A Frenchman in America: Recollections of Men and Things

I think that many Europeans are prevented from going to America by an idea that the expense of traveling and living there is very great. This is quite a delusion. For my part I find that hotels are as cheap in America as in England at any rate, and railway traveling in Pullman cars is certainly cheaper than in European first-class carriages, and incomparably more comfortable. Put aside in America such hotels as Delmonico’s, the Brunswick in New York; the Richelieu in Chicago; and in England such hotels as the Metropôle, the Victoria, the Savoy; and take the good hotels of the country, such as the Grand Pacific at Chicago; the West House at Minneapolis, the Windsor at Montreal, the Cadillac at Detroit. I only mention those I remember as the very best. In these hotels, you are comfortably lodged and magnificently fed for from three to five dollars a day. In no good hotel of England, France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, would you get the same amount of comfort, or even luxury, at the same price, and those who require a sitting-room get it for a little less than they would have to pay in a European hotel.

The only very dear hotels I have come across in the United States are those of Virginia. There I have been charged as much as two dollars a day, but never in my life did I pay so dear for what I had, never in my life did I see so many dirty rooms or so many messes that were unfit for human food.

But I will just say this much for the American refinement of feeling to be met with, even in the hotels of Virginia, even in the “lunch” rooms in small stations, you are supplied, at the end of each meal, with a bowl of water – to rinse your mouth.

CHAPTER V

My Opening Lecture – Reflections on Audiences I Have Had – The Man who Won’t Smile – The One who Laughs too Soon, and Many Others

    Boston, January 7.

Began my second American tour under most favorable auspices last night, in the Tremont Temple. The huge hall was crowded with an audience of about 2500 people – a most kind, warm, keen, and appreciative audience. I was a little afraid of the Bostonians; I had heard so much about their power of criticism that I had almost come to the conclusion that it was next to impossible to please them. The Boston newspapers this morning give full reports of my lecture. All of them are kind and most favorable. This is a good start, and I feel hopeful.

The subject of my lecture was “A National Portrait Gallery of the Anglo-Saxon Races,” in which I delineated the English, the Scotch, and the American characters. Strange to say, my Scotch sketches seemed to tickle them most. This, however, I can explain to myself. Scotch “wut” is more like American humor than any kind of wit I know. There is about it the same dryness, the same quaintness, the same preposterousness, the same subtlety.

My Boston audience also seemed to enjoy my criticisms of America and the Americans, which disposes of the absurd belief that the Americans will not listen to the criticism of their country. There are Americans and Americans, as there is criticism and criticism. If you can speak of people’s virtues without flattery; if you can speak of their weaknesses and failings with kindness and good humor, I believe you can criticise to your heart’s content without ever fearing to give offense to intelligent and fair-minded people. I admire and love the Americans. How could they help seeing it through all the little criticisms that I indulged in on the platform? On the whole, I was delighted with my Boston audience, and, to judge from the reception they gave me, I believe I succeeded in pleasing them. I have three more engagements in Boston, so I shall have the pleasure of meeting the Bostonians again.

…

I have never been able to lecture, whether in England, in Scotland, in Ireland or in America, without discovering, somewhere in the hall, after speaking for five minutes or so, an old gentleman who will not smile. He was there last night, and it is evident that he is going to favor me with his presence every night during this second American tour. He generally sits near the platform, and not unfrequently on the first row. There is a horrible fascination about that man. You cannot get your eyes off him. You do your utmost to “fetch him” – you feel it to be your duty not to send him home empty-headed; your conscience tells you that he has not to please you, but that you are paid to please him, and you struggle on. You would like to slip into his pocket the price of his seat and have him removed, or throw the water bottle at his face and make him show signs of life. As it is, you try to look the other way, but you know he is there, and that does not improve matters.

Now this man, who will not smile, very often is not so bad as he looks. You imagine that you bore him to death, but you don’t. You wonder how it is he does not go, but the fact is he actually enjoys himself – inside. Or, maybe, he is a professional man himself, and no conjuror has ever been known to laugh at another conjuror’s tricks. A great American humorist relates that, after speaking for an hour and a half without succeeding in getting a smile from a certain man in the audience, he sent some one to inquire into the state of his mind.

“Excuse me, sir, did you not enjoy the lecture that has been delivered to-night?”

“Very much indeed,” said the man, “it was a most clever and entertaining lecture.”

“But you never smiled – ”

“Oh, no – I’m a liar myself.”

…

Sometimes there are other reasons to explain the unsmiling man’s attitude.

One evening I had lectured in Birmingham. On the first row there sat the whole time an old gentleman, with his umbrella standing between his legs, his hands crossed on the handle, and his chin resting on his hands. Frowning, his mouth gaping, and his eyes perfectly vacant, he remained motionless, looking at me, and for an hour and twenty minutes seemed to say to me: “My poor fellow, you may do what you like, but you won’t ‘fetch’ me to-night, I can tell you.” I looked at him, I spoke to him, I winked at him, I aimed at him; several times even I paused so as to give him ample time to see a point. All was in vain. I had just returned, after the lecture, to the secretary’s room behind the platform, when he entered.

“Oh, that man again!” I cried, pointing to him.

He advanced toward me, took my hand, and said:

“Thank you very much for your excellent lecture, I have enjoyed it very much.”

“Have you?” said I.

“Would you be kind enough to give me your autograph?” And he pulled out of his pocket a beautiful autograph book.

