George William Curtis

“ Daisy Clover thinks it’s heavenly. Darling little Daisy! life is an endless German cotillion to her. She thinks the world is gay but well-meaning, is sure that it goes to church on Sundays and never tells lies. Cerulea Bass looks at it for a moment with her hard, round, ebony eyes, and calmly wonders that people will make such fools of themselves. And you, Miss Minerva, pardon me,—you come because you are in the habit of coming—because you are not happy out of such society, and have a tantalizing sadness in it. ”

“ The simplicity of the republican idea and system will appear in your manners and modes of life. Leaving to the children of a society based upon antique and aristocratic principles, to squander their lives in an aimless luxury, you will carry about with you, as it were the fresh airs and virgin character of a new country and civilization. When you go to Paris, it will be like a sweet country breeze blowing into a perfumer’s shop. The customers will scent something finer than the most exquisite essence, and will prefer the fresh fragrance of the flower to the most elaborate distillation. ”

“ It worships wealth, and the pomp which wealth can purchase, more than virtue, genius, or beauty. We may be told that it has always been so in every country, and that the fine society of all lands is as profuse and flashy as our own. We deny it, flatly. Neither English, nor French, nor Italian, nor German society, is so unspeakably barren as that which is technically called “society” here. In London, and Paris, and Vienna, and Rome, all the really eminent men and women help make up the mass of society. A party is not a mere ball, but it is a congress of the wit, beauty, and fame of the capital. ”

“ You come home tired, and likely enough, surly, and gloom about like a thundercloud if dinner isn’t ready for you the instant you are ready for it, and then sit mum and eat it; and snap at the children, and show yourselves the selfish, ugly things you are. Am I to have no fun, never go to the opera, never go to a ball, never have a party at home? Men are tyrants, Mr. Potiphar. They are ogres who entice us poor girls into their castles, and then eat up our happiness and scold us while they eat.”
Well, I suppose it is so. I suppose I am an ogre and enticed Polly into my castle. ”

“ But men are not learned at the billiard table, nor in the barroom, nor by meeting them in an endless round of debauch, nor does a man know the world because he has been to Paris. It is a sad thing for a young man to seek applause by surpassing his companions in that which makes them contemptible. The best men of our own time have little leisure, and the best of other days have committed their better part to books, wherein we may know and love them.
There is nothing more admirable than good society, as there is nothing so fine as a noble man, nor so lovely as a beautiful woman. ”

“ To conclude my sermon, ladies, Europe is a charmed name to Americans, because in Europe are the fountains of all our education and training. History is the story of that hemisphere; the ruins of empires, arts, and civilizations, are here. Now, if there is any use in living at all, which I am far from asserting, is it worth while to get nothing out of Europe but a prolonged supper with Madame Casta Diva, or a wardrobe of all the charming dresses in Paris, and a facility of scandal which has all the wickedness and none of the wit of the finest French-woman? ”

“ But the truth is, that in such engrossing places as Saratoga and Newport, it is hardly possible to determine which is the pleasantest and most important thing among so many. I am so fond of that old, droll Kurz Pacha, that if I begin to talk about him I forget everything else. He says such nice things about people that nobody else would dare to say, and that everybody is so glad to hear. He is invaluable in society. And yet one is never safe. People say he isn’t gentlemanly; but when I see the style of man that is called gentlemanly, I am very glad he is not. ”

“ If your mind were in the condition of your house, so ill-assorted, so confused, so overloaded with things that don’t belong together, you would never make another cent. You have order, propriety, harmony, in your dealings with the Symmes’s Hole Bore Co., and they are the secrets of your success. Why not have the same elements in your house? Why pitch every century, country, and fashion, higgledy-piggledly into your parlors and dining-room? Have everything you can get, in heaven’s name, but have everything in its place. ”

“ Knowing that luxury enervates a nation, they aim to show in their lives, as in their persons, that simplicity is the finest ornament of dress, as health best decorates the body. They are cheerfully obedient to those who command them, and gentle to those they command. Full of charity, and knowing that if every man has some sore weakness, he has also a human soul latent in him, they trust each man as if that soul might, at any moment, look out of his eyes, and acknowledge with tears, the sympathy that unites them. ”

“ A city, it seems to me, is mainly valuable as a gallery of opportunities. But a man should not live exclusively in his library, nor among his pictures. Letters and art may well decorate his life. But if they are not subsidiary to the man, and his character, then he is a sadder spectacle than a vain book or a poor picture. The eager whirl of a city tends either to beget a thirst that can only be sated by strong, yet dangerous excitement, or to deafen a man’s ear, and harden his heart, to the really noble attractions around him. ”

“ The young men, instead of sighing for other institutions, and the immunities of rank, prefer to deserve, by earning, their own patents of Nobility. They are industrious, temperate, and frugal, as becomes the youth to whom the destinies of so great a nation, and the hopes of the world, are committed. They are proud to have raised themselves from poverty, and they are never ashamed to confess that they are poor. They acknowledge the equal dignity of all kinds of labor, and do not presume upon any social differences between their baker and themselves. ”

“ An old belle who endeavors to retain by sharp wit and spicy scandal the place she held only in virtue of youth and spirited beauty is, in a new circle of youth and beauty, like an enemy firing at you from the windows of your own house. The difficulty of your position, dear Miss Minerva, is, that you can never deceive those who alone are worth deceiving. Daisy Clover and Young America, of course, consider you a talented, tremendous kind of woman. Daisy Clover wonders all the men are not in love with you. ”

