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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/7997-8.txt b/7997-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..8702ff3 --- /dev/null +++ b/7997-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5561 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of America To-day, Observations and Reflections +by William Archer + +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: America To-day, Observations and Reflections + +Author: William Archer + +Release Date: July 22, 2004 [EBook #7997] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AMERICA TO-DAY *** + + + + +Produced by Karen Dalrymple and PG Distributed Proofreaders + + + + + +AMERICA TO-DAY + +_OBSERVATIONS AND REFLECTIONS_ + +BY +WILLIAM ARCHER + +NEW YORK +CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS +1899 + + + + +CONTENTS + + +_PART I--OBSERVATIONS_ + +I. The Straits of New York--When is a Ship not a Ship?--Nationality of +Passengers--A Dream Realized + +II. Fog in New York Harbor--The Customs--The Note-Taker's +Hyperęsthesia--A Literary Car-Conductor--Mr. Kipling and the American +Public--The City of Elevators + +III. New York a much-maligned City--Its Charm--Mr. Steevens' +Antithesis--New York compared with Other Cities--Its +Slums--Advertisements--Architecture in New York and Philadelphia + +IV. Absence of Red Tape--"Rapid Transit" in New York--The Problem and +its Solution--The Whirl of Life--New York by Night--The "White Magic" of +the Future + +V. Character and Culture--American Universities--Is the American +"Electric" or Phlegmatic?--Alleged Laxity of the Family Tie--Postscript: +The University System + +VI. Washington in April--A Metropolis in the Making--The White House, +the Capitol, and the Library of Congress--The Symbolism of Washington + +VII. American Hospitality--Instances--Conversation and +Story-Telling--Overprofusion In Hospitality--Expensiveness of Life in +America--The American Barber--Postscript: An Anglo-American Club + +VIII. Boston--Its Resemblance to Edinburgh--Concord, Walden Pond, and +Sleepy Hollow--Is the "Yankee" Dying Out?--America for the +Americans--Detroit and Buffalo--The "Middle West" + +IX. Chicago--Its Splendour and Squalour--Mammoth Buildings--Wind, Dust, +and Smoke--Culture--Chicago's Self-Criticism--Postscript: Social Service +in America + +X. New York in Spring--Central Park--New York not an Ill-Governed +City--The United States Post Office--The Express System--Valedictory + + +_PART II--REFLECTIONS_ + +North and South, I + +North and South, II + +North and South, III + +North and South, IV + +The Republic and The Empire, I + +The Republic and The Empire, II + +The Republic and The Empire, III + +The Republic and The Empire, IV + +American Literature + +The American Language, I + +The American Language, II + +The American Language, III + +The American Language, IV + + + +The letters and essays which make up this volume appeared in the +London _Pall Mall Gazette_ and _Pall Mall Magazine_ respectively, and +are reprinted by kind permission of the editors of these periodicals. +The ten letters which were sent to the _Pall Mall Gazette_ appeared also +in the _New York Times_. + + + + +PART I + +OBSERVATIONS + + + + +LETTER I + +The Straits of New York--When is a Ship not a Ship?--Nationality of +Passengers--A Dream Realized. + + +R.M.S. _Lucania_. + +The Atlantic Ocean is geographically a misnomer, socially and +politically a dwindling superstition. That is the chief lesson one +learns--and one has barely time to take it in--between Queenstown and +Sandy Hook. Ocean forsooth! this little belt of blue water that we cross +before we know where we are, at a single hop-skip-and-jump! From north +to south, perhaps, it may still count as an ocean; from east to west we +have narrowed it into a strait. Why, even for the seasick (and on this +point I speak with melancholy authority) the Atlantic has not half the +terrors of the Straits of Dover; comfort at sea being a question, not of +the size of the waves, but of the proportion between the size of the +waves and the size of the ship. Our imagination is still beguiled by the +fuss the world made over Columbus, whose exploit was intellectually and +morally rather than physically great. The map-makers, too, throw dust +in our eyes by their absurd figment of two "hemispheres," as though +Nature had sliced her orange in two, and held one half in either hand. +We are slow to realise, in fact, that time is the only true measure of +space, and that London to-day is nearer to New York than it was to +Edinburgh a hundred and fifty years ago. The essential facts of the +case, as they at present stand, would come home much more closely to the +popular mind of both continents if we called this strip of sea the +Straits of New York, and classed our liners, not as the successors of +Columbus's caravels, but simply as what they are: giant ferry-boats +plying with clockwork punctuality between the twin landing-stages of the +English-speaking world. + +To-morrow we shall be in New York harbour; it seems but yesterday that +we slipped out of the Cove of Cork. As I look at the chart on the +companion staircase, where our daily runs are marked off, I feel the +abject poverty of our verbs of speed. We have not rushed, or dashed, or +hurtled along--these words do grave injustice to the majesty of our +progress. I can think of nothing but the strides of some Titan, so vast +as to beggar even the myth-making imagination. It is not seven-league, +no, nor hundred-league boots that we wear--we do our 520, 509, 518, 530 +knots at a stride. Nor is it to be imagined that we are anywhere near +the limit of speed. Already the _Lucania's_ record is threatened by the +_Oceanic_; and the _Oceanic_, if she fulfils her promises, will only +spur on some still swifter Titan to the emprise.[A] Then, again, it is +hard to believe that the difficulties are insuperable which as yet +prevent us from utilising, as a point of arrival and departure, that +almost mid-Atlantic outpost of the younger world, Newfoundland--or at +the least Nova Scotia. By this means the actual waterway between the two +continents will be shortened by something like a third. What with the +acceleration of the ferry-boats and the narrowing of the ferry, it is +surely no visionary Jules-Vernism to look forward to the time when one +may set foot on American soil, within, say, sixty-five hours of leaving +the Liverpool landing-stage; supposing, that is to say, that steam +navigation be not in the meantime superseded. + +As yet, to be sure, the Atlantic possesses a certain strategic +importance as a coal-consuming force. To contract its time-width we have +to expand our coal-bunkers; and the ship which has crossed it in six +days, be she ferryboat or cruiser, is apt to arrive, as it were, a +little out of breath. But even this drawback can scarcely be permanent. +Science must presently achieve the storage of motive-power in some less +bulky form than that of crude coal. Then the Atlantic will be as +extinct, politically, as the Great Wall of China; or, rather, it will +retain for America the abiding significance which the "silver streak" +possesses for England--an effectual bulwark against aggression, but a +highway to influence and world-moulding power. + +Think of the time when the _Lucania_ shall have fallen behind in the +race, and shall be plying to Boston or Philadelphia, while larger and +swifter hotel-ships shall put forth almost daily from Liverpool, +Southampton, and New York! Think of the growth of intercourse which even +the next ten years will probably bring, and the increase of mutual +comprehension involved in it! Is it an illusion of mine, or do we not +already observe in England, during the past year, a new interest and +pride in our trans-Atlantic service, which now ranks close to the Navy +in the popular affections? It dates, I think, from those first days of +the late war, when the _Paris_ was vainly supposed to be in danger of +capture by Spanish cruisers, and when all England was wishing her +god-speed. + +For my own taste, this sumptuous hotel-ship is rather too much of a +hotel and too little of a ship. I resent the absolute exclusion of the +passengers from even the most distant view of the propelling and guiding +forces. Practically, the _Lucania_ is a ship without a deck; and the +deck is to the ship what the face is to the human being. The so-called +promenade-deck is simply a long roofed balcony on either side of the +hotel building. It is roofed by the "shade deck," which is rigidly +reserved "for navigators only." There the true life of the ship goes on, +and we are vouchsafed no glimpse of it. One is reminded of the +Chinaman's description of a three-masted screw steamer with two funnels: +"Thlee piecee bąmboo, two piecee puff-puff, wąlk-along ģnside, no can +see." Here the "wąlk-along," the motive power, is "ģnside" with a +vengeance. I have not at this moment the remotest conception where the +engine-room is, or where lies the descent to that Avernus. Not even the +communicator-gong can be heard in the hotel. I have not set eyes on an +engineer or a stoker, scarcely on a sailor. The captain I do not even +know by sight. Occasionally an officer flits past, on his way up to or +down from the "shade deck"; I regard him with awe, and guess reverently +at his rank. The ship's company, as I know it, consists of the purser, +the doctor, and the army of stewards and stewardesses. The roof of the +promenade-deck weighs upon my brain. It shuts off the better half of the +sky, the zenith. In order even to see the masts and funnels of the ship +one has to go far forward or far aft and crane one's neck upward. Not a +single human being have I ever descried on the "shade-deck" or on the +towering bridge. The genii of the hundred-league boots remain not only +inaccessible but invisible. The effect is inhuman, uncanny. All the +luxury of the saloons and staterooms does not compensate for the lack of +a frank, straightforward deck. The _Lucania_, in my eyes, has no +individuality as a ship. It--I instinctively say "it," not "she"--is +merely a rather low-roofed hotel, with sea-sickness superadded to all +the comforts of home. But a first-class hotel it is: the living good +and plentiful, if not superfine, the service excellent, and the charges, +all things considered, remarkably moderate. + +What chiefly strikes one about the passengers is their homogeneity of +race. Apart from a small (but influential) Semitic contingent, the whole +body is thoroughly Anglo-Saxon in type. About half are British, I take +it, and half American; but in most cases the nationality is to be +distinguished only by accent, not by any characteristic of appearance or +of demeanour. The strongly-marked Semites always excepted, there is not +a man or woman among the saloon passengers who strikes me as a +foreigner, a person of alien race. I do not feel my sympathies chill +toward my very agreeable table-companion because he drinks ice-water at +breakfast; and he views my tea with an eye of equal tolerance. It is not +till one looks at the second-class passengers that one sees signs of the +heterogeneity of the American people; and then one remembers with +misgivings the emigrants who crowded on board at Queenstown, with their +household goods done up in bundles and gaping, ill-roped boxes. The +thought of them recalls an anecdote which was new to me the other day, +and may be fresh to some of my readers. In any case it will bear +repetition. An Irishman coming to America for the first time, found New +York gay with bunting as he sailed up the harbour. He asked an American +fellow-passenger the reason of the display, and was told it was in +honour of Evacuation Day. "And what's that?" he inquired. "Why, the day +the British troops evacuated New York." Presently an Englishman came up +to the Irishman and asked him if he knew what the flags were for. "For +Evacuation Day, to be sure!" was the reply. "What is Evacuation Day?" +asked the Sassenach. "The day we drove you blackguards out of the +country, bedad!" was the immediate reply. If not literally true, the +story is at least profoundly typical. + +There is a light on our starboard bow: my first glimpse, for two and +twenty years, of America. It has been literally the dream of my life to +revisit the United States. Not once, but fifty times, have I dreamed +that the ocean (which loomed absurdly large even in my waking thoughts) +was comfortably crossed, and I was landing in New York. I can clearly +recall at this moment some of the fantastic shapes the city put on in +my dreams--utterly different, of course, from my actual recollections of +it. Well, that dream is now realised; the gates of the Western world are +opening to me. What experience awaits me I know not; but this I do know, +that the emotion with which I confront it is not one of idle curiosity, +or even of calmly sympathetic interest. It is not primarily to my +intelligence, but to my imagination, that the word "America" appeals. To +many people that word conveys none but prosaic associations; to me it is +electric with romance. Only one other word in existence can give me a +comparable thrill; the word one sees graven on a roadside pillar as one +walks down the southern slope of an Alpine pass: ITALIA. But that word +carries the imagination backward only, whereas AMERICA stands for the +meeting-place of the past and the future. What the land of Cooper and +Mayne Reid was to my boyish fancy, the land of Washington and Lincoln, +Hawthorne and Emerson, is to my adult thoughts. Does this mean that I +approach America in the temper of a romantic schoolboy? Perhaps; but, +bias for bias, I would rather own to that of the romantic schoolboy than +to that of the cynical Old-Worldling. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote A: The _Oceanic_, it appears, is designed to break the record +in punctuality, not in speed. Nevertheless there are several indications +that our engineers are not resting on their oars, but will presently put +on another spurt. The very shortest Atlantic passage, I understand, has +been made by a German ship. Surely England and America cannot long be +content to leave the record for speed, of all things, in the hands of +Germany.] + + + + +LETTER II + +Fog in New York Harbour--The Customs--The Note-Taker's Hyperęsthesia--a +Literary Car-Conductor--Mr. Kipling and the American Public--The City of +Elevators. + + +NEW YORK. + +By way of making us feel quite at home, New-York receives us with a dank +Scotch mist. On the shores of Staten Island the leafless trees stand out +grey and gaunt against the whity-grey snow, a legacy, no doubt, from the +great blizzard. Though I keep a sharp look-out, I can descry no Liberty +Enlightening the World. Liberty (_absit omen!_) is wrapped away in grimy +cotton-wool. There, however, are the "sky-scraper" buildings, looming +out through the mist, like the Jotuns in Niflheim of Scandinavian +mythology. They are grandiose, certainly, and not, to my thinking, ugly. +That word has no application in this context. "Pretty" and "ugly"--why +should we for ever carry about these ęsthetic labels in our pockets, and +insist on dabbing them down on everything that comes in our way? If we +cannot get, with Nietzsche, _Jenseits von Gut und Böse_, we might at +least allow our souls an occasional breathing-space in a region "Back of +the Beautiful and the Ugly," as they say in President's English. While I +am trying to formulate my feelings with regard to this deputation of +giants which the giant Republic sends down to the waterside to welcome +us, behold, we have crept up abreast of the Cunard wharf, and there +stands a little crowd of human welcomers, waving handkerchiefs and +American flags. An energetic tug-boat butts her head gallantly into the +flank of the huge liner, in order to help her round. She glides up to +her berth, the gangway is run out, and at last I set foot upon +American--lumber. + +What are my emotions? I have only one; single, simple, easily-expressed: +dread of the United States Custom House. Its terrors and its tyrannies +have been depicted in such lurid colours on the other side that I am +almost surprised to observe no manifest ogres in uniform caps, but only, +it would seem, ordinary human beings. And, on closer acquaintanceship, +they prove to be civil and even helpful human beings, with none of the +lazy superciliousness which so often characterises the European +toll-taker. At first the scene is chaotic enough, but, by aid of an +arrangement in alphabetical groups, cosmos soon emerges. The system by +which you declare your dutiable goods and are assigned an examiner, and +if necessary an appraiser, is admirably simple and free from red-tape. I +shall not describe it, for it would be more tedious in description than +in act. Enough that the whole thing is conducted, so far as I could see, +promptly, efficiently, and with perfect good temper. One brief +discussion I heard, between an official and an American citizen, who was +heavily assessed on some article or articles which he declared to have +been manufactured in America and taken out of the country by himself +only a few months before. The official insisted that there was no proof +of this; but just as the discussion threatened to become an altercation +(a "scrap" they would call it here) some one found a way out. The goods +were forwarded in bond to the traveller's place of residence (Hartford, +I think) where he declared that he could produce proof of their American +origin. For myself, I had to pay two dollars and a half on some +magic-lantern slides. I could have imported the lantern, had I owned +one, free of charge, as a philosophical instrument used in my +profession; but the courts have held, it appears, that though the +lantern comes under that rubric, the slides do not. I cannot pretend to +grasp the distinction, or to admire the system which necessitates it. +But whatever the economic merits or demerits of the tariff, I take +pleasure in bearing testimony to the civility with which I found it +enforced. + +My companion and I express our baggage to our hotel and jump on the +platform of a horse-car on West-street, skirting the wharves. The +roadway is ill paved, certainly, and the clammy atmosphere has congealed +on its surface into an oily black mud; while in the middle of the side +streets one can see relics of the blizzard in the shape of little grubby +glaciers slowly oozing away. The prospect is not enlivening; nor do the +low brick houses, given up to nondescript longshore traffic, and freely +punctuated with gilt-lettered saloons, add to its impressiveness. +Squalid it is without doubt, this particular aspect of New York; but +what is the squalor of West-street to that of Limehouse or Poplar? Are +our own dock thoroughfares always paved to perfection? And if we had a +blizzard like that of three weeks ago, how long would its vestiges +linger in the side-streets of Millwall? Even as I mark the grimness of +the scene, I am conscious of a sort of hyperęsthesia against which one +ought to be on guard. The note-taking traveller is very apt to forget +that the mere act of note-taking upsets his normal perceptivity. He +becomes feverishly observant, morbidly critical. He compares +incommensurables, and flies to ideal standpoints. He is so eager to +descry differences, that he overlooks similarities--nay, identities. +Thus only can I account for many statements about New York, occurring in +the pages of recent and reputable travellers, both French and English, +which I find to be exaggerated almost to the point of monstrosity. What +should we say of an American who should criticise the Commercial Road +from the point of view of Fifth Avenue? After a week's experience of New +York, I cannot but fancy that certain travellers I could mention have +been guilty of similar errors of proportion. + +To return to our street-car platform. The conductor gathers from our +conversation that we have just landed from the English steamer, and he +at once overflows upon the one great topic of all classes in New York. +"I s'pose you've heard," he says, "that Kipling has been very ill?" Yes, +we had heard of his illness before we left England. "He's pulling +through now, though," says the conductor with heartfelt satisfaction. +That, too, we had ascertained on board. "He ought to be the next +poet-laureate," our friend continues eagerly; "_he_ don't follow no +beaten tracks. He cuts a road for himself, every time, right through; +and a mighty good road, too." He then proceeded to make some remarks, +which in the rattle of the street I did not quite catch, about +"carpet-bag knights." I gathered that he held a low opinion of the +present wearer of the bays, and confounded him (not inexcusably) with +one or other of his titled compeers. My companion and I were too much +taken aback to pursue the theme and ascertain our friend's opinions on +Mr. Ruskin, Mr. Meredith, Mrs. Humphry Ward, and Miss Marie Corelli. +Think of it! We have travelled three thousand miles to find a +tram-conductor whose eyes glisten as he tells us that Kipling is better, +and who discusses with a great deal of sense and acuteness the question +of the English poet-laureateship! Could anything be more marvellous or +more significant? Said I not well when I declared the Atlantic Ocean of +less account than the Straits of Dover? + +This was indeed a welcome to the New World. Fate could not have devised +a more ingenious and at the same time tactful way of making us feel at +home; though at home, indeed, a Mile End 'bus conductor is scarcely the +authority one would turn to for enlightened views upon the Laureateship. +The mere fact of our friend's having heard of Mr. Kipling's existence +struck us as surprising enough, until we learned that the poet of Tommy +Atkins is at the present moment quite the most famous person in the +United States. When his illness was at its height, hourly bulletins were +posted in factories and workshops, and people meeting in the streets +asked each other, "How is he?" without deeming it necessary to supply an +antecedent to the pronoun. It was grammatically as well as spiritually a +case of "Kipling understood." + +At a low music-hall into which I strayed one evening, one of the nigger +corner-men sang a song of which the nature may be sufficiently divined +from the refrain, "And the tom-cat was the cause of it all." This lyric +being loudly encored, the performer came forward, and, to my +astonishment, began to recite a long series of doggerel verses upon Mr. +Kipling's illness, setting forth how + + "His strong will made him famous, and his strong will pulled him + through." + +They were imbecile, they were maudlin, they were in the worst possible +taste. So far as the reciter was concerned, they were absolutely +insincere clap-trap. But the crowded audience received them with +rapture; and the very fact that an astute caterer should serve up this +particular form of clap-trap showed how the sympathy with Mr. Kipling +had permeated even the most un-literary stratum of the public. To an +Englishman, nothing can be more touching than to find on every hand this +enthusiastic affection for the poet of the Seven Seas--a writer, too, +who has not dealt over-tenderly with American susceptibilities, and has, +by sheer force of genius, lived down a good deal of unpopularity. + +For the moment, neither President McKinley nor Mr. Fitzsimmons can vie +with him in notoriety. His sole rival as a popular hero is Admiral +Dewey, whose name is in every mouth and on every boarding. He is the one +living celebrity whom the Italian image-vendors admit to their pantheon, +where he rubs shoulders with Shakespeare, Dante, Beethoven, and the +Venus of Milo. It is related that, at a Camp of Exercise last year, +President McKinley chanced to stray beyond bounds, and on returning was +confronted by a sentry, who dropped his rifle and bade him halt. "I have +forgotten the pass-word," said Mr. McKinley, "but if you will look at +me you will see that I am the President." "If you were George Dewey +himself," was the reply, "you shouldn't get by here without the +pass-word." This anecdote has a flavour of ancient history, but it is +aptly brought up to date.[B] + +We bid adieu to our poetical conductor, take a cross-town car, and are +presently pushing at the revolving doors--a draught-excluding +plate-glass turn-stile--of a vast red-brick hotel, luxurious and +labyrinthine. A short colloquy with the clerk at the bureau, and we find +ourselves in a gorgeously upholstered elevator, whizzing aloft to the +thirteenth floor. Not the top floor--far from it. If you could slice off +the stories above the thirteenth, as you slice off the top of an egg, +and plant them down in Europe, they would of themselves make a biggish +hotel according to our standards. This first elevator voyage is the +prelude to how many others! For the past week I seem to have spent the +best part of my time in elevators. I must have travelled miles on miles +at right angles to the earth's surface. If all my ascensions could be +put together, they would out-top Olympus and make Ossa a wart. + +This is the first sensation of life in New York--you feel that the +Americans have practically added a new dimension to space. They move +almost as much on the perpendicular as on the horizontal plane. When +they find themselves a little crowded, they simply tilt a street on end +and call it a sky scraper. This hotel, for example (the +Waldorf-Astoria), is nothing but a couple of populous streets soaring up +into the air instead of crawling along the ground. When I was here in +1877, I remember looking with wonder at the _Tribune_ building, hard by +the Post Office, which was then considered a marvel of architectural +daring. Now it is dwarfed into absolute insignificance by a dozen +Cyclopean structures on every hand. It looks as diminutive as the +Adelphi Terrace in contrast with the Hotel Cecil. I am credibly informed +that in some of the huge down-town buildings they run "express" +elevators, which do not stop before the fifteenth, eighteenth, twentieth +floor, as the case may be. Some such arrangement seems very necessary, +for the elevator _Bummelzugs_, which stop at every floor, take quite an +appreciable slice out of the average New York day. I wonder that +American ingenuity has not provided a system of pneumatic +passenger-tubes for lightning communication with these aėrial suburbs, +these "mansions in the sky." + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote B: A similar story is told of the Confederate President. +Challenged by a sentinel, he said, "Look at me and you will see that I +am President Davis." "Well," said the soldier, "you _do_ look like a +used postage-stamp. Pass, President Davis!"] + + + + +LETTER III + +New York a much-maligned City--Its Charm--Mr. Steevens' Antitheses--New +York compared with Other Cities--Its Slums--Advertisements--Architecture +in New York and Philadelphia. + + +NEW YORK. + +Many superlatives have been applied to New York by her own children, by +the stranger within her gates, and by the stranger without her gates, at +a safe distance. I, a newcomer, venture to apply what I believe to be a +new superlative, and to call her the most maligned city in the world. +Even sympathetic observers have exaggerated all that is uncouth, +unbeautiful, unhealthy in her life, and overlooked, as it seems to me, +her all-pervading charm. One must be a pessimist indeed to feel no +exhilaration on coming in contact with such intensity of upward-striving +life as meets one on every hand in this league-long island city, +stretching oceanward between her eastern Sound and her western estuary, +and roofed by a radiant dome of smokeless sky. "Upward-striving life," I +say, for everywhere and in every branch of artistic effort the desire +for beauty is apparent, while at many points the achievement is +remarkable and inspiriting. I speak, of course, mainly of material +beauty; but it is hard to believe that so marked an impulse toward the +good as one notes in architecture, painting, sculpture, and literature, +can be unaccompanied by a cognate impulse toward moral beauty, even in +relation to civic life. The New Yorker's pride in New York is much more +alert and active than the Londoner's pride in London; and this feeling +must ere long make itself effective and dominant. For the great +advantage, it seems to me, that America possesses over the Old World is +its material and moral plasticity. Even among the giant structures of +this city, one feels that there is nothing rigid, nothing oppressive, +nothing inaccessible to the influence of changing conditions. If the +buildings are Cyclopean, so is the race that reared them. The material +world seems as clay on the potter's wheel, visibly taking on the impress +of the human spirit; and the human spirit, as embodied in this superbly +vital people, seems to be visibly thrilling to all the forces of +civilisation. + +One of the latest, and certainly one of the most keen-sighted, of +English travellers in America is Mr. G.W. Steevens, a master journalist +if ever there was one. I turn to his _Land of the Dollar_ and I find New +York writ down "uncouth, formless, piebald, chaotic." "Never have I +seen," says Mr. Steevens, "a city more hideous.... Nothing is given to +beauty; everything centres in hard utility." Mr. Steevens must forgive +me for saying that this is simply libellous. It is true, I do not quote +him fairly: I omit his laudatory antitheses. The truncated phrase in the +above passage reads in the original "more hideous or more splendid," and +after averring that "nothing is given to beauty," Mr. Steevens +immediately proceeds to celebrate the beauty of many New York buildings. +Are we to understand, then, that the architects thought of nothing but +"hard utility," and that it was some ęsthetic divinity that shaped their +blocks, rough-hew them how they might? For my part, I cannot see how +truth is to result from the clash of contradictory falsehoods. There are +a few cities more splendid than New York; many more hideous. In point of +concentrated architectural magnificence, there is nothing in New York to +compare with the Vienna Ringstrasse, from the Opera House to the Votive +Church. + +In the splendour which proceeds from ordered uniformity and +spaciousness, Paris is, of course, incomparable; while a Scotchman may +perhaps be excused for holding that, as regards splendour of situation, +Edinburgh is hard to beat. Nor is there any single prospect in New York +so impressive as the panorama of London from Waterloo Bridge, when it +happens to be visible--that imperial sweep of river frontage from the +Houses of Parliament to the Tower. Except in the new region, far up the +Hudson, New York shares with Dublin the disadvantage of turning her +meaner aspects to her river fronts, though the majesty of the rivers +themselves, and the grandiose outlines of the Brooklyn Bridge, largely +compensate for this defect. In the main, then, the splendour of New York +is as yet sporadic. It is emerging on every hand from comparative +meanness and commonplace. At no point can one as yet say, "This prospect +is finer than anything Europe can show." But everywhere there are purple +patches of architectural splendour; and one can easily foresee the time +when Fifth Avenue, the whole circuit of Central Park, and the up-town +riverside region will be magnificent beyond compare. + +As for the superlative hideousness attributed by Mr. Steevens to New +York, I can only inquire, in the local idiom: "What is the matter with +Glasgow?" Or, indeed, with Hull? or Newcastle? or the north-east regions +of London? No doubt New York contains some of the very worst slums in +the world. That melancholy distinction must be conceded her. But simply +to the outward eye the slums of New York have not the monotonous +hideousness of our English "warrens of the poor." In spite of her hard +winter, New York cannot quite forget that her latitude is that of Madrid +and Naples, not of London, or even of Paris. Her slums have a Southern +air about them, a variety of contour and colour--in some aspects one +might almost say a gaiety--unknown to Whitechapel or Bethnal Green. For +one thing, the ubiquitous balconies and fire escapes serve of themselves +to break the monotony of line, and lend, as it were, a peculiar texture +to the scene; to say nothing of the oportunities they afford for the +display of multifarious shreds and patches of colour. Then the houses +themselves are often brightly, not to say loudly, painted; so that in +the clear, sparkling atmosphere characteristic of New York, the most +squalid slum puts on a many-coloured Southern aspect, which suggests +Naples or Marseilles rather than the back streets of any English city. +Add to this that the inhabitants are largely of Southern origin, and are +apt, whenever the temperature will permit, to carry on the main part of +their daily lives out of doors; and you can understand that, appalling +as poverty may be in New York, the average slum is not so dank, dismal, +and suicidally monotonous as a street of a similar status in London. + +"The whole city," says Mr. Steevens, "is plastered, and papered, and +painted with advertisements;" and he instances the huge "H-O" (whatever +that may mean) which confronts one as one sails up the harbour, and the +omnipresent "Castoria" placards. Here Mr. Steevens shows symptoms of the +note-taker's hyperęsthesia. The facts he states are undeniable, but the +implication that advertisement is carried to greater excess in New York +than in London and other European cities seems to me utterly groundless. +The "H-O" advertisement is not one whit more monstrous than, for +instance, the huge announcements of cheap clothing-shops, &c., painted +all over the ends of houses, that deface the railway approaches to +Paris; nor is it so flagrant and aggressive as the illuminated +advertisements of whisky and California wines that vulgarise the august +spectacle of the Thames by night. It is true that the proprietors of +"Castoria" have occupied nearly every blank wall that is visible from +Brooklyn Bridge; but their advertisements are so far from garish that I +should scarcely have noticed them had not Mr. Steevens called my +attention to them. Sky-signs, as Mr. Steevens admits, are unknown in New +York; so are the flashing out-and-in electric advertisements which make +night hideous in London. One or two large steady-burning advertisements +irradiate Madison Square of an evening; but being steady they are +comparatively inoffensive. Twenty years ago, when I crossed the +continent from San Francisco, I noticed with disgust the advertisements +stencilled on every second rock in the canyons of Nevada, and defacing +every coign of vantage around Niagara. Whether this abuse continues I +know not; but I know that the pill placards and sauce puffs which +blossom in our English meadows along every main line of railway are +quite as offensive. Far be it from me to deny that advertising is +carried to deplorable excesses in America; but in picking this out as a +differentia, Mr. Steevens shows that his intentness of observation in +New York has for the moment dimmed his mental vision of London. It is a +case, I fancy, in which the expectation was father to the thought. + +Similarly, Mr. Steevens notes, "No chiropodist worthy of the name but +keeps at his door a modelled human foot the size of a cab-horse; and +other trades go and do likewise." The "cab-horse" is a monumental +exaggeration; but it is true that some chiropodists use as a sign a foot +of colossal proportions--the size of a small sheep, let us say, if we +must adopt a zoological standard. So far good; but the implication that +the streets of New York swarm, like a scene in a harlequinade, with +similarly Brobdingnagian signs is quite unfounded. Thus it is, I think, +that travellers are apt to seize on isolated eccentricities or +extravagances (have we no monstrous signs in England?) and treat them as +typical. Mr. Steevens came to America prepared to find everything +gigantic, and the chiropodist's foot so agreeably fulfilled his +expectation that he thought it unnecessary to look any further--"ex pede +Herculem."[C] + +The architecture of New York, according to Mr. Steevens, is "the +outward expression of the freest, fiercest individualism.... Seeing it, +you can well understand the admiration of an American for something +ordered and proportioned--for the Rue de Rivoli or Regent Street." I +heard this admiration emphatically expressed the other day by one of the +foremost and most justly famous of American authors; but, unlike Mr. +Steevens, I could not understand it. "What!" I said, "you would +Haussmannise New York! You would reduce the glorious variety of Fifth +Avenue to the deadly uniformity of the Avenue de l'Opéra, where each +block of buildings reproduces its neighbour, as though they had all been +stamped by one gigantic die!" Such an architectural ideal is +inconceivable to me. It is all very well for a few short streets, for a +square or two, for a quadrant like that of Regent Street, or a crescent +or circus like those of Bath or Edinburgh. But to apply it throughout a +whole quarter of a city, or even throughout the endless vistas of a +great American street, would be simply maddening. Better the most +heaven-storming or sky-scraping audacity of individualism than any +attempt to transform New York into a Fourierist phalanstery or a model +prison. I do not doubt that there will one day be some legal restriction +on Towers of Babel, and that the hygienic disadvantages of the +microbe-breeding "well" or air-shaft will be more fully recognised than +they are at present. A time may come, too, when the ideal of an unforced +harmony in architectural groupings may replace the now dominant instinct +of aggressive diversity. But whatever developments the future may have +in store, I must own my gratitude to the "fierce individualism" of the +present for a new realisation of the possibilities of architectural +beauty in modern life. At almost every turn in New York, one comes +across some building that gives one a little shock of pleasure. +Sometimes, indeed, it is the pleasure of recognising an old friend in a +new place--a patch of Venice or a chunk of Florence transported bodily +to the New World. The exquisite tower of the Madison Square Garden, for +instance, is modelled on that of the Giralda, at Seville; while the new +University Club, on Fifth Avenue, is simply a Florentine fortress-palace +of somewhat disproportionate height. But along with a good deal of sheer +reproduction of European models, one finds a great deal of ingenious +and inventive adaptation, to say nothing of a very delicate taste in the +treatment of detail. New York abounds, it is true, with monuments of +more than one bygone and detestable period of architectural fashion; but +they are as distinctly survivals from a dead past as is the wooden +shanty which occupies one of the best sites on Fifth Avenue, in the very +shadow of the new Delmonico's. I wish tasteless, conventional, and +machine-made architecture were as much of a "back-number" in England as +it is here. A practised observer could confidently date any prominent +building in New York, to within a year or two, by its architectural +merit; and the greater the merit the later the year. + +In short, architecture is here a living art. Go where you will in these +up-town regions, you can see imagination and cultured intelligence in +the act, as it were, of impressing beauty of proportion and detail upon +brick and terra-cotta, granite and marble. And domestic or middle-class +architecture is not neglected. The American "master builders" do not +confine themselves to towers and palaces, but give infinite thought and +loving care to "homes for human beings." The average old-fashioned New +York house, so far as I have seen it, is externally unattractive (the +characteristic material, a sort of coffee-coloured stone, being truly +hideous), and internally dark, cramped, and stuffy. But modern houses, +even of no special pretensions, are generally delightful, with their +polished wood floors and fittings, and their airy suites of rooms. The +American architect has a great advantage over his English colleague in +the fact that in furnace-heated houses only the bedrooms require to be +shut off with doors. The halls and public rooms can be grouped so that, +when the curtains hung in their wide doorways are drawn back, two, +three, or four rooms are open to the eye at once, and charming effects +of space and light-and-shade can be obtained. Of this advantage the +modern house-planner makes excellent use, and I have seen more than one +quite modest family house which, without any sacrifice of comfort, gives +one a sense of almost palatial spaciousness. An architectural exhibition +which I saw the other day proved that equal or even greater care and +attention is being bestowed upon the country house, in which a +characteristically American style is being developed, mainly founded, I +take it, upon the suave and graceful classicism of Colonial +architecture. The wide "piazza" is its most noteworthy feature, and the +opportunity it offers for beautiful cloister-work is being utilised to +the full. Furthermore, the large attendance at the exhibition showed +what a keen interest the public takes in the art--a symptom of high +vitality. + +In Philadelphia, too, where I spent some time last week, there is a good +deal of exquisite architecture to be seen. The old Philadelphia dwelling +house, "simplex munditiis," with its plain red-brick front and white +marble steps, has a peculiar charm for me; but it, of course, is not a +product of the present movement. I do not know the date of some lovely +white marble palazzetti scattered about the Rittenhouse Square region; +but the Art Club on Broad Street, and the Houston Club for Students of +the University of Pennsylvania, are both quite recent buildings, and +both very beautiful. I could mention several other buildings that are, +as they say here, "pretty good" (a phrase of high commendation); but I +had better get safely out of New York before I enlarge on the merits of +Philadelphia. There is only one city the New Yorker despises more than +Philadelphia, and that is Brooklyn. The New York schoolboy speaks of +Philadelphia as "the place the chestnuts go to when they die;" and to +the most popular wit in New York at this moment (an Americanised +Englishman, by the way) is attributed the saying, "Mr. So-and-so has +three daughters--two alive, and one in Philadelphia." Six different +people have related this gibe to me; it is only less admired than the +same gentleman's observation as he alighted from an electric car at the +further end of the Suspension Bridge, when he heaved a deep sigh, and +remarked, "In the midst of life we are in Brooklyn." Another favourite +anecdote in New York is that of the Philadelphian who went to a doctor +and complained of insomnia. The doctor gave him a great deal of sage +advice as to diet, exercise, and so forth, concluding, "If after that +you haven't better nights, let me see you again." "But you mistake, +doctor," the patient replied; "I sleep all right at night--it's in the +daytime I can't sleep!" + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote C: One method of advertisement which I observed in Chicago has +not yet, so far as I know, been introduced into England. One of the +windows of a vast dry-goods store on State Street was fitted up as a +dentists parlour; and when I passed a young lady was reclining in the +operating-chair and having her teeth stopped, to the no small +delectation of a little crowd which blocked the side-walk.] + + + + +LETTER IV + +Absence of Red Tape--"Rapid Transit" in New York--The Problem and its +Solution--The Whirl of Life--New York by Night--The "White Magic" of the +Future. + + +NEW YORK. + +Whatever turn her fiscal policy may take in the future, I hope America +will keep an absolutely prohibitive duty upon the import of red tape, +while at the same time discouraging the home manufacture of the article. +The absence of red tape is, to me, one of the charms of life in this +country. One gathers, indeed, that the art of running a Circumlocution +Office is carried to a high pitch in the political sphere. But there it +is exercised with a definite object; it is a means to an end, cunningly +devised and skillfully applied; it is not a mere matter of instinct, +inertia, and routine. The Tite Barnacles of Dickens's satire were +perfectly honest people according to their lights. They were sincerely +convinced that the British Empire would crumble to pieces the moment +its ligaments of red tape were in the slightest degree relaxed. Their +strength lay in the fact that they represented an innate tendency in the +nation, or at any rate in the dominant class at the period of which +Dickens wrote. In America there is no such innate tendency. The Tite +Barnacles do not imagine or pretend that they are saving the Republic; +they simply make use of a convenient political machinery to serve their +private ends. Therefore their position, however strong it may seem for +the moment, is insecurely founded. It rests upon no moral basis, it +finds no stronghold in the national character. Outsiders may think the +average American citizen strangely tolerant of abuses, and indeed I find +him smiling with placid amusement at things which, were I in his place, +would make my blood boil. But he is under no illusion as to the real +nature of these things. An abuse remains an abuse in his eyes, though he +may not for the moment see his way to rectifying it. The red tape which +is used to embarrass justice or "tie up" reform commands no reverence +even from the party that employs it. Cynicism may endure for the night, +but indignation ariseth in the morning. + +The American character, in a word, does not naturally run to red tape. +Observe, for instance, the system of transit in New York: it is +admirably successful in grappling with a very difficult problem, and its +success proceeds from the absence of by-laws and restrictions, the +omnipresence of good-nature and common-sense. The problem is rendered +difficult, not only by the enormous numbers to be conveyed, but by the +stocking-like configuration of Manhattan Island. The business quarter of +New York is in the foot, the residential quarters in the calf and knee. +Therefore there is a great rush of people down to the foot in the +morning and up to the knee in the afternoon. The business quarter of +London is like the hub of a wheel, from which the railway and omnibus +lines radiate like spokes. In New York there is very little radiation or +dispersion of the multitude. Practically the whole tide sets down a +narrow channel in the morning, and up again in the evening. At the time, +then, of these tidal waves, it is a flat impossibility that transit can +be altogether comfortable. The "elevated" trains and electric trolleys +are overcrowded, certainly; but you can always find a place in them, and +they carry you so rapidly that the discomfort is rendered as little +irksome as possible. A society has been formed, I see, to agitate +against this overcrowding; but it seems to me it will only waste its +pains. Let it agitate for an underground railway, by all means; and if, +as I gather, the underground railway scheme is obstructed by +self-seeking vested interests, let it do its best to break down the +obstruction. Until some altogether new means of transport are provided, +the attempt to restrict the number of passengers which a car or trolley +may carry is, I think, antisocial, and must prove futile. The force of +public convenience would break the red-tape barrier like a cobweb. The +trains and trolleys follow each other at the very briefest intervals; it +does not seem possible that a greater number should be run on the +existing lines; and, that being so, there is no alternative between +overcrowding and the far greater inconvenience of indefinite delay. +Fancy having to "take a number," as they do in Paris, and await your +turn for a seat! New York would be simply paralysed. It is needless to +point out, of course, that where steam or electricity is the motive +power there is no cruelty to animals in overcrowding. + +The American people, rightly and admirably as it seems to me, choose the +lesser of two evils, and minimise it by good temper and mutual civility. +At a certain hour of every morning, the "L" railroad trains are as +densely packed as our Metropolitan trains on Boat-Race Day. There are +people clinging in clusters to each of the straps, and even the +platforms between the cars are crowded to the very couplings. It often +appears hopelessly impossible for any new-comer to squeeze in, or for +those who are wedged in the middle of a long car to force their way out. +Yet when the necessity arises, no force has to be applied. People manage +somehow or other to "welcome the coming, speed the parting guest." Every +one recognises that cantankerous obstructiveness would only make matters +worse, nay, absolutely intolerable. The first comer makes no attempt to +insist upon his position of advantage, because he knows that to-morrow +he may be the last comer. The sense of individual inconvenience is +swamped in the sense of general convenience. People laugh and rather +enjoy the joke when a too sudden start or an abrupt curve sends a whole +group of them cannoning up against one another. It must be remembered +that the transit is rapid, so that there is no irritating sense of +wasted time: and that the cars are brilliantly lighted, and, on the +whole, well ventilated, so that there is no fog, smoke, or sulphurous +air to get on the nerves and strain the temper. The scene as a whole, +even on a wet, disagreeable evening, is not depressing, but rather +cheerful. For my part, I regard it with positive pleasure, as a +manifestation of the national character. Less admirable, to be sure, is +the public acquiescence in the political manoeuvring, which blocks the +proposed underground railway. Yet the opponents of the scheme have +doubtless something to say on their side. It appears, at any rate, that +the profits of the "L" road are not exorbitant. It is said to be only +through overcrowding that it pays at all. The passengers it seats barely +suffice to cover expenses, and "the profits hang on to the straps." + +Idealists hope that when the underground comes, the elevated will go; +but I, as an outsider, cannot share his hope. In the first place, I +don't see how the mere substitution of one line for another is to +relieve the congestion of traffic; in the second place, the elevated +seems to me an admirable institution, which it would be a great pity to +abolish. Even ęsthetically there is much to be said for it. The road, +itself, to be sure, does not add to the beauty of the avenues along +which it runs, but it is not by any means the eyesore one might imagine; +and the trains, with their light, graceful, and elegantly-proportioned +cars, so different from our squat and formless railway carriages, seem +to me a positively beautiful feature of the city life. They are not very +noisy, they are not very smoky, and they will be smokeless and almost +noiseless when they are run by electricity. The discomfort they cause, +to dwellers on the avenues is, I am sure, greatly exaggerated. People +who do not live on the avenues suffer in their sympathetic imagination +much more than the actual martyrs to the "L" road suffer in fact. +Imagination makes cowards of us all. For my part, I endured agonies from +the rush, whirl and clatter of New York before I left London; but here I +find nothing that, to healthy nerves, is not rather enjoyable than +otherwise. Neither up town nor down town is the traffic so dense, the +roar and bustle so continuous, as that of London; while the service of +trains and cars is so excellent and so simply arranged that it costs +much less thought, effort, and worry to "get about" in Manhattan than in +Middlesex. In saying this I may perhaps offend American +susceptibilities. There is nothing we moderns are more apt to brag of +than the nervous overstrain of our life. But sincerity comes before +courtesy, and I must gently but firmly decline to allow New York a +monopoly of neurasthenia, or of the conditions that produce it. + +One great difference is, I take it, that while New York exhausts it also +stimulates, whereas the days of the year when there is any positive +stimulus in the air of London may be counted on the ten fingers. Muggy +and misty days do occur here, it is true; but though the natives tell me +that this month of March has been exceptionally unpleasant, the +prevailing impression I have received is that of a lofty and radiant +vault of sky, with keen, sweet, limpid air that one drank in eagerly, +like sparkling wine. More than once, after a slight snowfall, I have +seen the air full of dancing particles of light, like the gold leaf in +Dantzic brandy. One of the most impressive things I ever saw, though I +did not then realise its tragic significance, was the huge column of +smoke that rose into the clear blue air from the Windsor Hotel fire. I +happened to come out on Fifth Avenue, close to the Manhattan Club, just +as the tail of the St. Patrick's Day procession was passing; and, +looking up the avenue after it, I was ware of a gigantic white pillar +standing motionless, as it seemed to me, and cleaving the limitless blue +dome almost to the zenith. The procession moved quietly on; no one +appeared to take any notice; and as fires are ineffective in the +daylight, I turned down the avenue instead, of up, and saw no more of +the spectacle. But I shall never forget that "pillar of cloud by day," +standing out in the sunshine, white as marble or sea foam. + +At night, again, under the purple, star-lit sky, street life in the +central region of New York is indescribably exhilarating. From Union +Square to Herald Square, and even further up, Broadway and many of the +cross streets flash out at dusk into the most brilliant illumination. +Theatres, restaurants, stores, are outlined in incandescent lamps; the +huge electric trolleys come sailing along in an endless stream, +profusely jewelled with electricity; and down the thickly-gemmed vista +of every cross street one can see the elevated trains, like luminous +winged serpents, skimming through the air.[D] The great restaurants are +crowded with gaily-dressed merry-makers; and altogether there is a +sense of festivity in the air, without any flagrantly meretricious +element in it, which I plead guilty to finding very enjoyable. From the +moral, and even from the loftily ęsthetic point of view, this gaudy, +glittering Vanity Fair is no doubt open to criticism. What reconciles me +to it ęsthetically is the gemlike transparency of its colouring. Garish +it is, no doubt, but not in the least stifling, smoky, or lurid. The +application of electricity--light divorced from smoke and heat--to the +beautifying of city life is as yet in its infancy. Even the Americans +have scarcely got beyond the point of making lavish use of the raw +material. But the raw material is beautiful in itself, and in this +pellucid air (the point to which one always returns) it produces magical +effects. + +The other night, at a restaurant, I sat at the next table to Mr. Edison, +and could not but look with interest and admiration at his furrowed, +anxious, typically American and truly beautiful face. Here, if you like, +was an example of nervous overstrain; but the soft and yet brilliant +light of the restaurant was in itself a sufficient reminder that the +overstrain had not been incurred for nothing. Electricity is the true +"white magic" of the future; and here, with his pallid face and silver +hair, sat the master magician--one of the great light-givers of the +world. A light-giver, I think, in more than a merely material sense. The +moral influence of the electric lamp, its effect upon the hygiene of the +soul, has not yet been duly estimated. But even in a merely material +sense, what has not the Edison movement, as it may be called, done for +this city of New York! Its influence is felt on every hand, in comfort, +convenience, and beauty. The lavish use of electricity, both as an +illuminant and as a motive power, combines with its climate, its +situation, and its architecture to make New York one of the most +fascinating cities in the world. Why, good Americans, when they die, +should go to Paris, is a theological enigma which more and more puzzles +me. + + +POSTSCRIPT.--Since my return to England, I have carefully reconsidered +my impression that the rush, whirl, and clamour of street life is +greater in London than in New York. Every day confirms it. On our main +thoroughfares, the stream of omnibuses is quite as unbroken as the +stream of electric and cable cars in New York; our van traffic is at +least as heavy; and we have in addition the host of creeping "growlers" +and darting hansoms, which is almost without counterpart in New York. I +know of no crossing in New York so trying to the nerves as Piccadilly +Circus or Charing Cross (Trafalgar Square). The intersection of +Broadway, Fifth Avenue and 23rd Street, at Madison Square, is the +nearest approach to these bewildering ganglia of traffic. It must be +owned, too, that the Bowery, with its two "elevated" tracks and four +lines of trolley-cars, is a place where one cannot safely let one's wits +go wool-gathering, especially on a rainy evening when the roadway is +under repair. Let me add that there is one place in New York where the +whirl of traffic ("whirl" in a literal sense) is unique and amazing. I +mean the covered area at the New York end of Brooklyn Bridge where the +transpontine electric cars, in an incessant stream, swoop down the +curves of the bridge and sweep round on their return journey. The scene +at night is indescribable. The air seems supersaturated with +electricity, flashing and crackling on every hand. One has a sense of +having strayed unwittingly into the midst of a miniature planetary +system in full swing, with the boom of the trolleys, in their mazy +courses, to represent the music of the spheres. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote D: I find the same idea (a sufficiently obvious one) finely +expressed by Mr. Richard Hovey in his book of poems entitled _Along the +Trail_: + + Look, how the overhead train at the Morningside curve + Loops like a sea-born dragon its sinuous flight. + Loops in the night in and out, high up in the air, + Like a serpent of stars with the coil and undulant reach of waves.] + + + + +LETTER V + +Character and Culture--American Universities--Is the American "Electric" +or Phlegmatic?--Alleged Laxity of the Family Tie--Postscript; the +University System. + + +NEW YORK. + +It is four weeks to-day since I landed in New York, and, save for forty +hours in Philadelphia and four hours in Brooklyn, I have spent all that +time in Manhattan Island. Yet, to my shame be it spoken, I am not +prepared with any generalisation as to the American character. It has +been my good fortune to see a great deal of literary and artistic New +York, and, comparing it with literary and artistic London, I am inclined +to say "Pompey and Cęsar berry much alike--specially Pompey!" The New +Yorker is far more cosmopolitan than the Londoner; of that there is no +doubt. He knows all that we know about current English literature. He +knows all that we do _not_ know about current American literature. He is +much more interested in and influenced by French literature and art +than the average educated Englishman--so much so that the leading French +critics, such as M. Brunetičre and M. Rod, lecture here to crowded and +appreciative audiences. Moreover an excellent German theatre permanently +established in the city keeps the literary world well abreast of +cosmopolitanism of the educated New Yorker the dramatic movement in +Germany. But the merely means that he has everything in common with the +educated Londoner--and a little over. His traditions are ours, his +standards are ours, his ideals are ours. He is busied with the same +problems of ethics, of ęsthetics, of style, even of grammar. I had not +been three days in New York when I found myself plunged in a hot +discussion of the "split infinitive," in which I was ranged with two +Americans against a recreant Briton who defended the collocation. "It is +a mistake to regard it is an Americanism," said one of the Americans. +"It is as old as the English language, or at least as old as Wickliff. +But it is unnecessary, and the best modern practice discountenances it." +I felt like falling on the neck of an ally of half an hour's standing, +and swearing eternal friendship. What matters Alaska, or Venezuela, or +Nicaragua, "or all the stones of stumbling in the world," so long as we +have a common interest in (and some of us a common distaste for) the +split infinitive? To put the matter briefly, while the outlook of the +New Yorker is wider than ours, his standpoint is the same. We gather +from a well-known anecdote that some, at least, of the cultivated +Americans of Thackeray's time were inclined to "think of Tupper." To-day +they do not "think of Tupper" any more than we do--and by Tupper I mean, +of course, not the veritable Martin Farquhar, but the Tuppers of the +passing hour. In America as in England, no doubt, there is a huge +half-educated public, ravenous for doughnuts of romance served up with +syrup of sentiment. The enthusiasms of the American shopgirl, I take it, +are very much the same as those of her English sister. But the line of +demarkation between the educated and the half-educated is just as clear +in New York as in London. For the cultivated American of to-day, the +Boomster booms and the Sibyl sibyllates in vain. I find no +justification, in this city at any rate, for the old saying which +described America as the most common-schooled and least educated country +in the world. If we must draw distinctions, I should say that the effect +of the American system of university education was to raise the level +of general culture, while lowering the standard of special scholarship. +I believe that the general American tendency is to insist less than we +do on sheer mental discipline for its own sake, whether in classics or +mathematics, to allow the student a wider latitude of choice, and to +enable him to specialise at an earlier point in his curriculum upon the +studies he most affects, or which are most likely to be directly useful +to him in practical life. Thus the American universities, probably, do +not turn out many men who can "read Plato with their feet on the hob," +but many who can, and do, read and understand him as Colonel Newcome +read Cęsar--"with a translation, sir, with a translation." The width of +outlook which I have noted as characteristic of literary New York is +deliberately aimed at in the university system, and most successfully +attained. The average young man of parts turned out by an American +university has a many-sided interest in, and comprehension of, European +literature and the intellectual movement of the world, which may go far +to compensate for his possible or even probable inexpertness in Greek +aorists and Latin elegiacs. + +The academic and literary New Yorker, I am well aware, is not "the +American." But who is "the American?" I turn to Mr. G.W. Steevens, and +find that "the American is a highly electric Anglo-Saxon. His +temperament is of quicksilver. There is as much difference in vivacity +and emotion between him and an Englishman as there is between an +Englishman and an Italian." Well, Mr. Steevens is a keener observer than +I; when he wrote this, he had been two months in America to my one; and +he had travelled far and wide over the continent. I am not rash enough, +then, to contradict him; but I must own that I have not met this +"American," or anything like him, in the streets, clubs, theatres, +restaurants, or public conveyances of New York. On the contrary, as I +take my walks abroad between Union Square and Central Park, or hang on +to the straps of an Elevated train or cable car, I am all the time +occupied in trying--and failing--to find marked differences of +appearance and manners between the people I see here and the people I +should expect to see under similar circumstances in London. Differences +of dress and feature there are, of course--but how trifling! Difference +of manners there is none, unless it lie in the general good-nature and +unobtrusive politeness of the American crowd, upon which I have already +remarked. We all know that there is a distinctively American physical +type, recognisable especially in the sex which aims at self-development, +instead of self-suppression, in its attire. When one meets her in +Bloomsbury (where she abounds in the tourist season) one readily +distinguishes the American lady; but here specific distinctions are +obsorbed in generic identity, and the only difference between American +and English ladies of which I am habitually conscious lies in the added +touch of Parisian elegance which one notes in the costumes on Fifth +Avenue. The average of beauty is certainly very high in New York. I will +not say higher than in London, for there too it is remarkable; but this +I will say, that night after night I have looked round the audiences in +New York theatres, and found a clear majority of notably good-looking +women. There are few European cities where one could hope to make the +same observation. It is especially to be noted, I think, that the +American lady has the art of growing old with comely dignity. She loses +her complexion, indeed, but only to put on a new beauty in the contrast +between her olive skin and her silvering or silver hair. This contrast +may almost be called the characteristic feature of the specially +American type, which is much more clearly discernible in middle-aged and +old than in young women. + +As for the men, what strikes one in New York is the total absence of the +traditional "Yankee" type. It must have a foundation in fact, since the +Americans themselves have accepted it in political caricature. No doubt +I shall find it in its original habitat--New England. It has certainly +not penetrated into New York. On close examination, the average +man-in-the-street is distinguishable from his fellow in London by +certain trifling differences in "the cut of his jib"--his fashion in +hats, in moustaches, in neckties. But the intense electricity that Mr. +Steevens discovers in him has totally eluded my observation. The fault +may be mine, but assuredly I have failed to "faire jaillir l'étincelle." +I have looked in vain for any symptom of the "temperament of +quicksilver." Mr. Steevens, it is true, made his observations during the +last Presidential election. Perhaps the quicksilver is generated in the +American citizen by political excitement, and when that is over "runs +out at the heels of his boots." + +But, surely, it is a monstrous exaggeration to state in general terms +that the difference in "vivacity and emotion" between the average +American and the average Englishman is as great as the difference +between an Englishman and an Italian. By what inconceivable error, does +it happen, then, that the American of fiction and drama--English, +Continental, and American to boot--is always represented as outdoing +John Bull himself in Anglo-Saxon phlegm? In the courts of ethnology, I +shall be told, "what the caricaturist says is not evidence;" but no +caricature could ever have gained such world-wide acceptance without a +substratum of truth to support it. The probabilities of the case are +greatly against the development of any special "vivacity" of +temperament, for though there has no doubt been a large Keltic admixture +in the Anglo-Saxon stock, there has been a large Teutonic infusion +(German and Scandinavian) to counterbalance it. Simply as a matter of +observation, the differences between English and Italian manners hit you +in the eye, while the differences between American and English manners +are really microscopic; and manners, I take it, are the outward and +visible signs of temperament. A Scotchman by birth, a Londoner by habit, +I walk the streets of New York undetected, to the best of my belief, +until I begin to speak; in Rome, on the contrary, every one recognises +me at a glance as an "Inglese," unless they mistake me for an +"Americano." To me it is amazing how inessential is the change produced +by the Anglo-Saxon type and temperament by influences of climate and +admixture of foreign blood. There are great foreign cities in New +York--German, Italian, Yiddish, Bohemian, Hungarian, Chinese--but the +New York of the New Yorker is scarcely, to the Englishman, a foreign +city. + +The other day I heard an Englishman, who has lived for twenty-five years +in America, maintaining very emphatically that the chief difference +between England and America lay in the greater laxity of the family bond +on this side of the Atlantic. He declared that, in the main, "home" +meant less to the American than to the Englishman, and especially that +the American boy between thirteen and twenty was habitually insurgent +against home influences. It would be ludicrous, of course, to set up the +observations of a month against the experience of a quarter of a +century; yet I cannot but feel that either I have been miraculously +fortunate in the glimpses I have obtained of American home life, or else +there is something amiss with my friend's generalisation. Perhaps he +brought away with him from England in the early seventies a conception +of the "patria potestas" which he would now find out of date there as +well as here. No doubt the migratory habit is stronger in America than +in England, and family life is not apt to flourish in hotels or +boarding-houses. The Saratoga trunk is not the best cornerstone for the +home: so much we may take for granted. But the American families who are +content to go through life without a threshold and hearthstone of their +own must, after all, be in a vanishing minority. They very naturally cut +a larger figure in fiction than in fact. It has been my privilege to see +something of the daily life of a good many families living under their +own roof-tree, and in every case without exception I have been struck +with the beauty and intimacy of the relation between parents and +children. When my friend laid down his theory of the intractable +American boy, I could not but think of a youth of twenty whom I had seen +only two days before, whose manner towards his father struck me as an +ideal blending of affectionate comradeship with old-fashioned +respect.[E] True, this was in Philadelphia, "the City of Homes," and +even there it may have been an exceptional case. I am not so illogical +as to pit a single observation against (presumably) a wide induction; I +merely offer for what it is worth one item of evidence. + +Again, it has been my good fortune here in New York to spend an evening +in a household which suggested a chapter of Dickens in his tenderest and +most idyllic mood. It was the home of an actor and actress. Two +daughters, of about eighteen and twenty, respectively, are on the stage, +acting in their father's company; but the master of the house is a +bright little boy of seven or eight, known as "the Commodore." As it +happened, the mother of the family was away for the day; yet in the +hundred affectionate references made to her by the father and daughters, +not to me, but to each other, I read her character and influence more +clearly, perhaps, than if she had been present in the flesh. A more +simple, natural, unaffectedly beautiful "interior" no novelist could +conceive. If the family tie is seriously relaxed in America, it seems an +odd coincidence that I should in a single month have chanced upon two +households where it is seen in notable perfection, to say nothing of +many others in which it is at least as binding as in the average English +home. + + +POSTSCRIPT.--The American university system is a very large subject, to +which none but a specialist could do justice, and that in a volume, not +a postscript. Nevertheless I should like slightly to supplement the +above allusion to it. In the first place, let me quote from the +_Spectator_ (February 12, 1898) the following passage:-- + + "Some of the American Universities, in our judgment, come nearer to + the ideal of a true University than any of the other types. + Beginning on the old English collegiate system, they have broadened + out into vast and splendidly endowed institutions of universal + learning, have assimilated some German features, and have combined + successfully college routine and discipline with mature and + advanced work. Harvard and Princeton were originally English + colleges; now, without entirely abandoning the college system, + they are great semi-German seats of learning. Johns Hopkins at + Baltimore is purely of the German type, with no residence and only + a few plain lecture rooms, library, and museums. Columbia, + originally an old English college (its name was King's, changed to + Columbia at the Revolution), is now perhaps the first University in + America, magnificently endowed, with stately buildings, and with a + school of political and legal science second only to that of Paris. + Cornell, intended by its generous founder to be a sort of cheap + glorified technical institute, has grown into a great seat of + culture. The quadrangles and lawns of Harvard, Yale, and Princeton + almost recall Oxford and Cambridge; their lecture-rooms, + laboratories, and post-graduate studies hint of Germany, where + nearly all American teachers of the present generation have been + educated." + +Some authorities, however, deplore the Germanising of American +education. A Professor of Greek, himself trained in Germany, and +recognised as one of the foremost of American scholars, confessed to me +his deep dissatisfaction with the results achieved in his own teaching. +His students did good work on the scientific and philological side, but +their relation to Greek literature as literature was not at all what he +could desire. This bears out the remark which I heard another authority +make, to the effect that American scholarship was entirely absorbed in +the counting of accents, and the like mechanical details; while it seems +to run counter to the above suggestion that the university system tends +to raise the level of culture while lowering the standard of erudition. +At the same time there can be no doubt that the immense width of the +field covered by university teaching in America must, in some measure, +make for "superficial omniscience" rather than for concentration and +research. The truth probably is that the system cuts both ways. The +average student seeks and finds general culture in his university +course, while the born specialist is enabled to go straight to the study +he most affects and concentrate upon it. + +To exemplify the latitude of choice offered to the American student, let +me give a list of the "course" in English and Literature at Columbia +University, New York, extracted from the Calendar for 1898-99: + + RHETORIC AND ENGLISH COMPOSITION + + COURSES + + 1. English Composition. Lectures, daily themes, and fortnightly + essays. Professor G.R. CARPENTER. Three hours[F] first half-year. + + 2. English Composition. Essays, lectures, and discussions in regard + to style. Professor G.R. CARPENTER. Three hours, second half-year. + + 3. English Composition, Advanced Course. Essays, lectures and + consultations. Dr. ODELL. Two hours. + + 4. Elocution. Lectures and Exercises. Mr. PUTNAM. Two hours. + + [5. The Art of English Versification. Professor BRANDER MATTHEWS. + _Not given in 1898-9_.] + + 6. Argumentative Composition. Lectures, briefs, essays, and oral + discussions. Mr. BRODT. Three hours. + + 7. Seminar. The topics discussed in 1898-9 will be: Canons of + rhetorical propriety (first half-year); the teaching of formal + rhetoric in the secondary school (second half-year). Professor + G.R. CARPENTER. + + + ENGLISH AND LITERATURE + + COURSES + + 1 and 2. Anglo-Saxon Language and Historical English Grammar. Mr. + SEWARD. Two hours. + + 3. Anglo-Saxon Literature: Poetry and Prose. Professor JACKSON. Two + hours. + + 4. Chaucer's Language, Versification, and Method of Narrative + Poetry. Professor JACKSON. Two hours. + + [5. English Language and Literature of the Eleventh, Twelfth, and + Thirteenth Centuries. Professor PRICE. _Not given in 1898-9._] + + [6. English Language and Literature of the Fourteenth Century, + exclusive of Chaucer, and of the Fifteenth Century; Reading of + authors, with investigation of special questions and writing of + essays. Professor Price. _Not given in 1898-9._] + + 7. English Language and Literature of the Sixteenth Century; + Reading of authors, with investigation of special questions and + writing of essays. Professor Jackson. Two hours. + + Courses 5, 6, and 7 are designed for the careful study of the + language and literature of Early and Middle English periods: Course + 6 was given in 1897-8. + + [8. Anglo-Saxon Prose and Historical English Syntax. Investigation + of special questions and writing of essays. Professor Price. _Not + given in 1898-9. To be given in 1899-1900._] + + [10. English Verse-Forms: Study of their historical development. + Professor Price. _Not given in 1898-9._] + + 11. History of English Literature from 1789 to the death of + Tennyson: Lectures. Professor Woodberry. Three hours. + + 12. History of English Literature from 1660 to 1789: Lectures. Mr. + Kroeber. Three hours. + + [13. History of English Literature from the birth of Shakespeare to + 1660, with special attention to the origin of the drama in England + and to the poems of Spenser and Milton. Professor Woodberry. _Not + given in 1898-9._] + + Courses 12 and 13 are given in alternate years. + + [14. Pope: Language, Versification, and Poetical Method. Professor + Price. _Not given in 1898-9._] + + 15. Shakespeare: Language, Versification, and Method of Dramatic + Poetry. Text: Cambridge Text of Shakespeare. Professor JACKSON. Two + hours. + + 16. American Literature. Professor BRANDER MATTHEWS. Two hours. + + [17. The Poetry, Lyrical, Narrative, and Dramatic, of Tennyson, + Browning, and Arnold. Professor PRICE. _Not given in 1898-9._] + + + LITERATURE. + + COURSES. + + 1. The History of Modern Fiction. Professor BRANDER MATTHEWS. Two + hours. + + 2. The Theory, History, and Practice of Criticism, with special + attention to Aristotle, Boileau, Lessing, and English and later + French writers, and a study of the great works of imagination. + Professor WOODBERRY. Three hours. + + [3. Epochs of the Drama. Professor BRANDER MATTHEWS. _Not given in + 1898-9._] + + 4. Dramatists of the Nineteenth Century. Professor BRANDER + MATTHEWS. Two hours. + + [5. Moličre and Modern Comedy. Professor BRANDER MATTHEWS. _Not + given in 1898-9._] + + [6. The Evolution of the Essay. Professor BRANDER MATTHEWS. _Not + given in 1898-9._] + + 7. Studies in Literature, mainly Critical: Selected Works, in Prose + and Verse, illustrating the Character and Development of Natural + Literature. Lectures. Professor WOODBERRY. Three hours. + + 8. Studies in Literature, mainly Historical: Narrative Poetry of + the Middle Ages. Lectures and Conferences. Mr. TAYLOR. Two hours. + + [9. The Lyrical Poetry of the Middle Ages. Professor G.R. + CARPENTER. _Not given in 1898-9._] + + 10. Hellenism: Its Origin, Development, and Diffusion with some + account of the Civilisations that preceded it. Lectures and + Conferences. Mr. TAYLOR Three hours. + + 11. Literary Phases of the Transition from Paganism to + Christianity, with illustrations from the other Arts of Expression. + Lectures and Conferences. Mr. TAYLOR. One hour. + + Seminar in Literature. Professor WOODBERRY. Seminar in the History + of the Drama. Professor BRANDER MATTHEWS. + +A "seminar" is an institution borrowed from Germany. The professor and a +small number of students (six or eight at the outside) sit together +round a table, with their books at hand, and pass an hour in +co-operative study and discussion. In going through the noble library of +Columbia University, I came upon an alcove devoted to Scandinavian +literature, with a table on which lay some Danish books. The gentleman +who was guiding me round happened to be an instructor in the +Scandinavian languages. He pointed to the books and said, "I have just +been having a seminar here, in Danish literature." Seeing on the shelves +an edition of Holberg, I asked him if he had ever considered the +question why Holberg's comedies, so delightful in the original, +appeared to be totally untranslatable into English. "One of my +students," he said, "put the same question to me only to-day." One could +scarcely desire a better example of the all-embracing range of the +studies which an American University provides for and encourages. I have +heard it said, with a sneer, that "You can take an honours degree in +Marie Corelli." If you can graduate with honours in Holberg, your time, +in so far, has certainly not been misemployed. + +Whatever the drawbacks of the German influence which is so marked in +America, I cannot doubt that in one thing, at any rate, the Americans +are far ahead of us--in the careful study they devote to the science of +education. No fewer than twenty courses of lectures on the theory and +practice of education were given in Columbia College during 1898-99. +Teaching, I take it, is an art founded upon, and intimately associated +with, the science of psychology. Why should we be content with +antiquated and rule-of-thumb methods, instead of going to the root of +the thing, studying its principles, and learning to apply them to the +best advantage? + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote E: "Affectionate comradeship" rather than "old-fashioned +respect" is exemplified in the following anecdote of young America. A +Professor of Pedagogy in a Western university brings up his children on +the most advanced principles. Among other things, they are encouraged to +sink the antiquated terms "father" and "mother," and call their parents +by their Christian names. On one occasion, the children, playing in the +bathroom, turned on the water and omitted to turn it off again. +Observing it percolating through the ceiling of his study, their father +rushed upstairs to see what was the matter, flung open the bathroom +door, and was greeted by the prime mover in the mischief, a boy of six, +with the remark, "Don't say a word, John--bring the mop!"] + +[Footnote F: That is, three hours a week; so, too, in all subsequent +instances.] + + + + +LETTER VI + +Washington in April--A Metropolis in the Making--The White House, the +Capitol, and the Library of Congress--The Symbolism of Washington. + + +WASHINGTON. + +To profess oneself disappointed with Washington in this first week of +April, 1899, would be like complaining of the gauntness of a rosebush in +December. What would you have? It is not the season, either politically +or atmospherically. Congress is gone, and spring has not come. In the +city of leafy avenues there is not a leaf to be seen, and, except the +irrepressible crocus, not a flower. A fortnight hence, as I am assured, +the capital of the Great Republic will have put on a regal robe of +magnolia and other blossoms, that will "knock spots out of" Solomon in +all his glory. In the meantime, the trees line the avenues in skeleton +rows, like a pyrotechnic set-piece before it is ignited. It is useless +to pretend, then, that I have seen Washington. The trumpet of March has +blown, the pennon of May is not yet unfurled; and even the cloudless +sunshine of the past two days has only reduplicated the skeleton trees +in skeleton shadows. Washington is not responsible for the tardiness of +the spring. It would be unjust to take umbrage at the city because one +finds none in its avenues. + +Yet I cannot but feel that I have, so to speak, found Washington out. I +have chanced upon her without her make-up, and seen the real face of the +city divested of its wig of leafage and rouge of blossoms. Here, for the +first time, at any rate, I am impressed by that sense of rawness and +incompleteness which is said to be characteristic of America. Washington +will one day be a magnificent city, of that there is no doubt; but for +the present it is distinctly unfinished. The very breadth of its +avenues, contrasted with the comparative lowness of the buildings which +line them, gives it the air rather of a magnified and glorified frontier +township than of a great capital on the European scale. Here, for the +first time, I am really conscious of the newness of things. The eastern +cities--Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore--are, in effect, not a +whit newer than most English towns. Oxford and Cambridge, no doubt, and +a few cathedral cities, give one a habitual consciousness of dwelling +among the relics of the past. They are our Nuremburg or Prague, Siena or +Perugia. In most English cities, on the other hand, as in London itself, +one has no habitual sense of the antiquity of one's surroundings. Apart +from a few tourist-haunted monuments, which the resident passes with +scarcely a glance, the general run of buildings and streets, if not +palpably modern, can at most lay claim to a respectable, or +disreputable, middle-age. Now, an eminently respectable middle-age is +precisely the characteristic of the central regions of Philadelphia and +Baltimore; while in New York both reputable and disreputable middle-age +are amply represented. One may almost say that these Eastern cities are +fundamentally old-fashioned, and that all their modern mechanism of +electric cars, telephone wires, and what not, is but a thin and +transparent outer network, through which the older order of things is +everywhere peering. And from this very contrast between the old and the +new, this sense of visible time-strata in the structure of a city, there +results a very real effect of age. + +Here, in Washington, one instinctively craves for something of that +uniformity which one instinctively deprecates as an ideal for New York. +The buildings on the main streets are too haphazard, like the books on +an ill-arranged shelf: folios, quartos, and duodecimos huddled pell-mell +together. But when some approach to a definite style is achieved, how +noble will be the radiating vistas of this spacious city! The plan of +the avenues and streets, as has been aptly said, suggests a cartwheel +superimposed upon a gridiron--an arrangement, by the way, which may be +studied on a small scale in Carlsruhe. The result is dire bewilderment +to the traveller; my bump of locality, usually not ill-developed, seems +to shrink into a positive indentation before the problems presented in +such formulas as "K Street, corner of 13th Street, N.E." But from the +Capitol, whence most of the avenues spread fanwise, the views they offer +are superb; and Pennsylvania Avenue, leading to the Government offices +and the White House, will one day, undoubtedly, be one of the great +streets of the world. For the present its beauty is not heightened by +the new Postal Department, a massive but somewhat forbidding structure +in grey granite, which dominates and frowns upon the whole street. From +certain points of view, it seems almost to dwarf the Washington Obelisk, +the loftiest stone structure in the world. It is a pity that this fine +monument should be placed in such a low situation, on the very shore of +the Potomac. From the central parts of the city it loses much of its +effect, but seen from the distance it stands forth impressively. + +People are discontented, it would seem, with the White House, and talk +of replacing it with a larger and showier edifice. The latter change, at +any rate, would be a change for the worse. There could not be a more +appropriate and dignified residence for the Chief Magistrate of a +republic. On the other hand, one cannot but foresee a gradual enrichment +and ennoblement of the interior of the Capitol. Externally it is +magnificent, especially now that the side towards the city has been +terraced and balustraded; but internally its decorations are quite +unworthy of modern America. The floors, the doors, the cornices and +mouldings are cheap in material, dingily garish in colour. Especially +painful are the crude blue-and-yellow mosaic tiles of the corridors. The +mural decorations belong to several artistic periods, all equally +debased. On the whole, it is inconceivable that Congress should for long +content itself with an abode which, without being venerable, is simply +out of date. The main architectural proportions of the interior are +dignified enough. What is wanted is merely the transmutation of stucco +into marble, painted pine into oak, and pseudo-Italian arabesques into +American frescoes and mosaics. Why should Congress itself be more meanly +housed than its Library? + +This new Library of Congress is certainly the crown and glory of the +Washington of to-day. It is an edifice and an institution of which any +nation might justly boast. It is simple in design, rich in material, +elaborate, and for the most part beautiful, in decoration. The general +effect of the entrance hall and galleries is at first garish, and some +details of the decoration will scarcely bear looking into. Yet the +building is, on the whole, in fresco, mosaic, and sculpture, a veritable +treasure-house of contemporary American art. Even in this clear Southern +climate, the effect of gaudiness will in time pass off. Fifty years +hence, perhaps, when there are no living susceptibilities to be hurt, +some of the less successful panels and medallions may be "hatched over +again, and hatched different." But many of the decorations, I am +convinced, will prove possessions for ever to the American people. As +for the Rotunda Reading Room, it is, I think, almost above criticism in +its combination of dignity with splendour. Far be it from me to +belittle that great and liberal institution, the British Museum Reading +Room. It is considerably larger than this one; it is no less imposing in +its severe simplicity; and it offers the serious student a vaster quarry +of books to draw upon, together with wider elbow-room and completer +accommodations. But the Library of Congress is still more liberal, for +it admits all the world without even the formality of applying for a +ticket; and it substitutes for the impressiveness of simplicity the +allurements of splendour. It is impossible to conceive a more brilliant +spectacle than this Rotunda when it is lighted at night by nearly +fifteen-hundred incandescent lamps. Nor is it possible for me to +describe in this place the mechanical marvels of the institution--the +huge underground boiler-house, with its sixteen boilers; the +electrician's room, clean and bright as a new dollar, with its "purring +dynamos" and its immense switch-board; the tunnel through which books +are delivered by electric trolley to the legislators in the Capitol, +within eight minutes of the time they are applied for; and, most +wonderful of all, the endless chain, with its series of baskets, whereby +books are not only brought down to the reading room, but re-delivered, +at the mere touch of a button on whatever "deck" of the nine-storied +"book-stacks" they happen to belong to. So ingenious is this triumph of +mechanism that the baskets seem positively to go through complex +processes of thought and selection. Talking of thought and selection, by +the way, every one connected with the library speaks with enthusiasm of +President McKinley's wise and public-spirited choice of the new chief +librarian. Mr. Herbert Putnam, late of the Boston Public Library, is the +ideal man for the post, and his appointment was made, not only without +suspicion of jobbery, but in the teeth of strong political influence. +Mr. McKinley's action in this matter is considered to be not only right +in itself, but an invaluable precedent. + +Let me not be understood, I beg, to make light of the National Capital. +I merely say that to the outward eye it is not yet the city it is +manifestly destined to become. Its splendid potentialities do some wrong +to its eminently spacious and seemly actuality. But to the mind's eye, +to the ideal sense, it has the imperishable beauty of absolute fitness. +Omniscient Baedeker informs us that when it was founded there was some +thought of calling it "Federal City." How much finer, in its heroic and +yet human associations, is the name it bears! Since Alfred the Great, +the Anglo-Saxon race has produced no loftier or purer personality than +George Washington, and his country could not blazon on her shield a more +inspiring name. Carlyle's treatment of Washington is, perhaps, the most +unpardonable of his many similar offences. One almost wonders at the +forgiving spirit in which the decorators of the Library of Congress have +inscribed upon the walls of the new building certain maxims from the +splenetic Sage. And if the city is named with exquisite fitness, so are +its radiating avenues. Each of them takes its name from one of the +States of the Union--names which, as Stevenson long ago pointed out, +form an unrivalled array of "sweet and sonorous vocables." In its whole +conception, Washington is an ideal capital for the United States--not +least typical, perhaps, in its factitiousness, since this Republic is +not so much a product of natural development as a deliberate creation of +will and intelligence. It represents the struggle of an Idea against the +crude forces of nature and human nature. The Capitol, with its clear and +logical design, is as aptly symbolic of its history and function as are +our Houses of Parliament, with their bewildering but grandiose +agglomeration of shafts and turrets, spires and pinnacles; and the two +buildings should rank side by side in the esteem of the English-speaking +peoples, as the twin foci of our civilisation. + + + + +LETTER VII + +American Hospitality--Instances--Conversation and +Story-Telling--Over-Profusion in Hospitality--Expensiveness of Life in +America--The American Barber--Postscript: An Anglo-American Club. + + +BOSTON. + +Much has been said of American hospitality; too much cannot possibly be +said. Here am I in Boston, the guest of one of the foremost clubs of the +city. I sit, as I write, at my bedroom window, with a view over the +whole of Boston Common, and the beautiful spires of the Back-Bay region +beyond. I step out on my balcony, and the gilded dome of the State +House--"the Hub of the Universe"--is but a stone's-throw off. Through +the leafless branches of the trees I can see the back of St. Gaudens' +beautiful Shaw Monument, and beyond it the graceful dip of upper +Beacon-street. My room is as spacious and luxurious as heart can desire, +lighted by half a dozen electric lamps, and with a private bath-room +attached, which is itself nearly as large as the bedroom assigned me in +the "swagger" hotel of New York--an establishment, by the way, of which +it has been wittily said that its purpose is "to provide exclusiveness +for the masses." All the comforts of the club are at my command; the +rooms are delightful, the food and service excellent. In short, I could +not be more conveniently or agreeably situated. Of course I pay the club +charges for my room and meals, but it is mere hospitality to allow me to +do so. And how do I come to be established in these quarters? The little +story is absolutely commonplace, but all the more typical. + +In Washington I made the acquaintance of a gentleman who invited me to +lunch at the leading diplomatic and social club. I had no claim upon him +of any sort, beyond the most casual introduction. He regaled me with +little-neck clams, terrapin, and all the delicacies of the season, and +invited to meet me half a dozen of the most interesting men in the city, +all of them strangers to me until that moment. I found myself seated +next an exceedingly amiable man, whose name I had not caught when we +were introduced. One of the first things he asked me was--not "What did +I think of America?" no one ever asked me that--but "Where was I going +next?" To Boston. + +"Where was I going to put up?" I thought of going to the T---- Hotel. +"Much better go to the U---- Club," he replied; "I've no doubt they will +be able to give you a room. As soon as lunch is over, I shall telegraph +to the club and make sure that everything is ready for you." I, of +course, thanked him warmly. "But what credentials shall I present?" "You +don't require any--just present your card. I shall make it all right for +you." This was a man whom I had met ten minutes before, whose name I did +not know, and to whom I had been introduced by a man whom I barely knew! +It did not appear that he, on his side, knew or cared about anything I +had said or done in the world. He simply obeyed the national instinct of +courtesy and helpfulness. And he was as good as his word. Arriving in +Boston at a somewhat unearthly hour in the morning, I found my room +allotted me and the club servants ready to receive me with every +attention. I felt like the Prince in the fairy tale, only that I had +done nothing whatever to oblige the good fairy. + +Another example. I had a letter of introduction to the Governor of one +of the States of the Union, probably (what does not always happen) the +most universally respected man in the State, and a member of one of its +oldest and most distinguished families. I left the letter, with my card, +at this gentleman's house, and in the course of a few hours received a +note from his wife, telling me that, owing to a death in the family, +they were not then entertaining at all, but saying that the Governor +would call upon me to offer me any courtesy or assistance in his power. +And so he did. He called, not once, but twice. He presented me with a +card for one of the leading clubs of the city, and if my time had +allowed me to avail myself of his courtesy, he would have put me in the +way of seeing any or all of the State institutions to the best +advantage. The governorship of an American State, let me add, is no +ornamental sinecure. This was not only a man in high position, but a +very busy man. Is there any other country where a mere letter of +introduction is so generously honoured? If so, it is to me an +undiscovered country. + +These are but two cases out of a hundred. The Americans are said to be +the busiest people in the world (I have my doubts on that point), but +they have always leisure to give a stranger "a good time." Even, be it +noted, during the working hours of the day. My evenings being occupied +with theatre-going, I could not accept invitations to dinner; wherefore +those who were hospitably inclined towards me had to invite me to lunch; +and a luncheon party in America invariably absorbs the best part of an +afternoon. A score of these delightful gatherings will always remain in +my memory. The "bright" American is, to my thinking, the best talker in +the world--certainly the best talker in the English language. A light +and facile humour, a power of giving a pleasant little sparkle even to +sufficiently commonplace sayings, is in this country the rule and not +the exception. I must have met at these luncheon parties, and actually +conversed with, at least a hundred different men of all ages and +occupations, and I do not remember among them a single dull, pompous, +morose, or pedantic person. The parties did not usually exceed six or +eight in number, so that there was no necessity for breaking up into +groups. The shuttlecock of conversation was lightly bandied to and fro +across the round table. Each took his share and none took more. All +topics--even the, burning question of "expansion"--were touched upon +gaily, humorously, and in perfect good temper. + +It is said that American conversation among men tends to degenerate into +a mere exchange of anecdotes. I can remember only one party which was +in the least degree open to this reproach; and there the anecdotes were +without exception so good, and so admirably told, that I, for one, +should have been sorry to exchange them for even the loftiest discourse +on Shakespeare and the musical glasses. Here, for instance, is an +example of the American gift of picturesque exaggeration. On board one +of the Florida steamboats, which have to be built with exceedingly light +draught to get over the frequent shallows of the rivers, an Englishman +accosted the captain with the remark, "I understand, captain, that you +think nothing of steaming across a meadow where there's been a heavy +fall of dew." "Well, I don't know about that," replied the captain, "but +it's true we have sometimes to send a man ahead with a watering-pot!" Or +take, again, the story of the Southern colonel who was conducted to the +theatre to see Salvini's Othello. He witnessed the performance gravely, +and remarked at the close, "That was a mighty good show, and I don't see +but the coon did as well as any of 'em." A third anecdote that charmed +me on this occasion was that of the man who, being invited to take a +drink, replied, "No, no, I solemnly promised my dear dead mother never +to touch a drop; besides, boys, it's too early in the morning; besides, +I've just had one!" + +Furthermore, as I recall the party in question, I feel that I am wrong +in implying that the conversation was mainly composed of anecdotes. It +was mainly composed of narratives; but that is a different matter. There +is a clear distinction between the mere story-teller and the narrator. +Two or three of the party were brilliant narrators, and delighted us +with accounts of personal experiences, quaint character-sketches, novels +in a nutshell. One of the guests was, without exception, the most +ready-witted man I ever met. His inexhaustible gift of lightning +repartee I saw illustrated on another occasion, when he presided at the +midnight "gambol" of a Bohemian club, at which it needed the utmost tact +and presence of mind to "ride the whirlwind and direct the storm." At +the luncheon party, he related several episodes from his chequered +journalistic career in a style so easy and yet so graphic that one felt, +if they could have been taken down in shorthand, they would have been +literature ready-made. It is a clear injustice to confound such talk as +this with a mere bandying of Joe-Millers. + +The one drawback to American hospitality is that it is apt to be too +profuse. I have more than once had to offer a mild protest against being +entertained by a hard-working brother journalist on a scale that would +have befitted a millionaire. The possibility of returning the compliment +in kind affords the canny Scot but poor consolation. A dinner three +times more lavish and expensive than you want is not sweetened by the +thought that you may, in turn, give your host a dinner three times more +expensive and lavish than _he_ wants. Both parties, on this system, +suffer in digestion and in pocket, while only Delmonico is the gainer. +It seems to me, on the whole, that in this country the millionaire is +too commonly allowed to fix the standard of expenditure. Society would +not be less, but more, agreeable if, instead of always emulating the +splendours of Lucullus, people now and then studied the art of Horatian +frugality. And I note that in club life, if the plutocrat sets the +standard of expenditure, the aristocrat looks to the training of the +servants. Their obsequiousness is almost painful. There is not the +slightest trace of democratic equality in their dress, their manners, or +their speech. + +Take it all and all, America is a trying place of sojourn for the +aforesaid canny Scot--the man who without being stingy (oh, dear, no!) +has "all his generous impulses under perfect control." The sixpences do +not "bang" in this country: they crepitate, they crackle, as though shot +from a Maxim quick-firer. For instance, the lowest electric-trolley fare +is twopence-halfpenny. It is true that for five cents you can, if you +wish it, ride fifteen or twenty miles; but that advantage becomes +inappreciable when you don't want to ride more than half a mile. Take, +again, the harmless, necessary operation of shaving. In a good English +barber's shop it is a brief and not unpleasant process; in an American +"tonsorial parlour" it is a lingering and costly torture. One of the +many reasons which lead me to regard the Americans as a leisurely people +rather than a nation of "hustlers" is the patience with which they +submit to the long-drawn tyranny of the barber. In England, one grudges +five minutes for a shave, and one pays from fourpence to sixpence; in +America one can hardly escape in twenty-five minutes, and one pays (with +the executioner's tip)[G] from a shilling to eighteenpence. The charge +would be by no means excessive if one wanted or enjoyed all the endless +processes to which one is subjected; but for my part I would willingly +pay double to escape them. The essential part of the business, the +actual shaving, is, as a rule, badly performed, with a heavy hand, and a +good deal of needless pawing-about of the patient's head. But when the +shave is over the horrors are only beginning. First, your whole face is +cooked for several minutes in relays of towels steeped in boiling water. +Then a long series of essences is rubbed into it, generally with the +torturer's naked hand. The sequence of these essences varies in +different "parlours," but one especially loathsome hell-brew, known as +"witchhazel" is everywhere inevitable. Then your wounds have to be +elaborately doctored with stinging chemicals; your hair, which has been +hopelessly touzled in the pawing process, has to be drenched in some +sickly-smelling oil and brushed; your moustache has to be lubricated +and combed; and at last you escape from the tormentor's clutches, +irritated, enervated, hopelessly late for an important appointment, and +so reeking with unholy odours that you feel as though all great +Neptune's ocean would scarcely wash you clean again. Only once or twice +have I submitted, out of curiosity, to the whole interminable process. I +now cut it short, not without difficulty, before the "witchhazel" stage +is reached, and am regarded with blank astonishment and disapproval by +the tonsorial professor, who feels his art and mystery insulted in his +person, and is scarcely mollified by a ten-cent tip. Americans, on the +other hand, go through all these processes, and more, with stolid and +long-suffering patience. Yet this nation is credited with having +invented the maxim "Time is money," and is supposed to act up to it with +feverish consistency! + + +POSTSCRIPT.--As I have said a good deal about clubs in this letter, let +me add to it a word as to the influence of club life in keeping America +in touch with England. At all the leading clubs one or two English daily +papers and all the more important weekly papers are taken as a matter of +course; so that the American club-man has not the slightest difficulty +in keeping abreast of the social, political, and literary life of +England. As a matter of fact, the educated American's knowledge of +England every day puts to shame the Englishman's ignorance of America. +Reciprocity in this matter would be greatly to the advantage of both +countries. I am much mistaken if there is a single club in London where +American periodicals are so well represented on the reading-room table +as are English periodicals in every club in New York. Yet there is +assuredly no dearth of interesting weekly papers in America, some +connected with daily papers, others independent. It may be said that +they are not taken at English clubs because they would not be read. If +so, the more's the pity; but I do not think it is so; for this is a case +in which supply would beget demand. At any rate, there must be numbers +of people in London who would be glad to keep fairly in touch with +American life, if they could do so without too much trouble. Why should +there not be an Anglo-American social club, organised with the special +purpose of bringing America home (in a literal sense) to London and +England? Why should not (say) the Century Club of New York be reproduced +in London, with American periodicals as fully represented in its +news-room and reading-room as are English periodicals in an American +club of the first rank? Interest in and sympathy with America would be +the implied condition of membership; and by a judiciously-devised system +of non-resident membership, American visitors to London would be enabled +to read their home newspapers in greater comfort than at the existing +American reading-rooms, and would, moreover, come into easy contact with +sympathetically-minded Englishmen, to their mutual pleasure and profit. +Such a club might, in process of time, become a potent factor in +international relations, and form a new bond of union, of quite +appreciable strength, between the two countries. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote G: I had read or been told that the tip system did not obtain +in America, except in the case of negroes and waiters. A very few days +in New York undeceived me. I went twice to a barber's shop in the +basement of the house in which I lived, paid fifteen cents to be shaved, +and gave the operator nothing; but at my second visit I found myself so +lowered upon by that portly and heavy-moustached citizen that I never +again ventured to place myself under his razor, but went to a more +distant establishment and tipped from the outset. There are, indeed, +certain classes of people--railroad conductors for instance--who do not +expect the tips which in England they consider their due; but, according +to my experience, the safe rule in America is, "when in doubt--tip."] + + + + +LETTER VIII + +Boston--Its Resemblance to Edinburgh--Concord, Walden Pond, and Sleepy +Hollow--Is the "Yankee" Dying Out?--America for the Americans--Detroit +and Buffalo--The "Middle West." + + +CHICAGO. + +The luxury of my quarters in Boston seduced me into a disquisition on +American hospitality which would have come in equally well with +reference to any other city. Were I to search very deeply into my soul +(an exercise much in vogue in Boston), I might perhaps find reasons for +my rambling off. To say that Boston did not interest me would be the +reverse of the truth. It interested me deeply; but it did not excite me +with a sense of novelty or vastness. One can only repeat the obvious +truth that it is like an exceptionally dignified and stately English +town. One instinctively looks around for a cathedral, and finds the +State House in its stead. To the founders of this city, the glory of God +was not a thing to be furthered, or even typified, by any work of men's +hands; but the salvation of men's souls, they thought, could be best +achieved in a well-ordered democratic polity. Their descendants have of +late years taken to decorating their places of worship, and Trinity +Church (by H.H. Richardson), and the new Old South Church, are ambitious +and beautiful pieces of ecclesiastical architecture. But the old Old +South Meeting-House, the ecclesiastical centre of the city, is the flat +and somewhat sour negation of all that is expressed or implied in an +English cathedral. Let me not be understood to disparage the Old South +or the spirit which fashioned it. In my eyes, minster and meeting-house +are equally interesting historic monuments, and to my hereditary +instincts the latter is the more sympathetic. I merely note the fact +that the most conspicuous edifice in Boston, its Duomo, its St. Peter's +or St. Paul's, is dedicated, not to the glory of God, but to the +well-being of man. + +Not physically, of course, but intellectually, Boston has been likened +to Edinburgh. The parallel is fair enough, with this important +reservation, that the theological element in the atmosphere is not +Presbyterian but Unitarian. The Boston of to-day, it must be added, +especially resembles Edinburgh in the fact that its pre-eminence as an +intellectual centre has virtually departed. The _Atlantic Monthly_ +survives, as _Blackwood_, survives, a relic of the great days of old; +but Boston has no Scott Monument to bear visual testimony to her +spiritual achievement. She ought certainly to treat herself to a worthy +Emerson Monument on the Common, whither the boy Emerson used to drive +his mother's cows: not, of course, a Gothic pile like that which +commemorates the genius of Scott, but a statue by the incomparable St. +Gaudens, under a modest classic canopy. + +But if, or when, such a monument is erected, it will absolve no one of +the duty of making a pilgrimage to Concord. Even if it had no historic +or literary associations, this simple, dignified, beautiful New England +village, with its plain frame houses and its stately elm avenues, would +be well worth a visit. Village I call it, but township would be a better +word. Let no one go there with less than half a day to spare, for the +places of interest are widely scattered. My companion and I went first +to Walden Pond, then to the Emerson and Hawthorne houses, then to that +ideal burying-place, Sleepy Hollow, where Emerson and Hawthorne and +Thoreau rest side by side, and finally to the bridge-- + + Where once the embattled farmers stood, + And fired the shot heard round the world. + +Everything here is beautifully appropriate. The commemorative statue of +the "minute-man" with his musket is simple and expressive, and the four +lines of Emerson's hymn graven on the pedestal are the right words +written by the right man, entwining, as it were, the historical and +literary associations of the place. An exquisite appropriateness, too, +presides over the Poets' Corner of Sleepy Hollow. The grave of Emerson +is marked by a rough block of pure white quartz, in which is inserted a +bronze tablet bearing the words:-- + + The passive master lent his hand + To the vast soul that o'er him planned. + +Altogether, among the places of pilgrimage of the English-speaking race, +there is none more satisfactory or more inspiring than Concord, Mass. + +If Boston is no longer a great centre of literary production, it +remains, with its noble public library in its midst, and with Harvard +University on its outskirts, a great centre of culture. I shall always +remember a luncheon party at Harvard, where I was the guest of an +eminent Shakespearean critic, and had for my fellow guests a very +learned Dante scholar (one of the most delightful talkers imaginable), a +famous psychologist, a political economist, and a lecturer on English +literature. The talk fell upon the depopulation of New England, or +rather the substitution of an alien race for (I had almost said) the +indigenous Yankee stock. There was some discussion as to whether the +Yankee was really dying out, or had merely spread throughout the West, +taking with him and disseminating the qualities which had made the +greatness of New England. It was not denied, of course, that westward +emigration has much to do with the matter. The New England farmer, +unable to stand up against the competition of the prairies, has betaken +himself to the prairies so as to compete on the winning side. But one of +the company maintained that this did not account for the whole +phenomenon. "The real key to it," he said, "lies in such a family +history as mine. My grandmother was the youngest of thirteen children; +my mother was the eldest of five; my brother and I are two; and we are +unmarried." + +I am inclined to think that this story of a dwindling stock is typical, +not for New England alone, but for other parts of the Union. It seems as +though the pressure of life in the Eastern States, and perhaps some +subtle influence of climate upon temperament, were rendering the people +of old Teutonic blood--British, Dutch, and German--unwilling to face the +responsibility of large families, and so were giving the country over to +the later and usually inferior immigrant and his progeny. I am not sure +that it might not be well to cultivate a new sense of social duty in +this matter. Is it Utopian to suggest a policy of "America for the +Americans"--some effectual restriction of immigration before it is too +late, so as to leave room for the natural increase of the American +people? This is an "expansion," a "taking up of the white man's burden," +which would command my warmest sympathy. It is to the interest of the +whole world that the America of the future should be peopled by "white +men" in every sense of the word. + +New England, however, cannot be utterly depopulated of its old stocks, +for at every turn you come up against those good old Puritan names which +bespeak a longer ancestry than many an English peer can claim. I find +among the signatures to a petition against the reinstatement of an +elevated railroad in Boston, such names as Adams, Morse, Lowell, +Emerson, Bowditch, Lothrop, Storey, Dabney, Whipple, Ticknor, and Hale. +Of the fifty signatures, only three (or, at the outside five, if we +include two doubtful cases) are of other than English origin. In +contrast to this I may mention another list of names which came under my +notice at the same time--a list of the purchasers at a sale by auction +of seats for a New York first-night. Here twenty-six names out of forty +are obviously of non-English origin, while several of the remaining +fourteen have a distinctly Hebraic ring. + +Though very much smaller than New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia, +Boston is essentially a great city, with a very animated street life, +and nothing in the least provincial about it. But it is not in these +great capitals, not even in this marvellous Chicago where I am now +writing, that one most clearly realises the bewildering potentialities +of the United States. It is precisely in the minor, the provincial +cities, which to us in Europe are no more than names--perhaps not so +much. For instance, what does the average Englishman know of Detroit?