Looking back on it all I realise that America never struck me as a new
country, although its inhabitants often seemed to be a new people. The
cities are more mature than the citizens. New York, Chicago, Boston,
Philadelphia, Washington--all have an air of permanence and age. The
buildings, even the most fantastic, suggest indigenousness, or at least
stability; nor would the presence of more ancient structures increase
this effect. To the eye of the ordinary Englishman accustomed to work in
what we call the City, in Fleet Street, in the Strand, in Piccadilly, or
in Oxford Street, New York would not appear to be a younger place than
London, and Boston might easily strike him as older. Nor is London more
than a little older, except in spots, such as the Tower and the Temple
and the Abbey, and that little Tudor row in Holborn, all separated by
vast tracts of modernity. Indeed, I would almost go farther and say that
London sets up an illusion of being newer even than New York by reason
of its more disturbing street traffic both in the roads and on the
footways, and the prevalence of the gaily coloured omnibuses which
thunder along so many thoroughfares in notable contrast with the
sedate and sober vehicles that serve Fifth Avenue and are hardly seen
elsewhere.
Meanwhile an illusion of antiquity is set up by New York's habit of
commingling business houses and private residences, which surely belongs
to an older order of society. In London we have done away with such
a blend. Our nearest approach to Fifth Avenue is, I suppose, Regent
Street; but there are no mansions among the shops of Regent Street. Our
shops are there and our mansions are elsewhere, far away, in what we
call residential quarters--such as Park Lane, Queen's Gate, Mayfair, the
Bayswater Road, and Grosvenor Square. To turn out of Fifth Avenue into
the quiet streets where people live is to receive a distinct impression
of sedateness such as New York is never supposed to convey. One has the
same feeling in the other great American cities.
But when it comes to their inhabitants there are to the English eye
fewer signs of maturity. I have never been able to get rid of the idea
that every one I have met in America, no matter how grave a senior,
instead of being really and self-consciously in the thick of life,
is only getting ready to begin. Perhaps this is due in part to the
pleasure--the excitement almost--which American business men--and all
Americans are business men--take in their work. They not merely do it,
but they enjoy doing it and they watch themselves doing it. They seem to
have a knack of withdrawing aside and observing themselves as from
the stalls, not without applause. In other words, they dramatise
continually. Now, one does not do this when one is old--it is a childish
game--and it is another proof that they are younger than we, who do not
enjoy our work, and indeed, most of us, are ashamed of it and want the
world to believe that we live like the lilies on private means.
Similarly, many Americans seem, when they talk, to be two persons: one
the talker, and the other the listener charmed by the quality of his
discourse. There is nothing detrimental in such duplicity. Indeed,
I think I have a very real envy of it. But one of the defects of the
listening habit is perhaps to make them too rhetorical, too verbose. It
is odd that the nation that has given us so much epigrammatic slang and
the telegraph and the telephone and the typewriter should have so little
of what might be called intellectual short-hand. But so it is. Too many
Americans are remorseless when they are making themselves clear.
Yet the passion for printed idiomatic sententiousness and arresting
trade-notices is visible all the time. You see it in the newspapers and
in the shops. I found a children's millinery shop in New York with
this laconic indication of its scope, in permanent letters, on the
plate-glass window: "Lids for Kids." A New York undertaker, I am told,
has affixed to all his hearses the too legible legend: "You may linger,
but I'll get you yet."
When it comes to descriptive new words, coined rapidly to meet
occasions, we English are nowhere compared with the Americans. Could
there be anything better than the term "Nearbeer" to reveal at a blow
the character of a substitute for ale? I take off my hat, too, to
"crape-hanger," which leaves "kill-joy" far in the rear. But "optience"
for a cinema audience, which sees but does not hear, though ingenious,
is less admirable.
Although I found the walls of business offices in New York and elsewhere
decorated with pithy counsel to callers, and discouragements to
irrelevance, such as "Come to the point but don't camp on it," "To hell
with yesterday," and so forth, I am very doubtful if with all these
suggestions of practical address and Napoleonic efficiency the American
business man is as quick and decisive as ours can be. There is more
autobiography talked in American offices than in English; more getting
ready to begin.
I have, however, no envy of the American man's inability to loaf and
invite his soul, as his great democratic poet was able to do. I think
that this unfamiliarity with armchair life is a misfortune. That article
of furniture, we must suppose, is for older civilisations, where men
have either, after earning the right to recline, taken their ease
gracefully, or have inherited their fortune and are partial to idleness.
It consorts ill with those who are still either continually and
restlessly in pursuit of the dollar or are engaged in the occupation of
watching dollars automatically arrive.
One of the things, I take it, for Americans to learn is how to transform
money into a friend. So many men who ought to be quietly rejoicing in
their riches seem still to be anxious and acquisitive; so many men who
have become suddenly wealthy seem to be allowing their gains to ruin
their happiness. For the nation's good nearly every one, I fancy, has
too much money.
