University of Virginia Library

6. THE LORGNETTE.

JULY 20, 1850. NEW-YORK. SECOND SERIES—NO. 6.

Our President is dead!

Fritz, God forbid that you should think me so
far gone with the frivolities of the town, or so much
engrossed by those phases of social interchange
which make up the chronicle of our summer history,
that I should either forbear, or hesitate to drop
both an encomium and a tear at our nation's loss.
You know me, Fritz, as an American; you know
that none of the lascivious luxury and attenuated
civilization of Europe, have been able to withdraw

my sympathies and soul from that country where I
was born, and to which shall always be credited
gratefully, whatever slight consideration may be
won. With this knowledge, you will have anticipated
my poignant sorrow at the death of the man
who, from birth, education, habit, reputation and
success, was the man of all our public men, to
form, by his weight and probity, such balance-wheel
to our eccentric, administrative machinery,
as should secure its regularity, and perfect its issues.

I do not at all envy the reputation or the reflections
of that Congressional declaimer,[1] who so recently,
stirred by party animosity, moved the vote
of censure upon the language of our dead hero. I
doubt much if he has anybody's envy. Yet he has
won a singular distinction, worthy even of my
humble record; and by one marvelous stroke, he
has achieved a splendid notoriety, and covered his
name with a blasting renown. Let not the hope
of following our idlers to their summer recreations;
or our social studies, of whatever strangeness, make
you begrudge the half page on which I record my
sorrow, and a nation's grief.

Read my epigraph again; it is altered widely
from Juvenal: Corpuscula has become, to the

fault of the metre, corpora. The diminutives are
abandoned, and the positive is assumed. Death
has told us, not of how little worth was the man
called Zachary Taylor, but of how great worth.

God grant that the times and the men may fill
up well the gap that the Presidential grave has
opened! And may Providence, that has touched
us terribly, so order events and action, and so control
and moderate the spirit of our newly-come
President, as that the altered epigraph may rest
properly upon his tomb-stone, and the world of to-day
exclaim—Bene tanti fieri!—It is well to be
worth so much!

THE HABIT OF OUR AMUSEMENTS.

The stranger who saw our town only in this
heated month of summer, would have very incorrect,
and unsatisfactory notions of the life and aspect of
the town year. We are pre-eminently a business
and a practical people, (without giving even the Bostonians
the benefit of an aristocratic exclusion;)
and, at the same time, we are the most arrant, and
impetuous seekers of pleasure that are to be found

in the world. The foreigner coming among us at
any ordinary season, and finding few theatres
where action is an art,—few operas where a delicate
appreciation of music makes the charm,—few
public balls where gayety is the impulse, and the
end,—few hotels where daily enjoyment is the pursuit,
and not mere getting of food, and getting of
lodging; and few mansions where the proprietors
study a leisurely enjoyment of life's best comforts,
would decide that we were given over, body and
soul, to trade.

And he would be more than half right: with us
business is the habit,—pleasure is an exception.
The hurry of enterprise, and commercial endeavor,
may be likened to the regular, leafy development
of a plant, in which the abounding succulence goes
only to supply foliage; while our paroxysms of
pleasure-hunting may be aptly compared to that
extraordinary action of the vegetable life, which
shows itself in flowers. Our female plant, to renew
the simile, blossoms twice a year,—once in mid-summer,
and once in mid-winter. Our male plant
has but the single flowering period of mid-summer;
an exception, however, is to be noted, in favor of a
certain class of perennial beaux, who blossom double,
and who, like all double-blossoming trees, make
no fruit.

In the cities of the Old World it is different.
There, pleasure is a part of life. It is incorporate
with the whole animal and mental being. It is an
element of their civilization. It is compacted with
the whole manhood; and it is the daily grace of the
life of woman. We, on the contrary, are in that
stage of civilization, where all hands and nearly all of
energy, are busy upon the crude, mechanical framework
of society; and toward those cultivated pleasures
which will fill up the interstices of a perfected
civilization, we reach by spasms of desire, and
grapple them by piece-meal, and apart.

