The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866

This division of opinion and feeling concerning the Dusky-wings, although deep and earnest, had not led to much open debate; the people of the island were very hospitable and polite, and they refrained to a great extent from showing their prejudices against the colonists. But my arrival gave them an opportunity of saying with open frankness many things which, although said concerning me, were meant and understood as referring to the immigrants from the continent. The Dusky-wings themselves said but little; they were quiet, inoffensive, affectionate people, who were somewhat wounded occasionally by the scorn of a Purple-wing, but simply went on minding their own business, and showing kindness to all persons alike.

The aborigines of the island, outnumbering the others by twenty to one, discussed me and my position with eager warmth. On the one hand, it was argued that I was a Batrachian,—of a high species, it was granted, but still only an animal; that, if I really had reason and sentiments, they must be of a low order; that certainly I had no social nor legal rights which their race were bound to respect; that I was the property of my captor, by right of discovery, and he had absolute rights over me as a chattel; that he might sell me or use me as lawfully as he could sell or use clothing, food, or books; that he might compel me to work for him; and that he even had a right to poison me (as they poisoned troublesome insects) whenever he was tired of the burden of my support, or wished to study my anatomy.

On the other hand, it was maintained that the fact of my being a Batrachian had no bearing on my moral rights, and ought not to have upon my social and legal rights. The capacity which I had for understanding the moral law and for feeling injustice gave me a claim to justice. Whoever has the moral sense to claim rights is by that very endowment vested with rights. "The true brotherhood between us rational animals," said this party, "is founded in our rationality and in our sentiments of justice and piety, and not in our animal nature. But this Batrachian, although belonging to the lower orders of animal nature, partakes with us of reason and of the sentiments of justice and piety. He is therefore our brother, and his rights are as sacred as our own. He is the guest, and not the chattel, of the family who discovered him. To sell him or to buy him, to force him to labor against his will, to hold his life less sacred than our own, would be criminal."

Of course I knew nothing of all this until I had been there for several years, and acquired a tolerable familiarity with their speech. Indeed, it required a considerable time for the feud to arrive at its highest. But at length party strife concerning me and concerning the relative superiority of the two races rose to such a pitch, that I seriously feared lest I should be the innocent cause of a civil war in this once happy island. Moreover, I saw that my presence was becoming a source of serious inconvenience to my host and to his family. They were attached to me, that I could not doubt; but neither could I doubt that it was unpleasant to them to have old acquaintances decline any further intercourse with them because they had allowed a Batrachian to sit at table with them.

Very reluctantly I decided that I would ask Copernicus to restore me to my own family on Earth. First I broke the matter cautiously to my host, and explained to him confidentially my real origin and my intended return. He was astonished beyond measure at my revelation, and I could with difficulty persuade him that I was not of celestial nature. We talked it over daily for several weeks, and then explained it to the family, and afterwards to a select circle of friends, who were to publish it after my departure, and give to the whole island their first notions of terrestrial geography and history. Finally, I decided upon a night in which I would depart, and at bed-time bade the family good by. At midnight I filled my pockets and sundry satchels with my note-books, specimens of dried plants, insects, fragments of minerals, etc., and, hanging these satchels on my arms, called on Copernicus to fulfil his promise. Instantly all things disappeared again from my view; I was floating with my satchels in mid-ether, and fell into a trance. When I awaked, I was in my father's house in New York. How long the passage required, I have no means of determining.

The present brief sketch of my life upon the planet Mars is designed partly to call attention to the volumes which I am preparing, in conjunction with more learned and more scientific collaborateurs, for immediate publication by the Smithsonian Institution, and partly for the gratification of readers who may never see those ponderous quartos.

I will only add, that, since my return to Earth, I have never been able to obtain any information either from Copernicus or from any other of the illustrious dead, except through the pages of their printed works.

MADAM WALDOBOROUGH'S CARRIAGE

On a bright particular afternoon, in the month of November, 1855, I met on the Avenue des Champs Élysées, in Paris, my young friend Herbert J–.

