An American Shopping Abroad

by Lilian Bell
(from Abroad with the Jimmies, 1902)

Lilian Bell was The New Woman personified. Smart and witty, fashionable yet the–girl–next–door type, she was a popular writer of her era. The cover of Abroad with the Jimmies (a book recounting a vacation taken with friends), shows a woman in a plain skirt, slightly–pigeon–fronted shirtwaist, boater, and a parasol: the all–American, ideal woman. It was with this broad appeal that she made men and women both laugh at and ponder life in the early 1900s. Excerpted here is a portion of her chapter devoted to shopping in foreign countries. From it, not only can we glean what was considered hard–to–find in America, but we get an unprecedented look at what shopping was like in the early 1900s.

Author Lilian Bell.

"In going to Europe timid persons often cover their real design by claiming the intention of taking German baths, of “doing” Switzerland, or of learning languages. But everybody knows that the real reason why most women go abroad is to shop. What cathedral can bring such a look of rapture to a woman’s face as New Bond Street or what scenery such ecstasy as the Rue de la Paix?

Therefore, as I believe my lot in shopping to be the common lot of all, let me tell my tale, so that to all who have suffered the same agonies and delights this may come as a personal reminiscence of their own, while to you who have Europe yet to view for that blissful first time, which is the best of all, this is what you will go through.
When I first went to Europe I had all of the average American woman’s timidity about asserting herself in the face of a shop-girl or salesman. Many years of shopping in America had thoroughly broken a spirit which was once proud. I therefore suffered unnecessary annoyance during my first shopping in London, because I was overwhelmingly polite and affable to the man behind the counter. I said “please,” and “If you don’t mind,” and “I would like to see,” instead of using the martial command of the ordinary Englishwoman, who marches up to the show-case in flat-heeled boots and says in a tone of an officer ordering

“Shoulder arms,” “Show me your gauze fans!” I used to listen to them standing next me at a counter, momentarily expecting to see them knocked down by the indignant salesman and carried to a hospital in an ambulance...

Still without having thoroughly asserted myself, not having been to that particular manner born, I went next to Paris, where my politeness met with the just reward which virtue is always supposed to get and seldom does.
I consider shopping in Paris one of the greatest pleasures to be found in this vale of tears. The shops, with the exception of the Louvre, the Bon Marché, and one or two of the large department stores of similar scope, are all small—tiny, in fact, and exploit but one or two things. A little shop for fans will be next to a milliner who makes a specialty of nothing but gauze theatre bonnets. Perhaps next will come a linen store, where the windows will have nothing but the most fascinating embroidery, handkerchiefs, and neckware. Then comes the man who sells belts of every description, and parasol handles. Perhaps your next window will have such a display of diamond necklaces as would justify you in supposing that his stock would make Tiffany choke with envy, but if you enter, you will find yourself in an aperture in the wall, holding an iron safe, a two-by-four show-case, and three chairs, and you will find that everything of value he has, except the clothes he wears, are all in his window.

As long as these shops are all crowded together and so small, to shop in Paris is really much more convenient than in one of our large department stores at home, with the additional delight of having smiling, interested, service. The proprietor himself enters into your wants, and uses all his quickness and intelligence to supply your demands. He may be, very likely he is, doubling the price on you, because you are an American, but, if your bruised spirit is like mine, you will be perfectly willing to pay a little extra for politeness.

It is a truth that I have brought home with me no article from Paris which does not carry with it pleasant recollections of the way I bought it. Can any woman who has shopped only in America bring forward a similar statement?

All this changes, however, when once you get into the clutches of the average French dressmaker. By his side, Barabbas would appear a gentleman of exceptional honesty. I have often, in idle moments, imagined myself a cannibal, and, in preparing my daily menu, my first dish would be a fricassee of French dressmakers. Perhaps in that I am unjust. In thinking it over, I will amend it by saying a fricassee of all dressmakers. It would be unfair to limit it to the French.

There is one thing particularly noticeable about the charm which French shop–windows in one of the smart streets like the rue de la Paix exercises upon the American woman, and that is that it very soon wears off, and she sees that most of the things exploited are beyond her means, or are totally unsuited to her needs. I defy any woman to walk down one of these brilliant shop-lined streets of Paris for the first time, and not want to buy every individual thing she sees, and she will want to do it a second time and a third time, and, if she goes away from Paris and stays two months, the first time she sees these things on her return all the old fascination is there. To overcome it, to stamp it out of the system, she must stay long enough in Paris to live it down, for, if she buys rashly while under the influence of this first glamour, she is sure to regret it.

