Through the Eye of the Needle: A Romance

by William Dean Howells

  XV

  The sally of the hostess made them all laugh, and they began to talkabout the genuine American character of the holiday, and what a finething it was to have something truly national. They praised Mrs. Makelyfor thinking of so many American dishes, and the facetious gentleman saidthat she rendered no greater tribute than was due to the overrulingProvidence which had so abundantly bestowed them upon the Americans as apeople. "You must have been glad, Mrs. Strange," he said to the lady atmy side, "to get back to our American oysters. There seems nothing elseso potent to bring us home from Europe."

  "I'm afraid," she answered, "that I don't care so much for the Americanoyster as I should. But I am certainly glad to get back."

  "In time for the turkey, perhaps?"

  "No, I care no more for the turkey than for the oyster of my nativeland," said the lady.

  "Ah, well, say the canvasback duck, then? The canvasback duck is noalien. He is as thoroughly American as the turkey, or as any of us."

  "No, I should not have missed him, either," persisted the lady.

  "What could one have missed," the gentleman said, with a bow to thehostess, "in the dinner Mrs. Makely has given us? If there had beennothing, I should not have missed it," and when the laugh at his drollinghad subsided he asked Mrs. Strange: "Then, if it is not too indiscreet,might I inquire what in the world has lured you again to our shores, ifit was not the oyster, nor the turkey, nor yet the canvasback?"

  "The American dinner-party," said the lady, with the same burlesque.

  "Well," he consented, "I think I understand you. It is different from theEnglish dinner-party in being a festivity rather than a solemnity;though, after all, the American dinner is only a condition of the Englishdinner. Do you find us much changed, Mrs. Strange?"

  "I think we are every year a little more European," said the lady. "Onenotices it on getting home."

  "I supposed we were so European already," returned the gentleman, "thata European landing among us would think he had got back to hisstarting-point in a sort of vicious circle. I am myself so thoroughlyEuropeanized in all my feelings and instincts that, do you know, Mrs.Makely, if I may confess it without offence--"

  "Oh, by all means!" cried the hostess.

  "When that vast bird which we have been praising, that colossal roastturkey, appeared, I felt a shudder go through my delicate substance, suchas a refined Englishman might have experienced at the sight, and I saidto myself, quite as if I were not one of you, 'Good Heavens! now theywill begin talking through their noses and eating with their knives.'It's what I might have expected!"

  It was impossible not to feel that this gentleman was talking at me; ifthe Americans have a foreign guest, they always talk at him more or less;and I was not surprised when he said, "I think our friend, Mr. Homos,will conceive my fine revolt from the crude period of our existence whichthe roast turkey marks as distinctly as the graffiti of the cave-dwellerproclaim his epoch."

  "No," I protested, "I am afraid that I have not the documents for theinterpretation of your emotion. I hope you will take pity on my ignoranceand tell me just what you mean."

  The others said they none of them knew, either, and would like to know,and the gentleman began by saying that he had been going over the matterin his mind on his way to dinner, and he had really been trying to leadup to it ever since we sat down. "I've been struck, first of all, by thefact, in our evolution, that we haven't socially evolved from ourselves;we've evolved from the Europeans, from the English. I don't think you'llfind a single society rite with us now that had its origin in ourpeculiar national life, if we have a peculiar national life; I doubt it,sometimes. If you begin with the earliest thing in the day, if you beginwith breakfast, as society gives breakfasts, you have an Englishbreakfast, though American people and provisions."

  "I must say, I think they're both much nicer," said Mrs. Makely.

  "Ah, there I am with you! We borrow the form, but we infuse the spirit. Iam talking about the form, though. Then, if you come to the societylunch, which is almost indistinguishable from the society breakfast, youhave the English lunch, which is really an undersized English dinner.The afternoon tea is English again, with its troops of eager females andstray, reluctant males; though I believe there are rather more men at theEnglish teas, owing to the larger leisure class in England. The afternoontea and the 'at home' are as nearly alike as the breakfast and the lunch.Then, in the course of time, we arrive at the great society function,the dinner; and what is the dinner with us but the dinner of ourmother-country?"

  "It is livelier," suggested Mrs. Makely, again.

  "Livelier, I grant you, but I am still speaking of the form, and not ofthe spirit. The evening reception, which is gradually fading away, as aseparate rite, with its supper and its dance, we now have as the Englishhave it, for the people who have not been asked to dinner. The ball,which brings us round to breakfast again, is again the ball of ourAnglo-Saxon kin beyond the seas. In short, from the society point of viewwe are in everything their mere rinsings."

  "Nothing of the kind!" cried Mrs. Makely. "I won't let you say such athing! On Thanksgiving-day, too! Why, there is the Thanksgiving dinneritself! If that isn't purely American, I should like to know what is."

  "It is purely American, but it is strictly domestic; it is not society.Nobody but some great soul like you, Mrs. Makely, would have the courageto ask anybody to a Thanksgiving dinner, and even you ask only sucheasy-going house-friends as we are proud to be. You wouldn't think ofgiving a dinner-party on Thanksgiving?"

  "No, I certainly shouldn't. I should think it was very presuming; and youare all as nice as you can be to have come to-day; I am not the onlygreat soul at the table. But that is neither here nor there. Thanksgivingis a purely American thing, and it's more popular than ever. A few yearsago you never heard of it outside of New England."

