LITERATURE
Mr. William Dean Howells, who is one of the leaders of that small band of
American authors who have a right to literary consideration in England,
has lately published an entertaining romance which he calls “Through the
Eye of the Needle.” With Mr. Howells’s story as a story I have nothing
to do. In the process of relating it Mr. Howells offers us some candid
criticisms of his countrymen which will serve to illustrate the real
opinion of the cultivated American as to himself, and all that to him
appertains.
“My hero,” writes Mr. Howells, “visited this country when it was on the
verge of great economic depression extending from 1894 to 1898, but,
after the Spanish War, Providence marked the Divine approval of our
victory in that contest by renewing in unexampled measure the prosperity
of the Republic. With the downfall of the Trusts, and the release of our
industrial and commercial forces to unrestricted activity, the condition
of every form of Labour has been immeasurably improved, and it is now
united with Capital in bonds of the closest affection.”
Mr. Howells does not mean this passage satirically. He is really of
opinion that Providence marked the Divine approval of America’s victory
over Spain “by renewing in unexampled measure the prosperity of the
Republic.” He believes, good easy man, that the Trusts have been humbled,
and that “Labour is now united with Capital in bonds of the closest
affection.” Isn’t it delicious? Mr. Howells further informs us that the
servant problem in America has been “solved once for all by humanity,”
and that New York is no longer a city of violent and unthinkable noises.
“The flattened wheel of the trolley,” he says, “banging the track day and
night, and tormenting the waking and sleeping ear, was, oddly enough,
the inspiration of Reforms which have made our city the quietest in
the world. The trolleys now pass unheard; the elevated train glides by
overhead with only a modulated murmur, the subway is a retreat fit for
meditation and prayer, where the passenger can possess his soul in a
peace to be found nowhere else; the automobile whirrs softly through the
most crowded thoroughfare, far below the speed limit, with a sigh of
gentle satisfaction in its own harmlessness, and, ‘like the sweet South,
taking and giving odor.’” It is beside the mark to note that Shakespeare
did not write “taking” but “stealing,” and he certainly did not spell
odour Mr. Howells’s way.
Our author proceeds to assure us that American men are not now the
intellectual inferiors of American women, “or at least not so much the
inferiors”; that American men have made “a vast advance in the knowledge
and love of literature,” and that “with the multitude of our periodicals,
and the swarm of our fictions selling from a hundred thousand to half a
million each, even our business men cannot wholly escape culture, and
they have become more and more cultured, so that now you frequently hear
them asking what this or that book is all about.”
Later he says of the New Yorkers: “They are purely commercial, and the
thing that cannot be bought and sold has logically no place in their
life. They applaud one another for their charities, which they measure
by the amount given, rather than by the love which goes with the giving.
The widow’s mite has little credit with them, but the rich man’s million
has an acclaim that reverberates through their newspapers long after his
gift is made. It is only the poor in America who do charity—by giving
help where it is needed; the Americans are mostly too busy, if they are
at all prosperous, to give anything but money; and the more money they
give, the more charitable they esteem themselves. From time to time some
man with twenty or thirty millions gives one of them away, usually to
a public institution of some sort, where it will have no effect with
the people who are under-paid for their work, or cannot get work; and
then his deed is famed throughout the Country as a thing really beyond
praise. Yet anyone who thinks about it must know that he never earned the
millions he kept, or the millions he gave, but somehow made them from the
labours of others; that with all the wealth left him he cannot miss the
fortune that he lavishes, any more than if the check (English, cheque)
which conveyed it were a withered leaf, and not in any wise so much as an
ordinary working man might feel the bestowal of a postage stamp.”
We have here, as I have said, views on America not by a shouting American
bluffer or dealer in hyperbole, but by a man of recognised literary
parts and judgment. Furthermore, Mr. Howells is plainly not one of those
Americans who affect a contempt for their country. When he speaks
of American success he attributes it to the favour of Providence; he
can perceive a “vast advance” in the American’s knowledge and love of
literature, and while he reproves the American millionaire, he does so
more in sorrow than in anger. So that on the whole his testimony cannot
fairly be traversed.
And reading between the lines of it, the intelligent observer will not be
slow to discern that it amounts practically to a pretty severe indictment
of the Americans. A man who has no place in his life for a thing that
cannot be bought and sold, is not, after all, the kind of man one can be
expected to admire, even though Providence may appear to smile upon him.