Dresden and Berlin differ materially from Paris in this respect. Their shop-windows exploit things less expensive, more suitable to your every-day needs, and equally unattainable at home. So that if you have gained some experience by your mistakes in Paris, your outlay in these German cities will be much more rational.
Leather goods in Germany are simply distracting. There are shops in Dresden where no woman who appreciates bags, satchels, card-cases, photograph-frames, book-covers, and purses could refrain from buying without disastrous results. I remember my first pilgrimage through the streets of Dresden. Between the porcelains and toilet sets, the Madonnas, the belts, and card-cases, I nearly lost my mind. The modest prices of the coveted articles were each time a separate shock of joy. If these sturdy Germans had wished to take advantage of my indiscreet expressions of surprise and delight, they might easily have raised their prices without our ever having discovered it. But day after day we returned, not only to find that the prices remained the same, but that, in many instances, if we bought several articles, they voluntarily took off a mark or two on account of the generosity of our purchases...

In Austria manners differ considerably both from those of Paris and upper Germany. I should say they were a cross between the two. We shopped in Ischl, which has shops quite out of proportion to its size—on account of being the summer home of the Emperor, and there we met with a politeness which was delightful.

Lilian Bell's portrait for Abroad with the Jimmies.

In Vienna we had occasion to accompany Jimmie and “Little Papa” on business expeditions which led him into the wholesale district. There it was universal for all the clerks to be seated at their work, particularly in the jeweller’s shops. At our entrance, every man and woman there, from the proprietor to the errand boys, rose to their feet, bowed, and said “Good day.” When we finished our purchases, or even if we only looked and came away without buying, this was all repeated, which sometimes gave me the sensation of having been to a court function.

Vienna fashions are very elegant. Being the seat of the court, there is a great deal of dress. There is wealth, and the shops are magnificent.. Personally, I much prefer the fashions of Vienna to those of Paris. Prices are perhaps a little more moderate, but the truly Paris creation generally has the effect of making one think it would be beautiful on somebody else. I can go to Worth, Felix, and Doucet, and half a dozen others equally as smart, and not see ten models that I would like to own. In Vienna there were Paris clothes, of course, but the Viennese have modified them, producing somewhat the same effect as American influence on Paris fashions. To my mind they are more elegant, having more of reserve and dignity in their style, and a distinct morality. Paris clothes generally look immoral when you buy them, and feel immoral when you get them on. There is a distinct spiritual atmosphere about clothes. In Vienna this was very noticeable. I speak more of clothes in Paris and Vienna, as there are only four cities in the world where one would naturally buy clothes—Paris, Vienna, London, and New York. In other cities you buy other things, articles perhaps distinctive of the country.

When you get to St. Petersburg, in your shopping experiences, you will find a mixture of Teuton and Slav which is very perplexing. We were particularly anxious to get some good specimens of Russian enamel, which naturally one supposes to be more inexpensive in the country which creates them, but to our distress we discovered Avenue de l’Opéra prices on everything we wished. Each time that we went back the price was different. The market seemed to fluctuate.

One blue enamelled belt, upon which I had set my heart, varied in price from one to three dollars each time I looked at it. Finally, one day I hit upon a plan. I asked my friend, Mlle. de Falk, to follow me into this shop and not speak to me, but to notice the particular belt I held in my hand. I then went out without purchasing, ~ind the next day my friend sent her sister, who speaks nothing but Russian and French, to this shop. She purchased the belt for ten dollars less than it had been offered to me. She ordered a different lining made for it, and the shopkeeper said in guileless Russian, “How strange it is that ladies all over the world are alike. For a week two American young ladies have been in here looking at this belt, and by a strange coincidence they also wished this same lining...”

Occasionally we were betrayed into buying a peasant’s costume, an icon, or an enamel, but in Moscow and Kief, the only way that we could reproduce to our friends at home the glories and splendours of these two beautiful cities was by photographs, in which the brilliancy of their colours brings back the sensations of delight which we experienced.

Sopping in Constantinople is not shopping as we Americans understand it, unless you happen to be an Indian trader by profession. I am not. Therefore, the system of bargaining, of going away from a bazaar and pretending you never intended buying, never wanted it anyhow, of coming back to sit down and take a cup of coffee, was like acting in private theatricals. By nature I am not a diplomat, but if I had stayed longer in the Orient, I think I would have learned to be as tricky as Chinese diplomacy.

