_Notes on the great American Cities.--New York.--Boston.--A
Visit to Oliver Wendell Holmes.--Washington.--Mount
Vernon.--Philadelphia.--Chicago.--Rivalry between these
Cities.--Jokes they indulge in at each other's Expense._
The large cities do not constitute the real America. To gain a correct
idea of the country, one must go and see those hundreds, nay thousands,
of flourishing little towns which spring up day by day on that immense
continent.
I went to America too late, and left it too early, to be able to enjoy
and admire its natural beauties. The trees were shorn of their
magnificent foliage, the Indian summer was just over, and forest and
prairie were alike bare and brown. No matter: I dread descriptions of
scenery, and I could not have done justice to the subject. Men interest
me more than rivers, rocks, and trees. I cannot describe Nature, and it
is human nature that attracts me most.
Great cities surely have their interest, especially those of the United
States, which, with the exception of New York, have each their own
particular characteristics.
* * * * *
The city of New York is built upon an island about nine miles long, half
a mile broad at the south, and about two and a half broad at the north.
This island has the form of a tongue.
The city looks like a slice of honeycomb on the map: twelve great
arteries run from north to south, crossed at right angles by over a
hundred streets forming an immense number of "blocks," as they are
called.
Except in the city proper, where they have particular names, the streets
are all numbered: 1st Street, 2nd Street, 125th Street, and so on. The
great arteries take the name of Avenues, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, up to 11th,
besides Broadway which crosses the city diagonally.
It will readily be seen that nothing is easier than to find a house
situated in such and such a street, at such and such a number. So many
streets, so many blocks, and you are at your destination without
trouble. The thing which puzzled my wits was to remember the addresses
of my acquaintances: No. 103, East 15th Street; 144, West 26th Street;
134, West 33rd Street; 177, East 48th Street; 154, West 72nd Street;
400, Fifth Avenue. You can readily imagine the perplexity of the
unfortunate foreigner who finds himself, at the end of a few days,
confronted with this difficulty and with a score of calls to pay.
As I looked at the New Yorkers walking along the streets with that
preoccupied look of theirs, I said to myself: "Those good people must be
trying to keep their address in mind, and are repeating it over to
themselves all the time."
It is of no use looking in New York for monuments in the sense which we
attach to the word in Europe. There are massive buildings, and a few
handsome churches, but nothing which arrests your gaze. The houses in
the best parts of the town are built of brown stone, in the English
style. In the populous quarters many are of red brick, with green
shutters on the outside.
The streets are horribly ill paved. From my windows, which looked on
Madison Square, the carriages appeared to rise and fall as if on a
troubled sea. Drunkards have had to drop their habits: they could not
reach home from the beer saloons.
Three fine squares alone break the monotony of all these parallelograms
of streets: Washington Square, Union Square, and Madison Square.
On the north, Central Park, with its fine avenues, its hillocks, its
valleys, its lakes, and its magnificent terrace over the Hudson, is a
very lovely pleasure ground. It is the only place where one can see
trees, turf, and flowers. New York does not possess a single garden,
public or private, if one excepts the three squares I named just now.
That which strikes the visitor to New York is not the city itself, but
the feverish activity that reigns there.
Overhead is a network of telegraph and telephone wires; on the ground a
network of rails. It is estimated that there are more than 12,000 miles
of telegraph wires suspended over the heads of the passers by: about
enough to go half round the world.
The whistles of the boats that ply between New York and Brooklyn on the
East River, and between New York and Jersey City on the Hudson, keep up,
day and night until one in the morning, a noise which is like the roar
of wild beasts. It is the cry of Matter under the yoke of Man. It is
like living in a menagerie.
In almost every street tramcars pass every few minutes. It is an
incessant procession. In Broadway alone there are more than three
hundred. The cars, as they are always called in America, are magical,
like everything American. Built to carry twenty-four persons inside
(there are no seats on the top), they are made to hold sixty and more.
In fact, no matter how full they are, there is always room for one more.