  The gentleman laughed. "You are perfectly right, Mrs. Makely, as youalways are. Thanksgiving is purely American. So is the corn-husking, sois the apple-bee, so is the sugar-party, so is the spelling-match, so isthe church-sociable; but none of these have had their evolution in oursociety entertainments. The New Year's call was also purely American, butthat is now as extinct as the dodo, though I believe the other Americanfestivities are still known in the rural districts."

  "Yes," said Mrs. Makely, "and I think it's a great shame that we can'thave some of them in a refined form in society. I once went to asugar-party up in New Hampshire when I was a girl, and I never enjoyedmyself so much in my life. I should like to make up a party to go to onesomewhere in the Catskills in March. Will you all go? It would besomething to show Mr. Homos. I should like to show him something reallyAmerican before he goes home. There's nothing American left in society!"

  "You forget the American woman," suggested the gentleman. "She is alwaysAmerican, and she is always in society."

  "Yes," returned our hostess, with a thoughtful air, "you're quite rightin that. One always meets more women than men in society. But it'sbecause the men are so lazy, and so comfortable at their clubs, theywon't go. They enjoy themselves well enough in society after they getthere, as I tell my husband when he grumbles over having to dress."

  "Well," said the gentleman, "a great many things, the day-time things, wereally can't come to, because we don't belong to the aristocratic class,as you ladies do, and we are busy down-town. But I don't think we arereluctant about dinner; and the young fellows are nearly always willingto go to a ball, if the supper's good and it's a house where they don'tfeel obliged to dance. But what do _you_ think, Mr. Homos?" heasked. "How does your observation coincide with my experience?"

  I answered that I hardly felt myself qualified to speak, for though I hadassisted at the different kinds of society rites he had mentioned, thanksto the hospitality of my friends in New York, I knew the Englishfunctions only from a very brief stay in England on my way here, and fromwhat I had read of them in English fiction and in the relations of ouremissaries. He inquired into our emissary system, and the
companyappeared greatly interested in such account of it as I could brieflygive.

  "Well," he said, "that would do while you kept it to yourselves; but nowthat your country is known to the plutocratic world, your publicdocuments will be apt to come back to the countries your emissaries havevisited, and make trouble. The first thing you know some of our brightreporters will get on to one of your emissaries, and interview him, andthen we shall get what you think of us at first hands. By-the-by, haveyou seen any of those primitive social delights which Mrs. Makely regretsso much?"

  "I!" our hostess protested. But then she perceived that he was joking,and she let me answer.

  I said that I had seen them nearly all, during the past year, in NewEngland and in the West, but they appeared to me inalienable of thesimpler life of the country, and that I was not surprised they should nothave found an evolution in the more artificial society of the cities.

  "I see," he returned, "that you reserve your _opinion_ of our moreartificial society; but you may be sure that our reporters will get itout of you yet before you leave us."

  "Those horrid reporters!" one of the ladies irrelevantly sighed.

  The gentleman resumed: "In the mean time, I don't mind saying how itstrikes me. I think you are quite right about the indigenous Americanthings being adapted only to the simpler life of the country and thesmaller towns. It is so everywhere. As soon as people become at allrefined they look down upon what is their own as something vulgar. But itis peculiarly so with us. We have nothing national that is not connectedwith the life of work, and when we begin to live the life of pleasure wemust borrow from the people abroad, who have always lived the life ofpleasure."

  "Mr. Homos, you know," Mrs. Makely explained for me, as if this were theaptest moment, "thinks we all ought to work. He thinks we oughtn't tohave any servants."

  "Oh no, my dear lady," I put in. "I don't think that of you as you_are_. None of you could see more plainly than I do that in yourconditions you _must_ have servants, and that you cannot possiblywork unless poverty obliges you."

  The other ladies had turned upon me with surprise and horror at Mrs.Makely's words, but they now apparently relented, as if I had fullyredeemed myself from the charge made against me. Mrs. Strange aloneseemed to have found nothing monstrous in my supposed position."Sometimes," she said, "I wish we had to work, all of us, and that wecould be freed from our servile bondage to servants."

  Several of the ladies admitted that it was the greatest slavery in theworld, and that it would be comparative luxury to do one's own work. Butthey all asked, in one form or another, what were they to do, and Mrs.Strange owned that she did not know. The facetious gentleman asked me howthe ladies did in Altruria, and when I told them, as well as I could,they were, of course, very civil about it, but I could see that they allthought it impossible, or, if not impossible, then ridiculous. I did notfeel bound to defend our customs, and I knew very well that each womanthere was imagining herself in our conditions with the curse of herplutocratic tradition still upon her. They could not do otherwise, any ofthem, and they seemed to get tired of such effort as they did make.

  Mrs. Makely rose, and the other ladies rose with her, for the Americansfollow the English custom in letting the men remain at table after thewomen have left. But on this occasion I found it varied by a pretty touchfrom the French custom, and the men, instead of merely standing up whilethe women filed out, gave each his arm, as far as the drawing-room, tothe lady he had brought in to dinner. Then we went back, and what is thepleasantest part of the dinner to most men began for us.