[H] + +What State is it in? Is it in the North or the South, the East or the +West? For my part I knew in a general way, having been there before, +that Detroit was situated somewhere between Chicago and Niagara Falls, +but until a few days ago I should have been puzzled to describe its +situation more precisely. Well, I arrive in this obscure, insignificant +place, and find it a city of considerably more than a quarter of a +million inhabitants, beautifully laid out, magnificently paved and +lighted, its broad and noble avenues lined with handsome commercial +houses and roomy if not always beautiful villas, trees shading its +sidewalks, electric cars swimming in an endless stream along its +bustling thoroughfares, its imposing public library swarming with +readers, its theatres crowded, its parks alive with bicyclists, an eager +activity, whether in business, culture, or recreation, manifesting +itself on every hand. Or take, again, Buffalo, somewhat larger than +Detroit, but still by no means a city of the first rank. Everything that +I have said of Detroit applies to it, with the addition that some of +its commercial buildings are not only palatial in their dimensions, but +original and impressive in their architecture. An afternoon stroll along +Woodward-avenue, Detroit, or Main-street, Buffalo, reassures one as to +the future--the physical, at any rate--of the American people. The +prevailing type is, if not definitely Anglo-Saxon, at any rate Teutonic, +and the average of physical development is very high, especially among +the women. It may have some bearing upon what I have been saying above +to note that, in point of stature and beauty, the Bostonian woman, as a +rule, seemed to me to fall far short of her sisters in the other cities +I have visited. I have before my mind's eye many distinguished and +delightful exceptions to this rule; but, postponing gallantry to +sociological candour, I state my general impression for what it is +worth. + +Here, in Chicago, gallantry and candour go hand in hand. A legend of the +envious East represents that a Chicago young man travelling in Louisiana +wrote to his sweetheart: "DEAR MAMIE,--I have shot an alligator. When I +have shot another, I will send you a pair of slippers." The implication +is, to the best of my knowledge and belief, a base and baseless +calumny. New York itself does not present a higher average of female +beauty than Chicago, and that is saying a great deal. But I must not +enlarge on this fascinating topic. A Judgment of Paris is always a +delicate business, and I am in nowise called upon to make the invidious +award. Were I compelled to undertake it, I could only distribute the +apple, and my homage, in equal shares to the goddesses of the East, the +South, and the Middle West. + +When I was in Chicago in '77, it was the metropolis of the West, without +qualification. Now it is merely the frontier city of the Middle West. +From the standpoint of Omaha and Denver, it seems to fill the Eastern +horizon, and shut out the further view. Many stories are told to show +how absolutely and instinctively your true Westerner ignores the Eastern +States and cities. Here is one of the most characteristic. A little girl +came into the smoking car of a train somewhere in Kansas or Nebraska, +and stood beside her father, who was in conversation with another man. +The father put his arm round her and said to his companion, "She's been +a great traveller, this little girl of mine. She's only ten years old, +and she's been all over the United States." + +"You don't say!" replied the other; "all over the United States?" + +"Yes, sir; all over the United States," said the proud father; and then +added, as though the detail was scarcely worth mentioning, "except east +of Chicago." + +Chicago, unfortunately, marks the limit of my wanderings; so I shall +return to England without having seen anything of the United States, +except for a sort of Pisgah-glimpse from the tower of the Auditorium. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote H: My own visit to Detroit illustrated this vagueness of the +average Englishman. I was anxious to see Mr. James A. Herne's famous +play, _Shore Acres_, and learned from Mr. Herne that it would be played +by a travelling company at Buffalo on a certain date. I carefully noted +the place and day, but contrived to mix up Buffalo and Detroit in my +mind, and arrived on the appointed day in Detroit--nearly two hundred +and fifty miles from the appointed place! It was as though, having +arranged to be in Brighton at a certain time, one should go instead to +Scarborough.] + + + + +LETTER IX + +Chicago--Its Splendour and Squalor--Mammoth Buildings--Wind, Dust, and +Smoke--Culture--Chicago's Self-Criticism--Postscript: Social Service in +America. + + +CHICAGO. + +When I was in America twenty-two years ago, Chicago was the city that +interested me least. Coming straight from San Francisco--which, in the +eyes of a youthful student of Bret Harte, seemed the fitting metropolis +of one of the great realms of romance--I saw in Chicago the negation of +all that had charmed me on the Pacific slope. It was a flat and grimy +abode of mere commerce, a rectilinear Glasgow; and to an Edinburgh man, +or rather boy, no comparison could appear more damaging. How different +is the impression produced by the Chicago of to-day! In 1877 the city +was extensive enough, indeed, and handsome to boot, in a commonplace, +cast-iron fashion. It was a chequer-board of Queen-Victoria-streets. +To-day its area is appalling, its architecture grandiose. It is the +young giant among the cities of the earth, and it stands but on the +threshold of its destiny. It embraces in its unimaginable amplitude +every extreme of splendour and squalor. Walking in Dearborn-street or +Adams-street of a cloudy afternoon, you think yourself in a frowning and +fuliginous city of Dis, piled up by superhuman and apparently sinister +powers. Cycling round the boulevards of a sunny morning, you rejoice in +the airy and spacious greenery of the Garden City. Driving along the +Lake Shore to Lincoln Park in the flush of sunset, you wonder that the +dwellers in this street of palaces should trouble their heads about +Naples or Venice, when they have before their very windows the +innumerable laughter, the ever-shifting opalescence, of their +fascinating inland sea. Plunging in the electric cars through the river +subway, and emerging in the West Side, you realise that the slums of +Chicago, if not quite so tightly packed as those of New York or London, +are no whit behind them in the other essentials of civilised barbarism. +Chicago, more than any other city of my acquaintance, suggests that +antique conception of the underworld which placed Elysium and Tartarus +not only on the same plane, but, so to speak, round the corner from each +other. + +As the elephant (or rather the megatherium) to the giraffe, so is the +colossal business block of Chicago to the sky-scraper of New York. There +is a proportion and dignity in the mammoth buildings of Chicago which is +lacking in most of those which form the jagged sky-line of Manhattan +Island. For one reason or another--no doubt some difference in the +system of land tenure is at the root of the matter--the Chicago +architect has usually a larger plot of ground to operate on than his New +York colleague, and can consequently give his building breadth and depth +as well as height. Before the lanky giants of the Eastern metropolis, +one has generally to hold one's ęsthetic judgment in abeyance. They are +not precisely ugly, but still less, as a rule, can they be called +beautiful. They are simply astounding manifestations of human energy and +heaven-storming audacity. They stand outside the pale of ęsthetics, like +the Eiffel Tower or the Forth Bridge. But in Chicago proportion goes +along with mere height, and many of the business houses are, if not +beautiful, at least ęsthetically impressive--for instance, the grim +fortalice of Marshall Field & Company, the Masonic Temple, the Women's +Temperance Temple (a structure with a touch of real beauty), and such +vast cities within the city as the Great Northern Building and the +Monadnock Block. The last-named edifice alone is said to have a daily +population of 6000. A city ordinance now limits the height of buildings +to ten stories; but even that is a respectable allowance. Moreover, it +is found that where giant constructions cluster too close together, they +(literally) stand in each other's light, and the middle stories do not +let. Thus the heaven-storming era is probably over; but there is all the +more reason to feel assured that the business centre of Chicago will ere +long be not only grandiose but architecturally dignified and +satisfactory. A growing thirst for beauty has come upon the city, and +architects are earnestly studying how to assuage it. In magnificence of +internal decoration, Chicago can already challenge the world: for +instance, in the white marble vestibule and corridors of The Rookery, +and the noble hall of the Illinois Trust Bank. + +At the same time, no account of the city scenery of Chicago is complete +without the admission that the gorges and canyons of its central +district are exceedingly draughty, smoky, and dusty. Even in these +radiant spring days, it fully acts up to its reputation as the Windy +City. This peculiarity renders it probably the most convenient place in +the world for the establishment of a Suicide Club on the Stevensonian +model. With your eyes peppered with dust, with your ears full of the +clatter of the Elevated Road, and with the prairie breezes playfully +buffeting you and waltzing with you by turns, as they eddy through the +ravines of Madison, Monroe, or Adams-street, you take your life in your +hand when you attempt the crossing of State-street, with its endless +stream of rattling waggons and clanging trolley-cars. New York does not +for a moment compare with Chicago in the roar and bustle and +bewilderment, of its street life. This remark will probably be resented +in New York, but it expresses the settled conviction of an impartial +pedestrian, who has spent a considerable portion of his life during the +past few weeks in "negotiating" the crossings of both cities. + +On the other hand, I observe no eagerness on the part of New York to +contest the supremacy of Chicago in the matter of smoke. In this +respect, the eastern metropolis is to the western as Mont Blanc to +Vesuvius. The smoke of Chicago has a peculiar and aggressive +individuality, due, I imagine, to the natural clearness of the +atmosphere. It does not seem, like London smoke, to permeate and blend +with the air. It does not overhang the streets in a uniform canopy, but +sweeps across and about them in gusts and swirls, now dropping and now +lifting again its grimy curtain. You will often see the vista of a +gorge-like street so choked with a seeming thundercloud that you feel +sure a storm is just about to burst upon the city, until you look up at +the zenith and find it smiling and serene. Again and again a sudden +swirl of smoke across the street (like that which swept across +Fifth-avenue when the Windsor Hotel burst into flames) has led me to +prick up my ears for a cry of "Fire!" But Chicago is not so easily +alarmed. It is accustomed to having its airs from heaven blurred by +these blasts from hell. I know few spectacles more curious than that +which awaits you when you have shot up in the express elevator to the +top of the Auditorium tower--on the one hand, the blue and laughing +lake, on the other, the city belching volumes of smoke from its thousand +throats, as though a vaster Sheffield or Wolverhampton had been +transported by magic to the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. What a +wonderful city Chicago will be when the commandment is honestly +enforced which declares, "Thou shalt consume thine own smoke!" + +What a wonderful city Chicago will be! That is the ever-recurring burden +of one's cogitations. For Chicago is awake, and intelligently awake, to +her destinies; so much one perceives even in the reiterated complaints +that she is asleep. Discontent is the condition of progress, and Chicago +is not in the slightest danger of relapsing into a condition of inert +self-complacency. Her sons love her, but they chasten her. They are +never tired of urging her on, sometimes (it must be owned) with most +unfilial objurgations; and she, a quite unwearied Titan, is bracing up +her sinews for the great task of the coming century. I have given myself +a rendezvous in Chicago for 1925, when air-ships will no doubt make the +transit easy for my septuagenarian frame. Nowhere in the world, I am +sure, does the "to be continued in our next" interest take hold on one +with such a compulsive grip. + +Culture is pouring into Chicago as rapidly as pork or grain, and Chicago +is insatiate in asking for more. In going over the Public Library (a not +quite satisfactory building, though with some beautiful details) I was +most of all impressed by the army of iron-bound boxes which are +perpetually speeding to and fro between the library itself and no fewer +than fifty-seven distributing stations scattered throughout the city. "I +thought the number was forty-eight," said a friend who accompanied me. +"So it was last year," said the librarian. "We have set up nine more +stations during the interval." The Chicago Library boasts (no doubt +justly) that it circulates more books than any similar institution in +the world. Take, again, the University of Chicago: seven years ago (or, +say, at the outside ten) it had no existence, and its site was a dismal +swamp; to-day it is a handsome and populous centre of literary and +scientific culture. Observe, too, that it is by no means an oasis in the +desert, but is thoroughly in touch with the civic life around it. For +instance, it actively participates in the admirable work done by the +Hull House Settlement in South Halsted-street, and in the vigorous and +wide-spreading University Extension movement. + +At the present moment, Chicago is not a little resentful of the sharp +admonitions addressed to her by two of her aforesaid loving but exacting +children. One, Professor Charles Zueblin, has been telling her that "in +the arrogance of youth she has failed to realise that instead of being +one of the progressive cities of the world, she has been one of the +reckless, improvident, and shiftless cities." Professor Zueblin is not +content (for example) with her magnificent girdle of parks and +boulevards, but calls for smaller parks and breathing spaces in the +heart of her most crowded districts. He further maintains that her great +new sewage canal is a gigantically costly blunder; and indeed one cannot +but sympathise with the citizens of St. Louis in inquiring by what right +Chicago converts the Mississippi into her main sewer. But if Professor +Zueblin chastises Chicago with whips, Mr. Henry B. Fuller, it would +seem, lashes her with scorpions. Mr. Fuller is one of the leading +novelists of the city--for Chicago, be it known, had a nourishing and +characteristic literature of her own long before Mr. Dooley sprang into +fame. The author of _The Cliff-Dwellers_ is alleged to have said that +the Anglo-Saxon race was incapable of art, and that in this respect +Chicago was pre-eminently Anglo-Saxon. "Alleged," I say, for reports of +lectures in the American papers are always to be taken with caution, and +are very often as fanciful as Dr. Johnson's reports of the debates in +Parliament. The reporter is not generally a shorthand writer. He jots +down as much as he conveniently can of the lecturer's remarks, and +pieces them out from imagination. Thus, I am not at all sure what Mr. +Fuller really said; but there is no doubt whatever of the indignation +kindled by his diatribe. Deny her artistic capacities and sensibilities, +and you touch Chicago in her tenderest point. Moreover, Mr. Fuller's +onslaught encouraged several other like-minded critics to back him up, +so that the city has been writhing under the scourges of her +epigrammatists. I have before me a letter to one of the evening papers, +written in a tone of academic sarcasm which proves that even the +supercilious and "donnish" element is not lacking in Chicago culture. "I +know a number of artists," says the writer, "who came to Chicago, and +after staying here for a while, went away and achieved much success in +New York, London, and Paris. The appreciation they received here gave +them the impetus to go elsewhere, and thus brought them fame and +fortune." Whatever foundation there may be for these jibes, they are in +themselves a sufficient evidence that Chicago is alive to her +opportunities and responsibilities. She is, in her own vernacular, +"making, culture hum." Mr. Fuller, I understand, reproached her with her +stockyards--an injustice which even Mr. Bernard Shaw would scarcely +have committed. Is it the fault of Chicago that the world is +carnivorous? Was not "Nature red in tooth and claw" several ęons before +Chicago was thought of? I do not understand that any unnecessary cruelty +is practised in the stockyards; and apart from that, I fail to see that +systematic slaughter of animals for food is any more disgusting than +sporadic butchery. But of the stockyards I can speak only from hearsay. +I shall not go to see them. If I have any spare time, I shall rather +spend it in a second visit to St. Gaudens' magnificent and magnificently +placed statue of Abraham Lincoln, surely one of the great works of art +of the century, and of the few entirely worthy monuments ever erected to +a national hero. + + +POSTSCRIPT.--The above-mentioned Hull House Settlement in South +Halsted-street, under the direction of Miss Jane Addams, is probably the +most famous institution of its kind in America; but it is only one of +many. There is no more encouraging feature in American life than the +zeal, energy, and high and liberal intelligence with which social +service of this sort is being carried on in all the great cities. This +is a line of activity on which England and America are advancing hand +in hand, and however much one may deplore the necessity for such work, +one cannot but see in the common impulse which prompts and directs it a +symptom of the deep-seated unity of the two peoples. Nothing I saw in +America impressed me more than the thorough practicality as well as the +untiring devotion which was apparent in the work carried on by Miss +Addams in Chicago and Miss Lillian D. Wald in Henry-street, New York. +And in both Settlements I recognised the same atmosphere of culture, the +same spirit of plain living, hard working, and high thinking, that +characterises the best of our kindred institutions in England. A lady +connected with the University of Chicago, who is also a worker at the +Hull House Settlement, told me a touching little story which illustrates +at once the need for such work in Chicago, and the unexpected response +with which it sometimes meets. She had been talking about the beauties +of nature to a group of women from the slums, and at the end of her +address one of her hearers said, "I ain't never been outside of Chicago, +but I know it's true what the lady says. There's two vacant lots near +our place, an' when the spring comes, the colours of them--they fair +makes you hold your breath. An' then there's the trees on the Avenoo. +An' then there's all the sky." On another occasion the same lady met +with an "unexpected response" of a different order. She was showing a +boy from the slums some photographs of Italian pictures, when they came +upon a Virgin and Child. "Ah," said the boy at once, "that's Jesus an' +his Mother: I allus knows _them_ when I sees 'em." "Yes," said Miss +R----, "there is a purity and grandeur of expression about them, isn't +there--" "Tain't that," interrupted the boy, "it's the rims round their +heads as gives 'em away!" + +Apart from the Settlements, there are many energetically-conducted +Societies in America for the social and political enlightenment of the +masses. I have before me, for instance, a little bundle of most +excellent leaflets issued by the League for Social Service of New York. +They deal with such subjects as _The Duties of American Citizenship, The +Value of a Vote, The Duty of Public Spirit, The Co-operative City_, &c. +They include an admirable abstract in twenty-four pages, of _Laws +Concerning the Welfare of Every Citizen of New York_, and the same +Society issues similar abstracts of the laws of other States. They have +a large and well-equipped lecture organisation, and they issue +excellent practical _Suggestions for Conferences and Courses of Study_. +The problem to be grappled with by this Society and others working on +similar lines is no doubt one of immense difficulty. It is nothing less +than the education in citizenship of the most heterogeneous, polyglot, +and in some respects ignorant and degraded population ever assembled in +a single city, since the days of Imperial Rome. The spread of political +enlightenment in New York and other cities cannot possibly be very +rapid; but no effort is being spared to accelerate it. I sometimes +wonder whether the obvious necessity for political education in America +may not, in the long run, prove a marked advantage to her, as compared, +for instance, with England. Dissatisfaction, as I have said above, is +the condition of progress. We are apt to assume that every Briton is +born a good citizen; and in the lethargy begotten of that assumption, it +may very well happen that we let the Americans outstrip us in the march +of enlightenment. + + + + +LETTER X + +New York in Spring--Central Park--New York not an Ill-governed City--The +United States Post Office--The Express System--Valedictory. + + +NEW YORK. + +It is with a curious sensation of home-coming that I find myself once +more in New York. Spring has arrived before me. The blue dome of sky has +lost its crystalline sparkle, and the trees in Madison-square have put +on a filmy veil of green. Going to a luncheon party in the Riverside +region, I determine, for the sheer pleasure and exhilaration of the +thing, to walk the whole way, up Fifth-avenue and diagonally across +Central Park. What a magnificent pleasure ground, vast, various, and +seductive! A peerless emerald on the finger of Manhattan! If I were not +bound by solemn oaths to present myself at West-End-avenue at half-past +one, I could loaf all the afternoon by the superb expanse of the Croton +Reservoir, looking out over the giant city of sunshine, with the white +dome of Columbia College and the pyramid of Grant's Monument on the +northern horizon, and far to the eastward the low hills of Long Island. + +Passing the Metropolitan Museum of Art, I am reminded, not only that I +have never been inside it, but that in all the cities I have visited I +have not gone to a single show-place, museum, or picture-gallery, save +one remarkable private collection in Baltimore. Of course I must also +except (a large exception!) the public libraries of Washington, Boston, +and Chicago, which are, in a very eminent sense, "show-places." Still, +it seems somewhat remarkable (does it not?) that in a country which is +understood in Europe to be monotonous and unattractive to travellers, I +should have spent two months not only of intellectual interest but of +ęsthetic enjoyment, without once, except in a chance moment of idleness, +feeling the least inclination to fall back upon, the treasures of +European art which it undoubtedly contains. I have even ignored the +marvels of nature. I passed within twenty miles of Niagara; I saw the +serried icefloes sweeping down from Lake Erie to the cataract; and I did +not go to see them plunge over. In the first place, I had been there +before; in the second place, I should have had to sacrifice six hours +of Chicago, where I wanted, not six hours less, but six weeks more. + +Before saying farewell--a fond farewell!--to New York, let me supplement +my first impressions with my last. The most maligned of cities, I called +it; and truly I said well. Here is even the judicious Mr. J.F. Muirhead +of "Baedeker," betrayed by his passion for antithesis into describing +New York as "a lady in ball costume, with diamonds in her ears and her +toes out at her boots." This was written, to be sure, in 1890, and may +have been true in its day; for it takes an American city much less than +a decade to belie a derogatory epigram. Now, at any rate, New York has +had her shoes mended to some purpose. She is not the best paved city in +the world, or even in America, but neither is she by any means the +worst; and her splendid system of electric and elevated railroads +renders her more independent of paving than any European city. +Fifth-avenue is paved to perfection; Broadway and Sixth-avenue are not; +but at any rate the streets are not for ever being hauled up and laid +down again, like some of our leading London thoroughfares. Holborn, for +example, may be ideally paved on paper, but its roadway is subject to +such incessant eruptions of one sort or another that it is in practice +a much more uncomfortable thoroughfare than any of the New York avenues. +For the rest, New York has a copious and excellent water supply, which +London has not; it has a splendidly efficient fire-brigade; it has an +admirable telephone system, with underground wires; and even its +electric trolleys get their motive-power from underneath, whereas in +Philadelphia the overhead wires are, I regret to say, killing the trees +which lend the streets their greatest charm. Altogether, Tammany or no +Tammany, New York cannot possibly be described as an ill-governed city. +Its government may be wasteful and worse; inefficient it is not. Even +the policemen seem to be maligned. I never found them rude or needlessly +dictatorial. + +In one of the essential conveniences of modern life, New York is far +behind London; but the blame lies, not with the city, but with the +United States. Its postal arrangements are at best erratic, at worst +miserable. Letters which would be delivered in London in three or four +hours take in New York anywhere from six to sixteen hours. It was a long +time before I realised and learned to allow for the slowness of the +postal service. At first I used mentally to accuse my correspondents of +great dilatoriness in attending to notes that called for an immediate +reply. On one occasion I posted in Madison Square at 3 P.M. a letter +addressed to the Lyceum Theatre, not a quarter of a mile away, +suggesting an appointment for the same evening after the play. The +appointment was not kept, for the letter was not delivered till the +following morning! To ensure its delivery the same evening, I ought to +have put a special-delivery stamp on it--price fivepence--in addition to +the ordinary two-cent stamp. No doubt it is the universal employment of +the telephone in American cities that leads people to put up with such +defective postal arrangements. + +But it is not only within city limits that the United States Post Office +functions with a dignified deliberation. The ordinary time that it takes +to write (say) from New York to Chicago, and receive an answer, might be +considerably reduced without any acceleration of the train service. It +sounds incredible, but it is, I believe, the case, that the simple and +eminently time-saving device of a letter-box in the domestic front-door +is practically unknown in America. I did observe one, in Boston, so +small that a fair sized business letter would certainly have stuck in +its throat. One evening I was sitting at dinner in a fashionable street +in New York, close to Central Park, when I was startled by a distinctly +burglarious noise at the window. My host smiled at my look of +bewilderment, and explained that it was only the letter-carrier; and, +sure enough, when the servant came into the room she picked up three or +four letters from the floor. The postman was somehow able to reach the +front window from the "stoop," open it, and throw in the evening's +mail--a primitive arrangement, more suggestive of the English than of +the American Gotham. Even the gum on the United States postage-stamps +is apt to be ineffectual. When you are stamping letters in hot haste +to catch the European mail, you are as likely as not to find that +the head of President Grant has curled up and refuses--most +uncharacteristically--to stick to its post. + +The conveniences of the express system, again, are, in my judgment, +greatly overrated. It is often slow and always expensive. It seems to +have been devised by the makers of Saratoga trunks, for it puts a +premium upon huge packages and a tax upon those of moderate size. I +speak feelingly, for I have just paid, eight shillings for the +conveyance of five packages from my room to the wharf, a distance of +about a mile and a half. A London growler would have taken them and +myself to boot for eighteenpence, three of the packages going outside, +and two, with their owner, inside. It is true that had I packed all my +belongings in one huge box the same company would have conveyed them to +the steamer for one and eightpence, which is the regular charge per +package. But I could not have taken this box into my state-room; I must +in any case have had a cabin trunk; and for an ocean voyage, a bundle of +rugs is, to say the least of it, advisable. Thus I could not have +escaped paying four and tenpence for the conveyance of my baggage +alone--rather more than three times as much as it would have cost to +convey my baggage and myself the same distance in London. It must not be +forgotten, of course, that the New York Express Company would, if +necessary, have carried the goods much further for the same charge of +forty cents a package. The limit of distance I do not know: it is +probably something like twenty miles. But a potential ell does not +reconcile me to paying an exorbitant price for the actual inch which is +all I have any use for. This method of simplification--fixing the +minimum payment on the basis of the maximum bulk, weight, and +distance--seems to me essentially irrational. In some cases, indeed, it +cuts against the Express Company. When I first had occasion to move from +one abode to another in New York--a distance of about a quarter of a +mile--I thought with glee "Now the famous express system will save me +all trouble." But I found that it would cost two dollars to express my +belongings, whereas even the notoriously extortionate New York cabman +would convey me and all my goods and chattels for half that sum. So the +Express Company's loss was cabby's gain. + +"The ship is cheered, the harbour cleared," and none too merrily are we +dropping down by the Statue of Liberty to Sandy Hook and the Atlantic. +(There is a point, by the way, a little below the Battery, from which +New York looks mountainous indeed. Its irregularly serrated profile is +lost, and the sky-scrapers fall into position one behind the other, like +an artistically grouped cohort of giants. "Hills peep o'er hills, and +Alps on Alps arise," while in the background the glorious curve of the +Brooklyn Bridge seems to span half the horizon. I could not but think of +Valhalla and the Bridge of the Gods in the _Rheingold_. Elevator +architecture necessarily sends one to Scandinavian mythology in quest of +similitudes.) It is with acute regret that I turn my back upon New York, +or, rather, turn my face to see it receding over the steamer's wake. Not +often in this imperfect world are high anticipations overtopped, as the +real American has overtopped my half-reminiscent dream of it. "The real +America?" That, of course, is an absurd expression. I have had only a +superficial glimpse of one corner of the United States. It is as though +one were to glance at a mere dog-ear on a folio page, and then profess +to have mastered its whole import. But I intend no such ridiculous +profession. I have seen something of the outward aspect of five or six +great cities; I have looked into one small facet of American social +life; and I have faithfully reported what I have seen--nothing more. At +the same time my observations, and more especially my conversations with +the scores of "bright" and amiable men it has been my privilege to meet, +have suggested to me certain thoughts, certain hopes and apprehensions, +respecting the future of America and the English-speaking world, which I +shall try to formulate elsewhere. For the present, let me only sum up +my personal experiences in saying that all the pleasant expectations I +brought with me to America have been realised, all the forebodings +disappointed. Even the interviewer is far less terrible than I had been +led to imagine. He always treated me with courtesy, sometimes with +comprehension. One gentleman alone (not an American, by the way) set +forth to be mildly humorous at my expense; and even he apologised in +advance, as it were, by prefixing his own portrait to the interview, as +who should say, "Look at me--how can I help it?" Again, I had been led +rather to fear American hospitality as being apt to become importunate +and exacting. I found it no less considerate than cordial. Probably I +was too small game to bring the lion-hunters upon my trail. The alleged +habit of speech-making and speech-demanding on every possible occasion I +found to be merely mythical. Three times only was I called upon to "say +something," and on the first two occasions, being taken unawares, I said +everything I didn't want to say. The third time, having foreseen the +demand, I had noted down in advance the heads of an eloquent harangue; +but when the time came I felt the atmosphere unpropitious, and +suppressed my rhetoric. The proceedings opened with an iced beverage, +called, I believe, a "Mississippi toddy," probably as being the longest +toddy on record, the father of (fire) waters; and on its down-lapsing +current my eloquence was swept into the gulf of oblivion. The meeting, +fortunately, did not know what it had lost, and its serenity remained +unclouded. But it is not to the Mississippi toddies and other creature +comforts of America that I look back with gratitude and affection. It is +to the spontaneous and unaffected human kindness that met me on every +hand; the will to please and to be pleased in daily intercourse; and, in +the spiritual sphere, the thirst for knowledge, for justice, for beauty, +for the larger and the purer light. + + + + +PART II + +REFLECTIONS + + + + +NORTH AND SOUTH + +I + + +In Washington, on the 6th of April last, business was suspended from +mid-day onwards, while President McKinley and all the high officers of +State attended the public funeral at Arlington Cemetery of several +hundred soldiers, brought home from the battlefields of Cuba. The burial +ground on the heights of Arlington--the old Virginian home, by the way, +of the Lee family--had hitherto been known as the resting-place of +numbers of Northern soldiers, killed in the Civil War. But among the +bodies committed to earth that afternoon were those of many Southerners, +who had stood and fallen side by side with their Northern comrades at El +Caney and San Juan. The significance of the event was widely felt and +commented upon. "Henceforth," said one paper, "the graves at Arlington +will constitute a truly national cemetery;" and the same note was struck +in a thousand other quarters. Poets burst into song at the thought of +their + + "Resting together side by side, + Comrades in blue and grey! + + "Healed in the tender peace of time, + The wounds that once were red + With hatred and with hostile rage, + While sanguined brothers bled. + + "They leaped together at the call + Of country--one in one, + The soldiers of the Northern hills, + And of the Southern sun! + + "'Yankee' and 'Rebel,' side by side, + Beneath one starry fold-- + To-day, amid our common tears, + Their funeral bells are tolled." + +The artlessness of these verses renders them none the less significant. +They express a popular sentiment in popular language. But, as here +expressed, it is clearly the sentiment of the North: how far is it +shared and acknowledged by the South? Happening to be on the spot, I +could not but try to obtain some sort of answer to this question. + +Again, as I stood on the terrace of the Capitol that April afternoon, +and looked out across the Potomac to the old Lee mansion at Arlington, +while all the flags of Washington drooped at half-mast, a very +different piece of verse somehow floated into my memory: + + "Walk wide o' the Widow at Windsor, + For 'alf o' Creation she owns: + We 'ave bought 'er the same with the sword and the flame, + And salted it down with our bones. + (Poor beggars!--it's blue with our bones!)" + +The association was obvious: how the price of lead would go up if +England brought home all her dead "heroes" in hermetically-sealed +caskets! My thought (so an anti-Imperialist might say) was like the +smile of the hardened freebooter at the amiable sentimentalism of a +comrade who was "yet but young in deed." But why should Mr. Kipling's +rugged lines have cropped up in my memory rather than the smoother +verses of other poets, equally familiar to me, and equally well fitted +to point the contrast?--for instance, Mr. Housman's:-- + + "It dawns in Asia, tombstones show, + And Shropshire names are read; + And the Nile spills his overflow + Beside the Severn's dead." + +Or Mr. Newbolt's: + + "_Qui procul hinc_--the legend's writ, + The frontier grave is far away; + _Qui ante diem periit, + Sed miles, sed fro patriā_." + +The reason simply was that during the month I had spent in America the +air had been filled with Kipling. His name was the first I had heard +uttered on landing--by the conductor of a horse-car. Men of light and +leading, and honourable women not a few, had vied with each other in +quoting his refrains; and I had seen the crowded audience at a low +music-hall stirred to enthusiasm by the delivery of a screed of maudlin +verses on his illness. He, the rhapsodist of the red coat, was out and +away the most popular poet in the country of the blue, and that at a +time when the blue coat in itself was inimitably popular. Nor could +there be any doubt that his _Barrack-room Ballads_ were the most popular +of his works. Not a century had passed since the Tommy Atkins of that +day had burnt the Capitol on whose steps I was standing (a shameful +exploit, to which I allude only to point the contrast); and here was the +poet of Tommy Atkins so idolised by the grandsons of the men of 1812 and +1776, that I, a Briton and a staunch admirer of Kipling, had almost come +to resent as an obsession the ubiquity of his name! + +It seemed then, that the rancour of the blue coat against the red must +have dwindled no less significantly than the rancour of the grey coat +against the blue. Into the reality of this phenomenon, too, I made it +my business to inquire. + + + + +II + + +There can be no doubt that the Spanish War has done a great deal to +bring the North and the South together. It has not in any sense created +in the South a feeling of loyalty to the Union, but it has given the +younger generation in the South an opportunity of manifesting that +loyalty to the Union which has been steadily growing for twenty years. +Down to 1880, or thereabouts, the wound left by the Civil War was still +raw, its inflammation envenomed rather than allayed by the measures of +the "reconstruction" period. Since 1880, since the administration of +President Hayes, the wound has been steadily healing, until it has come +to seem no longer a burning sore, but an honourable cicatrice. + +Every one admits that the heaviest blow ever dealt to the South was that +which laid Abraham Lincoln in the dust. He, if any one, could have +averted the mistakes which delayed by fifteen years the very beginning +of the process of reconciliation. His wise and kindly influence +removed, the North committed what is now recognised as the fatal blunder +of forcing unrestricted negro suffrage on the South. This measure was +dictated partly, no doubt, by honest idealism, partly by much lower +motives. Then the horde of "carpet-baggers" descended upon the +"reconstructed" States, and there ensued a period of humiliation to the +South which made men look back with longing even to the sharper agonies +of the war. Coloured voters were brought in droves, by their Northern +fuglemen, to polling-places which were guarded by United States troops. +Utterly illiterate negroes crowded the benches of State legislatures. A +Northerner and staunch Union man has assured me that in the Capitol of +one of the reconstructed States he has seen a coloured representative +gravely studying a newspaper which he held upside down. The story goes +that in the legislature of Mississippi a negro majority, which had +opposed a certain bill, was suddenly brought round to it in a body by a +chance allusion to its "provisions," which they understood to mean +something to eat! This anecdote perhaps lacks evidence; but there can be +no doubt that the freedmen of 1865 were, as a body, entirely unfitted to +exercise the suffrage thrust upon them. A degrading and exasperating +struggle was the inevitable result--the whites of the South striving by +intimidation and chicanery to nullify the negro vote, the professional +politicians from the North battling, with the aid of the United States +troops, to render it effectual. Such a state of things was demoralising +to both parties, and in process of time the common sense of the North +revolted against it. United States troops no longer stood round the +ballot-boxes, and the South was suffered, in one way and another, to +throw off the "Dominion of Darkness." Different States modified their +constitutions in different ways. Many offices which had been elective +were made appointive. The general plan adopted of late years has been to +restrict the suffrage by means of a very simple test of intelligence, +the would-be voter being required to read a paragraph of the State +constitution and explain its meaning. The examiner, if one may put it +so, is the election judge, and he can admit or exclude a man at his +discretion. Thus illiterate whites are not necessarily deprived of the +suffrage. They may be quite intelligent men and responsible citizens, +who happened to grow to manhood precisely in the years when the war and +its sequels upset the whole system of public education in the South. At +any rate (it is argued), the illiterate white is a totally different man +from the illiterate negro. How far such modifications of the State +constitutions are consistent with the Constitution of the United States, +is a nice question upon which I shall not attempt to enter. The +arguments used to reconcile this test of intelligence with Amendments +XIV. and XV. of the United States Constitution seem to me more ingenious +than convincing. But, constitutional or not, the compromise is +reasonable; and though people in the South still feel, as one of them +put it to me, that the Republican party "may yet wield the flail of the +negro over them," the flail has been laid aside long enough to permit +the South, in the main, to recover its peace of mind and its +self-respect. The negro problem is still difficult enough, as many +tragic evidences prove; but there is no reason to despair of its +ultimate solution. + +Meanwhile material prosperity has been returning to the South; +agriculture has revived, and manufactures have increased. Social +intercourse and intermarriage have done much to promote mutual +comprehension between North and South, and to wipe out rankling +animosities. Each party has made a sincere effort to understand the +other's "case," and the war has come to seem a thing fated and +inevitable, or at any rate not to have been averted save by superhuman +wisdom and moderation on both sides. With mutual comprehension, mutual +admiration has gone hand in hand. The gallantry and tenacity of the +South are warmly appreciated in the North, and it is felt on both sides +that the very qualities which made the tussle so long and terrible are +the qualities which ensure the greatness of the reunited nation. But +changes of sentiment are naturally slow and, from moment to moment, +imperceptible. It needs some outside stimulus or shock to bring them +clearly home to the minds of men. Such a stimulus was provided by the +conflict with Spain. It did not create a new sense of solidarity between +the North and the South, but rather brought prominently to the surface +of the national consciousness a sense of solidarity that had for years +been growing and strengthening, more or less obscurely and +inarticulately, on both sides of Mason and Dixon's line. It consummated +a process of consolidation which had been going on for something like +twenty years. + +Furthermore, the Spanish War deposed the Civil War from its position as +the last event of great external picturesqueness in the national +history. However sincere may be our love of peace, war remains +irresistibly fascinating to the imagination; and the imagination of +young America has now a foreign war instead of a civil war to look back +upon. The smoke of battle, in which the South stood shoulder to shoulder +with the North, has done more than many years of peace could do to +soften in retrospect the harsh outlines of the fratricidal struggle. + +At the same time, there is another side to the case which ought not to +be overlooked. The South is proud, very proud; and the older generation, +the generation which fought and agonised through the terrible years from +'61 to '65, is more than a little inclined to resent what it regards as +the condescending advances of the North. This feeling is not confined to +those out-of-the-way corners where, as the saying goes, they have not +yet heard that the war--the Civil War--is over. It is not confined to +the old families, ruined by the war, whom the tide of returning +prosperity has not reached, and never will reach. It is strong among +even the most active and progressive of the veterans of '65. They smile +a grim smile in their grizzled beards at the fuss which has been made +over this "picayune war," as they call it. They, who came crushed, +impoverished, heartbroken, out of the duel of the Titans--they, who know +what it really means to sacrifice everything, everything, to a patriotic +ideal--they, to whom their cause seems none the less sacred because they +know it irrevocably lost--how can they be expected to toss up their caps +and help the party which first vanquished, and then, for many bitter +years, oppressed them, to make political capital out of what appears, in +their eyes, a more or less creditable military picnic? It is especially +the small scale of the conflict that excites their derision. "Did you +ever hear of the battle of Dinwiddie Court-House?" one of them said to +me. I confessed that I had not. "No," he said, "nor has any one else +heard of the battle of Dinwiddie Court-House. It was one of the most +insignificant fights in the war. But there were more men killed in half +an hour in that almost forgotten battle, than in all this mighty war we +hear so much about. Ah!" he continued, "they think we are vastly +gratified when they 'fraternise' with us on our battlefields and +decorate the graves of our dead. I don't know but I prefer the 'waving +of the bloody shirt' to this flaunting of the olive-branch. They have +their victory; let them leave us our graves." + +An intense loyalty, not only to the political theories of the South, but +to the memory of the men who died for them--"qui bene pro patria cum +patriaque jacent"--still animates the survivors of the war. With a +confessed but none the less pathetic illogicality, they feel as though +Death had not gone to work impartially, but had selected for his prey +the noblest and the best. One of these survivors, in a paper now before +me, quotes from _Das Siegesfest_ the line-- + + "Ja, der Krieg verschlingt die Besten!" + +and then remarks: "Still, when Schiller says:-- + + 'Denn Patroklus liegt begraben, + Und Thersites kommt zurück,' + +his illustration is only half right. The Greek Thersites did not return +to claim a pension." + +The dash of bitterness in this remark must not be taken too seriously. +The fact remains, however, that among the veterans of the South there +prevails a certain feeling of aloofness from the national jubilation +over the Spanish War. They "don't take much stock in it." The feeling is +widespread, I believe, but not loud-voiced. If I represented it as +surly or undignified, I should misrepresent it grossly. It is simply the +outcome of an ancient and deep-seated sorrow, not to be salved by +phrases or ceremonies--the most tragic emotion, I think, with which I +ever came face to face. But it prevails almost exclusively among the +older generation in the South, the men who "when they saw the issue of +the war, gave up their faith in God, but not their faith in the cause." +To the young, or even the middle-aged, it has little meaning. I met a +scholar-soldier in the South who had given expression to the sentiment +of his race and generation in an essay--one might almost say an +elegy--so chivalrous in spirit and so fine in literary form that it +moved me well-nigh to tears. Reading it at a public library, I found +myself so visibly affected by it that my neighbour at the desk glanced +at me in surprise, and I had to pull myself sharply together. Yet the +writer of this essay told me that when he gave it to his son to read, +the young man handed it back to him, saying, "All this is a sealed book +to me. I can not feel these things as you do." + +More important, perhaps than the sentiment of the veterans is the +feeling, which has been pretty generally expressed, that the South was +slighted in the actual conduct of the late war--that Southern regiments +and Southern soldiers (notably General Fitzhugh Lee) were unduly kept in +the background. Still, there is every reason to believe that the general +effect of the war has been one of conciliation and consolidation. From +the ultra-Southern point of view, the North seems merely to have seized +the opportunity of making honourable amends for the "horrors of +reconstruction;" but even those who take this view admit that the North +_has_ seized the opportunity, and that gladly. As a matter of fact the +good-will of the North, and its desire to let bygones be bygones, are +probably very little influenced by any such recondite motive. It is in +most cases quite simple and instinctive. "There are no rebels now," said +the commandant of the Brooklyn Navy Yard when he gave orders to delete +the fourth word of the inscription "Taken from the rebel ram +_Mississippi_" over a trophy of the Civil War displayed outside of his +quarters. Admiral Philips had probably no thought of "reconstruction" or +of "making amends;" he simply obeyed a spontaneous and general +sentiment. The Southern heroes of the Civil War, moreover, are freely +admitted, and enthusiastically welcomed, into the national Pantheon. + +When the thirty-fourth anniversary of "Appomattox Day," which brought +the war to an end, was celebrated in Chicago on April 10 last (Governor +Roosevelt being the guest of honour), the memory of Lee was eulogised +along with that of Grant, and the oration in his honour was received +with equal applause. Finally, it is admitted even by those who are most +inclined to make light of the sentiment elicited by the late war, that +all the States of the Atlantic seaboard are instinctively drawing +together to counterpoise the growing predominance of the West. This +substitution of a new line of cleavage for the old one may seem a +questionable matter for rejoicing. But in any great community, conflicts +of interest must always arise. The recognition of the problems which +await the Republic in the near future does not imply any doubt of her +ability to arrive at a wise and just solution of them. + + + + +III + + +The most loyal of the Southern veterans, I have said, recognise that the +cause of the South is irrevocably lost. By the cause of the South I do +not, of course, mean slavery. There is probably no one in the South who +would advocate the reinstatement of that "peculiar institution," even if +it could be effected by the lifting of a finger. "The cause we fought +for and our brothers died for," says Professor Gildersleeve of +Baltimore, "was the cause of civil liberty, not the cause of human +slavery.... If the secrets of all hearts could have been revealed, our +enemies would have been astounded to see how many thousands and tens of +thousands in the Southern States felt the crushing burden and the awful +responsibility of the institution which we were supposed to be defending +with the melodramatic fury of pirate kings." + +What was it, then, that the South fought for? In what sense was its +cause the cause of "civil liberty?" A brief inquiry into this question +may be found to have more than a merely historic interest--to have a +direct bearing, indeed, upon the problems of the future, not only for +America, but for the English-speaking world. + +Let me state at once the true inwardness of the matter, as I have been +led to see it. The cause of the South was the cause of small against +large political aggregations; and the world regards the defeat of the +South as righteous and inevitable, because instinct tells it that the +welfare of humanity is to be sought in large political aggregations, and +not in small. Providence, in a word, is on the side of the big (social) +battalions. + +From the point of view of pure logic, of academic argument, the case of +the South was enormously strong. Consequently, the latter-day apologists +of the Confederacy devote themselves with pathetic fervour, and often +with great ingenuity, to what the impartial outsider cannot but feel to +be barren discussions of constitutional law. They point out that the +States--that is, the thirteen original States--preceded the Federal +Union, and voluntarily entered into it under clearly-defined conditions; +that the Federal Government actually derived its powers from the +consent of the States, and could have none which they did not confer +upon it; that the maintenance of slavery in the Southern States, and the +right to claim the extradition of fugitive slaves, were formally +safeguarded in the Constitution; that it was in reliance upon these +provisions that the Southern States consented to enter the Union; that +the right of secession had been openly and repeatedly asserted by +leading politicians and influential parties in several Northern States, +and was therefore no novel and treasonable invention of the South; and, +finally, that the right to enter into a compact implied the right to +recede from it when its provisions were broken, or obviously on the +point of being broken, by the other party or parties to the agreement. +All this is logically and historically indisputable. The Southerners +were the conservative party, and had the letter of the Constitution on +their side; the Northerners were the reformers, the innovators. +Entrenched in the theory of State Sovereignty, the South denied the +right of the North, acting through the Central Government, to interfere +with its "peculiar institution;" and even those who deplored the +existence of slavery felt themselves none the less bound to assert and +defend the right of their respective States to manage their own +affairs.[I] It was a conflict as old as the Revolution--and even, in its +germs, of still older date--between centripetal and centrifugal forces, +between national and local patriotism. The makers of the Constitution +had tried to hold the scales justly, but in their natural jealousy of a +strong central power, they had allowed the balance to deflect unduly on +the side of local independence. The North, the national majority, felt, +obscurely and reluctantly, that a revision of the Constitution in the +matter of slavery was essential to the national welfare.[J] The South +maintained that the States were antecedent and superior to the Nation, +and said, "If your Nation, in virtue of its mere majority vote, insists +on encroaching on State rights which we formally reserved as a condition +of entering the Nation, why then, we prefer to withdraw from this Nation +and set up a nation of our own, in which the true principles of the +Constitution shall be preserved." Thereupon the North retorted, "We +deny your right to withdraw," and the battle was joined. + +The North said, "You have no right to withdraw," but it meant, I think, +something rather different. It threw overboard the question of abstract, +formal, technical right, and fought primarily, no doubt, for a +humanitarian ideal, but fundamentally to enforce its instinct of the +highest political expediency. The right interpretation of a state-paper, +however venerable, would not have been a question worthy of such +terrible arbitrament. Even the emancipation of the negro, had that been +the sole object of the contest, would have been too dearly paid for in +blood and tears. The question at issue was really this: What is the +ideal political unit? The largest possible? or the smallest convenient? +What mattered abstract argument as to the _right_ to secede? Once grant +the _power_ to secede, once suffer the precedent to be established, and +the greatest democracy the world had ever seen was bound to break up, +not only into two, but ultimately into many petty republics, wrangling +and jangling like those of Spanish America. To this negation of a great +ideal the North refused its consent. National patriotism had outgrown +local patriotism. It had become to all intents and purposes a fiction +that the Federal Government derived its powers from the States; Thirteen +of them, indeed, had sanctioned the Federal Government, but the Federal +Government had sanctioned and admitted to the Union twenty-one more. In +these the sentiment of priority to the Union could not exist, while +State Sovereignty was a doctrine limited by considerations of +expediency, rather than a patriotic dogma. Immigration, and westward +migration from the north-eastern States, had produced a race of men and +women whose patriotism was divorced, so to speak, from any given patch +of soil, but was wedded to the all-embracing idea of the United States, +with the emphasis on the epithet. They thought of themselves first of +all as American citizens, and only in the second place as citizens of +this State or of that. This habit or instinct is still incomprehensible, +and almost contemptible, to the Southerner of the older generation; but +the Time-Spirit was clearly on its side. + +Thus, then, I interpret the fundamental feeling which impelled the North +to take up arms: "Better one stout tussle for the idea of Unity, than a +facile acquiescence in the idea, of Multiplicity, with all its sequels +of instability, distrust, rivalry, and rancour. Better for our +children, if not for us, one great expenditure of blood and gold, than +never-ending threats and rumours of war, commercial conflicts, political +complications, frontiers to be safeguarded, bureaucracies to be +financed." Of course I do not put this forward as a new interpretation +of the question at issue. It is old and it is obvious. But though the +national significance of the struggle has long been recognised, I am not +sure that its international, its world-historic significance, has been +sufficiently dwelt upon. We Europeans have been apt to think that, +because the theatre of conflict was so distant, we had only a +spectacular, or at most an abstract-humanitarian, interest in it. There +could not be a greater mistake. The whole world, I believe, will one day +come to hold Vicksburg and Gettysburg names of larger historic import +than Waterloo or Sedan. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote I: "Submission to any encroachment," says Professor +Gildersleeve, "the least as well as the greatest, on the rights of a +State, means slavery;" this remark occurring early in an article of +twenty-five columns, in which _negro_ slavery is not so much as +mentioned until the twenty-first column.] + +[Footnote J: See _Postscript_ to this article.] + + + + +IV + + +The iconoclast of to-day is full of scorn for patriotism, which he holds +the most retrograde of emotions. He may as usefully declaim against +friendship, comradeship, the love of man for woman or of mother for +child. The lowest savage regards himself, and cannot but regard himself, +as a member of some sort of political aggregation. This feeling is one +of the primal instincts of humanity, and as such one of the permanent +data of the problem of the future. It is folly to denounce or seek to +eradicate it. The wise course is to give it large and noble instead of +petty and parochial concepts to which to attach itself. Rightly esteemed +and rightly directed, patriotism is not a retrograde emotion, but one of +the indispensable conditions of progress. + +"Nothing is," says Hamlet, "but thinking makes it so." It is not oceans, +straits, rivers, or mountain-barriers, that constitute a Nation, but the +idea in the minds of the people composing it. Now, the largest +political idea that ever entered the mind--not of a man--not of a +governing class--but of a people, is the idea of the United States of +America. The "Pax Romana" was a great idea in its day, but it was +imposed from without, and by military methods, upon a number of subject +peoples, who did not realise and intelligently co-operate in it, but +merely submitted to it. It has its modern analogue in the "Pax +Britannica" of India. The idea of the United States, on the other hand, +gives what may be called psychological unity to one of the largest +political aggregates, both in territory and population, ever known to +history. In the modern world, there are only two political aggregates in +any wise comparable to it: the British Empire, whereof the idea is not +as yet quite clearly formulated; and the Russian Empire, whereof the +idea, in so far as it belongs to the people at all, is a blind and +slavish superstition. Holy Russia is a formidable idea, Greater Britain +is a picturesque and pregnant idea; but the United States is a +self-conscious, clearly defined and heroically vindicated idea, in whose +further vindication the whole world is concerned. It is only an +experiment, say some--an experiment which, thirty years ago, trembled +on the brink of disastrous failure, and which may yet have even greater +perils to encounter. This is true in a sense, but not the essential +truth. Let us substitute for "experiment" another word which means the +same thing--with a difference. The United States of America, let us say, +is a rehearsal for the United States of Europe, nay, of the world. It is +the very difficulties over which the croakers shake their heads that +make the experiment interesting, momentous. The United States is a +veritable microcosm: it presents in little all the elements which go to +make up a world, and which have hitherto kept the world, almost +unintermittently, in a state of battle and bloodshed. There are wide +differences of climate and of geographical conditions in the United +States, with the resulting conflict of material interest between +different regions of the country. There are differences of race and even +of language to be overcome, extremes of wealth and poverty to be dealt +with. As though to make sure that no factor in the problem of +civilisation should be omitted, the men of last century were at pains to +saddle their descendants with the burden of the negro--a race incapable +of assimilation and yet tenacious of life. In brief, a thousand +difficulties and temptations to dissension beset the giant Republic: in +so far as it overcomes them, and carries on its development by peaceful +methods, it presents a unique and invaluable object-lesson to the world. +The idea of unity, annealed in the furnace of the Civil War, has as yet +been stronger than all the forces of disintegration; and there is no +reason to doubt that it will continue to be so. When France falls out +with Germany, or Russia with Turkey, there is nothing save a purely +material counting of the cost to hinder them from flying at each other's +throats. The abstract humanitarianism of a few individuals is as a +feather on the torrent. Such sentiment as comes into play is all on the +side of bloodshed. It takes very little to make a Frenchman and a German +feel that they are in a state of war by nature, and that peace between +them is an artificial and necessarily unstable condition. But in +America, should two States or two groups of States fall out, there is a +strong, and we may hope unconquerable, sentiment of unity to be overcome +before the dissentients even reach the point of counting the material +cost of war. Men feel that they are in a state of peace by nature, and +that war between them, instead of being a hereditary and almost +consecrated habit, would be a monstrous and almost unthinkable crime. +The National Government, as established by the Constitution, is in fact +a permanent court of arbitration between the States; and the +common-sense of all may be trusted to "hold a fractious State in awe." +"Did not people say and think the same thing in 1859," it may be asked, +"on the eve of the greatest Civil War in history?" Possibly; but that +war was precisely what was needed to ratify the Union, and lift it out +of the experimental stage. "Blut ist ein ganz besondrer Saft," and it is +sometimes necessary that other pacts than those of hell should be +written in blood, before the world recognises their full validity. +Heaven forbid that the Deed of Union of the United States should require +a second time to be retraced in red! + +But it is an illusion, though a salutary one, that civil war is any more +barbarous than international war. What the world wants is the +realisation that every war is a civil war, a war between brothers, +justifiable only for the repression of some cruelty more cruel than war +itself, some barbarism more barbarous. Towards this realisation the +United States is leading the way, by showing that, under the conditions +of modern life, an effective sense of brotherhood, a resolute loyalty +to a unifying idea, may be maintained throughout a practically unlimited +extent of territory. + +But, while enumerating the difficulties which the Republic has to +overcome, I have said nothing of the one great advantage it enjoys--a +common, or at any rate a dominant, language. The diversity of tongues +which prevails in Europe is doubtless one of the chief hindrances to +that "Federation of the World" of which the poet dreamed. But if the +many tongues of Europe retard its fusion into what I have called a +political aggregate, there exists in the world a political aggregate +larger in extent than either Europe or the United States, which +possesses, like the United States, the advantage of one dominant +language. I mean, of course, the British Empire; and surely it is, +on the face of it, a fact of good augury for the world that the +dominant language of these two vast aggregations of democracies should +happen to be one and the same. The hopes--and perhaps, too, some +apprehensions--arising from this unity of speech will form the subject +of another article. + + +POSTSCRIPT.--My representation of the South as the conservative and the +North as the innovating party is the only point in this article to +which (so far as I know) serious objection has been made. A very able +and courteous critic--Mr. Norman Hapgood--writes to me as follows: "I +think the history of the Kansas-Nebraska trouble, in which the +preliminary conflict centred, the speeches of the time, North and South, +the party platforms, all proved that the North said, 'Slavery shall keep +its rights and have no further extension,' while the South said, 'It +shall go into any newly-acquired territory it chooses.' In 1860 the +slave interest was more protected and extended by law than ever before +in the history of the country. It had simply made a new claim which the +North could not allow. The abolitionists were few; the Northerners who +said that slavery should not be _extended_ were many.... I don't believe +there is an American historian of standing who does not say that the +propositions of the South, on which the North took issue in 1861, were +these: (1) Slavery shall go into all territory hereafter acquired; (2) +We will secede if this is not allowed." + +It was inevitable that this protest should be raised, since, in the +limited space at my command, I had imperfectly expressed my meaning. My +reply to Mr. Hapgood puts it, I hope, more clearly. It ran as +follows:".... What I was trying to do was not so much to summarise +conscious motives as to present my own interpretation (right or wrong) +of the sub-conscious, the unconscious forces that were at work. I go +behind the declarations of Northern statesmen, and what, I have no +doubt, was the sincere sentiment of the majority in the North, against +interference with slavery in the existing slave States. I have tried to +allow to this sentiment what weight it deserves, in saying that the +North '_obscurely and reluctantly_ felt a revision of the Constitution +essential to the national welfare.' But my view is that whatever they +said, and whatever, on the surface of their minds, they thought, the +people of the North knew, even if they denied it to themselves, that +chattel slavery was impossible in the modern world; and furthermore that +the people of the South were justified in that instinct which told them +that the institution, fatally menaced, was to be saved only by +secession. The kernel of the matter, to my thinking, lay in the fugitive +slave question. The provision of the Constitution for the return of +fugitive slaves, though it may seem a matter of detail, was, I think, in +reality the keystone of the arch. Make it inoperative, and the +institution was doomed. Now many of the Northern States, by 'personal +liberty laws' and the like, had long been picking at that keystone. +Whatever were the professions of politicians and people as to +non-interference, they shrank from the logical corollary, which would +have been the sincere, whole-hearted and cheerful carrying out of +Article IV., Section 2, Paragraph 3 of the Constitution. They were even, +I think, logically bound to accept loyally the Dred Scott decision, +which was absolutely constitutional. To protest against it, to seek to +evade it, was to insist on a revision of the Constitution. But it was +inconceivable that a civilised community, not blinded by local Southern +prejudice, could loyally accept the Dred Scott decision, or could +cheerfully assist the Southern slaveholder to capture and carry off from +their own hearthstones, as it were, his runaway chattel. Therefore, the +position and the protestations of the North were mutually contradictory. +It was a case of trying to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds; +and the North was bound to the hare by fundamental considerations of +humanity and self-interest, to the hounds, only by a compact accepted at +a time when its consequences could not possibly be foreseen. I do not +doubt that the North, on the surface of its will, sincerely desired to +keep this compact; but the South, with an instinct which was really that +of self-preservation, looked, as I am trying to look, beneath the +conscious surface to the unconscious sweep of current. It is not with +reference to the struggle for Western expansion that I call the South +the conservative and constitutional party. There, as it seems to me, the +question was entirely an open one, the power of Congress over +territories being undefined in the Constitution; and no doubt the South, +in the course of the struggle, often took up violent and extravagant +positions. My argument is that the attitude of the North, whatever its +protestations, virtually threatened the institution of slavery in the +old slave States, and that therefore the South had virtual, if not +formal, justification for holding the constitutional compact broken." + + + + +THE REPUBLIC AND THE EMPIRE + +I + + +Though one of the main objects which I proposed to myself in visiting +America was to take note of American feeling towards England as affected +by the Spanish War, I soon found that, so far as the gathering of +information by way of question and answer was concerned, I might almost +as well have stayed at home. A curious diffidence beset me from the +first. I shrank from recognising that there was any question as to the +good feeling between the two countries, and still more from seeming to +appeal to a non-existent or a grudging sense of kinship. It seemed to me +tactless and absurd for an Englishman to lay any stress on the war as +affecting the relations between the two peoples. What had England done? +Nothing that had cost her a cent or a drop of blood. The British people +had sympathised with the United States in a war which it felt to be, in +the last analysis, a part of the necessary police-work of the world; it +had applauded in American soldiers and sailors the qualities it was +accustomed to admire in its own fighting men; and the British +Government, giving ready effect to the instinct of the people, had, at a +critical moment, secured a fair field for the United States, and broken +up what might have been an embarrassing, though scarcely a very +formidable, anti-American intrigue on the part of the Continental +Powers. What was there in all this to make any merit of? Nothing +whatever. It was the simplest matter in the world--we had merely felt +and done what came natural to us. The really significant fact was that +any one in America should have been surprised at our attitude, or should +have regarded it as more friendly than they had every right and reason +to expect. In short, I felt an irrational but I hope not unnatural +disinclination to recognise as matter for question and remark a state of +feeling which, as it seemed to me, ought to "go without saying." + +Above all was I careful to avoid the word "Anglo-Saxon." I heard it and +read it with satisfaction, I uttered it, never. It is for the American +to claim his Anglo-Saxon birthright, if he feels so disposed; it is not +for the Briton to thrust it upon him. To cheapen it, to send it +a-begging, were to do it a grievous wrong. Besides, the term +"Anglo-Saxon" is inaccurate, and, so to speak, provisional. Rightly +understood, it covers a great idea; but if one chooses to take it in a +strict ethnological sense, it lends itself to caricature. The truth is, +it has no strict ethnological sense--it may rather be called an +ethnological countersense, no less in England than in America. It +represents an historical and political, not an ethnological, concept. +The Anglo-Saxon was already an infinitely composite personage--Saxon, +Scandinavian, Gaul, and Kelt--before he set foot in America; and America +merely proves her deep-rooted Anglo-Saxonism in accepting and absorbing +all sorts of alien and semi-alien race-elements. But when we have to go +so far behind the face-value of a word to bring it into consonance with +obvious facts, it is safest to use that word sparingly. + +In brief, I did not wear my Anglo-Saxon heart on my sleeve, or go about +inviting expressions of gratitude to England for having, like Mr. +Gilbert's House of Lords, + + Done nothing in particular, + And done it very well. + +Yet evidences of a new tone of feeling towards England met me on every +hand, both in the newspapers and in conversation. The subject which I +shrank from introducing was frequently introduced by my American +acquaintances. It was evident that the change of feeling, though far +from universal, was real and wide-spread. Americans who had recently +returned to their native land, after passing some years abroad, assured +me that they were keenly conscious of it. Many of my acquaintances were +opposed to the policy which brought about the Spanish War, and declared +the better mutual understanding between England and America to be its +one good result. Others adopted the view to which Mr. Kipling had given +such far-echoing expression, and frankly rejoiced in the sympathy with +which England regarded America's determination to "take up the white +man's burden." In the Kipling craze as a whole, after making all +deductions, I could not but see a symptom of real significance. It was +partly a mere literary fashion, partly a result of personal and +accidental circumstances; but it also arose in no small degree from a +novel sense of kinship with the men, and participation in the ideals, +celebrated by the poet of British Imperialism. + +The change, moreover, extended beyond the book-reading class, wide as +that is in America. It was to be noted even in the untravelled and +unlettered American, the man whose spiritual horizon is bounded by his +Sunday newspaper, the man in the street and on the farm. The events of +the past year had taught him--and he rubbed his eyes at the +realisation--that England was not an "effete monarchy," evilly-disposed +towards a Republic as such,[K] and dully resentful of bygone +humiliations by land and sea, but a brotherly-minded people, remembering +little (perhaps _too_ little) of those "old, unhappy, far-off things," +willing to be as helpful as the rules of neutrality permitted, and eager +to applaud the achievements of American arms. + +Millions of people who had hitherto felt no touch of racial sympathy, +and had been conscious only of a vague historic antipathy, learned with +surprise that England was in no sense their natural enemy, but rather, +among all the nations of Europe, their natural friend. Anglophobes, no +doubt, were still to be found in plenty; but they could no longer reckon +on the instant popular response which, a few years ago, would almost +certainly have attended any movement of hostility towards England. An +American publicist, who has perhaps unequalled opportunities for keeping +his finger on the pulse of national feeling, said to me, "It is only +three or four years since I heard a Federal judge express an earnest +desire for war with England, as a means of consolidating the North and +South in a great common enthusiasm. Of course this was pernicious talk +at any time," he added; "but it would then have found an echo which it +certainly would not find to-day." + +This puts the international situation in a nutshell, so far as to-day is +concerned. But what about to-morrow? + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote K: See _Postscript_ to this article.] + + + + +II + + +When people spoke to me of the sudden veering of popular sympathy from +France and Russia, and towards England, I could not help asking, now and +again, "When is the reaction coming?" "There is no reaction coming," I +was told with some confidence. For my part, I hope and believe that a +permanent advance has been made, and that any reaction that may set in +will be trifling and temporary. But to ensure this result there is still +the most urgent need for the exercise of wisdom and moderation on both +sides. The misunderstandings of more than a century are not to be wiped +out in two or three months of popular excitement. What we have arrived +at is not a complete mutual understanding, but merely the attitude of +mind which may, in course of time, render such an understanding +possible. That, to be sure, is half the battle; but the longer and more +tedious half is before us. + +The Englishman who visits America for pleasure, and enjoys the +inexhaustible hospitality of New York, Boston, and Washington, must be +careful not to imagine that he gets really in touch with the sentiment +of the American nation. His circle of acquaintance is almost certain to +be composed mainly of people whom he, or friends of his, have met in +Europe, people of more or less clearly remembered British descent, who +know England well, have many English friends and possibly relatives, and +are conscious of a distant sentimental attachment to "the Old Country." +They are almost without exception people of culture, as well read as he +himself in the English classics, ancient and modern. They show their +Americanism not in that they love English literature less, but that very +probably they love French literature more, than he does. Further, they +are an exceedingly polite people, and, sensitive themselves on points of +national honour, they instinctively keep in the background all topics on +which a too free interchange of opinions might be apt to wound the +susceptibilities of their guest. Thus he loses entirely his sense of +being in a foreign country, because he moves among people most of whom +have an affection for England almost as deep as his own, while all are +courteous enough to respect his prejudices. This class is large in +actual numbers, no doubt, but in proportion to the whole American +people it is infinitesimal, and would be a mere featherweight in the +scale at any moment of crisis. Its voice is clearly audible in +literature and even in journalism, but at the polls it would be as a +whisper to the thunder of Niagara. The traveller who has "had a good +time" in literary, artistic, university circles in the Eastern cities, +has not felt the pulse of America, but has merely touched the fringe of +the fringe of her garment. + +We deceive ourselves if we imagine that there is, or at any rate that +there was until recently, the slightest sentimental attachment to +England in the heart of the American people at large. Among the +"hyphenated Americans," as they are called--Irish-Americans, +German-Americans, and so forth--it would be folly to look for any such +feeling.[L] The conciliation of America will never be complete until we +have achieved the conciliation of Ireland. It is evident, indeed, from +many symptoms, that Irish-American hostility to England is declining, if +not in rancour, at any rate in influence. Still, a popular New York +paper, on St. Patrick's Day, thinks it worth while to propitiate "The +Powerful Race of Ireland" by a leader under that heading, and to this +effect: + + "The Irish race is famous as producing the best fighters and poets + among men, and the most beautiful and most virtuous of women. + + "Such a reputation should suffice for any nation. + + "And note that Ireland still is and always will be a NATION. There + is no Anglomania in that fair land, no yearning for reciprocity for + the sake of a few dollars, no drinking of the Queen's health + first.... + + "Noble patriots like John Dillon and William O'Brien fight for them + in the House of Commons, and they are good fighters everywhere, + from the glass-covered room in Westminster Abbey (!) to the + prize-ring, where a Sullivan, of pure Irish blood, forbids any man + to stand three rounds before him. + + "The English whipped the Irish at the battle of the Boyne--true. + But the English on that occasion had the good luck to be led by a + Dutchman, and the Irish--sorra the day--had an English King for a + leader. The English King was running fast while the Irish were + still fighting the Dutchman. + + "Wellington, of Irish blood, beat Napoleon; Sheridan, of Irish + blood, fought here most delightfully. + + "Here's to the Irish!" + + + +This spirited performance no doubt represents fairly enough the +political philosophy of the thousands composing the league-long +procession which filed stolidly up Fifth Avenue on the day of its +appearance. + +But even among unhyphenated Americans--Americans pure and simple--the +tendency to regard England as a hereditary foe, though sensibly weakened +by recent events, remains very strong. A good example of this frame of +mind and habit of speech is afforded by the following passage from an +address delivered by Judge Van Wyck at the Democratic Club's Jefferson +Dinner in New York on April 13 last. Referring to England, the speaker +said:-- + + "Let us be influenced by the natural as well as the fixed policy of + that nation toward us for a century and a half, rather than by + their profuse expressions of friendship during the Spanish War. + England's policy has been one of sharp rivalry and competition + with America; it impelled the Revolution of 1776, fought for + business as well as political independence; brought on the war of + 1812, waged against the insolent claim of England for the right to + search our ships of commerce while riding the highways of the + ocean; caused her to contest every inch of our northern boundary + line from ocean to ocean; made her encourage our family troubles + from 1860 to 1865, for which she was compelled to pay us millions + and admit her wrong; and actuated her, in violation of the Monroe + doctrine, to attempt an unwarrantable encroachment on the territory + of Venezuela, until ordered by the American Government to halt." + +Apart from the obvious begging of the question with reference to +Venezuela, there is nothing in this invective that has not some +historical foundation. It is the studiously hostile turn of the +phraseology that renders the speech significant. Everything--even the +honourable amends made for the _Alabama_ blunder--is twisted to +England's reproach. She is "compelled" to do this, and "ordered" to do +that. There is here no hint of good feeling, no trace of international +amenity, but sheer undisguised hatred and desire to make the worst of +things. And this address, be it noted, was the speech of the evening at +a huge and representative gathering of the dominant party in New York +municipal politics. + +I need scarcely adduce further evidence of the fact that Anglophobia is +still a power in the land, if not the power it once was. But active and +aggressive Anglophobia is, I think, a less important factor in the +situation than the sheer indifference to England, with a latent bias +towards hostility, which is so widespread in America. To the English +observer, this indifference is far more disconcerting than hatred. The +average Briton, one may say with confidence, is not indifferent towards +America. He may be very ignorant about it, very much prejudiced against +certain American habits and institutions, very thoughtless and tactless +in expressing his prejudices; but the United States is not, to him, a +foreign country like any other, on the same plane with France, Germany, +or Russia. But that is precisely what England is to millions of +Americans--a foreign country like any other. We see this even in many +travelling Americans; much more is it to be noted in multitudes who stay +at home. Many Americans seem curiously indifferent even to the comfort +of being able to speak their own language in England; probably because +they have less false shame than the average Englishman in adventuring +among the pitfalls of a foreign tongue. They--this particular class of +travellers, I mean--land in England without emotion, visit its shrines +without sentiment, and pass on to France and Italy with no other feeling +than one of relief in escaping from the London fog. These travellers, +however, are but single spies sent forth by vast battalions who never +cross the ocean. To them England is a mere name, and the name, moreover, +of their fathers' one enemy in war, their own chief rival in trade. They +have no points of contact with England, such as almost every Englishman +has with America. We make use every day of American inventions and +American "notions": English inventions and "notions," if they make their +way to America at all, are not recognised as English. There are few +Britishers, high or low, that have not friends or relatives settled in +America, or have not formed pleasant acquaintanceships with Americans on +this side. But there are innumerable families in America who, even if +they be of British descent, have lost all vital recollection of the +fact; who (as the tide of emigration has not yet turned eastwards) have +no friends or relatives settled in England; and who, in their American +homes, are far more apt to come in contact with men of almost every +other nationality than with Englishmen. "But surely English +literature," it may be said, "brings England home even to people of this +class, and differentiates her from France or Germany." In a measure, +doubtless; but I think it will be found that the lower strata of the +reading public (not in America alone, of course) are strangely +insensitive to local colour. To people of culture, the bond of +literature is a very strong one; but the class of which I am speaking is +not composed of people of culture. They read, it is true, and often +greedily; but generally, I think, without knowing or greatly caring +whether a book is English or American, and at all events with no such +clear perception of the distinctive qualities of English work as could +beget in them any imaginative realisation of, or affection for, England. +Let us make no mistake--in the broad mass of the American people no such +affection exists. They are simply indifferent to England, with, as I +have said, a latent bias towards hostility. + +Thus the scale of American feeling towards England, while its gradations +are of course infinite, may be divided into three main sections. At one +end of the scale we have the cultured and travelled classes, especially +in the Eastern States, conscious for the most part of British descent, +alive to the historical relationship between the two countries, valuing +highly their birthright in the treasures of English literature, knowing, +and (not uncritically) understanding England and her people, and +clinging to a kinship of which, taking one thing with another, they have +no reason to be ashamed. This class is intellectually influential, but +its direct weight in politics is small. It is, with shining exceptions, +a "mugwump" class. At the other end of the scale we have the hyphenated +Americans, who have imported or inherited European rancours against +England, and those unhyphenated Americans whose hatred of England is +partly a mere plank in a political platform, designed to accommodate her +hyphenated foe-men, partly a result of instinctive and traditional +chauvinism, reinforced by a (in every sense) partial view of +Anglo-American history. Finally, between these two extremes, we have the +great mass of the American people, who neither love nor hate England, +any more than they love or hate (say) Italy or Japan, but whose +indifference would, until recently, have been much more easily deflected +on the side of hatred than of love. The effect of the Spanish War has +been in some measure to alter this bias, and to differentiate England, +to her advantage, from the other nations of Europe. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote L: A very distinguished American authority writes to me as +follows with regard to this passage: "I hardly think you lay enough +weight upon the fact that in two or three generations the great bulk of +the descendants of the immigrants of non-English origin become +absolutely indistinguishable from other Americans, and share their +feelings. This is markedly so with the Scandinavians, and most of the +Germans of the second, and all the Germans of the third, generation, who +practically all, during 1898, felt toward Germany and England just +exactly as other Americans did.... Twice recently I have addressed huge +meetings of eight or ten thousand people, each drawn, as regards the +enormous majority, from exactly that class which you pointed out as +standing between the two extremes. In each case the men who introduced +me dwelt upon the increased good feeling between the English-speaking +peoples, and every complimentary allusion to England was received with +great applause." At the same time my correspondent adds: "Your division +of the American sentiment into three classes is exactly right; also your +sense of the relative importance of these three classes."] + + + + +III + + +It is commonly alleged that the anti-English virulence of the ordinary +school history of the United States is mainly responsible for this bias +towards hostility in the mind of the average American. Mr. Goldwin +Smith, a high authority, has contested this theory; and I must admit +that, after a good deal of inquiry, I have been unable to find the +American school historians guilty of any very serious injustices to +England. Some quite modern histories which I have looked into (yet +written before the Spanish War) seem to me excellently and most +impartially done. The older histories are not well written: they are apt +to be sensational and chauvinistic in tone, and to encourage a somewhat +cheap and blusterous order of patriotism; but that they commonly malign +character or misrepresent events I cannot discover. They are perhaps a +little too much inclined to make "insolent" the inseparable epithet of +the British soldier; but there is no reason to doubt that in many cases +it was amply merited. I have not come across the history in which Mr. +G.W. Steevens discovered the following passages: + + "The eyes of the soldiers glared upon the people like hungry + bloodhounds. The captain waved his sword. The red-coats pointed + their guns at the crowd. In a moment the flash of their muskets + lighted up the street, and eleven New England men fell bleeding + upon the snow.... Blood was streaming upon the snow; and though + that purple stain melted away in the next day's sun, it was never + forgotten nor forgiven by the people.... A battle took place + between a large force of Tories and Indians and a hastily organised + force of patriotic Americans. The Americans were defeated with + horrible slaughter, and many of those who were made prisoners were + put to death by fiendish torture.... More than six thousand + American sailors had been seized by British warships and pressed + into the hated service of a hated nation." + +These passages are certainly not judicial or even judicious in tone; but +I fancy that the book or books from which Mr. Steevens culled them must +be quite antiquated. In books at present on the educational market I +find nothing so lurid. What I do find in some is a failure to +distinguish between the king's share and the British people's share in +the policy which brought about and carried on the Revolutionary War. +For instance, in Barnes's _Primary History of the United States_ +(undated, but brought down to the end of the Spanish War) we read: + + "_The English people_ after a time became jealous of the prosperity + of the colonists, and began to devise plans by which to grasp for + themselves a share of the wealth that was thus rolling in.... + Indeed, _the English people_ acted from the first as if the + colonies existed only for the purpose of helping them to make + money." + +George III. and his Ministers are not so much as mentioned, and the +impression conveyed to the ingenuous student is that the whole English +nation was consciously and deliberately banded together for purposes of +sheer brigandage. The same history is delightfully chauvinistic in its +account of the Colonial Wars. The British officers are all bunglers and +poltroons; if disasters are averted or victories won, it is entirely by +the courage and conduct of the colonists: + + "When Johnson reached the head of Lake George he met the French, + and a fierce battle was fought. Success seemed at first to be + altogether with the French; but after a while Johnson was slightly + wounded, when General Lyman, a brave colonial officer, took + command, and beat the French terribly.... Abercrombie's defeat was + the last of the English disasters. The colonists now had arms + enough, and were allowed to fight in their own way, and a series of + brilliant victories followed.... By the energy, courage, and + patriotism of her colonies, England had now acquired a splendid + empire in the New World. And while she reaped all the glory of the + war and its fruits, it was the hardy colonists who had throughout, + borne the brunt of the conflict." + +The child who learns his history from Mr. Barnes may not hate England, +but will certainly despise her. + +Text-books of this type, however, are already obsolescent. A committee +of the New England History Teachers' Association published in the +_Educational Review_ for December 1898 a careful survey of no fewer than +nineteen school histories of the United States, and summed up the +results as follows: + + "In discussing the causes of the Revolution, text-book writers have + sounded pretty much the whole scale of motives. England has been + pictured, on the one hand, as an arbitrary oppressor, and, on the + other, as the helpless victim of political environment. Under the + influence of deeper study and a keener sense of justice, however, + the element of bitterness, which so often entered into the + discussion of this subject, has largely disappeared; and while the + treatment of the Revolution in the text-books still leaves much to + be desired, it is now seldom dogmatic and unsympathetic." + +The fact remains, however, that we have still to live down our wars +with the United States, in which there was much that was galling to the +just pride of the American people, and much, too, that was perhaps +over-stimulating to their self-esteem. There is no doubt, on the one +hand, that we were inclined to adopt a supercilious and contemptuous +attitude towards the "rebel colonists" of 1775, the new-made nation of +1815; no doubt, on the other hand, that they made a splendid fight +against us, and taught our superciliousness a salutary lesson. They feel +to this day the humiliation of having been despised, and the exultation +of having put their despisers to shame. These wars, which were, until +1861, almost the whole military history of the United States, were but +episodes in our history, and one of them a trifling episode. Therefore, +while the average Englishman has not studied them sufficiently to +realise how much he ought to deplore them, the average American has been +taught to dwell upon them as the glorious struggles in which his nation +won its spurs. To the juvenile imagination, battles are always the oases +in the desert of history, and the schoolboy never fails to take sides +fiercely and uncompromisingly, exaggerating, with the histrionic +instinct of youth, his enthusiasm and his hatreds. Thus the insolent +Britisher became the Turk's-head or Guy Fawkes, so to speak, of the +American boy, the butt of his bellicose humours; and a habit of mind +contracted in boyhood is not always to be eradicated by the sober +reflection of manhood, even in minds capable of sober reflection. The +Civil War, be it noted, did not depose the insolent Britisher from his +bad eminence in the schoolboy imagination. The Confederates were, after +all, Americans, though misguided Americans; and the fostering, the +brooding upon, intestine rancours was felt by teachers and pupils alike +to be impossible. But there is in the juvenile mind at any given moment +a certain amount of abstract combativeness, let us call it, which must +find an outlet somewhere. Hatred is a natural function of the human +mind, just as much as love; and the healthy boy instinctively exercises +it under the guise of patriotism, without clearly distinguishing the +element of sheer play and pose in his transports. England's attitude +during the Civil War certainly did nothing to endear her either to the +writers or the readers of school histories; and she remained after that +struggle, as she had been before, the one great historical adversary on +whom the abstract combativeness of young America could expend itself. +How strong this tendency is, or has been, in the American school, may be +judged from the following anecdote. A boy of unmixed English parentage, +whose father and mother had settled in America, was educated at the +public school of his district. On the day when Mr. Cleveland's Venezuela +message was given to the world, he came home from school radiant, and +shouted to his parents: "Hurrah! We're going to war with England! We've +whipped you twice before, and we're going to do it again." It is clear +that at this academy Anglomania formed no part of the curriculum; and +who can doubt that in myriads of cases these schoolboy animosities +subsist throughout life, either active, or dormant and easily awakened? + +Let us admit without shrinking that the history of the United States +cannot be truthfully written in such a way as to ingratiate Great +Britain with the youth of America. There have been painful episodes +between the two nations, in which England has, on the whole, acted +stupidly, or arrogantly, or both. Nor can we shift the whole blame upon +George III. or his Ministers. They were responsible for the actual +Revolution; but after the Revolution, down even to the time of the +Civil War inclusive, the English people, though guiltless in the main of +active hostility to America, cannot be acquitted of ignorance and +indifference. It is not in the least to be desired that American history +should be written with a pro-English bias, and, as I have said, I do not +find the anti-English bias, even in inferior text-books, so excessive as +it is sometimes represented to be. The anti-English sentiment of +American schools is, as it seems to me, an inevitable phenomenon of +juvenile psychology, under the given conditions; and it is the +alteration in the actual conditions wrought by recent events, rather +than any marked change in the tone of the text-books, that may, I think, +be trusted to soothe the schoolboy's savage breast. England has now done +what she had never done before: shown herself conspicuously friendly to +the United States; and another European country has given occasion for +spirit-stirring manifestations of American prowess. Thus England is +deposed for the time, and we may trust for ever, from her position as +the one traditional arch-enemy. + +But though the errors of commission in American history-books have been +exaggerated, I cannot but think that a common error of omission is +worthy of remark and correction. They begin American history too +late--with the discovery of America--and they do not awaken, as they +might, the just pride of race in the "unhyphenated" American boy. Long +before Columbus set sail from Palos, American history was a-making in +the shire-moots of Saxon England, at Hastings, and Runnymead, and +Bannockburn. In all the medięval achievements of England, in peace and +war--in her cathedrals, her castles, her universities, in Cressy, +Poictiers, and Agincourt--Americans may without paradox claim their +ancestral part. Why should the sons of the English who emigrated leave +to the sons of those who stayed at home the undivided credit of having +sent to the right-about the Invincible Armada? Nay, it is only the very +oldest American families that can disclaim all complicity in having, as +Lord Auchinleck put it, "garred kings ken that they had a lith in their +necks." Of course I do not mean that the American schoolboy should be +taken in detail through British history down to the seventeenth century +before, so to speak, he crosses the Atlantic. But I do suggest that he +would be none the worse American for being encouraged to set a due value +on his rightful share in the achievements of earlier ancestors than +those who fought at Trenton or sailed with Decatur. Let him realise his +birthright in the glories of Britain, and he will perhaps come to take a +more magnanimous view of her errors and disasters. + + + + +IV + + +Britain has been too forgetful of the past, America, perhaps, too +mindful; and in the everyday relations of life Britain has often been +tactless and unsympathetic, America suspicious and supersensitive. There +is every prospect, I think, that such errors will become, in the future, +rarer and ever rarer; and it behoves us, on our side, to be careful in +guarding against them. We have not hitherto sufficiently respected +America,--that is the whole story. We have taken no pains to know and +understand her. We have too often regarded her with a careless and +supercilious good feeling, which she has not unnaturally mistaken for +ill feeling, and repaid in kind. The events of the past year seem to +have brought the two countries almost physically closer to each other, +and to have made them more real, more clearly visible, each to each. +America has won the respectful consideration of even the most +thoughtless and insular among us. She has come home to us, so to speak, +as a vast and vital factor in the problem of the future. +Superciliousness towards her is a mere anachronism. + +Many Englishmen, however, are still guilty of a thoughtless captiousness +towards America, which is none the less galling because it manifests +itself in the most trifling matters. A friend of my own returned a few +years ago from a short tour in the United States, declaring that he +heartily disliked the country, and would never go back again. Inquiry as +to the grounds of his dissatisfaction elicited no more definite or +damning charge than that "they" (a collective pronoun presumed to cover +the whole American people) hung up his trousers instead of folding +them--or _vice versā_, for I am heathen enough not to remember which is +the orthodox process. Doubtless he had other, and possibly weightier, +causes of complaint; but this was the head and front of America's +offending. Another Englishman of education and position, being asked why +he had never crossed the Atlantic, gravely replied that he could not +endure to travel in a country where you had to black your own boots! +Such instances of ignorance and pettiness may seem absurdly trivial, but +they are quite sufficient to act as grits in the machinery of social +intercourse. Americans are very fond of citing as an example of English +manners the legend of a great lady who, at an American breakfast, saw +her husband declining a dish which was offered to him, and called across +the table, "Take some, my dear--it isn't half as nasty as it looks." +Three different people have vouched to me for the truth of this +anecdote, each naming the heroine, and each giving her a different name. +True or false, it is held in America to be typical; and it would +scarcely be so popular as it is unless people had suffered a good deal +from the tactlessness which it exemplifies. The same vice, in a more +insidious form, appears in a remark made to me the other day by an +Englishman of very high intelligence, who had just returned from a long +tour in America, and was, in the main, far from unsympathetic. "What I +felt," he said, "was the suburbanism of everything. It was all Clapham +or Camberwell on a gigantic scale." Some justice of observation may +possibly have lain behind this remark, though I certainly failed to +recognise it. But in the form of its expression it exemplified that +illusion of metropolitanism which is to my mind the veriest cockneyism +in disguise, and which cannot but strike Americans as either ridiculous +or offensive. + +Englishmen who, as individuals, wish to promote and not impede an +international understanding, will do well to take some little thought to +avoid wounding, even in trifles, the just and inevitable +susceptibilities of their American acquaintances. Our own national +self-esteem is cased in oak and triple brass,[M] and we are apt to +regard American sensitiveness as a ridiculous foible. It is nothing of +the sort: it is a psychological necessity, deep-rooted in history and +social conditions. + +Again, there are certain misunderstandings which Englishmen, not as +individual human beings but as citizens of the British Empire, ought +carefully to guard against. Let us beware of speaking or thinking as +though friendship for England involved on the part of America any +acceptance of English political ideas or imitation of English methods. +In especial, let us carefully guard against the idea that an +Anglo-American understanding, however cordial, implies the adoption of +an "expansionist" policy by the United States, or must necessarily +strengthen the hands of the "expansionist" party. If America chooses to +"take up the white man's burden" in the Kiplingesque sense, it would ill +become England to object; but her doing so is by no means a condition of +England's sympathy. It might seem, indeed, that she had plenty of "white +man's burden" to shoulder within her own continental boundaries; but +that is a matter which she is entirely competent to determine for +herself. + +Most of all must we beware of anything that can encourage an impression, +already too prevalent in America, that we find the "white man's burden" +too heavy for us, and are anxious to share it with the United States. +This suspicion is very generally felt and very openly expressed. Take, +for instance, this paragraph from an editorial in one of the leading +Chicago papers: + + "It would be a strange thing to see Continental Europe take up arms + against Great Britain alone.... That it is a very reasonable + possibility, however, is generally recognised in Europe, and it + was doubtless a knowledge of this fact that induced Great Britain + to make such unusual exertions to ally itself with the United + States." + +Here, again, is another journalistic straw floating on the stream: + + "Referring to the fact that English and American officers had + fallen side by side in Samoa while promoting commercial interests, + Lord [Charles] Beresford expressed the hope that the two nations + would 'always be found working and fighting in unison.' This might + keep us pretty busy, your lordship." + +In a rather low-class farce which I saw in a Chicago theatre, two men +wandered through the action, with the charming irrelevance +characteristic of American popular drama, attired, one as John Bull, the +other as Brother Jonathan. There came a point in the action where some +one had to be kicked out of the house. "You do it, Jonathan," said John +Bull; whereupon Jonathan retorted: "I know your game; you want me to do +your fighting for you, but _I don't do it_! See?" These are ridiculous +trifles, no doubt, but they might be indefinitely multiplied; and they +show the set of a certain current in American feeling. Let us beware of +lending added strength to this current by any appearance of +self-interested eagerness in our advances towards America. + +One thing we cannot too clearly realise, and that is that the true +American clings above everything to his Americanism. The status of an +American citizen is to him the proudest on earth, and that although he +may clearly enough recognise the abuses of American political life, and +the dangers which the Republic has to encounter. The feeling (which is +not to be confounded with an ignorant chauvinism, though in some cases +it may take that form) is the fundamental feeling of the whole nation; +and no emotion which threatened to encroach upon it, or compete with it +in any way, would have the least chance of taking a permanent place in +the American mind. The feeling which, as one may reasonably hope, is now +growing up between the two nations must be based on the mutual admission +of absolute independence and equality. The relation is new to history, +and must beget a new emotion. Strong as is the bond of mutual interest, +it must have a large idealism to reinforce it--a sentiment (shall we +say?) of mutual admiration--if the English-speaking peoples are to play +the great part in the drama of the future which Destiny seems to be +urging upon them. In order to stand together in perfect freedom and +dignity, it is essential that each of the brother-nations should be +incontestably able to stand alone. If we want to cement the +Anglo-American understanding, the first thing we have to do is to cement +the British Empire. + +There is no more typical and probably no more widely respected American +at the present moment than Governor Roosevelt, of New York. Even those +who dissent from his "strenuous" ideal and his expansionist opinions, +admit him to be a model of political integrity and public spirit. In an +article on "The Monroe Doctrine," published in 1896, Mr. Roosevelt wrote +as follows: + + "No English colony now stands on a footing of genuine equality with + the parent State. As long as the Canadian remains a colonist, he + remains in a position which is distinctly inferior to that of his + cousins, both in England and in the United States. The Englishman + at bottom looks down on the Canadian, as he does on any one who + admits his inferiority, and quite properly too. The American, on + the other hand, with equal propriety, regards the Canadian with the + good-natured condescension always felt by the freeman for the man + who is not free. A funny instance of the English attitude towards + Canada was shown after Lord Dunraven's inglorious fiasco last + September, when the Canadian yachtsman Rose challenged for the + America Cup. The English journals repudiated him on the express + ground that a Canadian was not an Englishman, and not entitled to + the privileges of an Englishman. In their comments, many of them + showed a dislike for Americans which almost rose to hatred. The + feeling they displayed for Canadians was not one of dislike. It was + one of contempt." + +There are several contestable points in this statement, and I quote it, +though it is but three years old, as a historical rather than a +contemporary utterance. At the same time it expresses an almost +universal American point of view, and indicates errors to be corrected, +dangers to be avoided. It is absurd, of course, that the American should +look down upon the Canadian as a "man who is not free"; but every shadow +of an excuse for such an attitude ought to be removed, and the citizen +of the British Empire ought to have as clearly defined a status as the +citizen of the American Republic. + +Even if such unpleasant incidents should recur as those to which Mr. +Roosevelt alludes, we may trust with tolerable confidence that he would +now find no "hatred" for America, or "contempt" for Canada, in the tone +of the British Press. The years which have passed since 1896 have not +only created a new feeling between England and America, but have drawn +the Empire together. In this respect--in every respect--much remains to +be done. + +But at least we can say with assurance that a good beginning has been +made towards that consolidation of the English-speaking countries on +which the well-being of the world so largely depends. + + +POSTSCRIPT.--The notion of inevitable hostility between a constitutional +Monarchy and a Republic has been fostered by American writers in whom +one would have expected greater clearness of perception. We find Lowell, +for instance, writing in his well-known essay _On a Certain +Condescension in Foreigners_: "I never blamed her (England) for not +wishing well to democracy--how should she?" The more obvious question +is, How should not one democracy wish another well? There may have been +at the time when Lowell wrote, and there may even be to-day, a handful +of royalty-worshippers in England who regard a Republic as a vulgar, +unpicturesque form of government; but this is not a political opinion, +or even prejudice, but mere stolid snobbery. Whatever were England's +misdemeanours towards America at the time of the Civil War, they were +not prompted by any hatred of democracy. + +I find the same misconception insisted on in a document much later than +Lowell's essay: a leaflet by the Rev. Edward Everett Hale, contributed +to a _Good Citizenship Series_ especially designed for the enlightenment +of the more ignorant class of American voters. The tract is called _The +Ruler of America_, and sets forth that the Ruler of America is "The +People with a very large P." Now, according to Dr. Hale, we benighted +Europeans are absolutely incapable of grasping this truth. He says: +"This is at bottom the trouble with the diplomatists of Europe, with +prime ministers, and with leaders of ''Er Majesty's Hopposition.'