University of Virginia Library

10. THE LORGNETTE.

SEPTEMBER 11, 1850. NEW-YORK. SECOND SERIES—NO. 10.

To you, Fritz, who are of a quiet, contemplative
habit, it must have sometime occurred, that we
Americans, with all our ancestral phlegm, are yet
an excitable people, working off our excesses in
occasional mobs, grand funerals, and triumphant
jubilees. We are as wasteful of breath, as a high
pressure engine; and relieve ourselves by continued
explosive puffs of vapour, for which judgment

has not as yet supplied any economic, condensing
chamber.

I cannot recall a livelier illustration of the mercurial
temperament of our town, or a noisier proof
of the justice of De Foe's lunar[1] observations, (as
quoted above) than the history of the last fortnight
supplies.

Upon a Saturday, not long ago, the street world
was solemn, and wore an unusual earnestness of
expression; and the newspapers, with their gigantic
capitals, drew attention to that last, sad office
of Justice, which cut down a man, while in the
flower of his days, who had been distinguished for his
attainments; and who was criminal—in the world's
eye—by only a single ebullition of passion. There
was something in his position, in the refinements
of his education, in the attachment and worth of
his esteemed family, and in the stern, dogged resolve
which had sustained him throughout his trial,
that made him naturally the object of intense interest;
and in six hours from the time that the
trap was sprung, which `shuffled him off this mortal
coil,' a hundred thousand of the town population
were stung by a report of the dreadful issue,
into a thoughtfulness that bordered on amazement.

This was the `dark side of affairs;' but on the
morrow, the first day of the week, there was a turn
of our moral kaleidoscope. The same thousands
who had been hushed by the execution of an eminent
criminal, into a soberness that was almost reflection,
forgot the gallows and the crime, as easy
as they forgot the Sunday prayers, and paid their
worship in a jubilant chorus to the Swedish singer.
The papers which on Saturday had set the Boston
gallows in capitals, were now making capital of
the songstress. The news boys had changed their
tune from Dr. `Webster—last day,—gallows,' to
`Jenny Lind,—first day,—Irving House.' Dr.
Putnam gave place to Mr. Barnum; the moral
preacher yielded to the princely showman.

I had forewarned you, Fritz, of the approach of
our Jenny Lind mania; but I am free to confess to
you, that notwithstanding all the intimacy of my
observation, I was not prepared for the rueful and
extraordinary effects of the distemper; and it has
only been by dint of the most extreme caution, in
avoiding contact with infected persons, that I have
been able to preserve my usual state of health. It
has even been a serious question with me if it were
not worth my while to retire for a short time into
the country, out of the reach of the contagion; but

on second thought, a sense of duty prevailed
over my fears, and has kept me firmly at my
post.

Poor De Foe, when thrown into the like circumstances,
at the breaking out of the Great Plague in
London, says, `I resolved that I would stay in the
town, and casting myself entirely upon the goodness
and protection of the Almighty, would not seek
any other shelter whatever; and that as my times
were in his hands, he was as able to keep me in a
time of the infection, as in a time of health; and if
he did not think fit to deliver me, still I was in his
hands, and it was meet he should do with me as
should seem good to him.'

I trust, Fritz, that no little of the same self-devotion
has belonged to my decision. And you will
the more readily credit this statement, when I tell
you that my landlady, and nearly half of our household,
have already been seized with unmistakeable
symptoms of the distemper. Yesterday, on going
down to the breakfast table, at half-past nine
o'clock (my usual hour,) I was surprised to find
the whole family assembled, and talking with a vivacity
which I had not observed, since the eve of
the late murder of Dr. Parkman; and this vivacity
was all the more alarming, since the coffee was
badly smoked, and the beef steak (of which there

were two platters on the table) was very much
overdone.

The tasteful gentleman who sat over opposite to
me, was fearfully gay; notwithstanding the fact
(to which I was knowing) that his quarter's bill
had been sent in to him on the evening previous.
One of the young ladies served herself to the griddle
cakes no less than five successive times, with a terrible
vacuity of countenance; and was so much infected
by the prevailing disorder as to say to a
mild old bachelor who was sitting next her—
`thank 'ye for a concert ticket';—when she would
have said simply—`thank 'ye for the butter.'

The number of the victims on the first day of
the outbreak, is set down in round numbers at thirty
thousand; but as this statement is made up
from the testimony of the newspaper reporters, who
are strongly predisposed to all distempers of this
kind, and many of them even now classed among
the most hopeless of the victims,—it should be received
with due allowances.

