achieve an absolutely first-class cuisine. No large restaurant, either
in the United States or out of it, can hope to achieve an absolutely
first-class cuisine. The peerless restaurant is and must be a little
one. Nor would I specially complain of the noise and thronging of the
great restaurants, the deafening stridency of their music, the artistic
violence of their decorations; these features of fashionable restaurants
are now universal throughout the world, and the philosopher adapts
himself to them. (Indeed, in favor of New York I must say that in one of
the largest of its restaurants I heard a Chopin ballade well played on a
good piano--and it was listened to in appreciative silence; event quite
unique in my experience. Also, the large restaurant whose cuisine
nearest approaches the absolutely first-class is in New York, and not in
Europe.) Nor would I complain that the waiter in the great restaurant
neither understands English nor speaks a tongue which resembles English,
for this characteristic, too, is very marked across the Atlantic. (One
night, in a Boston hotel, after lingual difficulties with a head-waiter,
I asked him in French if he was not French. He cuttingly replied in
waiter's American: "I _was_ French, but now I am an American." In
another few years that man will be referring to Great Britain as "the
old country.") ...
No; what disconcerts the European in the great American restaurant is
the excessive, the occasionally maddening slowness of the service, and
the lack of interest in the service. Touching the latter defect, the
waiter is not impolite; he is not neglectful. But he is, too often,
passively hostile, or, at best, neutral. He, or his chief, has
apparently not grasped the fact that buying a meal is not like buying a
ton of coal. If the purchaser is to get value for his money, he must
enjoy his meal; and if he is to enjoy the meal, it must not merely be
efficiently served, but it must be efficiently served in a sympathetic
atmosphere. The supreme business of a good waiter is to create this
atmosphere.... True, that even in the country which has carried cookery
and restaurants to loftier heights than any other--I mean, of course,
Belgium, the little country of little restaurants--the subtle ether
which the truly civilized diner demands is rare enough. But in the great
restaurants of the great cities of America it is, I fancy, rarer than
anywhere else.
VI
SPORT AND THE THEATER
I remember thinking, long before I came to the United States, at the
time when the anti-gambling bill was a leading topic of American
correspondence in European newspapers, that a State whose public opinion
would allow even the discussion of a regulation so drastic could not
possibly regard "sport" as sport is regarded in Europe. It might be very
fond of gambling, but it could not be afflicted with the particular
mania which in Europe amounts to a passion, if not to a religion. And
when the project became law, and horse-racing was most beneficially and
admirably abolished in the northeastern portion of the Republic, I was
astonished. No such law could be passed in any European country that I
knew. The populace would not suffer it; the small, intelligent minority
would not care enough to support it; and the wealthy oligarchical
priest-patrons of sport would be seriously convinced that it involved
the ruin of true progress and the end of all things. Such is the
sacredness of sport in Europe, where governments audacious enough to
attack and overthrow the state-church have never dared to suggest the
suppression of the vice by which alone the main form of sport lives ...
So that I did not expect to find the United States a very "sporting"
country. And I did not so find it. I do not wish to suggest that, in my
opinion, there is no "sport" in the United States, but only that there
is somewhat less than in Western Europe; as I have already indicated,
the differences between one civilization and another are always slight,
though they are invariably exaggerated by rumor.
I know that the "sporting instinct"--a curious combination of the
various instincts for fresh air, destruction, physical prowess,
emulation, devotion, and betting--is tolerably strong in America. I
could name a list of American sports as long as the list of dutiable
articles in the customs tariff. I am aware that over a million golf
balls are bought (and chiefly lost) in the United States every year. I
know that no residence there is complete without its lawn-tennis court.
I accept the statement that its hunting is unequaled. I have admired the
luxury and completeness of its country clubs. Its yachting is renowned.
