Читать книгу Journal of a Residence in America - Fanny Kemble - Страница 38

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Sat stitching all the blessed day. So we are to go to Philadelphia before Boston. I'm sorry. The H——s will be disappointed, and I shall get no riding, che seccatura! At five dressed, and went to the——, where we were to dine. This is one of the first houses here, so I conclude that I am to consider what I see as a tolerable sample of the ways and manners of being, doing, and suffering of the best society in New York. There were about twenty people; the women were in a sort of French demi-toilette, with bare necks, and long sleeves, heads frizzed out after the very last Petit Courier, and thread net handkerchiefs and capes; the whole of which, to my English eye, appeared a strange marrying of incongruities. The younger daughter of our host is beautiful; a young and brilliant likeness of Ellen Tree, with more refinement, and a smile that was, not to say a ray, but a whole focus of sun rays, a perfect blaze of light; she was much taken up with a youth, to whom, my neighbour at dinner informed me, she was engaged.

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The women here, like those of most warm climates, ripen very early, and decay proportionably soon. They are, generally speaking, pretty, with good complexions, and an air of freshness and brilliancy, but this, I am told, is very evanescent; and whereas, in England, a woman is in the full bloom of health and beauty from twenty to five-and-thirty, here they scarcely reach the first period without being faded and looking old.[15] They marry very young, and this is another reason why age comes prematurely upon them. There was a fair young thing at dinner to-day who did not look above seventeen, and she was a wife. As for their figures, like those of French women, they are too well dressed for one to judge exactly what they are really like: they are, for the most part, short and slight, with remarkably pretty feet and ankles; but there's too much pelerine and petticoat, and "de quoi" of every sort, to guess any thing more.

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There was a Mr. ——, the Magnus Apollo of New York, who is a musical genius: sings as well as any gentleman need sing, pronounces Italian well, and accompanies himself without false chords; all which renders him the man round whom (as round H——, G——, Lord C——, and that pretty Lord O——, in our own country) the women listen and languish. He sang the Phantom Bark: the last time I heard it was from the lips of Moore, with two of the loveliest faces in all the world hanging over him, Mrs. N——, and Mrs. B——. By the by, the man who sat next me at dinner was asking me all manner of questions about Mrs. N——: among others, whether she was "as pale as a poetess ought to be?" Oh! how I wish Corinne had but heard that herself! what a deal of funny scorn would have looked beautiful on her rich brown cheek and brilliant lips. The dinner was plenteous, and tolerably well dressed, but ill served: there were not half servants enough, and we had neither water-glasses nor finger-glasses. Now, though I don't eat with my fingers (except peaches, whereat I think the aborigines, who were paring theirs like so many potatoes, seemed rather amazed), yet do I hold a finger-glass at the conclusion of my dinner a requisite to comfort. After dinner we had coffee, but no tea, whereat my English taste was in high dudgeon. The gentlemen did not sit long, and when they joined us, Mr. ——, as I said before, uttered sweet sounds. By the by, I was not a little amused at Mrs. ——asking me whether I had heard of his singing, or their musical soirées, and seeming all but surprised that I had no revelations of either across the Atlantic. Mercy on me! what fools people are all over the world! The worst is, they are all fools of the same sort, and there is no profit whatever in travelling. Mr. B——, who is an Englishman, happened to ask me if I knew Captain——, whereupon we immediately struck up a conversation, and talked over English folks and doings together, to my entire satisfaction. The—— were there: he is brother to that wondrous ruler of the spirits whom I did so dislike in London, and his lady is a daughter of Lord——.

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I was very glad to come home. I sang to them two or three things, but the piano was pitched too high for my voice; by the by, in that large, lofty, fine room, they had a tiny, old-fashioned, becurtained cabinet piano stuck right against the wall, unto which the singer's face was turned, and into which his voice was absorbed. We had hardly regained our inn and uncloaked, when there came a tap at the door, and in walked Mr. ——to ask me if we would not join them (himself and the——) at supper. He said that, besides five being a great deal too early to dine, he had not half dinner enough; and then began the regular English quizzing of every thing and every body we had left behind. Oh dear, oh dear! how thoroughly English it was, and how it reminded me of H——; of course, we did not accept their invitation, but it furnished me matter of amusement. How we English folks do cling to our own habits, our own views, our own things, our own people; how, in spite of all our wanderings and scatterings over the whole face of the earth, like so many Jews, we never lose our distinct and national individuality; nor fail to lay hold of one another's skirts, to laugh at and depreciate all that differs from that country, which we delight in forsaking for any and all others.