... +Even men of intelligence.... can make nothing of the central truth of +our system.... In my house, once, an English gentleman of great +intelligence told me that he had visited the White House, and was most +glad to pay his respects to 'the Ruler of our Great Nation.' Poor man! +he thought he would please me! But he saw his mistake soon enough. I +stormed out, 'Ruler of America? Who told you he was the ruler of +America? He never told you so. He is the First Servant of America.' And +I hope the poor traveller learned his lesson." + +It is true that the poor traveller used a pompous and rather absurd +expression, but if he had had his wits about him he might have reminded +Dr. Hale that the President is much more effectively the Ruler of +America than the Queen is the Ruler of England. He rules by the direct +mandate of the People, but he rules none the less. It would greatly +conduce to a just understanding between America and England if the +political instructors of the American people would correct instead of +confirming the prevalent impression that they have a monopoly of +democracy. + + + + +AMERICAN LITERATURE + + +Great Britain and the United States are sister Commonwealths, enjoying +the advantages and exposed to the dangers of sisterhood. The dangers are +as real, though we trust not as great, as the advantages. Family +quarrels are apt to be bitterest; a chance word will seem unkind and +unbearable from a near kinsman, which, coming from a stranger, would +carry no sting at all. As Lowell very truly said, "The common blood, and +still more the common language, are fatal instruments of +misapprehension." But behind this statement there lies a far deeper +though still obvious truth. We misunderstand because we understand; and +it would be an extravagance of pessimism to doubt that, in the long run, +understanding will carry the day. Light may dazzle here and bewilder +there; but, after all, it is light and not darkness. We English and +Americans hold a talisman that makes us at home over half, and more than +half, the world; and we are not going to rob it of its virtue by +renouncing our ties, and wantonly declaring ourselves aliens to each +other. + +Our unity of speech is such a commonplace that we scarcely notice it. +But, rightly regarded, it is a thing to be rejoiced in with a great joy, +and not without a certain sense of danger happily escaped. He would have +been a bold man who should confidently have prophesied at the Revolution +that American and English would remain the same tongue, and that at the +end of the nineteenth century there would not be the slightest +perceptible cleavage, or threat of ultimate divergence. No doubt there +were forces obviously tending to preserve the linguistic unity of the +two nations. There was the English Bible for one thing, and there was +the whole body of English literature. The Americans, it might have been +said, could scarcely be so foolish as deliberately to renounce their +spiritual birthright, or let it drift little by little away from them. +But, on the other hand, virulent and inveterate political enmity, had it +arisen, might quite conceivably have led the Americans to make it a +point of honour to differentiate their speech from ours, as many +Norwegians are at this moment making it a point of honour to +differentiate their language from the Danish, which was until of late +years the generally accepted medium of literary expression. In the +evolution of their literature, the Americans might purposely have +rejected our classical tradition, making their effort rather to depart +from than to adhere to it. Again, an observer in 1776 could not have +foreseen the practical annihilation, by steam and electricity, of that +barrier which then appeared so formidable--the Atlantic Ocean. He might +have foreseen the immense influx of men of every race and tongue into +the unpeopled West; but he could scarcely have anticipated with +confidence the ready absorption of all these alien elements (save one!) +into the dominant Anglo-Saxon polity. It was quite on the cards that a +new American language might have developed from a fusion of all the +diverse tongues of all the scattered races of the earth. + +Nothing of the sort, as we know, has happened. The instinct of kinship +from the first kept political enmity in check; the Atlantic has been +practically wiped out; and English has easily absorbed, in America, all +the other idioms which have been brought into contact, rather than +competition, with it. The result is that the English language occupies a +unique position among the tongues of the earth. It is unique in two +dimensions--in altitude and in expanse. It soars to the highest heights +of human utterance, and it covers an unequalled area of the earth's +surface. Undoubtedly it is the most precious heirloom of our race, and +as such we must reverence and guard it. Nor must we islanders talk as +though we hold it in fee-simple, and allowed our trans-Atlantic kinsfolk +merely a conditional usufruct of it. Their property in it is as complete +and indefeasible as our own; and we should rejoice to accept their aid +in the conversation and renovation (equally indispensable processes) of +this superb and priceless heritage. + +English critics of the beginning of the century so convincingly set +forth the reasons why America, absorbed in the conquest of nature and in +material progress, could not produce anything great in the way of +literature, that their arguments remain embedded in many minds even to +this day, when events have conclusively falsified them. It is a +commonplace with some people that America has not developed a great +_American_ literature. If this merely means that, in casting off her +allegiance to George III., America did not cast off her allegiance to +Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Dryden, Addison, Swift, Pope, the +reproach, if it be one, must be accepted. If it be a humiliation to +American authors to own the traditions and standards established by +these men, and thereby to enrol themselves in their immortal fellowship, +why, then it must be owned that they have deliberately incurred that +humiliation. One American of vivid originality tried to escape it, and +with what result? Simply that Whitman holds a place of his own, somewhat +like that of Blake one might say, in the literature of the English +language, and has produced at least as much effect in England as in +America. If, on the other hand, it be implied that American literature +feebly imitates English literature, and fails to present an original and +adequate interpretation of American life, no reproach could well be more +flagrantly unjust. It is not only the abstract merit of American +literature, though that is very high, but precisely the Americanism of +it, that gives it its value in the eyes of all thinking Englishmen. Only +one American author of the first rank could possibly, at a superficial +glance, appear--not so much English as--European, cosmopolitan. I mean, +of course, Edgar Allan Poe, who has left perhaps a deeper impress upon +literature outside the English-speaking countries than any other +imaginative writer of the century, with the exception of Byron. Poe was +a born idealist, a creature of pure intelligence. Whether in poetry or +fiction, he was always solving problems; and it is hard to be +distinctively national in an exercise of pure intelligence. We do not +look for local colour in, for example, the agreeable essays of Euclid. +But Poe's intelligence was, at bottom, of a characteristically American +type. He was the Edison of romance.[N] As for the other great writers of +America, what can be more patent than their Americanism? Speaking only, +for the present, of those who have joined the majority, I would name two +who seem to me to stand with Poe in the very front rank of original +genius. They are Emerson, that starlike spirit, dwelling in a serener +ether than ours, which, though we may never attain, it is yet a +refreshment to look up to; and Hawthorne, not perhaps the greatest +romancer in the English tongue, but certainly the purest artist in that +sphere of fiction. Now, it is a mere truism to say that each of these +men was, in his way, a typical product of New England, inconceivable as +the offspring of any other soil in the world. Emerson, it has been said, +not without truth, was the first of the American humourists, carrying +into metaphysics that gift of realistic vision and inspired hyperbole +which has somehow been grafted upon the Anglo-Saxon character by the +conditions of American life. As for Hawthorne, though he has felt and +reproduced the physical charm of Rome more subtly than any other artist, +his genius drew at once its strength and its delicacy from his Puritan +ancestry and environment. To realise how intimately he smacks of the +soil, we have but to think of that marvellous scene in _The Blithedale +Romance_, the search for Zenobia's body. From what does it derive its +peculiar quality, its haunting savour? Simply from the presence of Silas +Foster, that delightful incarnation of the New England yeoman. "If I +thought anything had happened to Zenobia, I should feel kind o' +sorrowful," said the grim Silas; and there never was a speech more +dramatically true, or, in its context, more bitterly pathetic. + +Even while English critics were proving that there could be no such +thing as an American literature, Washington Irving and Fenimore Cooper +were laying its foundations on a thoroughly American basis. Irving was +none the less American for loving the picturesque traditions of his +English ancestry; Cooper, a gallant and fertile genius, did his country +and our language an inestimable service by adding a whole group of +specifically American figures to the deathless aristocracy of the realms +of romance. Then, in the generation which has just passed away, we have +such men as Thoreau, racy of his native soil; Longfellow, in his day and +way the chief interpreter of America to England; Whittier, so intensely +local that, as Professor Matthews puts it, "he wrote for New England +rather than for the whole of the United States;" Lowell, courtly, +cultured, cosmopolitan, and yet the creator of Hosea Biglow; Holmes, as +American in his humour as Lamb was English, who justly ranks with Lamb +and Goldsmith among the personally best-beloved writers of the English +tongue. Prescott, in the sphere of history, paralleled the achievement +of Cooper in fiction, by giving literary form to the romance of the New +World; while Motley was inspired (too ardently, perhaps) by the spirit +of free America in writing the great epic of religious and political +freedom in Europe. Finally, it must not be forgotten that in _Uncle +Tom's Cabin_, a tragically American production, Mrs. Beecher Stowe added +to the literature of the English language the most potent, the most +dynamic, pamphlet ever hurled into the arena of national life. + +Of all that living Americans are doing for the literature of our common +tongue it is as yet impossible to speak adequately. Since 1870, a new +spirit of nationalism has entered into American literature, which has +not yet been thoroughly studied in America or appreciated in England. So +far from having no national literature, America has now, perhaps, the +most intimately national body of fiction in the modern world. Before the +Civil War there was practically no deliberate and systematic study of +local and racial idiosyncracies. Hosea Biglow was a mask, not a +character, and Parson Wilbur was a literary device. Even Hawthorne +thought primarily of the element of imagination in the romances--the +universal, not the local, element. His leading characters are +psychological creations, with nothing specifically American about them; +his local colour and local character-study, though admirable, are +incidental, or at any rate stand on a secondary plane. In the South +there was no literature at all, local or otherwise, with the one +startling exception of _Uncle Tom's Cabin_.[O] But since 1870, and +mainly, indeed, within the past twenty years, a marvellous change has +come over the scene. Not only the national but the local +self-consciousness of America has sprung to literary life, until at the +present day there is scarcely a corner of the country, scarcely an +aspect of social life, that has not found its special, and, as a rule, +very able interpreter through the medium of fiction. Pursuing technical +methods partly borrowed from abroad (from France rather than from +England), American writers have undertaken what one is tempted to call a +sociological ordnance-survey of the Republic from Maine to Arizona, from +Florida to Oregon. There is scarcely a human being in the United States, +from the Newport society belle to the "greaser" of New Mexico, that has +not his or her more or less faithful counterpart in fiction. No European +country, so far as I know, has achieved anything like such comprehensive +self-realisation. Comprehensive, I say--not necessarily profound. +Perhaps France in Balzac, perhaps Russia in Turgueneff and Tolstoļ, +found more searching interpretation than America has found even in her +host of novelists. But never, surely, was there a body of fiction that +touched life at so many points, to mirror if not to probe it. And in +many cases to probe it as well. + +It would take a volume to criticise these writers in any detail. I can +attempt no more than a bald and imperfect enumeration. Miss Mary +Wilkins's studies of New England life are well known and appreciated in +England, but the talent of Miss Sarah Orne Jewett is not sufficiently +recognised. In her _Country of the Pointed Firs_, for example, there are +whole chapters that rise to a classical perfection of workmanship. The +novelists of the Eastern cities, with Mr. Howells, a master craftsman, +at their head, are of course numberless. For studies in the local colour +of New York nothing could be better than Professor Brander Matthews' +_Vignettes of Manhattan_, and other stories. Mr. Paul Leicester Ford's +_Honorable Peter Stirling_, though antiquated in style, gives a +remarkable picture of political life in New York. The Bowery Boy is +cleverly represented, so far as dialect at any rate is concerned, by +Mr. E.W. Townsend in his _Chimmie Fadden_. Even the Jewish and the +Italian quarters of New York have their portraitists in fiction. Life in +Washington has been frequently and ably depicted; for instance, in Mrs. +Burnett's _Through one Administration_. Of the many interpreters of the +South I need mention only three: Mr. Cable, Mr. Thomas Nelson Page, and +Mr. Chandler Harris. Miss Murfree ("Charles Egbert Craddock") has made +the mountains of Tennessee her special province. Chicago has several +novelists of her own: for example, Mr. Henry Fuller, author of _The +Cliff Dwellers_, Mr. Will Payne, and that close student of Chicago +slang, Mr. George Ade, the author of _Artie_. The Middle West counts +such novelists as Miss "Octave Thanet" and Mr. Hamlin Garland, whose +_Main Travelled Roads_ contains some very remarkable work. The Far West +is best represented, perhaps, in the lively and graphic sketches of Mr. +Owen Wister; while California has novelists of talent in Miss Gertrude +Atherton and Mr. Frank Norris. At least two Americans living abroad have +made noteworthy contributions to this sociological survey of their +native land: the late Mr. Harold Frederic, who has dealt mainly with +country life in New York State, and Miss Elizabeth Robins, whose +picture, in _The Open Question_, of a Southern family impoverished by +the war, is exceedingly vivid and bears all the marks of the utmost +fidelity. Nor must I omit to mention that the stage has borne a modest +but not insignificant part in this movement of national +self-portraiture. Mr. Augustus Thomas' _Alabama_ is a delightful picture +of Southern life, while Mr. James A. Herne's _Shore Acres_ takes a +distinct place in the literature of New England, his _Griffith +Davenport_[P] in the literature of Virginia. + +There must, of course, be many gaps in this summary enumeration. It is +very probable that many novelists of distinction have altogether escaped +my notice; and I have made no attempt to include in my list the writers +of short magazine stories, many of them artists of high accomplishment. +One omission, however, I must at once repair. "Mark Twain's" +contributions to the work of self-realisation have been in the main +retrospective, but nevertheless of the first importance. He is the +"sacred poet" of the Mississippi. If any work of incontestable genius, +and plainly predestined to immortality, has been issued in the English +language during the past quarter of a century, it is that brilliant +romance of the Great Rivers, _The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn_. + +Intensely American though he be, "Mark Twain" is one of the greatest +living masters of the English language. To some Englishmen this may seem +a paradox; but it is high time we should disabuse ourselves of the +prejudice that residence on the European side of the Atlantic confers +upon us an exclusive right to determine what is good English, and to +write it correctly and vigorously. We are apt in England to class as an +"Americanism" every unfamiliar, or too familiar, locution which we do +not happen to like. As a matter of fact, there is a pretty lively +interchange between the two countries of slipshod and vulgar +"journalese;" and as the picturesque reporter is a greater power in +America than he is with us, we perhaps import more than we export of +this particular commodity. But there can be no rational doubt, I think, +that the English language has gained, and is gaining, enormously by its +expansion over the American continent. The prime function of a language, +after all, is to interpret the "form and pressure" of life--the +experience, knowledge, thought, emotion, and aspiration of the race +which employs it. This being so, the more tap-roots a language sends +down into the soil of life, and the more varied the strata of human +experience from which it draws its nourishment, whether of vocabulary or +idiom, the more perfect will be its potentialities as a medium of +expression. We must be careful, it is true, to keep the organism +healthy, to guard against disintegration of tissue; but to that duty +American writers are quite as keenly alive as we. It is not a source of +weakness but of power and vitality to the English language that it +should embrace a greater variety of dialects than any other civilised +tongue. A new language, says the proverb, is a new sense; but a +multiplicity of dialects means, for the possessors of the main language, +an enlargement of the pleasures of the linguistic sense without the +fatigue of learning a totally new grammar and vocabulary. So long as +there is a potent literary tradition keeping the core of the language +one and indivisible, vernacular variations can only tend, in virtue of +the survival of the fittest, to promote the abundance, suppleness, and +nicety of adaptation of the language as a literary instrument. The +English language is no mere historic monument, like Westminster Abbey, +to be religiously preserved as a relic of the past, and reverenced as +the burial-place of a bygone breed of giants. It is a living organism, +ceaselessly busied, like any other organism, in the processes of +assimilation and excretion. It has before it, we may fairly hope, a +future still greater than its glorious past. And the greatness of that +future will largely depend on the harmonious interplay of spiritual +forces throughout the American Republic and the British Empire. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote M: I do not mean that we are callous to American criticism, or +always take it in good part when it comes home to us. I think with +shame, for example, of the stupid insolence with which certain English +journalists used for years to treat Mr. W.D. Howells, merely because he +had expressed certain literary judgments from which they dissented. What +I do mean, and believe to be true, is that we are _habitually +unconscious_ of American criticism, while Americans may rather be said +to be _habitually over-conscious_ that the eyes of England and of the +world are on them. The existence of this habit of mind seems to me no +less evident than the fact that it is rapidly correcting itself.] + +[Footnote N: I went to see Poe's grave in Baltimore, marked by a mean +and ugly monument, little more than a mere tombstone. It is surely time +that a worthy memorial should be raised, at his burial-place or +elsewhere, to this unique genius. England and the English-speaking world +would gladly contribute. For a masterly criticism and vindication of +Poe, let me refer the reader to Mr. John M. Robertson's _New Essays +towards a Critical Method_. London and New York, 1897.] + +[Footnote O: For the reasons of this barrenness, see an essay on _Two +Studies in the South_, in Professor Brander Matthews' _Aspects of +Fiction_. New York, 1896.] + +[Footnote P: Founded on a novel by Miss Helen H. Gardener.] + + + + +THE AMERICAN LANGUAGE + +I + + +Nothing short of an imperative sense of duty could tempt me to set forth +on that most perilous emprise, a discussion of the American language. +The path is beset with man-traps and spring-guns. Not all the serious +causes of dissension between England and America have begotten half the +bad blood that has been engendered by trumpery questions of vocabulary, +grammar, and pronunciation. I cannot hope to escape giving offence, +probably on both sides; but if I can induce one or two people on either +side to think twice before they scoff once, I shall not have written in +vain. + +In the way of scoffing, we English have doubtless (and inevitably) been +the worst offenders. We have habitually used "Americanism" as a term of +reproach, implying, if not saying in so many words, that America was the +great source of pollution, and of nothing but pollution, to the +otherwise limpid current of our speech. Dean Alford wrote offensively +to this effect; Archbishop Trench, on the other hand, discussed the +relations between the English of America and the English of England with +courtesy and good sense.[Q] He protested against certain transatlantic +neologisms, including in his list that excellent old word "to berate," +and a word so useful and so eminently consonant with the spirit of the +language as "to belittle;" but, whether wise or unwise, his protest was +at least civil. Other writers, both in books and periodicals, have been +apt to take their tone from the Dean rather than from the Archbishop. It +may even be said that the instinct of the majority of Englishmen, which +finds heedless expression in the newspapers and common talk, is to +regard Americanisms as necessarily vulgar, and (conversely) vulgarisms +as probably American. If challenged and brought to book, they can +generally realise the narrowness and injustice of this way of thinking; +yet they relapse into it next moment. It is time we should be on our +guard against so insidious a habit. Its reduction to absurdity may be +found (alackaday!) in _Fors Clavigera_ for June 1, 1874. With shame and +sorrow I transcribe the passage, for the time has not yet come for it +to be forgotten. If it were merely the aberration of an individual, +however distinguished, it were better kept out of sight, out of mind; +but it is, I repeat, the reckless exaggeration of a not altogether +uncommon habit of thought:-- + + "England taught the Americans all they have of speech or thought, + hitherto. What thoughts they have not learned from England are + foolish thoughts; what words they have not learned from England, + unseemly words; the vile among them not being able even to be + humorous parrots, but only obscene mocking-birds." + + +Can we wonder that Americans have retorted with some asperity upon +criticisms in which any approach to such insolent insularism is even +remotely or inadvertently implied? + +The American retort, however, has not always been judicious or +dignified. It has too often consisted in the mere pitting of one +linguistic prejudice against another. It is very easy to prove that +there are bad speakers and bad writers in both countries, and the +attempt to determine which country has the more numerous and the greater +sinners is exceedingly unprofitable. The "You're another" style of +argument has been far too prevalent. Here we have Mr. Gilbert M. Tucker, +for instance, in a book entitled _Our Common Speech_ (1895) implying, +if he does not absolutely assert (p. 173), that a "boldness of +innovation" in matters linguistic, amounting to "absolute +licentiousness," is more characteristic of England than of America. The +suggestion leaves my British withers entirely unwrung, for I approve of +bold innovation in language, trusting to the impermanence of the unfit +to counteract the effects of licentiousness. If I could believe that we +British were the bolder innovators, I should admit it without blenching; +but observation and probability seem to me to point with one accord in +the opposite direction. New words are begotten by new conditions of +life; and as American life is far more fertile of new conditions than +ours, the tendency towards neologism cannot but be stronger in America +than in England. America has enormously enriched the language, not only +with new words, but (since the American mind is, on the whole, quicker +and wittier than the English) with apt and luminous colloquial +metaphors; and I know not why Mr. Tucker should disclaim the credit. + +He next sets forth to show how recent English writers are corrupting the +language; and, in doing so, he falls into some curious errors. + +Dickens was boldly innovating when he made Silas Wegg say, "Mr. Boffin, +I never bargain"--"haggle," it would seem, is the proper word. But if +Mr. Tucker will look into the matter, he will find it extremely probable +that this was the original sense of the word "bargain," and quite +certain that it was a very early sense; for instance-- + + "So worthless peasants bargain for their wives, + As market-men for oxen, sheep, or horse." + + I HENRY VI., V. v. 53. + +And, in any case, is it possible to set up such a distinction between +"bargaining" and "haggling" as to be worth an international wrangle? +"Starved" for frozen is to Mr. Tucker an innovation; it was used both by +Shakespeare and Milton. "Assist" in the sense of to "be present at" is +an "absurd" innovation; it was used by Gibbon and by Prescott, a +"tolerably good authority," says Mr. Tucker himself, "in the use of +English." Miss Yonge is taken to task for saying, "Theodora _flung_ away +and was rushing off;" but Milton says, "And crop-full out of doors he +flings." Charles Reade "is guilty of such phrases as 'Wardlaw whipped +before him,' 'Ransome whipped before it;'" but the Princess in _Love's +Labour's Lost_ is guilty of saying, "Whip to our tents, as roes run +o'er the land," and the word occurs in the same sense in Ben Jonson and +Steele, to search no further. The simple fact is that Mr. Tucker has not +happened to note the intransitive sense of "to fling" and "to whip," +which has been current in the best authors for centuries. He is very +severe on the English habit of "inserting utterly superfluous words," +instancing from Lord Beaconsfield, "He was _by way of_ intimating that +he was engaged on a great work," and, from a magazine, "She was _by way +of_ painting the shrimp girl." Now, this is not an elegant expression, +and for my part I should be at some pains to avoid it; but it has a +perfectly distinct meaning, and is not a mere redundancy. If Mr. Tucker +supposes that "She was by way of painting the shrimp girl" means exactly +the same as "She was painting the shrimp girl," he misses one of the +fine shades of the English language. Similarly, his remark on the +"peculiar misuse of the affix _ever_, as in saying 'What_ever_ are you +doing?'" stands in need of reconsideration. It is wrong, certainly, to +treat _ever_ as an affix, and to mistake the first two words of "What +ever are you doing?" for the one word "whatever;" but to suppose the +"ever" meaningless and inert, is to overlook a clearly marked and very +useful gradation of emphasis. "What are you doing?" expresses simple +curiosity; "What ever are you doing?" expresses surprise; "What the +devil are you doing?" expresses anger--we need not run farther up the +scale. Nor is this use of "ever" an innovation, licentious or otherwise. +"Ever" has for centuries been employed as an intensive particle after +the interrogative pronouns and adverbs how, who, what, where, why. For +instance, in _The World of Wonders_ (1607), "I shall desire him to +consider how ever it was possible to get an answer from these priests." + +One of the most remarkable paragraphs in Mr. Tucker's book is that in +which he proves "the greater permanence and steadiness of our American +speech as compared with that of the mother country" by going through +Halliwell's _Dictionary of Archaisms and Provincialisms_, and picking +out 76 words which Halliwell regards as obsolete, but which in America +are all alive and kicking. (The vulgarism is mine, not Mr. Tucker's.) +Now as a matter of fact not one of these words is really obsolete in +England, and most of them are in everyday use; for instance, adze, +affectation, agape, to age, air (appearance), appellant, apple-pie +order, baker's dozen, bamboozle, bay window, between whiles, bicker, +blanch, to brain, burly, catcall, clodhopper, clutch, coddle, copious, +cosy, counterfeit money, crazy (dilapidated), crone, crook, croon, +cross-grained, cross-patch, cross purposes, cuddle, to cuff (to strike), +cleft, din, earnest money, egg on, greenhorn, jack-of-all-trades, +loophole, settled, ornate, to quail, ragamuffin, riff-raff, rigmarole, +scant, seedy, out of sorts, stale, tardy, trash. How Halliwell ever came +to class these words as archaic I cannot imagine; but I submit that any +one who sets forth to write about the English of England ought to have +sufficient acquaintance with the language to check and reject +Halliwell's amazing classification. Does Mr. Tucker so despise British +English as never to read an English book? How else is one to account for +his imagining for a moment that clodhopper, clutch, copious, cosy, +cross-grained, greenhorn, and rigmarole are obsolete in England? + +Far be it from me to assert that Mr. Tucker makes no good points in his +catalogue of English solecisms. I merely hint that this game of pot and +kettle is neither dignified nor profitable; that purism is almost always +over-hasty, and apt to ignore both the history and the psychology of +language; and, finally, that nothing is gained by introducing acerbity +(though I have admitted the frequent provocation) into a discussion +which a little exercise of temper should render no less agreeable than +instructive to both parties. "The speech of the lower orders of our +people," says Mr. Tucker, "... differs from what all admit to be +standard correctness in a much smaller degree[R] than we have every +reason to believe to be the case in England, _our enemies themselves +being judges_." Now I protest I am not Mr. Tucker's enemy, and I know of +no reason why he should be mine. I cannot share the withering contempt +with which he regards the extension of the term "traffic" from barter to +movement to and fro, as in a street or on a railway; but if he prefers +another word (he does not suggest one, by the way) for the traffic on +Broadway or on the New York Central, I shall not esteem him one whit the +less.[S] Even when he tells me that "bumper" is the English term for +the American "buffer" (on a railway carriage) I do not feel my blood +boil. A very slight elevation of the eyebrows expresses all the emotion +of which I am conscious. So long as he does not insist on my saying a +"bumper state" when I mean a "buffer state," I see no reason whatever +for any rupture of that sympathy which ought to subsist between two men +who take a common interest and pride in the subject of his +treatise--_Our Common Speech_. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote Q: See _English Past and Present_, ninth edition, pp. 63, +215.] + +[Footnote R: "What great city of this country," Mr. Tucker inquires, +"has developed, or is likely to develop, any peculiar class of errors at +all comparable in importance to those of the Cockney speech of London?" +The answer is pat: New York and Chicago--unless Mr. Townsend's _Chimmie +Fadden_ and Mr. Ade's _Artie_ are sheer linguistic libels.] + +[Footnote S: It must be very painful to Mr. Tucker to find Shakespeare +talking of the "two hours' traffic of our stage." He was a hardened +offender, was Shakespeare, against Mr. Tucker's ideal of one single, +inelastic, cast-iron signification for every word in the language.] + + + + +II + + +It is not to be expected that an extremely English intonation should +ever be agreeable to Americans, or an extremely American intonation to +Englishmen. We ourselves laugh at a "haw-haw" intonation in English; +why, then, should we forbid Americans to do so? If "an accent like a +banjo" is recognised as undesirable in America (and assuredly it is), +there is no reason why we in England should pretend to admire it. But a +vulgar or affected intonation is clearly distinguishable, and ought to +be clearly distinguished, from a national habit in the pronunciation of +a given letter, or accentuation of a particular word, or class of words. +For instance, take the pronunciation of the indefinite article. The +American habitually says "[=a] man" (_a_ as in "game"); the Englishman, +unless he wants to be emphatic, says, "[)a] man."[T] Neither is right, +neither wrong; it is purely a matter of habit; and to consider either +habit ridiculous is merely to exhibit that childishness or provincialism +of mind which is moved to laughter by whatever is unfamiliar. Again, +when I first read the works of the sagacious Mr. Dooley, I thought it a +curiously far-fetched idea on the part of that philosopher to talk of +Admiral Dewey as his "Cousin George," and assert that "Dewey" and +"Dooley" were practically the same name. I had not then noticed that the +American pronunciation of "Dewey" is "Dooey," and that the liquid "yoo" +is very seldom heard in America. In the course of the five minutes I +spent in the Supreme Court at Washington, I heard the Chief Justice of +the United States make this one remark: "That, sir, is not +_constitootional_." To our ears this "oo" has an old-fashioned ring, +like that of the "ee" in "obleeged;" but to call it wrong is absurd, and +to find it ridiculous is provincial. Very possibly it can be proved that +had Shakespeare used the word at all, he would have said +"constitootional;" but that would make the "oo" neither better nor worse +in my eyes. There always have been, and always will be, changing +fashions in pronunciation; and the Americans have as good a right to +their fashion as we to ours. Fifty years hence, perhaps, our grandsons +will be saying "constitootional," and theirs "constityootional." I +confess that, in point of abstract sonority, I prefer the "yoo" to the +dry "oo;" but that, again, is a pure matter of taste. If Americans +choose to say, + + "From morn + To noon he fell, from noon to dooey eve, + A summer's day." + +I am perfectly willing that they should do so, reserving always my own +right to say "dyooey." It would not at all surprise me to learn that +Milton said "dooey;" but neither would it lead me to alter the +pronunciation which, as one of the present generation of Englishmen, I +have learnt to prefer. + +It is said that when Mr. Daly's company returned to New York, after a +long visit to England, they pronounced "lieutenant" according to the +English fashion, "leftenant," but were called to order by an outburst of +protest. Though, for my own part, I say "leftenant," I heartily +sympathise with the protesters. "Leftenant," though a corruption of +respectable antiquity, is a corruption none the less, and since it has +died out in America, it would be mere snobbery to reintroduce it. + +So, too, with questions of accentuation. We say "prim-arily" and +"tem-porarily;" most (or at any rate many) Americans say "primar-ily" +and "temporar-ily." Here there is no question of right or wrong, +refinement or vulgarity. The one accentuation is as good as the other. +It may be argued, indeed, that our accentuation throws into relief the +root, the idea, the soul of the word, not the mere grammatical suffix, +the "limbs and outward flourishes;" but on the other hand, it may be +contended with equal truth that the American accentuation has the Latin +precedent in its favour. Neither advantage is conclusive; neither, +indeed, is, strictly speaking, relevant; for Englishmen do not make a +principle of accentuating the root rather than the prefix or suffix, +else we should say "inund-ation," "resonant," "admir-able;" and the +Americans do not make a principle of following the Latin emphasis, else +they would say "ora-tor" and "gratui-tous," and the recognised +pronunciation of "theatre" would be "theayter." It is argued that there +is a general tendency among educated Englishmen to throw the accent as +far back as possible; that, for instance, the educated speaker says +"in-teresting," the uneducated, "interest-ing." True; but until this +tendency can be proved to possess some inherent advantage, there is not +a shadow of reason why Americans should be reproached or ridiculed for +obeying their own tendency rather than ours. The English tendency is a +matter of comparatively recent fashion. "Con-template," said Samuel +Rogers, "is bad enough, but bal-cony makes me sick." Both forms have +maintained themselves up to the present; but will they for long? I think +one may already trace a reaction against the universal throwing backward +of the accent. I myself say "per-emptory" and "ex-emplary;" but it would +take very little encouragement to make me say "peremp-tory" and +"exemp-lary," which seem to me much more expressive words. There is +surely no doubt that, in accenting a prefix rather than the root of the +word, we lose a certain amount of force. "Con-template," for instance, +is not nearly so strong a word as "contemp-late." We say an +"il-lustrated" book or the "_Il-lustrated London News_" because we do +not require any particular force in the epithet; but when the sense +demands a word with colour and emotion in it, we say the "illus-trious" +statesman, the "illus-trious" poet, throwing into relief the essential +element in the word, the "lustre." What a paltry word would +"tri-umphant" be in comparison with "trium-phant!" But the larger our +list of examples, the more capricious does our accentuation seem, the +more evidently subject to mere accidents of fashion. There is scarcely a +trace of consistent or rational principle in the matter. To make a merit +of one practice, and find in the other a subject for contemptuous +criticism, is simply childish. + +Mere slovenliness of pronunciation is a totally different matter. For +instance, the use of "most" for "almost" is distinctly, if not a +vulgarism, at least a colloquialism. It may be of ancient origin; it may +have crossed in the _Mayflower_ for aught I know; but the overwhelming +preponderance of ancient and modern usage is certainly in favour of +prefixing the "al," and there is a clear advantage in having a special +word for this special idea. If American writers tried to make "most" +supplant "almost" in the literary language, we should have a right to +remonstrate; the two forms would fight it out, and the fittest would +survive. But as a matter of fact I am not aware that any one has +attempted to introduce "most," in this sense, into literature. It is +perfectly recognised as a colloquialism, and as such it keeps its place. +Again, such pronunciations as "mebbe" for "maybe" and "I'd ruther" or "I +druther" for "I'd rather" are obvious slovenlinesses. No American would +defend them as being correct, any more than an Englishman would defend +"I dunno" for "I don't know" or "atome" for "at home." If an actor, for +instance, were to say, + + "I druther be a dog and bay the moon + Than such a Roman," + +American and English critics alike could not but protest against the +solecism; for in poetry absolute precision of utterance is clearly +indispensable. But in everyday speech a certain amount of colloquialism +is inevitable. Let him whose own enunciation is chemically free from +localism or slovenliness cast the first stone even at "mebbe" and +"ruther." + +A curious American colloquialism, of which I certainly cannot see the +advantage, in the substitution of "yep," or "yup" for "yes," and of +"nope" for "no." No doubt we have in England the coster's "yuss;" but +one hears even educated Americans now and then using "yep," or some +other corruption of "yes," scarcely to be indicated by the ordinary +alphabetical symbols. It seems to me a pity. + +Much more respectable in point of antiquity is the habit which obtains +to some extent even among educated Americans, of saying "somewheres" and +"a long ways." Here the "s" is an old case-ending, an adverbial +genitive. "He goes out nights," too, on which Mr. Andrew Lang is so +severe, is a form as old as the language and older. I turn to Dr. Leon +Kellner's _Historical English Syntax_ (p. 119) and find that the Gothic +for "at night" was "nahts," and that the form (with its correlative +"days ") runs through old Norse, old Saxon, old English, and middle +English: for instance, "dages endi nahtes" _(Hźliand)_, "dęges and +nihtes" _(Beówulf)_, "dęies and nihtes" (Layamon), all meaning "by day +and by night." In all, or almost all, words ending in "ward," the +genitive inflection, according to modern English practice, can either be +retained or dropped at will. It is a mere pedantry to declare "toward" +better English than "towards," "upward" than "upwards." Thus we see +that here again there is neither logical principle nor consistent +practice to be invoked. At the same time, as "somewheres" has become +irremediably a vulgarism in England, it would, I think, be a graceful +concession on the part of educated Americans to drop the "s." After all, +"somewhere" does not jar in America, and "somewheres" very distinctly +jars in England. + +An insidious laxity of pronunciation (rather than of grammar), which is +taking great hold in America, is the total omission of the "had" or +"have," in such phrases as "You'd better," "we've got to." Mr. Howells's +Willis Campbell, a witty and cultivated Bostonian, says, in _The Albany +Depot_, "I guess we better get out of here;" Mr. Ade's Artie, a Chicago +clerk, says, "I got a boost in my pay," meaning "I have got:" the +locution is very common indeed. It is no more defensible than "swelp me" +for "so help me." It arises from sheer laziness, unwillingness to face +the infinitesimal difficulty of pronouncing, "d" and "b" together. As a +colloquialism it is all very well; but I regard it with a certain alarm, +for where all trace of a word disappears, people are apt to forget the +logical and grammatical necessity for it. Though contracted to its last +letter, a word still asserts its existence; but when even the last +letter has vanished its state is parlous indeed. + +An Anglicism much ridiculed in America is "different to." As a +Scotchman, I dislike it, and would neither use nor defend it. At the +same time I cannot but hint to American critics that the use of a +particular preposition in a particular context is largely a matter of +convention; that when we learn a new language we have simply to get up +by rote the conventions that obtain in this regard, reason being little +or no guide to us; and that within the same language the conventions are +always changing. You may easily nonplus even a good grammarian by asking +him suddenly, "What preposition should you use in such-and-such a +context?" just as you may puzzle a man by asking him to spell a word +which, if he wrote it without thinking about it, would present no +difficulty to him. Some very good American writers always say, "at the +North," and "at the South," where an Englishman would certainly say +"in." "At," to my mind, suggests a very narrow point of space. I should +say "at" a village, but "in" a city--"at Concord," but "in Boston." I +recognise, however, that this is a mere matter of convention, and do +not dream of condemning "at the North" as an error. In the same way I +would claim tolerance, though certainly not approval, for "different +to." + +As a general rule, I think, educated Americans are more apt to err on +the side of purism than of laxity. I have before me, for example, a long +list of rules and warnings for American writers, issued by the _New York +Press_, many of which are very much to the point, while others seem to +me captious and pedantic. For instance, a woman is not to "marry" a man; +she is "married to" him; "the clergyman or magistrate marries both." The +grammatical suitor, then, when the awful moment arrives, must not say to +the blushing fair, "Will you marry me?" but "Will you be married to me?" +Again, you not only must not split infinitives, but you must not +separate an auxiliary from its verb; you must say "probably will be," +not "will probably be." This is English by the card indeed. + +I will not waste space upon discussing the different fashions of +spelling in England and America. The rage excited in otherwise rational +human beings by the dropping of the "u" in "favor," or the final "me" in +"program," is one of the strangest of psychological phenomena. The +baselessness of the reasonings used to bolster up the British clinging +to superfluous letters is very ably shown in Professor Matthews' +_Americanisms and Briticisms_. Let me only put in a plea for the +retention of such abnormal spellings as serve to distinguish two words +of the same sound. For instance, it seems to me useful that we should +write "story" for a tale and "storey" for a floor, and in the plural +"stories" and "storeys." + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote T: "Surely, on Mr. Archer's own showing," writes Mr. A.B. +Walkley, "the Englishman has the advantage here, for 'when he wants to +be emphatic' he can be, whereas the American cannot." This is a +misapprehension on Mr. Walkley's part. The American a can be spoken with +or without emphasis, just as the speaker pleases. It is because we are +accustomed always to associate this particular sonority with emphasis +that even when it is spoken without emphasis, we imagine it to be +emphatic.] + + + + +III + + +Passing now from questions of pronunciation and grammar to questions of +vocabulary, I can only express my sense of the deep indebtedness of the +English language, both literary and colloquial, to America, for the old +words she has kept alive and the new words and phrases she has invented. +It is a sheer pedantry--nay, a misconception of the laws which govern +language as a living organism--to despise pithy and apt colloquialisms, +and even slang. In order to remain healthy and vigorous, a literary +language must be rooted in the soil of a copious vernacular, from which +it can extract and assimilate, by a chemistry peculiar to itself, +whatever nourishment it requires. It must keep in touch with life in the +broadest acceptation of the word; and life at certain levels, obeying a +psychological law which must simply be accepted as one of the conditions +of the problem, will always express itself in dialect, provincialism, +slang. + +America doubles and trebles the number of points at which the English +language comes in touch with nature and life, and is therefore a great +source of strength and vitality. The literary language, to be sure, +rejects a great deal more than it absorbs; and even in the vernacular, +words and expressions are always dying out and being replaced by others +which are somehow better adapted to the changing conditions. But though +an expression has not, in the long run, proved itself fitted to survive, +it does not follow that it has not done good service in its time. +Certain it is that the common speech of the Anglo-Saxon race throughout +the world is exceedingly supple, well nourished, and rich in forcible +and graphic idioms; and a great part of this wealth it owes to America. +Let the purists who sneer at "Americanisms" think for one moment how +much poorer the English language would be to-day if North America had +become a French or Spanish instead of an English continent. + +I am far from advocating a breaking down of the barrier between literary +and vernacular speech. It should be a porous, a permeable bulwark, +allowing of free filtration; but it should be none the less distinct and +clearly recognised. Nor do I recommend an indiscriminate hospitality to +all the linguistic inspirations of the American fancy. All I say is that +neologisms should be judged on their merits, and not rejected with +contumely for no better reason than that they are new and (presumably) +American. Take, for instance, the word "scientist." It was originally +suggested by Whewell in 1840; but it first came into common use in +America, and was received in England at the point of the bayonet. Huxley +and other "scientists" disowned it, and only a few years ago the _Daily +News_ denounced it as "an ignoble Americanism," a "cheap and vulgar +product of transatlantic slang." But "scientist" is undoubtedly holding +its own, and will soon be as generally accepted as "retrograde," +"reciprocal," "spurious," and "strenuous," against which Ben Jonson, in +his day, so--strenuously protested. It holds its own because it is felt +to be a necessity. No one who is in the habit of writing will pretend +that it is always possible to fall back upon the cumbrous phrase "man of +science."[U] On the other hand, the purist objection to +"scientist"--that it is a Latin word with a Greek termination, and that +it implies the existence of a non-existent verb--may be urged with +equal force against such harmless necessary words as deist, aurist, +dentist, florist, jurist, oculist, somnambulist, ventriloquist, +and--purist. Much more valid objection might be made to the word +"scientific," which is not hybrid indeed, but is, if strictly examined, +illogical and even nonsensical. The fact is that three-fourths of the +English language would crumble away before a purist analysis, and we +should be left without words to express the commonest and most necessary +ideas. + +Contrast with the case of "scientist" a vulgarism such as the use of +"transpire" in the sense of "happen." I do not quote it as an +Americanism; it is probably of English origin; it occurs, I regret to +note, in Dickens. I select it merely as an example of a demonstrably +vicious locution which ought indubitably to be banished from the +language. It has its origin in sheer blundering. Some one, at some time, +has come upon the phrase "such-and-such a thing has transpired"--that +is, leaked out, become known--and, ignorantly mistaking its meaning, has +noted and employed the word as a finer-sounding synonym for "occurred" +or "happened." The blunder has been passed on from one penny-a-liner to +another, until at last it has crept into the pages of writers, on both +sides of the Atlantic, who ought to know better. If it served any +purpose, expressed any shade of meaning, it might be tolerated; but +being at once a useless pedantry and an obvious blunder, it deserves no +quarter. + +My point, then, is that "scientist" ought to live on its merits, +"transpire" to die on its demerits. With regard to every neologism we +ought first to inquire, "Does it fill a gap? Does it serve a purpose?" +And if that question be answered in the affirmative, we may next +consider whether it is formed on a reasonably good analogy and in +consonance with the general spirit of the language. "Truthful," for +example, is said to be an Americanism, and at one time gave offence on +that account. It is not only a vast improvement on the stilted +"veracious," but one of the prettiest and most thoroughly English words +in the dictionary. + +The above-quoted writer in the _New York Press_ is a purist in +vocabulary, no less than in grammar. He will not allow us to be +"unwell," we must always be "ill;" an inhuman imperative. Why should we +sacrifice this clear and useful gradation: unwell, very unwell, ill, +very ill? On "sick" he does not deliver judgment. The American use of +the word is ancient and respectable, but the English limitation of its +meaning seems to me convenient, seeing we have the general terms +"unwell" and "ill" ready to hand. Again, the _New York Press_ authority +follows Freeman in wishing to eject the word "ovation" from the +language; surely a ridiculous literalism. It is true we do not sacrifice +a sheep at a modern "ovation," but neither (for example) do we judge by +the flight of birds when we declare the circumstances to be "auspicious" +for such and such an undertaking. Again, we are never to "retire" for +the night, but always to "go to bed." If, as is commonly alleged, +Americans say "retire" because they consider it indelicate to go to bed, +the feeling and the expression are alike foolish. But I do not believe +that either is at all common in America. On the other hand, one may +retire for the night without going to bed. In the case of ladies +especially, the interval between retiring and going to bed is reputed +to be far from inconsiderable. If, then, one really means "retired for +the night" and does _not_ definitely mean "went to bed," I see no crime +in employing the expression that conveys one's exact meaning. Finally +the _New York Press_ will not let us use the word "commence;" we must +always "begin." This is an excellent example of unreflecting or +half-reflecting purism. "Commence" is a very old word; it is used by the +best writers; it is easily pronounceable and not in the least +grandiloquent; indeed it has precisely the length and cadence of its +competitor. But somebody or other one day observed that it was Latin, +whereas "begin" was Saxon; and since then there has been a systematic +attempt, in several quarters, to hound the innocent and useful synonym +out of the language. Whence comes this rage for impoverishing our +tongue! The more synonyms we possess the better. Wherefore (by the way) +I for my part should not be too rigorous in excluding a forcible +Americanism merely because it happens to duplicate some word or +expression already current in England. The rich language is that which +possesses not only the necessaries of life but also an abundance of +superfluities. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote U: Mr. Andrew Lang says: "Plenty of other words are formed on +the same analogy: the Greeks, in the verb 'to Medize,' set the example. +But we happen to have no use for 'scientist.'" It is not quite clear +whether Mr. Lang employs "have no use" in the American sense, expressing +sheer dislike, or in the literal and English sense. In the latter case I +can only say that he has been fortunate in never coming across +conjunctures in which "man of science" came in awkwardly and +inelegantly.] + + + + +IV + + +Let me note a few of the Americanisms, good, bad, and indifferent, which +specially struck me, whether in talk or in books, during my recent visit +to the United States. I call them Americanisms without inquiring into +their history. Some of them may be of English origin; but for practical +purposes an Americanism may be taken to mean an expression commonly used +in America and not commonly used in England. + +I had not been three hours on American soil before I heard a charming +young lady remark, "Oh, it was bully!" I gathered that this expression +is considered admissible, in the conversation of grown-up people, only +in and about New York. I often heard it there, and never anywhere else. +A very distinguished officer, who served as a volunteer in Cuba, was +asked to state his impressions of war. "War," he said, "is a terrible +thing. You can't exaggerate its horrors. When you sit in your tent the +night before the battle, and think of home and your wife and children, +you feel pretty sick and downhearted. But," he added, "next day, when +you're in it, oh, it _is_ bully!" + +The general use of picturesque metaphor is of course a striking feature +of American conversation. Many of these expressions have taken firm root +in England, such as "to have no use for" a man, or "to take no stock in" +a theory. But fresh inventions crop up on every hand in America. For +instance, where an English theatrical manager would say, "We must get +this play well talked about and paragraphed in advance," an American +manager puts the whole thing much more briefly and forcibly in the +phrase, "We don't want this piece to come in on rubbers." Metaphor +apart, many Americans have a gift of fantastic extravagance of phrase +which often produces an irresistible effect. A gentleman in high +political office had one day to receive a deputation with whose objects +he had no sympathy. He listened for some time to the spokesman of the +party, and then, at a pause, broke in with the remark: "Gentlemen, you +need proceed no further. I am not an entirely dishevelled jackass!" One +would give something for a snapshot photograph of the faces of that +deputation. + +Small differences of expression (other than those with which every one +is familiar--such as "elevator," "baggage," "depot," &c.)--strike one in +daily life. The American for "To let" is "For rent;" a "thing one would +wish to have expressed otherwise" is, more briefly, "a bad break;" +instead of "He married money" an American will say "He married rich;" +but this, I take it, is a vulgarism--as, indeed, is the English +expression. I find that in the modern American novel, setting forth the +sayings and doings of more or less educated people, there are apt to be, +on an average, about half a dozen words and phrases at which the English +reader stumbles for a moment. Mr. Howells, a master of English, may be +taken as a faithful reporter of the colloquial speech of Boston and New +York. In one of his comediettas, he makes Willis Campbell say, "Let me +turn out my sister's cup" (pour her a cup of tea). Mrs. Roberts, in +another of these delightful little pieces, says, "I'll smash off a +note," where an English Mrs. Roberts would say "dash off "; and where an +English Mrs. Roberts would ring the bell, her American namesake "touches +the annunciator." It is commonly believed in England that there is no +such thing as a "servant" in America, but only "hired girls" and +"helps." This is certainly not so in New York. I once "rang up" a +friend's house by telephone, and, on asking who was speaking to me, +received the answer, in a feminine voice, "I'm one of Mr. So-and-so's +servants." + +The heroine of _The Story of a Play_ says to her husband, "Are you still +thinking of our scrap of this morning?" "Scrap," in the sense of +"quarrel," is one of the few exceedingly common American expressions +which, have as yet taken little hold in England.[V] Admiral Dewey, for +instance, is admired as a "scrapper," or, as we should phrase it, a +fighting Admiral. Mr. Henry Fuller, of Chicago, in his powerful novel +_The Cliff Dwellers_, uses a still less elegant synonym for "scrap"--he +talks of a "connubial spat." In the same book I note the phrases "He +teetered back and forth on his toes," "He was a stocky young man," "One +of his brief noonings," "That's right, Claudia--score the profession." +"Score," as used in America, does not mean "score off," but rather, I +take it, "attack and leave your mark upon." It is very common in this +sense. For instance, I note among the headlines of a New York paper, +"Mr. So-and-so scores Yellow Journalism." Talking of Yellow Journalism, +by the way, the expressions "a beat," and "a scoop," for what we in +England call an "exclusive" item of news, were unknown to me until I +went to America. I was a little bewildered, too, when I was told of a +family which "lived on air-tights." Their diet consisted of canned (or, +as we should say, tinned) provisions. + +The most popular slang expression of the day is "to rubberneck," or, +more concisely, "to rubber." Its primary meaning is to crane the neck in +curiosity, to pry round the corner, as it were.[W] But it has numerous +and surprising extensions of meaning. It appears to be one of the laws +of slang that when a phrase strikes the popular fancy, it is pressed +into service on every possible or impossible occasion. Another +favourite expression is "That cuts no ice with me."[X] I was unable to +ascertain either its origin or its precise significance. On the other +hand, a piece of slang which supplies a "felt want," and will one day, I +believe, pass into the literary language, is "the limit" in the sense of +"le comble." A theatrical poster, widely displayed in New York while I +was there, bore this alluring inscription: + + THE LIMIT AT LAST! + + "THE MORMON SENATOR AND THE MERMAID" + + JAGS OF JOY FOR JADED JOHNNIES. + +A "jag," be it known, means primarily a load, secondarily a "load," or +"package," of alcohol. + +Collectors of slang will find many priceless gems in two recent books +which I commend to their notice: _Chimmie Fadden_, by Mr. E.W. Townsend, +and _Artie_, by Mr. George Ade. _Chimmie Fadden_ gives us the dialect of +the New York Bowery Boy, or "tough," in which the most notable feature +is the substitution either of "d" or "t" for "th." Is this, I wonder, a +spontaneous corruption, or is it due to German and Yiddish influence? +When Chimmie wants to express his admiration for a young lady, he says: +"Well, say, she's a torrowbred, an' dat goes." When the young lady's +father comes to thank him for championing her, this is how Chimmie +describes the visit: "Den he gives me a song an' dance about me being a +brave young man for tumping de mug what insulted his daughter," "Mug," +the Bowery term for "fellow" or "man," in Chicago finds its equivalent +in "guy." Mr. Ade's Artie is a Chicago clerk, and his dialect is of the +most delectable. In comparison with him, Mr. Dooley is a well of English +undefiled. Here again we find traces of the influence of polyglot +immigration. "Kopecks" for "money" evidently comes from the Russian Jew; +"girlerino," as a term of endearment, from the "Dago" of the sunny +south; and "spiel," meaning practically anything you please, from the +Fatherland. When Artie goes to a wedding, he records that "there was a +long spiel by the high guy in the pulpit." After describing the +embarrassments of a country cousin in the city, Artie proceeds, "Down at +the farm, he was the wise guy and I was the soft mark." "Mark" in the +sense of "butt" or "gull" is one of the commonest of slang words. When +Artie has cut out all rivals in the good graces of his Mamie, he puts it +thus, "There ain't nobody else in the one-two-sevens. They ain't even in +the 'also rans.'" When they have a lovers' quarrel he remarks, "Well, I +s'pose the other boy's fillin' all my dates." When he is asked whether +Mamie cycles, he replies, "Does she? She's a scorchalorum!" When he +disapproves of another young gentleman, this is how "he puts him next" +to the fact, as he himself would say-- + + "You're nothin' but a two-spot. You're the smallest thing in the + deck.... Chee-e-ese it! You can't do nothin' like that to me and + then come around afterwards and jolly me. Not in a million! I tell + you you're a two spot, and if you come into the same part o' the + town with me I'll change your face. There's only one way to get + back at you people.... If he don't keep off o' my route, there'll + be people walkin' slow behind him one o' these days.... But this + same two-spot's got a sister that can have my seat in the car any + time she comes in." + +I plead guilty to an unholy relish for Chimmie's and Artie's racy +metaphors from the music-hall, the poker-table, and the "grip-car."[Y] +But it is to be noted that both these profound students of slang, Mr. +Townsend and Mr. Ade, like the creator of the delightful Dooley, express +themselves in pure and excellent English the moment they drop the mask +of their personage. This is very characteristic. Many educated Americans +take great delight, and even pride, in keeping abreast of the daily +developments of slang and patter; but this study does not in the least +impair their sense for, or their command of, good English. The idea that +the English language is degenerating in America is an absolutely +groundless illusion. Take them all round, the newspapers of the leading +American cities, in their editorial columns at any rate, are at least as +well written as the newspapers of London; and in magazines and books the +average level of literary accomplishment is certainly very high. There +are bad and vulgar writers on both sides of the Atlantic; but until the +beams are removed from our own eyes, we may safely trust the Americans +to attend to the motes in theirs. + + +POSTSCRIPT.--When this paper originally appeared, it formed the text for +an editorial article in the _Daily News_, in which Mr. Andrew Lang's +sign manual was not to be mistaken. Mr. Lang brought my somewhat +desultory discussion very neatly to a point. He admitted that we +habitually use "Americanism" as a term of reproach; "but," he asked, +"who is reproached? Not the American (who may do as he pleases) but the +English writer, who, in serious work, introduces, needlessly, an +American phrase into our literature. We say 'needlessly' when our +language already possesses a consecrated equivalent for the word or +idiom." + +In the first place, one has to remark that many English critics are far +from accepting Mr. Lang's principle that "the American may do as he +pleases, of course." Mr. Lang himself scarcely acts up to it in this +very article. And, for my part, I think the principle a false one. I +think the English language has been entrusted to the care of all of us, +English no less than Americans, Americans no less than English; and if I +find an American writer debasing it in an essential point, as opposed to +a point of mere local predilection, I assert my right to remonstrate +with him, just as I admit his right, under similar circumstances, to +remonstrate with me. + +It is not here, however, that I join issue with Mr. Lang: it is on his +theory that an English writer necessarily does wrong who unnecessarily +employs an Americanism. This is a question of great practical moment, +and I am glad that Mr. Lang has stated it in this definite form. My view +is perhaps sufficiently indicated above, but I take the opportunity of +reasserting it with all deliberation. I believe that, as a matter both +of literary and of social policy, we ought to encourage the free +infiltration of graphic and racy Americanisms into our vernacular, and +of vigorous and useful Americanisms (even if not absolutely necessary) +into our literary language. Where is the harm in duplicating terms, if +only the duplicates be in themselves good terms? For instance, take the +word "fall." Mr. Brander Matthews writes: "An American with a sense of +the poetic cannot but prefer to the imported word 'autumn' the native +and more logical word 'fall,' which the British have strangely suffered +to drop into disuse." Well, "autumn" was a sufficiently early +importation. "Our ancestors," wrote Lowell (quoted by Mr. Matthews in +the same article), "unhappily could bring over no English better than +Shakespeare's;" and in Shakespeare's (and Chaucer's) English they +brought over "autumn." The word has inherent beauty as well as splendid +poetical associations. I doubt whether even Shakespeare could have made +out of "fall" so beautiful a line as + + "The teeming autumn, big with rich increase." + +I doubt whether Keats, had he written an _Ode to the Fall_, would have +produced quite such a miraculous poem as that which begins + + "Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness." + +Still, Mr. Matthews is quite right in saying that "fall" has a poetic +value, a suggestion, an atmosphere of its own. I wonder, with him, why +we dropped it, and I see no smallest reason why we should not recover +it. The British literary patriotism which makes a point of never saying +"fall" seems to me just as mistaken as the American literary patriotism +(if such there be) that makes a merit of never saying "autumn." By +insisting on such localisms (for the exclusive preference for either +term is nothing more) we might, in process of time, bring about a +serious fissure in the language. Of course there is no reason why Mr. +Lang should force himself to use a word that is uncongenial to him; but +if "fall" is congenial to me, I think I ought to be allowed to use it +"without fear and without reproach." + +Take, now, a colloquialism. How formal and colourless is the English +phrase "I have enjoyed myself!" beside the American "I have had a good +time!" Each has its uses, no doubt. I am far from suggesting that the +one should drive out the other. It is precisely the advantage of our +linguistic position that it so enormously enlarges the stock of +semi-synonyms at our disposal. To reject a forcible Americanism merely +because we could, at a pinch, get on without it, is--Mr. Lang will +understand the forcible Scotticism--to "sin our mercies." + +Mr. Lang is under a certain illusion, I think, in his belief that in +hardening our hearts against Americanism's we should raise no barrier +between ourselves and the classical authors of America. He says: "Let us +remark that they [Americanisms] do not occur in Hawthorne, Poe, Lowell, +Longfellow, Prescott, and Emerson, except when these writers are +consciously reproducing conversations in dialect." He made the same +remark on a previous occasion; when his opponent (see the _Academy_, +March 30, 1895) opened a volume of Hawthorne and a volume of Emerson, +and in five minutes found in Hawthorne "He had named his two children, +one _for_ Her Majesty and one _for_ Prince Albert," and in Emerson +"Nature tells every secret once. Yes; but in man she tells it _all the +time_." The latter phrase is one which Mr. Lang explicitly puts under +his ban. He is an ingenious and admirable translator: I wish he would +translate Emerson's sentence from American into English, without loss of +brevity, directness, and simple Saxon strength. For my part, I can think +of nothing better than "In man she is always telling it," which strikes +me as a feeble makeshift. "All the time," I suggest, is precisely one of +the phrases we should accept with gratitude--if, indeed, it be not +already naturalised. + +Mr. Lang is peculiarly unfortunate in calling Oliver Wendell Holmes to +witness against his particular and pet aversion "I belong here" or "That +does not belong there." Writing of "needless Americanisms," he says, +"The use of 'belong' as a new auxiliary verb [an odd classification, by +the way] is an example of what we mean. Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes was a +stern opponent of such neologisms." I turn to the Oxford Dictionary, and +the one quotation I find under "belong" in this sense, is:--"'You belong +with the last set, and got accidentally shuffled with the others.'--_O.W. +Holmes, 'Elsie Venner_.'" But this, Mr. Lang may say, is in +dialogue. Yes, but not in dia_lect_. I am very much mistaken if the +locution does not occur elsewhere in Holmes. If Mr. Lang, in a leisure +hour, were to undertake a search for it, he might incidentally find +cause to modify his view as to the sternness of the Autocrat's +anti-Americanism. + +Let me not be thought to underrate the services which, by sound precept +and invaluable example, Mr. Lang has rendered to all of us who use the +English tongue. Conservatism and liberalism are as inevitable, nay, +indispensable, in the world of words as in the world of deeds; and I +trust Mr. Lang will not set down my liberalism as anarchism. He and I, +in this little discussion, are simply playing our allotted parts. I +believe (and Mr. Lang would probably admit with a shrug) that the forces +of the future are on my side. May I recall to him that charming anecdote +of Thackeray and Viscount Monck, when they were rival candidates for the +representation of Oxford in Parliament? They met in the street one day, +and exchanged a few words. On parting, Thackeray shook hands with his +opponent and said, "Good-bye; and may the best man win!" "I hope _not_," +replied Viscount Monck, with a bow. A hundred years hence, if some +English-speaker of the future should chance to disinter this book from +the recesses of the British Museum or the Library of Congress, and +should read these final paragraphs, I doubt not he will say--for the +immortal soul of the language even anarchism cannot affect--"the race is +not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong." + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote V: Mr. Walkley reports that he has heard a Cockney policeman, +speaking of a street row, "There's been a little scrappin'."] + +[Footnote W: "About a dozen ringers followed us into the church and +stood around rubberin'." "Gettin' next to the new kinds o' saddles and +rubber-neckin' to read the names on the tyres."--_Artie_. A writer in +the New York _Sun_ says: "I first heard the term 'rubbernecks' in +Arizona, about four years ago, applied to the throngs of onlookers in +the gambling-houses, who strove to get a better view of the games in +progress by stretching or bending their necks."] + +[Footnote X: "We didn't break into sassiety notes, but that cuts no ice +in our set."--_Artie_.] + +[Footnote Y: Extract from a letter to the _Chicago Evening Post_: "I do +not at all subscribe to the sneering remark of a talented author of my +acquaintance, to the effect that there were not enough cultured people +in Chicago to fill a grip-car. I asked him if he meant a grip-car and a +trailer, and he said, 'No; just one car.' And I told him right there +that I could not agree with him."] + + + +THE END + + + + + + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of America To-day, Observations and +Reflections, by William Archer + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AMERICA TO-DAY *** + +***** This file should be named 7997-8.txt or 7997-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/7/9/9/7997/ + +Produced by Karen Dalrymple and PG Distributed Proofreaders + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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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: America To-day, Observations and Reflections + +Author: William Archer + +Release Date: July 22, 2004 [EBook #7997] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AMERICA TO-DAY *** + + + + +Produced by Karen Dalrymple and PG Distributed Proofreaders + + + + + +</pre> + +<h1>AMERICA TO-DAY</h1> + +<h2><i>OBSERVATIONS AND REFLECTIONS</i></h2> +<br><br> +<h4>BY</h4> +<h2>WILLIAM ARCHER</h2> +<br><br> +<h4>NEW YORK<br> +CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS<br> +1899</h4> + + + + +<hr style='width: 65%;' /> +<a name='CONTENTS'></a><h2>CONTENTS</h2> + +<!-- Autogenerated TOC. Modify or delete as required. --> + <a href='#PART_I'><b><i>PART I—OBSERVATIONS</i></b></a><br /> + <p><a href='#LETTER_I'><b>LETTER I</b></a><br> + The Straits of New York—When is a Ship not a Ship?—Nationality +of Passengers—A Dream Realized</p> + <p><a href='#LETTER_II'><b>LETTER II</b></a><br> + Fog in New York Harbor—The Customs—The Note-Taker's +Hyperæsthesia—A Literary Car-Conductor—Mr. Kipling and the American +Public—The City of Elevators</p> +<p><a href='#LETTER_III'><b>LETTER III</b></a><br> + New York a much-maligned City—Its Charm—Mr. Steevens' +Antithesis—New York compared with Other Cities—Its +Slums—Advertisements—Architecture in New York and Philadelphia</p> +<p> <a href='#LETTER_IV'><b>LETTER IV</b></a><br> Absence of Red Tape—"Rapid Transit" in New York—The Problem and +its Solution—The Whirl of Life—New York by Night—The "White Magic" of +the Future</p> +<p> <a href='#LETTER_V'><b>LETTER V</b></a><br> Character and Culture—American Universities—Is the American +"Electric" or Phlegmatic?—Alleged Laxity of the Family Tie—Postscript: +The University System</p> +<p> <a href='#LETTER_VI'><b>LETTER VI</b></a><br> Washington in April—A Metropolis in the Making—The White House, +the Capitol, and the Library of Congress—The Symbolism of Washington</p> +<p> <a href='#LETTER_VII'><b>LETTER VII</b></a><br> American Hospitality—Instances—Conversation and +Story-Telling—Overprofusion In Hospitality—Expensiveness of Life in +America—The American Barber—Postscript: An Anglo-American Club</p> +<p> <a href='#LETTER_VIII'><b>LETTER VIII</b></a><br> Boston—Its Resemblance to Edinburgh—Concord, Walden Pond, and +Sleepy Hollow—Is the "Yankee" Dying Out?—America for the +Americans—Detroit and Buffalo—The "Middle West"</p> +<p> <a href='#LETTER_IX'><b>LETTER IX</b></a><br> Chicago—Its Splendour and Squalour—Mammoth Buildings—Wind, Dust, +and Smoke—Culture—Chicago's Self-Criticism—Postscript: Social Service +in America</p> +<p> <a href='#LETTER_X'><b>LETTER X</b></a><br> New York in Spring—Central Park—New York not an Ill-Governed +City—The United States Post Office—The Express System—Valedictory</p> +<br><br> + <a href='#PART_II'><b><i>PART II—REFLECTIONS</i></b></a><br /><br> + <a href='#NORTH_AND_SOUTH'><b>NORTH AND SOUTH</b></a><br /> +<ul><li> <a href='#NORTH_I'><b>I</b></a></li> +<li> <a href='#NORTH_II'><b>II</b></a></li> +<li> <a href='#NORTH_III'><b>III</b></a></li> +<li> <a href='#NORTH_IV'><b>IV</b></a></li></ul> + <a href='#THE_REPUBLIC_AND_THE_EMPIRE'><b>THE REPUBLIC AND THE EMPIRE</b></a><br /> +<ul><li> <a href='#REPUBLIC_I'><b>I</b></a></li> +<li> <a href='#REPUBLIC_II'><b>II</b></a></li> +<li> <a href='#REPUBLIC_III'><b>III</b></a></li> +<li> <a href='#REPUBLIC_IV'><b>IV</b></a></li></ul> +<p> <a href='#AMERICAN_LITERATURE'><b>AMERICAN LITERATURE</b></a><br /></p> + <a href='#THE_AMERICAN_LANGUAGE'><b>THE AMERICAN LANGUAGE</b></a><br /> +<ul><li> <a href='#LANG_I'><b>I</b></a></li> +<li> <a href='#LANG_II'><b>II</b></a></li> +<li> <a href='#LANG_III'><b>III</b></a></li> +<li> <a href='#LANG_IV'><b>IV</b></a></li></ul> + + +<!-- End Autogenerated TOC. --> + + +<hr style='width: 65%;' /> +<p>The letters and essays which make up this volume appeared in the +London <i>Pall Mall Gazette</i> and <i>Pall Mall Magazine</i> respectively, and +are reprinted by kind permission of the editors of these periodicals. +The ten letters which were sent to the <i>Pall Mall Gazette</i> appeared also +in the <i>New York Times</i>.</p> + + + +<hr style='width: 65%;' /> +<a name='PART_I'></a><h2>PART I</h2> + +<h2>OBSERVATIONS</h2> + +<br /> + +<hr style='width: 65%;' /> +<a name='LETTER_I'></a><h2>LETTER I</h2> + +<p>The Straits of New York—When is a Ship not a Ship?—Nationality of +Passengers—A Dream Realized.</p> +<br /> + +<p>R.M.S. <i>Lucania</i>.</p> + +<p>The Atlantic Ocean is geographically a misnomer, socially and +politically a dwindling superstition. That is the chief lesson one +learns—and one has barely time to take it in—between Queenstown and +Sandy Hook. Ocean forsooth! this little belt of blue water that we cross +before we know where we are, at a single hop-skip-and-jump! From north +to south, perhaps, it may still count as an ocean; from east to west we +have narrowed it into a strait. Why, even for the seasick (and on this +point I speak with melancholy authority) the Atlantic has not half the +terrors of the Straits of Dover; comfort at sea being a question, not of +the size of the waves, but of the proportion between the size of the +waves and the size of the ship. Our imagination is still beguiled by the +fuss the world made over Columbus, whose exploit was intellectually and +morally rather than physically great. The map-makers, too, throw dust +in our eyes by their absurd figment of two "hemispheres," as though +Nature had sliced her orange in two, and held one half in either hand. +We are slow to realise, in fact, that time is the only true measure of +space, and that London to-day is nearer to New York than it was to +Edinburgh a hundred and fifty years ago. The essential facts of the +case, as they at present stand, would come home much more closely to the +popular mind of both continents if we called this strip of sea the +Straits of New York, and classed our liners, not as the successors of +Columbus's caravels, but simply as what they are: giant ferry-boats +plying with clockwork punctuality between the twin landing-stages of the +English-speaking world.</p> + +<p>To-morrow we shall be in New York harbour; it seems but yesterday that +we slipped out of the Cove of Cork. As I look at the chart on the +companion staircase, where our daily runs are marked off, I feel the +abject poverty of our verbs of speed. We have not rushed, or dashed, or +hurtled along—these words do grave injustice to the majesty of our +progress. I can think of nothing but the strides of some Titan, so vast +as to beggar even the myth-making imagination. It is not seven-league, +no, nor hundred-league boots that we wear—we do our 520, 509, 518, 530 +knots at a stride. Nor is it to be imagined that we are anywhere near +the limit of speed. Already the <i>Lucania's</i> record is threatened by the +<i>Oceanic</i>; and the <i>Oceanic</i>, if she fulfils her promises, will only +spur on some still swifter Titan to the emprise.<a name='FNanchor_A_1'></a><a href='#Footnote_A_1'><sup>[A]</sup></a> Then, again, it is +hard to believe that the difficulties are insuperable which as yet +prevent us from utilising, as a point of arrival and departure, that +almost mid-Atlantic outpost of the younger world, Newfoundland—or at +the least Nova Scotia. By this means the actual waterway between the two +continents will be shortened by something like a third. What with the +acceleration of the ferry-boats and the narrowing of the ferry, it is +surely no visionary Jules-Vernism to look forward to the time when one +may set foot on American soil, within, say, sixty-five hours of leaving +the Liverpool landing-stage; supposing, that is to say, that steam +navigation be not in the meantime superseded.</p> + +<p>As yet, to be sure, the Atlantic possesses a certain strategic +importance as a coal-consuming force. To contract its time-width we have +to expand our coal-bunkers; and the ship which has crossed it in six +days, be she ferryboat or cruiser, is apt to arrive, as it were, a +little out of breath. But even this drawback can scarcely be permanent. +Science must presently achieve the storage of motive-power in some less +bulky form than that of crude coal. Then the Atlantic will be as +extinct, politically, as the Great Wall of China; or, rather, it will +retain for America the abiding significance which the "silver streak" +possesses for England—an effectual bulwark against aggression, but a +highway to influence and world-moulding power.</p> + +<p>Think of the time when the <i>Lucania</i> shall have fallen behind in the +race, and shall be plying to Boston or Philadelphia, while larger and +swifter hotel-ships shall put forth almost daily from Liverpool, +Southampton, and New York! Think of the growth of intercourse which even +the next ten years will probably bring, and the increase of mutual +comprehension involved in it! Is it an illusion of mine, or do we not +already observe in England, during the past year, a new interest and +pride in our trans-Atlantic service, which now ranks close to the Navy +in the popular affections? It dates, I think, from those first days of +the late war, when the <i>Paris</i> was vainly supposed to be in danger of +capture by Spanish cruisers, and when all England was wishing her +god-speed.</p> + +<p>For my own taste, this sumptuous hotel-ship is rather too much of a +hotel and too little of a ship. I resent the absolute exclusion of the +passengers from even the most distant view of the propelling and guiding +forces. Practically, the <i>Lucania</i> is a ship without a deck; and the +deck is to the ship what the face is to the human being. The so-called +promenade-deck is simply a long roofed balcony on either side of the +hotel building. It is roofed by the "shade deck," which is rigidly +reserved "for navigators only." There the true life of the ship goes on, +and we are vouchsafed no glimpse of it. One is reminded of the +Chinaman's description of a three-masted screw steamer with two funnels: +"Thlee piecee bàmboo, two piecee puff-puff, wàlk-along ìnside, no can +see." Here the "wàlk-along," the motive power, is "ìnside" with a +vengeance. I have not at this moment the remotest conception where the +engine-room is, or where lies the descent to that Avernus. Not even the +communicator-gong can be heard in the hotel. I have not set eyes on an +engineer or a stoker, scarcely on a sailor. The captain I do not even +know by sight. Occasionally an officer flits past, on his way up to or +down from the "shade deck"; I regard him with awe, and guess reverently +at his rank. The ship's company, as I know it, consists of the purser, +the doctor, and the army of stewards and stewardesses. The roof of the +promenade-deck weighs upon my brain. It shuts off the better half of the +sky, the zenith. In order even to see the masts and funnels of the ship +one has to go far forward or far aft and crane one's neck upward. Not a +single human being have I ever descried on the "shade-deck" or on the +towering bridge. The genii of the hundred-league boots remain not only +inaccessible but invisible. The effect is inhuman, uncanny. All the +luxury of the saloons and staterooms does not compensate for the lack of +a frank, straightforward deck. The <i>Lucania</i>, in my eyes, has no +individuality as a ship. It—I instinctively say "it," not "she"—is +merely a rather low-roofed hotel, with sea-sickness superadded to all +the comforts of home. But a first-class hotel it is: the living good +and plentiful, if not superfine, the service excellent, and the charges, +all things considered, remarkably moderate.</p> + +<p>What chiefly strikes one about the passengers is their homogeneity of +race. Apart from a small (but influential) Semitic contingent, the whole +body is thoroughly Anglo-Saxon in type. About half are British, I take +it, and half American; but in most cases the nationality is to be +distinguished only by accent, not by any characteristic of appearance or +of demeanour. The strongly-marked Semites always excepted, there is not +a man or woman among the saloon passengers who strikes me as a +foreigner, a person of alien race. I do not feel my sympathies chill +toward my very agreeable table-companion because he drinks ice-water at +breakfast; and he views my tea with an eye of equal tolerance. It is not +till one looks at the second-class passengers that one sees signs of the +heterogeneity of the American people; and then one remembers with +misgivings the emigrants who crowded on board at Queenstown, with their +household goods done up in bundles and gaping, ill-roped boxes. The +thought of them recalls an anecdote which was new to me the other day, +and may be fresh to some of my readers. In any case it will bear +repetition. An Irishman coming to America for the first time, found New +York gay with bunting as he sailed up the harbour. He asked an American +fellow-passenger the reason of the display, and was told it was in +honour of Evacuation Day. "And what's that?" he inquired. "Why, the day +the British troops evacuated New York." Presently an Englishman came up +to the Irishman and asked him if he knew what the flags were for. "For +Evacuation Day, to be sure!" was the reply. "What is Evacuation Day?" +asked the Sassenach. "The day we drove you blackguards out of the +country, bedad!" was the immediate reply. If not literally true, the +story is at least profoundly typical.</p> + +<p>There is a light on our starboard bow: my first glimpse, for two and +twenty years, of America. It has been literally the dream of my life to +revisit the United States. Not once, but fifty times, have I dreamed +that the ocean (which loomed absurdly large even in my waking thoughts) +was comfortably crossed, and I was landing in New York. I can clearly +recall at this moment some of the fantastic shapes the city put on in +my dreams—utterly different, of course, from my actual recollections of +it. Well, that dream is now realised; the gates of the Western world are +opening to me. What experience awaits me I know not; but this I do know, +that the emotion with which I confront it is not one of idle curiosity, +or even of calmly sympathetic interest. It is not primarily to my +intelligence, but to my imagination, that the word "America" appeals. To +many people that word conveys none but prosaic associations; to me it is +electric with romance. Only one other word in existence can give me a +comparable thrill; the word one sees graven on a roadside pillar as one +walks down the southern slope of an Alpine pass: ITALIA. But that word +carries the imagination backward only, whereas AMERICA stands for the +meeting-place of the past and the future. What the land of Cooper and +Mayne Reid was to my boyish fancy, the land of Washington and Lincoln, +Hawthorne and Emerson, is to my adult thoughts. Does this mean that I +approach America in the temper of a romantic schoolboy? Perhaps; but, +bias for bias, I would rather own to that of the romantic schoolboy than +to that of the cynical Old-Worldling.</p> +<br /> + +<p>FOOTNOTES:</p> + +<a name='Footnote_A_1'></a><a href='#FNanchor_A_1'>[A]</a><div class='note'><p> The <i>Oceanic</i>, it appears, is designed to break the record +in punctuality, not in speed. Nevertheless there are several indications +that our engineers are not resting on their oars, but will presently put +on another spurt. The very shortest Atlantic passage, I understand, has +been made by a German ship. Surely England and America cannot long be +content to leave the record for speed, of all things, in the hands of +Germany.</p></div> + + + +<hr style='width: 65%;' /> +<a name='LETTER_II'></a><h2>LETTER II</h2> + +<p>Fog in New York Harbour—The Customs—The Note-Taker's Hyperæsthesia—a +Literary Car-Conductor—Mr. Kipling and the American Public—The City of +Elevators.</p> +<br /> + +<p>NEW YORK.</p> + +<p>By way of making us feel quite at home, New-York receives us with a dank +Scotch mist. On the shores of Staten Island the leafless trees stand out +grey and gaunt against the whity-grey snow, a legacy, no doubt, from the +great blizzard. Though I keep a sharp look-out, I can descry no Liberty +Enlightening the World. Liberty (<i>absit omen!</i>) is wrapped away in grimy +cotton-wool. There, however, are the "sky-scraper" buildings, looming +out through the mist, like the Jotuns in Niflheim of Scandinavian +mythology. They are grandiose, certainly, and not, to my thinking, ugly. +That word has no application in this context. "Pretty" and "ugly"—why +should we for ever carry about these æsthetic labels in our pockets, and +insist on dabbing them down on everything that comes in our way? If we +cannot get, with Nietzsche, <i>Jenseits von Gut und Böse</i>, we might at +least allow our souls an occasional breathing-space in a region "Back of +the Beautiful and the Ugly," as they say in President's English. While I +am trying to formulate my feelings with regard to this deputation of +giants which the giant Republic sends down to the waterside to welcome +us, behold, we have crept up abreast of the Cunard wharf, and there +stands a little crowd of human welcomers, waving handkerchiefs and +American flags. An energetic tug-boat butts her head gallantly into the +flank of the huge liner, in order to help her round. She glides up to +her berth, the gangway is run out, and at last I set foot upon +American—lumber.</p> + +<p>What are my emotions? I have only one; single, simple, easily-expressed: +dread of the United States Custom House. Its terrors and its tyrannies +have been depicted in such lurid colours on the other side that I am +almost surprised to observe no manifest ogres in uniform caps, but only, +it would seem, ordinary human beings. And, on closer acquaintanceship, +they prove to be civil and even helpful human beings, with none of the +lazy superciliousness which so often characterises the European +toll-taker. At first the scene is chaotic enough, but, by aid of an +arrangement in alphabetical groups, cosmos soon emerges. The system by +which you declare your dutiable goods and are assigned an examiner, and +if necessary an appraiser, is admirably simple and free from red-tape. I +shall not describe it, for it would be more tedious in description than +in act. Enough that the whole thing is conducted, so far as I could see, +promptly, efficiently, and with perfect good temper. One brief +discussion I heard, between an official and an American citizen, who was +heavily assessed on some article or articles which he declared to have +been manufactured in America and taken out of the country by himself +only a few months before. The official insisted that there was no proof +of this; but just as the discussion threatened to become an altercation +(a "scrap" they would call it here) some one found a way out. The goods +were forwarded in bond to the traveller's place of residence (Hartford, +I think) where he declared that he could produce proof of their American +origin. For myself, I had to pay two dollars and a half on some +magic-lantern slides. I could have imported the lantern, had I owned +one, free of charge, as a philosophical instrument used in my +profession; but the courts have held, it appears, that though the +lantern comes under that rubric, the slides do not. I cannot pretend to +grasp the distinction, or to admire the system which necessitates it. +But whatever the economic merits or demerits of the tariff, I take +pleasure in bearing testimony to the civility with which I found it +enforced.</p> + +<p>My companion and I express our baggage to our hotel and jump on the +platform of a horse-car on West-street, skirting the wharves. The +roadway is ill paved, certainly, and the clammy atmosphere has congealed +on its surface into an oily black mud; while in the middle of the side +streets one can see relics of the blizzard in the shape of little grubby +glaciers slowly oozing away. The prospect is not enlivening; nor do the +low brick houses, given up to nondescript longshore traffic, and freely +punctuated with gilt-lettered saloons, add to its impressiveness. +Squalid it is without doubt, this particular aspect of New York; but +what is the squalor of West-street to that of Limehouse or Poplar? Are +our own dock thoroughfares always paved to perfection? And if we had a +blizzard like that of three weeks ago, how long would its vestiges +linger in the side-streets of Millwall? Even as I mark the grimness of +the scene, I am conscious of a sort of hyperæsthesia against which one +ought to be on guard. The note-taking traveller is very apt to forget +that the mere act of note-taking upsets his normal perceptivity. He +becomes feverishly observant, morbidly critical. He compares +incommensurables, and flies to ideal standpoints. He is so eager to +descry differences, that he overlooks similarities—nay, identities. +Thus only can I account for many statements about New York, occurring in +the pages of recent and reputable travellers, both French and English, +which I find to be exaggerated almost to the point of monstrosity. What +should we say of an American who should criticise the Commercial Road +from the point of view of Fifth Avenue? After a week's experience of New +York, I cannot but fancy that certain travellers I could mention have +been guilty of similar errors of proportion.</p> + +<p>To return to our street-car platform. The conductor gathers from our +conversation that we have just landed from the English steamer, and he +at once overflows upon the one great topic of all classes in New York. +"I s'pose you've heard," he says, "that Kipling has been very ill?" Yes, +we had heard of his illness before we left England. "He's pulling +through now, though," says the conductor with heartfelt satisfaction. +That, too, we had ascertained on board. "He ought to be the next +poet-laureate," our friend continues eagerly; "<i>he</i> don't follow no +beaten tracks. He cuts a road for himself, every time, right through; +and a mighty good road, too." He then proceeded to make some remarks, +which in the rattle of the street I did not quite catch, about +"carpet-bag knights." I gathered that he held a low opinion of the +present wearer of the bays, and confounded him (not inexcusably) with +one or other of his titled compeers. My companion and I were too much +taken aback to pursue the theme and ascertain our friend's opinions on +Mr. Ruskin, Mr. Meredith, Mrs. Humphry Ward, and Miss Marie Corelli. +Think of it! We have travelled three thousand miles to find a +tram-conductor whose eyes glisten as he tells us that Kipling is better, +and who discusses with a great deal of sense and acuteness the question +of the English poet-laureateship! Could anything be more marvellous or +more significant? Said I not well when I declared the Atlantic Ocean of +less account than the Straits of Dover?</p> + +<p>This was indeed a welcome to the New World. Fate could not have devised +a more ingenious and at the same time tactful way of making us feel at +home; though at home, indeed, a Mile End 'bus conductor is scarcely the +authority one would turn to for enlightened views upon the Laureateship. +The mere fact of our friend's having heard of Mr. Kipling's existence +struck us as surprising enough, until we learned that the poet of Tommy +Atkins is at the present moment quite the most famous person in the +United States. When his illness was at its height, hourly bulletins were +posted in factories and workshops, and people meeting in the streets +asked each other, "How is he?" without deeming it necessary to supply an +antecedent to the pronoun. It was grammatically as well as spiritually a +case of "Kipling understood."</p> + +<p>At a low music-hall into which I strayed one evening, one of the nigger +corner-men sang a song of which the nature may be sufficiently divined +from the refrain, "And the tom-cat was the cause of it all." This lyric +being loudly encored, the performer came forward, and, to my +astonishment, began to recite a long series of doggerel verses upon Mr. +Kipling's illness, setting forth how</p> + +<div class='blkquot'><p>"His strong will made him famous, and his strong will pulled him + through."</p></div> + +<p>They were imbecile, they were maudlin, they were in the worst possible +taste. So far as the reciter was concerned, they were absolutely +insincere clap-trap. But the crowded audience received them with +rapture; and the very fact that an astute caterer should serve up this +particular form of clap-trap showed how the sympathy with Mr. Kipling +had permeated even the most un-literary stratum of the public. To an +Englishman, nothing can be more touching than to find on every hand this +enthusiastic affection for the poet of the Seven Seas—a writer, too, +who has not dealt over-tenderly with American susceptibilities, and has, +by sheer force of genius, lived down a good deal of unpopularity.</p> + +<p>For the moment, neither President McKinley nor Mr. Fitzsimmons can vie +with him in notoriety. His sole rival as a popular hero is Admiral +Dewey, whose name is in every mouth and on every boarding. He is the one +living celebrity whom the Italian image-vendors admit to their pantheon, +where he rubs shoulders with Shakespeare, Dante, Beethoven, and the +Venus of Milo. It is related that, at a Camp of Exercise last year, +President McKinley chanced to stray beyond bounds, and on returning was +confronted by a sentry, who dropped his rifle and bade him halt. "I have +forgotten the pass-word," said Mr. McKinley, "but if you will look at +me you will see that I am the President." "If you were George Dewey +himself," was the reply, "you shouldn't get by here without the +pass-word." This anecdote has a flavour of ancient history, but it is +aptly brought up to date.<a name='FNanchor_B_2'></a><a href='#Footnote_B_2'><sup>[B]</sup></a></p> + +<p>We bid adieu to our poetical conductor, take a cross-town car, and are +presently pushing at the revolving doors—a draught-excluding +plate-glass turn-stile—of a vast red-brick hotel, luxurious and +labyrinthine. A short colloquy with the clerk at the bureau, and we find +ourselves in a gorgeously upholstered elevator, whizzing aloft to the +thirteenth floor. Not the top floor—far from it. If you could slice off +the stories above the thirteenth, as you slice off the top of an egg, +and plant them down in Europe, they would of themselves make a biggish +hotel according to our standards. This first elevator voyage is the +prelude to how many others! For the past week I seem to have spent the +best part of my time in elevators. I must have travelled miles on miles +at right angles to the earth's surface. If all my ascensions could be +put together, they would out-top Olympus and make Ossa a wart.</p> + +<p>This is the first sensation of life in New York—you feel that the +Americans have practically added a new dimension to space. They move +almost as much on the perpendicular as on the horizontal plane. When +they find themselves a little crowded, they simply tilt a street on end +and call it a sky scraper. This hotel, for example (the +Waldorf-Astoria), is nothing but a couple of populous streets soaring up +into the air instead of crawling along the ground. When I was here in +1877, I remember looking with wonder at the <i>Tribune</i> building, hard by +the Post Office, which was then considered a marvel of architectural +daring. Now it is dwarfed into absolute insignificance by a dozen +Cyclopean structures on every hand. It looks as diminutive as the +Adelphi Terrace in contrast with the Hotel Cecil. I am credibly informed +that in some of the huge down-town buildings they run "express" +elevators, which do not stop before the fifteenth, eighteenth, twentieth +floor, as the case may be. Some such arrangement seems very necessary, +for the elevator <i>Bummelzugs</i>, which stop at every floor, take quite an +appreciable slice out of the average New York day. I wonder that +American ingenuity has not provided a system of pneumatic +passenger-tubes for lightning communication with these aërial suburbs, +these "mansions in the sky."</p> +<br /> + +<p>FOOTNOTES:</p> + +<a name='Footnote_B_2'></a><a href='#FNanchor_B_2'>[B]</a><div class='note'><p> A similar story is told of the Confederate President. +Challenged by a sentinel, he said, "Look at me and you will see that I +am President Davis." "Well," said the soldier, "you <i>do</i> look like a +used postage-stamp. Pass, President Davis!"</p></div> + + + +<hr style='width: 65%;' /> +<a name='LETTER_III'></a><h2>LETTER III</h2> + +<p>New York a much-maligned City—Its Charm—Mr. Steevens' Antitheses—New +York compared with Other Cities—Its Slums—Advertisements—Architecture +in New York and Philadelphia.</p> +<br /> + +<p>NEW YORK.</p> + +<p>Many superlatives have been applied to New York by her own children, by +the stranger within her gates, and by the stranger without her gates, at +a safe distance. I, a newcomer, venture to apply what I believe to be a +new superlative, and to call her the most maligned city in the world. +Even sympathetic observers have exaggerated all that is uncouth, +unbeautiful, unhealthy in her life, and overlooked, as it seems to me, +her all-pervading charm. One must be a pessimist indeed to feel no +exhilaration on coming in contact with such intensity of upward-striving +life as meets one on every hand in this league-long island city, +stretching oceanward between her eastern Sound and her western estuary, +and roofed by a radiant dome of smokeless sky. "Upward-striving life," I +say, for everywhere and in every branch of artistic effort the desire +for beauty is apparent, while at many points the achievement is +remarkable and inspiriting. I speak, of course, mainly of material +beauty; but it is hard to believe that so marked an impulse toward the +good as one notes in architecture, painting, sculpture, and literature, +can be unaccompanied by a cognate impulse toward moral beauty, even in +relation to civic life. The New Yorker's pride in New York is much more +alert and active than the Londoner's pride in London; and this feeling +must ere long make itself effective and dominant. For the great +advantage, it seems to me, that America possesses over the Old World is +its material and moral plasticity. Even among the giant structures of +this city, one feels that there is nothing rigid, nothing oppressive, +nothing inaccessible to the influence of changing conditions. If the +buildings are Cyclopean, so is the race that reared them. The material +world seems as clay on the potter's wheel, visibly taking on the impress +of the human spirit; and the human spirit, as embodied in this superbly +vital people, seems to be visibly thrilling to all the forces of +civilisation.</p> + +<p>One of the latest, and certainly one of the most keen-sighted, of +English travellers in America is Mr. G.W. Steevens, a master journalist +if ever there was one. I turn to his <i>Land of the Dollar</i> and I find New +York writ down "uncouth, formless, piebald, chaotic." "Never have I +seen," says Mr. Steevens, "a city more hideous.... Nothing is given to +beauty; everything centres in hard utility." Mr. Steevens must forgive +me for saying that this is simply libellous. It is true, I do not quote +him fairly: I omit his laudatory antitheses. The truncated phrase in the +above passage reads in the original "more hideous or more splendid," and +after averring that "nothing is given to beauty," Mr. Steevens +immediately proceeds to celebrate the beauty of many New York buildings. +Are we to understand, then, that the architects thought of nothing but +"hard utility," and that it was some æsthetic divinity that shaped their +blocks, rough-hew them how they might? For my part, I cannot see how +truth is to result from the clash of contradictory falsehoods. There are +a few cities more splendid than New York; many more hideous. In point of +concentrated architectural magnificence, there is nothing in New York to +compare with the Vienna Ringstrasse, from the Opera House to the Votive +Church.</p> + +<p>In the splendour which proceeds from ordered uniformity and +spaciousness, Paris is, of course, incomparable; while a Scotchman may +perhaps be excused for holding that, as regards splendour of situation, +Edinburgh is hard to beat. Nor is there any single prospect in New York +so impressive as the panorama of London from Waterloo Bridge, when it +happens to be visible—that imperial sweep of river frontage from the +Houses of Parliament to the Tower. Except in the new region, far up the +Hudson, New York shares with Dublin the disadvantage of turning her +meaner aspects to her river fronts, though the majesty of the rivers +themselves, and the grandiose outlines of the Brooklyn Bridge, largely +compensate for this defect. In the main, then, the splendour of New York +is as yet sporadic. It is emerging on every hand from comparative +meanness and commonplace. At no point can one as yet say, "This prospect +is finer than anything Europe can show." But everywhere there are purple +patches of architectural splendour; and one can easily foresee the time +when Fifth Avenue, the whole circuit of Central Park, and the up-town +riverside region will be magnificent beyond compare.</p> + +<p>As for the superlative hideousness attributed by Mr. Steevens to New +York, I can only inquire, in the local idiom: "What is the matter with +Glasgow?" Or, indeed, with Hull? or Newcastle? or the north-east regions +of London? No doubt New York contains some of the very worst slums in +the world. That melancholy distinction must be conceded her. But simply +to the outward eye the slums of New York have not the monotonous +hideousness of our English "warrens of the poor." In spite of her hard +winter, New York cannot quite forget that her latitude is that of Madrid +and Naples, not of London, or even of Paris. Her slums have a Southern +air about them, a variety of contour and colour—in some aspects one +might almost say a gaiety—unknown to Whitechapel or Bethnal Green. For +one thing, the ubiquitous balconies and fire escapes serve of themselves +to break the monotony of line, and lend, as it were, a peculiar texture +to the scene; to say nothing of the oportunities they afford for the +display of multifarious shreds and patches of colour. Then the houses +themselves are often brightly, not to say loudly, painted; so that in +the clear, sparkling atmosphere characteristic of New York, the most +squalid slum puts on a many-coloured Southern aspect, which suggests +Naples or Marseilles rather than the back streets of any English city. +Add to this that the inhabitants are largely of Southern origin, and are +apt, whenever the temperature will permit, to carry on the main part of +their daily lives out of doors; and you can understand that, appalling +as poverty may be in New York, the average slum is not so dank, dismal, +and suicidally monotonous as a street of a similar status in London.</p> + +<p>"The whole city," says Mr. Steevens, "is plastered, and papered, and +painted with advertisements;" and he instances the huge "H-O" (whatever +that may mean) which confronts one as one sails up the harbour, and the +omnipresent "Castoria" placards. Here Mr. Steevens shows symptoms of the +note-taker's hyperæsthesia. The facts he states are undeniable, but the +implication that advertisement is carried to greater excess in New York +than in London and other European cities seems to me utterly groundless. +The "H-O" advertisement is not one whit more monstrous than, for +instance, the huge announcements of cheap clothing-shops, &c., painted +all over the ends of houses, that deface the railway approaches to +Paris; nor is it so flagrant and aggressive as the illuminated +advertisements of whisky and California wines that vulgarise the august +spectacle of the Thames by night. It is true that the proprietors of +"Castoria" have occupied nearly every blank wall that is visible from +Brooklyn Bridge; but their advertisements are so far from garish that I +should scarcely have noticed them had not Mr. Steevens called my +attention to them. Sky-signs, as Mr. Steevens admits, are unknown in New +York; so are the flashing out-and-in electric advertisements which make +night hideous in London. One or two large steady-burning advertisements +irradiate Madison Square of an evening; but being steady they are +comparatively inoffensive. Twenty years ago, when I crossed the +continent from San Francisco, I noticed with disgust the advertisements +stencilled on every second rock in the canyons of Nevada, and defacing +every coign of vantage around Niagara. Whether this abuse continues I +know not; but I know that the pill placards and sauce puffs which +blossom in our English meadows along every main line of railway are +quite as offensive. Far be it from me to deny that advertising is +carried to deplorable excesses in America; but in picking this out as a +differentia, Mr. Steevens shows that his intentness of observation in +New York has for the moment dimmed his mental vision of London. It is a +case, I fancy, in which the expectation was father to the thought.</p> + +<p>Similarly, Mr. Steevens notes, "No chiropodist worthy of the name but +keeps at his door a modelled human foot the size of a cab-horse; and +other trades go and do likewise." The "cab-horse" is a monumental +exaggeration; but it is true that some chiropodists use as a sign a foot +of colossal proportions—the size of a small sheep, let us say, if we +must adopt a zoological standard. So far good; but the implication that +the streets of New York swarm, like a scene in a harlequinade, with +similarly Brobdingnagian signs is quite unfounded. Thus it is, I think, +that travellers are apt to seize on isolated eccentricities or +extravagances (have we no monstrous signs in England?) and treat them as +typical. Mr. Steevens came to America prepared to find everything +gigantic, and the chiropodist's foot so agreeably fulfilled his +expectation that he thought it unnecessary to look any further—"ex pede +Herculem."<a name='FNanchor_C_3'></a><a href='#Footnote_C_3'><sup>[C]</sup></a></p> + +<p>The architecture of New York, according to Mr. Steevens, is "the +outward expression of the freest, fiercest individualism.... Seeing it, +you can well understand the admiration of an American for something +ordered and proportioned—for the Rue de Rivoli or Regent Street." I +heard this admiration emphatically expressed the other day by one of the +foremost and most justly famous of American authors; but, unlike Mr. +Steevens, I could not understand it. "What!" I said, "you would +Haussmannise New York! You would reduce the glorious variety of Fifth +Avenue to the deadly uniformity of the Avenue de l'Opéra, where each +block of buildings reproduces its neighbour, as though they had all been +stamped by one gigantic die!" Such an architectural ideal is +inconceivable to me. It is all very well for a few short streets, for a +square or two, for a quadrant like that of Regent Street, or a crescent +or circus like those of Bath or Edinburgh. But to apply it throughout a +whole quarter of a city, or even throughout the endless vistas of a +great American street, would be simply maddening. Better the most +heaven-storming or sky-scraping audacity of individualism than any +attempt to transform New York into a Fourierist phalanstery or a model +prison. I do not doubt that there will one day be some legal restriction +on Towers of Babel, and that the hygienic disadvantages of the +microbe-breeding "well" or air-shaft will be more fully recognised than +they are at present. A time may come, too, when the ideal of an unforced +harmony in architectural groupings may replace the now dominant instinct +of aggressive diversity. But whatever developments the future may have +in store, I must own my gratitude to the "fierce individualism" of the +present for a new realisation of the possibilities of architectural +beauty in modern life. At almost every turn in New York, one comes +across some building that gives one a little shock of pleasure. +Sometimes, indeed, it is the pleasure of recognising an old friend in a +new place—a patch of Venice or a chunk of Florence transported bodily +to the New World. The exquisite tower of the Madison Square Garden, for +instance, is modelled on that of the Giralda, at Seville; while the new +University Club, on Fifth Avenue, is simply a Florentine fortress-palace +of somewhat disproportionate height. But along with a good deal of sheer +reproduction of European models, one finds a great deal of ingenious +and inventive adaptation, to say nothing of a very delicate taste in the +treatment of detail. New York abounds, it is true, with monuments of +more than one bygone and detestable period of architectural fashion; but +they are as distinctly survivals from a dead past as is the wooden +shanty which occupies one of the best sites on Fifth Avenue, in the very +shadow of the new Delmonico's. I wish tasteless, conventional, and +machine-made architecture were as much of a "back-number" in England as +it is here. A practised observer could confidently date any prominent +building in New York, to within a year or two, by its architectural +merit; and the greater the merit the later the year.</p> + +<p>In short, architecture is here a living art. Go where you will in these +up-town regions, you can see imagination and cultured intelligence in +the act, as it were, of impressing beauty of proportion and detail upon +brick and terra-cotta, granite and marble. And domestic or middle-class +architecture is not neglected. The American "master builders" do not +confine themselves to towers and palaces, but give infinite thought and +loving care to "homes for human beings." The average old-fashioned New +York house, so far as I have seen it, is externally unattractive (the +characteristic material, a sort of coffee-coloured stone, being truly +hideous), and internally dark, cramped, and stuffy. But modern houses, +even of no special pretensions, are generally delightful, with their +polished wood floors and fittings, and their airy suites of rooms. The +American architect has a great advantage over his English colleague in +the fact that in furnace-heated houses only the bedrooms require to be +shut off with doors. The halls and public rooms can be grouped so that, +when the curtains hung in their wide doorways are drawn back, two, +three, or four rooms are open to the eye at once, and charming effects +of space and light-and-shade can be obtained. Of this advantage the +modern house-planner makes excellent use, and I have seen more than one +quite modest family house which, without any sacrifice of comfort, gives +one a sense of almost palatial spaciousness. An architectural exhibition +which I saw the other day proved that equal or even greater care and +attention is being bestowed upon the country house, in which a +characteristically American style is being developed, mainly founded, I +take it, upon the suave and graceful classicism of Colonial +architecture. The wide "piazza" is its most noteworthy feature, and the +opportunity it offers for beautiful cloister-work is being utilised to +the full. Furthermore, the large attendance at the exhibition showed +what a keen interest the public takes in the art—a symptom of high +vitality.