America To day, Observations and Reflections - William Archer
AMERICA TO-DAY
_OBSERVATIONS AND REFLECTIONS_
BY
WILLIAM ARCHER
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1899
CONTENTS
_PART I--OBSERVATIONS_
I. The Straits of New York--When is a Ship not a Ship?--Nationality of
Passengers--A Dream Realized
II. Fog in New York Harbor--The Customs--The Note-Taker's
Hyperaesthesia--A Literary Car-Conductor--Mr. Kipling and the American
Public--The City of Elevators
III. New York a much-maligned City--Its Charm--Mr. Steevens'
Antithesis--New York compared with Other Cities--Its
Slums--Advertisements--Architecture in New York and Philadelphia
IV. Absence of Red Tape--"Rapid Transit" in New York--The Problem and
its Solution--The Whirl of Life--New York by Night--The "White Magic" of
the Future
V. Character and Culture--American Universities--Is the American
"Electric" or Phlegmatic?--Alleged Laxity of the Family Tie--Postscript:
The University System
VI. Washington in April--A Metropolis in the Making--The White House,
the Capitol, and the Library of Congress--The Symbolism of Washington
VII. American Hospitality--Instances--Conversation and
Story-Telling--Overprofusion In Hospitality--Expensiveness of Life in
America--The American Barber--Postscript: An Anglo-American Club
VIII. Boston--Its Resemblance to Edinburgh--Concord, Walden Pond, and
Sleepy Hollow--Is the "Yankee" Dying Out?--America for the
Americans--Detroit and Buffalo--The "Middle West"
IX. Chicago--Its Splendour and Squalour--Mammoth Buildings--Wind, Dust,
and Smoke--Culture--Chicago's Self-Criticism--Postscript: Social Service
in America
X. New York in Spring--Central Park--New York not an Ill-Governed
City--The United States Post Office--The Express System--Valedictory
_PART II--REFLECTIONS_
North and South, I
North and South, II
North and South, III
North and South, IV
The Republic and The Empire, I
The Republic and The Empire, II
The Republic and The Empire, III
The Republic and The Empire, IV
American Literature
The American Language, I
The American Language, II
The American Language, III
The American Language, IV
The letters and essays which make up this volume appeared in the
London _Pall Mall Gazette_ and _Pall Mall Magazine_ respectively, and
are reprinted by kind permission of the editors of these periodicals.
The ten letters which were sent to the _Pall Mall Gazette_ appeared also
in the _New York Times_.
PART I
OBSERVATIONS
LETTER I
The Straits of New York--When is a Ship not a Ship?--Nationality of
Passengers--A Dream Realized.
R.M.S. _Lucania_.
The Atlantic Ocean is geographically a misnomer, socially and
politically a dwindling superstition. That is the chief lesson one
learns--and one has barely time to take it in--between Queenstown and
Sandy Hook. Ocean forsooth! this little belt of blue water that we cross
before we know where we are, at a single hop-skip-and-jump! From north
to south, perhaps, it may still count as an ocean; from east to west we
have narrowed it into a strait. Why, even for the seasick (and on this
point I speak with melancholy authority) the Atlantic has not half the
terrors of the Straits of Dover; comfort at sea being a question, not of
the size of the waves, but of the proportion between the size of the
waves and the size of the ship. Our imagination is still beguiled by the
fuss the world made over Columbus, whose exploit was intellectually and
morally rather than physically great. The map-makers, too, throw dust
in our eyes by their absurd figment of two "hemispheres," as though
Nature had sliced her orange in two, and held one half in either hand.
We are slow to realise, in fact, that time is the only true measure of
space, and that London to-day is nearer to New York than it was to
Edinburgh a hundred and fifty years ago. The essential facts of the
case, as they at present stand, would come home much more closely to the
popular mind of both continents if we called this strip of sea the
Straits of New York, and classed our liners, not as the successors of
Columbus's caravels, but simply as what they are: giant ferry-boats
plying with clockwork punctuality between the twin landing-stages of the
English-speaking world.
