THE
ABOUNDING
AMERICAN
BY
T. W. H. CROSLAND
Author of
“Lovely Woman” and “The Unspeakable Scot”
London:
A. F. THOMPSON & CO.
92 Fleet Street, E.C.
1907
CONTENTS.
PAGE
THE PROPOSITION 7
MILLIONAIRES 19
HUMOURISTS 29
THE AMERICAN WOMAN 37
LITERATURE 45
THE PRESIDENT 55
ADVERTISEMENT 61
THE PEA-NUT MIND 71
THE DRAMA 81
SPORT 91
HOGS 101
VERDICT 109
[Illustration]
COPYRIGHT 1907
BY
A. F. THOMPSON
IN
THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
AND IN
GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND
All Rights Reserved
CHAPTER I
THE PROPOSITION
“And what, prithee, hath overtaken Guy?”
“Guy—why Guy diced and drabbed and ruffled away his inheritance, and to
save his neck took shipping for the tobacco plantations where, they say,
he married a daughter of Lo, the poor Indian, and none hath since heard
of him.”
This is the kind of talk that one could hear in the clubs of London a
matter of, say, two hundred and fifty years ago. In plain terms, Guy,
poor devil, being a wastrel,—and a broken wastrel at that—had betaken
himself to America, there probably to found one of the “fine old Virginia
families” of which American writers, and particularly American fictional
writers, are so prone to babble.
America, of course, was really started not by the Indians or Columbus,
but by the Pilgrim Fathers, assisted and backed up by several cargoes
of blue-brained and cleverblooded spirits from the British Isles, whose
minds were full of theology and whose souls were full of tea. I shall be
told that it is unkind of me to make such remarks.
But, quite apart from all questions of kindness, it is desirable that
you know something of the antecedents of a man before you set about
a proper estimate of him. If you wish to understand him thoroughly,
you must never let sleeping dogs lie nor allow bygones to be bygones.
It is notorious that the average frantic Fourth of July American is
an adept at showing the best side of himself and his institutions to
an admiring world. If you are to believe him the first American was
Christopher Columbus, whose name in this connection I had hoped not to
mention. But Don Columbus made the mistake of “discovering America.” For
the accomplishment of this feat the Americans bestow upon his memory
unqualified pæans. Really, of course, the fact that Columbus steered
his leaky lugger desperately for Coney Island and Long Branch, when he
had the rest of the world—including China and Gozo—before him where to
choose, proves that so far from being a hero and a man of genius, he was
a dull and evilly disposed person.
According to the bumptious, khaki-tinted gentleman from Indiana too,
the Pilgrim Fathers already referred to were high-minded, blameless,
and entirely disinterested saints, incapable of hurting a fly or
causing butter to melt north of the colour line. They “inaugurated
America for conscience sake, sir, and you can bet your pile that I am
proud to have them for ancestors.” In which connection I shall pass
no rude observation, contenting myself rather with the hint that the
reader who wishes to acquaint himself with the true inwardness of the
Pilgrim Fathers and their doings in America should look up some of the
serious literature on the subject. The Americans, be it noted, read that
literature very privately, and neither in the basket nor in the store.
I might proceed indefinitely on these lines of disillusion for Master
Phineas B. Flubdub; but as it is not my particular business to amuse him
inordinately, I shall desist.
In Europe, or at any rate in England, there is a disposition on the part
of the sandblind to look upon the United States and the people who dwell
in them with an eye of amused wonderment, as well as admiration. For
reasons that are not difficult to appreciate America has never been taken
quite seriously by the superior European. In spite of all her boasting
and shouting, in spite of her e-normous population and her equally
e-normous wealth, in spite of the fact that there is a U.S. Army and a
U.S. Navy that can lick creation, and that the U.S. also boasts of a
reeking, shrieking press, together with the most gaudy and scintillating
“Courts of Justice” that ever delighted civilisation, no person in Europe
believes in the back of his mind that the land of hustle and bluff is
a nation of any weight where nations count, or that she is capable of
exercising the smallest direct or indirect influence upon the manners,
customs, tendencies, or destiny of haughty feudal Europe.
