University of Virginia Library

STEPHEN GRIFFEN, ESQ. TO FRANK LATHAM.

Verily Frank, this same New York is a place that may
be tolerated for a few weeks, with the assistance of the
Signorina, the unequalled cookery, and above all the divine
Madame —. Only think of a real, genuine opera
dancer in these parts! Five years ago, I should as soon
have expected to see an Indian war dance at the Theatre

Francois. It is really a vast comfort to have something
one can relish after Paris. I think it bad policy for a young
fellow to go abroad, unless he can afford to spend the rest
of his life in New York. Coming home to a country
life, is like going from high seasoned dishes to ham and
chickens. Such polite people as one meets with abroad;
they never contradict you so long as you pay them what
they ask for every thing; such a variety of dishes to eat;
why Frank, a bill of fare at a Paris hotel, is as long as a
list of the passengers in Noah's ark or a Liverpool
packet; and comprehends as great a variety of animals.
Nothing can equal it except New York. And then
such a succession of amusements. Nobody ever yawned
in Paris, except a real John Bull, some of whom have
their mouths always open, either to eat or yawn. To
see a fat fellow gaping in the Louvre you would think he
came there to catch flies, as the alligators do, by lying
with their jaws extended half a yard. How I love to
recall the dear delights of the grand tour; and as I
write at thee, not to thee, Frank, I will incontinently
please myself at this present, by recapitulating, if it be
only to refresh my memory, and make thee miserable at
thy condign ignorance of the world.

I staid abroad six years; just long enough to cast
my skin, or shed my shell, as the snakes and crabs do
every once and a while. In France, I threw away my
clod-hopping shoes, and learned to dance. I got a new
stomach too, for I took vastly to Messrs. the restaurateurs.
In Italy, I was drawn up the Appenines
by six horses and two pair of oxen, and went to sleep
every day for three weeks, at the feet of the Venus de

Medicis. There were other Venuses at whose feet I
did not go to sleep. I was, moreover, deeply inoculated,
or rather as the real genuine phrase is, vaccinated,
with a raving taste for music, and opera dancing, which
last, in countries where refinement is got to such a
pitch that nobody thinks of blushing, is worth, as Mr.
Jefferson says of Harper's Ferry, “a voyage across
the Atlantic.” By the way, they have an excellent
custom in Europe, which puts all the women on a par.
They paint their faces so that one can't tell whether
they blush or not. Impudence and modesty are thus
on a level, and all is as it should be.

Italy is indeed a fine place. The women are so
sociable, and the men so polite. France does pretty
well; but even there they sometimes, particularly since
the brutifying revolution, they sometimes so far forget
themselves as to feel dishonour and resent insult. All
this is owing to the bad example of that upstart Napoleon,
and his upstart officers. Now in Italy, when a gentleman
of substance takes an affront, he does not dirty his
fingers with the affair; he hires me a fellow whose trade
is killing, and there is an end of the matter. Then it is
such a cheap country. Every thing is cheap, and
women the cheapest of all. Every thing there, except
pagan antiques, is for sale; and you can buy heaven
of his holiness, for a hundred times less money, than it
costs to purchase the torso of a heathen god without
legs or arms.

In Germany and especially at Vienna, they are excessively
devout—and what I assure you is, in very refined
countries not in the least incompatible—exceedingly

profligate at the same time. I mean among the higher
ranks. This is one of the great secrets a young fellow
learns by going abroad. If he makes good use of his
time, his talents, and above all his money, he will
find the secret of reconciling a breach of the whole
decalogue, with the most exemplary piety. When
I was first in Vienna they had the Mozart fever,
and half the city was dying of it. On my second
visit Beethoven was all the vogue. He was as
deaf as a post—yet played and composed divinely;
a prrof—you being of the pure Gothic will say—
that music can be no great science, since it requires
neither ears nor understanding. Beethoven had a long
beard, and a most ferocious countenance; there was
no more music in it than in a lion's. He was moreover
excessively rude and disobliging, and would not play for
the emperor unless he was in the humour. These peculiarities
made him irresistible. The Beethoven fever
was worse than the Mozart fever a great deal. I returned
a third time to Vienna—and Beethoven was
starving. They were all running after a great preacher,
who from being the editor of a liberal paper, had turned
monk, and preached in favour of the divine right of the
emperor, notwithstanding the diet and all that sort of
trumpery. But music is their passion—it is the source
of their national pride.

