Hesperothen; Notes from the West, Vol. 1 (of 2) / A Record of a Ramble in the United States and Canada in the Spring and Summer of 1881

by Sir William Howard Russell

The Cleveland papers were not all very civil—some of them, indeed, were not only uncivil, but untruthful in their accounts of the Duke's party. There were "imaginary conversations" reported, that in all but wit and interest would have done credit to Walter Savage Landor.

At the beginning of this century there were but a few wooden houses to justify the selection of the site of a city laid out in 1794. Fifty years ago there were 1000 souls in Cleveland. But the Canal opened to it the fountains of life, and there are now about 170,000 people in this handsome, well-to-do city.

I hope that other people bear the souvenirs of their disasters in characters of paint, brass, and iron, in monuments of stone and the ære perennius records of history, as well as the normal Briton, who is met in the United States with "Io triumphes" over his race in all kinds of metals and forms. I turned me out of Kennard Hotel, and found myself in a fine square, surrounded by shops and important edifices, and, gravitating towards a statue, I was obliged to recognise the effigies of Commodore Perry, who swept Lake Erie as clear of King George's flotilla as erst did Van Tromp "balaye" the Channel of the ships of the Stuart. Then I recoiled against a cannon, and was brought up all standing by the inscription which recorded another disaster of my countrymen. Finally I wandered off into Euclid Avenue to recover my peace of mind, only wondering whether Frenchmen in England are so heavenly minded under the infliction of innumerable Waterloo and Wellington squares, streets, places, and bridges, and if Russians feel as little the wrongs of Boulevards Sébastopol in Paris, and cannon plantations in every town in England. Now, Euclid Avenue is a street without parallel as far as I know. It is not quite a street, but it is not easy to draw a line between a street and an avenue. The American Euclid drew his line straight enough for more miles than I could go, and then he built on either side spruce, trim villas of very various architecture, shapes, and sizes, each in its plot of ground, with lawns, trees, and gardens, often open and unfenced to the roadway, which is lined with trees in a grand boulevard—a kind of Clapham or Balham frontage, with ideas taken from the Avenue de l'Impératrice, or the suburbs of Versailles—any way, the people who lived in these abodes were well lodged, and must have a fair share of the world's goods. They ought to be very good people, too. Wherever I looked there were church steeples pointing with their silent fingers to heaven. There are, I am told, nearly one hundred churches—to be guide-bookishly accurate, ninety-six—in Cleveland, and, as extremes touch, the Methodists and Presbyterians affect the Gothic style as well as the Episcopalians and Roman Catholics. On hearsay mainly, but in some measure on the evidence of eyesight, I aver that the city literally abounds in edifices of beauty devoted to the highest objects of education, science, learning, and charity. I felt, as I walked along the Avenue of Euclid, and beheld so many evidences of enterprise and prosperity, that (if I could do it in the dark) I ought to go and put a wreath at the foot of Commodore Perry's statue. What would it all have been, had the General in the red coat and the old Commodore on the other side had the best of it? Did any of the people in the nice houses think that an elderly gentleman who was dawdling under the shade of their beautiful trees was rather anxious that he should not be recognised as a compatriot of the degenerate descendants of their common ancestors who failed to prove that they were the better for not having been transplanted? I suppose not, but I was not in the least ashamed, somehow. I walked on mile after mile admiring the scene, and not the less interested in it because it so happened that I seemed to have hit off the witching hour of day when school-mistresses yawn and schools give up their young ladies to dinner, for I encountered processions of young ladies with books and bags, and nods and becks and wreathed smiles for their fellows, some of whom, mounted on their irresistible wheel skates, more terrible than Boadicea in her chariot, swept me off into the road as clean as the great Perry did the Britishers. If ever I see a large American box with "Miss S. Spriggs, Cleveland, Ohio," on it outside any hotel in the world, I shall stand on guard till I see the owner. "Sally! I say, Sally Spriggs! If I don't tell Mrs. Minerva I saw you blow a kiss at that ma-an" (I beg leave to say, alas! I was not the man) "I hope I shan't get my tea." The name was not Spriggs. But that is a detail. I only know that "Sally" was a charming person of some fifteen years of age, and that her vindictive friend, a year younger perhaps, was quite fascinating enough, should she ask grace of me, to induce me to spare Cleveland and all its oil-works if ever I lead a victorious army there to overthrow Perry and carry off those guns. Whatever its early or ultimate results may be, the United States system developes or creates an exquisite abandon and naturalness among the girls and women which they do not share with the men but in a matrimonial way, when they keep their full share all the same. Euclid Avenue must have an end, but I did not find it.

My mayor-ridden or driven friends, much pleased with what they had seen, had reached their hotel before I did, and were singing, metaphorically, their "chanson de départ" for Toledo. As I was busy packing, "Miss Keerin," the châtelaine of the castle, or at least the chieftainess of the female helpdom, looked in upon me—a fine handsome young woman of a Hiberno-Celtic order of beauty, who told me she was Cleveland born, but that her father and mother were "Irish—poor people," driven into exile by the Saxons who came over with Hengist and Horsa. Miss Keerin belonged to the old faith, and there was a touch of Torquemada in the turn of her pretty mouth as she informed me "that she, and every maid in the house, was a good Roman Catholic." So I made my bow in spirit to Mr. MacClosky, the proprietor, and Miss Keerin, the mistress of the maids, for their devotion to the Church.

