_Jonathan and his Critics.--An eminent American gives me
Salutary Advice.--Travelling Impressions.--Why Jonathan does
not love John Bull._
A few days before leaving America, I had a pleasant talk with Mr.
Whitelaw Reid, the chief editor of the _New York Tribune_.
"Do not fall into the great error of fancying that you have seen America
in six months," he said to me.
"But I do not fancy anything of the kind," I replied; "I have no such
pretension. When a man of average intelligence returns home after having
made a voyage to a foreign land, he cannot help having formed a certain
number of impressions, and he has a right to communicate them to his
friends. They are but impressions, notes taken by the wayside; and, if
there is an error committed by anyone, it is by the critic or the
reader, when either of these looks for a perfect picture of the manners
and institutions of the people the author has visited, instead of simple
_impressions de voyage_. Certainly, if there is a country in the world
that it would be impossible to judge in six months, that country is
America; and the author who, in such a little space of time, allowed
himself to fall into the error of sitting in judgment upon her would
write himself down an ass. In six months you cannot know America, you
cannot even see the country; you can merely get a glimpse of it: but, by
the end of a week, you may have been struck with various things, and
have taken note of them. A serious study and an impression are two
different things, and an error is committed by the person who takes one
for the other. For instance, if, in criticising my little volume, you
exclaim, 'The author has no deep knowledge of his subject,' it is you
who commit an error, and not I. I do not pretend to a deep knowledge of
my subject. How would that be possible in so short a time? How should
you imagine it to be possible? To form a really exact idea of America,
one would need to live twenty years in the country, nay, to be an
American; and I may add that, in my opinion, the best books that exist
upon the different countries of the world have been written by natives
of those countries. Never has an author written of the English like
Thackeray; never have the Scotch been painted with such fidelity as by
Ramsay; and to describe Tartarin, it needed not only a Frenchman, but a
Provencal, almost a Tarasconnais. I say all this to you, Mr. Reid, to
warn you that, if on my return to Europe I should publish a little
volume on America, it will be a book of impressions; and if you should
persist in seeing in it anything but impressions, it is you who will be
to blame. But in this matter I trust to the intelligence of those
Americans who do me the honour of reading me. I shall be in good
hands."
Upon this the editor of the _Tribune_ responded, as he shook my hand--
"You are right."
* * * * *
It must be allowed that Jonathan has good reason to mistrust his
critics. Most books on America have been written by Englishmen. Now, the
English are, of all people, those who can the least easily get rid of
their prejudices in speaking of America. They are obliged to admit that
the Americans have made their way pretty well since they have been their
own masters; but John Bull has always a rankling remembrance, when he
looks at America, of the day that the Americans sent him about his
business, and his look seems to say to Jonathan: "Yes, yes; you have not
done at all badly--for you; but just think what the country would have
been by this time if it had remained in my hands."
He looks at everything he sees with a patronising air; with the arrogant
calm that makes him, amiable as he is at home, so unbearable when he
travels abroad. He expresses cavalierly, criticises freely. He goes over
with the firm intention of admiring nothing American. If he finds
nothing else to disparage, he will complain of the want of ruins and old
cathedrals. He occasionally presents himself at Jonathan's
dinner-parties in a tweed suit, fearing to do him too much honour by
putting on evening dress. His little talent of making himself
disagreeable abroad comes out more strongly in America; and Jonathan,
one of whose little weaknesses is love of approbation, I honestly
believe, has a cordial antipathy to the magnificent Briton.
The Englishman, on his side, has no antipathy whatever to the Americans.
For that matter, the Englishman has no antipathy for anyone. He
despises, but he does not hate; a fact which is irritating to the last
degree to the objects of his attention. When a man feels that he has
some worth, he likes to be loved or hated: to be treated with
indifference is galling. John Bull looks on the American as a _parvenu_,
and smiles with incredulity when you say that American society is not
only brilliant and witty, but quite as polished as the best European
society.
It is this haughty disdain which exasperates Americans.
Jonathan has forgotten that the English were once his oppressors; he
forgives them for the war of 1812; without forgetting it, he forgives
them for having sided with the slave-owners during the Civil War, but he
cannot forgive an Englishman for coming to his dinner-table in a tweed
suit.