</p> + +<p>In Philadelphia, too, where I spent some time last week, there is a good +deal of exquisite architecture to be seen. The old Philadelphia dwelling +house, "simplex munditiis," with its plain red-brick front and white +marble steps, has a peculiar charm for me; but it, of course, is not a +product of the present movement. I do not know the date of some lovely +white marble palazzetti scattered about the Rittenhouse Square region; +but the Art Club on Broad Street, and the Houston Club for Students of +the University of Pennsylvania, are both quite recent buildings, and +both very beautiful. I could mention several other buildings that are, +as they say here, "pretty good" (a phrase of high commendation); but I +had better get safely out of New York before I enlarge on the merits of +Philadelphia. There is only one city the New Yorker despises more than +Philadelphia, and that is Brooklyn. The New York schoolboy speaks of +Philadelphia as "the place the chestnuts go to when they die;" and to +the most popular wit in New York at this moment (an Americanised +Englishman, by the way) is attributed the saying, "Mr. So-and-so has +three daughters—two alive, and one in Philadelphia." Six different +people have related this gibe to me; it is only less admired than the +same gentleman's observation as he alighted from an electric car at the +further end of the Suspension Bridge, when he heaved a deep sigh, and +remarked, "In the midst of life we are in Brooklyn." Another favourite +anecdote in New York is that of the Philadelphian who went to a doctor +and complained of insomnia. The doctor gave him a great deal of sage +advice as to diet, exercise, and so forth, concluding, "If after that +you haven't better nights, let me see you again." "But you mistake, +doctor," the patient replied; "I sleep all right at night—it's in the +daytime I can't sleep!"</p> +<br /> + +<p>FOOTNOTES:</p> + +<a name='Footnote_C_3'></a><a href='#FNanchor_C_3'>[C]</a><div class='note'><p> One method of advertisement which I observed in Chicago has +not yet, so far as I know, been introduced into England. One of the +windows of a vast dry-goods store on State Street was fitted up as a +dentists parlour; and when I passed a young lady was reclining in the +operating-chair and having her teeth stopped, to the no small +delectation of a little crowd which blocked the side-walk.</p></div> + + + +<hr style='width: 65%;' /> +<a name='LETTER_IV'></a><h2>LETTER IV</h2> + +<p>Absence of Red Tape—"Rapid Transit" in New York—The Problem and its +Solution—The Whirl of Life—New York by Night—The "White Magic" of the +Future.</p> +<br /> + +<p>NEW YORK.</p> + +<p>Whatever turn her fiscal policy may take in the future, I hope America +will keep an absolutely prohibitive duty upon the import of red tape, +while at the same time discouraging the home manufacture of the article. +The absence of red tape is, to me, one of the charms of life in this +country. One gathers, indeed, that the art of running a Circumlocution +Office is carried to a high pitch in the political sphere. But there it +is exercised with a definite object; it is a means to an end, cunningly +devised and skillfully applied; it is not a mere matter of instinct, +inertia, and routine. The Tite Barnacles of Dickens's satire were +perfectly honest people according to their lights. They were sincerely +convinced that the British Empire would crumble to pieces the moment +its ligaments of red tape were in the slightest degree relaxed. Their +strength lay in the fact that they represented an innate tendency in the +nation, or at any rate in the dominant class at the period of which +Dickens wrote. In America there is no such innate tendency. The Tite +Barnacles do not imagine or pretend that they are saving the Republic; +they simply make use of a convenient political machinery to serve their +private ends. Therefore their position, however strong it may seem for +the moment, is insecurely founded. It rests upon no moral basis, it +finds no stronghold in the national character. Outsiders may think the +average American citizen strangely tolerant of abuses, and indeed I find +him smiling with placid amusement at things which, were I in his place, +would make my blood boil. But he is under no illusion as to the real +nature of these things. An abuse remains an abuse in his eyes, though he +may not for the moment see his way to rectifying it. The red tape which +is used to embarrass justice or "tie up" reform commands no reverence +even from the party that employs it. Cynicism may endure for the night, +but indignation ariseth in the morning.</p> + +<p>The American character, in a word, does not naturally run to red tape. +Observe, for instance, the system of transit in New York: it is +admirably successful in grappling with a very difficult problem, and its +success proceeds from the absence of by-laws and restrictions, the +omnipresence of good-nature and common-sense. The problem is rendered +difficult, not only by the enormous numbers to be conveyed, but by the +stocking-like configuration of Manhattan Island. The business quarter of +New York is in the foot, the residential quarters in the calf and knee. +Therefore there is a great rush of people down to the foot in the +morning and up to the knee in the afternoon. The business quarter of +London is like the hub of a wheel, from which the railway and omnibus +lines radiate like spokes. In New York there is very little radiation or +dispersion of the multitude. Practically the whole tide sets down a +narrow channel in the morning, and up again in the evening. At the time, +then, of these tidal waves, it is a flat impossibility that transit can +be altogether comfortable. The "elevated" trains and electric trolleys +are overcrowded, certainly; but you can always find a place in them, and +they carry you so rapidly that the discomfort is rendered as little +irksome as possible. A society has been formed, I see, to agitate +against this overcrowding; but it seems to me it will only waste its +pains. Let it agitate for an underground railway, by all means; and if, +as I gather, the underground railway scheme is obstructed by +self-seeking vested interests, let it do its best to break down the +obstruction. Until some altogether new means of transport are provided, +the attempt to restrict the number of passengers which a car or trolley +may carry is, I think, antisocial, and must prove futile. The force of +public convenience would break the red-tape barrier like a cobweb. The +trains and trolleys follow each other at the very briefest intervals; it +does not seem possible that a greater number should be run on the +existing lines; and, that being so, there is no alternative between +overcrowding and the far greater inconvenience of indefinite delay. +Fancy having to "take a number," as they do in Paris, and await your +turn for a seat! New York would be simply paralysed. It is needless to +point out, of course, that where steam or electricity is the motive +power there is no cruelty to animals in overcrowding.</p> + +<p>The American people, rightly and admirably as it seems to me, choose the +lesser of two evils, and minimise it by good temper and mutual civility. +At a certain hour of every morning, the "L" railroad trains are as +densely packed as our Metropolitan trains on Boat-Race Day. There are +people clinging in clusters to each of the straps, and even the +platforms between the cars are crowded to the very couplings. It often +appears hopelessly impossible for any new-comer to squeeze in, or for +those who are wedged in the middle of a long car to force their way out. +Yet when the necessity arises, no force has to be applied. People manage +somehow or other to "welcome the coming, speed the parting guest." Every +one recognises that cantankerous obstructiveness would only make matters +worse, nay, absolutely intolerable. The first comer makes no attempt to +insist upon his position of advantage, because he knows that to-morrow +he may be the last comer. The sense of individual inconvenience is +swamped in the sense of general convenience. People laugh and rather +enjoy the joke when a too sudden start or an abrupt curve sends a whole +group of them cannoning up against one another. It must be remembered +that the transit is rapid, so that there is no irritating sense of +wasted time: and that the cars are brilliantly lighted, and, on the +whole, well ventilated, so that there is no fog, smoke, or sulphurous +air to get on the nerves and strain the temper. The scene as a whole, +even on a wet, disagreeable evening, is not depressing, but rather +cheerful. For my part, I regard it with positive pleasure, as a +manifestation of the national character. Less admirable, to be sure, is +the public acquiescence in the political manoeuvring, which blocks the +proposed underground railway. Yet the opponents of the scheme have +doubtless something to say on their side. It appears, at any rate, that +the profits of the "L" road are not exorbitant. It is said to be only +through overcrowding that it pays at all. The passengers it seats barely +suffice to cover expenses, and "the profits hang on to the straps."</p> + +<p>Idealists hope that when the underground comes, the elevated will go; +but I, as an outsider, cannot share his hope. In the first place, I +don't see how the mere substitution of one line for another is to +relieve the congestion of traffic; in the second place, the elevated +seems to me an admirable institution, which it would be a great pity to +abolish. Even æsthetically there is much to be said for it. The road, +itself, to be sure, does not add to the beauty of the avenues along +which it runs, but it is not by any means the eyesore one might imagine; +and the trains, with their light, graceful, and elegantly-proportioned +cars, so different from our squat and formless railway carriages, seem +to me a positively beautiful feature of the city life. They are not very +noisy, they are not very smoky, and they will be smokeless and almost +noiseless when they are run by electricity. The discomfort they cause, +to dwellers on the avenues is, I am sure, greatly exaggerated. People +who do not live on the avenues suffer in their sympathetic imagination +much more than the actual martyrs to the "L" road suffer in fact. +Imagination makes cowards of us all. For my part, I endured agonies from +the rush, whirl and clatter of New York before I left London; but here I +find nothing that, to healthy nerves, is not rather enjoyable than +otherwise. Neither up town nor down town is the traffic so dense, the +roar and bustle so continuous, as that of London; while the service of +trains and cars is so excellent and so simply arranged that it costs +much less thought, effort, and worry to "get about" in Manhattan than in +Middlesex. In saying this I may perhaps offend American +susceptibilities. There is nothing we moderns are more apt to brag of +than the nervous overstrain of our life. But sincerity comes before +courtesy, and I must gently but firmly decline to allow New York a +monopoly of neurasthenia, or of the conditions that produce it.</p> + +<p>One great difference is, I take it, that while New York exhausts it also +stimulates, whereas the days of the year when there is any positive +stimulus in the air of London may be counted on the ten fingers. Muggy +and misty days do occur here, it is true; but though the natives tell me +that this month of March has been exceptionally unpleasant, the +prevailing impression I have received is that of a lofty and radiant +vault of sky, with keen, sweet, limpid air that one drank in eagerly, +like sparkling wine. More than once, after a slight snowfall, I have +seen the air full of dancing particles of light, like the gold leaf in +Dantzic brandy. One of the most impressive things I ever saw, though I +did not then realise its tragic significance, was the huge column of +smoke that rose into the clear blue air from the Windsor Hotel fire. I +happened to come out on Fifth Avenue, close to the Manhattan Club, just +as the tail of the St. Patrick's Day procession was passing; and, +looking up the avenue after it, I was ware of a gigantic white pillar +standing motionless, as it seemed to me, and cleaving the limitless blue +dome almost to the zenith. The procession moved quietly on; no one +appeared to take any notice; and as fires are ineffective in the +daylight, I turned down the avenue instead, of up, and saw no more of +the spectacle. But I shall never forget that "pillar of cloud by day," +standing out in the sunshine, white as marble or sea foam.</p> + +<p>At night, again, under the purple, star-lit sky, street life in the +central region of New York is indescribably exhilarating. From Union +Square to Herald Square, and even further up, Broadway and many of the +cross streets flash out at dusk into the most brilliant illumination. +Theatres, restaurants, stores, are outlined in incandescent lamps; the +huge electric trolleys come sailing along in an endless stream, +profusely jewelled with electricity; and down the thickly-gemmed vista +of every cross street one can see the elevated trains, like luminous +winged serpents, skimming through the air.<a name='FNanchor_D_4'></a><a href='#Footnote_D_4'><sup>[D]</sup></a> The great restaurants are +crowded with gaily-dressed merry-makers; and altogether there is a +sense of festivity in the air, without any flagrantly meretricious +element in it, which I plead guilty to finding very enjoyable. From the +moral, and even from the loftily æsthetic point of view, this gaudy, +glittering Vanity Fair is no doubt open to criticism. What reconciles me +to it æsthetically is the gemlike transparency of its colouring. Garish +it is, no doubt, but not in the least stifling, smoky, or lurid. The +application of electricity—light divorced from smoke and heat—to the +beautifying of city life is as yet in its infancy. Even the Americans +have scarcely got beyond the point of making lavish use of the raw +material. But the raw material is beautiful in itself, and in this +pellucid air (the point to which one always returns) it produces magical +effects.</p> + +<p>The other night, at a restaurant, I sat at the next table to Mr. Edison, +and could not but look with interest and admiration at his furrowed, +anxious, typically American and truly beautiful face. Here, if you like, +was an example of nervous overstrain; but the soft and yet brilliant +light of the restaurant was in itself a sufficient reminder that the +overstrain had not been incurred for nothing. Electricity is the true +"white magic" of the future; and here, with his pallid face and silver +hair, sat the master magician—one of the great light-givers of the +world. A light-giver, I think, in more than a merely material sense. The +moral influence of the electric lamp, its effect upon the hygiene of the +soul, has not yet been duly estimated. But even in a merely material +sense, what has not the Edison movement, as it may be called, done for +this city of New York! Its influence is felt on every hand, in comfort, +convenience, and beauty. The lavish use of electricity, both as an +illuminant and as a motive power, combines with its climate, its +situation, and its architecture to make New York one of the most +fascinating cities in the world. Why, good Americans, when they die, +should go to Paris, is a theological enigma which more and more puzzles +me.</p> +<br /> + +<p>POSTSCRIPT.—Since my return to England, I have carefully reconsidered +my impression that the rush, whirl, and clamour of street life is +greater in London than in New York. Every day confirms it. On our main +thoroughfares, the stream of omnibuses is quite as unbroken as the +stream of electric and cable cars in New York; our van traffic is at +least as heavy; and we have in addition the host of creeping "growlers" +and darting hansoms, which is almost without counterpart in New York. I +know of no crossing in New York so trying to the nerves as Piccadilly +Circus or Charing Cross (Trafalgar Square). The intersection of +Broadway, Fifth Avenue and 23rd Street, at Madison Square, is the +nearest approach to these bewildering ganglia of traffic. It must be +owned, too, that the Bowery, with its two "elevated" tracks and four +lines of trolley-cars, is a place where one cannot safely let one's wits +go wool-gathering, especially on a rainy evening when the roadway is +under repair. Let me add that there is one place in New York where the +whirl of traffic ("whirl" in a literal sense) is unique and amazing. I +mean the covered area at the New York end of Brooklyn Bridge where the +transpontine electric cars, in an incessant stream, swoop down the +curves of the bridge and sweep round on their return journey. The scene +at night is indescribable. The air seems supersaturated with +electricity, flashing and crackling on every hand. One has a sense of +having strayed unwittingly into the midst of a miniature planetary +system in full swing, with the boom of the trolleys, in their mazy +courses, to represent the music of the spheres.</p> +<br /> + +<p>FOOTNOTES:</p> + +<a name='Footnote_D_4'></a><a href='#FNanchor_D_4'>[D]</a><div class='note'><p> I find the same idea (a sufficiently obvious one) finely +expressed by Mr. Richard Hovey in his book of poems entitled <i>Along the +Trail</i>: +</p><p> +<div class='poem'><div class='stanza'> +<span>Look, how the overhead train at the Morningside curve<br /></span> +<span>Loops like a sea-born dragon its sinuous flight.<br /></span> +<span>Loops in the night in and out, high up in the air,<br /></span> +<span>Like a serpent of stars with the coil and undulant reach of waves.<br /></span> +</div></div> +</div> + + + +<hr style='width: 65%;' /> +<a name='LETTER_V'></a><h2>LETTER V</h2> + +<p>Character and Culture—American Universities—Is the American "Electric" +or Phlegmatic?—Alleged Laxity of the Family Tie—Postscript; the +University System.</p> +<br /> + +<p>NEW YORK.</p> + +<p>It is four weeks to-day since I landed in New York, and, save for forty +hours in Philadelphia and four hours in Brooklyn, I have spent all that +time in Manhattan Island. Yet, to my shame be it spoken, I am not +prepared with any generalisation as to the American character. It has +been my good fortune to see a great deal of literary and artistic New +York, and, comparing it with literary and artistic London, I am inclined +to say "Pompey and Cæsar berry much alike—specially Pompey!" The New +Yorker is far more cosmopolitan than the Londoner; of that there is no +doubt. He knows all that we know about current English literature. He +knows all that we do <i>not</i> know about current American literature. He is +much more interested in and influenced by French literature and art +than the average educated Englishman—so much so that the leading French +critics, such as M. Brunetière and M. Rod, lecture here to crowded and +appreciative audiences. Moreover an excellent German theatre permanently +established in the city keeps the literary world well abreast of +cosmopolitanism of the educated New Yorker the dramatic movement in +Germany. But the merely means that he has everything in common with the +educated Londoner—and a little over. His traditions are ours, his +standards are ours, his ideals are ours. He is busied with the same +problems of ethics, of æsthetics, of style, even of grammar. I had not +been three days in New York when I found myself plunged in a hot +discussion of the "split infinitive," in which I was ranged with two +Americans against a recreant Briton who defended the collocation. "It is +a mistake to regard it is an Americanism," said one of the Americans. +"It is as old as the English language, or at least as old as Wickliff. +But it is unnecessary, and the best modern practice discountenances it." +I felt like falling on the neck of an ally of half an hour's standing, +and swearing eternal friendship. What matters Alaska, or Venezuela, or +Nicaragua, "or all the stones of stumbling in the world," so long as we +have a common interest in (and some of us a common distaste for) the +split infinitive? To put the matter briefly, while the outlook of the +New Yorker is wider than ours, his standpoint is the same. We gather +from a well-known anecdote that some, at least, of the cultivated +Americans of Thackeray's time were inclined to "think of Tupper." To-day +they do not "think of Tupper" any more than we do—and by Tupper I mean, +of course, not the veritable Martin Farquhar, but the Tuppers of the +passing hour. In America as in England, no doubt, there is a huge +half-educated public, ravenous for doughnuts of romance served up with +syrup of sentiment. The enthusiasms of the American shopgirl, I take it, +are very much the same as those of her English sister. But the line of +demarkation between the educated and the half-educated is just as clear +in New York as in London. For the cultivated American of to-day, the +Boomster booms and the Sibyl sibyllates in vain. I find no +justification, in this city at any rate, for the old saying which +described America as the most common-schooled and least educated country +in the world. If we must draw distinctions, I should say that the effect +of the American system of university education was to raise the level +of general culture, while lowering the standard of special scholarship. +I believe that the general American tendency is to insist less than we +do on sheer mental discipline for its own sake, whether in classics or +mathematics, to allow the student a wider latitude of choice, and to +enable him to specialise at an earlier point in his curriculum upon the +studies he most affects, or which are most likely to be directly useful +to him in practical life. Thus the American universities, probably, do +not turn out many men who can "read Plato with their feet on the hob," +but many who can, and do, read and understand him as Colonel Newcome +read Cæsar—"with a translation, sir, with a translation." The width of +outlook which I have noted as characteristic of literary New York is +deliberately aimed at in the university system, and most successfully +attained. The average young man of parts turned out by an American +university has a many-sided interest in, and comprehension of, European +literature and the intellectual movement of the world, which may go far +to compensate for his possible or even probable inexpertness in Greek +aorists and Latin elegiacs.</p> + +<p>The academic and literary New Yorker, I am well aware, is not "the +American." But who is "the American?" I turn to Mr. G.W. Steevens, and +find that "the American is a highly electric Anglo-Saxon. His +temperament is of quicksilver. There is as much difference in vivacity +and emotion between him and an Englishman as there is between an +Englishman and an Italian." Well, Mr. Steevens is a keener observer than +I; when he wrote this, he had been two months in America to my one; and +he had travelled far and wide over the continent. I am not rash enough, +then, to contradict him; but I must own that I have not met this +"American," or anything like him, in the streets, clubs, theatres, +restaurants, or public conveyances of New York. On the contrary, as I +take my walks abroad between Union Square and Central Park, or hang on +to the straps of an Elevated train or cable car, I am all the time +occupied in trying—and failing—to find marked differences of +appearance and manners between the people I see here and the people I +should expect to see under similar circumstances in London. Differences +of dress and feature there are, of course—but how trifling! Difference +of manners there is none, unless it lie in the general good-nature and +unobtrusive politeness of the American crowd, upon which I have already +remarked. We all know that there is a distinctively American physical +type, recognisable especially in the sex which aims at self-development, +instead of self-suppression, in its attire. When one meets her in +Bloomsbury (where she abounds in the tourist season) one readily +distinguishes the American lady; but here specific distinctions are +obsorbed in generic identity, and the only difference between American +and English ladies of which I am habitually conscious lies in the added +touch of Parisian elegance which one notes in the costumes on Fifth +Avenue. The average of beauty is certainly very high in New York. I will +not say higher than in London, for there too it is remarkable; but this +I will say, that night after night I have looked round the audiences in +New York theatres, and found a clear majority of notably good-looking +women. There are few European cities where one could hope to make the +same observation. It is especially to be noted, I think, that the +American lady has the art of growing old with comely dignity. She loses +her complexion, indeed, but only to put on a new beauty in the contrast +between her olive skin and her silvering or silver hair. This contrast +may almost be called the characteristic feature of the specially +American type, which is much more clearly discernible in middle-aged and +old than in young women.</p> + +<p>As for the men, what strikes one in New York is the total absence of the +traditional "Yankee" type. It must have a foundation in fact, since the +Americans themselves have accepted it in political caricature. No doubt +I shall find it in its original habitat—New England. It has certainly +not penetrated into New York. On close examination, the average +man-in-the-street is distinguishable from his fellow in London by +certain trifling differences in "the cut of his jib"—his fashion in +hats, in moustaches, in neckties. But the intense electricity that Mr. +Steevens discovers in him has totally eluded my observation. The fault +may be mine, but assuredly I have failed to "faire jaillir l'étincelle." +I have looked in vain for any symptom of the "temperament of +quicksilver." Mr. Steevens, it is true, made his observations during the +last Presidential election. Perhaps the quicksilver is generated in the +American citizen by political excitement, and when that is over "runs +out at the heels of his boots."</p> + +<p>But, surely, it is a monstrous exaggeration to state in general terms +that the difference in "vivacity and emotion" between the average +American and the average Englishman is as great as the difference +between an Englishman and an Italian. By what inconceivable error, does +it happen, then, that the American of fiction and drama—English, +Continental, and American to boot—is always represented as outdoing +John Bull himself in Anglo-Saxon phlegm? In the courts of ethnology, I +shall be told, "what the caricaturist says is not evidence;" but no +caricature could ever have gained such world-wide acceptance without a +substratum of truth to support it. The probabilities of the case are +greatly against the development of any special "vivacity" of +temperament, for though there has no doubt been a large Keltic admixture +in the Anglo-Saxon stock, there has been a large Teutonic infusion +(German and Scandinavian) to counterbalance it. Simply as a matter of +observation, the differences between English and Italian manners hit you +in the eye, while the differences between American and English manners +are really microscopic; and manners, I take it, are the outward and +visible signs of temperament. A Scotchman by birth, a Londoner by habit, +I walk the streets of New York undetected, to the best of my belief, +until I begin to speak; in Rome, on the contrary, every one recognises +me at a glance as an "Inglese," unless they mistake me for an +"Americano." To me it is amazing how inessential is the change produced +by the Anglo-Saxon type and temperament by influences of climate and +admixture of foreign blood. There are great foreign cities in New +York—German, Italian, Yiddish, Bohemian, Hungarian, Chinese—but the +New York of the New Yorker is scarcely, to the Englishman, a foreign +city.</p> + +<p>The other day I heard an Englishman, who has lived for twenty-five years +in America, maintaining very emphatically that the chief difference +between England and America lay in the greater laxity of the family bond +on this side of the Atlantic. He declared that, in the main, "home" +meant less to the American than to the Englishman, and especially that +the American boy between thirteen and twenty was habitually insurgent +against home influences. It would be ludicrous, of course, to set up the +observations of a month against the experience of a quarter of a +century; yet I cannot but feel that either I have been miraculously +fortunate in the glimpses I have obtained of American home life, or else +there is something amiss with my friend's generalisation. Perhaps he +brought away with him from England in the early seventies a conception +of the "patria potestas" which he would now find out of date there as +well as here. No doubt the migratory habit is stronger in America than +in England, and family life is not apt to flourish in hotels or +boarding-houses. The Saratoga trunk is not the best cornerstone for the +home: so much we may take for granted. But the American families who are +content to go through life without a threshold and hearthstone of their +own must, after all, be in a vanishing minority. They very naturally cut +a larger figure in fiction than in fact. It has been my privilege to see +something of the daily life of a good many families living under their +own roof-tree, and in every case without exception I have been struck +with the beauty and intimacy of the relation between parents and +children. When my friend laid down his theory of the intractable +American boy, I could not but think of a youth of twenty whom I had seen +only two days before, whose manner towards his father struck me as an +ideal blending of affectionate comradeship with old-fashioned +respect.<a name='FNanchor_E_5'></a><a href='#Footnote_E_5'><sup>[E]</sup></a> True, this was in Philadelphia, "the City of Homes," and +even there it may have been an exceptional case. I am not so illogical +as to pit a single observation against (presumably) a wide induction; I +merely offer for what it is worth one item of evidence.</p> + +<p>Again, it has been my good fortune here in New York to spend an evening +in a household which suggested a chapter of Dickens in his tenderest and +most idyllic mood. It was the home of an actor and actress. Two +daughters, of about eighteen and twenty, respectively, are on the stage, +acting in their father's company; but the master of the house is a +bright little boy of seven or eight, known as "the Commodore." As it +happened, the mother of the family was away for the day; yet in the +hundred affectionate references made to her by the father and daughters, +not to me, but to each other, I read her character and influence more +clearly, perhaps, than if she had been present in the flesh. A more +simple, natural, unaffectedly beautiful "interior" no novelist could +conceive. If the family tie is seriously relaxed in America, it seems an +odd coincidence that I should in a single month have chanced upon two +households where it is seen in notable perfection, to say nothing of +many others in which it is at least as binding as in the average English +home.</p> +<br /> + +<p>POSTSCRIPT.—The American university system is a very large subject, to +which none but a specialist could do justice, and that in a volume, not +a postscript. Nevertheless I should like slightly to supplement the +above allusion to it. In the first place, let me quote from the +<i>Spectator</i> (February 12, 1898) the following passage:—</p> + +<div class='blkquot'><p>"Some of the American Universities, in our judgment, come nearer to + the ideal of a true University than any of the other types. + Beginning on the old English collegiate system, they have broadened + out into vast and splendidly endowed institutions of universal + learning, have assimilated some German features, and have combined + successfully college routine and discipline with mature and + advanced work. Harvard and Princeton were originally English + colleges; now, without entirely abandoning the college system, + they are great semi-German seats of learning. Johns Hopkins at + Baltimore is purely of the German type, with no residence and only + a few plain lecture rooms, library, and museums. Columbia, + originally an old English college (its name was King's, changed to + Columbia at the Revolution), is now perhaps the first University in + America, magnificently endowed, with stately buildings, and with a + school of political and legal science second only to that of Paris. + Cornell, intended by its generous founder to be a sort of cheap + glorified technical institute, has grown into a great seat of + culture. The quadrangles and lawns of Harvard, Yale, and Princeton + almost recall Oxford and Cambridge; their lecture-rooms, + laboratories, and post-graduate studies hint of Germany, where + nearly all American teachers of the present generation have been + educated."</p></div> + +<p>Some authorities, however, deplore the Germanising of American +education. A Professor of Greek, himself trained in Germany, and +recognised as one of the foremost of American scholars, confessed to me +his deep dissatisfaction with the results achieved in his own teaching. +His students did good work on the scientific and philological side, but +their relation to Greek literature as literature was not at all what he +could desire. This bears out the remark which I heard another authority +make, to the effect that American scholarship was entirely absorbed in +the counting of accents, and the like mechanical details; while it seems +to run counter to the above suggestion that the university system tends +to raise the level of culture while lowering the standard of erudition. +At the same time there can be no doubt that the immense width of the +field covered by university teaching in America must, in some measure, +make for "superficial omniscience" rather than for concentration and +research. The truth probably is that the system cuts both ways. The +average student seeks and finds general culture in his university +course, while the born specialist is enabled to go straight to the study +he most affects and concentrate upon it.</p> + +<p>To exemplify the latitude of choice offered to the American student, let +me give a list of the "course" in English and Literature at Columbia +University, New York, extracted from the Calendar for 1898-99:</p> + +<div class='blkquot'><p>RHETORIC AND ENGLISH COMPOSITION + +<p> COURSES</p> + +<p> 1. English Composition. Lectures, daily themes, and fortnightly + essays. Professor G.R. CARPENTER. Three hours<a name='FNanchor_F_6'></a><a href='#Footnote_F_6'><sup>[F]</sup></a> first half-year.</p> + +<p> 2. English Composition. Essays, lectures, and discussions in regard + to style. Professor G.R. CARPENTER. Three hours, second half-year.</p> + +<p> 3. English Composition, Advanced Course. Essays, lectures and + consultations. Dr. ODELL. Two hours.</p> + +<p> 4. Elocution. Lectures and Exercises. Mr. PUTNAM. Two hours.</p> + +<p> [5. The Art of English Versification. Professor BRANDER MATTHEWS. + <i>Not given in 1898-9</i>.]</p> + +<p> 6. Argumentative Composition. Lectures, briefs, essays, and oral + discussions. Mr. BRODT. Three hours.</p> + +<p> 7. Seminar. The topics discussed in 1898-9 will be: Canons of + rhetorical propriety (first half-year); the teaching of formal + rhetoric in the secondary school (second half-year). Professor + G.R. CARPENTER.</p> +<br /> + +<p> ENGLISH AND LITERATURE</p> + +<p> COURSES</p> + +<p> 1 and 2. Anglo-Saxon Language and Historical English Grammar. Mr. + SEWARD. Two hours.</p> + +<p> 3. Anglo-Saxon Literature: Poetry and Prose. Professor JACKSON. Two + hours.</p> + +<p> 4. Chaucer's Language, Versification, and Method of Narrative + Poetry. Professor JACKSON. Two hours.</p> + +<p> [5. English Language and Literature of the Eleventh, Twelfth, and + Thirteenth Centuries. Professor PRICE. <i>Not given in 1898-9.</i>]</p> + +<p> [6. English Language and Literature of the Fourteenth Century, + exclusive of Chaucer, and of the Fifteenth Century; Reading of + authors, with investigation of special questions and writing of + essays. Professor Price. <i>Not given in 1898-9.</i>]</p> + +<p> 7. English Language and Literature of the Sixteenth Century; + Reading of authors, with investigation of special questions and + writing of essays. Professor Jackson. Two hours.</p> + +<p> Courses 5, 6, and 7 are designed for the careful study of the + language and literature of Early and Middle English periods: Course + 6 was given in 1897-8.</p> + +<p> [8. Anglo-Saxon Prose and Historical English Syntax. Investigation + of special questions and writing of essays. Professor Price. <i>Not + given in 1898-9. To be given in 1899-1900.</i>]</p> + +<p> [10. English Verse-Forms: Study of their historical development. + Professor Price. <i>Not given in 1898-9.</i>]</p> + +<p> 11. History of English Literature from 1789 to the death of + Tennyson: Lectures. Professor Woodberry. Three hours.</p> + +<p> 12. History of English Literature from 1660 to 1789: Lectures. Mr. + Kroeber. Three hours.</p> + +<p> [13. History of English Literature from the birth of Shakespeare to + 1660, with special attention to the origin of the drama in England + and to the poems of Spenser and Milton. Professor Woodberry. <i>Not + given in 1898-9.</i>]</p> + +<p> Courses 12 and 13 are given in alternate years.</p> + +<p> [14. Pope: Language, Versification, and Poetical Method. Professor + Price. <i>Not given in 1898-9.</i>]</p> + +<p> 15. Shakespeare: Language, Versification, and Method of Dramatic + Poetry. Text: Cambridge Text of Shakespeare. Professor JACKSON. Two + hours.</p> + +<p> 16. American Literature. Professor BRANDER MATTHEWS. Two hours.</p> + +<p> [17. The Poetry, Lyrical, Narrative, and Dramatic, of Tennyson, + Browning, and Arnold. Professor PRICE. <i>Not given in 1898-9.</i>]</p> +<br /> + +<p> LITERATURE.</p> + +<p> COURSES.</p> + +<p> 1. The History of Modern Fiction. Professor BRANDER MATTHEWS. Two + hours.</p> + +<p> 2. The Theory, History, and Practice of Criticism, with special + attention to Aristotle, Boileau, Lessing, and English and later + French writers, and a study of the great works of imagination. + Professor WOODBERRY. Three hours.</p> + +<p> [3. Epochs of the Drama. Professor BRANDER MATTHEWS. <i>Not given in + 1898-9.</i>]</p> + +<p> 4. Dramatists of the Nineteenth Century. Professor BRANDER + MATTHEWS. Two hours.</p> + +<p> [5. Molière and Modern Comedy. Professor BRANDER MATTHEWS. <i>Not + given in 1898-9.</i>]</p> + +<p> [6. The Evolution of the Essay. Professor BRANDER MATTHEWS. <i>Not + given in 1898-9.</i>]</p> + +<p> 7. Studies in Literature, mainly Critical: Selected Works, in Prose + and Verse, illustrating the Character and Development of Natural + Literature. Lectures. Professor WOODBERRY. Three hours.</p> + +<p> 8. Studies in Literature, mainly Historical: Narrative Poetry of + the Middle Ages. Lectures and Conferences. Mr. TAYLOR. Two hours.</p> + +<p> [9. The Lyrical Poetry of the Middle Ages. Professor G.R. + CARPENTER. <i>Not given in 1898-9.</i>]</p> + +<p> 10. Hellenism: Its Origin, Development, and Diffusion with some + account of the Civilisations that preceded it. Lectures and + Conferences. Mr. TAYLOR Three hours.</p> + +<p> 11. Literary Phases of the Transition from Paganism to + Christianity, with illustrations from the other Arts of Expression. + Lectures and Conferences. Mr. TAYLOR. One hour.</p> + +<p> Seminar in Literature. Professor WOODBERRY. Seminar in the History + of the Drama. Professor BRANDER MATTHEWS.</p></div> + +<p>A "seminar" is an institution borrowed from Germany. The professor and a +small number of students (six or eight at the outside) sit together +round a table, with their books at hand, and pass an hour in +co-operative study and discussion. In going through the noble library of +Columbia University, I came upon an alcove devoted to Scandinavian +literature, with a table on which lay some Danish books. The gentleman +who was guiding me round happened to be an instructor in the +Scandinavian languages. He pointed to the books and said, "I have just +been having a seminar here, in Danish literature." Seeing on the shelves +an edition of Holberg, I asked him if he had ever considered the +question why Holberg's comedies, so delightful in the original, +appeared to be totally untranslatable into English. "One of my +students," he said, "put the same question to me only to-day." One could +scarcely desire a better example of the all-embracing range of the +studies which an American University provides for and encourages. I have +heard it said, with a sneer, that "You can take an honours degree in +Marie Corelli." If you can graduate with honours in Holberg, your time, +in so far, has certainly not been misemployed.</p> + +<p>Whatever the drawbacks of the German influence which is so marked in +America, I cannot doubt that in one thing, at any rate, the Americans +are far ahead of us—in the careful study they devote to the science of +education. No fewer than twenty courses of lectures on the theory and +practice of education were given in Columbia College during 1898-99. +Teaching, I take it, is an art founded upon, and intimately associated +with, the science of psychology. Why should we be content with +antiquated and rule-of-thumb methods, instead of going to the root of +the thing, studying its principles, and learning to apply them to the +best advantage?</p> +<br /> + +<p>FOOTNOTES:</p> + +<a name='Footnote_E_5'></a><a href='#FNanchor_E_5'>[E]</a><div class='note'><p> "Affectionate comradeship" rather than "old-fashioned +respect" is exemplified in the following anecdote of young America. A +Professor of Pedagogy in a Western university brings up his children on +the most advanced principles. Among other things, they are encouraged to +sink the antiquated terms "father" and "mother," and call their parents +by their Christian names. On one occasion, the children, playing in the +bathroom, turned on the water and omitted to turn it off again. +Observing it percolating through the ceiling of his study, their father +rushed upstairs to see what was the matter, flung open the bathroom +door, and was greeted by the prime mover in the mischief, a boy of six, +with the remark, "Don't say a word, John—bring the mop!"</p></div> + +<a name='Footnote_F_6'></a><a href='#FNanchor_F_6'>[F]</a><div class='note'><p> That is, three hours a week; so, too, in all subsequent +instances.</p></div> + + + +<hr style='width: 65%;' /> +<a name='LETTER_VI'></a><h2>LETTER VI</h2> + +<p>Washington in April—A Metropolis in the Making—The White House, the +Capitol, and the Library of Congress—The Symbolism of Washington.</p> +<br /> + +<p>WASHINGTON.</p> + +<p>To profess oneself disappointed with Washington in this first week of +April, 1899, would be like complaining of the gauntness of a rosebush in +December. What would you have? It is not the season, either politically +or atmospherically. Congress is gone, and spring has not come. In the +city of leafy avenues there is not a leaf to be seen, and, except the +irrepressible crocus, not a flower. A fortnight hence, as I am assured, +the capital of the Great Republic will have put on a regal robe of +magnolia and other blossoms, that will "knock spots out of" Solomon in +all his glory. In the meantime, the trees line the avenues in skeleton +rows, like a pyrotechnic set-piece before it is ignited. It is useless +to pretend, then, that I have seen Washington. The trumpet of March has +blown, the pennon of May is not yet unfurled; and even the cloudless +sunshine of the past two days has only reduplicated the skeleton trees +in skeleton shadows. Washington is not responsible for the tardiness of +the spring. It would be unjust to take umbrage at the city because one +finds none in its avenues.</p> + +<p>Yet I cannot but feel that I have, so to speak, found Washington out. I +have chanced upon her without her make-up, and seen the real face of the +city divested of its wig of leafage and rouge of blossoms. Here, for the +first time, at any rate, I am impressed by that sense of rawness and +incompleteness which is said to be characteristic of America. Washington +will one day be a magnificent city, of that there is no doubt; but for +the present it is distinctly unfinished. The very breadth of its +avenues, contrasted with the comparative lowness of the buildings which +line them, gives it the air rather of a magnified and glorified frontier +township than of a great capital on the European scale. Here, for the +first time, I am really conscious of the newness of things. The eastern +cities—Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore—are, in effect, not a +whit newer than most English towns. Oxford and Cambridge, no doubt, and +a few cathedral cities, give one a habitual consciousness of dwelling +among the relics of the past. They are our Nuremburg or Prague, Siena or +Perugia. In most English cities, on the other hand, as in London itself, +one has no habitual sense of the antiquity of one's surroundings. Apart +from a few tourist-haunted monuments, which the resident passes with +scarcely a glance, the general run of buildings and streets, if not +palpably modern, can at most lay claim to a respectable, or +disreputable, middle-age. Now, an eminently respectable middle-age is +precisely the characteristic of the central regions of Philadelphia and +Baltimore; while in New York both reputable and disreputable middle-age +are amply represented. One may almost say that these Eastern cities are +fundamentally old-fashioned, and that all their modern mechanism of +electric cars, telephone wires, and what not, is but a thin and +transparent outer network, through which the older order of things is +everywhere peering. And from this very contrast between the old and the +new, this sense of visible time-strata in the structure of a city, there +results a very real effect of age.</p> + +<p>Here, in Washington, one instinctively craves for something of that +uniformity which one instinctively deprecates as an ideal for New York. +The buildings on the main streets are too haphazard, like the books on +an ill-arranged shelf: folios, quartos, and duodecimos huddled pell-mell +together. But when some approach to a definite style is achieved, how +noble will be the radiating vistas of this spacious city! The plan of +the avenues and streets, as has been aptly said, suggests a cartwheel +superimposed upon a gridiron—an arrangement, by the way, which may be +studied on a small scale in Carlsruhe. The result is dire bewilderment +to the traveller; my bump of locality, usually not ill-developed, seems +to shrink into a positive indentation before the problems presented in +such formulas as "K Street, corner of 13th Street, N.E." But from the +Capitol, whence most of the avenues spread fanwise, the views they offer +are superb; and Pennsylvania Avenue, leading to the Government offices +and the White House, will one day, undoubtedly, be one of the great +streets of the world. For the present its beauty is not heightened by +the new Postal Department, a massive but somewhat forbidding structure +in grey granite, which dominates and frowns upon the whole street. From +certain points of view, it seems almost to dwarf the Washington Obelisk, +the loftiest stone structure in the world. It is a pity that this fine +monument should be placed in such a low situation, on the very shore of +the Potomac. From the central parts of the city it loses much of its +effect, but seen from the distance it stands forth impressively.</p> + +<p>People are discontented, it would seem, with the White House, and talk +of replacing it with a larger and showier edifice. The latter change, at +any rate, would be a change for the worse. There could not be a more +appropriate and dignified residence for the Chief Magistrate of a +republic. On the other hand, one cannot but foresee a gradual enrichment +and ennoblement of the interior of the Capitol. Externally it is +magnificent, especially now that the side towards the city has been +terraced and balustraded; but internally its decorations are quite +unworthy of modern America. The floors, the doors, the cornices and +mouldings are cheap in material, dingily garish in colour. Especially +painful are the crude blue-and-yellow mosaic tiles of the corridors. The +mural decorations belong to several artistic periods, all equally +debased. On the whole, it is inconceivable that Congress should for long +content itself with an abode which, without being venerable, is simply +out of date. The main architectural proportions of the interior are +dignified enough. What is wanted is merely the transmutation of stucco +into marble, painted pine into oak, and pseudo-Italian arabesques into +American frescoes and mosaics. Why should Congress itself be more meanly +housed than its Library?</p> + +<p>This new Library of Congress is certainly the crown and glory of the +Washington of to-day. It is an edifice and an institution of which any +nation might justly boast. It is simple in design, rich in material, +elaborate, and for the most part beautiful, in decoration. The general +effect of the entrance hall and galleries is at first garish, and some +details of the decoration will scarcely bear looking into. Yet the +building is, on the whole, in fresco, mosaic, and sculpture, a veritable +treasure-house of contemporary American art. Even in this clear Southern +climate, the effect of gaudiness will in time pass off. Fifty years +hence, perhaps, when there are no living susceptibilities to be hurt, +some of the less successful panels and medallions may be "hatched over +again, and hatched different." But many of the decorations, I am +convinced, will prove possessions for ever to the American people. As +for the Rotunda Reading Room, it is, I think, almost above criticism in +its combination of dignity with splendour. Far be it from me to +belittle that great and liberal institution, the British Museum Reading +Room. It is considerably larger than this one; it is no less imposing in +its severe simplicity; and it offers the serious student a vaster quarry +of books to draw upon, together with wider elbow-room and completer +accommodations. But the Library of Congress is still more liberal, for +it admits all the world without even the formality of applying for a +ticket; and it substitutes for the impressiveness of simplicity the +allurements of splendour. It is impossible to conceive a more brilliant +spectacle than this Rotunda when it is lighted at night by nearly +fifteen-hundred incandescent lamps. Nor is it possible for me to +describe in this place the mechanical marvels of the institution—the +huge underground boiler-house, with its sixteen boilers; the +electrician's room, clean and bright as a new dollar, with its "purring +dynamos" and its immense switch-board; the tunnel through which books +are delivered by electric trolley to the legislators in the Capitol, +within eight minutes of the time they are applied for; and, most +wonderful of all, the endless chain, with its series of baskets, whereby +books are not only brought down to the reading room, but re-delivered, +at the mere touch of a button on whatever "deck" of the nine-storied +"book-stacks" they happen to belong to. So ingenious is this triumph of +mechanism that the baskets seem positively to go through complex +processes of thought and selection. Talking of thought and selection, by +the way, every one connected with the library speaks with enthusiasm of +President McKinley's wise and public-spirited choice of the new chief +librarian. Mr. Herbert Putnam, late of the Boston Public Library, is the +ideal man for the post, and his appointment was made, not only without +suspicion of jobbery, but in the teeth of strong political influence. +Mr. McKinley's action in this matter is considered to be not only right +in itself, but an invaluable precedent.</p> + +<p>Let me not be understood, I beg, to make light of the National Capital. +I merely say that to the outward eye it is not yet the city it is +manifestly destined to become. Its splendid potentialities do some wrong +to its eminently spacious and seemly actuality. But to the mind's eye, +to the ideal sense, it has the imperishable beauty of absolute fitness. +Omniscient Baedeker informs us that when it was founded there was some +thought of calling it "Federal City." How much finer, in its heroic and +yet human associations, is the name it bears! Since Alfred the Great, +the Anglo-Saxon race has produced no loftier or purer personality than +George Washington, and his country could not blazon on her shield a more +inspiring name. Carlyle's treatment of Washington is, perhaps, the most +unpardonable of his many similar offences. One almost wonders at the +forgiving spirit in which the decorators of the Library of Congress have +inscribed upon the walls of the new building certain maxims from the +splenetic Sage. And if the city is named with exquisite fitness, so are +its radiating avenues. Each of them takes its name from one of the +States of the Union—names which, as Stevenson long ago pointed out, +form an unrivalled array of "sweet and sonorous vocables." In its whole +conception, Washington is an ideal capital for the United States—not +least typical, perhaps, in its factitiousness, since this Republic is +not so much a product of natural development as a deliberate creation of +will and intelligence. It represents the struggle of an Idea against the +crude forces of nature and human nature. The Capitol, with its clear and +logical design, is as aptly symbolic of its history and function as are +our Houses of Parliament, with their bewildering but grandiose +agglomeration of shafts and turrets, spires and pinnacles; and the two +buildings should rank side by side in the esteem of the English-speaking +peoples, as the twin foci of our civilisation.</p> + + + +<hr style='width: 65%;' /> +<a name='LETTER_VII'></a><h2>LETTER VII</h2> + +<p>American Hospitality—Instances—Conversation and +Story-Telling—Over-Profusion in Hospitality—Expensiveness of Life in +America—The American Barber—Postscript: An Anglo-American Club.</p> +<br /> + +<p>BOSTON.</p> + +<p>Much has been said of American hospitality; too much cannot possibly be +said. Here am I in Boston, the guest of one of the foremost clubs of the +city. I sit, as I write, at my bedroom window, with a view over the +whole of Boston Common, and the beautiful spires of the Back-Bay region +beyond. I step out on my balcony, and the gilded dome of the State +House—"the Hub of the Universe"—is but a stone's-throw off. Through +the leafless branches of the trees I can see the back of St. Gaudens' +beautiful Shaw Monument, and beyond it the graceful dip of upper +Beacon-street. My room is as spacious and luxurious as heart can desire, +lighted by half a dozen electric lamps, and with a private bath-room +attached, which is itself nearly as large as the bedroom assigned me in +the "swagger" hotel of New York—an establishment, by the way, of which +it has been wittily said that its purpose is "to provide exclusiveness +for the masses." All the comforts of the club are at my command; the +rooms are delightful, the food and service excellent. In short, I could +not be more conveniently or agreeably situated. Of course I pay the club +charges for my room and meals, but it is mere hospitality to allow me to +do so. And how do I come to be established in these quarters? The little +story is absolutely commonplace, but all the more typical.</p> + +<p>In Washington I made the acquaintance of a gentleman who invited me to +lunch at the leading diplomatic and social club. I had no claim upon him +of any sort, beyond the most casual introduction. He regaled me with +little-neck clams, terrapin, and all the delicacies of the season, and +invited to meet me half a dozen of the most interesting men in the city, +all of them strangers to me until that moment. I found myself seated +next an exceedingly amiable man, whose name I had not caught when we +were introduced. One of the first things he asked me was—not "What did +I think of America?" no one ever asked me that—but "Where was I going +next?" To Boston.</p> + +<p>"Where was I going to put up?" I thought of going to the T—— Hotel. +"Much better go to the U—— Club," he replied; "I've no doubt they will +be able to give you a room. As soon as lunch is over, I shall telegraph +to the club and make sure that everything is ready for you." I, of +course, thanked him warmly. "But what credentials shall I present?" "You +don't require any—just present your card. I shall make it all right for +you." This was a man whom I had met ten minutes before, whose name I did +not know, and to whom I had been introduced by a man whom I barely knew! +It did not appear that he, on his side, knew or cared about anything I +had said or done in the world. He simply obeyed the national instinct of +courtesy and helpfulness. And he was as good as his word. Arriving in +Boston at a somewhat unearthly hour in the morning, I found my room +allotted me and the club servants ready to receive me with every +attention. I felt like the Prince in the fairy tale, only that I had +done nothing whatever to oblige the good fairy.</p> + +<p>Another example. I had a letter of introduction to the Governor of one +of the States of the Union, probably (what does not always happen) the +most universally respected man in the State, and a member of one of its +oldest and most distinguished families. I left the letter, with my card, +at this gentleman's house, and in the course of a few hours received a +note from his wife, telling me that, owing to a death in the family, +they were not then entertaining at all, but saying that the Governor +would call upon me to offer me any courtesy or assistance in his power. +And so he did. He called, not once, but twice. He presented me with a +card for one of the leading clubs of the city, and if my time had +allowed me to avail myself of his courtesy, he would have put me in the +way of seeing any or all of the State institutions to the best +advantage. The governorship of an American State, let me add, is no +ornamental sinecure. This was not only a man in high position, but a +very busy man. Is there any other country where a mere letter of +introduction is so generously honoured? If so, it is to me an +undiscovered country.</p> + +<p>These are but two cases out of a hundred. The Americans are said to be +the busiest people in the world (I have my doubts on that point), but +they have always leisure to give a stranger "a good time." Even, be it +noted, during the working hours of the day. My evenings being occupied +with theatre-going, I could not accept invitations to dinner; wherefore +those who were hospitably inclined towards me had to invite me to lunch; +and a luncheon party in America invariably absorbs the best part of an +afternoon. A score of these delightful gatherings will always remain in +my memory. The "bright" American is, to my thinking, the best talker in +the world—certainly the best talker in the English language. A light +and facile humour, a power of giving a pleasant little sparkle even to +sufficiently commonplace sayings, is in this country the rule and not +the exception. I must have met at these luncheon parties, and actually +conversed with, at least a hundred different men of all ages and +occupations, and I do not remember among them a single dull, pompous, +morose, or pedantic person. The parties did not usually exceed six or +eight in number, so that there was no necessity for breaking up into +groups. The shuttlecock of conversation was lightly bandied to and fro +across the round table. Each took his share and none took more. All +topics—even the, burning question of "expansion"—were touched upon +gaily, humorously, and in perfect good temper.</p> + +<p>It is said that American conversation among men tends to degenerate into +a mere exchange of anecdotes. I can remember only one party which was +in the least degree open to this reproach; and there the anecdotes were +without exception so good, and so admirably told, that I, for one, +should have been sorry to exchange them for even the loftiest discourse +on Shakespeare and the musical glasses. Here, for instance, is an +example of the American gift of picturesque exaggeration. On board one +of the Florida steamboats, which have to be built with exceedingly light +draught to get over the frequent shallows of the rivers, an Englishman +accosted the captain with the remark, "I understand, captain, that you +think nothing of steaming across a meadow where there's been a heavy +fall of dew." "Well, I don't know about that," replied the captain, "but +it's true we have sometimes to send a man ahead with a watering-pot!" Or +take, again, the story of the Southern colonel who was conducted to the +theatre to see Salvini's Othello. He witnessed the performance gravely, +and remarked at the close, "That was a mighty good show, and I don't see +but the coon did as well as any of 'em." A third anecdote that charmed +me on this occasion was that of the man who, being invited to take a +drink, replied, "No, no, I solemnly promised my dear dead mother never +to touch a drop; besides, boys, it's too early in the morning; besides, +I've just had one!"</p> + +<p>Furthermore, as I recall the party in question, I feel that I am wrong +in implying that the conversation was mainly composed of anecdotes. It +was mainly composed of narratives; but that is a different matter. There +is a clear distinction between the mere story-teller and the narrator. +Two or three of the party were brilliant narrators, and delighted us +with accounts of personal experiences, quaint character-sketches, novels +in a nutshell. One of the guests was, without exception, the most +ready-witted man I ever met. His inexhaustible gift of lightning +repartee I saw illustrated on another occasion, when he presided at the +midnight "gambol" of a Bohemian club, at which it needed the utmost tact +and presence of mind to "ride the whirlwind and direct the storm." At +the luncheon party, he related several episodes from his chequered +journalistic career in a style so easy and yet so graphic that one felt, +if they could have been taken down in shorthand, they would have been +literature ready-made. It is a clear injustice to confound such talk as +this with a mere bandying of Joe-Millers.</p> + +<p>The one drawback to American hospitality is that it is apt to be too +profuse. I have more than once had to offer a mild protest against being +entertained by a hard-working brother journalist on a scale that would +have befitted a millionaire. The possibility of returning the compliment +in kind affords the canny Scot but poor consolation. A dinner three +times more lavish and expensive than you want is not sweetened by the +thought that you may, in turn, give your host a dinner three times more +expensive and lavish than <i>he</i> wants. Both parties, on this system, +suffer in digestion and in pocket, while only Delmonico is the gainer. +It seems to me, on the whole, that in this country the millionaire is +too commonly allowed to fix the standard of expenditure. Society would +not be less, but more, agreeable if, instead of always emulating the +splendours of Lucullus, people now and then studied the art of Horatian +frugality. And I note that in club life, if the plutocrat sets the +standard of expenditure, the aristocrat looks to the training of the +servants. Their obsequiousness is almost painful. There is not the +slightest trace of democratic equality in their dress, their manners, or +their speech.</p> + +<p>Take it all and all, America is a trying place of sojourn for the +aforesaid canny Scot—the man who without being stingy (oh, dear, no!) +has "all his generous impulses under perfect control." The sixpences do +not "bang" in this country: they crepitate, they crackle, as though shot +from a Maxim quick-firer. For instance, the lowest electric-trolley fare +is twopence-halfpenny. It is true that for five cents you can, if you +wish it, ride fifteen or twenty miles; but that advantage becomes +inappreciable when you don't want to ride more than half a mile. Take, +again, the harmless, necessary operation of shaving. In a good English +barber's shop it is a brief and not unpleasant process; in an American +"tonsorial parlour" it is a lingering and costly torture. One of the +many reasons which lead me to regard the Americans as a leisurely people +rather than a nation of "hustlers" is the patience with which they +submit to the long-drawn tyranny of the barber. In England, one grudges +five minutes for a shave, and one pays from fourpence to sixpence; in +America one can hardly escape in twenty-five minutes, and one pays (with +the executioner's tip)<a name='FNanchor_G_7'></a><a href='#Footnote_G_7'><sup>[G]</sup></a> from a shilling to eighteenpence. The charge +would be by no means excessive if one wanted or enjoyed all the endless +processes to which one is subjected; but for my part I would willingly +pay double to escape them. The essential part of the business, the +actual shaving, is, as a rule, badly performed, with a heavy hand, and a +good deal of needless pawing-about of the patient's head. But when the +shave is over the horrors are only beginning. First, your whole face is +cooked for several minutes in relays of towels steeped in boiling water. +Then a long series of essences is rubbed into it, generally with the +torturer's naked hand. The sequence of these essences varies in +different "parlours," but one especially loathsome hell-brew, known as +"witchhazel" is everywhere inevitable. Then your wounds have to be +elaborately doctored with stinging chemicals; your hair, which has been +hopelessly touzled in the pawing process, has to be drenched in some +sickly-smelling oil and brushed; your moustache has to be lubricated +and combed; and at last you escape from the tormentor's clutches, +irritated, enervated, hopelessly late for an important appointment, and +so reeking with unholy odours that you feel as though all great +Neptune's ocean would scarcely wash you clean again. Only once or twice +have I submitted, out of curiosity, to the whole interminable process. I +now cut it short, not without difficulty, before the "witchhazel" stage +is reached, and am regarded with blank astonishment and disapproval by +the tonsorial professor, who feels his art and mystery insulted in his +person, and is scarcely mollified by a ten-cent tip. Americans, on the +other hand, go through all these processes, and more, with stolid and +long-suffering patience. Yet this nation is credited with having +invented the maxim "Time is money," and is supposed to act up to it with +feverish consistency!</p> +<br /> + +<p>POSTSCRIPT.—As I have said a good deal about clubs in this letter, let +me add to it a word as to the influence of club life in keeping America +in touch with England. At all the leading clubs one or two English daily +papers and all the more important weekly papers are taken as a matter of +course; so that the American club-man has not the slightest difficulty +in keeping abreast of the social, political, and literary life of +England. As a matter of fact, the educated American's knowledge of +England every day puts to shame the Englishman's ignorance of America. +Reciprocity in this matter would be greatly to the advantage of both +countries. I am much mistaken if there is a single club in London where +American periodicals are so well represented on the reading-room table +as are English periodicals in every club in New York. Yet there is +assuredly no dearth of interesting weekly papers in America, some +connected with daily papers, others independent. It may be said that +they are not taken at English clubs because they would not be read. If +so, the more's the pity; but I do not think it is so; for this is a case +in which supply would beget demand. At any rate, there must be numbers +of people in London who would be glad to keep fairly in touch with +American life, if they could do so without too much trouble. Why should +there not be an Anglo-American social club, organised with the special +purpose of bringing America home (in a literal sense) to London and +England? Why should not (say) the Century Club of New York be reproduced +in London, with American periodicals as fully represented in its +news-room and reading-room as are English periodicals in an American +club of the first rank? Interest in and sympathy with America would be +the implied condition of membership; and by a judiciously-devised system +of non-resident membership, American visitors to London would be enabled +to read their home newspapers in greater comfort than at the existing +American reading-rooms, and would, moreover, come into easy contact with +sympathetically-minded Englishmen, to their mutual pleasure and profit. +Such a club might, in process of time, become a potent factor in +international relations, and form a new bond of union, of quite +appreciable strength, between the two countries.</p> +<br /> + +<p>FOOTNOTES:</p> + +<a name='Footnote_G_7'></a><a href='#FNanchor_G_7'>[G]</a><div class='note'><p> I had read or been told that the tip system did not obtain +in America, except in the case of negroes and waiters. A very few days +in New York undeceived me. I went twice to a barber's shop in the +basement of the house in which I lived, paid fifteen cents to be shaved, +and gave the operator nothing; but at my second visit I found myself so +lowered upon by that portly and heavy-moustached citizen that I never +again ventured to place myself under his razor, but went to a more +distant establishment and tipped from the outset. There are, indeed, +certain classes of people—railroad conductors for instance—who do not +expect the tips which in England they consider their due; but, according +to my experience, the safe rule in America is, "when in doubt—tip."</p></div> + + + +<hr style='width: 65%;' /> +<a name='LETTER_VIII'></a><h2>LETTER VIII</h2> + +<p>Boston—Its Resemblance to Edinburgh—Concord, Walden Pond, and Sleepy +Hollow—Is the "Yankee" Dying Out?—America for the Americans—Detroit +and Buffalo—The "Middle West."</p> +<br /> + +<p>CHICAGO.</p> + +<p>The luxury of my quarters in Boston seduced me into a disquisition on +American hospitality which would have come in equally well with +reference to any other city. Were I to search very deeply into my soul +(an exercise much in vogue in Boston), I might perhaps find reasons for +my rambling off. To say that Boston did not interest me would be the +reverse of the truth. It interested me deeply; but it did not excite me +with a sense of novelty or vastness. One can only repeat the obvious +truth that it is like an exceptionally dignified and stately English +town. One instinctively looks around for a cathedral, and finds the +State House in its stead. To the founders of this city, the glory of God +was not a thing to be furthered, or even typified, by any work of men's +hands; but the salvation of men's souls, they thought, could be best +achieved in a well-ordered democratic polity. Their descendants have of +late years taken to decorating their places of worship, and Trinity +Church (by H.H. Richardson), and the new Old South Church, are ambitious +and beautiful pieces of ecclesiastical architecture. But the old Old +South Meeting-House, the ecclesiastical centre of the city, is the flat +and somewhat sour negation of all that is expressed or implied in an +English cathedral. Let me not be understood to disparage the Old South +or the spirit which fashioned it. In my eyes, minster and meeting-house +are equally interesting historic monuments, and to my hereditary +instincts the latter is the more sympathetic. I merely note the fact +that the most conspicuous edifice in Boston, its Duomo, its St. Peter's +or St. Paul's, is dedicated, not to the glory of God, but to the +well-being of man.</p> + +<p>Not physically, of course, but intellectually, Boston has been likened +to Edinburgh. The parallel is fair enough, with this important +reservation, that the theological element in the atmosphere is not +Presbyterian but Unitarian. The Boston of to-day, it must be added, +especially resembles Edinburgh in the fact that its pre-eminence as an +intellectual centre has virtually departed. The <i>Atlantic Monthly</i> +survives, as <i>Blackwood</i>, survives, a relic of the great days of old; +but Boston has no Scott Monument to bear visual testimony to her +spiritual achievement. She ought certainly to treat herself to a worthy +Emerson Monument on the Common, whither the boy Emerson used to drive +his mother's cows: not, of course, a Gothic pile like that which +commemorates the genius of Scott, but a statue by the incomparable St. +Gaudens, under a modest classic canopy.</p> + +<p>But if, or when, such a monument is erected, it will absolve no one of +the duty of making a pilgrimage to Concord. Even if it had no historic +or literary associations, this simple, dignified, beautiful New England +village, with its plain frame houses and its stately elm avenues, would +be well worth a visit. Village I call it, but township would be a better +word. Let no one go there with less than half a day to spare, for the +places of interest are widely scattered. My companion and I went first +to Walden Pond, then to the Emerson and Hawthorne houses, then to that +ideal burying-place, Sleepy Hollow, where Emerson and Hawthorne and +Thoreau rest side by side, and finally to the bridge—</p> + +<div class='poem'><div class='stanza'> +<span>Where once the embattled farmers stood,<br /></span> +<span>And fired the shot heard round the world.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Everything here is beautifully appropriate. The commemorative statue of +the "minute-man" with his musket is simple and expressive, and the four +lines of Emerson's hymn graven on the pedestal are the right words +written by the right man, entwining, as it were, the historical and +literary associations of the place. An exquisite appropriateness, too, +presides over the Poets' Corner of Sleepy Hollow. The grave of Emerson +is marked by a rough block of pure white quartz, in which is inserted a +bronze tablet bearing the words:—</p> + +<div class='poem'><div class='stanza'> +<span>The passive master lent his hand<br /></span> +<span>To the vast soul that o'er him planned.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Altogether, among the places of pilgrimage of the English-speaking race, +there is none more satisfactory or more inspiring than Concord, Mass.</p> + +<p>If Boston is no longer a great centre of literary production, it +remains, with its noble public library in its midst, and with Harvard +University on its outskirts, a great centre of culture. I shall always +remember a luncheon party at Harvard, where I was the guest of an +eminent Shakespearean critic, and had for my fellow guests a very +learned Dante scholar (one of the most delightful talkers imaginable), a +famous psychologist, a political economist, and a lecturer on English +literature. The talk fell upon the depopulation of New England, or +rather the substitution of an alien race for (I had almost said) the +indigenous Yankee stock. There was some discussion as to whether the +Yankee was really dying out, or had merely spread throughout the West, +taking with him and disseminating the qualities which had made the +greatness of New England. It was not denied, of course, that westward +emigration has much to do with the matter. The New England farmer, +unable to stand up against the competition of the prairies, has betaken +himself to the prairies so as to compete on the winning side. But one of +the company maintained that this did not account for the whole +phenomenon. "The real key to it," he said, "lies in such a family +history as mine. My grandmother was the youngest of thirteen children; +my mother was the eldest of five; my brother and I are two; and we are +unmarried."</p> + +<p>I am inclined to think that this story of a dwindling stock is typical, +not for New England alone, but for other parts of the Union. It seems as +though the pressure of life in the Eastern States, and perhaps some +subtle influence of climate upon temperament, were rendering the people +of old Teutonic blood—British, Dutch, and German—unwilling to face the +responsibility of large families, and so were giving the country over to +the later and usually inferior immigrant and his progeny. I am not sure +that it might not be well to cultivate a new sense of social duty in +this matter. Is it Utopian to suggest a policy of "America for the +Americans"—some effectual restriction of immigration before it is too +late, so as to leave room for the natural increase of the American +people? This is an "expansion," a "taking up of the white man's burden," +which would command my warmest sympathy. It is to the interest of the +whole world that the America of the future should be peopled by "white +men" in every sense of the word.</p> + +<p>New England, however, cannot be utterly depopulated of its old stocks, +for at every turn you come up against those good old Puritan names which +bespeak a longer ancestry than many an English peer can claim. I find +among the signatures to a petition against the reinstatement of an +elevated railroad in Boston, such names as Adams, Morse, Lowell, +Emerson, Bowditch, Lothrop, Storey, Dabney, Whipple, Ticknor, and Hale. +Of the fifty signatures, only three (or, at the outside five, if we +include two doubtful cases) are of other than English origin. In +contrast to this I may mention another list of names which came under my +notice at the same time—a list of the purchasers at a sale by auction +of seats for a New York first-night. Here twenty-six names out of forty +are obviously of non-English origin, while several of the remaining +fourteen have a distinctly Hebraic ring.</p> + +<p>Though very much smaller than New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia, +Boston is essentially a great city, with a very animated street life, +and nothing in the least provincial about it. But it is not in these +great capitals, not even in this marvellous Chicago where I am now +writing, that one most clearly realises the bewildering potentialities +of the United States. It is precisely in the minor, the provincial +cities, which to us in Europe are no more than names—perhaps not so +much. For instance, what does the average Englishman know of Detroit?<a name='FNanchor_H_8'></a><a href='#Footnote_H_8'><sup>[H]</sup></a></p> + +<p>What State is it in? Is it in the North or the South, the East or the +West? For my part I knew in a general way, having been there before, +that Detroit was situated somewhere between Chicago and Niagara Falls, +but until a few days ago I should have been puzzled to describe its +situation more precisely. Well, I arrive in this obscure, insignificant +place, and find it a city of considerably more than a quarter of a +million inhabitants, beautifully laid out, magnificently paved and +lighted, its broad and noble avenues lined with handsome commercial +houses and roomy if not always beautiful villas, trees shading its +sidewalks, electric cars swimming in an endless stream along its +bustling thoroughfares, its imposing public library swarming with +readers, its theatres crowded, its parks alive with bicyclists, an eager +activity, whether in business, culture, or recreation, manifesting +itself on every hand. Or take, again, Buffalo, somewhat larger than +Detroit, but still by no means a city of the first rank. Everything that +I have said of Detroit applies to it, with the addition that some of +its commercial buildings are not only palatial in their dimensions, but +original and impressive in their architecture. An afternoon stroll along +Woodward-avenue, Detroit, or Main-street, Buffalo, reassures one as to +the future—the physical, at any rate—of the American people. The +prevailing type is, if not definitely Anglo-Saxon, at any rate Teutonic, +and the average of physical development is very high, especially among +the women. It may have some bearing upon what I have been saying above +to note that, in point of stature and beauty, the Bostonian woman, as a +rule, seemed to me to fall far short of her sisters in the other cities +I have visited. I have before my mind's eye many distinguished and +delightful exceptions to this rule; but, postponing gallantry to +sociological candour, I state my general impression for what it is +worth.</p> + +<p>Here, in Chicago, gallantry and candour go hand in hand. A legend of the +envious East represents that a Chicago young man travelling in Louisiana +wrote to his sweetheart: "DEAR MAMIE,—I have shot an alligator. When I +have shot another, I will send you a pair of slippers." The implication +is, to the best of my knowledge and belief, a base and baseless +calumny. New York itself does not present a higher average of female +beauty than Chicago, and that is saying a great deal. But I must not +enlarge on this fascinating topic. A Judgment of Paris is always a +delicate business, and I am in nowise called upon to make the invidious +award. Were I compelled to undertake it, I could only distribute the +apple, and my homage, in equal shares to the goddesses of the East, the +South, and the Middle West.</p> + +<p>When I was in Chicago in '77, it was the metropolis of the West, without +qualification. Now it is merely the frontier city of the Middle West. +From the standpoint of Omaha and Denver, it seems to fill the Eastern +horizon, and shut out the further view. Many stories are told to show +how absolutely and instinctively your true Westerner ignores the Eastern +States and cities. Here is one of the most characteristic. A little girl +came into the smoking car of a train somewhere in Kansas or Nebraska, +and stood beside her father, who was in conversation with another man. +The father put his arm round her and said to his companion, "She's been +a great traveller, this little girl of mine. She's only ten years old, +and she's been all over the United States."</p> + +<p>"You don't say!" replied the other; "all over the United States?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, sir; all over the United States," said the proud father; and then +added, as though the detail was scarcely worth mentioning, "except east +of Chicago."</p> + +<p>Chicago, unfortunately, marks the limit of my wanderings; so I shall +return to England without having seen anything of the United States, +except for a sort of Pisgah-glimpse from the tower of the Auditorium.</p> +<br /> + +<p>FOOTNOTES:</p> + +<a name='Footnote_H_8'></a><a href='#FNanchor_H_8'>[H]</a><div class='note'><p> My own visit to Detroit illustrated this vagueness of the +average Englishman. I was anxious to see Mr. James A. Herne's famous +play, <i>Shore Acres</i>, and learned from Mr. Herne that it would be played +by a travelling company at Buffalo on a certain date. I carefully noted +the place and day, but contrived to mix up Buffalo and Detroit in my +mind, and arrived on the appointed day in Detroit—nearly two hundred +and fifty miles from the appointed place! It was as though, having +arranged to be in Brighton at a certain time, one should go instead to +Scarborough.</p></div> + + + +<hr style='width: 65%;' /> +<a name='LETTER_IX'></a><h2>LETTER IX</h2> + +<p>Chicago—Its Splendour and Squalor—Mammoth Buildings—Wind, Dust, and +Smoke—Culture—Chicago's Self-Criticism—Postscript: Social Service in +America.</p> +<br /> + +<p>CHICAGO.</p> + +<p>When I was in America twenty-two years ago, Chicago was the city that +interested me least. Coming straight from San Francisco—which, in the +eyes of a youthful student of Bret Harte, seemed the fitting metropolis +of one of the great realms of romance—I saw in Chicago the negation of +all that had charmed me on the Pacific slope. It was a flat and grimy +abode of mere commerce, a rectilinear Glasgow; and to an Edinburgh man, +or rather boy, no comparison could appear more damaging. How different +is the impression produced by the Chicago of to-day! In 1877 the city +was extensive enough, indeed, and handsome to boot, in a commonplace, +cast-iron fashion. It was a chequer-board of Queen-Victoria-streets. +To-day its area is appalling, its architecture grandiose. It is the +young giant among the cities of the earth, and it stands but on the +threshold of its destiny. It embraces in its unimaginable amplitude +every extreme of splendour and squalor. Walking in Dearborn-street or +Adams-street of a cloudy afternoon, you think yourself in a frowning and +fuliginous city of Dis, piled up by superhuman and apparently sinister +powers. Cycling round the boulevards of a sunny morning, you rejoice in +the airy and spacious greenery of the Garden City. Driving along the +Lake Shore to Lincoln Park in the flush of sunset, you wonder that the +dwellers in this street of palaces should trouble their heads about +Naples or Venice, when they have before their very windows the +innumerable laughter, the ever-shifting opalescence, of their +fascinating inland sea. Plunging in the electric cars through the river +subway, and emerging in the West Side, you realise that the slums of +Chicago, if not quite so tightly packed as those of New York or London, +are no whit behind them in the other essentials of civilised barbarism. +Chicago, more than any other city of my acquaintance, suggests that +antique conception of the underworld which placed Elysium and Tartarus +not only on the same plane, but, so to speak, round the corner from each +other.</p> + +<p>As the elephant (or rather the megatherium) to the giraffe, so is the +colossal business block of Chicago to the sky-scraper of New York. There +is a proportion and dignity in the mammoth buildings of Chicago which is +lacking in most of those which form the jagged sky-line of Manhattan +Island. For one reason or another—no doubt some difference in the +system of land tenure is at the root of the matter—the Chicago +architect has usually a larger plot of ground to operate on than his New +York colleague, and can consequently give his building breadth and depth +as well as height. Before the lanky giants of the Eastern metropolis, +one has generally to hold one's æsthetic judgment in abeyance. They are +not precisely ugly, but still less, as a rule, can they be called +beautiful. They are simply astounding manifestations of human energy and +heaven-storming audacity. They stand outside the pale of æsthetics, like +the Eiffel Tower or the Forth Bridge. But in Chicago proportion goes +along with mere height, and many of the business houses are, if not +beautiful, at least æsthetically impressive—for instance, the grim +fortalice of Marshall Field & Company, the Masonic Temple, the Women's +Temperance Temple (a structure with a touch of real beauty), and such +vast cities within the city as the Great Northern Building and the +Monadnock Block. The last-named edifice alone is said to have a daily +population of 6000. A city ordinance now limits the height of buildings +to ten stories; but even that is a respectable allowance. Moreover, it +is found that where giant constructions cluster too close together, they +(literally) stand in each other's light, and the middle stories do not +let. Thus the heaven-storming era is probably over; but there is all the +more reason to feel assured that the business centre of Chicago will ere +long be not only grandiose but architecturally dignified and +satisfactory. A growing thirst for beauty has come upon the city, and +architects are earnestly studying how to assuage it. In magnificence of +internal decoration, Chicago can already challenge the world: for +instance, in the white marble vestibule and corridors of The Rookery, +and the noble hall of the Illinois Trust Bank.</p> + +<p>At the same time, no account of the city scenery of Chicago is complete +without the admission that the gorges and canyons of its central +district are exceedingly draughty, smoky, and dusty. Even in these +radiant spring days, it fully acts up to its reputation as the Windy +City. This peculiarity renders it probably the most convenient place in +the world for the establishment of a Suicide Club on the Stevensonian +model. With your eyes peppered with dust, with your ears full of the +clatter of the Elevated Road, and with the prairie breezes playfully +buffeting you and waltzing with you by turns, as they eddy through the +ravines of Madison, Monroe, or Adams-street, you take your life in your +hand when you attempt the crossing of State-street, with its endless +stream of rattling waggons and clanging trolley-cars. New York does not +for a moment compare with Chicago in the roar and bustle and +bewilderment, of its street life. This remark will probably be resented +in New York, but it expresses the settled conviction of an impartial +pedestrian, who has spent a considerable portion of his life during the +past few weeks in "negotiating" the crossings of both cities.</p> + +<p>On the other hand, I observe no eagerness on the part of New York to +contest the supremacy of Chicago in the matter of smoke. In this +respect, the eastern metropolis is to the western as Mont Blanc to +Vesuvius. The smoke of Chicago has a peculiar and aggressive +individuality, due, I imagine, to the natural clearness of the +atmosphere. It does not seem, like London smoke, to permeate and blend +with the air. It does not overhang the streets in a uniform canopy, but +sweeps across and about them in gusts and swirls, now dropping and now +lifting again its grimy curtain. You will often see the vista of a +gorge-like street so choked with a seeming thundercloud that you feel +sure a storm is just about to burst upon the city, until you look up at +the zenith and find it smiling and serene. Again and again a sudden +swirl of smoke across the street (like that which swept across +Fifth-avenue when the Windsor Hotel burst into flames) has led me to +prick up my ears for a cry of "Fire!" But Chicago is not so easily +alarmed. It is accustomed to having its airs from heaven blurred by +these blasts from hell. I know few spectacles more curious than that +which awaits you when you have shot up in the express elevator to the +top of the Auditorium tower—on the one hand, the blue and laughing +lake, on the other, the city belching volumes of smoke from its thousand +throats, as though a vaster Sheffield or Wolverhampton had been +transported by magic to the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. What a +wonderful city Chicago will be when the commandment is honestly +enforced which declares, "Thou shalt consume thine own smoke!"</p> + +<p>What a wonderful city Chicago will be! That is the ever-recurring burden +of one's cogitations. For Chicago is awake, and intelligently awake, to +her destinies; so much one perceives even in the reiterated complaints +that she is asleep. Discontent is the condition of progress, and Chicago +is not in the slightest danger of relapsing into a condition of inert +self-complacency. Her sons love her, but they chasten her. They are +never tired of urging her on, sometimes (it must be owned) with most +unfilial objurgations; and she, a quite unwearied Titan, is bracing up +her sinews for the great task of the coming century. I have given myself +a rendezvous in Chicago for 1925, when air-ships will no doubt make the +transit easy for my septuagenarian frame. Nowhere in the world, I am +sure, does the "to be continued in our next" interest take hold on one +with such a compulsive grip.</p> + +<p>Culture is pouring into Chicago as rapidly as pork or grain, and Chicago +is insatiate in asking for more. In going over the Public Library (a not +quite satisfactory building, though with some beautiful details) I was +most of all impressed by the army of iron-bound boxes which are +perpetually speeding to and fro between the library itself and no fewer +than fifty-seven distributing stations scattered throughout the city. "I +thought the number was forty-eight," said a friend who accompanied me. +"So it was last year," said the librarian. "We have set up nine more +stations during the interval." The Chicago Library boasts (no doubt +justly) that it circulates more books than any similar institution in +the world. Take, again, the University of Chicago: seven years ago (or, +say, at the outside ten) it had no existence, and its site was a dismal +swamp; to-day it is a handsome and populous centre of literary and +scientific culture. Observe, too, that it is by no means an oasis in the +desert, but is thoroughly in touch with the civic life around it. For +instance, it actively participates in the admirable work done by the +Hull House Settlement in South Halsted-street, and in the vigorous and +wide-spreading University Extension movement.</p> + +<p>At the present moment, Chicago is not a little resentful of the sharp +admonitions addressed to her by two of her aforesaid loving but exacting +children. One, Professor Charles Zueblin, has been telling her that "in +the arrogance of youth she has failed to realise that instead of being +one of the progressive cities of the world, she has been one of the +reckless, improvident, and shiftless cities." Professor Zueblin is not +content (for example) with her magnificent girdle of parks and +boulevards, but calls for smaller parks and breathing spaces in the +heart of her most crowded districts. He further maintains that her great +new sewage canal is a gigantically costly blunder; and indeed one cannot +but sympathise with the citizens of St. Louis in inquiring by what right +Chicago converts the Mississippi into her main sewer. But if Professor +Zueblin chastises Chicago with whips, Mr. Henry B. Fuller, it would +seem, lashes her with scorpions. Mr. Fuller is one of the leading +novelists of the city—for Chicago, be it known, had a nourishing and +characteristic literature of her own long before Mr. Dooley sprang into +fame. The author of <i>The Cliff-Dwellers</i> is alleged to have said that +the Anglo-Saxon race was incapable of art, and that in this respect +Chicago was pre-eminently Anglo-Saxon. "Alleged," I say, for reports of +lectures in the American papers are always to be taken with caution, and +are very often as fanciful as Dr. Johnson's reports of the debates in +Parliament. The reporter is not generally a shorthand writer. He jots +down as much as he conveniently can of the lecturer's remarks, and +pieces them out from imagination. Thus, I am not at all sure what Mr. +Fuller really said; but there is no doubt whatever of the indignation +kindled by his diatribe. Deny her artistic capacities and sensibilities, +and you touch Chicago in her tenderest point. Moreover, Mr. Fuller's +onslaught encouraged several other like-minded critics to back him up, +so that the city has been writhing under the scourges of her +epigrammatists. I have before me a letter to one of the evening papers, +written in a tone of academic sarcasm which proves that even the +supercilious and "donnish" element is not lacking in Chicago culture. "I +know a number of artists," says the writer, "who came to Chicago, and +after staying here for a while, went away and achieved much success in +New York, London, and Paris. The appreciation they received here gave +them the impetus to go elsewhere, and thus brought them fame and +fortune." Whatever foundation there may be for these jibes, they are in +themselves a sufficient evidence that Chicago is alive to her +opportunities and responsibilities. She is, in her own vernacular, +"making, culture hum." Mr. Fuller, I understand, reproached her with her +stockyards—an injustice which even Mr. Bernard Shaw would scarcely +have committed. Is it the fault of Chicago that the world is +carnivorous? Was not "Nature red in tooth and claw" several æons before +Chicago was thought of? I do not understand that any unnecessary cruelty +is practised in the stockyards; and apart from that, I fail to see that +systematic slaughter of animals for food is any more disgusting than +sporadic butchery. But of the stockyards I can speak only from hearsay. +I shall not go to see them. If I have any spare time, I shall rather +spend it in a second visit to St. Gaudens' magnificent and magnificently +placed statue of Abraham Lincoln, surely one of the great works of art +of the century, and of the few entirely worthy monuments ever erected to +a national hero.</p> +<br /> + +<p>POSTSCRIPT.—The above-mentioned Hull House Settlement in South +Halsted-street, under the direction of Miss Jane Addams, is probably the +most famous institution of its kind in America; but it is only one of +many. There is no more encouraging feature in American life than the +zeal, energy, and high and liberal intelligence with which social +service of this sort is being carried on in all the great cities. This +is a line of activity on which England and America are advancing hand +in hand, and however much one may deplore the necessity for such work, +one cannot but see in the common impulse which prompts and directs it a +symptom of the deep-seated unity of the two peoples. Nothing I saw in +America impressed me more than the thorough practicality as well as the +untiring devotion which was apparent in the work carried on by Miss +Addams in Chicago and Miss Lillian D. Wald in Henry-street, New York. +And in both Settlements I recognised the same atmosphere of culture, the +same spirit of plain living, hard working, and high thinking, that +characterises the best of our kindred institutions in England. A lady +connected with the University of Chicago, who is also a worker at the +Hull House Settlement, told me a touching little story which illustrates +at once the need for such work in Chicago, and the unexpected response +with which it sometimes meets. She had been talking about the beauties +of nature to a group of women from the slums, and at the end of her +address one of her hearers said, "I ain't never been outside of Chicago, +but I know it's true what the lady says. There's two vacant lots near +our place, an' when the spring comes, the colours of them—they fair +makes you hold your breath. An' then there's the trees on the Avenoo. +An' then there's all the sky." On another occasion the same lady met +with an "unexpected response" of a different order. She was showing a +boy from the slums some photographs of Italian pictures, when they came +upon a Virgin and Child. "Ah," said the boy at once, "that's Jesus an' +his Mother: I allus knows <i>them</i> when I sees 'em." "Yes," said Miss +R——, "there is a purity and grandeur of expression about them, isn't +there—" "Tain't that," interrupted the boy, "it's the rims round their +heads as gives 'em away!"</p> + +<p>Apart from the Settlements, there are many energetically-conducted +Societies in America for the social and political enlightenment of the +masses. I have before me, for instance, a little bundle of most +excellent leaflets issued by the League for Social Service of New York. +They deal with such subjects as <i>The Duties of American Citizenship, The +Value of a Vote, The Duty of Public Spirit, The Co-operative City</i>, &c. +They include an admirable abstract in twenty-four pages, of <i>Laws +Concerning the Welfare of Every Citizen of New York</i>, and the same +Society issues similar abstracts of the laws of other States. They have +a large and well-equipped lecture organisation, and they issue +excellent practical <i>Suggestions for Conferences and Courses of Study</i>. +The problem to be grappled with by this Society and others working on +similar lines is no doubt one of immense difficulty. It is nothing less +than the education in citizenship of the most heterogeneous, polyglot, +and in some respects ignorant and degraded population ever assembled in +a single city, since the days of Imperial Rome. The spread of political +enlightenment in New York and other cities cannot possibly be very +rapid; but no effort is being spared to accelerate it. I sometimes +wonder whether the obvious necessity for political education in America +may not, in the long run, prove a marked advantage to her, as compared, +for instance, with England. Dissatisfaction, as I have said above, is +the condition of progress. We are apt to assume that every Briton is +born a good citizen; and in the lethargy begotten of that assumption, it +may very well happen that we let the Americans outstrip us in the march +of enlightenment.</p> + + + +<hr style='width: 65%;' /> +<a name='LETTER_X'></a><h2>LETTER X</h2> + +<p>New York in Spring—Central Park—New York not an Ill-governed City—The +United States Post Office—The Express System—Valedictory.</p> +<br /> + +<p>NEW YORK.</p> + +<p>It is with a curious sensation of home-coming that I find myself once +more in New York. Spring has arrived before me. The blue dome of sky has +lost its crystalline sparkle, and the trees in Madison-square have put +on a filmy veil of green. Going to a luncheon party in the Riverside +region, I determine, for the sheer pleasure and exhilaration of the +thing, to walk the whole way, up Fifth-avenue and diagonally across +Central Park. What a magnificent pleasure ground, vast, various, and +seductive! A peerless emerald on the finger of Manhattan! If I were not +bound by solemn oaths to present myself at West-End-avenue at half-past +one, I could loaf all the afternoon by the superb expanse of the Croton +Reservoir, looking out over the giant city of sunshine, with the white +dome of Columbia College and the pyramid of Grant's Monument on the +northern horizon, and far to the eastward the low hills of Long Island.</p> + +<p>Passing the Metropolitan Museum of Art, I am reminded, not only that I +have never been inside it, but that in all the cities I have visited I +have not gone to a single show-place, museum, or picture-gallery, save +one remarkable private collection in Baltimore. Of course I must also +except (a large exception!) the public libraries of Washington, Boston, +and Chicago, which are, in a very eminent sense, "show-places." Still, +it seems somewhat remarkable (does it not?) that in a country which is +understood in Europe to be monotonous and unattractive to travellers, I +should have spent two months not only of intellectual interest but of +æsthetic enjoyment, without once, except in a chance moment of idleness, +feeling the least inclination to fall back upon, the treasures of +European art which it undoubtedly contains. I have even ignored the +marvels of nature. I passed within twenty miles of Niagara; I saw the +serried icefloes sweeping down from Lake Erie to the cataract; and I did +not go to see them plunge over. In the first place, I had been there +before; in the second place, I should have had to sacrifice six hours +of Chicago, where I wanted, not six hours less, but six weeks more.</p> + +<p>Before saying farewell—a fond farewell!—to New York, let me supplement +my first impressions with my last. The most maligned of cities, I called +it; and truly I said well. Here is even the judicious Mr. J.F. Muirhead +of "Baedeker," betrayed by his passion for antithesis into describing +New York as "a lady in ball costume, with diamonds in her ears and her +toes out at her boots." This was written, to be sure, in 1890, and may +have been true in its day; for it takes an American city much less than +a decade to belie a derogatory epigram. Now, at any rate, New York has +had her shoes mended to some purpose. She is not the best paved city in +the world, or even in America, but neither is she by any means the +worst; and her splendid system of electric and elevated railroads +renders her more independent of paving than any European city. +Fifth-avenue is paved to perfection; Broadway and Sixth-avenue are not; +but at any rate the streets are not for ever being hauled up and laid +down again, like some of our leading London thoroughfares. Holborn, for +example, may be ideally paved on paper, but its roadway is subject to +such incessant eruptions of one sort or another that it is in practice +a much more uncomfortable thoroughfare than any of the New York avenues. +For the rest, New York has a copious and excellent water supply, which +London has not; it has a splendidly efficient fire-brigade; it has an +admirable telephone system, with underground wires; and even its +electric trolleys get their motive-power from underneath, whereas in +Philadelphia the overhead wires are, I regret to say, killing the trees +which lend the streets their greatest charm. Altogether, Tammany or no +Tammany, New York cannot possibly be described as an ill-governed city. +Its government may be wasteful and worse; inefficient it is not. Even +the policemen seem to be maligned. I never found them rude or needlessly +dictatorial.</p> + +<p>In one of the essential conveniences of modern life, New York is far +behind London; but the blame lies, not with the city, but with the +United States. Its postal arrangements are at best erratic, at worst +miserable. Letters which would be delivered in London in three or four +hours take in New York anywhere from six to sixteen hours. It was a long +time before I realised and learned to allow for the slowness of the +postal service. At first I used mentally to accuse my correspondents of +great dilatoriness in attending to notes that called for an immediate +reply. On one occasion I posted in Madison Square at 3 P.M. a letter +addressed to the Lyceum Theatre, not a quarter of a mile away, +suggesting an appointment for the same evening after the play. The +appointment was not kept, for the letter was not delivered till the +following morning! To ensure its delivery the same evening, I ought to +have put a special-delivery stamp on it—price fivepence—in addition to +the ordinary two-cent stamp. No doubt it is the universal employment of +the telephone in American cities that leads people to put up with such +defective postal arrangements.</p> + +<p>But it is not only within city limits that the United States Post Office +functions with a dignified deliberation. The ordinary time that it takes +to write (say) from New York to Chicago, and receive an answer, might be +considerably reduced without any acceleration of the train service. It +sounds incredible, but it is, I believe, the case, that the simple and +eminently time-saving device of a letter-box in the domestic front-door +is practically unknown in America. I did observe one, in Boston, so +small that a fair sized business letter would certainly have stuck in +its throat. One evening I was sitting at dinner in a fashionable street +in New York, close to Central Park, when I was startled by a distinctly +burglarious noise at the window. My host smiled at my look of +bewilderment, and explained that it was only the letter-carrier; and, +sure enough, when the servant came into the room she picked up three or +four letters from the floor. The postman was somehow able to reach the +front window from the "stoop," open it, and throw in the evening's +mail—a primitive arrangement, more suggestive of the English than of +the American Gotham. Even the gum on the United States postage-stamps +is apt to be ineffectual. When you are stamping letters in hot haste +to catch the European mail, you are as likely as not to find that +the head of President Grant has curled up and refuses—most +uncharacteristically—to stick to its post.</p> + +<p>The conveniences of the express system, again, are, in my judgment, +greatly overrated. It is often slow and always expensive. It seems to +have been devised by the makers of Saratoga trunks, for it puts a +premium upon huge packages and a tax upon those of moderate size. I +speak feelingly, for I have just paid, eight shillings for the +conveyance of five packages from my room to the wharf, a distance of +about a mile and a half. A London growler would have taken them and +myself to boot for eighteenpence, three of the packages going outside, +and two, with their owner, inside. It is true that had I packed all my +belongings in one huge box the same company would have conveyed them to +the steamer for one and eightpence, which is the regular charge per +package. But I could not have taken this box into my state-room; I must +in any case have had a cabin trunk; and for an ocean voyage, a bundle of +rugs is, to say the least of it, advisable. Thus I could not have +escaped paying four and tenpence for the conveyance of my baggage +alone—rather more than three times as much as it would have cost to +convey my baggage and myself the same distance in London. It must not be +forgotten, of course, that the New York Express Company would, if +necessary, have carried the goods much further for the same charge of +forty cents a package. The limit of distance I do not know: it is +probably something like twenty miles. But a potential ell does not +reconcile me to paying an exorbitant price for the actual inch which is +all I have any use for. This method of simplification—fixing the +minimum payment on the basis of the maximum bulk, weight, and +distance—seems to me essentially irrational. In some cases, indeed, it +cuts against the Express Company. When I first had occasion to move from +one abode to another in New York—a distance of about a quarter of a +mile—I thought with glee "Now the famous express system will save me +all trouble." But I found that it would cost two dollars to express my +belongings, whereas even the notoriously extortionate New York cabman +would convey me and all my goods and chattels for half that sum. So the +Express Company's loss was cabby's gain.</p> + +<p>"The ship is cheered, the harbour cleared," and none too merrily are we +dropping down by the Statue of Liberty to Sandy Hook and the Atlantic. +(There is a point, by the way, a little below the Battery, from which +New York looks mountainous indeed. Its irregularly serrated profile is +lost, and the sky-scrapers fall into position one behind the other, like +an artistically grouped cohort of giants. "Hills peep o'er hills, and +Alps on Alps arise," while in the background the glorious curve of the +Brooklyn Bridge seems to span half the horizon. I could not but think of +Valhalla and the Bridge of the Gods in the <i>Rheingold</i>. Elevator +architecture necessarily sends one to Scandinavian mythology in quest of +similitudes.) It is with acute regret that I turn my back upon New York, +or, rather, turn my face to see it receding over the steamer's wake. Not +often in this imperfect world are high anticipations overtopped, as the +real American has overtopped my half-reminiscent dream of it. "The real +America?" That, of course, is an absurd expression. I have had only a +superficial glimpse of one corner of the United States. It is as though +one were to glance at a mere dog-ear on a folio page, and then profess +to have mastered its whole import. But I intend no such ridiculous +profession. I have seen something of the outward aspect of five or six +great cities; I have looked into one small facet of American social +life; and I have faithfully reported what I have seen—nothing more. At +the same time my observations, and more especially my conversations with +the scores of "bright" and amiable men it has been my privilege to meet, +have suggested to me certain thoughts, certain hopes and apprehensions, +respecting the future of America and the English-speaking world, which I +shall try to formulate elsewhere. For the present, let me only sum up +my personal experiences in saying that all the pleasant expectations I +brought with me to America have been realised, all the forebodings +disappointed. Even the interviewer is far less terrible than I had been +led to imagine. He always treated me with courtesy, sometimes with +comprehension. One gentleman alone (not an American, by the way) set +forth to be mildly humorous at my expense; and even he apologised in +advance, as it were, by prefixing his own portrait to the interview, as +who should say, "Look at me—how can I help it?" Again, I had been led +rather to fear American hospitality as being apt to become importunate +and exacting. I found it no less considerate than cordial. Probably I +was too small game to bring the lion-hunters upon my trail. The alleged +habit of speech-making and speech-demanding on every possible occasion I +found to be merely mythical. Three times only was I called upon to "say +something," and on the first two occasions, being taken unawares, I said +everything I didn't want to say. The third time, having foreseen the +demand, I had noted down in advance the heads of an eloquent harangue; +but when the time came I felt the atmosphere unpropitious, and +suppressed my rhetoric. The proceedings opened with an iced beverage, +called, I believe, a "Mississippi toddy," probably as being the longest +toddy on record, the father of (fire) waters; and on its down-lapsing +current my eloquence was swept into the gulf of oblivion. The meeting, +fortunately, did not know what it had lost, and its serenity remained +unclouded. But it is not to the Mississippi toddies and other creature +comforts of America that I look back with gratitude and affection. It is +to the spontaneous and unaffected human kindness that met me on every +hand; the will to please and to be pleased in daily intercourse; and, in +the spiritual sphere, the thirst for knowledge, for justice, for beauty, +for the larger and the purer light.</p> + + + +<hr style='width: 65%;' /> +<a name='PART_II'></a><h2>PART II</h2> + +<h2>REFLECTIONS</h2> + + + +<hr style='width: 65%;' /> +<a name='NORTH_AND_SOUTH'></a><h2>NORTH AND SOUTH</h2> + +<hr style='width: 65%;' /> +<a name='NORTH_I'></a><h2>I</h2> +<br /> + +<p>In Washington, on the 6th of April last, business was suspended from +mid-day onwards, while President McKinley and all the high officers of +State attended the public funeral at Arlington Cemetery of several +hundred soldiers, brought home from the battlefields of Cuba. The burial +ground on the heights of Arlington—the old Virginian home, by the way, +of the Lee family—had hitherto been known as the resting-place of +numbers of Northern soldiers, killed in the Civil War. But among the +bodies committed to earth that afternoon were those of many Southerners, +who had stood and fallen side by side with their Northern comrades at El +Caney and San Juan. The significance of the event was widely felt and +commented upon. "Henceforth," said one paper, "the graves at Arlington +will constitute a truly national cemetery;" and the same note was struck +in a thousand other quarters. Poets burst into song at the thought of +their</p> + +<div class='poem'><div class='stanza'> +<span>"Resting together side by side,<br /></span> +<span class='i1'>Comrades in blue and grey!<br /></span> +</div><div class='stanza'> +<span>"Healed in the tender peace of time,<br /></span> +<span class='i1'>The wounds that once were red<br /></span> +<span>With hatred and with hostile rage,<br /></span> +<span class='i1'>While sanguined brothers bled.<br /></span> +</div><div class='stanza'> +<span>"They leaped together at the call<br /></span> +<span class='i1'>Of country—one in one,<br /></span> +<span>The soldiers of the Northern hills,<br /></span> +<span class='i1'>And of the Southern sun!<br /></span> +</div><div class='stanza'> +<span>"'Yankee' and 'Rebel,' side by side,<br /></span> +<span class='i1'>Beneath one starry fold—<br /></span> +<span>To-day, amid our common tears,<br /></span> +<span class='i1'>Their funeral bells are tolled."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The artlessness of these verses renders them none the less significant. +They express a popular sentiment in popular language. But, as here +expressed, it is clearly the sentiment of the North: how far is it +shared and acknowledged by the South? Happening to be on the spot, I +could not but try to obtain some sort of answer to this question.</p> + +<p>Again, as I stood on the terrace of the Capitol that April afternoon, +and looked out across the Potomac to the old Lee mansion at Arlington, +while all the flags of Washington drooped at half-mast, a very +different piece of verse somehow floated into my memory:</p> + +<div class='poem'><div class='stanza'> +<span class='i2'>"Walk wide o' the Widow at Windsor,<br /></span> +<span class='i3'>For 'alf o' Creation she owns:<br /></span> +<span>We 'ave bought 'er the same with the sword and the flame,<br /></span> +<span class='i4'>And salted it down with our bones.