A BOOK OF THE MOMENT.

THE FABULOUS 'FORTIES, 1840-1850.

The Fabulous 'Forties, 1840-1850. By Meade Minnigerode. (Putnam. 7s. 6d. net.)

THIS is a very amusing book, in spite of a certain grimness and hardness in the manner of recording the amazing social and intellectual vagaries of America during the period between

1840 and 1850. Never in human history was a nation superfi- cially in so crazy and so ridiculous a condition as were the United States in the 'forties. The decade was one long • scream. The people did not know where they were, what • they wanted or did not want ; what was going to happen or who was to lead them. And over all this welter of perturba- tion, restlessness, mental affliction, anxiety and folly, tears of sham sentiment, useless sharpness, imbecile pride, tumid self-consciousness and futile laughter, presided a mocking and sardonic Fiend—" that acrid Asiatic mirth," which 'fifty years later Kipling pronounced to be at once the poison and the antiseptic of the American spirit.

The great Republic was making a tragic fool or itself and then grinning bitterly, nastily, almost tragically, at the result. Hence in reading one knows not whether more to be amused or to be ashamed at our kinsmen's absurdities. If they had been foreigners we could give ourselves wholly up to entertainment at the inanities depicted with so ruthless a hand by Mr. Minnigerode. As, however, we are hearing of the doings of a very near relation in his green youth we cannot help blushing, or,, at any rate, feeling uncomfortable. It is like reading ill-natured gossip about a person now a very august and prosperous member of the family, one endowed with great responsibilities and destined before long to be the most important member of the kin, if not, indeed, its head.

We are embarrassed by hearing how, when he was in the hobbledehoy stage, he used to get tipsy on "ginger-pop," dress himself like a mountebank, and play the accordion in the scullery. Now it was hymn tunes, now " She wore a wreath of roses," and now knowing negro melodies.

What it was that turned the young gentleman so " queer" in the 'forties is a question which suggests many answers not a little curious. At that same period Britain was hungry and unhappy, but not hysterical :—

"The rich preached rights and future days, And heard no angels scoffing.

The poor died mute, with starving gaze On corn ships in the offing."

In France they were pouring out their blood on the barricades and demanding to "live working or die fighting." In Italy the land reeled and heaved and swayed under the heel of the Austrians, as the slopes of Etna or Vesuvius shiver when

the Titan awakes and stretches his limbs in his fiery dungeon. Even Germany grew uneasy and began to wonder whether, after all, drill and beer, metaphysics and painted china pipes, " Verboten " notices and symphonic music were all that man needed here below. We wonder whether these reactions, psychological, physical, so strange and so various, were not after all fundamentally connected. Shall I be thought a currency crank, and so a creature beyond the pale of human sympathy, if I suggest that a constriction of the media of exchange—i.e., of the rolling stock of commerce—was the real cause of all this hysteria, comic and tragic? At any rate there is a fact fully germane to this review which suggests that I am right. The book ends with a chapter on the gold diggings, " Ho ! for California," and a very interesting chapter it is. The Fabulous 'Forties in America, as the Hungry 'Forties here, and the Bloody 'Forties in France, Italy and Germany, ended with the vast addition to the media of exchange caused by the new gold washed from the

Pactoli of the West. The world, as if by a miracle, grew comparatively sane and prosperous. The 'fifties and 'sixties threw off their woeful weeds and crazy garlands, and began to attend to the more prosaic sides of life. It is true that• this new way of life led to many great and tragic happenings, but at any rate the world was no longer sad without sagacity, or frivolous without happiness, as it had been in the 'forties —the epoch of constriction. What a strange fate! How humiliating it seems that man should be sent crazy, by dearth of the circulating medium. What a thing to remembet after long years—to remember with tears and laughter. But that may not be all. Can we be, sure as we read that the inscription below this grinning death's head on the grave- stone is not applicable to us : "It was our case yesterday. It will be yours to-morrow " ?

But I must quit such tragi-comedy and return to the realities of "A Book of the Moment." It was not written to be taken too gravely, and it should not be reviewed in too serious a vein.