I do not know, Fritz, if I convey to you by such
language a fair idea of what I wish to express.
Let me give you, therefore, a practical illustration.
Our mid-summer, by habit and conventional usage,
is our pleasure vacation. Being such, it is a business
to enjoy it. To enjoy it, the country must be
sought,—no matter what may be the ties of circumstances,
or of employ,—no matter how rough the
roads over which we are to travel,—no matter how
shabby the hotels we are to visit,—no matter what
may be our tastes, or habitual indulgences,—no
matter what may be the fashionable shackles which
are to hamper us,—the business in hand is pleasure,
and it must all be called pleasure.

The pursuit is entered upon as we enter upon a

commercial speculation; there is the same rapidity
of movement; the same bustle of progress, and the
same fears of failure. The hunt after enjoyment is
a venture, into which our anxieties enter as much
as into an investment in grain, or in stocks.
Pleasure is a marketable commodity; it is a business
in hand, upon which valuation is set, by cost.
We bag it as we bag game; and estimate it, like
hunters, by the difficulties of the capture.

I put it to you, Fritz, if the European has not
more method in his madness? Are not his recreations
more intimately blended with his life, and with
his daily habit? Are they not more a part of him,
and less hideously objective? Enjoyment with
him is not at the end of some rough journey, but
lies, on either hand, along his road. It is not
with him a matter of patent manufacture, whose
excellence is to be established by puffing, but it
is a thing of education, and of existence.

The Englishman quits London for his country
place, for Brighton, or for the Moors, not altogether
when the town chooses, but when he chooses himself.
He loves variety, in his way; but he acknowledges
no high road, by which it is always to be approached,
and out of which no enjoyable variety is
to be found. He may love the Cliffs of Scarborough,
or the rural attractions of Leamington, or the

splendor and parade of Cheltenham, but he does not
like to admit that either one or the other, is absolutely
essential to the attainment of a summer's
pleasure, or that talk of them is to make up the
only valid catalogue, and measure of his enjoyments.

The Parisian, tiring of the Sunday's talk in the
Passage de l' Opera, or of the Sunday evenings in
the Grand Balcon, may run away to the terrace of
St. Germain, to the baths of Dieppe, or to the waters
of the Pyrenees. And this he does—if done at all—
because he can afford it, and because he finds a
pleasure in every step of his progress; and not because
crowds have gone before him, or because it
will be essential to the chat of the winter, to talk
either of Pau, or of Aix la Chapelle.

There is nothing conventional in his pursuit of
pleasure; it sits on him as easy as his coat; and
when it irks him, he throws it off as sudden as
his dressing-gown. Because the Champs Elysees
are without their equipages, he does not consider
himself debarred the pleasure of a drive; nor does
he repine because he cannot find rooms at the same
watering-place with her Grace the Duchess. Into
the whole web and woof of his life are twisted the
gilded threads, which give the blazon of amusement;
they are not arranged in bands, broad,

heavy, and cumbrous, but are fine, and evenly distributed.

Do not understand me, Fritz, to undervalue our
national characteristics of enterprise, and commercial
vigor, or to admire more the easy, and life-long
indulgence, which belongs to a graceful, but a frivolous
nation;—and yet a nation which can well instruct
us in the matter of those amusements which
adorn civilization. It is hardly worth while that
our summer pleasures be piled up in masses, and
be billeted, and appraised, like so much gauze merchandise:
they should be tempered by common
sense, and so worked into the cloth of life, that
they may decorate it and relieve it everywhere.
Nothing is to be feared, and much is to be gained
by a comparison of our recreative resources, with
those of a people, who have served a very long apprenticeship
at the trade. The true art of rational
amusement is in so moderating, and multiplying
its characteristics, as that there may be no danger
from satiety, and no intemperate flush from undue
excitation.

