University of Virginia Library

1. THE LORGNETTE.

1. JAN. 20. NEW-YORK. NO. I.

You know, my dear Fritz, that I am not unused
to the handling of a glass; and that I have amused
myself for a considerable number of years in looking
about the world, as carelessly and freely as I
chose. Now, it has occurred to me, in the opening
of this new half-century, (may you live to the
end of it!) that in common justice, I ought to
make such return as lies in my power, by attempting
to amuse some little portion of that world,
which has so long and gratuitously amused me.

You stare hugely, to find your old friend become
a man of type, and making his New-Year's

greetings in veritable print. But book-making,
let me tell you, is now-a-days but a very small
affair; since every blue-stocking thinks it worth
her while to spin out rhymes for the lady journals;
and the old class of wholesome authors in shabby
coats, and dirty linen, is almost supplanted by a
great tribe of coxcomb writers, in opera gloves,
and in velvet trimmings.

I am aware that I am challenging, in this way,
a degree of attention from the very enlightened
public of the city, which possibly I may never get;
and that I wantonly assume a task, which the
world, in its wisdom, may decide to be wholly beyond
my powers. But I console myself with the
reflection, that in this affair of book-making, I
have got no reputation to lose; and indeed, were it
otherwise, I should be much disposed to question
whether, in this day of mushroom growth, it would
not be more creditable to lose reputation, than to
gain it.

To fame, or to what passes for it now—to newspaper-mention,
I am fortunately wholly unknown:
Since the days of the old College catalogue,—with
the exception, indeed, of some half dozen passenger
rolls of Foreign Packets,—I do not remember ever
to have seen my name in print; nor shall I flatter
my vanity by heralding it now.

I shall lose thus, it is true, the sympathies of
friends and acquaintances; for I shall maintain
an incognito as strictly in the circles where I am
cordially received, as in the public talk. My
papers, then, will have no support of friends, and
no hireling praise: on the other hand, I shall have
no enemies who can throw an old and cherished
bitterness into their condemnation. And this last,
I reckon no small point; since the popular littérateurs
of the city, as I am told, are forever quarreling,
and barking at each other, like so many apes
of Siam. Now, as the critical attachés to this
amiable fraternity of town writers will have, in
my case, no reputation to pull down, and no old
grudge to satisfy, I have a hope of passing scotfree,—without
so much as a single vagabond pen
being wet to dampen my fire. But let me warn
them, that if they choose to bark, they may bark
till their lungs are sore, and they will draw out no
newspaper card in reply, nor shall I suborn any of
their fraternity to bolster me up.

It would be very idle to pretend, my dear Fritz,
that in printing my letters, I had not some hope of
doing the public a trifling service. There are errors
which need only to be mentioned, to be frowned
upon; and there are virtues, which an approving
word, even of a stranger, will encourage.

Both of these objects belong to my plan; yet my
strictures shall not be personal, or invidious. It
will be easy, surely, to carry with me the sympathies
of all sensible people, in a little harmless
ridicule of the foibles of the day, without citing
personal instance; and it will be vastly easier, in
such Babylon as ours, to designate a virtue, without
naming its possessor!

Still, you know me too well, to believe that I
shall be frightened out of free, or even caustic remark,
by any critique of the papers, or by any
dignified frown of the literary coteries of the city.

My publisher, indeed, has assured me, that without
favorable mention from such and such newspapers,
my work would all be idle, and my toil
all be damned in advance. One of the journals,
he told me, if carefully treated with, would make
the merits of my plan known to the whole fashionable
world;—nay, that a breath of praise from that
quarter, would make my letters, fashionable letters.
He cited two or three books, which by a
single half-column of commendation, had been secured
the run of the town; and he assured me
that not a few boarding-school misses were crazily
in love with the authors bepraised by the journal in
question; and moreover, that its editor had secured
eligible husbands to some half dozen despairing

literary spinsters, who had been honored with assiduous,
and determined complimentary notices,
at his hands.

Another journal, I was told, must be conciliated,
or it would become rank assailant, both of my design
and of its execution; though, by my publisher's
own confession, it seemed quite questionable,
if its assaults would not work me more favor, even
than the prettiest of its compliments. Another,
whose literary budget was most astutely managed
by a keen admirer of the late Mr. Charles Fourier,
would carry news of me to all the hotel tables of
the town; and a flattering notice, if it could be secured,
would make my papers particularly palatable
to all who make a joke of society. A fourth,
read at all tea-drinkings, and very safe for Sunday
perusal, or for nervous invalids, would give me the
stamp of propriety among good old ladies, and all
respectable people: And yet another, by bare mention—if
only the types did not get askew,—would
make me matter of gossip with all such gadding,
companionable housewives, as are forever on the
look-out for terrible casualties, personal movements,
and arrivals at the hotels.