Its horse-shows, to which enthusiasts repair in automobiles, are
wondrous displays of fashion. But none of these things is democratic;
none enters into the life of the mass of the people. Nor can that fierce
sport be called quite democratic which depends exclusively upon, and is
limited to, the universities. A six-day cycling contest and a
Presidential election are, of course, among the very greatest sporting
events in the world, but they do not occur often enough to merit
consideration as constant factors of national existence.
[Illustration: THE HORSE-SHOWS ARE WONDROUS DISPLAYS OF FASHION]
Baseball remains a formidable item, yet scarcely capable of balancing
the scale against the sports--football, cricket, racing, pelota,
bull-fighting--which, in Europe, impassion the common people, and draw
most of their champions from the common people. In Europe the
advertisement hoardings--especially in the provinces--proclaim sport
throughout every month of the year; not so in America. In Europe the
most important daily news is still the sporting news, as any editor will
tell you; not so in America, despite the gigantic headings of the
evening papers at certain seasons.
But how mighty, nevertheless, is baseball! Its fame floats through
Europe as something prodigious, incomprehensible, romantic, and
terrible. After being entertained at early lunch in the correct hotel
for this kind of thing, I was taken, in a state of great excitement, by
a group of excited business men, and flashed through Central Park in an
express automobile to one of the great championship games. I noted the
excellent arrangements for dealing with feverish multitudes. I noted the
splendid and ornate spaciousness of the grand-stand crowned with
innumerable eagles, and the calm, matter-of-fact tone in which a friend
informed me that the grand-stand had been burned down six months ago. I
noted the dreadful prominence of advertisements, and particularly of
that one which announced "the 3-dollar hat with the 5-dollar look," all
very European! It was pleasant to be convinced in such large letters
that even shrewd America is not exempt from that universal human naïveté
which is ready to believe that in some magic emporium a philanthropist
is always waiting to give five dollars' worth of goods in exchange for
three dollars of money.
Then I braced my intelligence to an understanding of the game, which,
thanks to its classical simplicity, and to some training in the finesse
of cricket and football, I did soon grasp in its main outlines. A
beautiful game, superbly played. We reckon to know something of ball
games in Europe; we reckon to be connoisseurs; and the old footballer
and cricketer in me came away from that immense inclosure convinced that
baseball was a game of the very first class, and that those players were
the most finished exponents of it. I was informed that during the winter
the players condescended to follow the law and other liberal
professions. But, judging from their apparent importance in the public
eye, I should not have been surprised to learn that during the winter
they condescended to be Speakers of the House of Representatives or
governors of States. It was a relief to know that in the matter of
expenses they were treated more liberally than the ambassadors of the
Republic.
They seemed to have carried the art of pitching a ball to a more
wondrous degree of perfection than it has ever been carried in cricket.
The absolute certitude of the fielding and accuracy of the throwing was
profoundly impressive to a connoisseur. Only in a certain lack of
elegance in gesture, and in the unshaven dowdiness of the ground on
which it was played, could this game be said to be inferior to the noble
spectacle of cricket. In broad dramatic quality I should place it above
cricket, and on a level with Association football.
In short, I at once became an enthusiast for baseball. For nine innings
I watched it with interest unabated, until a vast purple shadow,
creeping gradually eastward, had obscurely veiled the sublime legend of
the 3-dollar hat with the 5-dollar look. I began to acquire the proper
cries and shouts and menaces, and to pass comments on the play which I
was assured were not utterly foolish. In my honest yearning to feel
myself a habitué, I did what everybody else did and even attacked a
morsel of chewing-gum; but all that a European can say of this singular
substance is that it is, finally, eternal and unconquerable. One slip I
did quite innocently make. I rose to stretch myself after the sixth
inning instead of half-way through the seventh. Happily a friend with
marked presence of mind pulled me down to my seat again, before I had
had time fully to commit this horrible sacrilege. When the game was
finished I surged on to the enormous ground, and was informed by
innerring experts of a few of the thousand subtle tactical points which
I had missed. And lastly, I was flung up onto the Elevated platform,
littered with pieces of newspaper, and through a landscape of slovenly
apartment-houses, punctuated by glimpses of tremendous quantities of
drying linen, I was shot out of New York toward a calm week-end.
