Some impressions of the United States

Front matter

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ASIA

I Impressions

Contents

Difference between old and new countries ; closer connexion of past and present in the new 2-4 New things and old in America . . . . S American interest in British opinion ; its working in

different ways 6-9

Tendency to imagine slights 8

I

I HAVE BEEN ASKED to Say Something as to the impressions left on my mind by my late visit to the United States. This is a work which I should hardly have undertaken of my own choice. But it seemed to be gradually laid upon me by force of circumstances. He who visits Britain from America, he who visits America from Britain, seems bound, if he be at all in the habit of using the pen, to use it forthwith to set down all or some of his impressions of the kindred land and its people. The thing seems to have taken its place as a formal duty which cannot be escaped. For my own part I had hoped to escape it. I was so well treated in America that it really seemed unthankful, almost uncivil, for me to write anything about America. Yet, while I was

B there, I was asted over and over again, whether I meant to write a book about America. All thought of writing a book I could then honestly disclaim. It was only gradually that the necessity even of writing something less than a book forced itself upon me. The thought of a book I still disclaimed long after I had found myself in print on the subject. But as the detached papers were laid upon me by circumstances, so at a later stage the graver duty was laid upon me. And I, who wished at first to escape from making even an article, now find myself making a book.

I still regret the necessity ; for I feel that any picture that I can draw of American things must . necessarily be an imperfect one, much more imperfect than the picture which I might draw of any European land. For there are many aspects of any country, but above all of a young cotmtry, of which I am quite unfit to judge, and at which indeed I was not likely to look at all. And this necessary imperfection is a worse fault in a young country than it is in an old one. In a young country everything is affected by the fact of youth, in a way in which things in an old country are not always affected by the fact of age. It is ' always better, if possible, to make present and past illustrate one another; still in an old country it is often easy, from some points of view.

OLD AND NEW COUNTEIES. 3

to treat of the present witli very little reference to the past, and of the past with very little reference to the present. But in a young country the nearness of even the remotest past has a direct influence on the present. Everything seems to be young together, while in an old country some things are old and some young. This air of newness in the United States is often, as I hope presently to show, only an air ; but the air of seeming newness practically affects everything. It seems to bring different classes of things more nearly to a level than they are in an old country. It is not so easy as it is in an old country to keep things apart from each other. ■ And unluckily there are a great many aspects of present life, aspects which are specially prominent in American life, which for me have no interest whatever. Political and judicial assemblies have for me the same interest in young America which they have in old Greece. But, greatly to my illluck, I am wholly ignorant of all things bearing on commerce, manufactures, or agriculture. Nor am I better skilled in matters bearing on education, unless it be education which rises to the level of a college or university. 'Now I can pass through an old country, say Italy or Dalmatia, and I can find a great deal to notice and to record without meddling with any of the things of which I am ignorant. In America it is hardly possible

B 2 to avoid them. Happily mj American friends were merciful. I was taken to see a good many schools ; for some people, I know not why, seemed to think that I had something to do with schools, or at least that I took some special interest in schools. But I was spared the more fearful grind of going through factories, prisons, hospitals, with all the weariness of an inexpert.

It follows therefore at once that any remarks of mine on American matters must be very imperfect, and further that such imperfection is a much greater fault in the case of America than it might be in the case of some other lands. But beyond this, I take up my pen with a dread that anything that I can say of the United States and their people will be frightfully one-sided. It is not easy to write quite impartially of a land in which a man has received so cordial a welcome and such constant and unmixed kindness as I received in America. One has a feeling that it is ungrateful, almost unfair, to write anything but unmixed praise; and yet unmixed praise, either in America or anywhere else, must be unfair, because it must be untruthful. And I feel too that I personally can have seen only some of the brightest sides of the country and its people. The whole nation cannot be as good as the people who have been so good to me. I was naturally thrown

OLD AND NEW ELEMENTS. 5

mainly among men whose thonghts and pursuits had some kind of likeness to my own. I lived chiefly with professors, lawyers, a sprinkling of statesmen, men of thought and information of various kinds. Of the pushing, meddling, questioning, American, described in so many stories and caricatures, I have seen nothing, at least not on American soil. It is therefore somewhat hard . for me to write about American matters at all. But I think that cultivated and sensible people in America, such as those among whom I spent most of my time when I was there, are not likely to be offended with anything that I am likely to say. I trust at least that they will not be displeased with a certain general doctrine which I have to maintain, and at which I have already hinted. This is that the seeming newness of everything in the United States is very superficial, and that there is a larse kernel of what is old within. If a formula is wanted, I would put it in this shape. There are many things in the United States which are new, very new, palpably new at first sight. But when a thing is not thus palpably new, it is commonly quite as old as the thing that answers to it in England, and very often much older.

ir.