We were given, by several of our Turkish friends, two or three rules which should govern conduct when shopping in the Orient. One is to look bored; the second, never to show interest in what pleases you; the third, never to let your robber salesman have an idea of what you really intend to buy. This comes hard at first, but after you have once learned it, to go shopping is one of the most exciting experiences that I can remember. I have always thought that burglary must be an exhilarating profession, second only to that of the detective who traps him. In shopping in the Orient, the bazaars are dens of thieves, and you, the purchaser, are the detective. We found in Constantinople little opportunity to exercise our new-found knowledge, because we were accompanied by our Turkish friends, who saw to it that we made no indiscreet purchases. On several occasions they made us send things back because we had been overcharged, and they found us better articles at less price. Of course we bought a fez, embroidered capes, bolero jackets, embroidered curtains, and rugs, but we, ourselves, were waiting to get to Smyrna for the real purchase of rugs, and it was there that I personally first brought into play the guile that I had learned of the Turks...

It was the brightest, most brilliant Mediterranean sunshine which irradiated the scene the morning on which we arrived at Smyrna. A score of gaily clad boatmen, whose very patches on their trousers were as picturesque as the patches on Italian sails, held out their hands to enable us to step from one cockle–shell to another, to reach the pier...and in three minutes’ walk we were in the rug bazaars of Smyrna. Such treasures as we saw!
We were received by the smiling merchants as if we were long–lost daughters suddenly. restored, but we practised our newly acquired diplomacy on them to such an extent that their faces soon began to betray the most comic astonishment...Alas, we were not the prey they had hoped for. We sneered at their rugs; we laughed at their embroideries; we turned up our noses at their jewelled weapons; we drank their coffee, and walked out of their shops without buying. They followed us into the street, and there implored us to come back, but we pretended to be returning to our ship. On our way back through this same street, every proprietor was out in front of his shop, holding up some special rug or embroidery which he had hastily dug out of his secret treasures in the vain hope of compelling our respect. Some of these were Persian silk rugs worth from one to three thousand dollars each. Although we would have committed any crime in order to possess these treasures, having got thoroughly into the spirit of the thing, we turned these rugs on their backs and pretended to find flaws in them, jeered at their colouring, and went on our way, followed by a jabbering, excited, perplexed, and nettled horde, who recklessly slaughtered their prices and almost tore up their mud floors in their wild anxiety to prove that they had something—anything—which we would buy. They called upon Allah to witness that they never had been treated so in their lives, but would we not stop just once more again to cast our eyes on their unworthy stock?

Having had all the amusement we wanted, and it being nearly time for luncheon, we went in, and in half an hour we had bought all that we had intended to buy from the first moment our eyes were cast upon them, and at about one–half the price they were offered to us three hours before. Now, if that isn’t what you call enjoying yourself, I should like to ask what you expect...

In Athens we bought nothing modern, but found several antique shops with Byzantine treasures, also silver ornaments, ancient curios, more beautiful than anything we found in Italy, and ancient sacred brass candlesticks of the Greek Church, which bore the test of being transplanted to an American setting.

In truth, some of my richest experiences have been in exploring with Jimmie tiny second-hand shops, pawn-shops, and dark, almost squalid corners, where, amid piles of rubbish, we found some really exquisite treasures. Mrs. Jimmie and Bee would have been afraid they would catch leprosy if they had gone with us on some of our expeditions, but Jimmie and I trusted in that Providence which always watches over children and fools, and even in England we found bits of old silver, china, and porcelain which amply repaid us for all the risk we ran. We often encountered shopkeepers who spoke a language utterly unknown to us and who understood not one word of English, and with whom we communicated by writing down the figures on paper which we would pay, or showing them the money in our hands. Perhaps we were cheated now and then—in fact, in our secret hearts we are guiltily sure of it, but what difference does that make?

When you get to Cairo, it being the jumping–off place, you naturally expect the most curious mixture of stuffs for sale that your mind can imagine, but, after having passed through the first stages of bewilderment, you soon see that there are only a few things that you really care for. For instance, you can’t resist the turquoises. If you go home from Egypt without buying any you will be sorry all the rest of your lives. Nor ought you to hold yourself back from your natural leaning toward crude ostrich feathers from the ostrich farms, and to bottle up your emotion at seeing uncut amber in pieces the size of a lump of chalk is to render yourself explosive and dangerous to your friends. Shirt studs, long chains for your vinaigrette or your fan, cuff buttons, antique belts of curious stones (generally clumsy and unbecoming to the waist, but not to be withstood), carved ostrich eggs, jewelled fly-brushes, carved brass coffee-pots and finger bowls, cigar sets of brilliant but rude enamel, to say nothing of the rugs and embroideries, are some of the things which I defy you to refrain from buying. To be sure, there are thousands of other attractions, which, if you are strong-minded, you can leave alone, but these things I have enumerated you will find that you cannot live without. Of course, I mean by this that these things are within reach of your purse, and cheaper than you can get them anywhere else, unless perhaps you go into the adjacent countries from which they come.