It was really an awful exhibition to see thousands
of these sufferers rushing along the streets,
regardless of all ordinary proprieties, and sometimes
screaming out at the very top of their voices.
Some would take off their hats, and swing them
several times around their heads, accompanying the

action with exceeding loud shouts, that brought
people in the neighboring houses to their windows
in affright. Some carried huge bouquets of flowers,
which they threw into the carriage of Miss
Lind, and kissed their hands, and made all kinds
of antics; after which they either grew melancholy,
and slipped away through the back-streets, or
quieted themselves with drink.

Some seven hundred or more, both in the town
and in the villages adjoining, have been infected,
even to song-making; but owing to the judicious
treatment of a committee of doctors, they have
been, with one exception, entirely cured of the disorder.

This singular contagion broke out, as I have told
you, at about half-past one o'clock, on the 1st day
of September; by evening it had spread to an
alarming extent; and at eleven o'clock, several
thousand square feet of pavement were covered by
a dense mass of people, who were gazing stedfastly
upon two iron balconies which project Eastward
and Southward from the Irving Hotel. The windows
upon these balconies, were most of them
thrown open; and at times, as a female figure appeared
before one or the other of the balconies, the
crowd upon the pavement would break out into
terrible shouts; once or twice, as it proved, under

the mistaken notion that the female figure was that
of Miss Lind. This error was observed to excite
the poor people the more; an attempt was made to
reduce the unfortunate sufferers to subjection by a
little music, but it so increased the violence of the
fever that I was fain to move away. I went to
bed that night, grateful for my own escape, but
firmly resolved to continue my observation on the
morrow, cost what it might.

The next morning the alarm was general; an
immense number had collected early in the day,
about the corner of Chambers street and Broadway:
they were so many that the omnibuses could with
difficulty make their way through the crowd. A
strange looking flag had been run up the flag staff
on Mr. Howard's hotel; which, I was told by a bystander,
was a sort of hospital signal, toward which
the poor people came flocking from all quarters of
the town. Many distinguished victims fell before
nightfall this day; among whom, if I mistake not,
was one Mr. Woodhull, being the mayor of the town;
also a small, gray-haired gentleman, who had lived
in the State of Mississippi, and who was much
known by his former patriotic efforts to secure a tax
upon tea and coffee.

Many deserving tradespeople had, I was informed,
gone quite crazy with the fever; and I saw myself

great numbers rushing into the house where the
flag was flying, with band-boxes, packages, silk
finery, riding whips, fancy combs, umbrellas, fans,
and other useful articles. The town papers had
quite given up all the usual topics of disunion.
tailors' wages, mutual abuse, and the like, and
were discussing with very great energy the extraordinary
disorder which had broken out in the city.
Even the heavy, blanket-shaped journals, which one
would have supposed were too old or too stupid to
be in any way affected by the mania, were almost
as far gone as any with this Swedish fever; and
talked with a droll dignity about the engrossing
topic of the day. Their sportive and fantastic humor,
coming in between accounts of cotton sales;
and the heavy moralities of their politics, reminded
one of the playful capers of a superannuated old beau
who is stirred up by some little buxom baggage of
a country girl, into cutting a pigeon wing with a
pair of gouty legs.

As for the smart gossipping papers, they were
overrun with details about the prevailing disorder;
which to the great comfort of such people as read
the papers, swept their columns clear of all politics,
and morals. Even the dullest of the evening papers,
were for once snatched up with haste, and under
the influence of the town fever, and horribly

excited, the poor people read through whole columns!

Once or twice I came near being overwhelmed
by the rush; and on one occasion, nothing but my
cane and my age could have saved me from the onset
of a company of respectably dressed females.
Some of these infatuated creatures believed that they
saw an angel in one of the windows of Mr. Howard's
hotel; and, furthermore, that the angel had
blue eyes; and another said that it had light hair;
and a third said (very wickedly, as it seemed to
me) that Mr. Beebe had just been measuring it for
a riding suit. This story was believed so much,
that carriages stopped under the windows, and the
occupants looked up to see the angel, and others
sent up their cards by the footman. It was said,
moreover, that Mr. Barnum had the angel in charge,
and that he would take it to ride after noon;
at which there was a great hue and cry; and the
people flocked around the carriage, as you have seen
them flock in the streets of Rome, about the wonderful
bambino, which they keep in the church of
the Capucins, by the Capitol.

One poor fellow would cry out, “there she goes!”
—and then fall to swinging his hat, and shouting
like a madman. Some gazed with a disconsolate
air of melancholy; but these last were comparatively

few, and consisted, as I was told, mostly of
song writers, and play actors. I looked as hard as
any of them, at what seemed to me a nice young
woman, with blue eyes, and a taking little hat;
but was afraid to say so little of her, for fear of being
trodden down as a scoffer.

