Produced by Judith Boss
AMERICAN NOTES
by Rudyard Kipling
With Introduction
Introduction
In an issue of the London World in April, 1890, there appeared the
following paragraph: “Two small rooms connected by a tiny hall afford
sufficient space to contain Mr. Rudyard Kipling, the literary hero of
the present hour, 'the man who came from nowhere,' as he says himself,
and who a year ago was consciously nothing in the literary world.”
Six months previous to this Mr. Kipling, then but twenty-four years old,
had arrived in England from India to find that fame had preceded him. He
had already gained fame in India, where scores of cultured and critical
people, after reading “Departmental Ditties,” “Plain Tales from the
Hills,” and various other stories and verses, had stamped him for a
genius.
Fortunately for everybody who reads, London interested and stimulated
Mr. Kipling, and he settled down to writing. “The Record of Badalia
Herodsfoot,” and his first novel, “The Light that Failed,” appeared
in 1890 and 1891; then a collection of verse, “Life's Handicap, being
stories of Mine Own People,” was published simultaneously in London and
New York City; then followed more verse, and so on through an unending
series.
In 1891 Mr. Kipling met the young author Wolcott Balestier, at that
time connected with a London publishing house. A strong attachment grew
between the two, and several months after their first meeting they
came to Mr. Balestier's Vermont home, where they collaborated on “The
Naulahka: A Story of West and East,” for which The Century paid the
largest price ever given by an American magazine for a story. The
following year Mr. Kipling married Mr. Balestier's sister in London and
brought her to America.
The Balestiers were of an aristocratic New York family; the grandfather
of Mrs. Kipling was J. M. Balestier, a prominent lawyer in New York City
and Chicago, who died in 1888, leaving a fortune of about a million. Her
maternal grandfather was E. Peshine Smith of Rochester, N. Y., a noted
author and jurist, who was selected in 1871 by Secretary Hamilton
Fish to go to Japan as the Mikado's adviser in international law. The
ancestral home of the Balestiers was near Brattleboro', Vt., and here
Mr. Kipling brought his bride. The young Englishman was so impressed by
the Vermont scenery that he rented for a time the cottage on the “Bliss
Farm,” in which Steele Mackaye the playwright wrote the well known drama
“Hazel Kirke.”
The next spring Mr. Kipling purchased from his brother-in-law, Beatty
Balestier, a tract of land about three miles north of Brattleboro', Vt.,
and on this erected a house at a cost of nearly $50,000, which he named
“The Naulahka.” This was his home during his sojourn in America. Here
he wrote when in the mood, and for recreation tramped abroad over the
hills. His social duties at this period were not arduous, for to his
home he refused admittance to all but tried friends. He made a study of
the Yankee country dialect and character for “The Walking Delegate,” and
while “Captains Courageous,” the story of New England fisher life, was
before him he spent some time among the Gloucester fishermen with an
acquaintance who had access to the household gods of these people.
He returned to England in August, 1896, and did not visit America again
till 1899, when he came with his wife and three children for a limited
time.
It is hardly fair to Mr. Kipling to call “American Notes” first
impressions, for one reading them will readily see that the impressions
are superficial, little thought being put upon the writing. They seem
super-sarcastic, and would lead one to believe that Mr. Kipling is
antagonistic to America in every respect. This, however, is not true.
These “Notes” aroused much protest and severe criticism when they
appeared in 1891, and are considered so far beneath Mr. Kipling's real
work that they have been nearly suppressed and are rarely found in
a list of his writings. Their very caustic style is of interest to a
student and lover of Kipling, and for this reason the publishers believe
them worthy of a good binding.
G. P. T.
Contents
AT THE GOLDEN GATE
AMERICAN POLITICS
AMERICAN SALMON
THE YELLOWSTONE
CHICAGO
THE AMERICAN ARMY
AMERICA'S DEFENCELESS COASTS
I. AT THE GOLDEN GATE
“Serene, indifferent to fate,
Thou sittest at the Western Gate;
Thou seest the white seas fold their tents,
Oh, warder of two continents;
Thou drawest all things, small and great,
To thee, beside the Western Gate.”
THIS is what Bret Harte has written of the great city of San Francisco,
and for the past fortnight I have been wondering what made him do it.
There is neither serenity nor indifference to be found in these parts;
and evil would it be for the continents whose wardship were intrusted to
so reckless a guardian.
Behold me pitched neck-and-crop from twenty days of the high seas into
the whirl of California, deprived of any guidance, and left to draw my
own conclusions. Protect me from the wrath of an outraged community
if these letters be ever read by American eyes! San Francisco is a mad
city--inhabited for the most part by perfectly insane people, whose
women are of a remarkable beauty.
When the “City of Pekin” steamed through the Golden Gate, I saw with
great joy that the block-house which guarded the mouth of the “finest
harbor in the world, sir,” could be silenced by two gunboats from Hong
Kong with safety, comfort, and despatch. Also, there was not a single
American vessel of war in the harbor.
This may sound bloodthirsty; but remember, I had come with a grievance
upon me--the grievance of the pirated English books.
