IMMEDIATELY upon my arrival in London I was interviewed by the Press. I
was interviewed in all twenty times. I am not saying this in any
spirit of elation or boastfulness. I am simply stating it as a
fact--interviewed twenty times, sixteen times by men and twice by women.
But as I feel that the results of these interviews were not all that I
could have wished, I think it well to make some public explanation of
what happened.
The truth is that we do this thing so differently over in America that I
was for the time being completely thrown off my bearings. The questions
that I had every right to expect after many years of American and
Canadian interviews failed to appear.
I pass over the fact that being interviewed for five hours is a
fatiguing process. I lay no claim to exemption for that. But to that no
doubt was due the singular discrepancies as to my physical appearance
which I detected in the London papers.
The young man who interviewed me immediately after breakfast described
me as "a brisk, energetic man, still on the right side of forty, with
energy in every movement."
The lady who wrote me up at 11.30 reported that my hair was turning
grey, and that there was "a peculiar languor" in my manner.
And at the end the boy who took me over at a quarter to two said, "The
old gentleman sank wearily upon a chair in the hotel lounge. His hair is
almost white."
The trouble is that I had not understood that London reporters are
supposed to look at a man's personal appearance. In America we never
bother with that. We simply describe him as a "dynamo." For some reason
or other it always pleases everybody to be called a "dynamo," and the
readers, at least with us, like to read about people who are "dynamos,"
and hardly care for anything else.
In the case of very old men we sometimes call them "battle-horses" or
"extinct volcanoes," but beyond these three classes we hardly venture
on description. So I was misled. I had expected that the reporter would
say: "As soon as Mr. Leacock came across the floor we felt we were in
the presence of a 'dynamo' (or an 'extinct battle-horse' as the case may
be)." Otherwise I would have kept up those energetic movements all the
morning. But they fatigue me, and I did not think them necessary. But I
let that pass.
The more serious trouble was the questions put to me by the reporters.
Over in our chief centres of population we use another set altogether.
I am thinking here especially of the kind of interview that I have
given out in Youngstown, Ohio, and Richmond, Indiana, and Peterborough,
Ontario. In all these places--for example, in Youngstown, Ohio the
reporter asks as his first question, "What is your impression of
Youngstown?"
In London they don't. They seem indifferent to the fate of their city.
Perhaps it is only English pride. For all I know they may have been
burning to know this, just as the Youngstown, Ohio, people are, and
were too proud to ask. In any case I will insert here the answer I had
written out in my pocket-book (one copy for each paper--the way we do it
in Youngstown), and which read:
"London strikes me as emphatically a city with a future. Standing as
she does in the heart of a rich agricultural district with railroad
connection in all directions, and resting, as she must, on a bed of coal
and oil, I prophesy that she will one day be a great city."
The advantage of this is that it enables the reporter to get just the
right kind of heading: PROPHESIES BRIGHT FUTURE FOR LONDON. Had
that been used my name would have stood higher there than it does
to-day--unless the London people are very different from the people in
Youngstown, which I doubt. As it is they don't know whether their future
is bright or is as dark as mud. But it's not my fault. The reporters
never asked me.
If the first question had been handled properly it would have led up
by an easy and pleasant transition to question two, which always runs:
"Have you seen our factories?" To which the answer is:
"I have. I was taken out early this morning by a group of your citizens
(whom I cannot thank enough) in a Ford car to look at your pail and
bucket works. At eleven-thirty I was taken out by a second group in what
was apparently the same car to see your soap works. I understand that
you are the second nail-making centre east of the Alleghenies, and I
am amazed and appalled. This afternoon I am to be taken out to see your
wonderful system of disposing of sewerage, a thing which has fascinated
me from childhood."
Now I am not offering any criticism of the London system of
interviewing, but one sees at once how easy and friendly for all
concerned this Youngstown method is; how much better it works than the
London method of asking questions about literature and art and difficult
things of that sort. I am sure that there must be soap works and
perhaps a pail factory somewhere in London. But during my entire time
of residence there no one ever offered to take me to them. As for the
sewerage--oh, well, I suppose we are more hospitable in America. Let it
go at that.