University of Virginia Library

THE WEST IN A PETTICOAT.

(By way of declining a communication in hope of a
better one.)

We have been for years looking at the western
horizon of American literature, for a star to rise that
should smack of the big rivers, steamboats, alligators,
and western manners. We have the DOWN EAST —
embodied in Jack Downing and his imitators. There
was wanting a literary embodiment of the OUT WEST
— not, a mind shining at it, by ridiculing it from a
distance, but a mind shining from it, by showing its
peculiar qualities unconsciously. The rough-hewn
physiognomy of the west, though showing as yet but
in rude and unattractive outline, is the profile of a fine
giant, and will chisel down to noble features hereafter;
but, meantime, there will be a literary foreshadowing
of its maturity — abrupt, confiding, dashing writers,
regardless of all trammels and fearless of ridicule —
and we think we have heard from one of them.

The letter from which we shall quote presently, is
entirely in earnest, and signed with the lady's real
name. We at first threw the accompanying communication
aside, as very original and amusing, but
unfit for print — except with comments which we had
no time to make. Taking it up again this morning,
we think we see a way to compass the lady-writer's
object, and we commence by giving her a fictitious
name to make famous (instead of her own), and by interesting
our readers in her with showing her character
of mind as her letter shows her to us. She is
quick, energetic, confident of herself, full of humor,
and a good observer, and the “half-horse half-alligator”
impulses with which she writes so unconsciously,
may be trimmed into an admirable and entirely
original style by care and labor.

Miss “Kate Juniper,”[1] (so we name her), thus
dashes, western-fashion, in what she has to say
to us: —

“I hate formal introductions. I would speak to you
now, and I will see you, when I may, in the Palace
of Truth. I am in Godey's Lady's Book with decent
compensation, but I want to be published faster than
they can do it. I want to write for the Mirror without
pay, for the sake of `getting my name up.' I shall
ultimately `put money in my purse' by this course.
I have now three manuscript volumes, which good
judges tell me are equal to Miss Bremer's. I send you
a specimen. I have a series of these sketches, entitled
`The Spirits of the Room.' I can sell them to
Godey, but he will be for ever bringing them out. I
propose to give them to you, if you like them, in the
true spirit of bargain and sale, though not in the letter.
I will give you as many as will serve my purpose
of getting my name known; and then, if success
comes, you will hold me by the chain of gratitude, as
you now do by that of reverence and affection.

“Will you write me immediately and tell me your
thoughts of this thing? Truly your friend.”

We can only give a taste of her literary quality by
an extract from her communication, the remainder
wanting finish, and this portion sufficing to introduce
her to our readers. We give it precisely as written
and punctuated. She is describing an interview with
a travelling lecturer on magnetism, and gives her own
experience in neurological sight-seeing: —

“Mark the sequel. I had, on going into the room,
lost my handkerchief. A gentleman famed for his
wisdom, his powder of seeing as far into the future
without the gift of second sight, as others can with it,
lent me his, protem. I heard the wonderful statements
of the `New School in Psychology' relative to sympathy
established by means of magnetized or neurologized
handkerchiefs, letters, etc. I determined to
keep the handkerchief and see if there were enough
of the soul aura of my wise-acre friend imprisoned in
it, to affect me. I did so; I returned to my home in
the hotel — to my lonely room; evening shut in; the
waiter did not bring me a light; my anthracite burned
blue and dimly enough; I bound the magic handkerchief
about my brow and invoked the sight of my
friend to aid my own. What I saw shall be told in
the next chapter.

1. CHAPTER I.

“I gazed into the dimness and vacancy that surrounded
me — I conjured the guardian spirit of the
room to come before me, and communicate some of
the secrets of his wards. How many hearts, thought
I, have beat with joy and sorrow, with hope, and with
anguish unutterable in this room. But no guardian
spirit appeared, and I began to think that the tee-total
pledge of this hotel had really banished all sorts of
spirits, neurology to the contrary notwithstanding. I
closed my eyes, laid my hand on the bewitching
point in my forehead, and lo! my eyes were opened,
not literally but neurologically. At first a figure was
revealed dimly and indistinctly — gradually its outlines
grew more defined, and a graceful young man stood
before me. He was enveloped in the folds of an ample
cloak, a jewelled hand held it in front, and he
stood as if waiting to be known and noted. While
gazing on him I found myself endowed with new and
marvellous powers — every line of his face had its
language, and told me a broad history. His attitude,
his hand, the manner in which the folds of his cloak
fell about him, constituted a library that I was skilled
to read, if I would. Here was the signatura rerum.
I looked and looked — it was like looking into a library
and determining what you shall read, and what you
shall leave unread. Some one has said that `the
half is greater than the whole.' This may be a physical,
yet not a metaphysical paradox. Here I saw the

last occupant of my room standing before me. I
said I will first look at one week of his life. In a
moment I beheld him pacing fitfully the room —
his thoughts came before me — they were such as
these,” &c., &c.

