REFLECTIONS ON THE TYPICAL AMERICAN.
_New York, January 23._
I was asked to-day by the editor of the _North American Review_ to write
an article on the typical American.
The typical American!
In the eyes of my beloved compatriots, the typical American is a man
with hair falling over his shoulders, wearing a sombrero, a red shirt,
leather leggings, a pair of revolvers in his belt, spending his life on
horseback, and able to shoot a fly off the tip of your nose without for
a moment endangering your olfactory organ; and, since Buffalo Bill has
been exhibiting his Indians and cowboys to the Parisians, this
impression has become a deep conviction.
I shall never forget the astonishment I caused to my mother when I first
broke the news to her that I wanted to go to America. My mother had
practically never left a lovely little provincial town of France. Her
face expressed perfect bewilderment.
"You don't mean to say you want to go to America?" she said. "What for?"
"I am invited to give lectures there."
"Lectures? in what language?"
"Well, mother, I will try my best in English."
"Do they speak English out there?"
"H'm--pretty well, I think."
We did not go any further on the subject that time. Probably the good
mother thought of the time when the Californian gold-fields attracted
all the scum of Europe, and, no doubt, she thought that it was strange
for a man who had a decent position in Europe, to go and "seek fortune"
in America.
Later on, however, after returning to England, I wrote to her that I had
made up my mind to go.
Her answer was full of gentle reproaches, and of sorrow at seeing that
she had lost all her influence over her son. She signed herself "always
your loving mother," and indulged in a postscript. Madame de Sevigne
said that the gist of a woman's letter was to be found in the
postscript.
My mother's was this:
"P.S.--I shall not tell any one in the town that you have gone to
America."
This explains why I still dare show my face in my little native town.
* * * * *
The typical American!
First of all, does he exist? I do not think so. As I have said
elsewhere, there are Americans in plenty, but _the_ American has not
made his appearance yet. The type existed a hundred years ago in New
England. He is there still; but he is not now a national type, he is
only a local one.
[Illustration: THE TYPICAL AMERICAN.]
I was talking one day with two eminent Americans on the subject of the
typical American, real or imaginary. One of them was of opinion that he
was a taciturn being; the other, on the contrary, maintained that he was
talkative. How is a foreigner to dare decide, where two eminent natives
find it impossible to agree?
In speaking of the typical American, let us understand each other. All
the civilized nations of the earth are alike in one respect; they are
all composed of two kinds of men, those that are gentlemen, and those
that are not. America is no exception to this rule. Fifth Avenue does
not differ from Belgravia and Mayfair. A gentleman is everywhere a
gentleman. As a type, he belongs to no particular country, he is
universal.
When the writer of some "society" paper, English or American, reproaches
a sociologist for writing about the masses instead of the classes,
suggesting that "he probably never frequented the best society of the
nation he describes," that writer writes himself down an ass.
In the matters of feeling, conduct, taste, culture, I have never
discovered the least difference between a gentleman from America and a
gentleman from France, England, Russia, or any other country of
Europe--including Germany. So, if we want to find a typical American, it
is not in good society that we must search for him, but among the mass
of the population.
Well, it is just here that our search will break down. We shall come
across all sorts and conditions of Americans, but not one that is really
typical.
[Illustration: THE AMERICAN OF A HUNDRED YEARS AGO.]
A little while ago, the _Century Magazine_ published specimens of
composite photography. First, there was the portrait of one person, then
that of this same face with another superposed, then another containing
three faces blended, and so on up to eight or nine. On the last page the
result was shown. I can only compare the typical American to the last of
those. This appears to me the process of evolution through which the
American type is now going. What it will be when this process of
evolution is over, no one, I imagine, can tell. The evolution will be
complete when immigration shall have ceased, and all the different types
have been well mixed and assimilated. While the process of assimilation
is still going on, the result is suspended, and the type is incomplete.
But, meanwhile, are there not certain characteristic traits to be found
throughout almost all America? That is a question much easier to answer.
Is it necessary to repeat that I put aside good society and confine
myself merely to the people?
Nations are like individuals: when they are young, they have the
qualities and the defects of children. The characteristic trait of
childhood is curiosity. It is also that of the American. I have never
been in Australia, but I should expect to find this trait in the
Australian.
Look at American journalism. What does it live on? Scandal and gossip.
Let a writer, an artist, or any one else become popular in the States,
and the papers will immediately tell the public at what time he rises
and what he takes for breakfast. When any one of the least importance
arrives in America, he is quickly beset by a band of reporters who ask
him a host of preposterous questions and examine him minutely from head
to foot, in order to tell the public next day whether he wears laced,
buttoned, or elastic boots, enlighten them as to the cut of his coat and
the color of his trowsers, and let them know if he parts his hair in the
middle or not.
[Illustration: CURIOSITY IN AUSTRALIA.]
Every time I went into a new town to lecture I was interviewed, and the
next day, besides an account of the lecture, there was invariably a
paragraph somewhat in this style:
The lecturer is a man of about forty, whose cranium is getting visible
through his hair. He wears a double eye-glass, with which he plays
while talking to his audience. His handkerchief was black-bordered. He
wore the regulation patent leather shoes, and his shirt front was
fastened with a single stud. He spoke without effort or pretension,
and often with his hands in his pockets, etc.
A few days ago, on reading the morning papers in a town where I had
lectured the night before, I found, in one of them, about twenty lines
consecrated to my lecture, and half a column to my hat.
