Chapter 16

I have a good deal of sympathy with a Canadian friend who exclaimed: "Oh, Boston! I don't include _Boston_ when I speak of the United States." Max O'Rell has similarly noted that if you wish to hear severe criticism of America you have only to go to Boston. "_Là on loue Boston et Angleterre, et l'on débine l'Amérique à dire d'experts._" It would be a mistake, however, to infer that Boston is not truly American, or that it devotes itself to any voluntary imitation of England. In a very deep sense Boston is one of the most intensely American cities in the Union; it represents, perhaps, the finest development of many of the most characteristic ideals of Americanism. Its resemblances to England seem to be due to the simple fact that like causes produce like results. The original English stock by which Boston was founded has remained less mixed here than, perhaps, in any other city of America; and the differences between the descendants of the Puritans who emigrated and the descendants of those of them who remained at home are not complicated by a material infusion of alien blood in either case. The independence of the original settlers, their hatred of coercion and tyranny, have naturally grown with two centuries and a half of democracy; even the municipal administration has not been wholly captured by the Irish voter. The Bostonian has, to a very appreciable extent, solved the problem of combining the virtues of democracy with the manners of aristocracy; and I know not where you will find a better type of the American than the Boston gentleman: patriotic with enlightened patriotism; finely mannered even to the class immediately below his own; energetic, but not a slave to the pursuit of wealth; liberal in his religion, but with something of the Puritan conscience still lying _perdu_ beneath his universalism; distributing his leisure between art, literature, and outdoor occupations; a little cool in his initial manner to strangers, but warmly hospitable when his confidence in your merit is satisfied. We, in England, may well feel proud that the blood which flows in the veins of the ideal Bostonian is as distinctly and as truly English as that of our own Gladstones and Morleys, our Brownings and our Tennysons.

Prof. Hugo Münsterberg, of Berlin, writes thus of Boston and Chicago: "_Ja, Boston ist die Hauptstadt jenes jungen, liebenswerthen, idealistischen Amerikas und wird es bleiben; Chicago dagegen ist die Hochburg der alten protzigen amerikanischen Dollarsucht, und die Weltausstellung schliesslich ist überhaupt nicht Amerika, sondern chicagosirtes Europa._" Whatever may be thought of the first part of this judgment, the second member of it seems to me rather unfair to Chicago and emphatically so as regards the Chicago exhibition.

Since 1893 Chicago ought never to be mentioned as Porkopolis without a simultaneous reference to the fact that it was also the creator of the White City, with its Court of Honour, perhaps the most flawless and fairy-like creation, on a large scale, of man's invention. We expected that America would produce the largest, most costly, and most gorgeous of all international exhibitions; but who expected that she would produce anything so inexpressibly poetic, chaste, and restrained, such an absolutely refined and soul-satisfying picture, as the Court of Honour, with its lagoon and gondolas, its white marble steps and balustrades, its varied yet harmonious buildings, its colonnaded vista of the great lake, its impressive fountain, its fairy-like outlining after dark by the gems of electricity, its spacious and well-modulated proportions which made the largest crowd in it but an unobtrusive detail, its air of spontaneity and inevitableness which suggested nature itself, rather than art? No other scene of man's creation seemed to me so perfect as this Court of Honour. Venice, Naples, Rome, Florence, Edinburgh, Athens, Constantinople, each in its way is lovely indeed; but in each view of each of these there is some jarring feature, something that we have to _ignore_ in order to thoroughly lose ourselves in the beauty of the scene. The Court of Honour was practically blameless; the æsthetic sense of the beholder was as fully and unreservedly satisfied as in looking at a masterpiece of painting or sculpture, and at the same time was soothed and elevated by a sense of amplitude and grandeur such as no single work of art could produce. The glamour of old association that illumines Athens or Venice was in a way compensated by our deep impression of the pathetic transitoriness of the dream of beauty before us, and by the revelation it afforded of the soul of a great nation. For it will to all time remain impossibly ridiculous to speak of a country or a city as wholly given over to the worship of Mammon which almost involuntarily gave birth to this ethereal emanation of pure and uneconomic beauty.

