Chapter 9

Boston has a remarkable art gallery and museum, notable for its ancient Chinese paintings, its collection of Japanese prints--one of the best in the world, I believe--and a dazzling wall of water-colours by Mr. Sargent. It was here that I saw my first Winslow Homers--two or three rapid sketches of fishermen in full excitement--and was conquered by his verve and actuality. In the Metropolitan Museum in New York I found him again in oils and my admiration increased. Surely no one ever can have painted the sea with more vividness, power and truth! We have no example of his work in any public gallery in London; nor have we anything by W. M. Chase, Arthur B. Davies, Swain Gifford, J. W. Alexander, George Inness, or De Forest Brush. It is more than time for another American Exhibition. As it is, the only modern American artists of whom there is any general knowledge in England are Mr. Sargent, Mr. Epstein and Mr. Pennell, and the late E. A. Abbey, G. H. Boughton, and Whistler. Other Americans painting in our midst are Mr. Mark Fisher, R.A., Mr. J. J. Shannon, R.A., Mr. J. McLure Hamilton, and Mr. G. Wetherbee.

The Boston Gallery is the proud possessor of the rough and unfinished but "speaking" likeness of George Washington by his predestined limner Gilbert Stuart, and also a companion presentment of Washington's wife. Looking upon this lady's countenance and watching a party of school girls who were making the tour of the rooms, not uncomforted on their arduous adventure by chocolate and other confections, it occurred to me that if America increases her present love of eating sweets, due, I am told, not a little to Prohibition, George Washington will gradually disappear into the background and Martha Washington, who has already given her name to a very popular brand of candy, will be venerated instead, as the Sweet Mother of her Country.

An American correspondent sends me the following poem in order to explain to me the deviousness of Boston's principal thoroughfare. The poet is Mr. Sam Walter Foss:--

One day through the primeval wood A calf walked home, as good calves should;

But made a trail all bent askew, A crooked trail, as all calves do.

Since then two hundred years have fled, And, I infer, the calf is dead.

But still he left behind his trail, And thereby hangs my moral tale.

The trail was taken up next day By a lone dog that passed that way;

And then a wise bell-wether sheep Pursued the trail o'er vale and steep,

And drew the flock behind him too, As good bell-wethers always do.

And from that day o'er hill and glade Through those old woods a path was made,

And many men wound in and out, And dodged and turned and bent about,

And uttered words of righteous wrath Because 'twas such a crooked path;

But still they followed--do not laugh-- The first migrations of that calf,

And through this winding wood-way stalked Because he wabbled when he walked.

The forest path became a lane That bent and turned and turned again;

This crooked lane became a road, Where many a poor horse with his load

Toiled on beneath the burning sun, And travelled some three miles in one.

And thus a century and a half They trod the footsteps of that calf.

The years passed on in swiftness fleet, The road became a village street,

And then before men were aware, A city's crowded thoroughfare,

And soon the central street was this Of a renowned metropolis.

And men two centuries and a half Trod in the footsteps of that calf.

Each day a hundred thousand rout Followed the zigzag calf about;

And o'er his crooked journey went The traffic of a continent.

A hundred thousand men were led By one calf near three centuries dead.

They followed still his crooked way And lost one hundred years a day;

For thus such reverence is lent To well-established precedent.

A moral lesson this might teach, Were I ordained and called to preach.

For men are prone to go it blind Along the calf-paths of the mind,

And work away from sun to sun To do what other men have done.

They follow in the beaten track, And out and in and forth and back

And still their devious course pursue, To keep the paths that others do.

But how the wise old wood-gods laugh Who saw the first primeval calf!

Ah, many things this tale might teach--But I am not ordained to preach.

