University of Virginia Library

11. THE LORGNETTE.

SEPTEMBER 25, 1850. NEW-YORK. SECOND SERIES—NO. 11.

Fritz, you will doubtless remember our entrance,
some few years since, into the salons of a certain
distinguished old gentleman, who received us,
even amid the throng that crowded his receptin,
with a suavity and grace, and a familiar adoption of
our language, that surprised us; and that put us
at ease, even under the frescos of the old palace of
the Medici. And now the old gentleman is dead;
his strange life is ended. The reaper has put his

sickle, for his season's harvest, into the tallest of the
grain.

Let them carp and sneer as they will at Louis
Philippe;—there died in him the spirit of a strong
man. Misguided he may have been; ambitious he
was, without doubt; avaricious, too;—but in this
vice falling far short of that great Marlborough,
whose monumental column still rises from the
lawn of Blenheim, the worship and the wonder of
all cockneys.

There is something of manly vigor, long forecast,
and admirable action, about the man who could so
bravely struggle with peril, exposure, exile, poverty,
and all the ills that princely flesh is heir to, and rise
above them to the mildest deciad of French sovereignty
that France has known in a century.

Let those who sneer at the late King of the
French, consider for a moment the enlarging commerce,
the flourishing marine, the remunerative
manufactures that sprung up under his thrall;
and let them wander through those galleries enriched
by his munificence and taste; and if they
doubt the refinement and genius of the house of
Orleans, let them linger in that grand corridor of
the palace of Versailles, by that marvellous Joan
d'Arc in marble, which will go down to future
ages, with the monumental effigies of Augustus,

and of the Bythinian Antinous, as a speaking testimonial
to the genius of the King's daughter.

Do not see in this any undue sympathy for Kings,
or for Kings' daughters. Louis Philippe was not
all he should have been, or all that his position
and his means would have made it easy for him to
be. But Louis Philippe was a man of talents, of
perseverance, of system, and of energy. And they
who think that monarchie associations will kill all
these, or that mere freedom will create them, have
got a lesson to learn, that they may take wisely from
the life of the old gentleman who has just now
died in the exile of Claremont.

Freedom may, indeed, encourage the developement
of manliness; but if I be not greatly mistaken,
Fritz, there is a growing notion with us, that
Republican institutions are all that are needed to
guaranty it. No mistake could be greater, or more
harmful. Every man has a soul to be strung discreetly,
and delicately, and to be attuned carefully,
and with much labor. And when in princely station
there meet us such capacity, such developement,
and such culture as belonged to the head of
the house of Orleans, it becomes us to think that
they were gained, as they must always be gained,
by determined effort.

Let our young men, boastful of their privileges

and exploding in pompous Fourth of July orations,
measure their abilities, from time to time, by those
of the men at whom they affect to sneer; let them
gauge their powers of endurance and the intensity
of their purpose by the same standard; and they
may learn, that bravado does not supply merit, nor
noise give strength of soul.

May the old graybeard sleep calmly in his tomb!
It his virtues were as common with his countrymen
as his vices are, there would not be so strong
a contrast between their liberty of action and their
liberty of talk.

Pray excuse the sober garrulity which a reminiscence
of our common wandering has started from
my pen, and I will come back to the topics of my
`stated preaching.'

THE RETURN TO TOWN.

Now that your swamps have taken on the first
sprinkle of their maple scarlet, and the first frosts
have crowned the broad leaflets of your maize, the
town-world is shrinking back to its city covert.

Already the streets are thronging with much the
same crowd, and the same equipages are astir,
which, eight months ago, tempted me into the dignity
of print.

All the summer conquests have been made; the
muslin and the barége are giving place to the silk
and the worsted; and bare arms, whether blue
with the breakfast hour, or crimsoned with ball-room
fatigue, will have to bide their time in sleevy
retirement, until the promenade shall yield to the
soirée and the opera.

The fancy balls have, I fear, been without much
efficacy the present season; and from no little observation,—for
you know, Fritz, that I have played
the debardeur, if not the man-of-war's man, in
my time,—I am disposed to think that only the
most moderate éclat attaches to the heroines either
of the Newport or the Saratoga display.