• Most amusing is the account of the visit of "the Divine Fanny "—i.e., Fanny Elssler to the United States in the spring of 1840. Miss Elssler was very unhappy at leaving Europe, and frightened by the voyage, and still more by the thought of the fierce and holy zealots who, as she supposed, were "hushed in grim repose" awaiting their evening's prey ! Would they -yield to the fascinations of her rhythmic spells, her flying feet, her harmonious bounds and incomparable postures, or would they, would they not hiss her off the stage as the Scarlet Woman? She need not have worried. The Puritan men and maids of the Atlantic States were quite ready to be demoralized by those enchanting heels and toes. The thing went with a roar. Here is Mr. Minnigerode's account of her reception and of her feelings :— " What a moment, in the silence of her room, while Mr. Hone and his friends were gathering out front. Perhaps she thought of Naples, of the silly old King of Prussia, of I.ondon and Paris, of Mr. von Gentz, of the white-clad boy in Austria who was dead now. Perhaps she wished that her father had never allowed her to visit the Opera, that one fatal time in Vienna. Perhaps she powdered her nose. And the manager outside the door, biting his nails, and sister Katty running back and forth, bubbling over in German about a pair of slippers mislaid, perhaps, or some dread- fully expensive flowers, possibly, sent by some important non- entity.'

Here is Fanny Elssler's story of the great night in her own words :— " I had hardly strength to walk upon the stage. The curtain rose, and breathless silence prevailed ; the music struck up, and the moment came, and I appeared. The scene that ensued beggars description. The whole house rose, and such a shout ascended as stunned my senses and made me involuntarily recoil. Mon waved their hats, and women their handkerchiefs, and all was inexplicable dumb show for several mortal moments. (Immortal moments, she meant.) I stood confounded, with tears streaming down my face. Order at length restored, the dance began. How I went through it I know not, . . . but I must have danced as I hope never to dance again. I was encored to the echo, and in a few moments recommenced amid the most cheering applause.

• •

It is not for me to say what I did, or how I did it. . . . I danced without effort, and even Katty applauded some of my feats. The most deafening exclamations of delight broke at rapid intervals from all parts of the house, till they lashed themselves into a perfect tempest of admiration. Never before did I behold so vast an assembly so completely under the sway of one dominant feeling. • . . The curtain fell amid a roar that sounded like the fall of mighty waters, and that soon brought me before them. Their applause was perfectly frantic, cheers and bravos saluted me, and flowers and wreaths fell like rain upon me. You cannot suppose that I stoed unmoved amid such sights and scenes. My heart beat till I thought it would leap from its socket, and my eyes over- ran in grateful testimony of their fervent goodness. I essayed to speak and stammered forth a few simple words of thanks, and withdrew. The ordeal is passed, doubt no more affrights mo, and what a prospect dawns upon me ! "

As it was in the beginning, so it was in the end. All America applauded, and when she said good-bye it was in

these terms :—

" Ladies and Gentlemen,—I am very much bothered. I don't like to leave you now, for the last time, and I am afraid to try your patience by a longer stay. Really, I don't know what to do. (Shouts of 'Stay, stay!' from all parts of the house.) I have a great mind to stay—shall I? (` Yes, yes,' and groat cheering.) Now remember, if you get tired of me, it is your own fault."

I, like America, have taken too heartily to Miss Elssler, and have left myself little or no space to treat of " Tippe- canoe, and Tyler Too ! " and all those mystic words import, Again, I must leave my readers to find out for themselves the full sweets of the "Home, Sweet Home" chapter. It is amazing beyond words. What strikes one is its anti-feminist

tone.

And I have said nothing about the smart set and the young men about town, and their clothes, and those of the girls, and also of the freedom in which certain intimate questions were discussed. Strangest of all is the way in which prophecies as to the end of the world were believed.

and, indeed, acted on. Then, too, there are the novels, and finally the chapter about California, to which I have alluded already. The book, in truth, is amazing and curious from the first page to the last. The illustrations, from contemporary prints, are really staggering. They would seem to prove that American artists in the 'forties were —without knowing it—Impressionists or Cubists, or even Futurists, both as regards landscapes and figures. It is a real score for the most modern of the pictorial modernists. Apparently man, left to himself and not spoiled by knowing too much and learning too much of academic painting, "throws forward " into the artifices of the so-called Decadents. I am pleased, for I lace the new and the bizarre ; but it is