' What do you think of our country ? ' is the question traditionally put into the mouth of the American addressing his British visitor. And the British Yisitor in real life finds that he very often has to answer that question or its equivalent. In its naked shape it is not often put by the very best people, and, whenever it is put by any one, the question is a little embarrassing. It is not a question that one can answer offhand in words of one syllable. I have sometimes tried to turn it off by answering that their country was very big, a statement which is surely colourless and which cannot be denied by people of any way of thinking. Or I have tried to parry it by asking vrhether they meant the whole Union or their own particular State or neighbourhood. But even when one is not questioned quite so nakedly, it is easy to see an intense desire on the part of the American host to know how everything about him looks in the eyes of the British guest. Such a desire is indeed almost inherent in the relation of host and guest everywhere ; but it seems to be stronger than elsewhere, it certainly is more openly and pressingly revealed than elsewhere, when the host is American and the guest British. That so it should be is neither wonderful nor blameable. It

INTEREST IN BRITISH OPINION. 7

is only in the nature of things that every American should, in his heart, deem British opinion more important than any other, and should in his heart value British good opinion more fondly than any other. A young nation, honestly conscious of its own greatness in many ways, but conscious at the same time that it has been often unfairly censured, often misunderstood, is snre to be keenly sensitive to the opinion of other nations, and above all of the nation which in its heart it feels to be its own parent. The very tone of boasting and bluster towards Europe and England which is sometimes put on by some classes of American writers and speakers is really a witness to this feeling. American dislike towards England — when it is really felt and not put on simply to catch Irish votes — is something quite different from certain forms of national ill-feeling to which we are used at home. It is unlike either the old-fashioned dislike to France or the new-fashioned dislike to Russia. In this last kind of dislike there is mingled a certain feeling of contempt, of very unjust contempt in both cases, but still of genuine contempt. It is the dislike which springs from old-standing national self-sufficiency, a dislike which is quite free from touchiness or inquisitiveness ; no British characteristic is more marked than our utter and often most foolish heedlessness of the opinion of other nations. This is the natural weakness of an old nation, above all of an insular nation. The natural weakness of a young natioij is the exact opposite. Such a nation must be conscious ; it must be touchy ; it must be inquisitive. It cannot help caring for the opinion of other nations, above all for the opinion of its own ancient motherland. And if such a nation, truly or untruly, fancies itself slighted, misrepresented, misunderstood, if it fails to meet with sympathy where it seeks for sympathy, the result may easily be a dislike which is possibly real, a contempt which is certainly artificial. This innate yearning, often unavowed, sometimes perhaps unconscious, for European, above all for British, good opinion often shows itself in odd ways. One form of it is the tendency in some Americans, chiefly perhaps in some American newspapers, a tendency which to us seems so strange, to conjure up slights where nothing like a slight has been meant. This form of interest is unpleasant, but it is not at all unnatural. The honest desire to know what the stranger, above all what the British stranger, thinks, is another and a better side of the same feeling. It may sometimes get a little ludicrous and a little wearisome ; but in moderation it is perfectly right and healthy. And with the highest class of Americans — those

LIKENESSES AND TJNLIEENESSES. 9

who do not put tlieir questions in quite so naked a shape, those who are keen-sighted enough to understand and candid enough to avow that there may be a balance of merit and defect either way — the discussion of things on the older and the newer side of Ocean often leads to comparisons, and the comparisons often lead to investigations, which are interesting and instructive in the highest degree.

