As We Are and As We May Be

by Walter Besant

That was one side—perhaps the most important side. But the halo of adventure still lay glowing in the western land. No colony but had its history of massacre, treachery, and war to the knife with the Red Indian. Long before the time of Fenimore Cooper the English lad could read stories of dreadful tortures, of heroic daring, of patience and endurance, of revenges fierce, of daily and hourly peril. The blood of the Dragon ran yet in English veins. America was still to the heirs and successors of that Great Heart the Land of Romance and the Land of Gallant Fights.

And such stories! That of Captain John Smith laying his head upon the block that it might be smashed by the Indians' clubs, and of his rescue by the Indian girl, afterwards the 'Princess Rebecca'; the massacre of three hundred and fifty men, women and children of the infant colony of Virginia, a hundred stories of massacre. Or, that story of the mother's revenge, told, I believe, by Thoreau. Her name was Hannah Dunstan. Her house was attacked by Indians; her husband and her elder children fled for their lives; she, with an infant of a fortnight, and her nurse, were left behind. The Indians dashed out the brains of the baby and forced the two women to march with them through the forest to their camp. Here they found an English boy, also a prisoner. Hannah Dunstan made the boy find out from one of the Indians the quickest way to strike with the tomahawk so as to kill and to secure the scalp. The Indian told the boy. Now there were in the camp two men, three women, and seven children. In the dead of night Hannah got up, awakened her nurse and the boy, secured the tomahawks, and in the way the unsuspecting Indian had taught the boy, she tomahawked every one—man, woman and child—except a boy who fled into the woods—and took their scalps. Then she scuttled all the canoes but one, and taking the scalps with her as proof of her revenge, she put the nurse and the boy into the canoe and paddled down the river. She escaped all roving bands and won her way home again to find her husband and sons safe and well, and to show the scalps—the blood payment for her murdered child. Such were the stories told and retold in every colonial township, round every fire; such were the stories brought home by the sailors and the merchants; they were published in books of travel. Think you that our English blood had grown so sluggish that it could not be fired by such tales? Think you that the romance of the Colonies was one whit less enthralling than the romance of the Spanish Main?

I say nothing of the wars in which the British troops and the Colonial, side by side, at last succeeded in driving the French out of the country. They belong to the history of the eighteenth century and to the expansion of the English-speaking race. But for them, North America would now be half French and a quarter Spanish. These, however, were regular wars, with no more romance about them than belongs to war wherever it is conducted according to the war-game of the day. The manuvres of generals and the deploying of men in masses inspire none but students, just as a fine game of chess can only be judged by one who knows the game. Louisburg, Quebec, 'Queen Anne's War,' 'King George's War'—Wolfe and Montcalm—these things and these men produced little effect upon the popular view of America. In the colonies themselves murmurings and complaints began to make themselves heard; as they became stronger, the discontent increased; but they did not reach the ear of the average Englishman, who still looked across the ocean and still saw the country bathed in all the glories of the West. Then—violently, suddenly—all this romance which had grown up around and after so much fighting, so many achievements, was broken off and destroyed. It perished with the War of Independence; it was no longer possible when the Colonies had become not only a foreign country, but a country bitterly hostile. The romance of America was dead.

After the war was over, with much humiliation and shame for the nation—the better part of which had been against the war from the outset—the country turned for consolation to the East. But, as has been said above, neither India, nor Australia, nor New Zealand, has ever taken such a place in the affections of our country as that continent which was planted by our own sons, for whose safety and freedom from foreign enemies we cheerfully spent treasure incalculable and lives uncounted.