I began, Fritz, with saying something about the
July aspect of our town; it is not like the winter
town. The streets still have their fullness; but
it is not the fullness of the spring-tide, or of the
hybernal flood. Even such of the winter belles as

remain have changed their air; they have become
moderate in dress, and less exacting in their demands.
They glide slily in the shadows of the
houses, as if their vacation had come, and as if
their need of city display had gone by. Some few
who were not noticeable in the fullness of the town,
and who have adroitly out-stayed their more successful
rivals, are grown into objects of attraction,
and are reaping a harvest of favors from those who
possess the habit of bestowal. In the comparative
absence of equipages, too, not a few see the possibility
of arresting attention; and will triumph in
a Brougham, that two months ago would have
given only the most tedious chance of success.

Middle-aged ladies, who, in the plethora of the
winter festivities, might have despaired of smiles,
can now win such adoration as finds no other object.
Negligé dresses are both in rule, and in worship.
Etiquette is forborne; and belles may shop
at their grocer's without fear of observation, or of
remark. The town may be fairly reckoned in deshabille,
and a kind of easy looseness (I mean no
harm) belongs both to its dress, and to its habit.
The formality of receptions is passed away, and
people chat from balcony to balcony, as if they belonged
to a common family.

As you will naturally suppose, there are long

lines of deserted houses which a month ago may
have been exceedingly gay. An old gentleman,
whose wife and daughters are at the Springs, reigns
for once in his own house, and over his own household,
and appears to enjoy exquisitely his freedom.
He may be seen peeping at dusk from between the
half-opened shutters, with an air of pride and independence,
which, though it does not sit upon him
naturally, will yet impose upon many the belief
that he is master of his own mansion. He may
even smoke in the balcony, with an audacious front,
that owes its character only to the distance that
lies between the town and his wife. In the ecstatic
enjoyment of his temporary supremacy, he may
even crack jokes with the maid, without fearing
the punishment of a wife's glance. He will take
advantage of the opportunity to cultivate a neighborly
spirit with the ladies about him, and astonish
them by his courage. Whether his wife may not
be balancing the account, in her own way, at the
Springs, is a question I may broach later in the
season.

Pursy gentlemen, who are heads of families, and
who are allowing their wives and daughters a
week's shopping in the town, may be seen walking
at dusk with their domestic trains, flanked, possibly,
by some negro nurse or body servant. A

Southern influx gives its tone for a time to the
public parlors of the town, and the lions of the day
are strangers. Strange faces are in the public
shops, and the churches are sprinkled with strangetrimmed
hats. Amusement has driven away the
absentees, and amusement has brought in the new-comers.
But while this summer rush for amusements
makes the town bare of its old formalities,
it imposes its peculiar restraints upon character
and habit at the watering-places. Nor are these
restraints, for the most part, those either of morals
or of religion; (it being generally understood that
the winter education supplies a sufficient stock
of these useful and respectable matters). The restraints
are of the making of that special tyrant
which we Americans delight to honor—I mean—
public opinion.

Even the arbitrary enactments of the town lose
their force, and rules of propriety languish. What
will be said, and what will be seen,—give a turn to
our summer's choice, the color to a summer's wardrobe,
the moderation to our summer action, and a
zest to the summer amusement.

A little township of jealousies, sects, and reputations
grows up in the heart of each of our summer
resorts; and it forms no small part of the
amusement to keep them warm and active. We

amuse ourselves by cultivating assiduously a happy
notoriety; and our poor belles, worn out with
the fatigues of a winter, restore their languishing
systems with such air, such dresses, such dances,
such hates, and such acquaintances, as fashion declares
nutritious. If the bitter, nauseating waters
of Sharon have touched pleasantly the fancy, or the
palate of some town leader of the modes, it becomes
part of the summer amusement to cultivate
the sulphurous taste. If riding is in vogue, or
Madame Such-an-one has given the cue, it is capital
amusement to ride. If their graces, who discipline
the hour and the modes, have set their
hearts on Newport, there will be crowds who will
get the first hint of their amusements, by following
in their wake. If Avon is vulgar, with its strong-smelling
waters, and its rough, honest country
folk, it is a part of fashionable amusement, to stay
away.

If the society of a watering-place, by popular
mention, is reckoned good, it is part of our amusement
to be amused with it; but if the society is
doubtful, or mixed, or lacks the quickening leaven
of well-known names, it is the part of our seeker
of amusement to be horribly ennuyé.