After many desolate days of wind and rain and falling leaves, the city had thrown off her wet rags, so to speak, and arrayed herself in the gorgeous apparel of one of the most golden and perfect Sundays of the season. "All the world" was out of doors. The Boulevards, the Bois de Boulogne, the bridges over the Seine, all the public promenades and gardens, swarmed with joyous multitudes. The Champs Élysées, and the long avenue leading up to the Barrière de l'Étoile, appeared one mighty river, an Amazon of many-colored human life. The finest July weather had not produced such a superb display; for now the people of fashion, who had passed the summer at their country-seats, or in Switzerland, or among the Pyrenees, reappeared in their showy equipages. The tide, which had been flowing to the Bois de Boulogne ever since two o'clock, had turned, and was pouring back into Paris. For miles, up and down, on either side of the city-wall, extended the glittering train of vehicles. The three broad, open gateways of the Barrière proved insufficient channels; and far as you could see, along the Avenue de l'Impératrice, stood three seemingly endless rows of carriages, closely crowded, unable to advance, waiting for the Barrière de l'Étoile to discharge its surplus living waters. Detachments of the mounted city guard, and long lines of police, regulated the flow; while at the Barrière an extra force of customhouse officers fulfilled the necessary formality of casting an eye of inspection into each vehicle as it passed, to see that nothing was smuggled.

Just below the Barrière, as I was moving with the stream of pedestrians, I met Herbert. He turned and took my arm. As he did so, I noticed that he lifted his bran-new Parisian hat towards heaven, saluting with a lofty flourish one of the carriages that passed the gate.

It was a dashy barouche, drawn by a glossy-black span, and occupied by two ladies and a lapdog. A driver on the box, and a footman perched behind, both in livery,—long coats, white gloves, and gold bands on their hats,—completed the establishment The ladies sat facing each other, and their mingled, effervescing skirts and flounces filled the cup of the vehicle quite to over-foaming, like a Rochelle powder, nearly drowning the brave spaniel, whose sturdy little nose was elevated, for air, just above the surge.

Both ladies recognized my friend, and she who sat, or rather reclined, (for such a luxurious, languishing attitude can hardly be called a sitting posture.) fairy-like, in the hinder part of the shell, bestowed upon him a very gracious, condescending smile. She was a most imposing creature,—in freshness of complexion, in physical development, and, above all, in amplitude and magnificence of attire, a full-blown rose of a woman,—aged, I should say, about forty.

"Don't you know that turn-out?" said Herbert, as the shallop with its lovely freight floated on in the current.

"I am not so fortunate," I replied.

"Good gracious! miserable man! Where do you live? In what obscure society have you buried yourself? Not to know Madam Waldoborough's Carriage!"

This was spoken in a tone of humorous extravagance which piqued my curiosity. Behind the ostentatious deference with which he had raised his hat to the sky, beneath the respectful awe with which he spoke the lady's name, I detected irony and a spirit of mischief.

"Who is Madam Waldoborough? and what about her carriage?"

"Who is Madam Waldoborough?" echoed Herbert, with mock astonishment; "that an American, six months in Paris, should ask that question! An American woman, and a woman of fortune, sir; and, which is more, of fashion; and, which is more, as pretty a piece of flesh as any in Messina or elsewhere;—one that occupies a position, go to! and receives on Thursday evenings, go to! and that hath ambassadors at her table, and everything handsome about her! And as for her carriage," he continued, coming down from his Dogberrian strain of eloquence, "it is the very identical carriage which I didn't ride in once!"

"How was that?"

"I'll tell you; for it was a curious adventure, and as it was a very useful lesson to me, so you may take warning by my experience, and, if ever she invites you to ride with her, as she did me, beware! beware! her flashing eyes, her floating hair!—do not accept, or, before accepting, take Iago's advice, and put money in your purse: put money in your purse! I'll tell you why.

"But, in the first place, I must explain how I came to be without money in mine, so soon after arriving in Paris, where so much of the article is necessary. My woes all arise from vanity. That is the rock, that is the quicksand, that is the maelstrom. I presume you don't know anybody else who is afflicted with that complaint? If you do, I'll but teach you how to tell my story, and that will cure him; or, at least, it ought to.