Then a reporter leaped aboard, and ere I could gasp held me in his
toils. He pumped me exhaustively while I was getting ashore, demanding
of all things in the world news about Indian journalism. It is an awful
thing to enter a new land with a new lie on your lips. I spoke the truth
to the evil-minded Custom House man who turned my most sacred raiment on
a floor composed of stable refuse and pine splinters; but the reporter
overwhelmed me not so much by his poignant audacity as his beautiful
ignorance. I am sorry now that I did not tell him more lies as I passed
into a city of three hundred thousand white men. Think of it! Three
hundred thousand white men and women gathered in one spot, walking
upon real pavements in front of plate-glass-windowed shops, and talking
something that at first hearing was not very different from English. It
was only when I had tangled myself up in a hopeless maze of small wooden
houses, dust, street refuse, and children who played with empty kerosene
tins, that I discovered the difference of speech.
“You want to go to the Palace Hotel?” said an affable youth on a dray.
“What in hell are you doing here, then? This is about the lowest ward in
the city. Go six blocks north to corner of Geary and Markey, then walk
around till you strike corner of Gutter and Sixteenth, and that brings
you there.”
I do not vouch for the literal accuracy of these directions, quoting but
from a disordered memory.
“Amen,” I said. “But who am I that I should strike the corners of such
as you name? Peradventure they be gentlemen of repute, and might hit
back. Bring it down to dots, my son.”
I thought he would have smitten me, but he didn't. He explained that no
one ever used the word “street,” and that every one was supposed to know
how the streets ran, for sometimes the names were upon the lamps and
sometimes they weren't. Fortified with these directions, I proceeded
till I found a mighty street, full of sumptuous buildings four and five
stories high, but paved with rude cobblestones, after the fashion of the
year 1.
Here a tram-car, without any visible means of support, slid stealthily
behind me and nearly struck me in the back. This was the famous cable
car of San Francisco, which runs by gripping an endless wire rope sunk
in the ground, and of which I will tell you more anon. A hundred yards
further there was a slight commotion in the street, a gathering together
of three or four, something that glittered as it moved very swiftly. A
ponderous Irish gentleman, with priest's cords in his hat and a small
nickel-plated badge on his fat bosom, emerged from the knot supporting
a Chinaman who had been stabbed in the eye and was bleeding like a
pig. The by-standers went their ways, and the Chinaman, assisted by the
policeman, his own. Of course this was none of my business, but I rather
wanted to know what had happened to the gentleman who had dealt
the stab. It said a great deal for the excellence of the municipal
arrangement of the town that a surging crowd did not at once block the
street to see what was going forward. I was the sixth man and the last
who assisted at the performance, and my curiosity was six times the
greatest. Indeed, I felt ashamed of showing it.
There were no more incidents till I reached the Palace Hotel, a
seven-storied warren of humanity with a thousand rooms in it. All the
travel books will tell you about hotel arrangements in this country.
They should be seen to be appreciated. Understand clearly--and this
letter is written after a thousand miles of experiences--that money
will not buy you service in the West. When the hotel clerk--the man
who awards your room to you and who is supposed to give you
information--when that resplendent individual stoops to attend to your
wants he does so whistling or humming or picking his teeth, or pauses
to converse with some one he knows. These performances, I gather, are to
impress upon you that he is a free man and your equal. From his general
appearance and the size of his diamonds he ought to be your superior.
There is no necessity for this swaggering self-consciousness of freedom.
Business is business, and the man who is paid to attend to a man might
reasonably devote his whole attention to the job. Out of office hours he
can take his coach and four and pervade society if he pleases.
In a vast marble-paved hall, under the glare of an electric light,
sat forty or fifty men, and for their use and amusement were provided
spittoons of infinite capacity and generous gape. Most of the men
wore frock-coats and top-hats--the things that we in India put on at a
wedding-breakfast, if we possess them--but they all spat. They spat on
principle. The spittoons were on the staircases, in each bedroom--yea,
and in chambers even more sacred than these. They chased one into
retirement, but they blossomed in chiefest splendor round the bar, and
they were all used, every reeking one of them.
Just before I began to feel deathly sick another reporter grappled me.
What he wanted to know was the precise area of India in square miles. I
referred him to Whittaker. He had never heard of Whittaker. He wanted it
from my own mouth, and I would not tell him. Then he swerved off, just
like the other man, to details of journalism in our own country. I
ventured to suggest that the interior economy of a paper most concerned
the people who worked it.
“That's the very thing that interests us,” he said. “Have you got
reporters anything like our reporters on Indian newspapers?”
“We have not,” I said, and suppressed the “thank God” rising to my lips.
“Why haven't you?” said he.
“Because they would die,” I said.
It was exactly like talking to a child--a very rude little child. He
would begin almost every sentence with, “Now tell me something about
India,” and would turn aimlessly from one question to the other without
the least continuity. I was not angry, but keenly interested. The man
was a revelation to me. To his questions I returned answers mendacious
and evasive. After all, it really did not matter what I said. He could
not understand. I can only hope and pray that none of the readers of the
“Pioneer” will ever see that portentous interview. The man made me out
to be an idiot several sizes more drivelling than my destiny intended,
and the rankness of his ignorance managed to distort the few poor facts
with which I supplied him into large and elaborate lies. Then, thought
I, “the matter of American journalism shall be looked into later on. At
present I will enjoy myself.”
