causes, that are due the prevalence and perfection of the American
short story. It has often been remarked that French literature alone
is superior in this _genre_; and many of the best American productions
of the kind can scarcely be called second even to the French in
daintiness of phrase, sureness of touch, sense of proportion, and
skilful condensation of interest. Excellent examples of the short
story have been common in American literature from the times of
Hawthorne, Irving, and Poe down to the present day. Mr. Henry James,
perhaps, stands at the head of living writers in this branch. Miss
Mary E. Wilkins is inimitable in her sketches of New England, the
pathos, as well as the humour of which she touches with a master hand.
It is interesting to note that, foreign as her subject would seem to
be to the French taste, her literary skill has been duly recognised by
the _Revue des Deux Mondes_. Bret Harte and Frank Stockton are so
eminently short-story writers that the longer their stories become,
the nearer do they approach the brink of failure. Other names that
suggest themselves in a list that might be indefinitely extended are
those of Miss Jewett, Mrs. Elizabeth Phelps Ward, Mr. Richard Harding
Davis, Mr. T.B. Aldrich, Mr. Thos. Nelson Page, Mr. Owen Wister, Mr.
Hamlin Garland, Mr. G.W. Cable, and (in a lighter vein) Mr. H.C.
Bunner.
This chapter may fitly close with a straw of startling literary
contrast, that seems to me alone almost enough to bring American
literature under the rubric of this volume's title. If a critic
familiar only with the work chiefly associated with the author's name
were asked to indicate the source of the following quotations, I
should be surprised if he were to guess correctly in his first hundred
efforts. Indeed, I should not be astonished if some of his shots
missed the mark by centuries of time as well as oceans of space. One
hesitates to use lightly the word Elizabethan; but at present I do not
recall any other modern work that suggests it more strongly than some
of the lines I quote below:
"So wanton are all emblems that the cloak
Which folds a king will kiss a crooked nail
As quickly as a beggar's gabardine
Will do like office."
* * * * *
"Thou art so like to substance that I'd think
Myself a shadow ere thyself a dream."
* * * * *
"Not so much beauty, sire,
As would make full the pocket of thine eye."
* * * * *
"A vein
That spilt its tender blue upon her eyelid,
As though the cunning hand that dyed her eyes
Had slipped for joy of its own work."
* * * * *
"What am I who doth rail against the fate
That binds mankind? The atom of an atom,
Particle of this particle the earth,
That with its million kindred worlds doth spin
Like motes within the universal light.
What if I sin--am lost--do crack my life
Against the gateless walls of Fate's decree?
Is the world fouler for a gnat's corpse? Nay,
The ocean, is it shallower for the drop
It leaves upon a blade of grass?"
* * * * *
"There is a boy in Essex, they do say,
Can crack an ox's ribs in one arm-crotch."
All these passages are taken from the tragedy of "Athelwold," written
by Miss Amelie Rives, the author of a novel entitled "The Quick and
the Dead."
FOOTNOTES:
[20] I confess I should have felt myself on still firmer ground in
making the above comparison if I had been able to select "Peter
Ibbetson" instead of "Trilby" as the American favourite. It is
distinctly the finest, the most characteristic, and the most
convincing of Mr. Du Maurier's novels, though it is easy to see why it
did not enjoy such a "boom" as its successor. In "Peter Ibbetson" our
moral sense does not feel outraged by the fact of the sympathy we have
to extend to a man-slayer; we are made to feel that a man may kill his
fellow in a moment of ungovernable and not unrighteous wrath without
losing his fundamental goodness. On the other hand, it seems to me,
Mr. Du Maurier fails to convert us to belief in the possibility of
such a character as Trilby, and fails to make us wholly sympathise
with his pæans in her praise. It seems psychologically impossible for
a woman to sin so repeatedly as Trilby, and so apparently without any
overwhelming temptation, and yet at the same time to retain her
essential purity. It is a prostitution of the word "love" to excuse
Trilby's temporary amourettes with a "_quia multum amavit_."
