As We Are and As We May Be

by Walter Besant

This was a big thing. The things which the English traveller in the States now notices are little things; as life is made up of little things, he is noting differences all day long, because everything that he sees is different. Speech is different: the manner of enunciating the words is different; it is clearer, slower, more grammatical; among the better sort it is more careful; it is even academical. We English speak thickly, far back in the throat, the voice choked by beard and moustache, and we speak much more carelessly. Then the way of living at the hotels is different; the rooms are much—very much—better furnished than would be found in towns of corresponding size in England—e.g., at Providence, Rhode Island, which is not a large city, there is a hotel which is most beautifully furnished; and at Buffalo, which is a city half the size of Birmingham, the hotel is perhaps better furnished than any hotel in London. An immense menu is placed before the visitor for breakfast and dinner. There is an embarrassment of choice. Perhaps it is insular prejudice which makes one prefer the simple menu, the limited choice, and the plain food of the English hotels. At least, rightly or wrongly, the English hotels appear to the English traveller the more comfortable. I return to the differences. In the preparation and the serving of food there are differences—the mid-day meal, far more in America than in England, is the national dinner. In most American hotels that received us we found the evening meal called supper—and a very inferior spread it was, compared to the one o'clock service. In the drinks there is a difference—the iced water which forms so welcome a part of every meal in the States is generally the only drink; it is not common, out of the great cities, to see claret on the table. There are differences in the conduct of the trains and in the form of the railway carriages; differences in the despatch and securing of luggage; difference in the railway whistle; difference in the management of the station, until one knows the way about, travelling in America is a continual trial to the temper. Until, for instance, an understanding of the manners and customs in this respect has been attained, the conveyance of the luggage to the hotel is a ruinous expense. And unless one understands the rough usage of luggage on American lines, there will be further trials of temper over the breakage of things. In France and Italy such small differences do not exasperate, because they ate known to exist; one expects them; they are benighted foreigners who know no better. But in America, where they speak our own language, one seems to have a right, somehow, to expect that all the usages will be exactly the same—and they are not; and so the cad with the kodak gets his chance.

I can quite understand, even at this day, the making of a book which should hold up to ridicule the whole of a nation on account of these differences. 'The Americans a great nation? Why, sir, I could not get—the whole time that I was them—such a simple thing as English mustard. The Americans a great nation? Well, sir, all I can say is that their breakfast in the Wagner car is a greasy pretence. The Americans a great nation? They may be, sir; but all I can say is that there isn't such a thing—that I could discover—as an honest bar-parlour, where a man can have his pipe and his grog in comfort.' And so on—the kind of thing may be multiplied indefinitely. What Mrs. Trollope did sixty years ago might be done again.

But, if I had the time, I would write the companion volume—that of the American in England—in which it should be proved, after the same fashion, that this poor old country is in the last stage of decay, because we have compartment carriages on the railway; no checks for the luggage; no electric trolleys in the street; at the hotels no elaborate menu, but only a simple dinner of fish and roast-beef; no iced water, an established Church (the clergy all bursting with fatness); a House of Lords (all profligates); and a Queen who chops off heads when so disposed. It would also be noted, as proving the contemptible decay of the country, that a large proportion of the lower classes omit the aspirate; that rough holiday-makers laugh and sing and play the accordion as they take their trips abroad; that the factory girls wear hideous hats and feathers; that all classes drink beer, and that men are often seen rolling drunk in the streets. Nor would the American traveller in Great Britain fail to observe, with the scorn of a moralist, the political corruption of the time; he would hold up to the contempt of the world the statesman who with the utmost vehemence condemns a movement one day which, on the following day, in order to gain votes and recover power, he adopts, and with equal vehemence advocates; he would ask what can be the moral standards of a country where a great party turns right round, at the bidding of their leader, and follows him like a flock of sheep, applauding, voting, advocating as he bids them, to-day, this—to-morrow, its opposite.

These things and more will be found in that book of the American in England when it appears. You see how small and worthless and prejudiced would be such a volume. Well, it is precisely such a volume that the ordinary traveller is capable of writing. All the things that I have mentioned are accidentals; they are differences which mean nothing; they are not essentials; what I wish to show is that he who would think rightly of a country must disregard the accidentals and get at the essentials. What follows is my own attempt—which I am well aware must be of the smallest account—to feel my way to two or three essentials.

First and foremost, one essential is that the country is full of youth. I have discovered this for myself, and I have learned what the fact means and how it affects the country. I had heard this said over and over again. It used to irritate me to hear a monotonous repetition of the words, 'Sir, we are a young county.' Young? At least, it is three hundred years old; nor was it till I had passed through New England, and seen Buffalo and Chicago—those cities which stand between the east and time west—and was able to think and compare, that I began to understand the reality and the meaning of those words, which have now become so real and mean so much. It is not that the cities are new and the buildings put up yesterday; it is in the atmosphere of buoyancy, elation, self-reliance, and energy, which one drinks in everywhere, that this sense of youth is apprehended. It is youth full of confidence. Is there such a thing anywhere in America as poverty or the fear of poverty? I do not think so. Men may be hard up or even stone-broke; there are slums; there are hard-worked women; but there is no general fear of poverty. In the old countries the fear of poverty lies on all hearts like lead. To be sure, such a fear is a survival in England. In the last century the strokes of fate were sudden and heavy, and a merchant sitting to-day in a place of great honour and repute, an authority on 'Change, would find himself on the morrow in the Marshalsea or the Fleet, a prisoner for life; once down a man could not recover; he spent the rest of his life in captivity; he and his descendants, to the third and fourth generations—for it was as unlucky to be the son of a bankrupt as the son of a convict—grovelled in the gutter. There is no longer a Marshalsea or a Fleet prison; but the dread of failure survives. In the States that dread seems practically absent.