<br /></span> +<span class='i3'>(Poor beggars!—it's blue with our bones!)"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The association was obvious: how the price of lead would go up if +England brought home all her dead "heroes" in hermetically-sealed +caskets! My thought (so an anti-Imperialist might say) was like the +smile of the hardened freebooter at the amiable sentimentalism of a +comrade who was "yet but young in deed." But why should Mr. Kipling's +rugged lines have cropped up in my memory rather than the smoother +verses of other poets, equally familiar to me, and equally well fitted +to point the contrast?—for instance, Mr. Housman's:—</p> + +<div class='poem'><div class='stanza'> +<span>"It dawns in Asia, tombstones show,<br /></span> +<span class='i1'>And Shropshire names are read;<br /></span> +<span>And the Nile spills his overflow<br /></span> +<span class='i1'>Beside the Severn's dead."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Or Mr. Newbolt's:</p> + +<div class='poem'><div class='stanza'> +<span>"<i>Qui procul hinc</i>—the legend's writ,<br /></span> +<span class='i1'>The frontier grave is far away;<br /></span> +<span><i>Qui ante diem periit,</i><br /></span> +<span class='i1'><i>Sed miles, sed fro patriâ</i>."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The reason simply was that during the month I had spent in America the +air had been filled with Kipling. His name was the first I had heard +uttered on landing—by the conductor of a horse-car. Men of light and +leading, and honourable women not a few, had vied with each other in +quoting his refrains; and I had seen the crowded audience at a low +music-hall stirred to enthusiasm by the delivery of a screed of maudlin +verses on his illness. He, the rhapsodist of the red coat, was out and +away the most popular poet in the country of the blue, and that at a +time when the blue coat in itself was inimitably popular. Nor could +there be any doubt that his <i>Barrack-room Ballads</i> were the most popular +of his works. Not a century had passed since the Tommy Atkins of that +day had burnt the Capitol on whose steps I was standing (a shameful +exploit, to which I allude only to point the contrast); and here was the +poet of Tommy Atkins so idolised by the grandsons of the men of 1812 and +1776, that I, a Briton and a staunch admirer of Kipling, had almost come +to resent as an obsession the ubiquity of his name!</p> + +<p>It seemed then, that the rancour of the blue coat against the red must +have dwindled no less significantly than the rancour of the grey coat +against the blue. Into the reality of this phenomenon, too, I made it +my business to inquire.</p> + + + +<hr style='width: 65%;' /> +<a name='NORTH_II'></a><h2>II</h2> +<br /> + +<p>There can be no doubt that the Spanish War has done a great deal to +bring the North and the South together. It has not in any sense created +in the South a feeling of loyalty to the Union, but it has given the +younger generation in the South an opportunity of manifesting that +loyalty to the Union which has been steadily growing for twenty years. +Down to 1880, or thereabouts, the wound left by the Civil War was still +raw, its inflammation envenomed rather than allayed by the measures of +the "reconstruction" period. Since 1880, since the administration of +President Hayes, the wound has been steadily healing, until it has come +to seem no longer a burning sore, but an honourable cicatrice.</p> + +<p>Every one admits that the heaviest blow ever dealt to the South was that +which laid Abraham Lincoln in the dust. He, if any one, could have +averted the mistakes which delayed by fifteen years the very beginning +of the process of reconciliation. His wise and kindly influence +removed, the North committed what is now recognised as the fatal blunder +of forcing unrestricted negro suffrage on the South. This measure was +dictated partly, no doubt, by honest idealism, partly by much lower +motives. Then the horde of "carpet-baggers" descended upon the +"reconstructed" States, and there ensued a period of humiliation to the +South which made men look back with longing even to the sharper agonies +of the war. Coloured voters were brought in droves, by their Northern +fuglemen, to polling-places which were guarded by United States troops. +Utterly illiterate negroes crowded the benches of State legislatures. A +Northerner and staunch Union man has assured me that in the Capitol of +one of the reconstructed States he has seen a coloured representative +gravely studying a newspaper which he held upside down. The story goes +that in the legislature of Mississippi a negro majority, which had +opposed a certain bill, was suddenly brought round to it in a body by a +chance allusion to its "provisions," which they understood to mean +something to eat! This anecdote perhaps lacks evidence; but there can be +no doubt that the freedmen of 1865 were, as a body, entirely unfitted to +exercise the suffrage thrust upon them. A degrading and exasperating +struggle was the inevitable result—the whites of the South striving by +intimidation and chicanery to nullify the negro vote, the professional +politicians from the North battling, with the aid of the United States +troops, to render it effectual. Such a state of things was demoralising +to both parties, and in process of time the common sense of the North +revolted against it. United States troops no longer stood round the +ballot-boxes, and the South was suffered, in one way and another, to +throw off the "Dominion of Darkness." Different States modified their +constitutions in different ways. Many offices which had been elective +were made appointive. The general plan adopted of late years has been to +restrict the suffrage by means of a very simple test of intelligence, +the would-be voter being required to read a paragraph of the State +constitution and explain its meaning. The examiner, if one may put it +so, is the election judge, and he can admit or exclude a man at his +discretion. Thus illiterate whites are not necessarily deprived of the +suffrage. They may be quite intelligent men and responsible citizens, +who happened to grow to manhood precisely in the years when the war and +its sequels upset the whole system of public education in the South. At +any rate (it is argued), the illiterate white is a totally different man +from the illiterate negro. How far such modifications of the State +constitutions are consistent with the Constitution of the United States, +is a nice question upon which I shall not attempt to enter. The +arguments used to reconcile this test of intelligence with Amendments +XIV. and XV. of the United States Constitution seem to me more ingenious +than convincing. But, constitutional or not, the compromise is +reasonable; and though people in the South still feel, as one of them +put it to me, that the Republican party "may yet wield the flail of the +negro over them," the flail has been laid aside long enough to permit +the South, in the main, to recover its peace of mind and its +self-respect. The negro problem is still difficult enough, as many +tragic evidences prove; but there is no reason to despair of its +ultimate solution.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile material prosperity has been returning to the South; +agriculture has revived, and manufactures have increased. Social +intercourse and intermarriage have done much to promote mutual +comprehension between North and South, and to wipe out rankling +animosities. Each party has made a sincere effort to understand the +other's "case," and the war has come to seem a thing fated and +inevitable, or at any rate not to have been averted save by superhuman +wisdom and moderation on both sides. With mutual comprehension, mutual +admiration has gone hand in hand. The gallantry and tenacity of the +South are warmly appreciated in the North, and it is felt on both sides +that the very qualities which made the tussle so long and terrible are +the qualities which ensure the greatness of the reunited nation. But +changes of sentiment are naturally slow and, from moment to moment, +imperceptible. It needs some outside stimulus or shock to bring them +clearly home to the minds of men. Such a stimulus was provided by the +conflict with Spain. It did not create a new sense of solidarity between +the North and the South, but rather brought prominently to the surface +of the national consciousness a sense of solidarity that had for years +been growing and strengthening, more or less obscurely and +inarticulately, on both sides of Mason and Dixon's line. It consummated +a process of consolidation which had been going on for something like +twenty years.</p> + +<p>Furthermore, the Spanish War deposed the Civil War from its position as +the last event of great external picturesqueness in the national +history. However sincere may be our love of peace, war remains +irresistibly fascinating to the imagination; and the imagination of +young America has now a foreign war instead of a civil war to look back +upon. The smoke of battle, in which the South stood shoulder to shoulder +with the North, has done more than many years of peace could do to +soften in retrospect the harsh outlines of the fratricidal struggle.</p> + +<p>At the same time, there is another side to the case which ought not to +be overlooked. The South is proud, very proud; and the older generation, +the generation which fought and agonised through the terrible years from +'61 to '65, is more than a little inclined to resent what it regards as +the condescending advances of the North. This feeling is not confined to +those out-of-the-way corners where, as the saying goes, they have not +yet heard that the war—the Civil War—is over. It is not confined to +the old families, ruined by the war, whom the tide of returning +prosperity has not reached, and never will reach. It is strong among +even the most active and progressive of the veterans of '65. They smile +a grim smile in their grizzled beards at the fuss which has been made +over this "picayune war," as they call it. They, who came crushed, +impoverished, heartbroken, out of the duel of the Titans—they, who know +what it really means to sacrifice everything, everything, to a patriotic +ideal—they, to whom their cause seems none the less sacred because they +know it irrevocably lost—how can they be expected to toss up their caps +and help the party which first vanquished, and then, for many bitter +years, oppressed them, to make political capital out of what appears, in +their eyes, a more or less creditable military picnic? It is especially +the small scale of the conflict that excites their derision. "Did you +ever hear of the battle of Dinwiddie Court-House?" one of them said to +me. I confessed that I had not. "No," he said, "nor has any one else +heard of the battle of Dinwiddie Court-House. It was one of the most +insignificant fights in the war. But there were more men killed in half +an hour in that almost forgotten battle, than in all this mighty war we +hear so much about. Ah!" he continued, "they think we are vastly +gratified when they 'fraternise' with us on our battlefields and +decorate the graves of our dead. I don't know but I prefer the 'waving +of the bloody shirt' to this flaunting of the olive-branch. They have +their victory; let them leave us our graves."</p> + +<p>An intense loyalty, not only to the political theories of the South, but +to the memory of the men who died for them—"qui bene pro patria cum +patriaque jacent"—still animates the survivors of the war. With a +confessed but none the less pathetic illogicality, they feel as though +Death had not gone to work impartially, but had selected for his prey +the noblest and the best. One of these survivors, in a paper now before +me, quotes from <i>Das Siegesfest</i> the line—</p> + +<div class='poem'><div class='stanza'> +<span>"Ja, der Krieg verschlingt die Besten!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>and then remarks: "Still, when Schiller says:—</p> + +<div class='poem'><div class='stanza'> +<span>'Denn Patroklus liegt begraben,<br /></span> +<span class='i1'>Und Thersites kommt zurück,'<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>his illustration is only half right. The Greek Thersites did not return +to claim a pension."</p> + +<p>The dash of bitterness in this remark must not be taken too seriously. +The fact remains, however, that among the veterans of the South there +prevails a certain feeling of aloofness from the national jubilation +over the Spanish War. They "don't take much stock in it." The feeling is +widespread, I believe, but not loud-voiced. If I represented it as +surly or undignified, I should misrepresent it grossly. It is simply the +outcome of an ancient and deep-seated sorrow, not to be salved by +phrases or ceremonies—the most tragic emotion, I think, with which I +ever came face to face. But it prevails almost exclusively among the +older generation in the South, the men who "when they saw the issue of +the war, gave up their faith in God, but not their faith in the cause." +To the young, or even the middle-aged, it has little meaning. I met a +scholar-soldier in the South who had given expression to the sentiment +of his race and generation in an essay—one might almost say an +elegy—so chivalrous in spirit and so fine in literary form that it +moved me well-nigh to tears. Reading it at a public library, I found +myself so visibly affected by it that my neighbour at the desk glanced +at me in surprise, and I had to pull myself sharply together. Yet the +writer of this essay told me that when he gave it to his son to read, +the young man handed it back to him, saying, "All this is a sealed book +to me. I can not feel these things as you do."</p> + +<p>More important, perhaps than the sentiment of the veterans is the +feeling, which has been pretty generally expressed, that the South was +slighted in the actual conduct of the late war—that Southern regiments +and Southern soldiers (notably General Fitzhugh Lee) were unduly kept in +the background. Still, there is every reason to believe that the general +effect of the war has been one of conciliation and consolidation. From +the ultra-Southern point of view, the North seems merely to have seized +the opportunity of making honourable amends for the "horrors of +reconstruction;" but even those who take this view admit that the North +<i>has</i> seized the opportunity, and that gladly. As a matter of fact the +good-will of the North, and its desire to let bygones be bygones, are +probably very little influenced by any such recondite motive. It is in +most cases quite simple and instinctive. "There are no rebels now," said +the commandant of the Brooklyn Navy Yard when he gave orders to delete +the fourth word of the inscription "Taken from the rebel ram +<i>Mississippi</i>" over a trophy of the Civil War displayed outside of his +quarters. Admiral Philips had probably no thought of "reconstruction" or +of "making amends;" he simply obeyed a spontaneous and general +sentiment. The Southern heroes of the Civil War, moreover, are freely +admitted, and enthusiastically welcomed, into the national Pantheon.</p> + +<p>When the thirty-fourth anniversary of "Appomattox Day," which brought +the war to an end, was celebrated in Chicago on April 10 last (Governor +Roosevelt being the guest of honour), the memory of Lee was eulogised +along with that of Grant, and the oration in his honour was received +with equal applause. Finally, it is admitted even by those who are most +inclined to make light of the sentiment elicited by the late war, that +all the States of the Atlantic seaboard are instinctively drawing +together to counterpoise the growing predominance of the West. This +substitution of a new line of cleavage for the old one may seem a +questionable matter for rejoicing. But in any great community, conflicts +of interest must always arise. The recognition of the problems which +await the Republic in the near future does not imply any doubt of her +ability to arrive at a wise and just solution of them.</p> + + + +<hr style='width: 65%;' /> +<a name='NORTH_III'></a><h2>III</h2> +<br /> + +<p>The most loyal of the Southern veterans, I have said, recognise that the +cause of the South is irrevocably lost. By the cause of the South I do +not, of course, mean slavery. There is probably no one in the South who +would advocate the reinstatement of that "peculiar institution," even if +it could be effected by the lifting of a finger. "The cause we fought +for and our brothers died for," says Professor Gildersleeve of +Baltimore, "was the cause of civil liberty, not the cause of human +slavery.... If the secrets of all hearts could have been revealed, our +enemies would have been astounded to see how many thousands and tens of +thousands in the Southern States felt the crushing burden and the awful +responsibility of the institution which we were supposed to be defending +with the melodramatic fury of pirate kings."</p> + +<p>What was it, then, that the South fought for? In what sense was its +cause the cause of "civil liberty?" A brief inquiry into this question +may be found to have more than a merely historic interest—to have a +direct bearing, indeed, upon the problems of the future, not only for +America, but for the English-speaking world.</p> + +<p>Let me state at once the true inwardness of the matter, as I have been +led to see it. The cause of the South was the cause of small against +large political aggregations; and the world regards the defeat of the +South as righteous and inevitable, because instinct tells it that the +welfare of humanity is to be sought in large political aggregations, and +not in small. Providence, in a word, is on the side of the big (social) +battalions.</p> + +<p>From the point of view of pure logic, of academic argument, the case of +the South was enormously strong. Consequently, the latter-day apologists +of the Confederacy devote themselves with pathetic fervour, and often +with great ingenuity, to what the impartial outsider cannot but feel to +be barren discussions of constitutional law. They point out that the +States—that is, the thirteen original States—preceded the Federal +Union, and voluntarily entered into it under clearly-defined conditions; +that the Federal Government actually derived its powers from the +consent of the States, and could have none which they did not confer +upon it; that the maintenance of slavery in the Southern States, and the +right to claim the extradition of fugitive slaves, were formally +safeguarded in the Constitution; that it was in reliance upon these +provisions that the Southern States consented to enter the Union; that +the right of secession had been openly and repeatedly asserted by +leading politicians and influential parties in several Northern States, +and was therefore no novel and treasonable invention of the South; and, +finally, that the right to enter into a compact implied the right to +recede from it when its provisions were broken, or obviously on the +point of being broken, by the other party or parties to the agreement. +All this is logically and historically indisputable. The Southerners +were the conservative party, and had the letter of the Constitution on +their side; the Northerners were the reformers, the innovators. +Entrenched in the theory of State Sovereignty, the South denied the +right of the North, acting through the Central Government, to interfere +with its "peculiar institution;" and even those who deplored the +existence of slavery felt themselves none the less bound to assert and +defend the right of their respective States to manage their own +affairs.<a name='FNanchor_I_9'></a><a href='#Footnote_I_9'><sup>[I]</sup></a> It was a conflict as old as the Revolution—and even, in its +germs, of still older date—between centripetal and centrifugal forces, +between national and local patriotism. The makers of the Constitution +had tried to hold the scales justly, but in their natural jealousy of a +strong central power, they had allowed the balance to deflect unduly on +the side of local independence. The North, the national majority, felt, +obscurely and reluctantly, that a revision of the Constitution in the +matter of slavery was essential to the national welfare.<a name='FNanchor_J_10'></a><a href='#Footnote_J_10'><sup>[J]</sup></a> The South +maintained that the States were antecedent and superior to the Nation, +and said, "If your Nation, in virtue of its mere majority vote, insists +on encroaching on State rights which we formally reserved as a condition +of entering the Nation, why then, we prefer to withdraw from this Nation +and set up a nation of our own, in which the true principles of the +Constitution shall be preserved." Thereupon the North retorted, "We +deny your right to withdraw," and the battle was joined.</p> + +<p>The North said, "You have no right to withdraw," but it meant, I think, +something rather different. It threw overboard the question of abstract, +formal, technical right, and fought primarily, no doubt, for a +humanitarian ideal, but fundamentally to enforce its instinct of the +highest political expediency. The right interpretation of a state-paper, +however venerable, would not have been a question worthy of such +terrible arbitrament. Even the emancipation of the negro, had that been +the sole object of the contest, would have been too dearly paid for in +blood and tears. The question at issue was really this: What is the +ideal political unit? The largest possible? or the smallest convenient? +What mattered abstract argument as to the <i>right</i> to secede? Once grant +the <i>power</i> to secede, once suffer the precedent to be established, and +the greatest democracy the world had ever seen was bound to break up, +not only into two, but ultimately into many petty republics, wrangling +and jangling like those of Spanish America. To this negation of a great +ideal the North refused its consent. National patriotism had outgrown +local patriotism. It had become to all intents and purposes a fiction +that the Federal Government derived its powers from the States; Thirteen +of them, indeed, had sanctioned the Federal Government, but the Federal +Government had sanctioned and admitted to the Union twenty-one more. In +these the sentiment of priority to the Union could not exist, while +State Sovereignty was a doctrine limited by considerations of +expediency, rather than a patriotic dogma. Immigration, and westward +migration from the north-eastern States, had produced a race of men and +women whose patriotism was divorced, so to speak, from any given patch +of soil, but was wedded to the all-embracing idea of the United States, +with the emphasis on the epithet. They thought of themselves first of +all as American citizens, and only in the second place as citizens of +this State or of that. This habit or instinct is still incomprehensible, +and almost contemptible, to the Southerner of the older generation; but +the Time-Spirit was clearly on its side.</p> + +<p>Thus, then, I interpret the fundamental feeling which impelled the North +to take up arms: "Better one stout tussle for the idea of Unity, than a +facile acquiescence in the idea, of Multiplicity, with all its sequels +of instability, distrust, rivalry, and rancour. Better for our +children, if not for us, one great expenditure of blood and gold, than +never-ending threats and rumours of war, commercial conflicts, political +complications, frontiers to be safeguarded, bureaucracies to be +financed." Of course I do not put this forward as a new interpretation +of the question at issue. It is old and it is obvious. But though the +national significance of the struggle has long been recognised, I am not +sure that its international, its world-historic significance, has been +sufficiently dwelt upon. We Europeans have been apt to think that, +because the theatre of conflict was so distant, we had only a +spectacular, or at most an abstract-humanitarian, interest in it. There +could not be a greater mistake. The whole world, I believe, will one day +come to hold Vicksburg and Gettysburg names of larger historic import +than Waterloo or Sedan.</p> +<br /> + +<p>FOOTNOTES:</p> + +<a name='Footnote_I_9'></a><a href='#FNanchor_I_9'>[I]</a><div class='note'><p> "Submission to any encroachment," says Professor +Gildersleeve, "the least as well as the greatest, on the rights of a +State, means slavery;" this remark occurring early in an article of +twenty-five columns, in which <i>negro</i> slavery is not so much as +mentioned until the twenty-first column.</p></div> + +<a name='Footnote_J_10'></a><a href='#FNanchor_J_10'>[J]</a><div class='note'><p> See <i>Postscript</i> to this article.</p></div> + + + +<hr style='width: 65%;' /> +<a name='NORTH_IV'></a><h2>IV</h2> +<br /> + +<p>The iconoclast of to-day is full of scorn for patriotism, which he holds +the most retrograde of emotions. He may as usefully declaim against +friendship, comradeship, the love of man for woman or of mother for +child. The lowest savage regards himself, and cannot but regard himself, +as a member of some sort of political aggregation. This feeling is one +of the primal instincts of humanity, and as such one of the permanent +data of the problem of the future. It is folly to denounce or seek to +eradicate it. The wise course is to give it large and noble instead of +petty and parochial concepts to which to attach itself. Rightly esteemed +and rightly directed, patriotism is not a retrograde emotion, but one of +the indispensable conditions of progress.</p> + +<p>"Nothing is," says Hamlet, "but thinking makes it so." It is not oceans, +straits, rivers, or mountain-barriers, that constitute a Nation, but the +idea in the minds of the people composing it. Now, the largest +political idea that ever entered the mind—not of a man—not of a +governing class—but of a people, is the idea of the United States of +America. The "Pax Romana" was a great idea in its day, but it was +imposed from without, and by military methods, upon a number of subject +peoples, who did not realise and intelligently co-operate in it, but +merely submitted to it. It has its modern analogue in the "Pax +Britannica" of India. The idea of the United States, on the other hand, +gives what may be called psychological unity to one of the largest +political aggregates, both in territory and population, ever known to +history. In the modern world, there are only two political aggregates in +any wise comparable to it: the British Empire, whereof the idea is not +as yet quite clearly formulated; and the Russian Empire, whereof the +idea, in so far as it belongs to the people at all, is a blind and +slavish superstition. Holy Russia is a formidable idea, Greater Britain +is a picturesque and pregnant idea; but the United States is a +self-conscious, clearly defined and heroically vindicated idea, in whose +further vindication the whole world is concerned. It is only an +experiment, say some—an experiment which, thirty years ago, trembled +on the brink of disastrous failure, and which may yet have even greater +perils to encounter. This is true in a sense, but not the essential +truth. Let us substitute for "experiment" another word which means the +same thing—with a difference. The United States of America, let us say, +is a rehearsal for the United States of Europe, nay, of the world. It is +the very difficulties over which the croakers shake their heads that +make the experiment interesting, momentous. The United States is a +veritable microcosm: it presents in little all the elements which go to +make up a world, and which have hitherto kept the world, almost +unintermittently, in a state of battle and bloodshed. There are wide +differences of climate and of geographical conditions in the United +States, with the resulting conflict of material interest between +different regions of the country. There are differences of race and even +of language to be overcome, extremes of wealth and poverty to be dealt +with. As though to make sure that no factor in the problem of +civilisation should be omitted, the men of last century were at pains to +saddle their descendants with the burden of the negro—a race incapable +of assimilation and yet tenacious of life. In brief, a thousand +difficulties and temptations to dissension beset the giant Republic: in +so far as it overcomes them, and carries on its development by peaceful +methods, it presents a unique and invaluable object-lesson to the world. +The idea of unity, annealed in the furnace of the Civil War, has as yet +been stronger than all the forces of disintegration; and there is no +reason to doubt that it will continue to be so. When France falls out +with Germany, or Russia with Turkey, there is nothing save a purely +material counting of the cost to hinder them from flying at each other's +throats. The abstract humanitarianism of a few individuals is as a +feather on the torrent. Such sentiment as comes into play is all on the +side of bloodshed. It takes very little to make a Frenchman and a German +feel that they are in a state of war by nature, and that peace between +them is an artificial and necessarily unstable condition. But in +America, should two States or two groups of States fall out, there is a +strong, and we may hope unconquerable, sentiment of unity to be overcome +before the dissentients even reach the point of counting the material +cost of war. Men feel that they are in a state of peace by nature, and +that war between them, instead of being a hereditary and almost +consecrated habit, would be a monstrous and almost unthinkable crime. +The National Government, as established by the Constitution, is in fact +a permanent court of arbitration between the States; and the +common-sense of all may be trusted to "hold a fractious State in awe." +"Did not people say and think the same thing in 1859," it may be asked, +"on the eve of the greatest Civil War in history?" Possibly; but that +war was precisely what was needed to ratify the Union, and lift it out +of the experimental stage. "Blut ist ein ganz besondrer Saft," and it is +sometimes necessary that other pacts than those of hell should be +written in blood, before the world recognises their full validity. +Heaven forbid that the Deed of Union of the United States should require +a second time to be retraced in red!</p> + +<p>But it is an illusion, though a salutary one, that civil war is any more +barbarous than international war. What the world wants is the +realisation that every war is a civil war, a war between brothers, +justifiable only for the repression of some cruelty more cruel than war +itself, some barbarism more barbarous. Towards this realisation the +United States is leading the way, by showing that, under the conditions +of modern life, an effective sense of brotherhood, a resolute loyalty +to a unifying idea, may be maintained throughout a practically unlimited +extent of territory.</p> + +<p>But, while enumerating the difficulties which the Republic has to +overcome, I have said nothing of the one great advantage it enjoys—a +common, or at any rate a dominant, language. The diversity of tongues +which prevails in Europe is doubtless one of the chief hindrances to +that "Federation of the World" of which the poet dreamed. But if the +many tongues of Europe retard its fusion into what I have called a +political aggregate, there exists in the world a political aggregate +larger in extent than either Europe or the United States, which +possesses, like the United States, the advantage of one dominant +language. I mean, of course, the British Empire; and surely it is, +on the face of it, a fact of good augury for the world that the +dominant language of these two vast aggregations of democracies should +happen to be one and the same. The hopes—and perhaps, too, some +apprehensions—arising from this unity of speech will form the subject +of another article.</p> +<br /> + +<p>POSTSCRIPT.—My representation of the South as the conservative and the +North as the innovating party is the only point in this article to +which (so far as I know) serious objection has been made. A very able +and courteous critic—Mr. Norman Hapgood—writes to me as follows: "I +think the history of the Kansas-Nebraska trouble, in which the +preliminary conflict centred, the speeches of the time, North and South, +the party platforms, all proved that the North said, 'Slavery shall keep +its rights and have no further extension,' while the South said, 'It +shall go into any newly-acquired territory it chooses.' In 1860 the +slave interest was more protected and extended by law than ever before +in the history of the country. It had simply made a new claim which the +North could not allow. The abolitionists were few; the Northerners who +said that slavery should not be <i>extended</i> were many.... I don't believe +there is an American historian of standing who does not say that the +propositions of the South, on which the North took issue in 1861, were +these: (1) Slavery shall go into all territory hereafter acquired; (2) +We will secede if this is not allowed."</p> + +<p>It was inevitable that this protest should be raised, since, in the +limited space at my command, I had imperfectly expressed my meaning. My +reply to Mr. Hapgood puts it, I hope, more clearly. It ran as +follows:".... What I was trying to do was not so much to summarise +conscious motives as to present my own interpretation (right or wrong) +of the sub-conscious, the unconscious forces that were at work. I go +behind the declarations of Northern statesmen, and what, I have no +doubt, was the sincere sentiment of the majority in the North, against +interference with slavery in the existing slave States. I have tried to +allow to this sentiment what weight it deserves, in saying that the +North '<i>obscurely and reluctantly</i> felt a revision of the Constitution +essential to the national welfare.' But my view is that whatever they +said, and whatever, on the surface of their minds, they thought, the +people of the North knew, even if they denied it to themselves, that +chattel slavery was impossible in the modern world; and furthermore that +the people of the South were justified in that instinct which told them +that the institution, fatally menaced, was to be saved only by +secession. The kernel of the matter, to my thinking, lay in the fugitive +slave question. The provision of the Constitution for the return of +fugitive slaves, though it may seem a matter of detail, was, I think, in +reality the keystone of the arch. Make it inoperative, and the +institution was doomed. Now many of the Northern States, by 'personal +liberty laws' and the like, had long been picking at that keystone. +Whatever were the professions of politicians and people as to +non-interference, they shrank from the logical corollary, which would +have been the sincere, whole-hearted and cheerful carrying out of +Article IV., Section 2, Paragraph 3 of the Constitution. They were even, +I think, logically bound to accept loyally the Dred Scott decision, +which was absolutely constitutional. To protest against it, to seek to +evade it, was to insist on a revision of the Constitution. But it was +inconceivable that a civilised community, not blinded by local Southern +prejudice, could loyally accept the Dred Scott decision, or could +cheerfully assist the Southern slaveholder to capture and carry off from +their own hearthstones, as it were, his runaway chattel. Therefore, the +position and the protestations of the North were mutually contradictory. +It was a case of trying to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds; +and the North was bound to the hare by fundamental considerations of +humanity and self-interest, to the hounds, only by a compact accepted at +a time when its consequences could not possibly be foreseen. I do not +doubt that the North, on the surface of its will, sincerely desired to +keep this compact; but the South, with an instinct which was really that +of self-preservation, looked, as I am trying to look, beneath the +conscious surface to the unconscious sweep of current. It is not with +reference to the struggle for Western expansion that I call the South +the conservative and constitutional party. There, as it seems to me, the +question was entirely an open one, the power of Congress over +territories being undefined in the Constitution; and no doubt the South, +in the course of the struggle, often took up violent and extravagant +positions. My argument is that the attitude of the North, whatever its +protestations, virtually threatened the institution of slavery in the +old slave States, and that therefore the South had virtual, if not +formal, justification for holding the constitutional compact broken."</p> + + + +<hr style='width: 65%;' /> +<a name='THE_REPUBLIC_AND_THE_EMPIRE'></a><h2>THE REPUBLIC AND THE EMPIRE</h2> + +<hr style='width: 65%;' /> +<a name='REPUBLIC_I'></a><h2>I</h2> +<br /> + +<p>Though one of the main objects which I proposed to myself in visiting +America was to take note of American feeling towards England as affected +by the Spanish War, I soon found that, so far as the gathering of +information by way of question and answer was concerned, I might almost +as well have stayed at home. A curious diffidence beset me from the +first. I shrank from recognising that there was any question as to the +good feeling between the two countries, and still more from seeming to +appeal to a non-existent or a grudging sense of kinship. It seemed to me +tactless and absurd for an Englishman to lay any stress on the war as +affecting the relations between the two peoples. What had England done? +Nothing that had cost her a cent or a drop of blood. The British people +had sympathised with the United States in a war which it felt to be, in +the last analysis, a part of the necessary police-work of the world; it +had applauded in American soldiers and sailors the qualities it was +accustomed to admire in its own fighting men; and the British +Government, giving ready effect to the instinct of the people, had, at a +critical moment, secured a fair field for the United States, and broken +up what might have been an embarrassing, though scarcely a very +formidable, anti-American intrigue on the part of the Continental +Powers. What was there in all this to make any merit of? Nothing +whatever. It was the simplest matter in the world—we had merely felt +and done what came natural to us. The really significant fact was that +any one in America should have been surprised at our attitude, or should +have regarded it as more friendly than they had every right and reason +to expect. In short, I felt an irrational but I hope not unnatural +disinclination to recognise as matter for question and remark a state of +feeling which, as it seemed to me, ought to "go without saying."</p> + +<p>Above all was I careful to avoid the word "Anglo-Saxon." I heard it and +read it with satisfaction, I uttered it, never. It is for the American +to claim his Anglo-Saxon birthright, if he feels so disposed; it is not +for the Briton to thrust it upon him. To cheapen it, to send it +a-begging, were to do it a grievous wrong. Besides, the term +"Anglo-Saxon" is inaccurate, and, so to speak, provisional. Rightly +understood, it covers a great idea; but if one chooses to take it in a +strict ethnological sense, it lends itself to caricature. The truth is, +it has no strict ethnological sense—it may rather be called an +ethnological countersense, no less in England than in America. It +represents an historical and political, not an ethnological, concept. +The Anglo-Saxon was already an infinitely composite personage—Saxon, +Scandinavian, Gaul, and Kelt—before he set foot in America; and America +merely proves her deep-rooted Anglo-Saxonism in accepting and absorbing +all sorts of alien and semi-alien race-elements. But when we have to go +so far behind the face-value of a word to bring it into consonance with +obvious facts, it is safest to use that word sparingly.</p> + +<p>In brief, I did not wear my Anglo-Saxon heart on my sleeve, or go about +inviting expressions of gratitude to England for having, like Mr. +Gilbert's House of Lords,</p> + +<div class='poem'><div class='stanza'> +<span>Done nothing in particular,<br /></span> +<span class='i1'>And done it very well.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Yet evidences of a new tone of feeling towards England met me on every +hand, both in the newspapers and in conversation. The subject which I +shrank from introducing was frequently introduced by my American +acquaintances. It was evident that the change of feeling, though far +from universal, was real and wide-spread. Americans who had recently +returned to their native land, after passing some years abroad, assured +me that they were keenly conscious of it. Many of my acquaintances were +opposed to the policy which brought about the Spanish War, and declared +the better mutual understanding between England and America to be its +one good result. Others adopted the view to which Mr. Kipling had given +such far-echoing expression, and frankly rejoiced in the sympathy with +which England regarded America's determination to "take up the white +man's burden." In the Kipling craze as a whole, after making all +deductions, I could not but see a symptom of real significance. It was +partly a mere literary fashion, partly a result of personal and +accidental circumstances; but it also arose in no small degree from a +novel sense of kinship with the men, and participation in the ideals, +celebrated by the poet of British Imperialism.</p> + +<p>The change, moreover, extended beyond the book-reading class, wide as +that is in America. It was to be noted even in the untravelled and +unlettered American, the man whose spiritual horizon is bounded by his +Sunday newspaper, the man in the street and on the farm. The events of +the past year had taught him—and he rubbed his eyes at the +realisation—that England was not an "effete monarchy," evilly-disposed +towards a Republic as such,<a name='FNanchor_K_11'></a><a href='#Footnote_K_11'><sup>[K]</sup></a> and dully resentful of bygone +humiliations by land and sea, but a brotherly-minded people, remembering +little (perhaps <i>too</i> little) of those "old, unhappy, far-off things," +willing to be as helpful as the rules of neutrality permitted, and eager +to applaud the achievements of American arms.</p> + +<p>Millions of people who had hitherto felt no touch of racial sympathy, +and had been conscious only of a vague historic antipathy, learned with +surprise that England was in no sense their natural enemy, but rather, +among all the nations of Europe, their natural friend. Anglophobes, no +doubt, were still to be found in plenty; but they could no longer reckon +on the instant popular response which, a few years ago, would almost +certainly have attended any movement of hostility towards England. An +American publicist, who has perhaps unequalled opportunities for keeping +his finger on the pulse of national feeling, said to me, "It is only +three or four years since I heard a Federal judge express an earnest +desire for war with England, as a means of consolidating the North and +South in a great common enthusiasm. Of course this was pernicious talk +at any time," he added; "but it would then have found an echo which it +certainly would not find to-day."</p> + +<p>This puts the international situation in a nutshell, so far as to-day is +concerned. But what about to-morrow?</p> +<br /> + +<p>FOOTNOTES:</p> + +<a name='Footnote_K_11'></a><a href='#FNanchor_K_11'>[K]</a><div class='note'><p> See <i>Postscript</i> to this article.</p></div> + + + +<hr style='width: 65%;' /> +<a name='REPUBLIC_II'></a><h2>II</h2> +<br /> + +<p>When people spoke to me of the sudden veering of popular sympathy from +France and Russia, and towards England, I could not help asking, now and +again, "When is the reaction coming?" "There is no reaction coming," I +was told with some confidence. For my part, I hope and believe that a +permanent advance has been made, and that any reaction that may set in +will be trifling and temporary. But to ensure this result there is still +the most urgent need for the exercise of wisdom and moderation on both +sides. The misunderstandings of more than a century are not to be wiped +out in two or three months of popular excitement. What we have arrived +at is not a complete mutual understanding, but merely the attitude of +mind which may, in course of time, render such an understanding +possible. That, to be sure, is half the battle; but the longer and more +tedious half is before us.</p> + +<p>The Englishman who visits America for pleasure, and enjoys the +inexhaustible hospitality of New York, Boston, and Washington, must be +careful not to imagine that he gets really in touch with the sentiment +of the American nation. His circle of acquaintance is almost certain to +be composed mainly of people whom he, or friends of his, have met in +Europe, people of more or less clearly remembered British descent, who +know England well, have many English friends and possibly relatives, and +are conscious of a distant sentimental attachment to "the Old Country." +They are almost without exception people of culture, as well read as he +himself in the English classics, ancient and modern. They show their +Americanism not in that they love English literature less, but that very +probably they love French literature more, than he does. Further, they +are an exceedingly polite people, and, sensitive themselves on points of +national honour, they instinctively keep in the background all topics on +which a too free interchange of opinions might be apt to wound the +susceptibilities of their guest. Thus he loses entirely his sense of +being in a foreign country, because he moves among people most of whom +have an affection for England almost as deep as his own, while all are +courteous enough to respect his prejudices. This class is large in +actual numbers, no doubt, but in proportion to the whole American +people it is infinitesimal, and would be a mere featherweight in the +scale at any moment of crisis. Its voice is clearly audible in +literature and even in journalism, but at the polls it would be as a +whisper to the thunder of Niagara. The traveller who has "had a good +time" in literary, artistic, university circles in the Eastern cities, +has not felt the pulse of America, but has merely touched the fringe of +the fringe of her garment.</p> + +<p>We deceive ourselves if we imagine that there is, or at any rate that +there was until recently, the slightest sentimental attachment to +England in the heart of the American people at large. Among the +"hyphenated Americans," as they are called—Irish-Americans, +German-Americans, and so forth—it would be folly to look for any such +feeling.<a name='FNanchor_L_12'></a><a href='#Footnote_L_12'><sup>[L]</sup></a> The conciliation of America will never be complete until we +have achieved the conciliation of Ireland. It is evident, indeed, from +many symptoms, that Irish-American hostility to England is declining, if +not in rancour, at any rate in influence. Still, a popular New York +paper, on St. Patrick's Day, thinks it worth while to propitiate "The +Powerful Race of Ireland" by a leader under that heading, and to this +effect:</p> + +<div class='blkquot'><p>"The Irish race is famous as producing the best fighters and poets + among men, and the most beautiful and most virtuous of women.</p> + +<p> "Such a reputation should suffice for any nation.</p> + +<p> "And note that Ireland still is and always will be a NATION. There + is no Anglomania in that fair land, no yearning for reciprocity for + the sake of a few dollars, no drinking of the Queen's health + first....</p> + +<p> "Noble patriots like John Dillon and William O'Brien fight for them + in the House of Commons, and they are good fighters everywhere, + from the glass-covered room in Westminster Abbey (!) to the + prize-ring, where a Sullivan, of pure Irish blood, forbids any man + to stand three rounds before him.</p> + +<p> "The English whipped the Irish at the battle of the Boyne—true. + But the English on that occasion had the good luck to be led by a + Dutchman, and the Irish—sorra the day—had an English King for a + leader. The English King was running fast while the Irish were + still fighting the Dutchman.</p> + +<p> "Wellington, of Irish blood, beat Napoleon; Sheridan, of Irish + blood, fought here most delightfully.</p> + +<p> "Here's to the Irish!"</p></div> + +<br /> + +<p>This spirited performance no doubt represents fairly enough the +political philosophy of the thousands composing the league-long +procession which filed stolidly up Fifth Avenue on the day of its +appearance.</p> + +<p>But even among unhyphenated Americans—Americans pure and simple—the +tendency to regard England as a hereditary foe, though sensibly weakened +by recent events, remains very strong. A good example of this frame of +mind and habit of speech is afforded by the following passage from an +address delivered by Judge Van Wyck at the Democratic Club's Jefferson +Dinner in New York on April 13 last. Referring to England, the speaker +said:—</p> + +<div class='blkquot'><p>"Let us be influenced by the natural as well as the fixed policy of + that nation toward us for a century and a half, rather than by + their profuse expressions of friendship during the Spanish War. + England's policy has been one of sharp rivalry and competition + with America; it impelled the Revolution of 1776, fought for + business as well as political independence; brought on the war of + 1812, waged against the insolent claim of England for the right to + search our ships of commerce while riding the highways of the + ocean; caused her to contest every inch of our northern boundary + line from ocean to ocean; made her encourage our family troubles + from 1860 to 1865, for which she was compelled to pay us millions + and admit her wrong; and actuated her, in violation of the Monroe + doctrine, to attempt an unwarrantable encroachment on the territory + of Venezuela, until ordered by the American Government to halt."</p></div> + +<p>Apart from the obvious begging of the question with reference to +Venezuela, there is nothing in this invective that has not some +historical foundation. It is the studiously hostile turn of the +phraseology that renders the speech significant. Everything—even the +honourable amends made for the <i>Alabama</i> blunder—is twisted to +England's reproach. She is "compelled" to do this, and "ordered" to do +that. There is here no hint of good feeling, no trace of international +amenity, but sheer undisguised hatred and desire to make the worst of +things. And this address, be it noted, was the speech of the evening at +a huge and representative gathering of the dominant party in New York +municipal politics.</p> + +<p>I need scarcely adduce further evidence of the fact that Anglophobia is +still a power in the land, if not the power it once was. But active and +aggressive Anglophobia is, I think, a less important factor in the +situation than the sheer indifference to England, with a latent bias +towards hostility, which is so widespread in America. To the English +observer, this indifference is far more disconcerting than hatred. The +average Briton, one may say with confidence, is not indifferent towards +America. He may be very ignorant about it, very much prejudiced against +certain American habits and institutions, very thoughtless and tactless +in expressing his prejudices; but the United States is not, to him, a +foreign country like any other, on the same plane with France, Germany, +or Russia. But that is precisely what England is to millions of +Americans—a foreign country like any other. We see this even in many +travelling Americans; much more is it to be noted in multitudes who stay +at home. Many Americans seem curiously indifferent even to the comfort +of being able to speak their own language in England; probably because +they have less false shame than the average Englishman in adventuring +among the pitfalls of a foreign tongue. They—this particular class of +travellers, I mean—land in England without emotion, visit its shrines +without sentiment, and pass on to France and Italy with no other feeling +than one of relief in escaping from the London fog. These travellers, +however, are but single spies sent forth by vast battalions who never +cross the ocean. To them England is a mere name, and the name, moreover, +of their fathers' one enemy in war, their own chief rival in trade. They +have no points of contact with England, such as almost every Englishman +has with America. We make use every day of American inventions and +American "notions": English inventions and "notions," if they make their +way to America at all, are not recognised as English. There are few +Britishers, high or low, that have not friends or relatives settled in +America, or have not formed pleasant acquaintanceships with Americans on +this side. But there are innumerable families in America who, even if +they be of British descent, have lost all vital recollection of the +fact; who (as the tide of emigration has not yet turned eastwards) have +no friends or relatives settled in England; and who, in their American +homes, are far more apt to come in contact with men of almost every +other nationality than with Englishmen. "But surely English +literature," it may be said, "brings England home even to people of this +class, and differentiates her from France or Germany." In a measure, +doubtless; but I think it will be found that the lower strata of the +reading public (not in America alone, of course) are strangely +insensitive to local colour. To people of culture, the bond of +literature is a very strong one; but the class of which I am speaking is +not composed of people of culture. They read, it is true, and often +greedily; but generally, I think, without knowing or greatly caring +whether a book is English or American, and at all events with no such +clear perception of the distinctive qualities of English work as could +beget in them any imaginative realisation of, or affection for, England. +Let us make no mistake—in the broad mass of the American people no such +affection exists. They are simply indifferent to England, with, as I +have said, a latent bias towards hostility.</p> + +<p>Thus the scale of American feeling towards England, while its gradations +are of course infinite, may be divided into three main sections. At one +end of the scale we have the cultured and travelled classes, especially +in the Eastern States, conscious for the most part of British descent, +alive to the historical relationship between the two countries, valuing +highly their birthright in the treasures of English literature, knowing, +and (not uncritically) understanding England and her people, and +clinging to a kinship of which, taking one thing with another, they have +no reason to be ashamed. This class is intellectually influential, but +its direct weight in politics is small. It is, with shining exceptions, +a "mugwump" class. At the other end of the scale we have the hyphenated +Americans, who have imported or inherited European rancours against +England, and those unhyphenated Americans whose hatred of England is +partly a mere plank in a political platform, designed to accommodate her +hyphenated foe-men, partly a result of instinctive and traditional +chauvinism, reinforced by a (in every sense) partial view of +Anglo-American history. Finally, between these two extremes, we have the +great mass of the American people, who neither love nor hate England, +any more than they love or hate (say) Italy or Japan, but whose +indifference would, until recently, have been much more easily deflected +on the side of hatred than of love. The effect of the Spanish War has +been in some measure to alter this bias, and to differentiate England, +to her advantage, from the other nations of Europe.</p> +<br /> + +<p>FOOTNOTES:</p> + +<a name='Footnote_L_12'></a><a href='#FNanchor_L_12'>[L]</a><div class='note'><p> A very distinguished American authority writes to me as +follows with regard to this passage: "I hardly think you lay enough +weight upon the fact that in two or three generations the great bulk of +the descendants of the immigrants of non-English origin become +absolutely indistinguishable from other Americans, and share their +feelings. This is markedly so with the Scandinavians, and most of the +Germans of the second, and all the Germans of the third, generation, who +practically all, during 1898, felt toward Germany and England just +exactly as other Americans did.... Twice recently I have addressed huge +meetings of eight or ten thousand people, each drawn, as regards the +enormous majority, from exactly that class which you pointed out as +standing between the two extremes. In each case the men who introduced +me dwelt upon the increased good feeling between the English-speaking +peoples, and every complimentary allusion to England was received with +great applause." At the same time my correspondent adds: "Your division +of the American sentiment into three classes is exactly right; also your +sense of the relative importance of these three classes."</p></div> + + + +<hr style='width: 65%;' /> +<a name='REPUBLIC_III'></a><h2>III</h2> +<br /> + +<p>It is commonly alleged that the anti-English virulence of the ordinary +school history of the United States is mainly responsible for this bias +towards hostility in the mind of the average American. Mr. Goldwin +Smith, a high authority, has contested this theory; and I must admit +that, after a good deal of inquiry, I have been unable to find the +American school historians guilty of any very serious injustices to +England. Some quite modern histories which I have looked into (yet +written before the Spanish War) seem to me excellently and most +impartially done. The older histories are not well written: they are apt +to be sensational and chauvinistic in tone, and to encourage a somewhat +cheap and blusterous order of patriotism; but that they commonly malign +character or misrepresent events I cannot discover. They are perhaps a +little too much inclined to make "insolent" the inseparable epithet of +the British soldier; but there is no reason to doubt that in many cases +it was amply merited. I have not come across the history in which Mr. +G.W. Steevens discovered the following passages:</p> + +<div class='blkquot'><p>"The eyes of the soldiers glared upon the people like hungry + bloodhounds. The captain waved his sword. The red-coats pointed + their guns at the crowd. In a moment the flash of their muskets + lighted up the street, and eleven New England men fell bleeding + upon the snow.... Blood was streaming upon the snow; and though + that purple stain melted away in the next day's sun, it was never + forgotten nor forgiven by the people.... A battle took place + between a large force of Tories and Indians and a hastily organised + force of patriotic Americans. The Americans were defeated with + horrible slaughter, and many of those who were made prisoners were + put to death by fiendish torture.... More than six thousand + American sailors had been seized by British warships and pressed + into the hated service of a hated nation."</p></div> + +<p>These passages are certainly not judicial or even judicious in tone; but +I fancy that the book or books from which Mr. Steevens culled them must +be quite antiquated. In books at present on the educational market I +find nothing so lurid. What I do find in some is a failure to +distinguish between the king's share and the British people's share in +the policy which brought about and carried on the Revolutionary War. +For instance, in Barnes's <i>Primary History of the United States</i> +(undated, but brought down to the end of the Spanish War) we read:</p> + +<div class='blkquot'><p>"<i>The English people</i> after a time became jealous of the prosperity + of the colonists, and began to devise plans by which to grasp for + themselves a share of the wealth that was thus rolling in.... + Indeed, <i>the English people</i> acted from the first as if the + colonies existed only for the purpose of helping them to make + money."</p></div> + +<p>George III. and his Ministers are not so much as mentioned, and the +impression conveyed to the ingenuous student is that the whole English +nation was consciously and deliberately banded together for purposes of +sheer brigandage. The same history is delightfully chauvinistic in its +account of the Colonial Wars. The British officers are all bunglers and +poltroons; if disasters are averted or victories won, it is entirely by +the courage and conduct of the colonists:</p> + +<div class='blkquot'><p>"When Johnson reached the head of Lake George he met the French, + and a fierce battle was fought. Success seemed at first to be + altogether with the French; but after a while Johnson was slightly + wounded, when General Lyman, a brave colonial officer, took + command, and beat the French terribly.... Abercrombie's defeat was + the last of the English disasters. The colonists now had arms + enough, and were allowed to fight in their own way, and a series of + brilliant victories followed.... By the energy, courage, and + patriotism of her colonies, England had now acquired a splendid + empire in the New World. And while she reaped all the glory of the + war and its fruits, it was the hardy colonists who had throughout, + borne the brunt of the conflict."</p></div> + +<p>The child who learns his history from Mr. Barnes may not hate England, +but will certainly despise her.</p> + +<p>Text-books of this type, however, are already obsolescent. A committee +of the New England History Teachers' Association published in the +<i>Educational Review</i> for December 1898 a careful survey of no fewer than +nineteen school histories of the United States, and summed up the +results as follows:</p> + +<div class='blkquot'><p>"In discussing the causes of the Revolution, text-book writers have + sounded pretty much the whole scale of motives. England has been + pictured, on the one hand, as an arbitrary oppressor, and, on the + other, as the helpless victim of political environment. Under the + influence of deeper study and a keener sense of justice, however, + the element of bitterness, which so often entered into the + discussion of this subject, has largely disappeared; and while the + treatment of the Revolution in the text-books still leaves much to + be desired, it is now seldom dogmatic and unsympathetic."</p></div> + +<p>The fact remains, however, that we have still to live down our wars +with the United States, in which there was much that was galling to the +just pride of the American people, and much, too, that was perhaps +over-stimulating to their self-esteem. There is no doubt, on the one +hand, that we were inclined to adopt a supercilious and contemptuous +attitude towards the "rebel colonists" of 1775, the new-made nation of +1815; no doubt, on the other hand, that they made a splendid fight +against us, and taught our superciliousness a salutary lesson. They feel +to this day the humiliation of having been despised, and the exultation +of having put their despisers to shame. These wars, which were, until +1861, almost the whole military history of the United States, were but +episodes in our history, and one of them a trifling episode. Therefore, +while the average Englishman has not studied them sufficiently to +realise how much he ought to deplore them, the average American has been +taught to dwell upon them as the glorious struggles in which his nation +won its spurs. To the juvenile imagination, battles are always the oases +in the desert of history, and the schoolboy never fails to take sides +fiercely and uncompromisingly, exaggerating, with the histrionic +instinct of youth, his enthusiasm and his hatreds. Thus the insolent +Britisher became the Turk's-head or Guy Fawkes, so to speak, of the +American boy, the butt of his bellicose humours; and a habit of mind +contracted in boyhood is not always to be eradicated by the sober +reflection of manhood, even in minds capable of sober reflection. The +Civil War, be it noted, did not depose the insolent Britisher from his +bad eminence in the schoolboy imagination. The Confederates were, after +all, Americans, though misguided Americans; and the fostering, the +brooding upon, intestine rancours was felt by teachers and pupils alike +to be impossible. But there is in the juvenile mind at any given moment +a certain amount of abstract combativeness, let us call it, which must +find an outlet somewhere. Hatred is a natural function of the human +mind, just as much as love; and the healthy boy instinctively exercises +it under the guise of patriotism, without clearly distinguishing the +element of sheer play and pose in his transports. England's attitude +during the Civil War certainly did nothing to endear her either to the +writers or the readers of school histories; and she remained after that +struggle, as she had been before, the one great historical adversary on +whom the abstract combativeness of young America could expend itself. +How strong this tendency is, or has been, in the American school, may be +judged from the following anecdote. A boy of unmixed English parentage, +whose father and mother had settled in America, was educated at the +public school of his district. On the day when Mr. Cleveland's Venezuela +message was given to the world, he came home from school radiant, and +shouted to his parents: "Hurrah! We're going to war with England! We've +whipped you twice before, and we're going to do it again." It is clear +that at this academy Anglomania formed no part of the curriculum; and +who can doubt that in myriads of cases these schoolboy animosities +subsist throughout life, either active, or dormant and easily awakened?</p> + +<p>Let us admit without shrinking that the history of the United States +cannot be truthfully written in such a way as to ingratiate Great +Britain with the youth of America. There have been painful episodes +between the two nations, in which England has, on the whole, acted +stupidly, or arrogantly, or both. Nor can we shift the whole blame upon +George III. or his Ministers. They were responsible for the actual +Revolution; but after the Revolution, down even to the time of the +Civil War inclusive, the English people, though guiltless in the main of +active hostility to America, cannot be acquitted of ignorance and +indifference. It is not in the least to be desired that American history +should be written with a pro-English bias, and, as I have said, I do not +find the anti-English bias, even in inferior text-books, so excessive as +it is sometimes represented to be. The anti-English sentiment of +American schools is, as it seems to me, an inevitable phenomenon of +juvenile psychology, under the given conditions; and it is the +alteration in the actual conditions wrought by recent events, rather +than any marked change in the tone of the text-books, that may, I think, +be trusted to soothe the schoolboy's savage breast. England has now done +what she had never done before: shown herself conspicuously friendly to +the United States; and another European country has given occasion for +spirit-stirring manifestations of American prowess. Thus England is +deposed for the time, and we may trust for ever, from her position as +the one traditional arch-enemy.</p> + +<p>But though the errors of commission in American history-books have been +exaggerated, I cannot but think that a common error of omission is +worthy of remark and correction. They begin American history too +late—with the discovery of America—and they do not awaken, as they +might, the just pride of race in the "unhyphenated" American boy. Long +before Columbus set sail from Palos, American history was a-making in +the shire-moots of Saxon England, at Hastings, and Runnymead, and +Bannockburn. In all the mediæval achievements of England, in peace and +war—in her cathedrals, her castles, her universities, in Cressy, +Poictiers, and Agincourt—Americans may without paradox claim their +ancestral part. Why should the sons of the English who emigrated leave +to the sons of those who stayed at home the undivided credit of having +sent to the right-about the Invincible Armada? Nay, it is only the very +oldest American families that can disclaim all complicity in having, as +Lord Auchinleck put it, "garred kings ken that they had a lith in their +necks." Of course I do not mean that the American schoolboy should be +taken in detail through British history down to the seventeenth century +before, so to speak, he crosses the Atlantic. But I do suggest that he +would be none the worse American for being encouraged to set a due value +on his rightful share in the achievements of earlier ancestors than +those who fought at Trenton or sailed with Decatur. Let him realise his +birthright in the glories of Britain, and he will perhaps come to take a +more magnanimous view of her errors and disasters.</p> + + + +<hr style='width: 65%;' /> +<a name='REPUBLIC_IV'></a><h2>IV</h2> +<br /> + +<p>Britain has been too forgetful of the past, America, perhaps, too +mindful; and in the everyday relations of life Britain has often been +tactless and unsympathetic, America suspicious and supersensitive. There +is every prospect, I think, that such errors will become, in the future, +rarer and ever rarer; and it behoves us, on our side, to be careful in +guarding against them. We have not hitherto sufficiently respected +America,—that is the whole story. We have taken no pains to know and +understand her. We have too often regarded her with a careless and +supercilious good feeling, which she has not unnaturally mistaken for +ill feeling, and repaid in kind. The events of the past year seem to +have brought the two countries almost physically closer to each other, +and to have made them more real, more clearly visible, each to each. +America has won the respectful consideration of even the most +thoughtless and insular among us. She has come home to us, so to speak, +as a vast and vital factor in the problem of the future. +Superciliousness towards her is a mere anachronism.</p> + +<p>Many Englishmen, however, are still guilty of a thoughtless captiousness +towards America, which is none the less galling because it manifests +itself in the most trifling matters. A friend of my own returned a few +years ago from a short tour in the United States, declaring that he +heartily disliked the country, and would never go back again. Inquiry as +to the grounds of his dissatisfaction elicited no more definite or +damning charge than that "they" (a collective pronoun presumed to cover +the whole American people) hung up his trousers instead of folding +them—or <i>vice versâ</i>, for I am heathen enough not to remember which is +the orthodox process. Doubtless he had other, and possibly weightier, +causes of complaint; but this was the head and front of America's +offending. Another Englishman of education and position, being asked why +he had never crossed the Atlantic, gravely replied that he could not +endure to travel in a country where you had to black your own boots! +Such instances of ignorance and pettiness may seem absurdly trivial, but +they are quite sufficient to act as grits in the machinery of social +intercourse. Americans are very fond of citing as an example of English +manners the legend of a great lady who, at an American breakfast, saw +her husband declining a dish which was offered to him, and called across +the table, "Take some, my dear—it isn't half as nasty as it looks." +Three different people have vouched to me for the truth of this +anecdote, each naming the heroine, and each giving her a different name. +True or false, it is held in America to be typical; and it would +scarcely be so popular as it is unless people had suffered a good deal +from the tactlessness which it exemplifies. The same vice, in a more +insidious form, appears in a remark made to me the other day by an +Englishman of very high intelligence, who had just returned from a long +tour in America, and was, in the main, far from unsympathetic. "What I +felt," he said, "was the suburbanism of everything. It was all Clapham +or Camberwell on a gigantic scale." Some justice of observation may +possibly have lain behind this remark, though I certainly failed to +recognise it. But in the form of its expression it exemplified that +illusion of metropolitanism which is to my mind the veriest cockneyism +in disguise, and which cannot but strike Americans as either ridiculous +or offensive.</p> + +<p>Englishmen who, as individuals, wish to promote and not impede an +international understanding, will do well to take some little thought to +avoid wounding, even in trifles, the just and inevitable +susceptibilities of their American acquaintances. Our own national +self-esteem is cased in oak and triple brass,<a name='FNanchor_M_13'></a><a href='#Footnote_M_13'><sup>[M]</sup></a> and we are apt to +regard American sensitiveness as a ridiculous foible. It is nothing of +the sort: it is a psychological necessity, deep-rooted in history and +social conditions.</p> + +<p>Again, there are certain misunderstandings which Englishmen, not as +individual human beings but as citizens of the British Empire, ought +carefully to guard against. Let us beware of speaking or thinking as +though friendship for England involved on the part of America any +acceptance of English political ideas or imitation of English methods. +In especial, let us carefully guard against the idea that an +Anglo-American understanding, however cordial, implies the adoption of +an "expansionist" policy by the United States, or must necessarily +strengthen the hands of the "expansionist" party. If America chooses to +"take up the white man's burden" in the Kiplingesque sense, it would ill +become England to object; but her doing so is by no means a condition of +England's sympathy. It might seem, indeed, that she had plenty of "white +man's burden" to shoulder within her own continental boundaries; but +that is a matter which she is entirely competent to determine for +herself.</p> + +<p>Most of all must we beware of anything that can encourage an impression, +already too prevalent in America, that we find the "white man's burden" +too heavy for us, and are anxious to share it with the United States. +This suspicion is very generally felt and very openly expressed. Take, +for instance, this paragraph from an editorial in one of the leading +Chicago papers:</p> + +<div class='blkquot'><p>"It would be a strange thing to see Continental Europe take up arms + against Great Britain alone.... That it is a very reasonable + possibility, however, is generally recognised in Europe, and it + was doubtless a knowledge of this fact that induced Great Britain + to make such unusual exertions to ally itself with the United + States."</p></div> + +<p>Here, again, is another journalistic straw floating on the stream:</p> + +<div class='blkquot'><p>"Referring to the fact that English and American officers had + fallen side by side in Samoa while promoting commercial interests, + Lord [Charles] Beresford expressed the hope that the two nations + would 'always be found working and fighting in unison.' This might + keep us pretty busy, your lordship."</p></div> + +<p>In a rather low-class farce which I saw in a Chicago theatre, two men +wandered through the action, with the charming irrelevance +characteristic of American popular drama, attired, one as John Bull, the +other as Brother Jonathan. There came a point in the action where some +one had to be kicked out of the house. "You do it, Jonathan," said John +Bull; whereupon Jonathan retorted: "I know your game; you want me to do +your fighting for you, but <i>I don't do it</i>! See?" These are ridiculous +trifles, no doubt, but they might be indefinitely multiplied; and they +show the set of a certain current in American feeling. Let us beware of +lending added strength to this current by any appearance of +self-interested eagerness in our advances towards America.</p> + +<p>One thing we cannot too clearly realise, and that is that the true +American clings above everything to his Americanism. The status of an +American citizen is to him the proudest on earth, and that although he +may clearly enough recognise the abuses of American political life, and +the dangers which the Republic has to encounter. The feeling (which is +not to be confounded with an ignorant chauvinism, though in some cases +it may take that form) is the fundamental feeling of the whole nation; +and no emotion which threatened to encroach upon it, or compete with it +in any way, would have the least chance of taking a permanent place in +the American mind. The feeling which, as one may reasonably hope, is now +growing up between the two nations must be based on the mutual admission +of absolute independence and equality. The relation is new to history, +and must beget a new emotion. Strong as is the bond of mutual interest, +it must have a large idealism to reinforce it—a sentiment (shall we +say?) of mutual admiration—if the English-speaking peoples are to play +the great part in the drama of the future which Destiny seems to be +urging upon them. In order to stand together in perfect freedom and +dignity, it is essential that each of the brother-nations should be +incontestably able to stand alone. If we want to cement the +Anglo-American understanding, the first thing we have to do is to cement +the British Empire.</p> + +<p>There is no more typical and probably no more widely respected American +at the present moment than Governor Roosevelt, of New York. Even those +who dissent from his "strenuous" ideal and his expansionist opinions, +admit him to be a model of political integrity and public spirit. In an +article on "The Monroe Doctrine," published in 1896, Mr. Roosevelt wrote +as follows:</p> + +<div class='blkquot'><p>"No English colony now stands on a footing of genuine equality with + the parent State. As long as the Canadian remains a colonist, he + remains in a position which is distinctly inferior to that of his + cousins, both in England and in the United States. The Englishman + at bottom looks down on the Canadian, as he does on any one who + admits his inferiority, and quite properly too. The American, on + the other hand, with equal propriety, regards the Canadian with the + good-natured condescension always felt by the freeman for the man + who is not free. A funny instance of the English attitude towards + Canada was shown after Lord Dunraven's inglorious fiasco last + September, when the Canadian yachtsman Rose challenged for the + America Cup. The English journals repudiated him on the express + ground that a Canadian was not an Englishman, and not entitled to + the privileges of an Englishman. In their comments, many of them + showed a dislike for Americans which almost rose to hatred. The + feeling they displayed for Canadians was not one of dislike. It was + one of contempt."</p></div> + +<p>There are several contestable points in this statement, and I quote it, +though it is but three years old, as a historical rather than a +contemporary utterance. At the same time it expresses an almost +universal American point of view, and indicates errors to be corrected, +dangers to be avoided. It is absurd, of course, that the American should +look down upon the Canadian as a "man who is not free"; but every shadow +of an excuse for such an attitude ought to be removed, and the citizen +of the British Empire ought to have as clearly defined a status as the +citizen of the American Republic.</p> + +<p>Even if such unpleasant incidents should recur as those to which Mr. +Roosevelt alludes, we may trust with tolerable confidence that he would +now find no "hatred" for America, or "contempt" for Canada, in the tone +of the British Press. The years which have passed since 1896 have not +only created a new feeling between England and America, but have drawn +the Empire together. In this respect—in every respect—much remains to +be done.</p> + +<p>But at least we can say with assurance that a good beginning has been +made towards that consolidation of the English-speaking countries on +which the well-being of the world so largely depends.</p> +<br /> + +<p>POSTSCRIPT.—The notion of inevitable hostility between a constitutional +Monarchy and a Republic has been fostered by American writers in whom +one would have expected greater clearness of perception. We find Lowell, +for instance, writing in his well-known essay <i>On a Certain +Condescension in Foreigners</i>: "I never blamed her (England) for not +wishing well to democracy—how should she?" The more obvious question +is, How should not one democracy wish another well? There may have been +at the time when Lowell wrote, and there may even be to-day, a handful +of royalty-worshippers in England who regard a Republic as a vulgar, +unpicturesque form of government; but this is not a political opinion, +or even prejudice, but mere stolid snobbery. Whatever were England's +misdemeanours towards America at the time of the Civil War, they were +not prompted by any hatred of democracy.</p> + +<p>I find the same misconception insisted on in a document much later than +Lowell's essay: a leaflet by the Rev. Edward Everett Hale, contributed +to a <i>Good Citizenship Series</i> especially designed for the enlightenment +of the more ignorant class of American voters. The tract is called <i>The +Ruler of America</i>, and sets forth that the Ruler of America is "The +People with a very large P." Now, according to Dr. Hale, we benighted +Europeans are absolutely incapable of grasping this truth. He says: +"This is at bottom the trouble with the diplomatists of Europe, with +prime ministers, and with leaders of ''Er Majesty's Hopposition.'... +Even men of intelligence.... can make nothing of the central truth of +our system.... In my house, once, an English gentleman of great +intelligence told me that he had visited the White House, and was most +glad to pay his respects to 'the Ruler of our Great Nation.' Poor man! +he thought he would please me! But he saw his mistake soon enough. I +stormed out, 'Ruler of America? Who told you he was the ruler of +America? He never told you so. He is the First Servant of America.' And +I hope the poor traveller learned his lesson."</p> + +<p>It is true that the poor traveller used a pompous and rather absurd +expression, but if he had had his wits about him he might have reminded +Dr. Hale that the President is much more effectively the Ruler of +America than the Queen is the Ruler of England. He rules by the direct +mandate of the People, but he rules none the less. It would greatly +conduce to a just understanding between America and England if the +political instructors of the American people would correct instead of +confirming the prevalent impression that they have a monopoly of +democracy.</p> + +<hr style='width: 65%;' /> +<a name='AMERICAN_LITERATURE'></a><h2>AMERICAN LITERATURE</h2> + + +<p>Great Britain and the United States are sister Commonwealths, enjoying +the advantages and exposed to the dangers of sisterhood. The dangers are +as real, though we trust not as great, as the advantages. Family +quarrels are apt to be bitterest; a chance word will seem unkind and +unbearable from a near kinsman, which, coming from a stranger, would +carry no sting at all. As Lowell very truly said, "The common blood, and +still more the common language, are fatal instruments of +misapprehension." But behind this statement there lies a far deeper +though still obvious truth. We misunderstand because we understand; and +it would be an extravagance of pessimism to doubt that, in the long run, +understanding will carry the day. Light may dazzle here and bewilder +there; but, after all, it is light and not darkness. We English and +Americans hold a talisman that makes us at home over half, and more than +half, the world; and we are not going to rob it of its virtue by +renouncing our ties, and wantonly declaring ourselves aliens to each +other.</p> + +<p>Our unity of speech is such a commonplace that we scarcely notice it. +But, rightly regarded, it is a thing to be rejoiced in with a great joy, +and not without a certain sense of danger happily escaped. He would have +been a bold man who should confidently have prophesied at the Revolution +that American and English would remain the same tongue, and that at the +end of the nineteenth century there would not be the slightest +perceptible cleavage, or threat of ultimate divergence. No doubt there +were forces obviously tending to preserve the linguistic unity of the +two nations. There was the English Bible for one thing, and there was +the whole body of English literature. The Americans, it might have been +said, could scarcely be so foolish as deliberately to renounce their +spiritual birthright, or let it drift little by little away from them. +But, on the other hand, virulent and inveterate political enmity, had it +arisen, might quite conceivably have led the Americans to make it a +point of honour to differentiate their speech from ours, as many +Norwegians are at this moment making it a point of honour to +differentiate their language from the Danish, which was until of late +years the generally accepted medium of literary expression. In the +evolution of their literature, the Americans might purposely have +rejected our classical tradition, making their effort rather to depart +from than to adhere to it. Again, an observer in 1776 could not have +foreseen the practical annihilation, by steam and electricity, of that +barrier which then appeared so formidable—the Atlantic Ocean. He might +have foreseen the immense influx of men of every race and tongue into +the unpeopled West; but he could scarcely have anticipated with +confidence the ready absorption of all these alien elements (save one!) +into the dominant Anglo-Saxon polity. It was quite on the cards that a +new American language might have developed from a fusion of all the +diverse tongues of all the scattered races of the earth.</p> + +<p>Nothing of the sort, as we know, has happened. The instinct of kinship +from the first kept political enmity in check; the Atlantic has been +practically wiped out; and English has easily absorbed, in America, all +the other idioms which have been brought into contact, rather than +competition, with it. The result is that the English language occupies a +unique position among the tongues of the earth. It is unique in two +dimensions—in altitude and in expanse. It soars to the highest heights +of human utterance, and it covers an unequalled area of the earth's +surface. Undoubtedly it is the most precious heirloom of our race, and +as such we must reverence and guard it. Nor must we islanders talk as +though we hold it in fee-simple, and allowed our trans-Atlantic kinsfolk +merely a conditional usufruct of it. Their property in it is as complete +and indefeasible as our own; and we should rejoice to accept their aid +in the conversation and renovation (equally indispensable processes) of +this superb and priceless heritage.</p> + +<p>English critics of the beginning of the century so convincingly set +forth the reasons why America, absorbed in the conquest of nature and in +material progress, could not produce anything great in the way of +literature, that their arguments remain embedded in many minds even to +this day, when events have conclusively falsified them. It is a +commonplace with some people that America has not developed a great +<i>American</i> literature. If this merely means that, in casting off her +allegiance to George III., America did not cast off her allegiance to +Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Dryden, Addison, Swift, Pope, the +reproach, if it be one, must be accepted. If it be a humiliation to +American authors to own the traditions and standards established by +these men, and thereby to enrol themselves in their immortal fellowship, +why, then it must be owned that they have deliberately incurred that +humiliation. One American of vivid originality tried to escape it, and +with what result? Simply that Whitman holds a place of his own, somewhat +like that of Blake one might say, in the literature of the English +language, and has produced at least as much effect in England as in +America. If, on the other hand, it be implied that American literature +feebly imitates English literature, and fails to present an original and +adequate interpretation of American life, no reproach could well be more +flagrantly unjust. It is not only the abstract merit of American +literature, though that is very high, but precisely the Americanism of +it, that gives it its value in the eyes of all thinking Englishmen. Only +one American author of the first rank could possibly, at a superficial +glance, appear—not so much English as—European, cosmopolitan. I mean, +of course, Edgar Allan Poe, who has left perhaps a deeper impress upon +literature outside the English-speaking countries than any other +imaginative writer of the century, with the exception of Byron. Poe was +a born idealist, a creature of pure intelligence. Whether in poetry or +fiction, he was always solving problems; and it is hard to be +distinctively national in an exercise of pure intelligence. We do not +look for local colour in, for example, the agreeable essays of Euclid. +But Poe's intelligence was, at bottom, of a characteristically American +type. He was the Edison of romance.<a name='FNanchor_N_14'></a><a href='#Footnote_N_14'><sup>[N]</sup></a> As for the other great writers of +America, what can be more patent than their Americanism? Speaking only, +for the present, of those who have joined the majority, I would name two +who seem to me to stand with Poe in the very front rank of original +genius. They are Emerson, that starlike spirit, dwelling in a serener +ether than ours, which, though we may never attain, it is yet a +refreshment to look up to; and Hawthorne, not perhaps the greatest +romancer in the English tongue, but certainly the purest artist in that +sphere of fiction. Now, it is a mere truism to say that each of these +men was, in his way, a typical product of New England, inconceivable as +the offspring of any other soil in the world. Emerson, it has been said, +not without truth, was the first of the American humourists, carrying +into metaphysics that gift of realistic vision and inspired hyperbole +which has somehow been grafted upon the Anglo-Saxon character by the +conditions of American life. As for Hawthorne, though he has felt and +reproduced the physical charm of Rome more subtly than any other artist, +his genius drew at once its strength and its delicacy from his Puritan +ancestry and environment. To realise how intimately he smacks of the +soil, we have but to think of that marvellous scene in <i>The Blithedale +Romance</i>, the search for Zenobia's body. From what does it derive its +peculiar quality, its haunting savour? Simply from the presence of Silas +Foster, that delightful incarnation of the New England yeoman. "If I +thought anything had happened to Zenobia, I should feel kind o' +sorrowful," said the grim Silas; and there never was a speech more +dramatically true, or, in its context, more bitterly pathetic.</p> + +<p>Even while English critics were proving that there could be no such +thing as an American literature, Washington Irving and Fenimore Cooper +were laying its foundations on a thoroughly American basis. Irving was +none the less American for loving the picturesque traditions of his +English ancestry; Cooper, a gallant and fertile genius, did his country +and our language an inestimable service by adding a whole group of +specifically American figures to the deathless aristocracy of the realms +of romance. Then, in the generation which has just passed away, we have +such men as Thoreau, racy of his native soil; Longfellow, in his day and +way the chief interpreter of America to England; Whittier, so intensely +local that, as Professor Matthews puts it, "he wrote for New England +rather than for the whole of the United States;" Lowell, courtly, +cultured, cosmopolitan, and yet the creator of Hosea Biglow; Holmes, as +American in his humour as Lamb was English, who justly ranks with Lamb +and Goldsmith among the personally best-beloved writers of the English +tongue. Prescott, in the sphere of history, paralleled the achievement +of Cooper in fiction, by giving literary form to the romance of the New +World; while Motley was inspired (too ardently, perhaps) by the spirit +of free America in writing the great epic of religious and political +freedom in Europe. Finally, it must not be forgotten that in <i>Uncle +Tom's Cabin</i>, a tragically American production, Mrs. Beecher Stowe added +to the literature of the English language the most potent, the most +dynamic, pamphlet ever hurled into the arena of national life.</p> + +<p>Of all that living Americans are doing for the literature of our common +tongue it is as yet impossible to speak adequately. Since 1870, a new +spirit of nationalism has entered into American literature, which has +not yet been thoroughly studied in America or appreciated in England. So +far from having no national literature, America has now, perhaps, the +most intimately national body of fiction in the modern world. Before the +Civil War there was practically no deliberate and systematic study of +local and racial idiosyncracies. Hosea Biglow was a mask, not a +character, and Parson Wilbur was a literary device. Even Hawthorne +thought primarily of the element of imagination in the romances—the +universal, not the local, element. His leading characters are +psychological creations, with nothing specifically American about them; +his local colour and local character-study, though admirable, are +incidental, or at any rate stand on a secondary plane. In the South +there was no literature at all, local or otherwise, with the one +startling exception of <i>Uncle Tom's Cabin</i>.<a name='FNanchor_O_15'></a><a href='#Footnote_O_15'><sup>[O]</sup></a> But since 1870, and +mainly, indeed, within the past twenty years, a marvellous change has +come over the scene. Not only the national but the local +self-consciousness of America has sprung to literary life, until at the +present day there is scarcely a corner of the country, scarcely an +aspect of social life, that has not found its special, and, as a rule, +very able interpreter through the medium of fiction. Pursuing technical +methods partly borrowed from abroad (from France rather than from +England), American writers have undertaken what one is tempted to call a +sociological ordnance-survey of the Republic from Maine to Arizona, from +Florida to Oregon. There is scarcely a human being in the United States, +from the Newport society belle to the "greaser" of New Mexico, that has +not his or her more or less faithful counterpart in fiction. No European +country, so far as I know, has achieved anything like such comprehensive +self-realisation. Comprehensive, I say—not necessarily profound. +Perhaps France in Balzac, perhaps Russia in Turgueneff and Tolstoï, +found more searching interpretation than America has found even in her +host of novelists. But never, surely, was there a body of fiction that +touched life at so many points, to mirror if not to probe it. And in +many cases to probe it as well.</p> + +<p>It would take a volume to criticise these writers in any detail. I can +attempt no more than a bald and imperfect enumeration. Miss Mary +Wilkins's studies of New England life are well known and appreciated in +England, but the talent of Miss Sarah Orne Jewett is not sufficiently +recognised. In her <i>Country of the Pointed Firs</i>, for example, there are +whole chapters that rise to a classical perfection of workmanship. The +novelists of the Eastern cities, with Mr. Howells, a master craftsman, +at their head, are of course numberless. For studies in the local colour +of New York nothing could be better than Professor Brander Matthews' +<i>Vignettes of Manhattan</i>, and other stories. Mr. Paul Leicester Ford's +<i>Honorable Peter Stirling</i>, though antiquated in style, gives a +remarkable picture of political life in New York. The Bowery Boy is +cleverly represented, so far as dialect at any rate is concerned, by +Mr. E.W. Townsend in his <i>Chimmie Fadden</i>. Even the Jewish and the +Italian quarters of New York have their portraitists in fiction. Life in +Washington has been frequently and ably depicted; for instance, in Mrs. +Burnett's <i>Through one Administration</i>. Of the many interpreters of the +South I need mention only three: Mr. Cable, Mr. Thomas Nelson Page, and +Mr. Chandler Harris. Miss Murfree ("Charles Egbert Craddock") has made +the mountains of Tennessee her special province. Chicago has several +novelists of her own: for example, Mr. Henry Fuller, author of <i>The +Cliff Dwellers</i>, Mr. Will Payne, and that close student of Chicago +slang, Mr. George Ade, the author of <i>Artie</i>. The Middle West counts +such novelists as Miss "Octave Thanet" and Mr. Hamlin Garland, whose +<i>Main Travelled Roads</i> contains some very remarkable work. The Far West +is best represented, perhaps, in the lively and graphic sketches of Mr. +Owen Wister; while California has novelists of talent in Miss Gertrude +Atherton and Mr. Frank Norris. At least two Americans living abroad have +made noteworthy contributions to this sociological survey of their +native land: the late Mr. Harold Frederic, who has dealt mainly with +country life in New York State, and Miss Elizabeth Robins, whose +picture, in <i>The Open Question</i>, of a Southern family impoverished by +the war, is exceedingly vivid and bears all the marks of the utmost +fidelity. Nor must I omit to mention that the stage has borne a modest +but not insignificant part in this movement of national +self-portraiture. Mr. Augustus Thomas' <i>Alabama</i> is a delightful picture +of Southern life, while Mr. James A. Herne's <i>Shore Acres</i> takes a +distinct place in the literature of New England, his <i>Griffith +Davenport</i><a name='FNanchor_P_16'></a><a href='#Footnote_P_16'><sup>[P]</sup></a> in the literature of Virginia.</p> + +<p>There must, of course, be many gaps in this summary enumeration. It is +very probable that many novelists of distinction have altogether escaped +my notice; and I have made no attempt to include in my list the writers +of short magazine stories, many of them artists of high accomplishment. +One omission, however, I must at once repair. "Mark Twain's" +contributions to the work of self-realisation have been in the main +retrospective, but nevertheless of the first importance. He is the +"sacred poet" of the Mississippi. If any work of incontestable genius, +and plainly predestined to immortality, has been issued in the English +language during the past quarter of a century, it is that brilliant +romance of the Great Rivers, <i>The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn</i>.</p> + +<p>Intensely American though he be, "Mark Twain" is one of the greatest +living masters of the English language. To some Englishmen this may seem +a paradox; but it is high time we should disabuse ourselves of the +prejudice that residence on the European side of the Atlantic confers +upon us an exclusive right to determine what is good English, and to +write it correctly and vigorously. We are apt in England to class as an +"Americanism" every unfamiliar, or too familiar, locution which we do +not happen to like. As a matter of fact, there is a pretty lively +interchange between the two countries of slipshod and vulgar +"journalese;" and as the picturesque reporter is a greater power in +America than he is with us, we perhaps import more than we export of +this particular commodity. But there can be no rational doubt, I think, +that the English language has gained, and is gaining, enormously by its +expansion over the American continent. The prime function of a language, +after all, is to interpret the "form and pressure" of life—the +experience, knowledge, thought, emotion, and aspiration of the race +which employs it. This being so, the more tap-roots a language sends +down into the soil of life, and the more varied the strata of human +experience from which it draws its nourishment, whether of vocabulary or +idiom, the more perfect will be its potentialities as a medium of +expression. We must be careful, it is true, to keep the organism +healthy, to guard against disintegration of tissue; but to that duty +American writers are quite as keenly alive as we. It is not a source of +weakness but of power and vitality to the English language that it +should embrace a greater variety of dialects than any other civilised +tongue. A new language, says the proverb, is a new sense; but a +multiplicity of dialects means, for the possessors of the main language, +an enlargement of the pleasures of the linguistic sense without the +fatigue of learning a totally new grammar and vocabulary. So long as +there is a potent literary tradition keeping the core of the language +one and indivisible, vernacular variations can only tend, in virtue of +the survival of the fittest, to promote the abundance, suppleness, and +nicety of adaptation of the language as a literary instrument. The +English language is no mere historic monument, like Westminster Abbey, +to be religiously preserved as a relic of the past, and reverenced as +the burial-place of a bygone breed of giants. It is a living organism, +ceaselessly busied, like any other organism, in the processes of +assimilation and excretion. It has before it, we may fairly hope, a +future still greater than its glorious past. And the greatness of that +future will largely depend on the harmonious interplay of spiritual +forces throughout the American Republic and the British Empire.</p> +<br /> + +<p>FOOTNOTES:</p> + +<a name='Footnote_M_13'></a><a href='#FNanchor_M_13'>[M]</a><div class='note'><p> I do not mean that we are callous to American criticism, or +always take it in good part when it comes home to us. I think with +shame, for example, of the stupid insolence with which certain English +journalists used for years to treat Mr. W.D. Howells, merely because he +had expressed certain literary judgments from which they dissented. What +I do mean, and believe to be true, is that we are <i>habitually +unconscious</i> of American criticism, while Americans may rather be said +to be <i>habitually over-conscious</i> that the eyes of England and of the +world are on them. The existence of this habit of mind seems to me no +less evident than the fact that it is rapidly correcting itself.</p></div> + +<a name='Footnote_N_14'></a><a href='#FNanchor_N_14'>[N]</a><div class='note'><p> I went to see Poe's grave in Baltimore, marked by a mean +and ugly monument, little more than a mere tombstone. It is surely time +that a worthy memorial should be raised, at his burial-place or +elsewhere, to this unique genius. England and the English-speaking world +would gladly contribute. For a masterly criticism and vindication of +Poe, let me refer the reader to Mr. John M. Robertson's <i>New Essays +towards a Critical Method</i>. London and New York, 1897.</p></div> + +<a name='Footnote_O_15'></a><a href='#FNanchor_O_15'>[O]</a><div class='note'><p> For the reasons of this barrenness, see an essay on <i>Two +Studies in the South</i>, in Professor Brander Matthews' <i>Aspects of +Fiction</i>. New York, 1896.</p></div> + +<a name='Footnote_P_16'></a><a href='#FNanchor_P_16'>[P]</a><div class='note'><p> Founded on a novel by Miss Helen H. Gardener.</p></div> + + + +<hr style='width: 65%;' /> +<a name='THE_AMERICAN_LANGUAGE'></a><h2>THE AMERICAN LANGUAGE</h2> + +<hr style='width: 65%;' /> +<a name='LANG_I'></a><h2>I</h2> +<br /> + +<p>Nothing short of an imperative sense of duty could tempt me to set forth +on that most perilous emprise, a discussion of the American language. +The path is beset with man-traps and spring-guns. Not all the serious +causes of dissension between England and America have begotten half the +bad blood that has been engendered by trumpery questions of vocabulary, +grammar, and pronunciation. I cannot hope to escape giving offence, +probably on both sides; but if I can induce one or two people on either +side to think twice before they scoff once, I shall not have written in +vain.</p> + +<p>In the way of scoffing, we English have doubtless (and inevitably) been +the worst offenders. We have habitually used "Americanism" as a term of +reproach, implying, if not saying in so many words, that America was the +great source of pollution, and of nothing but pollution, to the +otherwise limpid current of our speech. Dean Alford wrote offensively +to this effect; Archbishop Trench, on the other hand, discussed the +relations between the English of America and the English of England with +courtesy and good sense.<a name='FNanchor_Q_17'></a><a href='#Footnote_Q_17'><sup>[Q]</sup></a> He protested against certain transatlantic +neologisms, including in his list that excellent old word "to berate," +and a word so useful and so eminently consonant with the spirit of the +language as "to belittle;" but, whether wise or unwise, his protest was +at least civil. Other writers, both in books and periodicals, have been +apt to take their tone from the Dean rather than from the Archbishop. It +may even be said that the instinct of the majority of Englishmen, which +finds heedless expression in the newspapers and common talk, is to +regard Americanisms as necessarily vulgar, and (conversely) vulgarisms +as probably American. If challenged and brought to book, they can +generally realise the narrowness and injustice of this way of thinking; +yet they relapse into it next moment. It is time we should be on our +guard against so insidious a habit. Its reduction to absurdity may be +found (alackaday!) in <i>Fors Clavigera</i> for June 1, 1874. With shame and +sorrow I transcribe the passage, for the time has not yet come for it +to be forgotten. If it were merely the aberration of an individual, +however distinguished, it were better kept out of sight, out of mind; +but it is, I repeat, the reckless exaggeration of a not altogether +uncommon habit of thought:—</p> + +<div class='blkquot'><p>"England taught the Americans all they have of speech or thought, + hitherto. What thoughts they have not learned from England are + foolish thoughts; what words they have not learned from England, + unseemly words; the vile among them not being able even to be + humorous parrots, but only obscene mocking-birds."</p></div> +<br /> + +<p>Can we wonder that Americans have retorted with some asperity upon +criticisms in which any approach to such insolent insularism is even +remotely or inadvertently implied?</p> + +<p>The American retort, however, has not always been judicious or +dignified. It has too often consisted in the mere pitting of one +linguistic prejudice against another. It is very easy to prove that +there are bad speakers and bad writers in both countries, and the +attempt to determine which country has the more numerous and the greater +sinners is exceedingly unprofitable. The "You're another" style of +argument has been far too prevalent. Here we have Mr. Gilbert M. Tucker, +for instance, in a book entitled <i>Our Common Speech</i> (1895) implying, +if he does not absolutely assert (p. 173), that a "boldness of +innovation" in matters linguistic, amounting to "absolute +licentiousness," is more characteristic of England than of America. The +suggestion leaves my British withers entirely unwrung, for I approve of +bold innovation in language, trusting to the impermanence of the unfit +to counteract the effects of licentiousness. If I could believe that we +British were the bolder innovators, I should admit it without blenching; +but observation and probability seem to me to point with one accord in +the opposite direction. New words are begotten by new conditions of +life; and as American life is far more fertile of new conditions than +ours, the tendency towards neologism cannot but be stronger in America +than in England. America has enormously enriched the language, not only +with new words, but (since the American mind is, on the whole, quicker +and wittier than the English) with apt and luminous colloquial +metaphors; and I know not why Mr. Tucker should disclaim the credit.</p> + +<p>He next sets forth to show how recent English writers are corrupting the +language; and, in doing so, he falls into some curious errors.</p> + +<p>Dickens was boldly innovating when he made Silas Wegg say, "Mr. Boffin, +I never bargain"—"haggle," it would seem, is the proper word. But if +Mr. Tucker will look into the matter, he will find it extremely probable +that this was the original sense of the word "bargain," and quite +certain that it was a very early sense; for instance—</p> + +<div class='poem'><div class='stanza'> +<span>"So worthless peasants bargain for their wives,<br /></span> +<span>As market-men for oxen, sheep, or horse."<br /></span> +</div><div class='stanza'> +<span>I HENRY VI., V. v. 53.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>And, in any case, is it possible to set up such a distinction between +"bargaining" and "haggling" as to be worth an international wrangle? +"Starved" for frozen is to Mr. Tucker an innovation; it was used both by +Shakespeare and Milton. "Assist" in the sense of to "be present at" is +an "absurd" innovation; it was used by Gibbon and by Prescott, a +"tolerably good authority," says Mr. Tucker himself, "in the use of +English." Miss Yonge is taken to task for saying, "Theodora <i>flung</i> away +and was rushing off;" but Milton says, "And crop-full out of doors he +flings." Charles Reade "is guilty of such phrases as 'Wardlaw whipped +before him,' 'Ransome whipped before it;'" but the Princess in <i>Love's +Labour's Lost</i> is guilty of saying, "Whip to our tents, as roes run +o'er the land," and the word occurs in the same sense in Ben Jonson and +Steele, to search no further. The simple fact is that Mr. Tucker has not +happened to note the intransitive sense of "to fling" and "to whip," +which has been current in the best authors for centuries. He is very +severe on the English habit of "inserting utterly superfluous words," +instancing from Lord Beaconsfield, "He was <i>by way of</i> intimating that +he was engaged on a great work," and, from a magazine, "She was <i>by way +of</i> painting the shrimp girl." Now, this is not an elegant expression, +and for my part I should be at some pains to avoid it; but it has a +perfectly distinct meaning, and is not a mere redundancy. If Mr. Tucker +supposes that "She was by way of painting the shrimp girl" means exactly +the same as "She was painting the shrimp girl," he misses one of the +fine shades of the English language. Similarly, his remark on the +"peculiar misuse of the affix <i>ever</i>, as in saying 'What<i>ever</i> are you +doing?'" stands in need of reconsideration. It is wrong, certainly, to +treat <i>ever</i> as an affix, and to mistake the first two words of "What +ever are you doing?" for the one word "whatever;" but to suppose the +"ever" meaningless and inert, is to overlook a clearly marked and very +useful gradation of emphasis. "What are you doing?" expresses simple +curiosity; "What ever are you doing?" expresses surprise; "What the +devil are you doing?" expresses anger—we need not run farther up the +scale. Nor is this use of "ever" an innovation, licentious or otherwise. +"Ever" has for centuries been employed as an intensive particle after +the interrogative pronouns and adverbs how, who, what, where, why. For +instance, in <i>The World of Wonders</i> (1607), "I shall desire him to +consider how ever it was possible to get an answer from these priests."</p> + +<p>One of the most remarkable paragraphs in Mr. Tucker's book is that in +which he proves "the greater permanence and steadiness of our American +speech as compared with that of the mother country" by going through +Halliwell's <i>Dictionary of Archaisms and Provincialisms</i>, and picking +out 76 words which Halliwell regards as obsolete, but which in America +are all alive and kicking. (The vulgarism is mine, not Mr. Tucker's.) +Now as a matter of fact not one of these words is really obsolete in +England, and most of them are in everyday use; for instance, adze, +affectation, agape, to age, air (appearance), appellant, apple-pie +order, baker's dozen, bamboozle, bay window, between whiles, bicker, +blanch, to brain, burly, catcall, clodhopper, clutch, coddle, copious, +cosy, counterfeit money, crazy (dilapidated), crone, crook, croon, +cross-grained, cross-patch, cross purposes, cuddle, to cuff (to strike), +cleft, din, earnest money, egg on, greenhorn, jack-of-all-trades, +loophole, settled, ornate, to quail, ragamuffin, riff-raff, rigmarole, +scant, seedy, out of sorts, stale, tardy, trash. How Halliwell ever came +to class these words as archaic I cannot imagine; but I submit that any +one who sets forth to write about the English of England ought to have +sufficient acquaintance with the language to check and reject +Halliwell's amazing classification. Does Mr. Tucker so despise British +English as never to read an English book? How else is one to account for +his imagining for a moment that clodhopper, clutch, copious, cosy, +cross-grained, greenhorn, and rigmarole are obsolete in England?</p> + +<p>Far be it from me to assert that Mr. Tucker makes no good points in his +catalogue of English solecisms. I merely hint that this game of pot and +kettle is neither dignified nor profitable; that purism is almost always +over-hasty, and apt to ignore both the history and the psychology of +language; and, finally, that nothing is gained by introducing acerbity +(though I have admitted the frequent provocation) into a discussion +which a little exercise of temper should render no less agreeable than +instructive to both parties. "The speech of the lower orders of our +people," says Mr. Tucker, "... differs from what all admit to be +standard correctness in a much smaller degree<a name='FNanchor_R_18'></a><a href='#Footnote_R_18'><sup>[R]</sup></a> than we have every +reason to believe to be the case in England, <i>our enemies themselves +being judges</i>." Now I protest I am not Mr. Tucker's enemy, and I know of +no reason why he should be mine. I cannot share the withering contempt +with which he regards the extension of the term "traffic" from barter to +movement to and fro, as in a street or on a railway; but if he prefers +another word (he does not suggest one, by the way) for the traffic on +Broadway or on the New York Central, I shall not esteem him one whit the +less.<a name='FNanchor_S_19'></a><a href='#Footnote_S_19'><sup>[S]</sup></a> Even when he tells me that "bumper" is the English term for +the American "buffer" (on a railway carriage) I do not feel my blood +boil. A very slight elevation of the eyebrows expresses all the emotion +of which I am conscious. So long as he does not insist on my saying a +"bumper state" when I mean a "buffer state," I see no reason whatever +for any rupture of that sympathy which ought to subsist between two men +who take a common interest and pride in the subject of his +treatise—<i>Our Common Speech</i>.</p> +<br /> + +<p>FOOTNOTES:</p> + +<a name='Footnote_Q_17'></a><a href='#FNanchor_Q_17'>[Q]</a><div class='note'><p> See <i>English Past and Present</i>, ninth edition, pp. 63, +215.</p></div> + +<a name='Footnote_R_18'></a><a href='#FNanchor_R_18'>[R]</a><div class='note'><p> "What great city of this country," Mr. Tucker inquires, +"has developed, or is likely to develop, any peculiar class of errors at +all comparable in importance to those of the Cockney speech of London?" +The answer is pat: New York and Chicago—unless Mr. Townsend's <i>Chimmie +Fadden</i> and Mr. Ade's <i>Artie</i> are sheer linguistic libels.</p></div> + +<a name='Footnote_S_19'></a><a href='#FNanchor_S_19'>[S]</a><div class='note'><p> It must be very painful to Mr. Tucker to find Shakespeare +talking of the "two hours' traffic of our stage." He was a hardened +offender, was Shakespeare, against Mr. Tucker's ideal of one single, +inelastic, cast-iron signification for every word in the language.</p></div> + + + +<hr style='width: 65%;' /> +<a name='LANG_II'></a><h2>II</h2> +<br /> + +<p>It is not to be expected that an extremely English intonation should +ever be agreeable to Americans, or an extremely American intonation to +Englishmen. We ourselves laugh at a "haw-haw" intonation in English; +why, then, should we forbid Americans to do so? If "an accent like a +banjo" is recognised as undesirable in America (and assuredly it is), +there is no reason why we in England should pretend to admire it. But a +vulgar or affected intonation is clearly distinguishable, and ought to +be clearly distinguished, from a national habit in the pronunciation of +a given letter, or accentuation of a particular word, or class of words. +For instance, take the pronunciation of the indefinite article. The +American habitually says "[=a] man" (<i>a</i> as in "game"); the Englishman, +unless he wants to be emphatic, says, "[)a] man."