In America (18 page)

Last night Bogdan and I claimed an evening for ourselves, and dined at Delmonico's, a restaurant reputed to be the best in the city. I can report that the nabobs here are as richly fed and sedate in their movements as those in Vienna and Paris. Outside, all is restlessness and noise. Wagons, carriages, omnibuses, horse-cars, streetcars, jostling pedestrians make each corner crossing an adventure; every building is covered with signs and there are men hired to be walking kiosks, festooned front and back, even on their heads, with advertisements, while others shove leaflets into the hands of every passerby or toss them by the fistful into the streetcars; bootblacks plead for clients from their little stands, peddlers shout from their carts, and bands of musicians, mostly German, blare their horns and tubas at you. I was surprised to see so many Germans, more numerous even than the Irish and Italians, with each nation having its own quarter. Henryk, there is so much misery and poverty here. And crime: we are constantly being warned not to venture where the poor live, for the danger of being attacked and robbed by bands of roughs is very great. Jakub is the most daring among us in exploring these teeming parts of the city; he has already filled five albums with sketches. Yesterday he spent the afternoon in the neighborhood of Jews, poor Jews of course, who look much as they do in Kraków, the dark-bearded men in skullcaps still wearing their long black coats in this atrocious heat.

Which brings me to my only complaint. I have never known such heat. All of us are suffering. Piotr has a rash. Danuta's younger girl cries all the time. Feeling hot means that I feel overdressed—I suppose I
am
overdressed—though less than the women here, who still wear hoops and, as Danuta, Wanda, Barbara, and I have noticed, stare enviously (so I imagine) at our slim skirts. Of course, we walk a great deal after we disembark from the ferry. Yesterday, while we were strolling on Broadway, the principal street here, a large woman girded by an enormous hoop under her heavy black skirt crumpled to the sidewalk before our eyes. I thought she was seriously ill but, no, a fellow stroller said this happens often in August, and a cabman unfastened his horse's pail of water and unceremoniously sprinkled some on her face, whereupon she was helped to her feet and without any embarrassment went on her way. I know it is imprudent to remain so much in the sun, but we have no hotel to retreat to. If Piotr had his way, we would be taking refuge once an hour in an ice-cream parlor. Ice cream here, made by Italians, is delicious. He's also fond of an Indian delicacy sold on the street, dry airy lumps made by exploding kernels of white corn, and the small brown pea-nuts sheathed in a pale soft pod, but these I find quite indigestible. People here drink even more water than wine with their meals, and in winter as well as summer the water is drunk very cold: the glass is filled with small cube-shaped pieces of ice—I'm sure you will think this quite unhealthy. Today, in vain search of coolness some of us visited the vast park just completed north of the city; it is called the Central Park, though there is nothing central about it. Nor much that is parklike either, if truth be told—do not imagine anything like a newer park in Kraków, much less our stately, leafy Planty—for most of the trees are too young yet to give any shade.

The Polish community is small, many more of our compatriots having settled in the west, in Chicago. Bogdan has visited some of the leaders, who told him of their desire to organize a reception in my honor. I feel that I must decline, much as I regret disappointing them. They want to welcome the person I have ceased to be. But the actress who was cannot stifle her curiosity about the theatre, and August, besides being the hottest month, is also the beginning of the season. Indeed, as Heinrich rudely warned me, theatre here does seem to mean something other than what it means
chez nous
and in Vienna and Paris. The public expects to be entertained, not elevated, and is most entertained by the grandiose and the bizarre. We had thought of seeing Offenbach's
La Grande-Duchesse,
playing on one of the largest stages here, until we learned that it was being performed by the Mexican Juvenile Opera Company and that the prima donna, Señorita Niña Carmen y Morón, was eight years old. Can you imagine hearing the Duchess's
“Dites-lui qu'on l'a remarqué”
—is there a more ravishing love song?—in the shrill squeaking voice of a small girl! Something for Piotr perhaps, though I suppose he would have enjoyed even more the program at another theatre, which included George France and his dogs, Don Caesar and Bruno, the Hansell Troupe of Alpine Warblers, Jenny Turnour the Trapeze Queen, and a Herr Cline, who dances a
pas de deux
on the high wire with his grandmother. No Shakespeare in any of the theatres, alas, even though I have been assured that no dramatic author is performed as often in America as Shakespeare. Apart from farces and melodramas that seem not worth risking, even out of curiosity, there is only a light comedy, English of course, called
Our American Cousin,
which has enjoyed an unstoppable popularity throughout the country for the last eleven years because it was while watching this play from a box with his wife and members of his government that President Lincoln was murdered—by a deranged actor, as you'll recall. Proper plays are almost all English or French but, while Wagner is adored by the New York public, there is no interest in the great German dramatists. Should you want to see some Schiller, you must go to one of the German-language theatres, where you will see him performed by a second-rate touring company from Munich or Berlin. And, since it's unthinkable to present a play by Krasiński or Slowacki or Fredro in English and there are not enough Poles in New York to support a Polish-language theatre, our own sublime dramatists remain quite unknown here.