[21] His extraordinary article on George Du Maurier in _Harper's
Magazine_ for September, 1897, is, perhaps, so far as style is
concerned, as glaring an example of how not to do it as can be found
in the range of American letters.
[22] Perhaps Mr. George W. Cable is entitled to rank with Mr. Howells
in this respect as a man who refused to disguise his moral convictions
behind his literary art, and thus infallibly and with full
consciousness imperilled his popularity among his own people.
[23] "Stops of Various Quills," by W.D. Howells (Harper & Brothers,
New York, 1895).
XI
Certain Features of Certain Cities
One of the dicta in M. Bourget's "Outre Mer" to which I cannot but
take exception is that which insists on the essential similarity and
monotony of all the cities of the United States. Passing over the
question of the right of a Parisian to quarrel with monotony of street
architecture, I should simply ask what single country possesses cities
more widely divergent than New York and New Orleans, Philadelphia and
San Francisco, Chicago and San Antonio, Washington and Pittsburg? If
M. Bourget merely means that there is a tendency to homogeneity in the
case of modern cities which was not compatible with the picturesque
though uncomfortable reasons for variety in more ancient foundations,
his remark amounts to a truism. For his implied comparison with
European cities to have any point, he should be able to assert that
the recent architecture of the different cities of Europe is more
varied than the contemporary architecture of the United States. This
seems to me emphatically not the case. Modern Paris resembles modern
Rome more closely than any two of the above-named cities resemble each
other; and it is simply the universal tendency to note similarity
first and then unlikeness that makes the brief visitor to the United
States fail to find characteristic individuality in the various great
cities of the country. We are also too prone to forget that the
United States, though continental in its proportions, is after all but
a single nation, enjoying the same institutions and speaking
practically one tongue; and this of necessity introduces an element of
sameness that must be absent from the continent of Europe with which
we are apt to compare it. If we oppose to the United States that one
European country which approaches it most nearly in size, we shall, I
think, find the balance of uniformity does not incline to the American
side. When all is said, however, it cannot be denied that there _is_ a
great deal of similarity in the smaller and newer towns and cities of
the West, and Mr. W.S. Caine's likening them to "international
exhibitions a week before their opening" will strike many visitors as
very apposite. It is only to the indiscriminate and unhedged form of
M. Bourget's statement that objection need be made.
Architecture struck me as, perhaps, the one art in which America, so
far as modern times are concerned, could reasonably claim to be on a
par with, if not ahead of, any European country whatsoever. I say this
with a full realisation of the many artistic nightmares that oppress
the soil from the Atlantic to the Pacific, with a perfect recollection
of the acres of petty, monotonous, and mean structures in almost every
great city of the Union, with a keen appreciation of the witty saying
that the American architect often "shows no more self-restraint than a
bunch of fire-crackers." It is, however, distinctly true, as Mr.
Montgomery Schuyler well puts it, that "no progress can result from
the labour of architects whose training has made them so fastidious
that they are more revolted by the crudity of the forms that result
from the attempt to express a new meaning than by the failure to make
the attempt;" and it is in his freedom from this fastidious lack of
courage that the American architect is strong. His earlier efforts at
independence were, perhaps, hardly fortunate; but he is now entering a
phase in which adequate professional knowledge coöperates with good
taste to define the limits within which his imagination may
legitimately work. I know not where to look, within the last quarter
of a century or so, for more tasteful designs, greater sincerity of
purpose, or happier adaptations to environment than the best creations
of men like Mr. H.H. Richardson, Mr. R.M. Hunt, Mr. J.W. Root, Mr.
G.B. Post, and Messrs. McKim, Mead, and White. Some of the new
residential streets of places as recent as Chicago or St. Paul more
than hold their own, as it seems to me, with any contemporaneous
thoroughfares of their own class in Europe. To my own opinion let me
add the valuable testimony of Mr. E.A. Freeman, in his "Impressions of
the United States" (pp. 246, 247):
I found the modern churches, of various denominations, certainly
better, as works of architecture, than I had expected. They may
quite stand beside the average of modern churches in England,
setting aside a few of the very best.... But I thought the
churches, whose style is most commonly Gothic of one kind or
another, decidedly less successful than some of the civil
buildings. In some of these, I hardly know how far by choice, how
far by happy accident, a style has been hit upon which seemed to
me far more at home than any of the reproductions of Gothic. Much
of the street architecture of several cities has very
successfully caught the leading idea of the true Italian style.