No man rose to tell me what were the lions of the place. No one
volunteered any sort of conveyance. I was absolutely alone in this big
city of white folk. By instinct I sought refreshment, and came upon a
barroom full of bad Salon pictures in which men with hats on the backs
of their heads were wolfing food from a counter. It was the institution
of the “free lunch” I had struck. You paid for a drink and got as much
as you wanted to eat. For something less than a rupee a day a man can
feed himself sumptuously in San Francisco, even though he be a bankrupt.
Remember this if ever you are stranded in these parts.
Later I began a vast but unsystematic exploration of the streets. I
asked for no names. It was enough that the pavements were full of white
men and women, the streets clanging with traffic, and that the restful
roar of a great city rang in my ears. The cable cars glided to all
points of the compass at once. I took them one by one till I could go no
further. San Francisco has been pitched down on the sand bunkers of the
Bikaneer desert. About one fourth of it is ground reclaimed from the
sea--any old-timers will tell you all about that. The remainder is just
ragged, unthrifty sand hills, to-day pegged down by houses.
From an English point of view there has not been the least attempt
at grading those hills, and indeed you might as well try to grade the
hillocks of Sind. The cable cars have for all practical purposes made
San Francisco a dead level. They take no count of rise or fall, but
slide equably on their appointed courses from one end to the other of a
six-mile street. They turn corners almost at right angles, cross other
lines, and for aught I know may run up the sides of houses. There is
no visible agency of their flight, but once in awhile you shall pass
a five-storied building humming with machinery that winds up an
everlasting wire cable, and the initiated will tell you that here is the
mechanism. I gave up asking questions. If it pleases Providence to make
a car run up and down a slit in the ground for many miles, and if for
twopence halfpenny I can ride in that car, why shall I seek the reasons
of the miracle? Rather let me look out of the windows till the shops
give place to thousands and thousands of little houses made of wood (to
imitate stone), each house just big enough for a man and his family. Let
me watch the people in the cars and try to find out in what manner they
differ from us, their ancestors.
It grieves me now that I cursed them (in the matter of book piracy),
because I perceived that my curse is working and that their speech is
becoming a horror already. They delude themselves into the belief that
they talk English--the English--and I have already been pitied for
speaking with “an English accent.” The man who pitied me spoke, so far
as I was concerned, the language of thieves. And they all do. Where we
put the accent forward they throw it back, and vice versa where we
give the long “a” they use the short, and words so simple as to be past
mistaking they pronounce somewhere up in the dome of their heads. How do
these things happen?
Oliver Wendell Holmes says that the Yankee school-marm, the cider and
the salt codfish of the Eastern States, are responsible for what he
calls a nasal accent. I know better. They stole books from across the
water without paying for 'em, and the snort of delight was fixed in
their nostrils forever by a just Providence. That is why they talk a
foreign tongue to-day.
“Cats is dogs, and rabbits is dogs, and so's parrots. But this 'ere
tortoise is an insect, so there ain't no charge,” as the old porter
said.
A Hindoo is a Hindoo and a brother to the man who knows his vernacular.
And a Frenchman is French because he speaks his own language. But the
American has no language. He is dialect, slang, provincialism, accent,
and so forth. Now that I have heard their voices, all the beauty of Bret
Harte is being ruined for me, because I find myself catching through the
roll of his rhythmical prose the cadence of his peculiar fatherland. Get
an American lady to read to you “How Santa Claus Came to Simpson's
Bar,” and see how much is, under her tongue, left of the beauty of the
original.
But I am sorry for Bret Harte. It happened this way. A reporter asked
me what I thought of the city, and I made answer suavely that it was
hallowed ground to me, because of Bret Harte. That was true.
“Well,” said the reporter, “Bret Harte claims California, but California
don't claim Bret Harte. He's been so long in England that he's quite
English. Have you seen our cracker factories or the new offices of the
'Examiner'?”
He could not understand that to the outside world the city was worth a
great deal less than the man. I never intended to curse the people with
a provincialism so vast as this.
But let us return to our sheep--which means the sea-lions of the Cliff
House. They are the great show of San Francisco. You take a train which
pulls up the middle of the street (it killed two people the day
before yesterday, being unbraked and driven absolutely regardless of
consequences), and you pull up somewhere at the back of the city on the
Pacific beach. Originally the cliffs and their approaches must have been
pretty, but they have been so carefully defiled with advertisements that
they are now one big blistered abomination. A hundred yards from
the shore stood a big rock covered with the carcasses of the sleek
sea-beasts, who roared and rolled and walloped in the spouting surges.
No bold man had painted the creatures sky-blue or advertised newspapers
on their backs, wherefore they did not match the landscape, which was
chiefly hoarding. Some day, perhaps, whatever sort of government may
obtain in this country will make a restoration of the place and keep it
clean and neat. At present the sovereign people, of whom I have heard so
much already, are vending cherries and painting the virtues of “Little
Bile Beans” all over it.
