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diff --git a/6445.txt b/6445.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..1d8b056 --- /dev/null +++ b/6445.txt @@ -0,0 +1,3931 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Letters from America, by Rupert Brooke + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Letters from America + Preface by Henry James + +Author: Rupert Brooke + +Commentator: Henry James + + +Release Date: September, 2004 [EBook #6445] +This file was first posted on December 14, 2002 +Last Updated: April 10, 2013 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LETTERS FROM AMERICA *** + + + + +Produced by Tonya Allen, Charles Franks and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team + + + + + + + + +LETTERS FROM AMERICA + + +By Rupert Brooke. + + +With a Preface by Henry James + + +[Frontispiece: Rupert Brooke 1913] + + + + +NOTE + + +The author started in May 1913 on a journey to the United States, +Canada, and the South Seas, from which he returned next year at the +beginning of June. The first thirteen chapters of this book were written +as letters to the _Westminster Gazette_. He would probably not have +republished them in their present form, as he intended to write a longer +book on his travels; but they are now printed with only the correction +of a few evident slips. + +The two remaining chapters appeared in the _New Statesman_, soon after +the outbreak of war. + +Thanks are due to the Editors who have allowed the republication of the +articles. + +E. M. + + + + +CONTENTS + + +Note + +RUPERT BROOKE: by Henry James + +LETTERS FROM AMERICA + +I. Arrival + +II. New York + +III. New York--(_continued_) + +IV. Boston and Harvard + +V. Montreal and Ottawa + +VI. Quebec and the Saguenay + +VII. Ontario + +VIII. Niagara Falls + +IX. To Winnipeg + +X. Outside + +XI. The Prairies + +XII. The Indians + +XIII. The Rockies + +XIV. Some Niggers + +An Unusual Young Man + + + + +RUPERT BROOKE: by Henry James + + +Nothing more generally or more recurrently solicits us, in the light of +literature, I think, than the interest of our learning how the poet, +the true poet, and above all the particular one with whom we may for the +moment be concerned, has come into his estate, asserted and preserved +his identity, worked out his question of sticking to that and to nothing +else; and has so been able to reach us and touch us _as_ a poet, in +spite of the accidents and dangers that must have beset this course. The +chances and changes, the personal history of any absolute genius, draw +us to watch his adventure with curiosity and inquiry, lead us on to win +more of his secret and borrow more of his experience (I mean, needless +to say, when we are at all critically minded); but there is something +in the clear safe arrival of the poetic nature, in a given case, at the +point of its free and happy exercise, that provokes, if not the +cold impulse to challenge or cross-question it, at least the need of +understanding so far as possible how, in a world in which difficulty +and disaster are frequent, the most wavering and flickering of all fine +flames has escaped extinction. We go back, we help ourselves to hang +about the attestation of the first spark of the flame, and like to +indulge in a fond notation of such facts as that of the air in which +it was kindled and insisted on proceeding, or yet perhaps failed to +proceed, to a larger combustion, and the draughts, blowing about the +world, that were either, as may have happened, to quicken its native +force or perhaps to extinguish it in a gust of undue violence. It is +naturally when the poet has emerged unmistakeably clear, or has at a +happy moment of his story seemed likely to, that our attention and our +suspense in the matter are most intimately engaged; and we are at any +rate in general beset by the impression and haunted by the observed law, +that the growth and the triumph of the faculty at its finest have been +positively in proportion to certain rigours of circumstance. + +It is doubtless not indeed so much that this appearance has been +inveterate as that the quality of genius in fact associated with it is +apt to strike us as the clearest we know. We think of Dante in harassed +exile, of Shakespeare under sordidly professional stress, of Milton +in exasperated exposure and material darkness; we think of Burns and +Chatterton, and Keats and Shelley and Coleridge, we think of Leopardi +and Musset and Emily Bronte and Walt Whitman, as it is open to us surely +to think even of Wordsworth, so harshly conditioned by his spareness and +bareness and bleakness--all this in reference to the voices that have +most proved their command of the ear of time, and with the various +examples added of those claiming, or at best enjoying, but the slighter +attention; and their office thus mainly affects us as that of showing +in how jostled, how frequently arrested and all but defeated a hand, the +torch could still be carried. It is not of course for the countrymen of +Byron and of Tennyson and Swinburne, any more than for those of +Victor Hugo, to say nothing of those of Edmond Rostand, to forget the +occurrence on occasion of high instances in which the dangers all seem +denied and only favour and facility recorded; but it would take more +of these than we can begin to set in a row to purge us of that prime +determinant, after all, of our affection for the great poetic muse, the +vision of the rarest sensibility and the largest generosity we know kept +by her at their pitch, kept fighting for their life and insisting on +their range of expression, amid doubts and derisions and buffets, even +sometimes amid stones of stumbling quite self-invited, that might at +any moment have made the loss of the precious clue really irremediable. +Which moral, so pointed, accounts assuredly for half our interest in +the poetic character--a sentiment more unlikely than not, I think, +to survive a sustained succession of Victor Hugos and Rostands, or of +Byrons, Tennysons and Swinburnes. We quite consciously miss in these +bards, as we find ourselves rather wondering even at our failure to miss +it in Shelley, that such "complications" as they may have had to reckon +with were not in general of the cruelly troublous order, and that no +stretch of the view either of our own "theory of art" or of our vivacity +of passion as making trouble, contributes perceptibly the required +savour of the pathetic. We cling, critically or at least experientially +speaking, to our superstition, if not absolutely to our approved +measure, of this grace and proof; and that truly, to cut my argument +short, is what sets us straight down before a sudden case in which the +old discrimination quite drops to the ground--in which we neither on the +one hand miss anything that the general association could have given it, +nor on the other recognise the pomp that attends the grand exceptions I +have mentioned. + +Rupert Brooke, young, happy, radiant, extraordinarily endowed and +irresistibly attaching, virtually met a soldier's death, met it in the +stress of action and the all but immediate presence of the enemy; but he +is before us as a new, a confounding and superseding example +altogether, an unprecedented image, formed to resist erosion by time or +vulgarisation by reference, of quickened possibilities, finer ones than +ever before, in the stuff poets may be noted as made of. With twenty +reasons fixing the interest and the charm that will henceforth abide +in his name and constitute, as we may say, his legend, he submits all +helplessly to one in particular which is, for appreciation, the least +personal to him or inseparable from him, and he does this because, +while he is still in the highest degree of the distinguished faculty +and quality, we happen to feel him even more markedly and significantly +"modern." This is why I speak of the mixture of his elements as new, +feeling that it governs his example, put by it in a light which nothing +else could have equally contributed--so that Byron for instance, who +startled his contemporaries by taking for granted scarce one of the +articles that formed their comfortable faith and by revelling in almost +everything that made them idiots if he himself was to figure as a child +of truth, looks to us, by any such measure, comparatively plated over +with the impenetrable rococo of his own day. I speak, I hasten to add, +not of Byron's volume, his flood and his fortune, but of his really +having quarrelled with the temper and the accent of his age still more +where they might have helped him to expression than where he but flew in +their face. He hugged his pomp, whereas our unspeakably fortunate young +poet of to-day, linked like him also, for consecration of the final +romance, with the isles of Greece, took for _his_ own the whole of the +poetic consciousness he was born to, and moved about in it as a stripped +young swimmer might have kept splashing through blue water and coming +up at any point that friendliness and fancy, with every prejudice shed, +might determine. Rupert expressed us _all_, at the highest tide of our +actuality, and was the creature of a freedom restricted only by that +condition of his blinding youth, which we accept on the whole with +gratitude and relief--given that I qualify the condition as dazzling +even to himself. How can it therefore not be interesting to see a little +what the wondrous modern in him consisted of? + + + + +I + + +What it first and foremost really comes to, I think, is the fact that at +an hour when the civilised peoples are on exhibition, quite finally +and sharply on show, to each other and to the world, as they absolutely +never in all their long history have been before, the English tradition +(both of amenity and of energy, I naturally mean), should have flowered +at once into a specimen so beautifully producible. Thousands of other +sentiments are of course all the while, in different connections, at +hand for us; but it is of the exquisite civility, the social instincts +of the race, _poetically_ expressed, that I speak; and it would be hard +to overstate the felicity of his fellow-countrymen's being able just +now to say: "Yes, this, with the imperfection of so many of our +arrangements, with the persistence of so many of our mistakes, with +the waste of so much of our effort and the weight of the many-coloured +mantle of time that drags so redundantly about us, this natural +accommodation of the English spirit, this frequent extraordinary +beauty of the English aspect, this finest saturation of the English +intelligence by its most immediate associations, tasting as they mainly +do of the long past, this ideal image of English youth, in a word, +at once radiant and reflective, are things that appeal to us as +delightfully exhibitional beyond a doubt, yet as drawn, to the last +fibre, from the very wealth of our own conscience and the very force +of our own history. We haven't, for such an instance of our genius, to +reach out to strange places or across other, and otherwise productive, +tracts; the exemplary instance himself has well-nigh as a matter of +course reached and revelled, for that is exactly our way in proportion +as we feel ourselves clear. But the kind of experience so entailed, of +contribution so gathered, is just what we wear easiest when we have +been least stinted of it, and what our English use of makes perhaps our +vividest reference to our thick-growing native determinants." + +Rupert Brooke, at any rate, the charmed commentator may well keep before +him, simply did all the usual English things--under the happy provision +of course that he found them in his way at their best; and it was +exactly most delightful in him that no inordinate expenditure, no +anxious extension of the common plan, as "liberally" applied all about +him, had been incurred or contrived to predetermine his distinction. It +is difficult to express on the contrary how peculiar a value attached +to his having simply "come in" for the general luck awaiting any English +youth who may not be markedly inapt for the traditional chances. He +could in fact easily strike those who most appreciated him as giving +such an account of the usual English things--to repeat the form of +my allusion to them--as seemed to address you to them, in their very +considerable number indeed, for any information about him that might +matter, but which left you wholly to judge whether they seemed justified +by their fruits. This manner about them, as one may call it in general, +often contributes to your impression that they make for a certain +strain of related modesty which may on occasion be one of their happiest +effects; it at any rate, in days when my acquaintance with them was +slighter, used to leave me gaping at the treasure of operation, the +far recessional perspectives, it took for granted and any offered +demonstration of the extent or the mysteries of which seemed unthinkable +just in proportion as the human resultant testified in some one or other +of his odd ways to their influence. He might not always be, at any rate +on first acquaintance, a resultant explosively human, but there was +in any case one reflection he could always cause you to make: "What a +wondrous system it indeed must be which insists on flourishing to all +appearance under such an absence of advertised or even of confessed +relation to it as would do honour to a vacuum produced by an air-pump!" +The formulation, the approximate expression of what the system at large +might or mightn't do for those in contact with it, became thus one's own +fitful care, with one's attention for a considerable period doubtless +dormant enough, but with the questions always liable to revive before +the individual case. + +Rupert Brooke made them revive as soon as one began to know him, or in +other words made one want to read back into him each of his promoting +causes without exception, to trace to some source in the ambient air +almost any one, at a venture, of his aspects; so precious a loose and +careless bundle of happy references did that inveterate trick of giving +the go-by to over-emphasis which he shared with his general kind fail to +prevent your feeling sure of his having about him. I think the liveliest +interest of these was that while not one of them was signally romantic, +by the common measure of the great English amenity, they yet hung +together, reinforcing and enhancing each other, in a way that seemed to +join their hands for an incomparably educative or civilising process, +the great mark of which was that it took some want of amenability in +particular subjects to betray anything like a gap. I do not mean of +course to say that gaps, and occasionally of the most flagrant, were +made so supremely difficult of occurrence; but only that the effect, in +the human resultants who kept these, and with the least effort, most in +abeyance, was a thing one wouldn't have had different by a single +shade. I am not sure that such a case of the recognisable was the better +established by the fact of Rupert's being one of the three sons of a +house-master at Rugby, where he was born in 1887 and where he lost his +father in 1910, the elder of his brothers having then already died +and the younger being destined to fall in battle at the allied Front, +shortly after he himself had succumbed; but the circumstance I speak +of gives a peculiar and an especially welcome consecration to that +perceptible play in him of the inbred "public school" character the +bloom of which his short life had too little time to remove and +which one wouldn't for the world not have been disposed to note, with +everything else, in the beautiful complexity of his attributes. The fact +was that if one liked him--and I may as well say at once that few young +men, in our time, can have gone through life under a greater burden, +more easily carried and kept in its place, of being liked--one liked +absolutely everything about him, without the smallest exception; so that +he appeared to convert before one's eyes all that happened to him, or +that had or that ever might, not only to his advantage as a source of +life and experience, but to the enjoyment on its own side of a sort +of illustrational virtue or glory. This appearance of universal +assimilation--often indeed by incalculable ironic reactions which were +of the very essence of the restless young intelligence rejoicing in its +gaiety--made each part of his rich consciousness, so rapidly acquired, +cling, as it were, to the company of all the other parts, so as at once +neither to miss any touch of the luck (one keeps coming back to that), +incurred by them, or to let them suffer any want of its own rightness. +It was as right, through the spell he cast altogether, that he should +have come into the world and have passed his boyhood in that Rugby home, +as that he should have been able later on to wander as irrepressibly as +the spirit moved him, or as that he should have found himself fitting +as intimately as he was very soon to do into any number of the +incalculabilities, the intellectual at least, of the poetic temperament. +He had them all, he gave himself in his short career up to them all--and +I confess that, partly for reasons to be further developed, I am unable +even to guess what they might eventually have made of him; which is of +course what brings us round again to that view of him as the young poet +with absolutely nothing but his generic spontaneity to trouble +about, the young poet profiting for happiness by a general condition +unprecedented for young poets, that I began by indulging in. He +went from Rugby to Cambridge, where, after a while, he carried off a +Fellowship at King's, and where, during a short visit there in "May +week," or otherwise early in June 1909, I first, and as I was to find, +very unforgettingly, met him. He reappears to me as with his felicities +all most promptly divinable, in that splendid setting of the river at +the "backs"; as to which indeed I remember vaguely wondering what it was +left to such a place to do with the added, the verily wasted, grace +of such a person, or how even such a person could hold his own, as who +should say, at such a pitch of simple scenic perfection. Any difficulty +dropped, however, to the reconciling vision; for that the young man +was publicly and responsibly a poet seemed the fact a little +over-officiously involved--to the promotion of a certain surprise (on +one's own part) at his having to "be" anything. It was to come over me +still more afterwards that nothing of that or of any other sort need +really have rested on him with a weight of obligation, and in fact I +cannot but think that life might have been seen and felt to suggest to +him, in an exposed unanimous conspiracy, that his status should be +left to the general sense of others, ever so many others, who would +sufficiently take care of it, and that such a fine rare case was +accordingly as arguable as it possibly _could_ be--with the pure, +undischarged poetry of him and the latent presumption of his dying for +his country the only things to gainsay it. The question was to a certain +extent crude, "Why need he be a poet, why need he so specialise?" but if +this was so it was only, it was already, symptomatic of the interesting +final truth that he was to testify to his function in the unparalleled +way. He was going to have the life (the unanimous conspiracy so far +achieved _that_), was going to have it under no more formal guarantee +than that of his appetite and genius for it; and this was to help us +all to the complete appreciation of him. No single scrap of the English +fortune at its easiest and truest--which means of course with every +vulgarity dropped out--but was to brush him as by the readiest +instinctive wing, never over-straining a point or achieving a miracle to +do so; only trusting his exquisite imagination and temper to respond +to the succession of his opportunities. It is in the light of what this +succession could in the most natural and most familiar way in the +world amount to for him that we find this idea of a beautiful crowning +modernness above all to meet his case. The promptitude, the perception, +the understanding, the quality of humour and sociability, the happy +lapses in the logic of inward reactions (save for their all infallibly +being poetic), of which he availed himself consented to be as +illustrational as any fondest friend could wish, whether the subject of +the exhibition was aware of the degree or not, and made his vivacity of +vision, his exercise of fancy and irony, of observation at its freest, +inevitable--while at the same time setting in motion no machinery of +experience in which his curiosity, or in other words, the quickness of +his familiarity, didn't move faster than anything else. + + + + +II + + +I owe to his intimate and devoted friend Mr Edward Marsh the +communication of many of his letters, these already gathered into an +admirable brief memoir which is yet to appear and which will give ample +help in the illustrative way to the pages to which the present remarks +form a preface, and which are collected from the columns of the London +evening journal in which they originally saw the light. The "literary +baggage" of his short course consists thus of his two slender volumes +of verse and of these two scarcely stouter sheafs of correspondence +[Footnote: There remain also to be published a book on John Webster, and +a prose play in one act.--E.M.]--though I should add that the hitherto +unpublished letters enjoy the advantage of a commemorative and +interpretative commentary, at the Editor's hands, which will have +rendered the highest service to each matter. That even these four scant +volumes tell the whole story, or fix the whole image, of the fine young +spirit they are concerned with we certainly hold back from allowing; +his case being in an extraordinary degree that of a creature on whom +the gods had smiled their brightest, and half of whose manifestation +therefore was by the simple act of presence and of direct communication. +He did in fact specialise, to repeat my term; only since, as one reads +him, whether in verse or in prose, that distinguished readability seems +all the specialisation one need invoke, so when the question was of the +gift that made of his face to face address a circumstance so complete in +itself as apparently to cover all the ground, leaving no margin either, +an activity to the last degree justified appeared the only name for +one's impression. The moral of all which is doubtless that these brief, +if at the same time very numerous, moments of his quick career formed +altogether as happy a time, in as happy a place, to be born to as the +student of the human drama has ever caught sight of--granting always, +that is, that some actor of the scene has been thoroughly up to his +part. Such was the sort of recognition, assuredly, under which Rupert +played _his_--that of his lending himself to every current and contact, +the "newer," the later fruit of time, the better; only this not because +any particular one was an agitating revelation, but because with due +sensibility, with a restless inward ferment, at the centre of them all, +what could he possibly so much feel like as the heir of all the ages? +I remember his originally giving me, though with no shade of imputable +intention, the sense of his just _being_ that, with the highest +amiability--the note in him that, as I have hinted, one kept coming back +to; so that during a long wait for another glimpse of him I thought +of the practice and function so displayed as wholly engaging, took for +granted his keeping them up with equal facility and pleasure. Nothing +could have been more delightful accordingly, later on, in renewal of the +personal acquaintance than to gather that this was exactly what had been +taking place, and with an inveteracy as to which his letters are a full +documentation. Whatever his own terms for the process might be had he +been brought to book, and though the variety of his terms for anything +and everything was the very play, and even the measure, of his talent, +the most charmed and conclusive description of him was that no young +man had ever so naturally taken on under the pressure of life the poetic +nature, and shaken it so free of every encumbrance by simply wearing it +as he wore his complexion or his outline. + +That, then, was the way the imagination followed him with its luxury +of confidence: he was doing everything that could be done in the time +(since this was the modernest note), but performing each and every +finest shade of these blest acts with a poetic punctuality that was only +matched by a corresponding social sincerity. I recall perfectly my +being sure of it all the while, even if with little current confirmation +beyond that supplied by his first volume of verse; and the effect of +the whole record is now to show that such a conclusion was quite +extravagantly right. He _was_ constantly doing all the things, and this +with a reckless freedom, as it might be called, that really dissociated +the responsibility of the precious character from anything like +conscious domestic coddlement to a point at which no troubled young +singer, none, that is, equally troubled, had perhaps ever felt he could +afford to dissociate it. Rupert's resources for affording, in the whole +connection, were his humour, his irony, his need, under every quiver of +inspiration, toward whatever end, to be amused and amusing, and to find +above all that this could never so much occur as by the application of +his talent, of which he was perfectly conscious, to his own case. He +carried his case with him, for purposes of derision as much as for any +others, wherever he went, and how he went everywhere, thus blissfully +burdened, is what meets us at every turn on his printed page. My only +doubt about him springs in fact from the question of whether he +knew that the earthly felicity enjoyed by him, his possession of the +exquisite temperament linked so easily to the irrepressible experience, +was a thing to make of the young Briton of the then hour so nearly the +spoiled child of history that one wanted something in the way of an +extra guarantee to feel soundly sure of him. I come back once more +to his having apparently never dreamt of any stretch of the point of +liberal allowance, of so-called adventure, on behalf of "development," +never dreamt of any stretch but that of the imagination itself +indeed--quite a different matter and even if it too were at moments to +recoil; it was so true that the general measure of his world as to what +it might be prompt and pleasant and in the day's work or the day's play +to "go in for" was exactly the range that tinged all his education as +liberal, the education the free design of which he had left so short a +way behind him when he died. + +Just there was the luck attendant of the coincidence of his course with +the moment at which the proceeding hither and yon to the tune of almost +any "happy thought," and in the interest of almost any branch of culture +or invocation of response that might be more easily improvised than not, +could positively strike the observer as excessive, as in fact absurd, +for the formation of taste or the enrichment of genius, unless the +principle of these values had in a particular connection been subjected +in advance to some challenge or some test. Why should it take such a +flood of suggestion, such a luxury of acquaintance and contact, only +to make superficial specimens? Why shouldn't the art of living inward a +little more, and thereby of digging a little deeper or pressing a little +further, rather modestly replace the enviable, always the enviable, +young Briton's enormous range of alternatives in the way of +question-begging movement, the way of vision and of non-vision, the +enormous habit of holidays? If one could have made out once for all that +holidays were proportionately and infallibly inspiring one would have +ceased thoughtfully to worry; but the question was as it stood an old +story, even though it might freshly radiate, on occasion, under the +recognition that the seed-smothered patch of soil flowered, when it did +flower, with a fragrance all its own. This concomitant, however, always +dangled, that if it were put to us, "Do you really mean you would rather +they should not perpetually have been again for a look-in at Berlin, +or an awfully good time at Munich, or a rush round Sicily, or a dash +through the States to Japan, with whatever like rattling renewals?" you +would after all shrink from the responsibility of such a restriction +before being clear as to what you would suggest in its place. Rupert +went on reading-parties from King's to Lulworth for instance, which +the association of the two places, the two so extraordinarily finished +scenes, causes to figure as a sort of preliminary flourish; and +everything that came his way after that affects me as the blest +indulgence in flourish upon flourish. This was not in the least the air, +or the desire, or the pretension of it, but the unfailing felicity just +kept catching him up, just left him never wanting nor waiting for some +pretext to roam, or indeed only the more responsively to stay, doing +either, whichever it might be, as a form of highly intellectualised +"fun." He didn't overflow with shillings, yet so far as roving was +concerned the practice was always easy, and perhaps the adorably +whimsical lyric, contained in his second volume of verse, on the pull +of Grantchester at his heartstrings, as the old vicarage of that sweet +adjunct to Cambridge could present itself to him in a Berlin cafe, may +best exemplify the sort of thing that was represented, in one way and +another, by his taking his most ultimately English ease. + +Whatever Berlin or Munich, to speak of them only, could do or fail to do +for him, how can one not rejoice without reserve in the way he felt what +he did feel as poetic reaction of the liveliest and finest, with the +added interest of its often turning at one and the same time to the +fullest sincerity and to a perversity of the most "evolved"?