<a name='FNanchor_T_20'></a><a href='#Footnote_T_20'><sup>[T]</sup></a> Neither is right, +neither wrong; it is purely a matter of habit; and to consider either +habit ridiculous is merely to exhibit that childishness or provincialism +of mind which is moved to laughter by whatever is unfamiliar. Again, +when I first read the works of the sagacious Mr. Dooley, I thought it a +curiously far-fetched idea on the part of that philosopher to talk of +Admiral Dewey as his "Cousin George," and assert that "Dewey" and +"Dooley" were practically the same name. I had not then noticed that the +American pronunciation of "Dewey" is "Dooey," and that the liquid "yoo" +is very seldom heard in America. In the course of the five minutes I +spent in the Supreme Court at Washington, I heard the Chief Justice of +the United States make this one remark: "That, sir, is not +<i>constitootional</i>." To our ears this "oo" has an old-fashioned ring, +like that of the "ee" in "obleeged;" but to call it wrong is absurd, and +to find it ridiculous is provincial. Very possibly it can be proved that +had Shakespeare used the word at all, he would have said +"constitootional;" but that would make the "oo" neither better nor worse +in my eyes. There always have been, and always will be, changing +fashions in pronunciation; and the Americans have as good a right to +their fashion as we to ours. Fifty years hence, perhaps, our grandsons +will be saying "constitootional," and theirs "constityootional." I +confess that, in point of abstract sonority, I prefer the "yoo" to the +dry "oo;" but that, again, is a pure matter of taste. If Americans +choose to say,</p> + +<div class='poem'><div class='stanza'> +<span class='i10'>"From morn<br /></span> +<span>To noon he fell, from noon to dooey eve,<br /></span> +<span>A summer's day."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>I am perfectly willing that they should do so, reserving always my own +right to say "dyooey." It would not at all surprise me to learn that +Milton said "dooey;" but neither would it lead me to alter the +pronunciation which, as one of the present generation of Englishmen, I +have learnt to prefer.</p> + +<p>It is said that when Mr. Daly's company returned to New York, after a +long visit to England, they pronounced "lieutenant" according to the +English fashion, "leftenant," but were called to order by an outburst of +protest. Though, for my own part, I say "leftenant," I heartily +sympathise with the protesters. "Leftenant," though a corruption of +respectable antiquity, is a corruption none the less, and since it has +died out in America, it would be mere snobbery to reintroduce it.</p> + +<p>So, too, with questions of accentuation. We say "prim-arily" and +"tem-porarily;" most (or at any rate many) Americans say "primar-ily" +and "temporar-ily." Here there is no question of right or wrong, +refinement or vulgarity. The one accentuation is as good as the other. +It may be argued, indeed, that our accentuation throws into relief the +root, the idea, the soul of the word, not the mere grammatical suffix, +the "limbs and outward flourishes;" but on the other hand, it may be +contended with equal truth that the American accentuation has the Latin +precedent in its favour. Neither advantage is conclusive; neither, +indeed, is, strictly speaking, relevant; for Englishmen do not make a +principle of accentuating the root rather than the prefix or suffix, +else we should say "inund-ation," "resonant," "admir-able;" and the +Americans do not make a principle of following the Latin emphasis, else +they would say "ora-tor" and "gratui-tous," and the recognised +pronunciation of "theatre" would be "theayter." It is argued that there +is a general tendency among educated Englishmen to throw the accent as +far back as possible; that, for instance, the educated speaker says +"in-teresting," the uneducated, "interest-ing." True; but until this +tendency can be proved to possess some inherent advantage, there is not +a shadow of reason why Americans should be reproached or ridiculed for +obeying their own tendency rather than ours. The English tendency is a +matter of comparatively recent fashion. "Con-template," said Samuel +Rogers, "is bad enough, but bal-cony makes me sick." Both forms have +maintained themselves up to the present; but will they for long? I think +one may already trace a reaction against the universal throwing backward +of the accent. I myself say "per-emptory" and "ex-emplary;" but it would +take very little encouragement to make me say "peremp-tory" and +"exemp-lary," which seem to me much more expressive words. There is +surely no doubt that, in accenting a prefix rather than the root of the +word, we lose a certain amount of force. "Con-template," for instance, +is not nearly so strong a word as "contemp-late." We say an +"il-lustrated" book or the "<i>Il-lustrated London News</i>" because we do +not require any particular force in the epithet; but when the sense +demands a word with colour and emotion in it, we say the "illus-trious" +statesman, the "illus-trious" poet, throwing into relief the essential +element in the word, the "lustre." What a paltry word would +"tri-umphant" be in comparison with "trium-phant!" But the larger our +list of examples, the more capricious does our accentuation seem, the +more evidently subject to mere accidents of fashion. There is scarcely a +trace of consistent or rational principle in the matter. To make a merit +of one practice, and find in the other a subject for contemptuous +criticism, is simply childish.</p> + +<p>Mere slovenliness of pronunciation is a totally different matter. For +instance, the use of "most" for "almost" is distinctly, if not a +vulgarism, at least a colloquialism. It may be of ancient origin; it may +have crossed in the <i>Mayflower</i> for aught I know; but the overwhelming +preponderance of ancient and modern usage is certainly in favour of +prefixing the "al," and there is a clear advantage in having a special +word for this special idea. If American writers tried to make "most" +supplant "almost" in the literary language, we should have a right to +remonstrate; the two forms would fight it out, and the fittest would +survive. But as a matter of fact I am not aware that any one has +attempted to introduce "most," in this sense, into literature. It is +perfectly recognised as a colloquialism, and as such it keeps its place. +Again, such pronunciations as "mebbe" for "maybe" and "I'd ruther" or "I +druther" for "I'd rather" are obvious slovenlinesses. No American would +defend them as being correct, any more than an Englishman would defend +"I dunno" for "I don't know" or "atome" for "at home." If an actor, for +instance, were to say,</p> + +<div class='poem'><div class='stanza'> +<span>"I druther be a dog and bay the moon<br /></span> +<span>Than such a Roman,"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>American and English critics alike could not but protest against the +solecism; for in poetry absolute precision of utterance is clearly +indispensable. But in everyday speech a certain amount of colloquialism +is inevitable. Let him whose own enunciation is chemically free from +localism or slovenliness cast the first stone even at "mebbe" and +"ruther."</p> + +<p>A curious American colloquialism, of which I certainly cannot see the +advantage, in the substitution of "yep," or "yup" for "yes," and of +"nope" for "no." No doubt we have in England the coster's "yuss;" but +one hears even educated Americans now and then using "yep," or some +other corruption of "yes," scarcely to be indicated by the ordinary +alphabetical symbols. It seems to me a pity.</p> + +<p>Much more respectable in point of antiquity is the habit which obtains +to some extent even among educated Americans, of saying "somewheres" and +"a long ways." Here the "s" is an old case-ending, an adverbial +genitive. "He goes out nights," too, on which Mr. Andrew Lang is so +severe, is a form as old as the language and older. I turn to Dr. Leon +Kellner's <i>Historical English Syntax</i> (p. 119) and find that the Gothic +for "at night" was "nahts," and that the form (with its correlative +"days ") runs through old Norse, old Saxon, old English, and middle +English: for instance, "dages endi nahtes" <i>(Hêliand)</i>, "dæges and +nihtes" <i>(Beówulf)</i>, "dæies and nihtes" (Layamon), all meaning "by day +and by night." In all, or almost all, words ending in "ward," the +genitive inflection, according to modern English practice, can either be +retained or dropped at will. It is a mere pedantry to declare "toward" +better English than "towards," "upward" than "upwards." Thus we see +that here again there is neither logical principle nor consistent +practice to be invoked. At the same time, as "somewheres" has become +irremediably a vulgarism in England, it would, I think, be a graceful +concession on the part of educated Americans to drop the "s." After all, +"somewhere" does not jar in America, and "somewheres" very distinctly +jars in England.</p> + +<p>An insidious laxity of pronunciation (rather than of grammar), which is +taking great hold in America, is the total omission of the "had" or +"have," in such phrases as "You'd better," "we've got to." Mr. Howells's +Willis Campbell, a witty and cultivated Bostonian, says, in <i>The Albany +Depot</i>, "I guess we better get out of here;" Mr. Ade's Artie, a Chicago +clerk, says, "I got a boost in my pay," meaning "I have got:" the +locution is very common indeed. It is no more defensible than "swelp me" +for "so help me." It arises from sheer laziness, unwillingness to face +the infinitesimal difficulty of pronouncing, "d" and "b" together. As a +colloquialism it is all very well; but I regard it with a certain alarm, +for where all trace of a word disappears, people are apt to forget the +logical and grammatical necessity for it. Though contracted to its last +letter, a word still asserts its existence; but when even the last +letter has vanished its state is parlous indeed.</p> + +<p>An Anglicism much ridiculed in America is "different to." As a +Scotchman, I dislike it, and would neither use nor defend it. At the +same time I cannot but hint to American critics that the use of a +particular preposition in a particular context is largely a matter of +convention; that when we learn a new language we have simply to get up +by rote the conventions that obtain in this regard, reason being little +or no guide to us; and that within the same language the conventions are +always changing. You may easily nonplus even a good grammarian by asking +him suddenly, "What preposition should you use in such-and-such a +context?" just as you may puzzle a man by asking him to spell a word +which, if he wrote it without thinking about it, would present no +difficulty to him. Some very good American writers always say, "at the +North," and "at the South," where an Englishman would certainly say +"in." "At," to my mind, suggests a very narrow point of space. I should +say "at" a village, but "in" a city—"at Concord," but "in Boston." I +recognise, however, that this is a mere matter of convention, and do +not dream of condemning "at the North" as an error. In the same way I +would claim tolerance, though certainly not approval, for "different +to."</p> + +<p>As a general rule, I think, educated Americans are more apt to err on +the side of purism than of laxity. I have before me, for example, a long +list of rules and warnings for American writers, issued by the <i>New York +Press</i>, many of which are very much to the point, while others seem to +me captious and pedantic. For instance, a woman is not to "marry" a man; +she is "married to" him; "the clergyman or magistrate marries both." The +grammatical suitor, then, when the awful moment arrives, must not say to +the blushing fair, "Will you marry me?" but "Will you be married to me?" +Again, you not only must not split infinitives, but you must not +separate an auxiliary from its verb; you must say "probably will be," +not "will probably be." This is English by the card indeed.</p> + +<p>I will not waste space upon discussing the different fashions of +spelling in England and America. The rage excited in otherwise rational +human beings by the dropping of the "u" in "favor," or the final "me" in +"program," is one of the strangest of psychological phenomena. The +baselessness of the reasonings used to bolster up the British clinging +to superfluous letters is very ably shown in Professor Matthews' +<i>Americanisms and Briticisms</i>. Let me only put in a plea for the +retention of such abnormal spellings as serve to distinguish two words +of the same sound. For instance, it seems to me useful that we should +write "story" for a tale and "storey" for a floor, and in the plural +"stories" and "storeys."</p> +<br /> + +<p>FOOTNOTES:</p> + +<a name='Footnote_T_20'></a><a href='#FNanchor_T_20'>[T]</a><div class='note'><p> "Surely, on Mr. Archer's own showing," writes Mr. A.B. +Walkley, "the Englishman has the advantage here, for 'when he wants to +be emphatic' he can be, whereas the American cannot." This is a +misapprehension on Mr. Walkley's part. The American a can be spoken with +or without emphasis, just as the speaker pleases. It is because we are +accustomed always to associate this particular sonority with emphasis +that even when it is spoken without emphasis, we imagine it to be +emphatic.</p></div> + + + +<hr style='width: 65%;' /> +<a name='LANG_III'></a><h2>III</h2> +<br /> + +<p>Passing now from questions of pronunciation and grammar to questions of +vocabulary, I can only express my sense of the deep indebtedness of the +English language, both literary and colloquial, to America, for the old +words she has kept alive and the new words and phrases she has invented. +It is a sheer pedantry—nay, a misconception of the laws which govern +language as a living organism—to despise pithy and apt colloquialisms, +and even slang. In order to remain healthy and vigorous, a literary +language must be rooted in the soil of a copious vernacular, from which +it can extract and assimilate, by a chemistry peculiar to itself, +whatever nourishment it requires. It must keep in touch with life in the +broadest acceptation of the word; and life at certain levels, obeying a +psychological law which must simply be accepted as one of the conditions +of the problem, will always express itself in dialect, provincialism, +slang.</p> + +<p>America doubles and trebles the number of points at which the English +language comes in touch with nature and life, and is therefore a great +source of strength and vitality. The literary language, to be sure, +rejects a great deal more than it absorbs; and even in the vernacular, +words and expressions are always dying out and being replaced by others +which are somehow better adapted to the changing conditions. But though +an expression has not, in the long run, proved itself fitted to survive, +it does not follow that it has not done good service in its time. +Certain it is that the common speech of the Anglo-Saxon race throughout +the world is exceedingly supple, well nourished, and rich in forcible +and graphic idioms; and a great part of this wealth it owes to America. +Let the purists who sneer at "Americanisms" think for one moment how +much poorer the English language would be to-day if North America had +become a French or Spanish instead of an English continent.</p> + +<p>I am far from advocating a breaking down of the barrier between literary +and vernacular speech. It should be a porous, a permeable bulwark, +allowing of free filtration; but it should be none the less distinct and +clearly recognised. Nor do I recommend an indiscriminate hospitality to +all the linguistic inspirations of the American fancy. All I say is that +neologisms should be judged on their merits, and not rejected with +contumely for no better reason than that they are new and (presumably) +American. Take, for instance, the word "scientist." It was originally +suggested by Whewell in 1840; but it first came into common use in +America, and was received in England at the point of the bayonet. Huxley +and other "scientists" disowned it, and only a few years ago the <i>Daily +News</i> denounced it as "an ignoble Americanism," a "cheap and vulgar +product of transatlantic slang." But "scientist" is undoubtedly holding +its own, and will soon be as generally accepted as "retrograde," +"reciprocal," "spurious," and "strenuous," against which Ben Jonson, in +his day, so—strenuously protested. It holds its own because it is felt +to be a necessity. No one who is in the habit of writing will pretend +that it is always possible to fall back upon the cumbrous phrase "man of +science."<a name='FNanchor_U_21'></a><a href='#Footnote_U_21'><sup>[U]</sup></a> On the other hand, the purist objection to +"scientist"—that it is a Latin word with a Greek termination, and that +it implies the existence of a non-existent verb—may be urged with +equal force against such harmless necessary words as deist, aurist, +dentist, florist, jurist, oculist, somnambulist, ventriloquist, +and—purist. Much more valid objection might be made to the word +"scientific," which is not hybrid indeed, but is, if strictly examined, +illogical and even nonsensical. The fact is that three-fourths of the +English language would crumble away before a purist analysis, and we +should be left without words to express the commonest and most necessary +ideas.</p> + +<p>Contrast with the case of "scientist" a vulgarism such as the use of +"transpire" in the sense of "happen." I do not quote it as an +Americanism; it is probably of English origin; it occurs, I regret to +note, in Dickens. I select it merely as an example of a demonstrably +vicious locution which ought indubitably to be banished from the +language. It has its origin in sheer blundering. Some one, at some time, +has come upon the phrase "such-and-such a thing has transpired"—that +is, leaked out, become known—and, ignorantly mistaking its meaning, has +noted and employed the word as a finer-sounding synonym for "occurred" +or "happened." The blunder has been passed on from one penny-a-liner to +another, until at last it has crept into the pages of writers, on both +sides of the Atlantic, who ought to know better. If it served any +purpose, expressed any shade of meaning, it might be tolerated; but +being at once a useless pedantry and an obvious blunder, it deserves no +quarter.</p> + +<p>My point, then, is that "scientist" ought to live on its merits, +"transpire" to die on its demerits. With regard to every neologism we +ought first to inquire, "Does it fill a gap? Does it serve a purpose?" +And if that question be answered in the affirmative, we may next +consider whether it is formed on a reasonably good analogy and in +consonance with the general spirit of the language. "Truthful," for +example, is said to be an Americanism, and at one time gave offence on +that account. It is not only a vast improvement on the stilted +"veracious," but one of the prettiest and most thoroughly English words +in the dictionary.</p> + +<p>The above-quoted writer in the <i>New York Press</i> is a purist in +vocabulary, no less than in grammar. He will not allow us to be +"unwell," we must always be "ill;" an inhuman imperative. Why should we +sacrifice this clear and useful gradation: unwell, very unwell, ill, +very ill? On "sick" he does not deliver judgment. The American use of +the word is ancient and respectable, but the English limitation of its +meaning seems to me convenient, seeing we have the general terms +"unwell" and "ill" ready to hand. Again, the <i>New York Press</i> authority +follows Freeman in wishing to eject the word "ovation" from the +language; surely a ridiculous literalism. It is true we do not sacrifice +a sheep at a modern "ovation," but neither (for example) do we judge by +the flight of birds when we declare the circumstances to be "auspicious" +for such and such an undertaking. Again, we are never to "retire" for +the night, but always to "go to bed." If, as is commonly alleged, +Americans say "retire" because they consider it indelicate to go to bed, +the feeling and the expression are alike foolish. But I do not believe +that either is at all common in America. On the other hand, one may +retire for the night without going to bed. In the case of ladies +especially, the interval between retiring and going to bed is reputed +to be far from inconsiderable. If, then, one really means "retired for +the night" and does <i>not</i> definitely mean "went to bed," I see no crime +in employing the expression that conveys one's exact meaning. Finally +the <i>New York Press</i> will not let us use the word "commence;" we must +always "begin." This is an excellent example of unreflecting or +half-reflecting purism. "Commence" is a very old word; it is used by the +best writers; it is easily pronounceable and not in the least +grandiloquent; indeed it has precisely the length and cadence of its +competitor. But somebody or other one day observed that it was Latin, +whereas "begin" was Saxon; and since then there has been a systematic +attempt, in several quarters, to hound the innocent and useful synonym +out of the language. Whence comes this rage for impoverishing our +tongue! The more synonyms we possess the better. Wherefore (by the way) +I for my part should not be too rigorous in excluding a forcible +Americanism merely because it happens to duplicate some word or +expression already current in England. The rich language is that which +possesses not only the necessaries of life but also an abundance of +superfluities.</p> +<br /> + +<p>FOOTNOTES:</p> + +<a name='Footnote_U_21'></a><a href='#FNanchor_U_21'>[U]</a><div class='note'><p> Mr. Andrew Lang says: "Plenty of other words are formed on +the same analogy: the Greeks, in the verb 'to Medize,' set the example. +But we happen to have no use for 'scientist.'" It is not quite clear +whether Mr. Lang employs "have no use" in the American sense, expressing +sheer dislike, or in the literal and English sense. In the latter case I +can only say that he has been fortunate in never coming across +conjunctures in which "man of science" came in awkwardly and +inelegantly.</p></div> + + + +<hr style='width: 65%;' /> +<a name='LANG_IV'></a><h2>IV</h2> +<br /> + +<p>Let me note a few of the Americanisms, good, bad, and indifferent, which +specially struck me, whether in talk or in books, during my recent visit +to the United States. I call them Americanisms without inquiring into +their history. Some of them may be of English origin; but for practical +purposes an Americanism may be taken to mean an expression commonly used +in America and not commonly used in England.</p> + +<p>I had not been three hours on American soil before I heard a charming +young lady remark, "Oh, it was bully!" I gathered that this expression +is considered admissible, in the conversation of grown-up people, only +in and about New York. I often heard it there, and never anywhere else. +A very distinguished officer, who served as a volunteer in Cuba, was +asked to state his impressions of war. "War," he said, "is a terrible +thing. You can't exaggerate its horrors. When you sit in your tent the +night before the battle, and think of home and your wife and children, +you feel pretty sick and downhearted. But," he added, "next day, when +you're in it, oh, it <i>is</i> bully!"</p> + +<p>The general use of picturesque metaphor is of course a striking feature +of American conversation. Many of these expressions have taken firm root +in England, such as "to have no use for" a man, or "to take no stock in" +a theory. But fresh inventions crop up on every hand in America. For +instance, where an English theatrical manager would say, "We must get +this play well talked about and paragraphed in advance," an American +manager puts the whole thing much more briefly and forcibly in the +phrase, "We don't want this piece to come in on rubbers." Metaphor +apart, many Americans have a gift of fantastic extravagance of phrase +which often produces an irresistible effect. A gentleman in high +political office had one day to receive a deputation with whose objects +he had no sympathy. He listened for some time to the spokesman of the +party, and then, at a pause, broke in with the remark: "Gentlemen, you +need proceed no further. I am not an entirely dishevelled jackass!" One +would give something for a snapshot photograph of the faces of that +deputation.</p> + +<p>Small differences of expression (other than those with which every one +is familiar—such as "elevator," "baggage," "depot," &c.)—strike one in +daily life. The American for "To let" is "For rent;" a "thing one would +wish to have expressed otherwise" is, more briefly, "a bad break;" +instead of "He married money" an American will say "He married rich;" +but this, I take it, is a vulgarism—as, indeed, is the English +expression. I find that in the modern American novel, setting forth the +sayings and doings of more or less educated people, there are apt to be, +on an average, about half a dozen words and phrases at which the English +reader stumbles for a moment. Mr. Howells, a master of English, may be +taken as a faithful reporter of the colloquial speech of Boston and New +York. In one of his comediettas, he makes Willis Campbell say, "Let me +turn out my sister's cup" (pour her a cup of tea). Mrs. Roberts, in +another of these delightful little pieces, says, "I'll smash off a +note," where an English Mrs. Roberts would say "dash off "; and where an +English Mrs. Roberts would ring the bell, her American namesake "touches +the annunciator." It is commonly believed in England that there is no +such thing as a "servant" in America, but only "hired girls" and +"helps." This is certainly not so in New York. I once "rang up" a +friend's house by telephone, and, on asking who was speaking to me, +received the answer, in a feminine voice, "I'm one of Mr. So-and-so's +servants."</p> + +<p>The heroine of <i>The Story of a Play</i> says to her husband, "Are you still +thinking of our scrap of this morning?" "Scrap," in the sense of +"quarrel," is one of the few exceedingly common American expressions +which, have as yet taken little hold in England.<a name='FNanchor_V_22'></a><a href='#Footnote_V_22'><sup>[V]</sup></a> Admiral Dewey, for +instance, is admired as a "scrapper," or, as we should phrase it, a +fighting Admiral. Mr. Henry Fuller, of Chicago, in his powerful novel +<i>The Cliff Dwellers</i>, uses a still less elegant synonym for "scrap"—he +talks of a "connubial spat." In the same book I note the phrases "He +teetered back and forth on his toes," "He was a stocky young man," "One +of his brief noonings," "That's right, Claudia—score the profession." +"Score," as used in America, does not mean "score off," but rather, I +take it, "attack and leave your mark upon." It is very common in this +sense. For instance, I note among the headlines of a New York paper, +"Mr. So-and-so scores Yellow Journalism." Talking of Yellow Journalism, +by the way, the expressions "a beat," and "a scoop," for what we in +England call an "exclusive" item of news, were unknown to me until I +went to America. I was a little bewildered, too, when I was told of a +family which "lived on air-tights." Their diet consisted of canned (or, +as we should say, tinned) provisions.</p> + +<p>The most popular slang expression of the day is "to rubberneck," or, +more concisely, "to rubber." Its primary meaning is to crane the neck in +curiosity, to pry round the corner, as it were.<a name='FNanchor_W_23'></a><a href='#Footnote_W_23'><sup>[W]</sup></a> But it has numerous +and surprising extensions of meaning. It appears to be one of the laws +of slang that when a phrase strikes the popular fancy, it is pressed +into service on every possible or impossible occasion. Another +favourite expression is "That cuts no ice with me."<a name='FNanchor_X_24'></a><a href='#Footnote_X_24'><sup>[X]</sup></a> I was unable to +ascertain either its origin or its precise significance. On the other +hand, a piece of slang which supplies a "felt want," and will one day, I +believe, pass into the literary language, is "the limit" in the sense of +"le comble." A theatrical poster, widely displayed in New York while I +was there, bore this alluring inscription:</p> + +<div class='blkquot'><p>THE LIMIT AT LAST! + +<p> "THE MORMON SENATOR AND THE MERMAID"</p> + +<p> JAGS OF JOY FOR JADED JOHNNIES.</p></div> + +<p>A "jag," be it known, means primarily a load, secondarily a "load," or +"package," of alcohol.</p> + +<p>Collectors of slang will find many priceless gems in two recent books +which I commend to their notice: <i>Chimmie Fadden</i>, by Mr. E.W. Townsend, +and <i>Artie</i>, by Mr. George Ade. <i>Chimmie Fadden</i> gives us the dialect of +the New York Bowery Boy, or "tough," in which the most notable feature +is the substitution either of "d" or "t" for "th." Is this, I wonder, a +spontaneous corruption, or is it due to German and Yiddish influence? +When Chimmie wants to express his admiration for a young lady, he says: +"Well, say, she's a torrowbred, an' dat goes." When the young lady's +father comes to thank him for championing her, this is how Chimmie +describes the visit: "Den he gives me a song an' dance about me being a +brave young man for tumping de mug what insulted his daughter," "Mug," +the Bowery term for "fellow" or "man," in Chicago finds its equivalent +in "guy." Mr. Ade's Artie is a Chicago clerk, and his dialect is of the +most delectable. In comparison with him, Mr. Dooley is a well of English +undefiled. Here again we find traces of the influence of polyglot +immigration. "Kopecks" for "money" evidently comes from the Russian Jew; +"girlerino," as a term of endearment, from the "Dago" of the sunny +south; and "spiel," meaning practically anything you please, from the +Fatherland. When Artie goes to a wedding, he records that "there was a +long spiel by the high guy in the pulpit." After describing the +embarrassments of a country cousin in the city, Artie proceeds, "Down at +the farm, he was the wise guy and I was the soft mark." "Mark" in the +sense of "butt" or "gull" is one of the commonest of slang words. When +Artie has cut out all rivals in the good graces of his Mamie, he puts it +thus, "There ain't nobody else in the one-two-sevens. They ain't even in +the 'also rans.'" When they have a lovers' quarrel he remarks, "Well, I +s'pose the other boy's fillin' all my dates." When he is asked whether +Mamie cycles, he replies, "Does she? She's a scorchalorum!" When he +disapproves of another young gentleman, this is how "he puts him next" +to the fact, as he himself would say—</p> + +<div class='blkquot'><p>"You're nothin' but a two-spot. You're the smallest thing in the + deck.... Chee-e-ese it! You can't do nothin' like that to me and + then come around afterwards and jolly me. Not in a million! I tell + you you're a two spot, and if you come into the same part o' the + town with me I'll change your face. There's only one way to get + back at you people.... If he don't keep off o' my route, there'll + be people walkin' slow behind him one o' these days.... But this + same two-spot's got a sister that can have my seat in the car any + time she comes in."</p></div> + +<p>I plead guilty to an unholy relish for Chimmie's and Artie's racy +metaphors from the music-hall, the poker-table, and the "grip-car."<a name='FNanchor_Y_25'></a><a href='#Footnote_Y_25'><sup>[Y]</sup></a> +But it is to be noted that both these profound students of slang, Mr. +Townsend and Mr. Ade, like the creator of the delightful Dooley, express +themselves in pure and excellent English the moment they drop the mask +of their personage. This is very characteristic. Many educated Americans +take great delight, and even pride, in keeping abreast of the daily +developments of slang and patter; but this study does not in the least +impair their sense for, or their command of, good English. The idea that +the English language is degenerating in America is an absolutely +groundless illusion. Take them all round, the newspapers of the leading +American cities, in their editorial columns at any rate, are at least as +well written as the newspapers of London; and in magazines and books the +average level of literary accomplishment is certainly very high. There +are bad and vulgar writers on both sides of the Atlantic; but until the +beams are removed from our own eyes, we may safely trust the Americans +to attend to the motes in theirs.</p> +<br /> + +<p>POSTSCRIPT.—When this paper originally appeared, it formed the text for +an editorial article in the <i>Daily News</i>, in which Mr. Andrew Lang's +sign manual was not to be mistaken. Mr. Lang brought my somewhat +desultory discussion very neatly to a point. He admitted that we +habitually use "Americanism" as a term of reproach; "but," he asked, +"who is reproached? Not the American (who may do as he pleases) but the +English writer, who, in serious work, introduces, needlessly, an +American phrase into our literature. We say 'needlessly' when our +language already possesses a consecrated equivalent for the word or +idiom."</p> + +<p>In the first place, one has to remark that many English critics are far +from accepting Mr. Lang's principle that "the American may do as he +pleases, of course." Mr. Lang himself scarcely acts up to it in this +very article. And, for my part, I think the principle a false one. I +think the English language has been entrusted to the care of all of us, +English no less than Americans, Americans no less than English; and if I +find an American writer debasing it in an essential point, as opposed to +a point of mere local predilection, I assert my right to remonstrate +with him, just as I admit his right, under similar circumstances, to +remonstrate with me.</p> + +<p>It is not here, however, that I join issue with Mr. Lang: it is on his +theory that an English writer necessarily does wrong who unnecessarily +employs an Americanism. This is a question of great practical moment, +and I am glad that Mr. Lang has stated it in this definite form. My view +is perhaps sufficiently indicated above, but I take the opportunity of +reasserting it with all deliberation. I believe that, as a matter both +of literary and of social policy, we ought to encourage the free +infiltration of graphic and racy Americanisms into our vernacular, and +of vigorous and useful Americanisms (even if not absolutely necessary) +into our literary language. Where is the harm in duplicating terms, if +only the duplicates be in themselves good terms? For instance, take the +word "fall." Mr. Brander Matthews writes: "An American with a sense of +the poetic cannot but prefer to the imported word 'autumn' the native +and more logical word 'fall,' which the British have strangely suffered +to drop into disuse." Well, "autumn" was a sufficiently early +importation. "Our ancestors," wrote Lowell (quoted by Mr. Matthews in +the same article), "unhappily could bring over no English better than +Shakespeare's;" and in Shakespeare's (and Chaucer's) English they +brought over "autumn." The word has inherent beauty as well as splendid +poetical associations. I doubt whether even Shakespeare could have made +out of "fall" so beautiful a line as</p> + +<div class='poem'><div class='stanza'> +<span>"The teeming autumn, big with rich increase."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>I doubt whether Keats, had he written an <i>Ode to the Fall</i>, would have +produced quite such a miraculous poem as that which begins</p> + +<div class='poem'><div class='stanza'> +<span>"Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Still, Mr. Matthews is quite right in saying that "fall" has a poetic +value, a suggestion, an atmosphere of its own. I wonder, with him, why +we dropped it, and I see no smallest reason why we should not recover +it. The British literary patriotism which makes a point of never saying +"fall" seems to me just as mistaken as the American literary patriotism +(if such there be) that makes a merit of never saying "autumn." By +insisting on such localisms (for the exclusive preference for either +term is nothing more) we might, in process of time, bring about a +serious fissure in the language. Of course there is no reason why Mr. +Lang should force himself to use a word that is uncongenial to him; but +if "fall" is congenial to me, I think I ought to be allowed to use it +"without fear and without reproach."</p> + +<p>Take, now, a colloquialism. How formal and colourless is the English +phrase "I have enjoyed myself!" beside the American "I have had a good +time!" Each has its uses, no doubt. I am far from suggesting that the +one should drive out the other. It is precisely the advantage of our +linguistic position that it so enormously enlarges the stock of +semi-synonyms at our disposal. To reject a forcible Americanism merely +because we could, at a pinch, get on without it, is—Mr. Lang will +understand the forcible Scotticism—to "sin our mercies."</p> + +<p>Mr. Lang is under a certain illusion, I think, in his belief that in +hardening our hearts against Americanism's we should raise no barrier +between ourselves and the classical authors of America. He says: "Let us +remark that they [Americanisms] do not occur in Hawthorne, Poe, Lowell, +Longfellow, Prescott, and Emerson, except when these writers are +consciously reproducing conversations in dialect." He made the same +remark on a previous occasion; when his opponent (see the <i>Academy</i>, +March 30, 1895) opened a volume of Hawthorne and a volume of Emerson, +and in five minutes found in Hawthorne "He had named his two children, +one <i>for</i> Her Majesty and one <i>for</i> Prince Albert," and in Emerson +"Nature tells every secret once. Yes; but in man she tells it <i>all the +time</i>." The latter phrase is one which Mr. Lang explicitly puts under +his ban. He is an ingenious and admirable translator: I wish he would +translate Emerson's sentence from American into English, without loss of +brevity, directness, and simple Saxon strength. For my part, I can think +of nothing better than "In man she is always telling it," which strikes +me as a feeble makeshift. "All the time," I suggest, is precisely one of +the phrases we should accept with gratitude—if, indeed, it be not +already naturalised.</p> + +<p>Mr. Lang is peculiarly unfortunate in calling Oliver Wendell Holmes to +witness against his particular and pet aversion "I belong here" or "That +does not belong there." Writing of "needless Americanisms," he says, +"The use of 'belong' as a new auxiliary verb [an odd classification, by +the way] is an example of what we mean. Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes was a +stern opponent of such neologisms." I turn to the Oxford Dictionary, and +the one quotation I find under "belong" in this sense, is:—"'You belong +with the last set, and got accidentally shuffled with the others.'—<i>O.W. +Holmes, 'Elsie Venner</i>.'" But this, Mr. Lang may say, is in +dialogue. Yes, but not in dia<i>lect</i>. I am very much mistaken if the +locution does not occur elsewhere in Holmes. If Mr. Lang, in a leisure +hour, were to undertake a search for it, he might incidentally find +cause to modify his view as to the sternness of the Autocrat's +anti-Americanism.</p> + +<p>Let me not be thought to underrate the services which, by sound precept +and invaluable example, Mr. Lang has rendered to all of us who use the +English tongue. Conservatism and liberalism are as inevitable, nay, +indispensable, in the world of words as in the world of deeds; and I +trust Mr. Lang will not set down my liberalism as anarchism. He and I, +in this little discussion, are simply playing our allotted parts. I +believe (and Mr. Lang would probably admit with a shrug) that the forces +of the future are on my side. May I recall to him that charming anecdote +of Thackeray and Viscount Monck, when they were rival candidates for the +representation of Oxford in Parliament? They met in the street one day, +and exchanged a few words. On parting, Thackeray shook hands with his +opponent and said, "Good-bye; and may the best man win!" "I hope <i>not</i>," +replied Viscount Monck, with a bow. A hundred years hence, if some +English-speaker of the future should chance to disinter this book from +the recesses of the British Museum or the Library of Congress, and +should read these final paragraphs, I doubt not he will say—for the +immortal soul of the language even anarchism cannot affect—"the race is +not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong."</p> +<br /> + +<p>FOOTNOTES:</p> + +<a name='Footnote_V_22'></a><a href='#FNanchor_V_22'>[V]</a><div class='note'><p> Mr. Walkley reports that he has heard a Cockney policeman, +speaking of a street row, "There's been a little scrappin'."</p></div> + +<a name='Footnote_W_23'></a><a href='#FNanchor_W_23'>[W]</a><div class='note'><p> "About a dozen ringers followed us into the church and +stood around rubberin'." "Gettin' next to the new kinds o' saddles and +rubber-neckin' to read the names on the tyres."—<i>Artie</i>. A writer in +the New York <i>Sun</i> says: "I first heard the term 'rubbernecks' in +Arizona, about four years ago, applied to the throngs of onlookers in +the gambling-houses, who strove to get a better view of the games in +progress by stretching or bending their necks."</p></div> + +<a name='Footnote_X_24'></a><a href='#FNanchor_X_24'>[X]</a><div class='note'><p> "We didn't break into sassiety notes, but that cuts no ice +in our set."—<i>Artie</i>.</p></div> + +<a name='Footnote_Y_25'></a><a href='#FNanchor_Y_25'>[Y]</a><div class='note'><p> Extract from a letter to the <i>Chicago Evening Post</i>: "I do +not at all subscribe to the sneering remark of a talented author of my +acquaintance, to the effect that there were not enough cultured people +in Chicago to fill a grip-car. I asked him if he meant a grip-car and a +trailer, and he said, 'No; just one car.' And I told him right there +that I could not agree with him."</p></div> + +<br /> +<hr style='width: 65%;' /> +<p>THE END</p> + + + + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of America To-day, Observations and +Reflections, by William Archer + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AMERICA TO-DAY *** + +***** This file should be named 7997-h.htm or 7997-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/7/9/9/7997/ + +Produced by Karen Dalrymple and PG Distributed Proofreaders + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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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: America To-day, Observations and Reflections + +Author: William Archer + +Release Date: July 22, 2004 [EBook #7997] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AMERICA TO-DAY *** + + + + +Produced by Karen Dalrymple and PG Distributed Proofreaders + + + + + +AMERICA TO-DAY + +_OBSERVATIONS AND REFLECTIONS_ + +BY +WILLIAM ARCHER + +NEW YORK +CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS +1899 + + + + +CONTENTS + + +_PART I--OBSERVATIONS_ + +I. The Straits of New York--When is a Ship not a Ship?--Nationality of +Passengers--A Dream Realized + +II. Fog in New York Harbor--The Customs--The Note-Taker's +Hyperaesthesia--A Literary Car-Conductor--Mr. Kipling and the American +Public--The City of Elevators + +III. New York a much-maligned City--Its Charm--Mr. Steevens' +Antithesis--New York compared with Other Cities--Its +Slums--Advertisements--Architecture in New York and Philadelphia + +IV. Absence of Red Tape--"Rapid Transit" in New York--The Problem and +its Solution--The Whirl of Life--New York by Night--The "White Magic" of +the Future + +V. Character and Culture--American Universities--Is the American +"Electric" or Phlegmatic?--Alleged Laxity of the Family Tie--Postscript: +The University System + +VI. Washington in April--A Metropolis in the Making--The White House, +the Capitol, and the Library of Congress--The Symbolism of Washington + +VII. American Hospitality--Instances--Conversation and +Story-Telling--Overprofusion In Hospitality--Expensiveness of Life in +America--The American Barber--Postscript: An Anglo-American Club + +VIII. Boston--Its Resemblance to Edinburgh--Concord, Walden Pond, and +Sleepy Hollow--Is the "Yankee" Dying Out?--America for the +Americans--Detroit and Buffalo--The "Middle West" + +IX. Chicago--Its Splendour and Squalour--Mammoth Buildings--Wind, Dust, +and Smoke--Culture--Chicago's Self-Criticism--Postscript: Social Service +in America + +X. New York in Spring--Central Park--New York not an Ill-Governed +City--The United States Post Office--The Express System--Valedictory + + +_PART II--REFLECTIONS_ + +North and South, I + +North and South, II + +North and South, III + +North and South, IV + +The Republic and The Empire, I + +The Republic and The Empire, II + +The Republic and The Empire, III + +The Republic and The Empire, IV + +American Literature + +The American Language, I + +The American Language, II + +The American Language, III + +The American Language, IV + + + +The letters and essays which make up this volume appeared in the +London _Pall Mall Gazette_ and _Pall Mall Magazine_ respectively, and +are reprinted by kind permission of the editors of these periodicals. +The ten letters which were sent to the _Pall Mall Gazette_ appeared also +in the _New York Times_. + + + + +PART I + +OBSERVATIONS + + + + +LETTER I + +The Straits of New York--When is a Ship not a Ship?--Nationality of +Passengers--A Dream Realized. + + +R.M.S. _Lucania_. + +The Atlantic Ocean is geographically a misnomer, socially and +politically a dwindling superstition. That is the chief lesson one +learns--and one has barely time to take it in--between Queenstown and +Sandy Hook. Ocean forsooth! this little belt of blue water that we cross +before we know where we are, at a single hop-skip-and-jump! From north +to south, perhaps, it may still count as an ocean; from east to west we +have narrowed it into a strait. Why, even for the seasick (and on this +point I speak with melancholy authority) the Atlantic has not half the +terrors of the Straits of Dover; comfort at sea being a question, not of +the size of the waves, but of the proportion between the size of the +waves and the size of the ship. Our imagination is still beguiled by the +fuss the world made over Columbus, whose exploit was intellectually and +morally rather than physically great. The map-makers, too, throw dust +in our eyes by their absurd figment of two "hemispheres," as though +Nature had sliced her orange in two, and held one half in either hand. +We are slow to realise, in fact, that time is the only true measure of +space, and that London to-day is nearer to New York than it was to +Edinburgh a hundred and fifty years ago. The essential facts of the +case, as they at present stand, would come home much more closely to the +popular mind of both continents if we called this strip of sea the +Straits of New York, and classed our liners, not as the successors of +Columbus's caravels, but simply as what they are: giant ferry-boats +plying with clockwork punctuality between the twin landing-stages of the +English-speaking world. + +To-morrow we shall be in New York harbour; it seems but yesterday that +we slipped out of the Cove of Cork. As I look at the chart on the +companion staircase, where our daily runs are marked off, I feel the +abject poverty of our verbs of speed. We have not rushed, or dashed, or +hurtled along--these words do grave injustice to the majesty of our +progress. I can think of nothing but the strides of some Titan, so vast +as to beggar even the myth-making imagination. It is not seven-league, +no, nor hundred-league boots that we wear--we do our 520, 509, 518, 530 +knots at a stride. Nor is it to be imagined that we are anywhere near +the limit of speed. Already the _Lucania's_ record is threatened by the +_Oceanic_; and the _Oceanic_, if she fulfils her promises, will only +spur on some still swifter Titan to the emprise.[A] Then, again, it is +hard to believe that the difficulties are insuperable which as yet +prevent us from utilising, as a point of arrival and departure, that +almost mid-Atlantic outpost of the younger world, Newfoundland--or at +the least Nova Scotia. By this means the actual waterway between the two +continents will be shortened by something like a third. What with the +acceleration of the ferry-boats and the narrowing of the ferry, it is +surely no visionary Jules-Vernism to look forward to the time when one +may set foot on American soil, within, say, sixty-five hours of leaving +the Liverpool landing-stage; supposing, that is to say, that steam +navigation be not in the meantime superseded. + +As yet, to be sure, the Atlantic possesses a certain strategic +importance as a coal-consuming force. To contract its time-width we have +to expand our coal-bunkers; and the ship which has crossed it in six +days, be she ferryboat or cruiser, is apt to arrive, as it were, a +little out of breath. But even this drawback can scarcely be permanent. +Science must presently achieve the storage of motive-power in some less +bulky form than that of crude coal. Then the Atlantic will be as +extinct, politically, as the Great Wall of China; or, rather, it will +retain for America the abiding significance which the "silver streak" +possesses for England--an effectual bulwark against aggression, but a +highway to influence and world-moulding power. + +Think of the time when the _Lucania_ shall have fallen behind in the +race, and shall be plying to Boston or Philadelphia, while larger and +swifter hotel-ships shall put forth almost daily from Liverpool, +Southampton, and New York! Think of the growth of intercourse which even +the next ten years will probably bring, and the increase of mutual +comprehension involved in it! Is it an illusion of mine, or do we not +already observe in England, during the past year, a new interest and +pride in our trans-Atlantic service, which now ranks close to the Navy +in the popular affections? It dates, I think, from those first days of +the late war, when the _Paris_ was vainly supposed to be in danger of +capture by Spanish cruisers, and when all England was wishing her +god-speed. + +For my own taste, this sumptuous hotel-ship is rather too much of a +hotel and too little of a ship. I resent the absolute exclusion of the +passengers from even the most distant view of the propelling and guiding +forces. Practically, the _Lucania_ is a ship without a deck; and the +deck is to the ship what the face is to the human being. The so-called +promenade-deck is simply a long roofed balcony on either side of the +hotel building. It is roofed by the "shade deck," which is rigidly +reserved "for navigators only." There the true life of the ship goes on, +and we are vouchsafed no glimpse of it. One is reminded of the +Chinaman's description of a three-masted screw steamer with two funnels: +"Thlee piecee bamboo, two piecee puff-puff, walk-along inside, no can +see." Here the "walk-along," the motive power, is "inside" with a +vengeance. I have not at this moment the remotest conception where the +engine-room is, or where lies the descent to that Avernus. Not even the +communicator-gong can be heard in the hotel. I have not set eyes on an +engineer or a stoker, scarcely on a sailor. The captain I do not even +know by sight. Occasionally an officer flits past, on his way up to or +down from the "shade deck"; I regard him with awe, and guess reverently +at his rank. The ship's company, as I know it, consists of the purser, +the doctor, and the army of stewards and stewardesses. The roof of the +promenade-deck weighs upon my brain. It shuts off the better half of the +sky, the zenith. In order even to see the masts and funnels of the ship +one has to go far forward or far aft and crane one's neck upward. Not a +single human being have I ever descried on the "shade-deck" or on the +towering bridge. The genii of the hundred-league boots remain not only +inaccessible but invisible. The effect is inhuman, uncanny. All the +luxury of the saloons and staterooms does not compensate for the lack of +a frank, straightforward deck. The _Lucania_, in my eyes, has no +individuality as a ship. It--I instinctively say "it," not "she"--is +merely a rather low-roofed hotel, with sea-sickness superadded to all +the comforts of home. But a first-class hotel it is: the living good +and plentiful, if not superfine, the service excellent, and the charges, +all things considered, remarkably moderate. + +What chiefly strikes one about the passengers is their homogeneity of +race. Apart from a small (but influential) Semitic contingent, the whole +body is thoroughly Anglo-Saxon in type. About half are British, I take +it, and half American; but in most cases the nationality is to be +distinguished only by accent, not by any characteristic of appearance or +of demeanour. The strongly-marked Semites always excepted, there is not +a man or woman among the saloon passengers who strikes me as a +foreigner, a person of alien race. I do not feel my sympathies chill +toward my very agreeable table-companion because he drinks ice-water at +breakfast; and he views my tea with an eye of equal tolerance. It is not +till one looks at the second-class passengers that one sees signs of the +heterogeneity of the American people; and then one remembers with +misgivings the emigrants who crowded on board at Queenstown, with their +household goods done up in bundles and gaping, ill-roped boxes. The +thought of them recalls an anecdote which was new to me the other day, +and may be fresh to some of my readers. In any case it will bear +repetition. An Irishman coming to America for the first time, found New +York gay with bunting as he sailed up the harbour. He asked an American +fellow-passenger the reason of the display, and was told it was in +honour of Evacuation Day. "And what's that?" he inquired. "Why, the day +the British troops evacuated New York." Presently an Englishman came up +to the Irishman and asked him if he knew what the flags were for. "For +Evacuation Day, to be sure!" was the reply. "What is Evacuation Day?" +asked the Sassenach. "The day we drove you blackguards out of the +country, bedad!" was the immediate reply. If not literally true, the +story is at least profoundly typical. + +There is a light on our starboard bow: my first glimpse, for two and +twenty years, of America. It has been literally the dream of my life to +revisit the United States. Not once, but fifty times, have I dreamed +that the ocean (which loomed absurdly large even in my waking thoughts) +was comfortably crossed, and I was landing in New York. I can clearly +recall at this moment some of the fantastic shapes the city put on in +my dreams--utterly different, of course, from my actual recollections of +it. Well, that dream is now realised; the gates of the Western world are +opening to me. What experience awaits me I know not; but this I do know, +that the emotion with which I confront it is not one of idle curiosity, +or even of calmly sympathetic interest. It is not primarily to my +intelligence, but to my imagination, that the word "America" appeals. To +many people that word conveys none but prosaic associations; to me it is +electric with romance. Only one other word in existence can give me a +comparable thrill; the word one sees graven on a roadside pillar as one +walks down the southern slope of an Alpine pass: ITALIA. But that word +carries the imagination backward only, whereas AMERICA stands for the +meeting-place of the past and the future. What the land of Cooper and +Mayne Reid was to my boyish fancy, the land of Washington and Lincoln, +Hawthorne and Emerson, is to my adult thoughts. Does this mean that I +approach America in the temper of a romantic schoolboy? Perhaps; but, +bias for bias, I would rather own to that of the romantic schoolboy than +to that of the cynical Old-Worldling. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote A: The _Oceanic_, it appears, is designed to break the record +in punctuality, not in speed. Nevertheless there are several indications +that our engineers are not resting on their oars, but will presently put +on another spurt. The very shortest Atlantic passage, I understand, has +been made by a German ship. Surely England and America cannot long be +content to leave the record for speed, of all things, in the hands of +Germany.] + + + + +LETTER II + +Fog in New York Harbour--The Customs--The Note-Taker's Hyperaesthesia--a +Literary Car-Conductor--Mr. Kipling and the American Public--The City of +Elevators. + + +NEW YORK. + +By way of making us feel quite at home, New-York receives us with a dank +Scotch mist. On the shores of Staten Island the leafless trees stand out +grey and gaunt against the whity-grey snow, a legacy, no doubt, from the +great blizzard. Though I keep a sharp look-out, I can descry no Liberty +Enlightening the World. Liberty (_absit omen!_) is wrapped away in grimy +cotton-wool. There, however, are the "sky-scraper" buildings, looming +out through the mist, like the Jotuns in Niflheim of Scandinavian +mythology. They are grandiose, certainly, and not, to my thinking, ugly. +That word has no application in this context. "Pretty" and "ugly"--why +should we for ever carry about these aesthetic labels in our pockets, and +insist on dabbing them down on everything that comes in our way? If we +cannot get, with Nietzsche, _Jenseits von Gut und Boese_, we might at +least allow our souls an occasional breathing-space in a region "Back of +the Beautiful and the Ugly," as they say in President's English. While I +am trying to formulate my feelings with regard to this deputation of +giants which the giant Republic sends down to the waterside to welcome +us, behold, we have crept up abreast of the Cunard wharf, and there +stands a little crowd of human welcomers, waving handkerchiefs and +American flags. An energetic tug-boat butts her head gallantly into the +flank of the huge liner, in order to help her round. She glides up to +her berth, the gangway is run out, and at last I set foot upon +American--lumber. + +What are my emotions? I have only one; single, simple, easily-expressed: +dread of the United States Custom House. Its terrors and its tyrannies +have been depicted in such lurid colours on the other side that I am +almost surprised to observe no manifest ogres in uniform caps, but only, +it would seem, ordinary human beings. And, on closer acquaintanceship, +they prove to be civil and even helpful human beings, with none of the +lazy superciliousness which so often characterises the European +toll-taker. At first the scene is chaotic enough, but, by aid of an +arrangement in alphabetical groups, cosmos soon emerges. The system by +which you declare your dutiable goods and are assigned an examiner, and +if necessary an appraiser, is admirably simple and free from red-tape. I +shall not describe it, for it would be more tedious in description than +in act. Enough that the whole thing is conducted, so far as I could see, +promptly, efficiently, and with perfect good temper. One brief +discussion I heard, between an official and an American citizen, who was +heavily assessed on some article or articles which he declared to have +been manufactured in America and taken out of the country by himself +only a few months before. The official insisted that there was no proof +of this; but just as the discussion threatened to become an altercation +(a "scrap" they would call it here) some one found a way out. The goods +were forwarded in bond to the traveller's place of residence (Hartford, +I think) where he declared that he could produce proof of their American +origin. For myself, I had to pay two dollars and a half on some +magic-lantern slides. I could have imported the lantern, had I owned +one, free of charge, as a philosophical instrument used in my +profession; but the courts have held, it appears, that though the +lantern comes under that rubric, the slides do not. I cannot pretend to +grasp the distinction, or to admire the system which necessitates it. +But whatever the economic merits or demerits of the tariff, I take +pleasure in bearing testimony to the civility with which I found it +enforced. + +My companion and I express our baggage to our hotel and jump on the +platform of a horse-car on West-street, skirting the wharves. The +roadway is ill paved, certainly, and the clammy atmosphere has congealed +on its surface into an oily black mud; while in the middle of the side +streets one can see relics of the blizzard in the shape of little grubby +glaciers slowly oozing away. The prospect is not enlivening; nor do the +low brick houses, given up to nondescript longshore traffic, and freely +punctuated with gilt-lettered saloons, add to its impressiveness. +Squalid it is without doubt, this particular aspect of New York; but +what is the squalor of West-street to that of Limehouse or Poplar? Are +our own dock thoroughfares always paved to perfection? And if we had a +blizzard like that of three weeks ago, how long would its vestiges +linger in the side-streets of Millwall? Even as I mark the grimness of +the scene, I am conscious of a sort of hyperaesthesia against which one +ought to be on guard. The note-taking traveller is very apt to forget +that the mere act of note-taking upsets his normal perceptivity. He +becomes feverishly observant, morbidly critical. He compares +incommensurables, and flies to ideal standpoints. He is so eager to +descry differences, that he overlooks similarities--nay, identities. +Thus only can I account for many statements about New York, occurring in +the pages of recent and reputable travellers, both French and English, +which I find to be exaggerated almost to the point of monstrosity. What +should we say of an American who should criticise the Commercial Road +from the point of view of Fifth Avenue? After a week's experience of New +York, I cannot but fancy that certain travellers I could mention have +been guilty of similar errors of proportion. + +To return to our street-car platform. The conductor gathers from our +conversation that we have just landed from the English steamer, and he +at once overflows upon the one great topic of all classes in New York. +"I s'pose you've heard," he says, "that Kipling has been very ill?" Yes, +we had heard of his illness before we left England. "He's pulling +through now, though," says the conductor with heartfelt satisfaction. +That, too, we had ascertained on board. "He ought to be the next +poet-laureate," our friend continues eagerly; "_he_ don't follow no +beaten tracks. He cuts a road for himself, every time, right through; +and a mighty good road, too." He then proceeded to make some remarks, +which in the rattle of the street I did not quite catch, about +"carpet-bag knights." I gathered that he held a low opinion of the +present wearer of the bays, and confounded him (not inexcusably) with +one or other of his titled compeers. My companion and I were too much +taken aback to pursue the theme and ascertain our friend's opinions on +Mr. Ruskin, Mr. Meredith, Mrs. Humphry Ward, and Miss Marie Corelli. +Think of it! We have travelled three thousand miles to find a +tram-conductor whose eyes glisten as he tells us that Kipling is better, +and who discusses with a great deal of sense and acuteness the question +of the English poet-laureateship! Could anything be more marvellous or +more significant? Said I not well when I declared the Atlantic Ocean of +less account than the Straits of Dover? + +This was indeed a welcome to the New World. Fate could not have devised +a more ingenious and at the same time tactful way of making us feel at +home; though at home, indeed, a Mile End 'bus conductor is scarcely the +authority one would turn to for enlightened views upon the Laureateship. +The mere fact of our friend's having heard of Mr. Kipling's existence +struck us as surprising enough, until we learned that the poet of Tommy +Atkins is at the present moment quite the most famous person in the +United States. When his illness was at its height, hourly bulletins were +posted in factories and workshops, and people meeting in the streets +asked each other, "How is he?" without deeming it necessary to supply an +antecedent to the pronoun. It was grammatically as well as spiritually a +case of "Kipling understood." + +At a low music-hall into which I strayed one evening, one of the nigger +corner-men sang a song of which the nature may be sufficiently divined +from the refrain, "And the tom-cat was the cause of it all." This lyric +being loudly encored, the performer came forward, and, to my +astonishment, began to recite a long series of doggerel verses upon Mr. +Kipling's illness, setting forth how + + "His strong will made him famous, and his strong will pulled him + through." + +They were imbecile, they were maudlin, they were in the worst possible +taste. So far as the reciter was concerned, they were absolutely +insincere clap-trap. But the crowded audience received them with +rapture; and the very fact that an astute caterer should serve up this +particular form of clap-trap showed how the sympathy with Mr. Kipling +had permeated even the most un-literary stratum of the public. To an +Englishman, nothing can be more touching than to find on every hand this +enthusiastic affection for the poet of the Seven Seas--a writer, too, +who has not dealt over-tenderly with American susceptibilities, and has, +by sheer force of genius, lived down a good deal of unpopularity. + +For the moment, neither President McKinley nor Mr. Fitzsimmons can vie +with him in notoriety. His sole rival as a popular hero is Admiral +Dewey, whose name is in every mouth and on every boarding. He is the one +living celebrity whom the Italian image-vendors admit to their pantheon, +where he rubs shoulders with Shakespeare, Dante, Beethoven, and the +Venus of Milo. It is related that, at a Camp of Exercise last year, +President McKinley chanced to stray beyond bounds, and on returning was +confronted by a sentry, who dropped his rifle and bade him halt. "I have +forgotten the pass-word," said Mr. McKinley, "but if you will look at +me you will see that I am the President." "If you were George Dewey +himself," was the reply, "you shouldn't get by here without the +pass-word." This anecdote has a flavour of ancient history, but it is +aptly brought up to date.[B] + +We bid adieu to our poetical conductor, take a cross-town car, and are +presently pushing at the revolving doors--a draught-excluding +plate-glass turn-stile--of a vast red-brick hotel, luxurious and +labyrinthine. A short colloquy with the clerk at the bureau, and we find +ourselves in a gorgeously upholstered elevator, whizzing aloft to the +thirteenth floor. Not the top floor--far from it. If you could slice off +the stories above the thirteenth, as you slice off the top of an egg, +and plant them down in Europe, they would of themselves make a biggish +hotel according to our standards. This first elevator voyage is the +prelude to how many others! For the past week I seem to have spent the +best part of my time in elevators. I must have travelled miles on miles +at right angles to the earth's surface. If all my ascensions could be +put together, they would out-top Olympus and make Ossa a wart. + +This is the first sensation of life in New York--you feel that the +Americans have practically added a new dimension to space. They move +almost as much on the perpendicular as on the horizontal plane. When +they find themselves a little crowded, they simply tilt a street on end +and call it a sky scraper. This hotel, for example (the +Waldorf-Astoria), is nothing but a couple of populous streets soaring up +into the air instead of crawling along the ground. When I was here in +1877, I remember looking with wonder at the _Tribune_ building, hard by +the Post Office, which was then considered a marvel of architectural +daring. Now it is dwarfed into absolute insignificance by a dozen +Cyclopean structures on every hand. It looks as diminutive as the +Adelphi Terrace in contrast with the Hotel Cecil. I am credibly informed +that in some of the huge down-town buildings they run "express" +elevators, which do not stop before the fifteenth, eighteenth, twentieth +floor, as the case may be. Some such arrangement seems very necessary, +for the elevator _Bummelzugs_, which stop at every floor, take quite an +appreciable slice out of the average New York day. I wonder that +American ingenuity has not provided a system of pneumatic +passenger-tubes for lightning communication with these aerial suburbs, +these "mansions in the sky." + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote B: A similar story is told of the Confederate President. +Challenged by a sentinel, he said, "Look at me and you will see that I +am President Davis." "Well," said the soldier, "you _do_ look like a +used postage-stamp. Pass, President Davis!"] + + + + +LETTER III + +New York a much-maligned City--Its Charm--Mr. Steevens' Antitheses--New +York compared with Other Cities--Its Slums--Advertisements--Architecture +in New York and Philadelphia. + + +NEW YORK. + +Many superlatives have been applied to New York by her own children, by +the stranger within her gates, and by the stranger without her gates, at +a safe distance. I, a newcomer, venture to apply what I believe to be a +new superlative, and to call her the most maligned city in the world. +Even sympathetic observers have exaggerated all that is uncouth, +unbeautiful, unhealthy in her life, and overlooked, as it seems to me, +her all-pervading charm. One must be a pessimist indeed to feel no +exhilaration on coming in contact with such intensity of upward-striving +life as meets one on every hand in this league-long island city, +stretching oceanward between her eastern Sound and her western estuary, +and roofed by a radiant dome of smokeless sky. "Upward-striving life," I +say, for everywhere and in every branch of artistic effort the desire +for beauty is apparent, while at many points the achievement is +remarkable and inspiriting. I speak, of course, mainly of material +beauty; but it is hard to believe that so marked an impulse toward the +good as one notes in architecture, painting, sculpture, and literature, +can be unaccompanied by a cognate impulse toward moral beauty, even in +relation to civic life. The New Yorker's pride in New York is much more +alert and active than the Londoner's pride in London; and this feeling +must ere long make itself effective and dominant. For the great +advantage, it seems to me, that America possesses over the Old World is +its material and moral plasticity. Even among the giant structures of +this city, one feels that there is nothing rigid, nothing oppressive, +nothing inaccessible to the influence of changing conditions. If the +buildings are Cyclopean, so is the race that reared them. The material +world seems as clay on the potter's wheel, visibly taking on the impress +of the human spirit; and the human spirit, as embodied in this superbly +vital people, seems to be visibly thrilling to all the forces of +civilisation. + +One of the latest, and certainly one of the most keen-sighted, of +English travellers in America is Mr. G.W. Steevens, a master journalist +if ever there was one. I turn to his _Land of the Dollar_ and I find New +York writ down "uncouth, formless, piebald, chaotic." "Never have I +seen," says Mr. Steevens, "a city more hideous.... Nothing is given to +beauty; everything centres in hard utility." Mr. Steevens must forgive +me for saying that this is simply libellous. It is true, I do not quote +him fairly: I omit his laudatory antitheses. The truncated phrase in the +above passage reads in the original "more hideous or more splendid," and +after averring that "nothing is given to beauty," Mr. Steevens +immediately proceeds to celebrate the beauty of many New York buildings. +Are we to understand, then, that the architects thought of nothing but +"hard utility," and that it was some aesthetic divinity that shaped their +blocks, rough-hew them how they might? For my part, I cannot see how +truth is to result from the clash of contradictory falsehoods. There are +a few cities more splendid than New York; many more hideous. In point of +concentrated architectural magnificence, there is nothing in New York to +compare with the Vienna Ringstrasse, from the Opera House to the Votive +Church. + +In the splendour which proceeds from ordered uniformity and +spaciousness, Paris is, of course, incomparable; while a Scotchman may +perhaps be excused for holding that, as regards splendour of situation, +Edinburgh is hard to beat. Nor is there any single prospect in New York +so impressive as the panorama of London from Waterloo Bridge, when it +happens to be visible--that imperial sweep of river frontage from the +Houses of Parliament to the Tower. Except in the new region, far up the +Hudson, New York shares with Dublin the disadvantage of turning her +meaner aspects to her river fronts, though the majesty of the rivers +themselves, and the grandiose outlines of the Brooklyn Bridge, largely +compensate for this defect. In the main, then, the splendour of New York +is as yet sporadic. It is emerging on every hand from comparative +meanness and commonplace. At no point can one as yet say, "This prospect +is finer than anything Europe can show." But everywhere there are purple +patches of architectural splendour; and one can easily foresee the time +when Fifth Avenue, the whole circuit of Central Park, and the up-town +riverside region will be magnificent beyond compare. + +As for the superlative hideousness attributed by Mr. Steevens to New +York, I can only inquire, in the local idiom: "What is the matter with +Glasgow?" Or, indeed, with Hull? or Newcastle? or the north-east regions +of London? No doubt New York contains some of the very worst slums in +the world. That melancholy distinction must be conceded her. But simply +to the outward eye the slums of New York have not the monotonous +hideousness of our English "warrens of the poor." In spite of her hard +winter, New York cannot quite forget that her latitude is that of Madrid +and Naples, not of London, or even of Paris. Her slums have a Southern +air about them, a variety of contour and colour--in some aspects one +might almost say a gaiety--unknown to Whitechapel or Bethnal Green. For +one thing, the ubiquitous balconies and fire escapes serve of themselves +to break the monotony of line, and lend, as it were, a peculiar texture +to the scene; to say nothing of the oportunities they afford for the +display of multifarious shreds and patches of colour. Then the houses +themselves are often brightly, not to say loudly, painted; so that in +the clear, sparkling atmosphere characteristic of New York, the most +squalid slum puts on a many-coloured Southern aspect, which suggests +Naples or Marseilles rather than the back streets of any English city. +Add to this that the inhabitants are largely of Southern origin, and are +apt, whenever the temperature will permit, to carry on the main part of +their daily lives out of doors; and you can understand that, appalling +as poverty may be in New York, the average slum is not so dank, dismal, +and suicidally monotonous as a street of a similar status in London. + +"The whole city," says Mr. Steevens, "is plastered, and papered, and +painted with advertisements;" and he instances the huge "H-O" (whatever +that may mean) which confronts one as one sails up the harbour, and the +omnipresent "Castoria" placards. Here Mr. Steevens shows symptoms of the +note-taker's hyperaesthesia. The facts he states are undeniable, but the +implication that advertisement is carried to greater excess in New York +than in London and other European cities seems to me utterly groundless. +The "H-O" advertisement is not one whit more monstrous than, for +instance, the huge announcements of cheap clothing-shops, &c., painted +all over the ends of houses, that deface the railway approaches to +Paris; nor is it so flagrant and aggressive as the illuminated +advertisements of whisky and California wines that vulgarise the august +spectacle of the Thames by night. It is true that the proprietors of +"Castoria" have occupied nearly every blank wall that is visible from +Brooklyn Bridge; but their advertisements are so far from garish that I +should scarcely have noticed them had not Mr. Steevens called my +attention to them. Sky-signs, as Mr. Steevens admits, are unknown in New +York; so are the flashing out-and-in electric advertisements which make +night hideous in London. One or two large steady-burning advertisements +irradiate Madison Square of an evening; but being steady they are +comparatively inoffensive. Twenty years ago, when I crossed the +continent from San Francisco, I noticed with disgust the advertisements +stencilled on every second rock in the canyons of Nevada, and defacing +every coign of vantage around Niagara. Whether this abuse continues I +know not; but I know that the pill placards and sauce puffs which +blossom in our English meadows along every main line of railway are +quite as offensive. Far be it from me to deny that advertising is +carried to deplorable excesses in America; but in picking this out as a +differentia, Mr. Steevens shows that his intentness of observation in +New York has for the moment dimmed his mental vision of London. It is a +case, I fancy, in which the expectation was father to the thought. + +Similarly, Mr. Steevens notes, "No chiropodist worthy of the name but +keeps at his door a modelled human foot the size of a cab-horse; and +other trades go and do likewise." The "cab-horse" is a monumental +exaggeration; but it is true that some chiropodists use as a sign a foot +of colossal proportions--the size of a small sheep, let us say, if we +must adopt a zoological standard. So far good; but the implication that +the streets of New York swarm, like a scene in a harlequinade, with +similarly Brobdingnagian signs is quite unfounded. Thus it is, I think, +that travellers are apt to seize on isolated eccentricities or +extravagances (have we no monstrous signs in England?) and treat them as +typical. Mr. Steevens came to America prepared to find everything +gigantic, and the chiropodist's foot so agreeably fulfilled his +expectation that he thought it unnecessary to look any further--"ex pede +Herculem."[C] + +The architecture of New York, according to Mr. Steevens, is "the +outward expression of the freest, fiercest individualism.... Seeing it, +you can well understand the admiration of an American for something +ordered and proportioned--for the Rue de Rivoli or Regent Street." I +heard this admiration emphatically expressed the other day by one of the +foremost and most justly famous of American authors; but, unlike Mr. +Steevens, I could not understand it. "What!" I said, "you would +Haussmannise New York! You would reduce the glorious variety of Fifth +Avenue to the deadly uniformity of the Avenue de l'Opera, where each +block of buildings reproduces its neighbour, as though they had all been +stamped by one gigantic die!" Such an architectural ideal is +inconceivable to me. It is all very well for a few short streets, for a +square or two, for a quadrant like that of Regent Street, or a crescent +or circus like those of Bath or Edinburgh. But to apply it throughout a +whole quarter of a city, or even throughout the endless vistas of a +great American street, would be simply maddening. Better the most +heaven-storming or sky-scraping audacity of individualism than any +attempt to transform New York into a Fourierist phalanstery or a model +prison. I do not doubt that there will one day be some legal restriction +on Towers of Babel, and that the hygienic disadvantages of the +microbe-breeding "well" or air-shaft will be more fully recognised than +they are at present. A time may come, too, when the ideal of an unforced +harmony in architectural groupings may replace the now dominant instinct +of aggressive diversity. But whatever developments the future may have +in store, I must own my gratitude to the "fierce individualism" of the +present for a new realisation of the possibilities of architectural +beauty in modern life. At almost every turn in New York, one comes +across some building that gives one a little shock of pleasure. +Sometimes, indeed, it is the pleasure of recognising an old friend in a +new place--a patch of Venice or a chunk of Florence transported bodily +to the New World. The exquisite tower of the Madison Square Garden, for +instance, is modelled on that of the Giralda, at Seville; while the new +University Club, on Fifth Avenue, is simply a Florentine fortress-palace +of somewhat disproportionate height. But along with a good deal of sheer +reproduction of European models, one finds a great deal of ingenious +and inventive adaptation, to say nothing of a very delicate taste in the +treatment of detail. New York abounds, it is true, with monuments of +more than one bygone and detestable period of architectural fashion; but +they are as distinctly survivals from a dead past as is the wooden +shanty which occupies one of the best sites on Fifth Avenue, in the very +shadow of the new Delmonico's. I wish tasteless, conventional, and +machine-made architecture were as much of a "back-number" in England as +it is here. A practised observer could confidently date any prominent +building in New York, to within a year or two, by its architectural +merit; and the greater the merit the later the year. + +In short, architecture is here a living art. Go where you will in these +up-town regions, you can see imagination and cultured intelligence in +the act, as it were, of impressing beauty of proportion and detail upon +brick and terra-cotta, granite and marble. And domestic or middle-class +architecture is not neglected. The American "master builders" do not +confine themselves to towers and palaces, but give infinite thought and +loving care to "homes for human beings." The average old-fashioned New +York house, so far as I have seen it, is externally unattractive (the +characteristic material, a sort of coffee-coloured stone, being truly +hideous), and internally dark, cramped, and stuffy. But modern houses, +even of no special pretensions, are generally delightful, with their +polished wood floors and fittings, and their airy suites of rooms. The +American architect has a great advantage over his English colleague in +the fact that in furnace-heated houses only the bedrooms require to be +shut off with doors. The halls and public rooms can be grouped so that, +when the curtains hung in their wide doorways are drawn back, two, +three, or four rooms are open to the eye at once, and charming effects +of space and light-and-shade can be obtained. Of this advantage the +modern house-planner makes excellent use, and I have seen more than one +quite modest family house which, without any sacrifice of comfort, gives +one a sense of almost palatial spaciousness. An architectural exhibition +which I saw the other day proved that equal or even greater care and +attention is being bestowed upon the country house, in which a +characteristically American style is being developed, mainly founded, I +take it, upon the suave and graceful classicism of Colonial +architecture. The wide "piazza" is its most noteworthy feature, and the +opportunity it offers for beautiful cloister-work is being utilised to +the full. Furthermore, the large attendance at the exhibition showed +what a keen interest the public takes in the art--a symptom of high +vitality. + +In Philadelphia, too, where I spent some time last week, there is a good +deal of exquisite architecture to be seen. The old Philadelphia dwelling +house, "simplex munditiis," with its plain red-brick front and white +marble steps, has a peculiar charm for me; but it, of course, is not a +product of the present movement. I do not know the date of some lovely +white marble palazzetti scattered about the Rittenhouse Square region; +but the Art Club on Broad Street, and the Houston Club for Students of +the University of Pennsylvania, are both quite recent buildings, and +both very beautiful. I could mention several other buildings that are, +as they say here, "pretty good" (a phrase of high commendation); but I +had better get safely out of New York before I enlarge on the merits of +Philadelphia. There is only one city the New Yorker despises more than +Philadelphia, and that is Brooklyn. The New York schoolboy speaks of +Philadelphia as "the place the chestnuts go to when they die;" and to +the most popular wit in New York at this moment (an Americanised +Englishman, by the way) is attributed the saying, "Mr. So-and-so has +three daughters--two alive, and one in Philadelphia." Six different +people have related this gibe to me; it is only less admired than the +same gentleman's observation as he alighted from an electric car at the +further end of the Suspension Bridge, when he heaved a deep sigh, and +remarked, "In the midst of life we are in Brooklyn." Another favourite +anecdote in New York is that of the Philadelphian who went to a doctor +and complained of insomnia. The doctor gave him a great deal of sage +advice as to diet, exercise, and so forth, concluding, "If after that +you haven't better nights, let me see you again." "But you mistake, +doctor," the patient replied; "I sleep all right at night--it's in the +daytime I can't sleep!" + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote C: One method of advertisement which I observed in Chicago has +not yet, so far as I know, been introduced into England. One of the +windows of a vast dry-goods store on State Street was fitted up as a +dentists parlour; and when I passed a young lady was reclining in the +operating-chair and having her teeth stopped, to the no small +delectation of a little crowd which blocked the side-walk.] + + + + +LETTER IV + +Absence of Red Tape--"Rapid Transit" in New York--The Problem and its +Solution--The Whirl of Life--New York by Night--The "White Magic" of the +Future. + + +NEW YORK. + +Whatever turn her fiscal policy may take in the future, I hope America +will keep an absolutely prohibitive duty upon the import of red tape, +while at the same time discouraging the home manufacture of the article. +The absence of red tape is, to me, one of the charms of life in this +country. One gathers, indeed, that the art of running a Circumlocution +Office is carried to a high pitch in the political sphere. But there it +is exercised with a definite object; it is a means to an end, cunningly +devised and skillfully applied; it is not a mere matter of instinct, +inertia, and routine. The Tite Barnacles of Dickens's satire were +perfectly honest people according to their lights. They were sincerely +convinced that the British Empire would crumble to pieces the moment +its ligaments of red tape were in the slightest degree relaxed. Their +strength lay in the fact that they represented an innate tendency in the +nation, or at any rate in the dominant class at the period of which +Dickens wrote. In America there is no such innate tendency. The Tite +Barnacles do not imagine or pretend that they are saving the Republic; +they simply make use of a convenient political machinery to serve their +private ends. Therefore their position, however strong it may seem for +the moment, is insecurely founded. It rests upon no moral basis, it +finds no stronghold in the national character. Outsiders may think the +average American citizen strangely tolerant of abuses, and indeed I find +him smiling with placid amusement at things which, were I in his place, +would make my blood boil. But he is under no illusion as to the real +nature of these things. An abuse remains an abuse in his eyes, though he +may not for the moment see his way to rectifying it. The red tape which +is used to embarrass justice or "tie up" reform commands no reverence +even from the party that employs it. Cynicism may endure for the night, +but indignation ariseth in the morning. + +The American character, in a word, does not naturally run to red tape. +Observe, for instance, the system of transit in New York: it is +admirably successful in grappling with a very difficult problem, and its +success proceeds from the absence of by-laws and restrictions, the +omnipresence of good-nature and common-sense. The problem is rendered +difficult, not only by the enormous numbers to be conveyed, but by the +stocking-like configuration of Manhattan Island. The business quarter of +New York is in the foot, the residential quarters in the calf and knee. +Therefore there is a great rush of people down to the foot in the +morning and up to the knee in the afternoon. The business quarter of +London is like the hub of a wheel, from which the railway and omnibus +lines radiate like spokes. In New York there is very little radiation or +dispersion of the multitude. Practically the whole tide sets down a +narrow channel in the morning, and up again in the evening. At the time, +then, of these tidal waves, it is a flat impossibility that transit can +be altogether comfortable. The "elevated" trains and electric trolleys +are overcrowded, certainly; but you can always find a place in them, and +they carry you so rapidly that the discomfort is rendered as little +irksome as possible. A society has been formed, I see, to agitate +against this overcrowding; but it seems to me it will only waste its +pains. Let it agitate for an underground railway, by all means; and if, +as I gather, the underground railway scheme is obstructed by +self-seeking vested interests, let it do its best to break down the +obstruction. Until some altogether new means of transport are provided, +the attempt to restrict the number of passengers which a car or trolley +may carry is, I think, antisocial, and must prove futile. The force of +public convenience would break the red-tape barrier like a cobweb. The +trains and trolleys follow each other at the very briefest intervals; it +does not seem possible that a greater number should be run on the +existing lines; and, that being so, there is no alternative between +overcrowding and the far greater inconvenience of indefinite delay. +Fancy having to "take a number," as they do in Paris, and await your +turn for a seat! New York would be simply paralysed. It is needless to +point out, of course, that where steam or electricity is the motive +power there is no cruelty to animals in overcrowding. + +The American people, rightly and admirably as it seems to me, choose the +lesser of two evils, and minimise it by good temper and mutual civility. +At a certain hour of every morning, the "L" railroad trains are as +densely packed as our Metropolitan trains on Boat-Race Day. There are +people clinging in clusters to each of the straps, and even the +platforms between the cars are crowded to the very couplings. It often +appears hopelessly impossible for any new-comer to squeeze in, or for +those who are wedged in the middle of a long car to force their way out. +Yet when the necessity arises, no force has to be applied. People manage +somehow or other to "welcome the coming, speed the parting guest." Every +one recognises that cantankerous obstructiveness would only make matters +worse, nay, absolutely intolerable. The first comer makes no attempt to +insist upon his position of advantage, because he knows that to-morrow +he may be the last comer. The sense of individual inconvenience is +swamped in the sense of general convenience. People laugh and rather +enjoy the joke when a too sudden start or an abrupt curve sends a whole +group of them cannoning up against one another. It must be remembered +that the transit is rapid, so that there is no irritating sense of +wasted time: and that the cars are brilliantly lighted, and, on the +whole, well ventilated, so that there is no fog, smoke, or sulphurous +air to get on the nerves and strain the temper. The scene as a whole, +even on a wet, disagreeable evening, is not depressing, but rather +cheerful. For my part, I regard it with positive pleasure, as a +manifestation of the national character. Less admirable, to be sure, is +the public acquiescence in the political manoeuvring, which blocks the +proposed underground railway. Yet the opponents of the scheme have +doubtless something to say on their side. It appears, at any rate, that +the profits of the "L" road are not exorbitant. It is said to be only +through overcrowding that it pays at all. The passengers it seats barely +suffice to cover expenses, and "the profits hang on to the straps." + +Idealists hope that when the underground comes, the elevated will go; +but I, as an outsider, cannot share his hope. In the first place, I +don't see how the mere substitution of one line for another is to +relieve the congestion of traffic; in the second place, the elevated +seems to me an admirable institution, which it would be a great pity to +abolish. Even aesthetically there is much to be said for it. The road, +itself, to be sure, does not add to the beauty of the avenues along +which it runs, but it is not by any means the eyesore one might imagine; +and the trains, with their light, graceful, and elegantly-proportioned +cars, so different from our squat and formless railway carriages, seem +to me a positively beautiful feature of the city life. They are not very +noisy, they are not very smoky, and they will be smokeless and almost +noiseless when they are run by electricity. The discomfort they cause, +to dwellers on the avenues is, I am sure, greatly exaggerated. People +who do not live on the avenues suffer in their sympathetic imagination +much more than the actual martyrs to the "L" road suffer in fact. +Imagination makes cowards of us all. For my part, I endured agonies from +the rush, whirl and clatter of New York before I left London; but here I +find nothing that, to healthy nerves, is not rather enjoyable than +otherwise. Neither up town nor down town is the traffic so dense, the +roar and bustle so continuous, as that of London; while the service of +trains and cars is so excellent and so simply arranged that it costs +much less thought, effort, and worry to "get about" in Manhattan than in +Middlesex. In saying this I may perhaps offend American +susceptibilities. There is nothing we moderns are more apt to brag of +than the nervous overstrain of our life. But sincerity comes before +courtesy, and I must gently but firmly decline to allow New York a +monopoly of neurasthenia, or of the conditions that produce it. + +One great difference is, I take it, that while New York exhausts it also +stimulates, whereas the days of the year when there is any positive +stimulus in the air of London may be counted on the ten fingers. Muggy +and misty days do occur here, it is true; but though the natives tell me +that this month of March has been exceptionally unpleasant, the +prevailing impression I have received is that of a lofty and radiant +vault of sky, with keen, sweet, limpid air that one drank in eagerly, +like sparkling wine. More than once, after a slight snowfall, I have +seen the air full of dancing particles of light, like the gold leaf in +Dantzic brandy. One of the most impressive things I ever saw, though I +did not then realise its tragic significance, was the huge column of +smoke that rose into the clear blue air from the Windsor Hotel fire. I +happened to come out on Fifth Avenue, close to the Manhattan Club, just +as the tail of the St. Patrick's Day procession was passing; and, +looking up the avenue after it, I was ware of a gigantic white pillar +standing motionless, as it seemed to me, and cleaving the limitless blue +dome almost to the zenith. The procession moved quietly on; no one +appeared to take any notice; and as fires are ineffective in the +daylight, I turned down the avenue instead, of up, and saw no more of +the spectacle. But I shall never forget that "pillar of cloud by day," +standing out in the sunshine, white as marble or sea foam. + +At night, again, under the purple, star-lit sky, street life in the +central region of New York is indescribably exhilarating. From Union +Square to Herald Square, and even further up, Broadway and many of the +cross streets flash out at dusk into the most brilliant illumination. +Theatres, restaurants, stores, are outlined in incandescent lamps; the +huge electric trolleys come sailing along in an endless stream, +profusely jewelled with electricity; and down the thickly-gemmed vista +of every cross street one can see the elevated trains, like luminous +winged serpents, skimming through the air.[D] The great restaurants are +crowded with gaily-dressed merry-makers; and altogether there is a +sense of festivity in the air, without any flagrantly meretricious +element in it, which I plead guilty to finding very enjoyable. From the +moral, and even from the loftily aesthetic point of view, this gaudy, +glittering Vanity Fair is no doubt open to criticism. What reconciles me +to it aesthetically is the gemlike transparency of its colouring. Garish +it is, no doubt, but not in the least stifling, smoky, or lurid. The +application of electricity--light divorced from smoke and heat--to the +beautifying of city life is as yet in its infancy. Even the Americans +have scarcely got beyond the point of making lavish use of the raw +material. But the raw material is beautiful in itself, and in this +pellucid air (the point to which one always returns) it produces magical +effects. + +The other night, at a restaurant, I sat at the next table to Mr. Edison, +and could not but look with interest and admiration at his furrowed, +anxious, typically American and truly beautiful face. Here, if you like, +was an example of nervous overstrain; but the soft and yet brilliant +light of the restaurant was in itself a sufficient reminder that the +overstrain had not been incurred for nothing. Electricity is the true +"white magic" of the future; and here, with his pallid face and silver +hair, sat the master magician--one of the great light-givers of the +world. A light-giver, I think, in more than a merely material sense. The +moral influence of the electric lamp, its effect upon the hygiene of the +soul, has not yet been duly estimated. But even in a merely material +sense, what has not the Edison movement, as it may be called, done for +this city of New York! Its influence is felt on every hand, in comfort, +convenience, and beauty. The lavish use of electricity, both as an +illuminant and as a motive power, combines with its climate, its +situation, and its architecture to make New York one of the most +fascinating cities in the world. Why, good Americans, when they die, +should go to Paris, is a theological enigma which more and more puzzles +me. + + +POSTSCRIPT.--Since my return to England, I have carefully reconsidered +my impression that the rush, whirl, and clamour of street life is +greater in London than in New York. Every day confirms it. On our main +thoroughfares, the stream of omnibuses is quite as unbroken as the +stream of electric and cable cars in New York; our van traffic is at +least as heavy; and we have in addition the host of creeping "growlers" +and darting hansoms, which is almost without counterpart in New York. I +know of no crossing in New York so trying to the nerves as Piccadilly +Circus or Charing Cross (Trafalgar Square). The intersection of +Broadway, Fifth Avenue and 23rd Street, at Madison Square, is the +nearest approach to these bewildering ganglia of traffic. It must be +owned, too, that the Bowery, with its two "elevated" tracks and four +lines of trolley-cars, is a place where one cannot safely let one's wits +go wool-gathering, especially on a rainy evening when the roadway is +under repair. Let me add that there is one place in New York where the +whirl of traffic ("whirl" in a literal sense) is unique and amazing. I +mean the covered area at the New York end of Brooklyn Bridge where the +transpontine electric cars, in an incessant stream, swoop down the +curves of the bridge and sweep round on their return journey. The scene +at night is indescribable. The air seems supersaturated with +electricity, flashing and crackling on every hand. One has a sense of +having strayed unwittingly into the midst of a miniature planetary +system in full swing, with the boom of the trolleys, in their mazy +courses, to represent the music of the spheres. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote D: I find the same idea (a sufficiently obvious one) finely +expressed by Mr. Richard Hovey in his book of poems entitled _Along the +Trail_: + + Look, how the overhead train at the Morningside curve + Loops like a sea-born dragon its sinuous flight. + Loops in the night in and out, high up in the air, + Like a serpent of stars with the coil and undulant reach of waves.] + + + + +LETTER V + +Character and Culture--American Universities--Is the American "Electric" +or Phlegmatic?--Alleged Laxity of the Family Tie--Postscript; the +University System. + + +NEW YORK. + +It is four weeks to-day since I landed in New York, and, save for forty +hours in Philadelphia and four hours in Brooklyn, I have spent all that +time in Manhattan Island. Yet, to my shame be it spoken, I am not +prepared with any generalisation as to the American character. It has +been my good fortune to see a great deal of literary and artistic New +York, and, comparing it with literary and artistic London, I am inclined +to say "Pompey and Caesar berry much alike--specially Pompey!" The New +Yorker is far more cosmopolitan than the Londoner; of that there is no +doubt. He knows all that we know about current English literature. He +knows all that we do _not_ know about current American literature. He is +much more interested in and influenced by French literature and art +than the average educated Englishman--so much so that the leading French +critics, such as M. Brunetiere and M. Rod, lecture here to crowded and +appreciative audiences. Moreover an excellent German theatre permanently +established in the city keeps the literary world well abreast of +cosmopolitanism of the educated New Yorker the dramatic movement in +Germany. But the merely means that he has everything in common with the +educated Londoner--and a little over. His traditions are ours, his +standards are ours, his ideals are ours. He is busied with the same +problems of ethics, of aesthetics, of style, even of grammar. I had not +been three days in New York when I found myself plunged in a hot +discussion of the "split infinitive," in which I was ranged with two +Americans against a recreant Briton who defended the collocation. "It is +a mistake to regard it is an Americanism," said one of the Americans. +"It is as old as the English language, or at least as old as Wickliff. +But it is unnecessary, and the best modern practice discountenances it." +I felt like falling on the neck of an ally of half an hour's standing, +and swearing eternal friendship. What matters Alaska, or Venezuela, or +Nicaragua, "or all the stones of stumbling in the world," so long as we +have a common interest in (and some of us a common distaste for) the +split infinitive? To put the matter briefly, while the outlook of the +New Yorker is wider than ours, his standpoint is the same. We gather +from a well-known anecdote that some, at least, of the cultivated +Americans of Thackeray's time were inclined to "think of Tupper." To-day +they do not "think of Tupper" any more than we do--and by Tupper I mean, +of course, not the veritable Martin Farquhar, but the Tuppers of the +passing hour. In America as in England, no doubt, there is a huge +half-educated public, ravenous for doughnuts of romance served up with +syrup of sentiment. The enthusiasms of the American shopgirl, I take it, +are very much the same as those of her English sister. But the line of +demarkation between the educated and the half-educated is just as clear +in New York as in London. For the cultivated American of to-day, the +Boomster booms and the Sibyl sibyllates in vain. I find no +justification, in this city at any rate, for the old saying which +described America as the most common-schooled and least educated country +in the world. If we must draw distinctions, I should say that the effect +of the American system of university education was to raise the level +of general culture, while lowering the standard of special scholarship. +I believe that the general American tendency is to insist less than we +do on sheer mental discipline for its own sake, whether in classics or +mathematics, to allow the student a wider latitude of choice, and to +enable him to specialise at an earlier point in his curriculum upon the +studies he most affects, or which are most likely to be directly useful +to him in practical life. Thus the American universities, probably, do +not turn out many men who can "read Plato with their feet on the hob," +but many who can, and do, read and understand him as Colonel Newcome +read Caesar--"with a translation, sir, with a translation." The width of +outlook which I have noted as characteristic of literary New York is +deliberately aimed at in the university system, and most successfully +attained. The average young man of parts turned out by an American +university has a many-sided interest in, and comprehension of, European +literature and the intellectual movement of the world, which may go far +to compensate for his possible or even probable inexpertness in Greek +aorists and Latin elegiacs. + +The academic and literary New Yorker, I am well aware, is not "the +American." But who is "the American?" I turn to Mr. G.W. Steevens, and +find that "the American is a highly electric Anglo-Saxon. His +temperament is of quicksilver. There is as much difference in vivacity +and emotion between him and an Englishman as there is between an +Englishman and an Italian." Well, Mr. Steevens is a keener observer than +I; when he wrote this, he had been two months in America to my one; and +he had travelled far and wide over the continent. I am not rash enough, +then, to contradict him; but I must own that I have not met this +"American," or anything like him, in the streets, clubs, theatres, +restaurants, or public conveyances of New York. On the contrary, as I +take my walks abroad between Union Square and Central Park, or hang on +to the straps of an Elevated train or cable car, I am all the time +occupied in trying--and failing--to find marked differences of +appearance and manners between the people I see here and the people I +should expect to see under similar circumstances in London. Differences +of dress and feature there are, of course--but how trifling! Difference +of manners there is none, unless it lie in the general good-nature and +unobtrusive politeness of the American crowd, upon which I have already +remarked. We all know that there is a distinctively American physical +type, recognisable especially in the sex which aims at self-development, +instead of self-suppression, in its attire. When one meets her in +Bloomsbury (where she abounds in the tourist season) one readily +distinguishes the American lady; but here specific distinctions are +obsorbed in generic identity, and the only difference between American +and English ladies of which I am habitually conscious lies in the added +touch of Parisian elegance which one notes in the costumes on Fifth +Avenue. The average of beauty is certainly very high in New York. I will +not say higher than in London, for there too it is remarkable; but this +I will say, that night after night I have looked round the audiences in +New York theatres, and found a clear majority of notably good-looking +women. There are few European cities where one could hope to make the +same observation. It is especially to be noted, I think, that the +American lady has the art of growing old with comely dignity. She loses +her complexion, indeed, but only to put on a new beauty in the contrast +between her olive skin and her silvering or silver hair. This contrast +may almost be called the characteristic feature of the specially +American type, which is much more clearly discernible in middle-aged and +old than in young women. + +As for the men, what strikes one in New York is the total absence of the +traditional "Yankee" type. It must have a foundation in fact, since the +Americans themselves have accepted it in political caricature. No doubt +I shall find it in its original habitat--New England. It has certainly +not penetrated into New York. On close examination, the average +man-in-the-street is distinguishable from his fellow in London by +certain trifling differences in "the cut of his jib"--his fashion in +hats, in moustaches, in neckties. But the intense electricity that Mr. +Steevens discovers in him has totally eluded my observation. The fault +may be mine, but assuredly I have failed to "faire jaillir l'etincelle." +I have looked in vain for any symptom of the "temperament of +quicksilver." Mr. Steevens, it is true, made his observations during the +last Presidential election. Perhaps the quicksilver is generated in the +American citizen by political excitement, and when that is over "runs +out at the heels of his boots." + +But, surely, it is a monstrous exaggeration to state in general terms +that the difference in "vivacity and emotion" between the average +American and the average Englishman is as great as the difference +between an Englishman and an Italian. By what inconceivable error, does +it happen, then, that the American of fiction and drama--English, +Continental, and American to boot--is always represented as outdoing +John Bull himself in Anglo-Saxon phlegm? In the courts of ethnology, I +shall be told, "what the caricaturist says is not evidence;" but no +caricature could ever have gained such world-wide acceptance without a +substratum of truth to support it. The probabilities of the case are +greatly against the development of any special "vivacity" of +temperament, for though there has no doubt been a large Keltic admixture +in the Anglo-Saxon stock, there has been a large Teutonic infusion +(German and Scandinavian) to counterbalance it. Simply as a matter of +observation, the differences between English and Italian manners hit you +in the eye, while the differences between American and English manners +are really microscopic; and manners, I take it, are the outward and +visible signs of temperament. A Scotchman by birth, a Londoner by habit, +I walk the streets of New York undetected, to the best of my belief, +until I begin to speak; in Rome, on the contrary, every one recognises +me at a glance as an "Inglese," unless they mistake me for an +"Americano." To me it is amazing how inessential is the change produced +by the Anglo-Saxon type and temperament by influences of climate and +admixture of foreign blood. There are great foreign cities in New +York--German, Italian, Yiddish, Bohemian, Hungarian, Chinese--but the +New York of the New Yorker is scarcely, to the Englishman, a foreign +city. + +The other day I heard an Englishman, who has lived for twenty-five years +in America, maintaining very emphatically that the chief difference +between England and America lay in the greater laxity of the family bond +on this side of the Atlantic. He declared that, in the main, "home" +meant less to the American than to the Englishman, and especially that +the American boy between thirteen and twenty was habitually insurgent +against home influences. It would be ludicrous, of course, to set up the +observations of a month against the experience of a quarter of a +century; yet I cannot but feel that either I have been miraculously +fortunate in the glimpses I have obtained of American home life, or else +there is something amiss with my friend's generalisation. Perhaps he +brought away with him from England in the early seventies a conception +of the "patria potestas" which he would now find out of date there as +well as here. No doubt the migratory habit is stronger in America than +in England, and family life is not apt to flourish in hotels or +boarding-houses. The Saratoga trunk is not the best cornerstone for the +home: so much we may take for granted. But the American families who are +content to go through life without a threshold and hearthstone of their +own must, after all, be in a vanishing minority. They very naturally cut +a larger figure in fiction than in fact. It has been my privilege to see +something of the daily life of a good many families living under their +own roof-tree, and in every case without exception I have been struck +with the beauty and intimacy of the relation between parents and +children. When my friend laid down his theory of the intractable +American boy, I could not but think of a youth of twenty whom I had seen +only two days before, whose manner towards his father struck me as an +ideal blending of affectionate comradeship with old-fashioned +respect.[E] True, this was in Philadelphia, "the City of Homes," and +even there it may have been an exceptional case. I am not so illogical +as to pit a single observation against (presumably) a wide induction; I +merely offer for what it is worth one item of evidence. + +Again, it has been my good fortune here in New York to spend an evening +in a household which suggested a chapter of Dickens in his tenderest and +most idyllic mood. It was the home of an actor and actress. Two +daughters, of about eighteen and twenty, respectively, are on the stage, +acting in their father's company; but the master of the house is a +bright little boy of seven or eight, known as "the Commodore." As it +happened, the mother of the family was away for the day; yet in the +hundred affectionate references made to her by the father and daughters, +not to me, but to each other, I read her character and influence more +clearly, perhaps, than if she had been present in the flesh. A more +simple, natural, unaffectedly beautiful "interior" no novelist could +conceive. If the family tie is seriously relaxed in America, it seems an +odd coincidence that I should in a single month have chanced upon two +households where it is seen in notable perfection, to say nothing of +many others in which it is at least as binding as in the average English +home. + + +POSTSCRIPT.