there are no titles and no theory of caste in the United States, there
are no social distinctions worth the trouble of recognition. Besides
the crudely obvious elevation of wealth and "smartness" already
referred to, there are inner circles of good birth, of culture, and so
on, which are none the less practically recognised because they are
theoretically ignored. Of such are the old Dutch clans of New York,
which still, I am informed, regard families like the Vanderbilts as
upstarts and parvenues. In Chicago there is said to be an inner circle
of forty or fifty families which is recognised as the "best society,"
though by no means composed of the richest citizens. In Boston, though
the Almighty Dollar now plays a much more important rôle than before,
it is still a combination of culture and ancestry that sets the most
highly prized hall-mark on the social items. And indeed the heredity
of such families as the Quincys, the Lowells, the Winthrops, and the
Adamses, which have maintained their superior position for
generations, through sheer force of ability and character, without the
external buttresses of primogeniture and entail, may safely measure
itself against the stained lineage of many European families of high
title. The very absence of titular distinction often causes the lines
to be more clearly drawn; as Mr. Charles Dudley Warner says: "Popular
commingling in pleasure resorts is safe enough in aristocratic
countries, but it will not answer in a republic." There is, however,
no universal theory that holds good from New York to California; and
hence the generalising foreigner is apt to see nothing but practical
as well as theoretical equality.
In spite of anything in the foregoing that may seem incompatible, the
fact remains that the distinguishing feature of American society, as
contrasted with the societies of Europe, is the greater approach to
equality that it has made. It is in this sphere, and not in those of
industry, law, or politics, that the British observer must feel that
the American breathes a distinctly more liberal and democratic air
than he. The processes of endosmose and exosmose go on under much
freer conditions; the individual particle is much more ready to
filtrate up or down to its proper level. Mr. W.D. Howells writes that
"once good society contained only persons of noble or gentle birth;
then persons of genteel or sacred callings were admitted; now it
welcomes to its level everyone of agreeable manners or cultivated
mind;" and this, which may be true of modern society in general, is
infinitely more true in America than elsewhere. It might almost be
asserted that everyone in America ultimately finds his proper social
niche; that while many are excluded from the circles for which they
_think_ themselves adapted, practically none are shut off from their
really harmonious _milieu_. The process of segregation is deprived to
a large extent of the disagreeableness consequent upon a rigid table
of precedence. Nothing surprises an American more in London society
than the uneasy sense of inferiority that many a distinguished man of
letters will show in the presence of a noble lord. No amount of
philosophy enables one to rise entirely superior to the trammels of
early training and hoary association. Even when the great novelist
feels himself as at least on a level with his ducal interlocutor, he
cannot ignore the fact that his fellow-guests do not share his
opinion. Now, without going the length of asserting that there is
absolutely nothing of this kind in the intercourse of the American
author with the American railroad magnate, it may be safely stated
that the general tone of society in America makes such an attitude
rare and unlikely. There social equality has become an instinct, and
the ruling note of good society is of pleasant cameraderie, without
condescension on the one hand or fawning on the other. "The democratic
system deprives people of weapons that everyone does not equally
possess. No one is formidable; no one is on stilts; no one has great
pretensions or any recognised right to be arrogant." (Henry James.)
The spirit of goodwill, of a desire to make others happy (especially
when it does not incommode you to do so), swings through a much larger
arc in American society than in English. One can be surer of one's
self, without either an overweening self-conceit or the assumption of
brassy self-assertion.
The main rock of offence in American society is, perhaps, its tendency
to attach undue importance to materialistic effects. Plain living with
high thinking is not so much of an American formula as one would wish.