I would dearly have liked to see one of the eminent American actors whose reputations have reached Europe, but none are on view now. We did go to the magnificent theatre owned by one of these actors, Edwin Booth (it was his younger brother who assassinated Mr. Lincoln), which has opened with a tragic drama by Lord Byron,
Sardanapalus.
It seems petty to note that the acting left little to the imagination—your Mr. Darwin would have approved!—given that the play has been turned into a vast and ingenious spectacle. Loud music, towering décor, a hundred performers milling about an immense stage—that's what the public here most appreciates. Besides a dozen actors in the principal roles, the “Italian ballet” in Act Two had—I am looking now at the program—“four first-class dancers, eight coryphées, six ballet ladies, ninety-nine supers, twenty-four negro boys, twelve chorus women, eight chorus men, and forty-eight extra ladies”! Imagine all these cavorting about while the stage machinery produces the most astonishing effects: an entire scene may rise from the floor or drop out of sight. The last act ended with a stupendous conflagration, which the audience appreciated mightily, as did we.

Here biggest is best—a prejudice perhaps no more unsound than thinking oldest is best. Booth's Theatre, which seats almost two thousand people with standing room for hundreds more, is far from the largest. Larger still is Steinway Hall, where, we were solemnly informed, Anton Rubinstein made his American debut. Seeking to impress Bogdan, I refrained from mentioning, ever so casually, that the great pianist was a frequent guest at our Tuesday evenings in Warsaw. It occurs to me that, for all their boasts about having the biggest and the most of everything, Americans, when it comes to art, are surprisingly devoid of patriotic self-confidence. It is false to say that the public craves only plebeian entertainments. But it is assumed that performances of quality come from abroad. Foreign actors make quite a splash here and, if French or Italian, are expected to perform in their own language, which no one understands. Rachel triumphed with
Adrienne Lecouvreur
at the biggest theatre in the city, the Metropolitan, some twenty years ago; and ten years ago Ristori made a very successful, lucrative tour throughout the country. Thinking about this now, I confess to feeling a twinge of envy. But, no, don't conclude that I dream of resuming my career here. In what language? No one would want to hear our native tongue, and the other in which I have been trained to act, German, is also considered fit only for the immigrant public.

I shall not grumble about a play called
The Mighty Dollar
that we saw at Wallack's Theatre, ending our sampling of what is on at the theatres. At Gilmore's Garden we heard Madame Pappenheim, Emilie Pappenheim, a soprano, in concert; Bogdan and I found her less interesting than her audience, which was most enthusiastic, applauding at every trill. At a French art gallery, Michel Knoedler's, we saw a room of dull paintings, and at the New-York Historical Society (there is no museum here worth speaking of) we came upon marble bas-relief sculptures taken from the palace of Sardanapalus—a nice surprise after having seen their fanciful rendering in papier-mâché during our Byronic evening. We take Piotr with us everywhere, and viewing the city through his eyes keeps me from being too fastidious: the child is enchanted by everything. This can't be said of the other child in my custody—I mean Aniela, our new servant—to whom everything is merely incomprehensible. She was told she was going to America, but Warsaw must have been an America to her (she had never been out of her natal village), after which she found herself on a train (she had never seen a train), in a hotel in a foreign city, in a hotel on water, as she called our steamship, and now here. When we walk I hear the constant refrain, “Oh, Madame! Oh, Madame!” Imagine me with my little boy on one side and this pudgy horse-faced girl on the other, both of them clasping my hands in apprehension and astonishment. You had a glimpse of her at the station and, knowing my appreciation of beauty in all forms, may wonder that I engaged her. I also surprised everyone at the orphanage in Szymanów by choosing her among the six girls reared there who had been selected for me to interview. One of the nuns took me aside to warn me I was making a mistake, that Aniela's proficiency in sewing and cooking was far inferior to that of the others. Why then did I take her? Well—you'll smile—it was because of her voice. When I asked her if she knew how to sing, she stared at me, mouth agape, then without first closing her mouth (but closing her eyes tightly) sang two Latin hymns and “God Save Poland,” one after another. I know it sounds comical, but her singing moved me to tears. I could tell she had a sweet disposition, the girl is only sixteen, and Danuta and Wanda will teach her to cook and sew. To tell the truth, I need a few lessons myself! Any female can learn to keep house, but who would think of teaching this child how to sing?