And between the advent of the Swedish songstress,
and of California, Utah, and New Mexico,
our heroes of the watering-place season, who had
brushed up their steps at Saraccos, and who were
counting on a large figure in the two-penny journals,
have been sadly out of sight. They are deserving
fellows in their way, and, with a propriety
and prudence worthy of the poets, they have chosen
that sphere of indulgence which they are best fitted

to adorn. But when matters of State, or a
popular singer, engrosses the town, they must even
yield up their vanities to the humor of the public,
and be content with that native inferiority which
some accident of marriage or scandal may, in time,
providentially relieve.

The accredited watering-place families, too, who
at this season are usually blooming on their honors,
and who resort with the chills of autumn to the
town, in the expectancy of much street commendation,
are now sadly behind the wake of the popular
taste; and from their carriage, and sour demeanor,
feel the neglect, in a way little credible to their
prudence, or to their philosophy. Even the eminent
town-livers, who, by their houses, equipage, or
scandal, were the lions of the winter past, are now,
in the overflowing plethora of the streets, roaming
about like tame jackals, who cannot call a shout,
or be anything but inoffensive, with the boldest of
their clamor.

My heart is warm, Fritz; and it is peculiarly
alive to the curtailment of honors in those quarters
where honors are the only basis of character. There
is indeed a class of steady, honest, thriving, modest
people, who never feel loss of attention, because it
is not their habitual nourishment; they do not
court, nor shall they enjoy, my sympathy. But

what, as a Christian man, shall I say of those,
who, if they cannot bewilder the town into a gaze,
or astonish the humble, are the most unhappy
creatures imaginable?

I cannot help, too, entertaining great sympathies
for those who, by a little pardonable bravado at
springs, maintain quite a position, but who, on
their return to the town, are entirely swallowed
up and lost in the throng.

There exists a considerable class of hoydenish,
watering-place belles, who will cut a very gay
figure, either in the parlor of the United States,
or of the Ocean House; but once returned to the
city, where there are no public corridors for
promenade, and no very promiscuous dancing,
their honors are suddenly shorn. My friend,
Tophanes, has the class entered upon his list, and
by reference to his schedule, I find them entered
as,—moderately rich,—passably young, ranging
in good season, from twenty to thirty-five,—good
dancers,—busy talkers, sometimes given to pluns,—
blooming (naturally),—good riders, but of uncertain
position, and of only moderate education.

In short, he makes them out, of admirable
qualities for summer amusements, and for public
places; but he adds this significant note against
their names—`shy of housewifery;' and thereupon,

by his peculiar system of classification, he drags
in their whole coterie, under his general head of—
`forlorn hopes.'

The finer accomplishments, and any of the
graces of even lady learning, are sadly wasted at
our summer places; indeed they are in little
demand in any quarter (always excepting Boston)
during the hot months. With the approach of
cold, however, cultivation gains repute. The
musical and literary soirées divide supremacy with
the street and the ball. Sonnetteers who have
lived on whey and Festus during September,
regain position at the town tea-boards; and starveling
authors rejoice again in invitations to dine.
New books are cut open with the cast-away fruit
knives or exhausted corset bones, and critiques
upon the drama or the new novels are as plentiful
and gregarious as the Jersey reed birds.

The Home Journal is furbishing up again its easy,
hot-weather columns; and we may expect to find
the sprightly de Trobriand giving us, instead of
long Paris feuilletons, a new taste of the town
suppers, and of the town ladies—served up with
his French sauce piquante.

It might be pleasant, Fritz, to pursue to some
length an inquiry about such literary elements
as belong to the town socialities, and to trace, if

possible, their reciprocal action. I am afraid,
however, that it would take me upon delicate
ground; it is certain that a little affectation of
literature is beginning to be employed as a burnisher
for vulgarities; and our most worshipful
grocer or broker can in no better way take off
the edge from his ignorance, than by a studious
patronage of the crack-brained poets. Our adventurous
bachelor lawyer, too, will foist himself
into the graces of showy companionship, far better
by his hap-hazard critiques upon Punch, or the
Berber, than by his Clientelle, or his Chitty.

Aspiring ladies, moreover, who are zealous for
something more than the notoriety which equipage
or magnificent rooms will furnish, would do well
to take a morning hour with the Enyclopædia, in
lieu of the upholsterer, and in a week's time they
will be able to astonish their vulgar and rich
acquaintances, with the extent and variety of their
erudition. I would further specially commend to
them an enterprising young artist of the town,
who has succeeded in producing such an imitation
of book-backs as would escape detection in any
classically shaded alcove. He should, however,
be instructed to confine his labors to the standard
works, which are rarely read; and any counterfeit

of Tupper, Boyer's Dictionary, or the Complete
Letter Writer, would be hazardous.