--since +I can not dispense with that sign of truth. Never was a young singer +either less obviously sentimental or less addicted to the mere twang of +the guitar; at the same time that it was always his personal experience +or his curious, his not a little defiantly excogitated, inner vision +that he sought to catch; some of the odd fashion of his play with which +latter seems on occasion to preponderate over the truly pleasing poet's +appeal to beauty or cultivated habit of grace. Odd enough, no +doubt, that Rupert should appear to have had well-nigh in horror the +cultivation of grace for its own sake, as we say, and yet should really +not have disfigured his poetic countenance by a single touch quotable +as showing this. The medal of the mere pleasant had always a reverse for +him, and it was generally in that substitute he was most interested. We +catch in him reaction upon reaction, the succession of these conducing +to his entirely unashamed poetic complexity, and of course one +observation always to be made about him, one reminder always to be +gratefully welcomed, is that we are dealing after all with one of the +_youngest_ quantities of art and character taken together that +ever arrived at an irresistible appeal. His irony, his liberty, his +pleasantry, his paradox, and what I have called his perversity, are all +nothing if not young; and I may as well say at once for him that I find +in the imagination of their turning in time, dreadful time, to +something more balanced and harmonised, a difficulty insuperable. The +self-consciousness, the poetic, of his so free figuration (in verse, +only in verse, oddly enough) of the unpleasant to behold, to touch, or +even to smell, was certainly, I think, nothing if not "self-conscious," +but there were so many things in his consciousness, which was never +in the least unpeopled, that it would have been a rare chance had his +projection of the self that we are so apt to make an object of invidious +allusion stayed out. What it all really most comes to, you feel again, +is that none of his impulses prospered in solitude, or, for that matter, +were so much as permitted to mumble their least scrap there; he was +predestined and condemned to sociability, which no league of neglect +could have deprived him of even had it speculatively tried: whereby what +was it but his own image that he most saw reflected in other faces? It +would still have been there, it couldn't possibly have succeeded in not +being, even had he closed his eyes to it with elaborate tightness. The +only neglect must have been on his own side, where indeed it did take +form in that of as signal an opportunity to become "spoiled," probably, +as ever fell in a brilliant young man's way: so that to help out my +comprehension of the unsightly and unsavoury, sufficiently wondered +at, with which his muse repeatedly embraced the occasion to associate +herself, I take the thing for a declaration of the idea that he might +himself prevent the spoiling so far as possible. He could in fact +prevent nothing, the wave of his fortune and his favour continuing so +to carry him; which is doubtless one of the reasons why, through our +general sense that nothing could possibly not be of the last degree of +rightness in him, what would have been wrong in others, literally in +any creature but him, like for example "A Channel Passage" of his first +volume, simply puts on, while this particular muse stands anxiously by, +a kind of dignity of experiment quite consistent with our congratulating +her, at the same time, as soon as it is over. What was "A Channel +Passage" thus but a flourish marked with the sign of all his flourishes, +that of being a success and having fruition? Though it performed the +extraordinary feat of directing the contents of the poet's stomach +straight at the object of his displeasure, we feel that, by some +excellent grace, the object is not at all reached--too many things, and +most of all, too innocently enormous a cynicism, standing in the way +and themselves receiving the tribute; having in a word, impatient young +cynicism as they are, _that_ experience as well as various things. + + + + +III + + +No detail of Mr Marsh's admirable memoir may I allow myself to +anticipate. I can only announce it as a picture, with all the elements +in iridescent fusion, of the felicity that fairly dogged Rupert's steps, +as we may say, and that never allowed him to fall below its measure. We +shall read into it even more relations than nominally appear, and every +one of them again a flourish, every one of them a connection with +his time, a "sampling" of it at its most multitudinous and most +characteristic; every one of them too a record of the state of +some other charmed, not less than charming party--even when the +letter-writer's expression of the interest, the amusement, the play of +fancy, of taste, of whatever sort of appreciation or reaction for his +own spirit, is the ostensible note. This is what I mean in especial by +the constancy with which, and the cost at which, perhaps not less, for +others, the poetic sensibility was maintained and guaranteed. It was as +genuine as if he had been a bard perched on an eminence with a harp, and +yet it was arranged for, as we may say, by the close consensus of those +who had absolutely to know their relation with him but as a delight and +who wanted therefore to keep him, to the last point, true to himself. +His complete curiosity and sociability might have made him, on these +lines, factitious, if it had not happened that the people he so +variously knew and the contacts he enjoyed were just of the kind to +promote most his facility and vivacity and intelligence of life. They +were all young together, allowing for three or four notable, by which I +mean far from the least responsive, exceptions; they were all fresh and +free and acute and aware and in "the world," when not out of it; all +together at the high speculative, the high talkative pitch of the +initiational stage of these latest years, the informed and animated, +the so consciously non-benighted, geniality of which was to make him the +clearest and most projected poetic case, with the question of difficulty +and doubt and frustration most solved, the question of the immediate +and its implications most in order for him, that it was possible to +conceive. He had found at once to his purpose a wondrous enough old +England, an England breaking out into numberless assertions of a new +awareness, into liberties of high and clean, even when most sceptical +and discursive, young intercourse; a carnival of half anxious and +half elated criticism, all framed and backgrounded in still richer +accumulations, both moral and material, or, as who should say, +pictorial, of the matter of course and the taken for granted. Nothing +could have been in greater contrast, one cannot too much insist, to the +situation of the traditional lonely lyrist who yearns for connections +and relations yet to be made and whose difficulty, lyrical, emotional, +personal, social or intellectual, has thereby so little in common with +any embarrassment of choice. The author of the pages before us was +perhaps the young lyrist, in all the annals of verse, who, having the +largest luxury of choice, yet remained least "demoralised" by it--how +little demoralised he was to round off his short history by showing. + +It was into these conditions, thickening and thickening, in their +comparative serenity, up to the eleventh hour, that the War came +smashing down; but of the basis, the great garden ground, all green +and russet and silver, all a tissue of distinguished and yet so easy +occasions, so improvised extensions, which they had already placed +at his service and that of his extraordinarily amiable and constantly +enlarged "set" for the exercise of _their_ dealing with the rest of the +happy earth in punctuating interludes, it is the office of our few +but precious documents to enable us to judge. The interlude that here +concerns us most is that of the year spent in his journey round a +considerable part of the world in 1913-14, testifying with a charm that +increases as he goes to that quest of unprejudiced culture, the true +poetic, the vision of the life of man, which was to prove the liveliest +of his impulses. It was not indeed under the flag of that research that +he offered himself for the Army almost immediately after his return to +England--and even if when a young man was so essentially a poet we need +see no act in him as a prosaic alternative. The misfortune of this set +of letters from New York and Boston, from Canada and Samoa, addressed, +for the most part, to a friendly London evening journal is, alas, in +the fact that they are of so moderate a quantity; for we make him out +as steadily more vivid and delightful while his opportunity grows. He is +touching at first, inevitably quite juvenile, in the measure of his good +faith; we feel him not a little lost and lonely and stranded in the New +York pandemonium--obliged to throw himself upon sky-scrapers and +the overspread blackness pricked out in a flickering fury of imaged +advertisement for want of some more interesting view of character and +manners. We long to take him by the hand and show him finer lights--eyes +of but meaner range, after all, being adequate to the gape at the +vertical business blocks and the lurid sky-clamour for more dollars. We +feel in a manner his sensibility wasted and would fain turn it on to +the capture of deeper meanings. But we must leave him to himself and to +youth's facility of wonder; he is amused, beguiled, struck on the whole +with as many differences as we could expect, and sufficiently reminded, +no doubt, of the number of words he is restricted to. It is moreover his +sign, as it is that of the poetic turn of mind in general that we seem +to catch him alike in anticipations or divinations, and in lapses +and freshnesses, of experience that surprise us. He makes various +reflections, some of them all perceptive and ingenious--as about +the faces, the men's in particular, seen in the streets, the public +conveyances and elsewhere; though falling a little short, in his +friendly wondering way, of that bewildered apprehension of monotony of +type, of modelling lost in the desert, which we might have expected of +him, and of the question above all of what is destined to become of that +more and more vanishing quantity the American nose other than Judaic. + +What we note in particular is that he likes, to all appearance, many +more things than he doesn't, and how superlatively he is struck with +the promptitude and wholeness of the American welcome and of all its +friendly service. What it is but too easy, with the pleasure of +having known him, to read into all this is the operation of his own +irresistible quality, and of the state of felicity he clearly created +just by appearing as a party to the social relation. He moves and +circulates to our vision as so naturally, so beautifully undesigning +a weaver of that spell, that we feel comparatively little of the story +told even by his diverted report of it; so much fuller a report would +surely proceed, could we appeal to their memory, their sense of poetry, +from those into whose ken he floated. It is impossible not to figure +him, to the last felicity, as he comes and goes, presenting himself +always with a singular effect both of suddenness and of the readiest +rightness; we should always have liked to be there, wherever it was, for +the justification of our own fond confidence and the pleasure of seeing +it unfailingly spread and spread. The ironies and paradoxes of his +verse, in all this record, fall away from him; he takes to direct +observation and accepts with perfect good-humour any hazards of contact, +some of the shocks of encounter proving more muffled for him than +might, as I say, have been feared--witness the American Jew with whom he +appears to have spent some hours in Canada; and of course the "word" of +the whole thing is that he simply reaped at every turn the harmonising +benefit that his presence conferred. This it is in especial that makes +us regret so much the scanting, as we feel it, of his story; it deprives +us in just that proportion of certain of the notes of his appearance +and his "success." _There_ was the poetic fact involved--that, being +so gratefully apprehended everywhere, his own response was inevitably +prescribed and pitched as the perfect friendly and genial and liberal +thing. Moreover, the value of his having so let himself loose in the +immensity tells more at each step in favour of his style; the pages from +Canada, where as an impressionist, he increasingly finds his feet, and +even finds to the same increase a certain comfort of association, are +better than those from the States, while those from the Pacific Islands +rapidly brighten and enlarge their inspiration. This part of his +adventure was clearly the great success and fell in with his fancy, +amusing and quickening and rewarding him, more than anything in the +whole revelation. He lightly performs the miracle, to my own sense, +which R. L. Stevenson, which even Pierre Loti, taking however long a +rope, had not performed; he charmingly conjures away--though in this +prose more than in the verse of his second volume--the marked tendency +of the whole exquisite region to insist on the secret of its charm, when +incorrigibly moved to do so, only at the expense of its falling a little +flat, or turning a little stale, on our hands. I have for myself at +least marked the tendency, and somehow felt it point a graceless moral, +the moral that as there are certain faces too well produced by nature +to be producible again by the painter, the portraitist, so there are +certain combinations of earthly ease, of the natural and social art of +giving pleasure, which fail of character, or accent, even of the power +to interest, under the strain of transposition or of emphasis. Rupert, +with an instinct of his own, transposes and insists only in the right +degree; or what it doubtless comes to is that we simply see him arrested +by so vivid a picture of the youth of the world at its blandest as to +make all his culture seem a waste and all his questions a vanity. That +is apparently the very effect of the Pacific life as those who dip into +it seek, or feel that they are expected to seek, to report it; but it +reports itself somehow through these pages, smilingly cools itself off +in them, with the lightest play of the fan ever placed at its service. +Never, clearly, had he been on such good terms with the hour, never +found the life of the senses so anticipate the life of the imagination, +or the life of the imagination so content itself with the life of +the senses; it is all an abundance of amphibious felicity--he was as +incessant and insatiable a swimmer as if he had been a triton framed +for a decoration; and one half makes out that some low-lurking instinct, +some vague foreboding of what awaited him, on his own side the globe, +in the air of so-called civilisation, prompted him to drain to the last +drop the whole perfect negation of the acrid. He might have been waiting +for the tide of the insipid to begin to flow again, as it seems ever +doomed to do when the acrid, the saving acrid, has already ebbed; at any +rate his holiday had by the end of the springtime of 1914 done for him +all it could, without a grain of waste--his assimilations being +neither loose nor literal, and he came back to England as promiscuously +qualified, as variously quickened, as his best friends could wish for +fine production and fine illustration in some order still awaiting +sharp definition. Never certainly had the free poetic sense in him more +rejoiced in an incorruptible sincerity. + + + + +IV + + +He was caught up of course after the shortest interval by the strong +rush of that general inspiration in which at first all differences, all +individual relations to the world he lived in, seemed almost ruefully or +bewilderedly to lose themselves. The pressing thing was of a sudden that +youth was youth and genius community and sympathy. He plunged into that +full measure of these things which simply made and spread itself as it +gathered them in, made itself of responses and faiths and understandings +that were all the while in themselves acts of curiosity, romantic +and poetic throbs and wonderments, with reality, as it seemed to call +itself, breaking in after a fashion that left the whole past pale, and +that yet could flush at every turn with meanings and visions +borrowing their expression from whatever had, among those squandered +preliminaries, those too merely sportive intellectual and critical +values, happened to make most for the higher truth. Of the successions +of his matter of history at this time Mr Marsh's memoir is the +infinitely touching record--touching after the fact, but to the +accompaniment even at the time of certain now almost ineffable +reflections; this especially, I mean, if one happened to be then not +wholly without familiar vision of him. What could strike one more, for +the immense occasion, than the measure that might be involved in it of +desolating and heart-breaking waste, waste of quality, waste for that +matter of quantity, waste of all the rich redundancies, all the light +and all the golden store, which up to then had formed the very price and +grace of life? Yet out of the depths themselves of this question rose +the other, the tormenting, the sickening and at the same time the +strangely sustaining, of why, since the offering couldn't at best be +anything but great, it wouldn't be great just in proportion to its +purity, or in other words its wholeness, everything in it that could +make it most radiant and restless. Exquisite at such times the hushed +watch of the mere hovering spectator unrelieved by any action of his own +to take, which consists at once of so much wonder for why the finest of +the fine should, to the sacrifice of the faculty we most know them by, +have to become mere morsels in the huge promiscuity, and of the thrill +of seeing that they add more than ever to our knowledge and our passion, +which somehow thus becomes at the same time an unfathomable abyss. + +Rupert, who had joined the Naval Brigade, took part in the rather +distractedly improvised--as it at least at the moment appeared--movement +for the relief of the doomed Antwerp, but was, later on, after the +return of the force so engaged, for a few days in London, whither he +had come up from camp in Dorsetshire, briefly invalided; thanks to which +accident I had on a couple of occasions my last sight of him. It was +all auspiciously, well-nigh extravagantly, congruous; nothing certainly +could have been called more modern than all the elements and suggestions +of his situation for the hour, the very spot in London that could +best serve as a centre for vibrations the keenest and most various; a +challenge to the appreciation of life, to that of the whole range of the +possible English future, at its most uplifting. He had not yet so much +struck me as an admirable nature _en disponibilite_ and such as any +cause, however high, might swallow up with a sense of being the sounder +and sweeter for. More definitely perhaps the young poet, with all the +wind alive in his sails, was as evident there in the guise of the young +soldier and the thrice welcome young friend, who yet, I all recognisably +remember, insisted on himself as little as ever in either character, +and seemed even more disposed than usual not to let his intelligibility +interfere with his modesty. He promptly recovered and returned to camp, +whence it was testified that his specific practical aptitude, under the +lively call, left nothing to be desired--a fact that expressed again, to +the perception of his circle, with what truth the spring of inspiration +worked in him, in the sense, I mean, that his imagination itself +shouldered and made light of the material load. It had not yet, at the +same time, been more associatedly active in a finer sense; my own next +apprehension of it at least was in reading the five admirable sonnets +that had been published in "New Numbers" after the departure of his +contingent for the campaign at the Dardanelles. To read these in +the light of one's personal knowledge of him was to draw from them, +inevitably, a meaning still deeper seated than their noble beauty, an +authority, of the purest, attended with which his name inscribes itself +in its own character on the great English scroll. The impression, +the admiration, the anxiety settled immediately--to my own sense at +least--as upon something that would but too sharply feed them, falling +in as it did with that whole particularly animated vision of him of +which I have spoken. He had never seemed more animated with our newest +and least deluded, least conventionalised life and perception and +sensibility, and that formula of his so distinctively fortunate, his +overflowing share in our most developed social heritage which had +already glimmered, began with this occasion to hang about him as one of +the aspects, really a shining one, of his fate. + +So I remember irrepressibly thinking and feeling, unspeakably +apprehending, in a word; and so the whole exquisite exhalation of his +own consciousness in the splendid sonnets, attach whatever essentially +or exclusively poetic value to it we might, baffled or defied us as +with a sort of supreme rightness. Everything about him of keenest and +brightest (yes, absolutely of brightest) suggestion made so for his +having been charged with every privilege, every humour, of our merciless +actuality, our fatal excess of opportunity, that what indeed could the +full assurance of this be but that, finding in him the most charming +object in its course, the great tide was to lift him and sweep him away? +Questions and reflections after the fact perhaps, yet haunting for the +time and during the short interval that was still to elapse--when, with +the sudden news that he _had_ met his doom, an irrepressible "of course, +of course!" contributed its note well-nigh of support. It was as if the +peculiar richness of his youth had itself marked its limit, so that what +his own spirit was inevitably to feel about his "chance"--inevitably +because both the high pitch of the romantic and the ironic and the +opposed abyss of the real came together in it--required, in the wondrous +way, the consecration of the event. The event came indeed not in the +manner prefigured by him in the repeatedly perfect line, that of the +received death-stroke, the fall in action, discounted as such; which +might have seemed very much because even the harsh logic and pressure of +history were tender of him at the last and declined to go through more +than the form of their function, discharging it with the least violence +and surrounding it as with a legendary light. He was taken ill, as an +effect of blood-poisoning, on his way from Alexandria to Gallipoli, and, +getting ominously and rapidly worse, was removed from his transport to a +French hospital ship, where, irreproachably cared for, he died in a few +hours and without coming to consciousness. I deny myself any further +anticipation of the story to which further noble associations attach, +and the merest outline of which indeed tells it and rounds it off +absolutely as the right harmony would have it. It is perhaps even a +touch beyond any dreamt-of harmony that, under omission of no martial +honour, he was to be carried by comrades and devoted waiting sharers, +whose evidence survives them, to the steep summit of a Greek island of +infinite grace and there placed in such earth and amid such beauty of +light and shade and embracing prospect as that the fondest reading of +his young lifetime could have suggested nothing better. It struck us at +home, I mean, as symbolising with the last refinement his whole instinct +of selection and response, his relation to the overcharged appeal of his +scene and hour. How could he have shown more the young English poetic +possibility and faculty in which we were to seek the freshest reflection +of the intelligence and the soul of the new generation? The generosity, +I may fairly say the joy, of his contribution to the general perfect +way makes a monument of his high rest there at the heart of all that was +once noblest in history. + +HENRY JAMES + + + + +LETTERS FROM AMERICA + + + + +I + +ARRIVAL + + +However sedulously he may have avoided a preparatory reading of +those 'impressions' of America which our hurried and observant Great +continually