A Traveler at Forty

by Theodore Dreiser

However, St. Paul’s is neither Greek, Gothic, nor anything else very much—a staggering attempt on the part of Sir Christopher Wren to achieve something new which is to me not very successful. The dome is pleasing and the interior space is fairly impressive, but the general effect is botchy, and I think I said as much. Naturally this was solid ground for an argument and the battle raged to and fro,—through Greece, Rome, the Byzantine East and the Gothic realms of Europe and England. We finally came down to the skyscrapers of New York and Chicago and the railway terminals of various American cities, but I shall not go into that. What was more important was that it raised a question concerning the proletariate of England,—the common people from whom, or because of whom, all things are made to rise, and this was based on the final conclusion that all architecture is, or should be, an expression of national temperament, and this as a fact was partly questioned and partly denied, I think. It began by my asking whether the little low cottages we had been seeing that afternoon—the quaint windows, varying gables, pointless but delicious angles, and the battered, time-worn state of houses generally—was an expression of the English temperament. Mind you, I love what these things stand for. I love the simpleness of soul which somehow is conveyed by Burns and Wordsworth and Hardy, and I would have none of change if life could be ordered so sweetly—if it could really stay. Alas, I know it can not. Compared to the speed and skill which is required to manipulate the modern railway trains, the express companies, the hotels, the newspapers, all this is helpless, pathetic.

Sir Scorp’s answer was yes, that they were an expression, but that, nevertheless, the English mass was a beast of muddy brain. It did not—could not—quite understand what was being done. Above it were superimposed intellectual classes, each smaller and more enthusiastic and aware as you reach the top. At least, it has been so, he said, but now democracy and the newspapers are beginning to break up this lovely solidarity of simplicity and ignorance into something that is not so nice.

“People want to get on now,” he declared. “They want each to be greater than the other. They must have baths and telephones and railways and they want to undo this simplicity. The greatness of England has been due to the fact that the intellectual superior classes with higher artistic impulses and lovelier tendencies generally could direct the masses and like sheep they would follow. Hence all the lovely qualities of England; its ordered households, its beautiful cathedrals, its charming castles and estates, its good roads, its delicate homes, and order and precedences. The magnificent princes of the realm have been able to do so much for art and science because their great impulses need not be referred back to the mass—the ignorant, non-understanding mass—for sanction.”

Sir Scorp sprang with ease to Lorenzo, the magnificent, to the princes of Italy, to Rome and the Cæsars for illustration. He cited France and Louis. Democracy, he declared, is never going to do for all what the established princes could do. Democracy is going to be the death of art. Not so, I thought and said, for democracy can never alter the unalterable difference between high and low, rich and poor, little brain and big brain, strength and weakness. It cannot abolish difference and make a level plane. It simply permits the several planes to rise higher together. What is happening is that the human pot is boiling again. Nations are undergoing a transition period. We are in a maelstrom, which means change and reconstruction. America is going to flower next and grandly, and perhaps after that Africa, or Australia. Then, say, South America, and we come back to Europe by way of India, China, Japan and through Russia. All in turn and new great things from each again. Let’s hope so. A pretty speculation, anyhow.

At my suggestion of American supremacy, Sir Scorp, although he protested, no doubt honestly, that he preferred the American to any other foreign race, was on me in a minute with vital criticism and I think some measure of insular solidarity. The English do not love the Americans—that is sure. They admire their traits—some of them, but they resent their commercial progress. The wretched Americans will not listen to the wise British. They will not adhere to their noble and magnificent traditions. They go and do things quite out of order and the way in which they should be done, and then they come over to England and flaunt the fact in the noble Britisher’s face. This is above all things sad. It is evil, crass, reprehensible, anything you will, and the Englishman resents it. He even resents it when he is an Irish Englishman. He dislikes the German much—fears the outcome of a war from that quarter—but really he dislikes the American more. I honestly think he considers America far more dangerous than Germany. What are you going to do with that vast realm which is “the states”? It is upsetting the whole world by its nasty progressiveness, and this it should not be permitted to do. England should really lead. England should have invented all the things which the Americans have invented. England should be permitted to dictate to-day and to set the order of forms and procedures, but somehow it isn’t doing it. And, hang it all! the Americans are. We progressed through various other things,—an American operatic manager who was then in London attempting to revise English opera, an American tobacco company which had made a failure of selling tobacco to the English, but finally weariness claimed us all, and we retired for the night, determined to make Oxford on the morrow if the weather faired in the least.

The next morning I arose, glad that we had had such a forceful argument. It was worth while, for it brought us all a little closer together. Barfleur, the children and I ate breakfast together while we were waiting for Scorp to come down and wondering whether we should really go, it was so rainy. Barfleur gave me a book on Oxford, saying that if I was truly interested I should look up beforehand the things that I was to see. Before a pleasant grate fire I studied this volume, but my mind was disturbed by the steadily approaching fact of the trip itself, and I made small progress. Somehow during the morning the plan that Barfleur had of getting us invited to luncheon by his uncle at Oxford disappeared and it turned out that we were to go the whole distance and back in some five or six hours, having only two or three hours for sightseeing.

At eleven Sir Scorp came down and then it was agreed that the rain should make no difference. We would go, anyhow.

I think I actually thrilled as we stepped into the car, for somehow the exquisite flavor and sentiment of Oxford was reaching me here. I hoped we would go fast so that I should have an opportunity to see much of it. We did speed swiftly past open fields where hay cocks were standing drearily in the drizzling rain, and down dark aisles of bare but vine-hung trees, and through lovely villages where vines and small oddly placed windows and angles and green-grown, sunk roofs made me gasp for joy. I imagined how they would look in April and May with the sun shining, the birds flying, a soft wind blowing. I think I could smell the odor of roses here in the wind and rain. We tore through them, it seemed to me, and I said once to the driver, “Is there no law against speeding in England?”

“Yes,” he replied, “there is, but you can’t pay any attention to that if you want to get anywhere.”

There were graceful flocks of crows flying here and there. There were the same gray little moss-grown churches with quaint belfries and odd vine-covered windows. There were the same tree-protected borders of fields, some of them most stately where the trees were tall and dark and sad in the rain. I think an open landscape, such as this, with green, wet grass or brown stubble and low, sad, heavy, gray clouds for sky and background, is as delicious as any landscape that ever was. And it was surely not more than one hour and a half after we left Bridgely before we began to rush through the narrow, winding streets where houses, always brick and stone and red walls with tall gates and vines above them, lined either side of the way. It was old—you could see that, even much that could be considered new in England was old according to the American standard. The plan of the city was odd to me because unlike the American cities, praise be! there was no plan. Not an east and west street, anywhere. Not a north and south one. Not a four- or five-story building anywhere, apparently, and no wood; just wet, gray stone and reddish-brown brick and vines. When I saw High Street and the façade of Queens College I leaped for joy. I can think of nothing lovelier in either marble or bronze than this building line. It is so gentle, so persuasive of beautiful thought, such an invitation to reflection and tender romance. It is so obvious that men have worked lovingly over this. It is so plain there has been great care and pains and that life has dealt tenderly with all. It has not been destroyed or revised and revivified, but just allowed to grow old softly and gracefully.