Night fell over the Pacific, and the white sea-fog whipped through the
streets, dimming the splendors of the electric lights. It is the use of
this city, her men and women folk, to parade between the hours of eight
and ten a certain street called Cairn Street, where the finest shops are
situated. Here the click of high heels on the pavement is loudest, here
the lights are brightest, and here the thunder of the traffic is most
overwhelming. I watched Young California, and saw that it was, at
least, expensively dressed, cheerful in manner, and self-asserting
in conversation. Also the women were very fair. Perhaps eighteen days
aboard ship had something to do with my unreserved admiration. The
maidens were of generous build, large, well groomed, and attired in
raiment that even to my inexperienced eyes must have cost much. Cairn
Street at nine o'clock levels all distinctions of rank as impartially
as the grave. Again and again I loitered at the heels of a couple of
resplendent beings, only to overhear, when I expected the level voice
of culture, the staccato “Sez he,” “Sez I” that is the mark of the white
servant-girl all the world over.
This was depressing because, in spite of all that goes to the contrary,
fine feathers ought to make fine birds. There was wealth--unlimited
wealth--in the streets, but not an accent that would not have been dear
at fifty cents. Wherefore, revolving in my mind that these folk were
barbarians, I was presently enlightened and made aware that they also
were the heirs of all the ages, and civilized after all. There appeared
before me an affable stranger of prepossessing appearance, with a blue
and an innocent eye. Addressing me by name, he claimed to have met me in
New York, at the Windsor, and to this claim I gave a qualified assent.
I did not remember the fact, but since he was so certain of it, why,
then--I waited developments.
“And what did you think of Indiana when you came through?” was the next
question.
It revealed the mystery of previous acquaintance and one or two other
things. With reprehensible carelessness my friend of the light-blue eye
had looked up the name of his victim in the hotel register, and read
“Indiana” for India.
The provincialism with which I had cursed his people extended to
himself. He could not imagine an Englishman coming through the States
from west to east instead of by the regularly ordained route. My fear
was that in his delight in finding me so responsive he would make
remarks about New York and the Windsor which I could not understand.
And, indeed, he adventured in this direction once or twice, asking me
what I thought of such and such streets, which from his tone I gathered
to be anything but respectable. It is trying to talk unknown New York in
almost unknown San Francisco. But my friend was merciful. He protested
that I was one after his own heart, and pressed upon me rare and curious
drinks at more than one bar. These drinks I accepted with gratitude, as
also the cigars with which his pockets were stored. He would show me the
life of the city. Having no desire to watch a weary old play again, I
evaded the offer and received in lieu of the devil's instruction much
coarse flattery. Curiously constituted is the soul of man. Knowing how
and where this man lied, waiting idly for the finale, I was distinctly
conscious, as he bubbled compliments in my ear, of soft thrills of
gratified pride stealing from hat-rim to boot-heels. I was wise, quoth
he--anybody could see that with half an eye; sagacious, versed in the
ways of the world, an acquaintance to be desired; one who had tasted the
cup of life with discretion.
All this pleased me, and in a measure numbed the suspicion that was
thoroughly aroused. Eventually the blue-eyed one discovered, nay,
insisted, that I had a taste for cards (this was clumsily worked in,
but it was my fault, for in that I met him half-way and allowed him
no chance of good acting). Hereupon I laid my head upon one side and
simulated unholy wisdom, quoting odds and ends of poker talk, all
ludicrously misapplied. My friend kept his countenance admirably, and
well he might, for five minutes later we arrived, always by the purest
of chance, at a place where we could play cards and also frivol with
Louisiana State Lottery tickets. Would I play?
“Nay,” said I, “for to me cards have neither meaning nor continuity; but
let us assume that I am going to play. How would you and your friends
get to work? Would you play a straight game, or make me drunk, or--well,
the fact is, I'm a newspaper man, and I'd be much obliged if you'd let
me know something about bunco steering.”
My blue-eyed friend erected himself into an obelisk of profanity. He
cursed me by his gods--the right and left bower; he even cursed the very
good cigars he had given me. But, the storm over, he quieted down and
explained. I apologized for causing him to waste an evening, and we
spent a very pleasant time together.
Inaccuracy, provincialism, and a too hasty rushing to conclusions,
were the rocks that he had split on, but he got his revenge when he
said:--“How would I play with you? From all the poppycock Anglice bosh
you talked about poker, I'd ha' played a straight game, and skinned
you. I wouldn't have taken the trouble to make you drunk. You never knew
anything of the game, but how I was mistaken in going to work on you,
makes me sick.”
He glared at me as though I had done him an injury. To-day I know how it
is that year after year, week after week, the bunco steerer, who is the
confidence trick and the card-sharper man of other climes, secures
his prey. He clavers them over with flattery as the snake clavers the
rabbit. The incident depressed me because it showed I had left the
innocent East far behind and was come to a country where a man must look
out for himself. The very hotels bristled with notices about keeping my
door locked and depositing my valuables in a safe. The white man in a
lump is bad. Weeping softly for O-Toyo (little I knew then that my
heart was to be torn afresh from my bosom) I fell asleep in the clanging
hotel.