I can see, though, that I shall have to teach her everything else. First of all, not to be afraid of the world. Second, not to be afraid of me. I had asked her before we left Warsaw if she had everything she needed for her new life, which I tried, with little success, to describe to her. As if this were a test she must not fail, she cried, “Oh yes, Madame. Everything!” I discovered after we started the journey that she had only one dress, a scarf, a torn smock, and a quilted fustian jacket to her name. The proprietor of the inn in Hoboken has advised us to buy clothing here before setting out for California, since everything in the big stores is marked down because of the “panic” I mentioned earlier. So you may imagine your Desdemona yesterday going from store to store, engaged in earnest conversation with clerks over a coat, a skirt, a shirtwaist, and some very practical undergarments. The store of stores here, A. T. Stewart, a cast-iron palace occupying a whole city block, is said to be the largest in the world; but I prefer a smaller emporium, Macy's, which has just opened a boy's clothing department whose sensible array of goods bitterly disappointed Piotr. He was expecting that I could purchase for him there an Apache feather headdress and loincloth, and for the rest of the day remained quite inconsolable!

 

15 August

 

Piotr has forgiven me for disappointing him: yesterday we visited the Centennial Exposition.

The trip was itself a spectacle, inside the train as well as looking out the windows, since it appears that the cars on American trains, even in so-called first class, are not divided into compartments. For some two and a half hours we had an intimate view of a fixed number of perspiring strangers, and they of us, perspiring just as profusely while trying to keep some shred of useless Old World dignity. Most passengers were
en famille
and carrying hampers of food and drink, the genial offering of which, whether accepted or not, gave them the right to be friendly—which, in America, means asking questions. What country we came from, if we were going to the Centennial, and what we wanted to see. “It's too big to see everything,” we were told again and again. There were only seven of us, for Barbara and Aleksander, once they learned that Philadelphia lay to the south and was likely to be even hotter, remained in Hoboken; nothing could persuade them to share this keenly anticipated excursion with us. Danuta and Cyprian were able to come because they could leave their little girls with Aniela, but Danuta has sought reassurance that they will not suffer so much when we reach California. Suffer! Even as I remind them that California is famed for its ideal, temperate climate, I worry that they haven't understood how arduous in other ways our life there, at least for the first months, may be.

Philadelphia, what we saw of it between the station and the Exposition grounds outside the city, is older, handsomer, and cleaner than Manhattan. I missed the hubbub of Manhattan! But enough people for the most avid connoisseur of crowds were awaiting us at the Exposition, which has already received several million visitors since it opened in May.

There was no way we could see everything of interest in one day. Imagine, Henryk, the largest edifice in the world, the Exposition's Main Building, a colossal structure of wood, iron, and glass five times longer and ten times wider than the
Donau!
Imagine—but you have undoubtedly read about it in our papers or the German papers. Indeed, you should have been able to read an account by Ryszard; I know he promised the
Gazeta Polska
at least one article about the Centennial. But, as we learned from the letter waiting for us at the hotel in Bremen, our carefree young journalist never went to Philadelphia. He wrote that he was too impatient to leave, and would make some articles out of the transcontinental journey instead, such as Chicago rising from the ashes after their Great Fire of five years ago. And once he reached the Western Territories, he would finally see live Indians, if only in mournful procession, fleeing the invincible government troops who protect the pioneers. This made me smile. For Chicago, where Ryszard would have spent only a few hours, must be already completely rebuilt; Henryk, in America five years is a very long time! And the most recent battle with the Indians, early this summer, resulted in ignominious defeat for the cavalry and the death of their leader, General Custer. Since Ryszard has such a great imagination—perhaps even more necessary for a journalist than for an actor—I won't be surprised if you tell me he did send back an article on the Centennial Exposition!