My publisher farther suggested a connection
with some one of those literary coteries, which he
tells me belong to the reading population of the

town, and which would trumpet my design in a
quiet way, at social gatherings—make my papers a
standard tea-topic, and flatter even my short-comings.

Some of these coteries, he told me, had stated
meetings, at which all new literary matters were
discussed over coffee and ices; and that it needed
only a rehearsal from the lips of some blooming
littérateure in bodice, and an approving word or
two from some of the committee managers, to give
to the work of a new writer the dignity of reputation.

To the suggestion in regard to the newspapers,
which touched my publisher in a tender point—his
purse—I replied, by enclosing him a cheque, which
would secure him against all possible loss.

Of the coteries, I told him, I was wholly unknown;
and as it would come into my plan to
speak very freely of all such cliques as assume the
privilege of giving to the town its literary opinions,
I begged to be excused from making any overtures.
Nor will I conceal the fact, that this decision
of mine was sustained by the conviction that
all such overtures, coming from one in my humble
condition in the literary world, would be treated
with rank disdain.

As for topic, it will vary with the week, and with

my humor. Sometimes I shall fill my papers with
portraits, or such social usages as prevail, and as
seem to me deserving of remark; and shall endeavor
to give you an idea of our town life, by calling
up to your eye appearances of street and play-house.
At other times, I shall hope to light your
features into a smile, by sketching, in my careless
way, the lounges and loges of the Opera, and perhaps
an interior of City Salon—with this special and
firm proviso, however—that in no instance the hospitality
which may be accorded to me as a stranger,
will be abused. You will understand, then,
that when I speak of the receptions of such as
Mistress Dolly Dragall—not that I have the honor
of any such acquaintance, and am abusing a tender
confidence,—but that I make her a type (if she
really exist) of some particular usage, and hope
honestly to do her honor, by extending the publicity
of her charms, and to flatter her vanity by descanting
on the suavity of her address.

Town coats, and costumes, and mantillas, will
not be out of the range of my Lorgnette, and any
innocent little extravagances of hat, or pelisse, or
shoe-tie, will be touched for your amusement, as
daintily as the prettiest flower wreaths in the
hands of Miss Lawson's girls.

I shall depict for you, from time to time, samples

of the different social stages and fashionable gradations
which meet my eye; and shall try to satisfy
your country curiosity, by testing their groundwork.
You must not be surprised, indeed, my
dear Fritz, if within the range of my glass, should
come up some old country acquaintances, whom
we remember years ago in pretty rustic deshabille,
and with strong nasal twang,—now riding in carriages,
emblazoned with such heraldry as does
honor to the ingenuity of Collis and Lawrence![1]
Delicate work, you will say; but I know no reason
in the world why fashionable pretensions, however
noisy in their claims, or however successful in their
empiricism, should be too high or too sacred for
the curious and earnest gaze of a simple-minded
looker-on, even though he avail himself of the
slightly magnifying powers of a Lorgnette.

As for literary opinions, and men, and books,
they will drop into my papers at intervals; not so
much as topic for learned and critical remark, as
by way of weather-cocks to show how the current
of town opinions is drifting. Book-making has become
so much a matter of trade, mere accommodation
of supply to demand, that it seems to me

far more reasonable, on all principles of public
economy, to rail at the readers of bad books rather
than their writers.

Religious and moral habitudes—their tendencies
and exhibitions—will without doubt, occasionally
sweep over the field of vision, and if they do not
pass so quickly as to render the effort vain, they
shall be reduced to some sort of classification. Indeed,
I shall make very free to speak of the innumerable
bickerings and schisms, which, as I hear,
belong to church life in town; nor between doubtful
Bishops, and pungent Lady Alice in breeches,
will the topic be without its sources of amusement.
And if a little good-natured raillery may have the
effect of rendering ridiculous such absurdities as
belong to town practices of worship, I shall feel as
if engaged in an Apostolic labor; and as if, without
the laying on of hands, I were as good a servant
of the Mother Church, as the leanest of the
Bishops, or the fattest of the Vestry-men. Nor
shall the Barnburners, wire-pullers, office-seekers,
journalists, and other political quidnuncs be passed
by unceremoniously. I promise you, they shall
have their sittings. I might even adopt for motto,
if it had not been adopted ad nauseam, that line
of Cato:—

And I could translate it with more freedom than
would have been tolerated on the university benches,—nothing
touches humanity, but touches me.