"You see, in crossing over to Liverpool in the steamer, I became acquainted with a charming young lady, who proved to be a second-cousin of my father's. She belongs to the aristocratic branch of our family. Every family tree has an aristocratic branch, or bough, or little twig at least, I believe. She was a Todworth; and having always heard my other relations mention with immense pride and respect the Todworths,—as if it was one of the solid satisfactions of life to be able to speak of 'my uncle Todworth,' or 'my cousins the Todworths,'—I was prepared to appreciate my extreme good fortune. She was a bride, setting out on her wedding tour. She had married a sallow, bilious, perfumed, very disagreeable fellow,—except that he too was an aristocrat, and a millionnaire besides, which made him very agreeable; at least, I thought so. That was before I rode in Madam Waldoborough's carriage: since which era in my life I have slightly changed my habits of thinking on these subjects.

"Well, the fair bride was most gratifyingly affable, and cousined me to my heart's content. Her husband was no less friendly: they not only petted me, but I think they really liked me; and by the time we reached London I was on as affectionately familiar terms with them as a younger brother could have been. If I had been a Todworth, they couldn't have made more of me. They insisted on my going to the same hotel with them, and taking a room adjoining their suite. This was a happiness to which I had but one objection,—my limited pecuniary resources. My family are neither aristocrats nor millionnaires; and economy required that I should place myself in humble and inexpensive lodgings for the two or three weeks I was to spend in London. But vanity! vanity! I was actually ashamed, sir, to do the honest and true thing,—afraid of disgracing my branch of the family in the eyes of the Todworth branch, and of losing the fine friends I had made, by confessing my poverty. The bride, I confess, was a delightful companion; but I know other ladies just as interesting, although they do not happen to be Todworths. For her sake, personally, I should never have thought of committing the folly; and still less, I assure you, for that piece of perfumed and yellow-complexioned politeness, her husband. It was pride, sir, pride that ruined me. They went to Cox's Hotel, in Jermyn Street; and I, simpleton as I was, went with them,—for that was before I rode in Madam Waldoborough's carriage.

"Cox's, I fancy, is the crack hotel of London. Lady Byron boarded there; the author of 'Childe Harold' himself used to stop there; Tom Moore wrote a few of his last songs and drank a good many of his last bottles of wine there; my Lords Tom, Dick, and Harry,—the Duke of Dash, Sir Edward Splash, and Viscount Flash,—these and other notables always honor Cox's when they go to town. So we honored Cox's. And a very quiet, orderly, well-kept tavern we found it. I think Mr. Cox must have a good housekeeper. He has been fortunate in securing a very excellent cook. I should judge that he had engaged some of the finest gentlemen in England to act as waiters. Their manners would do credit to any potentate in Europe: there is that calm self-possession about them, that serious dignity of deportment, sustained by a secure sense of the mighty importance of their mission to the world which strikes a beholder with awe. I was made to feel very inferior in their presence. We dined at a private table, and these ministers of state waited upon us. They brought us the morning paper on a silver salver; they presented it as if it had been a mission from a king to a king. Whenever we went out or came in, there stood two of those magnates, in white waistcoats and white gloves, to open the folding-doors for us, with stately mien. You would have said it was the Lord High Chamberlain and his deputy, and that I was at least Minister Plenipotentiary to the Court of St. James. I tried to receive these overpowering attentions with an air of easy indifference, like one who had been all his life accustomed to that sort of thing, you know; but I was oppressed with a terrible sense of being out of my place. I couldn't help feeling that these serene and lofty highnesses knew perfectly well that I was a green Yankee boy, with less than fifty pounds in my pocket; and I fancied that, behind the mask of gravity each imperturbable countenance wore, there was always lurking a smile of contempt.

