THE COURIER
NOTES OF VANITY FAIR.
Paul Bourget is writing a series of sketches under the title "Outre
Mere" on American society, that are occasioning much comment.
Below are extracts from his last article:
I have taken a great number of notes during these past months,
after my first ones, about that American Bociety of which I had ob
tained such a complete and at once striking impression at Newport.
I hare seen it again it many of its phases, at Boston, at Chicago, in
New York and again at Washington. These notes, jotted down
from day to day, and which are, like the studies of a painter, destined
to be amalgamated later on in some definite picture, I have turned
over several times with the idea of classing and of resuming them in
a few neat formulae. But I have found in that synthesis a difficulty
a difficulty which arises less from the abundance of the notes than
from the work of transformation which has taken place in my mind
during this long voyage and its multiple experiences. Just as those
words, the "United States," today call forth for mo millions of con
crete and distinct images, instead of seeming, as they did on my
arrival, a great mass of confused and undetermined ideas, so those
other words, "American Bociety," have ceased to express to me that
unique thing which I had judged it to be at Newport.
There is no "society" in America like there is in France or as there
is in England.
In the United States, as many towns as many societies, and as
none of those towns has managed to assume a domination of fashion
like Paris exercises over our provinces it results that there are all
sorts of centres of social life, each of which would merit a mono
graph. Certain novelists who study local customs are working at it,
among whom I may cite Mr. Chatfield Taylor, to whom we already
owe such curious sketches of fashionable Chicago life; and even the
common language bears witness to those differences of social habits,
with the natural exxaggeration of proverbial sayings. How many
times have they not repeated to me during my journey:
"At Boston the people ask you what you know; at New York, how
much money are you worth; at Philadelphia, who are your parents!'
Those epigrammatic bywords are not exactly correct. It seemed
to me, in New York, for example, that the painters, the sculptors,
the writers and the theatrical artists were certain of a reception just
as cordial as that of the ancient and learned Puritan citadel, the
"Hub"" of Massachusetts. It is none the less evident that the inten
sity of culture is more general and more violent in Boston.the frenzy
of luxury stronger in New York; that in Chicago there is more imi
tation and more uncertainty in the research of that which is
proper.
I have seen in the theatre of the latter town ladies in the act of
going behind the scenes to salute an actor at the instigation of one
of the gentleman accompanying them. Then as a person from Bos
ton refused to join in the incursion behind the scenes, they Bat down
again with that look in their eyes expressive of the thought:
"So that is not the right thing! . . . "
They long for Washington: "What beautiful place to stay in."
said one of them to me; "the men are not busy, like here; they are
in politics or something of that kind and they have plenty of time
for afternoon teas. This abundance of time to spare for
afternoon teas truly gives to the city on the Potomac the physiog
nomy of a Dresden or a Weimar. In driving through its streets
bordered with small private houses, without any trace of business or
commerce, one might fancy onself in some strasse of a German capi
tal, and that easy suppleness of social life forms a singular contrast
with the overladen condition in other towns. I imagice that 'Frisco
as the deprecatory of the west insist on calling San Francisco
must also have its very distinctly worldly coterie, very special, very
distinct, very original; also St Louis the same, and above all New
Orleans.
The result is that after a while the traveller scarcely finds again
that first impression of a unity, which nevertheless is also true, for
those societies are but varieties of a species and as groups within
groups. In any case they have a common feature which it is im
possible to mistake, and which the most suparflcial just as the most
profound have observed; the two weeks' tourist the same as a Bryce
or a Claudio Jeannet All those social lives, different as they may
be, are uniquely, absolutely the work of woman. It is for the woman
and by the women that those "societies"' exist; in fact, to understand
them in their birth and in their development it is the Amirican
woman that you must first understand and consider. A difficult
task in all countries, and more so still when it concerns creatnre-i
complete and complex, each one of whom has a separate will, a littlo
universe of ideas, sentiments and ambitions. At all risks, hero are
a few reflections and once again a few sketches chosen among two
hundred others as the most representative.
A character turns up over and over again; it is that of a farmer of
the West, a rough personage, bitter and loyal, who chews, who
drinks, who uss3 a terrible slang, but who is capable, when a wo
man is in question, of the most romantic deeds of honor. Nowhere
else have I found that hero better represented that at Boston in a
comedy entitled "Mizzoura," and by an actor of the name of Good
win. This man, half cowboy, half Don Quixote, saved the lifo of
one of his rivals, who was on the point of being lynched by a furious
crowd. With his mocking and strained face, his cheek swollen with
tobacco, his jets of 6aliva shot out afar, the dissolute tone of the
voice, the hat thrown back, and a sort of automatic fixity, the com
edian appeared as the actual incarnation of the black-guard, senti
mental and honest; and there was for me, a simple stranger, a won
derful contrast between the applause of the public with which it
appreciated his generosity and the ease with which the same public
accepted the idea of the lynching. Both one and the other thing is
in the habits of the people
It is from all sorts of similar influences that the particular crea
tion of the American woman has arisen. Those are the roots
through which the frivolous and capricious independence of a mil
lionaire's daughter plunges afar into the sources of national life.
There is in the disconcerting relations between the American man
and woman a still deeper reason, at least according to my opinion,
and that quite a physiological one. But when the laws which regu
late the relations of the sexes the one toward the other are in ques
tion, we must always come back to physiology.
If the Orientals, for example, have reduced their womankind to a
terrible condition of slavery and of degradation, it is because they
have loved them with the most violent sensuality, and because there
is in all sensuality a foundation of hate, for there is hidden in it a
bestial jealousy. Further, if we leave in the Latin world more liber
ty to the woman and do not accept witnout revolt the idea of inde
pendence and their personal initiative, it is because we experience
through all sorts of refinements a little of that which the Oriental
feels. The sensuality and the de3potis n of jealousy aro at the bot
tom of it If the Englishman on the contrary leaves the English
woman more liberty, it is because the climate, the race, the religion
have diminished the ardor of the temperament. The sora jevenum
Venus of Tacitus is as true of the young men of Oxford as it was of
the young Germans of the first century. All those who have stud
ied the young American agree that in this respect he is the same as
the young Englishman and colder still. It is enough to consider
the conditions under which the country was made to understand
that it must logically be so.
A small fact is strangely significant. There is not at all in the
United States an entirely nude statue. Quite recently the people of
Boston have refused to accept for the facade of tha new library two
children by the great sculptor, Saint Gaudens, because they were
without clothes. The municipality of Chicago forced another artist
Highest of all in Leavening Power. Latest U. S. Gov't Report
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