New York, the gateway to America for, perhaps, nine out of ten
visitors, is described by Mr. Richard Grant White, the American
writer, as "the dashing, dirty, demi-rep of cities." Mr. Joaquin
Miller, the poet of the Sierras, calls it "an iron-fronted,
iron-footed, and iron-hearted town." Miss Florence Marryat asserts
that New York is "_without any exception_ the most charming city she
has ever been in." Miss Emily Faithful admits that at first it seems
rough and new, but says that when one returns to it from the West, one
recognises that it has everything essential in common with his
European experiences. In my own note-book I find that New York
impressed me as being "like a lady in ball costume, with diamonds in
her ears, and her toes out at her boots."
Here, then, is evidence that New York makes a pretty strong impression
on her guests, and that this impression is not by any means the same
in every case. New York is evidently a person of character, and of a
character with many facets. To most European visitors it must, on the
_whole_, be somewhat of a disappointment; and it is not really an
advantageous or even a characteristic portal to the American
continent. For one thing, it is too overwhelmingly cosmopolitan in the
composition of its population to strike the distinctive American note.
It is not alone that New York society imitates that of France and
England in a more pronounced way than I found anywhere else in
America, but the names one sees over the shops seem predominantly
German and Jewish, accents we are familiar with at home resound in
our ears, the quarters we are first introduced to recall the dinginess
and shabbiness of the waterside quarters of cities like London and
Glasgow. More intimate acquaintance finds much that is strongly
American in New York; but this is not the first impression, and first
impressions count for so much that it seems to me a pity that New York
is for most travellers the prologue to their American experiences.
The contrasts between the poverty and wealth of New York are so
extreme as sometimes to suggest even London, where misery and
prosperity rub shoulders in a more heartrending way than, perhaps,
anywhere else in the wide world. But the contrasts that strike even
the most unobservant visitor to the so-called American "metropolis"
are of a different nature. When I was asked by American friends what
had most struck me in America, I sometimes answered, if in malicious
mood, "The fact that the principal street of the largest and richest
city in the Union is so miserably paved;" and, indeed, my
recollections of the holes in Broadway, and of the fact that in wintry
weather I had sometimes to diverge into University Place in order to
avoid a mid-shin crossing of liquid mud in Broadway, seem as strange
as if they related to a dream.[24] New York, again, possesses some of
the most sumptuous private residences in the world, often adorned in
particular with exquisite carvings in stone, such as Europeans have
sometimes furnished for a cathedral or minster, but which it has been
reserved for republican simplicity to apply to the residence of a
private citizen.[25] Yet it is by no means _ausgeschlossen_, as the
Germans say, that the pavement in front of this abode of luxury may
not be seamed by huge cracks and rents that make walking after
nightfall positively dangerous.
Fifth Avenue is not, to my mind, one of the most attractive city
streets in the United States, but it is, perhaps, the one that makes
the greatest impression of prosperity. It is eminently solid and
substantial; it reeks with respectability and possibly dulness. It is
a very alderman among streets. The shops at its lower end, and
gradually creeping up higher like the modest guest of the parable,
make no appeal to the lightly pursed, but are as aristocratic-looking
as those of Hanover Square. Its hotels and clubs are equally
suggestive of well-lined pockets. Its churches more than hint at
golden offertories; and the visitor is not surprised to be assured (as
he infallibly will be) that the pastor of one of them preaches every
Sunday to "two hundred and fifty million dollars." Even the beautiful
Roman Catholic cathedral lends its aid to this impression, and
encourages the faithful by a charge of fifteen to twenty-five cents
for a seat. The "stoops" of the lugubrious brown sandstone houses seem
to retain something more of their Dutch origin than the mere name. The
Sunday Parade here is better dressed than that of Hyde Park, but
candour compels me to admit, at the expense of my present point,
considerably less stiff and non-committal. Indeed, were it not for
the miserable horses of the "stage lines" Fifth Avenue might present a
clean bill of unimpeachable affluence.
