Читать книгу The Lady of Fashion - Eric Wollencott Barnes - Страница 7

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The separation from James and her beloved May were a cruel wrench for Lily. But when she boarded the Roscius she was too weak and ill for grief. She was also terrified at the prospect of the long Atlantic crossing, remembering that earlier voyage and its tragic consequences. Yet this time the sea was on its best behavior. A steady wind sent the ship at a lively clip and acted as a tonic for the invalid who spent most of the days on deck wrapped in heavy shawls. The bracing salt air and bright sunshine worked wonders. By the time the Roscius reached Liverpool Lily was no longer coughing, and a faint tinge of color had come into her pale cheeks.

The two ladies went immediately to London where they passed a week shopping, sightseeing, and going to the theatre. Though Anna Cora devoted less time than most girls of the period to clothes—unless they were costumes for a play—she loved pretty things. She had to admit, with some reluctance, that there was a refinement and smartness about English mantuas and slippers that made the American product seem just a little crude.

Shopping gave an excuse for constantly moving about the city. London was full of reminders of home, yet it was foreign too and daily presented something new and strange to stimulate Lily’s lively curiosity. Although this was not her first experience of Europe—she had memories still of Bordeaux—London was so different. It was no gay little provincial city; it was a great metropolis of the world, where every square and street-corner offered evidence of the range and power of the British Empire. As the ladies drove through Regent Street or swept down Buckingham Palace Road, they could scarcely keep their heads inside the carriage. There was so much to see; if something attracted their attention on one side they were bound to miss something utterly fascinating on the other. A company of horse-guards, resplendent in glittering cuirasses and streaming black plumes, would gallop past with a clatter of hooves and a jingle of swords—more thrilling than any spectacle behind the footlights of the Bowery. As they rolled through Hyde Park they would pass handsome equipages painted blue or pale rose or shiny black, with liveried coachmen up before, and haughty footmen, arms folded, perched precariously up behind. There would be gilded crests on the doors, and if they looked hard they might glimpse the profile of some august personage within. But it was not only the magnificence and splendor that Lily found picturesque. She was just as captivated by the ragamuffins who were always appearing to open the door when the carriage stopped, and the crossing sweeps vociferously offering their services to anybody affluent enough to hire them.

Lily marveled at the efficiency and skill of the London milliners and mantuamakers. The ladies planned to visit the Italian Opera, and needed suitable gowns to mingle with the haut monde that frequented Her Majesty’s Theatre. Accordingly, they sought out a court dressmaker who had been highly recommended; and at five o’clock of the evening before the performance they were to attend, their measurements were taken. “Within eight minutes (three of which were passed in astonishment at my giving my name as a married woman) I was fitted and in the carriage again! The dress came home the next morning, and became me à merveille.” When one reflects on the complexities of even the simplest toilette of the time, not to mention a ballgown, one might marvel with Lily at such speed. And yet it was all a matter of organization and an unlimited labor market. Half a dozen expert seamstresses (at sixpence an hour each) could easily turn out a handsome creation by simply working all night.

Covent Garden, Her Majesty’s Theatre, which was about three times the size of the Park in New York, exceeded in magnificence anything the ladies had yet seen. They went on a Saturday, which was the most fashionable night, and the audience were all in costume de bal. Most of the assemblage were of the nobility, and it was only by a stroke of luck that Lily and her aunt had managed to secure places. They discovered that even peers were not completely devoid of the commercial instinct on which the power of England rested. By paying an exorbitant price, the two were able to obtain the Duchess of Grosvenor’s box for the evening. If the price startled them, they did not hesitate to pay it; for in addition to the opera, they would be able to see the Queen, who was scheduled to attend on that evening. In this delightful expectation, however, they were disappointed. “The queen was present,” Lily wrote to James, “but our republican curiosity was not gratified, for she sat directly beneath our loge.”