Undoubtedly there are few things more dismal than the sunless cañons which in Chicago are called streets; and the luckless being who is concerned there with retail trade is condemned to pass the greater part of his life in unrelieved ugliness. Things, however, are rather better in the "office" quarter; and he who is ready to admit that exigency of site gives some excuse for "elevator architecture" will find a good deal to interest him in its practice at Chicago. Indeed, no one can fail to wonder at the marvellous skill of architectural engineering which can run up a building of twenty stories, the walls of which are merely a veneer or curtain. Few will cavil at the handsome and comfortable equipment of the best interiors; but, given the necessity of their existence, the wide-minded lover of art will find something to reward his attention even in their exteriors. In many instances their architects have succeeded admirably in steering a middle course between the ornate style of a palace on the one hand and the packing case with windows on the other; and the observer might unreservedly admire the general effect were it not for the crick in his neck that reminds him most forcibly that he cannot get far enough away for a proper estimate of the proportions. Any city might feel proud to count amid its commercial architecture such features as the entrance of the Phenix Building, the office of the American Express Company, and the monumental Field Building, by Richardson, with what Mr. Schuyler calls its grim utilitarianism of expression; and the same praise might, perhaps, be extended to the Auditorium, the Owings Building, the Rookery, and some others. In non-commercial architecture Chicago may point with some pride to its City Hall, its University, its libraries, the admirable Chicago Club (the old Art Institute), and the new Art Institute on the verge of Lake Michigan. Of its churches the less said the better; their architecture, regarded as a studied insult to religion, would go far to justify the highly uncomplimentary epithet Mr. Stead applied to Chicago.

In some respects Chicago deserves the name City of Contrasts, just as the United States is the Land of Contrasts; and in no way is this more marked than in the difference between its business and its residential quarters. In the one--height, narrowness, noise, monotony, dirt, sordid squalor, pretentiousness; in the other--light, space, moderation, homelikeness. The houses in the Lake Shore Drive, the Michigan Boulevard, or the Drexel Boulevard are as varied in style as the brown-stone mansions of New York are monotonous; they face on parks or are surrounded with gardens of their own; they are seldom ostentatiously large; they suggest comfort, but not offensive affluence; they make credible the possession of some individuality of taste on the part of their owners. The number of massive round openings, the strong rusticated masonry, the open loggie, the absence of mouldings, and the red-tiled roofs suggest to the cognoscenti that Mr. H.H. Richardson's spirit was the one which brooded most efficaciously over the domestic architecture of Chicago. The two houses I saw that were designed by Mr. Richardson himself are undoubtedly not so satisfactory as some of his public buildings, but they had at least the merit of interest and originality; some of the numerous imitations were by no means successful.

The parks of Chicago are both large and beautiful. They contain not a few very creditable pieces of sculpture, among which Mr. St. Gaudens' statue of Lincoln is conspicuous as a wonderful triumph of artistic genius over unpromising material. The show of flowers in the parks is not easily paralleled in public domains elsewhere. Of these, rather than of its stockyards and its lightning rapidity in pig-sticking, will the visitor who wishes to think well of Chicago carry off a mental picture.

The man who has stood on Inspiration Point above Oakland and has watched the lights of San Francisco gleaming across its noble bay, or who has gazed down on the Golden Gate from the heights of the Presidio, must have an exceptionally rich gallery of memory if he does not feel that he has added to its treasures one of the most entrancing city views he has ever witnessed. The situation of San Francisco is indeed that of an empress among cities. Piled tier above tier on the hilly knob at the north end of a long peninsula, it looks down on the one side over the roomy waters of San Francisco Bay (fifty miles long and ten miles wide), backed by the ridge of the Coast Range, while in the other direction it is reaching out across the peninsula, here six miles wide, to the placid expanse of the Pacific Ocean. On the north the peninsula ends abruptly in precipitous cliffs some hundreds of feet high, while a similar peninsula, stretching southwards, faces it in a similar massive promontory, separated by a scant mile of water. This is the famous Golden Gate, the superb gateway leading from the ocean to the shelters of the bay. To the south the eye loses itself among the fertile valleys of corn and fruit stretching away toward the Mexican frontier.

