Chapter XI
AMERICA[1]
“How do you like America?”
“Oh,” I said, “are we there?”
“Soon will be,” he answered. “How do you pronounce your name?”
I told him. He repeated it louder, for the benefit of the others—some dozen of them, grouped around him. They made a note of it.
“What would you say was the difference between English and American humour?”
A chill north wind was blowing, and I hadn't had my breakfast. I did my best.
“These things,” I said, “are a natural growth, springing from the soil. In England, to go no further back than Chaucer——” Nobody was listening. They were all busy writing. I wondered where they had come from. Out of the sea, apparently. I had been pacing the deck, scanning the horizon for my first sight of New York, and suddenly had found myself in the midst of them. Their spokesman was a thick-set, red-haired gentleman. He had a military manner. The rest were a mixed collection. Some of them looked to me to be mere boys.
“Say, can you tell us a story?” he questioned me.
I stared at him. “A story?” I repeated. “You want me to tell you a story?”
“Why, sure,” he answered.
What on earth did they mean! Did they want me to start off and spin them a yarn, at a quarter to eight in the morning? And if so, was it to be adventure or romance, or just a simple love episode? I had a vision of being, perhaps, expected to sit down in the centre of them, taking the youngest of them on my knee.
He saw I was bewildered. “Anything happened to you on the voyage,” he suggested, “anything interesting or amusing?”
I had the feeling of a condemned prisoner, reprieved at the last moment. In gratitude, I tried to think of something interesting and amusing that really might have happened to me. Given time, I could have done it. But they stood there waiting with their pencils poised, and I had to fall back upon the truth. I told them the only thing that had happened—that, three days out, we had sighted an iceberg. It was a silly little iceberg. I had mistaken it, myself, for a portion of a wreck; and a man who had been looking at it through a telescope had pronounced it to be a polar bear. If it had not been for the bartender, none of us would have known it was an iceberg. I made the most of it, describing how we had “run before it,” and speaking highly of the Captain. It appeared in the evening papers under the heading, “The Ice Queen shows her Teeth.”
We got on better after that. They saw that, at all events, I was trying. I told them how the American woman struck me—or rather how I felt sure she was going to strike me when I saw her; and gave them (by request) my opinion of Christopher Columbus, the American drama, the future of California, President Roosevelt and Elizabeth B. Parker. Who Elizabeth B. Parker was I have never discovered to this day; but that, I take it, is my fault. I gathered her to be one of America's then leading idols (they don't last long); and said that one of my objects in coming to America was to meet her. This seemed to give general satisfaction, and we parted friends.
I make no charge against the American interviewer. One takes the rough with the smooth. I have been described, within the same period of seven months, as a bald-headed elderly gentleman, with a wistful smile; a curly-haired athletic Englishman, remarkable for his youthful appearance; a rickety cigarette-smoking neurotic; and a typical John Bull. Some of them objected to my Oxford drawl; while others catalogued me as a cockney, and invariably quoted me as dropping my aitches. All of them noticed with unfeigned surprise that I spoke English with an English accent. In the city of Prague, I once encountered a Bohemian ruffian who claimed to be a guide—a Czecho-Slovakian, I suppose he would be called to-day. He had learnt English in New York from a Scotchman. Myself, I could not understand him; but the New York interviewer would, I feel sure, have found in him his ideal Englishman. To anyone visiting America for a rest cure, I can see the American interviewer proving a thorn in the flesh. In pursuit of duty, he makes no bones about awakening you at two o'clock in the morning to ascertain your opinion of the local baseball team; and on arriving at your hotel, after a thirty-six hours' journey, you may find him waiting for you in your bedroom, accompanied by a flashlight photographer. But not many people, I take it, go to America for their health. At Pittsburgh, my wife woke with a sick headache, and I had to leave her behind me for a day or two. In the evening, better but still shaky, she dressed herself and slipped down into the lounge. Little black things were running about the floor. She thought they were kittens and tried to make friends with them, but they none of them would come to her. The place was poorly lighted, but there seemed to be about a score of them; sometimes more and sometimes less. The chambermaid looked in. She was an Irish girl. My wife drew her attention to these black kittens, as she thought them, commenting upon their shyness.
“Oh, they're not kittens,” explained the chambermaid, “they're rats.”
It seemed they came up from the kitchen, making use of the air shaft. If you did not interfere with them or tease them, they did you no harm.
It was a slack time and the girl, at my wife's earnestly expressed wish, brought in her sewing. The girl was full of stories about rats, but doubted their being as intelligent as it was said. Otherwise, so the girl argued, you would hardly find them in Pittsburgh.
“But you yourself are in Pittsburgh,” said my wife, “and you told me yesterday you had been here six years.”
The girl explained the seeming riddle. She hoped in another three years to have saved enough to be able to return to Ireland and settle down. She had pigs and a small holding in her mind, not unconnected with one named Dennis. Thousands of Irish girls, she assured my wife, came to America with similar intention. Not all of them, of course, succeeded, but it was long before they lost hope. It is the dream of every “Dago” to return to his native village and open a shop with dollars brought back from America. Nor is it only the hyphenated alien who looks forward to spending abroad money got out of the United States. In travelling about, I have discovered that all the best parts of Europe are inhabited by hundred-per-cent Americans. Sooner or later, it occurs to the English literary man that there is money to be made out of lecturing in America. But without the American interviewer to boom us in advance, and work up the local excitement for us when we arrive, we would return with empty pockets. For what I have received in the way of lecturing fees out of America the Lord make me truly thankful to the American interviewer: and may his sins be forgot.
The most impressive thing in America is New York. Niagara disappointed me. I had some trouble in finding it. The tram conductor promised to let me know when we came to the proper turning, but forgot; and I had to walk back three blocks. I came across it eventually at the bottom of a tea garden, belonging to a big hotel. My tour did not permit me to visit the Yellowstone Park. But I saw the Garden of the Gods in Colorado, and it struck me as neglected. The Rockies are imposing, but lack human interest. The Prairies are depressing. One has the feeling of being a disembodied spirit, travelling through space, and growing doubtful as to one's destination. To the European, what America suffers from is there being too much of it. In Switzerland, one winter, I met a man from Indianapolis. We were looking out of the window on our way to Grindelwald.
1
The Author made three visits to America, separated by a number of years, the first at a time when both he and America were younger than they are now. The incidents and the observations made on all of these visits are recorded together in this chapter. It is natural in such a brief account that the date, or even the visit, on which a given incident occurred could not be recorded. The reader will readily see that, in many cases, the Author is recounting to-day the American scene of a day that is long since past.—The Publishers.