Next morning I had entered upon the deferred inheritance. There are
no princes in America--at least with crowns on their heads--but a
generous-minded member of some royal family received my letter of
introduction. Ere the day closed I was a member of the two clubs, and
booked for many engagements to dinner and party. Now, this prince, upon
whose financial operations be continual increase, had no reason, nor had
the others, his friends, to put himself out for the sake of one Briton
more or less, but he rested not till he had accomplished all in my
behalf that a mother could think of for her debutante daughter.
Do you know the Bohemian Club of San Francisco? They say its fame
extends over the world. It was created, somewhat on the lines of the
Savage, by men who wrote or drew things, and has blossomed into most
unrepublican luxury. The ruler of the place is an owl--an owl standing
upon a skull and cross-bones, showing forth grimly the wisdom of the man
of letters and the end of his hopes for immortality. The owl stands
on the staircase, a statue four feet high; is carved in the wood-work,
flutters on the frescoed ceiling, is stamped on the note-paper, and
hangs on the walls. He is an ancient and honorable bird. Under his wing
'twas my privilege to meet with white men whose lives were not chained
down to routine of toil, who wrote magazine articles instead of reading
them hurriedly in the pauses of office-work, who painted pictures
instead of contenting themselves with cheap etchings picked up at
another man's sale of effects. Mine were all the rights of social
intercourse, craft by craft, that India, stony-hearted step-mother of
collectors, has swindled us out of. Treading soft carpets and breathing
the incense of superior cigars, I wandered from room to room studying
the paintings in which the members of the club had caricatured
themselves, their associates, and their aims. There was a slick French
audacity about the workmanship of these men of toil unbending that went
straight to the heart of the beholder. And yet it was not altogether
French. A dry grimness of treatment, almost Dutch, marked the
difference. The men painted as they spoke--with certainty. The
club indulges in revelries which it calls “jinks”--high and low, at
intervals--and each of these gatherings is faithfully portrayed in
oils by hands that know their business. In this club were no amateurs
spoiling canvas, because they fancied they could handle oils without
knowledge of shadows or anatomy--no gentleman of leisure ruining the
temper of publishers and an already ruined market with attempts to write
“because everybody writes something these days.”
My hosts were working, or had worked for their daily bread with pen or
paint, and their talk for the most part was of the shop--shoppy--that is
to say, delightful. They extended a large hand of welcome, and were as
brethren, and I did homage to the owl and listened to their talk. An
Indian club about Christmas-time will yield, if properly worked, an
abundant harvest of queer tales; but at a gathering of Americans
from the uttermost ends of their own continent, the tales are larger,
thicker, more spinous, and even more azure than any Indian variety.
Tales of the war I heard told by an ex-officer of the South over his
evening drink to a colonel of the Northern army, my introducer, who had
served as a trooper in the Northern Horse, throwing in emendations from
time to time. “Tales of the Law,” which in this country is an amazingly
elastic affair, followed from the lips of a judge. Forgive me for
recording one tale that struck me as new. It may interest the up-country
Bar in India.
Once upon a time there was Samuelson, a young lawyer, who feared not
God, neither regarded the Bench. (Name, age, and town of the man were
given at great length.) To him no case had ever come as a client, partly
because he lived in a district where lynch law prevailed, and partly
because the most desperate prisoner shrunk from intrusting himself to
the mercies of a phenomenal stammerer. But in time there happened an
aggravated murder--so bad, indeed, that by common consent the citizens
decided, as a prelude to lynching, to give the real law a chance. They
could, in fact, gambol round that murder. They met--the court in its
shirt-sleeves--and against the raw square of the Court House window a
temptingly suggestive branch of a tree fretted the sky. No one appeared
for the prisoner, and, partly in jest, the court advised young Samuelson
to take up the case.
“The prisoner is undefended, Sam,” said the court. “The square thing to
do would be for you to take him aside and do the best you can for him.”
Court, jury, and witness then adjourned to the veranda, while Samuelson
led his client aside to the Court House cells. An hour passed ere the
lawyer returned alone. Mutely the audience questioned.
“May it p-p-please the c-court,” said Samuel-son, “my client's case is
a b-b-b-bad one--a d-d-amn bad one. You told me to do the b-b-best I
c-could for him, judge, so I've jest given him y-your b-b-bay gelding,
an' told him to light out for healthier c-climes, my p-p-professional
opinion being he'd be hanged quicker'n h-h-hades if he dallied here.
B-by this time my client's 'bout fifteen mile out yonder somewheres.
That was the b-b-best I could do for him, may it p-p-please the court.”
The young man, escaping punishment in lieu of the prisoner, made his
fortune ere five years.