To-morrow we shall be in New York harbour; it seems but yesterday that
we slipped out of the Cove of Cork. As I look at the chart on the
companion staircase, where our daily runs are marked off, I feel the
abject poverty of our verbs of speed. We have not rushed, or dashed, or
hurtled along--these words do grave injustice to the majesty of our
progress. I can think of nothing but the strides of some Titan, so vast
as to beggar even the myth-making imagination. It is not seven-league,
no, nor hundred-league boots that we wear--we do our 520, 509, 518, 530
knots at a stride. Nor is it to be imagined that we are anywhere near
the limit of speed. Already the _Lucania's_ record is threatened by the
_Oceanic_; and the _Oceanic_, if she fulfils her promises, will only
spur on some still swifter Titan to the emprise.[A] Then, again, it is
hard to believe that the difficulties are insuperable which as yet
prevent us from utilising, as a point of arrival and departure, that
almost mid-Atlantic outpost of the younger world, Newfoundland--or at
the least Nova Scotia. By this means the actual waterway between the two
continents will be shortened by something like a third. What with the
acceleration of the ferry-boats and the narrowing of the ferry, it is
surely no visionary Jules-Vernism to look forward to the time when one
may set foot on American soil, within, say, sixty-five hours of leaving
the Liverpool landing-stage; supposing, that is to say, that steam
navigation be not in the meantime superseded.
As yet, to be sure, the Atlantic possesses a certain strategic
importance as a coal-consuming force. To contract its time-width we have
to expand our coal-bunkers; and the ship which has crossed it in six
days, be she ferryboat or cruiser, is apt to arrive, as it were, a
little out of breath. But even this drawback can scarcely be permanent.
Science must presently achieve the storage of motive-power in some less
bulky form than that of crude coal. Then the Atlantic will be as
extinct, politically, as the Great Wall of China; or, rather, it will
retain for America the abiding significance which the "silver streak"
possesses for England--an effectual bulwark against aggression, but a
highway to influence and world-moulding power.
Think of the time when the _Lucania_ shall have fallen behind in the
race, and shall be plying to Boston or Philadelphia, while larger and
swifter hotel-ships shall put forth almost daily from Liverpool,
Southampton, and New York! Think of the growth of intercourse which even
the next ten years will probably bring, and the increase of mutual
comprehension involved in it! Is it an illusion of mine, or do we not
already observe in England, during the past year, a new interest and
pride in our trans-Atlantic service, which now ranks close to the Navy
in the popular affections? It dates, I think, from those first days of
the late war, when the _Paris_ was vainly supposed to be in danger of
capture by Spanish cruisers, and when all England was wishing her
god-speed.
For my own taste, this sumptuous hotel-ship is rather too much of a
hotel and too little of a ship. I resent the absolute exclusion of the
passengers from even the most distant view of the propelling and guiding
forces. Practically, the _Lucania_ is a ship without a deck; and the
deck is to the ship what the face is to the human being. The so-called
promenade-deck is simply a long roofed balcony on either side of the
hotel building. It is roofed by the "shade deck," which is rigidly
reserved "for navigators only." There the true life of the ship goes on,
and we are vouchsafed no glimpse of it. One is reminded of the
Chinaman's description of a three-masted screw steamer with two funnels:
"Thlee piecee bamboo, two piecee puff-puff, walk-along inside, no can
see." Here the "walk-along," the motive power, is "inside" with a
vengeance. I have not at this moment the remotest conception where the
engine-room is, or where lies the descent to that Avernus. Not even the
communicator-gong can be heard in the hotel. I have not set eyes on an
engineer or a stoker, scarcely on a sailor. The captain I do not even
know by sight. Occasionally an officer flits past, on his way up to or
down from the "shade deck"; I regard him with awe, and guess reverently
at his rank. The ship's company, as I know it, consists of the purser,
the doctor, and the army of stewards and stewardesses. The roof of the
promenade-deck weighs upon my brain. It shuts off the better half of the
sky, the zenith. In order even to see the masts and funnels of the ship
one has to go far forward or far aft and crane one's neck upward. Not a
single human being have I ever descried on the "shade-deck" or on the
towering bridge. The genii of the hundred-league boots remain not only
inaccessible but invisible. The effect is inhuman, uncanny. All the
luxury of the saloons and staterooms does not compensate for the lack of
a frank, straightforward deck. The _Lucania_, in my eyes, has no
individuality as a ship. It--I instinctively say "it," not "she"--is
merely a rather low-roofed hotel, with sea-sickness superadded to all
the comforts of home. But a first-class hotel it is: the living good
and plentiful, if not superfine, the service excellent, and the charges,
all things considered, remarkably moderate.
