CHAPTER XIX.
V. CHEVILLERE TO B. RANDOLPH.
"New-York, 18--.
"DEAR FRIEND,
"Certainly I must be one of the most unfortunate fellows that ever lived. And none the less so because the bitter strokes come upon me in the midst of apparent prosperity; but before I tell you of one disappointment, I must tell you of the things which preceded it, in the order of their occurrence.
"On the evening after the assemblage of our little party at Hazlehurst's, Lamar, Damon, and myself went to the Italian Opera; and to please Lamar no less than Damon, we took seats in the pit.
"The assemblage was brilliant beyond any thing I have seen, in the two lower tiers of boxes. All the fashion, and wealth, and beauty of this fair city seemed to be assembled around us, with their gay plumage and foreign head-attire, and opera-glasses. As a shading to this gay picture, there were the gentlemen, with enormous whiskers and mustaches curling sentimentally and greasily over the upper lip; their teeth glistening through the bristles, ghastly as Peale's mummy itself.
"The passion for hairy visages is a singular characteristic of this phrenological age. Large and frizzled locks puffed out on each side of the head to hide the absence of development are easily enough accounted for; but this supererogatory disfiguration of ugly faces is altogether unaccountable on the same principles.
"'I'll be dad shamed if it ain't all cowardice, and I hate to see it practised,' said Damon.
"There is, perhaps, more truth in this remark than you would at first suppose. No man is so desirous to appear fierce, courageous, and even piratical as he that is a dastard in his heart. Indeed most men are fond of making a parade of those qualifications with which they are least endowed by nature.
"There is one bewhiskered class, however, from whom we ought to expect better things; I mean young and thoughtless men, who are led away by fashion; many of whom have rubbed through the walls, if not through the studies, of college; and whose taste ought to have been more refined by associating with gentlemen, however great their stolidity or idleness.
"Finally, as to whiskers, I have seen most of the American naval and military heroes; and I cannot now recall a single one of them who ever wore remarkable whiskers, or bristles on the upper lip. Nor have I ever seen a polished southern gentleman remarkable for either. There is one fact which, if generally known, would root out the evil at its source; and that is, that men who flourish large whiskers are very apt to become _bald_!
"'O! corn-stalks and jews-harps!' said Damon, after worrying on his seat during the performance of the overture by the orchestra; 'will they tune their banjoes all night, and never get to playin?'
"'That is called fine Italian music,' said Lamar.
"'Yes! yes!' replied he, 'there's 'four-and-twenty fiddlers' sure enough! but I rather suspicion that it would puzzle some of our Kentuck gals to dance a reel to that music. O my grandmother! what jaunty heels they would have to sling after such elbow-greese as that. But you are stuffing me with soft corn--I see you are by your laughing. They know better than to pass that for music; no, no, catch a weasel asleep!'
"The opera now commenced, and I must own that I saw more of Damon than I did of the play. He was struck dumb with astonishment; seemed scarcely to believe his own senses, but looking round the house after an unusual silence, and seeing the audience serious and apparently attentive, he burst into a cachinnation.
"'Well,' said he, with a long breath, 'I wish I may be tetotally smashed in a cider-mill, if that don't out-Cherokee old Kentuck; why that ain't a chaw-tobacco better nor Cherokee! Just wait a minute, and they'll raise the whoop, it's likely; and if they do, if I don't give them a touch of Kentuck pipes that'll make them think somebody's busted their biler. Look! some of the men have got rings in their ears too; and leather skinned. Now I'm snagged if I was to meet that feller in a Mississip cane-brake, and my rifle on my arm, if I wouldn't be apt to let the wind through his whistle cross-ways.'
"'Not if he was to speak to you, and tell you he was a Christian like yourself?'
"'Speak to me! he would do a devilish sight better to play dummy: for sure as he spoke, I should let fly at him, because I wouldn't know but he belonged to some of those far away tribes of Black-feet, or the likes of that.'
"'But you do not really think that they look and speak any thing like the western savages, Damon?' said I.
"'I'm smashed if I don't bet that I can put blankets and leggins on the whole tribe, and pass them through the Cherokee nation for friendly Black-feet.'
"The incomparable Prima Donna (as she is called here) now made her first appearance; her voice is exquisite, Randolph, and her execution beyond the conception of an unsophisticated student.
"The music is pleasing to the ear, and may touch an Italian heart, but it found no response from mine. I tell this to you in all sincerity and confidence, but it would lower a man, I fear, to say so in the fashionable circles.
"'Well, Damon, would the Italian ladies pass for squaws?'
"'No, no; they are better than the men, and they are right pretty too, if they didn't talk such outlandish gibberish; but that dark skinn'd man there, I swear Pete Ironsides would kick him if he was to go in my stable; for he hates an Injin, as I do an allegator; poor Pete! I reckon he thinks I'm skulped.'
"'Pete is well cared for, I will guaranty,' said Lamar, very pathetically.
"'Look! look!' exclaimed Damon; 'what's that under the green umbrella there, at the front of the stage among the lights?'
"'That is the prompter, to put them right when they go wrong.'
"'Yes, yes! I see, I see!' continued he; 'he gives them a wink every now and then.'
"In the operas it is very frequently the case that one of the subordinate characters comes to the front of the stage after the principals have made their exit, and explains what rare sport is coming.
"'What does that fellow slip out here every now and then like a dropped stitch for?'