PHILADELPHIA

I was fortunate in the city over which William Penn, in giant effigy, keeps watch and ward, in having as guide, philosopher and friend Mr. A. Edward Newton, the Johnsonian, and the author of one of the best examples of "amateur" literature that I know--"The Amenities of Book-Collecting." Mr. Newton took me everywhere, even to the little seventeenth-century Swedish church, which architecturally may be described as the antipodes of Philadelphia's newer glory, the Curtis Building, where editors are lodged like kings and can be attained to (if at all) only through marble halls. We went to St. Peter's, where, suddenly awaking during the sermon, one would think oneself to be in a London city church, and to the Historical Museum, where I found among the Quaker records many of my own ancestors and was bewildered amid such a profusion of relics of Penn, Washington and Franklin. In the old library were more traces of Franklin, including his famous electrical appliance, again testifying to the white flame with which American hero-worship can burn; and we found the sagacious Benjamin once more at the Franklin Inn Club, where the simplicity of the eighteenth century mingles with the humour and culture of the twentieth. We then drove through several miles of Fairmount Park, stopping for a few minutes in the hope of finding the late J. G. Johnson's Vermeer in the gallery there; but for the moment it was in hiding, the walls being devoted to his Italian pictures.

Finally we drew up at the gates of that strange and imposing Corinthian temple which might have been dislodged from its original site and hurled to Philadelphia by the first Quaker, Poseidon--the Girard College. This solemn fane we were permitted to enter only on convincing the porter that we were not ministers of religion--an easy enough task for Mr. Newton, who wears with grace the natural abandon of a Voltairean, but a difficult one for me. Why Stephen Girard, the worthy "merchant and mariner" who endowed this institution, was so suspicious of the cloth, no matter what its cut, I do not know; no doubt he had his reasons; but his prejudices are faithfully respected by his janitor, whose eye is a very gimlet of suspicion. However, we got in and saw the philanthropist's tomb and his household effects behind those massive columns.

That evening I spent in Mr. Newton's library among Blake and Lamb and Johnson autographs and MSS., breaking the Tenth Commandment with a recklessness that would have satisfied and delighted Stephen Girard's gatekeeper; and the next day we were off to Valley Forge to see with what imaginative thoughtfulness the Government has been transforming Washington's camp into a national park and restoring the old landmarks. It was a fine spring day and the woods were flecked with the white and pink blossoms of the dogwood--a tree which in England is only an inconspicuous hedgerow bush but here has both charm and importance and some of the unexpectedness of a tropical growth. I wish we could acclimatise it.

The memorial chapel now in course of completion on one of the Valley Forge eminences seemed to me a very admirable example not only of modern Gothic but of votive piety. And such a wealth of American symbolism cannot exist elsewhere. But in the severe little cottage where Washington made his headquarters, down by the stream, with all his frugal campaigning furniture and accessories in their old places, I felt more emotion than in the odour of sanctity. The simple reality of it conquered the stained glass.

GENERAL REFLECTIONS

Looking back on it all I realise that America never struck me as a new country, although its inhabitants often seemed to be a new people. The cities are more mature than the citizens. New York, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington--all have an air of permanence and age. The buildings, even the most fantastic, suggest indigenousness, or at least stability; nor would the presence of more ancient structures increase this effect. To the eye of the ordinary Englishman accustomed to work in what we call the City, in Fleet Street, in the Strand, in Piccadilly, or in Oxford Street, New York would not appear to be a younger place than London, and Boston might easily strike him as older. Nor is London more than a little older, except in spots, such as the Tower and the Temple and the Abbey, and that little Tudor row in Holborn, all separated by vast tracts of modernity. Indeed, I would almost go farther and say that London sets up an illusion of being newer even than New York by reason of its more disturbing street traffic both in the roads and on the footways, and the prevalence of the gaily coloured omnibuses which thunder along so many thoroughfares in notable contrast with the sedate and sober vehicles that serve Fifth Avenue and are hardly seen elsewhere.