Again, youth is extravagant; spends with both hands, cannot hear of economy; burns the candle at both ends; eats the corn while it is green; trades upon the future; gives bills at long dates without hesitation, and while the golden flood rolls past takes what it wants and sends out its sons to help themselves. Why should youth make provisions for the sons of youth? The world is young; the riches of the world are beyond counting; they belong to the young; let us work, let us spend; let us enjoy, for youth is the time for work and for enjoyment.

In youth, again, one is careless about little things; they will right themselves: persons of the baser sort pervert the freedom of the country to their own uses; they make 'corners' and 'rings' and steal the money of the municipality; never mind; some day, when we have time, we will straighten things out. In youth, also, one is tempted to gallant apparel, bravery of show, a defiant bearing, gold and lace and colour. In cities this tendency of youth is shown by great buildings and big institutions. In youth, there is a natural exaggeration in talk: hence the spread-eagle of which we hear so much. Then everything which belongs to youth must be better—beyond comparison better—than everything that belongs to age. In the last century, if you like, youth followed and imitated age; it is the note of this, our country, that youth is always advancing and stepping ahead of age. Even in the daily press the youth of the country shows itself. Let age sit down and meditate; let such a paper as the London Times—that old, old paper—give every day three laboured and thoughtful essays written by scholars and philosophers on the topics of the day. It is not for youth to ponder over the meaning and the tendencies of things; it is for youth to act, to make history, to push things along; therefore let the papers record everything that passes; perhaps when the country is old, when the time comes for meditation, the London Times may be imitated, and even a weekly collection of essays, such as the Saturday Review or the Spectator, may be successfully started in the United States. Again, youth is apt to be jealous over its own pretensions. Perhaps this quality also might be illustrated; but, for obvious reasons, we will not press this point. Lastly, youth knows nothing of the time which came immediately before itself. It is not till comparatively late in life that a man connects his own generation—his own history—with that which preceded him. When does the history of the United States begin—not for the man of letters or the professor of history—but for the average man? It begins when the Union begins: not before. There is a very beautiful and very noble history before the Union. But it is shared with Great Britain. There is a period of gallant and victorious war—but beside the colonials marched King George's red-coats. There was a brave struggle for supremacy, and the French were victoriously driven out—but it was by English fleets and with the help of English soldiers. Therefore, the average American mind refuses to dwell on this period. His country must spring at once, full armed, into the world. His country must be all his own. He wants no history, if you please, in which any other country has also a share.

In a word, America seems to present all the possible characteristics of youth. It is buoyant, confident, extravagant, ardent, elated, and proud. It lives in the present. The young men of twenty-one cannot believe in coming age; people do get to fifty, he believes; but, for himself, age is so far off that he need not consider it. I observed the youthfulness of America even in New England, but the country as one got farther west seemed to become more youthful. At Chicago, I suppose, no one owns to more than five-and-twenty—youth is infectious. I felt myself while in the city much under that age.

Let us pass to another point—also an essential—the flaunting of the flag, I had the honour of assisting at the 'Sollemnia Academica,' the commencement of Harvard on the 28th of June last. I believe that Harvard is the richest, as it is also the oldest, of American universities; it is also the largest in point of numbers. The function was celebrated in the college theatre; it was attended by the governor of the State with the lieutenant-governor and his aide-de-camp; there was a notable gathering on the stage or platform, consisting of the president, professors and governors of the university, together with those men of distinction whom the university proposed to honour with a degree. The floor, or pit, of the house was filled with the commencing bachelors; the gallery was crowded with spectators, chiefly ladies. After the ceremony we were invited to assist at the dinner given by the students to the president, and a company among whom it was a distinction for a stranger to sit. The ceremony of conferring degrees was interesting to an Englishman and a member of the older Cambridge, because it contained certain points of detail which had certainly been brought over by Harvard himself, the founder, from the old to the new Cambridge. The dinner, or luncheon, was interesting for the speeches, for which it was the occasion and the excuse. The president, for his part, reported the addition of $750,000 to the wealth of the college, and called attention to the very remarkable feature of modern American liberality in the lavish gifts and endowments going on all over the States to colleges and places of learning. He said that it was unprecedented in history. With submissions to the learned president, not quite without precedent. The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries witnessed a similar spirit in the foundation and endowment of colleges and schools in England and Scotland. About half the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge, and three out of the four Scottish universities, belong to the period. Still, it is very remarkable to find this new largeness of mind. Since one has received great fortune, let this wealth be passed on, not to make a son into an idle man, but to endow, with the best gifts of learning and science, generation after generation of men born for work. We, who are ourselves so richly endowed, and have been so richly endowed for four hundred years, have no need to envy Harvard all her wealth, We may applaud the spirit which seeks not to enrich a family but to advance the nation; all the more because we have many instances of a similar spirit in our own country. It is not the further endowment of Oxford and Cambridge that is continued by one rich man, but the foundation of new colleges, art galleries, and schools of art. Angerstein, Vernon, Alexander, Tate, are some of our benefactors in art.

The endowments of Owens College, the Mason College, the Firth College, University College, London, are gifts of private persons. Since we do not produce rich men so freely as America, our endowments are neither so many nor so great; but the spirit of endowment is with us as well.