“ Who pass a few years in Europe, and return skeptical of republicanism and human improvement, longing and sighing for more sharply emphasised social distinctions? Who squander with profuse recklessness the hard-earned fortunes of their sires? Who diligently devote their time to nothing, foolishly and wrongly supposing that a young English nobleman has nothing to do? Who, in fine, evince by their collective conduct, that they regard their Americanism as a misfortune, and are so the most deadly enemies of their country? None but what our wag facetiously termed “the best society.” ”

“ You pass for a brilliant woman. You go out to dinners and balls; and men are, what is called, ‘afraid of you.’ You scorn most of us. You are not a favorite, but your pride is flattered by the very fear on the part of others which prevents your being loved. Time and yourself are your only enemies, and they are in league, for you betray yourself to him. You have found youth the most fascinating and fatal of flirts, but he, although your heart and hope clung to him despairingly, has jilted you and thrown you by. Let him go, if you can, and throw after him the white muslin and the baby-waist. ”

“ I am preaching to you in your baby-waist, here in a Newport ball-room at midnight. I humbly beg your pardon. There are more potent preachers here than I. Besides, I’m engaged to Mrs. Potiphar’s supper at 12. Take things more gently, dear Miss Minerva. Don’t make faces at Mrs. Vite, nor growl at your darling Polly. Women as smart as you are, will say precisely as smart thing of you as you say of them. We shall all laugh, first with you, and then at you. But don’t deny yourself the pleasure of saying the smart things in hope that they will also refrain. ”

“ If the pretty young Caroline, with youth, health, freshness, a fine, budding form, and wreathed in a semi-transparent haze of flounced and flowered gauze, is so vapid that we prefer to accost her with our eyes alone, and not with our tongues, is the same Caroline married into a Madame Pettitoes, and fanning herself upon a sofa,—no longer particularly fresh, nor young, nor pretty, and no longer budding but very fully blown,—likely to be fascinating in conversation? ”

“ It is a delightful language for the natives, and for all who have thoroughly mastered its spirit. Its genius is airy and sparkling. It is especially the language of society, because society is, theoretically, the playful encounter of sprightliness and wit. It is the worst language I know of for poetry, ethics, and the habit of the Saxon mind. It is wonderful in the hands of such masters as Balzac and George Sand, and is especially adapted to their purposes. Yet their books are forbidden to Nancy Fungus, Tabby Dormouse, Daisy Clover, and all their relations. ”

“ The world is not made for the prosperous alone, nor for the strong. We may wince at the truth, but we must at length believe it,—that the poor in spirit, and the poor in will, and the poor in success, are appointed as pensioners upon our care.
In my house your son will miss the luxuries of his home, but he will, perhaps, find as cordial a sympathy in his little interests, and as careful a consultation of his desires and aims. He will have pure air, a tranquil landscape, a pleasant society ”

“ Those who did not dance walked up and down the rooms as well as they could, squeezing by non-dancing ladies, causing them to swear in their hearts as the brusque broadcloth carried away the light outworks of gauze and gossamer. The dowagers, ranged in solid phalanx, occupied all the chairs and sofas against the wall, and fanned themselves until supper-time, looking at each other’s diamonds, and criticising the toilettes of the younger ladies, each narrowly watching her peculiar Polly Jane, that she did not betray too much interest in any man who was not of a certain fortune. ”

“ The perfection of civilization has not yet mounted the stairs. It is confined to the dining-room. How beautiful is that strain from the Favorita, Miss Minerva, tum, tum, ti ti, tum tum, tee tee,” and the delightful Sennaar ambassador, seeing Mrs. Potiphar in the parlor, danced humming away.
There are few pleasanter men in society. I should think with his experience he would be hard upon us, but he is not. The air of courts does not seem to have spoiled him.
“My dear madam,” he said one evening to Mrs. Potiphar, “if you laugh at anything, your laughing is laughed at next day. Life is short. ”

“ A youth of boyish grace, with a wreath woven in his tangled hair, and with red and drowsy eyes, sits listless upon one pedestal, while upon another stands a boy, insane with drunkenness, and proffering a dripping goblet to the marble mouth of the statue. In the corner of the picture, as if just quitting the court—Rome finally departing—is a group of Romans with care-worn brows, and hands raised to their faces in melancholy meditation. ”

“ It is called a satire, but after much diligent reading, we cannot discover the satire. A state of society not at all superior to that of “Vanity Fair” is not unknown to our experience; and, unless truth-telling be satire; unless the most tragically real portraiture be satire; unless scalding tears of sorrow, and the bitter regret of a manly mind over the miserable spectacle of artificiality, wasted powers, misdirected energies, and lost opportunities, be satirical; we do not find satire in that sad story. ”

“ Laura Larmes, who reads all the novels, and rolls her great eyes around the ball room,—who laughs at the idea of such a girl as Blanche Amory in Pendennis,—who would be pensive if she were not so plump,—who likes “nothing so much as walking on the cliff by moonlight,”—who wonders that girls should want to dance on warm summer nights when they have Nature, “and such nature” before them,—who, in fact, would be a mere emotion if she were not a bouncing girl,—Laura Larmes wonders that any man can be so happy as Kurz Pacha. ”

“ I am astonished that a man of Kurz Pacha’s tact should have opened the book-case. People have no right to suppose that the pretty bindings on one’s shelves are books. Why, they might as well insist upon trying if the bloom on one’s cheek, or the lace on one’s dress, or, in fact, one’s figure, were real. Such things are addressed to the eye. No gentleman uses his hands in good society. I’ve no doubt they were originally put into gloves to keep them out of mischief.
I am as bad as dear Mrs. Potiphar about coming to the point of my story. ”