Thanks ought to be given, in this connection, to
those philanthropic gentlemen, who, while they
collect large libraries, show such a scrupulous nicety
in guarding their treasure from the profanation of
either public or private scrutiny. Like the old monks
that Curzon tells us of, they brood among their
books, and hatch out their ideas by incubation.

As for our young ladies, literary accomplishments
vary strangely with taste and circle. We
have our Italian speaking, and loving ladies,—
adoring Manzoni, whom they read, and Dante
whom they do not read,—who are profound lovers
of the opera, and of moonlight,—sentimental and
passionate, and uncommon admirers of moustache
and oysters.

We have our ladies of French suavity, by far the
most numerous class,—practising on a patient
femme de chambre, and a dog's-eared Raphael,—in
love with the Home Journal, and passionately fond
of waltzing,—making their talk crisp and full of
equivoque, and partial to bare shoulders, and to
young men of fortune. There are beside, our
young ladies of English habit, the friends of some
`first families' either in Boston or Virginia, who
can repeat you long passages from Romeo, or the

Bride of Abydos,—who are prim, and critical,—
much given to letter-writing, and very knowing
about the habits of the town poets,—firm believers
in the Literary World, and prone to long sighs.
Nor ought I to forget the odd and eccentric
coteries, who are ravished with German arias and
Faust, and talk incontinently in German twang;
nor yet those humbler literary victims, who read
Mrs. More's voluminous biographies, and who, if
you give them only moderate occasion, will overwhelm
you with a gush of dogmatism, that is as
woful to withstand as the French of boarding
school girls, or the moralities of the Herald.

Of musical accomplishments, and of their position
upon the opening boards of the winter, it would be
indiscreet to speak, in view of that splendid northern
comet of song, which is just now sweeping
over our sky, and trailing from its golden hair
fever and delirium. And, Fritz, I should be very
recreant to my intent of keeping you even with the
rush and current of the town life, if I did not give
you some further picture of the prevailing mania;
alas, the picture is only too ready; your philosophic
Timon has yielded to the infection; and this,
notwithstanding all ordinary means of prevention.
My only appeal now to your charity, must be
couched in the words of the old play:—

A CAVATINA.

Not long since, there arrived in our city a pair
of the Lafayettes, who landed, washed, shaved,
bathed, ate, slept and departed, without so much
as starting from their ambush a single one of the
lion-hunters; with the exception of one or two riddling
shots from the small arms of the evening papers,
they escaped scot-free, and as unscathed as if
their father, the poor old marquis, had never buckled
on an epaulette for American Independence.
At Albany, indeed, I learn with regret, that they
were overtaken, and were honored with such a surfeit
of mud, Devons and Dorkings, as must have
satisfied both their rurality and their pride.

To their escape from our town, they are indebted
not so much to our generosity as to our Jenny Lind.
You, Fritz, will understand this;—for you have
listened to this songstress amid the blaze of kingly
attendance, and under the heavily embossed roof of

a Royal opera-house;—where the King and his
suite were nothing, and the fairest, `high-bosomed'
dames of the Unter den Linden were nothing,—and
where the long-moustached young officers of the
Prussian army twisted their German faces into all
shapes of delight. You will understand it, for you
have seen her add her native grace to the sweet
impersonation of the dreaming and wronged Sonnambula;
and you have seen her, with all the accessories
of brilliant stage decorations, and with all
the vitality of infectious dramatic skill, stretch up
those little hands to Heaven, in all the fervor and
the strength of a song of prayer.

Seeing her thus in the old world, where at every
sunset martial music swelled upon the air, with its
tale of monarchic splendor, and of monarchic power,—it
is pleasant to see her here, quit for a time of
the panoply of the stage, and in no character but
that which she best adorns, viz., her own,—lending
her sweet voice and songs to the clear atmosphere
of our land of freedom.

Nor could our songstress easily find a more glorious
singing-spot than that upon the edge of our
moon-lighted bay—wide as the gulf by Sorentum,
and with a richer green upon the shore—soft as
the Lagoons of Venice, and wakened with the
charm of a freer and happier life.

Had Jenny been less than she was represented,
either in tone or in heart, there might before this
have been a strong reaction. But from the first,
she has more than sustained her character; and
with a most liberal hand, she has showered back
the first largess of the town, to run like the golden
currents of her song in a thousand channels, carrying
gladness and joy with their sparkle.