Meanwhile an illusion of antiquity is set up by New York's habit of commingling business houses and private residences, which surely belongs to an older order of society. In London we have done away with such a blend. Our nearest approach to Fifth Avenue is, I suppose, Regent Street; but there are no mansions among the shops of Regent Street. Our shops are there and our mansions are elsewhere, far away, in what we call residential quarters--such as Park Lane, Queen's Gate, Mayfair, the Bayswater Road, and Grosvenor Square. To turn out of Fifth Avenue into the quiet streets where people live is to receive a distinct impression of sedateness such as New York is never supposed to convey. One has the same feeling in the other great American cities.

But when it comes to their inhabitants there are to the English eye fewer signs of maturity. I have never been able to get rid of the idea that every one I have met in America, no matter how grave a senior, instead of being really and self-consciously in the thick of life, is only getting ready to begin. Perhaps this is due in part to the pleasure--the excitement almost--which American business men--and all Americans are business men--take in their work. They not merely do it, but they enjoy doing it and they watch themselves doing it. They seem to have a knack of withdrawing aside and observing themselves as from the stalls, not without applause. In other words, they dramatise continually. Now, one does not do this when one is old--it is a childish game--and it is another proof that they are younger than we, who do not enjoy our work, and indeed, most of us, are ashamed of it and want the world to believe that we live like the lilies on private means.

Similarly, many Americans seem, when they talk, to be two persons: one the talker, and the other the listener charmed by the quality of his discourse. There is nothing detrimental in such duplicity. Indeed, I think I have a very real envy of it. But one of the defects of the listening habit is perhaps to make them too rhetorical, too verbose. It is odd that the nation that has given us so much epigrammatic slang and the telegraph and the telephone and the typewriter should have so little of what might be called intellectual short-hand. But so it is. Too many Americans are remorseless when they are making themselves clear.

Yet the passion for printed idiomatic sententiousness and arresting trade-notices is visible all the time. You see it in the newspapers and in the shops. I found a children's millinery shop in New York with this laconic indication of its scope, in permanent letters, on the plate-glass window: "Lids for Kids." A New York undertaker, I am told, has affixed to all his hearses the too legible legend: "You may linger, but I'll get you yet."

When it comes to descriptive new words, coined rapidly to meet occasions, we English are nowhere compared with the Americans. Could there be anything better than the term "Nearbeer" to reveal at a blow the character of a substitute for ale? I take off my hat, too, to "crape-hanger," which leaves "kill-joy" far in the rear. But "optience" for a cinema audience, which sees but does not hear, though ingenious, is less admirable.

Although I found the walls of business offices in New York and elsewhere decorated with pithy counsel to callers, and discouragements to irrelevance, such as "Come to the point but don't camp on it," "To hell with yesterday," and so forth, I am very doubtful if with all these suggestions of practical address and Napoleonic efficiency the American business man is as quick and decisive as ours can be. There is more autobiography talked in American offices than in English; more getting ready to begin.

I have, however, no envy of the American man's inability to loaf and invite his soul, as his great democratic poet was able to do. I think that this unfamiliarity with armchair life is a misfortune. That article of furniture, we must suppose, is for older civilisations, where men have either, after earning the right to recline, taken their ease gracefully, or have inherited their fortune and are partial to idleness. It consorts ill with those who are still either continually and restlessly in pursuit of the dollar or are engaged in the occupation of watching dollars automatically arrive.

One of the things, I take it, for Americans to learn is how to transform money into a friend. So many men who ought to be quietly rejoicing in their riches seem still to be anxious and acquisitive; so many men who have become suddenly wealthy seem to be allowing their gains to ruin their happiness. For the nation's good nearly every one, I fancy, has too much money.

