BACK TO CANADA AND THE UNITED STATES
THE Pacific as we crossed it on our return from Japan to America was
very different to the Pacific of our outward journey. Instead of being
on a small ship, so buffeted by the seas that we could not remain on
deck, with hardly another white passenger on board except missionaries,
we were on a large ship—the finest which crossed the Pacific in those
days—full of “Society” people returning from the East, and the sea was
like the traditional mill-pond.
We landed at San Francisco and stayed a week at the Palace to see
something of life in the Californian capital. It struck me as very like
life in Australia, especially in the character of the buildings and the
appearance of the people. But the cold winds of the San Francisco summer
have no parallel in Australia.
The chief effect of my visit to California in the development of my
writing was that, receiving a contract to write a number of articles for
the _San Francisco Chronicle_, my first prose writing had to be lively
enough to satisfy the lively Californian audience. This was a good
training.
From San Francisco we went up the Pacific coast to Vancouver, with good
opportunities for learning the humours and vulgarities of Western
America.
The tail-end of summer and the autumn we spent in working our way back
from Vancouver to Montreal, breaking our journey wherever we felt
inclined to try the joys of wild life in Canada—at the head waters of
the Fraser, the Sicamous lakes in the Kootenay country, various spots on
Lake Nepigon and the wild North shore of Lake Superior, Lake Nipissing,
the Lake of the Woods, Trout Lake, and so on, besides the chief towns
like Winnipeg, and the regular tourist stopping-places at Banff and the
Glacier House. At some places we had the opportunity of watching the
life of the Siwashes, or Coast Indians, of Esquimaux blood, who live
chiefly by catching and drying the salmon which we saw coming up the
Fraser like a river of fish in a river of water. At others we saw the
lordly Red Indian—Stony or Blood or Blackfoot—and on the Rainy Lake we
saw two thousand Ojibways on the war-path—all cartridge-belts and
feathers—camped on the outskirts of a Canadian town (without inflicting
the smallest scare on the inhabitants), while they were waiting to see
if they should have to go and support the Ojibways across the border in
their war upon a Baltimore Company, which had infringed their rights.
The Indians, in their shrewd way, first tried their luck in the United
States Courts, who decided in their favour, so war was not declared.
At Sicamous we saw eighty fresh skins of black bears, who had been
slaughtered while they were feeding on the salmon stranded in shallow
water, owing to the failure of the berry crop. In their anxiety to spawn
in shallow water, the salmon crush their way up into tiny brooks and
ponds where the bears can catch them easily, and the farmers sweep them
out of the water with branches.
At the Glacier House, Jim the guide’s slaying of the great grizzly bear,
when we were there before, inflamed my imagination. I cultivated Jim. I
climbed the great Assulkan Glacier with him after the first fall of
autumn snow, and made a vow about glaciers which I have religiously
kept; and having a Winchester sporting rifle with me, I went out with
him to try and get a shot at a grizzly, whose track he had seen. But we
saw no more of that bear, which was, perhaps, fortunate for me, for
though I had won many prizes at rifle-shooting, I had not been brought
face to face with any dangerous game, and a grizzly decidedly falls into
that category.
We had splendid fishing all the way across, and delightful camping out;
and altogether had an experience of outdoor life in Western Canada,
which is very unspoiled and wild—a snakeless Eden, that certainly told
in my development as a writer.
At last the autumn came to an end. We felt the first breath of winter
standing by the river side, where Tom Moore wrote his famous _Canadian
Boat Song_—the woods were a glory of crimson and gold.
We said good-bye to Canada and turned our footsteps to New York. There
we met a warm-hearted American welcome. Our numerous friends seemed to
find an almost personal gratification in the fact that we had been to
the Far North-West and to the Far East, to the Pacific Coast and to
Japan and China.
I was now no longer exclusively the “Australian Poet,” I was a sort of
mild explorer, and people talked Japan to me whenever they were not
talking about themselves. There was a good deal of this to do, because I
had a commission from Griffith, Farran & Co. to compile a book on the
younger American Poets, and nearly every one I met seemed to be a poet.
I was sitting next to H. M. Alden, the editor of _Harper’s Magazine_,
one night at dinner. Suddenly he pulled out his watch. “It is now nine
o’clock,” he said; “at this moment there are a hundred thousand people
in America writing poetry, and most of them will send it to me.”