So things went on, getting worse and worse, till
night. Wherever I went, all the talk was the same;
and the next day the papers were at it, fine type
and coarse type, as hard as before. I should not
be surprised, indeed, to find that the matter had
been made the subject of a sermon, by some of those
clerical gentlemen who are familiar with allegories
and angels; if not, I would venture to commend
it, as a fruitful subject, and (what is better) liable
to be listened to; and this is what cannot be said
of a good many town sermons.

On the outbreak of such a distemper in the town,
a vast many quacks are sure to set up pretences of
being able to cure; and their advertisements are to
be met with in every corner. Among them are
great quantities of music sellers, who have diplomas
guarantying their efficiency and good faith;
beside these, are the writers of biographies, who
are certainly very effective, and only to be surpassed
by the seven hundred song writers; whose
modesty I am sorry to say, still compels them to

withhold the result of their benevolent endeavors
from the public.

No later than the fourth day, I found that
the fever had reached our quiet quarter of the
town; the chamber-maid was fairly delirious: the
tasteful man was rubbing up his last winter's kids,
and had got his note discounted for a hundred dollars;
while I caught his wife in the parlor, at eleven
of the morning, with her hair in papers, humming,
la casta diva.

I could easily fill up my paper with the relation
of other most extraordinary circumstances, which
attend upon this peculiar visitation of Providence.
Many very dismal facts I might record of the
appearance of sudden and fatal symptoms in
those persons who thought themselves least liable
to attack. I might go on to recount the visitations,
the august ceremonies, the desertion of whole neighborhoods,
the frenzy of particular sufferers, the
parlor receptions, the casual remarks of momentous
meaning, the speeches of their various honors,
the mayor and the president of the Art-Union, the
beauty of riding caps, the size and shape of tickets;—
but all this has been recited with captivating grace
by our city editors. Their version is made up con
amore; and my own, if ventured on, would I sadly
fear, be written out can dolore.

I must however, take the permission to name

one or two means of prevention, that have occurred
to me, against the fever which is now raging; and
that seem to me worthy of adoption, not only in
view of the public health, but of the convenience
and profit of those people who live in lodging
houses, or who have no ear for music, or who frequent
the public streets, or who read the newspapers.
And first, I would throw out a hint against
the seemliness of blocking up the public way, by a
crowd of more than two or three thousand people,
who scream together: the unfortunate victims of
this mania are indeed to be pitied, but they are
none the less proper subjects for a police surveillance.
I would further recommend to conversational
people, a moderate mention of the name of
Jenny Lind, as well as that of Mr. Barnum; it
having been observed that such mention is greatly
provocative of fever. Moreover, I would caution
the presidents of learned societies against rushing
in large and tumultuous bodies upon the lady's
retirement; upon the journals most infected, I
would urge a course of dieting—say a column a
day—of Mr. Giddings, or Clark. The small poets
would do well to abstain temporarily from songwriting;
and if necessary, shave their heads, and
lease out their services to the Mother's Magazine,
or the Literary World.

In case Miss Lind should continue to be the
source of so violent and dangerous a furor, I can
think of no more effective way of alleviating the
excitement, and withdrawing her from notice, than
by electing her a member of the New York Historical
Society, and by securing her attendance on
the next Tuesday evening meeting.

But a truce to this irony: you see where it runs,
Fritz. It runs to combat that odious, because extravagant
and unseemly adulation, which has
waited upon the Swedish songstress. She is deserving
indeed; and that enthusiasm which kindles
into transport in view of merit, is eminently praiseworthy.
But when that enthusiasm, by its blind
excess, by its stupid forgetfulness of proprieties, by
its abandonment of all self-respect, and by its frenzied
iteration, fatigues the sense, and offends delicacy,
it becomes a fit subject for reproof. Respect
for the virtues of a stranger is one thing, and respect
for one's own dignity is another; nor is there
any reason in the world, why the first should destroy
the last. So soon as a man sacrifices his self-respect
in the fervor of his applause, he is making
his applause for a sensible mind, good for nothing;
he is taking away from his admiration, all that
should make it sterling, and proffering instead, a
meaningless rapture.

Do not think, Fritz, that my spirit cannot be
stirred with the warblings of Jenny Lind; it
has been stirred thus years ago: but far more
kindlier than her songs, rare as they are, is her benevolent
heart; and in view of that glorious charity
of Stockholm, I could cheerfully, old as I am, fling
up my hat in the air, and shout with the best of
them—long live Jenny Lind!