The opera itself was splendid. The offering was Lucia di Lammermoor, and the singing of Persiani was almost too sublime for words. “Her mad scene was painfully powerful—terribly beautiful,”—thus she put it to James. Strangely enough, when she came herself to play the Bride of Lammermoor, in the stage version of Scott’s novel, the critics would strain the language in a similar way to describe her performance of Lucy Ashton. It is not unlikely that something of Persiani’s interpretation of Lucia was incorporated later into Anna Cora’s own projection of the part; and that the lyrical quality with which she lifted the scene above the crude melodrama of the original was due to the memory of Donizetti’s exquisite aria—which forever haunted her after hearing Persiani.

In London Lily also saw Madame Vestris, the leading actress of the English stage. This lady had toured America a few seasons before, but with little success. Seeing her now in her own theatre with the company which she had selected and trained, Lily thought she understood why this had been. A play, as she now saw for perhaps the first time, was not a mere vehicle for the display of one individual’s talents. It was (if the author’s intention was to be realized) a group creation in which each player contributed his part—giving his personal art to the whole, and reflecting the equally personal arts of his fellow-actors. Even a great star, if truly an actress and not just a showy personality, could display her art only if properly supported. So it was with Madame Vestris. “She is nothing alone,” Lily wrote to May. “This is her sphere—she is the planet round which her satellites move. Drawing light from her they shine themselves, and thus add to her lustre. She is nothing alone—she must have a certain entourage to develop and set forth her powers.”

This is astute criticism from an eighteen-year-old girl who had scarcely visited the theatre more than five or six times in her life. One can search the professional reviews of the period in vain for similar understanding of the actor’s art. One would wait for more than half a century before the theatre itself showed the same perceptions. But in this as most things Lily was ahead of her time. For a brief season when she herself was a star, she succeeded in abolishing the star-system; but the system itself was too firmly established to give way entirely. In America, where worship of the glittering personality has been one of the negative by-products of the gospel of individualism, the star-system continues to be the backbone of the theatre.

Shopping and theatre-going did not consume all the ladies’ time. With that almost maniacal compulsion to see everything which has always made the American tourist the wonder of Europeans, Lily and her aunt systematically did the sights. They were properly impressed by all the usual things: the Tower and the crown jewels; Westminster Abbey; St. Paul’s. They gazed with particular admiration at the colossal statue of Achilles opposite the entrance to Hyde Park, erected in honor of the Duke of Wellington by the English ladies (underlined by Lily in her report to James).

One memorable morning was spent at Madame Tussaud’s, where the two visitors had the gratification of standing only a few feet from the Queen. She was in wax, it is true, but so like life that she practically breathed! As for the figure of Madame de St. Amaranth (she who had rejected the vile solicitations of Robespierre, and thus become the victim of his fury)—it actually did breathe. She was stretched upon a couch in a dying attitude, her bosom heaving with expiring agony. (How many transmogrifications has this lady undergone in the course of a century! In one’s childhood she was the Sleeping Beauty. For present-day children she is a somnolent blonde with Hollywood contours. But the figure is the same. Only the mechanism—which in Lily’s day was clockwork—is now electrified).

The very last day, as they were attempting to squeeze their greatly-augmented wardrobes into recalcitrant trunks and portmanteaus, news was brought that the Queen was momentarily expected to visit the National Gallery. Abandoning their packing, the ladies summoned their carriage and dashed to Trafalgar Square where they joined the eager crowd. They stood for an hour and a half, but the Queen did not arrive. On the basis of a rumor that she had changed her destination, they sped to St. James’ Place. Here they passed another hour, only to be disappointed again. Well, no one could say they had not tried!

That night—“the loveliest moonlight night I ever beheld”—they left London. Twenty-four hours later, after a pleasant passage across the North Sea, they were in Hamburg. From Hamburg they proceeded by Schnellpost (which one of them thought must mean “snail-post”) to Bremen. Here they were awaited by Anna Cora’s younger sister Emma, who had married a wealthy young German merchant, Henry Mecke, only a short time before. Lily and her aunt were to spend the winter with them.