As you go up the Nile, your shopping becomes more primitive. On the mud banks, at the stations at which your boat stops, Arabians, Nubians, and Egyptians sit squatting on the caked mud with their gaudy clothes, brilliant embroideries, and rugs piled around them all within arm’s reach. Here also you must bring the guile which I have described into play.

It may be that at Assuan, near the first cataract, I really got into some little danger. I never knew why, but in the bazaars there I developed an awful, insatiable desire to make a complete collection of Abyssinian weapons of warfare. For this purpose, one day, I got on my donkey and took with me only a little Scotchman, who had presented me with countless bead necklaces and so many baskets all the way up the Nile that at night I was obliged to put them overboard in order to get into my stateroom, and who wore, besides his goggles, a green veil over his face. We made our way across the sand, into which our donkeys’ feet sank above their fetlocks, to the bazaars of Assuan.

These bazaars deserve more than a passing mention, as they are unlike any that I ever saw. They are all under one roof on both sides of tiny streets or broad aisles, just as you choose to call them, and through these aisles your donkey is privileged to go, while you sit calmly on his back, bargaining with the cross-legged merchants, who scream at you as you pass, thrusting their wares into your face, and, even if you attempt to pass on, they stop your donkey by pulling his tail. On this particular day I left my donkey at the door and made my way on foot, as I was eager to make my purchases.

Perhaps I was careless and ought to have taken better care of my Scotchman, because he was so little and so far from home, but I regret to say that I lost him soon after I went into the bazaar, and I didn’t see him again for three hours. Never shall I forget those three hours.

In Smyrna, Turkey, and Egypt the bargaining language is about the same.

“What you give, lady?”

“I won’t give anything! I don’t want it! What! Do you think I would carry that back home?”

“But you take hold of him; you feel him silk; I think you want to buy. Ver’ cheap, only four pound!”

“Four pounds!” I say in French. “Oh, you don’t want to sell. You want to keep it. And at such a price you will keep it.”

“Keep it!” in a shrill scream. “Not want to sell? Me? I here to sell! I sell you everything you see! I sell you the shop!” and then more wheedlingly, “You give me forty francs?”

“No,” in English again. “I’ll give you two dollars.”

“America! Liberty!” he cries, having cunningly established my nationality, and flattering my country with Oriental guile.

“Exactly,” I say, “liberty for such as you if you go there. None for me. Liberty in America is only free to the lower classes. The others are obliged to buy theirs.”

He shakes his head uncomprehendingly. “How much you give for him? Last price now! Six dollars!”

We haggle over “last prices” for a quarter of an hour more, and after two cups of coffee, amiably taken together, and some general conversation, I buy the thing for three dollars.

Bee says my tastes are low, but at any rate I can truthfully say that I get on uncommonly well with the common herd. I got about thirty of these jargon–speaking merchants so excited with my spirited method of not buying what they wanted me to that a large Englishman and a tall, gaunt Australian, thinking there was a fight going on, came to where I sat drinking coffee, and found that the screams, gesticulations, appeals to Allah, smiting of foreheads, brandishing of fists, and the general uproar were all caused by a quiet and well–behaved American girl sitting in their midst, while no less than four of them held a fold of her skirt twitching it now and then to call attention to their particular howl of resentment. They rescued me, loaded my purchases on my donkey boy, and found my donkey for me, beside which, sitting patiently on the ground and humbly waiting my return, I found my little Scotchman.

With all this cumulative experience, as Jimmie says, “of how to misbehave in shops,” we got back to London, where I could bring it into play, and in a manner avenge myself for past slights...

When we got to Paris, there seemed to be an epidemic of gun-metal ornaments set with tiny pearls, diamonds, or sapphires. Of these I noticed that Jimmie admired the pearl–studded cigar–cases and match–safes most, but for some reason I waited to make my purchase in London, which was one of the most foolish things I ever have done in all my foolish career, and right here let me say that there is nothing so unsatisfactory as to postpone a purchase, thinking either that you will come back to the same place or that you will see better further along, for in nine cases out of ten you never see it again.

