Lady Baltimore

by Owen Wister
To

S. Weir Mitchell
With the Affection and Memories of All My Life

To the Reader
You know the great text in Burns, I am sure, where he wishes he could see

himself as others see him. Well, here lies the hitch in many a work of
art: if its maker--poet, painter, or novelist--could but have become its

audience too, for a single day, before he launched it irrevocably upon
the uncertain ocean of publicity, how much better his boat would often

sail! How many little touches to the rigging he would give, how many
little drops of oil to the engines here and there, the need of which he

had never suspected, but for that trial trip! That's where the
ship-builders and dramatists have the advantage over us others: they can

dock their productions and tinker at them. Even to the musician comes
this useful chance, and Schumann can reform the proclamation which opens

his B-flat Symphony.
Still, to publish a story in weekly numbers previously to its appearance

as a book does sometimes give to the watchful author an opportunity to
learn, before it is too late, where he has failed in clearness; and it

brings him also, through the mails, some few questions that are pleasant
and proper to answer when his story sets forth united upon its journey of

adventure among gentle readers.
How came my hero by his name?

If you will open a book more valuable than any I dare hope to write, and
more entertaining too, The Life of Paul Jones, by Mr. Buell, you will

find the real ancestor of this imaginary boy, and fall in love with John
Mayrant the First, as did his immortal captain of the Bon Homme Richard.

He came from South Carolina; and believing his seed and name were
perished there to-day, I gave him a descendant. I have learned that the

name, until recently, was in existence; I trust it will not seem taken in
vain in these pages.

Whence came such a person as Augustus?
Our happier cities produce many Augustuses, and may they long continue to

do so! If Augustus displeases any one, so much the worse for that one,
not for Augustus. To be sure, he doesn't admire over heartily the

parvenus of steel or oil, whose too sudden money takes them to the
divorce court; he calls them the 'yellow rich'; do you object to that?

Nor does he think that those Americans who prefer their pockets to their
patriotism, are good citizens. He says of such people that 'eternal

vigilance cannot watch liberty and the ticker at the same time.' Do you
object to that? Why, the young man would be perfect, did he but attend

his primaries and vote more regularly,--and who wants a perfect young
man?

What would John Mayrant have done if Hortense had not challenged him as
she did?

I have never known, and I fear we might have had a tragedy.
Would the old ladies really have spoken to Augustus about the love

difficulties of John Mayrant?
I must plead guilty. The old ladies of Kings Port, like American

gentlefolk everywhere, keep family matters sacredly inside the family
circle. But you see, had they not told Augustus, how in the world could I

have told--however, I plead guilty.
Certain passages have been interpreted most surprisingly to signify a

feeling against the colored race, that is by no means mine. My only wish
regarding these people, to whom we owe an immeasurable responsibility, is

to see the best that is in them prevail. Discord over this seems on the
wane, and sane views gaining. The issue sits on all our shoulders, but

local variations call for a sliding scale of policy. So admirably
dispassionate a novel as The Elder Brother, by Mr. Jervey. forwards the

understanding of Northerners unfamiliar with the South, and also that
friendliness between the two places, which is retarded chiefly by

tactless newspapers.
Ah, tact should have been one of the cardinal virtues; and if I didn't

possess a spice of it myself, I should here thank by name certain two
members of the St. Michael family of Kings Port for their patience with

this comedy, before ever it saw the light. Tact bids us away from many
pleasures; but it can never efface the memory of kindness.

LADY BALTIMORE
I: A Word about My Aunt

Like Adam, our first conspicuousancestor, I must begin, and lay the
blame upon a woman; I am glad to recognize that I differ from the father

of my sex in no important particular, being as manlike as most of his
sons. Therefore it is the woman, my Aunt Carola, who must bear the whole

reproach of the folly which I shall forthwithconfess to you, since she
it was who put it into my head; and, as it was only to make Eve happy

that her husband ever consented to eat the disastrous apple, so I, save
to please my relative, had never aspired to become a Selected Salic

Scion. I rejoice now that I did so, that I yielded to her temptation.
Ours is a wide country, and most of us know but our own corner of it,

while, thanks to my Aunt, I have been able to add another corner. This,
among many other enlightenments of navel and education, do I owe her; she

stands on the threshold of all that is to come; therefore I were lacking in
deference did I pass her and her Scions by without due mention,--employing

no English but such as fits a theme so stately. Although she never left
the threshold, nor went to Kings Port with me, nor saw the boy, or the

girl, or any part of what befell them, she knew quite well who the boy
was. When I wrote her about him, she remembered one of his grandmothers

whom she had visited during her own girlhood, long before the war, both
in Kings Port and at the family plantation; and this old memory led her

to express a kindly interest in him. How odd and far away that interest
seems, now that it has been turned to cold displeasure!

Some other day, perhaps, I may try to tell you much more than I can tell
you here about Aunt Carola and her Colonial Society--that apple which

Eve, in the form of my Aunt, held out to me. Never had I expected to feel
rise in me the appetite for this particular fruit, though I had known

such hunger to exist in some of my neighbors. Once a worthy dame of my
town, at whose dinner-table young men and maidens of fashion sit

constantly, asked me with much sentiment if I was aware that she was
descended from Boadicea. Why had she never (I asked her) revealed this to

me before? And upon her informing me that she had learned it only that
very day, I exclaimed that it was a great distance to have descended so

suddenly. To this, after a look at me, she assented, adding that she had
the good news from the office of The American Almanach de Gotha, Union

Square, New York; and she recommended that publication to me. There was
but a slight fee to pay, a matter of fifty dollars or upwards, and for

this trifling sum you were furnished with your rightful coat-of-arms and
with papers clearly tracing your family to the Druids, the Vestal Vir-

gins, and all the best people in the world. Therefore I felicitated the
Boadicean lady upon the illustrious progenitrix with whom the Almanach de

Gotha had provided her for so small a consideration, and observed that
for myself I supposed I should continue to rest content with the thought

that in our enlightened Republic every American was himself a sovereign.
But that, said the lady, after giving me another look, is so different

from Boadicea! And to this I perfectly agreed. Later I had the pleasure
to hear in a roundabout way that she had pronounced me one of the most

agreeable young men in society, though sophisticated. I have not
cherished this against her; my gift of humor puzzles many who can see

only my refinement and my scrupulous attention to dress.
Yes, indeed, I counted myself proof against all Boadiceas. But you have

noticed--have you not?--how, whenever a few people gather together and
style themselves something, and choose a president, and eight or nine

vice-presidents, and a secretary and a treasurer, and a committee on
elections, and then let it be known that almost nobody else is qualified

to belong to it, that there springs up immediately in hundreds and thou-
sands of breasts a fiery craving to get into that body? You may try this

experiment in science, law, medicine, art, letters, society, farming, I
care not what, but you will set the same craving afire in doctors,

academicians, and dog breeders all over the earth. Thus, when my Aunt--
the president, herself, mind you!--said to me one day that she thought,