Lily’s usual delight in all sorts and conditions of people seems not to have operated in the case of the Germans. But if she did not warm to the people themselves, that fact did not lessen her curiosity about them. Their extraordinary tastes, particularly in the matter of food and drink—and funerals—were the object of the most careful observation—and reflection. As usual, when Lily reflected it was with pen in hand. She began to note down what she saw and heard in Bremen. Two years later these notes formed the basis of an article which was published in The Ladies’ Companion.

Usages and Manners of the Northern Germans begins with a description of German meals—the most remarkable feature of which, for Lily, is their length. She marvels at the devices by which the consumption of food can be prolonged indefinitely. There is not only the food itself, fifteen or twenty courses—but toasts, songs, speeches, and, naturally, conversation. When the foreigner thinks the time at last arrived for the guests to leave their seats (we can imagine Lily as having been long on the edge of hers), there is a further ceremony. Each gentleman now takes out a pipe and indulges “in the luxury of sending forth fantastic wreaths of smoke to encircle the fair one by his side, without the remotest fear of a distasteful frown deepening on her brow; and she, if fatigued, or preferring a more poetic garland, may soon disappear, almost unperceived, amid the clouds of smoke which darken the air, and refresh herself with the perfume of the carefully-tended garden....”

From dinner-parties Lily proceeds at once to funerals, there being evidently some association in her mind between the two. She is fascinated by the long flaxen wigs worn by pallbearers in Hamburg. Like Mark Twain later, she notes the institution in Germany of special houses, where the dead are laid out in comfort and allowed to remain for several days with a bell-rope attached to their hands so that help can be instantly summoned in the event of a return to animation: all of which is merely a precaution against faulty diagnosis.

But Anna Cora’s finest praise is reserved for German cemeteries and the loving care expended by survivors of the deceased in keeping these hallowed spots neat and pretty. She is lyrically moved by the attitude of those who come to mourn: a father and his children standing with bowed heads beside a mother’s grave, or “a young widow bending over a shattered column, and with gentle hands training the ivy at its base to wind round that sculptured emblem, even as her thoughts and affections intwine the memory of the departed.” All that is lacking in the description is the weeping-willow, and its absence is a symptom of the author’s restraint. Even so, Anna Cora’s fond lingering on the theme of death is very typical of the period. Yet in her case, as with our great-grandmothers in general, it is a tendency easy to misjudge. Like so many young women of her time Anna Cora lived in the shadow of incurable disease, and had she not been able to romanticize death, she might have sunk into a helpless pessimism.

Another vignette of her Bremen winter eventually appeared in the Ladies Companion. This was called Bridal Customs of the North Germans. As in the matter of funerals, Anna Cora was struck by the picturesqueness surrounding a ceremony so universal. The “Binding of the Myrtle,” a pre-nuptial rite in which only unmarried ladies took part, particularly charmed her. In fact the whole business of Marriage, including the silver and golden weddings—for Lily did not believe in leaving a subject until she had exhausted its possibilities—had an element of drama which she found very satisfying.

Bremen life on the whole was not too exciting. There was not a great deal to see. The charm of the old Hanseatic architecture seems to have been lost on Lily, though she does lavish attention on the cathedral—particularly the burial vaults, where, due to some strange property of the air, bodies had been preserved for centuries without decay. This attraction was apparently popular with most tourists, for the coffins were left open to display the bodies in their moldering shrouds. Among other notable personages laid here to rest was the Countess of Stanhope. She was said to have been a great beauty, and her teeth were still perfect. By her side (but evidently not related) was a noble baron who “yet retained his corpulent appearance.” There was also the body of a young student, who had been shot in a duel for his lady love. One could still see the hole in his breast made by the ball; and one of the ladies in Anna Cora’s party severed a lock from the head of this long-dead Romeo. The traveler of the period had a catholic taste in souvenirs.

