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New Notes on C. A. Bristed. Poe, and Baudelaire
admits that he had not read the entire novel when he wrote his first comments. “Happening to read two or three chapters in the middle, and then pitching it away in disgust, as one is apt to do with a French novel, I rashly concluded that it was the old story of a city exquisite and a country wife, &c., whereas the heroine is the worst character in the book, or nearly so [...] and bound to come to grief from the commencement of her life.” Bristed says that “the book may be said to have a morał bearing. ‘Instructive, but disgusting,’ as the lady said when she looked into the dissect-ing-room.’”17
Like other Americans of his time, Bristed had conflicting opin-ions about French culture. He readily recognized the richness and sophistication of its tradition in contrast to the lack of true intel-lectual cultivation in America, and he regularly reported on the opera, theater, horse-racing, and balls of the Second Empire. Yet, he often struck a moralistic tonę in speaking of French politics, society, and culture. For instance, in a letter of 1852, defending his joumalistic description of the coup d’etat, he articulates a dis-tinctly American position as he writes for an American reader-ship. “I stoutly insist upon being considered a genuine republican and should be very sorry to have any respectable man suppose that I am not.” The French accepted the usurpation of their gov-emment out of “fear of the Socialists,” and they are not “compe-tent” to “have a republic” because they are in the habit of looking to the govemment for help when they should help themselves. But the new govemment is one of “show and pomp and paradę.” The French are a people with luxurious tastes and inclinations, “over curious in dress and diet, effeminate and fastidious in all things, lazy except in pursuit of pleasure, and never loving work
17 The Spirit of the Times. 27, n" 41 (November 21, 1857): 482.
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