And now with a sweep of the pen, and of my
thought, I bring back before you that dismal
shadow of a gallows, which hung over the opening
pages of my present chapter. The contrast, occurring
as it did within eight and forty hours, is good
for a gaping crowd to look on. Life is a play of
light and shadow. There is the professor in black;
and here is the singing-girl in white. There is the
murderer; and here, the angel of Mercy. From
the crime and gallows of the first, the proud may
learn Humility; and from the success and triumphs
of the last, the rich may learn Benevolence.

THE YOUNG MAN ABOUT TOWN.

Mr. Noah Webster never made so pretty an exhibition
of his descriptive powers, as in that passage
of his great work, where he speaks of a dandy, as
a `male of the human species, who dresses himself
like a doll, and who carries his character on his
back.' I take blame to myself, Fritz, for having
thus far left you in comparative ignorance of a
class, which goes so much to make up the expression
of the town life, as that which is so cleverly
defined by the American Dictionary.

The growth of our fashionable man through the
various gradations of cellar life, drawing-room life,
club-life, committee life, and the life bankrupt,
and married, I have already traced: but of the
young gentleman now brought to your notice,growth
can hardly be predicated. He skims about, by
reason of his light draft, upon the surface of society;

and as he carries neither freight nor ballast,
his whole hulk looms over the busy tide, where we
are floating, each our several ways.

He may be found of varying age, from eighteen
to thirty; and between these limits he oscillates
playfully, as his whim, or the season may direct.
He smacks into the town life on a sudden; nothing
has been known of him as a school boy; and very
little of him as a child. His parentage indeed, is
nominal, and accredited: but his real generation
dates from those years of incipient manhood which
go immediately before his appearance upon the
boards of the town. He is found upon the street,
in the hotels, and at the watering places; sometimes
also he may be seen upon the steamboats or in railway
cars, where he wears colored shirts, and is shy.

On his clean linen days, he favors the fashionable
purlieus, such as Upper Broadway, Union
Square, and Fifth avenue; and is particularly fond
of a negligé position, upon the step of the New York
Hotel; or of an easy abandon (i. e. feet upon the
window) in the smoking room. If pinched for
funds, a matter which he keeps buttoned under his
own coat, he falls away during the hot months to
small sea-shore, or mountain places. Here, his
moustache, and town manner commend him to
hoydenish, lean young ladies, in very long stomachers,

who wear fond expressions, and read pocket
editions of the poets; and to those estimable middle
aged women who wear black mits and long
finger nails, and who talk about charming scenery.
He is cautious however, to avoid those old gentlemen,
who abound at small watering places, and
who carry yellow and black silk handkerchiefs,—
take snuff, play checkers, sneeze, and talk about
the rheumatiz, taxes, and politics. He cracks capital
jokes with a young woman who shuffles around
of a morning in patent India-rubbers—about the
petticoats that are hung upon the lilac bushes;
he also rolls at nine-pins occasionally, which amusement
he makes excessively diverting;—particularly
where a stout girl with a red face, keeps rolling the
balls to one side, and an old lady near by, in spectacles,
says—`la—suz!'

He is not, by half, so much a lion in the town,
as he is out of it; he does not find so much of
fondness to fatten on. It may be that he is a
graduate of a city college, flourishing possibly
one or two barbaric insignia; and in the full
communion with some initiatory association, which
serves as dry nurse to the New-York Club. He is
of course, a zealous admirer of the Opera; and
knows to a hair's breadth—when to laugh, when to
applaud, and when to go into ectasies.

Nothing proves such a finisher to one of these
young gentlemen, as a trip to Europe; it is of little
consequence that it be either long or wide. An
evening or two at the Gardens of Vauxhall, an
introduction to the foyer of the Haymarket, and a
week of a Paris winter's intrigue, are sufficient to
set up a young gentleman of ordinary ingenuity,
in our town, as an `old bird,' and a clever observer.
I should be gratified to meet with some such young
gentleman, who on a visit to Paris, had not experienced
an affair du cœur with a distinguished
lady;—of undoubted position; who was very rich,
and attended by two or three domestics; elegantly
dressed; occupying a splendid salon, and so on.

And the acquaintance is uniformly so unusual and
romantic!—very accidental in the first instance;
either it is—we met in a coach, or, `we met, 'twas
in a crowd;' or our young gentleman catches the
first glimpse of her at a public ball, where she is evidently
annoyed by the attentions thrust upon her;
she wears the air of a stranger; she is clearly much
above the ordinary level; she does not venture to
dance; and besides, she is very beautiful, and has
a servant in attendance.