The Americans are hot stuff. They go in for cut-throat finance and
lime-light lynchings, their swindles are beautiful, their fortunes
colossal, and their corruption is picturesque. They have a wonderful
country. It is theirs and not ours, and they are welcome to do as they
like in it. They can never hurt us. Knowing this, the Englishman sleeps
snugly of nights, and when he meets a “Yank” in London or on the Riviera
or in Paris, he smiles to himself, professes to be tickled, tolerates
him if there be occasion for it, grapples him to his bosom with hooks of
steel if there is money in it, and parts from him pretty much in the mood
of a man who has been inspecting a new motor car.
And, truth to tell, in the guileless, sight-seeing, rush-about American
whom the Englishman encounters on his own midden, there does not appear
to be anything which is either very outrageous or very formidable. All
you see of him is a somewhat undersized, loosely built human biped, with
a fat jowl, straight hair, a nobby suit, a little round white or brown
felt hat—and a guide-book. Of course, there is also the smart swagger
American, accompanied by a feminine entourage of peaches and dreams. But
usually your man from Yankeeland has with him a plain, up-and-down, sad
sort of woman who might have stepped out of Noah’s ark—and that is the
end of it. When he engages you in conversation, which he commonly insists
upon doing, he blows foolishly about his own Country, admits that yours
“hez the bulge in antiques,” says that he is glad that he came over, and
sticking out his finger in the direction of the woman, remarks: “This
is Mrs. Sarah B. Gazabo, my wife.” The real “insides” of the man never
strike you, partly because you are busy loathing his accent and admiring
his ginger, and partly because he has left his vital concerns, his
private essence and sheer Americanisms “way back to hum.” All Americans
imported for us by Thos. Cook & Son and his imitators are of this order.
For them England is a place in which to tread softly and speak low, or
at any rate as low as possible. They visit us in the same spirit that a
prize-fighter might visit a cemetery, and though the casual observer
would scarcely suspect it, their intention is to be subdued, sober,
decorous, and civil.
Eight times out of nine the American is a fine specimen of a manly
man, but it is the ninth that is such a wonder. We, the obtuse and
effete people of Great Britain, now and again wake up suddenly to the
circumstance that we have been the victims of an American invasion.
Such a ghastly conviction may at any moment overtake the best of us,
for no class of society knows whose turn is likely to be next. There
was an American invasion of the turf a year or two back, and English
sport is sore and poor about it to this day. There have been sundry
social invasions which those most directly concerned find it difficult
to forget, and at the present moment we are in the thick of a theatrical
invasion which is not doing us an appreciable amount of good. The fact
of these invasions and of their always unpleasant consequences so far as
the invaded are involved is, in my judgment, a fact of the most serious
import to Englishmen.
I shall for a moment drop the American as he seems to be, and regard him
as he actually is. What can one record of him that is to his credit?
Imprimus: He has devoted three hundred years more or less to the frantic
and bloodthirsty pursuit of the Almighty Dollar. Item: During those three
hundred years more or less he has done absolutely nothing but pursue
dollars. Item: He is still pursuing them. Item: But he makes the best
husband in the world, and places woman in the high place to which she is
so amply entitled. I will put so much to the credit side, though I make
no doubt that there are people in the world who will find themselves
unable to commend me for doing it.
Now for the obverse or discredit side. I shall ask you to note:
(1) That the Americans are the only nation who are ruled by a bureaucracy
of millionaires and at the same time croon themselves into a state of
vacuous coma to the touching strains of “vox populi, vox dei!”
(2) That they are the originators of the yelling yellow press, the
pioneers of the New Humour and the apostles of the New Pathos.
(3) That they are the only civilised people who make a point of exporting
the finest specimens of their womankind to foreign countries, included
in a consignment of cold dollars calculated pro rata with the antiquity,
decay and general worthlessness of the name which the former take in
exchange.