Now comparisons and investigations of this kind come most naturally when there is a strong essential likeness between the things compared. It is in such cases, not in those where the things compared are altogether unlike one another, that we note the minutest differences. It is where things are very much alike that we most diligently mark the points in which they are not alike. Take for instance the two universities of Oxford and Cambridge. The main features in the constitution and customs of the two are so closely alike to one another, and so utterly unlike those of any other universities in the world, that there is a certain curious pleasure in tracing out the endless minute points in which they differ. So it is between England and America. It is the essential likeness which makes us note every point of unlikeness. I hardly know whether my American friends were pleased or disappointed —

10 IMPKESSIONS OP THE UNITED STATES.

they certainlj were sometimes a little surprised — at my telling them, as J often had to do, that what most struck me in their country was how little it differed from my own. I had to say over and over again that this was the thing which had most surprised me, hut that on s3cond thoughts it did not surprise me at all, as it was only what was perfectly natural. To me most certainly the United States did not seem a foreign country ; it was simply England with a difference. The difference struck me as certainly greater than the greatest difference which had ever struck me between one part of England and another, but as certainly less than the difference which strikes me when I enter Scotland. That America should seem less strange than Scotland is doubtless partly owing to the fact that English and Scottish law are two things which stand wholly apart, while the law of the American States is for the most part simply English law with a difference. All things therefore which depend on the administration of the law — and the things which depend on the administration of the law make up a good part of ordinary life — are different between England and Scotland, while they are largely the same between England and America. A crowd of names, ofB.ces, formulae, modes of proceeding, are very much the same on the two sides of the Ocean,

AMERICA AND SCOTLAND. H

while they are altogether different on the two sides of the Tweed. It might be too much to say that the dilBPerence between England and Scotland is a difference in kind, while the difference between England and America is only a difference of degree. But if we rule both to be only differences of degree, the Scottish difference seems to me certainly the wider of the two. And of course it makes a great difference with what part of England America is compared. Rural America differs far more from rural England than urban America differs from urban England. There was nothing strange to me in the general look of the great American cities. They were very unlike York and Exeter ; but they were very like Manchester and Liverpool. In short, when I landed at New York in October, my first feeling was that America was very like England; when I landed at Liverpool in April, my first feeling was that England was very like America.

III

I said just now that I saw less difference between England and the United States than I find between England and Scotland ; and that I saw one chief reason for the fact, namely, that English and American law are for the most part the same, while English and Scottish law are for

12 IMPEESSIOKS OP THE UNITED STATES.

the most part different. 'Now, on this showing, I may possibly be asked whether I do not find a greater likeness between Ireland and either England or America than I find between either of these lands and Scotland. In going to Ireland, as in going to America, we cross the sea — certainly a much smaller part of it — and we then find ourselves in a land essentially of our own law, while in going to Scotland we keep within our own island, and yet find ourselves in a land essentially of another law. And it may happen that more superficial likenesses between America and Irela,nd may strike the British visitor to America pretty soon after his landing. It was an American visitor to England Tvho remarked — I believe he did not complain^that in England he missed the sound of the Irish accent. And he who lands in America, above all if he lands, as most of us do, at New York — will certainly remark, whether he welcomes or not, the sound of the Irish accent at the very beginning of his sojourn. Specially will he do so, if he makes, as many of us do, his first acquaintance with dollars by spending a large number of them on a New York hackney carriage. But he may perhaps before long come to think that the presence of English law in Ireland and the presence of the Irish cab-driver in America are alike phsenomena which are a little abnormal.

AMERICA AND IRELAND. 13

though they may perhaps have a subtle connexion with one another. It may be that, if English rule, and along with it English law, had never found their way into Ireland, the Irish cab-driver would never have found his way to New York. And some may even go on to think that, if the history of mankind had taken that turn, three countries at least would be the happier for it. Anyhow, the likeness of the law between England and Ireland does not bring with it the same kind of likeness between England and Ireland which the likeness of tlie law between England and America brings with it. And the reason is plain. In Ireland English law, and all that comes of the presence of English law, is something thoroughly foreign. In America the presence of English law, and all that comes of the presence of English law, is something thoroughly natural and native. The law of Ireland is like that of England, because Englishmen conquered Ireland and forced their own law upon the people of Ireland. The law of America is like the law of England, because Englishmen, freely settling in the new land of America, naturally took their own law with them. But Scotland was never either conquered in the same sense as Ireland nor settled in the same sense as America. Scotland therefore has never accepted English law, but keeps a wholly distinct law of her own growth.