“Well,” I said to the secretary in a whisper, “this old gentleman is extremely kind to ask for my autograph, for I am certain he has not enjoyed my lecture.”

“What makes you think so?”

“Why, he never smiled once.”

“Oh, poor old gentleman,” said the secretary; “he is stone deaf.”

Many a lecturer must have met this man.

It would be unwise, when you discover that certain members of the audience will not laugh, to give them up at once. As long as you are on the platform there is hope.

I was once lecturing in the chief town of a great hunting center in England. On the first row sat half a dozen hair-parted-in-the-middle, single-eye-glass young swells. They stared at me unmoved, and never relaxed a muscle except for yawning. It was most distressing to see how the poor fellows looked bored. How I did wish I could do something for them! I had spoken for nearly an hour when, by accident, I upset the tumbler on my table. The water trickled down the cloth. The young men laughed, roared. They were happy and enjoying themselves, and I had “fetched” them at last. I have never forgotten this trick, and when I see in the audience an apparently hopeless case, I often resort to it, generally with success.

…

There are other people who do not much enjoy your lecture: your own.

Of course you must forgive your wife. The dear creature knows all your lectures by heart; she has heard your jokes hundreds of times. She comes to your lectures rather to see how you are going to be received than to listen to you. Besides, she feels that for an hour and a half you do not belong to her. When she comes with you to the lecture hall, you are both ushered into the secretary’s room. Two or three minutes before it is time to go on the platform, it is suggested to her that it is time she should take her seat among the audience. She looks at the secretary and recognizes that for an hour and a half her husband is the property of this official, who is about to hand him over to the tender mercies of the public. As she says, “Oh, yes, I suppose I must go,” she almost feels like shaking hands with her husband, as Mrs. Baldwin takes leave of the Professor before he starts on his aerial trip. But, though she may not laugh, her heart is with you, and she is busy watching the audience, ever ready to tell them, “Now, don’t you think this is a very good point? Well, then, if you do, why don’t you laugh and cheer?” She is part and parcel of yourself. She is not jealous of your success, for she is your helpmate, your kind and sound counselor, and I can assure you that if an audience should fail to be responsive, it would never enter her head to lay the blame on her husband; she would feel the most supreme contempt for “that stupid audience that was unable to appreciate you.” That’s all.

But your other own folk! You are no hero to them. To judge the effect of anything, you must be placed at a certain distance, and your own folks are too near you.

One afternoon I had given a lecture to a large and fashionable audience in the South of England. A near relative of mine, who lived in the neighborhood, was in the hall. He never smiled. I watched him from the beginning to the end. When the lecture was over he came to the little room behind the platform to take me to his house. As he entered the room I was settling the money matters with my impresario. I will let you into the secret. There was fifty-two pounds in the house, and my share was two-thirds of the gross receipts, that is about thirty-four pounds. My relative heard the sum. As we drove along in his dog-cart he nudged me and said:

“Did you make thirty-four pounds this afternoon?”

“Oh, did you hear?” I said. “Yes, that was my part of the takings. For a small town I am quite satisfied.”

“I should think you were!” he replied. “If you had made thirty-four shillings you would have been well paid for your work!”

Nothing is more true to life than the want of appreciation the successful man encounters from relatives and also from former friends. Nothing is more certain than when a man has lived on terms of perfect equality and familiarity with a certain set of men, he can never hope to be anything but “plain John” to them, though by his personal efforts he may have obtained the applause of the public. Did he not rub shoulders with them for years in the same walk of life? Why these bravos? What was there in him more than in them? Even though they may have gone so far as to single him out as a “rather clever fellow,” while he was one of theirs, still the surprise at the public appreciation is none the less keen, his advance toward the front an unforgivable offense, and they are immediately seized with a desire to rush out in the highways and proclaim that he is only “Jack,” and not the “John” that his admirers think him. I remember that, in the early years of my life in England, when I had not the faintest idea of ever writing a book on John Bull, a young English friend of mine did me the honor of appreciating highly all my observations on British life and manners, and for years urged me hard and often to jot them down to make a book of. One day the book was finished and appeared in print. It attracted a good deal of public attention, but no one was more surprised than this man, who, from a kind friend, was promptly transformed into the most severe and unfriendly of my critics, and went about saying that the book and the amount of public attention bestowed upon it were both equally ridiculous. He has never spoken to me since.

A successful man is very often charged with wishing to turn his back on his former friends. No accusation is more false. Nothing would please him more than to retain the friends of more modest times, but it is they who have changed their feelings. They snub him, and this man, who is in constant need of moral support and pick-me-up, cannot stand it.

…

But let us return to the audience.

The man who won’t smile is not the only person who causes you some annoyance.

There is the one who laughs too soon; who laughs before you have made your points, and who thinks, because you have opened your lecture with a joke, that everything you say afterward is a joke. There is another rather objectionable person; it is the one who explains your points to his neighbor, and makes them laugh aloud just at the moment when you require complete silence to fire off one of your best remarks.

There is the old lady who listens to you frowning, and who does not mind what you are saying, but is all the time shaking for fear of what you are going to say next. She never laughs before she has seen other people laugh. Then she thinks she is safe.

All these I am going to have in America again; that is clear. But I am now a man of experience. I have lectured in concert rooms, in lecture halls, in theaters, in churches, in schools. I have addressed embalmed Britons in English health resorts, petrified English mummies at hydropathic establishments, and lunatics in private asylums.

I am ready for the fray.

CHAPTER VI

A Connecticut Audience – Merry Meriden – A Hard Pull