I
This year (1922) brings the centennial of Matthew Arnold’s birth. Except for a few of his more important poems, we confess to an affectionate ignorance about Arnold. Of course, we remember taking notes during a number of lectures about him when we were at college; a few catchwords about culture and anarchy; sweetness and light; seeing life steadily and seeing it whole; Barbarians, Philistines, and Populace—a few faded buntings of this sort flutter rather dingily from the halliards of our memory; and we remember that he had exceptionally fine whiskers. We used to speculate, in the jejune manner of youth, as to whether Matt, as Rugby boy and Oxford undergraduate, was not a rather amusing contrast to the robust Tom Brown whom his father made famous. But, as you will see, Arnold has never been more than an interesting and gracious wraith in our mind. Those of his essays that we were told to reread we have forgotten, or else (more likely) we never opened.
But rambling not long ago in the cellar of Mr. Mendoza’s bookshop on Ann Street we found, with a shock of excitement, a little book published in Boston in 1888, called Civilization in the United States: First and Last Impressions of America, by Matthew Arnold. We wondered whether this little book had ever been perused by any of the vigorous skeptics who published a recent large volume with the same title. They made, as far as we can recall, no allusion to it. Yet they would have found in it much nourishing meat.
Matthew Arnold’s analysis of American life is interesting to read now. Much of his estimate he would certainly wish to revise. We forget just when it was that he travelled over here—in the 80’s, we suppose—but his general comment was that American civilization was not interesting. He used the word in a very special sense, apparently; he explains it by mentioning the sense of beauty and the sense of distinction. He found American life lacking in charm and in those elements of beauty which appeal to the tranquil and more reflective emotions. It is entertaining—in view of later developments—to hear him say that “the American cities have hardly anything to please a trained or a natural sense for beauty ... where the Americans succeed best in their architecture—in that art so indicative and educative of a people’s sense for beauty—is in the fashion of their villa-cottages in wood.” One cannot help putting a little covey of exclamation marks in the margin at that point. Those “villa-cottages in wood” of the 1880’s are now the jest and rapidly vanishing pox of our suburbs. Even to Abraham Lincoln, by the way, he denies “distinction.” He says, “shrewd, sagacious, humorous, honest, courageous, firm; a man with qualities deserving the most sincere esteem and praise, but he has not distinction.” We have read somewhere (it is an unforgettable crumb of human oddity) that Arnold was chiefly interested in Lincoln’s assassination because the murderer shouted in Latin as he leapt on the stage.
There is much that might be said about a point of view so sincere, so sympathetic, so bravely honest, and yet so lacking in some qualities of imagination as that we seem to find in Arnold’s book. But what we want to quote is a portion of his comment on the American newspapers. Perhaps it is more nearly true still—and, since Northcliffe, more nearly true of British newspapers also—than any other part of his remarks. But we wish to quote it without either assent or denial. He wrote:
You must have lived amongst their newspapers to know what they are. If I relate some of my own experiences, it is because these will give a clear enough notion of what the newspapers over there are, and one remembers more definitely what has happened to oneself. Soon after arriving in Boston I opened a Boston newspaper and came upon a column headed: “Tickings.” By tickings we are to understand news conveyed through the tickings of the telegraph. The first “ticking” was: “Matthew Arnold is sixty-two years old”—an age, I must just say in passing, which I had not then reached. The second “ticking” was: “Wales says, Mary is a darling”; the meaning being that the Prince of Wales expressed great admiration for Miss Mary Anderson. This was at Boston, the American Athens. I proceeded to Chicago. An evening paper was given me soon after I arrived; I opened it, and found under a large-type heading, “We have seen him arrive,” the following picture of myself: “He has harsh features, supercilious manners, parts his hair down the middle, wears a single eyeglass and ill-fitting clothes.” Notwithstanding this rather unfavourable introduction, I was most kindly and hospitably received at Chicago. It happened that I had a letter for Mr. Medill, an elderly gentleman of Scotch descent, the editor of the chief newspaper in those parts, the Chicago Tribune. I called on him, and we conversed amicably together. Some time afterwards, when I had gone back to England, a New York paper published a criticism of Chicago and its people, purporting to have been contributed by me to the Pall Mall Gazette over here. It was a poor hoax, but many people were taken in and were excusably angry, Mr. Medill of the Chicago Tribune amongst the number. A friend telegraphed to me to know if I had written the criticism. I, of course, instantly telegraphed back that I had not written a syllable of it. Then a Chicago paper is sent to me; and what I have the pleasure of reading, as the result of my contradiction, is this: “Arnold denies; Mr. Medill refuses to accept Arnold’s disclaimer; says Arnold is a cur.”
There were California boosters even then, we note. Arnold quotes a Coast newspaper which called all Easterners “the unhappy denizens of a forbidding clime,” and added: “The time will surely come when all roads will lead to California. Here will be the home of art, science, literature, and profound knowledge.”