FullReads

We could never have time to make a catalogue of all the portraits that figure in this motley gallery. Among the travellers in Europe, who are daily multiplying in numbers and increasing in splendor, the United States’ dandies must not be omitted. They seem as rich as the Milor of old days; they crowd in European capitals; they have elbowed out people of the old country from many hotels which we used to frequent; they adopt the French fashion of dressing rather than ours, and they grow handsomer beards than English beards: as some plants are found to flourish and shoot up prodigiously when introduced into a new soil. The ladies seem to be as well dressed as Parisians, and as handsome; though somewhat more delicate, perhaps, than the native English roses. They drive the finest carriages, they keep the grandest houses, they frequent the grandest company–and, in a word, the Broadway Swell has now taken his station and asserted his dignity amongst the grandees of Europe. He is fond of asking Count Reineck to dinner, and Grafinn Laura will condescend to look kindly upon a gentleman who has millions of dollars. Here comes a pair of New Yorkers. Behold their elegant curling beards, their velvet coats, their delicate primrose gloves and cambric handkerchiefs, and the aristocratic beauty of their boots. Why, if you had sixteen quarterings, you could not have smaller feet than those; and if you were descended from a line of kings you could not smoke better or bigger cigars.

Lady Kicklebury deigns to think very well of these young men, since she has seen them in the company of grandees and heard how rich they are. “Who is that very stylish-looking woman, to whom Mr. Washington Walker spoke just now?” she asks of Kicklebury.

Kicklebury gives a twinkle of his eye. “Oh, that, mother! that is Madame La Princesse de Mogador–it’s a French title.”

“She danced last night, and danced exceedingly well; I remarked her. There’s a very high-bred grace about the princess.”

“Yes, exceedingly. We’d better come on,” says Kicklebury, blushing rather as he returns the princess’s nod.

It is wonderful how large Kicklebury’s acquaintance is. He has a word and a joke, in the best German he can muster, for everybody–for the high well-born lady, as for the German peasant maiden, or the pretty little washerwoman, who comes full sail down the streets, a basket on her head and one of Mrs. Fantail’s wonderful gowns swelling on each arm. As we were going to the Schloss-Garten I caught a sight of the rogue’s grinning face yesterday, close at little Gretel’s ear under her basket; but spying out his mother advancing, he dashed down a bystreet, and when we came up with her, Gretel was alone.

One but seldom sees the English and the holiday visitors in the ancient parts of Noirbourg; they keep to the streets of new buildings and garden villas, which have sprung up under the magic influence of M. Lenoir, under the white towers and gables of the old German town. The Prince of Trente et Quarante has quite overcome the old serene sovereign of Noirbourg, whom one cannot help fancying a prince like a prince in a Christmas pantomime–a burlesque prince with twopence-halfpenny for a revenue, jolly and irascible, a prime-minister-kicking prince, fed upon fabulous plum-puddings and enormous pasteboard joints, by cooks and valets with large heads which never alter their grin. Not that this portrait is from the life. Perhaps he has no life. Perhaps there is no prince in the great white tower, that we see for miles before we enter the little town. Perhaps he has been mediatized, and sold his kingdom to Monsieur Lenoir. Before the palace of Lenoir there is a grove of orange-trees in tubs, which Lenoir bought from another German prince; who went straightway and lost the money, which he had been paid for his wonderful orange-trees, over Lenoir’s green tables, at his roulette and trente-et-quarante. A great prince is Lenoir in his way; a generous and magnanimous prince. You may come to his feast and pay nothing, unless you please. You may walk in his gardens, sit in his palace, and read his thousand newspapers. You may go and play at whist in his small drawing-rooms, or dance and hear concerts in his grand saloon–and there is not a penny to pay. His fiddlers and trumpeters begin trumpeting and fiddling for you at the early dawn–they twang and blow for you in the afternoon, they pipe for you at night that you may dance–and there is nothing to pay–Lenoir pays for all. Give him but the chances of the table, and he will do all this and more. It is better to live under Prince Lenoir than a fabulous old German Durchlaucht whose cavalry ride wicker horses with petticoats, and whose prime minister has a great pasteboard head. Vive le Prince Lenoir!