University of Virginia Library

Miss Mary Degai, at the age of sixteen,
Was as pretty a maiden as ever was seen.
Her eyes were deep blue,—
Not that meaningless hue
That one sees on old china, and sometimes on new;
Which really implies
Hers were not saucer eyes,
Though the people declared—and I'm not sure which worser is—
That, though not saucer eyes, they had worked many sorceries.
Her hair was that shade of which poets are fond,
A compromise lustrous 'twixt chestnut and blond.
Her figure was fragile,
Yet springy and agile;
While her clear, pallid skin, so essentially Frenchy,
Neither brunette nor fair,
Just gave her the air
Of a sort of Fifth Avenue Beatrix Cenci.

With a spick and span new, superfine education,
Befitting a maid of such fortunate station,
Miss Mary Degai had just made her début,
From the very select,
Genteel, circumspect
Establishment kept by—it cannot be wrong
Just to mention the name—by one Madame Cancan.
This Madame Cancan was a perfect Parisian,
Her morals infernal, her manners elysian.
She was slender and graceful, and rouged with much art,
A mistress of dumb show, from ogle to start.
Her voice was delightful, her teeth not her own,—
And a cane-bottomed chair when she sat seemed a throne.
In short, this dear, elegant Madame Cancan
Was like a French dinner at some restaurant,—
That is, she completely was made à la carte,
And I think she 'd a truffle instead of a heart.
But then what good rearing she gave to her pupils!
They dressed like those elegant ladies at Goupil's
One sees in the prints just imported from France;
With what marvellous grace did they join in the dance!
No Puritan modesty marred their tournure,—
Being modest is nearly as bad as being poor,—
No shudder attacked them when man laid his hand on
Their waists in the redowa's graceful abandon,
As they swung in that waltz to voluptuous music.
Ah! did we but see
Our sisters so free,
I warrant the sight would make both me and you sick!
Thus no trouble was spared through those young misses' lives
To make them good partners, and—very bad wives.
Receptions were given each week on a Wednesday,—
Which day by the school was entitled “the men's day,”
Because on such date young New York was allowed
To visit en masse that ingenuous crowd,
When they talked threadbare nothings and flat shilly-shally,
Of Gottschalk's mustache, or Signora Vestvali,
Followed up by the thrillingest questions and answers,
Such as—which they liked best, the schottische or the lancers?
No flirting, of course, was permitted. O dear!
If Madame Cancan such a word were to hear,
She would look a whole beltful of dagger-blades at you,
And faint in the style of some favorite statue.
The men were invited alone to impart
To her young protégées that most difficult art
Of conversing with ease; and if ease was the aim
That Madame had in view she was not much to blame,
For I vow she succeeded so well with her shes,
That her school might take rank as a chapel of ease!
Au reste, Madame's pension was quite in the fashion:
None better knew how to put shawl or pin sash on
Than did her young ladies; 't was good as a play
To watch the well-bred and impertinent way
They could enter a room in. Their gait in the street
Was five-barred,—one might say,—'t was so high and complete.
Then their boots were so small, and their stockings so neat,—
Alas! that such dainty and elegant feet
Should be trained à la mode
In that vicious gymnasium, the modern girls' school,
To trip down the road
That, while easy and broad,
Conducts to a place that 's more spacious than cool!

Miss Mary Degai
Was the pet protégée
Of dear Madame Cancan. She was excellent pay,
In her own right an heiress,—a plum at the least,—
A plantation down south and a coal-mine down east,—
I can't state the sum of her fortune in figures,
But I know she had plenty of dollars and niggers.
She was petted and fêted,
And splendidly treated,
Lay abed when she chose, and her school-teachers cheated;
Smuggled candy in school; smoked cigars, and—O, fie!—
Read a great many very queer books on the sly.
She 'd a love affair, too,—quite a sweet episode,—
With a wonderful foreign young Count, who abode
In the opposite dwelling,—a Count Cherami,—
A charming young beau,
Who was très comme il faut,
And who was with our boarding-school Miss bien pris.
So he shot letters on to the roof with an arrow,
And thence they were picked by a provident sparrow,
An amiable housemaid, who thought that the course
Of true love should run smooth,
And had pity on youth,—
So, sooner than leave the fond pair no resource,
Disinterestedly brought all the letters to Mary,
At a dollar apiece,—the beneficent fairy!