record for the instruction of both nations, the pilgrim who +is crossing the Atlantic for the first time cannot approach Sandy Hook +Bar with so completely blank a mind as he would wish. So, at least, I +found. It is not so much that the recent American invasion of London +music-halls has bitten into one's brain a very definite taste of a +jerking, vital, _bizarre_ 'rag-time' civilisation. But the various and +vivid comments of friends to whom the news of a traveller's departure +is broken excite and predispose the imagination. That so many people who +have been there should have such different and decided opinions about +it! It must be at least remarkable. I felt the thrill of an explorer +before I started. "A country without conversation," said a philosopher. +"The big land has a big heart," wrote a kindly scholar; and, by the same +post, from another critic, "that land of crushing hospitality!" "It's +Hell, but it's fine," an artist told me. "El Cuspidorado," remarked an +Oxford man, brilliantly. But one wiser than all the rest wrote: "Think +gently of the Americans. They are so very young; and so very anxious to +appear grown-up; and so very lovable." This was more generous than the +unvarying comment of ordinary English friends when they heard of my +purpose, "My God!" And it was more precise than those nineteen several +Americans, to each of whom I said, "I am going to visit America," +and each of whom replied, after long reflection, "Wal! it's a great +country!" + +Travelling by the ordinary routes, you meet the American people a week +before you meet America. And my excitement to discover what, precisely, +this nation was _at_, was inflamed rather than damped by the attitude of +a charming American youth who crossed by the same boat. That simplicity +that is not far down in any American was very beautifully on the +delightful surface with him. The second day out he sidled shyly up +to me. "Of what nationality _are_ you?" he asked. His face showed +bewilderment when he heard. "I thought all Englishmen had moustaches," +he said. I told him of the infinite variety, within the homogeneity, +of our race. He did not listen, but settled down near me with the eager +kindliness of a child. "You know," he said, "you'll never understand +America. No, Sir. No Englishman can understand America. I've been in +London. In your Houses of Parliament there is one door for peers to go +in at, and one for ordinary people. Did I laugh some when I saw that? +You bet your America's not like that. In America one man's just as good +as another. You'll never understand America." I was all humility. His +theme and his friendliness fired him. He rose with a splendour which, I +had to confess to myself, England could never have given to him. "Would +you like to hear me re-cite to you the Declaration of Independence?" he +asked. And he did. + +So it was with a fairly blank mind, and yet a hope of understanding, or +at least of seeing, something very remarkably fresh, that I woke to +hear we were in harbour, and tumbled out on deck at six of a fine summer +morning to view a new world. New York Harbour is loveliest at night +perhaps. On the Staten Island ferry boat you slip out from the darkness +right under the immense sky-scrapers. As they recede they form into a +mass together, heaping up one behind another, fire-lined and majestic, +sentinel over the black, gold-streaked waters. Their cliff-like boldness +is the greater, because to either side sweep in the East River and the +Hudson River, leaving this piled promontory between. To the right hangs +the great stretch of the Brooklyn Suspension Bridge, its slight curve +very purely outlined with light; over it luminous trams, like shuttles +of fire, are thrown across and across, continually weaving the stuff of +human existence. From further off all these lights dwindle to a radiant +semicircle that gazes out over the expanse with a quiet, mysterious +expectancy. Far away seaward you may see the low golden glare of Coney +Island. + +But there was beauty in the view that morning, also, half an hour after +sunrise. New York, always the cleanest and least smoky of cities, lay +asleep in a queer, pearly, hourless light. A thin mist softened the +further outlines. The water was opalescent under a silver sky, cool and +dim, very slightly ruffled by the sweet wind that followed us in from +the sea. A few streamers of smoke flew above the city, oblique and +parallel, pennants of our civilisation. The space of water is great, and +so the vast buildings do not tower above one as they do from the street. +Scale is lost, and they might be any size. The impression is, rather, of +long, low buildings stretching down to the water's edge on every side, +and innumerable low black wharves and jetties and piers. And at one +point, the lower end of the island on which the city proper stands, rose +that higher clump of the great buildings, the Singer, the Woolworth, and +the rest. Their strength, almost severity, of line and the lightness of +their colour gave a kind of classical feeling, classical, and yet not +of Europe. It had the air, this block of masonry, of edifices built to +satisfy some faith, for more than immediate ends. Only, the faith was +unfamiliar. But if these buildings embodied its nature, it is cold and +hard and light, like the steel that is their heart. The first sight of +these strange fanes has queer resemblances to the first sight of that +lonely and secret group by Pisa's walls. It came upon me, at that +moment, that they could not have been dreamed and made without some +nobility. Perhaps the hour lent them sanctity. For I have often noticed +since that in the early morning, and again for a little about sunset, +the sky-scrapers are no longer merely the means and local convenience +for men to pursue their purposes, but acquire that characteristic of the +great buildings of the world, an existence and meaning of their own. + +Our boat moved up the harbour and along the Hudson River with a superb +and courteous stateliness. Round her snorted and scuttled and puffed +the multitudinous strange denizens of the harbour. Tugs, steamers, +queer-shaped ferry-boats, long rafts carrying great lines of trucks from +railway to railway, dredgers, motor-boats, even a sailing-boat or two; +for the day's work was beginning. Among them, with that majesty that +only a liner entering a harbour has, she went, progressed, had her +moving--English contains no word for such a motion--"_incessu patuit +dea_." A goddess entering fairyland, I thought; for the huddled beauty +of these buildings and the still, silver expanse of the water seemed +unreal. Then I looked down at the water immediately beneath me, and knew +that New York was a real city. All kinds of refuse went floating by: +bits of wood, straw from barges, bottles, boxes, paper, occasionally +a dead cat or dog, hideously bladder-like, its four paws stiff and +indignant towards heaven. + +This analysis of fairyland turned me towards the statue of Liberty, +already passed and growing distant. It is one of those things you have +long wanted to see and haven't expected to admire, which, seen, give you +a double thrill, that they're at last _there_, and that they're better +than your hopes. For Liberty stands nobly. Americans, always shy about +their country, have learnt from the ridicule which Europeans, on mixed +aesthetic and moral grounds, pour on this statue, to dismiss it with an +apologetic laugh. Yet it is fine--until you get near enough to see +its clumsiness. I admired the great gesture of it. A hand fell on my +shoulder, and a voice said, "Look hard at that, young man! That's the +first time you've seen Liberty--and it will be the last till you turn +your back on this country again." It was an American fellow-passenger, +one of the tall, thin type of American, with pale blue eyes of an +idealistic, disappointed expression, and an Indian profile. The other +half of America, personated by a small, bumptious, eager, brown-faced +man, with a cigar raking at an irritating angle from the corner of his +mouth, joined in with, "Wal! I should smile, I guess this is the Land of +Freedom, anyway." The tall man swung round: "Freedom! do you call it a +free land, where--" He gave instances of the power of the dollar. The +other man kept up the argument by spitting and by asseveration. As the +busy little tugs, with rugs on their noses, butted the great liner into +her narrow dock, the pessimist launched his last shafts. The short man +denied nothing. He drew the cigar from his lips, shot it back with a +popping noise into the round hole cigars had worn at the corner of +his mouth, and said, "Anyway, it's some country." I was introduced to +America. + + + + +II + +NEW YORK + + +In five things America excels modern England--fish, architecture, jokes, +drinks, and children's clothes. There may be others. Of these I am +certain. The jokes and drinks, which curiously resemble each other, +are the best. There is a cheerful violence about them; they take their +respective kingdoms by storm. All the lesser things one has heard turn +out to be delightfully true. The first hour in America proves them. +People here talk with an American accent; their teeth are inlaid with +gold; the mouths of car-conductors move slowly, slowly, with an oblique +oval motion, for they are chewing; pavements are 'sidewalks.' It is all +true.... But there were other things one expected, though in no precise +form. What, for instance, would it be like, the feeling of whatever +democracy America has secured? + +I landed, rather forlorn, that first morning, on the immense covered +wharf where the Customs mysteries were to be celebrated. The place was +dominated by a large, dirty, vociferous man, coatless, in a black +shirt and black apron. His mouth and jaw were huge; he looked like a +caricaturist's Roosevelt. 'Express Company' was written on his forehead; +labels of a thousand colours, printed slips, pencils and pieces of +string, hung from his pockets and his hands, were held behind his ears +and in his mouth. I laid my situation and my incompetence before him, +and learnt right where to go and right when to go there. Then he flung +a vast, dingy arm round my shoulders, and bellowed, "We'll have your +baggage right along to your hotel in two hours." It was a lie, but +kindly. That grimy and generous embrace left me startled, but an +initiate into Democracy. + +The other evening I went a lonely ramble, to try to detect the essence +of New York. A wary eavesdropper can always surprise the secret of a +city, through chance scraps of conversation, or by spying from a window, +or by coming suddenly round corners. I started on a 'car.' American +tram-cars are open all along the side and can be entered at any point in +it. The side is divided by vertical bars. It looks like a cage with the +horizontal lines taken out. Between these vertical bars you squeeze into +the seat. If the seat opposite you is full, you swing yourself along the +bars by your hands till you find room. The Americans become terrifyingly +expert at this. I have seen them, fat, middle-aged business men, +scampering up and down the face of the cars by means of their hands, +swinging themselves over and round and above each other, like nothing +in the world so much as the monkeys at the Zoo. It is a people informed +with vital energy. I believe that this exercise, and the habit of +drinking a lot of water between meals, are the chief causes of their +good health. + +The Broadway car runs mostly along the backbone of the queer island on +which this city stands. So the innumerable parallel streets that cross +it curve down and away; and at this time street after street to the west +reveals, and seems to drop into, a mysterious evening sky, full of dull +reds and yellows, amber and pale green, and a few pink flecks, and in +the midst, sometimes, the flushed, smoke-veiled face of the sun. Then +greyness, broken by these patches of misty colour, settles into the +lower channels of the New York streets; while the upper heights of the +sky-scrapers, clear of the roofs, are still lit on the sunward side with +a mellow glow, curiously serene. To the man in the mirk of the street, +they seem to exude this light from the great spaces of brick. At this +time the cars, always polyglot, are filled with shop-hands and workers, +and no English at all is heard. One is surrounded with Yiddish, Italian, +and Greek, broken by Polish, or Russian, or German. Some American +anthropologists claim that the children of these immigrants show marked +changes, in the shape of skull and face, towards the American type. It +may be so. But the people who surround one are mostly European-born. +They represent very completely that H.C.F. of Continental appearance +which is labelled in the English mind 'looking like a foreigner'; being +short, swarthy, gesticulatory, full of clatter, indeterminately alien. +Only in their dress and gait have they--or at least the men among +them--become at all American. + +The American by race walks better than we; more freely, with a taking +swing, and almost with grace. How much of this is due to living in a +democracy, and how much to wearing no braces, it is very difficult to +determine. But certainly it is the land of belts, and therefore of more +loosely moving bodies. This, and the padded shoulders of the coats, and +the loosely-cut trousers, make a figure more presentable, at a distance, +than most urban civilisations turn out. Also, Americans take their coats +off, which is sensible; and they can do it the more beautifully because +they are belted, and not braced. They take their coats off anywhere and +any-when, and somehow it strikes the visitor as the most symbolic thing +about them. They have not yet thought of discarding collars; but they +are unashamedly shirt-sleeved. Any sculptor, seeking to figure this +Republic in stone, must carve, in future, a young man in shirt-sleeves, +open-faced, pleasant, and rather vulgar, straw hat on the back of his +head, his trousers full and sloppy, his coat over his arm. The motto +written beneath will be, of course, 'This is some country.' The +philosophic gazer on such a monument might get some way towards +understanding the making of the Panama Canal, that exploit that no +European nation could have carried out. + +What facial type the sculptor would give the youth is harder to +determine, and very hard to describe. The American race seems to +have developed two classes, and only two, the upper-middle and the +lower-middle. Their faces are very distinct. The upper-class head is +long, often fine about the forehead and eyes, and very cleanly outlined. +The eyes have an odd, tired pathos in them--mixed with the friendliness +that is so admirable--as if of a perpetual never quite successful effort +to understand something. It is like the face of an only child who has +been brought up in the company of adults. I am convinced it is +partly due to the endeavour to set their standards by the culture and +traditions of older nations. But the mouth of such men is the most +typical feature. It is small, tight, and closed downwards at the +corners, the lower lip very slightly protruding. It has little +expression in it, and no curves. There the Puritan comes out. But no +other nation has a mouth like this. It is shared to some extent by the +lower classes; but their mouths tend to be wider and more expressive. +Their foreheads are meaner, and their eyes hard, but the whole face +rather more adaptive and in touch with life. These, anyhow, are the +types that strike one in the Eastern cities. And there are intermediate +varieties, as of the genial business-man, with the narrow forehead and +the wide, smooth--the too wide and too smooth--lower face. Smoothness +is the one unfailing characteristic. Why do American faces hardly ever +wrinkle? Is it the absence of a soul? It must be. For it is less true +of the Bostonian than of the ordinary business American, in whose life +exhilaration and depression take the place of joy and suffering. The +women's faces are more indeterminate, not very feminine; many of them +wear those 'invisible' pince-nez which centre glitteringly about the +bridge of the nose, and get from them a curious air of intelligence. +Handsome people of both sexes are very common; beautiful, and pretty, +ones very rare.... + +I slipped from my car up about Fortieth Street, the region where the +theatres and restaurants are, the 'roaring forties.' Broadway here +might be the offspring of Shaftesbury Avenue and Leicester Square, with, +somehow, some of Fleet Street also in its ancestry. I passed two men on +the sidewalk, their hats on the back of their heads, arguing fiercely. +One had slightly long hair. The other looked the more truculent, and was +saying to him, intensely, "See here! We contracted with you to supply +us with sonnets at five dollars per sonnet--" I passed up a side-street, +one of those deserted ways that abound just off the big streets, +resorts, apparently, for such people and things as are not quite +strident or not quite energetic enough for the ordinary glare of +life; dim places, fusty with hesternal excitements and the thrills of +yesteryear. Against a flight of desolate steps leant a notice. I stopped +to read it. It said: + + "You must see Cockie, + Positively the only bird that can both dance and sing. + She is almost superhuman." + +There was no explanation; Cockie may have been dead for years. I went, +musing on her possible fates, towards the pride and spaciousness of +Fifth Avenue. + +Fifth Avenue is handsome, the handsomest street imaginable. It is what +the streets of German cities try to be. The buildings are large, square, +'imposing,' built with the solidity of opulence. The street, as a whole, +has a character and an air of achievement. "Whatever else may be doubted +or denied, American civilisation has produced this." One feels rich +and safe as one walks. Back in Broadway, New York dropped her mask, +and began to betray herself once again. A little crowd, expressionless, +intent, and volatile, before a small shop, drew me. In the shop-window +was a young man, pleasant-faced, a little conscious, and a little bored, +dressed very lightly in what might have been a runner's costume. He was +bowing, twisting, and posturing in a slow rhythm. From time to time he +would put a large card on a little stand in the corner. The cards bore +various legends. He would display a card that said, "THIS UNDERWEAR DOES +NOT IMPEDE THE MOVEMENT OF THE BODY IN ANY DIRECTION." Then he moved +his body in every direction, from position to position, probable or +improbable, and was not impeded. With a terrible dumb patience he turned +the next card: "IT GIVES WITH THE BODY IN VIOLENT EXERCISING." The young +man leapt suddenly, lunged, smote imaginary balls, belaboured invisible +opponents, ran with immense speed but no progress, was thrown to earth +by the Prince of the Air, kicked, struggled, then bounded to his feet +again. But all this without a word. "IT ENABLES YOU TO KEEP COOL WHILE +EXERCISING." The young man exercised, and yet was cool. He did this, I +discovered later, for many hours a day. + +Not daring to imagine his state of mind, I hurried off through Union +Square. One of the many daily fire-alarms had gone; the traffic was +drawn to one side, and several fire-engines came, with clanging of bells +and shouting, through the space, gleaming with brass, splendid in their +purpose. Before the thrill in the heart had time to die, or the traffic +to close up, swung through an immense open motor-car driven by a young +mechanic. It was luxuriously appointed, and had the air of a private car +being returned from repairing. The man in it had an almost Swinburnian +mane of red hair, blowing back in the wind, catching the last lights +of day. He was clad, as such people often are in this country these hot +days, only in a suit of yellow overalls, so that his arms and shoulders +and neck and chest were bare. He was big, well-made, and strong, and he +drove the car, not wildly, but a little too fast, leaning back rather +insolently conscious of power. In private life, no doubt, a very +ordinary youth, interested only in baseball scores; but in this brief +passage he seemed like a Greek god, in a fantastically modern, yet not +unworthy way emblemed and incarnate, or like the spirit of Henley's +'Song of Speed.' So I found a better image of America for my sculptor +than the shirt-sleeved young man. + + + + +III + +NEW YORK--(_continued_) + + +The hotel into which the workings of blind chance have thrown me is +given over to commercial travellers. Its life is theirs, and the few +English tourists creep in and out with the shy, bewildered dignity of +their race and class. These American commercial travellers are called +'drummers'; drummers in the most endless and pointless and extraordinary +of wars. They have the air and appearance of devotees, men set aside, +roaming preachers of a _jehad_ whose meaning they have forgotten. They +seem to be invariably of the short, dark type. The larger, fair-haired, +long-headed men are common in business, but not in 'drumming.' The +drummer's eyes have a hard, rapt expression. He is not interested in the +romance of the road, like an English commercial traveller; only in its +ever-changing end. These people are for ever sending off and receiving +telegrams, messages, and cablegrams; they are continually telephoning; +stenographers are in waiting to record their inspirations. In the +intervals of activity they relapse into a curious trance, husbanding +their vitality for the next crisis. I have watched them with terror +and fascination. All day there are numbers of them sitting, immote and +vacant, in rows and circles on the hard chairs in the hall. They +are never smoking, never reading a paper, never even chewing. The +expressions of their faces never change. It is impossible to guess +what, or if anything, is in their minds. Hour upon hour they remain. +Occasionally one will rise, in obedience to some call or revelation +incomprehensible to us, and move out through the door into the clang and +confusion of Broadway. + +It all confirms the impression that grows on the visitor to America +that Business has developed insensibly into a Religion, in more than the +light, metaphorical sense of the words. It has its ritual and theology, +its high places and its jargon, as well as its priests and martyrs. One +of its more mystical manifestations is in advertisement. America has a +childlike faith in advertising. They advertise here, everywhere, and in +all ways. They shout your most private and sacred wants at you. Nothing +is untouched. Every day I pass a wall, some five hundred square feet +of which a gentleman has taken to declare that he is 'out' to break the +Undertakers' Trust. Half the advertisement is a coloured photograph of +himself. The rest is, "See what I give you for 75 dols.!" and a list of +what he does give. He gives everything that the most morbid taphologist +could suggest, beginning with "splendidly carved full-size oak casket, +with black ivory handles. Four draped Flambeaux...." and going on to +funereal ingenuities that would have overwhelmed Mausolus, and make +death impossible for a refined man. + +But there are heights as well as depths. I have been privileged with +some intimate glances into the greatest of those peculiarly American +institutions, the big departmental stores. Materially it is an immense +building, containing all things that any upper-middle-class person could +conceivably want. Such a store includes even Art, with the same bland +omnipotence. If you wander into the vast auditorium, it is equal chances +whether you hear a work of Beethoven, Victor Herbert, Schonberg, or Mr +Hirsch. If you are 'artistic,' you may choose between a large coloured +photograph of the Eiffel Tower, a carbon print of Botticelli, and a +reproduction of an 'improvisation' by Herr Kandinsky. You may buy +an Elizabethan dining-table, a Graeco-Roman bronze, the latest dress +designed by M. Bakst, or a packet of pins. Or you may sit and muse on +the life of the employee of this place, who gets from it all that +in less favoured civilisations family, guild, club, township, and +nationality have given him or her. As a child he gets education, then +evening-classes, continuation-schools, gymnasia, military training, +swimming-baths, orchestra, facilities for the study of anything under +the sun, from palaeography to Cherokee, libraries, holiday-camps, +hospitals, ever-present medical attendance, and at the end a pension, +and, I suppose, a store cemetery. And all for the price of a few hours' +work a day, and a little loyalty to the 'establishment.' Can human +hearts desire more? And, when all millionaires are as sensible, will +they? In industries and businesses like this, where the majority of the +employed are women, it ought to be a pretty stable sort of millennium. +Men, perhaps, take longer to learn that kind of 'loyalty.' + +In one corner of this store is the advertising department. There are +gathered poets, artists, _litterateurs_, and mere intellectuals, all +engaged in explaining to the upper middle-classes what there is for them +to buy and why they should buy it. It is a life of good salary, steady +hours, sufficient leisure, and entire dignity. There is no vulgarity in +this advertising, but the most perfect taste and great artistic daring +and novelty. The most 'advanced' productions of Europe are scanned for +ideas and suggestions. Two of the leading young 'post-impressionist' +painters in Paris, whose names are just beginning to be known in +England, have been designing posters for this store for years. I stood +and watched with awe a young American genius doing entirely Matisse-like +illustrations to some notes on summer suitings. "We give our artists a +free hand," said the very intelligent lady in charge of that section; +"except, of course, for nudes or improprieties. And we don't allow +any figures of people _smoking_. Some of our customers object very +strongly...." + +Cities, like cats, will reveal themselves at night. There comes an +hour of evening when lower Broadway, the business end of the town, is +deserted. And if, having felt yourself immersed in men and the frenzy +of cities all day, you stand out in the street in this sudden hush, +you will hear, like a strange questioning voice from another world, the +melancholy boom of a foghorn, and realise that not half a mile away are +the waters of the sea, and some great liner making its slow way out to +the Atlantic. After that, the lights come out up-town, and the New York +of theatres and vaudevilles and restaurants begins to roar and flare. +The merciless lights throw a mask of unradiant glare on the human beings +in the streets, making each face hard, set, wolfish, terribly blue. +The chorus of voices becomes shriller. The buildings tower away into +obscurity, looking strangely theatrical, because lit from below. And +beyond them soars the purple roof of the night. A stranger of another +race, loitering here, might cast his eyes up, in a vague wonder what +powers, kind or maleficent, controlled or observed this whirlpool. He +would find only this unresponsive canopy of black, unpierced even, if +the seeker stood near a centre of lights, by any star. But while he +looks, away up in the sky, out of the gulfs of