Yes, a grand game, a game entirely worthy of its reputation! If the
professional matador and gladiator business is to be carried on at all,
a better exemplification of it than baseball offers could hardly be
found or invented. But the beholding crowd, and the behavior of the
crowd, somewhat disappointed me. My friends said with intense pride that
forty thousand persons were present. The estimate proved to be an
exaggeration; but even had it not been, what is forty thousand to the
similar crowds in Europe? In Europe forty thousand people will often
assemble to watch an ordinary football match. And for a "Final," the
record stands at something over a hundred thousand. It should be
remembered, too, in forming the comparison, that many people in the
Eastern States frequent the baseball grounds because they have been
deprived of their horse-racing. Further, the New York crowd, though
fairly excited, was not excited as sporting excitement is understood in,
for instance, the Five Towns. The cheering was good, but it was not the
cheering of frenzied passion. The anathemas, though hearty, lacked that
religious sincerity which a truly sport-loving populace will always put
into them. The prejudice in favor of the home team, the cruel, frank
unfairness toward the visiting team, were both insufficiently
accentuated. The menaces were merely infantile. I inquired whether the
referee or umpire, or whatever the arbiter is called in America, ever
went in danger of life or limb, or had to be protected from a homicidal
public by the law in uniform. And I was shocked by a negative answer.
Referees in Europe have been smuggled off the ground in the center of a
cocoon of policemen, have even been known to spend a fortnight in bed,
after giving a decision adverse to the home team!... More evidence that
the United States is not in the full sense a sporting country!
* * * * *
Of the psychology of the great common multitude of baseball "bleachers,"
I learned almost nothing. But as regards the world of success and luxury
(which, of course, held me a willing captive firmly in its soft and
powerful influence throughout my stay), I should say that there was an
appreciable amount of self-hypnotism in its attitude toward baseball. As
if the thriving and preoccupied business man murmured to his soul, when
the proper time came: "By the way, these baseball championships are
approaching. It is right and good for me that I should be boyishly
excited, and I will be excited. I must not let my interest in baseball
die. Let's look at the sporting-page and see how things stand. And I'll
have to get tickets, too!" Hence possibly what seemed to me a
superficiality and factitiousness in the excitement of the more
expensive seats, and a too-rapid effervescence and finish of the
excitement when the game was over.
The high fever of inter-university football struck me as a more
authentic phenomenon. Indeed, a university town in the throes of an
important match offers a psychological panorama whose genuineness can
scarcely be doubted. Here the young men communicate the sacred contagion
to their elders, and they also communicate it to the young women, who,
in turn, communicate it to the said elders--and possibly the indirect
method is the surer! I visited a university town in order to witness a
match of the highest importance. Unfortunately, and yet fortunately, my
whole view of it was affected by a mere nothing--a trifle which the
newspapers dealt with in two lines.
When I reached the gates of the arena in the morning, to get a glimpse
of a freshmen's match, an automobile was standing thereat. In the
automobile was a pile of rugs, and sticking out of the pile of rugs in
an odd, unnatural, horizontal way was a pair of muddy football boots.
These boots were still on the feet of a boy, but all the rest of his
unconscious and smashed body was hidden beneath the rugs. The automobile
vanished, and so did my peace of mind. It seemed to me tragic that that
burly infant under the rugs should have been martyrized at a poor little
morning match in front of a few sparse hundreds of spectators and tens
of thousands of unresponsive empty benches. He had not had even the
glory and meed of a great multitude's applause. When I last inquired
about him, at the end of the day, he was still unconscious, and that was
all that could be definitely said of him; one heard that it was his
features that had chiefly suffered in the havoc, that he had been
defaced. If I had not happened to see those muddy football boots
sticking out, I should have heard vaguely of the accident, and remarked
philosophically that it was a pity, but that accidents would occur, and
there would have been the end of my impression. Only I just did happen
to see those muddy boots sticking out.