Meanwhile Lily was not idle. On the contrary, the routine of study went on with the same relentless application and method as at Melrose. The two ladies had taken a small furnished house for themselves, so that the program of self-improvement might proceed without interruption. At nine she had a two-hour German lesson. This was followed by a visit from her piano-teacher, who in turn was followed by a singing-master. Although Lily had a keen feeling for the nuances of language and was already bi-lingual, she found German a most obdurate tongue. However, this fact only whetted her determination, and after three months she could report with satisfaction that she was tasting “with exquisite enjoyment” the beauties of Goethe and Schiller.

Mr. Mowatt had planned to join his wife about the first of February. Happily he was able to speed his departure, and arrived in Bremen the middle of January. The letter announcing the changed date had miscarried, so that when he appeared Lily was greatly startled. She was practicing at the piano when he walked into the little salon, and the sudden sight of him so shocked her that she sprang violently to her feet. The brusque movement brought on a hemorrhage of the lungs—an effect to be produced throughout her life whenever she met with too-sudden excitement. The joyful reunion was thus dampened by a temporary relapse. Nevertheless, during the months in Bremen Lily’s basic constitution had been noticeably strengthened, and within a few weeks she was again on her feet. To hasten her recovery it was decided that they should move southward through Switzerland, southern France, and on into Italy. The plans for the journey were almost completed, when James fell ill, attacked by a disease of the eyes which threatened to destroy his sight. James was at this time an ardent believer in homeopathy; but the two most eminent practitioners of the art in Bremen were unable to help him. For four months he could only sit in a darkened chamber, suffering excruciating pain. Nothing but the sound of his wife’s voice could bring surcease from the agony, and Lily read or talked to him from morning to night.

During this time the Mowatts heard about the celebrated Dr. Hahnemann who was located in Paris. When, toward the end of December, James rallied sufficiently to make the journey, they set out for France. It was bitterly cold, and the trip would have been a trial of endurance even for a well man. They traveled by boat up the Rhine, then overland by diligence, and for brief stretches on newly-constructed railway lines. Despite the discomfort and the constant shifting from one means of locomotion to another, they made the trip in three days.

In Paris they were greeted by the parents-in-law of Anna Cora’s oldest sister, Charlotte, who had been widowed at about the time of Lily’s elopement, and was now remarried to a Frenchman, M. Joseph Guillet. Though she and her husband were living in America, M. Guillet’s mother and sisters received the Mowatts with great kindness and did everything possible to assist the invalid. Above all they urged that he see their own physician, in whom they had the utmost confidence. But James was determined to see Dr. Hahnemann.

Samuel Christian Friedrich Hahnemann, the father of homeopathy, was one of the most distinguished medical figures of the age. A native of Meissen, he had been hounded from city to city in Germany—mainly by the opposition of apothecaries whose business he menaced—until in his old age he was forced to become an exile. He had been settled now in Paris for about five years, had achieved an international reputation, and amassed a fortune. At this time he was about 85 years old.

A consultation presented some difficulty, since James was too ill to visit the great man and the Doctor too old to leave his own house. Indeed by now most of Hahnemann’s consultations were carried on by his wife, whom Anna Cora describes as a woman of remarkable gifts. She had been trained in medicine by her husband, acted as his assistant, and actually conducted a considerable part of his practice. When in desperation Anna Cora undertook to see the doctor herself, it was Mrs. Hahnemann—clad in an elaborate afternoon gown, with long golden curls about her shoulders—who managed the interview, referring occasionally to the wizened figure who sat huddled in an easy-chair in a corner of the room. She was disappointed when Mrs. Hahnemann refused to prescribe without seeing the patient personally; and there was nothing for it but somehow to get James to the great man’s house. Finally, this was done; but the results were disappointing. Although James faithfully followed the regimen and took the medicines prescribed, his sufferings merely increased. Homeopathy was then abandoned, and the Guillet family physician called in. All to no avail, and for four months James lay in his darkened room, certain now that he would never see again.

