From Louis Leverett in Boston to Harvard Tremont in Paris

November 1880.

The scales have turned, my sympathetic Harvard, and the beam that has lifted you up has dropped me again on this terribly hard spot. I’m extremely sorry to have missed you in London, but I received your little note and took due heed of your injunction to let you know how I got on. I don’t get on at all, my dear Harvard — I’m consumed with the love of the further shore. I’ve been so long away that I’ve dropped out of my place in this little Boston world and the shallow tides of New England life have closed over it. I’m a stranger here and find it hard to believe I ever was a native. It’s very hard, very cold, very vacant. I think of your warm rich Paris; I think of the Boulevard Saint–Michel on the mild spring evenings; I see the little corner by the window (of the Café de la Jeunesse) where I used to sit: the doors are open, the soft deep breath of the great city comes in. The sense is of a supreme splendour and an incomparable arrangement, yet there’s a kind of tone, of body, in the radiance; the mighty murmur of the ripest civilisation in the world comes in; the dear old peuple de Paris, the most interesting people in the world, pass by. I’ve a little book in my pocket; it’s exquisitely printed, a modern Elzevir. It consists of a lyric cry from the heart of young France and is full of the sentiment of form. There’s no form here, dear Harvard; I had no idea how little form there is. I don’t know what I shall do; I feel so undraped, so uncurtained, so uncushioned; I feel as if I were sitting in the centre of a mighty “reflector.” A terrible crude glare is over everything; the earth looks peeled and excoriated; the raw heavens seem to bleed with the quick hard light.

I’ve not got back my rooms in West Cedar Street; they’re occupied by a mesmeric healer. I’m staying at an hotel and it’s all very dreadful. Nothing for one’s self, nothing for one’s preferences and habits. No one to receive you when you arrive; you push in through a crowd, you edge up to a counter, you write your name in a horrible book where every one may come and stare at it and finger it. A man behind the counter stares at you in silence; his stare seems to say “What the devil do you want?” But after this stare he never looks at you again. He tosses down a key at you; he presses a bell; a savage Irishman arrives. “Take him away,” he seems to say to the Irishman; but it’s all done in silence; there’s no answer to your own wild wail —“What’s to be done with me, please?” “Wait and you’ll see” the awful silence seems to say. There’s a great crowd round you, but there’s also a great stillness; every now and then you hear some one expectorate. There are a thousand people in this huge and hideous structure; they feed together in a big white-walled room. It’s lighted by a thousand gas-jets and heated by cast-iron screens which vomit forth torrents of scorching air. The temperature’s terrible; the atmosphere’s more so; the furious light and heat seem to intensify the dreadful definiteness. When things are so ugly they shouldn’t be so definite, and they’re terribly ugly here. There’s no mystery in the corners, there’s no light and shade in the types. The people are haggard and joyless; they look as if they had no passions, no tastes, no senses. They sit feeding in silence under the dry hard light; occasionally I hear the high firm note of a child. The servants are black and familiar; their faces shine as they shuffle about; there are blue tones in their dark masks. They’ve no manners; they address but don’t answer you; they plant themselves at your elbow (it rubs their clothes as you eat) and watch you as if your proceedings were strange. They deluge you with iced water; it’s the only thing they’ll bring you; if you look round to summon them they’ve gone for more. If you read the newspaper — which I don’t, gracious heaven, I can’t! — they hang over your shoulder and peruse it also. I always fold it up and present it to them; the newspapers here are indeed for an African taste.

Then there are long corridors defended by gusts of hot air; down the middle swoops a pale little girl on parlour skates. “Get out of my way!” she............