What chiefly strikes one about the passengers is their homogeneity of
race. Apart from a small (but influential) Semitic contingent, the whole
body is thoroughly Anglo-Saxon in type. About half are British, I take
it, and half American; but in most cases the nationality is to be
distinguished only by accent, not by any characteristic of appearance or
of demeanour. The strongly-marked Semites always excepted, there is not
a man or woman among the saloon passengers who strikes me as a
foreigner, a person of alien race. I do not feel my sympathies chill
toward my very agreeable table-companion because he drinks ice-water at
breakfast; and he views my tea with an eye of equal tolerance. It is not
till one looks at the second-class passengers that one sees signs of the
heterogeneity of the American people; and then one remembers with
misgivings the emigrants who crowded on board at Queenstown, with their
household goods done up in bundles and gaping, ill-roped boxes. The
thought of them recalls an anecdote which was new to me the other day,
and may be fresh to some of my readers. In any case it will bear
repetition. An Irishman coming to America for the first time, found New
York gay with bunting as he sailed up the harbour. He asked an American
fellow-passenger the reason of the display, and was told it was in
honour of Evacuation Day. "And what's that?" he inquired. "Why, the day
the British troops evacuated New York." Presently an Englishman came up
to the Irishman and asked him if he knew what the flags were for. "For
Evacuation Day, to be sure!" was the reply. "What is Evacuation Day?"
asked the Sassenach. "The day we drove you blackguards out of the
country, bedad!" was the immediate reply. If not literally true, the
story is at least profoundly typical.
There is a light on our starboard bow: my first glimpse, for two and
twenty years, of America. It has been literally the dream of my life to
revisit the United States. Not once, but fifty times, have I dreamed
that the ocean (which loomed absurdly large even in my waking thoughts)
was comfortably crossed, and I was landing in New York. I can clearly
recall at this moment some of the fantastic shapes the city put on in
my dreams--utterly different, of course, from my actual recollections of
it. Well, that dream is now realised; the gates of the Western world are
opening to me. What experience awaits me I know not; but this I do know,
that the emotion with which I confront it is not one of idle curiosity,
or even of calmly sympathetic interest. It is not primarily to my
intelligence, but to my imagination, that the word "America" appeals. To
many people that word conveys none but prosaic associations; to me it is
electric with romance. Only one other word in existence can give me a
comparable thrill; the word one sees graven on a roadside pillar as one
walks down the southern slope of an Alpine pass: ITALIA. But that word
carries the imagination backward only, whereas AMERICA stands for the
meeting-place of the past and the future. What the land of Cooper and
Mayne Reid was to my boyish fancy, the land of Washington and Lincoln,
Hawthorne and Emerson, is to my adult thoughts. Does this mean that I
approach America in the temper of a romantic schoolboy? Perhaps; but,
bias for bias, I would rather own to that of the romantic schoolboy than
to that of the cynical Old-Worldling.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote A: The _Oceanic_, it appears, is designed to break the record
in punctuality, not in speed. Nevertheless there are several indications
that our engineers are not resting on their oars, but will presently put
on another spurt. The very shortest Atlantic passage, I understand, has
been made by a German ship. Surely England and America cannot long be
content to leave the record for speed, of all things, in the hands of
Germany.]
LETTER II
Fog in New York Harbour--The Customs--The Note-Taker's Hyperaesthesia--a
Literary Car-Conductor--Mr. Kipling and the American Public--The City of
Elevators.
NEW YORK.
By way of making us feel quite at home, New-York receives us with a dank
Scotch mist. On the shores of Staten Island the leafless trees stand out
grey and gaunt against the whity-grey snow, a legacy, no doubt, from the
great blizzard. Though I keep a sharp look-out, I can descry no Liberty
Enlightening the World. Liberty (_absit omen!_) is wrapped away in grimy
cotton-wool. There, however, are the "sky-scraper" buildings, looming
out through the mist, like the Jotuns in Niflheim of Scandinavian
mythology. They are grandiose, certainly, and not, to my thinking, ugly.
That word has no application in this context. "Pretty" and "ugly"--why
should we for ever carry about these aesthetic labels in our pockets, and
insist on dabbing them down on everything that comes in our way? If we
cannot get, with Nietzsche, _Jenseits von Gut und Boese_, we might at
least allow our souls an occasional breathing-space in a region "Back of
the Beautiful and the Ugly," as they say in President's English. While I
am trying to formulate my feelings with regard to this deputation of
giants which the giant Republic sends down to the waterside to welcome
us, behold, we have crept up abreast of the Cunard wharf, and there
stands a little crowd of human welcomers, waving handkerchiefs and
American flags. An energetic tug-boat butts her head gallantly into the
flank of the huge liner, in order to help her round. She glides up to
her berth, the gangway is run out, and at last I set foot upon
American--lumber.