My experience is that England has almost everything to learn from America in the matter of hotels. I consider American second and third-class hotels to be better in many ways than our best. Every American restaurant, of each grade, is better than the English equivalent; the appointments are better, the food is served with more distinction and often is better too. When it comes to coffee, there is no comparison whatever: American coffee is the best in the world. Only quite recently has the importance of the complete suite entered the intelligence of the promoters of English hotels, and in myriads of these establishments, called first class, there is still but one bathroom to twenty rooms. Heating coils and hot and cold water in the rooms are even more rare: so rare as to be mentioned in the advertisements. Telephones in the rooms are rarer. In too many hotels in England there is still no light at the head of the bed. But we have certain advantages. For example, in English restaurants there is always something on the table to eat at once--_hors d'oeuvres_ or bread and butter. In America there is too often nothing ready but iced water--an ungenial overture to any feast--and you must wait until your order has been taken. Other travellers, even Americans, have agreed with me that it would be more comfortable if the convention which decrees that the waiter shall bring everything together could be overruled. Something "to go on with" is a great ameliorative, especially when one is hungry and tired.

In thus commending American hotels over English it is, however, only right to admit that the American hotels are very much more expensive.

While on the subject of eating, I would say that for all their notorious freedoms Americans have a better sense of order than we. Their policemen may carry their batons drawn, and even swing them with a certain insolent defiance or even provocation, but New York goes on its way with more precision and less disturbance than London, and every one is smarter, more alert. The suggestion of a living wage for all is constant. It is indeed on this sense of orderliness that the success of certain of the American time-saving appliances is built. The Automat restaurants, for example, where the customer gets all his requirements himself, would never do in London. The idea is perfect; but it requires the co-operation of the customer, and that is what we should fail to provide. The spotless cleanliness and mechanical exactitude of these places in New York would cease in London, and gradually they would decline and then disappear. At heart, we in England dislike well-managed places. Nor can I see New York's public distribution of hot water adopted in London. Such little geysers as expel steam at intervals through the roadway of Fifth Avenue will never, I fear, be found in Regent Street or Piccadilly. Our communism is very patchy.

There are some unexpected differences between America and England. It is odd, for instance, to find a nation from whom we get most of our tobacco and who have the reputation of even chewing cigars, with such strict rules against smoking. In the Music Halls, which are, as a rule, better than ours, smoking is permitted only in certain parts. Public decorum again is, I should say, more noticeable in an American than an English city, and yet both in San Francisco and New York I dined in restaurants--not late--between 7 and 8--and not furtive hole-in-corner places,--where girls belonging to the establishment, wearing almost nothing at all, performed the latest dances, with extravagant and daring variations of them, among the tables. In London this kind of thing is unknown. In Paris it occurs only in the night cafés. It struck me as astonishing--and probably not at all to the good--that it should be an ordinary dinner accompaniment.

I was asked while I was in America to set down some of the chief things that I missed. I might easily have begun with walking-sticks, for until I reached New York I seemed to be the only man in America who carried one, although a San Francisco friend confessed to sometimes "wearing a cane" on Sundays. I missed a Visitors' Book either at the British Embassy in Washington or at the White House. After passing through India, where one's first duty is to enter one's name in these volumes, it seemed odd that the same machinery of civility should be lacking. I missed any system of cleaning boots during the night, in the hotels; but I soon became accustomed to this, and rather enjoyed visiting the "shine parlours," in one of which was this crisp notice: "If you like our work, tell your friends; if you don't like it, tell us." I missed gum-chewing.

But it was on returning to England that I began really to take notice. Then I found myself missing America's cleanliness, America's despatch, its hotel efficiency, its lashings of cream, its ice on every hand. All this at Liverpool! I missed later the petrol fountains all about the roads, a few of which I had seen in India, at which the motorist can replenish; but these surely will not be long in coming. I don't want England to be Americanised; I don't want America to cease to be a foreign country; but there are lessons each of us can learn.

If I were an American, although I travelled abroad now and then (and I hold that it is the duty of a man to see other lands but live in his own) I should concentrate on America. It is the country of the future. I am glad I have seen it and now know something--however slight--about it at first hand. I made many friends there and amassed innumerable delightful memories. But what is the use of eight weeks? I am ashamed not to have gone there sooner, and humiliated by the brevity of my stay. I have had the opportunity only to lift a thousand curtains, get a glimpse of the entertainment on the other side and drop them again. I should like to go there every other year and have time: time to make the acquaintance of a naturalist and learn from him the names of birds and trees and flowers; time to loiter in the byways; time to penetrate into deeper strata where intimacies strike root and the real discoveries are made; time to discern beneath the surface, so hard and assured, something fey, something wistful, the sense of tears.