Other voices followed, with equally wondrous tales of riata-throwing
in Mexico and Arizona, of gambling at army posts in Texas, of newspaper
wars waged in godless Chicago (I could not help being interested, but
they were not pretty tricks), of deaths sudden and violent in Montana
and Dakota, of the loves of half-breed maidens in the South, and
fantastic huntings for gold in mysterious Alaska. Above all, they
told the story of the building of old San Francisco, when the “finest
collection of humanity on God's earth, sir, started this town, and the
water came up to the foot of Market Street.” Very terrible were some
of the tales, grimly humorous the others, and the men in broadcloth and
fine linen who told them had played their parts in them.
“And now and again when things got too bad they would toll the city
bell, and the Vigilance Committee turned out and hanged the suspicious
characters. A man didn't begin to be suspected in those days till he had
committed at least one unprovoked murder,” said a calm-eyed, portly old
gentleman.
I looked at the pictures around me, the noiseless, neat-uniformed waiter
behind me, the oak-ribbed ceiling above, the velvet carpet beneath.
It was hard to realize that even twenty years ago you could see a man
hanged with great pomp. Later on I found reason to change my opinion.
The tales gave me a headache and set me thinking. How in the world
was it possible to take in even one thousandth of this huge, roaring,
many-sided continent? In the tobacco-scented silence of the sumptuous
library lay Professor Bryce's book on the American Republic.
“It is an omen,” said I. “He has done all things in all seriousness, and
he may be purchased for half a guinea. Those who desire information of
the most undoubted, must refer to his pages. For me is the daily
round of vagabondage, the recording of the incidents of the hour and
intercourse with the travelling-companion of the day. I will not 'do'
this country at all.”
And I forgot all about India for ten days while I went out to dinners
and watched the social customs of the people, which are entirely
different from our customs, and was introduced to men of many millions.
These persons are harmless in their earlier stages--that is to say, a
man worth three or four million dollars may be a good talker, clever,
amusing, and of the world; a man with twice that amount is to be
avoided, and a twenty million man is--just twenty millions. Take an
instance. I was speaking to a newspaper man about seeing the proprietor
of his journal, as in my innocence I supposed newspaper men occasionally
did. My friend snorted indignantly:--“See him! Great Scott! No. If he
happens to appear in the office, I have to associate with him; but,
thank Heaven! outside of that I move in circles where he cannot come.”
And yet the first thing I have been taught to believe is that money was
everything in America!
II. AMERICAN POLITICS
I HAVE been watching machinery in repose after reading about machinery
in action.
An excellent gentleman, who bears a name honored in the magazine,
writes, much as Disraeli orated, of “the sublime instincts of an ancient
people,” the certainty with which they can be trusted to manage their
own affairs in their own way, and the speed with which they are making
for all sorts of desirable goals. This he called a statement or purview
of American politics.
I went almost directly afterward to a saloon where gentlemen interested
in ward politics nightly congregate. They were not pretty persons. Some
of them were bloated, and they all swore cheerfully till the heavy gold
watch-chains on their fat stomachs rose and fell again; but they talked
over their liquor as men who had power and unquestioned access to places
of trust and profit.
The magazine writer discussed theories of government; these men the
practice. They had been there. They knew all about it. They banged their
fists on the table and spoke of political “pulls,” the vending of votes,
and so forth. Theirs was not the talk of village babblers reconstructing
the affairs of the nation, but of strong, coarse, lustful men fighting
for spoil, and thoroughly understanding the best methods of reaching it.
I listened long and intently to speech I could not understand--or but in
spots.
It was the speech of business, however. I had sense enough to know that,
and to do my laughing outside the door.
Then I began to understand why my pleasant and well-educated hosts in
San Francisco spoke with a bitter scorn of such duties of citizenship as
voting and taking an interest in the distribution of offices. Scores of
men have told me, without false pride, that they would as soon concern
themselves with the public affairs of the city or state as rake
muck with a steam-shovel. It may be that their lofty disdain covers
selfishness, but I should be very sorry habitually to meet the fat
gentlemen with shiny top-hats and plump cigars in whose society I have
been spending the evening.
Read about politics as the cultured writer of the magazine regards 'em,
and then, and not till then, pay your respects to the gentlemen who run
the grimy reality.
I'm sick of interviewing night editors who lean their chair against
the wall, and, in response to my demand for the record of a prominent
citizen, answer: “Well, you see, he began by keeping a saloon,” etc.
I prefer to believe that my informants are treating me as in the old
sinful days in India I was used to treat the wandering globe-trotter.
They declare that they speak the truth, and the news of dog politics
lately vouchsafed to me in groggeries inclines me to believe, but I
won't. The people are much too nice to slangander as recklessly as I
have been doing.
Besides, I am hopelessly in love with about eight American maidens--all
perfectly delightful till the next one comes into the room.
O-Toyo was a darling, but she lacked several things--conversation for
one. You cannot live on giggles. She shall remain unmarried at Nagasaki,
while I roast a battered heart before the shrine of a big Kentucky
blonde, who had for a nurse when she was little a negro “mammy.”
By consequence she has welded on California beauty, Paris dresses,
Eastern culture, Europe trips, and wild Western originality, the queer,
dreamy superstitions of the quarters, and the result is soul-shattering.
