Excerpts from Beaumont's Marie.

PROLOGUE. Conversation between Ludovic at the end of life and a French traveler in Michigan, on the difference between marriage in Europe and in America.

In Europe, said the traveler, abandoning himself to his poetic feelings, all is dirt and corruption! Women there stoop to sell themselves, and the men are stupid enough to buy them. When a young girl marries, she does not seek a tender soul with which hers may unite, she does not ask for a support to her weakness: she marries diamonds, a title, freedom. Not that she is heartless; she may have loved once, but her beloved was not sufficiently rich. They haggled over her; the man could not throw in a carriage with his price; the bargain fell through. Then, they tell the young girl that love is all foolishness; she believes it, and corrects her mistaken notions; she marries a rich idiot. If she has any soul at all, she pines away and dies. Usually she lives happily enough. Such is not the life of a woman in America. Here marriage is not a business, nor is love a commodity. Two beings are not condemned to love or to hate each other because they are united; they join because they love each other. Oh, how attractive these young girls are, with their blue eyes, their ebon eyebrows, their pure, candid souls! How sweet the perfume wafted from their hair, unspoiled by art! What harmony in their gentle voices, which never echo the passion of greed! Here, at least, when you court a young girl, and she responds, it is a meeting through tender sympathy, and not through cold calculation. Would it not be losing an opportunity for tranquil but delicious felicity not to seek the love of an American girl?

Ludovic listened calmly. When the traveler had ceased speaking, he said, I pity you for your errors; I will not undertake to correct them, for I know how worthless to one man is another's experience. I am, however, distressed to see you pursuing these chimeras. I might, by a single example, prove to you how misled you are. You have just been praising the merits of American women. The picture you have drawn is not entirely false; but your imagination has given it smiling colors which are not there.

I believe I can easily paint for you, without bias, a faithful portrait of the women in this country; for I have received neither kindness nor abuse from them.

CHAPTER 2: "AMERICAN WOMEN." General appearance; manners; courtship and marriage.

American women generally have well-informed minds but little imagination, and more reason than sensibility. Their blue eyes bear witness to their English origin, their dark hair to the influence of hot summers. Their frail and delicate constitutions carry on an unequal struggle against the rigors of a severe climate and the sudden changes in temperature.

The education of women in the United States differs completely from that of women in our country.

In France a young girl lives, until she marries, in the shadow of her parents. She is placid and trusting, because always at hand there is tender solicitude which watches sleeplessly over her; spared from thinking because others think for her. Doing as her mother does, with her joyful or sad, she is never ahead of life; she follows its current. So the tender vine, attached to the branch which upholds it, receives from it violent jolts or tender swayings.

In America, she is free before adolescence; having no guide but herself, she walks aimlessly on untried paths. Her first steps are not so dangerous; the child sets out on its journey into life as a fragile craft glides unendangered upon a calm sea.

But when the stormy billows of passion roll up, in early youth, what becomes of the frail skiff, with its swelling sails and its inexperienced pilot?

American education wards off the danger: at an early age the girl is informed of the traps besetting her path. Her instincts will defend her but poorly; she is taught to place her trust in reason; thus enlightened on the snares which surround her, she depends solely upon herself to avoid them. She is never lacking in prudence.

These guiding torches given to the adolescent girl are a necessary consequence of the liberty she enjoys; but they deprive her of two qualities which are so charming in youth: candor and naivete.

The American girl needs knowledge to be chaste; she knows too much to be called innocent.

This precocious liberty gives her thoughts a serious turn and stamps her character with a certain masculinity. I remember hearing a girl of twelve discussing and answering the grave question, Which of all the kinds of government is best? She placed the republic above all others.

This coolness of the senses, the supremacy of the mind, this masculine behavior among women, may find favor with one's intellect; but they hardly satisfy the heart....

In the United States, when two people realize that they suit each other, they promise to become united to each other, and are what is called engaged; it is a sort of unsolemnized betrothal, and has no other binding force than their own sworn word.