When we have once sated ourselves with the general effect, there still remains a number of details, picturesque, interesting, or quaint. There is the Golden Gate Park, the cypresses and eucalypti at one end of which testify to the balminess of the climate, while the sand-dunes at its other end show the original condition of the whole surface of the peninsula, and add to our admiration of nature a sense of respectful awe for the transforming energy of man. Beyond Golden Gate Park we reach Sutro Heights, another desert that has been made to blossom like the rose. Here we look out over the Pacific to the musically named Farralone Islands, thirty miles to the west. Then we descend for luncheon to the Cliff House below, and watch the uncouth gambols of hundreds of fat sea-lions (Spanish _lobos marinos_), which, strictly protected from the rifle or harpoon, swim, and plunge, and bark unconcernedly within a stone's throw of the observer. The largest of these animals are fifteen feet long and weigh about a ton; and it is said that certain individuals, recognisable by some peculiarity, are known to have frequented the rocks for many years. On our way back to the lower part of the city we use one of the cable-cars crawling up and down the steep inclines like flies on a window-pane; and we find, if the long polished seat of the car be otherwise unoccupied, that we have positive difficulty in preventing ourselves slipping down from one end of the car to the other. By this time the strong afternoon wind[29] has set in from the sea, and we notice with surprise that the seasoned Friscans, still clad in the muslins and linens that seemed suitable enough at high noon, seek by preference the open seats of the locomotive car, while we, puny visitors, turn up our coat-collars and flee to the shelter of the "trailer" or covered car. As we come over "Nob Hill" we take in the size of the houses of the Californian millionaires, note that they are of wood (on account of the earthquakes?), and bemoan the misdirected efforts of their architects, who, instead of availing themselves of the unique chance of producing monuments of characteristically developed timber architecture, have known no better than to slavishly imitate the incongruous features of stone houses in the style of the Renaissance. Indeed, we shall feel that San Francisco is badly off for fine buildings of all and every kind. If daylight still allows we may visit the Mission Dolores, one of the interesting old Spanish foundations that form the origin of so many places in California, and if we are historically inclined we may inspect the old Spanish grants in the Surveyor-General's office. Those of us whose tastes are modern and literary may find our account in identifying some of the places in R.L. Stevenson's "Ebb Tide," and it will go hard with us if we do not also meet a few of his characters amid the cosmopolitan crowd in the streets or on the wharves. At night we may visit China without the trouble of a voyage, and perambulate a city of 25,000 Celestials under the safe guidance of an Irish-accented detective. So often have the features of Chinatown been described--its incense-scented joss-houses, its interminable stage-plays, its opium-joints, its drug-stores with their extraordinary remedies, its curiosity shops, and its restaurants--that no repetition need be attempted here. We leave it with a sense of the curious incongruity which allows this colony of Orientals to live in the most wide-awake of western countries with an apparently almost total neglect of such sanitary observances as are held indispensable in all other modern municipalities. It is certain that no more horrible sight could be seen in the extreme East than the so-called "Hermit of Chinatown," an insane devotee who has lived for years crouched in a miserable little outhouse, subsisting on the offerings of the charitable, and degraded almost beyond the pale of humanity by his unbroken silence, his blank immobility, and his neglect of all the decencies of life. And this is an American resident, if not an American citizen! If the reader is as lucky as the writer, he may wind up the day with a smart shock of earthquake; and if he is equally sleepy and unintelligent (which Heaven forefend!), he may miss its keen relish by drowsily wondering what on earth they mean by moving that _very_ heavy grand piano overhead at that time of night.