And she is but one of many stars.
Item, a maiden who believes in education and possesses it, with a few
hundred thousand dollars to boot and a taste for slumming.
Item, the leader of a sort of informal salon where girls congregate,
read papers, and daringly discuss metaphysical problems and candy--a
sloe-eyed, black-browed, imperious maiden she.
Item, a very small maiden, absolutely without reverence, who can in one
swift sentence trample upon and leave gasping half a dozen young men.
Item, a millionairess, burdened with her money, lonely, caustic, with
a tongue keen as a sword, yearning for a sphere, but chained up to the
rock of her vast possessions.
Item, a typewriter maiden earning her own bread in this big city,
because she doesn't think a girl ought to be a burden on her parents,
who quotes Theophile Gautier and moves through the world manfully, much
respected for all her twenty inexperienced summers.
Item, a woman from cloud-land who has no history in the past or future,
but is discreetly of the present, and strives for the confidences
of male humanity on the grounds of “sympathy” (methinks this is not
altogether a new type).
Item, a girl in a “dive,” blessed with a Greek head and eyes, that seem
to speak all that is best and sweetest in the world. But woe is me! She
has no ideas in this world or the next beyond the consumption of beer
(a commission on each bottle), and protests that she sings the songs
allotted to her nightly without more than the vaguest notion of their
meaning.
Sweet and comely are the maidens of Devonshire; delicate and of gracious
seeming those who live in the pleasant places of London; fascinating for
all their demureness the damsels of France, clinging closely to their
mothers, with large eyes wondering at the wicked world; excellent in her
own place and to those who understand her is the Anglo-Indian “spin” in
her second season; but the girls of America are above and beyond them
all. They are clever, they can talk--yea, it is said that they think.
Certainly they have an appearance of so doing which is delightfully
deceptive.
They are original, and regard you between the brows with unabashed eyes
as a sister might look at her brother. They are instructed, too, in the
folly and vanity of the male mind, for they have associated with “the
boys” from babyhood, and can discerningly minister to both vices or
pleasantly snub the possessor. They possess, moreover, a life among
themselves, independent of any masculine associations. They have
societies and clubs and unlimited tea-fights where all the guests are
girls. They are self-possessed, without parting with any tenderness that
is their sex-right; they understand; they can take care of themselves;
they are superbly independent. When you ask them what makes them so
charming, they say:--“It is because we are better educated than your
girls, and--and we are more sensible in regard to men. We have good
times all round, but we aren't taught to regard every man as a possible
husband. Nor is he expected to marry the first girl he calls on
regularly.”
Yes, they have good times, their freedom is large, and they do not abuse
it. They can go driving with young men and receive visits from young
men to an extent that would make an English mother wink with horror, and
neither driver nor drivee has a thought beyond the enjoyment of a good
time. As certain, also, of their own poets have said:--
“Man is fire and woman is tow,
And the devil he comes and begins to blow.”
In America the tow is soaked in a solution that makes it fire-proof,
in absolute liberty and large knowledge; consequently, accidents do not
exceed the regular percentage arranged by the devil for each class and
climate under the skies.
But the freedom of the young girl has its drawbacks. She is--I say it
with all reluctance--irreverent, from her forty-dollar bonnet to the
buckles in her eighteen-dollar shoes. She talks flippantly to her
parents and men old enough to be her grandfather. She has a prescriptive
right to the society of the man who arrives. The parents admit it.
This is sometimes embarrassing, especially when you call on a man and
his wife for the sake of information--the one being a merchant of varied
knowledge, the other a woman of the world. In five minutes your host has
vanished. In another five his wife has followed him, and you are left
alone with a very charming maiden, doubtless, but certainly not the
person you came to see. She chatters, and you grin, but you leave
with the very strong impression of a wasted morning. This has been my
experience once or twice. I have even said as pointedly as I dared to a
man:--“I came to see you.”
“You'd better see me in my office, then. The house belongs to my women
folk--to my daughter, that is to say.”
He spoke the truth. The American of wealth is owned by his family. They
exploit him for bullion. The women get the ha'pence, the kicks are all
his own. Nothing is too good for an American's daughter (I speak here of
the moneyed classes).
The girls take every gift as a matter of course, and yet they develop
greatly when a catastrophe arrives and the man of many millions goes up
or goes down, and his daughters take to stenography or typewriting. I
have heard many tales of heroism from the lips of girls who counted the
principals among their friends. The crash came, Mamie, or Hattie, or
Sadie, gave up their maid, their carriages and candy, and with a No. 2
Remington and a stout heart set about earning their daily bread.
“And did I drop her from the list of my friends? No, sir,” said a
scarlet-lipped vision in white lace; “that might happen to us any day.”
It may be this sense of possible disaster in the air that makes San
Francisco society go with so captivating a rush and whirl. Recklessness
is in the air. I can't explain where it comes from, but there it is.
The roaring winds of the Pacific make you drunk to begin with. The
aggressive luxury on all sides helps out the intoxication, and you spin
forever “down the ringing grooves of change” (there is no small change,
by the way, west of the Rockies) as long as money lasts. They make
greatly and they spend lavishly; not only the rich, but the artisans,
who pay nearly five pounds for a suit of clothes, and for other luxuries
in proportion.