The conductor never refuses to let you get on board. You hang on to the
rail beside the driver or conductor, if it is not possible to squeeze
yourself inside and hold on to the leather straps provided for the
purpose; you gasp for breath, it is all you can do to get at your pocket
to extract the five cents which you owe the car company; but the
conductor cries in his imperturbable nasal drawl: "Move forward, make
room." If you do not like it, you have the alternative of walking. These
cars are drawn by two horses. At night, when the theatres are emptying
and the loads are heaviest, is just the time when the stoppages are most
frequent--someone gets on or alights at every block; the strain on the
horses must be tremendous.
Cabs are few. This is not wonderful, seeing that the lowest fare is a
dollar or a dollar and half.
In Third Avenue and Sixth Avenue, you find the overhead railway called
"the Elevated." It is supported on iron pillars, and the trains run
along on a level with the upper windows of the houses. This company
carries every day the fabulous number of 500,000 passengers.
All the existing means of transit are acknowledged to be insufficient,
and an underground railway is talked of. There will soon be travellers
under ground, on the ground, and in the air. Poor Hercules, where are
you with your _ne plus ultra_? You had reckoned without your Yankee.
The streets, ill-paved and dirty, are dangerous in winter. Coachmen do
not check their horses for the foot passengers, but neither do they try
to run over them. They strike the middle course between the London
coachman, who avoids them, and the Parisian one, who aims at them.
* * * * *
At the corner of each block there is a letter-box. If you have any
newspapers or extra large letters to post, you lay them on the box and
trust to the honesty of the passers-by. If rain comes on, so much the
worse. If you want stamps, you go to the chemist and buy a lotion or
potion, taking occasion at the same time to buy your stamps.
Post-offices are few and far between.
The populous quarters, such as the Chinese quarter, the Italian quarter,
the Jewish quarter, with their tenement-houses--those barracks of the
poor, which I visited one day in company with a sanitary
engineer--remind one of Dante's descriptions: it is a descent, or rather
an ascent, into hell. I spare the reader the impressions which that day
left upon me. Horrible! A populace composed of the offscourings of all
nations--the dirtiest, roughest, one can imagine.
Hard by this frightful squalor, Fifth Avenue, with its palaces full of
the riches of the earth. It is the eternal history of large cities.
As in London, hundreds of churches and taverns (called beer saloons): it
is the same ignoble Anglo-Saxon mixture of bible and beer, of the
spiritual and the spirituous.
New York is probably the most cosmopolitan city in the world. To give an
idea of it, I may tell you that there are newspapers published there in
English, French, German, Russian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish, Dutch,
Hungarian, Chinese, and Hebrew.
I received one day a circular of a meeting of the "Knights of Labour."
It was printed in six different languages.
The streets are wide, bright, and animated; the shops handsome. In
Broadway and Union Square the jewellers and confectioners flourish,
pretty flower-shops abound: it is Paris, rather than London, without,
however, being one or the other.
As I said before, there are no grand buildings to to invite one's gaze
to rest; to rejoice the eyes, one must penetrate into the houses of the
rich.
There is a small collection of pictures in the Museum in the Central
Park; but most of the art treasures of America are to be found in
private collections.
* * * * *
Boston (pronounced _Boast'on_) is quite an English city, handsomely and
solidly built. It has a public garden in the centre, the effect of which
at night is enchanting.
It is the most scholarly city of the United States--one of the greatest
centres of erudition in the world.
Boston Society is less showy than that of New York, the women have,
perhaps, less _chic_, but they have more colour in their faces and more
repose in their manner.
Nothing is more diverting than to hear the dwellers in each great
American town criticise the dwellers in the others. All these societies,
each almost in its infancy as yet, are jealous one of another. At
Boston, for instance, you will be told that the Chicago people are all
pig-stickers and pork-packers. In Chicago, you will hear that Boston is
composed of nothing but prigs and _precieuses ridicules_.
Allow for a large amount of exaggeration, and there remains a certain
foundation of truth.
The English spoken in Boston is purer than any to be heard elsewhere in
the North. The voices are less harsh and nasal, the language ceases to
be _vurry, vurry Amurracan_. If you think yourself in England, as you
walk along the streets, the illusion becomes complete when you hear the
well-bred people speak.