In the smart set of New York, and in other places _mutatis mutandis_,
this shows itself in an appallingly vulgar and ostentatious display of
mere purchase power. We are expected to find something grand in the
fact that an entertainment costs so much; there is little recognition
of the truth that a man who spends $100 where $10 would meet all the
demands of good taste is not only a bad economist, but essentially
bourgeois and _torné_ in soul. Even roses are vulgarised, if that be
possible, by production in the almost obtrusively handsome variety
known as the "American Beauty," and by being heaped up like hay-stacks
in the reception rooms. At a recent fashionable marriage in New York
no fewer than 20,000 sprays of lily of the valley are reported to have
been used. A short time ago a wedding party travelled from Chicago to
Burlington (Iowa) on a specially constructed train which cost £100,000
to build; the fortunes of the heads of the few families represented
aggregated £100,000,000. The private drawing-room cars of millionaires
are _too_ handsome; they do not indicate so much a necessity of taste
as a craving to spend. Many of the best hotels are characterised by a
tasteless magnificence which annoys rather than attracts the artistic
sense. At one hotel I stayed at in a fashionable watering-place the
cheapest bedroom cost £1 a night; but I did not find that its costly
tapestry hangings, huge Japanese vases, and elaborately carved
furniture helped me to woo sweet slumber any more successfully than
the simple equipments of an English village inn. Indeed, they rather
suggested insomnia, just as the ominous name of "Macbeth," affixed to
one of the bedrooms in the Shakespeare Hotel at Stratford-on-Avon,
immediately suggested the line "Macbeth doth murder sleep."
This materialistic tendency, however, which its defenders call a
higher standard of comfort, is not confined to the circles of the
millionaires; it crops out more or less at all the different levels.
Americans seem a _little_ more dependent on bodily comforts than
Englishmen, a _little_ more apt to coddle themselves, a _little_ less
hardy. They are more susceptible to variations of temperature, and
hence the prevalent over-heating of their houses, hotels, and
railway-cars. A very slight shower will send an American into his
overshoes.[7] There is more of a self-conscious effort in the
encouragement of manly sports. Americans seldom walk when they can
ride. The girls are apt to be annoyed if a pleasure-party be not
carried out so as to provide in the fullest way for their personal
comfort.
This last sentence suggests a social practice of the United States
which, perhaps, may come under the topic we are at present discussing.
I mean the custom by which girls allow their young men friends to
incur expense in their behalf. I am aware that this custom is on the
wane in the older cities, that the most refined girls in all parts of
the Union dislike it, that it is "bad form" in many circles. In the
bowling-club to which I had the pleasure to belong the ladies paid
their subscriptions "like a man;" when I drove out on sleigh-parties,
the girls insisted on paying their share of the expense. The fact,
however, remains that, speaking generally and taking class for class,
the American girl allows her admirers to spend their money on her much
more freely than the English girl. A man is considered mean if he does
not pay the car-fare of his girl companion; a girl will allow a man
who is merely a "friend" to take her to the theatre, fetching her and
taking her home in a carriage hired at exorbitant rates. The
_Illustrated American_ (Jan. 19, 1895) writes:
The advanced ideas prevalent in this country regarding the
relations of the opposite sexes make it not only proper, but
necessary, that a young man with serious intentions shall take
his sweetheart out, give her presents, send her flowers, go
driving with her, and in numberless little ways incur expense.
This is all very delightful for her, but to him it means ruin.
And at the end he may find that she was only flirting with him.
In fact, whenever a young man and a young woman are associated in any
enterprise, it is quite usual for the young man to pay for both. On
the whole, this custom seems an undesirable one. It is so much a
matter of habit that the American girl usually plays her part in the
matter with absolute innocence and unconsciousness; she feels no more
obligation than an English girl would for the opening of a door. The
young man also takes it as a matter of course, and does not in the
least presume on his services. But still, I think, it has a slight
tendency to rub the bloom off what ought to be the most delicate and
ethereal form of social intercourse. It favours the well-to-do youth
by an additional handicap. It throws another obstacle in the track of
poverty and thrift. It is contrary to the spirit of democratic
equality; the woman who accepts such attentions is tacitly allowing
that she is not on the same footing as man. On reflection it must
grate a little on the finest feelings. There seems to me little doubt
that it will gradually die out in circles to which it would be strange
in Europe.
On the whole, however, even with such drawbacks as the above, the
social relationship of the sexes in the United States is one of the
many points in which the new surpasses the old. The American girl is
thrown into such free and ample relations with the American boy from
her earliest youth up that she is very apt to look upon him simply as
a girl of a stronger growth. Some such word as the German
_Geschwister_ is needed to embrace the "young creatures" who, in
petticoats or trousers, form the genuine democracy of American youth.