night, spring two vast +fiery tooth-brushes, erect, leaning towards each other, and hanging on +to the bristles of them a little Devil, little but gigantic, who kicks +and wriggles and glares. After a few moments the Devil, baffled by +the firmness of the bristles, stops, hangs still, rolls his eyes, +moon-large, and, in a fury of disappointment, goes out, leaving only the +night, blacker and a little bewildered, and the unconscious throngs +of ant-like human beings. Turning with terrified relief from this +exhibition of diabolic impotence, the stranger finds a divine hand +writing slowly across the opposite quarter of the heavens its igneous +message of warning to the nations, "Wear--Underwear for Youths and +Men-Boys." And close by this message come forth a youth and a man-boy, +flaming and immortal, clad in celestial underwear, box a short round, +vanish, reappear for another round, and again disappear. Night after +night they wage this combat. What gods they are who fight endlessly and +indecisively over New York is not for our knowledge; whether it be Thor +and Odin, or Zeus and Cronos, or Michael and Lucifer, or Ormuzd and +Ahriman, or Good-as-a-means and Good-as-an-end. The ways of our lords +were ever riddling and obscure. To the right a celestial bottle, +stretching from the horizon to the zenith, appears, is uncorked, and +scatters the worlds with the foam of what ambrosial liquor may have been +within. Beyond, a Spanish goddess, some minor deity in the Dionysian +theogony, dances continually, rapt and mysterious, to the music of +the spheres, her head in Cassiopeia and her twinkling feet among the +Pleiades. And near her, Orion, archer no longer, releases himself from +his strained posture to drive a sidereal golf-ball out of sight through +the meadows of Paradise; then poses, addresses, and drives again. + + "O Nineveh, are these thy gods, + Thine also, mighty Nineveh?" + +Why this theophany, or how the gods have got out to perform their +various 'stunts' on the _flammantia moenia mundi_, is not asked by their +incurious devotees. Through Broadway the dingily glittering tide spreads +itself over the sands of 'amusement.' Theatres and 'movies' are aglare. +Cars shriek down the street; the Elevated train clangs and curves +perilously overhead; newsboys wail the baseball news; wits cry their +obscure challenges to one another, 'I should worry!' or 'She's some +Daisy!' or 'Good-night, Nurse!' In houses off the streets around +children are being born, lovers are kissing, people are dying. Above, +in the midst of those coruscating divinities, sits one older and greater +than any. Most colossal of all, it flashes momently out, a woman's head, +all flame against the darkness. It is beautiful, passionless, in its +simplicity and conventional representation queerly like an archaic Greek +or early Egyptian figure. Queen of the night behind, and of the gods +around, and of the city below--here, if at all, you think, may one +find the answer to the riddle. Her ostensible message, burning in the +firmament beside her, is that we should buy pepsin chewing-gum. But +there is more, not to be given in words, ineffable. Suddenly, when she +has surveyed mankind, she closes her left eye. Three times she winks, +and then vanishes. No ordinary winks these, but portentous, terrifyingly +steady, obliterating a great tract of the sky. Hour by hour she does +this, night by night, year by year. That enigmatic obscuration of light, +that answer that is no answer, is, perhaps, the first thing in this +world that a child born near here will see, and the last that a +dying man will have to take for a message to the curious dead. She is +immortal. Men have worshipped her as Isis and as Ashtaroth, as Venus, as +Cybele, Mother of the Gods, and as Mary. There is a statue of her by the +steps of the British Museum. Here, above the fantastic civilisation she +observes, she has no name. She is older than the sky-scrapers amongst +which she sits; and one, certainly, of her eyelids is a trifle weary. +And the only answer to our cries, the only comment upon our cities, is +that divine stare, the wink, once, twice, thrice. And then darkness. + + + + +IV + +BOSTON AND HARVARD + + +It is right to leave Boston late in a summer afternoon, and by sea. +Naval departure is always the better. A train snatches you, hot, dusty, +and smoky, with an irritated hurry out of the back parts of a town. The +last glimpse of a place you may have grown to like or love is, ignobly, +interminable rows of the bedroom-windows in mean streets, a few hovels, +some cinder-heaps, and a factory chimney. As like as not, you are reft +from a last wave to the city's unresponsive and dingy back by the +roar and suffocation of a tunnel. By sea one takes a gracefuller, more +satisfactory farewell. + +Boston put on her best appearance to watch our boat go out for New York. +The harbour was bright with sunlight and blue water and little white +sails, and there wasn't more than the faintest smell of tea. The city +sat primly on her little hills, decorous, civilised, European-looking. +It is homely after New York. The Boston crowd is curiously English. +They have nice eighteenth-century houses there, and ivy grows on the +buildings. And they are hospitable. All Americans are hospitable; but +they haven't _quite_ time in New York to practise the art so perfectly +as the Bostonians. It is a lovely art.... But Boston also makes you feel +at home without meaning to. A delicious ancient Toryism is to be found +here. "What is wrong with America," a middle-aged lady told me, "is this +_Democracy_. They ought to take the votes away from these people, who +don't know how to use them, and give them only to _us_, the Educated." +My heart leapt the Atlantic, and was in a Cathedral or University town +of South England. + +Yet Boston is alive. It sits, in comfortable middle-age, on the ruins of +its glory. But it is not buried beneath them. It used to lead America +in Literature, Thought, Art, everything. The years have passed. It +is remarkable how nearly now Boston is to New York what Munich is to +Berlin. Boston and Munich were the leaders forty years ago. They can't +quite make out that they aren't now. It is too incredible that Art +should leave her goose-feather bed and away to the wraggle-taggle +business-men. And certainly, if Berlin and New York are more 'live,' +Boston and Munich are more themselves, less feverishly imitations of +Paris. But the undisputed palm is there no more; and its absence is +felt. + +But I had little time to taste Boston itself. I was lured across the +river to a place called Cambridge, where is the University of Harvard. +Harvard is the Oxford and Cambridge of America, they claim. She has +moulded the nation's leaders and uttered its ideals. Harvard, Boston, +New England, it is impossible to say how much they are interwoven, and +how they have influenced America. I saw Harvard in 'Commencement,' which +is Eights Week and May Week, the festive winding-up of the year, a time +of parties and of valedictions. One of the great events of Commencement, +and of the year, is the Harvard-Yale baseball match. To this I went, +excited at the prospect of my first sight of a 'ball game,' and my mind +vaguely reminiscent of the indolent, decorous, upper-class crowd, the +sunlit spaces, the dignified ritual, and white-flannelled grace of +Lord's at the 'Varsity cricket match. The crowd was gay, and not very +large. We sat in wooden stands, which were placed in the shape of a +large V. As all the hitting which counts in baseball takes place well +in front of the wicket, so to speak, the spectators have the game right +under their noses; the striker stands in the angle of the V and plays +outwards. The field was a vast place, partly stubbly grass, partly worn +and patchy, like a parade-ground. Beyond it lay the river; beyond that +the town of Cambridge and the University buildings. Around me were +undergraduates, with their mothers and sisters. 'Cambridge'! ... but +there entered to us, across the field, a troop of several hundred men, +all dressed in striped shirts of the same hue and pattern, and headed by +a vast banner which informed the world that they were the graduates +of 1910, celebrating their triennial. In military formation they moved +across the plain towards us, led by a band, ceaselessly vociferating, +and raising their straw hats in unison to mark the time. There followed +the class of 1907, attired as sailors; 1903, the decennial class, with +some samples of their male children marching with them, and a banner +inscribed "515 Others. No Race Suicide"; 1898, carefully arranged in an +H-shaped formation, dancing along to their music with a slow polka-step, +each with his hands on the shoulders of the man in front, and at the +head of all their leader, dancing backwards in perfect time, marshalling +them; 1888, middle-aged men, again with some children, and a Highland +regiment playing the bagpipes. + +When these had passed to the seats allotted for them, I had time to +observe the players, who were practising about the ground, and I was +shocked. They wear dust-coloured shirts and dingy knickerbockers, +fastened under the knee, and heavy boots. They strike the English eye +as being attired for football, or a gladiatorial combat, rather than a +summer game. The very close-fitting caps, with large peaks, give them +picturesquely the appearance of hooligans. Baseball is a good game to +watch, and in outline easy to understand, as it is merely glorified +rounders. A cricketer is fascinated by their rapidity and skill in +catching and throwing. There is excitement in the game, but little +beauty except in the long-limbed 'pitcher,' whose duty it is to hurl the +ball rather further than the length of a cricket-pitch, as bewilderingly +as possible. In his efforts to combine speed, mystery, and curve, he +gets into attitudes of a very novel and fantastic, but quite obvious, +beauty. M. Nijinsky would find them repay study. + +One queer feature of this sport is that unoccupied members of the +batting side, fielders, and even spectators, are accustomed to join +in vocally. You have the spectacle of the representatives of the +universities endeavouring to frustrate or unnerve their opponents, at +moments of excitement, by cries of derision and mockery, or heartening +their own supporters and performers with exclamations of 'Now, Joe!' or +'He's got them!' or 'He's the boy!' At the crises in the fortunes of the +game, the spectators take a collective and important part. The Athletic +Committee appoints a 'cheer-leader' for the occasion. Every five or ten +minutes this gentleman, a big, fine figure in white, springs out from +his seat at the foot of the stands, addresses the multitude through a +megaphone with a 'One! Two! Three!' hurls it aside, and, with a wild +flinging and swinging of his body and arms, conducts ten thousand voices +in the Harvard yell. That over, the game proceeds, and the cheer-leader +sits quietly waiting for the next moment of peril or triumph. I shall +not easily forget that figure, bright in the sunshine, conducting with +his whole body, passionate, possessed by a demon, bounding in the frenzy +of his inspiration from side to side, contorted, rhythmic, ecstatic. It +seemed so wonderfully American, in its combination of entire wildness +and entire regulation, with the whole just a trifle fantastic. +Completely friendly and befriended as I was, I couldn't help feeling at +those moments very alien and very, very old--even more so than after the +protracted game had ended in a victory for Harvard, when the dusty plain +was filled with groups and lines of men dancing in solemn harmony, and +a shouting crowd, broken by occasional individuals who could find some +little eminence to lead a Harvard yell from, and who conducted the +bystanders, and then vanished, and the crowd swirled on again. + +Different enough was the scene next day, when all Harvard men who were +up for Commencement assembled and, arranged by years, marched round +the yard. Class by class they paraded, beginning with veterans of the +'fifties, down to the class of 1912. I wonder if English nerves could +stand it. It seems to bring the passage of time so very presently +and vividly to the mind. To see, with such emphatic regularity, one's +coevals changing in figure, and diminishing in number, summer after +summer!.... Perhaps it is nobler, this deliberate viewing of oneself as +part of the stream. To the spectator, certainly, the flow and transiency +become apparent and poignant. In five minutes fifty years of America, of +so much of America, go past one. The shape of the bodies, apart from +the effects of age, the lines of the faces, the ways of wearing hair and +beard and moustaches, all these change a little decade by decade, before +your eyes. And through the whole appearance runs some continuity, which +is Harvard. + +The orderly progression of the years was unbroken, except at one +point. There was one gap, large and arresting. Though all years were +represented, there seemed to be nobody in the procession between fifty +and sixty. I asked a Harvard friend the reason. "The War," he said. He +told me there had always been that gap. Those who were old enough to +be conscious of the war had lost a big piece of their lives. With their +successors a new America began. I don't know how true it is. Certainly, +the dates worked out right. And I met an American on a boat who had been +a child in one of the neutral States. He used to watch the regiments +forming in the main street of his town, and marching out, some north and +some south. He said it felt as though pieces of his body were being torn +in different directions. And he was only nine. + +The procession filed in to an open court, to hear the speeches of the +recipients of honorary degrees, and the President's annual statement. +There was still, in every sense, a solemn atmosphere. The President's +speech floated out into the great open space; fragments of it were blown +to one's ears concerning deaths, and the spirit of the place, and a +detailed account of the money given during the year. Eleven hundred +thousand dollars in all--a record, or nearly a record. We roared +applause. The American universities appear still to dream of the things +of this world. They keep putting up the most wonderful and expensive +buildings. But they do not pay their teachers well. + +Yet Harvard is a spirit, a way of looking at things, austerely refined, +gently moral, kindly. The perception of it grows on the foreigner. Its +charm is so deliciously old in this land, so deliciously young +compared with the lovely frowst of Oxford and Cambridge. You see it in +temperament, the charm of simplicity and good-heartedness and +culture; in the Harvard undergraduate, who is a boy, while his English +contemporary is either a young man or a schoolboy, less pleasant stages; +and in the old Bostonian who heard, and still hears, the lectures of +Dickens and Thackeray. Class Day brings so many of that older generation +together. They reveal what Harvard, what Boston, was. There is something +terrifying in the completeness of their lives and their civilisation. +They are like a company of dons whose studies are of a remote and +finished world. But the subject of their scholarship is the Victorian +age, and especially Victorian England. Hence their liveliness and +certainty, greater than men can reach who are concerned with the +dubieties and changes of incomplete things. Hence the wit, the stock of +excellent stories, the wrinkled wisdom and mirth of the type. They are +the flower of a civilisation, its ripest critics, and final judges. +Carlyle and Emerson are their greatest living heroes. One of them bent +the kindliness and alert interest of his eighty years upon me. "So you +come from Rugby," he said. "Tell me, do you know that curious creature, +Matthew Arnold?" I couldn't bring myself to tell him that, even in +Rugby, we had forgiven that brilliant youth his iconoclastic tendencies +some time since, and that, as a matter of fact, he had died when I was +eight months old. + + + + +V + +MONTREAL AND OTTAWA + + +My American friends were full of kindly scorn when I announced that I +was going to Canada. 'A country without a soul!' they cried, and pressed +books upon me, to befriend me through that Philistine bleakness. Their +commiseration unnerved me, but I was heartened by a feeling that I was, +in a sense, going home, and by the romance of journeying. There was +romance in the long grim American train, in the great lake we passed in +the blackest of nights, and could just see glinting behind dark trees; +in the negro car-attendant; in the boy who perpetually cried: 'Pea-nuts! +Candy!' up and down the long carriages; in the lofty box they put me +in to sleep; and in the fat old lady who had the berth under mine, and +snored shrilly the whole night through. There was almost romance, even, +in the fact that after all there was no restaurant-car on the train; +and, having walked all day in the country, I dined off an orange. I +suppose an Englishman in another country, if he is simple enough, is +continually and alternately struck by two thoughts: 'How like England +this is!' and 'How unlike England this is!' When I had woken next +morning, and, lying on my back, had got inside my clothes with a series +of fish-like jumps, I found myself looking with startled eyes out of the +window at the largest river I had ever seen. It was blue, and sunlit, +and it curved spaciously. But beyond that we ran into the squalider +parts of a city. It became immediately obvious that we were not in New +York or Boston or any of the more orderly, the rather foreign, cities +of America. There was something in the untidiness of those grimy houses, +the smoky disorder of the backyards, that ran a thrill of nostalgia +through me. I recognised the English way of doing things--with a +difference that I could not define till later. + +Determined to be in all ways the complete tourist, I took a rough +preliminary survey of Montreal in an 'observation-car.' It was a large +motor-wagonette, from which everything in Montreal could be seen in two +hours. We were a most fortuitous band of twenty, who had elected so to +see it. Our guide addressed us from the front through a small megaphone, +telling us what everything was, what we were to be interested in, what +to overlook, what to admire. He seemed the exact type of a spiritual +pastor and master, shepherding his stolid and perplexed flock on a +regulated path through the dust and clatter of the world. And the great +hollow device out of which our instruction proceeded was so perfectly a +blind mouth. I had never understood _Lycidas_ before. We were sheepish +enough, and fairly hungry. However, we were excellently fed. "On the +right, ladies and gentlemen, is the Bank of Montreal; on the left +the Presbyterian Church of St Andrew's; on the right, again, the +well-designed residence of Sir Blank Blank; further on, on the same +side, the Art Museum...." The outcome of it all was a vague general +impression that Montreal consists of banks and churches. The people of +this city spend much of their time in laying up their riches in this +world or the next. Indeed, the British part of Montreal is dominated +by the Scotch race; there is a Scotch spirit sensible in the whole +place--in the rather narrow, rather gloomy streets, the solid, square, +grey, aggressively prosperous buildings, the general greyness of the +city, the air of dour prosperity. Even the Canadian habit of loading the +streets with heavy telephone wires, supported by frequent black poles, +seemed to increase the atmospheric resemblance to Glasgow. + +But besides all this there is a kind of restraint in the air, due, +perhaps, to a state of affairs which, more than any other, startles the +ordinary ignorant English visitor. The average man in England has an +idea of Canada as a young-eyed daughter State, composed of millions +of wheat-growers and backwoodsmen of British race. It surprises him to +learn that more than a quarter of the population is of French descent, +that many of them cannot speak English, that they control a province, +form the majority in the biggest city in Canada, and are a perpetual +complication in the national politics. Even a stranger who knows this is +startled at the complete separateness of the two races. Inter-marriage +is very rare. They do not meet socially; only on business, and that not +often. In the same city these two communities dwell side by side, with +different traditions, different languages, different ideals, without +sympathy or comprehension. The French in Canada are entirely devoted +to--some say under the thumb of--the Roman Catholic Church. They seem +like a piece of the Middle Ages, dumped after a trans-secular journey +into a quite uncompromising example of our commercial time. Some +of their leaders are said to have dreams of a French Republic--or +theocracy--on the banks of the St Lawrence. How this, or any other, +solution of the problem is to come about, no man knows. Racial +difficulties are the most enduring of all. The French and British in +Canada seem to have behaved with quite extraordinary generosity and +kindliness towards each other. No one is to blame. But it is not in +human nature that two communities should live side by side, pretending +they are one, without some irritation and mutual loss of strength. There +is no open strife. But 'incidents,' and the memory of incidents, bear +continual witness to the truth of the situation. And racial disagreement +is at the bottom, often unconsciously, of many political and social +movements. Sir Wilfrid Laurier performed a miracle. But no one of French +birth will ever again be Premier of Canada. + +Montreal and Eastern Canada suffer from that kind of ill-health which +afflicts men who are cases of 'double personality'--debility and +spiritual paralysis. The 'progressive' British-Canadian man of commerce +is comically desperate of peasants who _will not_ understand that +increase of imports and volume of trade and numbers of millionaires are +the measures of a city's greatness; and to his eye the Roman Catholic +Church, with her invaluable ally Ignorance, keeps up her incessant +war against the general good of the community of which she is part. So +things remain. + +I made my investigations in Montreal. I have to report that +the Discobolus [Footnote: See Samuel Butler's poem, "Oh God! oh +Montreal!"--Ed.] is very well, and, nowadays, looks the whole world in +the face, almost quite unabashed. West of Montreal, the country seems +to take on a rather more English appearance. There is still a French +admixture. But the little houses are not purely Gallic, as they are +along the Lower St Lawrence; and once or twice I detected real hedges. + +Ottawa came as a relief after Montreal. There is no such sense of strain +and tightness in the atmosphere. The British, if not greatly in the +majority, are in the ascendency; also, the city seems conscious of other +than financial standards, and quietly, with dignity, aware of her own +purpose. The Canadians, like the Americans, chose to have for their +capital a city which did not lead in population or in wealth. This is +particularly fortunate in Canada, an extremely individualistic country, +whose inhabitants are only just beginning to be faintly conscious of +their nationality. Here, at least, Canada is more than the Canadian. A +man desiring to praise Ottawa would begin to do so without statistics +of wealth and the growth of population; and this can be said of no +other city in Canada except Quebec. Not that there are not immense +lumber-mills and the rest in Ottawa. But the Government farm, and the +Parliament buildings, are more important. Also, although the 'spoils' +system obtains a good deal in this country, the nucleus of the Civil +Service is much the same as in England; so there is an atmosphere of +Civil Servants about Ottawa, an atmosphere of safeness and honour and +massive buildings and well-shaded walks. After all, there is in the +qualities of Civility and Service much beauty, of a kind which would +adorn Canada. + +Parliament Buildings stand finely on a headland of cliff some 160 feet +above the river. There are gardens about them; and beneath, the wooded +rocks go steeply down to the water. It is a position of natural boldness +and significance. The buildings were put up in the middle of last +century, an unfortunate period. But they have dignity, especially of +line; and when evening hides their colour, and the western sky and the +river take on the lovely hues of a Canadian sunset, and the lights begin +to come out in the city, they seem to have the majesty and calm of a +natural crown of the river-headland. The Government have bought the +ground along the cliff for half a mile on either side, and propose to +build all their offices there. So, in the end, if they build well, the +river-front at Ottawa will be a noble sight. And--just to show that it +is Canada, and not Utopia--the line of national buildings will always be +broken by an expensive and superb hotel the Canadian Pacific Railway has +been allowed to erect on the twin and neighbouring promontory to that of +the Houses of Parliament. + +The streets of Ottawa are very quiet, and shaded with trees. The houses +are mostly of that cool, homely, wooden kind, with verandahs, on which, +or on the steps, the whole family may sit in the evening and observe the +passers-by. This is possible for both the rich and the poor, who live +nearer each other in Ottawa than in most cities. In general there is an +air of civilisation, which extends even over the country round. But in +the country you see little signs, a patch of swamp, or thickets of still +untouched primaeval wood, which remind you that Europeans have not long +had this land. I was taken in a motor-car some twenty miles or more over +the execrable roads round here, to a lovely little lake in the hills +north-west of Ottawa. We went by little French villages and fields at +first, and then through rocky, tangled woods of birch and poplar, rich +with milk-weed and blue cornflowers, and the aromatic thimbleberry +blossom, and that romantic, light, purple-red flower which is called +fireweed, because it is the first vegetation to spring up in the prairie +after a fire has passed over, and so might be adopted as the emblematic +flower of a sense of humour. They told me, casually, that there was +nothing but a few villages between me and the North Pole. It is probably +true of several commonly frequented places in this country. But it gives +a thrill to hear it. + +But what Ottawa leaves in the mind is a certain graciousness--dim, for +it expresses a barely materialised national spirit--and the sight of +kindly English-looking faces, and the rather lovely sound of the soft +Canadian accent, in the streets. + + + + +VI + +QUEBEC AND THE SAGUENAY + + +The boat starts from Montreal one evening, and lands you in Quebec at +six next morning. The evening I left was a dull one. Heavy sulphurous +clouds hung low over the city, drifting very slowly and gloomily +out across the river. Mount Royal crouched, black and sullen, in the +background, its crest occluded by the darkness, appearing itself a cloud +materialised, resting on earth. The harbour was filled with volumes of +smoke, purple and