All the anecdotes told in America on the subject of Boston are satires
upon the presumptuous character of the Bostonian, who considers Boston
the centre of the universe.
Here is one of the many hundreds I heard:
A Boston man has lost his wife. As soon as telephonic communication is
established between that city and Paradise, he rings and cries:
"Hello!"
"Hello!" from the other end.
"Is that you, Artemisia?"
"Yes, dear."
"Well, my love, and how do you like it up there?"
"Oh, it is very nice of course----but it isn't Boston."
Another, equally quiet, is this:
Two ladies walking along the road, in the environs of Boston, came to a
mile-stone bearing the inscription:
I M
FROM
BOSTON.
"How simple! how touching!" exclaimed one of the ladies, taking it for a
grave-stone; "nothing but these words: 'I'm from Boston.'"
* * * * *
Boston, and the whole State of Massachussets, of which it is the chief
city, are the homes of most of the literary celebrities of America.
Longfellow lived there; Whittier, Lowell, and Holmes live there still;
Mr. Howells and Henry James are Boston men, I believe.
Before leaving Boston, I had the pleasure of seeing Oliver Wendell
Holmes at home.
The Doctor received me in his study, a fine room well lined with books,
and having large windows overlooking the river Charles and facing his
Harvard University. Lit by the setting sun, the picture from the windows
was alone worth going to see. The Doctor's reception was most cordial.
He is a small man, looking about seventy-five; but the expression of his
face is young, and will always be so, I imagine. His smile is
clever-looking, sweet, and full of contagious gaiety. Thick bushy grey
eyebrows, which stand out, and a protruding under-lip, make his profile
odd looking. The eyes are twinkling with humour--and good humour.
Philosopher, poet, and humorist are written plainly on the face.
The Doctor was soon chatting about his last trip to Europe, and how,
though it was August, he went over to Paris to revisit the haunts of his
youth, where he had studied medicine (he was lecturer on anatomy in
Boston Hospital up to four years ago); how he found it a desert void of
all the "old familiar faces;" but his daughter shopped to her
satisfaction.
Then turning to modern French literature:
"Who will ever say again that France has no humorists?" remarked the
Doctor. "I have been delighting in Daudet's _Tartarin_."
At the very thought of the Tarasconnais' droll adventures, he laughed.
The Autocrat's laugh is, as I said, infectious. It is quick, merry,
hearty; he shakes over it in a way not common with any but stout people.
Skipping past other light literature, he stopped to say a word of
admiration for Zola's wonderful descriptions of Paris--in fact, for the
artist that is in him--but regretted, as everyone does, that such a
great writer should prostitute his genius.
Hung upon the wall in a corner was a caricature of "the Autocrat of the
Breakfast Table," one of the _Vanity Fair_ series. Upon my espying it,
the dear old Doctor said, with his merry laugh: "There, you see, I am
not a vain man, or I should hide that away."
Vain, no, Oliver Wendell Holmes is the personification of simplicity and
good humour; a sunny-hearted man, with a lively enjoyment still of the
pleasures of society.
A lady friend told me that, meeting him one day after he had had an
ovation somewhere, she asked him:
"Well, Doctor, and are you not getting a little tired of all this
cheering and applause?"
"Not a bit," replied he; "they never greet me loud enough, or clap long
enough, to please me."
* * * * *
Washington is the sole American city which has monuments that can strike
the European with admiration for their beauty. The Capitol, the
Government buildings, the museums, built in the midst of handsome
gardens, all arrest the eye of the visitor.
The Capitol, 751 feet long, built of white marble, with a superb dome
and majestic flights of steps, is one of the grandest, most
imposing-looking, edifices in the world. The souvenirs attached to it,
and the treasures it contains, render it dear to the Americans: it is a
monument which recalls to their minds the glories of the past, and keeps
alight the flame of patriotism.
A general, who served through the great Civil War, told me he had seen
strong men, soldiers brought up in remote States, sit down and weep with
emotion at seeing the Capitol for the first time.
At one end of the building there is the House of Representatives; in the
other wing, the Senate. As for the national treasures contained in the
Capitol, I refer the reader to guide-books for them.