Up to the doors of college, and often even beyond them, the boy and
girl have been "co-educated;" at the high school the boy has probably
had a woman for his teacher, at least in some branches, up to his
sixteenth or seventeenth year. The hours of recreation are often spent
in pastimes in which girls may share. In some of the most
characteristic of American amusements, such as the "coasting" of
winter, girls take a prominent place. There is no effort on the part
of elders to play the spy on the meetings of boy or girl, or to place
obstacles in their way. They are not thought of as opposite sexes; it
is "just all the young people together." The result is a spirit of
absolute good comradeship. There is little atmosphere of the unknown
or the mysterious about the opposite sex. The love that leads to
marriage is thus apt to be the product of a wider experience, and to
be based on a more intimate knowledge. The sentimental may cry fie on
so clear-sighted a Cupid, but the sensible cannot but rejoice over
anything that tends to the undoing of the phrase "lottery of
marriage."
That the ideal attitude towards and in marriage has been attained in
average American society I should be the last to assert. The way in
which American wives leave their husbands toiling in the sweltering
city while they themselves fleet the time in Europe would alone give
me pause. But I am here concerned with the relative and not the
absolute; and my contention is that the average marriage in America is
apt to be made under conditions which, compared with those of other
nations, increase the chances of happiness. A great deal has been said
and written about the inconsistency of the marriage laws of the
different States, and much cheap wit has been fired off at the fatal
facility of divorce in the United States; but I could not ascertain
from my own observation that these defects touched any very great
proportion of the population, or played any larger part in American
society, as I have defined it, than the differences between the
marriage laws of England and Scotland do in our own island. M.
Bourget, quite arbitrarily and (I think) with a trace of the
proverbial Gallic way of looking at the relations of the sexes, has
attributed the admitted moral purity of the atmosphere of American
society to the coldness of the American temperament and the _sera
juvenum Venus_. It seems to me, however, that there is no call to
disparage American virtue by the suggestion of a constitutional want
of liability to temptation, and that Mark Twain, in his somewhat
irreverent rejoinder, is much nearer the mark when he attributes the
prevalent sanctity of the marriage tie to the fact that the husbands
and wives have generally married each other for love. This is
undoubtedly the true note of America in this particular, though it may
not be unreservedly characteristic of the smart set of New York. If
the sacred flame of Cupid could be exposed to the alembic of
statistics, I should be surprised to hear that the love matches of the
United States did not reach a higher percentage than those of any
other nation. One certainly meets more husbands and wives of mature
age who seem thoroughly to enjoy each other's society.
There is a certain "snap" to American society that is not due merely
to a sense of novelty, and does not wholly wear off through
familiarity. The sense of enjoyment is more obvious and more evenly
distributed; there is a general willingness to be amused, a general
absence of the _blasé_. Even Matthew Arnold could not help noticing
the "buoyancy, enjoyment, and freedom from restraint which are
everywhere in America," and which he accounted for by the absence of
the aristocratic incubus. The nervous fluid so characteristic of
America in general flows briskly in the veins of its social organism;
the feeling is abroad that what is worth doing is worth doing well.