"We explained to him the meaning of it, as well as we understood it ourselves.
"'Ay, ay! I see it now; he is the Nota Bene!'
"We found great difficulty in getting Damon to understand, with his shrewd natural view of things, that an opera was nothing more than a common play; the parts being sung, instead of spoken.
"'Now I wish my head may be knocked into a cocked-hat, if a man had told this to me of the Yorkers in old Kentuck, if I wouldn't have thought he was spinnin long yarns; there is no sense in it, nor there's no fun in it, as they all take it up there in the pews; if so moutbe now that they were all of my way of thinking, and would only join in a _leetle_ touch of the warwhoop, why we might show them fellers a little of the real Cherokee, that I rather suspicion they haven't seen.'
"'Why, what would you do, Damon?'
"'_Jist_ set them four-and-twenty fiddlers to playin of something like Christian reels; hand the gals down on the floor; then I reckon there would be a little sort of a regular hand-round! Confound their jimmy simequivers, and their supple elbows! Smash me, if they don't think the whole cream of the ball lies in rattlin the bones of their elbows. Give me your long sweeping bow hands, that saws the music right in under your ribs, and sets your legs to dancin, whether they will or not. Do you think them fellers ever made anybody feel in the humour for a hand-round?'
"'I can't say that I think they ever did.'
"'No, nor they never will! they may set people's teeth on a wire edge, or make their flesh crawl, or set them into an ague fit with their shakin, and grindin, and squawkin. And now I think of it, the whol
e business sounds more like grinding ramrods in an armory, than any thing I ever come across; there's the squeakin of the wheels, that would go for them goose guzzles them fellers are pipin on. The ramrods on the grindstones will go for the fiddles,--only I don't see any fire flyin out of the catgut, but I've been watchin sharp for it some time. Then there's the old leather bellows groanin and gruntin away, jist like those two fellers seesawin there, on them two big-bellied fiddles, and the leather bands flappin every time they come round, keeps the time for the whole concern.'
"'Well, have you seen any fire yet?' after a long pause.
"'Yes, plenty of it! they make it fly out of my eyes, if they don't out of the catguts; confound them, I say, they keep me all the time drawin down first one eye and then another, first one corner of my mouth and then another, jist as if a horse was on a dead strain, and you were bowing your neck and stickin your leg straight in the ground, and then strainin with all your might as if you could help him; but this is worse! a confounded sight worse! for every now and then all the fiddlers and trumpeters comes rattlin down their tinklin quivers, like a four-horse load of china, goin to the devil down a steep hill at the rate of ten knots an hour; and then it all dies away agin, as if horses, wagon, and chinaware had all gone over a bank as high as a church steeple. Then! I begin to draw a long breath agin, and feel a little comfortable. But here's a dyin away sound! hop and come agin, rising and whooping, until the whole team's going full tilt, pull dick, pull devil, here they go again! old Nick take the hindmost. See their elbows now, how they move out and in, out and in, like spinning jinnies. And see that feller that sets at the top of the mob, on the high chair in the middle, how his head goes. See how he looks at that book before him, as if that stuff could be put down there in black and white.'
"'It _is_ all down there, Damon.'
"'Come, come, now, strangers, you have stuffed me enough! I can't swallow that exactly neither! All the lawyers in Philadelphia couldn't write down half the wriggle-ma-rees one of them chaps has made since I set here! Smash my apple-cart, if I wouldn't like jist to see a goosequill goin at the rate of one of them elbows. Ink would fly like mud at a scrub-race, and when it was done it would look like my copy-book used to do at school; more stops than words.'
"'But you keep your eye on the orchestra all the while; why not look on the stage?'
"'I do, I do; and that puzzles me the blamedest,--how they all come out square at the stops, fiddlers and all. Every now and then they seem to git into a fair race, and one feller's eye is poppin out of his head, and the veins on the woman's neck is ready to burst, and the fiddlers and the pipers and the trumpeters are all puffin and blowin, like our Kentuck jockeys at a pony sweepstakes; and then all at once, jist as there begins to be a little sport, to see who has the wind and the bottom, their heads begin to move first one side and then the other all so kind, and ready to make a draw game of it, blabbering all the time; till the trumpeter sees they're pretty well blown, then he begins to come down a little with his toot! toot! toot! That's to call all hands off, you see, and they slip down as easy and as quiet as if it had all been in fun. Then they all clear out but one, and he watches his chance till they're all gone. Then he comes here to the front, and flaps his wings and crows over them, as if he had done some great things, if we hadn't been here to show fair play.'
"I am sure, Randolph, that I give you but a poor idea of the reality, but you must supply the deficiencies by your imagination. Damon talked incessantly, and I enjoyed it far more than I could have done the opera, even if I had been a perfect Italian scholar. I find that I must defer the account of our disappointment till another time, when I will tell you some matters of interest.
"Truly yours,
"V. CHEVILLERE."
END OF VOL. I.
* * * * *
Transcriber's note:
Alternate, archaic, and inconsistent spelling of some words have been retained.
Punctuation has been made consistent including the use of quotation marks.
page 36: "faintin" changed to "faintin'" (a faintin' spell).
page 57: "ear" changed to "dear" (Believe me, dear lady,).
page 114: "doggrel" changed to "doggerel" so as to be consistent with other places this word is used (and singing doggerel to the music).
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