In short, my dear Fritz, this Lorgnette of mine
will range very much as my whim directs. In
morals, it will aim to be correct; in religion, to be
respectful; in literature, modest; in the arts, attentive;
in fashion, observing; in society, free; in
narrative, to be honest; in advice, to be sound; in
satire, to be hearty; and in general character,
whatever may be the critical opinions of the small
littérateurs, or the hints of fashionable patrons, to
be only—itself.

The Lorgnette will puff no books or tarts. If
any venders of such wares send them to the publisher,
it must be at their own risk. If the tarts
are good, they will be eaten; if the books are good,
they will be kept. Of the two, I may frankly say,
the tarts would be preferred.

LODGINGS IN TOWN.

You shall now see what matter I have made of
it, in searching out my winter's lodgings. In Europe,
you know, it is of but little account where a
stranger bachelor may live in a city. He is comparatively
so little known or inquired for, chez lui,

that he may inhabit garret or palace, as he fancies
best. You will remember too, without doubt, our
pretentious acquaintance of London, who, with a
dusky chamber in Fleet street, received all his
friends at a fashionable house of the new Palace
Yard. His letters and cards being all addressed to
the Hotel, and a small periodical fee to the head-waiter,
secured not only their acceptance at his
hands, but the post services of a little boy who ran,
on the occasion of a call upon our acquaintance,
from the hotel into Fleet street.

In Paris, even this sham appearance is unnecessary.
Both you and myself have thought it no
discredit to leave our address at the hotel of Madame
C—, of the Place Vendome, dating from
the eastern end of the dirty Rue Jacob. And you
will recall with a smile, after so long a lapse of
time, our raillery of a certain transatlantic friend,
who thought it necessary to take brilliant apartments
in the Rue de Hauteville, and to order his
dinners from the Café de Paris, and who was so astonished
to find his salon accueil so wofully disproportionate
to the tale of his weekly expenses!

In New-York, as I am told, the case is very different;
and a man is not a little estimated by the
street he lives in, or the house from which he hails.
An officious, but good-natured friend, who was possibly

not aware that I possessed some previous acquaintance
with the purlieus of the city, hinted
to me that if I wished to take rank among what
he called genteel people, I must take lodgings far
up town. And another suggested, when I spoke of
remaining at what seemed to me a very fair sort of
hotel, that it would never do; that the hotel was
not at all the thing, and that a miserable attic in a
fashionable up-town house, which he took the liberty
of recommending, would be much more to my
credit and standing. He even hinted, that if I persisted
in remaining in such quarters, for their size
and comforts, I should take frequent evening
walks in the direction he had named, and so make
a mock of living, where fashionable men made their
head-quarters. He further told me, by way of inducement,
of one or two individuals, who with a
bare pittance to keep soul and body together, had
nevertheless, by dint of scrupulous economy and
nice exactitude in such matters, succeeded in passing
a couple of seasons for men of wealth and ton,
and had eventually carried off splendid fortunes in
the doweries of retired mercers' daughters.

Now, as you know, my dear fellow, that I am
not wintering in town to make a name, either with
fashionable people, or fashion hunters, and that
my age would exculpate me from all intentions

upon retired mercers' daughters, I paid very little
regard to any such suggestions.

I have lived long enough to consult the ease and
comforts of life far more than appearances; and as
I wished a quiet neighborhood, and one which should
not be far removed from what would, in all probability,
be my usual haunts, to wit, the Exchange,
the Society Library, and the Club in which I have
become enrolled, I determined to set at naught all
opinions of place, and to take such lodgings as
suited my fancy.

Among the advertisements which met my eye in
the papers, not a few contained provisos to the
intent, that references would be expected; I therefore
supplied myself with a few of the cards of the
mercantile houses to which I had been accredited,
and which, at least, could substantiate my ability
to pay for a year's lodging.

It was a wet, gloomy day on which I made my
first trial, and I had put on an old pea-jacket which
had seen much ocean service, and a very shabby hat.
The landlady I first addressed—a stout buxom old
lady in black and crimson calico, looked rather
suspiciously at my coat, but prayed me to be seated,—remarked
upon the weather, and from the
weather ran on with a very glib tongue to the gaieties
of the town. She begged to know if I had the

acquaintance of Messrs. So and So, who had some
time been lodgers in her house; hinted that perhaps
I might know another gentleman who was in
excellent society, a man of large fortune, and who
visited Messrs. So and So; but finding me incorrigible
on these points, and only anxious to secure a quiet,
comfortable room, she restrained somewhat the
glibness of her speech. Her rooms proved not at
all to my taste.