There is a more general ability than we possess to talk brightly on
the topics of the moment; there is less lingering over one subject;
there is a constant savour of the humorous view of life. The more even
distribution of comfort in the United States (becoming, alas! daily
less characteristic) adds largely to the pleasantness of society by
minimising the semi-conscious feeling of remorse in playing while the
"other half" starves. The inherent inability of the American to
understand that there is any "higher" social order than his own
minimises the feeling of envy of those "above" him. "How dreadful,"
says the Englishman to the American girl, "to be governed by men to
whom you would not speak!" "Yes," is the rejoinder, "and how
delightful to be governed by men who won't speak to you!" From this
latter form of delight American society is free. Henry James strikes a
true note when he makes Miranda Hope (in "A Bundle of Letters")
describe the fashionable girl she met at a Paris pension as "like the
people they call 'haughty' in books," and then go on to say, "I have
never seen anyone like that before--anyone that wanted to make a
difference." And her feeling of impersonal interest in the phenomenon
is equally characteristic. "She seemed to me so like a proud young
lady in a novel. I kept saying to myself all day, 'haughty, haughty,'
and I wished she would keep on so." Too much stress cannot easily be
laid on this feeling of equality in the air as a potent enhancer of
the pleasure of society. To feel yourself patronised--even, perhaps
especially, when you know yourself to be in all respects the superior
of the patroniser--may tickle your sense of humour for a while, but in
the long run it is distinctly dispiriting. The philosopher, no doubt,
is or should be able to disregard the petty annoyances arising from an
ever-present consciousness of social limitation, but society is not
entirely composed of philosophers, even in America; and the sense of
freedom and space is unqualifiedly welcome to its members. It is not
easy for a European to the manner born to realise the sort of
extravagant, nightmare effect that many of our social customs have in
the eyes of our untutored American cousins. The inherent absurdities
that are second nature to us exhale for them the full flavour of their
grotesqueness. The idea of an insignificant boy peer taking precedence
of Mr. John Morley! The idea of _having_ to appear before royalty in a
state of partial nudity on a cold winter day! The necessity of backing
out of the royal presence! The idea of a freeborn Briton having to get
out of an engagement long previously formed on the score that "he has
been _commanded_ to dine with H.R.H." The horrible capillary plaster
necessary before a man can serve decently as an opener of
carriage-doors! The horsehair envelopes without which our legal brains
cannot work! The unwritten law by which a man has to nurse his hat and
stick throughout a call unless his hostess specially asks him to lay
them aside!
Mr. Bryce commits himself to the assertion that "Scotchmen and
Irishmen are more unlike Englishmen, the native of Normandy more
unlike the native of Provence, the Pomeranian more unlike the
Wurtemberger, the Piedmontese more unlike the Neapolitan, the Basque
more unlike the Andalusian, than the American from any part of the
country is to the American from any other." Max O'Rell, on the other
hand, writes: "L'habitant du Nord-est des Etats Unis, le Yankee,
diffère autant de l'Americain de l'Ouest et du Midi que l'Anglais
diffère de l'Allemand ou de l'Espagnol." On this point I find myself
far more in accord with the French than with the British observer,
though, perhaps, M. Blouët rather overstates his case. Wider
differences among civilised men can hardly be imagined than those
which subsist between the creole of New Orleans and the Yankee of
Maine, the Kentucky farmer and the Michigan lumberer. It is, however,
true that there is a distinct tendency for the stamp of the Eastern
States to be applied to the inhabitants of the cities, at least, of
the West. The founders of these cities are so largely men of Eastern
birth, the means of their expansion are so largely advanced by Eastern
capitalists, that this tendency is easily explicable. [So far as my
observation went it was to Boston rather than to New York or
Philadelphia that the educated classes of the Western cities looked
as the cynosure of their eyes. Boston seemed to stand for something
less material than these other cities, and the subtler nature of its
influence seemed to magnify its pervasive force.] None the less do the
people of the United States, compared with those of any one European
country, seem to me to have their due share of variety and even of
picturesqueness. This latter quality is indeed denied to the United
States not only by European visitors, but also by many Americans. This
denial, however, rests on a limited and traditional use of the word
picturesque. America has not the European picturesqueness of costume,
of relics of the past, of the constant presence of the potential
foeman at the gate. But apart altogether from the almost theatrical
romance of frontier life and the now obsolescent conflict with the
aborigines, is there not some element of the picturesque in the
processes of readjustment by which the emigrants of European stock
have adapted themselves and are adapting themselves to the conditions
of the New World? In some ways the nineteenth century is the most
romantic of all; and the United States embody and express it as no
other country. Is there not a picturesque side to the triumph of