'T was the height of the season, the spring-time of Brown,
Who sowed invitations all over the town.
Soireés musicale, tableaux, matinées,
Turned days into nights, and the nights into days;
And women went mad upon feathers and flounces,
And scruples gave way to auriferous ounces.
Amanda came over her father with new arts
To grant her a credit at amiable Stewart's,
And sulked till he 'd promised that, if she 'd not miff any,
He 'd give her the bracelet she wanted from Tiffany.
As a matter of course,
Young New York was in force.
Tight boots and loose coats,
Stiff, dog-collared throats;
Champagne under chair,
Drunk with dare-devil air.
Mr. Brown's light brigade
Was in splendor arrayed.
O, that season, I wot,
Will be never forgot!
For 't was then that young Beelzebub proved all his vigor
Of mind by inventing a wonderful figure,
To be danced every night by “his set” in that million
Of marvellous mazes,—the German cotillon.
'T was the height of the winter. The poor summer flowers
Were forced to come out at unreasonable hours.
Camellias, amazed at the frost and the snow,
Without asking their leaves, were requested to blow;
And gardeners, relentless, awaked the moss-roses
From slumbers hybernant to tickle the noses
Of maidens just budding, like them, out of season;
And pale, purple violets, sick and etiolate,
Tried in vain to preserve their wan blossoms inviolate.
In short, 't was the time of the ball-giving season,
The reign of low dresses, ice-creams, and unreason,
And the greatest event of the night—not the day,—
Though the latter 's the phrase the most proper to say,—
Was the bal de début of Miss Mary Degai.

What a ball that one was! All the city was there.
Brown reigned like a king on the white marble stair,
And whistled—perhaps 't was to drive away care—
Loud, shrilly, and long, to each carriage and pair
As it landed its burden of feminine fair.
And Kammerer, hid in a nice little lair
Of thick-tufted laurels, played many an air,
Soft waltz, wild mazourka, quick polka, slow Schottische,
With all those quadrilles called by Jullien “the Scottish.”
Globed lamps shed soft light over shoulders of satin,
While men, hat in hand,—fashion à la Manhattan,—
Talked in tones that were muffled in sweet modulation
To all those fair flowers of a fairer creation,
About—whether the play or the ballet were properer?
Or—they did not observe them last night at the opera.

O the nooks and the corners—the secret expansions—
That are found in the depths of Fifth Avenue mansions!
The deeply-bayed windows, screened off by camellias,
Just made for the loves of the Toms and Amelias;
The dim little boudoir
Where nestles—proh pudor!—
That pair of young doves, in the deep shadow cooing,—
Which means, in plain English, legitimate wooing.
The ancients, I know, or I 've got the idea,
Placed love in some spot that they called Cytherea,—
A commonplace garden, with nothing but sparrows
To shoot at,—and that would be wasting love's arrows,—
And where, if he sat on the grass with his Psyche,
He 'd probably start before long with, “O, Criky!
There 's a bug on my—tunic!” But that was all gammon.
The true home of love is the palace of mammon,
Where gardens grow up, under glass, nice and neat,
And lovers may wander,
And ever grow fonder,
Without even once getting wet on their feet!

