The Potiphar Papers | Page 9

might have been many and
various. But we all acknowledge the fact. On the other hand, and about
the same time, a lovely damsel (ah! Clorinda,) whose father was not
wealthy, who had no prospective means of support, who could do
nothing but polka to perfection, who literally knew almost nothing, and
who constantly shocked every fairly intelligent person by the glaring
ignorance betrayed in her remarks, informed a friend at one of the
Saratoga balls, whither he had made haste to meet "the best society,"
that there were "not more than three good matches in society!" _La
Dame aux Camélias_, Marie Duplessis, was, to our fancy, a much more
feminine, and admirable, and moral, and human person, than the adored
Clorinda. And yet what she said was the legitimate result of the state of
our fashionable society. It worships wealth, and the pomp which wealth
can purchase, more than virtue, genius, or beauty. We may be told that
it has always been so in every country, and that the fine society of all
lands is as profuse and flashy as our own. We deny it, flatly. Neither
English, nor French, nor Italian, nor German society, is so unspeakably
barren as that which is technically called "society" here. In London, and
Paris, and Vienna, and Rome, all the really eminent men and women
help make up the mass of society. A party is not a mere ball, but it is a
congress of the wit, beauty, and fame of the capital. It is worth while to
dress, if you shall meet Macaulay, or Hallam, or Guizot, or Thiers, or
Landseer, or Delaroche,--Mrs. Norton, the Misses Berry, Madame
Recamier, and all the brilliant women and famous foreigners. But why
should we desert the pleasant pages of those men, and the recorded
gossip of those women, to be squeezed flat against a wall, while young
Doughface pours oyster gravy down our shirt front, and Carolina
Pettitoes wonders at "Mr. Düsseldorf's" industry?
If intelligent people decline to go, you justly remark, it is their own
fault. Yes, but if they stay away it is very certainly their great gain. The
elderly people are always neglected with us, and nothing surprises
intelligent strangers more, than the tyrannical supremacy of Young
America. But we are not surprised at this neglect. How can we be if we

have our eyes open? When Caroline Pettitoes retreats from the floor to
the sofa, and instead of a "polker" figures at parties as a matron, do you
suppose that "tough old Joes" like ourselves are going to desert the
young Caroline upon the floor, for Madame Pettitoes upon the sofa? If
the pretty young Caroline, with youth, health, freshness, a fine, budding
form, and wreathed in a semi-transparent haze of flounced and
flowered gauze, is so vapid that we prefer to accost her with our eyes
alone, and not with our tongues, is the same Caroline married into a
Madame Pettitoes, and fanning herself upon a sofa,--no longer
particularly fresh, nor young, nor pretty, and no longer budding but
very fully blown,--likely to be fascinating in conversation? We cannot
wonder that the whole connection of Pettitoes, when advanced to the
matron state, is entirely neglected. Proper homage to age we can all pay
at home, to our parents and grandparents. Proper respect for some
persons is best preserved by avoiding their neighborhood.
And what, think you, is the influence of this extravagant expense and
senseless show upon these same young men and women? We can easily
discover. It saps their noble ambition, assails their health, lowers their
estimate of men and their reverence for women, cherishes an eager and
aimless rivalry, weakens true feeling, wipes away the bloom of true
modesty, and induces an ennui, a satiety, and a kind of dilettante
misanthropy, which is only the more monstrous because it is
undoubtedly real. You shall hear young men of intelligence and
cultivation, to whom the unprecedented circumstances of this country
offer opportunities of a great and beneficent career, complaining that
they were born within this blighted circle--regretting that they were not
bakers and tallow-chandlers, and under no obligation to keep up
appearances--deliberately surrendering all the golden possibilities of
that Future which this country, beyond all others, holds before
them--sighing that they are not rich enough to marry the girls they love,
and bitterly upbraiding fortune that they are not
millionnaires--suffering the vigor of their years to exhale in idle wishes
and pointless regrets--disgracing their manhood by lying in wait behind
their "so gentlemanly" and "aristocratic" manners, until they can
pounce upon a "fortune" and ensnare an heiress into matrimony: and so
having dragged their gifts, their horses of the sun, into a service which
shames out of them all their native pride and power, they sink in the

mire, and