I must tell you that this hat was brown, and all the hats in America are
black. If you wear anything that is not exactly like what Americans
wear, you are gazed at as if you were a curious animal. The Americans
are as great _badauds_ as the Parisians. In London, you may go down
Regent Street or Piccadilly got up as a Swiss admiral, a Polish general,
or even a Highlander, and nobody will take the trouble to look at you.
But, in America, you have only to put on a brown hat or a pair of light
trowsers, and you will become the object of a curiosity which will not
fail very promptly to bore you, if you are fond of tranquility, and like
to go about unremarked.
I was so fond of that poor brown hat, too! It was an incomparably
obliging hat. It took any shape, and adapted itself to any
circumstances. It even went into my pocket on occasions. I had bought it
at Lincoln & Bennett's, if you please. But I had to give it up. To my
great regret, I saw that it was imperative: its popularity bid fair to
make me jealous. Twenty lines about me, and half a column about that
hat! It was time to come to some determination. It was not to be put up
with any longer. So I took it up tenderly, smoothed it with care, and
laid it in a neat box which was then posted to the chief editor of the
paper with the following note:
DEAR SIR:
I see by your estimable paper that my hat has attracted a good deal of
public attention during its short sojourn in your city. I am even
tempted to think that it has attracted more of it than my lecture. I
send you the interesting headgear, and beg you will accept it as a
souvenir of my visit, and with my respectful compliments.
A citizen of the Great Republic knows how to take a joke. The worthy
editor inserted my letter in the next number of his paper, and informed
his readers that my hat fitted him to a nicety, and that he was going to
have it dyed and wear it. He further said, "Max O'Rell evidently thinks
the song, 'Where did you get that hat?' was specially written to annoy
him," and went on to the effect that "Max O'Rell is not the only man who
does not care to tell where he got his hat."
Do not run away with the idea that such nonsense as this has no interest
for the American public. It has.
American reporters have asked me, with the most serious face in the
world, whether I worked in the morning, afternoon, or evening, and what
color paper I used (_sic_). One actually asked me whether it was true
that M. Jules Claretie used white paper to write his novels on, and blue
paper for his newspaper articles. Not having the honor of a personal
acquaintance with the director of the Comedie-Francaise, I had to
confess my inability to gratify my amiable interlocutor.
Look at the advertisements in the newspapers. There you have the
bootmaker, the hatter, the traveling quack, publishing their portraits
at the head of their advertisements. Why are those portraits there, if
it be not to satisfy the curiosity of customers?
The mass of personalities, each more trumpery than the other, those
details of people's private life, and all the gossip daily served up in
the newspapers, are they not proof enough that curiosity is a
characteristic trait of the American?
This curiosity, which often shows itself in the most impossible
questions, gives immense amusement to Europeans. Unhappily, it amuses
them at the expense of well-bred Americans--people who are as innocent
of it as the members of the stiffest aristocracy in the world could be.
The English, especially, persist in not distinguishing Americans who are
gentlemen from Americans who are not.
* * * * *
And even that easy-going American _bourgeois_, with his childish but
good-humored nature, they often fail to do justice to. They too often
look at his curiosity as impertinence and ill-breeding, and will not
admit that, in nine cases out of ten, the freedom he uses with you is
but a show of good feeling, an act of good-fellowship.
Take, for instance, the following little story:
An American is seated in a railway carriage, and opposite him is a lady
in deep mourning, and looking a picture of sadness; a veritable _mater
dolorosa_.
"Lost a father?" begins the worthy fellow.
"No, sir."
"A mother, maybe?"
"No, sir."
"Ah! a child then?"
"No, sir; I have lost my husband."
"Your husband! Ah! Left you comfortable?"
The lady, rather offended, retires to the other end of the car, and cuts
short the conversation.
"Rather stuck up, this woman," remarks the good Yankee to his neighbor.
The intention was good, if the way of showing it was not. He had but
wanted to show the poor lady the interest he took in her.
After having seen you two or three times, the American will suppress
"Mr." and address you by your name without any handle to it. Do not say
that this is ill placed familiarity; it is meant as an act of
good-fellowship, and should be received by you as such.
If you are stiff, proud, and stuck-up, for goodness' sake, never go to
America; you will never get on there. On the contrary, take over a stock
of simple, affable manners and a good temper, and you will be treated as
a friend everywhere, feted, and well looked after.
In fact, try to deserve a certificate of good-fellowship, such as the
Clover Club, of Philadelphia, awards to those who can sit at its
hospitable table without taking affront at the little railleries leveled
at them by the members of that lively association. With people of
refinement who have humor, you can indulge in a joke at their expense.
So says La Bruyere. Every visitor to America, who wants to bring back a
pleasant recollection of his stay there, should lay this to heart.
Such are the impressions that I formed of the American during my first
trip to his country, and the more I think over the matter, the more sure
I am that they were correct. Curiosity is his chief little failing, and
good-fellowship his most prominent quality. This is the theme I will
develop and send to the Editor of the _North American Review_. I will
profit by having a couple of days to spend in New York to install myself
in a cosy corner of that cosiest of clubs, the "Players," and there
write it.
It seems that, in the same number of this magazine, the same subject is
to be treated by Mr. Andrew Lang. He has never seen Jonathan at home,
and it will be interesting to see what impressions he has formed of him
abroad. In the hands of such a graceful writer, the "typical American"
is sure to be treated in a pleasant and interesting manner.
[Illustration]