Then came the long twenty-three years' war in which Great Britain, for the most part single-handed, fought for the freedom of Europe against the most colossal tyranny ever devised by victorious captain. No nation in the history of the world ever carried on such a war, so stubborn, so desperate, so vital. Had Great Britain failed, what would now be the position of the world? The victories, the defeats, the successes, the disasters, which marked that long struggle, at least made our people forget their humiliation in America. The final triumph gave us back, as it was certain to do, more than our former pride, more than our old self-reliance. America was forgotten, the old love for America was gone; how could we remember our former affections when, at the very time when our need was the sorest, when every ship, every soldier, every sailor that we could find, was wanted to break down the power of the man who had subjugated the whole of Europe, except Russia and Great Britain, the United States—the very Land of Liberty—did her best to cripple the Armies of Liberty by proclaiming war against us? And now, indeed, there was nothing left at all of the old romance. It was quite, quite dead. In the popular imagination all was forgotten, except that on the other side of the Atlantic lived an implacable enemy, whose rancour—it then seemed to our people—was even greater than their boasted love of liberty.

I take it that the very worst time in the history of the relation of the United States with this country was the first half of this century. There was very little intercourse between the countries; there were very few travellers; there was ignorance on both sides, with misunderstandings, wilful misrepresentations and deliberate exaggerations. Remember how Nathaniel Hawthorne speaks about the English people among whom he lived; read how Thoreau speaks of us when he visits Quebec. Is that time past? Hardly. Among the better class of Americans one seldom finds any trace of hatred to Great Britain. I think that, with the exception of Mr. W.D. Howells, I have never found any American gentleman who would manifest such a passion. But, as regards the lower class of Americans, it is reported that there still survives a meaningless, smouldering hostility. The going and the coming, to and fro, are increasing and multiplying; arbitration seems to be established as the best way of terminating international disputes; if the tone of the press is not always gracious, it is not often openly hostile; we may, perhaps, begin to hope, at last, that the future of the world will be secured for freedom by the confederation of all the English-speaking nations.

The old romance is dead. Yet—yet—as Kingsley cried, when he landed on a West Indian island, 'At last!' so I, also, when I found myself in New England, was ready to cry. 'At last!' The old romance is not everywhere dead, since there can be found one Englishman who, when he stands for the first time on New England soil, feels that one more desire of his life has been satisfied. To see the East; to see India and far Cathay; to see the tropics and to live for a while in a tropical island; to be carried along the Grand Canal of Venice in a gondola; to see the gardens of Boccaccio and the cell of Savonarola; to camp and hunt in the backwoods of Canada, and to walk the streets of New York, all these things have I longed, from youth upwards, to see and to do—yea, as ardently as ever Drake desired to set an English sail upon the great and unknown sea, and all these things, and many more, have been granted to me. One great thing—perhaps more than one thing, one unsatisfied desire—remained undone. I would set foot on the shore of New England. It is a sacred land, consecrated to me long years ago, for the sake of the things which I used to read—for the sake of the long-yearning thoughts of childhood and the dim and mystic splendours which played about the land beyond the sunset, in the days of my sunrise.

'At last!'

Wherever a boy finds a quiet place for reading—an attic lumbered with rubbish, a bedroom cold and empty, even a corner on the stairs—he makes of that place a theatre, in which he is the sole audience. Before his eyes—to him alone—the drama is played, with scenery complete and costume correct, by such actors as never yet played upon any other stage, so natural, so lifelike—nay, so godlike, and for that very reason so lifelike.

This boy sat where he could—in a crowded household it is not always possible to get a quiet corner; wherever he sat, this stage rose up before him and the play went on. He saw upon that stage all these things of which I have spoken, and more. He saw the fight at Nombre de Dios, the capture of the rich galleon, the sacking of Maracaibo. I do not know whether other boys of that time were reading the American authors with such avidity, or whether it was by some chance that these books were thrown in his way. Washington Irving, Fenimore Cooper, Prescott, Emerson (in parts), Longfellow, Whittier, Bryant, Edgar Allan Poe, Lowell, Holmes, not to mention Thoreau, Herman Melville, Dana, certain religious novelists and many others whose names I do not recall, formed a tolerably large field of American reading for an English boy—without prejudice, be it understood, to the writers of his own country. To him the country of the American writers became almost as well known as his own. One thing alone he could not read. When he came to the War of Independence, he closed the book and ordered his theatre to vanish. And, to this day, the events of that war are only partly known to him. No boy who is jealous for his country will read, except upon compulsion, the story of a war which was begun in stupidity, carried on with incompetence, and concluded with humiliation.