Madison Avenue, hitherto uninvaded by shops, rivals Fifth Avenue in
its suggestions of extreme well-to-do-ness, and should be visited, if
for no other reason, to see the Tiffany house, one of the most daring
and withal most captivating experiments known to me in city
residences.
Unlike those of many other American cities, the best houses of New
York are ranged side by side without the interposition of the tiniest
bit of garden or greenery; it is only in the striking but unfinished
Riverside Drive, with its grand views of the Hudson, that architecture
derives any aid whatsoever from natural formations or scenic
conditions. The student of architecture should not fail to note the
success with which the problem of giving expression to a town house of
comparatively simple outline has often been tackled, and he will find
many charming single features, such as doors, or balconies, or
windows. Good examples of these are the exquisite oriel and other
decorative features of the house of Mr. W.K. Vanderbilt, by Mr. Hunt,
in Fifth Avenue, at the corner of 52d Street, and specimens will also
be found in 34th, 36th, 37th, 43d, 52d, 56th, and 57th Streets, near
their junction with Fifth Avenue. The W.H. Vanderbilt houses (Fifth
Avenue, between 50th and 51st Streets) have been described as
"brown-stone boxes with architecture appliqué;" but the applied
carving, though meaningless enough as far as its position goes, is so
exquisite in itself as to deserve more than a passing glance. The iron
railings which surround the houses are beautiful specimens of
metal-work. The house of Mr. Cornelius Vanderbilt, a little farther
up the avenue, with its red brick and slates, and its articulations
and dormers of grey limestone, is a good example of an effective use
of colour in domestic architecture--an effect which the clear, dry
climate of New York admits and perpetuates.[26] The row of quiet
oldtime houses on the north side of Washington Square will interest at
least the historical student of architecture, so characteristic are
they of times of restfulness and peace to which New York has long been
a stranger. Down towards the point of the island, in the "city"
proper, the visitor will find many happy creations for modern
mercantile purposes, besides such older objects of architectural
interest as Trinity Church and the City Hall, praised by Professor
Freeman and many other connoisseurs of both continents. Among these
business structures may be named the "Post Building," the building of
the Union Trust Company (No. 80 Broadway), and the Guernsey Building
(also in Broadway). At the extreme apex of Manhattan Island lie the
historic Bowling Green and Battery Park, the charm of which has not
been wholly annihilated by the intrusion of the elevated railway. Here
rises the huge rotunda of Castle Garden, through which till lately all
the immigrants to New York made their entry into the New World. Surely
this has a pathetic interest of its own when we consider what this
landing meant to so many thousands of the poor and needy. A suitable
motto for its hospitable portals would have been, "Imbibe new hope,
all ye who enter here."
As I have said, there is no lack of good Americanism in New York. Let
the Englishman who does not believe in an American school of sculpture
look at St. Gaudens' statue of Admiral Farragut in Madison Square, and
say where we have a better or as good a single figure in any of our
streets. Let him who thinks that fine public picture galleries are
confined to Europe go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art,[27] with its
treasures by Rembrandt and Rubens, Holbein and Van Dyck, Frans Hals
and Teniers, Reynolds and Hogarth, Meissonier and Detaille, Rosa
Bonheur and Troyon, Corot and Breton. Let the admirer of engineering
marvels, after he has sufficiently appreciated the elastic strength of
the Brooklyn Suspension Bridge, betake himself to the other end of the
island and enjoy the more solid, but in their way no less imposing,
proportions of the Washington Bridge over the Harlem, and let him
choose his route by the Ninth-avenue Elevated Railroad with its dizzy
curve at 110th street. And, finally, let not the lover of the
picturesque fail to enjoy the views from the already named Riverside
Drive, the cleverly created beauties of Central Park, and the district
known as Washington Heights.