Neither can I express myself violently taken with the man who is “not so
much the intellectual inferior of our women”—and such women—even if you
do frequently hear him asking what this or that book is all about. And
Mr. Howells’s opinion of millionaires and their charity coincides pretty
well with the opinion of Europe.
Mr. Howells, of course, is a well bred, well mannered and entirely
discreet author; he sets down naught in malice, his tendency being
rather in the direction of a little gentle extenuation. Irony, sarcasm,
reproach, and, least of all, flouts and jeers are not among his literary
weapons.
It goes without saying, however, that America has been written about
in much harsher tones than those of Mr. Howells. From an American book
published pseudonymously two or three years back, a book that does not
appear to have received anything like its due share of recognition either
in England or America, I cull the following picturesque details:—
“From the moment he takes his seat in his office, until he
goes home, an American’s business consists of a succession of
swindles. He either picks the pocket of each man he interviews,
or the men pick his.”
* * * * *
“The American gloats over his ability as a liar. He prides
himself upon the fact that his lie is a plausible one and
likely to deceive. If it does not come up to the specifications
he regards it and himself as failures, and a shadow is cast
upon his life.”
* * * * *
“The American who has just borrowed a dollar immediately rushes
into the nearest bar room and announces that he has raised
500,000 dollars from a prominent millionaire who has become his
partner, and will back him to any amount in any enterprise,
sane or insane, in which he may agree to embark. Then for the
succeeding three hours he talks about himself so loudly that
the entire neighbourhood throngs around him to join in the
debate.”
* * * * *
“The American trader in Europe has created the same feeling
that prevails among a party of honest cardplayers when the
card-sharper appears at the table.”
* * * * *
“The American politician never speaks but always ‘orates.’
If the matter under discussion in the legislative body is a
question whether five cents shall be expended on pencils, or
whether Mrs. Bridget O’Neill, or Mrs. Patrick O’Reilly shall
be appointed scrubwoman of the Senate House, he considers it
beneath his dignity to say anything that will not recall the
diction of Cicero or Demosthenes. If the ceiling is to be
cleaned and a three-and-elevenpenny contract is to be given
out, he takes the floor and with a loud preliminary bellow
announces that he is an American citizen, and anyone who says
that he is not is a confirmed and hereditary liar.”
* * * * *
“If an American learns that a man has been bribed he does not
hate him—he envies him.”
* * * * *
“In New York society no man is ever referred to as ‘Mr. Jones’
or ‘Mr. Smith.’ He is always referred to as ‘Mr. Jones, who is
worth two million dollars,’ or ‘Mr. Smith, who is worth four
million dollars and stole every cent of it.’”
* * * * *
“The average Chicagoan has not the faintest conception of the
true meaning of right and wrong. Right is the method that
succeeds in getting money. Wrong is the method that does not.”
I shall beg the reader to observe particularly that I do not myself make
these stinging assertions. In the words of the late Sir William Harcourt,
“I merely quote them.” In a sense, perhaps, they may be most correctly
described as exaggerations. But they are exaggerations of a kind which
have more than a substratum of truth in them. I commend them to the
swaggering rubber-jawed American for what they are worth.
Did the scope of this book allow, it would be possible to cite numerous
other animadversions upon American manners and customs by other pens.
No British author of standing has visited the United States and come
back in love with the American people. Dickens loathed them, Thackeray
could not put up with them, Mathew Arnold despised them, and Browning
laughed at them, while as for Tennyson he absolutely refused to go near
them. Even the sensational litterateurs of our own generation, such as
Hall Caine or Bernard Shaw, have failed to find much or anything to
shriek about. The Bishop of London and Father Vaughan are not authors
but diplomats. Rudyard Kipling has been in America more than once, and
remains dumb as to the whole concern. Mr. Zangwill is equally travelled
and equally silent. Mr. Wells, who went out for the purpose, has written
his book and said practically nothing. All of them, and others who
might be named, recognise that what ought to be said would be better
unsaid—unpleasant for the Americans, and consequently likely to provoke
bad feeling. It is gentlest to the Americans to write of them without
paying a preliminary visit to their native air. What would happen if a
person who wields a plain blunt pen were to make a call upon them and set
forth his impressions in good cold type and without fear or pity, no man
may tell. Probably the Americans would shoot him.
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