Having bade her good morning, which she met
with a very condescending sweep of her black and
crimson calico, I found myself next in a dingy
parlor, hung with faded damask curtains. A
slattern girl, in very showy merino, who was
thrumming at a piano sadly out of tune, met my
entrance with a very low and supercilious bow, and
continued her employment, which, so far as I could
judge, was a succession of efforts to catch some of
the worst, thought most striking passages of Don
Pasquale.

The landlady presently came in, trimmed off
with a tremendous flounce, and curtseying and
bowing together, in a way that might have taken a
man of livelier temperament off his legs. I presented
one of the cards of the commercial house, and
begged to know if, under such recommendation,
she would allow me the favor of looking at her rooms.

She assured me that she would be most happy;
at the same time eyeing my coat and hat with that
look of thorough curiosity, which I find belongs to
lodging-house keepers in all parts of the world.

She informed me that the neighborhood was
highly respectable, and that her lodgers were,
many of them, connected with some of the first
families of the town; and thereupon she commenced
enumerating to me a galaxy of names, which she
did with an air that she seemed to think would
utterly confound and embarrass a man in such
damaged pea-jacket as I happened to be wearing.
I maintained, however, sufficient composure to bow
very graciously at the announcement of each name,
and to tell her plainly at the end, that I knew
nothing of them.

She was evidently thwarted, but determined to
try me next by her scale of prices. She ushered
me into a dim, shabbily furnished upper parlor,
which she assured me was a charming apartment,
and had been occupied by a gentleman of high distinction
in the town circles. She directed my especial
attention to the fine heavy old furniture,
which, to be sure, was heavy and old enough; but
not finding me to join in her ecstasies, she asked if
I had been long in the city?

On hearing that I had but recently returned from

a long residence in the country, she launched out
into praises of town life:—had no doubt that I
would find it delightful; and, glancing at the card,
thought it would be easy to secure an introduction
—indeed, she said she had frequent sawraze at her
own house, at which a Mrs. Somebody was a frequent
attendant; and she would, if I took her
rooms, interest herself as much as possible in my
behalf. She hoped I loved music; her daughter
Fanny, she said, was “a ammature,”—possibly I
might have remarked her execution in the parlor.

The truth was, Fanny's execution was even now
painfully distinct, and utterly dissipated any
thought I might have entertained of engaging
rooms in so close proximity with the parlor instrument.

My next negotiation was with a little, thin,
weazen-faced French lady, of a certain age, who
was most earnest, notwithstanding my pea-jacket,
with the praise of her fort jolies chambers. She
smiled at my card of reference; plumed herself on
being able to detect at a glance a lodger “comme
il faut;”—complimented my French, and showed
me such dirty apartments that I was fain to pay
her back in her own coin, and ended with regretting
that her charming rooms should be all so
high, or so low, as to prevent my becoming a

lodger with so gracious and interesting a young
lady. We parted, of course, capital friends.

My next adventure was with a very prim and
demure-faced little lady in black, occupying a
small house, which she told me had been the property
of her poor husband, who was now dead (and
she sighed), and who had been well known on
'Change, where, if I chose, I could make inquiries
which would satisfy me as to respectability. She
showed me a quiet, neat-looking room, upon the
second floor, looking out upon a small court, garnished
with low roofs and brick walls, and a single
sickly-looking espalier peach-tree. The furniture
was simple, but substantial; a pleasant, “tasteful”
gentleman, with his wife, she told me, occupied
the front-room,—a very respectable old man was
above, and her nieces, from the country, occupied
the remaining attic.

I thought it would be a quiet place for my work,
where I should be out of the reach and knowledge
of prying eyes; and where, my dear Fritz, I could
quietly entertain you, on your visits to the city;—so
I closed with her terms, and am now writing from
a little white table which stands before the grate.

The “tasteful” gentleman proves to be a dashing
buck, who wears very broad plaid to his pantaloons;
he has over-reached himself in marriage,

and is now paying the forfeit in these quiet chambers,
and only gratifying the old exuberance of his
nature by an occasional Sunday dash, in buggy and
pair, upon the Third Avenue. His wife, of whom
I only occasionally catch sight, sports now and
then a superb satin cloak at the Opera or Grace
Church, after which she lies by for a week's recruit.
A thick partition is between our rooms, so that only
a confused murmur of their altercations reaches
my ear. Once, when the hall doors were open, I
caught a few words very sharply uttered, such as,
“satin cloaks,” “avenue rides,” “livery bills,”
“Stewart's,” “my money,” “breaking heart,”
“such a wife,” ending, so far as I could judge, in
the conquest and humiliation of my “tasteful”
neighbor.

