in the United States. By capital he means "a city which is not only
the seat of political government, but is also by the size, wealth, and
character of its population the head and centre of the country, a
leading seat of commerce and industry, a reservoir of financial
resources, the favoured residence of the great and powerful, the spot
in which the chiefs of the learned professions are to be found, where
the most potent and widely read journals are published, whither men of
literary and scientific capacity are drawn." New York journalists,
with a happy disregard of the historical connotation of language, are
prone to speak of their city as a metropolis; but it is very evident
that the most liberal interpretation of the word cannot elevate New
York to the relative position of such European metropolitan cities as
Paris or London. Washington, the nominal capital of the United States,
is perhaps still farther from satisfying Mr. Bryce's definition. It
certainly is a relatively small city, and it is not a leading seat of
trade, manufacture, or finance. It is also true that its journals do
not rank among the leading papers of the land; but, on the other hand,
it must be remembered that every important American journal has its
Washington correspondent, and that in critical times the letters of
these gentlemen are of very great weight. As the seat of the Supreme
Judicial Bench of the United States, it has as good a claim as any
other American city to be the residence of the "chiefs of the learned
professions;" and it is quite remarkable how, owing to the great
national collections and departments, it has come to the front as the
main focus of the scientific interests of the country. The Cosmos
Club's list of members is alone sufficient to illustrate this. Its
attraction to men of letters has proved less cogent; but the life of
an eminent literary man of (say) New Orleans or Boston is much more
likely to include a prolonged visit to Washington than to any other
American city not his own. The Library of Congress alone, now
magnificently housed in an elaborately decorated new building, is a
strong magnet. In the same way there is a growing tendency for all who
can afford it to spend at least one season in Washington. The belle of
Kalamazoo or Little Rock is not satisfied till she has made her bow in
Washington under the wing of her State representative, and the senator
is no-wise loath to see his wife's tea-parties brightened by a bevy of
the prettiest girls from his native wilds. University men throughout
the Union, leaders of provincial bars, and a host of others have often
occasion to visit Washington. When we add to all this the army of
government employees and the cosmopolitan element of the diplomatic
corps, we can easily see that, so far as "society" is concerned,
Washington is more like a European capital than any other American
city. Nothing is more amusing--for a short time, at least--than a
round of the teas, dinners, receptions, and balls of Washington, where
the American girl is seen in all her glory, with captives of every
clime, from the almond-eyed Chinaman to the most faultlessly correct
Piccadilly exquisite, at her dainty feet. I never saw a bevy of more
beautiful women than officiated at one senatorial afternoon tea I
visited; so beautiful were they as to make me entirely forget what
seemed to my untutored European taste the absurdity of their wearing
low-necked evening gowns while their guests sported hat and jacket and
fur. The whole tone of Washington society from the President downward
is one of the greatest hospitality and geniality towards strangers.
The city is beautifully laid out, and its plan may be described as
that of a wheel laid on a gridiron, the rectangular arrangement of the
streets having superimposed on it a system of radiating avenues, lined
with trees and named for the different States of the Union. The city
is governed and kept admirably in order by a board of commissioners
appointed by the President. The sobriquet of "City of Magnificent
Distances," applied to Washington when its framework seemed
unnecessarily large for its growth, is still deserved, perhaps, for
the width of its streets and the spaciousness of its parks and
squares. The floating white dome of the Capitol dominates the entire
city, and almost every street-vista ends in an imposing public
building, a mass of luxuriant greenery, or at the least a memorial
statue. The little wooden houses of the coloured squatters that used
to alternate freely with the statelier mansions of officialdom are now
rapidly disappearing; and some, perhaps, will regret the obliteration
of the element of picturesqueness suggested in the quaint contrast.
The absence of the wealth-suggesting but artistically somewhat sordid
accompaniments of a busy industrialism also contributes to
Washington's position as one of the most singularly handsome cities on
the globe. Among the other striking features of the American capital
is the Washington Memorial, a huge obelisk raising its metal-tipped
apex to a height of five hundred and fifty-five feet. There are those
who consider this a meaningless pile of masonry; but the writer
sympathises rather with the critics who find it, in its massive and
heaven-reaching simplicity, a fit counterpart to the Capitol and one
of the noblest monuments ever raised to mortal man. When gleaming in
the westering sun, like a slender, tapering, sky-pointing finger of
gold, no finer index can be imagined to direct the gazer to the record
of a glorious history. Near the monument is the White House, a
building which, in its modest yet adequate dimensions, embodies the
democratic ideal more fitly, it may be feared, than certain other
phases of the Great Republic. Without cataloguing the other public
buildings of Washington, we may quit it with a glow of patriotic
fervour over the fact that the Smithsonian Institute here, one of the
most important scientific institutions in the world, was founded by an
Englishman, who, so far as is known, never even visited the United
States, but left his large fortune for "the increase and diffusion of
knowledge among men," to the care of that country with whose generous
and popular principles he was most in sympathy.