Then relief came from an unexpected quarter. Dr. Valentine Mott, the eminent New York surgeon, happened to be passing through Paris. Although on a pleasure trip, he could not turn a deaf ear to the entreaties of the daughter of Samuel Ogden. He immediately undertook to help, and in two weeks there was a distinct change for the better. In a short while the bandages were removed from James’s eyes, and he could sit in the lightly-curtained drawing-room of their apartment. On the day when he could finally walk in the Champs Elysées, there was great jubilation.

With the load of James’s threatened blindness removed, Anna Cora’s spirits soared. Although James himself seldom ventured under the blaze of ballroom chandeliers—they were far more dazzling than sunlight in the Champs Elysées—he insisted that Anna Cora and her aunt join the social whirl. With their numerous connections, the Mowatts were the constant recipients of invitations to balls and soirées which, after so many months of ill-health and depression, Lily was delighted to accept. The most magnificent of these events, a fancy-dress ball given by an American millionaire, was described for the readers of The Ladies’ Companion. How the housewives of Hartford and Buffalo must have reveled in this record of refined opulence! The gorgeous mansion of their expatriate countryman was guarded for the occasion by fifty gendarmes, and the line of carriages waiting to discharge the guests stretched down the street as far as the eye could see.

Twelve gorgeous saloons were thrown open. Where the uncouth door once had been, costly drapery was suspended, tastefully gathered in folds or festoons; the carpets of velvet, the divans, ottomans, and couches were all that could be imagined of luxurious and beautiful. The walls were fluted with gold or rich silks, and hung with the works of the first masters; the ceilings painted in a thousand devices.... The thousand lights shed a flood of brilliancy which would almost have eclipsed sunshine; and the sparkling of diamonds threw a lustre around almost dazzling.

The costumes were “of every clime, ‘of every land where woman smiles or sighs.’ ” There was a pageant and a ballet, involving shepherdesses, Turks, knights, and Highlanders on horseback. And there were tableaux representing Madame de Pompadour and Louis XV with his court in powdered wigs and jewelled robes, and at their close “the giddy waltz and gay quadrille were merrily joined in by the company in general.” Afterwards came a banquet of the most delicate viands in endless tempting variety set out on a gold service. As a final note (for Anna Cora was mindful of the audience for which she wrote):

The cost of this ball is currently estimated at eight thousand dollars. One lady present wore so many diamonds (said to be valued at two hundred thousand dollars) that she was escorted to her carriage by gendarmes, for fear of robbery.

In the brilliant social life of Paris, Anna Cora herself was something of a figure. Her sparkling wit, her complete command of French, which after all was her first language, and her cosmopolitan background enabled her to move with ease through the aristocratic salons of the rue de l’Université and the Faubourg St. Honoré. Her appearance was arresting. She was below medium height, but so slender and so perfectly-proportioned that she gave the impression of being taller. Despite her youth she had great dignity, and in her manner there was none of that arch helplessness that so many small women affect. All descriptions are unanimous as to the extraordinary grace of her movements, and the elfin prettiness which had first attracted James Mowatt’s attention had ripened into warm beauty. Her quick responsiveness to people and situations was reflected in the animation of her face; and the radiance of her smile, which once seen was never forgotten, gave her a fascination that men—and women—found irresistible.

Through the American minister, General Cass, and her father’s French connections, Anna Cora met a number of distinguished personalities in Paris. She was particularly charmed with Madame de Lasteyrie, the daughter of Lafayette, who lived austerely in a great barn of an apartment in the Faubourg St. Germain and spent her days in good works. She also met Lady Bulwer, in Paris seeking a divorce from Sir Edward (soon to become Lord Lytton). She sympathized with that noble lady who had suffered much at the hands of her frivolous and irresponsible husband. Through Lady Bulwer she made the acquaintance of Mrs. Trollope. Like any proud daughter of Columbia, Anna Cora had been prepared to dislike thoroughly this lady whose treatment of America in her Domestic Manners of the Americans had been so merciless. But she found Mrs. Trollope actually the soul of kindness and a delightful companion. Lily herself now knew something of the larger world, and as she viewed America in a new perspective, she was forced to conclude that Mrs. Trollope’s reflections on our native habits were in the main well-founded. In the end she felt only sympathy for Mrs. Trollope, who was after all the victim of a dreadful affliction. “Mrs. Trollope! What a name! Surely Juliet was wrong if she thought a rose would smell as sweet were it called a dandelion.”