"But this was not the worst of it. I suffered from another cause. If noblemen were my attendants, I must expect to maintain noblemen. All that ceremony and deportment must go into the bill. With this view of the case, I could not look at their white kids without feeling sick at heart; white waistcoats became a terror; the sight of an august neckcloth, bowing its solemn attentions to me, depressed my very soul. The folding-doors, on golden hinges turning,—figuratively, at least, if not literally, like those of Milton's heaven,—grated as horrible discords on my secret ear as the gates of Milton's other place. It was my gold that helped to make those hinges. And this I endured merely for the sake of enjoying the society, not of my dear newly-found cousins, but of two phantoms, intangible, unsatisfactory, unreal that hovered over their heads,—the phantom of wealth and the still more empty phantom of social position. But all this, understand, was before I rode in Madam Waldoborough's carriage.

"Well, I saw London in company with my aristocratic relatives, and paid a good deal more for the show, and really profited less by it, than if I had gone about the business in my own deliberate and humble way. Everything was, of course, done in the most lordly and costly manner known. Instead of walking to this place or that, or taking an omnibus or a cab, we rolled magnificently in our carriage. I suppose the happy bridegroom would willingly have defrayed all these expenses, if I had wished him to do so; but pride prompted me to pay my share. So it happened that, during nine days in London, I spent as much as would have lasted me as many weeks, if I had been as wise as I was vain,—that is, if I had ridden in Madam Waldoborough's carriage before I went to England.

"When I saw how things were going, bankruptcy staring me in the face, ruin yawning at my feet, I was suddenly seized with an irresistible desire to go on to Paris, I had a French fever of the most violent character. I declared myself sick of the soot and smoke uproar of the great Babel,—I even spoke slightingly of Cox's Hotel, as if I had been used to better things,—and I called for my bill. Heavens and earth, how I trembled! Did ever a condemned wretch feel as faint at the sight of the priest coming to bid him prepare for the gallows, as I did at the sight of one of those sublime functionaries bringing me my doom on a silver salver? Every pore opened; a clammy perspiration broke out all over me; I reached forth a shaking hand, and thanked his highness with a ghastly smile.

"A few figures told my fate. The convict who hears his death-sentence may still hope for a reprieve; but figures are inexorable, figures cannot lie. My bill at Cox's was in pounds, shillings, and pence, amounting to just eleven dollars a day. Eleven times nine are ninety-nine. It was so near a round hundred, it seemed a bitter mockery not to say a hundred, and have done with it, instead of scrupulously stopping to consider a single paltry dollar. I was reminded of the boy whose father bragged of killing nine hundred and ninety-nine pigeons at one shot. Somebody asked why he didn't say a thousand. 'Thunder!' says the boy, 'do you suppose my father would lie just for one pigeon?' I told the story, to show my cousins how coolly I received the bill, and paid it,—coined my heart and dropped my blood for drachmas, rather than appear mean in presence of my relatives, although I knew that a portion of the charge was for the bridal arrangements for which the bridegroom alone was responsible.

"This drained my purse so nearly dry that I had only just money enough left to take me to Paris, and pay for a week's lodging or so in advance. They urged me to remain and go to Scotland with them; but I tore myself away, and fled to France. I would not permit them to accompany me to the railroad station, and see me off; for I was unwilling that they should know I was going to economize my finances by purchasing a second-class ticket. From the life I had been leading at Cox's to a second-class passage to Paris was that step from the sublime to the ridiculous which I did not wish to be seen taking. I think I'd have thrown myself into the Thames before I would thus have exposed myself; for, as I tell you, I had not yet been honored with a seat in Madame Waldoborough's carriage.

"It is certainly a grand thing to keep grand company; but if ever I felt a sense of relief, it was when I found myself free from my cousins, emancipated from the fearful bondage of keeping up such expensive appearances; when I found myself seated on the hard, cushionless bench of the second-class car, and nibbled my crackers at my leisure, unoppressed by the awful presence of those grandees in white waistcoats, and by the more awful presence of a condemning conscience within myself.

"I nibbled my crackers, and they tasted sweeter than Cox's best dinners; I nibbled, and contemplated my late experiences; nibbled, and was almost persuaded to be a Christian,—that is, to forswear thenceforth and forever all company which I could not afford to keep, all appearances which were not honest, all foolish pride, and silly ambition, and moral cowardice;—as I did after I had ridden in a certain carriage I have mentioned, and which I am coming to now as fast as possible.