black, wreathing and sidling eastwards, from steamers +and chimneys. The gigantic elevators and other harbour buildings stood +mistily in this inferno, their heads clear and sinister above the mirk. +It was impossible to decide whether an enormous mass of pitchy and +Tartarian gloom was being slowly moulded by diabolic invisible hands +into a city, or a city, the desperate and damned abode of a loveless +race, was disintegrating into its proper fume and dusty chaos. With +relief we turned outwards to the nobility of the St Lawrence and the +gathering dark. + +On the boat I fell in with another wanderer, an American Jew, and we +joined our fortunes, rather loosely, for a few days. He was one of +those men whom it is a life-long pleasure to remember. I can record his +existence the more easily that there is not the slightest chance of +his ever reading these lines. He was a fat, large man of forty-five, +obviously in business, and probably of a mediocre success. His eyes were +light-coloured, very small, always watery, and perpetually roving. The +lower part of his face was clean-shaven and very broad; his mouth wide, +with thin, moist, colourless lips; his nose fat and Hebraic. He was +rather bald. He had respect for Montreal, because, though closed to +navigation for five months in the year, it is the second busiest port +on the coast. He said it had Boston skinned. The French he disliked. He +thought they stood in the way of Canada's progress. His mind was even +more childlike and transparent than is usual with business men. The +observer could see thoughts slowly floating into it, like carp in a +pond. When they got near the surface, by a purely automatic process they +found utterance. He was almost completely unconscious of an audience. +Everything he thought of he said. He told me that his boots were giving +in the sole, but would probably last this trip. He said he had not +washed his feet for eight days; and that his clothes were shabby (which +was true), but would do for Canada. It was interesting to see how Canada +presented herself to that mind. He seemed to regard her as a kind of +Boeotia, and terrifyingly dour. "These Canadian waiters," he said, "they +jes' _fling_ the food in y'r face. Kind'er gets yer sick, doesn't it?" I +agreed. There was a Yorkshire mechanic, too, who had been in Canada four +years, and preferred it to England, "because you've room to breathe," +but also found that Canada had not yet learnt social comfort, and +regretted the manners of "the Old Country." + +We woke to find ourselves sweeping round a high cliff, at six in the +morning, with a lively breeze, the river very blue and broken into +ripples, and a lot of little white clouds in the sky. The air was full +of gaiety and sunshine and the sense of the singing of birds, though +actually, I think, there were only a few gulls crying. It was the +perfection of a summer morning, thrilling with a freshness which, the +fancy said, was keener than any the old world knew. And high and grey +and serene above the morning lay the citadel of Quebec. + +Is there any city in the world that stands so nobly as Quebec? The +citadel crowns a headland, three hundred feet high, that juts boldly out +into the St Lawrence. Up to it, up the side of the hill, clambers the +city, houses and steeples and huts, piled one on the other. It has the +individuality and the pride of a city where great things have happened, +and over which many years have passed. Quebec is as refreshing and as +definite after the other cities of this continent as an immortal among +a crowd of stockbrokers. She has, indeed, the radiance and repose of an +immortal; but she wears her immortality youthfully. When you get among +the streets of Quebec, the mediaeval, precipitous, narrow, winding, and +perplexed streets, you begin to realise her charm. She almost incurs the +charge of quaintness (abhorrent quality!); but even quaintness becomes +attractive in this country. You are in a foreign land, for the people +have an alien tongue, short stature, the quick, decided, cinematographic +quality of movement, and the inexplicable cheerfulness, which mark a +foreigner. You might almost be in Siena or some old German town, except +that Quebec has her street-cars and grain-elevators to show that she is +living. + +The American Jew and I took a _caleche_, a little two-wheeled local +carriage, driven by a lively Frenchman with a factitious passion for +death-spots and churches. A small black and white spaniel followed +the _caleche_, yapping. The American's face shone with interest. "That +dawg's Michael," he said, "the hotel dawg. He's a queer little dawg. I +kicked his face; and he tried to bite me. Hup, Michael!" And he laughed +hoarsely. "Non!" said the driver suddenly, "it is not the 'otel dog." +The American did not lose interest. "These little dawgs are all alike," +he said. "Dare say if you kicked that dawg in the face, he'd bite you. +Hup, Michael!" With that he fell into deep thought. + +We rattled up and down the steep streets, out among tidy fields, and +back into the noisily sedate city again. We saw where Wolfe fell, where +Montcalm fell, where Montgomery fell. Children played where the tides of +war had ebbed and flowed. Mr Norman Angell and his friends tell us that +trade is superseding war; and pacifists declare that for the future +countries will win their pride or shame from commercial treaties and +tariffs and bounties, and no more from battles and sieges. And there is +a part of Canadian patriotism that has progressed this way. But I wonder +if the hearts of that remarkable race, posterity, will ever beat the +harder when they are told, "Here Mr Borden stood when he decided to +double the duty on agricultural implements," or even "In this room Mr +Ritchie conceived the plan of removing the shilling on wheat." When that +happens, Quebec will be a forgotten ruin.... The reverie was broken by +my friend struggling to his feet and standing, unsteady and bareheaded, +in the swaying carriage. In that position he burst hoarsely into a song +that I recognised as 'The Star-Spangled Banner.' We were passing the +American Consulate. His song over, he settled down and fell into a deep +sleep, and the _caleche_ jolted down even narrower streets, curiously +paved with planks, and ways that led through and under the ancient, +tottering wooden houses. + +But Quebec is too real a city to be 'seen' in such a manner. And a +better way of spending a few days, or years, is to sit on Dufferin +Terrace, with the old Lower Town sheer beneath you, and the river +beyond it, and the citadel to the right, a little above, and the Isle of +Orleans and the French villages away down-stream to your left. Hour by +hour the colours change, and sunlight follows shadow, and mist rises, +and smoke drifts across. And through the veil of the shifting of lights +and hues there remains visible the majesty of the most glorious river in +the world. + +From this contemplation, and from musing on men's agreement to mark by +this one great sign of the Taking of the Heights of Quebec, the turning +of one of the greatest currents in our history, I was torn by a journey +I had been advised to make. The boat goes some hundred and thirty miles +down the St Lawrence, turns up a northern tributary, the Saguenay, goes +as far as Chicoutimi, ninety miles up, and returns to Quebec. Both on +this trip, and between Quebec and Montreal, we touched at many +little French villages, by day and by night. Their _habitants_, the +French-Canadian peasants, are a jolly sight. They are like children +in their noisy content. They are poor and happy, Roman Catholics; they +laugh a great deal; and they continually sing. They do not progress at +all. As a counter to these admirable people we had on our boat a great +many priests. They diffused an atmosphere of black, of unpleasant +melancholy. Their faces had that curiously unwashed look, and were for +the most part of a mean and very untrustworthy expression. Their eyes +were small, shifty, and cruel, and would not meet the gaze.... The +choice between our own age and mediaeval times is a very hard one. + +It was almost full night when we left the twenty-mile width of the St +Lawrence, and turned up a gloomy inlet. By reason of the night and of +comparison with the river from which we had come, this stream appeared +unnaturally narrow. Darkness hid all detail, and we were only aware of +vast cliffs, sometimes dense with trees, sometimes bare faces of sullen +rock. They shut us in, oppressively, but without heat. There are no +banks to this river, for the most part; only these walls, rising sheer +from the water to the height of two thousand feet, going down sheer +beneath it, or rather by the side of it, to many times that depth. The +water was of some colour blacker than black. Even by daylight it is inky +and sinister. It flows without foam or ripple. No white showed in the +wake of the boat. The ominous shores were without sign of life, save +for a rare light every few miles, to mark some bend in the chasm. Once a +canoe with two Indians shot out of the shadows, passed under our +stern, and vanished silently down stream. We all became hushed and +apprehensive. The night was gigantic and terrible. There were a few +stars, but the flood slid along too swiftly to reflect them. The whole +scene seemed some Stygian imagination of Dante. As we drew further and +further into that lightless land, little twists and curls of vapour +wriggled over the black river-surface. Our homeless, irrelevant, tiny +steamer seemed to hang between two abysms. One became suddenly aware of +the miles of dark water beneath. I found that under a prolonged gaze +the face of the river began to writhe and eddy, as if from some horrible +suppressed emotion. It seemed likely that something might appear. I +reflected that if the river failed us, all hope was gone; and that +anyhow this region was the abode of devils. I went to bed. + +Next day we steamed down the river again. By daylight some of the horror +goes, but the impression of ancientness and desolation remains. The +gloomy flood is entirely shut in by the rock or the tangled pine and +birch forests of these great cliffs, except in one or two places, where +a chine and a beach have given lodging to lonely villages. One of these +is at the end of a long bay, called Ha-Ha Bay. The local guide-book, an +early example of the school of fantastic realism so popular among +our younger novelists, says that this name arose from the 'laughing +ejaculations' of the early French explorers, who had mistaken this +lengthy blind-alley for the main stream. 'Ha! Ha!' they said. So like an +early explorer. + +At the point where the Saguenay joins the St Lawrence, here twenty miles +wide, I 'stopped off' for a day, to feel the country more deeply. +The village is called Tadousac, and consists of an hotel and French +fishermen, to whom Quebec is a distant, unvisited city of legend. The +afternoon was very hot. I wandered out along a thin margin of yellow +sand to the extreme rocky point where the waters of the two rivers +meet and swirl. There I lay, and looked at the strange humps of the +Laurentian hills, and the dark green masses of the woods, impenetrable +depths of straight and leaning and horizontal trees, broken here and +there by great bald granite rocks, and behind me the little village, +where the earliest church in Canada stands. Away in the St Lawrence +there would be a flash as an immense white fish jumped. Miles out an +occasional steamer passed, bound to England perhaps. And once, +hugging the coast, came a half-breed paddling a canoe with a small +diamond-shaped sail, filled with trout. The cliff above me was crowned +with beds of blue flowers, whose names I did not know. Against the +little gulfs and coasts of rock at my feet were washing a few white logs +of driftwood. I wondered if they could have floated across from England, +or if they could be from the _Titanic_. The sun was very hot, the sky a +clear light blue, almost cloudless, like an English sky, and the water +seemed fairly deep. I stripped, hovered a while on the brink, and +plunged. The current was unexpectedly strong. I seemed to feel that +two-mile-deep body of black water moving against me. And it was cold as +death. Stray shreds of the St Lawrence water were warm and cheerful. But +the current of the Saguenay, on such a day, seemed unnaturally icy. As +my head came up I made one dash for the land, scrambled out on the hot +rocks, and lay there panting. Then I dried on a handkerchief, dressed, +and ran back home, still shivering, through the woods to the hotel. + + + + +VII + +ONTARIO + + +The great joy of travelling in Canada is to do it by water. The +advantage of this is that you can keep fairly clean and quiet of nerves; +the disadvantage is that you don't 'see the country.' I travelled most +of the way from Ottawa to Toronto by water. But between Ottawa and +Prescott then, and later from Toronto to Niagara Falls, and thence to +Sarnia, there is a good deal of Southern Ontario to be seen--the part +which has counted as Ontario so far. And I saw it through a faint +grey-pink mist of _Heimweh_. For after the States and after Quebec it is +English. There are weather-beaten farm-houses, rolling country, thickets +of trees, little hills green and grey in the distance, decorous small +fields, orchards, and, I swear, a hedge or two. Most of the towns we +went through are a little too vivacious or too pert to be European. But +there seemed to be real villages occasionally, and the land had a quiet +air of occupation. + +Men have lived contentedly on this land and died where they were born, +and so given it a certain sanctity. Away north the wild begins, and is +only now being brought into civilisation, inhabited, made productive, +explored, and exploited. But this country has seen the generations pass, +and won something of that repose and security which countries acquire +from the sight. + +The wise traveller from Ottawa to Toronto catches a boat at Prescott, +and puffs judicially between two nations up the St Lawrence and across +Lake Ontario. We were a cosmopolitan, middle-class bunch (it is the one +distinction between the Canadian and American languages that Canadians +tend to say 'bunch' but Americans 'crowd'), out to enjoy the scenery. +For this stretch of the river is notoriously picturesque, containing the +Thousand Isles. The Thousand Isles vary from six inches to hundreds +of yards in diameter. Each, if big enough, has been bought by a rich +man--generally an American--who has built a castle on it. So the +whole isn't much more beautiful than Golder's Green. We picked our way +carefully between the islands. The Americans on board sat in rows saying +"That house was built by Mr ----. Made his money in biscuits. Cost +three hundred thousand dollars, e-recting that building. Yessir." The +Canadians sat looking out the other way, and said, "In nineteen-ten +this land was worth twenty thousand an acre; now it's worth forty-five +thousand. Next year...." and their eyes grew solemn as the eyes of +men who think deep and holy thoughts. But the English sat quite still, +looking straight in front of them, thinking of nothing at all, and +hoping that nobody would speak to them. So we fared; until, well on in +the afternoon, we came to the entrance of Lake Ontario. + +There is something ominous and unnatural about these great lakes. The +sweet flow of a river, and the unfriendly restless vitality of the sea, +men may know and love. And the little lakes we have in Europe are but +as fresh-water streams that have married and settled down, alive and +healthy and comprehensible. Rivers (except the Saguenay) are human. The +sea, very properly, will not be allowed in heaven. It has no soul. It is +unvintageable, cruel, treacherous, what you will. But, in the end--while +we have it with us--it is all right; even though that all-rightness +result but, as with France, from the recognition of an age-long feud and +an irremediable lack of sympathy. But these monstrous lakes, which +ape the ocean, are not proper to fresh water or salt. They have souls, +perceptibly, and wicked ones. + +We steamed out, that day, over a flat, stationary mass of water, smooth +with the smoothness of metal or polished stone or one's finger-nail. +There was a slight haze everywhere. The lake was a terrible dead-silver +colour, the gleam of its surface shot with flecks of blue and a vapoury +enamel-green. It was like a gigantic silver shield. Its glint was +inexplicably sinister and dead, like the glint on glasses worn by +a blind man. In front the steely mist hid the horizon, so that the +occasional rock or little island and the one ship in sight seemed hung +in air. They were reflected to a preternatural length in the glassy +floor. Our boat appeared to leave no wake; those strange waters closed +up foamlessly behind her. But our black smoke hung, away back on the +trail, in a thick, clearly-bounded cloud, becalmed in the hot, windless +air, very close over the water, like an evil soul after death that +cannot win dissolution. Behind us and to the right lay the low, woody +shores of Southern Ontario and Prince Edward Peninsula, long dark +lines of green, stretching thinner and thinner, interminably, into the +distance. The lake around us was dull, though the sun shone full on it. +It gleamed, but without radiance. + +Toronto (pronounce _T'ranto_, please) is difficult to describe. It has +an individuality, but an elusive one; yet not through any queerness or +difficult shade of eccentricity; a subtly normal, an indefinably obvious +personality. It is a healthy, cheerful city (by modern standards); +a clean-shaven, pink-faced, respectably dressed, fairly +energetic, unintellectual, passably sociable, well-to-do, +public-school-and-'varsity sort of city. One knows in one's own life +certain bright and pleasant figures; people who occupy the nearer middle +distance, unobtrusive but not negligible; wardens of the marches between +acquaintanceship and friendship. It is always nice to meet them, and in +parting one looks back at them once. They are, healthily and simply, the +most fitting product of a not perfect environment; good-sorts; normal, +but not too normal; distinctly themselves, but not distinguished. They +support civilisation. You can trust them in anything, if your demand be +for nothing extremely intelligent or absurdly altruistic. One of these +could be exhibited in any gallery in the universe, 'Perfect Specimen; +Upper Middle Classes; Twentieth Century'--and we should not be ashamed. +They are not vexed by impossible dreams, nor outrageously materialistic, +nor perplexed by overmuch prosperity, nor spoilt by reverse. Souls for +whom the wind is always nor'-nor'-west, and they sail nearer success +than failure, and nearer wisdom than lunacy. Neither leaders nor +slaves--but no Tomlinsons!--whomsoever of your friends you miss, _them_ +you will certainly meet again, not unduly pardoned, the fifty-first +by the Throne. Such is Toronto. A brisk city of getting on for half a +million inhabitants, the largest British city in Canada (in spite of +the cheery Italian faces that pop up at you out of excavations in the +street), liberally endowed with millionaires, not lacking its due share +of destitution, misery, and slums. It is no mushroom city of the West, +it has its history; but at the same time it has grown immensely of +recent years. It is situated on the shores of a lovely lake; but you +never see that, because the railways have occupied the entire lake +front. So if, at evening, you try to find your way to the edge of the +water, you are checked by a region of smoke, sheds, trucks, wharves, +store-houses, 'depots,' railway-lines, signals, and locomotives and +trains that wander on the tracks up and down and across streets, pushing +their way through the pedestrians, and tolling, as they go, in the +American fashion, an immense melancholy bell, intent, apparently, +on some private and incommunicable grief. Higher up are the business +quarters, a few sky-scrapers in the American style without the modern +American beauty, but one of which advertises itself as the highest in +the British Empire; streets that seem less narrow than Montreal, but not +unrespectably wide; "the buildings are generally substantial and often +handsome" (the too kindly Herr Baedeker). Beyond that the residential +part, with quiet streets, gardens open to the road, shady verandahs, and +homes, generally of wood, that are a deal more pleasant to see than the +houses in a modern English town. + +Toronto is the centre and heart of the Province of Ontario; and Ontario, +with a third of the whole population of Canada, directs the country for +the present, conditioned by the French on one hand and the West on +the other. And in this land, that is as yet hardly at all conscious of +itself as a nation, Toronto and Ontario do their best in leading and +realising national sentiment. A Toronto man, like most Canadians, +dislikes an Englishman; but, unlike some Canadians, he detests an +American. And he has some inkling of the conditions and responsibilities +of the British Empire. The tradition is in him. His fathers fought to +keep Canada British. + +It is never easy to pick out of the turmoil of an election the real +powers that have moved men; and it is especially difficult in a country +where politics are so corrupt as they are in Canada. But certainly this +British feeling helped to throw Ontario, and so the country, against +Reciprocity with the United States in 1911; and it is keeping it, in the +comedy of the Navy Question, on Mr Borden's side--rather from distrust +of his opponents' sincerity, perhaps, than from admiration of the fix he +is in. It has been used, this patriotism, to aid the wealthy interests, +which are all-powerful here; and it will continue to be a ball in the +tennis of party politics. But it is real; it will remain, potential of +good, among all the forces that are certain for evil. + +Toronto, soul of Canada, is wealthy, busy, commercial, Scotch, absorbent +of whisky; but she is duly aware of other things. She has a most modern +and efficient interest in education; and here are gathered what faint, +faint beginnings or premonitions of such things as Art Canada can +boast (except the French-Canadians, who, it is complained, produce +disproportionately much literature, and waste their time on their own +unprofitable songs). Most of those few who have begun to paint the +landscape of Canada centre there, and a handful of people who know about +books. In these things, as in all, this city is properly and cheerfully +to the front. It can scarcely be doubted that the first Repertory +Theatre in Canada will be founded in Toronto, some thirty years hence, +and will very daringly perform _Candida_ and _The Silver Box_. Canada +is a live country, live, but not, like the States, kicking. In these +trifles of Art and 'culture,' indeed, she is much handicapped by the +proximity of the States. For her poets and writers are apt to be drawn +thither, for the better companionship there and the higher rates of pay. + +But Toronto--Toronto is the subject. One must say something--_what_ must +one say about Toronto? What can one? What has anybody ever said? It is +impossible to give it anything but commendation. It is not squalid like +Birmingham, or cramped like Canton, or scattered like Edmonton, or sham +like Berlin, or hellish like New York, or tiresome like Nice. It is all +right. The only depressing thing is that it will always be what it is, +only larger, and that no Canadian city can ever be anything better or +different. If they are good they may become Toronto. + + + + +VIII + +NIAGARA FALLS + + +Samuel Butler has a lot to answer for. But for him, a modern traveller +could spend his time peacefully admiring the scenery instead of feeling +himself bound to dog the simple and grotesque of the world for the sake +of their too-human comments. It is his fault if a peasant's _naivete_ +has come to outweigh the beauty of rivers, and the remarks of clergymen +are more than mountains. It is very restful to give up all effort at +observing human nature and drawing social and political deductions from +trifles, and to let oneself relapse into wide-mouthed worship of the +wonders of nature. And this is very easy at Niagara. Niagara means +nothing. It is not leading anywhere. It does not result from anything. +It throws no light on the effects of Protection, nor on the Facility for +Divorce in America, nor on Corruption in Public Life, nor on Canadian +character, nor even on the Navy Bill. It is merely a great deal of water +falling over some cliffs. But it is very remarkably that. The human +race, apt as a child to destroy what it admires, has done its best to +surround the Falls with every distraction, incongruity, and vulgarity. +Hotels, power-houses, bridges, trams, picture post-cards, sham legends, +stalls, booths, rifle-galleries, and side-shows frame them about. And +there are Touts. Niagara is the central home and breeding-place for +all the touts of earth. There are touts insinuating, and touts raucous, +greasy touts, brazen touts, and upper-class, refined, gentlemanly, +take-you-by-the-arm touts; touts who intimidate and touts who wheedle; +professionals, amateurs, and _dilettanti_, male and female; touts who +would photograph you with your arm round a young lady against a faked +background of the sublimest cataract, touts who would bully you into +cars, char-a-bancs, elevators, or tunnels, or deceive you into +a carriage and pair, touts who would sell you picture postcards, +moccasins, sham Indian beadwork, blankets, tee-pees, and crockery; +and touts, finally, who have no apparent object in the world, but just +purely, simply, merely, incessantly, indefatigably, and ineffugibly--to +tout. And in the midst of all this, overwhelming it all, are the Falls. +He who sees them instantly forgets humanity. They are not very high, but +they are overpowering. They are divided by an island into two parts, the +Canadian and the American. + +Half a mile or so above the Falls, on either side, the water of the +great stream begins to run more swiftly and in confusion. It descends +with ever-growing speed. It begins chattering and leaping, breaking into +a thousand ripples, throwing up joyful fingers of spray. Sometimes it +is divided by islands and rocks, sometimes the eye can see nothing but +a waste of laughing, springing, foamy waves, turning, crossing, even +seeming to stand for an instant erect, but always borne impetuously +forward like a crowd of triumphant feasters. Sit close down by it, and +you see a fragment of the torrent against the sky, mottled, steely, +and foaming, leaping onward in far-flung criss-cross strands of water. +Perpetually the eye is on the point of descrying a pattern in this +weaving, and perpetually it is cheated by change. In one place part of +the flood plunges over a ledge a few feet high and a quarter of a mile +or so long, in a uniform and stable curve. It gives an impression of +almost military concerted movement, grown suddenly out of confusion. But +it is swiftly lost again in the multitudinous tossing merriment. Here +and there a rock close to the surface is marked by a white wave that +faces backwards and seems to be rushing madly up-stream, but is really +stationary in the headlong charge. But for