This affianced young person, who cared so little about making herself pretty, was more of a coquette than any of the other young ladies, because she was disinterested. That put an end to my admiration. At any rate, excessive flirtatiousness is a characteristic common to all American girls, and is a consequence of their education.

To every girl over sixteen, marriage is the great interest in life. In France, she desires it; in America she hunts it. Since she is so early the mistress of herself and her own conduct, she makes her own choice.

One can appreciate how delicate and perilous is the young girl's task, trustee of her own destiny; she must have in herself the foresight which in France a father and mother have for their daughter. Generally, one must admit that she fulfills her mission with admirable sagacity. Within this pragmatic society, where everyone is engaged in business, American girls have theirs too: that of finding a husband. In the United States, men are cold, and tied to their business affairs; one must either run after them or attract them with powerful allurements. It is no wonder if the girl who lives among them is prodigal with studied smiles and tender glances. Her coquetry is, however, enlightened and prudent; she has taken the measure of her arena, she knows the bounds over which she may not step. If her strategems merit censure, at least their aim is irreproachable, for she wants only marriage.

There is no lack of opportunities for young people to reveal their mutual inclination and tender feelings. It is customary for them to go out together unaccompanied, and in doing this the young men give no offense to decorum. The only formality they must observe is that of walking separately, for a man may offer his arm to a young lady only if he is engaged to her. One may observe the same freedom in the drawing room. Rarely does a mother take part in the conversations of her daughter; the latter receives whom she pleases, entertains him unsupervised, and sometimes invites to her home young men whom she has met elsewhere and who are unacquainted with her parents. There is no impropriety in her acting thus, for these are the customs of the country.

American flirtatiousness has a quite special nature; in France a coquette is less desirous of marrying than of pleasing; in America she is eager to please only in order to marry. In France, flirtation is a passion; in America, it is a calculation. If a young lady who is engaged continues her flirtations, it is more through prudence than inclination; for it has happened that a fiance breaks his word; sometimes a girl foresees this dread possibility and tries to capture other hearts, not for the sake of possessing several at a time, but in order to have a replacement on hand for the one she risks losing.

In this case, as in all others, she provokes, encourages, or holds off the sighing swains with complete freedom.

In America this freedom is given to a woman only to be snatched away suddenly. In our country, the young girl exchanges the swaddling bands of infancy for the bonds of matrimony; but these new bonds rest lightly upon her. In taking a husband, she gains the right to join the outside world; by engaging herself she becomes free. Then begins the life of parties, pleasures, conquests. In America, on the contrary, the gay life is the young girl's; she retires from worldly pleasures to live among the austere duties of the domestic hearth. A man pays homage to her not because she is a woman, but because she can become a wife. Her coquetry, after catching her a husband, is of no more use, and after she has given herself in marriage, she uses it no more.

In the United States a woman ceases to be free on the day when, in France, she becomes so.

The privileges enjoyed by a young girl, and the early reduction to nonentity of the married woman, greatly increase the number of engaged people. In general, the purely ethical contract, which arises from this sort of betrothal, is ratified soon after by marriage, but not infrequently young girls endeavor to postpone the event. Acting thus, they achieve a double goal: engaged, they are sure of marrying, but are not yet wives; the certainty of future wifehood is secured while the liberty of girlhood is retained.

Nothing, in American women, appeals to one's imagination; there is , however, one side of their character which makes a deep impression on any serious-minded man.

The morality of a population may be judged by that of its women, and one cannot observe the society of the United States without marveling at the respect in which the married state is held. This respect never existed to so high a degree among any of the ancient peoples, and European society, corrupt as it is, cannot conceive of such moral purity.

In America they are no severer than elsewhere toward the irregular life and toward even the debauches of a bachelor; many young men can be found here whose dissoluteness is well known, and whose reputations do not suffer thereby; but their excesses, to be pardoned, must be committed outside the circle of family and friends. While indulgent concerning the pleasures obtainable from prostitutes, society condemns without pity those who obtain them at the expense of conjugal fidelity; it is as inflexible toward the man who incites the transgression as toward the woman who acquiesces. Both are banished from society; and to incur this punishment it is not even necessary to have been guilty; to have aroused the suspicion suffices. The domestic hearth is an inviolable shrine which no breath of impurity must besmirch.