In one of those bowers, remote and secluded,
With pale-blossomed roses ingeniously wooded,
Through whose light-scented leaves a faint music stole in,—
Like perfume made audible,—here might be seen
Tête-à-tête, that is, close as 't was proper to be,
Miss Mary Degai and the Count Cherami.
The Count was exactly the man for sixteen,
He was tall, he was dark, he was haughty of mien,
He had beautiful feet, and his smile was serene;
Though his hair might have needed a little wahpene,
Still what he had left was of glossiest sheen;
His age—let me see—well, his age might have been
Between thirty and forty,—a dangerous age,—
All the passions of youth, and the wit of the sage.
The Count was an exile,—a matter of course,—
A foreigner here has no other resource;
The Count was an exile for reasons political,
Though some said—but people are really so critical—
That he was but a croupier who 'd made a good swoop,
And had tried change of air for his fit of the croupe.
And 't was true that his eyes had a villanous flash,—
But then he had got such a lovely mustache,
And his English was broken to exquisite smash!

There he sat Tête-à-tête with Miss Mary Degai,
Talking low in her ear, in his Frenchified way,
Of his château at home, and the balls at the Tuileries,
Longchamps, and Chantilly, and other tom-fooleries,
While poor Madison Mowbray—a rising young lawyer
Who promised, his friends said, to be a top-sawyer—
Disconsolate wandered in search of Miss Mary,—
Seeking here, seeking there, that invisible fairy,
Who had promised her hand for the very next waltz,
And who now was accused as the falsest of false.
O Madison Mowbray, go home to your briefs,—
To your Chitty and Blackstone, and such like reliefs!
For though Mary Degai pledged her hand for the dance,
And though Mr. Degai promised it in advance
To your keeping forever, you'll never possess it,
Or swear at the altar to hold and caress it;
For while you are moping in blankest amazement,
Two black-shrouded figures slip out of the basement,
And so to the corner, then into a carriage,—
Which looks rather like an elopement and marriage.
But, to cut matters short, of the whole the amount
Is that Mary Degai has run off with the Count.

There 's a tenement-house in Mulberry Street,
Where thieves, and beggars, and loafers meet,—
A house whose face wears a leprous taint
Of mouldy plaster and peeling paint.
The windows are dull as the bleary eyes
Of a drunken sot, and a black pool lies
Full of festering garbage outside the door.
The old stairs shudder from floor to floor,
As if they shrank with an occult dread
From the frequent criminal's guilty tread.
And blasphemous women and drunken men
Inhabit this foul, accurséd den,
And oaths and quarrels disturb the night,
And ruffianly faces offend the light,
And wretches that dare not look on the sun
Burrow within till the day is done.

Here, in a room on the highest flat,—
The playground of beetle and of rat,—
Almost roofless, and bare, and cold,
With the damp walls reeking with slimy mould,
A woman hung o'er one smouldering ember
That lay in the grate—it was in December.
O, how thin she was, and wan!
What sunken eyes! what lips thin drawn!
Her mouth how it quivered!
Her form how it shivered!
Her teeth how they chattered, as if they 'd cheat
Each skeleton limb
With the pantomime grim
Of having something at last to eat!

There is no sight more awful, say I,
To look upon, whether in earth or sky,
Than the terrible glare of a hungry eye!

The woman sat over the smouldering ember,
Pinched with the cold of that bitter December,
Passing her hand in a weariful way
O'er the faint firelight's flickering spray,
Till might be seen the faint red ray
Gleam through the thin, transparent palm,
As one beholds the sunshine calm
Through a painted window play.
Who that beheld her in sunnier day,
Lapped in roses and bathed in balm,
Would credit that this was Mary Degai?
But where was the money in stocks and in rents?
All squandered! The niggers? All sold! The per cents?
All gone! The magnificent Count Cherami
Had made with her money a seven-years spree
In Paris and London: had known figurantes,
Played at poker and bluff with one-thousand-franc antes,
Bred racers, built yachts, and in seven years' time
Neither husband nor wife had as much as a dime.