these signs of reluctance, +the waters seem to fling themselves on with some foreknowledge of their +fate, in an ever wilder frenzy. But it is no Maeterlinckian prescience. +They prove, rather, that Greek belief that the great crashes are +preceded by a louder merriment and a wilder gaiety. Leaping in the +sunlight, careless, entwining, clamorously joyful, the waves riot on +towards the verge. + +But there they change. As they turn to the sheer descent, the white +and blue and slate-colour, in the heart of the Canadian Falls at least, +blend and deepen to a rich, wonderful, luminous green. On the edge of +disaster the river seems to gather herself, to pause, to lift a head +noble in ruin, and then, with a slow grandeur, to plunge into the +eternal thunder and white chaos below. Where the stream runs shallower +it is a kind of violet colour, but both violet and green fray and frill +to white as they fall. The mass of water, striking some ever-hidden +base of rock, leaps up the whole two hundred feet again in pinnacles and +domes of spray. The spray falls back into the lower river once more; all +but a little that fines to foam and white mist, which drifts in layers +along the air, graining it, and wanders out on the wind over the trees +and gardens and houses, and so vanishes. + +The manager of one of the great power-stations on the banks of the river +above the Falls told me that the centre of the riverbed at the Canadian +Falls is deep and of a saucer shape. So it may be possible to fill this +up to a uniform depth, and divert a lot of water for the power-houses. +And this, he said, would supply the need for more power, which will +certainly soon arise, without taking away from the beauty of Niagara. +This is a handsome concession of the utilitarians to ordinary +sight-seers. Yet, I doubt if we shall be satisfied. The real secret of +the beauty and terror of the Falls is not their height or width, but the +feeling of colossal power and of unintelligible disaster caused by the +plunge of that vast body of water. If that were taken away, there would +be little visible change; but the heart would be gone. + +The American Falls do not inspire this feeling in the same way as the +Canadian. It is because they are less in volume, and because the water +does not fall so much into one place. By comparison their beauty is +almost delicate and fragile. They are extraordinarily level, one long +curtain of lacework and woven foam. Seen from opposite, when the sun is +on them, they are blindingly white, and the clouds of spray show +dark against them. With both Falls the colour of the water is the +ever-altering wonder. Greens and blues, purples and whites, melt into +one another, fade, and come again, and change with the changing sun. +Sometimes they are as richly diaphanous as a precious stone, and +glow from within with a deep, inexplicable light. Sometimes the white +intricacies of dropping foam become opaque and creamy. And always there +are the rainbows. If you come suddenly upon the Falls from above, a +great double rainbow, very vivid, spanning the extent of spray from top +to bottom, is the first thing you see. If you wander along the cliff +opposite, a bow springs into being in the American Falls, accompanies +you courteously on your walk, dwindles and dies as the mist ends, and +awakens again as you reach the Canadian tumult. And the bold traveller +who attempts the trip under the American Falls sees, when he dare open +his eyes to anything, tiny baby rainbows, some four or five yards in +span, leaping from rock to rock among the foam, and gambolling beside +him, barely out of hand's reach, as he goes. One I saw in that place was +a complete circle, such as I have never seen before, and so near that I +could put my foot on it. It is a terrifying journey, beneath and behind +the Falls. The senses are battered and bewildered by the thunder of the +water and the assault of wind and spray; or rather, the sound is not of +falling water, but merely of falling; a noise of unspecified ruin. So, +if you are close behind the endless clamour, the sight cannot recognise +liquid in the masses that hurl past. You are dimly and pitifully aware +that sheets of light and darkness are falling in great curves in front +of you. Dull omnipresent foam washes the face. Farther away, in the roar +and hissing, clouds of spray seem literally to slide down some invisible +plane of air. + +Beyond the foot of the Falls the river is like a slipping floor of +marble, green with veins of dirty white, made by the scum that was +foam. It slides very quietly and slowly down for a mile or two, sullenly +exhausted. Then it turns to a dull sage green, and hurries more swiftly, +smooth and ominous. As the walls of the ravine close in, trouble stirs, +and the waters boil and eddy. These are the lower rapids, a sight more +terrifying than the Falls, because less intelligible. Close in its bands +of rock the river surges tumultuously forward, writhing and leaping +as if inspired by a demon. It is pressed by the straits into a visibly +convex form. Great planes of water slide past. Sometimes it is thrown +up into a pinnacle of foam higher than a house, or leaps with incredible +speed from the crest of one vast wave to another, along the shining +curve between, like the spring of a wild beast. Its motion continually +suggests muscular action. The power manifest in these rapids moves one +with a different sense of awe and terror from that of the Falls. Here +the inhuman life and strength are spontaneous, active, almost resolute; +masculine vigour compared with the passive gigantic power, female, +helpless and overwhelming, of the Falls. A place of fear. + +One is drawn back, strangely, to a contemplation of the Falls, at +every hour, and especially by night, when the cloud of spray becomes +an immense visible ghost, straining and wavering high above the river, +white and pathetic and translucent. The Victorian lies very close +below the surface in every man. There one can sit and let great cloudy +thoughts of destiny and the passage of empires drift through the mind; +for such dreams are at home by Niagara. I could not get out of my mind +the thought of a friend, who said that the rainbows over the Falls were +like the arts and beauty and goodness, with regard to the stream of +life--caused by it, thrown upon its spray, but unable to stay or direct +or affect it, and ceasing when it ceased. In all comparisons that rise +in the heart, the river, with its multitudinous waves and its single +current, likens itself to a life, whether of an individual or of a +community. A man's life is of many flashing moments, and yet one stream; +a nation's flows through all its citizens, and yet is more than they. +In such places, one is aware, with an almost insupportable and yet +comforting certitude, that both men and nations are hurried onwards to +their ruin or ending as inevitably as this dark flood. Some go down to +it unreluctant, and meet it, like the river, not without nobility. And +as incessant, as inevitable, and as unavailing as the spray that hangs +over the Falls, is the white cloud of human crying.... With some such +thoughts does the platitudinous heart win from the confusion and thunder +of Niagara a peace that the quietest plains or most stable hills can +never give. + + + + +IX + +TO WINNIPEG + + +The boats that run from Sarnia the whole length of Lake Huron and Lake +Superior are not comfortable. But no doubt a train for those six hundred +miles would be worse. You start one afternoon, and in the morning of the +next day you have done with the rather colourless, unindividual expanses +of Huron, and are dawdling along a canal that joins the lakes by the +little town of Sault Ste. Marie (pronounced, abruptly, 'Soo'). We +happened on it one Sunday. The nearer waters of the river and the lakes +were covered with little sailing or rowing or bathing parties. Everybody +seemed cheerful, merry, and mildly raucous. There is a fine, breezy, +enviable healthiness about Canadian life. Except in some Eastern cities, +there are few clerks or working-men but can get away to the woods and +water. + +As we drew out into the cold magnificence of Lake Superior, the receding +woody shores were occasionally spotted with picnickers or campers, +who rushed down the beach in various deshabille, waving towels, +handkerchiefs, or garments. We were as friendly. The human race seemed +a jolly bunch, and the world a fine, pleasant, open-air affair--'some +world,' in fact. A man in a red shirt and a bronzed girl with flowing +hair slid past in a canoe. We whistled, sang, and cried 'Snooky-ookums!' +and other words of occult meaning, which imputed love to them, and +foolishness. They replied suitably, grinned, and were gone. A little old +lady in black, in the chair next mine, kept a small telescope glued to +her eye, hour after hour. Whenever she distinguished life on any shore +we passed, she waved a tiny handkerchief. Diligently she did this, +and with grave face, never visible to the objects of her devotion, I +suppose, but certainly very happy; the most persistent lover of humanity +I have ever seen.... + +In the afternoon we were beyond sight of land. The world grew a little +chilly; and over the opaque, hueless water came sliding a queer, pale +mist. We strained through it for hours, a low bank of cloud, not twenty +feet in height, on which one could look down from the higher deck. +Its upper surface was quite flat and smooth, save for innumerable tiny +molehills or pyramids of mist. We seemed to be ploughing aimlessly +through the phantasmal sand-dunes of another world, faintly and by an +accident apprehended. So may the shades on a ghostly liner, plunging +down Lethe, have an hour's chance glimpse of the lights and lives of +Piccadilly, to them uncertain and filmy mirages of the air. + +To taste the full deliciousness of travelling in an American train by +night through new scenery, you must carefully secure a lower berth. +And when you are secret and separate in your little oblong world, safe +between sheets, pull up the blinds on the great window a few inches and +leave them so. Thus, as you lie, you can view the dark procession of +woods and hills, and mingle the broken hours of railway slumber with +glimpses of a wild starlit landscape. The country retains individuality, +and yet puts on romance, especially the rough, shaggy region between +Port Arthur and Winnipeg. For four hundred miles there is hardly a sign +that humanity exists on the earth's face, only rocks and endless woods +of scrubby pine, and the occasional strange gleam of water, and night +and the wind. Night-long, dream and reality mingle. You may wake from +sleep to find yourself flying through a region where a forest fire has +passed, a place of grey pine-trunks, stripped of foliage, occasionally +waving a naked bough. They appear stricken by calamity, intolerably bare +and lonely, gaunt, perpetually protesting, amazed and tragic creatures. +We saw no actual fire the night I passed. But a little while after dawn +we noticed on the horizon, fifteen miles away, an immense column of +smoke. There was little wind, and it hung, as if sculptured, against +the grey of the morning; nor did we lose sight of it till just before we +boomed over a wide, swift, muddy river, into the flat city of Winnipeg. + +Winnipeg is the West. It is important and obvious that in Canada there +are two or three (some say five) distinct Canadas. Even if you lump the +French and English together as one community in the East, there remains +the gulf of the Great Lakes. The difference between East and West +is possibly no greater than that between North and South England, or +Bavaria and Prussia; but in this country, yet unconscious of itself, +there is so much less to hold them together. The character of the land +and the people differs; their interests, as it appears to them, are not +the same. Winnipeg is a new city. In the archives at Ottawa is a picture +of Winnipeg in 1870--Main street, with a few shacks, and the prairie +either end. Now her population is a hundred thousand, and she has the +biggest this, that, and the other west of Toronto. A new city; a little +more American than the other Canadian cities, but not unpleasantly so. +The streets are wider, and full of a bustle which keeps clear of hustle. +The people have something of the free swing of Americans, without +the bumptiousness; a tempered democracy, a mitigated independence of +bearing. The manners of Winnipeg, of the West, impress the stranger as +better than those of the East, more friendly, more hearty, more +certain to achieve graciousness, if not grace. There is, even, in +the architecture of Winnipeg, a sort of _gauche_ pride visible. It is +hideous, of course, even more hideous than Toronto or Montreal; but +cheerily and windily so. There is no scheme in the city, and no beauty, +but it is at least preferable to Birmingham, less dingy, less directly +depressing. It has no real slums, even though there is poverty and +destitution. + +But there seems to be a trifle more public spirit in the West than the +East. Perhaps it is that in the greater eagerness and confidence of this +newer country men have a superfluity of energy and interest, even after +attending to their own affairs, to give to the community. Perhaps it +is that the West is so young that one has a suspicion money-making has +still some element of a child's game in it--its only excuse. At any +rate, whether because the state of affairs is yet unsettled, or because +of the invisible subtle spirit of optimism that blows through the +heavily clustering telephone-wires and past the neat little modern +villas and down the solidly pretentious streets, one can't help finding +a tiny hope that Winnipeg, the city of buildings and the city of human +beings, may yet come to something. It is a slender hope, not to be +compared to that of the true Winnipeg man, who, gazing on his city, is +fired with the proud and secret ambition that it will soon be twice as +big, and after that four times, and then ten times.... + + "Wider still and wider + Shall thy bounds be set," + +says that hymn which is the noblest expression of modern ambition. +_That_ hope is sure to be fulfilled. But the other timid prayer, that +something different, something more worth having, may come out of +Winnipeg, exists, and not quite unreasonably. That cannot be said of +Toronto. + +Winnipeg is of the West, new, vigorous in its way, of unknown +potentialities. Already the West has been a nuisance to the East, in the +fight of 1911 over Reciprocity with the United States. When she gets +a larger representation in Parliament, she will be still more of a +nuisance. A casual traveller cannot venture to investigate the beliefs +and opinions of the inhabitants of a country, but he can record them all +the better, perhaps, for his foreign-ness. It is generally believed in +the West that the East runs Canada, and runs it for its own advantage. +And the East means a very few rich men, who control the big railways, +the banks, and the Manufacturers' Association, subscribe to both +political parties, and are generally credited with complete control +over the Tariff and most other Canadian affairs. Whether or no the +Manufacturers' Association does arrange the Tariff and control the +commerce of Canada, it is generally believed to do so. The only thing is +that its friends say that it acts in the best interests of Canada, +its enemies that it acts in the best interests of the Manufacturers' +Association. Among its enemies are many in the West. The normal Western +life is a lonely and individual one; and a large part of the population +has crossed from the United States, or belongs to that great mass +of European immigration that Canada is letting so blindly in. So, +naturally, the Westerner does not feel the same affection for the Empire +or for England as the British Canadians of the East, whose forefathers +fought to stay within the Empire. Nor is his affection increased by the +suspicion that the Imperial cry has been used for party purposes. He has +no use for politics at Ottawa. The naval question is nothing to him. He +wants neither to subscribe money nor to build ships. Europe is very far +away; and he is too ignorant to realise his close connection with her. +He has strong views, however, on a Tariff which only affects him by +perpetually raising the cost of living and farming. The ideas of even a +Conservative in the West about reducing the Tariff would make an Eastern +'Liberal' die of heart-failure. And the Westerner also hates the Banks. +The banking system of Canada is peculiar, and throws the control of the +banks into the hands of a few people in the East, who were felt, by the +ever optimistic West, to have shut down credit too completely during the +recent money stringency. + +The most interesting expression of the new Western point of view, and +in many ways the most hopeful movement in Canada, is the Co-operative +movement among the grain-growers of the three prairie provinces. Only +started a few years ago, it has grown rapidly in numbers, wealth, power, +and extent of operations. So far it has confined itself politically +to influencing provincial legislatures. But it has gradually attached +itself to an advanced Radical programme of a Chartist description. And +it is becoming powerful. Whether the outcome will be a very desirable +rejuvenation of the Liberal Party, or the creation of a third--perhaps +Radical-Labour--party, it is hard to tell. At any rate, the change +will come. And, just to start with, there will very shortly come to the +Eastern Powers, who threw out Reciprocity with the States for the sake +of the Empire, a demand from the West that the preference to British +goods be increased rapidly till they be allowed to come in free, also +for the Empire's sake. Then the fun will begin. + + + + +X + +OUTSIDE + + +I had visited New York, Boston, Quebec, Montreal, and Toronto. In +Winnipeg I found a friend, who was tired of cities. So was I. In Canada +the remedy lies close at hand. We took ancient clothes--and I, Ben +Jonson and Jane Austen to keep me English--and departed northward for a +lodge, reported to exist in a region of lakes and hills and forests +and caribou and Indians and a few people. At first the train sauntered +through a smiling plain, intermittently cultivated, and dotted with +little new villages. Over this country are thrown little pools of that +flood of European immigration that pours through Winnipeg, to remain +separate or be absorbed, as destiny wills. The problem of immigration +here reveals that purposelessness that exists in the affairs of Canada +even more than those of other nations. The multitude from South or East +Europe flocks in. Some make money and return. The most remain, often in +inassimilable lumps. There is every sign that these lumps may poison the +health of Canada as dangerously as they have that of the United States. +For Canada there is the peril of too large an element of foreign blood +and traditions in a small nation already little more than half composed +of British blood and descent. Nationalities seem to teach one another +only their worst. If the Italians gave the Canadians of their good +manners, and the Doukhobors or Poles inoculated them with idealism and +the love of beauty, and received from them British romanticism and sense +of responsibility!.... But they only seem to increase the anarchy, these +'foreigners,' and to learn the American twang and method of spitting. +And there is the peril of politics. Upon these scattered exotic +communities, ignorant of the problems of their adopted land, ignorant +even of its language, swoop the agents of political parties, with their +one effectual argument--bad whisky. This baptism is the immigrants' only +organised welcome into their new liberties. Occasionally some Church +raises a thin protest. But the 'Anglo-Saxon' continues to take up his +burden; and the floods from Europe pour in. Canadians regard this influx +with that queer fatalism which men adopt under plutocracy. "How could +they stop it? It pays the steamship and railway companies. It may, or +may not, be good for Canada. Who knows? In any case, it will go on. Our +masters wish it...." + +It is noteworthy that Icelanders are found to be far the readiest to +mingle and become Canadian. After them, Norwegians and Swedes. With +other immigrant nationalities, hope lies with the younger generation; +but these acclimatise immediately. + +Our train was boarded by a crowd of Ruthenians or Galicians, brown-eyed +and beautiful people, not yet wholly civilised out of their own costume. +The girls chatted together in a swift, lovely language, and the children +danced about, tossing their queer brown mops of hair. They clattered out +at a little village that seemed to belong to them, and stood waving and +laughing us out of sight. I pondered on their feelings, and looked for +the name of the little Utopia these aliens had found in a new world. +It was called (for the railway companies name towns in this country) +'Milner.' + +We wandered into rougher country, where the rocks begin to show through +the surface, and scrub pine abounds. At the end of our side-line was +another, and at the end of that a village, the ultimate outpost of +civilisation. Here, on the way back, some weeks later, we had to spend +the night in a little hotel which 'accommodated transients.' It was a +rough affair of planks, inhabited by whatever wandering workman from +construction-camps or other labour in the region wanted shelter for the +night. You slept in a sort of dormitory, each bed partitioned off from +the rest by walls that were some feet short of the ceiling. Swedes, +Germans, Welsh, Italians, and Poles occupied the other partitions, each +blaspheming the works of the Lord in his own tongue. About midnight two +pairs of feet crashed into the cell opposite mine; and a high, sleepless +voice, with an accent I knew, continued an interminable argument +on theology. "I' beginning wash word," it proclaimed with all the +melancholy of drunkenness. The other disputant was German or Norwegian, +and uninterested, though very kindly. "Right-o!" he said. "Let's go +sleep!" + +"_What_ word?" pondered the Englishman. The Norwegian suggested several, +sleepily. "Logos," wailed the other, "_What_ Logos?" and wept. They +persisted, hour by hour, disconnected voices in the void and darkness, +lonely and chance companions in the back-blocks of Canada, the one who +couldn't, and the one who didn't want to, understand. A little before +dawn I woke again. That thin voice, in patient soliloquy, was discussing +Female Suffrage, going very far down into the roots of the matter. I +met its owner next morning. He was tall and dark and lachrymose, with +bloodshot eyes, and breath that stank of gin. He had played scrum-half +for ---- College in '98; and had prepared for ordination. "You'll +understand, old man," he said, "how out of place I am amongst this +scum--hoi polloi--we're not of the hoi polloi, are we?" It seemed nicer +to agree. "Oh, I know Greek!"--he was too eagerly the gentleman--"ho +cosmos tes adikias--the last thing I learnt for ordination--this world +of injustice--that's right, isn't it?" He laughed sickly. "I say as one +'Varsity man to another--we're not hoi polloi--could you lend me some +money?" + +We had to press on thirty miles up a 'light railway' to a power-station, +a settlement by a waterfall in the wild. An engine and an ancient +luggage-van conveyed us. The van held us, three crates, and some sacks, +four half-breeds in black slouch hats, who curled up on the floor like +dogs and slept, and an aged Italian. This last knew no word of English. +He had travelled all the way from Naples, Heaven knows how, to find +his two sons, supposed to be working in the power-station. So much was +written on a piece of paper. We gave him chocolate, and at intervals +I repeated to him my only Italian, the first line of the _Divina +Commedia_. He seemed cheered. The van jolted on through the fading +light. Once a man stepped out on to the track, stopped us, and clambered +silently up. We went on. It was the doctor, who had been visiting some +lonely hut in the woods. Later, another figure was seen staggering +between the rails. We slowed up, shouted, and finally stopped, butting +him gently on the back with our buffers, and causing him to fall. He was +very drunk. The driver and the doctor helped him into the van. There he +stood, and looking round, said very distinctly, "I do not wish to travel +on your ---- ---- train." So we put him off again, and proceeded. Such +is the West. + +We rattled interminably through the darkness. The unpeopled woods closed +about us, snatched with lean branches, and opened out again to a windy +space. Once or twice the ground fell away, and there was, for a moment, +the mysterious gleam and stir of water. Canadian stars are remote and +virginal. Everyone slumbered. Arrival at the great concrete building and +the little shacks of the power-station shook us to our feet. The Italian +vanished into the darkness. Whether he found his sons or fell into the +river no one knew, and no one seemed to care. + +An Indian, taciturn and Mongolian, led us on next day, by boat and on +foot, to the lonely log-house we aimed at. It stood on high rocks, above +a lake six miles by two. There was an Indian somewhere, by a river +three miles west, and a trapper to the east, and a family encamped on an +island in the lake. Else nobody. + +It is that feeling of fresh loneliness that impresses itself before +any detail of the wild. The soul--or the personality--seems to have +indefinite room to expand. There is no one else within reach, there +never has been anyone; no one else is _thinking_ of the lakes and hills +you see before you. They have no tradition, no names even; they are only +pools of water and lumps of earth, some day, perhaps, to be clothed with +loves and memories and the comings and goings of men, but now dumbly +waiting their Wordsworth or their Acropolis to give them individuality, +and a soul. In such country as this there is a rarefied clean sweetness. +The air is unbreathed, and the earth untrodden. All things share this +childlike loveliness, the grey whispering reeds, the pure blue of the +sky, the birches and thin fir-trees that make up these forests, even the +brisk touch of the clear water as you dive. + +That last sensation, indeed, and none of sight or hearing, has impressed +itself as the token of Canada, the land. Every swimmer knows it. It is +not languorous, like bathing in a warm Southern sea; nor grateful, +like a river in a hot climate; nor strange, as the ocean always is; nor +startling, like very cold water. But it touches the body continually +with freshness, and it seems to be charged with a subtle and unexhausted +energy. It is colourless, faintly stinging, hard and grey, like the +rocks around, full of vitality, and sweet. It has the tint and sensation +of a pale dawn before the sun is up. Such is the wild of Canada. It +awaits the sun, the end for which Heaven made it, the blessing of +civilisation. Some day it will be sold in large portions, and the timber +given to a friend of ----'s, and cut down and made into paper, on which +shall be printed the praise of prosperity; and the land itself shall +be divided into town-lots and sold, and