第8章

FROM MISS STURDY, AT NEWPORT, TO MRS.DRAPER, IN FLORENCE.

September 30.

I promised to tell you how I like it, but the truth is, I have gone to and fro so often that I have ceased to like and dislike.Nothing strikes me as unexpected; I expect everything in its order.Then, too, you know, I am not a critic; I have no talent for keen analysis, as the magazines say; I don't go into the reasons of things.It is true I have been for a longer time than usual on the wrong side of the water, and I admit that I feel a little out of training for American life.They are breaking me in very fast, however.I don't mean that they bully me; I absolutely decline to be bullied.I say what I think, because I believe that I have, on the whole, the advantage of knowing what I think--when I think anything--which is half the battle.Sometimes, indeed, I think nothing at all.They don't like that over here; they like you to have impressions.That they like these impressions to be favourable appears to me perfectly natural; I don't make a crime to them of that; it seems to me, on the contrary, a very amiable quality.When individuals have it, we call them sympathetic; I don't see why we shouldn't give nations the same benefit.But there are things Ihaven't the least desire to have an opinion about.The privilege of indifference is the dearest one we possess, and I hold that intelligent people are known by the way they exercise it.Life is full of rubbish, and we have at least our share of it over here.

When you wake up in the morning you find that during the night a cartload has been deposited in your front garden.I decline, however, to have any of it in my premises; there are thousands of things I want to know nothing about.I have outlived the necessity of being hypocritical; I have nothing to gain and everything to lose.When one is fifty years old--single, stout, and red in the face--one has outlived a good many necessities.They tell me over here that my increase of weight is extremely marked, and though they don't tell me that I am coarse, I am sure they think me so.There is very little coarseness here--not quite enough, I think--though there is plenty of vulgarity, which is a very different thing.On the whole, the country is becoming much more agreeable.It isn't that the people are charming, for that they always were (the best of them, I mean, for it isn't true of the others), but that places and things as well have acquired the art of pleasing.The houses are extremely good, and they look so extraordinarily fresh and clean.

European interiors, in comparison, seem musty and gritty.We have a great deal of taste; I shouldn't wonder if we should end by inventing something pretty; we only need a little time.Of course, as yet, it's all imitation, except, by the way, these piazzas.I am sitting on one now; I am writing to you with my portfolio on my knees.This broad light loggia surrounds the house with a movement as free as the expanded wings of a bird, and the wandering airs come up from the deep sea, which murmurs on the rocks at the end of the lawn.Newport is more charming even than you remember it; like everything else over here, it has improved.It is very exquisite today; it is, indeed, I think, in all the world, the only exquisite watering-place, for I detest the whole genus.The crowd has left it now, which makes it all the better, though plenty of talkers remain in these large, light, luxurious houses, which are planted with a kind of Dutch definiteness all over the green carpet of the cliff.

This carpet is very neatly laid and wonderfully well swept, and the sea, just at hand, is capable of prodigies of blue.Here and there a pretty woman strolls over one of the lawns, which all touch each other, you know, without hedges or fences; the light looks intense as it plays upon her brilliant dress; her large parasol shines like a silver dome.The long lines of the far shores are soft and pure, though they are places that one hasn't the least desire to visit.

Altogether the effect is very delicate, and anything that is delicate counts immensely over here; for delicacy, I think, is as rare as coarseness.I am talking to you of the sea, however, without having told you a word of my voyage.It was very comfortable and amusing; I should like to take another next month.

You know I am almost offensively well at sea--that I breast the weather and brave the storm.We had no storm fortunately, and I had brought with me a supply of light literature; so I passed nine days on deck in my sea-chair, with my heels up, reading Tauchnitz novels.

There was a great lot of people, but no one in particular, save some fifty American girls.You know all about the American girl, however, having been one yourself.They are, on the whole, very nice, but fifty is too many; there are always too many.There was an inquiring Briton, a radical M.P., by name Mr.Antrobus, who entertained me as much as any one else.He is an excellent man; Ieven asked him to come down here and spend a couple of days.He looked rather frightened, till I told him he shouldn't be alone with me, that the house was my brother's, and that I gave the invitation in his name.He came a week ago; he goes everywhere; we have heard of him in a dozen places.The English are very simple, or at least they seem so over here.Their old measurements and comparisons desert them; they don't know whether it's all a joke, or whether it's too serious by half.We are quicker than they, though we talk so much more slowly.We think fast, and yet we talk as deliberately as if we were speaking a foreign language.They toss off their sentences with an air of easy familiarity with the tongue, and yet they misunderstand two-thirds of what people say to them.Perhaps, after all, it is only OUR thoughts they think slowly; they think their own often to a lively tune enough.Mr.Antrobus arrived here at eight o'clock in the morning; I don't know how he managed it; it appears to be his favourite hour; wherever we have heard of him he has come in with the dawn.In England he would arrive at 5.30 p.m.