[Illustration: THE SENSE OF A MIGHTY AND CULMINATING EVENT SHARPENED THE
AIR]
When we came away from the freshmen's match, the charming roads of the
town, bordered by trees and by the agreeable architecture of mysterious
clubs, were beginning to be alive and dangerous with automobiles and
carriages, and pretty girls and proud men, and flags and flowers, and
colored favors and shoutings. Salutes were being exchanged at every
yard. The sense of a mighty and culminating event sharpened the air. The
great inn was full of jollity and excitement, and the reception-clerks
thereof had the negligent mien of those who know that every bedroom
is taken and every table booked. The club (not one of the mysterious
ones, but an ingenuous plain club of patriarchs who had once been young
in the university and were now defying time) was crammed with amiable
confusion, and its rich carpets protected for the day against the feet
of bald lads, who kept aimlessly walking up-stairs and down-stairs and
from room to room, out of mere friendly exuberance.
And after the inn and the club I was conducted into a true American
home, where the largest and most free hospitality was being practised
upon a footing of universal intimacy. You ate standing; you ate sitting;
you ate walking the length of the long table; you ate at one small
table, and then you ate at another. You talked at random to strangers
behind and strangers before. And when you couldn't think of anything to
say, you just smiled inclusively. You knew scarcely anybody's name, but
the heart of everybody. Impossible to be ceremonious! When a young woman
bluntly inquired the significance of that far-away look in your eye,
impossible not to reply frankly that you were dreaming of a second
helping of a marvelous pie up there at the end of the long table; and
impossible not to eat all the three separate second helpings that were
instantly thrust upon you! The chatter and the good-nature were
enormous. This home was an expression of the democracy of the university
at its best. Fraternity was abroad; kindliness was abroad; and therefore
joy. Whatever else was taught at the university, these were taught, and
they were learnt. If a publicist asked me what American civilization had
achieved, I would answer that among other things it had achieved this
hour in this modest home.
Occasionally a face would darken and a voice grow serious, exposing the
terrible secret apprehensions, based on expert opinion, that the home
side could not win. But the cloud would pass. And occasionally there
would be a reference to the victim whose muddy boots I had seen.
"Dreadful, isn't it?" and a twinge of compassion for the victim or for
his mother! But the cloud would immediately pass.
And then we all had to leave, for none must be late on this solemn and
gay occasion. And now the roads were so many converging torrents of
automobiles and carriages, and excitement had developed into fever. Life
was at its highest, and the world held but one problem ... Sign that
reaction was approaching!
A proud spectacle for the agitated vision, when the vast business of
filling the stands had been accomplished, and the eye ranged over acres
of black hats and variegated hats, hats flowered and feathered, and
plain male caps--a carpet intricately patterned with the rival colors!
At a signal the mimic battle began. And in a moment occurred the first
casualty--most grave of a series of casualties. A pale hero, with a
useless limb, was led off the field amid loud cheers. Then it was that I
became aware of some dozens of supplementary heroes shivering beneath
brilliant blankets under the lee of the stands. In this species of
football every casualty was foreseen, and the rules allowed it to be
repaired. Not two teams, but two regiments, were, in fact, fighting. And
my European ideal of sport was offended.