The Americans, determined for once to be beyond suspicion in employing
an adjective in the superlative degree, followed by the traditional "in
the world," have erected, to the memory of General Washington, an
obelisk 555 feet high. It is therefore the highest in the world, without
any inverted commas.
The town is prettily laid out, somewhat in the form of a spider's web.
The streets are wide, the houses coquettish-looking, the gardens,
especially the park of the Soldier's Home, extremely beautiful.
Washington is wholly given over to politics. When Congress is not
sitting, it is dead; when Congress is sitting, it is delirious.
Little or no commerce is done.
No visitor leaves Washington without making a pilgrimage to Mount
Vernon, where Washington is buried, and where everything speaks of him
who was "first in war, first in peace, first in the hearts of his
countrymen."
A journey of an hour and a half up the beautiful Potomac, every turn of
which discloses a fresh panorama, brings you to the woods of Mount
Vernon.
The house, a wooden structure with a piazza along the front, stands on a
considerable elevation, and commands a fine view of winding river and
wooded banks. One is seized with admiration at the sight of all this
beauty, as one stands upon the threshold of the old home of America's
liberator.
It was here, in this peaceful country-house, that lived, like the most
modest of America's sons, the man who was the greatest hero of modern
times. A feeling of reverent admiration fills you as you enter the
quaint little hall.
Each room is kept up at the expense of one of the thirty-three States of
the Union. Everything has been arranged, as nearly as possible, to
represent the state of the house at the time Washington lived in it.
In the hall hangs the key of the Bastille presented in 1789 by Lafayette
to the "Great friend of Liberty."
There is an interesting little souvenir attaching to the history of the
banquet hall. This room was built in 1784, and finished at the time of
Lafayette's third visit to America. He and several French noblemen were
visiting Mount Vernon, and a ball was to be given in their honour. A
handsome wall-paper, imported from England, had arrived; but the
paper-hangers had not arrived, greatly to Mrs. Washington's annoyance.
Seeing his hostess grow distressed over the delay of the workmen,
Lafayette, with characteristic enthusiasm, said to her:
"Do not despair, Madame; we are three or four able-bodied men, who will
soon make short work of it."
And, without more ado, the marquis and his friends set about papering
the walls, and were soon joined by Washington himself, who proved a
vigorous and efficient help.
The tomb of the General is of the simplest description; but it evokes
far more touching memories than the magnificent sarcophagus of Napoleon
in the Church of the _Invalides_. I never felt more sincerely impressed
and touched than at Mount Vernon.
* * * * *
Philadelphia, formerly the capital of the United States, is a city of
eight or nine hundred thousand inhabitants, and is built like New York,
in parallelograms. Its Town Hall is, next to the Capitol at Washington,
the finest edifice in America. I do not know anything to compare to its
splendid park, unless it be the Bois de Boulogne in Paris. The alleys of
this park, if put together, would cover about sixty miles in length--so
said a Philadelphian who added: "therefore it is the biggest park in the
world." Seen after New York or the busy western cities, Philadelphia
strikes one as monotonous. It is full of all kinds of manufactories,
however, this Quaker city of quiet streets and sober people.
* * * * *
On the shores of Lake Michigan there stood a rather insignificant town,
built of wood, and peopled by a few thousand inhabitants. This town was
called Chicago.
On the evening of the 8th of October, 1871, a cow, that an old woman was
milking in a barn, kicked over a lamp and set fire to the structure. The
flames spread, and on the morrow of that terrible night the whole city
was level with the ground. The Chicago people of to-day show, as a
curiosity to the visitor, the only house which escaped the flames.
At the present time, this city, like the phoenix of which she is the
living and gigantic emblem, stands, rebuilt in hewn stone, and holding
800,000 inhabitants.
Such is America.
In less than twenty years, Omaha, Kansas, Denver, Minneapolis, will be
so many Chicagos. Cincinnati, St. Louis, and Louisville will rival her
in five.
Chicago is, in my eyes, the very type of the American city--the most
striking example of what Jonathan calls _go-a-headism_.