In short, my dear Fritz, it will not do to be
amused without discretion. A reliance on one's

own appreciation of entertainment, is a very unsafe
reliance; and one may be subjected to the mortifying
reflection of having found amusement in
what the amusement fanciers utterly condemn. A
schedule of the means and appliances might be judiciously,
and most charitably prepared, by which
the ignorant would be informed of all that would
be requisite for a summer's amusement. Into such
schedule might safely enter the details of some
given lady's management; as, for instance,—her
choice of resort,—the style of her morning dress,—
the name of her coiffeur,—a list of her tenpenny
novels,—the intervals in her town correspondence,
—the age of her partners in the polka,—her pronunciation
of plaisir, and of liason,—her terms of
endearment, ordinary and extraordinary, and her
views on social education. With all these made
known, it would be a very dull pupil who did not
learn the art of a summer's amusement.

Am I not right, Fritz? Is there not a base subserviency
to formalities, and to opinionated dictation,
in the very search for recreation? And do
not one half of those so eager in the pursuit of a
summer's pleasure, utterly lose sight of any
healthful, and natural promptings, in the chase of
what some notoriety has decreed?

But I am in too sober a vein for the sultriness of

the air, and must give over my sermonizing, until
autumn shall have fanned us, and the amusements
of a season lie under our eye.

WATERING-PLACE PEOPLE.

There exists a class of people in the country, who
seemed designed by Providence specially for watering-places.
They make their appearance summer
after summer at Newport, or Saratoga,—adorn with
their presence the cycle of the season, and then pass
out of sight until the Springs and the summer
hotels revive their intermittent existence. They
seem gay, cheerful, and admirably calculated by
nature, for that species of enjoyment which belongs
to a heated atmosphere. Like the summer brood
of flies, they grow festive in the sunshine,[2] and lose
their grace and activity, if not their existence, as
the season advances.

With not a few of these, there is a particular
method of advance, which serves to variegate the

charms of their summer life. The closing days of
June will, perhaps, find them at Rockaway, or at
Fort Hamilton, from which they migrate in swarms
toward the sand plains of Saratoga; from thence
they swoop down in the heat of the season, and settle
for a day or two upon the rocks by the Mountain
House. At the striking of the tents, they will
revive their last year's flirtations with the graycoated
cadets, or grow sentimental upon the walk
by the shore, or indulge in romance at Kosciusko's
tomb. Still later, they catch the breezes of September
at the Ocean House; and having adorned with
their presence the closing ball of the season, they
fade away upon the water, and are lost to public
wonder for a winter.

In this species of people, may be enumerated
vagrant families—not without pretensions to beauty,
and other pretensions to match—who are the
inhabitants of some quite traditionary locality,
the descendants of some traditionary ancestry,
the possessors of some traditionary fortune, and
the heirs to some traditionary renown.

They are the subjects of periodical doubts, and
annual discussion, as well as of July admiration.
They neither seem to disappear by marriage, or by
any other Providential dispensation. Year after
year they appear, without growing old, or growing

new. If some vague report has disposed of a single
number, there is some new member to fill up the
gap. If misfortune has overtaken them pecuniarily,
it does not, in the slightest degree, alter their periodic
migration, or the eccentricity of their movement.

In the winter season, nearly all trace of them is
lost; and though individuals have sometimes set on
foot reports, of their having been seen in January, at
the Assembly Balls of Washington,—the testimony is
quite frail, and is scarce worthy of more credit
than that relating, in the colonial times, to the
appearance of Peter Rugg, and his daughter.

Another type of this species may be found in
some pleasant, old, gouty, red-nosed gentleman,
who may be found year after year seated in his
arm-chair upon the corridor of the United States,
or in the bar-room of our host at Avon. Everybody
knows him very well, though few know much of
him. Everybody knows his hours for bathing, if
he is by the sea, or at the sulphur baths; and everybody
knows his hour for cheese, and brandy and
water, at either place. He is never fatigued, and
never in a perspiration; and wherever in the whole
range of watering-places your eye falls upon him,
you recognize the fitness of his position, and feel
quite sure you would be surprised to meet him anywhere
else. If, by chance, you fall upon him of a

winter, in the town, you are shocked by the incongruity,
and cannot fail to think that he is wandering
in his mind, and has strayed away unconsciously
from the galleries of Saratoga.