Was it possible that a team could be permitted to replace a wounded man
by another, and so on ad infinitum? Was it possible that a team need not
abide by its misfortunes? Well, it was! I did not like this. It seemed
to me that the organizers, forgetting that this was a mimic battle, had
made it into a real battle, and that there was an imperfect appreciation
of what strictly amateur sport is. The desire to win, laudable and
essential in itself, may by excessive indulgence become a morbid
obsession. Surely, I thought, and still think, the means ought to suit
the end! An enthusiast for American organization, I was nevertheless
forced to conclude that here organization is being carried too far,
outraging the sense of proportion and of general fitness. For me, such
organization disclosed even a misapprehension as to the principal aim
and purpose of a university. If ever the fate of the Republic should
depend on the result of football matches, then such organization would
be justifiable, and courses of intellectual study might properly be
suppressed. Until that dread hour I would be inclined to dwell heavily
on the admitted fact that a football match is not Waterloo, but simply a
transient game in which two sets of youngsters bump up against one
another in opposing endeavors to put a bouncing toy on two different
spots of the earth's surface. The ultimate location of the inflated
bauble will not affect the national destiny, and such moral value as the
game has will not be increased but diminished by any enlargement of
organization. After all, if the brains of the world gave themselves
exclusively to football matches, the efficiency of football matches
would be immensely improved--but what then?... I seemed to behold on
this field the American passion for "getting results"--which I admire
very much; but it occurred to me that that passion, with its eyes fixed
hungrily on the result it wants, may sometimes fail to see that it is
getting a number of other results which it emphatically doesn't want.
[Illustration: THE VICTORS LEAVING THE FIELD]
Another example of excessive organization presented itself to me in the
almost military arrangements for shrieking the official yells. I was
sorry for the young men whose duty it was, by the aid of megaphones and
of grotesque and undignified contortions, to encourage and even force
the spectators to emit in unison the complex noises which constitute the
yell. I have no doubt that my pity was misdirected, for these young men
were obviously content with themselves; still, I felt sorry for them.
Assuming for an instant that the official yell is not monstrously absurd
and surpassingly ugly, admitting that it is a beautiful series of
sounds, enheartening, noble, an utterance worthy of a great and ancient
university at a crisis, even then one is bound to remember that its
essential quality should be its spontaneity. Enthusiasm cannot be
created at the word of command, nor can heroes be inspired by cheers
artificially produced under megaphonic intimidation. Indeed, no moral
phenomenon could be less hopeful to heroes than a perfunctory response
to a military order for enthusiasm. Perfunctory responses were frequent.
Partly, no doubt, because the imperious young men with megaphones would
not leave us alone. Just when we were nicely absorbed in the caprices of
the ball they would call us off and compel us to execute their
preposterous chorus; and we--the spectators--did not always like it.
And the difficulty of following the game was already acute enough!
Whenever the play quickened in interest we stood up. In fact, we were
standing up and sitting down throughout the afternoon. And as we all
stood up and we all sat down together, nobody gained any advantage from
these muscular exercises. We saw no better, and we saw no worse. Toward
the end we stood on the seats, with the same result. We behaved in
exactly the child-like manner of an Italian audience at a fashionable
concert. And to crown all, an aviator had the ineffably bad taste and
the culpable foolhardiness to circle round and round within a few dozen
yards of our heads.
In spite of all this, the sum of one's sensations amounted to lively
pleasure. The pleasure would have been livelier if university football
were a better game than in candid truth it is. At this juncture I seem
to hear a million voices of students and ex-students roaring out at me
with menaces that the game is perfect and the greatest of all games. A
national game always was and is perfect. This particular game was
perfect years ago. Nevertheless, I learned that it had recently been
improved, in deference to criticisms. Therefore, it is now pluperfect. I
was told on the field--and sharply--that experience of it was needed for
the proper appreciation of its finesse. Admitted! But just as devotees
of a favorite author will put sublime significances into his least
phrase, so will devotees of a game put marvels of finesse into its
clumsiest features. The process is psychological. I was new to this
particular game, but I had been following various footballs with my feet
or with my eyes for some thirty years, and I was not to be bullied out
of my opinion that the American university game, though goodish, lacked
certain virtues. Its characteristics tend ever to a too close formation,
and inevitably favor tedium and monotony. In some aspects an unemotional
critic might occasionally be tempted to call it naïve and barbaric. But
I was not unemotional. I recognize, and in my own person I proved, that
as a vehicle for emotion the American university game will serve. What
else is such a game for? In the match I witnessed there were some really
great moments, and one or two masterly exhibitions of skill and force.
And as "my" side won, against all odds, I departed in a state of
felicity.
* * * * *