FOOTNOTES:
[24] This refers to 1893; things are much better now.
[25] This suggestion of topsy-turvydom in the relations of God and
Mammon is much intensified when we find an apartment house like the
"Osborne" towering high above the church-spire on the opposite side of
the way, or see Trinity Church simply smothered by the contiguous
office buildings.
[26] Compare Montgomery Schuyler's "American Architecture," an
excellent though brief account and appreciation of modern American
building.
[27] The position of the Metropolitan Museum of Art is so assured that
in 1896 its trustees declined a bequest of 90 paintings (claiming to
include specimens of Velazquez, Titian, Rubens, and other great
artists), because it was hampered with the condition that it had to be
accepted and exhibited _en bloc_.
[28] This was changed to simple English in 1898.
[29] It is to this wind, the temperature of which varies little all
the year round, that San Francisco owes her wonderfully equable
climate, which is never either too hot or too cold for comfortable
work or play. The mean annual temperature is about 57° Fahr., or
rather higher than that of New York; but while the difference between
the mean of the months is 40° at the latter city, it is about 10° only
at the Golden Gate. The mean of July is about 60°, that of January
about 50°. September is a shade warmer than July. Observations
extending over 30 years show that the freezing point on the one hand
and 80° Fahr. on the other are reached on an average only about half a
dozen times a year. The hottest day of the year is more likely to
occur in September than any other month.
XII
Baedekeriana
This chapter deals with subjects related to the tourist and the
guidebook, and with certain points of a more personal nature connected
with the preparation of "Baedeker's Handbook to the United States."
Readers uninterested in topics of so practical and commonplace a
character will do well to skip it altogether.
When the scheme of publishing a "Baedeker" to the United States was
originally entertained, the first thought was to invite an American to
write the book for us. On more mature deliberation it was, however,
decided that a member of our regular staff would, perhaps, do the work
equally well, inasmuch as he would combine, with actual experience in
the art of guidebook making, the stranger's point of view, and thus
the more acutely realise, by experiment in his own _corpus vile_, the
points on which the ignorant European would require advice, warning,
or assistance. So far as my own voice had aught to do with this
decision, I have to confess that I severely grudged the interesting
task to an outsider. The opportunity of making a somewhat extensive
survey of the country that stood preëminently for the modern ideas of
democracy and progress was a peculiarly grateful one; and I even
contrived to infuse (for my own consumption) a spice of the ideal into
the homely brew of the guidebook by reflecting that it would
contribute (so far as it went) to that mutual knowledge, intimacy of
which is perhaps all that is necessary to ensure true friendship
between the two great Anglo-Saxon powers.
While thus reserving the editing of the book for one of our own
household, we realised thoroughly that no approach to completeness
would be attainable without the coöperation of the Americans
themselves; and I welcome this opportunity to reiterate my keen
appreciation of the open-handed and open-minded way in which this was
accorded. Besides the signed articles by men of letters and science in
the introductory part of the handbook, I have to acknowledge thousands
of other kindly offices and useful hints, many of which hardly allow
themselves to be classified or defined, but all of which had their
share in producing aught of good that the volume may contain. So many
Americans have used their Baedekers in Europe that I found troops of
ready-made sympathisers, who, half-interested, half-amused, at the
attempt to Baedekerise their own continent, knew pretty well what was
wanted, and were able to put me on the right track for procuring
information. Indeed, the book could hardly have been written but for
these innumerable streams of disinterested assistance, which enabled
the writer so to economise his time as to finish his task before the
part first written was entirely obsolete.
The process of change in the United States goes on so rapidly that the
attempt of a guidebook to keep abreast of the times (not easy in any
country) becomes almost futile. The speed with which Denver
metamorphosed her outward appearance has already been commented on at
page 214; and this is but one instance in a thousand. Towns spring up
literally in a night. McGregor in Texas, at the junction of two new
railways, had twelve houses the day after it was fixed upon as a town
site, and in two months contained five hundred souls. Towns may also
disappear in a night, as Johnstown (Penn.) was swept away by the
bursting of a dam on May 31, 1889, or as Chicago was destroyed by the
great fire of 1871. These are simply exaggerated examples of what is
happening less obtrusively all the time. The means of access to points
of interest are constantly changing; the rough horse-trail of to-day
becomes the stage-road of to-morrow and the railway of the day after.
The conservative clinging to the old, so common in Europe, has no
place in the New World; an apparently infinitesimal advantage will
occasion a _bouleversement_ that is by no means infinitesimal.