Of his origin and business, only vague rumors
are afloat; as for his years, none are so weak as to
hazard a guess at their number. In the memory
of the oldest habitué, he has neither changed the
color of his hair, nor of his nose; and he has been
overheard, by credible witnesses, to talk of Madison
and the elder Adams, as he now talks of Van Buren,
or Mr. Fillmore. He has been seen to talk occasionally
with middle-aged ladies, and sometimes to
pat rosy-cheeked girls under the chin; but his name
has not, to anybody's knowledge, ever been in the
Herald, nor has he ever fought a duel. It is uncertain
in what grave-yard he will be buried, if,
indeed, he should ever die.

Of a somewhat kindred stamp are certain middle-aged
bachelors, who delight themselves, by talking of
each other, as young men. They dress in very
perfect style, and know vast numbers of people.
They are familiar and easy in their chat about heiresses,
and the belles of the hour. They are nice
judges of cigers and brandies, and the comparative
size of ladies' ankles. They pride themselves specially
on some extraordinary personal accomplishment,—such

as a delicate hand with a cue, or on
being a good horseman, or on their conquests of
pretty milliners. They never go to second-class
hotels, or to second-class watering-places, and are
exceedingly attentive to young ladies on the point
of coming out. They expect some day to be married,
and to be esteemed; and it is possible they
may be so.

There are not a few middle-aged ladies who
adorn, year after year, the tables of our summer
hotels, and who seem to have been spared the possession
of their maidenly charms for their annual
attendance. But, much more noticeable than these,
is a class of married ladies of independent aim, and
fair exterior, whose town-life, if rumors may be
credited, is far less satisfactory than the summer
indulgence in sea breezes and bath dresses. They
have fairly worked up their social education to a
level with the freedom of country recreations.
They achieve easily, and maintain boldly, a distinguished
notoriety; and while they adorn the distinction
they enjoy, they give brilliant eclat to the
quietude of private life, and to the elegancies of
social action.

They give much of the burden to the talk of the
watering-place salons, and they study to make the
burden light. They have husbands, it is true; but

when these make their appearance, they do it with
considerate forbearance, and manifest an insouciance
which is as creditable to their education, as
it is to their discretion. As to what their husbands
may be, rumor talks with a lagging tongue, as if
the topic were not worth a trouble; and it is only
on one or two points, not connected with their
profession, or their family, (perhaps not with their
happiness) that public judgment has ever ventured
a decision.

Such ladies are not usually to be found at Union
Hall, but favor sooner the cool corridors of the
United States. They are fond of rides; and will
make their reputations so brilliant, by the character
and earnestness of their cavaliers, as that the
torpidity of a winter's exclusion will leave it undimmed.
They are not overcharged with the fastidiousness
of a prurient modesty, nor have they
any absurd notion of covering their gayety with the
sombre veil of matrimony. Their views are of
public width, and they would adorn our American
life with that prettiness of freedom, which our laws
have left neglected.

There are young ladies, who maintain the title
wonderfully well, and to whom it sticks, from force
of habit, year after year; these are to be found,
with every revolving season, playing the belle and

the peasant. Their attractions multiply by repetition,
and grow by being made familiar. A shade
of scandal will only spice their reputations, and
make their services more desirable in the perfecting
of our summer recreations.

The subject grows, Fritz, though the weather
is wilting. And I must give no farther enumeration
until the quicksilver has gone down, and the
study is more complete.

I pray the patience of those correspondents who
have favored me with their letters. They shall all
be served in due time, and shall receive such attention
as their merit demands.

My letter is short, Fritz, but if I may draw an
opinion from the trial of most of our book-writers
and pamphleteers, its brevity will be its best ornament.