Whatever therefore of likeness the English traveller in Ireland finds between that island and his own country is due to causes exactly opposite to those which bring about the likeness between England and America. In both cases the likeness is due to the presence of Englishmen in lands beyond the bounds of England; but it is due to their presence in altogether different characters. In the one case it is the presence of conquerors in an inhabited land ; in the other it is the presence of settlers in what was practically an uninhabited land. Whatever likeness there is between England and Ireland, between America and Ireland, is only on the surface. Whatever likeness there is between England and Scotland, between England and America, between America and Scotland, all belongs to the very root of the matter. The likenesses and unlikenesses are of course in all cases due to historical causes. But in the one case they are due to comparatively modern historical events, since the nations severally concerned had put on their several national characters. In the other case they are due to those subtler causes, those earlier events, which ruled that the nations concerned should severally be what they are.

I find that my feeling on this head is shared by some British travellers in America and is not

MY OWN POSITION. 15

shared hy others. Some' say with me that the difference between England and America struct them as slight, as slighter than that between England and Scotland. On others the points of unlikeness have made more impression. Doubtless I visited America under circumstances which were likely to make me dwell on likenesses rather than on unlikenesses. It might haply have been otherwise if I had known nothing of the continent of Europe, or if I had entered America, as some have done, on its western side. But I came to America from the east, and that as a somewhat old stager in continental Europe. I came as one fresh from Italy, Greece, and Dalmatia, as one who had used his own house in England as an inn on the road between Eagusa and Boston. Among a people of the same tongue, of essentially the same laws and manners, I naturally found myself at home, after tarrying in lands which were altogether foreign. But I have no doubt that deeper causes than this would naturally lead me to seize on the most English side of everything American. To me the English-speaking commonwealth on the American mainland is simply one part of the great English folk, as the English-speaking kingdom in the European island is another part. My whole line of thought and study leads me to think, more perhaps than most men, of the everlasting ties

16 IMPRESSIONS OF THE TTBTITED STATES.

of blood and speech, and less of the accidental separation wrought hy political and geographical causes. To me the English folk, wherever they may dwell, whatever may be their form of government, are still one people. It may be that the habit of constantly studying and comparing the history of England with the history of old Greece makes it easier for me to grasp the idea of a people, divided geographically and politically, but still forming in the higher sense one people. The tie that bound Greek to Greek was dearer to Kallikratidas than the advancement of Spartan interests by hnrbarian help. And so, to my mind at least, the thought of the true unity of the scattered English folk is a thought higher and dearer than any thought of a British Empire to the vast majority of whose subjects the common speech of Chatham and Washington, of Gladstone and Garfield, is an unknown tongue.

IV

It may be more important to ask how far the doctrine of the essential unity of the divided branches of the English people is received by those whom it concerns on the other side of the Ocean. This is a subject on which I rather distrust my own judgement. I feel that it is a subject on which I am an enthusiast, and that my enthusiasm