sub-divided and sold again, and +boomed and resold, and boosted and distributed to fishy young men who +will vend it in distant parts of the country; and then such portions +as can never be built upon shall be given in exchange for great sums +of money to old ladies in the quieter parts of England, but the central +parts of towns shall remain in the hands of the wise. And on these shall +churches, hotels, and a great many ugly skyscrapers be built, and hovels +for the poor, and houses for the rich, none beautiful, and there shall +ugly objects be manufactured, rather hurriedly, and sold to the people +at more than they are worth, because similar and cheaper objects made in +other countries are kept out by a tariff.... + +But at present there are only the wrinkled, grey-blue lake, sliding ever +sideways, and the grey rocks, and the cliffs and hills, covered with +birch-trees, and the fresh wind among the birches, and quiet, and that +unseizable virginity. Dawn is always a lost pearly glow in the ashen +skies, and sunset a multitude of softly-tinted mists sliding before +a remotely golden West. They follow one another with an infinite +loneliness. And there is a far and solitary beach of dark, golden sand, +close by a deserted Indian camp, where, if you drift quietly round +the corner in a canoe, you may see a bear stumbling along, or a great +caribou, or a little red deer coming down to the water to drink, +treading the wild edge of lake and forest with a light, secret, and +melancholy grace. + + + + +XI + +THE PRAIRIES + + +I passed the last few hours of the westward journey from Winnipeg to +Regina in daylight, the daylight of a wet and cheerless Sunday. The car +was half-empty, in possession of a family of small children and some +theatrical ladies and gentlemen from the United States, travelling on +'one night stands,' who were collectively called 'The World-Renowned +Barbary Pirates.' We jogged limply from little village to little +village, each composed of little brown log-shacks, with a few +buildings of tin and corrugated iron, and even of brick, and several +grain-elevators. Each village--I beg your pardon, 'town'--seems to be +exactly like the next. They differ a little in size, from populations +of 100 to nearly 2000, and in age, for some have buildings dating almost +back to the nineteenth century, and a few are still mostly tents. They +seemed all to be emptied of their folk this Sabbath morn; though whether +the inhabitants were at work, or in church, or had shot themselves from +depression induced by the weather, it was impossible to tell. These +little towns do not look to the passer-by comfortable as homes. Partly, +there is the difficulty of distinguishing your village from the others. +It would be as bad as being married to a Jap. And then towns should be +on hills or in valleys, however small. A town dumped down, apparently +by chance, on a flat expanse, wears the same air of discomfort as a man +trying to make his bed on a level, unyielding surface such as a lawn +or pavement. He feels hopelessly incidental to the superficies of the +earth. He is aware that the human race has thigh-bones.... + +Yet this country is not quite flat, as I had been led to expect. It does +not give you that feeling of a plain you have in parts of Lombardy and +Holland and Belgium. This may have been due to the grey mist and drizzle +which curtained off the horizon. But the land was always very slightly +rolling, and sometimes almost as uneven as a Surrey common. At first it +seemed to be given to mixed farming a good deal; afterwards to wheat, +oats, and barley. But a great part is uncultivated prairie-land, grass, +with sparse bushes and patches of brushwood and a few rare trees, and +continual clumps of large golden daisies. Occasional rough black roads +wind through the brush and into the towns, and die into grass tracks +along the wire fences. The day I went through, the interminable, +oblique, thin rain took the gold out of the wheat and the brown from the +distant fields and bushes, and drabbed all the colours in the grass. +The children in the car cried to each other with the shrill, sick +persistency of tired childhood, "How many inches to Regina?" "A +Billion." "A Trillion." "A Shillion." The Barbary Pirates laughed +incessantly. It seemed to me that the prairie would be a lonely place +to live in, especially if it rained. But the people who have lived there +for years tell me they get very homesick if they go away for a time. +Valleys and hills seem to them petty, fretful, unlovable. The magic of +the plains has them in thrall. + +Certainly there is a little more democracy in the west of Canada than +the east; the communities seem a little less incapable of looking after +themselves. Out in the west they are erecting not despicable public +buildings, founding universities, running a few public services. +That 'politics' has a voice in these undertakings does not make +them valueless. There are perceptible in the prairies, among all the +corruption, irresponsibility, and disastrous individualism, some faint +signs of the sense of the community. Take a very good test, the public +libraries. As you traverse Canada from east to west they steadily +improve. You begin in the city of Montreal, which is unable to support +one, and pass through the dingy rooms and inadequate intellectual +provision of Toronto and Winnipeg. After that the libraries and +reading-rooms, small for the smaller cities, are cleaner and better +kept, show signs of care and intelligence; until at last, in Calgary, +you find a very neat and carefully kept building, stocked with an +immense variety of periodicals, and an admirably chosen store of books, +ranging from the classics to the most utterly modern literature. Few +large English towns could show anything as good. Cross the Rockies to +Vancouver, and you're back among dirty walls, grubby furniture, and +inadequate literature again. There's nothing in Canada to compare with +the magnificent libraries little New Zealand can show. But Calgary is +hopeful. + +These cities grow in population with unimaginable velocity. From thirty +to thirty thousand in fifteen years is the usual rate. Pavements are +laid down, stores and bigger stores and still bigger stores spring up. +Trams buzz along the streets towards the unregarded horizon that lies +across the end of most roads in these flat, geometrically planned, +prairie-towns. Probably a Chinese quarter appears, and the beginnings +of slums. Expensive and pleasant small dwelling-houses fringe the +outskirts; and rents being so high, great edifices of residential flats +rival the great stores. In other streets, or even sandwiched between the +finer buildings, are dingy and decaying saloons, and innumerable little +booths and hovels where adventurers deal dishonestly in Real Estate, +and Employment Bureaux. And there are the vast erections of the great +corporations, Hudson's Bay Company, and the banks and the railways, and, +sometimes almost equally impressive, the public buildings. There are the +beginnings of very costly Universities; and Regina has built a superb +great House of Parliament, with a wide sheet of water in front of it, a +noble building. + +The inhabitants of these cities are proud of them, and envious of +each other with a bitter rivalry. They do not love their cities as a +Manchester man loves Manchester or a Muenchener Munich, for they have +probably lately arrived in them, and will surely pass on soon. But while +they are there they love them, and with no silent love. They boost. To +boost is to commend outrageously. And each cries up his own city, +both from pride, it would appear, and for profit. For the fortunes +of Newville are very really the fortunes of its inhabitants. From the +successful speculator, owner of whole blocks, to the waiter bringing you +a Martini, who has paid up a fraction of the cost of a quarter-share +in a town-lot--all are the richer, as well as the prouder, if Newville +grows. It is imperative to praise Edmonton in Edmonton. But it is sudden +death to praise it in Calgary. The partisans of each city proclaim its +superiority to all the others in swiftness of growth, future population, +size of buildings, price of land--by all recognised standards of +excellence. I travelled from Edmonton to Calgary in the company of +a citizen of Edmonton and a citizen of Calgary. Hour after hour they +disputed. Land in Calgary had risen from five dollars to three hundred; +but in Edmonton from three to five hundred. Edmonton had grown from +thirty persons to forty thousand in twenty years; but Calgary from +twenty to thirty thousand in twelve.... "Where"--as a respite--"did I +come from?" I had to tell them, not without shame, that my own town +of Grantchester, having numbered three hundred at the time of Julius +Caesar's landing, had risen rapidly to nearly four by Doomsday Book, but +was now declined to three-fifty. They seemed perplexed and angry. + +Sentimental people in the East will talk of the romance of the West, and +of these simple, brave pioneers who have wrung a living from the soil, +and are properly proud of the rude little towns that mark their conquest +over nature. That may apply to the frontiers of civilisation up North, +but the prairie-towns have progressed beyond all that. A few of the old +pioneers of the West survive to watch with startled eyes the wonderful +fruits of the seed they sowed. Such are among the finest people +in Canada, very different from the younger generation, with wider +interests, good talkers, the best of company. From them, and from +records, one can learn of the early settlers and the beginnings of the +North-West Mounted Police. The Police seem to have been superb. For no +great reward, but the love of the thing, they imposed order and fairness +upon half a continent. The Indians trusted them utterly; they were +without fear. A store stands now in Calgary where forty years ago a +policeman was shot to death by a murderer, followed over a thousand +miles. He knew that the criminal would shoot; but it was the rule of the +Mounted Police not to fire first. Wounded, he killed his man, then died. +And there was the case of the desperado who crossed the border, and was +eventually captured and held by an immense force of American police and +military. They awaited a regiment of the Police to conduct the villain +back to trial. Two appeared, and being asked, "Where is the escort?" +replied, "We are the escort," and started back their five hundred miles +ride with the murderer in tow. And there were the two who pursued a +horse-thief from Dawson down to Minneapolis, caught him, and took him +back to Dawson to be hanged. And there was the settler, who.... + +The tragedy of the West is that these men have passed, and that what +they lived and died to secure for their race is now the foundation for +a gigantic national gambling of a most unprofitable and disastrous kind. +Hordes of people--who mostly seem to come from the great neighbouring +Commonwealth, and are inspired with the national hunger for getting rich +quickly without deserving it--prey on the community by their dealings in +what is humorously called 'Real Estate.' For them our fathers died. What +a sowing, and what a harvest! And where good men worked or perished is +now a row of little shops, all devoted to the sale of town-lots in some +distant spot that must infallibly become a great city in the next two +years, and in the doorway of each lounges a thin-chested, much-spitting +youth, with a flabby face, shifty eyes, and an inhuman mouth, who +invites you continually, with the most raucous of American accents, to +"step inside and ex-amine our Praposition." + + + + +XII + +THE INDIANS + + +When I was in the East, I got to know a man who had spent many years +of his life living among the Indians. He showed me his photographs. He +explained one, of an old woman. He said, "They told me there was an old +woman in the camp called Laughing Earth. When I heard the name, I just +said, 'Take me to her!' She wouldn't be photographed. She kept turning +her back to me. I just picked up a clod and plugged it at her, and said, +'Turn round, Laughing Earth!' She turned half round, and grinned. She +_was_ a game old bird! I joshed all the boys here Laughing Earth was my +girl--till they saw her photo!" + +There stands Laughing Earth, in brightly-coloured petticoat and blouse, +her grey hair blowing about her. Her back is towards you, but her face +is turned, and scarcely hidden by a hand that is raised with all the +coyness of seventy years. Laughter shines from the infinitely lined, +round, brown cheeks, and from the mouth, and from the dancing eyes, and +floods and spills over from each of the innumerable wrinkles. Laughing +Earth--there is endless vitality in that laughter. The hand and face +and the old body laugh. No skinny, intellectual mirth, affecting but the +lips! It was the merriment of an apple bobbing on the bough, or a brown +stream running over rocks, or any other gay creature of earth. And with +all was a great dignity, invulnerable to clods, and a kindly and noble +beauty. By the light of that laughter much becomes clear--the right +place of man upon earth, the entire suitability in life of very +brightly-coloured petticoats, and the fact that old age is only a +different kind of a merriment from youth, and a wiser. + +And by that light the fragments of this pathetic race become more +comprehensible, and, perhaps, less pathetic. The wanderer in Canada sees +them from time to time, the more the further west he goes, irrelevant +and inscrutable figures. In the east, French and Scotch half-breeds +frequent the borders of civilisation. In any western town you may chance +on a brave and his wife and a baby, resplendent in gay blankets and +trappings, sliding gravely through the hideousness of the new order that +has supplanted them. And there will be a few half-breeds loitering at +the corners of the streets. These people of mixed race generally seem +unfortunate in the first generation. A few of the older ones, the +'old-timers', have 'made good,' and hold positions in the society for +which they pioneered. But most appear to inherit the weaknesses of both +sides. Drink does its work. And the nobler ones, like the tragic figure +of that poetess who died recently, Pauline Johnson, seem fated to be +at odds with the world. The happiest, whether Indian or half-breed, are +those who live beyond the ever-advancing edges of cultivation and order, +and force a livelihood from nature by hunting and fishing. Go anywhere +into the wild, and you will find in little clearings, by lake or river, +a dilapidated hut with a family of these solitaries, friendly with the +pioneers or trappers around, ready to act as guide on hunt or trail. +The Government, extraordinarily painstaking and well-intentioned, has +established Indian schools, and trains some of them to take their places +in the civilisation we have built. Not the best Indians these, say +lovers of the race. I have met them, as clerks or stenographers, only +distinguishable from their neighbours by a darker skin and a sweeter +voice and manner. And in a generation or two, I suppose, the strain +mingles and is lost. So we finish with kindness what our fathers began +with war. + +The Government, and others, have scientifically studied the history and +characteristics of the Indians, and written them down in books, lest it +be forgotten that human beings could be so extraordinary. They were a +wandering race, it appears, of many tribes and, even, languages. Not apt +to arts or crafts, they had, and have, an unrefined delight in bright +colours. They enjoyed a 'Nature-Worship,' believed rather dimly in a +presiding Power, and very definitely in certain ethical and moral rules. +One of their incomprehensible customs was that at certain intervals +the tribe divided itself into two factitious divisions, each headed by +various chiefs, and gambled furiously for many days, one party against +the other. They were pugnacious, and in their uncivilised way fought +frequent wars. They were remarkably loyal to each other, and treacherous +to the foe; brave, and very stoical. "Monogamy was very prevalent." It +is remarked that husbands and wives were very fond of each other, and +the great body of scientific opinion favours the theory that mothers +were much attached to their children. Most tribes were very healthy, and +some fine-looking. Such were the remarkable people who hunted, fought, +feasted, and lived here until the light came, and all was changed. Other +qualities they had even more remarkable to a European, such as +utter honesty, and complete devotion to the truth among themselves. +Civilisation, disease, alcohol, and vice have reduced them to a few +scattered communities and some stragglers, and a legend, the admiration +of boyhood. Boys they were, pugnacious, hunters, loyal, and cruel, older +than the merrier children of the South Seas, younger and simpler than +the weedy, furtive, acquisitive youth who may figure our age and type. +"We must be a Morally Higher race than the Indians," said an earnest +American businessman to me in Saskatoon, "because we have Survived them. +The Great Darwin has proved it." I visited, later, a community of our +Moral Inferiors, an Indian 'reservation' under the shade of the Rockies. +The Government has put aside various tracts of land where the Indians +may conduct their lives in something of their old way, and stationed +in each an agent to protect their interests. For every white man, as +an agent told me, "thinks an Indian legitimate prey for all forms of +cheating and robbery." + +The reservations are the better in proportion as they are further +from the towns and cities. The one I saw was peopled by a few hundred +Stonies, one of the finest and most untouched of the tribes. Of these +Laughing Earth had made one, but alas! a few years before she had become + + "a portion of the mirthfulness + That once she made more mirthful." + +The Indians occupy themselves with a little farming and hunting, and +with expeditions, and live in two or three small scattered villages +of huts and tents. But the centre of the community is the little +white-washed house where the agent has his office. Here we sat, he +and I, and talked, behind the counter. The agent is father, mother, +clergyman, tutor, physician, solicitor, and banker to the Indians. They +wandered in and out of the place with their various requests. The most +part of them could not talk English, but there was generally some young +Indian to interpret. An old chief entered. His grey hair curled down +to his broad shoulders. He had a noble forehead, brown, steady eyes, a +thin, humorous mouth. His cow had been run over by the C.P.R. What was +to be done? and how much would he get? The affair was discussed through +an interpreter, a Canadianised young Indian in trousers, who spat. Some +of the men, especially the older ones, have wonderful dignity and beauty +of face and body. Their physique is superb; their features shaped and +lined by weather and experience into a Roman nobility that demands +respect. Several such passed through. Then came an old woman, wizened +and loquacious, bent double by the sack of her weekly provision of meat +and flour. She required oil, was given it, secreted it in some cranny of +the many-coloured bundle that she was, and staggered creakily off again. + +The office emptied for a while. Then drifted in a younger man, tall, +with that brown, dog-like expression of simplicity many Indians wear. He +was covered by a large grey-coloured blanket, over his other clothes. He +puffed at a pipe and stared out of the window. The agent and I continued +talking. You must never hurry an Indian. Presently he gave a little +grunt. The agent said, "Well, John?" John went on smoking. Five minutes +later, in the middle of our conversation, John said suddenly, "Salt." He +was staring inexpressively at the ceiling. "Why, John," said the agent, +"I gave you enough salts on Thursday to last you a week." John directed +his gaze on us, and smoked dumbly. "Still the stomach?" inquired the +agent, genially. John's expression became gradually grimmer, and +he moved one hand slowly across till it rested on his stomach. An +impassive, significant hand. After a courteous pause the agent rose, +poured some Epsom salts out of a large jar, wrapped them in paper, and +handed them over. John secreted them dispassionately in some pouch +among the skins and blankets that wrapped him in. We went back to +our conversation. Five minutes after he grunted, suddenly. Again five +minutes, and he departed. His wife--a plump, patient young woman--and +his solemn-eyed, fat, ridiculous son of four, were sitting stolidly on +the grass outside. It obviously made no difference if he took one hour +or seven over his business. They mounted their tiny ponies and trotted +briskly off.... I suppose one is apt to be sentimental about these good +people. They're really so picturesque; they trail clouds of Fenimore +Cooper; and they seem, for all their unfitness, reposefully more in +touch with permanent things than the America that has succeeded them. +And it is interesting to watch our pathetic efforts to prevent or disarm +the effects of ourselves. What will happen? Shall we preserve these few +bands of them, untouched, to succeed us, ultimately, when the grasp of +our 'civilisation' weakens, and our transient anarchy in these wilder +lands recedes once more before the older anarchy of Nature? Or will they +be entirely swallowed by that ugliness of shops and trousers with which +we enchain the earth, and become a memory and less than a memory? +They are that already. The Indians have passed. They left no arts, no +tradition, no buildings or roads or laws; only a story or two, and a few +names, strange and beautiful. The ghosts of the old chiefs must surely +chuckle when they note that the name by which Canada has called her +capital and the centre of her political life, Ottawa, is an Indian name +which signifies 'buying and selling.' And the wanderer in this land will +always be remarking an unexplained fragrance about the place-names, as +from some flower which has withered, and which he does not know. + + + + +XIII + +THE ROCKIES + + +At Calgary, if you can spare a minute from more important matters, slip +beyond the hurrying white city, climb the golf links, and gaze west. A +low bank of dark clouds disturbs you by the fixity of its outline. It +is the Rockies, seventy miles away. On a good day, it is said, they +are visible twice as far, so clear and serene is this air. Five hundred +miles west is the coast of British Columbia, a region with a different +climate, different country, and different problems. It is cut off from +the prairies by vast tracts of wild country and uninhabitable ranges. +For nearly two hundred miles the train pants through the homeless +grandeur of the Rockies and the Selkirks. Four or five hotels, a few +huts or tents, and a rare mining-camp--that is all the habitation in +many thousands of square miles. Little even of that is visible from the +train. That is one of the chief differences between the effect of +the Rockies and that of the Alps. There, you are always in sight of +a civilisation which has nestled for ages at the feet of those high +places. They stand, enrobed with worship, and grander by contrast with +the lives of men. These un-memoried heights are inhuman--or rather, +irrelevant to humanity. No recorded Hannibal has struggled across them; +their shadow lies on no remembered literature. They acknowledge claims +neither of the soul nor of the body of man. He is a stranger, neither +Nature's enemy nor her child. She is there alone, scarcely a unity in +the heaped confusion of these crags, almost without grandeur among the +chaos of earth. + +Yet this horrid and solitary wildness is but one aspect. There is beauty +here, at length, for the first time in Canada, the real beauty that is +always too sudden for mortal eyes, and brings pain with its comfort. The +Rockies have a remoter, yet a kindlier, beauty than the Alps. Their +rock is of a browner colour, and such rugged peaks and crowns as do not +attain snow continually suggest gigantic castellations, or the ramparts +of Titans. Eastward, the foothills are few and low, and the mountains +stand superbly. The heart lifts to see them. They guard the sunset. +Into this rocky wilderness you plunge, and toil through it hour by hour, +viewing it from the rear of the Observation-Car. The Observation-Car +is a great invention of the new world. At the end of the train is a +compartment with large windows, and a little platform behind it, roofed +over, but exposed otherwise to the air, On this platform are sixteen +little perches, for which you fight with Americans. Victorious, you +crouch on one, and watch the ever-receding panorama behind the train. It +is an admirable way of viewing scenery. But a day of being perpetually +drawn backwards at a great pace through some of the grandest mountains +in the world has a queer effect. Like life, it leaves you with a dizzy +irritation. For, as in life, you never see the glories till they are +past, and then they vanish with incredible rapidity. And if you crane to +see the dwindling further peaks, you miss the new splendours. + +The day I went through most of the Rockies was, by some standards, a +bad one for the view. Rain scudded by in forlorn, grey showers, and the +upper parts of the mountains were wrapped in cloud, which was but rarely +blown aside to reveal the heights. Sublimity, therefore, was left to +the imagination; but desolation was most vividly present. In no weather +could the impression of loneliness be stronger. The pines drooped and +sobbed. Cascades, born somewhere in the dun firmament above, dropped +down the mountain sides in ever-growing white threads. The rivers roared +and plunged with aimless passion down the ravines. Stray little clouds, +left behind when the wrack lifted a little, ran bleating up and down the +forlorn hill-sides. More often, the clouds trailed along the valleys, +a long procession of shrouded, melancholy figures, seeming to pause, as +with an indeterminate, tragic, vain gesture, before passing out of sight +up some ravine. + +Yet desolation is not the final impression that will remain of the +Rockies and the Selkirks. I was advised by various people to 'stop off' +at Banff and at Lake Louise, in the Rockies. I did so. They are supposed +to be equally the beauty-spots of the mountains. How perplexing it is +that advisers are always so kindly and willing to help, and always so +undiscriminating. It is equally disastrous to be a sceptic and to be +credulous. Banff is an ordinary little tourist-resort in mountainous +country, with hills and a stream and snow-peaks beyond. Beautiful +enough, and invigorating. But Lake Louise--Lake Louise is of another +world. Imagine a little round lake 6000 feet up, a mile across, closed +in by great cliffs of brown rock, round the shoulders of which are +thrown mantles of close dark pine. At one end the lake is fed by a +vast glacier, and its milky tumbling stream; and the glacier climbs to +snowfields of one of the highest and loveliest peaks in the Rockies, +which keeps perpetual guard over the scene. To this place you go up +three or four miles from the railway. There is the hotel at one