The morality of American women, fruit of a serious and religious upbringing, is protected further for other reasons.

Completely engrossed in practical matters, the American man has neither the time nor the temperament for tender sentiments or gallantry; he is gallant once in his life, when he wishes to marry. He is undertaking a business affair, not a love affair.

He has no leisure to love, still less to make himself loved. The taste for fine arts, which is so closely allied to the pleasures of the heart, is forbidden him. If, emerging from his industrial sphere, a young man displays a passion for Mozart or Michelangelo, he loses public esteem. Fortunes are not made by listening to sounds or looking at colors. And how chain to the accountant's stool one who has once known the charms of a poetic life?

Thus doomed by the traditions of the country to confine themselves to practicality, young Americans are neither preoccupied with pleasing women nor skillful at winning them.

Moreover, there is a corrupt element, influential in European society, which is not to be met with in the United States: this is the idle rich and the soldiers in garrison. The wealthy without professions and the soldiers without glory have nothing to do; their sole pastime is the corruption of women--impetuous, open-handed youth, in need of space and action; comparable to the flood waters of the Mississippi: beneficial when flowing freely, deadly when stagnant.

In America, everyone works, because no one is born rich, (It does happen, by accident, that a few young people are conditioned by an inherited fortune and a polite education to gallantries and social intrigues, but they are too few in number to be a nuisance, and if they give the least indication of troubling the peace of a family, they find the American world leagued solidly against them to oppose and crush the common enemy. This explains why American bachelors of wealth and leisure do not stay in the United States but come to live in Europe, where they find men of intellect and corrupt women.) and the dreary idleness of the garrison is unknown here, because the country has no standing army.

Thus, the women escape the perils of seduction; if they are pure, one cannot tell if it is due to their virtue, for this has not been put to the test.

The extreme ease of becoming rich also comes to the aid of upholding morality; money is never an essential consideration in marriages; commerce, industry, the practice of a profession, assure young people of a living and a future. They marry the first woman they fall in love with; and nothing is rarer in the United States than a bachelor of twenty-five. Society thereby gains more married men in place of licentious bachelors. Finally , the condition of equality protects marriages, while difference in rank obstructs them in our country. In the United States there is only one class; no barrier of social distinction separates the young man and young girl who agree to become united. This equality, propitious to legitimate unions, is highly embarrassing to those which are not. The seducer of a young girl necessarily becomes her husband, whatever the difference in their economic position, because while superiority of fortune exists, there is no difference at all in rank. The rectitude of tradition, which applies less to individuals than to socity as a whole, gives a serious cast to all American society.

This country is dominated by a public opinion, from whose rule no woman can flee... [it] condemns all passion without pity, and authorizes calculation alone; indifferent to sentiment, it is exacting concerning moral obligation.

Love, the charms of which form the whole life of some European peoples, is not understood in the United States.

CHAPTER 5: MARIE. Literary Habits of American Women; Musical Ability of American Women.

Nelson was in the habit of commencing the evening by asking his daughter if any new books had come out; for, in the United States, men read nothing; they haven't the time; the women are charged with this duty, and they report on all the political and literary publications to either their fathers or their husbands, and so inform them that they may discuss these works as if they knew them. Then Nelson would request his daughter to play some music.

The young girl showed some embarrassment at my presence; however, since her father never listened to her playing, she assumed I would be no more attentive. Now, generally, in American drawing rooms, when the music begins it is a signal for conversation. I admit that at first I had very little curiosity about how Marie would perform. Most American girls are automatons at the piano; they take lessons for three months and memorize one waltz and one contradance; when one asks them to play, they rush to the piano and, without any warming up, dash therough their little repertory like children who know a story and babble it to all comers without understanding a word.

All the women in this country learn music, but hardly one has a feeling for it; they do this because it is fashionable, not because they like it...

[Marie] united in her person all that was seductive in American women, with none of the faults which overshadow the light of their good qualities. One would have thought her a European girl, with ardent passions, a lively imagination, with Italian sensuousness and a French heart; and this girl, American by reason of her mind, lived in the midst of a moral and religious world!