In Paris Anna Cora became a devotée of Rachel, and went again and again to the Théâtre Français to see her. Although she never met the great tragedienne, she became acquainted with Rachel’s two younger sisters, and through them Anna Cora learned something of Rachel’s private life, which she found wholly admirable. As for Rachel the artist, she could only be described as overwhelming. “From the moment she came upon the stage, I was always under the influence of a spell. Her eyes had the power of a basilisk’s upon me, and flashed with an intense brightness which no basilisk’s could have rivalled. I never expect to see that acting equalled—to surpass it in impassioned force and grandeur, appears to me to be impossible.”

Despite her busy social life and constant theatre-going, Anna Cora found time to study and to write, keeping to a fixed schedule in which so many hours of the day were allotted to each subject. She went on struggling valiantly with music. She read German literature diligently and plunged into Italian. Somehow she also managed to write long letters to her father and sisters, which later stood her in good stead as sources for articles in Sargent’s and Godey’s. Some of her more serious reflections found their way into these letters. Her childhood fondness for France had increased with her new insight into the values of French civilization. In a letter to May she wrote: “Poverty is not here considered to be nearly so much a crime as with us and in England. Talents, education, manners, even personal attractions, are placed before riches. Entrance into good society may be commanded by these, while with us the entrance is too often purchasable.”

There is this telling comment on the American passion for imitating European ways. “The customs and fashions which we imitate as Parisian are not infrequently mere caricatures of those that exist in Paris. For instance, it is the present mode not to introduce persons who meet at parties or in visiting, but the custom is intended to obviate the ceremoniousness of formal introductions. Everyone is expected to talk to his neighbor; and if mutual pleasure is received from the intercourse, an acquaintance is formed. The same fashion in vogue with us renders society cold and stiff. We abolish introductions because the Parisians do so; but we only take this first step in our transatlantic imitations. Few persons feel at liberty to address strangers. Little, contracted circles of friends herd in clannish groups together, and mar the true object of society. As yet, we only follow the fashions; we do not conceive the spirit which dictated them.”

This observation contains the germ of Fashion, the first American play of real distinction, and the first important satire of society in the New World. The play itself was still five years off, but the subject was already being studied with absorbed attention. Anna Cora’s comedy of manners, based on a comparison of French and American society, is a facet of the International Theme: a theme which Anna Cora Mowatt was to exploit with telling effect a generation before the advent of Henry James.

Not only our drawing-room manners, but our habits of dress, particularly feminine, reflected the mania of the ’30’s and ’40’s for aping Europe—and often with ludicrous results. “Expensive materials, worn here only at balls, are imported by American merchants and pronounced to be ‘very fashionable in Paris.’ They are universally bought by our belles, who, instead of wearing them at proper seasons, parade the streets in what is meant exclusively for evening costume.” Ten years before, Fanny Kemble, freshly arrived from England, was completely nonplussed to see that New York ladies often did their morning shopping in evening gowns.

Both James and his Lily were now apparently restored to health and eager to return to America. Even before leaving Paris they made plans for an elaborate homecoming celebration, Anna Cora devoted the last weeks of her stay to composing the pièce de résistance for this grand occasion, a dramatic work in six acts and in blank verse entitled Gulzara, or the Persian Slave. To insure that nothing might be lacking in the production, the most ambitious which she had yet undertaken, she commissioned a prominent French scene-painter to do the settings (one for each act!) and ordered sumptuous costumes from a leading couturier.

Late in August, 1840, James and Lily and all their baggage—including the six sets of imported scenery—embarked on the Ville de Lyons at Havre and set sail for New York.