The young men rejoice in the days of their youth. They gamble, yacht,
race, enjoy prize-fights and cock-fights, the one openly, the other
in secret; they establish luxurious clubs; they break themselves over
horse-flesh and other things, and they are instant in a quarrel. At
twenty they are experienced in business, embark in vast enterprises,
take partners as experienced as themselves, and go to pieces with as
much splendor as their neighbors. Remember that the men who stocked
California in the fifties were physically, and, as far as regards
certain tough virtues, the pick of the earth. The inept and the weakly
died en route, or went under in the days of construction. To this
nucleus were added all the races of the Continent--French, Italian,
German, and, of course, the Jew.
The result you can see in the large-boned, deep-chested, delicate-handed
women, and long, elastic, well-built boys. It needs no little golden
badge swinging from the watch-chain to mark the native son of the golden
West, the country-bred of California.
Him I love because he is devoid of fear, carries himself like a man, and
has a heart as big as his books. I fancy, too, he knows how to enjoy the
blessings of life that his province so abundantly bestows upon him. At
least, I heard a little rat of a creature with hock-bottle shoulders
explaining that a man from Chicago could pull the eye-teeth of a
Californian in business.
Well, if I lived in fairy-land, where cherries were as big as plums,
plums as big as apples, and strawberries of no account, where the
procession of the fruits of the seasons was like a pageant in a Drury
Lane pantomime and the dry air was wine, I should let business slide
once in a way and kick up my heels with my fellows. The tale of the
resources of California--vegetable and mineral--is a fairy-tale. You can
read it in books. You would never believe me.
All manner of nourishing food, from sea-fish to beef, may be bought at
the lowest prices, and the people are consequently well-developed and of
a high stomach. They demand ten shillings for tinkering a jammed lock of
a trunk; they receive sixteen shillings a day for working as carpenters;
they spend many sixpences on very bad cigars, which the poorest of them
smoke, and they go mad over a prize-fight. When they disagree they do so
fatally, with fire-arms in their hands, and on the public streets. I
was just clear of Mission Street when the trouble began between two
gentlemen, one of whom perforated the other.
When a policeman, whose name I do not recollect, “fatally shot Ed
Hearney” for attempting to escape arrest, I was in the next street. For
these things I am thankful. It is enough to travel with a policeman in
a tram-car, and, while he arranges his coat-tails as he sits down, to
catch sight of a loaded revolver. It is enough to know that fifty per
cent of the men in the public saloons carry pistols about them.
The Chinaman waylays his adversary, and methodically chops him to pieces
with his hatchet. Then the press roars about the brutal ferocity of the
pagan.
The Italian reconstructs his friend with a long knife. The press
complains of the waywardness of the alien.
The Irishman and the native Californian in their hours of discontent use
the revolver, not once, but six times. The press records the fact, and
asks in the next column whether the world can parallel the progress of
San Francisco. The American who loves his country will tell you that
this sort of thing is confined to the lower classes. Just at present an
ex-judge who was sent to jail by another judge (upon my word I cannot
tell whether these titles mean anything) is breathing red-hot vengeance
against his enemy. The papers have interviewed both parties, and
confidently expect a fatal issue.
Now, let me draw breath and curse the negro waiter, and through him
the negro in service generally. He has been made a citizen with a vote,
consequently both political parties play with him. But that is neither
here nor there. He will commit in one meal every betise that a senllion
fresh from the plow-tail is capable of, and he will continue to repeat
those faults. He is as complete a heavy-footed, uncomprehending,
bungle-fisted fool as any mem-sahib in the East ever took into her
establishment. But he is according to law a free and independent
citizen--consequently above reproof or criticism. He, and he alone, in
this insane city, will wait at table (the Chinaman doesn't count).
He is untrained, inept, but he will fill the place and draw the pay.
Now, God and his father's fate made him intellectually inferior to the
Oriental. He insists on pretending that he serves tables by accident--as
a sort of amusement. He wishes you to understand this little fact. You
wish to eat your meals, and, if possible, to have them properly served.
He is a big, black, vain baby and a man rolled into one.
A colored gentleman who insisted on getting me pie when I wanted
something else, demanded information about India. I gave him some facts
about wages.
“Oh, hell!” said he, cheerfully, “that wouldn't keep me in cigars for a
month.”
Then he fawned on me for a ten-cent piece. Later he took it upon himself
to pity the natives of India. “Heathens,” he called them--this woolly
one, whose race has been the butt of every comedy on the native stage
since the beginning. And I turned and saw by the head upon his shoulders
that he was a Yoruba man, if there be any truth in ethnological castes.
He did his thinking in English, but he was a Yoruba negro, and the race
type had remained the same throughout his generations. And the room was
full of other races--some that looked exactly like Gallas (but the
trade was never recruited from that side of Africa), some duplicates of
Cameroon heads, and some Kroomen, if ever Kroomen wore evening dress.