The Englishman in New York will probably here make his first
acquaintance with the American system of street nomenclature; and if
he at once masters its few simple principles, it will be strange if he
does not find it of great utility and convenience. The objection
usually made to it is that the numbering of streets, instead of
naming them, is painfully arithmetical, bald, and uninteresting; but
if a man stays long enough to be really familiar with the streets, he
will find that the bare numbers soon clothe themselves with
association, and Fifth Avenue will come to have as distinct an
individuality as Broadway, while 23d Street will call up as definite a
picture of shopping activity as Bond Street or Piccadilly. The chief
trouble is the facility of confusing such an address as No. 44 East
45th Street with No. 45 East 44th Street; and so natural is an
inversion of the kind that one is sometimes heedless enough to make it
in writing one's own address.
The transition from New York to Boston in a chapter like this is as
inevitable as the tax-collector, though perhaps less ingenuity is now
spent in the invention of anecdotes typical of the contrasts between
these two cities since Chicago, by the capture of the World's Fair,
drew upon herself the full fire of the satire-shotted guns of New
York's rivalry. It seems to me, however, that in many ways there is
much more similarity between New York and Chicago than between New
York and Boston, and that it is easier to use the latter couple than
the former to point a moral or adorn a tale. In both New York and
Chicago the prevailing note is that of wealth and commerce, the
dominant social impression is one of boundless material luxury, the
atmosphere is thick with the emanations of those who hurry to be rich.
I hasten to add that of course this is largely tempered by other
tendencies and features; it would be especially unpardonable of me to
forget the eminently intellectual, artistic, and refined aspects of
New York life of which I was privileged to enjoy glimpses. In Boston,
however, there is something different. Mere wealth, even in these
degenerate days, does not seem to play so important a part in her
society. The names one constantly hears or sees in New York are names
like Astor, Vanderbilt, Jay Gould, and Bradley-Martin, names which,
whatever other qualities they connote, stand first and foremost for
mere crude wealth. In Boston the prominent public names--the names
that naturally occur to my mind as I think of Boston as I saw it--are
Oliver Wendell Holmes, the poet and novelist; Eliot, the college
president; Francis Walker, the political economist; Higginson, the
generous cultivator of classical music; Robert Treat Paine, the
philanthropist; Edward Everett Hale; and others of a more or less
similar class. Again, in New York and in Chicago (Pullman, Marshall
Field, Armour) the prominent names are emphatically men of to-day and
seem to change with each generation. In Boston we have the names of
the first governor and other leaders of the early settlers still
shining in their descendants with almost undiminished lustre. The
present mayor of Boston, for example, is a member of a family the name
of which has been illustrious in the city's annals for two hundred
years. He is the fifth of his name in the direct line to gain fame in
the public service, and the third to occupy the mayor's chair. No less
than sixteen immediate members of the family are recorded in the
standard biographical dictionaries of America.
While doubtless the Attic tales of Boeotian dulness were at least as
often well invented as true, it is perhaps the case that there is
generally some ground for the popular caricatures of any given
community. I duly discounted the humorous and would-be humorous
stories of Boston's pedantry that I heard in New York, and found that
as a rule I had done right so to do. Blue spectacles are not more
prominent in Boston than elsewhere; its theatres do not make a
specialty of Greek plays; the little boys do not petition the
Legislature for an increase in the hours of school. There yet remains,
however, a basis of truth quite large enough to show the observer how
the reputation was acquired. It is a solemn fact that what would
appear in England as "No spitting allowed in this car" is translated
in the electric cars of Boston into: "The Board of Health hereby
adjudges that the deposit of sputum in street-cars is a public
nuisance."[28] The framer of this announcement would undoubtedly speak
of the limbs of a piano and allude to a spade as an agricultural
implement. And in social intercourse I have often noticed needless
celerity in skating over ice that seemed to my ruder British sense
quite well able to bear any ordinary weight, as well as a certain
subtlety of allusiveness that appeared to exalt ingenuity of phrase at
the expense of common sense and common candour. Too high praise cannot
easily be given to the Boston Symphony Concerts; but it is difficult
to avoid a suspicion of affectation in the severe criticism one hears
of the conductor whenever he allows a little music of a lighter class
than usual to appear on the programme.