Parrot and Olivier in America (31 page)

In a great passion I wrote, it seemed, a hundred letters--to Mr. Vaux, the Peek girls, Mr. Peek, Mrs. Peek, O'Hara, Mr. Elam Lynds--but toward the object of my affections... I must be patient.

Very early on the following Thursday morning I was on the pier opposite Schermerhorn Row, where, with the low mist a perfect garment for my mood, Mr. Parrot and I boarded the
Raritan
and set off in the opposite direction to the one my heart would have me go. That is, we churned our way to New Brunswick, then transferred to what had been advertised as a
stage wagon with good awning
, a disgusting contraption as it turned out. I was at Bordentown that evening, lovesick, sore, and dirty, and the steamboat
Phoenix
was already at its wharf, tooting impatiently for us like a bull who wishes admittance to where he should not go. Finally, having spent ten dollars and twenty-six miserable hours, we arrived, soon after nine on a Friday morning, at the Crooked Billet Wharf in Philadelphia.

V

AS THE
PHOENIX
approached the dock I saw five severe gentlemen in those ridiculous clerical hats. Dear God, I thought, I hope they are not my
reception committee
. What dry and juiceless creatures, wrapped like ravens, furled like umbrellas in the low sad mist. Perhaps Miss Godefroy has a wharf at Wethersfield and it would appear the same--an identical honking of the geese, for instance, an awful mooing from the shore--but it would be
her
geese,
her
cattle,
her
home,
her
mist, each drop of mist with its own aura. This awful hollow loneliness in my bones, this ache would not be there.

To my mother's great distress I had become what is called a deist, but how I now longed for a Catholic household. It was not dogma I sought, but to breathe air made of such subtle emanations that I might not even detect the true source of my own well-being. Now, I thought, I will be incarcerated in Philadelphia with Protestants who have built the kindest prison ever conceived, at a cost--I did not need Peek's equation for this--of two thousand dollars for every felon, at which price the state could equally afford to house them in a handsome riverside cottage with a dozen fat pigs and red leaves arranged in wreaths in vases every way you turn.

What use was this to France, or me? I knew the answer but must still investigate, and after so short a time in the country, I could accurately predict the room of documents, the pale gray ribbon, the bound reports that awaited me onshore, including but not limited to proclamations and
minutes
of those dreadful American
associations
. Was it O'Hara or was it Peek who claimed these free
associations
were the bones of their handsome democracy? Perhaps this is so in the giddy present, but let us wait to see them blossom as instruments of unrest and sedition. I will be gone by then, I thought.

And yet was not my hand playing with the letter to Miss Godefroy, a pristine article when it first left my boardinghouse, since spurned by Peek, defiled by his paternal hand, and now twisted and smudged by the ink-marked fingers of the lovelorn French commissioner? And what if my feelings were returned by Miss Godefroy? How catastrophic to be in love.

Master Parrot stood at my side at the rail. Was it solicitude he seemed to emanate? Had he seen me walk beside Miss Godefroy? Had he observed the color in my cheeks? How diligently he had attended me on this turbulent journey, carried my trunk, secured my seat on the stage, belligerently pursued my comfort in the awful hotel.

The
Phoenix
met the Crooked Billet Wharf with a loud bang, and the Parrot's hand was on my shoulder. I thought, He knows I am in love.

On the wharf the members of the
Society for the Alleviation of the Miseries of the Public Prisons
awaited us--Mr. Vaux, Mr. Washington-Smith, Mr. Devlin, Mr. Weatherspoon, and another chap whom I took to be their clerk, a deracinated Frenchman. I took particular note of this M. Duponceau, an old man of light frame, a little belly, a mane of gray hair, mouth ascetic but humorous, eyes clear and very lively. I thought, Did you fall in love, long ago, poor exiled creature?

Behold
The Welcome of the French Commissioner to Philadelphia
. The Crooked Billet Inn stands behind us. A dog gazes at the sky. There is the usual confusion of meeting and greeting.