It is a new feeling with which to worship art—
that of doing goodness by the worship. The knowledge
of the abounding benevolence and liberality
of this high priestess of song, makes our offerings
seem like the sweet sacrifices of old to some protecting
goddess, or like that Christian munificence
which made the wise men of the East prodigal
of their frankincense and myrrh.

Jenny Lind is reported to be appropriating her
earnings in this country to the establishment of a
great Swedish school; it can well be believed; her
charity and good sense lend evidence to the report.
Let me set the matter down for you, more narrowly;—a
young woman, not yet thirty, scarce appearing
two and twenty, with whom the enthusiasm
of youth has not yielded one jot to the approaches
of age,—while yet in the hey-day of life,
when worldly vanities take strongest hold of the
soul, and under an amount of blandishment and

flattery that might overcome the staid virtues of a
veteran, is bestowing her honors on the needy, and
the triumphs of her art and study upon the orphan,
and the poor. It is as if Raphael had painted always
to teach lessons of charity, or Byron made
verse for the endowment of hospitals.

I love, I must say, Fritz, the very exuberance of
admiration which waits upon such charity. It is
pleasant, amid the cynical things which are credited
me, to give loose to such enthusiasm as five
and fifty years can yet keep within the walls of
manhood, and add the applause of a Timon to the
plaudits of the multitude. God save me from that
respectable class who cherish their impassive habit
under all the events of life, and who cling to their
coldness as the only security of their dignity!

You surely will not set me down as an echoer of
the praises of others, or as one given to the loose
carriage of indiscriminate flattery. My letters, one
and all, have told you a different story:—nay, they
will have even made you question the heartiness
which you recognized in the days gone by,—when
we mingled our struggles and our hopes upon the
brink of youth, as the tide set outward, and
leaped together into the stream that led on to life
and destiny. But now, with the memory of those
notes of the songstress—not in my ear, but in my

soul—flowing over me like pleasant thoughts heaven-ward
bound, and heaven-belonging,—now falling
to an echo, sweet as the sweetest memories of
childhood, and again rising and swelling, pure and
high as the best hopes that beckon us toward futurity,—I
fall from my office of critic, carpist, or
whatever you may term me, and yield as profound
an homage as any, to that art which, though it
runs before the foremost, is yet sublimed to a still
higher pitch by its abounding charity.

There is something more than interesting in the
thought that a lady songstress, of foreign birth, is
gathering by her melodies, from Americans of every
class and every taste, the means to build up her
distant country of the North in the harmonies and
duties of civilization. Think of it for a moment,
Fritz, that your ticket, and your seat, is to give a
desk to some poor Swedish scholar; and that the
echoes of the Nightingale (sounds to be kissed) are
to re-echo through their whole life-time, in the
hearts and voices of ten thousand blue-eyed Scandinavian
children!

There is a kind of moral sublimity in the thought,
that the inhabitants of our Western World are led
on by their sympathetic appreciation of the highest
art, and by their offerings at its shrine, to extend
the means of cultivation and of refinement to the

people of that mountain peninsula, over which
reigned the great Gustavus Vasa, when America
was a wilderness, and this Castle Garden a low alluvial
debris, on which the herons stalked among
the rank sea grass, and half-clad heathen stranded
their birch canoes.

The fashionable world, the papers tell us, has
held aloof, and has only here and there sprinkled
the benches of the Castle; if so, fashionable people
are to be pitied—not so much for their weakness
as for their losses. I am inclined to think that the
fashionable world is slandered by the report. Were
Jenny less than Jenny; were the sympathies she
excites less universal, or her vanities more in keeping
with the proper vanities of the town, we should
long ago have lost her naïveté in the splendor of
parade, and our fashionists would have been intoxicated
by her reception of their favors. But even
the idlest, and the strongest of our fashionable
world, are not apt in the offices of self-denial; and
though they are not remarkable for their deeds of
benevolence, yet they will not cheat themselves of
a song that beguiles their ennui, though the price
they pay is a reluctant charity. What a lesson is
given by this benevolent Swedish woman, to our
silken drivers of showy equipage, and to our fat
dandlers of poodle dogs!

How many of our richly-reared women, between
twenty and thirty, have got an ear or eye for outcast,
needy children, or for the groans and sufferings
of the poor? How many of them are in the
habit of commuting their necklaces or their opera
fans into bread for the destitute? How many of
them keep the calendar of our schools by charity,
and do their offices of kindness—for a blessing?
There are indeed honorable exceptions, whom it
would please my fancy to designate;—they find
their reward in the glow of an honest purpose.