I once said to a worthy banker who had charge of my
purse strings—“Really monsieur—you are very loose
in your morals here.” “Yes—but we are the most musical
people in the world”—replied he triumphantly.
“Your married ladies of fashion have such crowds of

lovers.” “Yes—but then they are so musical.” “And
then from the prime minister Prince Metternich downwards,
every man of the least fashion is an intriguer
among women.” “True my dear sir—but then Prince
Metternich has a private opera house, and you hear the
divinest music there.” “And then the peasantry are in
such a poor condition—so ignorant.” “Ignorant sir—
you mistake—there is hardly one of them but can read
music!” Music covers a multitude of sins at Vienna.
It is worth while to go to Vienna only to see the peasantry—the
female peasantry from the country, with
bags, picking up manure, and singing perhaps an air of
Mozart or Beethoven.

In England I got the last polish—that is to say, I
learned to box enough to get a black eye, now and then
in a set-to with a hackney coachman, or an insolent
child of the night—videlicet, a watchman. Moreover,
I learned to give an uncivil answer to a civil question;
to contradict without ceremony; to believe that an American
mammoth was not half as big as a Teeswater
bull; that one canal was worth a dozen rivers; that a
rail road was still better than a canal, and a tunnel better
than either; that M'Adam was a greater man than
the Colossus of Rhodes; that liberty was upon the
whole rather a vulgar ill bred minx; and that a nation
without a king and nobility, was no better than a human
body wanting that indispensable requisite, the seat of
honour. Finally, I brought home a great number of
clever improvements—to wit, a head enlightened with
a hundred conflicting notions of religion, government,
morals, music, painting, and what not; and a heart divested

of all those vulgarisms concerning love of country,
with which young Americans are apt to be impestered
at home. Thus I may say, I got rid of all my
home bred prejudices; for a man can only truly
be said to be without prejudices when he has no decided
opinions on any subject whatever. Lastly, I had
contracted a habit of liberal curiosity which impelled
me to run about and see all the fine sights in the world.
I would at any time travel a hundred miles to visit an
old castle, ogle a Canova, or a Raphael. In short, I
was a gentleman to all intents and purposes, for I could
neither read, work, walk, ride, sit still, or devote my
self to any one object for an hour at a time.

This was my motive for coming hither:—I came in
search of sensation, whether derived from eating lobsters,
or seeing opera dancers, is all one to me. But alas,
what is there here to see, always excepting the dinners
and suppers, worth the trouble of opening one of one's
eyes, by a man who has seen the Opera Francois—the
Palais Royale—the inside of a French cook shop—the
Pantheon—St. Peter's—the carnival—the coronation—
and the punch of all puppet-shows, a legitimate king—
besides rowing in a Venitian gondola—and crossing
Mount St. Bernard on a donkey! Last of all, friend
Frank, I brought home with me the genuine patent of
modern gentility—a dyspepsy, which I caught at a famous
restaurateurs, and helped to mature at the Palais
Royale, where they sit up late at nights, eat late suppers,
and lie abed till five o'clock in the afternoon.

But this dyspepsy, though excessively high bred, at
that time, is now becoming vulgar. I have actually

heard brokers and lottery office keepers complain of it
since my arrival here. Besides it spoils the pleasure of
eating; and a man must have made the grand tour to
little purpose, not to know that eating is one of the chief
ends of man. I vegetated about for a year or two,
sans employment, sans amusement, sans every thing—
except dyspepsia. The doctor advised hard work and
abstinence—remedies ten times worse than the disease
—to a man who has made the grand tour. “Get a
wife, and go and live on a farm in the upper country.”
“Marry and live in the country!—not if it would give
me the digestion of an ostrich,” exclaimed Signior Stephen
Griffen. By the way, this same Christian name
of mine is a bore. Griffen will do—it smacks of heraldry;
but Stephen puts one in mind of that degenerate
potentate, whose breeches only cost him half a crown,
a circumstance in itself sufficient to stamp him with
ignominy unutterable. Be this as it may, it pleased my
doughty god-father, whom I shall never forgive for not
giving me a better name, to accede to the wishes of that
exceedingly sensible rice-fed young damsel, his pet
niece, and my predestined rib, alias better half, to visit
the springs at Ballston and Saratoga—the great canal
—the great falls—and other great lions of these parts.
So here we are established for ten days or a fortnight,
for the purpose of taking a preparatory course of lobsters,
singers, dancers, dust and ashes. Broadway is
a perfect cloud of dust. It has been M'Adamized—
for which may dust confound all concerned.