For me, there was only the question of how to introduce my traveling companion. "This," I said, "is my
secretaire
, Mr. Larrit." And I found myself interrogated by that gentleman's frank green eyes. Damn the scoundrel, would he be amused by me? His face was marked with sun and wind and all manner of those rough irregularities that time puts on the bark of trees, but if he was forty or fifty I could not say. And of course it is inevitable among my class that time and time again we will conceive a generous affection for those who will later cut our throats.

In Philadelphia I learned that my boardinghouse had lost its roof the night before but that I should not be in the least concerned. The association's papers had all been saved, and there was now a new house set aside for my use. To this end we were to be conveyed by the queer old Frenchman, and later we would endure the amusements which are the lot of a French commissioner and would include, as time would show, a French play on Napoleon presented by an appalling troupe from New Orleans, a lecture at the historical society, a dinner at the home of Mr. Vaux, and a musical soiree in the home of Mr. Walsh.

We were dispatched by the Quakers with promises of a prompt reunion. Mr. Duponceau then drove us in his own coach, so I was left to silently grapple with the problem of how to get my letter to Miss Godefroy. It was a very considerable concern that she had, at this instant, not the slightest hint of my warm feelings for her. Doubtless she had awaited a note and, receiving none, hardened her heart against me. How should I proceed? I had a thousand letters of introduction, but none to Godefroy
pere
. The single person who might have performed this service--Peek--would not act against the
interests
of his daughters.

This problem whirled round and round as the wheels of Duponceau's coach brought us up in the direction of Chestnut Street where we would stay.

Philadelphia had been conceived in the style of an English rural town, one where houses and businesses would be spread far apart and surrounded by gardens and orchards. So thought Mr. Penn and Mr. Penn alone. In the absence of others of a superior class to set the tone, the city's inhabitants, in pursuit of their own profit, crowded by the Delaware River and subdivided and resold their lots as many times as you can fold a piece of paper. Thus, while the grand center of the town is often praised as the birthplace of American democracy, it is only at the waterfront that one views the consequences of majority rule.

It was a pretty cottage--the home of Mr. Vaux's nephew, kindly vacated the previous day after the boardinghouse catastrophe--and so we three went to the parlor, as the main room of a middle-class house is called, while our trunks were stowed and Mr. Duponceau--Frenchman that he was--produced a bottle of Burgundy which he indicated, this being a house of teetotalers, he would open and serve himself when the maid had left us.

Thus three unlikely characters were joined together, and I was pleased to interrogate our guide who was, he confessed, no part of the Quakers or their prisons but someone
trotted out
, as he picturesquely put it, to speak to those Frenchmen who happened to visit the birthplace of the nation.

We sat on chairs designed by a people who judged it a sin for a man to sit for long. I asked Duponceau where a Frenchman might buy a copy of Moliere in his own language.

This produced such a sharp look that I suddenly feared him to be of that eccentric party of which my mother was a prominent representative--that is, those who still agree with the archbishop of Paris who, in 1667, forbade involvement with
Tartuffe
on pain of excommunication.

"Monsieur," I said, "if the name Moliere offends you, I wish I never spoke it."

"On the contrary," he said, but his manner was not warm. "It fills me with unlimited admiration. Generally," he said, "it is only Germans who defame the great writer. It was August Wilhelm von Schlegel who made a reputation by writing that Moliere was a buffoon, that Racine likewise was of no account, that the French were the most prosaic people of the world, and that there was no poetry in France."

His speaking voice was light and a little high, and together with his slight frame and lively eyes made one think of a schoolteacher, a priest, an antiquarian. He had that look you see in seminarians, that straight mouth, the bright gray combative eyes, fast as a twinkle, one of those clever little boys rescued from the farm or fishing boat.

"Wordsworth was as bad," said the peculiar servant.

"Indeed," said Duponceau.

A servant quoting literature, a Parrot, Perroquet.
A Parrot rather, for in my sence he talks by roat
.

"He went right off the French," the so-called
secretaire
explained to me.