What are my emotions? I have only one; single, simple, easily-expressed:
dread of the United States Custom House. Its terrors and its tyrannies
have been depicted in such lurid colours on the other side that I am
almost surprised to observe no manifest ogres in uniform caps, but only,
it would seem, ordinary human beings. And, on closer acquaintanceship,
they prove to be civil and even helpful human beings, with none of the
lazy superciliousness which so often characterises the European
toll-taker. At first the scene is chaotic enough, but, by aid of an
arrangement in alphabetical groups, cosmos soon emerges. The system by
which you declare your dutiable goods and are assigned an examiner, and
if necessary an appraiser, is admirably simple and free from red-tape. I
shall not describe it, for it would be more tedious in description than
in act. Enough that the whole thing is conducted, so far as I could see,
promptly, efficiently, and with perfect good temper. One brief
discussion I heard, between an official and an American citizen, who was
heavily assessed on some article or articles which he declared to have
been manufactured in America and taken out of the country by himself
only a few months before. The official insisted that there was no proof
of this; but just as the discussion threatened to become an altercation
(a "scrap" they would call it here) some one found a way out. The goods
were forwarded in bond to the traveller's place of residence (Hartford,
I think) where he declared that he could produce proof of their American
origin. For myself, I had to pay two dollars and a half on some
magic-lantern slides. I could have imported the lantern, had I owned
one, free of charge, as a philosophical instrument used in my
profession; but the courts have held, it appears, that though the
lantern comes under that rubric, the slides do not. I cannot pretend to
grasp the distinction, or to admire the system which necessitates it.
But whatever the economic merits or demerits of the tariff, I take
pleasure in bearing testimony to the civility with which I found it
enforced.
My companion and I express our baggage to our hotel and jump on the
platform of a horse-car on West-street, skirting the wharves. The
roadway is ill paved, certainly, and the clammy atmosphere has congealed
on its surface into an oily black mud; while in the middle of the side
streets one can see relics of the blizzard in the shape of little grubby
glaciers slowly oozing away. The prospect is not enlivening; nor do the
low brick houses, given up to nondescript longshore traffic, and freely
punctuated with gilt-lettered saloons, add to its impressiveness.
Squalid it is without doubt, this particular aspect of New York; but
what is the squalor of West-street to that of Limehouse or Poplar? Are
our own dock thoroughfares always paved to perfection? And if we had a
blizzard like that of three weeks ago, how long would its vestiges
linger in the side-streets of Millwall? Even as I mark the grimness of
the scene, I am conscious of a sort of hyperaesthesia against which one
ought to be on guard. The note-taking traveller is very apt to forget
that the mere act of note-taking upsets his normal perceptivity. He
becomes feverishly observant, morbidly critical. He compares
incommensurables, and flies to ideal standpoints. He is so eager to
descry differences, that he overlooks similarities--nay, identities.
Thus only can I account for many statements about New York, occurring in
the pages of recent and reputable travellers, both French and English,
which I find to be exaggerated almost to the point of monstrosity. What
should we say of an American who should criticise the Commercial Road
from the point of view of Fifth Avenue? After a week's experience of New
York, I cannot but fancy that certain travellers I could mention have
been guilty of similar errors of proportion.
To return to our street-car platform. The conductor gathers from our
conversation that we have just landed from the English steamer, and he
at once overflows upon the one great topic of all classes in New York.
"I s'pose you've heard," he says, "that Kipling has been very ill?" Yes,
we had heard of his illness before we left England. "He's pulling
through now, though," says the conductor with heartfelt satisfaction.
That, too, we had ascertained on board. "He ought to be the next
poet-laureate," our friend continues eagerly; "_he_ don't follow no
beaten tracks. He cuts a road for himself, every time, right through;
and a mighty good road, too." He then proceeded to make some remarks,
which in the rattle of the street I did not quite catch, about
"carpet-bag knights." I gathered that he held a low opinion of the
present wearer of the bays, and confounded him (not inexcusably) with
one or other of his titled compeers. My companion and I were too much
taken aback to pursue the theme and ascertain our friend's opinions on
Mr. Ruskin, Mr. Meredith, Mrs. Humphry Ward, and Miss Marie Corelli.
Think of it! We have travelled three thousand miles to find a
tram-conductor whose eyes glisten as he tells us that Kipling is better,
and who discusses with a great deal of sense and acuteness the question
of the English poet-laureateship! Could anything be more marvellous or
more significant? Said I not well when I declared the Atlantic Ocean of
less account than the Straits of Dover?
