“I was talking nonsense,” I said, impulsively. “Mere braggadocio, and in questionable taste. But it irks me that the best and kindest of you patronize my country, and excuse me! that so many who do it know next to nothing about us. Mrs. B—— asked me, just now, if it were ‘quite safe to promenade Broadway unarmed—on account of the savages, you know.’ And when I answered—‘the nearest savages to us are in your Canadian provinces,’ she said, without a tinge of embarrassment—‘Ah! I am very, very excessively ignorant about America. In point of fact, it is a country in which I have no personal interest whatever. I have a son in India, and one in Australia, but no friends on your side of the world.’ Yet she is a lady, well educated and well-born. She has traveled much; speaks several languages, and converses intelligently upon most topics. She is, moreover, too kind to have told me that my country is uninteresting had she dreamed that I could be hurt or offended by the remark. Another lady, a disciple of Dr. Cummings, and his personal friend, asked my countrywoman, Mrs. T——, ‘if she came from America by steamer or by the overland route?’ and a member of Parliament told Mr. J——, the other day, that the ‘North should have let the South go when she tried to separate herself from the Union. The geographical position of the two countries showed they should never have been one nation.’ ‘The hand of the Creator,’ he went on to say, ‘had placed a rocky rampart between them.’ ‘A rocky rampart!’ repeated Mr. J——, his mind running upon Mason’s and Dixon’s line. ‘Yes! The Isthmus of Darien!’
“Americans are accused of over-sensitiveness and boastfulness. Is it natural that we should submit tamely to patronage and criticism from those who calmly avow their ‘excessive ignorance’ of all that pertains to our land and institutions? Can we respect those who assume to teach when they know less upon many subjects than we do? A celebrated English divine once persisted in declaring to my husband that Georgia is a city, not a State. Another informed us that Pennsylvania is the capital of New England. Even my dear Miss W—— cannot be convinced that boys of nine years old are considered minors with us. She says she has been told by those who ought to know that, at that age, they discard parental authority; while her sister questioned me seriously as to the truth of the story that the feet of all American babies—boys and girls—are bandaged in infancy to make them small. Don’t laugh! This is all true, and I have not told you the tenth. The Silver Bill! I have never met another Englishman who knew anything about it!”
My friend laughed, in spite of my injunction.
“It is not ‘natural’ for Americans to ‘submit tamely’ to any kind of injustice, I fancy. But be merciful! Have you read in the ‘Nineteenth Century’ Dr. Dale’s ‘Impressions of America?’”
“I have. They are like himself, honest, sincere, thorough! But I have also read Trollope’s ‘American Senator,’ a product of the nineteenth century that will be read and credited by many who cannot appreciate Dr. Dale’s scholarship and logic. May I tell you an anecdote—true in every particular—to offset the Senator’s behavior in the Earl’s drawing-room? An English novelist, than whom none is better known on both sides of the water, dined, by invitation, at the house of a bona fide Senator in Washington. After dinner he approached the hostess in the drawing-room to take leave.
“‘It is very early yet, Mr.——,’ she said politely.
“‘I know it. But the fact is I must write ten pounds’ worth before I go to bed!’
“Yet this man is especially happy in clever flings at American society. We have faults—many and grievous! But we might drop them the sooner if our monitors were better qualified to instruct us, and would admonish in kindness, not disdain.”
Because he was an Englishman, and I liked him, I withheld from my excited harangue many and yet more atrocious absurdities uttered in my hearing by his compatriots. At this distance and time, and under the shelter of a nom de plume, I may relate an incident I forebore religiously from giving to my transatlantic acquaintances, albeit sorely tempted, occasionally, by their unconscious condescension and simplicity of arrogance—too amusing to be always offensive.
We were taking a cup of “arfternoon tea” with some agreeable English people, who had invited their rector and his wife to meet us. My seat was next the wife, a pretty, refined little woman, who graciously turned the talk into a channel where she fancied I would be at ease. She began to question me about America. Perceiving her motive, and being by this time somewhat weary of cruising in one strait, I, as civilly, fought shy of my native shores, and plied her with queries in my turn. I asked information, among other things, concerning Yorkshire and Haworth, stating our intention of visiting the home and church of the Brontës. The rectoress knew nothing about the topography of Yorkshire, but had heard of the Brontë novels.