The streets are twice as wide as the Parisian boulevards, the houses of
business are eight, ten, twelve stories high. Michigan Avenue is seven
miles long: the numbers of the houses run up to three thousand and
something. The city has parks, lovely drives by the Lake Shore; statues,
including a splendid one of Abraham Lincoln; public buildings imposing
in their massiveness, fine theatres and churches; luxurious clubs,
hotels inside which four good sized Parisian ones could dance a
quadrille, etc., etc.
Michigan Avenue and Prairie Avenue are extremely handsome. Picture to
yourself the Avenue of the Bois de Boulogne prolonged for seven miles in
a straight line, and imagine the effect, the beautiful vista, when this
is lit up at night, or when the trees, with which both these grand roads
are planted, are in all their fresh spring beauty.
In these avenues American eccentricity has been allowed free play. The
houses are built in all imaginable styles of architecture: some of them
are Florentine, some English, others Moorish, others a mixture of all
three; others, again, look like Greek temples, whilst here and there you
come across what looks like a little Gothic church, and close alongside
mediaeval castles in miniature, or an imitation of mosques; some have the
look of villas in the Paris suburbs; some have been modelled upon Swiss
chalets, others upon the residence of some pacha on the borders of the
Bosphorus. There are styles for all tastes.
The American may be eccentric, or what you will, but he is never
monotonous.
Enter one of these houses, and you will see handsome furniture, not only
rich, but in good taste.
Riches beget the taste for literature and the arts; perhaps one day it
will beget the taste for simplicity. I was not astonished to find
Chicago society genial, polished, and well read. You find here still
more warmth and much less constraint than in the East, You feel that you
have quitted the realms of New England puritanism. No frigidity here;
people give free play to their sentiments. If I had to name the most
sympathetic of my American audiences, the warmest[4] and promptest to
seize the significance of a look or gesture, I should name the one which
I had the honour of addressing in Chicago.
[4] I have had this opinion corroborated since by all the public
speakers and artists with whom I have spoken on the subject.
* * * * *
At seven in the morning every man is astir and at work, whether he be
millionaire or poor clerk. As I have mentioned elsewhere, only the idle
are outside the pale of respectability in Chicago.
The business done in Chicago is fabulous. The money value of the total
trade last year, I am told, reached the immense sum of 227 millions
sterling. The aggregate bank clearings amounted to about 612 millions
sterling. 2,383,000 cattle are slaughtered, and 6,250,000 barrels of
flour received. Chicago is probably the most flourishing city in
America--therefore in the world, as Jonathan would put it. I give these
figures also to show that divine wrath does not seem to fall upon this
city which opens its places of recreation on Sundays.
Twenty railway lines, besides local ones, have termini at Chicago. The
total mileages of Chicago railroads is 28,817. Stop and catch your
breath!
I do not think it is possible for a European to imagine the activity
which reigns in Chicago without seeing it.
"You will soon be inventing," I said to a resident, "a machine that will
take a live rabbit at one end, and turn out a chimney-pot hat at the
other."
"We have done something very like it already," he replied.
And next morning he took me to see the famous pig-killing and
pork-packing premises of Philip Armour and Co.
Picture to yourself a series of rooms connecting. In the first, 5,000
pigs a day are killed; in the second, they are scraped as they come out
of a cauldron of scalding water; in the third, the heads are cut off;
and so on, and so on. The process is somewhat sickening, and I will not
enter into any more details. At the end of the establishment the poor
pigs are presented to you under the forms of bacon, sausage, galantine,
etc. The various processes take place with all the rapidity of
conjuring.
What will they not invent in Chicago? That which looks like a joke
to-day may be a reality next week; and I shall not be surprised, next
time I go to Chicago, to find that the talking power of women has been
utilized as a motor for sewing machines by connecting the chin with the
wheel.
How leave Chicago without mentioning the adieux that reached me at my
hotel during the hour before I left for Canada?
Ding-rrrring, goes the telephone bell.
"Hello!"
"Hello!"
"Good-bye; good luck!"
"Hello!"
"Pleasant journey!"
"Hello!"
"Good-bye; our compliments to John Bull!"