There was no help from father. The old man was dead,
With the curse unrevoked that he 'd laid on her head.
No help from her husband. A Count could not work
And slave to enrich some tyrannical Turk.
No help from herself,—thanks to Madame Cancan,
She had not a notion of getting along.
Her fingers revolted from needle and thread,
And to earn a loaf were by far too well bred.
Too proud for a beggar, too thin for the stage,
She lay like a log in this hard-working age,—
The dreary result of a fashion fanatic,
And helplessly starved in a comfortless attic.

Hark! a step on the stairs! How her thin cheek grows white
As she cowers away with a shiver of fright.
And the door is burst open,—the Count staggers in,
With a hiccup and oath, and a blasphemous din.
Mad with drink, crazed with hunger, and weary of life,
He revenges his sins on the head of his wife.
Let us hasten the door of that garret to close
On the nakedness, poverty, hunger, and woes,—
On the oaths, on the shrieks, on the cowardly blows!

O young ladies who sigh over novels in yellow,
And think Eugène Sue an exceeding smart fellow,
There are more aims in life than a crinoline skirt,
And a maid may be charming and yet not a flirt;
And merit is better than title, my dears:
In this country we 've no occupation for peers
Save those ones that our beautiful harbor affords,
And those piers are worth more than the whole House of Lords.
And though money, I know,
Is voted quite slow
In circles pretending to elegant rank,
There 's no very great sin in a sum at the bank.
Nor is marriage the portal to idle enjoyment:
The true salt of life is an active employment.
And if you have money there 's plenty of work
In the back-slums and alleys, where starvingly lurk
Humanity's outcasts, 'mid want and disease,—
Broken hearts to be healed, craving wants to appease.
Above all, ye young heroines, take this amount
Of wholesome advice,
Which like curry with rice
Gives a flavor, and saves one from saying things twice.
Be this axiom forever with you paramount:
Don't you ever advance all your cash on a Count.

Madame Cancan still lives, and still ogles and teaches,
And still her lay sermons on fashion she preaches;
Still keeps of smooth phrases the choicest assortment;
Still lectures on dress, easy carriage, deportment;
And spends all her skill in thus moulding her pets
Into very-genteelly-got-up marionettes.
Yes! puppet 's the word; for there 's nothing inside
But a clock work of vanity, fashion, and pride;
Puppets warranted sound, that without any falter
When wound up will go—just as far as the altar;
But when once the cap 's donned with the matronly border,
Lo! the quiet machine goes at once out of order.
Ah! Madame Cancan, you may paint, you may plaster
Each crevice of time that comes faster and faster;
But you cannot avert that black day of disaster,
When in turn you 'll be summoned yourself by a Master!
You may speak perfect French, and Italian, and Spanish,
And know how to enter a room and to vanish,
To flirt with your fan quite as well as did Soto,
To play well-bred games from écarté to loto;
But in spite of all this, won't you look rather small
When you 're called up before the great Teacher of all?
False teacher, false friend,—more, false speaker, false wife,
Dare you stand to be parsed in the grammar of life?
What account will you give of the many pure souls
To be guided by you through the quicksands and shoals
That beset their youth's shore? Were they harbored or wrecked?
You did n't take trouble to think, I expect;
For each cockle-shell boat,
When you set it afloat,
Had guitar-strings for ropes, crinoline for a sail,—
Nice rigging that was to encounter a gale!

Ah! Madame Cancan, our great Master above,
Who instructs us in charity, virtue, and love,
When he finds you deficient in all of your lessons,
A deliberate dunce both in substance and essence,
Will send you, I fear, to a Finishing School,
Which differs from yours though, in being less cool,
And kept on the corporal-punishment rule.
There 's excellent company there to be found:
The uppermost ranks you'll see floating around;
Some for grinding the poor are placed there underground,—
So the hind has his justice as well as the hound.
Nor is dress much less thought of there than in Manhattan,
You may not find silks, but you'll surely find Satan;
And I doubt if you'll like their severe education,—
There 's lots to be learned, and no recreation,
And what 's worse is—you'll never have any vacation.