Miss Juniper goes on with an account of half a
dozen different characters, who (by a very natural
vein of revery) she imagines may have occupied the
room before her. The specimen we have given simply
shows the free dash of her pen, and we think we
see in it the capability of better things.

Female Stock Brokers, Etc. — A letter from
Paris to the London Times describes the stock exchange
of Paris (the Bourse) as thronged by female
speculators — not less than a hundred in attendance on
any one day. To do this, too, they are obliged to
stand in the open square in front of the building, as
they have been excluded from the interior by a special
regulation! Every five minutes during the sale
of stocks, two or three bareheaded agents rush down
the steps of the Bourse to announce to the fair speculators
the state of the market; and they buy and sell
accordingly.

Fancy a few of the customs of the “most polite nation”
introduced into New York! What would “Mrs.
Grundy” say of a hundred ladies standing about on
the sidewalk in Wall street, speculating in stocks, and
excluded by a vote of the stock-brokers from the floor
of the Exchange! When will the New York ladies
begin to smoke in their carriages, as they do in Paris?
When will they wear Wellington boots with
high heels? When will they frequent the billiard-rooms
and public eating-houses? When will those who
are not rich enough to keep house, use “home” only
as birds do their nests, to sleep in — breakfasting, dining,
and amusing themselves, at all other hours, out
of doors, or in cafes and restaurants? When will the
more fashionable ladies receive morning calls in the
prettiest room in the house — their bed-room — themselves
in bed, with coquettish caps and the most soignée
demi-toilet any way contrivable? Funny place,
France! Yet in no country that we were ever in,
seemed woman so insincerely worshipped — so mocked
with the shadow of power over men. We should
think it as great a curiosity to see a well-bred Frenchman
love-sick (when he supposed himself alone) as to
see an angel tipsy, or a marble bust in tears. This
condition of the “love of the country,” and the dissipation
of female habits, are mutual consequences — so
to speak. Men are constituted by nature to love
women, and in proportion as women become man-ified
they feel toward them as men do to each other — selfish
and unimpressible. We remember once asking a
French nobleman who was very fond of London, what
was the most marked point of difference which he (as
a professed love-maker) found between French and
English women. The reply was an unfeeling one,
but it will be a guide to an estimate of the effect of
the different national manners on female character.
“The expense of a love affair,” said he, “falls on the
man in France, and on the woman in England. English
women make you uncomfortable by the quantity
of presents they give you, and French women quite
as uncomfortable by the quantity they exact from
you.” We only quote this remark as made by a very
great beau and a very keen observer — the fact that a
high-bred man weighed women at all in such abominable
scales being a good argument (at least) against inviting
the ladies to Wall street and the billiard-rooms!

And now let us say a word of what made the letter
in the Times more suggestive than it otherwise would
have been — Miss Fuller's book on “Woman in the
Nineteenth Century.”

This book begins with an emblematic device resembling,
at first view, the knightly decoration called
by our English neighbors a star. On further examination,
a garter seems to be included in the figure;
but upon still closer view, we discover, within the
rays which form the outer border, first an eternal
serpent — then the deeper mystery of two triangles —
one of light, the other of darkness and shadow. We
should not have been thus particular in describing a
new decoration, but we conceive that the figure is
very significant of the tone and design of the book.
It belongs to what is called the transcendental school
— a school which we believe to have mixed up much
of what is noble and true with much of what is merely
imaginary and fantastic. Truth, freedom, love, light
— these are high and holy objects; and though they
may be sought, sometimes, by modes which we may
think susceptible of improvement, we honor those
who propose to themselves such objects, according to
their aims and not according to their ability of accomplishment.
The character and rights of woman
form naturally the principal subject of Miss Fuller's
book; and we hope it may have an influence in convincing,
if not “man,” at least some men, that woman
was born for better things than to “cook him something
good.”

The English Premier. — We see a text for the
least-taste-in-life of a sermon, in the following touch-up
of Sir Robert Peel by the London Examiner: —

“Wanted, a Premier's Assistant. — Our friend
Punch, who has written some excellent lessons for
ministers, `suited to the meanest capacity,' in words
from one syllable to three, by easy upward ascent,
should take Sir Robert Peel's education in hand, and
teach him how to write a decent note.