My experience is that England has almost everything to learn from
America in the matter of hotels. I consider American second and
third-class hotels to be better in many ways than our best. Every
American restaurant, of each grade, is better than the English
equivalent; the appointments are better, the food is served with more
distinction and often is better too. When it comes to coffee, there is
no comparison whatever: American coffee is the best in the world. Only
quite recently has the importance of the complete suite entered the
intelligence of the promoters of English hotels, and in myriads of these
establishments, called first class, there is still but one bathroom to
twenty rooms. Heating coils and hot and cold water in the rooms are even
more rare: so rare as to be mentioned in the advertisements. Telephones
in the rooms are rarer. In too many hotels in England there is still
no light at the head of the bed. But we have certain advantages. For
example, in English restaurants there is always something on the table
to eat at once--_hors d'oeuvres_ or bread and butter. In America there
is too often nothing ready but iced water--an ungenial overture to
any feast--and you must wait until your order has been taken. Other
travellers, even Americans, have agreed with me that it would be more
comfortable if the convention which decrees that the waiter shall bring
everything together could be overruled. Something "to go on with" is a
great ameliorative, especially when one is hungry and tired.
In thus commending American hotels over English it is, however, only
right to admit that the American hotels are very much more expensive.
While on the subject of eating, I would say that for all their notorious
freedoms Americans have a better sense of order than we. Their policemen
may carry their batons drawn, and even swing them with a certain
insolent defiance or even provocation, but New York goes on its way
with more precision and less disturbance than London, and every one
is smarter, more alert. The suggestion of a living wage for all is
constant. It is indeed on this sense of orderliness that the success
of certain of the American time-saving appliances is built. The Automat
restaurants, for example, where the customer gets all his requirements
himself, would never do in London. The idea is perfect; but it requires
the co-operation of the customer, and that is what we should fail to
provide. The spotless cleanliness and mechanical exactitude of these
places in New York would cease in London, and gradually they would
decline and then disappear. At heart, we in England dislike well-managed
places. Nor can I see New York's public distribution of hot water
adopted in London. Such little geysers as expel steam at intervals
through the roadway of Fifth Avenue will never, I fear, be found in
Regent Street or Piccadilly. Our communism is very patchy.
There are some unexpected differences between America and England. It is
odd, for instance, to find a nation from whom we get most of our tobacco
and who have the reputation of even chewing cigars, with such strict
rules against smoking. In the Music Halls, which are, as a rule, better
than ours, smoking is permitted only in certain parts. Public decorum
again is, I should say, more noticeable in an American than an
English city, and yet both in San Francisco and New York I dined in
restaurants--not late--between 7 and 8--and not furtive hole-in-corner
places,--where girls belonging to the establishment, wearing almost
nothing at all, performed the latest dances, with extravagant and daring
variations of them, among the tables. In London this kind of thing is
unknown. In Paris it occurs only in the night cafés. It struck me as
astonishing--and probably not at all to the good--that it should be an
ordinary dinner accompaniment.
I was asked while I was in America to set down some of the chief things
that I missed. I might easily have begun with walking-sticks, for until
I reached New York I seemed to be the only man in America who carried
one, although a San Francisco friend confessed to sometimes "wearing
a cane" on Sundays. I missed a Visitors' Book either at the British
Embassy in Washington or at the White House. After passing through
India, where one's first duty is to enter one's name in these volumes,
it seemed odd that the same machinery of civility should be lacking. I
missed any system of cleaning boots during the night, in the hotels; but
I soon became accustomed to this, and rather enjoyed visiting the "shine
parlours," in one of which was this crisp notice: "If you like our work,
tell your friends; if you don't like it, tell us." I missed gum-chewing.
But it was on returning to England that I began really to take notice.
Then I found myself missing America's cleanliness, America's despatch,
its hotel efficiency, its lashings of cream, its ice on every hand. All
this at Liverpool! I missed later the petrol fountains all about the
roads, a few of which I had seen in India, at which the motorist can
replenish; but these surely will not be long in coming. I don't want
England to be Americanised; I don't want America to cease to be a
foreign country; but there are lessons each of us can learn.
If I were an American, although I travelled abroad now and then (and
I hold that it is the duty of a man to see other lands but live in his
own) I should concentrate on America. It is the country of the future. I
am glad I have seen it and now know something--however slight--about
it at first hand. I made many friends there and amassed innumerable
delightful memories. But what is the use of eight weeks? I am ashamed
not to have gone there sooner, and humiliated by the brevity of my
stay. I have had the opportunity only to lift a thousand curtains, get
a glimpse of the entertainment on the other side and drop them again. I
should like to go there every other year and have time: time to make the
acquaintance of a naturalist and learn from him the names of birds and
trees and flowers; time to loiter in the byways; time to penetrate into
deeper strata where intimacies strike root and the real discoveries
are made; time to discern beneath the surface, so hard and assured,
something fey, something wistful, the sense of tears.