CHAPTER 8: "THE REVELATION." Consequences of Mixed Parentage in America; Miscegenation Laws.

Secretly he [Don Fernando d'Almanza] spread the rumor that Theresa [Marie's mother] was, through her great-grandmother, a mulatto; he brought proofs to this allegation which could justify it, naming all the forebears of Marie back to her whose impure blood had, he said, tainted the whole family.

His denunciation was hateful, but it was true. The stain upon Theresa Spencer's origins had been lost in the night of time. At Fernando's voice, sleeping memories reawoke--the memory of man is long when it comes to the misfortunes of others! Public opinion was in a turmoil; a sort of inquest was held; the oldest inhabitants were consulted, and it was found that a century before, Theresa Spencer's family had been soiled by a drop of black blood.

In following generations this admixture had become imperceptible. The whiteness of Theresa's complexion was dazzling; nothing in her features disclosed the flaw in her origin; but tradition condemned her.

From that day on, our life, which had flowed with such peaceful sweetness, became bitter and cruel. The more highly we had been respected by the world, the more shattering was the shame of our fall from grace...

We live here [Baltimore] in outward tranquillity: the trouble is in our hearts alone.

Not a soul knows the shame of my children; but it might be discovered any day. We are loved an honoured, because no one knows who we are. One word from a well-informed enemy could ruin us: we are like a guilty man whom society believes innocent, not daring to accept a prominent position because too overhwleming a disgrace would follow the revelation of his crime...

Marie... submissive and resigned to her destiny, seeks the shadow of isolation. This is the secret of her aversion to society. Ah yes, indeed she surpasses all the women of Baltimore in intelligence, talent, and goodness; but she is not their equal.... [interview with Nelson, following the revelation] N. the child of a slave belongs to the slave's master, as the fruits of the soil belong to the owner of the land. The loves of a slave leave no more trace on society than does the breeding of plants on our gardens; and when he dies, the only thought is to replace him, as one replaces a fruitful tree destroyed by a storm.

L. Thus your laws forbid Negro slaves to have filial respect, paternal love, and conjugal tenderness. Then what is left to them in common with mankind?

N. The principle once admitted, these consequences follow: the child born in slavery knows no more of family life than does an animal. The maternal bosom nourishes him as the teat of the wild beast feeds her young. The touching relationships of mother with child, of child with father, of brother with sister, have neither sense nor moral value to him, and he does not marry, because, belonging to someone else, he cannot give himself to anyone...

L. However, a white man, if such was his wish, could marry a free woman of color.

N. No, my friend, you are mistaken.

L..What power could hinder him?

N. The law. It contains an express prohibition, and declares such a marriage null.

L. A hateful law! But I shall defy that law.

N. There is a more serious obstacle than the law itself, that is tradition. You are ignorant of the condition of women of color in American society. You must know (I blush to say it, for it is a disgrace to my country) that in Louisiana the highest position that can be held by a free woman of color is that of a prostitute to white men.

New Orleans is largely populated by Americans from the North, who have come to make their fortunes, and leave as soon as they have made them. Rarely do these transients marry; and this is the obstacle that hinders them:

Each summer, New Orleans is ravaged by yellow fever. At this time, all those who can, quit the city, go up the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers, and seek in the Northern or central states, at Philadelphia or Boston, a more salubrious climate. When the hot season is over, they return to the South and resume their business. These annual migrations are easy for bachelors, but they would be inconvenienced by a family. The American man avoids all vexation by not marrying, and by taking an unlawful companion; he always chooses one from among the free women of color and gives her a sort of dowry. The young girl is honored by a union which brings her together with a white man; she knows she cannot marry him it is much in her eyes to be loved by him. She might, according to law, have married a mulatto, but such an alliance would not raise her out of her class. Also, the mulatto has no power to protect her; in marrying a man of color she perpetuates her degradation; she raises herself by prostituting herself to the white man. All young girls of color are brought up with these prejudices, and from the earliest age their parents mold them to the end of corruption. There are balls where none are admitted but white men and women of color; the husbands or brothers of the latter are not received; their mothers customarily attend and are witness to the attentions paid to their daughters, encourage them, and rejoice in them. When an American man's fancy is caught by a young girl, he approaches her mother, who bargains shrewdly, demanding more or less as a price according to whether her daughter is more or less of a novice. All this goes on, quite openly; these monstrous unions have not even the decency of vice, which hides itself in shame, as does virtue for modesty's sake; they parade undisguised before all eyes, and no infamy or blame is attached to the men who form them. When the American from the North has made his fortune, he has achieved his goal. One fine day he leaves New Orleans and never returns. His children, and she who for ten years has lived as his wife, are nothing to him. Then the girl of color sells herself to another man. And that is the fate of women of the African race in Louisiana.

CHAPTER 9: "The Test." American Opinion of French Manners.

It is a widely held opinion in the United States that the customs of France are still those of the Eighteenth century; a great number of people believe that vice is still in fashion, that the time is passed in gallantries to the ladies, in drawing-room intrigues and frivolity. This opinion among Americans is due mainly to the influence of a number of English novelists widely read in the United States, who, knowing nothing of France themselves save through books, are half a century behind the times...

CHAPTER 12: "The Test: Literature and Fine Arts." Absence of Gallantry in America; Small Number of Theaters in America.

Poetry began in France with the songs of the trouveres and with chivalrous love. Such could never be its origin in the United States. The men of this country, whose respect for women is profound, scorn all outward show of gallantry. A woman alone among several men, having lost her way, or been abandoned on a ship, need fear no harm; but she will get no homage. In America they know the merit of women; they do not sing of it...

If large theaters are rare, small ones are unknown. This absence of liking for the drama is doubtless part of morality for American society, who, having no theaters, do not go each evening to laugh at cuckolded husbands, to applaud happy lovers, and to look with indulgence on adulterous wives. The Americans are moral because they have no plays; they have no plays because of their morality. This is cause and effect in one.

CHAPTER 15: "The Virgin Forest and the Wilderness." Picture of a Wilderness Cottage.

Our shelter that night was a little log cabin, the dwelling of a New Englander who had settled near the Indians to deal in furs.

Upon our arrival our horses were turned loose in a narrow enclosure near the house. Our host hastened on foot to cut fodder for them in an oat field; then, taking an ax, he cut down a tree in the forest, with which he built a fire to keep us from the chill of the night. The logs of which the cabin was built let in the outside air through a thousand openings, and the damp mist from the river could already be felt. Soon a crackling fire, fed with pine cones, lit up the shadowy dwelling, and let us look about the hut, cramped but remarkably clean. A woman with a pale, thin face appeared; she was our host's wife, and around her flocked several young children. A crudely painted picture of General Washington was hung above the fireplace. In the United States, Washington is god in the cottage as in the Capitol! On a table in the middle of the room were scattered several pages of a fairly recent New York paper. Everything in our host's house suggested material comfort rather than happiness. Their manners were polite without elegance, their speech correct without refinement, their knowledge accurate but limited--all this showed that they were not born in the wilderness and that they belonged to the middle class of a civilized society. Their sole aim, their fixed idea, was to make their fortunes; they were like all other Americans.

The woman prepared us a modest meal; tea was served in the wilderness hut. This odd situation would not have been without its charms for me, if Marie had been able to enjoy it herself; but she was unwell. A long day of traveling had weakened her; she did not partake of the repast which would have mended her strength. I took great pains to prepare a place for her to rest in; a buffalo hide served as a bed; I covered her feet with my cloak, and then, overcome with weariness, Marie took one of my hands as a token of security, and , leaning against me, fell asleep.

APPENDIX B: Note on American Women. On the Different Roles of Men and Women in Marriage.

The most striking trait in the women of America is their superiority to the men of the same country.

The American, from his tenderest youth, is devoted to business; hardly has he learned to read and write when he becomes a merchant. The first sound in his ears is the chink of money; the first voice he hears is that of self-interest; he breathes at birth the air of industry; and all his early impressions persuade him that a business career is the only one becoming to a man.

