"Dear Madam: As a literary man of some reputation, I have many times had the pleasure of being entertained by the members of the old aristocracy of France. I have also many times had the pleasure of being entertained by the members of the old aristocracy of England. If it may interest you, I can even tell you that I have several times had the honor of being entertained by royalty; but my ambition has never been so wild as to expect that one day I might be entertained by the aristocracy of New York. No, I do not expect to be entertained by you, nor do I want you to expect me to entertain you and your friends to-night, for I decline to keep the engagement."
Now, I could fill a book on America with reminiscences of this sort, adding a few chapters on bosses and boodlers, on New York 'chronique scandaleuse', on the tenement houses of the large cities, on the gambling-hells of Denver, and the dens of San Francisco, and what not!
But not even your nasty article on my country, Mark, will make me do it.]-- We should not think it kind. No matter how much we might have associated with kings and nobilities, we should not think it right to crush her with it and make her ashamed of her lowlier walk in life; for we have a saying, " Who humiliates my mother includes his own."
Do I seriously imagine you to be the author of that strange letter, M. Bourget? Indeed I do not. I believe it to have been surreptitiously inserted by your amanuensis when your back was turned. I think he did it with a good motive, expecting it to add force and piquancy to your article, but it does not reflect your nature, and I know it will grieve you when you see it. I also think he interlarded many other things which you will disapprove of when you see them. I am certain that all the harsh names discharged at me come from him, not you. No doubt you could have proved me entitled to them with as little trouble as it has cost him to do it, but it would have been your disposition to hunt game of a higher quality.
Why, I even doubt if it is you who furnish me all that excellent information about Balzac and those others. --["Now the style of M.
Bourget and many other French writers is apparently a closed letter to Mark Twain; but let us leave that alone. Has he read Erckmann-Chatrian, Victor Hugo, Lamartine, Edmond About, Cherbuliez, Renan? Has he read Gustave Droz's 'Monsieur, Madame, et Bebe', and those books which leave for a long time a perfume about you? Has he read the novels of Alexandre Dumas, Eugene Sue, George Sand, and Balzac? Has be read Victor Hugo's 'Les Miserables' and 'Notre Dame de Paris'? Has he read or heard the plays of Sandeau, Augier, Dumas, and Sardou, the works of those Titans of modern literature, whose names will be household words all over the world for hundreds of years to come? He has read La Terre--this kind-hearted, refined humorist! When Mark Twain visits a garden does he smell the violets, the roses, the jasmine, or the honeysuckle? No, he goes in the far-away comer where the soil is prepared. Hear what he says: "I wish M.
Paul Bourget had read more of our novels before he came. It is the only way to thoroughly understand a people. When I found I was coming to Paris I read La Terre."]-- All this in simple justice to you--and to me; for, to gravely accept those interlardings as yours would be to wrong your head and heart, and at the same time convict myself of being equipped with a vacancy where my penetration ought to be lodged.
And now finally I must uncover the secret pain, the wee sore from which the Reply grew--the anecdote which closed my recent article--and consider how it is that this pimple has spread to these cancerous dimensions.
If any but you had dictated the Reply, M. Bourget, I would know that that anecdote was twisted around and its intention magnified some hundreds of times, in order that it might be used as a pretext to creep in the back way. But I accuse you of nothing--nothing but error. When you say that I "retort by calling France a nation of bastards," it is an error. And not a small one, but a large one. I made no such remark, nor anything resembling it. Moreover, the magazine would not have allowed me to use so gross a word as that.
You told an anecdote. A funny one--I admit that. It hit a foible of our American aristocracy, and it stung me--I admit that; it stung me sharply.
It was like this: You found some ancient portraits of French kings in the gallery of one of our aristocracy, and you said:
"He has the Grand Monarch, but where is the portrait of his grandfather?"
That is, the American aristocrat's grandfather.
Now that hits only a few of us, I grant--just the upper crust only--but it hits exceedingly hard.
