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America To-day, Observations and Reflections

William Archer

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Title: America To-day, Observations and Reflections

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AMERICA TO-DAY

_OBSERVATIONS AND REFLECTIONS_

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

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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

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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

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.

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.]

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

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.]

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.

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

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.]

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.]

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

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