Cross the Channel, and get yourself asked to one of Irving's choice suppers after the play.You will find the bar, the stage, and the pulpit represented there, a "happy family" over which the "Prince"often presides, smoking cigar after cigar, until the tardy London daylight appears to break up the entertainment.
For both are centres where the gifted and the travelled meet the great of the social world, on a footing of perfect equality, and where, if any prestige is accorded, it is that of brains.When you have seen these places and a dozen others like them, you will realize what the actor's wife had in her mind.
Now, let me whisper to you why I think such circles do not exist in this country.In the first place, we are still too provincial in this big city of ours.New York always reminds me of a definition I once heard of California fruit: "Very large, with no particular flavor." We are like a boy, who has had the misfortune to grow too quickly and look like a man, but whose mind has not kept pace with his body.What he knows is undigested and chaotic, while his appearance makes you expect more of him than he can give - hence disappointment.
Our society is yet in knickerbockers, and has retained all sorts of littlenesses and prejudices which older civilizations have long since relegated to the mental lumber room.An equivalent to this point of view you will find in England or France only in the smaller "cathedral" cities, and even there the old aristocrats have the courage of their opinions.Here, where everything is quite frankly on a money basis, and "positions" are made and lost like a fortune, by a turn of the market, those qualities which are purely mental, and on which it is hard to put a practical value, are naturally at a discount.We are quite ready to pay for the best.