■UNITY OP THE ENGLISH FOLK. 17

may possibly bias and colour any report that I may try to make. And, of course, I can give only the impressions which I have drawn from certain classes of people, impressions which may be widely different from those which another man may have drawn from other classes of people. As far as I can speak of my American acquaintances, I should say that with most of them the essential unity of the English folk is one of those facts which everybody in a sense knows, but of which few people really carry their knowledge about with them. The main facts of the case are so plain that they cannot fail to be known to every man among a people who know their own immediate and recent history so well as the Americans do. That the older American States were in the beginning English, colonies, that the great mass of their inhabitants are still of English descent, that, though the infusion of foreign elements has been large, yet it is the English kernel which has assimilated these foreign elements, all these are plain facts which every decently taught man in the United States cannot fail in a certain sense to know. That is, if he were examined on the subject, he could not fail to give the right answers. But the facts do not seem to be to him living things, constantly in his mind. Those Americans with whom I have spoken, all of them without a single exception, readily and gladly accepted the statement of wliat I may call their Englishry, when it was set before them. Once or twice indeed I have known the statement come from the American side. But, though the acceptance of the doctrine was ready and glad, it seemed to be the acceptance of a doctrine which could not be denied when it was stated, but which he who accepted it had not habitually carried about in his daily thoughts. And when the statement came from the American side, it came, not as an obvious truth, but rather as the result of the speaker's own observation, as a fact which he had noticed, but which might have escaped the notice of others. I will illustrate my meaning by an incident which happened to myself. At a college dinner to which I was asked, one gentleman proposed my health in words which in everything else were most kind and flattering, but in which I was spoken of as a man of ' a foreign nationality.' In my answer I thanked the proposer of the toast for everything else that he had said, but begged him to withdraw one word : I was not of a foreign nationality, but of the same nationality as himself. My answer was warmly cheered, and several other speakers took up the same line. The unity of Old and New England was in every mouth; one gentleman who had been American Minister in England told how

AMBEICAN FEBLISTG. 19

exactly the same thing had happened to him at a Lord Major's dinner in London, how he had been spoken of as a foreigner, and how he had refiised the name, just as I had done.

Now this story is an exact instance of what I say. The feeling of unity between the two severed branches is really present in the American breast, but it needs something special to wake it up. It comes most naturally to the Englishman of America to speak of the Englishman of Britain as a ' foreigner.' The word is often so applied in American newspapers and American books. But when the Englishman of Britain formally rejects the name, the Englishman of America frankly and gladly accepts the rejection, and welcomes the European kinsman as truly one of his own house. Now I know not how far I may judge others by myself; but I should say that the feeling in England is somewhat different. I do not think that Americans are commonly thought of, or spoken of, as 'foreigners.' In the stoi'y that I have just told, the case may have simply been that the Lord Mayor reckoned the representative of the United States among ' Foreign Ministers,' a formula in which the use of the unpleasant word could hardly be avoided. It seems to me that the American in England is welcomed above other men from beyond sea on the express ground that he is not a

c 2

20 IMPEBSSIONS OF THE UNITED STATES.

foreigner. Americans sometimes complain that they are welcomed indeed in England, but welcomed as if they were objects of curiosity, sometimes even that the welcome is mingled with condescension. The condescension I believe to be imaginary, a spectre called up by that spirit of touchiness of which I have already spoken. The curiosity is most real. But it is the curiosity with which we welcome a kinsman whom we have often heard of but never seen. It may sometimes take rather grotesque shapes, but it is in its essence that genuine interest which attaches to acknowledged kindred. In America it struck me that the British visitor was welcomed, kindly, cordially, hospitably welcomed, but still welcomed in the beginning as a stranger. That he is no stranger but a kinsman is a truth which dawns upon his American friends at a rather later stage. The American, it seems to me, feels a greater distinction between himself and the Englishman of Britain than the Englishman of Britain feels between himself and the American.

A good deal of this feeling is the natural result of past events, and I cannot help thinking that the result of past events has been somewhat aggravated by modern forms of speaking. The Englishman of America — he must allow me to call him so — has something to get over in acknowledg-

EFFECTS OF OLD GRUDGES. 21

ing the kindred of the Englishman of Britain ; the Englishman of Britain has nothing to get over in acknowledging the kindred of the Englishman of America,. In the broad fact of the War of Independence there is really nothing of -which either side need be ashamed. Each side acted as it was natural for each side to act. We can now see that both King George and the British nation were quite wrong; but for them to have acted otherwise than as they did would have needed a superhuman measure of wisdom, which few kings and few nations ever had. The later American war within the present century, a war which, one would think, could have been so easily avoided on either side, is a far uglier memory than the War of Independence. Still the War of Independence must be, on the American side, a formidable historic barrier in the way of perfect brotherhood. A war of that kind is something quite unlike an ordinary war between two nations which are already thoroughly formed. Two such nations can soon affoi'd to forget, they can almost afford to smile over, their past differences. It is otherwise when one nation dates its national being — in the political sense of the word ' nation '—from the defeat and humiliation of the other. If the American nation had parted off peacefully from the British nation, there would be no difficulty on