FOR some years past a rising tide of lecturers and literary men from
England has washed upon the shores of our North American continent. The
purpose of each one of them is to make a new discovery of America. They
come over to us travelling in great simplicity, and they return in
the ducal suite of the Aquitania. They carry away with them their
impressions of America, and when they reach England they sell them. This
export of impressions has now been going on so long that the balance
of trade in impressions is all disturbed. There is no doubt that the
Americans and Canadians have been too generous in this matter of giving
away impressions. We emit them with the careless ease of a glow worm,
and like the glow-worm ask for nothing in return.
But this irregular and one-sided traffic has now assumed such great
proportions that we are compelled to ask whether it is right to allow
these people to carry away from us impressions of the very highest
commercial value without giving us any pecuniary compensation whatever.
British lecturers have been known to land in New York, pass the customs,
drive uptown in a closed taxi, and then forward to England from the
closed taxi itself ten dollars' worth of impressions of American
national character. I have myself seen an English literary man,--the
biggest, I believe: he had at least the appearance of it; sit in the
corridor of a fashionable New York hotel and look gloomily into his hat,
and then from his very hat produce an estimate of the genius of Amer ica
at twenty cents a word. The nice question as to whose twenty cents that
was never seems to have occurred to him.
I am not writing in the faintest spirit of jealousy. I quite admit the
extraordinary ability that is involved in this peculiar susceptibility
to impressions. I have estimated that some of these English visitors
have been able to receive impressions at the rate of four to the second;
in fact, they seem to get them every time they see twenty cents. But
without jealousy or complaint, I do feel that somehow these impressions
are inadequate and fail to depict us as we really are.
Let me illustrate what I mean. Here are some of the impressions of New
York, gathered from visitors' discoveries of America, and reproduced not
perhaps word for word but as closely as I can remember them. "New York",
writes one, "nestling at the foot of the Hudson, gave me an impression
of cosiness, of tiny graciousness: in short, of weeness." But compare
this--"New York," according to another discoverer of America, "gave me
an impression of size, of vastness; there seemed to be a big ness about
it not found in smaller places." A third visitor writes, "New York
struck me as hard, cruel, almost inhuman." This, I think, was because
his taxi driver had charged him three dollars. "The first thing that
struck me in New York," writes another, "was the Statue of Liberty."
But, after all, that was only natural: it was the first thing that could
reach him.
Nor is it only the impressions of the metropolis that seem to fall short
of reality. Let me quote a few others taken at random here and there
over the continent.
"I took from Pittsburg," says an English visitor, "an impression of
something that I could hardly define--an atmosphere rather than an
idea."
All very well, But, after all, had he the right to take it? Granted that
Pittsburg has an atmosphere rather than an idea, the attempt to carry
away this atmosphere surely borders on rapacity.
"New Orleans," writes another visitor, "opened her arms to me and
bestowed upon me the soft and languorous kiss of the Caribbean." This
statement may or may not be true; but in any case it hardly seems the
fair thing to mention it.
"Chicago," according to another book of discovery, "struck me as a large
city. Situated as it is and where it is, it seems destined to be a place
of importance."
Or here, again, is a form of "impression" that recurs again and
again-"At Cleveland I felt a distinct note of optimism in the air."
This same note of optimism is found also at Toledo, at Toronto--in
short, I believe it indicates nothing more than that some one gave the
visitor a cigar. Indeed it generally occurs during the familiar scene
in which the visitor describes his cordial reception in an unsuspecting
American town: thus:
"I was met at the station (called in America the depot) by a member
of the Municipal Council driving his own motor car. After giving me an
excellent cigar, he proceeded to drive me about the town, to various
points of interest, including the municipal abattoir, where he gave me
another excellent cigar, the Carnegie public library, the First National
Bank (the courteous manager of which gave me an excellent cigar) and
the Second Congregational Church where I had the pleasure of meeting the
pastor. The pastor, who appeared a man of breadth and culture, gave me
another cigar. In the evening a dinner, admirably cooked and excellently
served, was tendered to me at a leading hotel." And of course he took
it. After which his statement that he carried away from the town a
feeling of optimism explains itself: he had four cigars, the dinner, and
half a page of impressions at twenty cents a word.