May 20th.—There is one mystery which never can be revealed to me—I have no brains for it. In vain has it been explained to me by some of the clearest-headed men in the world; in vain have they in a kindly, compassionate way, with maps and time-tables, shown me why it was desirable, if not necessary or inevitable, that we should halt at Toledo on this blessed 20th of May and put up at Boody House! I admit it was in the programme. I have no objection to Toledo in the abstract, nor to Boody House in the concrete, but the value or nature of the reasons which dictated the Toledo turn-out must be beyond my ken for ever. I admit it is on the Maurice river, that it is a port for Erie navigation, that it "handles" grain largely, that thirty years ago the population was not 4000, and that to-day it is more than 50,000, that it is the converging point of thirteen railways, and that the Union depot is an immense, if not, in the words of the guide-book, "an imposing structure," but I am still as puzzled as I was when I entered the portals of Boody House why we ever "lay," as the soldiers say, in that place, considering the violent hurry we were in. One thing I can answer for—if there be a place more unlike another place than Toledo in Ohio is to Toledo in Spain, I have yet to travel for it, and I shall be obliged to any one to tell me where it is, and this I say after having seen the two Syracuses and the three Romes.

The preparations made in the various towns for the reception of the party conferred upon it something of an embarrassing character. But, as they were all in honour of the Duke, the humbler members of the party do not consider that they are involved in the ceremonies which await the train on arrival and departure, to signify the high sense that is entertained of the visit, and the desire upon the part of the principal inhabitants to do justice to it. It would be unjust to Toledo not to admit it has great attractions to any student of the American railway system, arising from the number of railways which start thence to most points of the compass. The reception committee, consisting of Mr. Bodmin, Mr. King, Mr. Williams, and Mr. Wells, aided by the Mayor, Mr. Romeis, appointed by the Produce Exchange, were in waiting on our arrival. Again dismay was carried into the hearts of the weaker vessels by hearing the word "Elevators"; but the gentlemen were kinder in their deeds than in their words, and only some of the particular points of interest in what is called the "middle ground" were displayed to those members of the party who did not make the best of their way to Boody House.

In the evening we went to the theatre, and were interested in a drama with the title of "One hundred Wives," which had nothing whatever to do with the play—a piece written for the purpose of bringing into contempt the practices of the Saints in Utah, full of local incidents and acted with very considerable spirit. The sentiment of the audience was shown most unmistakably in the vigorous and sustained applause which greeted any situation or sentiment in which the Mormon leaders and their teachings were held up to contempt and hatred, and the curtain came down, amidst loud cheering, on a fine situation, in which half-a-dozen soldiers, in the uniform of the United States infantry, appeared to execute justice and to establish the predominance of the United States Constitution in the land of the Saints.

There was some friction connected with the arrangements for our journey from Toledo to Detroit this morning. The general manager of the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway was anxious that our train should run over his line instead of the Canada Southern, but Mr. Snow, passenger agent, who had come from Buffalo, applied to the customs authorities to pass the Fontaine engine across the border, in order to take the Duke over the other line. Our train consisted of what they call the combination baggage and smoking car, the Pullman hotel car Buckingham, a Pullman saloon belonging to the Pennsylvania Railway, and there was, moreover, the carriage of the general manager of the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway, the whole drawn by the Fontaine engine, which is a production of the mechanical genius and intelligence of a gentleman of that name in the Southern States. We were bound by schedule to go forty-five miles an hour, and Mr. Fontaine explained the mechanism and the advantages which he claimed for his engine to the party. The Duke got upon the engine with him and proceeded out of the station, with a confidence which it turned out was quite justified, although I admit some persons, not quite so experienced, were rather uneasy at the experiment. We should have gone to pieces in very good company, and there would not have been wanting representatives of the Press, of the Detroit and Toledo papers, to have shared or to have recorded the ruin. The Duke drove the engine to the great satisfaction of the engineer, Mr. Fontaine. Mr. Cornelius Vanderbilt, informed of the proceedings, sent a telegram to know how the party were getting on just as we were leaving Toledo. At 2 o'clock we arrived safely in Detroit, where the mayor and several railway officials, Ex-senator Baldwin, Mr. Lord, and others were waiting to accompany the Duke and his friends in the "Truant" steam-yacht, belonging to Mr. Macmillan, in which we took a cruise upon the beautiful river that separates Canada from the United States.

There can be no comparison between the activity and commercial development of towns on the American and on the Canadian side of the great lakes, although Montreal prospers and Toronto has increased greatly in importance and in wealth, but still the credit and resources of the Dominion are more than respectable, and Canadian firms are extending their business in the United States very remarkably and rapidly. In the course of a charming excursion we had occasion to contrast the aspect of the American city with Canadian Windsor, just opposite; the towering elevators, lofty church steeples, smoking factory chimneys, crowded quays, piers, and stores, and the suburbs bright with gay villas, were in strong opposition to the air of rather amateur repose on the British side, which was only remarkable for an enormous whisky distillery vomiting masses of smoke into the sky. But on the American side we were somewhat comforted, whether our solace was derived from sound bases or not, by seeing that Canadian banks and insurance offices were installed in handsome well-appointed offices. Detroit proved a most agreeable surprise to us; there was a pleasant air about it, and an unassuming perkiness very agreeable.

It is the fashion to consider Canada as the Sleepy Hollow of the American continent; but if the giant Progress who is going to devour the East, and who is feeding it meanwhile to make it fat and plump, does not advance with leaps and bounds north of the St. Lawrence (as he does down south), his march is assured and his footsteps are on solid ground.