The old gentleman above stairs goes to bed regularly
at nine, before which he reads in a loud,
nasal tone, a passage from the Psalms. He is a
quiet, good-hearted old gentleman, who has seen
the city growth, he tells me, for fifty years past.
He never went out of town further than Newark,
where he has a brother residing; yet he sometimes
gives me very wholesome advice, and often much
valuable information about old families and localities
of the town. He takes maccoboy snuff out of
a box ornamented with the head of Washington,

and turns up his nose at what he calls the “fippy-foppery”
of the day. I find that, on many points,
we are capitally agreed; and though he shakes his
head at the French poets which are in my librarycase,
he approves highly my good sense in cherishing
an old family copy of Scott's Bible.

The nieces are tidy, prim girls, who are completing
their education, by reading French phrase
books, Paradise Lost, a pamphlet on Etiquette, and
Tupper's Proverbial Philosophy, which they declare
to be “sweet.” They express, as sensible girls
should, who know little or nothing of the matter, a
great contempt for the Opera, and most of the fashionable
amusements. Yet I observe, that they
are always very earnest in their inquiries as to
how the house was made up, and about the dresses
of the ladies; and if they can draw me into a little
town gossip about the somewhat notorious occupants
of particular boxes, they seem delighted with
their success. And I once knew them to walk
the whole length of the street, in the hope of seeing
the Opera troupe, as it came out from rehearsal.
They are devoted readers of the Lady's Book, and
Mother's Magazine, though very anxious to get an
occasional look at the Home Journal, which the
tasteful gentleman sometimes purchases; though

the aunt and the old gray-haired lodger persist in
condemning it as silly, gossiping trash.

They occasionally walk Broadway in their best
hats, to admire the cloaks and mantillas, and yet
will talk very earnestly in condemnation of the
foolish extravagance of town-ladies. Though they
make bold to decry the rules of fashion, and to
inveigh against the pursuit of particular, foolish
fancies, I find them very ready to suggest to me
my short-comings in matters of town etiquette, and
they have latterly hinted at some changes of dress,
which they are kind enough to say would quite set
me up on Broadway, and give me a creditable
position at the concerts. My age enables me to
bear this very composedly; and further, to crack
occasional jokes with them about matrimony,
and affairs of gallantry, at which they blush, and
affect to be very angry—but are very sure to pardon
me, after an incredibly short probation.

Upon the whole, they are quiet, well-disposed
girls, who would not make it a material objection
to a lover, that he was an Opera-goer, or a little
of a Roué: withal, they are small talkers, and do
not play the piano.

As you will readily believe, my life passes in
such lodgings in the most quiet way imaginable;

and between the old-fashioned talk of the gray-haired
lodger, and the dashing conversation of the
tasteful gentleman, added to the every-day observations
of the demure nieces, I am forming very
rapidly a pretty set of conclusions about the classes
to which they respectively belong.

But these are by no means all the acquaintances
of whose observations I can avail myself; and I
shall introduce you, from time to time, to others of
wholly different mettle. I shall only excite your
curiosity now, by saying that one is a play-actor,
—another, a sexton of a fashionable church,—a
third is an officer high in the annals of the police,
—a fourth is a keen lawyer, one of whose eyes is
worth most men's two, — a fifth is a kind and
gossiping old lady, who knows half the scandal of
the town, with whom I am frequently treated to
a drive along the Bloomingdale road, much to the
astonishment of the girl lodgers, and of the tasteful
gentleman. Still another is a prim clergyman,
who, though he is not an Opera-goer, has yet
a good ear for a fiddle, and a very delicate eye for
mantillas or shoe-ties.

If the mails are true, you will smoke your Tuesday's
cigar over this paper; and if you are the
friend I take you for, you will look each successive

week, with no little curiosity, for the continuance
of my observations upon Life in Town.

Though the Lorgnette is set at the head of my
page, you need not suppose that I shall forbear
taking an occasional squint, with my naked eye,
either above or below; and though I shall sign this
Timon, you must not think, my dear Fritz, that I
have entered any Trophonian Cave, or that I cannot,
when the humor takes me, play the Merry
Andrew, with the gayest of the Town wits.