“Notwithstanding the proverb to the contrary, a man
may do a handsome thing in a very awkward way.

“It was quite becoming and right to give a pension
of £20 a year to Miss Brown, but what a note about
it is this, with its parenthetical dislocations, and its
atrocious style as stiff as buckram: —

“If Punch had been over Sir Robert Peel when he
wrote this, he would have hit him several sharp raps
on the knuckles with his baton, we are quite certain.
The model of the note may be in Dilworth, very
probably, or even in the Complete Letter-Writer, by
the retired butler; but, nevertheless, it is not a true
standard of taste.

“Not to mention the clumsy parenthetical clauses
so much better omitted, or the long-tailed words so
out of place in a note about a matter of £20 a year.
Sir Robert Peel has to learn that none but he-milliners
and haberdashers talk of their “ladies.” Sir Robert
Peel, as a gentleman and a prime minister, needs
not be ashamed of writing of his wife. He may rest
quite assured that the world will know that his wife is
a lady without his studiously telling it so.

“Foreigners will ask what is the distinction between
a gentleman's lady and his wife; whether they are
convertible terms; whether there are minister's wives
who are not ladies; or whether there are ladies who

are not wives; and why the equivocal word is preferred
to the distinct one; and why the wife is treated if
it were the less honorable.

“Formerly men used to have wives, not ladies; but
in the announcement of births it has seemed finer to
Mr. Spruggins and Mr. Wiggins to say that his lady
has been delivered than his wife, the latter sounding
homely and low.

“But Sir Robert Peel should not be led away by
these examples. He is of importance enough in the
world to afford to mention his wife in plain, honest,
homely old English.

“Any one who is disposed to give lessons in letter-writing
can not do better than collect Sir Robert
Peel's notes as warning examples. From the Velveteens
to Miss Brown's £20 a year, they have all the
same atrocious offences of style and taste. It is another
variety of the Yellow Plush school.

“It distresses us to see it. We should like to see
MissBrown's £20 a year rendered into plain, gentlemanly
English.

“As prizes are the fashion, perhaps some one will
give a prize for the best translation of Sir Robert
Peel's notes into the language of ease, simplicity, and
with them, good taste.”

Sir Robert's crockery note proves, not that his premiership
still shows the lint of the spinning-jenny, but
that he employed one of his clerks (suitably impressed
with his duty to Lady Peel) to write the letter. We
wish to call attention, however, to the superior simplicity
of the taste contended for by the critic, and to
the evidence it gives that extremes meet in the usages
of good breeding as in other things — the highest refinement
fairly lapping over upon what nature started
with. The application of this is almost universal, but
perhaps we had better particularize at once, and confess
to as much annoyance as we have a right to express
(in “a free country”) at the affected use of the
word lady in the United States, and the superfine
shrinking from the honest words wife and woman.
Those who say “this is my lady, sir!” instead of
“this is my wife, sir!” or those who say “she is a
very pretty lady,” instead of “she is a very pretty
woman,” should at least know what the words mean,
and what they convey to others.

In common usage, to speak of one's wife as one's
lady, smacks of low-breeding, because it expresses a
kind of announcement of her rank, as if her rank
would not otherwise be understood. It is sometimes
used from a dread of plain-spoken-ness, by men who
doubt their own manners — but, as it always betrays
the doubt, it is in bad taste. The etymology of the
plainer words is a better argument in their favor, however.
In the Saxon language from which they are
derived, wœepman signifies that one of the conjugal
pair who employed the weapons necessary for the defence
of the family, and wif-man signified the one
who was employed at the woof, clothing the family by
her industry. (The terms of endearment, of course,
were “my fighter,” and “my weaver!”) instead of
this honestly derived word (wife), meaning the one
who has the care of the family, the word lady is used,
which (also by derivation from the Saxon) signifies
one who is raised to the rank of her conjugal mate!
But, in this country, where the males invariably burrow
in trade, while the females as invariably soar out
of their reach in the sunshine of cultivation, few women
are raised to the rank of their husbands. It is an
injustice to almost any American woman to say as
much — by calling her a lady.

It is one part, though ever so small a part, of patriotism,
to toil for improving the manners of the country.
If we can avoid the long round of affectations,
and make a short cut to good taste by at once submitting
every question of manners to the three ultimate
standards of high-breeding — simplicity, disinterestedness,
and modesty, it might save us the century
or two of bad taste through which older countries
have found their way to refinement. Amen!