The lot of the young girl is not the same; her moral education goes on till the day she marries. She acquires knowledge of history and literature; she generally learns one foreign language (ordinarily French); she knows a little music. Her life is intellectual.

The young man and this young girl, who are so dissimilar, are united one day in marriage. The first, continuing in his habitual course, spends his time at the bank, or in his shop; the second, who becomes isolated on the day she takes a husband, compares the actual life which has fallen to her lot with the existence of which she had dreamed. As nothing in this new world before her speaks to her heart, she lives in daydreams and reads novels. Having little happiness, she is very religious and reads sermons. When she has children, she lives in close contact with them, cares for and loves them. Thus pass her days. In the evening the man comes home full of care, restless, overcome with fatigue; he brings to his wife the fruits of his labor, and already dreams of tomorrow's specualtions. He asks for his dinner, and offers not a word more; his wife knows nothing of the affairs that preoccupy him; in her husbands's presence she is still isolated. The sight of his wife and children doesn to tear the American away from the practical world, and he so rarely shows them a sign of tenderness and affection that a nick-name has been made for those households where the husband, after an absence, kisses his wife and children--they are called "kissing families." In the American's eyes, the wife is not a companion; she is a partner who helps him spend for his well- being and comfort the money he earns in business.

The sedentary and retired life of women in the United States explains, with the rigors of the climate, the poorness of their complexions; they do not leave their houses or take any exercise, and they live on a light diet; almost all of them have a great number of children; it is not astonishing that they grow old so fast and die so young.

It is a life of contrasts; exciting, adventurous, almost feverish for the man, sad and monotonous for the wife; it flows on uniformly until the day when the husband announces to his wife that they are bankrupt; then they have to leave, and recommence the same existence elsewhere.

Every American family, then, contains two worlds: the one entirely material, the other wholly moral. Whatever the closeness of the bond that unites the couple, there is still a barrier between them, separating the soul from the body, and mind from matter.

APPENDIX F: Note on Polygamy Among American Indians.

The basis of the story of Oneda is entirely true. Polygamy exists among all the savage tribes of North America; each Indian has as many wives as he can get. These women really live in a state of servitude; they prepare the Indian's food, take care of his clothes, and do not leave his hut while he is hunting or on the warpath. The relations between the Indian and his wives are completely material; nothing moral or intellectual enters in. It is by no means rare to see three sisters serving as wives to the same man. The condition of Indian wives is as wretched as can be imagined; they have none of the prerogatives proper to wives in civilized societies, nor any of the sensual pleasures given them by the customs of the Orient, where they are slaves.

I said that the Indian has as many wives as he can get; it would perhaps be more accurate to say that he gets as many as he can feed; for the lot of the Indian family is so hard that parents readily give their daughters to any one who can keep them alive. In this, all depends on the man's skill as a hunter; a famous hunter ordinarily has a large number of wives because he can provide them all with a means of existence.

The marriage of an Indian with his wives is accomplished with no ceremony, and sometimes is dissolved a few days after its formation. However, this happens infrequently; the Indian who breaks such a tie so easily would injure himself in the eyes of his tribe and would find no other family inclined to make an alliance with him.

One can imagine that this life of fatigue, wretchedness, and opprobrium would discourage and sicken Indian women; indeed, suicide is very frequent among them. The anecdote I have introduced into the text of my book seemed to me one of the most striking examples of the despair into which the unhappiness of these poor creatures can plunge them.

APPENDIX G: Note on American Sociability.

On this point we must distinguish between the Southern and the Northern states. All the Southern states are slave states--this fact has tremendous influence on the customs of the Southerners. The slaves work--the free men are idle. The Southerners thus have a leisure lacking to the Northerners; they can receive guests without neglecting their business. Nearly all of them live far from each other, and away from cities; a friend's visit, or the passing of a stranger, is a happy event in a lonely dwelling place and, far from disturbing the rural family, is an occasion for rejoicing.

Scanned and tagged by Mary Halnon, 1/97.