One of them was the English curate of the most fashionable church in New
York, and he was in a quandary. He wished to be in the book, but he had
heard that there was to be a biography of each poet, giving his date of
birth, parentage, career, etc. He did not wish his date of birth to be
known—he thought that it would interfere with his prospects as a
lady-killer. “Was it compulsory for him to say how old he was?” he
whined.
“You need not tell the truth about it,” I suggested.
In the compilation of that book I saw a great deal of human nature,
because I met the poets, whereas in _Australian Poets_, which I edited
simultaneously, I had to do my work entirely by correspondence.
We spent a delightful winter and spring in New York, because we had Miss
Lorimer’s beautiful sister, Mrs. Hay-Chapman, one of the finest amateur
pianists I ever heard, staying with us all the time, so that we had a
feast of music, and as I was doing literary and dramatic criticisms for
the _Dominion Illustrated_, the leading weekly of Canada, we had plenty
of new books and theatre tickets. This, and the articles on Japan I was
writing for the American Press and McClure’s Syndicate, kept me quite
busy.
My sojourn in America had a most important influence on my literary
career, because it taught me my trade as a journalist. Needing money,
and having no connections, I had to make my way as a journalistic free
lance in the open market, and I succeeded in making a fair income out of
it.
But I never tried to get a publisher (though one came to me), for the
simple reason that I never contemplated entering the lists as a
prose-writer. A large and well-known firm bought editions in sheets of
my various volumes of verse, which surprised me very much, till they
went bankrupt shortly afterwards without paying for them. The purchase
was not of sufficient magnitude to be the cause of the bankruptcy, as
the ill-natured might suggest.
I have often regretted that I did not form a close personal connection
with a single publishing house over there, instead of having each
individual book, as it was ready, sold to whichever publisher the agent
happens to do business with.
Also I blame myself for not learning the art of pleasing the American
novel-reader. Their book market is a much more valuable one than ours,
and unfortunately the worst fault a novel can have in their eyes is its
being “too British.” A book like _The Tragedy of the Pyramids_ is
anathema to them.
The only prose book I published during my sojourn in America was _The
Art of Travel_, for which the publisher, a Greek, forgot to pay me a
single penny of what he contracted. I afterwards turned into it an
advertisement for the North German Lloyd, and got something, about fifty
pounds, I think, out of them.
I must not take leave of America without recording my impressions of the
other American cities which I visited besides New York and Boston.
San Francisco, Seattle, Tacoma and other western towns were spoiled for
me, because the working-classes in them were so “swollen-headed” and
rude that any educated or gently-born person felt like a victim of the
French Revolution as he was making his way to the scaffold, surrounded
by wild mobs thirsting for his blood. The lower classes in the cities of
the Pacific Coast insult you to show that they are your equals. And
except as manual labourers, they never could be anybody’s equals,
because God created them so common. It is these people and the
unscrupulous speculators who make money. The decent people get ground
between the upper and lower grindstone in a land where living costs out
of all proportion to the rewards of education.
We spent some time also in Washington, which is their exact converse.
Washington has its vulgar rich, who go there to make a “season” of it,
and its venal and lobbying politicians who make the vast temple, which
acts as the American Capitol, a den of thieves, but they do not take the
first place in the public eye. The really fine elements in the American
nation are well represented at Washington, and form a natural Court, in
which the President may or may not be prominent. That depends on whether
he is fit to be their leader. It is they, and not the President, who
keep up the traditions of their country before the eyes of the various
Embassies. Such a man was Colonel John Hay. Their presence helps to make
Washington a delightful city.
The American Government is extremely polite and hospitable to visiting
authors. I was such a small author in those days that I felt positively
embarrassed when, a few hours after our arrival in Washington, President
Cleveland’s private secretary, Colonel Dan Lamont, called with an
invitation for us to go to supper with the President and Mrs. Cleveland
and be present at the last reception they gave before they left the
White House.
And when President Harrison came into office, Mr. Blaine, the new
Secretary of State, invited us to share his private box to witness the
inaugural procession.
[Illustration:
ISRAEL ZANGWILL
_Drawn by Yoshio Markino_
]
These were civilities beyond one’s dreams, and added to them were the
never-ceasing hospitalities at houses like John Hay’s, and the Judges’,
and the delightful receptions at which one met the great scientists
connected with the Smithsonian Institute, and the chief authors and
editors congregated at Washington.
To witness a change of Administration at Washington and partake in its
hospitalities is extraordinarily stimulating and interesting. It was a
privilege far beyond my deserts to meet the great public men of America.
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