INDEX

Adirondacks, etc. Agra and its Fort Aitken, E. H., his three books Akbar America, its democracy its humour its slang its trains its women its newspapers its MSS. its hotels its maturity American painters in England Americans, at home and abroad Americans, their clothes their physiognomy their disturbing wealth Aquariums Architecture in America "Association" books

Baker, Mr. Herbert Bam Bahadur, that great hunter Baseball and cricket Beecher, Henry Ward Benares Berkeley University Bernier on the Moguls Betel-nut chewing Birds in India Blackbuck, the agile Bombay--Towers of Silence Boston Butler, H.E., Sir Harcourt

Calcutta--the piano-carriers its snake charmers and the Maidan and its English buildings its old cemetery Charnock, Job Chicago, its hospitable policeman its pictures Cinema, the Cobb, Mr. Irvin Comparisons between America and England Coney Island Cow-worship in India Cricket and baseball Curzon, Lord, his preservation of ancient buildings

Dances in India and Japan Delhi--the camel omnibuses its architecture and the Mutiny Fort Dickens, Charles, presentation copies

"Eha," his three books Elephanta, caves of

Fakirs in India Fatehpur-Sikri Faneuil Hall, Boston Fifth Avenue Foss, Mr. Samuel W., his Boston poem Franklin, Benjamin Fujiyama Funerals in India and England

Ganges, the Geisha dances Gilbert, Mr. Cass Girard, Stephen Goschen, Lord, wounds the tiger

Hakone, Lake Hawking Herford, Mr. Oliver Hindus, the, and animals Hokusai Holmes, Oliver Wendell Hong-Kong, funeral at Honolulu Hooghli, the Hotels in America Humayun's Tomb Huntington, Mr. H. E.

Jahan, Shah, his buildings Jains, the, their preservation of life Japan--its lack of idlers and animal life its women its American reading Japanese, their small stature materialism public manners their gold teeth Journalism in America

Katsuragava rapids Keats' _Lamia_, 1820 Kesteven, Sir Charles, his library Khan, Sir Umar Hayat Kohinoor, the Kutb Minar, the Kyoto, its temples

Lake Placid Club Lamb, Mr. A. M., his distress at Honolulu Charles, first editions manuscripts Landor, Walter Savage Lavater abroad Lincoln Memorial Liston, Lt.-Col. Glen Lucknow and the Mutiny its delectability Lutyens, Sir Edwin Landseer, R.A., goes hawking and Imperial Delhi and the priests and the divers hunts the tiger Marquis, Mr. Don Moguls, the Mohammedan customs priests Monkeys Morgan, Mr. J. Pierpont Mount Vernon Mutiny, the Myanoshita

Nautch, the Nawanagar, the Jam of New or Imperial Delhi New York, its skyscrapers its buildings its aquarium its shops its dances its sky signs its pictures its MSS. its maturity Newspapers in America Newton, Mr. A. Edward

Otome Pass

Painters, American, in England Parsees, the Peacock Throne, the Philadelphia Pictures in America Prince of Wales in New York Prohibition Pronunciation in America

Ranjitsinhji, Prince Rickshaws Roosevelt, Theodore, his Memorial Road "Rose Aylmer" Ruth, "Babe"

San Francisco Saranac _Saturday Evening Post_, the Scott, Mr. A. P., his house Sculpture in America Shaw, Mr. Bernard Simplified spelling Skyscrapers Skysigns Slang in America Snake-poison antidotes St. Gaudens, Augustus Stevenson, Robert Louis Swamp-deer hunting Swan, Mr. Thomas, his despair at Honolulu