Next to the interest and beauty of the places to be visited, perhaps
the two things in which a visitor to a new country has most concern
are the means of moving from point to point and the accommodation
provided for him at his nightly stopping-places--in brief, its
conveyances and its inns. During the year or more I spent in almost
continuous travelling in the United States I had abundant opportunity
of testing both of these. In all I must have slept in over two hundred
different beds, ranging from one in a hotel-chamber so gorgeous that
it seemed almost as indelicate to go to bed in it as to undress in the
drawing-room, down through the berths of Pullman cars and river
steamboats, to an open-air couch of balsam boughs in the Adirondack
forests. My means of locomotion included a safety bicycle, an
Adirondack canoe, the back of a horse, the omnipresent buggy, a
bob-sleigh, a "cutter," a "booby," four-horse "stages," river, lake,
and sea-going steamers, horse-cars, cable-cars, electric cars,
mountain elevators, narrow-gauge railways, and the Vestibuled Limited
Express from New York to Chicago.
Perhaps it is significant of the amount of truth in many of the
assertions made about travelling in the United States that I traversed
about 35,000 miles in the various ways indicated above without a
scratch and almost without serious detention or delay. Once we were
nearly swamped in a sudden squall in a mountain lake, and once we had
a minute or two's pleasant experience of the iron-shod heels of our
horse _inside_ the buggy, the unfortunate animal having hitched his
hind-legs over the dash-board and nearly kicking out our brains in his
frantic efforts to get free. These, however, were accidents that might
have happened anywhere, and if my experiences by road and rail in
America prove anything, they prove that travelling in the United
States is just as safe as in Europe.[30] Some varieties of it are
rougher than anything of the kind I know in the Old World; but on the
other hand much of it is far pleasanter. The European system of small
railway compartments, in spite of its advantage of privacy and quiet,
would be simply unendurable in the long journeys that have to be made
in the western hemisphere. The journey of twenty-four to thirty hours
from New York to Chicago, if made by the Vestibuled Limited, is
probably less fatiguing than the day-journey of half the time from
London to Edinburgh. The comforts of this superb train include those
of the drawing-room, the dining-room, the smoking-room, and the
library. These apartments are perfectly ventilated by compressed air
and lighted by movable electric lights, while in winter they are
warmed to an agreeable temperature by steam-pipes. Card-tables and a
selection of the daily papers minister to the traveller's amusement,
while bulletin boards give the latest Stock Exchange quotations and
the reports of the Government Weather Bureau. Those who desire it may
enjoy a bath _en route_, or avail themselves of the services of a
lady's maid, a barber, a stenographer, and a type-writer. There is
even a small and carefully selected medicine chest within reach; and
the way in which the minor delicacies of life are consulted may be
illustrated by the fact that powdered soap is provided in the
lavatories, so that no one may have to use the same cake of soap as
his neighbour.
No one who has not tried both can appreciate the immense difference in
comfort given by the opportunity to move about in the train. No matter
how pleasant one's companions are in an English first-class
compartment, their _enforced_ proximity makes one heartily sick of
them before many hours have elapsed; while a conversation with Daisy
Miller in the American parlour car is rendered doubly delightful by
the consciousness that you may at any moment transfer yourself and
your _bons mots_ to Lydia Blood at the other end of the car, or retire
with Gilead P. Beck to the snug little smoking-room. The great size
and weight of the American cars make them very steady on well-laid
tracks like those of the Pennsylvania Railway, and thus letter-writing
need not be a lost art on a railway journey. Even when the permanent
way is inferior, the same cause often makes the vibration less than on
the admirable road-beds of England.
Theoretically, there is no distinction of classes on an American
railway; practically, there is whenever the line is important enough
or the journey long enough to make it worth while. The parlour car
corresponds to our first class; and its use has this advantage (rather
curious in a democratic country), that the increased fare for its
admirable comforts is relatively very low, usually (in my experience)
not exceeding 1/2_d._ a mile. The ordinary fare from New York to
Boston (220 to 250 miles) is $5 (£1); a seat in a parlour car costs $1
(4_s._), and a sleeping-berth $1.50 (6_s._). Thus the ordinary
passenger pays at the rate of about 1-1/4_d._ per mile, while the
luxury of the Pullman may be obtained for an additional expenditure of
just about 1/2_d._ a mile. The extra fare on even the Chicago
Vestibuled Limited is only $8 (32_s._) for 912 miles, or considerably
less than 1/2_d._ a mile. These rates are not only less than the
difference between first-class and third-class fares in Europe, but
also compare very advantageously with the rates for sleeping-berths on
European lines, being usually 50 to 75 per cent. lower. The
parlour-car rates, however, increase considerably as we go on towards
the West and get into regions where competition is less active. A good
instance of this is afforded by the parlour-car fares of the Canadian
Pacific Railway, which I select because it spans the continent with
its own rails from the Atlantic to the Pacific; the principle on the
United States lines is similar. The price of a "sleeper" ticket from
Montreal to Fort William (998 miles) is $6, or about 3/5_d._ per mile;
that from Banff to Vancouver (560 miles) is the same, or at the rate
of about 14/15_d._ per mile. The rate for the whole journey from
Halifax to Vancouver (3,362 miles) is about 2/3_d._ per mile.
