CHAPTER VIII
FROM DR. RUDOLF STAUB, IN PARIS, TO DR. JULIUS HIRSCH, AT GOTTINGEN.
My dear brother in Science--I resume my hasty notes, of which I sent
you the first instalment some weeks ago. I mentioned then that I
intended to leave my hotel, not finding it sufficiently local and
national. It was kept by a Pomeranian, and the waiters, without
exception, were from the Fatherland. I fancied myself at Berlin,
Unter den Linden, and I reflected that, having taken the serious step
of visiting the head-quarters of the Gallic genius, I should try and
project myself; as much as possible, into the circumstances which are
in part the consequence and in part the cause of its irrepressible
activity. It seemed to me that there could be no well-grounded
knowledge without this preliminary operation of placing myself in
relations, as slightly as possible modified by elements proceeding
from a different combination of causes, with the spontaneous home-
life of the country.
I accordingly engaged a room in the house of a lady of pure French
extraction and education, who supplements the shortcomings of an
income insufficient to the ever-growing demands of the Parisian
system of sense-gratification, by providing food and lodging for a
limited number of distinguished strangers. I should have preferred
to have my room alone in the house, and to take my meals in a
brewery, of very good appearance, which I speedily discovered in the
same street; but this arrangement, though very lucidly proposed by
myself; was not acceptable to the mistress of the establishment (a
woman with a mathematical head), and I have consoled myself for the
extra expense by fixing my thoughts upon the opportunity that
conformity to the customs of the house gives me of studying the
table-manners of my companions, and of observing the French nature at
a peculiarly physiological moment, the moment when the satisfaction
of the TASTE, which is the governing quality in its composition,
produces a kind of exhalation, an intellectual transpiration, which,
though light and perhaps invisible to a superficial spectator, is
nevertheless appreciable by a properly adjusted instrument.
I have adjusted my instrument very satisfactorily (I mean the one I
carry in my good square German head), and I am not afraid of losing a
single drop of this valuable fluid, as it condenses itself upon the
plate of my observation. A prepared surface is what I need, and I
have prepared my surface.
Unfortunately here, also, I find the individual native in the
minority. There are only four French persons in the house--the
individuals concerned in its management, three of whom are women, and
one a man. This preponderance of the feminine element is, however,
in itself characteristic, as I need not remind you what an
abnormally--developed part this sex has played in French history.
The remaining figure is apparently that of a man, but I hesitate to
classify him so superficially. He appears to me less human than
simian, and whenever I hear him talk I seem to myself to have paused
in the street to listen to the shrill clatter of a hand-organ, to
which the gambols of a hairy homunculus form an accompaniment.
I mentioned to you before that my expectation of rough usage, in
consequence of my German nationality, had proved completely
unfounded. No one seems to know or to care what my nationality is,
and I am treated, on the contrary, with the civility which is the
portion of every traveller who pays the bill without scanning the
items too narrowly. This, I confess, has been something of a
surprise to me, and I have not yet made up my mind as to the
fundamental cause of the anomaly. My determination to take up my
abode in a French interior was largely dictated by the supposition
that I should be substantially disagreeable to its inmates. I wished
to observe the different forms taken by the irritation that I should
naturally produce; for it is under the influence of irritation that
the French character most completely expresses itself. My presence,
however, does not appear to operate as a stimulus, and in this
respect I am materially disappointed. They treat me as they treat
every one else; whereas, in order to be treated differently, I was
resigned in advance to be treated worse. I have not, as I say, fully
explained to myself this logical contradiction; but this is the
explanation to which I tend. The French are so exclusively occupied
with the idea of themselves, that in spite of the very definite image
the German personality presented to them by the war of 1870, they
have at present no distinct apprehension of its existence. They are
not very sure that there are any Germans; they have already forgotten
the convincing proofs of the fact that were presented to them nine
years ago. A German was something disagreeable, which they
determined to keep out of their conception of things. I therefore
think that we are wrong to govern ourselves upon the hypothesis of
the revanche; the French nature is too shallow for that large and
powerful plant to bloom in it.
The English-speaking specimens, too, I have not been willing to
neglect the opportunity to examine; and among these I have paid
special attention to the American varieties, of which I find here
several singular examples. The two most remarkable are a young man
who presents all the characteristics of a period of national
decadence; reminding me strongly of some diminutive Hellenised Roman
of the third century. He is an illustration of the period of culture
in which the faculty of appreciation has obtained such a
preponderance over that of production that the latter sinks into a
kind of rank sterility, and the mental condition becomes analogous to
that of a malarious bog. I learn from him that there is an immense
number of Americans exactly resembling him, and that the city of
Boston, indeed, is almost exclusively composed of them. (He
communicated this fact very proudly, as if it were greatly to the
credit of his native country; little perceiving the truly sinister
impression it made upon me.)
What strikes one in it is that it is a phenomenon to the best of my
knowledge--and you know what my knowledge is--unprecedented and
unique in the history of mankind; the arrival of a nation at an
ultimate stage of evolution without having passed through the mediate
one; the passage of the fruit, in other words, from crudity to
rottenness, without the interposition of a period of useful (and
ornamental) ripeness. With the Americans, indeed, the crudity and
the rottenness are identical and simultaneous; it is impossible to
say, as in the conversation of this deplorable young man, which is
one and which is the other; they are inextricably mingled. I prefer
the talk of the French homunculus; it is at least more amusing.
It is interesting in this manner to perceive, so largely developed,
the germs of extinction in the so-called powerful Anglo-Saxon family.
I find them in almost as recognisable a form in a young woman from
the State of Maine, in the province of New England, with whom I have
had a good deal of conversation. She differs somewhat from the young
man I just mentioned, in that the faculty of production, of action,
is, in her, less inanimate; she has more of the freshness and vigour
that we suppose to belong to a young civilisation. But unfortunately
she produces nothing but evil, and her tastes and habits are
similarly those of a Roman lady of the lower Empire. She makes no
secret of them, and has, in fact, elaborated a complete system of
licentious behaviour. As the opportunities she finds in her own
country do not satisfy her, she has come to Europe "to try," as she
says, "for herself." It is the doctrine of universal experience
professed with a cynicism that is really most extraordinary, and
which, presenting itself in a young woman of considerable education,
appears to me to be the judgment of a society.
Another observation which pushes me to the same induction--that of
the premature vitiation of the American population--is the attitude
of the Americans whom I have before me with regard to each other.
There is another young lady here, who is less abnormally developed
than the one I have just described, but who yet bears the stamp of
this peculiar combination of incompleteness and effeteness. These
three persons look with the greatest mistrust and aversion upon each
other; and each has repeatedly taken me apart and assured me,
secretly, that he or she only is the real, the genuine, the typical
American. A type that has lost itself before it has been fixed--what
can you look for from this?
Add to this that there are two young Englanders in the house, who
hate all the Americans in a lump, making between them none of the
distinctions and favourable comparisons which they insist upon, and
you will, I think, hold me warranted in believing that, between
precipitate decay and internecine enmities, the English-speaking
family is destined to consume itself; and that with its decline the
prospect of general pervasiveness, to which I alluded above, will
brighten for the deep-lunged children of the Fatherland!