When we got to London, Bee and I put on our best street clothes and started out to buy Jimmie his birthday present. We searched everywhere, but found that all gunmetal articles in London were either plain or studded with diamonds. We couldn’t find a pearl. Finally in one shop I explained my search to a tall, heavy man, evidently the proprietor, who had small green eyes set quite closely together, a florid complexion, and hay–coloured side–whiskers. His whiskers irritated me quite as much as the fact that he hadn’t what I wanted. Perhaps my hat vexed him, but at any rate he looked as though he were glad he didn’t have the pearls, and he finally permitted his annoyance, or his general British rudeness, to voice itself in this way:

“Pardon me, madame,” he said, “but you will never find cigar-cases of gun–metal studded with pearls, no matter how much you may desire it, for it is not good taste.”

I was warm, irritated, and my dress was too tight in the belt, so I just leaned my two elbows on that show–case, and I said to him: “Do you mean to have the impertinence, my good man, to tell two American ladies that what they are looking for is not in good taste, simply because you are so stupid and insular as not to keep it in stock? Do you presume to express your opinion on taste when you are wearing a green satin necktie with a pink shirt.? If you had ever been off this little island, and had gone to a land where taste in dress, and particularly in jewels, is understood, you would realise the impertinence of criticising the taste of an American woman, who is trying to find something worth while buying in so hopelessly British a shop as this. Now, my good man,” I added, taking up my parasol and purse, “I shall not report your rudeness to the proprietor, because doubtless you have a family to support, and I don’t wish to make you but let this be a warning to you never to’ be so insolent again,” and with that, I simply swept out of his shop. I seldom sweep out. Bee says I generally crawl out, but this time I was so inflated with an unholy joy that I recklessly cabled to Paris for Jimmie’s pearls, and to this day I rejoice at the way that man covered his green satin tie with his large hairy red hand, and at the ecstatic smiles on the faces of two clerks standing near, for I knew he was the proprietor when I called him “My good man.”

If you want to open an account in London, you have to be vouched for by another commercial house. They won’t take your personal friends, no matter how wealthy, no matter if they are titled. Your bank’s opinion of you is no good. Neither does it avail you how well and favourably you are known at your hotel for paying your bill promptly. This, and the custom in several large department stores of never returning your money if you take back goods, but making you spend it, not in the store, but in the department in which you have bought, makes shopping for dry goods excessively annoying to Americans.

I took back two silk blouses out of five that I bought at a large shop in Regent Street much frequented by Americans...To my astonishment, I discovered that I must buy three more blouses, or else lose all the money I paid for them. In my thirst for information, I asked the reason for this. In America, a lady would consider the reason they gave an insult. The shopwoman told me that ladies’ maids are so expert at copying that many ladies have six or eight garments sent home, kept a few days, copied by their maids and returned, and that this became so much the custom that they were finally forced to make that obnoxious rule.

I have heard complaints made in America by proprietors of large importing houses that women who keep accounts frequently order a handsome gown, wrap, or hat sent home on approval, wear it, and return it the next day. If this is the custom among decent self–respecting American women, who masquerade in society in the guise of women of refinement and culture, no wonder that shopkeepers are obliged to protect themselves. There is nowhere that the saying, “the innocent must suffer with the guilty,” obtains with so much force as in shopping, particularly in London.

It is a characteristic difference between the clever American and the insular British shopkeeper that in America, when a thing such as I have mentioned is suspected, the saleswoman or a private detective is sent to shadow the suspect, and ascertain if she really wore the garment in question. In such cases, the garment is returned to her with a note, saying that she was seen wearing it, when it is generally paid for without a word. If not, the shop is in danger of losing one otherwise valuable customer, as she is placed on what is known as the “blacklist,” which means that a double scrutiny is placed on all her purchases, as she is suspected of trickery.
In this same shop in Regent Street, of which I have been speaking, we submitted to several petty annoyances of this description without complaint, the last and pettiest of which was when Mrs. Jimmie, being captivated by an exquisite hundred–guinea gown of pale gray, embroidered in pink silk roses, and veiled with black Chantilly lace, bought it and ordered it altered to her figure. For this they charged her two pounds ten in addition to that frightful price for about an hour’s work about the collar. Mrs. Jimmie seldom resents anything, and in her gentleness is easily governed, so this time I persuaded her to protest, and dictated a furious letter of remonstrance to the proprietor, citing only this one case of extortion. Jimmie sat by, smoking and encouraging me, as I paced up and down the room with my hands behind my back, giving vent to sentences which, when copied down in Mrs. Jimmie’s ladylike handwriting, made Jimmie scream with joy. I think Mrs. Jimmie never had any intention of sending the letter, having written it down as a safety–valve for my rather explosive nature, but Jimmie was so carried away by the artistic incongruities of the situation that he whipped a stamp on it and mailed it before his wife could wink.