"I had lost nearly all my money and a good share of my self-respect by the course I had taken, and I could think of only one substantial advantage which I had gained. That was a note of introduction from my lovely cousin to Madame Waldoborough. That would be of inestimable value to me in Paris. It would give me access to the best society, and secure to me, a stranger many privileges which could not otherwise be obtained. 'Perhaps, after all,' thought I, as I read over the flattering contents of the unsealed note,—'perhaps, after all, I shall find this worth quite as much as it has cost me.' O, had I foreseen that it was actually destined to procure me an invitation to ride out with Madam Waldoborough herself, shouldn't I have been elated?

"I reached Paris, took a cheap lodging, and waited for the arrival of my uncle's goods destined for the Great Exhibition,—for to look after them, (I could speak French, you know,) and to assist in having them properly placed, was the main business that had brought me here. I also waited anxiously for my uncle and a fresh supply of funds. In the mean time I delivered my letters of introduction, and made a few acquaintances. Twice I called at Madam Waldoborough's hotel, but did not see her; she was out. So at least the servants said, but I suspect they lied; for, the second time I was told so, I noticed, O, the most splendid turn-out!—the same you just saw pass—waiting in the carriage-way before her door, with the driver on the box, and the footman holding open the silver-handled and escutchioned panel that served as a door to the barouche, as if expecting some grand personage to get in.

"'Some distinguished visitor, perhaps,' thought I; 'or, it may be, Madam Waldoborough herself; instead of being out, she is just going out, and in five minutes the servant's lie will be a truth.' Sure enough, before I left the street—for I may as well confess that curiosity caused me to linger a little—my lady herself appeared in all her glory, and bounced into the barouche with a vigor that made it rock quite unromantically; for she is not frail, she is not a butterfly, as you perceived. I recognized her from a description I had received from my cousin the bride. She was accompanied by that meagre, smart little sprite of a French girl, whom Madam always takes with her,—to talk French with, and to be waited upon by her, she says; but rather, I believe, by way of a contrast to set off her own brilliant complexion and imperial proportions. It is Juno and Arachne. The divine orbs of the goddess turned haughtily upon me, but did not see me,—looked through and beyond me, as if I had been nothing but gossamer, feathers, air; and the little black, bead-like eyes of the insect pierced me maliciously an instant, as the barouche dashed past, and disappeared in the Rue de Rivoli. I was humiliated; I felt that I was recognized,—known as the rash youth who had just called at the Hôtel de Waldoborough, been told that Madam was out, and had stopped outside to catch the hotel in a lie. It is very singular—how do you explain it?—that it should have seemed to me the circumstance was something, not for Madam, but for me to be ashamed of! I don't believe that the color of her peachy cheeks was heightened the shadow of a shade; but as for me, I blushed to the tips of my ears.

"You may believe that I did not go away in such a cheerful frame of mind as might have encouraged me to repeat my call in a hurry. I just coldly enclosed to her my cousin's letter of introduction, along with my address; and said to myself, 'Now, she'll know what a deuse of a fellow she has slighted: she'll know she has put an affront upon a connection of the Todworths!' I was very silly, you see, for I had not yet—but I am coming to that part of my story.

"Well, returning to my lodgings a few days afterwards, I found a note which had been left for me by a liveried footman,—Madam Waldoborough's footman, O heaven! I was thrown into great trepidation by the stupendous event, and eagerly inquired if Madam herself was in her carriage, and was immensely relieved to learn she was not; for, unspeakably gratifying as such condescension, such an Olympian compliment, would have been under other circumstances, I should have felt it more than offset by the mortification of knowing that she knew, that her own eyes had beheld, the very humble quarter in which a lack of means had compelled me to locate myself.

"I turned from that frightful possibility to the note itself. It was everything I could have asked. It was ambrosia, it was nectar. I had done a big thing when I fired the Todworth gun: it had brought the enemy to terms. My cousin was complimented, and I was welcomed to Paris, and—the Hôtel Waldoborough!

"'Why have you not called to see me?' the note inquired, with charming innocence. 'I shall be at home to-morrow morning at two o'clock; cannot you give me the pleasure of greeting so near a relative of my dear, delightful Louise?'