From Dublin to Chicago: Some Notes on a Tour in America

by George A. Birmingham

Indeed this similarity of language was something of a disappointment to us. We did not actually expect to hear people say "I guess" at the beginning of every sentence. We knew that was as impossible as the frequent "Begorras" with which we Irish are credited. But we had read several delightful American books, one called "Rules of the Game" with particular attention, and we thought the American language would be more vigorously picturesque than it turns out to be. The American in books uses phrases and employs metaphors which are a continual joy. His conversation is a series of stimulating shocks. In real life he does not keep up to that level. He talks very much as an Englishman does. There are, indeed, ways of pronouncing certain words which are strange and very pleasant. I would give a good deal to be able to say "very" and "America" as these words are said across the Atlantic. "Vurry" does not represent the sound, nor does "Amurrica," but I have tried in vain to pick up that vowel. I suppose I am tone deaf. I either caricature it as "vurry" or relapse into the lean English version of the word. There are also some familiar words which are used in ways strange to me. "Through," for instance, is a word which I am thoroughly accustomed to, and "cereal" is one which I often come across in books dealing with agriculture. But I was puzzled one morning when an attentive American parlor maid, with her eye on my porridge plate, asked me whether I was "through with the cereal." Solicitors on this side of the Atlantic are regarded as more or less respectable members of society. Some of their clients may consider them crafty, but no one would class them, as actors used to be classed, with vagabonds. It was therefore a surprise to me to read a notice on an office door: "Solicitors and beggars are forbidden to enter this building." I made enquiries about what the solicitors had done to deserve this, and found that "solicitor," in that part of America, perhaps all over America, means, not a kind of lawyer, but one who solicits subscriptions, either for some charity or for his own use and benefit.

There are other words, "Baggage check," for instance, which could not be familiar to us, because we have not got the thing to which they belong in the British Isles. And a highly picturesque vigorous phrase meets one now and then. There was an occasion in which a laundry annoyed us very much. It did not bring back some clothes which had gone to be washed. We complained to a pleasant and highly vital young lady who controlled all the telephones in our hotel. She took our side in the dispute at once, seized the nearest receiver, and promised to "lay out that laundry right now." We went up to our rooms comforted with the vision of a whole staff of washer women lying in rows like corpses, with napkins tied under their chins, and white sheets over them. Americans ought not to swear, and do, in fact, swear much less than English people in ordinary conversation. The Englishman, when things go wrong with him, is almost forced to say "Damn" in order to express his feelings. His way of speaking his native language offers him no alternative. The American has at command a small battery of phrases far more helpful than any oath. It is no temptation to damn a laundry when you can "lay it out" by telephone.

I like the American use of the word "right" in such phrases as "right here," "right now," and "right away." When you are told, by telephone, as you are told almost everything in America, that your luggage will be sent up to your room in the hotel "right now," you are conscious of the friendliness of intention in the hall porter, which the English phrase "at once" wholly fails to convey. Even if you have to wait several hours before you actually get the luggage you know that every effort is being made to meet your wishes. You may perhaps have got into a bath and find yourself, for the want of clean clothes, forced to decide between staying there, going straight to bed, and getting back into the dirty garments in which you have traveled. But you have no business to complain. The "right now" ought to comfort you. Especially when it is repeated cheerily, while you stand dripping and embarrassed at the receiver to make a final appeal. The word "right" in these phrases does not intensify, it modifies, the immediateness of the now. This is one of the things to which you must get accustomed in America. But it is a friendly phrase, offering and inviting brotherliness of the most desirable kind. That it means no more than the "Anon, sir, anon," of Shakespeare's tapster is not the fault of anybody. Some sacrifices must be made for the sake of friendliness.

But taken as a whole the American language is very little different from English. I imagine the tendency to diverge has been checked by the growing frequency of intercourse between the two countries. So many Americans come to England and so many English go to America that the languages are being reduced to one dead level. What used to be called "Americanisms" are current in common talk on this side of the Atlantic and on the other there is a regrettable tendency to drop even the fine old forms which the English themselves lost long ago. "Gotten" still survives in America instead of the degraded "got," but I am afraid it is losing its hold. "Wheel" is in all ways preferable to bicycle, and may perhaps become naturalized here. I cannot imagine that the Americans will be so foolish as to give it up. Whether "an automobile ride" is preferable to "a drive in a motor" I do not know. They both strike me as vile phrases, and it is difficult to choose between them.

