their eastern sisters; only, as a rule, quite slight, not to say thin.

That which is lacking in the pretty American faces of the east is colour and freshness. The complexion is pale; and it is only their plumpness, which comes to their rescue after thirty, and prevents them from looking faded. Those who remain thin, generally fade quickly; the complexion becomes the colour of whity-brown paper, and wrinkles freely.

If American women went in for more outdoor exercise; if they let the outer air penetrate constantly into their rooms; if they gave up living in hothouses, they would have some colour, and their beauty need, perhaps, fear no compet.i.tion in Europe.

CHAPTER V.

_All that Glitters is not Gold, especially in America.--The Dollar is the Unity of the Metrical System.--Jonathan is Matter-of-fact.--How he judges Man.--The Kind of Baits that Take.--Talent without Money is a Useless Tool.--Boston and Kansas._

Jonathan admires all that glitters, even that which is not gold.

In his eyes, the success of a thing answers for its quality, and the charlatanism that succeeds is superior to the merit that vegetates.

The dollar is not only the unity of the monetary system; it is also the unity of the metrical system.

Before a.s.signing a man his standing, people ask him in England, "Who is your father?" in France, "Who are you?" in America, "How much have you?"

Like Professor Teufelsdrockh, the ordinary American judges men with an impartiality and coolness really charming. He admires talent, because it is a paying commodity. A literary or artistic success is only a success, in his eyes, on condition that it is a monetary one as well. He looks upon every man as possessing a certain commercial value. He is worth so much. Such and such a celebrity does not inspire his respect and admiration because he or she has produced a work of genius, but because the work of genius has produced a fortune. In America, you hear people, when talking of Madame Adelina Patti, speak less of her incomparable voice than of the houses she draws.

I was chatting one day with an American about the famous Robert Ingersoll.

"He is your greatest orator, I am told," I said.

"Oh, yes," he replied. "Ingersoll can fill the Metropolitan Opera House any day, and have five thousand dollars in the house."

Certainly that is a curious way to speak of a great orator, a great writer, and a great thinker.

I need not say that I am now speaking of the ordinary American, not the man of refinement.

It would be quite possible for an actress to attract large audiences all through a tour from New York to San Francisco, not because of incontestable talent, but because she travelled in a magnificent palace-car of her own.

I saw, in an American paper, the appearance of Miss Minnie Palmer spoken of in the following terms:

"Minnie Palmer will wear all her diamonds in the third act."

The booking-office was besieged all day, and in the evening money was refused. An amusing detail was the arrival of a good fourth of the audience at ten o'clock, to see the diamonds in the third act.

This necessity for being rich is the reverse side of the medal in America, where, more than anywhere else, talent without money is a useless tool.

America suffers from this state of things. The country's genius, instead of consecrating all its time to the production of works which would tend to elevate the ideas and aspirations of the people, is obliged to think of money-making.

"Ah! my friend," said one of America's most graceful bards to me one day as he touched his forehead, "it seems to me that I have something there, that I possess the _feu sacre_, and that I might do a little share of good by my writings. But how write poems, when there are rumours of panic in Wall Street?----Excuse me, I have not a moment to lose; I must rush to the Stock Exchange."

The American authors, most of them, only take up the pen at odd hours.

Business first. Mark Twain is a publisher; Oliver Wendell Holmes is a doctor; Edmund Clarence Stedman is a stockbroker; Robert Ingersoll, an advocate; George Cable, a public lecturer; and James Russell Lowell is a diplomatist. The rest are journalists. There are few, indeed, who live by book-writing.

However, perhaps a day will come when American law will prevent publishers from stealing the works of European writers, and publishing them at low prices; then American authors, having no longer to fear this unjust compet.i.tion, may be able to sell their books in sufficient numbers to allow them to pay their landlord and tradesmen out of the profits. When that day comes, American literature will spread its pinions and rise to prodigious heights.

In a country governed by Protectionists, it does seem strange that national products should all be protected except the products of the brain. Such an anomaly cannot certainly endure. The moral sense of the people will triumph. Boston, not Kansas, must win.

Unluckily, the Copyright Bill has the misfortune to be desired by the English; and this is quite enough for the Washington politicians to refuse to pa.s.s it, although the Americans desire it no less than the English, if not more.

CHAPTER VI.

_Diamonds.--How Diamonds are Won and Lost in Tripping.--The Sweat of Jonathan's brow crystallized in his Wife's Ears.--Avarice is a vice little known in America.--Jonathan is not the Slave of the Almighty Dollar to the Extent that he is believed to be._

Man has been perpetuated to expiate the transgression of his first parent by hard labour. Jonathan is a proof of it.

He labours, he toils, and the sweat of his brow crystallizes upon the neck and arms of his beloved womankind in the form of diamonds.

To the American woman the diamond is not an object of luxury, it is an object of prime necessity. An English old maid would do without her tea before an American woman would go without diamonds.

Oh, those diamonds in America! You see them wherever you go! Not one woman in a hundred will you see without a pair of them in her ears. It is an obsession.

Diamonds, at night with evening dress and artificial light, are things of beauty: but diamonds in the street with morning dress, at early breakfast in company with morning wrappers; diamonds in the ears, at the neck, in the bonnet-strings, on arms, on fingers, diamonds all day long and everywhere, it is a remnant of savagery. Nay, I saw diamonds on shoe-buckles one day in broad day in a shop.