(4) That having inherited, borrowed or stolen a beautiful language, they
wilfully and of set purpose degrade, distort and misspell it apparently
for the sole purpose of saving money in type-setting.
(5) That out of twenty-six Presidents of the United States, three have
met death at the hands of the assassin.[1]
(6) That having by sheer accident or because of the care and forethought,
which Providence has for fools, become possessed of a President who is
a man among men and a ninety horse-power statesman with direct drive on
all speeds, they allow him to be handicapped by a spectacular gang of
undesirable citizens.
(7) That they consider no function, public or private, sacred or
profane, to be complete without a newspaper correspondent, a lime-light
photographer, and a sky-sign contractor.
(8) That willingly and of their own unfettered volition they have
thrown back to the customs of their aboriginal ancestors in the matter
of diet, which diet is rapidly reducing them morally, physically and
intellectually to the level of primordial protoplasms.
(9) That they are the only nation who in civilised times rate noise above
all else, save dollars, and who in their theatres acclaim as the greatest
actor or play the one that in the shortest time makes the greatest uproar
for the smallest reason.
(10) That they have resolved their sports and pastimes into business
propositions in which the avowed aim and object of every competitor is
the utter destruction of his opponent by any means that can be found,
devised or conceived.
(11) That they are the only nation who in civilised times have been happy
and content to sink their individuality in an all pervading and evil
smelling atmosphere of hog and by-products.
The foregoing are merely a few of the main counts in the indictment.
Behind every one of them lies a history of gaiety, graft, dyspepsia,
bossism, fakery, flamboyancy, hysteria, vociferation brain storms
and dementia Americana of the most disconcerting and entertaining
kind. The details are on record, and I do not propose to harrow the
reader’s feelings with examples of them. I shall suggest simply that it
is questionable whether any other known race of men, white or black,
has managed to pack into three centuries such a volume of unthinkable
excitement and picturesque iniquity as can be rightfully and without
exaggeration laid at the door of these abounding Americans.
A certain Western city has been described by a friendly visitor as “hell
with the lid off.” For the greater part of her existence as a nation that
description might with justice have been applied to all America, and I
am by no means sure that it is not still applicable. It would seem that
under the inspiring ægis of the much-vaunted American constitution the
whole of the vices of civilised man have become grossly and incredibly
intensified. For unscrupulousness, insincerity, cynicism, and the pure
worship of mammon the United States stands without rival among the
nations to-day.
I believe the man lied who said there is not an institution in the
country—political, social, economic or even religious—that is not based
on a species of ingrained rottenness and not infested with the worm of
corruption and the scrawl of scandal. But there is no national aspiration
that does not have at the back of it the root idea that the sole duty
of an American man is to get rich and to get rich quick. There are few
standards of American life that are not gold standards and few kinds of
American effort that are not directed towards the rapid acquisition of
other people’s money.
It can be proved out of the history books that, broadly speaking, your
average American is a nondescript and nefarious hybrid composed of
three parts promoter, three parts missionary, three parts slave-driver,
and one part Indian. On this unsavoury soil the worst passions of the
soaring human animal have grown and run hoggishly to seed. Out of such
blood nothing that is honest or of good report could be expected to
rise. And when we in England, as has been the tendency in the past few
years, condescend to the adoption of American methods and American
notions, and applaud rather than rebuke American smartness and American
impudence, there can be no question whatever that we are on the
toboggan. The gradual Americanisation of this grand old country is not
only flattering to American vanity, but gratifying to American greed. As
I shall presently show, America has no more love for England than would
easily cover a threepenny-bit, and her insatiable cry is for markets,
markets, markets—a howl in which she is dulcetly supported by her dear
friend Germany. The causes for alarm in so far as they affect the larger
concrete issues are as yet comparatively slight. But it behoves every
Englishman to meditate on the possibility that Macaulay’s New Zealander
may in the long run turn out to be an American.
[1] This is a greater percentage than has obtained in the case of the
Czars of Russia, and in America there are no Nihilists or at any rate
none who are actively opposed to the American Presidency.
[Illustration]