Travellers who prefer the privacy of the European system may combine
it with the liberty of the American system by hiring, at a small extra
rate, the so-called "drawing-room" or "state-room," a small
compartment containing four seats or berths, divided by partitions
from the rest of the parlour car. The ordinary carriage or "day coach"
corresponds to the English second-class carriage, or, rather, to the
excellent third-class carriages on such railways as the Midland. It
does not, I think, excel them in comfort except in the greater size,
the greater liberty of motion, and the element of variety afforded by
the greater number of fellow-passengers. The seats are disposed on
each side of a narrow central aisle, and are so arranged that the
occupants can ride forward or backward as they prefer. Each seat holds
two persons, but with some difficulty if either has any amplitude of
bulk. The space for the legs is also very limited. The chief
discomfort, however, is the fact that there is no support for the head
and shoulders, though this disability might be easily remedied by a
movable head-rest. Very little provision is made for hand luggage, the
American custom being to "check" anything checkable and have it put in
the "baggage car." Rugs are entirely superfluous, as the cars are far
more likely to be too warm than too cold. The windows are usually
another weak point. They move vertically as ours do, but up instead of
down; and they are frequently made so that they cannot be opened more
than a few inches. The handles by which they are lifted are very
small, and afford very little purchase; and the windows are frequently
so stiff that it requires a strong man to move them. I have often seen
half a dozen passengers struggle in vain with a refractory glass, and
finally have to call in the help of the brawny brakeman. This
difficulty, however, is of less consequence from the fact that even if
you can open your window, there is sure to be some one among your
forty or fifty fellow-passengers who objects to the draught. Or if
_you_ object to the draught of a window in front of you, you have
either to grin and bear it or do violence to your British diffidence
in requesting its closure. The windows are all furnished with small
slatted blinds, which can be arranged in hot weather so as to exclude
the sun and let in the air. The conductor communicates with the
engine-driver by a bell-cord suspended from the roof of the carriages
and running throughout the entire length of the train. It is well to
remember that this tempting clothes-rope is not meant for hanging up
one's overcoat. Whatever be the reason, the plague of cinders from the
locomotive smoke is often much worse in America than in England. As we
proceed, they patter on the roof like hailstones, in a way that is
often very trying to the nerves, and they not unfrequently make open
windows a doubtful blessing, even on immoderately warm days. At
intervals the brakeman carries round a pitcher of iced water, which he
serves gratis to all who want it; and it is a pleasant sight on
sultry summer days to see how the children welcome his coming. In some
cases there is a permanent filter of ice-water with a tap in a corner
of the car. At each end of the car is a lavatory, one for men and one
for women. In spite, then, of the discomforts noted above, it may be
asserted that the poor man is more comfortable on a long journey than
in Europe; and that on a short journey the American system affords
more entertainment than the European. When Richard Grant White
announced his preference for the English system because it preserves
the traveller's individuality, looks after his personal comfort, and
carries all his baggage, he must have forgotten that it is practically
first-class passengers only who reap the benefit of those advantages.
One most unpleasantly suggestive equipment of an American railway
carriage is the axe and crowbar suspended on the wall for use in an
accident. This makes one reflect that there are only two doors in an
American car containing sixty people, whereas the same number of
passengers in Europe would have six, eight, or even ten. This is
extremely inconvenient in crowded trains (_e.g._, in the New York
Elevated), and might conceivably add immensely to the horrors of an
accident. The latter reflection is emphasised by the fact that there
are practically no soft places to fall on, sharp angles presenting
themselves on every side, and the very arm-rests of the seats being
made of polished iron.
There is always a smoking-car attached to the train, generally
immediately after the locomotive or luggage van. Labourers in their
working clothes and the shabbily clad in general are apt to select
this car, which thus practically takes the place of third-class
carriages on European railways. On the long-distance trains running
to the West there are emigrant cars which also represent our
third-class cars, while the same function is performed in the South by
the cars reserved for coloured passengers. In a few instances the
trains are made up of first-class and second-class carriages actually
so named. A "first-class ticket," however, in ordinary language means
one for the universal day-coach as above described.