Our young gentleman trembles at his own boldness,
as he seeks to learn, from the bonne, by virtue
of a bribe, the address of the fair mistress. And

then—what a glance of the eye, what dreams of
rapture, and what a studied billet-doux for the
next day's post! On such memories, our young
man about town, regales his friends, over a
cobbler at Sinclair's, or a dinner at Delmonico's.
But he carefully conceals from them the abounding
disappointment at the end; and with all his
praises of the lady, does not enlarge upon
that art, which imposed upon his folly, and
which stripped him of his money, and of his mirth.

For his physical characteristics, I may refer you
to this relation of a new, but accomplished correspondent:
“You often see his little lack-brain face,
peering from behind a cloud of smoke, in the windows
of the New-York Hotel; and the indifference
which he is apt to cultivate, is grown into a grateful,
and graceful inanity of expression. He has
purchased, for the approaching cool season, an
enormous bag-shaped coat, with huge collar rolling
up above the tips of his ears. His sleeves are loose,
and long enough to hide his fingers to the tips; and
he walks with his shoulders curiously hooked forward,
and his arms bowed stiffly out, as if he were
in the course of training for some very extraordinary
and unusual gymnastic feat.

From a button hole in his waistcoat, to a side
pocket, sweeps a tremendous chain of enamel and

gold, serving to sustain a very trifling watch, and
an inordinate quantity of oxidized charms, in the
shape of bronze women in bath tubs, opera-dancers'
legs, and horse's hoofs. You overtake him in the
street, and speak, (observe, Fritz, that I am quoting
from my correspondent,) expecting him to turn
his head; but such an expectation is very vain;
there is a slight lifting of the chin, a languid semi-revolution
at the hips; you see one corner of his
eye, and hear H' ah y,”—and—(to drop now my
correspondent,) it is the best he can do.

But, Fritz, is it not a waste of my paper, and an
added heaviness to my letters, to labor upon those
portraits, which when most finished, and most
true, make us most ashamed of our species? Yet
there are those who love such study, and who love
such samplers. A kind of mutual admiration, and
of mutual generation, sustains the class. Nature
not only favors bounteously the assimilation of
kindred spirits, but all the tendencies toward
assimilation. The young man about town, with
little to attract the ordinary observer, and less to
make afraid, will yet sustain a character for dignity,
possibly for wit, or even honesty, among those of
equal capacity and taste; nay, he may even be held
in high honor by small families of gossipping, elderly

ladies, or at the New York Club. Sus sui, canis
cani, bos bovi, et asinus asino pulcherrimus
videtur.

I am not familiar with the much lauded Fourier
and association doctrines; but it has sometimes
been a matter of curiosity to me, to conjecture in
what particular group, or phalanx, the young gentleman,
whose merits I have espoused in this paper,
would be entered. It does not appear to me that
he could safely be attached, either to the industrial,
or to the nursing groups; and I can only
conceive of his employment as a conversational
expounder of the system; which has now grown so
various under the teachings of different doctors,
that the vagaries of even a fool, could hardly infringe
upon the integrity of the leading idea, viz:
—the upsetting of society.

If the young man about town be of an easy moral
stamp, (and that stamp is current,) he had much
better be of good family, than of good wit. A
measurable position will set a refinement upon
errors, that would look very naked under the
coverings of a poor man's wit. It is French philosophy,
but the town will reckon it good,—more
especially if I give my authority. In la Nouvelle
Heloise, (which it is surprising that our publishers
have not translated—uniform with Consuelo,) the

father of Julie reproaches her mother for admitting
to her house St. Preux. `Who then should we
admit, if not gens d'Esprit?' says the mother.
—`Des gens sortables, madame, reprit il en colère,
qui puissent rèparer l'honneur d'une fille quand
ils l'ont offensèe.'[2]

I had hoped, Fritz, to jot down for you a few
of the oddities and strange things which belong to
the smaller watering-places along the shore, and
the skirts of the neighboring mountains; but my
present topics have crowded my paper, while the
cool evenings of the first autumn have fairly pushed
the summer festivities out of mind. I shall therefore
recur to the former matters of the town; and
having fairly set you adrift upon the winter's tide,
by two more pulls at the oar, I shall leave you to
your own pilotage, and to your own reflection.

The reader must excuse the author, for again pleading absence from
the city, and adding the following Errata for No. 21:

Page 203, line 18, for writer's read winters.

Page 203, line 25, for malaprop, read Malaprop.

Page 206, line 16, for building, read breeding.

Page 210, line 19, for cooings, read borings.

Page 212, line 10, for angels, read angles.

Page 224, line 3, for polite, read politic.

Several minor errors, particularly in the French, are committed to the
reader's keenness and charity.