"But how would you conceivably know this?" I asked.

"A light but cruel race, Coleridge called us," interrupted M. Duponceau, and in so doing filled the servant's glass to spilling. There is nothing worse than those public fairs where one's tenants drink too heavily and forget, as the saying is, what side
their bread is buttered on
.

"Let me explain my reaction to your query," said M. Duponceau, forcing his Burgundy through his teeth like a merchant and holding his glass--one of those American thimbles--up to the light as if to let his customers see the quality of the color. My God, I thought, he is going to spit.

"It is very well known to those Quaker gentlemen that I have a library." He swallowed. "Beside my own linguistic interests--Chinese particularly--I most highly value our great French writers. When I was a child in Saint-Martin-de-Re it was the English language I loved, so the seminarians called me l'Anglais, but today nothing affords me more pleasure than to read Moliere and, wherever possible, to dissuade my American friends from attempting any theatrical performance whatsoever."

I thought, This is the man for me.

"For those not easily dissuaded, monsieur, I bring them to my table and read to them, aloud, in the only language in which it should be known. If I looked askance just now, it was because they once brought to my house a famous visitor, we need not say his name, of a family as noble as your own, sir," and here he nodded his head and acknowledged that I understood exactly of whom he spoke. "He was brought to me with an inquiry like your own. I lent this noble lord my copy of
The Misanthrope
and he, reading it while walking in the hills, fell asleep, was woken by a rainstorm, and fled."

My God, I thought, this is wonderful. What is a little water damage in a case like this? I will get the copy from him. I will read for her.

"And it was destroyed," he said.

Was this true?

Carefully I let him know I had been raised in a great library like his own. Of course this was gross flattery. His own library, by necessity, must be the collection of an exile, put together with great difficulty in thirty years or less. But I wished him to understand that the poorest item in his library would be safe with a Garmont.

When this got me nowhere I asked him to direct me to a bookseller where I might purchase a good copy of, perhaps,
Tartuffe
.

"Well," said he, pursing his lips, "that can be a subject for inquiry."

So, I thought, he owns an edition of
Tartuffe
. He will trust me with it. He will. I will ensure it, and just as well, for I have no other scheme than to recite Moliere upon the hills of Wethersfield.

VI

ON THE DAY FOLLOWING I was invited to a musical
soiree
at the home of Mr. Walsh, a very distinguished Philadelphian. They sang well enough, which is to say that neither American men nor women figured in the concert, and all the entertainment was provided by an Italian and some Frenchwomen. The Americans, who are by nature as cold as ice, were throughout tempted to regard the Italian amateur as a lunatic, because he, while singing, gesticulated a great deal and assumed dramatic attitudes. The concert ended in some waltzes and quadrilles.

At its conclusion I was introduced to the redoubtable Mrs. Dougdale, who could not have been further from the emaciated figure I had imagined. She said she was perfectly convinced that the Negroes were of the same race as us, just as a black cow is of the same race as a white one. The Negro children show as much intelligence as the white ones; often they learn faster. I asked her if the blacks had citizens' rights. She answered, "Yes, in this state, in law, but they cannot present themselves at the poll."

"Why so?"

"They would be ill-treated."

"And what happens to the rule of law in that case?"

"The law with us is nothing if it is not supported by public opinion."

So, again--the majority.

There was not a drop of wine at the
soiree
, a lack I remarked on to my countryman as we walked through the streets of his occasionally handsome city. M. Duponceau said that the Quakers will touch nothing, but those of the other party are even worse, as they tipple, for the most part, on sweet Canary wine. Sometimes a port or Madeira is offered, although much of that is watered by the boatmen who see it as their right to sample the wares they transport. As there is some ancient enmity by the majority for the better classes, this "tax" is accepted by those who must pay. Old Duponceau, speaking in an eccentric mixture of French and English, confessed himself the loneliest man in Philadelphia, for although he had a cellar of first-rate wines from Medoc, Graves, and Bourgogne, none of his fellows would even
feign
to enjoy what he offered them.