end of +the lake, facing the glacier; else no sign of humanity. From the windows +you may watch the water and the peaks all day, and never see the same +view twice. In the lake, ever-changing, is Beauty herself, as nearly +visible to mortal eyes as she may ever be. The water, beyond the +flowers, is green, always a different green. Sometimes it is tranquil, +glassy, shot with blue, of a peacock tint. Then a little wind awakes in +the distance, and ruffles the surface, yard by yard, covering it with +a myriad tiny wrinkles, till half the lake is milky emerald, while +the rest still sleeps. And, at length, the whole is astir, and the sun +catches it, and Lake Louise is a web of laughter, the opal distillation +of all the buds of all the spring. On either side go up the dark +processional pines, mounting to the sacred peaks, devout, kneeling, +motionless, in an ecstasy of homely adoration, like the donors and their +families in a Flemish picture. Among these you may wander for hours +by little rambling paths, over white and red and golden flowers, and, +continually, you spy little lakes, hidden away, each a shy, soft jewel +of a new strange tint of green or blue, mutable and lovely.... And +beyond all is the glacier and the vast fields and peaks of eternal snow. + +If you watch the great white cliff, from the foot of which the glacier +flows--seven miles away, but it seems two--you will sometimes see a +little puff of silvery smoke go up, thin, and vanish. A few seconds +later comes the roar of terrific, distant thunder. The mountains tower +and smile unregarding in the sun. It was an avalanche. And if you climb +any of the ridges or peaks around, there are discovered other valleys +and heights and ranges, wild and desert, stretching endlessly away. As +day draws to an end the shadows on the snow turn bluer, the crying +of innumerable waters hushes, and the immense, bare ramparts +of westward-facing rock that guard the great valley win a rich, +golden-brown radiance. Long after the sun has set they seem to give +forth the splendour of the day, and the tranquillity of their centuries, +in undiminished fulness. They have that other-worldly serenity which a +perfect old age possesses. And as with a perfect old age, so here, the +colour and the light ebb so gradually out of things that you could swear +nothing of the radiance and glory gone up to the very moment before the +dark. + +It was on such a height, and at some such hour as this, that I sat +and considered the nature of the country in this continent. There +was perceptible, even here, though less urgent than elsewhere, the +strangeness I had noticed in woods by the St Lawrence, and on the banks +of the Delaware (where are red-haired girls who sing at dawn), and in +British Columbia, and afterwards among the brown hills and colossal +trees of California, but especially by that lonely golden beach in +Manitoba, where the high-stepping little brown deer run down to drink, +and the wild geese through the evening go flying and crying. It is an +empty land. To love the country here--mountains are worshipped, not +loved--is like embracing a wraith. A European can find nothing to +satisfy the hunger of his heart. The air is too thin to breathe. +He requires haunted woods, and the friendly presence of ghosts. The +immaterial soil of England is heavy and fertile with the decaying stuff +of past seasons and generations. Here is the floor of a new wood, yet +uncumbered by one year's autumn fall. We Europeans find the Orient stale +and too luxuriantly fetid by reason of the multitude of bygone lives and +thoughts, oppressive with the crowded presence of the dead, both men and +gods. So, I imagine, a Canadian would feel our woods and fields heavy +with the past and the invisible, and suffer claustrophobia in an English +countryside beneath the dreadful pressure of immortals. For his own +forests and wild places are windswept and empty. That is their charm, +and their terror. You may lie awake all night and never feel the passing +of evil presences, nor hear printless feet; neither do you lapse into +slumber with the comfortable consciousness of those friendly watchers +who sit invisibly by a lonely sleeper under an English sky. Even an +Irishman would not see a row of little men with green caps lepping +along beneath the fire-weed and the golden daisies; nor have the subtler +fairies of England found these wilds. It has never paid a steamship or +railway company to arrange for their emigration. + +In the bush of certain islands of the South Seas you may hear a crashing +on windless noons, and, looking up, see a corpse swinging along head +downwards at a great speed from tree to tree, holding by its toes, +grimacing, dripping with decay. Americans, so active in this life, +rest quiet afterwards. And though every stone of Wall Street have its +separate Lar, their kind have not gone out beyond city-lots. The maple +and the birch conceal no dryads, and Pan has never been heard amongst +these reedbeds. Look as long as you like upon a cataract of the New +World, you shall not see a white arm in the foam. A godless place. And +the dead do not return. That is why there is nothing lurking in the +heart of the shadows, and no human mystery in the colours, and neither +the same joy nor the kind of peace in dawn and sunset that older lands +know. It is, indeed, a new world. How far away seem those grassy, +moonlit places in England that have been Roman camps or roads, where +there is always serenity, and the spirit of a purpose at rest, and +the sunlight flashes upon more than flint! Here one is perpetually a +first-comer. The land is virginal, the wind cleaner than elsewhere, and +every lake new-born, and each day is the first day. The flowers are less +conscious than English flowers, the breezes have nothing to remember, +and everything to promise. There walk, as yet, no ghosts of lovers in +Canadian lanes. This is the essence of the grey freshness and brisk +melancholy of this land. And for all the charm of those qualities, it +is also the secret of a European's discontent. For it is possible, at a +pinch, to do without gods. But one misses the dead. + + + + +XIV + +SOME NIGGERS + + +"_Look at those niggers! Whose are they?" (An American Suffragist lady +on board S.S. 'Ventura,' entering Pago-Pago Harbour, Samoa, October +1913. Apropos of the Samoans.)_ + +I suppose that if news came that the National Gallery was burnt down, +one might feel, while hearing of the general damage, the rooms gutted or +untouched, the Rembrandts and Titians saved, harmed, or lost, a sudden +disproportionately keen little stab of wonder: "The Pisanello _St +Hubert_," or "The Patinir _Flight into Egypt_--What's happened to +_that_?" So now there must be a handful of wanderers here and there +who, among all the major conflagration and disasters of nations and +continents, have felt the tug of the question, "What of Samoa?" + +The South Sea Islands have an invincible glamour. Any bar in 'Frisco +or Sydney will give you tales of seamen who slipped ashore in Samoa +or Tahiti or the Marquesas for a month's holiday, five, ten, or twenty +years ago. Their wives and families await them yet. They are compound, +these islands, of all legendary heavens. They are Calypso's and +Prospero's isle, and the Hesperides, and Paradise, and every timeless +and untroubled spot. Such tales have been made of them by men who have +been there, and gone away, and have been haunted by the smell of the +bush and the lagoons, and faint thunder on the distant reef, and the +colours of sky and sea and coral, and the beauty and grace of the +islanders. And the queer thing is that it's all, almost tiresomely, +true. In the South Seas the Creator seems to have laid Himself out to +show what He _can_ do. Imagine an island with the most perfect climate +in the world, tropical, yet almost always cooled by a breeze from +the sea. No malaria or other fevers. No dangerous beasts, snakes, or +insects. Fish for the catching, and fruits for the plucking. And +an earth and sky and sea of immortal loveliness. What more could +civilisation give? Umbrellas? Rope? Gladstone bags?.... Any one of the +vast leaves of the banana is more waterproof than the most expensive +woven stuff. And from the first tree you can tear off a long strip of +fibre that holds better than any rope. And thirty seconds' work on +a great palm-leaf produces a basket-bag which will carry incredible +weights all day, and can be thrown away in the evening. A world of +conveniences. And the things which civilisation has left behind or +missed by the way are there, too, among the Polynesians: beauty and +courtesy and mirth. I think there is no gift of mind or body that the +wise value which these people lack. A man I met in some other islands, +who had travelled much all over the world, said to me, "I have found +no man, in or out of Europe, with the good manners and dignity of the +Samoan, with the possible exception of the Irish peasant." A people +among whom an Italian would be uncouth, and a high-caste Hindu vulgar, +and Karsavina would seem clumsy, and Helen of Troy a frump. + +The white population of Heaven, as one would expect, is very small; +but, as one wouldn't expect, it is composed of Americans, English, and +Germans. About half Germans, for it has been a German colony for some +fourteen years. But it is one of the few white 'possessions,' I suppose, +where a decent white needn't feel ashamed of himself. For, though it's +proper to deny that Germans can colonise, they have certainly ruled +Samoa very well. In some part, no doubt, the luck has been with +them--with the world--in this success. Samoa was one of their later +and wiser attempts in colonising. The first governor was Herr Solf, the +present Secretary for the Colonies, who is reputed to have started the +administration of Samoa after a careful examination of our method of +ruling Fiji, and with a due, but not complete, regard for the advice of +the chief English and American settlers in Samoa. Certainly he started +it very ably and wisely. By luck and good management those various +forces which might destroy the beauty of Samoa are almost ineffectual. +The fact that the missionaries are nearly all English puts a slight +sufficient chasm between the spiritual and civil powers, and avoids that +worst peril of these places--hierocracy. The trade of the islands is +largely a monopoly of the 'German firm,' a big affair which pays a +few people in Hamburg fabulous percentages. So smaller traders aren't +encouraged to flourish unduly; and the German firm itself is too well +fed to bother about extending. The Samoans, therefore, aren't exploited, +spiritually or commercially, as much as they might be. By such slight +chances beauty keeps a foothold in the world. The missionary's peace of +mind may require that the Samoan should wear trousers, or the trader's +pocket that he should drink gin and live under corrugated iron. But the +Government has discovered that these things are not good for the health +of the Polynesian, so the Samoan wears his _lava-lava_ and drinks his +_kava_, and lives in his cool and lovely thatched hut, and is happy. +And--final test of administration--the population is no longer +decreasing. + +But I think there's more than luck or German wisdom at the bottom of the +happy condition of Samoa. Something in the very magic of the place seems +to subdue or soften the evil in men. Heaven forbid I should deny that +mean and treacherous and cruel acts of white men and brown are on +record. But as a rule the greedy or the boorish, once they settle there, +appear to mellow and grow quiet. Between this sea and sky even a trader +becomes almost a gentleman, even a Prussian almost lovable, and the very +missionaries are betrayed by beauty, and contentment takes them unaware. + +Samoa has been well governed. The people have been forbidden a few +perils of civilisation, and for the rest are left pretty well to +themselves. Go up from Apia across the mountains, or round the coast, +or take a boat over to the other big island, Savaii, and you find them +living their old life, fishing and bathing and singing, and never a sign +of a white man. They are guaranteed possession of their land. They'll +sometimes complain faintly of 'taxation'--a small head-tax the +Government exacts, which compels the individual to some four or five +days' work a year. The English inhabitants themselves have had no +grumble against the Germans except that they incline to be 'too kind to +the natives'--an admirable testimonial. And traders in the Pacific +say they always get far better treatment from the customs and harbour +authorities at Apia than at the British Suva, in Fiji. + +And yet the Samoans do not like the Germans. When I was there, nearly +a year ago, I was often asked, "When will Peritania (Britain) fight +Germany, and send her away from Samoa?" They have no complaint against +the Germans. They have merely a sentimental and highly flattering +preference for the English. On a recent visit of an English gunboat to +Apia, the officers were entertained at a Samoan dinner party, with music +and dances, by an eminent and very charming young princess. The princess +is a famous beauty, with the keen intelligence Samoans have if they +care, a wonderful dancer, possessed of a glorious singing voice and +a perfect knowledge of English. The party was a great success. The +princess led her guests afterwards to the flag-staff. Before anyone +could stop her, she leapt on to the pole and raced up the sixty feet +of it. That also is among the accomplishments of a Samoan princess. She +seized the German flag, tore it to pieces, brought it down, and danced +on it. So the tale is; and it is probably true. In the villages where I +stayed it was amusing how swiftly and completely the children forgot the +few words of German the Government sometimes had them taught; while +one or two common phrases, '_Morgen_,' '_gut_,' etc., were retained +as extremely good jokes by the boys and girls, occasions of +inextinguishable laughter, through the absurdity of their sound and the +very ridiculous German-ness of them.... + +I wish I were there again. It is a country, and a life, that bind the +heart. There is a poem: + + "I know an island, + Lovely and lost, and half the world away; + And there, 'twixt lowland and highland, + Lies a pool, rich with murmur and scent and glimmer, + And there my friends go, all the radiant day, + Each golden-limbed and flower-crowned laughing swimmer," + +--and so on. It tells how ugly and joyless by comparison the fellow's +own country sometimes seems, filled with money-making and fogs and such +grey things: + + "Evil, and gloom, and cold o' nights in my land; + But,--I know an island + Where Beauty and Courtesy, as flowers, blow." + + So it goes, with a jolly return on the rhyme. But the whole poem is a +bad one. Still, the man felt it, the magic. It is a magic of a different +way of life. In the South Seas, if you live the South Sea life, the +intellect soon lapses into quiescence. The body becomes more active, the +senses and perceptions more lordly and acute. It is a life of swimming +and climbing and resting after exertion. The skin seems to grow more +sensitive to light and air, and the feel of water and the earth and +leaves. Hour after hour one may float in the warm lagoons, conscious, in +the whole body, of every shred and current of the multitudinous +water, or diving under in a vain attempt to catch the radiant +butterfly-coloured fish that flit in and out of the thousand windows +of their gorgeous coral palaces. Or go up, one of a singing +flower-garlanded crowd, to a shaded pool of a river in the bush, cool +from the mountains. The blossom-hung darkness is streaked with the +bodies that fling themselves, head or feet first, from the cliffs around +the water, and the haunted forest-silence is broken by laughter. It is +part of the charm of these people that, while they are not so foolish +as to 'think,' their intelligence is incredibly lively and subtle, their +sense of humour and their intuitions of other people's feelings are +very keen and living. They have built up, in the long centuries of +their civilisation, a delicate and noble complexity of behaviour and of +personal relationships. A white man living with them soon feels his +mind as deplorably dull as his skin is pale and unhealthy among those +glorious golden-brown bodies. But even he soon learns to _be_ his body +(and so his true mind), instead of using it as a stupid convenience +for his personality, a moment's umbrella against this world. He is +perpetually and intensely aware of the subtleties of taste in food, +of every tint and line of the incomparable glories of those dawns and +evenings, of each shade of intercourse in fishing or swimming or dancing +with the best companions in the world. That alone is life; all else is +death. And after dark, the black palms against a tropic night, the smell +of the wind, the tangible moonlight like a white, dry, translucent mist, +the lights in the huts, the murmur and laughter of passing figures, the +passionate, queer thrill of the rhythm of some hidden dance--all this +will seem to him, inexplicably and almost unbearably, a scene his heart +has known long ago, and forgotten, and yet always looked for. + +And now Samoa is ours. A New Zealand Expeditionary Force took it. Well, +I know a princess who will have had the day of her life. Did they see +Stevenson's tomb gleaming high up on the hill, as they made for that +passage in the reef? Did Vasa, with his heavy-lidded eyes, and that +infinitely adorable lady Fafaia, wander down to the beach to watch them +land? They must have landed from boats; and at noon, I see. How hot they +got! I know that Apia noon. Didn't they rush to the Tivoli bar--but I +forget, New Zealanders are teetotalers. So, perhaps, the Samoans gave +them the coolest of all drinks, _kava_; and they scored. And what dances +in their honour, that night!--but, again, I'm afraid the _houla-houla_ +would shock a New Zealander. I suppose they left a garrison, and went +away. I can very vividly see them steaming out in the evening; and the +crowd on shore would be singing them that sweetest and best-known of +South Sea songs, which begins 'Good-bye, my Flenni' ('Friend,' you'd +pronounce it), and goes on in Samoan, a very beautiful tongue. I hope +they'll rule Samoa well. + + + + +AN UNUSUAL YOUNG MAN + + +Some say the Declaration of War threw us into a primitive abyss of +hatred and the lust for blood. Others declare that we behaved very well. +I do not know. I only know the thoughts that flowed through the mind +of a friend of mine when he heard the news. My friend--I shall make no +endeavour to excuse him--is a normal, even ordinary man, wholly English, +twenty-four years old, active and given to music. By a chance he was +ignorant of the events of the world during the last days of July. He was +camping with some friends in a remote part of Cornwall, and had gone on, +with a companion, for a four-days' sail. So it wasn't till they beached +her again that they heard. A youth ran down to them with a telegram: +"We're at war with Germany. We've joined France and Russia." + +My friend ate and drank, and then climbed a hill of gorse, and sat +alone, looking at the sea. His mind was full of confused images, and +the sense of strain. In answer to the word 'Germany,' a train of vague +thoughts dragged across his brain. The pompous middle-class vulgarity of +the building of Berlin; the wide and restful beauty of Munich; the taste +of beer; innumerable quiet, glittering _cafes_; the _Ring_; the swish +of evening air in the face, as one _skis_ down past the pines; a certain +angle of the eyes in the face; long nights of drinking, and singing, +and laughter; the admirable beauty of German wives and mothers; +certain friends; some tunes; the quiet length of evening over the +Starnberger-See. Between him and the Cornish sea he saw quite clearly +an April morning on a lake south of Berlin, the grey water slipping +past his little boat, and a peasant-woman, suddenly revealed against +apple-blossom, hanging up blue and scarlet garments to dry in the sun. +Children played about her; and she sang as she worked. And he remembered +a night in Munich spent with a students' _Kneipe_. From eight to one +they had continually emptied immense jugs of beer, and smoked, and sung +English and German songs in profound chorus. And when the party broke up +he found himself arm-in-arm with the president, who was a vast Jew, and +with an Apollonian youth called Leo Diringer, who said he was a poet. +There was also a fourth man, of whom he could remember no detail. +Together, walking with ferocious care down the middle of the street, +they had swayed through Schwabing seeking an open _cafe_. Cafe Benz was +closed, but further up there was a little place still lighted, inhabited +by one waiter, innumerable chairs and tables piled on each other for the +night, and a row of chess-boards, in front of which sat a little bald, +bearded man in dress-clothes, waiting. The little man seemed to them +infinitely pathetic. Four against one, they played him at chess, and +were beaten. They bowed, and passed into the night. Leo Diringer recited +a sonnet, and slept suddenly at the foot of a lamp-post. The Jew's +heavy-lidded eyes shone with a final flicker of caution, and he turned +homeward resolutely, to the last not wholly drunk. My friend had +wandered to his lodgings, in an infinite peace. He could not remember +what had happened to the fourth man.... + +A thousand little figures tumbled through his mind. But they no longer +brought with them that air of comfortable kindliness which Germany had +always signified for him. Something in him kept urging, "You must hate +these things, find evil in them." There was that half-conscious agony of +breaking a mental habit, painting out a mass of associations, which he +had felt in ceasing to believe in a religion, or, more acutely, after +quarrelling with a friend. He knew that was absurd. The picture came +to him of encountering the Jew, or Diringer, or old Wolf, or little +Streckmann, the pianist, in a raid on the East Coast, or on the +Continent, slashing at them in a stagey, dimly-imagined battle. +Ridiculous. He vaguely imagined a series of heroic feats, vast +enterprise, and the applause of crowds.... + +From that egotism he was awakened to a different one, by the thought +that this day meant war and the change of all things he knew. He +realised, with increasing resentment, that music would be neglected. +And he wouldn't be able, for example, to camp out. He might have to +volunteer for military training and service. Some of his friends would +be killed. The Russian ballet wouldn't return. His own relationship with +A----, a girl he intermittently adored, would be changed. Absurd, but +inevitable; because--he scarcely worded it to himself--he and she and +everyone else were going to be different. His mind fluttered irascibly +to escape from this thought, but still came back to it, like a tethered +bird. Then he became calmer, and wandered out for a time into fantasy. + +A cloud over the sun woke him to consciousness of his own thoughts; and +he found, with perplexity, that they were continually recurring to two +periods of his life, the days after the death of his mother, and the +time of his first deep estrangement from one he loved. After a bit he +understood this. Now, as then, his mind had been completely divided +into two parts: the upper running about aimlessly from one half-relevant +thought to another, the lower unconscious half labouring with some +profound and unknowable change. This feeling of ignorant helplessness +linked him with those past crises. His consciousness was like the light +scurry of waves at full tide, when the deeper waters are pausing and +gathering and turning home. Something was growing in his heart, and he +couldn't tell what. But as he thought 'England and Germany,' the word +'England' seemed to flash like a line of foam. With a sudden tightening +of his heart, he realised that there might be a raid on the English +coast. He didn't imagine any possibility of it _succeeding_, but only +of enemies and warfare on English soil. The idea sickened him. He was +immensely surprised to perceive that the actual earth of England held +for him a quality which he found in A----, and in a friend's honour, and +scarcely anywhere else, a quality which, if he'd ever been sentimental +enough to use the word, he'd have called 'holiness.' His astonishment +grew as the full flood of 'England' swept him on from thought to +thought. He felt the triumphant helplessness of a lover. Grey, uneven +little fields, and small, ancient hedges rushed before him, wild +flowers, elms and beeches, gentleness, sedate houses of red brick, +proudly unassuming, a countryside of rambling hills and friendly copses. +He seemed to be raised high, looking down on a landscape compounded of +the western view from the Cotswolds, and the Weald, and the high land +in Wiltshire, and the Midlands seen from the hills above Prince's +Risborough. And all this to the accompaniment of tunes heard long ago, +an intolerable number of them being hymns. There was, in his mind, a +confused multitude of faces, to most of which he could not put a +name. At one moment he was on an Atlantic liner, sick for home, making +Plymouth at nightfall; and at another, diving into a little rocky pool +through which the Teign flows, north of Bovey; and again, waking, +stiff with dew, to see the dawn come up over the Royston plain. And +continually he seemed to see the set of a mouth which he knew for his +mother's, and A----'s face, and, inexplicably, the face of an old man +he had once passed in a Warwickshire village. To his great disgust, the +most commonplace sentiments found utterance in him. At the same time he +was extraordinarily happy.... + +My friend, who has always, though never very passionately, believed +himself a most unusual young man, rose to his feet. Feeling a little +frightened, and more than a little unwell--for he is a person of quiet +mental habits--he wandered down the hill. He kept slowly moving his +head, like a man who wishes to dodge a pain. I gather that he was +conscious of few definite thoughts till he reached the London train. He +kept remembering, unwillingly, a midnight in Carnival-time in Munich, +when he had seen a clown, a Pierrot, and a Columbine tip-toe delicately +round the deserted corner of Theresien-strasse, and vanish into the +darkness. Then he thought of the lights on the pavement in Trafalgar +Square. It seemed to him the most desirable thing in the world to mingle +and talk with a great many English people. Also, he kept saying to +himself--for he felt vaguely jealous of the young men in Germany and +France--"Well, if Armageddon's _on_, I suppose one should be there." ... +Of France, he tells me, he thought little. The French always seemed to +him people to be respected, but very remote; more incomprehensible than +the Japanese, more, even, than the Irish. Of Russia, less. She meant +nothing to him except a sense of hysteria and vague evil which he had +been given by some of her music and literature. He thought often and +heavily of Germany. Of England, all the time. He didn't know whether he +was glad or sad. 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