With the most of them (it is hard to say it, Fritz,)
this town life is but a round of delirious indulgences,
in which the delights afforded even by this new
meteor of song, are only—an added excitement.
Bounty and duty are to them unknown terms, just
fitted for pulpit talk, but very harsh in the boudoir.
Their sensibilities are kept for the dreamy rhapsodies
of elegantly-bound poets, or for the sweet
covers of their prayer-books. Their charity all
exudes in a twilight tear; and all their religion in
a Lentan fast.

You will perhaps set me down, Fritz, as one
crazed by the reigning excitement, and as giving
loose to a frenzied intoxication of spirit; but I
claim no absolution from that sympathy, which is
started by the holy offices of charity, and adorned

by the natural graces of simplicity and song. I do
not envy the critic, who must listen with professional
coldness to such a singer, and curb his admiration
by the music-master's scale. Even the
elegant journalism which talks of her bravuras, her
andantes, and falsettos, is to me a Crispin criticism
upon a Phidian statue.

Jenny's andante is an allegro of spirit; she
cultivates no catch-penny bravuras of voice, though
her whole action is a bravura of soul. Her life,
like her voice, is of one register; and her actions,
like her tones, whether di testa or di petto, have
always that peculiar and holy symphony of utterance
which makes them integral and alone.

There are those who object, that Jenny's voice
brings no tears, and that her style is cold. They
prefer the heated utterance of the Southron. Every
man will have his taste; but for myself, Fritz, I
had rather see the heat of the soul in deeds, than
to take my knowledge of it from the lip. And with
Jenny's warmth in the world, and toward the world,
she can well afford to spend her voice in cool showers
of refreshing and limpid sound, rather than in the
heated outbursts of sultry, electric clouds. The
tears she makes, are the tears of gratitude; and
the smiles she calls, are the smiles of wonder and
of joy.

I must confess that I have enough of the Saxon
blood tingling in these finger ends, to welcome, as
a northern cousin, the pure, bright genius of the
Swedish mountains and pine-lands, who is chaste
and pure as the auroral lights;—nor do I regret one
whit, that she does not bring in her breath the heat
of the simoon, or show in her style the yellow intensity
of the tropics. Her song is fresh, genial,
sympathetic; and though it does not welter and
writhe like a swollen and turbid mediterranean
river, it rolls on, pure and clear, like a rill through
heather, or dashes like a mountain stream, watering
bountifully wide meadows, and making whole
hillsides green.

The Grisi has her richness of song, flowing smoothly
and evenly as oil; but Jenny's notes are like the
dashing sparkle of spring water. The first may
feed, with its combustible material, the fires that
are seething in one's bosom; but the cool, joyous,
and limpid brightness of the other will feed the
health and temper of the whole man.

I propose no quarrel with the critics; they are a
captious set; and a quiet gentleman must needs be
much disturbed, if not worsted, by an encounter.
But in this matter of objecting to the town favorite,
her northern style, and her lack of that impassioned
dramatism of musical sentiment, which belongs to

the Italian, it seems to me that the critics are as
idle, and meaningless, as if they were to object to
the blue of her eye, or to the golden shadows that
lie parted over her forehead.

She is there—the large-souled woman, with not
one affectation of the stage, or one mimicry of
feeling;—only Jenny—as the God who made the
people of the pine-lands, as well as the people of
the olives, fashioned her; and if the amateurs can
mend her—they may.

I wish, Fritz, from my heart, that for an hour I
could get at one of your forest skirts, to gather a
bunch of wild-flowers,—with the golden rod in it,
and a fragrant orchis, and a blue daisy, and pale
ghost-flower, set off with the heavy fringe of a
brake, and the feathery lightness of the maiden's
hair,—to make up a bouquet for the songstress. And
I am sure that such a bunch of wild flowers would
touch Jenny's heart more nearly, than all the
flaunting blossoms from our green-houses of quality.

Act upon the hint, my dear fellow, and tie one
with your own hands, with the ribbon grass that
grows in your meadow; send it me at once, and it
shall be braided into a thyrsan garland, to hide the
point of my Timon raillery, and to be laid down,
with all the grace that years have vouchsafed to
me, at the feet of the blue-eyed Jenny.