"Two-thirds of them come here to die, and they can't do it." This was said by the famous Mr. Barnum about Colorado Springs; and the active life and cheerful manners of the condemned invalids who flourish in this charming little city go far to confirm the truth concealed beneath the jest. The land has insensibly sloped upwards since the traveller left the Mississippi behind him, and he now finds himself in a flowery prairie 6,000 feet above the sea level, while close by one of the finest sections of the Rocky Mountains rears its snowy peaks to a height of 6,000 to 8,000 feet more. The climate resembles that of Davos, and like it is preëminently suited for all predisposed to or already affected with consumption; but Colorado enjoys more sunshine than its Swiss rival, and has no disagreeable period of melting snow. The town is sheltered by the foothills, except to the southeast, where it lies open to the great plains; and, being situated where they meet the mountains, it enjoys the openness and free supply of fresh air of the seashore, without its dampness. The name is somewhat of a misnomer, as the nearest springs are those of Manitou, about five miles to the north.

Colorado Springs may be summed up as an oasis of Eastern civilisation and finish in an environment of Western rawness and enterprise. It has been described as "a charming big village, like the well-laid-out suburb of some large Eastern city." Its wide, tree-shaded streets are kept in excellent order. There is a refreshing absence of those "loose ends" of a new civilisation which even the largest of the Western cities are too apt to show. No manufactures are carried on, and no "saloons" are permitted. The inhabitants consist very largely of educated and refined people from the Eastern States and England, whose health does not allow them to live in their damper native climes. The tone of the place is a refreshing blend of the civilisation of the East and the unconventionalism of the West. Perhaps there is no pleasanter example of extreme social democracy. The young man of the East, unprovided with a private income, finds no scope here for his specially trained capacities, and is glad to turn an honest penny and occupy his time with anything he can get. Thus there are gentlemen in the conventional sense of the word among many of the so-called humbler callings, and one may rub shoulders at the charming little clubs with an Oxford-bred livery-stable keeper or a Harvard graduate who has turned his energies toward the selling of milk. Few visitors to Colorado Springs will fail to carry away a grateful and pleasant impression of the English doctor who has found vigorous life and a prosperous career in the place of exile to which his health condemned him in early manhood, and who has repaid the place for its gift of vitality by the most intelligent and effective championship of its advantages. These latter include an excellent hotel and a flourishing college for delicate girls and boys.

Denver, a near neighbour of Colorado Springs (if we speak _more Americano_), is an excellent example, both in theory and practice, of the confident expectation of growth with which new American cities are founded. The necessary public buildings are not huddled together as a nucleus from which the municipal infant may grow outwards; but a large and generous view is taken of the possibilities of expansion. Events do not always justify this sanguine spirit of forethought. The capitol at Washington still turns its back on the city of which it was to be the centre as well as the crown. In a great number of cases, however, hope and fact eventually meet together. The capitol of Bismarck, chief town of North Dakota, was founded in 1883, nearly a mile from the city, on a rising site in the midst of the prairie. It has already been reached by the advancing tide of houses, and will doubtless, in no long time, occupy a conveniently central situation. Denver is an equally conspicuous instance of the same tendency. The changes that took place in that city between the date of my visit to it and the reading of the proof-sheets of "Baedeker's United States" a year or so later demanded an almost entire rewriting of the description. Doubtless it has altered at least as much since then, and very likely the one or two slightly critical remarks of the handbook of 1893 are already grossly libellous. Denver quadrupled its population between 1880 and 1890. The value of its manufactures and of the precious ores smelted here reaches a fabulous amount of millions of dollars. The usual proportion of "million" and "two million dollar buildings" have been erected. Many of the principal streets are (most wonderful of all!) excellently paved and kept reasonably clean. But the crowning glory of Denver for every intelligent traveller is its magnificent view of the Rocky Mountains, which are seen to the West in an unbroken line of at least one hundred and fifty miles. Though forty miles distant, they look, owing to the purity of the atmosphere, as if they were within a walk of two or three hours. Denver is fond of calling herself the "Queen City of the Plains," and few will grudge the epithet queenly if it is applied to the possession of this matchless outlook on the grandest manifestations of nature. If the Denver citizen brags more of his State Capitol, his Metropole Hotel (no accent, please!), and his smelting works than of his snow-piled mountains and abysmal cañons, he only follows a natural human instinct in estimating most highly that which has cost him most trouble.