America, as a country to travel in, had for us another attraction besides its language. Some people have relations in Spain to whom they can go and in whose houses they can stay as guests. Others have relatives of the same convenient kind in Austria and even in Russia. Many people have friends in France and Germany. We are not so fortunate. When we go to those countries we spend our time in hotels, or at best in pensions. We do not discover intimate things about the people there. It is impossible for us to learn, except through books, and they seldom tell us the things we want to know, whether the Austrians are morose or cheerful at breakfast time, and whether the Germans when at home hate fresh air as bitterly as they hate it when traveling. And these are just the sort of things which it is most interesting to know about any people. The politics of a foreign country are more easily studied in the pages of periodicals like "The Nineteenth Century" than in the daily press of the country itself. Statistics about trade and population can be read up in books devoted to the purpose. All sorts of other information are supplied by the invaluable Baedeker, so that it is in no way necessary to go to Venice in order to find out things about St. Mark's. But very intimate details about the insides of houses, domestic manners and so forth can only be obtained by staying in private homes. This we thought we might accomplish in America because we had some friends there before we started. In reality ready made friends are unnecessary for the traveler in America. He makes them as he goes along, for the Americans are an amazingly sociable people and hospitable beyond all other nations. To us Irish—and we are supposed to be hospitable—the stranger is a stranger until he is shown in some way to be a friend. In America he is regarded as a friend unless he makes himself objectionable, unless he makes himself very objectionable indeed. We heard of American hospitality before we started. We feel now, as the Queen of Sheba felt after her visit to King Solomon, that the half was not told us. To be treated hospitably is always delightful. It is doubly so when the hospitality enables the fortunate guest to learn something of a kind of life which is not his own.

For all these reasons—I have enumerated four, I think—we desired greatly to go to America; and there was still another thing which attracted us. You cannot go to America except by sea. Even if you are seasick—and I occasionally am, a little—traveling in a steamer is greatly to be preferred to traveling in a train. A good steamer is clean. The best train covers you with smuts. The noise of the train is nerve-shattering. The noise which a steamer makes, even in a gale, is soothing. When a train stops and when it starts again it jerks and bumps. It also runs over things called points and then it bumps more. A steamer stops far seldomer than a train, and does so very gently and smoothly. It never actually bumps, and though it very often rolls or pitches, it does these things in a dignified way with due deliberation. We chose a slow steamer for our voyage out and if we are fortunate enough to go to America again we shall choose another slow steamer.

Having made up our minds to go—or rather since these things are really decided for us and we are never the masters of our movements—having been shepherded by Destiny into a trip to America we naturally sought for information about that country. We got a great deal more than we actually sought. Everyone we met gave us advice and told us what to expect. Advice is always contradictory, and the only wise thing to do is to take none of what is offered. But it puzzled us to find that the accounts we got of the country were equally contradictory. English people, using a curious phrase of which they seem to be very fond, prophesied for us "the time of our lives." They said that we should enjoy ourselves from the day we landed in New York until the day when we sank exhausted by too much joy, a day which some of them placed a fortnight off, some three weeks, all of them underestimating, as it turned out, our capacity for enduring delight. Americans on the other hand decried the country, and told us that the lot of the traveler in it was very far from being pleasant. This puzzled us. A very modest and retiring people might be expected to underestimate the attractions of their own land. We Irish, for instance, always assert that it rains three days out of every four in Ireland. But the Americans are not popularly supposed to be, and in fact are not, particularly modest. I can only suppose that the Americans we met before we started were in bad tempers because they were for one reason or another obliged to stay in England, and that they belittled their country in the spirit of the fox who said the grapes were sour.

One piece of advice which we got gave us, incidentally and accidentally, our first glimpse at one of the peculiarities of the American people, their hatred of letter writing as a means of communication. The advice was this:

"Do not attempt to take a sealskin coat into America, because there is a law there against sealskin coats and the Custom House officers will hold up the garment."

This seemed to us very improbable. I remembered the song I have already quoted about the "Land of the Free" and could not bring myself to believe that a great nation, a nation that had fought an expensive war in order to set its slaves at liberty, could possibly want to interfere with the wearing apparel of a casual stranger. The Law, which is very great and majestic everywhere, is, according to the proverb, indifferent to very small matters. America, which is as great and majestic as any law, could not possibly be supposed to concern itself with the material of a woman's coat. So we reasoned. But the warning was given with authority by one who knew a lady who had tried to bring a sealskin coat into America and failed. We thought it well to make sure. An inquiry at the steamboat office was useless. The clerk there declined to say anything either good or bad about the American Custom House regulations. I have noticed this same kind of cautious reticence among all Americans when the subject of customs comes up. I imagine that the people of ancient Crete avoided speaking about that god of theirs who ate young girls, and for the same reason. There is no use running risks, and the American Custom House officer is a person whom it is not well to offend. This is the way with all democracies. In Russia and Germany a man has to be careful in speaking about the Czar or the Kaiser. In republics we shut our mouths when a minor official is mentioned, unless we are among tried and trusted friends. I myself dislike respecting any one; but if respect is exacted of me I should rather yield it to a king with a proper crown on his head than to an ordinary man done up with brass buttons. However, Anglo-Saxons on both sides of the Atlantic seem to like doing obeisance to officials, and their tastes are no affairs of mine.