--The American university system is a very large subject, to +which none but a specialist could do justice, and that in a volume, not +a postscript. Nevertheless I should like slightly to supplement the +above allusion to it. In the first place, let me quote from the +_Spectator_ (February 12, 1898) the following passage:-- + + "Some of the American Universities, in our judgment, come nearer to + the ideal of a true University than any of the other types. + Beginning on the old English collegiate system, they have broadened + out into vast and splendidly endowed institutions of universal + learning, have assimilated some German features, and have combined + successfully college routine and discipline with mature and + advanced work. Harvard and Princeton were originally English + colleges; now, without entirely abandoning the college system, + they are great semi-German seats of learning. Johns Hopkins at + Baltimore is purely of the German type, with no residence and only + a few plain lecture rooms, library, and museums. Columbia, + originally an old English college (its name was King's, changed to + Columbia at the Revolution), is now perhaps the first University in + America, magnificently endowed, with stately buildings, and with a + school of political and legal science second only to that of Paris. + Cornell, intended by its generous founder to be a sort of cheap + glorified technical institute, has grown into a great seat of + culture. The quadrangles and lawns of Harvard, Yale, and Princeton + almost recall Oxford and Cambridge; their lecture-rooms, + laboratories, and post-graduate studies hint of Germany, where + nearly all American teachers of the present generation have been + educated." + +Some authorities, however, deplore the Germanising of American +education. A Professor of Greek, himself trained in Germany, and +recognised as one of the foremost of American scholars, confessed to me +his deep dissatisfaction with the results achieved in his own teaching. +His students did good work on the scientific and philological side, but +their relation to Greek literature as literature was not at all what he +could desire. This bears out the remark which I heard another authority +make, to the effect that American scholarship was entirely absorbed in +the counting of accents, and the like mechanical details; while it seems +to run counter to the above suggestion that the university system tends +to raise the level of culture while lowering the standard of erudition. +At the same time there can be no doubt that the immense width of the +field covered by university teaching in America must, in some measure, +make for "superficial omniscience" rather than for concentration and +research. The truth probably is that the system cuts both ways. The +average student seeks and finds general culture in his university +course, while the born specialist is enabled to go straight to the study +he most affects and concentrate upon it. + +To exemplify the latitude of choice offered to the American student, let +me give a list of the "course" in English and Literature at Columbia +University, New York, extracted from the Calendar for 1898-99: + + RHETORIC AND ENGLISH COMPOSITION + + COURSES + + 1. English Composition. Lectures, daily themes, and fortnightly + essays. Professor G.R. CARPENTER. Three hours[F] first half-year. + + 2. English Composition. Essays, lectures, and discussions in regard + to style. Professor G.R. CARPENTER. Three hours, second half-year. + + 3. English Composition, Advanced Course. Essays, lectures and + consultations. Dr. ODELL. Two hours. + + 4. Elocution. Lectures and Exercises. Mr. PUTNAM. Two hours. + + [5. The Art of English Versification. Professor BRANDER MATTHEWS. + _Not given in 1898-9_.] + + 6. Argumentative Composition. Lectures, briefs, essays, and oral + discussions. Mr. BRODT. Three hours. + + 7. Seminar. The topics discussed in 1898-9 will be: Canons of + rhetorical propriety (first half-year); the teaching of formal + rhetoric in the secondary school (second half-year). Professor + G.R. CARPENTER. + + + ENGLISH AND LITERATURE + + COURSES + + 1 and 2. Anglo-Saxon Language and Historical English Grammar. Mr. + SEWARD. Two hours. + + 3. Anglo-Saxon Literature: Poetry and Prose. Professor JACKSON. Two + hours. + + 4. Chaucer's Language, Versification, and Method of Narrative + Poetry. Professor JACKSON. Two hours. + + [5. English Language and Literature of the Eleventh, Twelfth, and + Thirteenth Centuries. Professor PRICE. _Not given in 1898-9._] + + [6. English Language and Literature of the Fourteenth Century, + exclusive of Chaucer, and of the Fifteenth Century; Reading of + authors, with investigation of special questions and writing of + essays. Professor Price. _Not given in 1898-9._] + + 7. English Language and Literature of the Sixteenth Century; + Reading of authors, with investigation of special questions and + writing of essays. Professor Jackson. Two hours. + + Courses 5, 6, and 7 are designed for the careful study of the + language and literature of Early and Middle English periods: Course + 6 was given in 1897-8. + + [8. Anglo-Saxon Prose and Historical English Syntax. Investigation + of special questions and writing of essays. Professor Price. _Not + given in 1898-9. To be given in 1899-1900._] + + [10. English Verse-Forms: Study of their historical development. + Professor Price. _Not given in 1898-9._] + + 11. History of English Literature from 1789 to the death of + Tennyson: Lectures. Professor Woodberry. Three hours. + + 12. History of English Literature from 1660 to 1789: Lectures. Mr. + Kroeber. Three hours. + + [13. History of English Literature from the birth of Shakespeare to + 1660, with special attention to the origin of the drama in England + and to the poems of Spenser and Milton. Professor Woodberry. _Not + given in 1898-9._] + + Courses 12 and 13 are given in alternate years. + + [14. Pope: Language, Versification, and Poetical Method. Professor + Price. _Not given in 1898-9._] + + 15. Shakespeare: Language, Versification, and Method of Dramatic + Poetry. Text: Cambridge Text of Shakespeare. Professor JACKSON. Two + hours. + + 16. American Literature. Professor BRANDER MATTHEWS. Two hours. + + [17. The Poetry, Lyrical, Narrative, and Dramatic, of Tennyson, + Browning, and Arnold. Professor PRICE. _Not given in 1898-9._] + + + LITERATURE. + + COURSES. + + 1. The History of Modern Fiction. Professor BRANDER MATTHEWS. Two + hours. + + 2. The Theory, History, and Practice of Criticism, with special + attention to Aristotle, Boileau, Lessing, and English and later + French writers, and a study of the great works of imagination. + Professor WOODBERRY. Three hours. + + [3. Epochs of the Drama. Professor BRANDER MATTHEWS. _Not given in + 1898-9._] + + 4. Dramatists of the Nineteenth Century. Professor BRANDER + MATTHEWS. Two hours. + + [5. Moliere and Modern Comedy. Professor BRANDER MATTHEWS. _Not + given in 1898-9._] + + [6. The Evolution of the Essay. Professor BRANDER MATTHEWS. _Not + given in 1898-9._] + + 7. Studies in Literature, mainly Critical: Selected Works, in Prose + and Verse, illustrating the Character and Development of Natural + Literature. Lectures. Professor WOODBERRY. Three hours. + + 8. Studies in Literature, mainly Historical: Narrative Poetry of + the Middle Ages. Lectures and Conferences. Mr. TAYLOR. Two hours. + + [9. The Lyrical Poetry of the Middle Ages. Professor G.R. + CARPENTER. _Not given in 1898-9._] + + 10. Hellenism: Its Origin, Development, and Diffusion with some + account of the Civilisations that preceded it. Lectures and + Conferences. Mr. TAYLOR Three hours. + + 11. Literary Phases of the Transition from Paganism to + Christianity, with illustrations from the other Arts of Expression. + Lectures and Conferences. Mr. TAYLOR. One hour. + + Seminar in Literature. Professor WOODBERRY. Seminar in the History + of the Drama. Professor BRANDER MATTHEWS. + +A "seminar" is an institution borrowed from Germany. The professor and a +small number of students (six or eight at the outside) sit together +round a table, with their books at hand, and pass an hour in +co-operative study and discussion. In going through the noble library of +Columbia University, I came upon an alcove devoted to Scandinavian +literature, with a table on which lay some Danish books. The gentleman +who was guiding me round happened to be an instructor in the +Scandinavian languages. He pointed to the books and said, "I have just +been having a seminar here, in Danish literature." Seeing on the shelves +an edition of Holberg, I asked him if he had ever considered the +question why Holberg's comedies, so delightful in the original, +appeared to be totally untranslatable into English. "One of my +students," he said, "put the same question to me only to-day." One could +scarcely desire a better example of the all-embracing range of the +studies which an American University provides for and encourages. I have +heard it said, with a sneer, that "You can take an honours degree in +Marie Corelli." If you can graduate with honours in Holberg, your time, +in so far, has certainly not been misemployed. + +Whatever the drawbacks of the German influence which is so marked in +America, I cannot doubt that in one thing, at any rate, the Americans +are far ahead of us--in the careful study they devote to the science of +education. No fewer than twenty courses of lectures on the theory and +practice of education were given in Columbia College during 1898-99. +Teaching, I take it, is an art founded upon, and intimately associated +with, the science of psychology. Why should we be content with +antiquated and rule-of-thumb methods, instead of going to the root of +the thing, studying its principles, and learning to apply them to the +best advantage? + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote E: "Affectionate comradeship" rather than "old-fashioned +respect" is exemplified in the following anecdote of young America. A +Professor of Pedagogy in a Western university brings up his children on +the most advanced principles. Among other things, they are encouraged to +sink the antiquated terms "father" and "mother," and call their parents +by their Christian names. On one occasion, the children, playing in the +bathroom, turned on the water and omitted to turn it off again. +Observing it percolating through the ceiling of his study, their father +rushed upstairs to see what was the matter, flung open the bathroom +door, and was greeted by the prime mover in the mischief, a boy of six, +with the remark, "Don't say a word, John--bring the mop!"] + +[Footnote F: That is, three hours a week; so, too, in all subsequent +instances.] + + + + +LETTER VI + +Washington in April--A Metropolis in the Making--The White House, the +Capitol, and the Library of Congress--The Symbolism of Washington. + + +WASHINGTON. + +To profess oneself disappointed with Washington in this first week of +April, 1899, would be like complaining of the gauntness of a rosebush in +December. What would you have? It is not the season, either politically +or atmospherically. Congress is gone, and spring has not come. In the +city of leafy avenues there is not a leaf to be seen, and, except the +irrepressible crocus, not a flower. A fortnight hence, as I am assured, +the capital of the Great Republic will have put on a regal robe of +magnolia and other blossoms, that will "knock spots out of" Solomon in +all his glory. In the meantime, the trees line the avenues in skeleton +rows, like a pyrotechnic set-piece before it is ignited. It is useless +to pretend, then, that I have seen Washington. The trumpet of March has +blown, the pennon of May is not yet unfurled; and even the cloudless +sunshine of the past two days has only reduplicated the skeleton trees +in skeleton shadows. Washington is not responsible for the tardiness of +the spring. It would be unjust to take umbrage at the city because one +finds none in its avenues. + +Yet I cannot but feel that I have, so to speak, found Washington out. I +have chanced upon her without her make-up, and seen the real face of the +city divested of its wig of leafage and rouge of blossoms. Here, for the +first time, at any rate, I am impressed by that sense of rawness and +incompleteness which is said to be characteristic of America. Washington +will one day be a magnificent city, of that there is no doubt; but for +the present it is distinctly unfinished. The very breadth of its +avenues, contrasted with the comparative lowness of the buildings which +line them, gives it the air rather of a magnified and glorified frontier +township than of a great capital on the European scale. Here, for the +first time, I am really conscious of the newness of things. The eastern +cities--Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore--are, in effect, not a +whit newer than most English towns. Oxford and Cambridge, no doubt, and +a few cathedral cities, give one a habitual consciousness of dwelling +among the relics of the past. They are our Nuremburg or Prague, Siena or +Perugia. In most English cities, on the other hand, as in London itself, +one has no habitual sense of the antiquity of one's surroundings. Apart +from a few tourist-haunted monuments, which the resident passes with +scarcely a glance, the general run of buildings and streets, if not +palpably modern, can at most lay claim to a respectable, or +disreputable, middle-age. Now, an eminently respectable middle-age is +precisely the characteristic of the central regions of Philadelphia and +Baltimore; while in New York both reputable and disreputable middle-age +are amply represented. One may almost say that these Eastern cities are +fundamentally old-fashioned, and that all their modern mechanism of +electric cars, telephone wires, and what not, is but a thin and +transparent outer network, through which the older order of things is +everywhere peering. And from this very contrast between the old and the +new, this sense of visible time-strata in the structure of a city, there +results a very real effect of age. + +Here, in Washington, one instinctively craves for something of that +uniformity which one instinctively deprecates as an ideal for New York. +The buildings on the main streets are too haphazard, like the books on +an ill-arranged shelf: folios, quartos, and duodecimos huddled pell-mell +together. But when some approach to a definite style is achieved, how +noble will be the radiating vistas of this spacious city! The plan of +the avenues and streets, as has been aptly said, suggests a cartwheel +superimposed upon a gridiron--an arrangement, by the way, which may be +studied on a small scale in Carlsruhe. The result is dire bewilderment +to the traveller; my bump of locality, usually not ill-developed, seems +to shrink into a positive indentation before the problems presented in +such formulas as "K Street, corner of 13th Street, N.E." But from the +Capitol, whence most of the avenues spread fanwise, the views they offer +are superb; and Pennsylvania Avenue, leading to the Government offices +and the White House, will one day, undoubtedly, be one of the great +streets of the world. For the present its beauty is not heightened by +the new Postal Department, a massive but somewhat forbidding structure +in grey granite, which dominates and frowns upon the whole street. From +certain points of view, it seems almost to dwarf the Washington Obelisk, +the loftiest stone structure in the world. It is a pity that this fine +monument should be placed in such a low situation, on the very shore of +the Potomac. From the central parts of the city it loses much of its +effect, but seen from the distance it stands forth impressively. + +People are discontented, it would seem, with the White House, and talk +of replacing it with a larger and showier edifice. The latter change, at +any rate, would be a change for the worse. There could not be a more +appropriate and dignified residence for the Chief Magistrate of a +republic. On the other hand, one cannot but foresee a gradual enrichment +and ennoblement of the interior of the Capitol. Externally it is +magnificent, especially now that the side towards the city has been +terraced and balustraded; but internally its decorations are quite +unworthy of modern America. The floors, the doors, the cornices and +mouldings are cheap in material, dingily garish in colour. Especially +painful are the crude blue-and-yellow mosaic tiles of the corridors. The +mural decorations belong to several artistic periods, all equally +debased. On the whole, it is inconceivable that Congress should for long +content itself with an abode which, without being venerable, is simply +out of date. The main architectural proportions of the interior are +dignified enough. What is wanted is merely the transmutation of stucco +into marble, painted pine into oak, and pseudo-Italian arabesques into +American frescoes and mosaics. Why should Congress itself be more meanly +housed than its Library? + +This new Library of Congress is certainly the crown and glory of the +Washington of to-day. It is an edifice and an institution of which any +nation might justly boast. It is simple in design, rich in material, +elaborate, and for the most part beautiful, in decoration. The general +effect of the entrance hall and galleries is at first garish, and some +details of the decoration will scarcely bear looking into. Yet the +building is, on the whole, in fresco, mosaic, and sculpture, a veritable +treasure-house of contemporary American art. Even in this clear Southern +climate, the effect of gaudiness will in time pass off. Fifty years +hence, perhaps, when there are no living susceptibilities to be hurt, +some of the less successful panels and medallions may be "hatched over +again, and hatched different." But many of the decorations, I am +convinced, will prove possessions for ever to the American people. As +for the Rotunda Reading Room, it is, I think, almost above criticism in +its combination of dignity with splendour. Far be it from me to +belittle that great and liberal institution, the British Museum Reading +Room. It is considerably larger than this one; it is no less imposing in +its severe simplicity; and it offers the serious student a vaster quarry +of books to draw upon, together with wider elbow-room and completer +accommodations. But the Library of Congress is still more liberal, for +it admits all the world without even the formality of applying for a +ticket; and it substitutes for the impressiveness of simplicity the +allurements of splendour. It is impossible to conceive a more brilliant +spectacle than this Rotunda when it is lighted at night by nearly +fifteen-hundred incandescent lamps. Nor is it possible for me to +describe in this place the mechanical marvels of the institution--the +huge underground boiler-house, with its sixteen boilers; the +electrician's room, clean and bright as a new dollar, with its "purring +dynamos" and its immense switch-board; the tunnel through which books +are delivered by electric trolley to the legislators in the Capitol, +within eight minutes of the time they are applied for; and, most +wonderful of all, the endless chain, with its series of baskets, whereby +books are not only brought down to the reading room, but re-delivered, +at the mere touch of a button on whatever "deck" of the nine-storied +"book-stacks" they happen to belong to. So ingenious is this triumph of +mechanism that the baskets seem positively to go through complex +processes of thought and selection. Talking of thought and selection, by +the way, every one connected with the library speaks with enthusiasm of +President McKinley's wise and public-spirited choice of the new chief +librarian. Mr. Herbert Putnam, late of the Boston Public Library, is the +ideal man for the post, and his appointment was made, not only without +suspicion of jobbery, but in the teeth of strong political influence. +Mr. McKinley's action in this matter is considered to be not only right +in itself, but an invaluable precedent. + +Let me not be understood, I beg, to make light of the National Capital. +I merely say that to the outward eye it is not yet the city it is +manifestly destined to become. Its splendid potentialities do some wrong +to its eminently spacious and seemly actuality. But to the mind's eye, +to the ideal sense, it has the imperishable beauty of absolute fitness. +Omniscient Baedeker informs us that when it was founded there was some +thought of calling it "Federal City." How much finer, in its heroic and +yet human associations, is the name it bears! Since Alfred the Great, +the Anglo-Saxon race has produced no loftier or purer personality than +George Washington, and his country could not blazon on her shield a more +inspiring name. Carlyle's treatment of Washington is, perhaps, the most +unpardonable of his many similar offences. One almost wonders at the +forgiving spirit in which the decorators of the Library of Congress have +inscribed upon the walls of the new building certain maxims from the +splenetic Sage. And if the city is named with exquisite fitness, so are +its radiating avenues. Each of them takes its name from one of the +States of the Union--names which, as Stevenson long ago pointed out, +form an unrivalled array of "sweet and sonorous vocables." In its whole +conception, Washington is an ideal capital for the United States--not +least typical, perhaps, in its factitiousness, since this Republic is +not so much a product of natural development as a deliberate creation of +will and intelligence. It represents the struggle of an Idea against the +crude forces of nature and human nature. The Capitol, with its clear and +logical design, is as aptly symbolic of its history and function as are +our Houses of Parliament, with their bewildering but grandiose +agglomeration of shafts and turrets, spires and pinnacles; and the two +buildings should rank side by side in the esteem of the English-speaking +peoples, as the twin foci of our civilisation. + + + + +LETTER VII + +American Hospitality--Instances--Conversation and +Story-Telling--Over-Profusion in Hospitality--Expensiveness of Life in +America--The American Barber--Postscript: An Anglo-American Club. + + +BOSTON. + +Much has been said of American hospitality; too much cannot possibly be +said. Here am I in Boston, the guest of one of the foremost clubs of the +city. I sit, as I write, at my bedroom window, with a view over the +whole of Boston Common, and the beautiful spires of the Back-Bay region +beyond. I step out on my balcony, and the gilded dome of the State +House--"the Hub of the Universe"--is but a stone's-throw off. Through +the leafless branches of the trees I can see the back of St. Gaudens' +beautiful Shaw Monument, and beyond it the graceful dip of upper +Beacon-street. My room is as spacious and luxurious as heart can desire, +lighted by half a dozen electric lamps, and with a private bath-room +attached, which is itself nearly as large as the bedroom assigned me in +the "swagger" hotel of New York--an establishment, by the way, of which +it has been wittily said that its purpose is "to provide exclusiveness +for the masses." All the comforts of the club are at my command; the +rooms are delightful, the food and service excellent. In short, I could +not be more conveniently or agreeably situated. Of course I pay the club +charges for my room and meals, but it is mere hospitality to allow me to +do so. And how do I come to be established in these quarters? The little +story is absolutely commonplace, but all the more typical. + +In Washington I made the acquaintance of a gentleman who invited me to +lunch at the leading diplomatic and social club. I had no claim upon him +of any sort, beyond the most casual introduction. He regaled me with +little-neck clams, terrapin, and all the delicacies of the season, and +invited to meet me half a dozen of the most interesting men in the city, +all of them strangers to me until that moment. I found myself seated +next an exceedingly amiable man, whose name I had not caught when we +were introduced. One of the first things he asked me was--not "What did +I think of America?" no one ever asked me that--but "Where was I going +next?" To Boston. + +"Where was I going to put up?" I thought of going to the T---- Hotel. +"Much better go to the U---- Club," he replied; "I've no doubt they will +be able to give you a room. As soon as lunch is over, I shall telegraph +to the club and make sure that everything is ready for you." I, of +course, thanked him warmly. "But what credentials shall I present?" "You +don't require any--just present your card. I shall make it all right for +you." This was a man whom I had met ten minutes before, whose name I did +not know, and to whom I had been introduced by a man whom I barely knew! +It did not appear that he, on his side, knew or cared about anything I +had said or done in the world. He simply obeyed the national instinct of +courtesy and helpfulness. And he was as good as his word. Arriving in +Boston at a somewhat unearthly hour in the morning, I found my room +allotted me and the club servants ready to receive me with every +attention. I felt like the Prince in the fairy tale, only that I had +done nothing whatever to oblige the good fairy. + +Another example. I had a letter of introduction to the Governor of one +of the States of the Union, probably (what does not always happen) the +most universally respected man in the State, and a member of one of its +oldest and most distinguished families. I left the letter, with my card, +at this gentleman's house, and in the course of a few hours received a +note from his wife, telling me that, owing to a death in the family, +they were not then entertaining at all, but saying that the Governor +would call upon me to offer me any courtesy or assistance in his power. +And so he did. He called, not once, but twice. He presented me with a +card for one of the leading clubs of the city, and if my time had +allowed me to avail myself of his courtesy, he would have put me in the +way of seeing any or all of the State institutions to the best +advantage. The governorship of an American State, let me add, is no +ornamental sinecure. This was not only a man in high position, but a +very busy man. Is there any other country where a mere letter of +introduction is so generously honoured? If so, it is to me an +undiscovered country. + +These are but two cases out of a hundred. The Americans are said to be +the busiest people in the world (I have my doubts on that point), but +they have always leisure to give a stranger "a good time." Even, be it +noted, during the working hours of the day. My evenings being occupied +with theatre-going, I could not accept invitations to dinner; wherefore +those who were hospitably inclined towards me had to invite me to lunch; +and a luncheon party in America invariably absorbs the best part of an +afternoon. A score of these delightful gatherings will always remain in +my memory. The "bright" American is, to my thinking, the best talker in +the world--certainly the best talker in the English language. A light +and facile humour, a power of giving a pleasant little sparkle even to +sufficiently commonplace sayings, is in this country the rule and not +the exception. I must have met at these luncheon parties, and actually +conversed with, at least a hundred different men of all ages and +occupations, and I do not remember among them a single dull, pompous, +morose, or pedantic person. The parties did not usually exceed six or +eight in number, so that there was no necessity for breaking up into +groups. The shuttlecock of conversation was lightly bandied to and fro +across the round table. Each took his share and none took more. All +topics--even the, burning question of "expansion"--were touched upon +gaily, humorously, and in perfect good temper. + +It is said that American conversation among men tends to degenerate into +a mere exchange of anecdotes. I can remember only one party which was +in the least degree open to this reproach; and there the anecdotes were +without exception so good, and so admirably told, that I, for one, +should have been sorry to exchange them for even the loftiest discourse +on Shakespeare and the musical glasses. Here, for instance, is an +example of the American gift of picturesque exaggeration. On board one +of the Florida steamboats, which have to be built with exceedingly light +draught to get over the frequent shallows of the rivers, an Englishman +accosted the captain with the remark, "I understand, captain, that you +think nothing of steaming across a meadow where there's been a heavy +fall of dew." "Well, I don't know about that," replied the captain, "but +it's true we have sometimes to send a man ahead with a watering-pot!" Or +take, again, the story of the Southern colonel who was conducted to the +theatre to see Salvini's Othello. He witnessed the performance gravely, +and remarked at the close, "That was a mighty good show, and I don't see +but the coon did as well as any of 'em." A third anecdote that charmed +me on this occasion was that of the man who, being invited to take a +drink, replied, "No, no, I solemnly promised my dear dead mother never +to touch a drop; besides, boys, it's too early in the morning; besides, +I've just had one!" + +Furthermore, as I recall the party in question, I feel that I am wrong +in implying that the conversation was mainly composed of anecdotes. It +was mainly composed of narratives; but that is a different matter. There +is a clear distinction between the mere story-teller and the narrator. +Two or three of the party were brilliant narrators, and delighted us +with accounts of personal experiences, quaint character-sketches, novels +in a nutshell. One of the guests was, without exception, the most +ready-witted man I ever met. His inexhaustible gift of lightning +repartee I saw illustrated on another occasion, when he presided at the +midnight "gambol" of a Bohemian club, at which it needed the utmost tact +and presence of mind to "ride the whirlwind and direct the storm." At +the luncheon party, he related several episodes from his chequered +journalistic career in a style so easy and yet so graphic that one felt, +if they could have been taken down in shorthand, they would have been +literature ready-made. It is a clear injustice to confound such talk as +this with a mere bandying of Joe-Millers. + +The one drawback to American hospitality is that it is apt to be too +profuse. I have more than once had to offer a mild protest against being +entertained by a hard-working brother journalist on a scale that would +have befitted a millionaire. The possibility of returning the compliment +in kind affords the canny Scot but poor consolation. A dinner three +times more lavish and expensive than you want is not sweetened by the +thought that you may, in turn, give your host a dinner three times more +expensive and lavish than _he_ wants. Both parties, on this system, +suffer in digestion and in pocket, while only Delmonico is the gainer. +It seems to me, on the whole, that in this country the millionaire is +too commonly allowed to fix the standard of expenditure. Society would +not be less, but more, agreeable if, instead of always emulating the +splendours of Lucullus, people now and then studied the art of Horatian +frugality. And I note that in club life, if the plutocrat sets the +standard of expenditure, the aristocrat looks to the training of the +servants. Their obsequiousness is almost painful. There is not the +slightest trace of democratic equality in their dress, their manners, or +their speech. + +Take it all and all, America is a trying place of sojourn for the +aforesaid canny Scot--the man who without being stingy (oh, dear, no!) +has "all his generous impulses under perfect control." The sixpences do +not "bang" in this country: they crepitate, they crackle, as though shot +from a Maxim quick-firer. For instance, the lowest electric-trolley fare +is twopence-halfpenny. It is true that for five cents you can, if you +wish it, ride fifteen or twenty miles; but that advantage becomes +inappreciable when you don't want to ride more than half a mile. Take, +again, the harmless, necessary operation of shaving. In a good English +barber's shop it is a brief and not unpleasant process; in an American +"tonsorial parlour" it is a lingering and costly torture. One of the +many reasons which lead me to regard the Americans as a leisurely people +rather than a nation of "hustlers" is the patience with which they +submit to the long-drawn tyranny of the barber. In England, one grudges +five minutes for a shave, and one pays from fourpence to sixpence; in +America one can hardly escape in twenty-five minutes, and one pays (with +the executioner's tip)[G] from a shilling to eighteenpence. The charge +would be by no means excessive if one wanted or enjoyed all the endless +processes to which one is subjected; but for my part I would willingly +pay double to escape them. The essential part of the business, the +actual shaving, is, as a rule, badly performed, with a heavy hand, and a +good deal of needless pawing-about of the patient's head. But when the +shave is over the horrors are only beginning. First, your whole face is +cooked for several minutes in relays of towels steeped in boiling water. +Then a long series of essences is rubbed into it, generally with the +torturer's naked hand. The sequence of these essences varies in +different "parlours," but one especially loathsome hell-brew, known as +"witchhazel" is everywhere inevitable. Then your wounds have to be +elaborately doctored with stinging chemicals; your hair, which has been +hopelessly touzled in the pawing process, has to be drenched in some +sickly-smelling oil and brushed; your moustache has to be lubricated +and combed; and at last you escape from the tormentor's clutches, +irritated, enervated, hopelessly late for an important appointment, and +so reeking with unholy odours that you feel as though all great +Neptune's ocean would scarcely wash you clean again. Only once or twice +have I submitted, out of curiosity, to the whole interminable process. I +now cut it short, not without difficulty, before the "witchhazel" stage +is reached, and am regarded with blank astonishment and disapproval by +the tonsorial professor, who feels his art and mystery insulted in his +person, and is scarcely mollified by a ten-cent tip. Americans, on the +other hand, go through all these processes, and more, with stolid and +long-suffering patience. Yet this nation is credited with having +invented the maxim "Time is money," and is supposed to act up to it with +feverish consistency! + + +POSTSCRIPT.--As I have said a good deal about clubs in this letter, let +me add to it a word as to the influence of club life in keeping America +in touch with England. At all the leading clubs one or two English daily +papers and all the more important weekly papers are taken as a matter of +course; so that the American club-man has not the slightest difficulty +in keeping abreast of the social, political, and literary life of +England. As a matter of fact, the educated American's knowledge of +England every day puts to shame the Englishman's ignorance of America. +Reciprocity in this matter would be greatly to the advantage of both +countries. I am much mistaken if there is a single club in London where +American periodicals are so well represented on the reading-room table +as are English periodicals in every club in New York. Yet there is +assuredly no dearth of interesting weekly papers in America, some +connected with daily papers, others independent. It may be said that +they are not taken at English clubs because they would not be read. If +so, the more's the pity; but I do not think it is so; for this is a case +in which supply would beget demand. At any rate, there must be numbers +of people in London who would be glad to keep fairly in touch with +American life, if they could do so without too much trouble. Why should +there not be an Anglo-American social club, organised with the special +purpose of bringing America home (in a literal sense) to London and +England? Why should not (say) the Century Club of New York be reproduced +in London, with American periodicals as fully represented in its +news-room and reading-room as are English periodicals in an American +club of the first rank? Interest in and sympathy with America would be +the implied condition of membership; and by a judiciously-devised system +of non-resident membership, American visitors to London would be enabled +to read their home newspapers in greater comfort than at the existing +American reading-rooms, and would, moreover, come into easy contact with +sympathetically-minded Englishmen, to their mutual pleasure and profit. +Such a club might, in process of time, become a potent factor in +international relations, and form a new bond of union, of quite +appreciable strength, between the two countries. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote G: I had read or been told that the tip system did not obtain +in America, except in the case of negroes and waiters. A very few days +in New York undeceived me. I went twice to a barber's shop in the +basement of the house in which I lived, paid fifteen cents to be shaved, +and gave the operator nothing; but at my second visit I found myself so +lowered upon by that portly and heavy-moustached citizen that I never +again ventured to place myself under his razor, but went to a more +distant establishment and tipped from the outset. There are, indeed, +certain classes of people--railroad conductors for instance--who do not +expect the tips which in England they consider their due; but, according +to my experience, the safe rule in America is, "when in doubt--tip."] + + + + +LETTER VIII + +Boston--Its Resemblance to Edinburgh--Concord, Walden Pond, and Sleepy +Hollow--Is the "Yankee" Dying Out?--America for the Americans--Detroit +and Buffalo--The "Middle West." + + +CHICAGO. + +The luxury of my quarters in Boston seduced me into a disquisition on +American hospitality which would have come in equally well with +reference to any other city. Were I to search very deeply into my soul +(an exercise much in vogue in Boston), I might perhaps find reasons for +my rambling off. To say that Boston did not interest me would be the +reverse of the truth. It interested me deeply; but it did not excite me +with a sense of novelty or vastness. One can only repeat the obvious +truth that it is like an exceptionally dignified and stately English +town. One instinctively looks around for a cathedral, and finds the +State House in its stead. To the founders of this city, the glory of God +was not a thing to be furthered, or even typified, by any work of men's +hands; but the salvation of men's souls, they thought, could be best +achieved in a well-ordered democratic polity. Their descendants have of +late years taken to decorating their places of worship, and Trinity +Church (by H.H. Richardson), and the new Old South Church, are ambitious +and beautiful pieces of ecclesiastical architecture. But the old Old +South Meeting-House, the ecclesiastical centre of the city, is the flat +and somewhat sour negation of all that is expressed or implied in an +English cathedral. Let me not be understood to disparage the Old South +or the spirit which fashioned it. In my eyes, minster and meeting-house +are equally interesting historic monuments, and to my hereditary +instincts the latter is the more sympathetic. I merely note the fact +that the most conspicuous edifice in Boston, its Duomo, its St. Peter's +or St. Paul's, is dedicated, not to the glory of God, but to the +well-being of man. + +Not physically, of course, but intellectually, Boston has been likened +to Edinburgh. The parallel is fair enough, with this important +reservation, that the theological element in the atmosphere is not +Presbyterian but Unitarian. The Boston of to-day, it must be added, +especially resembles Edinburgh in the fact that its pre-eminence as an +intellectual centre has virtually departed. The _Atlantic Monthly_ +survives, as _Blackwood_, survives, a relic of the great days of old; +but Boston has no Scott Monument to bear visual testimony to her +spiritual achievement. She ought certainly to treat herself to a worthy +Emerson Monument on the Common, whither the boy Emerson used to drive +his mother's cows: not, of course, a Gothic pile like that which +commemorates the genius of Scott, but a statue by the incomparable St. +Gaudens, under a modest classic canopy. + +But if, or when, such a monument is erected, it will absolve no one of +the duty of making a pilgrimage to Concord. Even if it had no historic +or literary associations, this simple, dignified, beautiful New England +village, with its plain frame houses and its stately elm avenues, would +be well worth a visit. Village I call it, but township would be a better +word. Let no one go there with less than half a day to spare, for the +places of interest are widely scattered. My companion and I went first +to Walden Pond, then to the Emerson and Hawthorne houses, then to that +ideal burying-place, Sleepy Hollow, where Emerson and Hawthorne and +Thoreau rest side by side, and finally to the bridge-- + + Where once the embattled farmers stood, + And fired the shot heard round the world. + +Everything here is beautifully appropriate. The commemorative statue of +the "minute-man" with his musket is simple and expressive, and the four +lines of Emerson's hymn graven on the pedestal are the right words +written by the right man, entwining, as it were, the historical and +literary associations of the place. An exquisite appropriateness, too, +presides over the Poets' Corner of Sleepy Hollow. The grave of Emerson +is marked by a rough block of pure white quartz, in which is inserted a +bronze tablet bearing the words:-- + + The passive master lent his hand + To the vast soul that o'er him planned. + +Altogether, among the places of pilgrimage of the English-speaking race, +there is none more satisfactory or more inspiring than Concord, Mass. + +If Boston is no longer a great centre of literary production, it +remains, with its noble public library in its midst, and with Harvard +University on its outskirts, a great centre of culture. I shall always +remember a luncheon party at Harvard, where I was the guest of an +eminent Shakespearean critic, and had for my fellow guests a very +learned Dante scholar (one of the most delightful talkers imaginable), a +famous psychologist, a political economist, and a lecturer on English +literature. The talk fell upon the depopulation of New England, or +rather the substitution of an alien race for (I had almost said) the +indigenous Yankee stock. There was some discussion as to whether the +Yankee was really dying out, or had merely spread throughout the West, +taking with him and disseminating the qualities which had made the +greatness of New England. It was not denied, of course, that westward +emigration has much to do with the matter. The New England farmer, +unable to stand up against the competition of the prairies, has betaken +himself to the prairies so as to compete on the winning side. But one of +the company maintained that this did not account for the whole +phenomenon. "The real key to it," he said, "lies in such a family +history as mine. My grandmother was the youngest of thirteen children; +my mother was the eldest of five; my brother and I are two; and we are +unmarried." + +I am inclined to think that this story of a dwindling stock is typical, +not for New England alone, but for other parts of the Union. It seems as +though the pressure of life in the Eastern States, and perhaps some +subtle influence of climate upon temperament, were rendering the people +of old Teutonic blood--British, Dutch, and German--unwilling to face the +responsibility of large families, and so were giving the country over to +the later and usually inferior immigrant and his progeny. I am not sure +that it might not be well to cultivate a new sense of social duty in +this matter. Is it Utopian to suggest a policy of "America for the +Americans"--some effectual restriction of immigration before it is too +late, so as to leave room for the natural increase of the American +people? This is an "expansion," a "taking up of the white man's burden," +which would command my warmest sympathy. It is to the interest of the +whole world that the America of the future should be peopled by "white +men" in every sense of the word. + +New England, however, cannot be utterly depopulated of its old stocks, +for at every turn you come up against those good old Puritan names which +bespeak a longer ancestry than many an English peer can claim. I find +among the signatures to a petition against the reinstatement of an +elevated railroad in Boston, such names as Adams, Morse, Lowell, +Emerson, Bowditch, Lothrop, Storey, Dabney, Whipple, Ticknor, and Hale. +Of the fifty signatures, only three (or, at the outside five, if we +include two doubtful cases) are of other than English origin. In +contrast to this I may mention another list of names which came under my +notice at the same time--a list of the purchasers at a sale by auction +of seats for a New York first-night. Here twenty-six names out of forty +are obviously of non-English origin, while several of the remaining +fourteen have a distinctly Hebraic ring. + +Though very much smaller than New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia, +Boston is essentially a great city, with a very animated street life, +and nothing in the least provincial about it. But it is not in these +great capitals, not even in this marvellous Chicago where I am now +writing, that one most clearly realises the bewildering potentialities +of the United States. It is precisely in the minor, the provincial +cities, which to us in Europe are no more than names--perhaps not so +much. For instance, what does the average Englishman know of Detroit?[H] + +What State is it in? Is it in the North or the South, the East or the +West? For my part I knew in a general way, having been there before, +that Detroit was situated somewhere between Chicago and Niagara Falls, +but until a few days ago I should have been puzzled to describe its +situation more precisely. Well, I arrive in this obscure, insignificant +place, and find it a city of considerably more than a quarter of a +million inhabitants, beautifully laid out, magnificently paved and +lighted, its broad and noble avenues lined with handsome commercial +houses and roomy if not always beautiful villas, trees shading its +sidewalks, electric cars swimming in an endless stream along its +bustling thoroughfares, its imposing public library swarming with +readers, its theatres crowded, its parks alive with bicyclists, an eager +activity, whether in business, culture, or recreation, manifesting +itself on every hand. Or take, again, Buffalo, somewhat larger than +Detroit, but still by no means a city of the first rank. Everything that +I have said of Detroit applies to it, with the addition that some of +its commercial buildings are not only palatial in their dimensions, but +original and impressive in their architecture. An afternoon stroll along +Woodward-avenue, Detroit, or Main-street, Buffalo, reassures one as to +the future--the physical, at any rate--of the American people. The +prevailing type is, if not definitely Anglo-Saxon, at any rate Teutonic, +and the average of physical development is very high, especially among +the women. It may have some bearing upon what I have been saying above +to note that, in point of stature and beauty, the Bostonian woman, as a +rule, seemed to me to fall far short of her sisters in the other cities +I have visited. I have before my mind's eye many distinguished and +delightful exceptions to this rule; but, postponing gallantry to +sociological candour, I state my general impression for what it is +worth. + +Here, in Chicago, gallantry and candour go hand in hand. A legend of the +envious East represents that a Chicago young man travelling in Louisiana +wrote to his sweetheart: "DEAR MAMIE,--I have shot an alligator. When I +have shot another, I will send you a pair of slippers." The implication +is, to the best of my knowledge and belief, a base and baseless +calumny. New York itself does not present a higher average of female +beauty than Chicago, and that is saying a great deal. But I must not +enlarge on this fascinating topic. A Judgment of Paris is always a +delicate business, and I am in nowise called upon to make the invidious +award. Were I compelled to undertake it, I could only distribute the +apple, and my homage, in equal shares to the goddesses of the East, the +South, and the Middle West. + +When I was in Chicago in '77, it was the metropolis of the West, without +qualification. Now it is merely the frontier city of the Middle West. +From the standpoint of Omaha and Denver, it seems to fill the Eastern +horizon, and shut out the further view. Many stories are told to show +how absolutely and instinctively your true Westerner ignores the Eastern +States and cities. Here is one of the most characteristic. A little girl +came into the smoking car of a train somewhere in Kansas or Nebraska, +and stood beside her father, who was in conversation with another man. +The father put his arm round her and said to his companion, "She's been +a great traveller, this little girl of mine. She's only ten years old, +and she's been all over the United States." + +"You don't say!" replied the other; "all over the United States?" + +"Yes, sir; all over the United States," said the proud father; and then +added, as though the detail was scarcely worth mentioning, "except east +of Chicago." + +Chicago, unfortunately, marks the limit of my wanderings; so I shall +return to England without having seen anything of the United States, +except for a sort of Pisgah-glimpse from the tower of the Auditorium. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote H: My own visit to Detroit illustrated this vagueness of the +average Englishman. I was anxious to see Mr. James A. Herne's famous +play, _Shore Acres_, and learned from Mr. Herne that it would be played +by a travelling company at Buffalo on a certain date. I carefully noted +the place and day, but contrived to mix up Buffalo and Detroit in my +mind, and arrived on the appointed day in Detroit--nearly two hundred +and fifty miles from the appointed place! It was as though, having +arranged to be in Brighton at a certain time, one should go instead to +Scarborough.] + + + + +LETTER IX + +Chicago--Its Splendour and Squalor--Mammoth Buildings--Wind, Dust, and +Smoke--Culture--Chicago's Self-Criticism--Postscript: Social Service in +America. + + +CHICAGO. + +When I was in America twenty-two years ago, Chicago was the city that +interested me least. Coming straight from San Francisco--which, in the +eyes of a youthful student of Bret Harte, seemed the fitting metropolis +of one of the great realms of romance--I saw in Chicago the negation of +all that had charmed me on the Pacific slope. It was a flat and grimy +abode of mere commerce, a rectilinear Glasgow; and to an Edinburgh man, +or rather boy, no comparison could appear more damaging. How different +is the impression produced by the Chicago of to-day! In 1877 the city +was extensive enough, indeed, and handsome to boot, in a commonplace, +cast-iron fashion. It was a chequer-board of Queen-Victoria-streets. +To-day its area is appalling, its architecture grandiose. It is the +young giant among the cities of the earth, and it stands but on the +threshold of its destiny. It embraces in its unimaginable amplitude +every extreme of splendour and squalor. Walking in Dearborn-street or +Adams-street of a cloudy afternoon, you think yourself in a frowning and +fuliginous city of Dis, piled up by superhuman and apparently sinister +powers. Cycling round the boulevards of a sunny morning, you rejoice in +the airy and spacious greenery of the Garden City. Driving along the +Lake Shore to Lincoln Park in the flush of sunset, you wonder that the +dwellers in this street of palaces should trouble their heads about +Naples or Venice, when they have before their very windows the +innumerable laughter, the ever-shifting opalescence, of their +fascinating inland sea. Plunging in the electric cars through the river +subway, and emerging in the West Side, you realise that the slums of +Chicago, if not quite so tightly packed as those of New York or London, +are no whit behind them in the other essentials of civilised barbarism. +Chicago, more than any other city of my acquaintance, suggests that +antique conception of the underworld which placed Elysium and Tartarus +not only on the same plane, but, so to speak, round the corner from each +other. + +As the elephant (or rather the megatherium) to the giraffe, so is the +colossal business block of Chicago to the sky-scraper of New York. There +is a proportion and dignity in the mammoth buildings of Chicago which is +lacking in most of those which form the jagged sky-line of Manhattan +Island. For one reason or another--no doubt some difference in the +system of land tenure is at the root of the matter--the Chicago +architect has usually a larger plot of ground to operate on than his New +York colleague, and can consequently give his building breadth and depth +as well as height. Before the lanky giants of the Eastern metropolis, +one has generally to hold one's aesthetic judgment in abeyance. They are +not precisely ugly, but still less, as a rule, can they be called +beautiful. They are simply astounding manifestations of human energy and +heaven-storming audacity. They stand outside the pale of aesthetics, like +the Eiffel Tower or the Forth Bridge. But in Chicago proportion goes +along with mere height, and many of the business houses are, if not +beautiful, at least aesthetically impressive--for instance, the grim +fortalice of Marshall Field & Company, the Masonic Temple, the Women's +Temperance Temple (a structure with a touch of real beauty), and such +vast cities within the city as the Great Northern Building and the +Monadnock Block. The last-named edifice alone is said to have a daily +population of 6000. A city ordinance now limits the height of buildings +to ten stories; but even that is a respectable allowance. Moreover, it +is found that where giant constructions cluster too close together, they +(literally) stand in each other's light, and the middle stories do not +let. Thus the heaven-storming era is probably over; but there is all the +more reason to feel assured that the business centre of Chicago will ere +long be not only grandiose but architecturally dignified and +satisfactory. A growing thirst for beauty has come upon the city, and +architects are earnestly studying how to assuage it. In magnificence of +internal decoration, Chicago can already challenge the world: for +instance, in the white marble vestibule and corridors of The Rookery, +and the noble hall of the Illinois Trust Bank. + +At the same time, no account of the city scenery of Chicago is complete +without the admission that the gorges and canyons of its central +district are exceedingly draughty, smoky, and dusty. Even in these +radiant spring days, it fully acts up to its reputation as the Windy +City. This peculiarity renders it probably the most convenient place in +the world for the establishment of a Suicide Club on the Stevensonian +model. With your eyes peppered with dust, with your ears full of the +clatter of the Elevated Road, and with the prairie breezes playfully +buffeting you and waltzing with you by turns, as they eddy through the +ravines of Madison, Monroe, or Adams-street, you take your life in your +hand when you attempt the crossing of State-street, with its endless +stream of rattling waggons and clanging trolley-cars. New York does not +for a moment compare with Chicago in the roar and bustle and +bewilderment, of its street life. This remark will probably be resented +in New York, but it expresses the settled conviction of an impartial +pedestrian, who has spent a considerable portion of his life during the +past few weeks in "negotiating" the crossings of both cities. + +On the other hand, I observe no eagerness on the part of New York to +contest the supremacy of Chicago in the matter of smoke. In this +respect, the eastern metropolis is to the western as Mont Blanc to +Vesuvius. The smoke of Chicago has a peculiar and aggressive +individuality, due, I imagine, to the natural clearness of the +atmosphere. It does not seem, like London smoke, to permeate and blend +with the air. It does not overhang the streets in a uniform canopy, but +sweeps across and about them in gusts and swirls, now dropping and now +lifting again its grimy curtain. You will often see the vista of a +gorge-like street so choked with a seeming thundercloud that you feel +sure a storm is just about to burst upon the city, until you look up at +the zenith and find it smiling and serene. Again and again a sudden +swirl of smoke across the street (like that which swept across +Fifth-avenue when the Windsor Hotel burst into flames) has led me to +prick up my ears for a cry of "Fire!" But Chicago is not so easily +alarmed. It is accustomed to having its airs from heaven blurred by +these blasts from hell. I know few spectacles more curious than that +which awaits you when you have shot up in the express elevator to the +top of the Auditorium tower--on the one hand, the blue and laughing +lake, on the other, the city belching volumes of smoke from its thousand +throats, as though a vaster Sheffield or Wolverhampton had been +transported by magic to the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. What a +wonderful city Chicago will be when the commandment is honestly +enforced which declares, "Thou shalt consume thine own smoke!" + +What a wonderful city Chicago will be! That is the ever-recurring burden +of one's cogitations. For Chicago is awake, and intelligently awake, to +her destinies; so much one perceives even in the reiterated complaints +that she is asleep. Discontent is the condition of progress, and Chicago +is not in the slightest danger of relapsing into a condition of inert +self-complacency. Her sons love her, but they chasten her. They are +never tired of urging her on, sometimes (it must be owned) with most +unfilial objurgations; and she, a quite unwearied Titan, is bracing up +her sinews for the great task of the coming century. I have given myself +a rendezvous in Chicago for 1925, when air-ships will no doubt make the +transit easy for my septuagenarian frame. Nowhere in the world, I am +sure, does the "to be continued in our next" interest take hold on one +with such a compulsive grip. + +Culture is pouring into Chicago as rapidly as pork or grain, and Chicago +is insatiate in asking for more. In going over the Public Library (a not +quite satisfactory building, though with some beautiful details) I was +most of all impressed by the army of iron-bound boxes which are +perpetually speeding to and fro between the library itself and no fewer +than fifty-seven distributing stations scattered throughout the city. "I +thought the number was forty-eight," said a friend who accompanied me. +"So it was last year," said the librarian. "We have set up nine more +stations during the interval." The Chicago Library boasts (no doubt +justly) that it circulates more books than any similar institution in +the world. Take, again, the University of Chicago: seven years ago (or, +say, at the outside ten) it had no existence, and its site was a dismal +swamp; to-day it is a handsome and populous centre of literary and +scientific culture. Observe, too, that it is by no means an oasis in the +desert, but is thoroughly in touch with the civic life around it. For +instance, it actively participates in the admirable work done by the +Hull House Settlement in South Halsted-street, and in the vigorous and +wide-spreading University Extension movement. + +At the present moment, Chicago is not a little resentful of the sharp +admonitions addressed to her by two of her aforesaid loving but exacting +children. One, Professor Charles Zueblin, has been telling her that "in +the arrogance of youth she has failed to realise that instead of being +one of the progressive cities of the world, she has been one of the +reckless, improvident, and shiftless cities." Professor Zueblin is not +content (for example) with her magnificent girdle of parks and +boulevards, but calls for smaller parks and breathing spaces in the +heart of her most crowded districts. He further maintains that her great +new sewage canal is a gigantically costly blunder; and indeed one cannot +but sympathise with the citizens of St. Louis in inquiring by what right +Chicago converts the Mississippi into her main sewer. But if Professor +Zueblin chastises Chicago with whips, Mr. Henry B. Fuller, it would +seem, lashes her with scorpions. Mr. Fuller is one of the leading +novelists of the city--for Chicago, be it known, had a nourishing and +characteristic literature of her own long before Mr. Dooley sprang into +fame. The author of _The Cliff-Dwellers_ is alleged to have said that +the Anglo-Saxon race was incapable of art, and that in this respect +Chicago was pre-eminently Anglo-Saxon. "Alleged," I say, for reports of +lectures in the American papers are always to be taken with caution, and +are very often as fanciful as Dr. Johnson's reports of the debates in +Parliament. The reporter is not generally a shorthand writer. He jots +down as much as he conveniently can of the lecturer's remarks, and +pieces them out from imagination. Thus, I am not at all sure what Mr. +Fuller really said; but there is no doubt whatever of the indignation +kindled by his diatribe. Deny her artistic capacities and sensibilities, +and you touch Chicago in her tenderest point. Moreover, Mr. Fuller's +onslaught encouraged several other like-minded critics to back him up, +so that the city has been writhing under the scourges of her +epigrammatists. I have before me a letter to one of the evening papers, +written in a tone of academic sarcasm which proves that even the +supercilious and "donnish" element is not lacking in Chicago culture. "I +know a number of artists," says the writer, "who came to Chicago, and +after staying here for a while, went away and achieved much success in +New York, London, and Paris. The appreciation they received here gave +them the impetus to go elsewhere, and thus brought them fame and +fortune." Whatever foundation there may be for these jibes, they are in +themselves a sufficient evidence that Chicago is alive to her +opportunities and responsibilities. She is, in her own vernacular, +"making, culture hum." Mr. Fuller, I understand, reproached her with her +stockyards--an injustice which even Mr. Bernard Shaw would scarcely +have committed. Is it the fault of Chicago that the world is +carnivorous? Was not "Nature red in tooth and claw" several aeons before +Chicago was thought of? I do not understand that any unnecessary cruelty +is practised in the stockyards; and apart from that, I fail to see that +systematic slaughter of animals for food is any more disgusting than +sporadic butchery. But of the stockyards I can speak only from hearsay. +I shall not go to see them. If I have any spare time, I shall rather +spend it in a second visit to St. Gaudens' magnificent and magnificently +placed statue of Abraham Lincoln, surely one of the great works of art +of the century, and of the few entirely worthy monuments ever erected to +a national hero. + + +POSTSCRIPT.--The above-mentioned Hull House Settlement in South +Halsted-street, under the direction of Miss Jane Addams, is probably the +most famous institution of its kind in America; but it is only one of +many. There is no more encouraging feature in American life than the +zeal, energy, and high and liberal intelligence with which social +service of this sort is being carried on in all the great cities. This +is a line of activity on which England and America are advancing hand +in hand, and however much one may deplore the necessity for such work, +one cannot but see in the common impulse which prompts and directs it a +symptom of the deep-seated unity of the two peoples. Nothing I saw in +America impressed me more than the thorough practicality as well as the +untiring devotion which was apparent in the work carried on by Miss +Addams in Chicago and Miss Lillian D. Wald in Henry-street, New York. +And in both Settlements I recognised the same atmosphere of culture, the +same spirit of plain living, hard working, and high thinking, that +characterises the best of our kindred institutions in England. A lady +connected with the University of Chicago, who is also a worker at the +Hull House Settlement, told me a touching little story which illustrates +at once the need for such work in Chicago, and the unexpected response +with which it sometimes meets. She had been talking about the beauties +of nature to a group of women from the slums, and at the end of her +address one of her hearers said, "I ain't never been outside of Chicago, +but I know it's true what the lady says. There's two vacant lots near +our place, an' when the spring comes, the colours of them--they fair +makes you hold your breath. An' then there's the trees on the Avenoo. +An' then there's all the sky." On another occasion the same lady met +with an "unexpected response" of a different order. She was showing a +boy from the slums some photographs of Italian pictures, when they came +upon a Virgin and Child. "Ah," said the boy at once, "that's Jesus an' +his Mother: I allus knows _them_ when I sees 'em." "Yes," said Miss +R----, "there is a purity and grandeur of expression about them, isn't +there--" "Tain't that," interrupted the boy, "it's the rims round their +heads as gives 'em away!" + +Apart from the Settlements, there are many energetically-conducted +Societies in America for the social and political enlightenment of the +masses. I have before me, for instance, a little bundle of most +excellent leaflets issued by the League for Social Service of New York. +They deal with such subjects as _The Duties of American Citizenship, The +Value of a Vote, The Duty of Public Spirit, The Co-operative City_, &c. +They include an admirable abstract in twenty-four pages, of _Laws +Concerning the Welfare of Every Citizen of New York_, and the same +Society issues similar abstracts of the laws of other States. They have +a large and well-equipped lecture organisation, and they issue +excellent practical _Suggestions for Conferences and Courses of Study_. +The problem to be grappled with by this Society and others working on +similar lines is no doubt one of immense difficulty. It is nothing less +than the education in citizenship of the most heterogeneous, polyglot, +and in some respects ignorant and degraded population ever assembled in +a single city, since the days of Imperial Rome. The spread of political +enlightenment in New York and other cities cannot possibly be very +rapid; but no effort is being spared to accelerate it. I sometimes +wonder whether the obvious necessity for political education in America +may not, in the long run, prove a marked advantage to her, as compared, +for instance, with England. Dissatisfaction, as I have said above, is +the condition of progress. We are apt to assume that every Briton is +born a good citizen; and in the lethargy begotten of that assumption, it +may very well happen that we let the Americans outstrip us in the march +of enlightenment. + + + + +LETTER X + +New York in Spring--Central Park--New York not an Ill-governed City--The +United States Post Office--The Express System--Valedictory. + + +NEW YORK. + +It is with a curious sensation of home-coming that I find myself once +more in New York. Spring has arrived before me. The blue dome of sky has +lost its crystalline sparkle, and the trees in Madison-square have put +on a filmy veil of green. Going to a luncheon party in the Riverside +region, I determine, for the sheer pleasure and exhilaration of the +thing, to walk the whole way, up Fifth-avenue and diagonally across +Central Park. What a magnificent pleasure ground, vast, various, and +seductive! A peerless emerald on the finger of Manhattan! If I were not +bound by solemn oaths to present myself at West-End-avenue at half-past +one, I could loaf all the afternoon by the superb expanse of the Croton +Reservoir, looking out over the giant city of sunshine, with the white +dome of Columbia College and the pyramid of Grant's Monument on the +northern horizon, and far to the eastward the low hills of Long Island. + +Passing the Metropolitan Museum of Art, I am reminded, not only that I +have never been inside it, but that in all the cities I have visited I +have not gone to a single show-place, museum, or picture-gallery, save +one remarkable private collection in Baltimore. Of course I must also +except (a large exception!) the public libraries of Washington, Boston, +and Chicago, which are, in a very eminent sense, "show-places." Still, +it seems somewhat remarkable (does it not?) that in a country which is +understood in Europe to be monotonous and unattractive to travellers, I +should have spent two months not only of intellectual interest but of +aesthetic enjoyment, without once, except in a chance moment of idleness, +feeling the least inclination to fall back upon, the treasures of +European art which it undoubtedly contains. I have even ignored the +marvels of nature. I passed within twenty miles of Niagara; I saw the +serried icefloes sweeping down from Lake Erie to the cataract; and I did +not go to see them plunge over. In the first place, I had been there +before; in the second place, I should have had to sacrifice six hours +of Chicago, where I wanted, not six hours less, but six weeks more. + +Before saying farewell--a fond farewell!--to New York, let me supplement +my first impressions with my last. The most maligned of cities, I called +it; and truly I said well. Here is even the judicious Mr. J.F. Muirhead +of "Baedeker," betrayed by his passion for antithesis into describing +New York as "a lady in ball costume, with diamonds in her ears and her +toes out at her boots." This was written, to be sure, in 1890, and may +have been true in its day; for it takes an American city much less than +a decade to belie a derogatory epigram. Now, at any rate, New York has +had her shoes mended to some purpose. She is not the best paved city in +the world, or even in America, but neither is she by any means the +worst; and her splendid system of electric and elevated railroads +renders her more independent of paving than any European city. +Fifth-avenue is paved to perfection; Broadway and Sixth-avenue are not; +but at any rate the streets are not for ever being hauled up and laid +down again, like some of our leading London thoroughfares. Holborn, for +example, may be ideally paved on paper, but its roadway is subject to +such incessant eruptions of one sort or another that it is in practice +a much more uncomfortable thoroughfare than any of the New York avenues. +For the rest, New York has a copious and excellent water supply, which +London has not; it has a splendidly efficient fire-brigade; it has an +admirable telephone system, with underground wires; and even its +electric trolleys get their motive-power from underneath, whereas in +Philadelphia the overhead wires are, I regret to say, killing the trees +which lend the streets their greatest charm. Altogether, Tammany or no +Tammany, New York cannot possibly be described as an ill-governed city. +Its government may be wasteful and worse; inefficient it is not. Even +the policemen seem to be maligned. I never found them rude or needlessly +dictatorial. + +In one of the essential conveniences of modern life, New York is far +behind London; but the blame lies, not with the city, but with the +United States. Its postal arrangements are at best erratic, at worst +miserable. Letters which would be delivered in London in three or four +hours take in New York anywhere from six to sixteen hours. It was a long +time before I realised and learned to allow for the slowness of the +postal service. At first I used mentally to accuse my correspondents of +great dilatoriness in attending to notes that called for an immediate +reply. On one occasion I posted in Madison Square at 3 P.M. a letter +addressed to the Lyceum Theatre, not a quarter of a mile away, +suggesting an appointment for the same evening after the play. The +appointment was not kept, for the letter was not delivered till the +following morning! To ensure its delivery the same evening, I ought to +have put a special-delivery stamp on it--price fivepence--in addition to +the ordinary two-cent stamp. No doubt it is the universal employment of +the telephone in American cities that leads people to put up with such +defective postal arrangements. + +But it is not only within city limits that the United States Post Office +functions with a dignified deliberation. The ordinary time that it takes +to write (say) from New York to Chicago, and receive an answer, might be +considerably reduced without any acceleration of the train service. It +sounds incredible, but it is, I believe, the case, that the simple and +eminently time-saving device of a letter-box in the domestic front-door +is practically unknown in America. I did observe one, in Boston, so +small that a fair sized business letter would certainly have stuck in +its throat. One evening I was sitting at dinner in a fashionable street +in New York, close to Central Park, when I was startled by a distinctly +burglarious noise at the window. My host smiled at my look of +bewilderment, and explained that it was only the letter-carrier; and, +sure enough, when the servant came into the room she picked up three or +four letters from the floor. The postman was somehow able to reach the +front window from the "stoop," open it, and throw in the evening's +mail--a primitive arrangement, more suggestive of the English than of +the American Gotham. Even the gum on the United States postage-stamps +is apt to be ineffectual. When you are stamping letters in hot haste +to catch the European mail, you are as likely as not to find that +the head of President Grant has curled up and refuses--most +uncharacteristically--to stick to its post. + +The conveniences of the express system, again, are, in my judgment, +greatly overrated. It is often slow and always expensive. It seems to +have been devised by the makers of Saratoga trunks, for it puts a +premium upon huge packages and a tax upon those of moderate size. I +speak feelingly, for I have just paid, eight shillings for the +conveyance of five packages from my room to the wharf, a distance of +about a mile and a half. A London growler would have taken them and +myself to boot for eighteenpence, three of the packages going outside, +and two, with their owner, inside. It is true that had I packed all my +belongings in one huge box the same company would have conveyed them to +the steamer for one and eightpence, which is the regular charge per +package. But I could not have taken this box into my state-room; I must +in any case have had a cabin trunk; and for an ocean voyage, a bundle of +rugs is, to say the least of it, advisable. Thus I could not have +escaped paying four and tenpence for the conveyance of my baggage +alone--rather more than three times as much as it would have cost to +convey my baggage and myself the same distance in London. It must not be +forgotten, of course, that the New York Express Company would, if +necessary, have carried the goods much further for the same charge of +forty cents a package. The limit of distance I do not know: it is +probably something like twenty miles. But a potential ell does not +reconcile me to paying an exorbitant price for the actual inch which is +all I have any use for. This method of simplification--fixing the +minimum payment on the basis of the maximum bulk, weight, and +distance--seems to me essentially irrational. In some cases, indeed, it +cuts against the Express Company. When I first had occasion to move from +one abode to another in New York--a distance of about a quarter of a +mile--I thought with glee "Now the famous express system will save me +all trouble." But I found that it would cost two dollars to express my +belongings, whereas even the notoriously extortionate New York cabman +would convey me and all my goods and chattels for half that sum. So the +Express Company's loss was cabby's gain. + +"The ship is cheered, the harbour cleared," and none too merrily are we +dropping down by the Statue of Liberty to Sandy Hook and the Atlantic. +(There is a point, by the way, a little below the Battery, from which +New York looks mountainous indeed. Its irregularly serrated profile is +lost, and the sky-scrapers fall into position one behind the other, like +an artistically grouped cohort of giants. "Hills peep o'er hills, and +Alps on Alps arise," while in the background the glorious curve of the +Brooklyn Bridge seems to span half the horizon. I could not but think of +Valhalla and the Bridge of the Gods in the _Rheingold_. Elevator +architecture necessarily sends one to Scandinavian mythology in quest of +similitudes.) It is with acute regret that I turn my back upon New York, +or, rather, turn my face to see it receding over the steamer's wake. Not +often in this imperfect world are high anticipations overtopped, as the +real American has overtopped my half-reminiscent dream of it. "The real +America?" That, of course, is an absurd expression. I have had only a +superficial glimpse of one corner of the United States. It is as though +one were to glance at a mere dog-ear on a folio page, and then profess +to have mastered its whole import. But I intend no such ridiculous +profession. I have seen something of the outward aspect of five or six +great cities; I have looked into one small facet of American social +life; and I have faithfully reported what I have seen--nothing more. At +the same time my observations, and more especially my conversations with +the scores of "bright" and amiable men it has been my privilege to meet, +have suggested to me certain thoughts, certain hopes and apprehensions, +respecting the future of America and the English-speaking world, which I +shall try to formulate elsewhere. For the present, let me only sum up +my personal experiences in saying that all the pleasant expectations I +brought with me to America have been realised, all the forebodings +disappointed. Even the interviewer is far less terrible than I had been +led to imagine. He always treated me with courtesy, sometimes with +comprehension. One gentleman alone (not an American, by the way) set +forth to be mildly humorous at my expense; and even he apologised in +advance, as it were, by prefixing his own portrait to the interview, as +who should say, "Look at me--how can I help it?" Again, I had been led +rather to fear American hospitality as being apt to become importunate +and exacting. I found it no less considerate than cordial. Probably I +was too small game to bring the lion-hunters upon my trail. The alleged +habit of speech-making and speech-demanding on every possible occasion I +found to be merely mythical. Three times only was I called upon to "say +something," and on the first two occasions, being taken unawares, I said +everything I didn't want to say. The third time, having foreseen the +demand, I had noted down in advance the heads of an eloquent harangue; +but when the time came I felt the atmosphere unpropitious, and +suppressed my rhetoric. The proceedings opened with an iced beverage, +called, I believe, a "Mississippi toddy," probably as being the longest +toddy on record, the father of (fire) waters; and on its down-lapsing +current my eloquence was swept into the gulf of oblivion. The meeting, +fortunately, did not know what it had lost, and its serenity remained +unclouded. But it is not to the Mississippi toddies and other creature +comforts of America that I look back with gratitude and affection. It is +to the spontaneous and unaffected human kindness that met me on every +hand; the will to please and to be pleased in daily intercourse; and, in +the spiritual sphere, the thirst for knowledge, for justice, for beauty, +for the larger and the purer light. + + + + +PART II + +REFLECTIONS + + + + +NORTH AND SOUTH + +I + + +In Washington, on the 6th of April last, business was suspended from +mid-day onwards, while President McKinley and all the high officers of +State attended the public funeral at Arlington Cemetery of several +hundred soldiers, brought home from the battlefields of Cuba. The burial +ground on the heights of Arlington--the old Virginian home, by the way, +of the Lee family--had hitherto been known as the resting-place of +numbers of Northern soldiers, killed in the Civil War. But among the +bodies committed to earth that afternoon were those of many Southerners, +who had stood and fallen side by side with their Northern comrades at El +Caney and San Juan. The significance of the event was widely felt and +commented upon. "Henceforth," said one paper, "the graves at Arlington +will constitute a truly national cemetery;" and the same note was struck +in a thousand other quarters. Poets burst into song at the thought of +their + + "Resting together side by side, + Comrades in blue and grey! + + "Healed in the tender peace of time, + The wounds that once were red + With hatred and with hostile rage, + While sanguined brothers bled. + + "They leaped together at the call + Of country--one in one, + The soldiers of the Northern hills, + And of the Southern sun! + + "'Yankee' and 'Rebel,' side by side, + Beneath one starry fold-- + To-day, amid our common tears, + Their funeral bells are tolled." + +The artlessness of these verses renders them none the less significant. +They express a popular sentiment in popular language. But, as here +expressed, it is clearly the sentiment of the North: how far is it +shared and acknowledged by the South? Happening to be on the spot, I +could not but try to obtain some sort of answer to this question. + +Again, as I stood on the terrace of the Capitol that April afternoon, +and looked out across the Potomac to the old Lee mansion at Arlington, +while all the flags of Washington drooped at half-mast, a very +different piece of verse somehow floated into my memory: + + "Walk wide o' the Widow at Windsor, + For 'alf o' Creation she owns: + We 'ave bought 'er the same with the sword and the flame, + And salted it down with our bones. + (Poor beggars!--it's blue with our bones!)" + +The association was obvious: how the price of lead would go up if +England brought home all her dead "heroes" in hermetically-sealed +caskets! My thought (so an anti-Imperialist might say) was like the +smile of the hardened freebooter at the amiable sentimentalism of a +comrade who was "yet but young in deed." But why should Mr. Kipling's +rugged lines have cropped up in my memory rather than the smoother +verses of other poets, equally familiar to me, and equally well fitted +to point the contrast?--for instance, Mr. Housman's:-- + + "It dawns in Asia, tombstones show, + And Shropshire names are read; + And the Nile spills his overflow + Beside the Severn's dead." + +Or Mr. Newbolt's: + + "_Qui procul hinc_--the legend's writ, + The frontier grave is far away; + _Qui ante diem periit, + Sed miles, sed fro patria_." + +The reason simply was that during the month I had spent in America the +air had been filled with Kipling. His name was the first I had heard +uttered on landing--by the conductor of a horse-car. Men of light and +leading, and honourable women not a few, had vied with each other in +quoting his refrains; and I had seen the crowded audience at a low +music-hall stirred to enthusiasm by the delivery of a screed of maudlin +verses on his illness. He, the rhapsodist of the red coat, was out and +away the most popular poet in the country of the blue, and that at a +time when the blue coat in itself was inimitably popular. Nor could +there be any doubt that his _Barrack-room Ballads_ were the most popular +of his works. Not a century had passed since the Tommy Atkins of that +day had burnt the Capitol on whose steps I was standing (a shameful +exploit, to which I allude only to point the contrast); and here was the +poet of Tommy Atkins so idolised by the grandsons of the men of 1812 and +1776, that I, a Briton and a staunch admirer of Kipling, had almost come +to resent as an obsession the ubiquity of his name! + +It seemed then, that the rancour of the blue coat against the red must +have dwindled no less significantly than the rancour of the grey coat +against the blue. Into the reality of this phenomenon, too, I made it +my business to inquire. + + + + +II + + +There can be no doubt that the Spanish War has done a great deal to +bring the North and the South together. It has not in any sense created +in the South a feeling of loyalty to the Union, but it has given the +younger generation in the South an opportunity of manifesting that +loyalty to the Union which has been steadily growing for twenty years. +Down to 1880, or thereabouts, the wound left by the Civil War was still +raw, its inflammation envenomed rather than allayed by the measures of +the "reconstruction" period. Since 1880, since the administration of +President Hayes, the wound has been steadily healing, until it has come +to seem no longer a burning sore, but an honourable cicatrice. + +Every one admits that the heaviest blow ever dealt to the South was that +which laid Abraham Lincoln in the dust. He, if any one, could have +averted the mistakes which delayed by fifteen years the very beginning +of the process of reconciliation. His wise and kindly influence +removed, the North committed what is now recognised as the fatal blunder +of forcing unrestricted negro suffrage on the South. This measure was +dictated partly, no doubt, by honest idealism, partly by much lower +motives. Then the horde of "carpet-baggers" descended upon the +"reconstructed" States, and there ensued a period of humiliation to the +South which made men look back with longing even to the sharper agonies +of the war. Coloured voters were brought in droves, by their Northern +fuglemen, to polling-places which were guarded by United States troops. +Utterly illiterate negroes crowded the benches of State legislatures. A +Northerner and staunch Union man has assured me that in the Capitol of +one of the reconstructed States he has seen a coloured representative +gravely studying a newspaper which he held upside down. The story goes +that in the legislature of Mississippi a negro majority, which had +opposed a certain bill, was suddenly brought round to it in a body by a +chance allusion to its "provisions," which they understood to mean +something to eat! This anecdote perhaps lacks evidence; but there can be +no doubt that the freedmen of 1865 were, as a body, entirely unfitted to +exercise the suffrage thrust upon them. A degrading and exasperating +struggle was the inevitable result--the whites of the South striving by +intimidation and chicanery to nullify the negro vote, the professional +politicians from the North battling, with the aid of the United States +troops, to render it effectual. Such a state of things was demoralising +to both parties, and in process of time the common sense of the North +revolted against it. United States troops no longer stood round the +ballot-boxes, and the South was suffered, in one way and another, to +throw off the "Dominion of Darkness." Different States modified their +constitutions in different ways. Many offices which had been elective +were made appointive. The general plan adopted of late years has been to +restrict the suffrage by means of a very simple test of intelligence, +the would-be voter being required to read a paragraph of the State +constitution and explain its meaning. The examiner, if one may put it +so, is the election judge, and he can admit or exclude a man at his +discretion. Thus illiterate whites are not necessarily deprived of the +suffrage. They may be quite intelligent men and responsible citizens, +who happened to grow to manhood precisely in the years when the war and +its sequels upset the whole system of public education in the South. At +any rate (it is argued), the illiterate white is a totally different man +from the illiterate negro. How far such modifications of the State +constitutions are consistent with the Constitution of the United States, +is a nice question upon which I shall not attempt to enter. The +arguments used to reconcile this test of intelligence with Amendments +XIV. and XV. of the United States Constitution seem to me more ingenious +than convincing. But, constitutional or not, the compromise is +reasonable; and though people in the South still feel, as one of them +put it to me, that the Republican party "may yet wield the flail of the +negro over them," the flail has been laid aside long enough to permit +the South, in the main, to recover its peace of mind and its +self-respect. The negro problem is still difficult enough, as many +tragic evidences prove; but there is no reason to despair of its +ultimate solution. + +Meanwhile material prosperity has been returning to the South; +agriculture has revived, and manufactures have increased. Social +intercourse and intermarriage have done much to promote mutual +comprehension between North and South, and to wipe out rankling +animosities. Each party has made a sincere effort to understand the +other's "case," and the war has come to seem a thing fated and +inevitable, or at any rate not to have been averted save by superhuman +wisdom and moderation on both sides. With mutual comprehension, mutual +admiration has gone hand in hand. The gallantry and tenacity of the +South are warmly appreciated in the North, and it is felt on both sides +that the very qualities which made the tussle so long and terrible are +the qualities which ensure the greatness of the reunited nation. But +changes of sentiment are naturally slow and, from moment to moment, +imperceptible. It needs some outside stimulus or shock to bring them +clearly home to the minds of men. Such a stimulus was provided by the +conflict with Spain. It did not create a new sense of solidarity between +the North and the South, but rather brought prominently to the surface +of the national consciousness a sense of solidarity that had for years +been growing and strengthening, more or less obscurely and +inarticulately, on both sides of Mason and Dixon's line. It consummated +a process of consolidation which had been going on for something like +twenty years. + +Furthermore, the Spanish War deposed the Civil War from its position as +the last event of great external picturesqueness in the national +history. However sincere may be our love of peace, war remains +irresistibly fascinating to the imagination; and the imagination of +young America has now a foreign war instead of a civil war to look back +upon. The smoke of battle, in which the South stood shoulder to shoulder +with the North, has done more than many years of peace could do to +soften in retrospect the harsh outlines of the fratricidal struggle. + +At the same time, there is another side to the case which ought not to +be overlooked. The South is proud, very proud; and the older generation, +the generation which fought and agonised through the terrible years from +'61 to '65, is more than a little inclined to resent what it regards as +the condescending advances of the North. This feeling is not confined to +those out-of-the-way corners where, as the saying goes, they have not +yet heard that the war--the Civil War--is over. It is not confined to +the old families, ruined by the war, whom the tide of returning +prosperity has not reached, and never will reach. It is strong among +even the most active and progressive of the veterans of '65. They smile +a grim smile in their grizzled beards at the fuss which has been made +over this "picayune war," as they call it. They, who came crushed, +impoverished, heartbroken, out of the duel of the Titans--they, who know +what it really means to sacrifice everything, everything, to a patriotic +ideal--they, to whom their cause seems none the less sacred because they +know it irrevocably lost--how can they be expected to toss up their caps +and help the party which first vanquished, and then, for many bitter +years, oppressed them, to make political capital out of what appears, in +their eyes, a more or less creditable military picnic? It is especially +the small scale of the conflict that excites their derision. "Did you +ever hear of the battle of Dinwiddie Court-House?" one of them said to +me. I confessed that I had not. "No," he said, "nor has any one else +heard of the battle of Dinwiddie Court-House. It was one of the most +insignificant fights in the war. But there were more men killed in half +an hour in that almost forgotten battle, than in all this mighty war we +hear so much about. Ah!" he continued, "they think we are vastly +gratified when they 'fraternise' with us on our battlefields and +decorate the graves of our dead. I don't know but I prefer the 'waving +of the bloody shirt' to this flaunting of the olive-branch. They have +their victory; let them leave us our graves." + +An intense loyalty, not only to the political theories of the South, but +to the memory of the men who died for them--"qui bene pro patria cum +patriaque jacent"--still animates the survivors of the war. With a +confessed but none the less pathetic illogicality, they feel as though +Death had not gone to work impartially, but had selected for his prey +the noblest and the best. One of these survivors, in a paper now before +me, quotes from _Das Siegesfest_ the line-- + + "Ja, der Krieg verschlingt die Besten!" + +and then remarks: "Still, when Schiller says:-- + + 'Denn Patroklus liegt begraben, + Und Thersites kommt zurueck,' + +his illustration is only half right. The Greek Thersites did not return +to claim a pension." + +The dash of bitterness in this remark must not be taken too seriously. +The fact remains, however, that among the veterans of the South there +prevails a certain feeling of aloofness from the national jubilation +over the Spanish War. They "don't take much stock in it." The feeling is +widespread, I believe, but not loud-voiced. If I represented it as +surly or undignified, I should misrepresent it grossly. It is simply the +outcome of an ancient and deep-seated sorrow, not to be salved by +phrases or ceremonies--the most tragic emotion, I think, with which I +ever came face to face. But it prevails almost exclusively among the +older generation in the South, the men who "when they saw the issue of +the war, gave up their faith in God, but not their faith in the cause." +To the young, or even the middle-aged, it has little meaning. I met a +scholar-soldier in the South who had given expression to the sentiment +of his race and generation in an essay--one might almost say an +elegy--so chivalrous in spirit and so fine in literary form that it +moved me well-nigh to tears. Reading it at a public library, I found +myself so visibly affected by it that my neighbour at the desk glanced +at me in surprise, and I had to pull myself sharply together. Yet the +writer of this essay told me that when he gave it to his son to read, +the young man handed it back to him, saying, "All this is a sealed book +to me. I can not feel these things as you do." + +More important, perhaps than the sentiment of the veterans is the +feeling, which has been pretty generally expressed, that the South was +slighted in the actual conduct of the late war--that Southern regiments +and Southern soldiers (notably General Fitzhugh Lee) were unduly kept in +the background. Still, there is every reason to believe that the general +effect of the war has been one of conciliation and consolidation. From +the ultra-Southern point of view, the North seems merely to have seized +the opportunity of making honourable amends for the "horrors of +reconstruction;" but even those who take this view admit that the North +_has_ seized the opportunity, and that gladly. As a matter of fact the +good-will of the North, and its desire to let bygones be bygones, are +probably very little influenced by any such recondite motive. It is in +most cases quite simple and instinctive. "There are no rebels now," said +the commandant of the Brooklyn Navy Yard when he gave orders to delete +the fourth word of the inscription "Taken from the rebel ram +_Mississippi_" over a trophy of the Civil War displayed outside of his +quarters. Admiral Philips had probably no thought of "reconstruction" or +of "making amends;" he simply obeyed a spontaneous and general +sentiment. The Southern heroes of the Civil War, moreover, are freely +admitted, and enthusiastically welcomed, into the national Pantheon. + +When the thirty-fourth anniversary of "Appomattox Day," which brought +the war to an end, was celebrated in Chicago on April 10 last (Governor +Roosevelt being the guest of honour), the memory of Lee was eulogised +along with that of Grant, and the oration in his honour was received +with equal applause. Finally, it is admitted even by those who are most +inclined to make light of the sentiment elicited by the late war, that +all the States of the Atlantic seaboard are instinctively drawing +together to counterpoise the growing predominance of the West. This +substitution of a new line of cleavage for the old one may seem a +questionable matter for rejoicing. But in any great community, conflicts +of interest must always arise. The recognition of the problems which +await the Republic in the near future does not imply any doubt of her +ability to arrive at a wise and just solution of them. + + + + +III + + +The most loyal of the Southern veterans, I have said, recognise that the +cause of the South is irrevocably lost. By the cause of the South I do +not, of course, mean slavery. There is probably no one in the South who +would advocate the reinstatement of that "peculiar institution," even if +it could be effected by the lifting of a finger. "The cause we fought +for and our brothers died for," says Professor Gildersleeve of +Baltimore, "was the cause of civil liberty, not the cause of human +slavery.... If the secrets of all hearts could have been revealed, our +enemies would have been astounded to see how many thousands and tens of +thousands in the Southern States felt the crushing burden and the awful +responsibility of the institution which we were supposed to be defending +with the melodramatic fury of pirate kings." + +What was it, then, that the South fought for? In what sense was its +cause the cause of "civil liberty?" A brief inquiry into this question +may be found to have more than a merely historic interest--to have a +direct bearing, indeed, upon the problems of the future, not only for +America, but for the English-speaking world. + +Let me state at once the true inwardness of the matter, as I have been +led to see it. The cause of the South was the cause of small against +large political aggregations; and the world regards the defeat of the +South as righteous and inevitable, because instinct tells it that the +welfare of humanity is to be sought in large political aggregations, and +not in small. Providence, in a word, is on the side of the big (social) +battalions. + +From the point of view of pure logic, of academic argument, the case of +the South was enormously strong. Consequently, the latter-day apologists +of the Confederacy devote themselves with pathetic fervour, and often +with great ingenuity, to what the impartial outsider cannot but feel to +be barren discussions of constitutional law. They point out that the +States--that is, the thirteen original States--preceded the Federal +Union, and voluntarily entered into it under clearly-defined conditions; +that the Federal Government actually derived its powers from the +consent of the States, and could have none which they did not confer +upon it; that the maintenance of slavery in the Southern States, and the +right to claim the extradition of fugitive slaves, were formally +safeguarded in the Constitution; that it was in reliance upon these +provisions that the Southern States consented to enter the Union; that +the right of secession had been openly and repeatedly asserted by +leading politicians and influential parties in several Northern States, +and was therefore no novel and treasonable invention of the South; and, +finally, that the right to enter into a compact implied the right to +recede from it when its provisions were broken, or obviously on the +point of being broken, by the other party or parties to the agreement. +All this is logically and historically indisputable. The Southerners +were the conservative party, and had the letter of the Constitution on +their side; the Northerners were the reformers, the innovators. +Entrenched in the theory of State Sovereignty, the South denied the +right of the North, acting through the Central Government, to interfere +with its "peculiar institution;" and even those who deplored the +existence of slavery felt themselves none the less bound to assert and +defend the right of their respective States to manage their own +affairs.[I] It was a conflict as old as the Revolution--and even, in its +germs, of still older date--between centripetal and centrifugal forces, +between national and local patriotism. The makers of the Constitution +had tried to hold the scales justly, but in their natural jealousy of a +strong central power, they had allowed the balance to deflect unduly on +the side of local independence. The North, the national majority, felt, +obscurely and reluctantly, that a revision of the Constitution in the +matter of slavery was essential to the national welfare.[J] The South +maintained that the States were antecedent and superior to the Nation, +and said, "If your Nation, in virtue of its mere majority vote, insists +on encroaching on State rights which we formally reserved as a condition +of entering the Nation, why then, we prefer to withdraw from this Nation +and set up a nation of our own, in which the true principles of the +Constitution shall be preserved." Thereupon the North retorted, "We +deny your right to withdraw," and the battle was joined. + +The North said, "You have no right to withdraw," but it meant, I think, +something rather different. It threw overboard the question of abstract, +formal, technical right, and fought primarily, no doubt, for a +humanitarian ideal, but fundamentally to enforce its instinct of the +highest political expediency. The right interpretation of a state-paper, +however venerable, would not have been a question worthy of such +terrible arbitrament. Even the emancipation of the negro, had that been +the sole object of the contest, would have been too dearly paid for in +blood and tears. The question at issue was really this: What is the +ideal political unit? The largest possible? or the smallest convenient? +What mattered abstract argument as to the _right_ to secede? Once grant +the _power_ to secede, once suffer the precedent to be established, and +the greatest democracy the world had ever seen was bound to break up, +not only into two, but ultimately into many petty republics, wrangling +and jangling like those of Spanish America. To this negation of a great +ideal the North refused its consent. National patriotism had outgrown +local patriotism. It had become to all intents and purposes a fiction +that the Federal Government derived its powers from the States; Thirteen +of them, indeed, had sanctioned the Federal Government, but the Federal +Government had sanctioned and admitted to the Union twenty-one more. In +these the sentiment of priority to the Union could not exist, while +State Sovereignty was a doctrine limited by considerations of +expediency, rather than a patriotic dogma. Immigration, and westward +migration from the north-eastern States, had produced a race of men and +women whose patriotism was divorced, so to speak, from any given patch +of soil, but was wedded to the all-embracing idea of the United States, +with the emphasis on the epithet. They thought of themselves first of +all as American citizens, and only in the second place as citizens of +this State or of that. This habit or instinct is still incomprehensible, +and almost contemptible, to the Southerner of the older generation; but +the Time-Spirit was clearly on its side. + +Thus, then, I interpret the fundamental feeling which impelled the North +to take up arms: "Better one stout tussle for the idea of Unity, than a +facile acquiescence in the idea, of Multiplicity, with all its sequels +of instability, distrust, rivalry, and rancour. Better for our +children, if not for us, one great expenditure of blood and gold, than +never-ending threats and rumours of war, commercial conflicts, political +complications, frontiers to be safeguarded, bureaucracies to be +financed." Of course I do not put this forward as a new interpretation +of the question at issue. It is old and it is obvious. But though the +national significance of the struggle has long been recognised, I am not +sure that its international, its world-historic significance, has been +sufficiently dwelt upon. We Europeans have been apt to think that, +because the theatre of conflict was so distant, we had only a +spectacular, or at most an abstract-humanitarian, interest in it. There +could not be a greater mistake. The whole world, I believe, will one day +come to hold Vicksburg and Gettysburg names of larger historic import +than Waterloo or Sedan. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote I: "Submission to any encroachment," says Professor +Gildersleeve, "the least as well as the greatest, on the rights of a +State, means slavery;" this remark occurring early in an article of +twenty-five columns, in which _negro_ slavery is not so much as +mentioned until the twenty-first column.] + +[Footnote J: See _Postscript_ to this article.] + + + + +IV + + +The iconoclast of to-day is full of scorn for patriotism, which he holds +the most retrograde of emotions. He may as usefully declaim against +friendship, comradeship, the love of man for woman or of mother for +child. The lowest savage regards himself, and cannot but regard himself, +as a member of some sort of political aggregation. This feeling is one +of the primal instincts of humanity, and as such one of the permanent +data of the problem of the future. It is folly to denounce or seek to +eradicate it. The wise course is to give it large and noble instead of +petty and parochial concepts to which to attach itself. Rightly esteemed +and rightly directed, patriotism is not a retrograde emotion, but one of +the indispensable conditions of progress. + +"Nothing is," says Hamlet, "but thinking makes it so." It is not oceans, +straits, rivers, or mountain-barriers, that constitute a Nation, but the +idea in the minds of the people composing it. Now, the largest +political idea that ever entered the mind--not of a man--not of a +governing class--but of a people, is the idea of the United States of +America. The "Pax Romana" was a great idea in its day, but it was +imposed from without, and by military methods, upon a number of subject +peoples, who did not realise and intelligently co-operate in it, but +merely submitted to it. It has its modern analogue in the "Pax +Britannica" of India. The idea of the United States, on the other hand, +gives what may be called psychological unity to one of the largest +political aggregates, both in territory and population, ever known to +history. In the modern world, there are only two political aggregates in +any wise comparable to it: the British Empire, whereof the idea is not +as yet quite clearly formulated; and the Russian Empire, whereof the +idea, in so far as it belongs to the people at all, is a blind and +slavish superstition. Holy Russia is a formidable idea, Greater Britain +is a picturesque and pregnant idea; but the United States is a +self-conscious, clearly defined and heroically vindicated idea, in whose +further vindication the whole world is concerned. It is only an +experiment, say some--an experiment which, thirty years ago, trembled +on the brink of disastrous failure, and which may yet have even greater +perils to encounter. This is true in a sense, but not the essential +truth. Let us substitute for "experiment" another word which means the +same thing--with a difference. The United States of America, let us say, +is a rehearsal for the United States of Europe, nay, of the world. It is +the very difficulties over which the croakers shake their heads that +make the experiment interesting, momentous. The United States is a +veritable microcosm: it presents in little all the elements which go to +make up a world, and which have hitherto kept the world, almost +unintermittently, in a state of battle and bloodshed. There are wide +differences of climate and of geographical conditions in the United +States, with the resulting conflict of material interest between +different regions of the country. There are differences of race and even +of language to be overcome, extremes of wealth and poverty to be dealt +with. As though to make sure that no factor in the problem of +civilisation should be omitted, the men of last century were at pains to +saddle their descendants with the burden of the negro--a race incapable +of assimilation and yet tenacious of life. In brief, a thousand +difficulties and temptations to dissension beset the giant Republic: in +so far as it overcomes them, and carries on its development by peaceful +methods, it presents a unique and invaluable object-lesson to the world. +The idea of unity, annealed in the furnace of the Civil War, has as yet +been stronger than all the forces of disintegration; and there is no +reason to doubt that it will continue to be so. When France falls out +with Germany, or Russia with Turkey, there is nothing save a purely +material counting of the cost to hinder them from flying at each other's +throats. The abstract humanitarianism of a few individuals is as a +feather on the torrent. Such sentiment as comes into play is all on the +side of bloodshed. It takes very little to make a Frenchman and a German +feel that they are in a state of war by nature, and that peace between +them is an artificial and necessarily unstable condition. But in +America, should two States or two groups of States fall out, there is a +strong, and we may hope unconquerable, sentiment of unity to be overcome +before the dissentients even reach the point of counting the material +cost of war. Men feel that they are in a state of peace by nature, and +that war between them, instead of being a hereditary and almost +consecrated habit, would be a monstrous and almost unthinkable crime. +The National Government, as established by the Constitution, is in fact +a permanent court of arbitration between the States; and the +common-sense of all may be trusted to "hold a fractious State in awe." +"Did not people say and think the same thing in 1859," it may be asked, +"on the eve of the greatest Civil War in history?" Possibly; but that +war was precisely what was needed to ratify the Union, and lift it out +of the experimental stage. "Blut ist ein ganz besondrer Saft," and it is +sometimes necessary that other pacts than those of hell should be +written in blood, before the world recognises their full validity. +Heaven forbid that the Deed of Union of the United States should require +a second time to be retraced in red! + +But it is an illusion, though a salutary one, that civil war is any more +barbarous than international war. What the world wants is the +realisation that every war is a civil war, a war between brothers, +justifiable only for the repression of some cruelty more cruel than war +itself, some barbarism more barbarous. Towards this realisation the +United States is leading the way, by showing that, under the conditions +of modern life, an effective sense of brotherhood, a resolute loyalty +to a unifying idea, may be maintained throughout a practically unlimited +extent of territory. + +But, while enumerating the difficulties which the Republic has to +overcome, I have said nothing of the one great advantage it enjoys--a +common, or at any rate a dominant, language. The diversity of tongues +which prevails in Europe is doubtless one of the chief hindrances to +that "Federation of the World" of which the poet dreamed. But if the +many tongues of Europe retard its fusion into what I have called a +political aggregate, there exists in the world a political aggregate +larger in extent than either Europe or the United States, which +possesses, like the United States, the advantage of one dominant +language. I mean, of course, the British Empire; and surely it is, +on the face of it, a fact of good augury for the world that the +dominant language of these two vast aggregations of democracies should +happen to be one and the same. The hopes--and perhaps, too, some +apprehensions--arising from this unity of speech will form the subject +of another article. + + +POSTSCRIPT.