To his delight, Mrs. Jimmie received, three days later, a letter from the astonished proprietor, which showed in every line of it the jolt that my letter must have been to his stolid British nerveless system. He began by thanking her for having reported the matter to him, apologised humbly, as a British tradesman always does apologise to the bloated power of wealth, and said that her letter had been sent to all the various heads of departments for their perusal. He declared that for five years he had been endeavouring to bring the directors to see that, if they were to possess the coveted American patronage for which they always strove, they must accommodate themselves to certain American prejudices, one of which was the unalterable distaste Americans displayed in .paying for refitting handsome gowns. He was delighted to say that her letter had -. been couched in such firm, decisive, and righteously indignant language, such as he himself never would have been capable of commanding, had carried such weight, and had been productive of such definite results with the directors that he was pleased to announce that henceforward a radical change would appear in the government of their house, and that never again would an extra charge be made for refitting any garment costing over ten pounds. He thanked her again for her letter, but could not resist saying at the close that it was the most astonishing letter he had ever received in his life, and he begged to enclose the two pounds ten overcharge.

Jimmie fairly howled for joy as he read this letter aloud; Bee looked very much mortified; Mrs. Jimmie exceedingly perplexed, as if uncertain what to think, but I confess that all my irritation against British shopkeepers fell away from me as a cast–off garment. I blush to say that I shared Jimmie’s delight, and when he solemnly made me a present of the two pounds ten I had so heroically earned, I soothed my ladylike sister’s refined resentment by inviting all three to have broiled lobster with me at Scott’s.

I imagine, however, that one woman’s experience with dressmakers is like all others. I have noticed that to introduce the subject of my personal woes in the matter is to make the conversation general, in fact I might say composite, no matter how formal the gathering of women. Like the subject of servants, it is as provocative of conversation as classical music.

Far be it from me, however, to class all shopping in London under the head of dry goods, or the rage one gets into with every dressmaker. In most of the shops, in fact, I may say, in all of them (for the one unfortunate experience I have related in the jeweller’s shop was the only one of the kind I ever had in London), the clerks are universally polite, interested, and obliging, no matter how smart the shop may be. Take for instance, Jay’s, or Lewis and Allenby’s. The instant you stop before the smallest object a saleswoman approaches and says, “Good morning.” You say, “What a very pretty parasol!” and she replies, “It is pretty, isn’t it, madam?” She wears a skin-tight black cashmere gown with a little tail to it. Her beautiful broad shoulders, flat back, tiny waist, bun at the back of her head, and the invisible net over the fringe, all proclaim her to be an Englishwoman, but her pronunciation of the simplest words, and the way her voice goes up and down two or three times in a single sentence, sometimes twice in a single word, might sometimes lead you to think she spoke a foreign tongue.

The English call all our voices monotonous, but it was several weeks after I reached London for the first time before I could catch the significance of a sentence the first time it was pronounced. All over Europe our watchword with the Russians, Turks, Egyptians, Arabs, French, Germans, and Italians was always “Do you speak English?” and in London it is Jimmie’s crowning act of revenge to ask the railway guards and cab–drivers the same insulting question. Imagine asking London cabbies the question, “Do you speak English?” It puts him in a purple rage directly.

But shopkeepers all over Europe are quick to anticipate all your wants, to suggest tempting things which have not occurred to you to buy, and to offer to have things made, if nothing in stock suits you. I suppose I am naturally slow and stupid. Bee says I am, but having been brought up in America, in the South, where nothing is ever made, and where we had to send to New York for everything, and where even New York has to depend on Europe for many of its staples, my surprise overpowered me so that it mortified Bee, when they offered to have silk stockings made for me in Paris.

Like most Americans, I am in the habit of turning away disappointed, and preparing to go without things if I cannot find what I want in the shops, but in London and Paris they will offer of their own accord to make for you anything you may describe to them, from a pair of gloves to a pattern of brocade. This is one and perhaps the only glory of being an American in Europe, for, as my friend in Naples, of the firm of Ananias, Barabbas, and Company, said to me: “Behold! you are an American, and by Americans do we not live?”

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04/22/2006