Nor is it only by the theft of impressions that we suffer at the hands
of these English discoverers of America. It is a part of the system also
that we have to submit to being lectured to by our talented visitors. It
is now quite understood that as soon as an English literary man finishes
a book he is rushed across to America to tell the people of the United
States and Canada all about it, and how he came to write it. At home, in
his own country, they don't care how he came to write it. He's written
it and that's enough. But in America it is different. One month after
the distinguished author's book on The Boyhood of Botticelli has
appeared in London, he is seen to land in New York very quietly out of
one of the back portholes of the Olympic. That same afternoon you will
find him in an armchair in one of the big hotels giving off impressions
of America to a group of reporters. After which notices appear in
all the papers to the effect that he will lecture in Carnegie Hall on
"Botticelli the Boy". The audience is assured beforehand. It consists of
all the people who feel that they have to go because they know all about
Botticelli and all the people who feel that they have to go because they
don't know anything about Botticelli. By this means the lecturer is
able to rake the whole country from Montreal to San Francisco
with "Botticelli the Boy". Then he turns round, labels his lecture
"Botticelli the Man", and rakes it all back again. All the way across
the continent and back he emits impressions, estimates of national
character, and surveys of American genius. He sails from New York in a
blaze of publicity, with his cordon of reporters round him, and a month
later publishes his book "America as I Saw It". It is widely read--in
America.
In the course of time a very considerable public feeling was aroused
in the United States and Canada over this state of affairs. The lack of
reciprocity in it seemed unfair. It was felt (or at least I felt)
that the time had come when some one ought to go over and take some
impressions off England. The choice of such a person (my choice) fell
upon myself. By an arrangement with the Geographical Society of America,
acting in conjunction with the Royal Geographical Society of England (to
both of whom I communicated my proposal), I went at my own expense.
It is scarcely feasible to give here full details in regard to my outfit
and equipment, though I hope to do so in a later and more extended
account of my expedition. Suffice it to say that my outfit, which was
modelled on the equipment of English lecturers in America, included a
complete suit of clothes, a dress shirt for lecturing in, a fountain
pen and a silk hat. The dress shirt, I may say for the benefit of other
travellers, proved invaluable. The silk hat, however, is no longer used
in England except perhaps for scrambling eggs in.
I pass over the details of my pleasant voyage from New York to
Liverpool. During the last fifty years so many travellers have made
the voyage across the Atlantic that it is now impossible to obtain any
impressions from the ocean of the slightest commercial value. My readers
will recall the fact that Washington Irving, as far back as a century
ago, chronicled the pleasure that one felt during an Atlantic voyage
in idle day dreams while lying prone upon the bowsprit and watching the
dolphins leaping in the crystalline foam. Since his time so many gifted
writers have attempted to do the same thing that on the large Atlantic
liners the bowsprit has been removed, or at any rate a notice put up:
"Authors are requested not to lie prostrate on the bowsprit." But
even without this advantage, three or four generations of writers have
chronicled with great minuteness their sensations during the transit.
I need only say that my sensations were just as good as theirs. I will
content myself with chronicling the fact that during the voyage we
passed two dolphins, one whale and one iceberg (none of them moving very
fast at the time), and that on the fourth day out the sea was so
rough that the Captain said that in forty years he had never seen such
weather. One of the steerage passengers, we were told, was actually
washed overboard: I think it was over board that he was washed, but it
may have been on board the ship itself.
I pass over also the incidents of my landing in Liverpool, except
perhaps to comment upon the extraordinary behaviour of the English
customs officials. Without wishing in any way to disturb international
relations, one cannot help noticing the rough and inquisitorial methods
of the English customs men as compared with the gentle and affectionate
ways of the American officials at New York. The two trunks that I
brought with me were dragged brutally into an open shed, the strap
of one of them was rudely unbuckled, while the lid of the other was
actually lifted at least four inches. The trunks were then roughly
scrawled with chalk, the lids slammed to, and that was all. Not one
of the officials seemed to care to look at my things or to have the
politeness to pretend to want to. I had arranged my dress suit and my
pyjamas so as to make as effective a display as possible: a New York
customs officer would have been delighted with it. Here they simply
passed it over. "Do open this trunk," I asked one of the officials, "and
see my pyjamas." "I don't think it is necessary, sir," the man answered.
There was a coldness about it that cut me to the quick.
But bad as is the conduct of the English customs men, the immigration
officials are even worse. I could not help being struck by the dreadful
carelessness with which people are admitted into England. There are, it
is true, a group of officials said to be in charge of immigration, but
they know nothing of the discriminating care exercised on the other side
of the Atlantic.
"Do you want to know," I asked one of them, "whether I am a polygamist?"
"No, sir," he said very quietly.
"Would you like me to tell you whether I am fundamentally opposed to any
and every system of government?"
The man seemed mystified. "No, sir," he said. "I don't know that I
would."
"Don't you care?" I asked.
"Well, not particularly, sir," he answered.