In essentials America is American, but when it comes to inessentials, to
trimmings, her dependence on old England was noticeable again and again
as I walked about New York. The fashion which, at the moment, the print
shops were fostering was for our racing, hunting and coaching coloured
prints of a century ago, while in the gallery of the distinguished
little Grolier Club I found an exhibition of the work of Randolph
Caldecott and Kate Greenaway. In such old bookshops as I visited all
the emphasis was--just then--laid upon Keats and Lamb and Shelley, whose
first editions and presentation copies seem to be continually making the
westward journey. I had not been in New York twenty-four hours before
Keats' "Lamia," 1820--with an inscription from the author to Charles
Lamb--the very copy from which, I imagine, Lamb wrote his review, was in
my hands; but it would have been far beyond my means even if the pound
were not standing at 3.83. These "association" books, in which American
collectors take especial pleasure, can be very costly. At a sale soon
after I left New York, seven presentation copies of Dickens' books,
containing merely the author's signed inscription, realised 4870
dollars. To continue, in Wanamaker's old curiosity department I found
little but English furniture and odds and ends, at prices which in their
own country would have been fantastically high. In the "Vanity Fair"
department, however (as I think it is called), the source was French. I
suppose that French influence must be at the back of all the costumiers
and jewellers of New York, but the shops themselves are far more
spacious than those in Paris and not less well-appointed. Tiffany's is
a palace; all it lacks is a name, but its splendid anonymity is, I take
it, a point of honour.
It used to be said that good Americans when they died went to Paris. The
Parisian lure no doubt is still powerful; but every day I should guess
that more of Paris comes to America. The upper parts of New York have
boulevards and apartment houses very like the real thing, and I noticed
that the architecture of France exerts a special attraction for the
rich man decreeing himself a pleasure dome. There are millionaires'
residences in New York that might have been transplanted not only from
the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne, but from Touraine itself; while when I
made my pilgrimage to Mr. Widener's, just outside Philadelphia, I found
Rembrandt's "Mill," and Manet's dead bull-fighter, and a Vermeer, and
a little meadow painted divinely by Corot, and El Greco's family group,
and Donatello's St. George, and one of the most lovely scenes that ever
was created by Turner's enchanted brush, all enshrined in a palace which
Louis Seize might have built.
But America is even more French than this. Her women can be not less
_soignées_ than those of France, although they suggest a cooler blood
and less dependence on male society; her bread and coffee are better
than France's best. Moreover, when it comes to night and the Broadway
constellations challenge the darkness, New York leaves Paris far behind.
For every cabaret and supper resort that Paris can provide, New York has
three; and for every dancing floor in Paris, New York has thirty. Good
Americans, however, will still remain faithful to their old posthumous
love, if only for her wine.
Apropos of American women, their position struck me as very different
from the position of women with us. English women are deferential to
their husbands; they are content to be relegated to the background on
all occasions when they are not wanted. They are dependent. They seldom
wear an air of triumph and rarely take the lead. But American women are
complacent and assured, they do most of the talking, make most of the
plans: if they are not seen, it is because they are in the background;
they are either active prominently elsewhere or are high on pedestals.
With each other they are mostly or often humorously direct, whereas with
men they seem to adopt an ironical or patronising attitude. American
women seem also to have a curious power of attracting to themselves
other women who admire them and foster their self-esteem. And, for all
that I know, these satellites have satellites too. Their federacy almost
amounts to a solid secret society; not so much against men, for men
must provide the sinews of war and other comforts, but for their own
satisfaction. Both sexes appear not to languish when alone.