civilisation over barbarism? Is there nothing of the picturesque in
the long thin lines of gleaming steel, thrown across the countless
miles of desert sand and alkali plain, and in the mighty mass of metal
with its glare of cyclopean eye and its banner of fire-illumined
smoke, that bears the conquerors of stubborn nature from side to side
of the great continent? Is there not an element of the picturesque in
the struggles of the Western farmer? Can anything be finer in its way
than a night view of Pittsburg--that "Hell with its lid off," where
the cold gleam of electricity vies with the lurid glare of the
furnaces and smelting works? I say nothing of the Californian
Missions; of the sallow creoles of New Orleans with their gorgeous
processions of Mardi-Gras; or of the almost equally fantastic fête of
the Veiled Prophet of St. Louis; or of the lumberers of Michigan; or
of the Mexicans of Arizona; or of the German beer-gardens of Chicago;
or of the swinging lanterns and banners of Chinatown in San Francisco
and Mott street in New York; or of the Italians of Mulberry Bend in
the latter city; or of the alternating stretches on a long railway
journey of forest and prairie, yellow corn-fields and sandy desert; or
of many other classes and conditions which are by no means void of
material for the artist in pen or brush. All these lend hues that are
anything but prosaic to my kaleidoscopic recollections of the United
States; but more than all these, _the_ characteristically picturesque
feature of American life, stands out the omnipresent negro. It was a
thrill to have one's boots blackened by a coloured "professor" in an
alley-way of Boston, and to hear his richly intoned "as shoh's you're
bawn." It was a delight to see the negro couples in the Public Garden,
conducting themselves and their courting, as Mr. Howells has well
remarked, with infinitely more restraint and refinement than their
Milesian compeers, or to see them passing out of the Charles-street
Church in all the Sunday bravery of broadcloth coats, shiny hats,
wonderfully laundered skirts of snowy whiteness, and bodices of all
the hues of the rainbow. And all through the Union their glossy black
faces and gleaming white teeth shed a kind of dusky radiance over the
traveller's path. Who but can recall with gratitude the expansive
geniality and reassuring smile of the white-coated negro waiter, as
compared with the supercilious indifference, if not positive rudeness,
of his pale colleague? And what will ever efface the mental kodak of
George (not Sambo any more) shuffling rapidly into the dining-room,
with his huge flat palm inverted high over his head and bearing a
colossal tray heaped up with good things for the guest under his
charge? And shall I ever forget the grotesque gravity of the negro
brakeman in Louisiana, with his tall silk hat? or the pair of gloves
pathetically shared between two neatly dressed negro youths in a
railway carriage in Georgia? or the pickaninnies slumbering sweetly in
old packing-cases in a hut at Jacksonville, while their father
thrummed the soft guitar with friendly grin? It has always seemed to
me a reproach to American artists that they fill the air with sighs
over the absence of the picturesque in the United States, while almost
totally overlooking the fine flesh-tones and gay dressing of the
coloured brother at their elbow.
The most conventional society of America is apt to be more or less
shrouded by the pall of monotony that attends convention elsewhere,
but typical American society--the society of the great mass of
Americans--shows distinctly more variety than that of England. In
social meetings, as in business, the American is ever on the alert for
some new thing: and the brain of every pretty girl is cudgelled in
order to provide some novelty for her next party. Hence the
progressive euchre, the "library" parties, the "shadow" dances, the
conversation parties, and the long series of ingenious games, the
adoption of which, for some of us at least, has done much to lighten
the deadly dulness of English "small and earlies." Even the
sacro-sanctity of whist has not been respected, and the astonished
shade of Hoyle has to look on at his favourite game in the form of
"drive" and "duplicate." The way in which whist has been taken up in
the United States is a good example of the national unwillingness to
remain in the ruts of one's ancestors. Possibly the best club-players
of England are at least as good as the best Americans, but the general
average of play and the general interest in the game are distinctly
higher in the United States. Every English whist-player with any
pretension to science knows what he has to expect when he finds an
unknown lady as his partner, especially if she is below thirty; but in
America he will often find himself "put to his trumps" by a bright
girl in her teens. The girls in Boston and other large cities have
organised afternoon whist-clubs, at which all the "rigour of the game"
is observed. Many of them take regular lessons from whist experts; and
among the latter themselves are not a few ladies, who find the
teaching of their favourite game a more lucrative employment than
governessing or journalism. Even so small a matter as the eating of
ice-cream may illustrate the progressive nature of American society.
Elderly Americans still remember the time when it was usual to eat
this refreshing delicacy out of economical wine-glasses such as we
have still to be content with in England. But now-a-days no American
expects or receives less than a heaping saucer of ice-cream at a time.