This was indeed a welcome to the New World. Fate could not have devised
a more ingenious and at the same time tactful way of making us feel at
home; though at home, indeed, a Mile End 'bus conductor is scarcely the
authority one would turn to for enlightened views upon the Laureateship.
The mere fact of our friend's having heard of Mr. Kipling's existence
struck us as surprising enough, until we learned that the poet of Tommy
Atkins is at the present moment quite the most famous person in the
United States. When his illness was at its height, hourly bulletins were
posted in factories and workshops, and people meeting in the streets
asked each other, "How is he?" without deeming it necessary to supply an
antecedent to the pronoun. It was grammatically as well as spiritually a
case of "Kipling understood."
At a low music-hall into which I strayed one evening, one of the nigger
corner-men sang a song of which the nature may be sufficiently divined
from the refrain, "And the tom-cat was the cause of it all." This lyric
being loudly encored, the performer came forward, and, to my
astonishment, began to recite a long series of doggerel verses upon Mr.
Kipling's illness, setting forth how
"His strong will made him famous, and his strong will pulled him
through."
They were imbecile, they were maudlin, they were in the worst possible
taste. So far as the reciter was concerned, they were absolutely
insincere clap-trap. But the crowded audience received them with
rapture; and the very fact that an astute caterer should serve up this
particular form of clap-trap showed how the sympathy with Mr. Kipling
had permeated even the most un-literary stratum of the public. To an
Englishman, nothing can be more touching than to find on every hand this
enthusiastic affection for the poet of the Seven Seas--a writer, too,
who has not dealt over-tenderly with American susceptibilities, and has,
by sheer force of genius, lived down a good deal of unpopularity.
For the moment, neither President McKinley nor Mr. Fitzsimmons can vie
with him in notoriety. His sole rival as a popular hero is Admiral
Dewey, whose name is in every mouth and on every boarding. He is the one
living celebrity whom the Italian image-vendors admit to their pantheon,
where he rubs shoulders with Shakespeare, Dante, Beethoven, and the
Venus of Milo. It is related that, at a Camp of Exercise last year,
President McKinley chanced to stray beyond bounds, and on returning was
confronted by a sentry, who dropped his rifle and bade him halt. "I have
forgotten the pass-word," said Mr. McKinley, "but if you will look at
me you will see that I am the President." "If you were George Dewey
himself," was the reply, "you shouldn't get by here without the
pass-word." This anecdote has a flavour of ancient history, but it is
aptly brought up to date.[B]
We bid adieu to our poetical conductor, take a cross-town car, and are
presently pushing at the revolving doors--a draught-excluding
plate-glass turn-stile--of a vast red-brick hotel, luxurious and
labyrinthine. A short colloquy with the clerk at the bureau, and we find
ourselves in a gorgeously upholstered elevator, whizzing aloft to the
thirteenth floor. Not the top floor--far from it. If you could slice off
the stories above the thirteenth, as you slice off the top of an egg,
and plant them down in Europe, they would of themselves make a biggish
hotel according to our standards. This first elevator voyage is the
prelude to how many others! For the past week I seem to have spent the
best part of my time in elevators. I must have travelled miles on miles
at right angles to the earth's surface. If all my ascensions could be
put together, they would out-top Olympus and make Ossa a wart.
This is the first sensation of life in New York--you feel that the
Americans have practically added a new dimension to space. They move
almost as much on the perpendicular as on the horizontal plane. When
they find themselves a little crowded, they simply tilt a street on end
and call it a sky scraper. This hotel, for example (the
Waldorf-Astoria), is nothing but a couple of populous streets soaring up
into the air instead of crawling along the ground. When I was here in
1877, I remember looking with wonder at the _Tribune_ building, hard by
the Post Office, which was then considered a marvel of architectural
daring. Now it is dwarfed into absolute insignificance by a dozen
Cyclopean structures on every hand. It looks as diminutive as the
Adelphi Terrace in contrast with the Hotel Cecil. I am credibly informed
that in some of the huge down-town buildings they run "express"
elevators, which do not stop before the fifteenth, eighteenth, twentieth
floor, as the case may be. Some such arrangement seems very necessary,
for the elevator _Bummelzugs_, which stop at every floor, take quite an
appreciable slice out of the average New York day. I wonder that
American ingenuity has not provided a system of pneumatic
passenger-tubes for lightning communication with these aerial suburbs,
these "mansions in the sky."