--My representation of the South as the conservative and the +North as the innovating party is the only point in this article to +which (so far as I know) serious objection has been made. A very able +and courteous critic--Mr. Norman Hapgood--writes to me as follows: "I +think the history of the Kansas-Nebraska trouble, in which the +preliminary conflict centred, the speeches of the time, North and South, +the party platforms, all proved that the North said, 'Slavery shall keep +its rights and have no further extension,' while the South said, 'It +shall go into any newly-acquired territory it chooses.' In 1860 the +slave interest was more protected and extended by law than ever before +in the history of the country. It had simply made a new claim which the +North could not allow. The abolitionists were few; the Northerners who +said that slavery should not be _extended_ were many.... I don't believe +there is an American historian of standing who does not say that the +propositions of the South, on which the North took issue in 1861, were +these: (1) Slavery shall go into all territory hereafter acquired; (2) +We will secede if this is not allowed." + +It was inevitable that this protest should be raised, since, in the +limited space at my command, I had imperfectly expressed my meaning. My +reply to Mr. Hapgood puts it, I hope, more clearly. It ran as +follows:".... What I was trying to do was not so much to summarise +conscious motives as to present my own interpretation (right or wrong) +of the sub-conscious, the unconscious forces that were at work. I go +behind the declarations of Northern statesmen, and what, I have no +doubt, was the sincere sentiment of the majority in the North, against +interference with slavery in the existing slave States. I have tried to +allow to this sentiment what weight it deserves, in saying that the +North '_obscurely and reluctantly_ felt a revision of the Constitution +essential to the national welfare.' But my view is that whatever they +said, and whatever, on the surface of their minds, they thought, the +people of the North knew, even if they denied it to themselves, that +chattel slavery was impossible in the modern world; and furthermore that +the people of the South were justified in that instinct which told them +that the institution, fatally menaced, was to be saved only by +secession. The kernel of the matter, to my thinking, lay in the fugitive +slave question. The provision of the Constitution for the return of +fugitive slaves, though it may seem a matter of detail, was, I think, in +reality the keystone of the arch. Make it inoperative, and the +institution was doomed. Now many of the Northern States, by 'personal +liberty laws' and the like, had long been picking at that keystone. +Whatever were the professions of politicians and people as to +non-interference, they shrank from the logical corollary, which would +have been the sincere, whole-hearted and cheerful carrying out of +Article IV., Section 2, Paragraph 3 of the Constitution. They were even, +I think, logically bound to accept loyally the Dred Scott decision, +which was absolutely constitutional. To protest against it, to seek to +evade it, was to insist on a revision of the Constitution. But it was +inconceivable that a civilised community, not blinded by local Southern +prejudice, could loyally accept the Dred Scott decision, or could +cheerfully assist the Southern slaveholder to capture and carry off from +their own hearthstones, as it were, his runaway chattel. Therefore, the +position and the protestations of the North were mutually contradictory. +It was a case of trying to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds; +and the North was bound to the hare by fundamental considerations of +humanity and self-interest, to the hounds, only by a compact accepted at +a time when its consequences could not possibly be foreseen. I do not +doubt that the North, on the surface of its will, sincerely desired to +keep this compact; but the South, with an instinct which was really that +of self-preservation, looked, as I am trying to look, beneath the +conscious surface to the unconscious sweep of current. It is not with +reference to the struggle for Western expansion that I call the South +the conservative and constitutional party. There, as it seems to me, the +question was entirely an open one, the power of Congress over +territories being undefined in the Constitution; and no doubt the South, +in the course of the struggle, often took up violent and extravagant +positions. My argument is that the attitude of the North, whatever its +protestations, virtually threatened the institution of slavery in the +old slave States, and that therefore the South had virtual, if not +formal, justification for holding the constitutional compact broken." + + + + +THE REPUBLIC AND THE EMPIRE + +I + + +Though one of the main objects which I proposed to myself in visiting +America was to take note of American feeling towards England as affected +by the Spanish War, I soon found that, so far as the gathering of +information by way of question and answer was concerned, I might almost +as well have stayed at home. A curious diffidence beset me from the +first. I shrank from recognising that there was any question as to the +good feeling between the two countries, and still more from seeming to +appeal to a non-existent or a grudging sense of kinship. It seemed to me +tactless and absurd for an Englishman to lay any stress on the war as +affecting the relations between the two peoples. What had England done? +Nothing that had cost her a cent or a drop of blood. The British people +had sympathised with the United States in a war which it felt to be, in +the last analysis, a part of the necessary police-work of the world; it +had applauded in American soldiers and sailors the qualities it was +accustomed to admire in its own fighting men; and the British +Government, giving ready effect to the instinct of the people, had, at a +critical moment, secured a fair field for the United States, and broken +up what might have been an embarrassing, though scarcely a very +formidable, anti-American intrigue on the part of the Continental +Powers. What was there in all this to make any merit of? Nothing +whatever. It was the simplest matter in the world--we had merely felt +and done what came natural to us. The really significant fact was that +any one in America should have been surprised at our attitude, or should +have regarded it as more friendly than they had every right and reason +to expect. In short, I felt an irrational but I hope not unnatural +disinclination to recognise as matter for question and remark a state of +feeling which, as it seemed to me, ought to "go without saying." + +Above all was I careful to avoid the word "Anglo-Saxon." I heard it and +read it with satisfaction, I uttered it, never. It is for the American +to claim his Anglo-Saxon birthright, if he feels so disposed; it is not +for the Briton to thrust it upon him. To cheapen it, to send it +a-begging, were to do it a grievous wrong. Besides, the term +"Anglo-Saxon" is inaccurate, and, so to speak, provisional. Rightly +understood, it covers a great idea; but if one chooses to take it in a +strict ethnological sense, it lends itself to caricature. The truth is, +it has no strict ethnological sense--it may rather be called an +ethnological countersense, no less in England than in America. It +represents an historical and political, not an ethnological, concept. +The Anglo-Saxon was already an infinitely composite personage--Saxon, +Scandinavian, Gaul, and Kelt--before he set foot in America; and America +merely proves her deep-rooted Anglo-Saxonism in accepting and absorbing +all sorts of alien and semi-alien race-elements. But when we have to go +so far behind the face-value of a word to bring it into consonance with +obvious facts, it is safest to use that word sparingly. + +In brief, I did not wear my Anglo-Saxon heart on my sleeve, or go about +inviting expressions of gratitude to England for having, like Mr. +Gilbert's House of Lords, + + Done nothing in particular, + And done it very well. + +Yet evidences of a new tone of feeling towards England met me on every +hand, both in the newspapers and in conversation. The subject which I +shrank from introducing was frequently introduced by my American +acquaintances. It was evident that the change of feeling, though far +from universal, was real and wide-spread. Americans who had recently +returned to their native land, after passing some years abroad, assured +me that they were keenly conscious of it. Many of my acquaintances were +opposed to the policy which brought about the Spanish War, and declared +the better mutual understanding between England and America to be its +one good result. Others adopted the view to which Mr. Kipling had given +such far-echoing expression, and frankly rejoiced in the sympathy with +which England regarded America's determination to "take up the white +man's burden." In the Kipling craze as a whole, after making all +deductions, I could not but see a symptom of real significance. It was +partly a mere literary fashion, partly a result of personal and +accidental circumstances; but it also arose in no small degree from a +novel sense of kinship with the men, and participation in the ideals, +celebrated by the poet of British Imperialism. + +The change, moreover, extended beyond the book-reading class, wide as +that is in America. It was to be noted even in the untravelled and +unlettered American, the man whose spiritual horizon is bounded by his +Sunday newspaper, the man in the street and on the farm. The events of +the past year had taught him--and he rubbed his eyes at the +realisation--that England was not an "effete monarchy," evilly-disposed +towards a Republic as such,[K] and dully resentful of bygone +humiliations by land and sea, but a brotherly-minded people, remembering +little (perhaps _too_ little) of those "old, unhappy, far-off things," +willing to be as helpful as the rules of neutrality permitted, and eager +to applaud the achievements of American arms. + +Millions of people who had hitherto felt no touch of racial sympathy, +and had been conscious only of a vague historic antipathy, learned with +surprise that England was in no sense their natural enemy, but rather, +among all the nations of Europe, their natural friend. Anglophobes, no +doubt, were still to be found in plenty; but they could no longer reckon +on the instant popular response which, a few years ago, would almost +certainly have attended any movement of hostility towards England. An +American publicist, who has perhaps unequalled opportunities for keeping +his finger on the pulse of national feeling, said to me, "It is only +three or four years since I heard a Federal judge express an earnest +desire for war with England, as a means of consolidating the North and +South in a great common enthusiasm. Of course this was pernicious talk +at any time," he added; "but it would then have found an echo which it +certainly would not find to-day." + +This puts the international situation in a nutshell, so far as to-day is +concerned. But what about to-morrow? + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote K: See _Postscript_ to this article.] + + + + +II + + +When people spoke to me of the sudden veering of popular sympathy from +France and Russia, and towards England, I could not help asking, now and +again, "When is the reaction coming?" "There is no reaction coming," I +was told with some confidence. For my part, I hope and believe that a +permanent advance has been made, and that any reaction that may set in +will be trifling and temporary. But to ensure this result there is still +the most urgent need for the exercise of wisdom and moderation on both +sides. The misunderstandings of more than a century are not to be wiped +out in two or three months of popular excitement. What we have arrived +at is not a complete mutual understanding, but merely the attitude of +mind which may, in course of time, render such an understanding +possible. That, to be sure, is half the battle; but the longer and more +tedious half is before us. + +The Englishman who visits America for pleasure, and enjoys the +inexhaustible hospitality of New York, Boston, and Washington, must be +careful not to imagine that he gets really in touch with the sentiment +of the American nation. His circle of acquaintance is almost certain to +be composed mainly of people whom he, or friends of his, have met in +Europe, people of more or less clearly remembered British descent, who +know England well, have many English friends and possibly relatives, and +are conscious of a distant sentimental attachment to "the Old Country." +They are almost without exception people of culture, as well read as he +himself in the English classics, ancient and modern. They show their +Americanism not in that they love English literature less, but that very +probably they love French literature more, than he does. Further, they +are an exceedingly polite people, and, sensitive themselves on points of +national honour, they instinctively keep in the background all topics on +which a too free interchange of opinions might be apt to wound the +susceptibilities of their guest. Thus he loses entirely his sense of +being in a foreign country, because he moves among people most of whom +have an affection for England almost as deep as his own, while all are +courteous enough to respect his prejudices. This class is large in +actual numbers, no doubt, but in proportion to the whole American +people it is infinitesimal, and would be a mere featherweight in the +scale at any moment of crisis. Its voice is clearly audible in +literature and even in journalism, but at the polls it would be as a +whisper to the thunder of Niagara. The traveller who has "had a good +time" in literary, artistic, university circles in the Eastern cities, +has not felt the pulse of America, but has merely touched the fringe of +the fringe of her garment. + +We deceive ourselves if we imagine that there is, or at any rate that +there was until recently, the slightest sentimental attachment to +England in the heart of the American people at large. Among the +"hyphenated Americans," as they are called--Irish-Americans, +German-Americans, and so forth--it would be folly to look for any such +feeling.[L] The conciliation of America will never be complete until we +have achieved the conciliation of Ireland. It is evident, indeed, from +many symptoms, that Irish-American hostility to England is declining, if +not in rancour, at any rate in influence. Still, a popular New York +paper, on St. Patrick's Day, thinks it worth while to propitiate "The +Powerful Race of Ireland" by a leader under that heading, and to this +effect: + + "The Irish race is famous as producing the best fighters and poets + among men, and the most beautiful and most virtuous of women. + + "Such a reputation should suffice for any nation. + + "And note that Ireland still is and always will be a NATION. There + is no Anglomania in that fair land, no yearning for reciprocity for + the sake of a few dollars, no drinking of the Queen's health + first.... + + "Noble patriots like John Dillon and William O'Brien fight for them + in the House of Commons, and they are good fighters everywhere, + from the glass-covered room in Westminster Abbey (!) to the + prize-ring, where a Sullivan, of pure Irish blood, forbids any man + to stand three rounds before him. + + "The English whipped the Irish at the battle of the Boyne--true. + But the English on that occasion had the good luck to be led by a + Dutchman, and the Irish--sorra the day--had an English King for a + leader. The English King was running fast while the Irish were + still fighting the Dutchman. + + "Wellington, of Irish blood, beat Napoleon; Sheridan, of Irish + blood, fought here most delightfully. + + "Here's to the Irish!" + + + +This spirited performance no doubt represents fairly enough the +political philosophy of the thousands composing the league-long +procession which filed stolidly up Fifth Avenue on the day of its +appearance. + +But even among unhyphenated Americans--Americans pure and simple--the +tendency to regard England as a hereditary foe, though sensibly weakened +by recent events, remains very strong. A good example of this frame of +mind and habit of speech is afforded by the following passage from an +address delivered by Judge Van Wyck at the Democratic Club's Jefferson +Dinner in New York on April 13 last. Referring to England, the speaker +said:-- + + "Let us be influenced by the natural as well as the fixed policy of + that nation toward us for a century and a half, rather than by + their profuse expressions of friendship during the Spanish War. + England's policy has been one of sharp rivalry and competition + with America; it impelled the Revolution of 1776, fought for + business as well as political independence; brought on the war of + 1812, waged against the insolent claim of England for the right to + search our ships of commerce while riding the highways of the + ocean; caused her to contest every inch of our northern boundary + line from ocean to ocean; made her encourage our family troubles + from 1860 to 1865, for which she was compelled to pay us millions + and admit her wrong; and actuated her, in violation of the Monroe + doctrine, to attempt an unwarrantable encroachment on the territory + of Venezuela, until ordered by the American Government to halt." + +Apart from the obvious begging of the question with reference to +Venezuela, there is nothing in this invective that has not some +historical foundation. It is the studiously hostile turn of the +phraseology that renders the speech significant. Everything--even the +honourable amends made for the _Alabama_ blunder--is twisted to +England's reproach. She is "compelled" to do this, and "ordered" to do +that. There is here no hint of good feeling, no trace of international +amenity, but sheer undisguised hatred and desire to make the worst of +things. And this address, be it noted, was the speech of the evening at +a huge and representative gathering of the dominant party in New York +municipal politics. + +I need scarcely adduce further evidence of the fact that Anglophobia is +still a power in the land, if not the power it once was. But active and +aggressive Anglophobia is, I think, a less important factor in the +situation than the sheer indifference to England, with a latent bias +towards hostility, which is so widespread in America. To the English +observer, this indifference is far more disconcerting than hatred. The +average Briton, one may say with confidence, is not indifferent towards +America. He may be very ignorant about it, very much prejudiced against +certain American habits and institutions, very thoughtless and tactless +in expressing his prejudices; but the United States is not, to him, a +foreign country like any other, on the same plane with France, Germany, +or Russia. But that is precisely what England is to millions of +Americans--a foreign country like any other. We see this even in many +travelling Americans; much more is it to be noted in multitudes who stay +at home. Many Americans seem curiously indifferent even to the comfort +of being able to speak their own language in England; probably because +they have less false shame than the average Englishman in adventuring +among the pitfalls of a foreign tongue. They--this particular class of +travellers, I mean--land in England without emotion, visit its shrines +without sentiment, and pass on to France and Italy with no other feeling +than one of relief in escaping from the London fog. These travellers, +however, are but single spies sent forth by vast battalions who never +cross the ocean. To them England is a mere name, and the name, moreover, +of their fathers' one enemy in war, their own chief rival in trade. They +have no points of contact with England, such as almost every Englishman +has with America. We make use every day of American inventions and +American "notions": English inventions and "notions," if they make their +way to America at all, are not recognised as English. There are few +Britishers, high or low, that have not friends or relatives settled in +America, or have not formed pleasant acquaintanceships with Americans on +this side. But there are innumerable families in America who, even if +they be of British descent, have lost all vital recollection of the +fact; who (as the tide of emigration has not yet turned eastwards) have +no friends or relatives settled in England; and who, in their American +homes, are far more apt to come in contact with men of almost every +other nationality than with Englishmen. "But surely English +literature," it may be said, "brings England home even to people of this +class, and differentiates her from France or Germany." In a measure, +doubtless; but I think it will be found that the lower strata of the +reading public (not in America alone, of course) are strangely +insensitive to local colour. To people of culture, the bond of +literature is a very strong one; but the class of which I am speaking is +not composed of people of culture. They read, it is true, and often +greedily; but generally, I think, without knowing or greatly caring +whether a book is English or American, and at all events with no such +clear perception of the distinctive qualities of English work as could +beget in them any imaginative realisation of, or affection for, England. +Let us make no mistake--in the broad mass of the American people no such +affection exists. They are simply indifferent to England, with, as I +have said, a latent bias towards hostility. + +Thus the scale of American feeling towards England, while its gradations +are of course infinite, may be divided into three main sections. At one +end of the scale we have the cultured and travelled classes, especially +in the Eastern States, conscious for the most part of British descent, +alive to the historical relationship between the two countries, valuing +highly their birthright in the treasures of English literature, knowing, +and (not uncritically) understanding England and her people, and +clinging to a kinship of which, taking one thing with another, they have +no reason to be ashamed. This class is intellectually influential, but +its direct weight in politics is small. It is, with shining exceptions, +a "mugwump" class. At the other end of the scale we have the hyphenated +Americans, who have imported or inherited European rancours against +England, and those unhyphenated Americans whose hatred of England is +partly a mere plank in a political platform, designed to accommodate her +hyphenated foe-men, partly a result of instinctive and traditional +chauvinism, reinforced by a (in every sense) partial view of +Anglo-American history. Finally, between these two extremes, we have the +great mass of the American people, who neither love nor hate England, +any more than they love or hate (say) Italy or Japan, but whose +indifference would, until recently, have been much more easily deflected +on the side of hatred than of love. The effect of the Spanish War has +been in some measure to alter this bias, and to differentiate England, +to her advantage, from the other nations of Europe. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote L: A very distinguished American authority writes to me as +follows with regard to this passage: "I hardly think you lay enough +weight upon the fact that in two or three generations the great bulk of +the descendants of the immigrants of non-English origin become +absolutely indistinguishable from other Americans, and share their +feelings. This is markedly so with the Scandinavians, and most of the +Germans of the second, and all the Germans of the third, generation, who +practically all, during 1898, felt toward Germany and England just +exactly as other Americans did.... Twice recently I have addressed huge +meetings of eight or ten thousand people, each drawn, as regards the +enormous majority, from exactly that class which you pointed out as +standing between the two extremes. In each case the men who introduced +me dwelt upon the increased good feeling between the English-speaking +peoples, and every complimentary allusion to England was received with +great applause." At the same time my correspondent adds: "Your division +of the American sentiment into three classes is exactly right; also your +sense of the relative importance of these three classes."] + + + + +III + + +It is commonly alleged that the anti-English virulence of the ordinary +school history of the United States is mainly responsible for this bias +towards hostility in the mind of the average American. Mr. Goldwin +Smith, a high authority, has contested this theory; and I must admit +that, after a good deal of inquiry, I have been unable to find the +American school historians guilty of any very serious injustices to +England. Some quite modern histories which I have looked into (yet +written before the Spanish War) seem to me excellently and most +impartially done. The older histories are not well written: they are apt +to be sensational and chauvinistic in tone, and to encourage a somewhat +cheap and blusterous order of patriotism; but that they commonly malign +character or misrepresent events I cannot discover. They are perhaps a +little too much inclined to make "insolent" the inseparable epithet of +the British soldier; but there is no reason to doubt that in many cases +it was amply merited. I have not come across the history in which Mr. +G.W. Steevens discovered the following passages: + + "The eyes of the soldiers glared upon the people like hungry + bloodhounds. The captain waved his sword. The red-coats pointed + their guns at the crowd. In a moment the flash of their muskets + lighted up the street, and eleven New England men fell bleeding + upon the snow.... Blood was streaming upon the snow; and though + that purple stain melted away in the next day's sun, it was never + forgotten nor forgiven by the people.... A battle took place + between a large force of Tories and Indians and a hastily organised + force of patriotic Americans. The Americans were defeated with + horrible slaughter, and many of those who were made prisoners were + put to death by fiendish torture.... More than six thousand + American sailors had been seized by British warships and pressed + into the hated service of a hated nation." + +These passages are certainly not judicial or even judicious in tone; but +I fancy that the book or books from which Mr. Steevens culled them must +be quite antiquated. In books at present on the educational market I +find nothing so lurid. What I do find in some is a failure to +distinguish between the king's share and the British people's share in +the policy which brought about and carried on the Revolutionary War. +For instance, in Barnes's _Primary History of the United States_ +(undated, but brought down to the end of the Spanish War) we read: + + "_The English people_ after a time became jealous of the prosperity + of the colonists, and began to devise plans by which to grasp for + themselves a share of the wealth that was thus rolling in.... + Indeed, _the English people_ acted from the first as if the + colonies existed only for the purpose of helping them to make + money." + +George III. and his Ministers are not so much as mentioned, and the +impression conveyed to the ingenuous student is that the whole English +nation was consciously and deliberately banded together for purposes of +sheer brigandage. The same history is delightfully chauvinistic in its +account of the Colonial Wars. The British officers are all bunglers and +poltroons; if disasters are averted or victories won, it is entirely by +the courage and conduct of the colonists: + + "When Johnson reached the head of Lake George he met the French, + and a fierce battle was fought. Success seemed at first to be + altogether with the French; but after a while Johnson was slightly + wounded, when General Lyman, a brave colonial officer, took + command, and beat the French terribly.... Abercrombie's defeat was + the last of the English disasters. The colonists now had arms + enough, and were allowed to fight in their own way, and a series of + brilliant victories followed.... By the energy, courage, and + patriotism of her colonies, England had now acquired a splendid + empire in the New World. And while she reaped all the glory of the + war and its fruits, it was the hardy colonists who had throughout, + borne the brunt of the conflict." + +The child who learns his history from Mr. Barnes may not hate England, +but will certainly despise her. + +Text-books of this type, however, are already obsolescent. A committee +of the New England History Teachers' Association published in the +_Educational Review_ for December 1898 a careful survey of no fewer than +nineteen school histories of the United States, and summed up the +results as follows: + + "In discussing the causes of the Revolution, text-book writers have + sounded pretty much the whole scale of motives. England has been + pictured, on the one hand, as an arbitrary oppressor, and, on the + other, as the helpless victim of political environment. Under the + influence of deeper study and a keener sense of justice, however, + the element of bitterness, which so often entered into the + discussion of this subject, has largely disappeared; and while the + treatment of the Revolution in the text-books still leaves much to + be desired, it is now seldom dogmatic and unsympathetic." + +The fact remains, however, that we have still to live down our wars +with the United States, in which there was much that was galling to the +just pride of the American people, and much, too, that was perhaps +over-stimulating to their self-esteem. There is no doubt, on the one +hand, that we were inclined to adopt a supercilious and contemptuous +attitude towards the "rebel colonists" of 1775, the new-made nation of +1815; no doubt, on the other hand, that they made a splendid fight +against us, and taught our superciliousness a salutary lesson. They feel +to this day the humiliation of having been despised, and the exultation +of having put their despisers to shame. These wars, which were, until +1861, almost the whole military history of the United States, were but +episodes in our history, and one of them a trifling episode. Therefore, +while the average Englishman has not studied them sufficiently to +realise how much he ought to deplore them, the average American has been +taught to dwell upon them as the glorious struggles in which his nation +won its spurs. To the juvenile imagination, battles are always the oases +in the desert of history, and the schoolboy never fails to take sides +fiercely and uncompromisingly, exaggerating, with the histrionic +instinct of youth, his enthusiasm and his hatreds. Thus the insolent +Britisher became the Turk's-head or Guy Fawkes, so to speak, of the +American boy, the butt of his bellicose humours; and a habit of mind +contracted in boyhood is not always to be eradicated by the sober +reflection of manhood, even in minds capable of sober reflection. The +Civil War, be it noted, did not depose the insolent Britisher from his +bad eminence in the schoolboy imagination. The Confederates were, after +all, Americans, though misguided Americans; and the fostering, the +brooding upon, intestine rancours was felt by teachers and pupils alike +to be impossible. But there is in the juvenile mind at any given moment +a certain amount of abstract combativeness, let us call it, which must +find an outlet somewhere. Hatred is a natural function of the human +mind, just as much as love; and the healthy boy instinctively exercises +it under the guise of patriotism, without clearly distinguishing the +element of sheer play and pose in his transports. England's attitude +during the Civil War certainly did nothing to endear her either to the +writers or the readers of school histories; and she remained after that +struggle, as she had been before, the one great historical adversary on +whom the abstract combativeness of young America could expend itself. +How strong this tendency is, or has been, in the American school, may be +judged from the following anecdote. A boy of unmixed English parentage, +whose father and mother had settled in America, was educated at the +public school of his district. On the day when Mr. Cleveland's Venezuela +message was given to the world, he came home from school radiant, and +shouted to his parents: "Hurrah! We're going to war with England! We've +whipped you twice before, and we're going to do it again." It is clear +that at this academy Anglomania formed no part of the curriculum; and +who can doubt that in myriads of cases these schoolboy animosities +subsist throughout life, either active, or dormant and easily awakened? + +Let us admit without shrinking that the history of the United States +cannot be truthfully written in such a way as to ingratiate Great +Britain with the youth of America. There have been painful episodes +between the two nations, in which England has, on the whole, acted +stupidly, or arrogantly, or both. Nor can we shift the whole blame upon +George III. or his Ministers. They were responsible for the actual +Revolution; but after the Revolution, down even to the time of the +Civil War inclusive, the English people, though guiltless in the main of +active hostility to America, cannot be acquitted of ignorance and +indifference. It is not in the least to be desired that American history +should be written with a pro-English bias, and, as I have said, I do not +find the anti-English bias, even in inferior text-books, so excessive as +it is sometimes represented to be. The anti-English sentiment of +American schools is, as it seems to me, an inevitable phenomenon of +juvenile psychology, under the given conditions; and it is the +alteration in the actual conditions wrought by recent events, rather +than any marked change in the tone of the text-books, that may, I think, +be trusted to soothe the schoolboy's savage breast. England has now done +what she had never done before: shown herself conspicuously friendly to +the United States; and another European country has given occasion for +spirit-stirring manifestations of American prowess. Thus England is +deposed for the time, and we may trust for ever, from her position as +the one traditional arch-enemy. + +But though the errors of commission in American history-books have been +exaggerated, I cannot but think that a common error of omission is +worthy of remark and correction. They begin American history too +late--with the discovery of America--and they do not awaken, as they +might, the just pride of race in the "unhyphenated" American boy. Long +before Columbus set sail from Palos, American history was a-making in +the shire-moots of Saxon England, at Hastings, and Runnymead, and +Bannockburn. In all the mediaeval achievements of England, in peace and +war--in her cathedrals, her castles, her universities, in Cressy, +Poictiers, and Agincourt--Americans may without paradox claim their +ancestral part. Why should the sons of the English who emigrated leave +to the sons of those who stayed at home the undivided credit of having +sent to the right-about the Invincible Armada? Nay, it is only the very +oldest American families that can disclaim all complicity in having, as +Lord Auchinleck put it, "garred kings ken that they had a lith in their +necks." Of course I do not mean that the American schoolboy should be +taken in detail through British history down to the seventeenth century +before, so to speak, he crosses the Atlantic. But I do suggest that he +would be none the worse American for being encouraged to set a due value +on his rightful share in the achievements of earlier ancestors than +those who fought at Trenton or sailed with Decatur. Let him realise his +birthright in the glories of Britain, and he will perhaps come to take a +more magnanimous view of her errors and disasters. + + + + +IV + + +Britain has been too forgetful of the past, America, perhaps, too +mindful; and in the everyday relations of life Britain has often been +tactless and unsympathetic, America suspicious and supersensitive. There +is every prospect, I think, that such errors will become, in the future, +rarer and ever rarer; and it behoves us, on our side, to be careful in +guarding against them. We have not hitherto sufficiently respected +America,--that is the whole story. We have taken no pains to know and +understand her. We have too often regarded her with a careless and +supercilious good feeling, which she has not unnaturally mistaken for +ill feeling, and repaid in kind. The events of the past year seem to +have brought the two countries almost physically closer to each other, +and to have made them more real, more clearly visible, each to each. +America has won the respectful consideration of even the most +thoughtless and insular among us. She has come home to us, so to speak, +as a vast and vital factor in the problem of the future. +Superciliousness towards her is a mere anachronism. + +Many Englishmen, however, are still guilty of a thoughtless captiousness +towards America, which is none the less galling because it manifests +itself in the most trifling matters. A friend of my own returned a few +years ago from a short tour in the United States, declaring that he +heartily disliked the country, and would never go back again. Inquiry as +to the grounds of his dissatisfaction elicited no more definite or +damning charge than that "they" (a collective pronoun presumed to cover +the whole American people) hung up his trousers instead of folding +them--or _vice versa_, for I am heathen enough not to remember which is +the orthodox process. Doubtless he had other, and possibly weightier, +causes of complaint; but this was the head and front of America's +offending. Another Englishman of education and position, being asked why +he had never crossed the Atlantic, gravely replied that he could not +endure to travel in a country where you had to black your own boots! +Such instances of ignorance and pettiness may seem absurdly trivial, but +they are quite sufficient to act as grits in the machinery of social +intercourse. Americans are very fond of citing as an example of English +manners the legend of a great lady who, at an American breakfast, saw +her husband declining a dish which was offered to him, and called across +the table, "Take some, my dear--it isn't half as nasty as it looks." +Three different people have vouched to me for the truth of this +anecdote, each naming the heroine, and each giving her a different name. +True or false, it is held in America to be typical; and it would +scarcely be so popular as it is unless people had suffered a good deal +from the tactlessness which it exemplifies. The same vice, in a more +insidious form, appears in a remark made to me the other day by an +Englishman of very high intelligence, who had just returned from a long +tour in America, and was, in the main, far from unsympathetic. "What I +felt," he said, "was the suburbanism of everything. It was all Clapham +or Camberwell on a gigantic scale." Some justice of observation may +possibly have lain behind this remark, though I certainly failed to +recognise it. But in the form of its expression it exemplified that +illusion of metropolitanism which is to my mind the veriest cockneyism +in disguise, and which cannot but strike Americans as either ridiculous +or offensive. + +Englishmen who, as individuals, wish to promote and not impede an +international understanding, will do well to take some little thought to +avoid wounding, even in trifles, the just and inevitable +susceptibilities of their American acquaintances. Our own national +self-esteem is cased in oak and triple brass,[M] and we are apt to +regard American sensitiveness as a ridiculous foible. It is nothing of +the sort: it is a psychological necessity, deep-rooted in history and +social conditions. + +Again, there are certain misunderstandings which Englishmen, not as +individual human beings but as citizens of the British Empire, ought +carefully to guard against. Let us beware of speaking or thinking as +though friendship for England involved on the part of America any +acceptance of English political ideas or imitation of English methods. +In especial, let us carefully guard against the idea that an +Anglo-American understanding, however cordial, implies the adoption of +an "expansionist" policy by the United States, or must necessarily +strengthen the hands of the "expansionist" party. If America chooses to +"take up the white man's burden" in the Kiplingesque sense, it would ill +become England to object; but her doing so is by no means a condition of +England's sympathy. It might seem, indeed, that she had plenty of "white +man's burden" to shoulder within her own continental boundaries; but +that is a matter which she is entirely competent to determine for +herself. + +Most of all must we beware of anything that can encourage an impression, +already too prevalent in America, that we find the "white man's burden" +too heavy for us, and are anxious to share it with the United States. +This suspicion is very generally felt and very openly expressed. Take, +for instance, this paragraph from an editorial in one of the leading +Chicago papers: + + "It would be a strange thing to see Continental Europe take up arms + against Great Britain alone.... That it is a very reasonable + possibility, however, is generally recognised in Europe, and it + was doubtless a knowledge of this fact that induced Great Britain + to make such unusual exertions to ally itself with the United + States." + +Here, again, is another journalistic straw floating on the stream: + + "Referring to the fact that English and American officers had + fallen side by side in Samoa while promoting commercial interests, + Lord [Charles] Beresford expressed the hope that the two nations + would 'always be found working and fighting in unison.' This might + keep us pretty busy, your lordship." + +In a rather low-class farce which I saw in a Chicago theatre, two men +wandered through the action, with the charming irrelevance +characteristic of American popular drama, attired, one as John Bull, the +other as Brother Jonathan. There came a point in the action where some +one had to be kicked out of the house. "You do it, Jonathan," said John +Bull; whereupon Jonathan retorted: "I know your game; you want me to do +your fighting for you, but _I don't do it_! See?" These are ridiculous +trifles, no doubt, but they might be indefinitely multiplied; and they +show the set of a certain current in American feeling. Let us beware of +lending added strength to this current by any appearance of +self-interested eagerness in our advances towards America. + +One thing we cannot too clearly realise, and that is that the true +American clings above everything to his Americanism. The status of an +American citizen is to him the proudest on earth, and that although he +may clearly enough recognise the abuses of American political life, and +the dangers which the Republic has to encounter. The feeling (which is +not to be confounded with an ignorant chauvinism, though in some cases +it may take that form) is the fundamental feeling of the whole nation; +and no emotion which threatened to encroach upon it, or compete with it +in any way, would have the least chance of taking a permanent place in +the American mind. The feeling which, as one may reasonably hope, is now +growing up between the two nations must be based on the mutual admission +of absolute independence and equality. The relation is new to history, +and must beget a new emotion. Strong as is the bond of mutual interest, +it must have a large idealism to reinforce it--a sentiment (shall we +say?) of mutual admiration--if the English-speaking peoples are to play +the great part in the drama of the future which Destiny seems to be +urging upon them. In order to stand together in perfect freedom and +dignity, it is essential that each of the brother-nations should be +incontestably able to stand alone. If we want to cement the +Anglo-American understanding, the first thing we have to do is to cement +the British Empire. + +There is no more typical and probably no more widely respected American +at the present moment than Governor Roosevelt, of New York. Even those +who dissent from his "strenuous" ideal and his expansionist opinions, +admit him to be a model of political integrity and public spirit. In an +article on "The Monroe Doctrine," published in 1896, Mr. Roosevelt wrote +as follows: + + "No English colony now stands on a footing of genuine equality with + the parent State. As long as the Canadian remains a colonist, he + remains in a position which is distinctly inferior to that of his + cousins, both in England and in the United States. The Englishman + at bottom looks down on the Canadian, as he does on any one who + admits his inferiority, and quite properly too. The American, on + the other hand, with equal propriety, regards the Canadian with the + good-natured condescension always felt by the freeman for the man + who is not free. A funny instance of the English attitude towards + Canada was shown after Lord Dunraven's inglorious fiasco last + September, when the Canadian yachtsman Rose challenged for the + America Cup. The English journals repudiated him on the express + ground that a Canadian was not an Englishman, and not entitled to + the privileges of an Englishman. In their comments, many of them + showed a dislike for Americans which almost rose to hatred. The + feeling they displayed for Canadians was not one of dislike. It was + one of contempt." + +There are several contestable points in this statement, and I quote it, +though it is but three years old, as a historical rather than a +contemporary utterance. At the same time it expresses an almost +universal American point of view, and indicates errors to be corrected, +dangers to be avoided. It is absurd, of course, that the American should +look down upon the Canadian as a "man who is not free"; but every shadow +of an excuse for such an attitude ought to be removed, and the citizen +of the British Empire ought to have as clearly defined a status as the +citizen of the American Republic. + +Even if such unpleasant incidents should recur as those to which Mr. +Roosevelt alludes, we may trust with tolerable confidence that he would +now find no "hatred" for America, or "contempt" for Canada, in the tone +of the British Press. The years which have passed since 1896 have not +only created a new feeling between England and America, but have drawn +the Empire together. In this respect--in every respect--much remains to +be done. + +But at least we can say with assurance that a good beginning has been +made towards that consolidation of the English-speaking countries on +which the well-being of the world so largely depends. + + +POSTSCRIPT.--The notion of inevitable hostility between a constitutional +Monarchy and a Republic has been fostered by American writers in whom +one would have expected greater clearness of perception. We find Lowell, +for instance, writing in his well-known essay _On a Certain +Condescension in Foreigners_: "I never blamed her (England) for not +wishing well to democracy--how should she?" The more obvious question +is, How should not one democracy wish another well? There may have been +at the time when Lowell wrote, and there may even be to-day, a handful +of royalty-worshippers in England who regard a Republic as a vulgar, +unpicturesque form of government; but this is not a political opinion, +or even prejudice, but mere stolid snobbery. Whatever were England's +misdemeanours towards America at the time of the Civil War, they were +not prompted by any hatred of democracy. + +I find the same misconception insisted on in a document much later than +Lowell's essay: a leaflet by the Rev. Edward Everett Hale, contributed +to a _Good Citizenship Series_ especially designed for the enlightenment +of the more ignorant class of American voters. The tract is called _The +Ruler of America_, and sets forth that the Ruler of America is "The +People with a very large P." Now, according to Dr. Hale, we benighted +Europeans are absolutely incapable of grasping this truth. He says: +"This is at bottom the trouble with the diplomatists of Europe, with +prime ministers, and with leaders of ''Er Majesty's Hopposition.'... +Even men of intelligence.... can make nothing of the central truth of +our system.... In my house, once, an English gentleman of great +intelligence told me that he had visited the White House, and was most +glad to pay his respects to 'the Ruler of our Great Nation.' Poor man! +he thought he would please me! But he saw his mistake soon enough. I +stormed out, 'Ruler of America? Who told you he was the ruler of +America? He never told you so. He is the First Servant of America.' And +I hope the poor traveller learned his lesson." + +It is true that the poor traveller used a pompous and rather absurd +expression, but if he had had his wits about him he might have reminded +Dr. Hale that the President is much more effectively the Ruler of +America than the Queen is the Ruler of England. He rules by the direct +mandate of the People, but he rules none the less. It would greatly +conduce to a just understanding between America and England if the +political instructors of the American people would correct instead of +confirming the prevalent impression that they have a monopoly of +democracy. + + + + +AMERICAN LITERATURE + + +Great Britain and the United States are sister Commonwealths, enjoying +the advantages and exposed to the dangers of sisterhood. The dangers are +as real, though we trust not as great, as the advantages. Family +quarrels are apt to be bitterest; a chance word will seem unkind and +unbearable from a near kinsman, which, coming from a stranger, would +carry no sting at all. As Lowell very truly said, "The common blood, and +still more the common language, are fatal instruments of +misapprehension." But behind this statement there lies a far deeper +though still obvious truth. We misunderstand because we understand; and +it would be an extravagance of pessimism to doubt that, in the long run, +understanding will carry the day. Light may dazzle here and bewilder +there; but, after all, it is light and not darkness. We English and +Americans hold a talisman that makes us at home over half, and more than +half, the world; and we are not going to rob it of its virtue by +renouncing our ties, and wantonly declaring ourselves aliens to each +other. + +Our unity of speech is such a commonplace that we scarcely notice it. +But, rightly regarded, it is a thing to be rejoiced in with a great joy, +and not without a certain sense of danger happily escaped. He would have +been a bold man who should confidently have prophesied at the Revolution +that American and English would remain the same tongue, and that at the +end of the nineteenth century there would not be the slightest +perceptible cleavage, or threat of ultimate divergence. No doubt there +were forces obviously tending to preserve the linguistic unity of the +two nations. There was the English Bible for one thing, and there was +the whole body of English literature. The Americans, it might have been +said, could scarcely be so foolish as deliberately to renounce their +spiritual birthright, or let it drift little by little away from them. +But, on the other hand, virulent and inveterate political enmity, had it +arisen, might quite conceivably have led the Americans to make it a +point of honour to differentiate their speech from ours, as many +Norwegians are at this moment making it a point of honour to +differentiate their language from the Danish, which was until of late +years the generally accepted medium of literary expression. In the +evolution of their literature, the Americans might purposely have +rejected our classical tradition, making their effort rather to depart +from than to adhere to it. Again, an observer in 1776 could not have +foreseen the practical annihilation, by steam and electricity, of that +barrier which then appeared so formidable--the Atlantic Ocean. He might +have foreseen the immense influx of men of every race and tongue into +the unpeopled West; but he could scarcely have anticipated with +confidence the ready absorption of all these alien elements (save one!) +into the dominant Anglo-Saxon polity. It was quite on the cards that a +new American language might have developed from a fusion of all the +diverse tongues of all the scattered races of the earth. + +Nothing of the sort, as we know, has happened. The instinct of kinship +from the first kept political enmity in check; the Atlantic has been +practically wiped out; and English has easily absorbed, in America, all +the other idioms which have been brought into contact, rather than +competition, with it. The result is that the English language occupies a +unique position among the tongues of the earth. It is unique in two +dimensions--in altitude and in expanse. It soars to the highest heights +of human utterance, and it covers an unequalled area of the earth's +surface. Undoubtedly it is the most precious heirloom of our race, and +as such we must reverence and guard it. Nor must we islanders talk as +though we hold it in fee-simple, and allowed our trans-Atlantic kinsfolk +merely a conditional usufruct of it. Their property in it is as complete +and indefeasible as our own; and we should rejoice to accept their aid +in the conversation and renovation (equally indispensable processes) of +this superb and priceless heritage. + +English critics of the beginning of the century so convincingly set +forth the reasons why America, absorbed in the conquest of nature and in +material progress, could not produce anything great in the way of +literature, that their arguments remain embedded in many minds even to +this day, when events have conclusively falsified them. It is a +commonplace with some people that America has not developed a great +_American_ literature. If this merely means that, in casting off her +allegiance to George III., America did not cast off her allegiance to +Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Dryden, Addison, Swift, Pope, the +reproach, if it be one, must be accepted. If it be a humiliation to +American authors to own the traditions and standards established by +these men, and thereby to enrol themselves in their immortal fellowship, +why, then it must be owned that they have deliberately incurred that +humiliation. One American of vivid originality tried to escape it, and +with what result? Simply that Whitman holds a place of his own, somewhat +like that of Blake one might say, in the literature of the English +language, and has produced at least as much effect in England as in +America. If, on the other hand, it be implied that American literature +feebly imitates English literature, and fails to present an original and +adequate interpretation of American life, no reproach could well be more +flagrantly unjust. It is not only the abstract merit of American +literature, though that is very high, but precisely the Americanism of +it, that gives it its value in the eyes of all thinking Englishmen. Only +one American author of the first rank could possibly, at a superficial +glance, appear--not so much English as--European, cosmopolitan. I mean, +of course, Edgar Allan Poe, who has left perhaps a deeper impress upon +literature outside the English-speaking countries than any other +imaginative writer of the century, with the exception of Byron. Poe was +a born idealist, a creature of pure intelligence. Whether in poetry or +fiction, he was always solving problems; and it is hard to be +distinctively national in an exercise of pure intelligence. We do not +look for local colour in, for example, the agreeable essays of Euclid. +But Poe's intelligence was, at bottom, of a characteristically American +type. He was the Edison of romance.[N] As for the other great writers of +America, what can be more patent than their Americanism? Speaking only, +for the present, of those who have joined the majority, I would name two +who seem to me to stand with Poe in the very front rank of original +genius. They are Emerson, that starlike spirit, dwelling in a serener +ether than ours, which, though we may never attain, it is yet a +refreshment to look up to; and Hawthorne, not perhaps the greatest +romancer in the English tongue, but certainly the purest artist in that +sphere of fiction. Now, it is a mere truism to say that each of these +men was, in his way, a typical product of New England, inconceivable as +the offspring of any other soil in the world. Emerson, it has been said, +not without truth, was the first of the American humourists, carrying +into metaphysics that gift of realistic vision and inspired hyperbole +which has somehow been grafted upon the Anglo-Saxon character by the +conditions of American life. As for Hawthorne, though he has felt and +reproduced the physical charm of Rome more subtly than any other artist, +his genius drew at once its strength and its delicacy from his Puritan +ancestry and environment. To realise how intimately he smacks of the +soil, we have but to think of that marvellous scene in _The Blithedale +Romance_, the search for Zenobia's body. From what does it derive its +peculiar quality, its haunting savour? Simply from the presence of Silas +Foster, that delightful incarnation of the New England yeoman. "If I +thought anything had happened to Zenobia, I should feel kind o' +sorrowful," said the grim Silas; and there never was a speech more +dramatically true, or, in its context, more bitterly pathetic. + +Even while English critics were proving that there could be no such +thing as an American literature, Washington Irving and Fenimore Cooper +were laying its foundations on a thoroughly American basis. Irving was +none the less American for loving the picturesque traditions of his +English ancestry; Cooper, a gallant and fertile genius, did his country +and our language an inestimable service by adding a whole group of +specifically American figures to the deathless aristocracy of the realms +of romance. Then, in the generation which has just passed away, we have +such men as Thoreau, racy of his native soil; Longfellow, in his day and +way the chief interpreter of America to England; Whittier, so intensely +local that, as Professor Matthews puts it, "he wrote for New England +rather than for the whole of the United States;" Lowell, courtly, +cultured, cosmopolitan, and yet the creator of Hosea Biglow; Holmes, as +American in his humour as Lamb was English, who justly ranks with Lamb +and Goldsmith among the personally best-beloved writers of the English +tongue. Prescott, in the sphere of history, paralleled the achievement +of Cooper in fiction, by giving literary form to the romance of the New +World; while Motley was inspired (too ardently, perhaps) by the spirit +of free America in writing the great epic of religious and political +freedom in Europe. Finally, it must not be forgotten that in _Uncle +Tom's Cabin_, a tragically American production, Mrs. Beecher Stowe added +to the literature of the English language the most potent, the most +dynamic, pamphlet ever hurled into the arena of national life. + +Of all that living Americans are doing for the literature of our common +tongue it is as yet impossible to speak adequately. Since 1870, a new +spirit of nationalism has entered into American literature, which has +not yet been thoroughly studied in America or appreciated in England. So +far from having no national literature, America has now, perhaps, the +most intimately national body of fiction in the modern world. Before the +Civil War there was practically no deliberate and systematic study of +local and racial idiosyncracies. Hosea Biglow was a mask, not a +character, and Parson Wilbur was a literary device. Even Hawthorne +thought primarily of the element of imagination in the romances--the +universal, not the local, element. His leading characters are +psychological creations, with nothing specifically American about them; +his local colour and local character-study, though admirable, are +incidental, or at any rate stand on a secondary plane. In the South +there was no literature at all, local or otherwise, with the one +startling exception of _Uncle Tom's Cabin_.[O] But since 1870, and +mainly, indeed, within the past twenty years, a marvellous change has +come over the scene. Not only the national but the local +self-consciousness of America has sprung to literary life, until at the +present day there is scarcely a corner of the country, scarcely an +aspect of social life, that has not found its special, and, as a rule, +very able interpreter through the medium of fiction. Pursuing technical +methods partly borrowed from abroad (from France rather than from +England), American writers have undertaken what one is tempted to call a +sociological ordnance-survey of the Republic from Maine to Arizona, from +Florida to Oregon. There is scarcely a human being in the United States, +from the Newport society belle to the "greaser" of New Mexico, that has +not his or her more or less faithful counterpart in fiction. No European +country, so far as I know, has achieved anything like such comprehensive +self-realisation. Comprehensive, I say--not necessarily profound. +Perhaps France in Balzac, perhaps Russia in Turgueneff and Tolstoi, +found more searching interpretation than America has found even in her +host of novelists. But never, surely, was there a body of fiction that +touched life at so many points, to mirror if not to probe it. And in +many cases to probe it as well. + +It would take a volume to criticise these writers in any detail. I can +attempt no more than a bald and imperfect enumeration. Miss Mary +Wilkins's studies of New England life are well known and appreciated in +England, but the talent of Miss Sarah Orne Jewett is not sufficiently +recognised. In her _Country of the Pointed Firs_, for example, there are +whole chapters that rise to a classical perfection of workmanship. The +novelists of the Eastern cities, with Mr. Howells, a master craftsman, +at their head, are of course numberless. For studies in the local colour +of New York nothing could be better than Professor Brander Matthews' +_Vignettes of Manhattan_, and other stories. Mr. Paul Leicester Ford's +_Honorable Peter Stirling_, though antiquated in style, gives a +remarkable picture of political life in New York. The Bowery Boy is +cleverly represented, so far as dialect at any rate is concerned, by +Mr. E.W. Townsend in his _Chimmie Fadden_. Even the Jewish and the +Italian quarters of New York have their portraitists in fiction. Life in +Washington has been frequently and ably depicted; for instance, in Mrs. +Burnett's _Through one Administration_. Of the many interpreters of the +South I need mention only three: Mr. Cable, Mr. Thomas Nelson Page, and +Mr. Chandler Harris. Miss Murfree ("Charles Egbert Craddock") has made +the mountains of Tennessee her special province. Chicago has several +novelists of her own: for example, Mr. Henry Fuller, author of _The +Cliff Dwellers_, Mr. Will Payne, and that close student of Chicago +slang, Mr. George Ade, the author of _Artie_. The Middle West counts +such novelists as Miss "Octave Thanet" and Mr. Hamlin Garland, whose +_Main Travelled Roads_ contains some very remarkable work. The Far West +is best represented, perhaps, in the lively and graphic sketches of Mr. +Owen Wister; while California has novelists of talent in Miss Gertrude +Atherton and Mr. Frank Norris. At least two Americans living abroad have +made noteworthy contributions to this sociological survey of their +native land: the late Mr. Harold Frederic, who has dealt mainly with +country life in New York State, and Miss Elizabeth Robins, whose +picture, in _The Open Question_, of a Southern family impoverished by +the war, is exceedingly vivid and bears all the marks of the utmost +fidelity. Nor must I omit to mention that the stage has borne a modest +but not insignificant part in this movement of national +self-portraiture. Mr. Augustus Thomas' _Alabama_ is a delightful picture +of Southern life, while Mr. James A. Herne's _Shore Acres_ takes a +distinct place in the literature of New England, his _Griffith +Davenport_[P] in the literature of Virginia. + +There must, of course, be many gaps in this summary enumeration. It is +very probable that many novelists of distinction have altogether escaped +my notice; and I have made no attempt to include in my list the writers +of short magazine stories, many of them artists of high accomplishment. +One omission, however, I must at once repair. "Mark Twain's" +contributions to the work of self-realisation have been in the main +retrospective, but nevertheless of the first importance. He is the +"sacred poet" of the Mississippi. If any work of incontestable genius, +and plainly predestined to immortality, has been issued in the English +language during the past quarter of a century, it is that brilliant +romance of the Great Rivers, _The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn_. + +Intensely American though he be, "Mark Twain" is one of the greatest +living masters of the English language. To some Englishmen this may seem +a paradox; but it is high time we should disabuse ourselves of the +prejudice that residence on the European side of the Atlantic confers +upon us an exclusive right to determine what is good English, and to +write it correctly and vigorously. We are apt in England to class as an +"Americanism" every unfamiliar, or too familiar, locution which we do +not happen to like. As a matter of fact, there is a pretty lively +interchange between the two countries of slipshod and vulgar +"journalese;" and as the picturesque reporter is a greater power in +America than he is with us, we perhaps import more than we export of +this particular commodity. But there can be no rational doubt, I think, +that the English language has gained, and is gaining, enormously by its +expansion over the American continent. The prime function of a language, +after all, is to interpret the "form and pressure" of life--the +experience, knowledge, thought, emotion, and aspiration of the race +which employs it. This being so, the more tap-roots a language sends +down into the soil of life, and the more varied the strata of human +experience from which it draws its nourishment, whether of vocabulary or +idiom, the more perfect will be its potentialities as a medium of +expression. We must be careful, it is true, to keep the organism +healthy, to guard against disintegration of tissue; but to that duty +American writers are quite as keenly alive as we. It is not a source of +weakness but of power and vitality to the English language that it +should embrace a greater variety of dialects than any other civilised +tongue. A new language, says the proverb, is a new sense; but a +multiplicity of dialects means, for the possessors of the main language, +an enlargement of the pleasures of the linguistic sense without the +fatigue of learning a totally new grammar and vocabulary. So long as +there is a potent literary tradition keeping the core of the language +one and indivisible, vernacular variations can only tend, in virtue of +the survival of the fittest, to promote the abundance, suppleness, and +nicety of adaptation of the language as a literary instrument. The +English language is no mere historic monument, like Westminster Abbey, +to be religiously preserved as a relic of the past, and reverenced as +the burial-place of a bygone breed of giants. It is a living organism, +ceaselessly busied, like any other organism, in the processes of +assimilation and excretion. It has before it, we may fairly hope, a +future still greater than its glorious past. And the greatness of that +future will largely depend on the harmonious interplay of spiritual +forces throughout the American Republic and the British Empire. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote M: I do not mean that we are callous to American criticism, or +always take it in good part when it comes home to us. I think with +shame, for example, of the stupid insolence with which certain English +journalists used for years to treat Mr. W.D. Howells, merely because he +had expressed certain literary judgments from which they dissented. What +I do mean, and believe to be true, is that we are _habitually +unconscious_ of American criticism, while Americans may rather be said +to be _habitually over-conscious_ that the eyes of England and of the +world are on them. The existence of this habit of mind seems to me no +less evident than the fact that it is rapidly correcting itself.] + +[Footnote N: I went to see Poe's grave in Baltimore, marked by a mean +and ugly monument, little more than a mere tombstone. It is surely time +that a worthy memorial should be raised, at his burial-place or +elsewhere, to this unique genius. England and the English-speaking world +would gladly contribute. For a masterly criticism and vindication of +Poe, let me refer the reader to Mr. John M. Robertson's _New Essays +towards a Critical Method_. London and New York, 1897.] + +[Footnote O: For the reasons of this barrenness, see an essay on _Two +Studies in the South_, in Professor Brander Matthews' _Aspects of +Fiction_. New York, 1896.] + +[Footnote P: Founded on a novel by Miss Helen H. Gardener.] + + + + +THE AMERICAN LANGUAGE + +I + + +Nothing short of an imperative sense of duty could tempt me to set forth +on that most perilous emprise, a discussion of the American language. +The path is beset with man-traps and spring-guns. Not all the serious +causes of dissension between England and America have begotten half the +bad blood that has been engendered by trumpery questions of vocabulary, +grammar, and pronunciation. I cannot hope to escape giving offence, +probably on both sides; but if I can induce one or two people on either +side to think twice before they scoff once, I shall not have written in +vain. + +In the way of scoffing, we English have doubtless (and inevitably) been +the worst offenders. We have habitually used "Americanism" as a term of +reproach, implying, if not saying in so many words, that America was the +great source of pollution, and of nothing but pollution, to the +otherwise limpid current of our speech. Dean Alford wrote offensively +to this effect; Archbishop Trench, on the other hand, discussed the +relations between the English of America and the English of England with +courtesy and good sense.[Q] He protested against certain transatlantic +neologisms, including in his list that excellent old word "to berate," +and a word so useful and so eminently consonant with the spirit of the +language as "to belittle;" but, whether wise or unwise, his protest was +at least civil. Other writers, both in books and periodicals, have been +apt to take their tone from the Dean rather than from the Archbishop. It +may even be said that the instinct of the majority of Englishmen, which +finds heedless expression in the newspapers and common talk, is to +regard Americanisms as necessarily vulgar, and (conversely) vulgarisms +as probably American. If challenged and brought to book, they can +generally realise the narrowness and injustice of this way of thinking; +yet they relapse into it next moment. It is time we should be on our +guard against so insidious a habit. Its reduction to absurdity may be +found (alackaday!) in _Fors Clavigera_ for June 1, 1874. With shame and +sorrow I transcribe the passage, for the time has not yet come for it +to be forgotten. If it were merely the aberration of an individual, +however distinguished, it were better kept out of sight, out of mind; +but it is, I repeat, the reckless exaggeration of a not altogether +uncommon habit of thought:-- + + "England taught the Americans all they have of speech or thought, + hitherto. What thoughts they have not learned from England are + foolish thoughts; what words they have not learned from England, + unseemly words; the vile among them not being able even to be + humorous parrots, but only obscene mocking-birds." + + +Can we wonder that Americans have retorted with some asperity upon +criticisms in which any approach to such insolent insularism is even +remotely or inadvertently implied? + +The American retort, however, has not always been judicious or +dignified. It has too often consisted in the mere pitting of one +linguistic prejudice against another. It is very easy to prove that +there are bad speakers and bad writers in both countries, and the +attempt to determine which country has the more numerous and the greater +sinners is exceedingly unprofitable. The "You're another" style of +argument has been far too prevalent. Here we have Mr. Gilbert M. Tucker, +for instance, in a book entitled _Our Common Speech_ (1895) implying, +if he does not absolutely assert (p. 173), that a "boldness of +innovation" in matters linguistic, amounting to "absolute +licentiousness," is more characteristic of England than of America. The +suggestion leaves my British withers entirely unwrung, for I approve of +bold innovation in language, trusting to the impermanence of the unfit +to counteract the effects of licentiousness. If I could believe that we +British were the bolder innovators, I should admit it without blenching; +but observation and probability seem to me to point with one accord in +the opposite direction. New words are begotten by new conditions of +life; and as American life is far more fertile of new conditions than +ours, the tendency towards neologism cannot but be stronger in America +than in England. America has enormously enriched the language, not only +with new words, but (since the American mind is, on the whole, quicker +and wittier than the English) with apt and luminous colloquial +metaphors; and I know not why Mr. Tucker should disclaim the credit. + +He next sets forth to show how recent English writers are corrupting the +language; and, in doing so, he falls into some curious errors. + +Dickens was boldly innovating when he made Silas Wegg say, "Mr. Boffin, +I never bargain"--"haggle," it would seem, is the proper word. But if +Mr. Tucker will look into the matter, he will find it extremely probable +that this was the original sense of the word "bargain," and quite +certain that it was a very early sense; for instance-- + + "So worthless peasants bargain for their wives, + As market-men for oxen, sheep, or horse." + + I HENRY VI., V. v. 53. + +And, in any case, is it possible to set up such a distinction between +"bargaining" and "haggling" as to be worth an international wrangle? +"Starved" for frozen is to Mr. Tucker an innovation; it was used both by +Shakespeare and Milton. "Assist" in the sense of to "be present at" is +an "absurd" innovation; it was used by Gibbon and by Prescott, a +"tolerably good authority," says Mr. Tucker himself, "in the use of +English." Miss Yonge is taken to task for saying, "Theodora _flung_ away +and was rushing off;" but Milton says, "And crop-full out of doors he +flings." Charles Reade "is guilty of such phrases as 'Wardlaw whipped +before him,' 'Ransome whipped before it;'" but the Princess in _Love's +Labour's Lost_ is guilty of saying, "Whip to our tents, as roes run +o'er the land," and the word occurs in the same sense in Ben Jonson and +Steele, to search no further. The simple fact is that Mr. Tucker has not +happened to note the intransitive sense of "to fling" and "to whip," +which has been current in the best authors for centuries. He is very +severe on the English habit of "inserting utterly superfluous words," +instancing from Lord Beaconsfield, "He was _by way of_ intimating that +he was engaged on a great work," and, from a magazine, "She was _by way +of_ painting the shrimp girl." Now, this is not an elegant expression, +and for my part I should be at some pains to avoid it; but it has a +perfectly distinct meaning, and is not a mere redundancy. If Mr. Tucker +supposes that "She was by way of painting the shrimp girl" means exactly +the same as "She was painting the shrimp girl," he misses one of the +fine shades of the English language. Similarly, his remark on the +"peculiar misuse of the affix _ever_, as in saying 'What_ever_ are you +doing?'" stands in need of reconsideration. It is wrong, certainly, to +treat _ever_ as an affix, and to mistake the first two words of "What +ever are you doing?" for the one word "whatever;" but to suppose the +"ever" meaningless and inert, is to overlook a clearly marked and very +useful gradation of emphasis. "What are you doing?" expresses simple +curiosity; "What ever are you doing?" expresses surprise; "What the +devil are you doing?" expresses anger--we need not run farther up the +scale. Nor is this use of "ever" an innovation, licentious or otherwise. +"Ever" has for centuries been employed as an intensive particle after +the interrogative pronouns and adverbs how, who, what, where, why. For +instance, in _The World of Wonders_ (1607), "I shall desire him to +consider how ever it was possible to get an answer from these priests." + +One of the most remarkable paragraphs in Mr. Tucker's book is that in +which he proves "the greater permanence and steadiness of our American +speech as compared with that of the mother country" by going through +Halliwell's _Dictionary of Archaisms and Provincialisms_, and picking +out 76 words which Halliwell regards as obsolete, but which in America +are all alive and kicking. (The vulgarism is mine, not Mr. Tucker's.) +Now as a matter of fact not one of these words is really obsolete in +England, and most of them are in everyday use; for instance, adze, +affectation, agape, to age, air (appearance), appellant, apple-pie +order, baker's dozen, bamboozle, bay window, between whiles, bicker, +blanch, to brain, burly, catcall, clodhopper, clutch, coddle, copious, +cosy, counterfeit money, crazy (dilapidated), crone, crook, croon, +cross-grained, cross-patch, cross purposes, cuddle, to cuff (to strike), +cleft, din, earnest money, egg on, greenhorn, jack-of-all-trades, +loophole, settled, ornate, to quail, ragamuffin, riff-raff, rigmarole, +scant, seedy, out of sorts, stale, tardy, trash. How Halliwell ever came +to class these words as archaic I cannot imagine; but I submit that any +one who sets forth to write about the English of England ought to have +sufficient acquaintance with the language to check and reject +Halliwell's amazing classification. Does Mr. Tucker so despise British +English as never to read an English book? How else is one to account for +his imagining for a moment that clodhopper, clutch, copious, cosy, +cross-grained, greenhorn, and rigmarole are obsolete in England? + +Far be it from me to assert that Mr. Tucker makes no good points in his +catalogue of English solecisms. I merely hint that this game of pot and +kettle is neither dignified nor profitable; that purism is almost always +over-hasty, and apt to ignore both the history and the psychology of +language; and, finally, that nothing is gained by introducing acerbity +(though I have admitted the frequent provocation) into a discussion +which a little exercise of temper should render no less agreeable than +instructive to both parties. "The speech of the lower orders of our +people," says Mr. Tucker, "... differs from what all admit to be +standard correctness in a much smaller degree[R] than we have every +reason to believe to be the case in England, _our enemies themselves +being judges_." Now I protest I am not Mr. Tucker's enemy, and I know of +no reason why he should be mine. I cannot share the withering contempt +with which he regards the extension of the term "traffic" from barter to +movement to and fro, as in a street or on a railway; but if he prefers +another word (he does not suggest one, by the way) for the traffic on +Broadway or on the New York Central, I shall not esteem him one whit the +less.[S] Even when he tells me that "bumper" is the English term for +the American "buffer" (on a railway carriage) I do not feel my blood +boil. A very slight elevation of the eyebrows expresses all the emotion +of which I am conscious. So long as he does not insist on my saying a +"bumper state" when I mean a "buffer state," I see no reason whatever +for any rupture of that sympathy which ought to subsist between two men +who take a common interest and pride in the subject of his +treatise--_Our Common Speech_. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote Q: See _English Past and Present_, ninth edition, pp. 63, +215.] + +[Footnote R: "What great city of this country," Mr. Tucker inquires, +"has developed, or is likely to develop, any peculiar class of errors at +all comparable in importance to those of the Cockney speech of London?" +The answer is pat: New York and Chicago--unless Mr. Townsend's _Chimmie +Fadden_ and Mr. Ade's _Artie_ are sheer linguistic libels.] + +[Footnote S: It must be very painful to Mr. Tucker to find Shakespeare +talking of the "two hours' traffic of our stage." He was a hardened +offender, was Shakespeare, against Mr. Tucker's ideal of one single, +inelastic, cast-iron signification for every word in the language.] + + + + +II + + +It is not to be expected that an extremely English intonation should +ever be agreeable to Americans, or an extremely American intonation to +Englishmen. We ourselves laugh at a "haw-haw" intonation in English; +why, then, should we forbid Americans to do so? If "an accent like a +banjo" is recognised as undesirable in America (and assuredly it is), +there is no reason why we in England should pretend to admire it. But a +vulgar or affected intonation is clearly distinguishable, and ought to +be clearly distinguished, from a national habit in the pronunciation of +a given letter, or accentuation of a particular word, or class of words. +For instance, take the pronunciation of the indefinite article. The +American habitually says "[=a] man" (_a_ as in "game"); the Englishman, +unless he wants to be emphatic, says, "[)a] man."[T] Neither is right, +neither wrong; it is purely a matter of habit; and to consider either +habit ridiculous is merely to exhibit that childishness or provincialism +of mind which is moved to laughter by whatever is unfamiliar. Again, +when I first read the works of the sagacious Mr. Dooley, I thought it a +curiously far-fetched idea on the part of that philosopher to talk of +Admiral Dewey as his "Cousin George," and assert that "Dewey" and +"Dooley" were practically the same name. I had not then noticed that the +American pronunciation of "Dewey" is "Dooey," and that the liquid "yoo" +is very seldom heard in America. In the course of the five minutes I +spent in the Supreme Court at Washington, I heard the Chief Justice of +the United States make this one remark: "That, sir, is not +_constitootional_." To our ears this "oo" has an old-fashioned ring, +like that of the "ee" in "obleeged;" but to call it wrong is absurd, and +to find it ridiculous is provincial. Very possibly it can be proved that +had Shakespeare used the word at all, he would have said +"constitootional;" but that would make the "oo" neither better nor worse +in my eyes. There always have been, and always will be, changing +fashions in pronunciation; and the Americans have as good a right to +their fashion as we to ours. Fifty years hence, perhaps, our grandsons +will be saying "constitootional," and theirs "constityootional." I +confess that, in point of abstract sonority, I prefer the "yoo" to the +dry "oo;" but that, again, is a pure matter of taste. If Americans +choose to say, + + "From morn + To noon he fell, from noon to dooey eve, + A summer's day." + +I am perfectly willing that they should do so, reserving always my own +right to say "dyooey." It would not at all surprise me to learn that +Milton said "dooey;" but neither would it lead me to alter the +pronunciation which, as one of the present generation of Englishmen, I +have learnt to prefer. + +It is said that when Mr. Daly's company returned to New York, after a +long visit to England, they pronounced "lieutenant" according to the +English fashion, "leftenant," but were called to order by an outburst of +protest. Though, for my own part, I say "leftenant," I heartily +sympathise with the protesters. "Leftenant," though a corruption of +respectable antiquity, is a corruption none the less, and since it has +died out in America, it would be mere snobbery to reintroduce it. + +So, too, with questions of accentuation. We say "prim-arily" and +"tem-porarily;" most (or at any rate many) Americans say "primar-ily" +and "temporar-ily." Here there is no question of right or wrong, +refinement or vulgarity. The one accentuation is as good as the other. +It may be argued, indeed, that our accentuation throws into relief the +root, the idea, the soul of the word, not the mere grammatical suffix, +the "limbs and outward flourishes;" but on the other hand, it may be +contended with equal truth that the American accentuation has the Latin +precedent in its favour. Neither advantage is conclusive; neither, +indeed, is, strictly speaking, relevant; for Englishmen do not make a +principle of accentuating the root rather than the prefix or suffix, +else we should say "inund-ation," "resonant," "admir-able;" and the +Americans do not make a principle of following the Latin emphasis, else +they would say "ora-tor" and "gratui-tous," and the recognised +pronunciation of "theatre" would be "theayter." It is argued that there +is a general tendency among educated Englishmen to throw the accent as +far back as possible; that, for instance, the educated speaker says +"in-teresting," the uneducated, "interest-ing." True; but until this +tendency can be proved to possess some inherent advantage, there is not +a shadow of reason why Americans should be reproached or ridiculed for +obeying their own tendency rather than ours. The English tendency is a +matter of comparatively recent fashion. "Con-template," said Samuel +Rogers, "is bad enough, but bal-cony makes me sick." Both forms have +maintained themselves up to the present; but will they for long? I think +one may already trace a reaction against the universal throwing backward +of the accent. I myself say "per-emptory" and "ex-emplary;" but it would +take very little encouragement to make me say "peremp-tory" and +"exemp-lary," which seem to me much more expressive words. There is +surely no doubt that, in accenting a prefix rather than the root of the +word, we lose a certain amount of force. "Con-template," for instance, +is not nearly so strong a word as "contemp-late." We say an +"il-lustrated" book or the "_Il-lustrated London News_" because we do +not require any particular force in the epithet; but when the sense +demands a word with colour and emotion in it, we say the "illus-trious" +statesman, the "illus-trious" poet, throwing into relief the essential +element in the word, the "lustre." What a paltry word would +"tri-umphant" be in comparison with "trium-phant!" But the larger our +list of examples, the more capricious does our accentuation seem, the +more evidently subject to mere accidents of fashion. There is scarcely a +trace of consistent or rational principle in the matter. To make a merit +of one practice, and find in the other a subject for contemptuous +criticism, is simply childish. + +Mere slovenliness of pronunciation is a totally different matter. For +instance, the use of "most" for "almost" is distinctly, if not a +vulgarism, at least a colloquialism. It may be of ancient origin; it may +have crossed in the _Mayflower_ for aught I know; but the overwhelming +preponderance of ancient and modern usage is certainly in favour of +prefixing the "al," and there is a clear advantage in having a special +word for this special idea. If American writers tried to make "most" +supplant "almost" in the literary language, we should have a right to +remonstrate; the two forms would fight it out, and the fittest would +survive. But as a matter of fact I am not aware that any one has +attempted to introduce "most," in this sense, into literature. It is +perfectly recognised as a colloquialism, and as such it keeps its place. +Again, such pronunciations as "mebbe" for "maybe" and "I'd ruther" or "I +druther" for "I'd rather" are obvious slovenlinesses. No American would +defend them as being correct, any more than an Englishman would defend +"I dunno" for "I don't know" or "atome" for "at home." If an actor, for +instance, were to say, + + "I druther be a dog and bay the moon + Than such a Roman," + +American and English critics alike could not but protest against the +solecism; for in poetry absolute precision of utterance is clearly +indispensable. But in everyday speech a certain amount of colloquialism +is inevitable. Let him whose own enunciation is chemically free from +localism or slovenliness cast the first stone even at "mebbe" and +"ruther." + +A curious American colloquialism, of which I certainly cannot see the +advantage, in the substitution of "yep," or "yup" for "yes," and of +"nope" for "no." No doubt we have in England the coster's "yuss;" but +one hears even educated Americans now and then using "yep," or some +other corruption of "yes," scarcely to be indicated by the ordinary +alphabetical symbols. It seems to me a pity. + +Much more respectable in point of antiquity is the habit which obtains +to some extent even among educated Americans, of saying "somewheres" and +"a long ways." Here the "s" is an old case-ending, an adverbial +genitive. "He goes out nights," too, on which Mr. Andrew Lang is so +severe, is a form as old as the language and older. I turn to Dr. Leon +Kellner's _Historical English Syntax_ (p. 119) and find that the Gothic +for "at night" was "nahts," and that the form (with its correlative +"days ") runs through old Norse, old Saxon, old English, and middle +English: for instance, "dages endi nahtes" _(Heliand)_, "daeges and +nihtes" _(Beowulf)_, "daeies and nihtes" (Layamon), all meaning "by day +and by night." In all, or almost all, words ending in "ward," the +genitive inflection, according to modern English practice, can either be +retained or dropped at will. It is a mere pedantry to declare "toward" +better English than "towards," "upward" than "upwards." Thus we see +that here again there is neither logical principle nor consistent +practice to be invoked. At the same time, as "somewheres" has become +irremediably a vulgarism in England, it would, I think, be a graceful +concession on the part of educated Americans to drop the "s." After all, +"somewhere" does not jar in America, and "somewheres" very distinctly +jars in England. + +An insidious laxity of pronunciation (rather than of grammar), which is +taking great hold in America, is the total omission of the "had" or +"have," in such phrases as "You'd better," "we've got to." Mr. Howells's +Willis Campbell, a witty and cultivated Bostonian, says, in _The Albany +Depot_, "I guess we better get out of here;" Mr. Ade's Artie, a Chicago +clerk, says, "I got a boost in my pay," meaning "I have got:" the +locution is very common indeed. It is no more defensible than "swelp me" +for "so help me." It arises from sheer laziness, unwillingness to face +the infinitesimal difficulty of pronouncing, "d" and "b" together. As a +colloquialism it is all very well; but I regard it with a certain alarm, +for where all trace of a word disappears, people are apt to forget the +logical and grammatical necessity for it. Though contracted to its last +letter, a word still asserts its existence; but when even the last +letter has vanished its state is parlous indeed. + +An Anglicism much ridiculed in America is "different to." As a +Scotchman, I dislike it, and would neither use nor defend it. At the +same time I cannot but hint to American critics that the use of a +particular preposition in a particular context is largely a matter of +convention; that when we learn a new language we have simply to get up +by rote the conventions that obtain in this regard, reason being little +or no guide to us; and that within the same language the conventions are +always changing. You may easily nonplus even a good grammarian by asking +him suddenly, "What preposition should you use in such-and-such a +context?" just as you may puzzle a man by asking him to spell a word +which, if he wrote it without thinking about it, would present no +difficulty to him. Some very good American writers always say, "at the +North," and "at the South," where an Englishman would certainly say +"in." "At," to my mind, suggests a very narrow point of space. I should +say "at" a village, but "in" a city--"at Concord," but "in Boston." I +recognise, however, that this is a mere matter of convention, and do +not dream of condemning "at the North" as an error. In the same way I +would claim tolerance, though certainly not approval, for "different +to." + +As a general rule, I think, educated Americans are more apt to err on +the side of purism than of laxity. I have before me, for example, a long +list of rules and warnings for American writers, issued by the _New York +Press_, many of which are very much to the point, while others seem to +me captious and pedantic. For instance, a woman is not to "marry" a man; +she is "married to" him; "the clergyman or magistrate marries both." The +grammatical suitor, then, when the awful moment arrives, must not say to +the blushing fair, "Will you marry me?" but "Will you be married to me?" +Again, you not only must not split infinitives, but you must not +separate an auxiliary from its verb; you must say "probably will be," +not "will probably be." This is English by the card indeed. + +I will not waste space upon discussing the different fashions of +spelling in England and America. The rage excited in otherwise rational +human beings by the dropping of the "u" in "favor," or the final "me" in +"program," is one of the strangest of psychological phenomena. The +baselessness of the reasonings used to bolster up the British clinging +to superfluous letters is very ably shown in Professor Matthews' +_Americanisms and Briticisms_. Let me only put in a plea for the +retention of such abnormal spellings as serve to distinguish two words +of the same sound. For instance, it seems to me useful that we should +write "story" for a tale and "storey" for a floor, and in the plural +"stories" and "storeys." + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote T: "Surely, on Mr. Archer's own showing," writes Mr. A.B. +Walkley, "the Englishman has the advantage here, for 'when he wants to +be emphatic' he can be, whereas the American cannot." This is a +misapprehension on Mr. Walkley's part. The American a can be spoken with +or without emphasis, just as the speaker pleases. It is because we are +accustomed always to associate this particular sonority with emphasis +that even when it is spoken without emphasis, we imagine it to be +emphatic.] + + + + +III + + +Passing now from questions of pronunciation and grammar to questions of +vocabulary, I can only express my sense of the deep indebtedness of the +English language, both literary and colloquial, to America, for the old +words she has kept alive and the new words and phrases she has invented. +It is a sheer pedantry--nay, a misconception of the laws which govern +language as a living organism--to despise pithy and apt colloquialisms, +and even slang. In order to remain healthy and vigorous, a literary +language must be rooted in the soil of a copious vernacular, from which +it can extract and assimilate, by a chemistry peculiar to itself, +whatever nourishment it requires. It must keep in touch with life in the +broadest acceptation of the word; and life at certain levels, obeying a +psychological law which must simply be accepted as one of the conditions +of the problem, will always express itself in dialect, provincialism, +slang. + +America doubles and trebles the number of points at which the English +language comes in touch with nature and life, and is therefore a great +source of strength and vitality. The literary language, to be sure, +rejects a great deal more than it absorbs; and even in the vernacular, +words and expressions are always dying out and being replaced by others +which are somehow better adapted to the changing conditions. But though +an expression has not, in the long run, proved itself fitted to survive, +it does not follow that it has not done good service in its time. +Certain it is that the common speech of the Anglo-Saxon race throughout +the world is exceedingly supple, well nourished, and rich in forcible +and graphic idioms; and a great part of this wealth it owes to America. +Let the purists who sneer at "Americanisms" think for one moment how +much poorer the English language would be to-day if North America had +become a French or Spanish instead of an English continent. + +I am far from advocating a breaking down of the barrier between literary +and vernacular speech. It should be a porous, a permeable bulwark, +allowing of free filtration; but it should be none the less distinct and +clearly recognised. Nor do I recommend an indiscriminate hospitality to +all the linguistic inspirations of the American fancy. All I say is that +neologisms should be judged on their merits, and not rejected with +contumely for no better reason than that they are new and (presumably) +American. Take, for instance, the word "scientist." It was originally +suggested by Whewell in 1840; but it first came into common use in +America, and was received in England at the point of the bayonet. Huxley +and other "scientists" disowned it, and only a few years ago the _Daily +News_ denounced it as "an ignoble Americanism," a "cheap and vulgar +product of transatlantic slang." But "scientist" is undoubtedly holding +its own, and will soon be as generally accepted as "retrograde," +"reciprocal," "spurious," and "strenuous," against which Ben Jonson, in +his day, so--strenuously protested. It holds its own because it is felt +to be a necessity. No one who is in the habit of writing will pretend +that it is always possible to fall back upon the cumbrous phrase "man of +science."[U] On the other hand, the purist objection to +"scientist"--that it is a Latin word with a Greek termination, and that +it implies the existence of a non-existent verb--may be urged with +equal force against such harmless necessary words as deist, aurist, +dentist, florist, jurist, oculist, somnambulist, ventriloquist, +and--purist. Much more valid objection might be made to the word +"scientific," which is not hybrid indeed, but is, if strictly examined, +illogical and even nonsensical. The fact is that three-fourths of the +English language would crumble away before a purist analysis, and we +should be left without words to express the commonest and most necessary +ideas. + +Contrast with the case of "scientist" a vulgarism such as the use of +"transpire" in the sense of "happen." I do not quote it as an +Americanism; it is probably of English origin; it occurs, I regret to +note, in Dickens. I select it merely as an example of a demonstrably +vicious locution which ought indubitably to be banished from the +language. It has its origin in sheer blundering. Some one, at some time, +has come upon the phrase "such-and-such a thing has transpired"--that +is, leaked out, become known--and, ignorantly mistaking its meaning, has +noted and employed the word as a finer-sounding synonym for "occurred" +or "happened." The blunder has been passed on from one penny-a-liner to +another, until at last it has crept into the pages of writers, on both +sides of the Atlantic, who ought to know better. If it served any +purpose, expressed any shade of meaning, it might be tolerated; but +being at once a useless pedantry and an obvious blunder, it deserves no +quarter. + +My point, then, is that "scientist" ought to live on its merits, +"transpire" to die on its demerits. With regard to every neologism we +ought first to inquire, "Does it fill a gap? Does it serve a purpose?" +And if that question be answered in the affirmative, we may next +consider whether it is formed on a reasonably good analogy and in +consonance with the general spirit of the language. "Truthful," for +example, is said to be an Americanism, and at one time gave offence on +that account. It is not only a vast improvement on the stilted +"veracious," but one of the prettiest and most thoroughly English words +in the dictionary. + +The above-quoted writer in the _New York Press_ is a purist in +vocabulary, no less than in grammar. He will not allow us to be +"unwell," we must always be "ill;" an inhuman imperative. Why should we +sacrifice this clear and useful gradation: unwell, very unwell, ill, +very ill? On "sick" he does not deliver judgment. The American use of +the word is ancient and respectable, but the English limitation of its +meaning seems to me convenient, seeing we have the general terms +"unwell" and "ill" ready to hand. Again, the _New York Press_ authority +follows Freeman in wishing to eject the word "ovation" from the +language; surely a ridiculous literalism. It is true we do not sacrifice +a sheep at a modern "ovation," but neither (for example) do we judge by +the flight of birds when we declare the circumstances to be "auspicious" +for such and such an undertaking. Again, we are never to "retire" for +the night, but always to "go to bed." If, as is commonly alleged, +Americans say "retire" because they consider it indelicate to go to bed, +the feeling and the expression are alike foolish. But I do not believe +that either is at all common in America. On the other hand, one may +retire for the night without going to bed. In the case of ladies +especially, the interval between retiring and going to bed is reputed +to be far from inconsiderable. If, then, one really means "retired for +the night" and does _not_ definitely mean "went to bed," I see no crime +in employing the expression that conveys one's exact meaning. Finally +the _New York Press_ will not let us use the word "commence;" we must +always "begin." This is an excellent example of unreflecting or +half-reflecting purism. "Commence" is a very old word; it is used by the +best writers; it is easily pronounceable and not in the least +grandiloquent; indeed it has precisely the length and cadence of its +competitor. But somebody or other one day observed that it was Latin, +whereas "begin" was Saxon; and since then there has been a systematic +attempt, in several quarters, to hound the innocent and useful synonym +out of the language. Whence comes this rage for impoverishing our +tongue! The more synonyms we possess the better. Wherefore (by the way) +I for my part should not be too rigorous in excluding a forcible +Americanism merely because it happens to duplicate some word or +expression already current in England. The rich language is that which +possesses not only the necessaries of life but also an abundance of +superfluities. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote U: Mr. Andrew Lang says: "Plenty of other words are formed on +the same analogy: the Greeks, in the verb 'to Medize,' set the example. +But we happen to have no use for 'scientist.'" It is not quite clear +whether Mr. Lang employs "have no use" in the American sense, expressing +sheer dislike, or in the literal and English sense. In the latter case I +can only say that he has been fortunate in never coming across +conjunctures in which "man of science" came in awkwardly and +inelegantly.] + + + + +IV + + +Let me note a few of the Americanisms, good, bad, and indifferent, which +specially struck me, whether in talk or in books, during my recent visit +to the United States. I call them Americanisms without inquiring into +their history. Some of them may be of English origin; but for practical +purposes an Americanism may be taken to mean an expression commonly used +in America and not commonly used in England. + +I had not been three hours on American soil before I heard a charming +young lady remark, "Oh, it was bully!" I gathered that this expression +is considered admissible, in the conversation of grown-up people, only +in and about New York. I often heard it there, and never anywhere else. +A very distinguished officer, who served as a volunteer in Cuba, was +asked to state his impressions of war. "War," he said, "is a terrible +thing. You can't exaggerate its horrors. When you sit in your tent the +night before the battle, and think of home and your wife and children, +you feel pretty sick and downhearted. But," he added, "next day, when +you're in it, oh, it _is_ bully!" + +The general use of picturesque metaphor is of course a striking feature +of American conversation. Many of these expressions have taken firm root +in England, such as "to have no use for" a man, or "to take no stock in" +a theory. But fresh inventions crop up on every hand in America. For +instance, where an English theatrical manager would say, "We must get +this play well talked about and paragraphed in advance," an American +manager puts the whole thing much more briefly and forcibly in the +phrase, "We don't want this piece to come in on rubbers." Metaphor +apart, many Americans have a gift of fantastic extravagance of phrase +which often produces an irresistible effect. A gentleman in high +political office had one day to receive a deputation with whose objects +he had no sympathy. He listened for some time to the spokesman of the +party, and then, at a pause, broke in with the remark: "Gentlemen, you +need proceed no further. I am not an entirely dishevelled jackass!" One +would give something for a snapshot photograph of the faces of that +deputation. + +Small differences of expression (other than those with which every one +is familiar--such as "elevator," "baggage," "depot," &c.)--strike one in +daily life. The American for "To let" is "For rent;" a "thing one would +wish to have expressed otherwise" is, more briefly, "a bad break;" +instead of "He married money" an American will say "He married rich;" +but this, I take it, is a vulgarism--as, indeed, is the English +expression. I find that in the modern American novel, setting forth the +sayings and doings of more or less educated people, there are apt to be, +on an average, about half a dozen words and phrases at which the English +reader stumbles for a moment. Mr. Howells, a master of English, may be +taken as a faithful reporter of the colloquial speech of Boston and New +York. In one of his comediettas, he makes Willis Campbell say, "Let me +turn out my sister's cup" (pour her a cup of tea). Mrs. Roberts, in +another of these delightful little pieces, says, "I'll smash off a +note," where an English Mrs. Roberts would say "dash off "; and where an +English Mrs. Roberts would ring the bell, her American namesake "touches +the annunciator." It is commonly believed in England that there is no +such thing as a "servant" in America, but only "hired girls" and +"helps." This is certainly not so in New York. I once "rang up" a +friend's house by telephone, and, on asking who was speaking to me, +received the answer, in a feminine voice, "I'm one of Mr. So-and-so's +servants." + +The heroine of _The Story of a Play_ says to her husband, "Are you still +thinking of our scrap of this morning?" "Scrap," in the sense of +"quarrel," is one of the few exceedingly common American expressions +which, have as yet taken little hold in England.[V] Admiral Dewey, for +instance, is admired as a "scrapper," or, as we should phrase it, a +fighting Admiral. Mr. Henry Fuller, of Chicago, in his powerful novel +_The Cliff Dwellers_, uses a still less elegant synonym for "scrap"--he +talks of a "connubial spat." In the same book I note the phrases "He +teetered back and forth on his toes," "He was a stocky young man," "One +of his brief noonings," "That's right, Claudia--score the profession." +"Score," as used in America, does not mean "score off," but rather, I +take it, "attack and leave your mark upon." It is very common in this +sense. For instance, I note among the headlines of a New York paper, +"Mr. So-and-so scores Yellow Journalism." Talking of Yellow Journalism, +by the way, the expressions "a beat," and "a scoop," for what we in +England call an "exclusive" item of news, were unknown to me until I +went to America. I was a little bewildered, too, when I was told of a +family which "lived on air-tights." Their diet consisted of canned (or, +as we should say, tinned) provisions. + +The most popular slang expression of the day is "to rubberneck," or, +more concisely, "to rubber." Its primary meaning is to crane the neck in +curiosity, to pry round the corner, as it were.[W] But it has numerous +and surprising extensions of meaning. It appears to be one of the laws +of slang that when a phrase strikes the popular fancy, it is pressed +into service on every possible or impossible occasion. Another +favourite expression is "That cuts no ice with me."[X] I was unable to +ascertain either its origin or its precise significance. On the other +hand, a piece of slang which supplies a "felt want," and will one day, I +believe, pass into the literary language, is "the limit" in the sense of +"le comble." A theatrical poster, widely displayed in New York while I +was there, bore this alluring inscription: + + THE LIMIT AT LAST! + + "THE MORMON SENATOR AND THE MERMAID" + + JAGS OF JOY FOR JADED JOHNNIES. + +A "jag," be it known, means primarily a load, secondarily a "load," or +"package," of alcohol. + +Collectors of slang will find many priceless gems in two recent books +which I commend to their notice: _Chimmie Fadden_, by Mr. E.W. Townsend, +and _Artie_, by Mr. George Ade. _Chimmie Fadden_ gives us the dialect of +the New York Bowery Boy, or "tough," in which the most notable feature +is the substitution either of "d" or "t" for "th." Is this, I wonder, a +spontaneous corruption, or is it due to German and Yiddish influence? +When Chimmie wants to express his admiration for a young lady, he says: +"Well, say, she's a torrowbred, an' dat goes." When the young lady's +father comes to thank him for championing her, this is how Chimmie +describes the visit: "Den he gives me a song an' dance about me being a +brave young man for tumping de mug what insulted his daughter," "Mug," +the Bowery term for "fellow" or "man," in Chicago finds its equivalent +in "guy." Mr. Ade's Artie is a Chicago clerk, and his dialect is of the +most delectable. In comparison with him, Mr. Dooley is a well of English +undefiled. Here again we find traces of the influence of polyglot +immigration. "Kopecks" for "money" evidently comes from the Russian Jew; +"girlerino," as a term of endearment, from the "Dago" of the sunny +south; and "spiel," meaning practically anything you please, from the +Fatherland. When Artie goes to a wedding, he records that "there was a +long spiel by the high guy in the pulpit." After describing the +embarrassments of a country cousin in the city, Artie proceeds, "Down at +the farm, he was the wise guy and I was the soft mark." "Mark" in the +sense of "butt" or "gull" is one of the commonest of slang words. When +Artie has cut out all rivals in the good graces of his Mamie, he puts it +thus, "There ain't nobody else in the one-two-sevens. They ain't even in +the 'also rans.'" When they have a lovers' quarrel he remarks, "Well, I +s'pose the other boy's fillin' all my dates." When he is asked whether +Mamie cycles, he replies, "Does she? She's a scorchalorum!" When he +disapproves of another young gentleman, this is how "he puts him next" +to the fact, as he himself would say-- + + "You're nothin' but a two-spot. You're the smallest thing in the + deck.... Chee-e-ese it! You can't do nothin' like that to me and + then come around afterwards and jolly me. Not in a million! I tell + you you're a two spot, and if you come into the same part o' the + town with me I'll change your face. There's only one way to get + back at you people.... If he don't keep off o' my route, there'll + be people walkin' slow behind him one o' these days.... But this + same two-spot's got a sister that can have my seat in the car any + time she comes in." + +I plead guilty to an unholy relish for Chimmie's and Artie's racy +metaphors from the music-hall, the poker-table, and the "grip-car."[Y] +But it is to be noted that both these profound students of slang, Mr. +Townsend and Mr. Ade, like the creator of the delightful Dooley, express +themselves in pure and excellent English the moment they drop the mask +of their personage. This is very characteristic. Many educated Americans +take great delight, and even pride, in keeping abreast of the daily +developments of slang and patter; but this study does not in the least +impair their sense for, or their command of, good English. The idea that +the English language is degenerating in America is an absolutely +groundless illusion. Take them all round, the newspapers of the leading +American cities, in their editorial columns at any rate, are at least as +well written as the newspapers of London; and in magazines and books the +average level of literary accomplishment is certainly very high. There +are bad and vulgar writers on both sides of the Atlantic; but until the +beams are removed from our own eyes, we may safely trust the Americans +to attend to the motes in theirs. + + +POSTSCRIPT.--When this paper originally appeared, it formed the text for +an editorial article in the _Daily News_, in which Mr. Andrew Lang's +sign manual was not to be mistaken. Mr. Lang brought my somewhat +desultory discussion very neatly to a point. He admitted that we +habitually use "Americanism" as a term of reproach; "but," he asked, +"who is reproached? Not the American (who may do as he pleases) but the +English writer, who, in serious work, introduces, needlessly, an +American phrase into our literature. We say 'needlessly' when our +language already possesses a consecrated equivalent for the word or +idiom." + +In the first place, one has to remark that many English critics are far +from accepting Mr. Lang's principle that "the American may do as he +pleases, of course." Mr. Lang himself scarcely acts up to it in this +very article. And, for my part, I think the principle a false one. I +think the English language has been entrusted to the care of all of us, +English no less than Americans, Americans no less than English; and if I +find an American writer debasing it in an essential point, as opposed to +a point of mere local predilection, I assert my right to remonstrate +with him, just as I admit his right, under similar circumstances, to +remonstrate with me. + +It is not here, however, that I join issue with Mr. Lang: it is on his +theory that an English writer necessarily does wrong who unnecessarily +employs an Americanism. This is a question of great practical moment, +and I am glad that Mr. Lang has stated it in this definite form. My view +is perhaps sufficiently indicated above, but I take the opportunity of +reasserting it with all deliberation. I believe that, as a matter both +of literary and of social policy, we ought to encourage the free +infiltration of graphic and racy Americanisms into our vernacular, and +of vigorous and useful Americanisms (even if not absolutely necessary) +into our literary language. Where is the harm in duplicating terms, if +only the duplicates be in themselves good terms? For instance, take the +word "fall." Mr. Brander Matthews writes: "An American with a sense of +the poetic cannot but prefer to the imported word 'autumn' the native +and more logical word 'fall,' which the British have strangely suffered +to drop into disuse." Well, "autumn" was a sufficiently early +importation. "Our ancestors," wrote Lowell (quoted by Mr. Matthews in +the same article), "unhappily could bring over no English better than +Shakespeare's;" and in Shakespeare's (and Chaucer's) English they +brought over "autumn." The word has inherent beauty as well as splendid +poetical associations. I doubt whether even Shakespeare could have made +out of "fall" so beautiful a line as + + "The teeming autumn, big with rich increase." + +I doubt whether Keats, had he written an _Ode to the Fall_, would have +produced quite such a miraculous poem as that which begins + + "Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness." + +Still, Mr. Matthews is quite right in saying that "fall" has a poetic +value, a suggestion, an atmosphere of its own. I wonder, with him, why +we dropped it, and I see no smallest reason why we should not recover +it. The British literary patriotism which makes a point of never saying +"fall" seems to me just as mistaken as the American literary patriotism +(if such there be) that makes a merit of never saying "autumn." By +insisting on such localisms (for the exclusive preference for either +term is nothing more) we might, in process of time, bring about a +serious fissure in the language. Of course there is no reason why Mr. +Lang should force himself to use a word that is uncongenial to him; but +if "fall" is congenial to me, I think I ought to be allowed to use it +"without fear and without reproach." + +Take, now, a colloquialism. How formal and colourless is the English +phrase "I have enjoyed myself!" beside the American "I have had a good +time!" Each has its uses, no doubt. I am far from suggesting that the +one should drive out the other. It is precisely the advantage of our +linguistic position that it so enormously enlarges the stock of +semi-synonyms at our disposal. To reject a forcible Americanism merely +because we could, at a pinch, get on without it, is--Mr. Lang will +understand the forcible Scotticism--to "sin our mercies." + +Mr. Lang is under a certain illusion, I think, in his belief that in +hardening our hearts against Americanism's we should raise no barrier +between ourselves and the classical authors of America. He says: "Let us +remark that they [Americanisms] do not occur in Hawthorne, Poe, Lowell, +Longfellow, Prescott, and Emerson, except when these writers are +consciously reproducing conversations in dialect." He made the same +remark on a previous occasion; when his opponent (see the _Academy_, +March 30, 1895) opened a volume of Hawthorne and a volume of Emerson, +and in five minutes found in Hawthorne "He had named his two children, +one _for_ Her Majesty and one _for_ Prince Albert," and in Emerson +"Nature tells every secret once. Yes; but in man she tells it _all the +time_." The latter phrase is one which Mr. Lang explicitly puts under +his ban. He is an ingenious and admirable translator: I wish he would +translate Emerson's sentence from American into English, without loss of +brevity, directness, and simple Saxon strength. For my part, I can think +of nothing better than "In man she is always telling it," which strikes +me as a feeble makeshift. "All the time," I suggest, is precisely one of +the phrases we should accept with gratitude--if, indeed, it be not +already naturalised. + +Mr. Lang is peculiarly unfortunate in calling Oliver Wendell Holmes to +witness against his particular and pet aversion "I belong here" or "That +does not belong there." Writing of "needless Americanisms," he says, +"The use of 'belong' as a new auxiliary verb [an odd classification, by +the way] is an example of what we mean. Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes was a +stern opponent of such neologisms." I turn to the Oxford Dictionary, and +the one quotation I find under "belong" in this sense, is:--"'You belong +with the last set, and got accidentally shuffled with the others.'--_O.W. +Holmes, 'Elsie Venner_.'" But this, Mr. Lang may say, is in +dialogue. Yes, but not in dia_lect_. I am very much mistaken if the +locution does not occur elsewhere in Holmes. If Mr. Lang, in a leisure +hour, were to undertake a search for it, he might incidentally find +cause to modify his view as to the sternness of the Autocrat's +anti-Americanism. + +Let me not be thought to underrate the services which, by sound precept +and invaluable example, Mr. Lang has rendered to all of us who use the +English tongue. Conservatism and liberalism are as inevitable, nay, +indispensable, in the world of words as in the world of deeds; and I +trust Mr. Lang will not set down my liberalism as anarchism. He and I, +in this little discussion, are simply playing our allotted parts. I +believe (and Mr. Lang would probably admit with a shrug) that the forces +of the future are on my side. May I recall to him that charming anecdote +of Thackeray and Viscount Monck, when they were rival candidates for the +representation of Oxford in Parliament? They met in the street one day, +and exchanged a few words. On parting, Thackeray shook hands with his +opponent and said, "Good-bye; and may the best man win!" "I hope _not_," +replied Viscount Monck, with a bow. A hundred years hence, if some +English-speaker of the future should chance to disinter this book from +the recesses of the British Museum or the Library of Congress, and +should read these final paragraphs, I doubt not he will say--for the +immortal soul of the language even anarchism cannot affect--"the race is +not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong." + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote V: Mr. Walkley reports that he has heard a Cockney policeman, +speaking of a street row, "There's been a little scrappin'."] + +[Footnote W: "About a dozen ringers followed us into the church and +stood around rubberin'." "Gettin' next to the new kinds o' saddles and +rubber-neckin' to read the names on the tyres."--_Artie_. A writer in +the New York _Sun_ says: "I first heard the term 'rubbernecks' in +Arizona, about four years ago, applied to the throngs of onlookers in +the gambling-houses, who strove to get a better view of the games in +progress by stretching or bending their necks."] + +[Footnote X: "We didn't break into sassiety notes, but that cuts no ice +in our set."--_Artie_.] + +[Footnote Y: Extract from a letter to the _Chicago Evening Post_: "I do +not at all subscribe to the sneering remark of a talented author of my +acquaintance, to the effect that there were not enough cultured people +in Chicago to fill a grip-car. I asked him if he meant a grip-car and a +trailer, and he said, 'No; just one car.' And I told him right there +that I could not agree with him."] + + + +THE END + + + + + + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of America To-day, Observations and +Reflections, by William Archer + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AMERICA TO-DAY *** + +***** This file should be named 7997.txt or 7997.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/7/9/9/7997/ + +Produced by Karen Dalrymple and PG Distributed Proofreaders + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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