Part 1 (1/2)

America To-day, Observations and Reflections.

by William Archer.

PART I

OBSERVATIONS

LETTER I

The Straits of New York--When is a s.h.i.+p not a s.h.i.+p?--Nationality of Pa.s.sengers--A Dream Realized.

R.M.S. _Lucania_.

The Atlantic Ocean is geographically a misnomer, socially and politically a dwindling superst.i.tion. That is the chief lesson one learns--and one has barely time to take it in--between Queenstown and Sandy Hook. Ocean forsooth! this little belt of blue water that we cross before we know where we are, at a single hop-skip-and-jump! From north to south, perhaps, it may still count as an ocean; from east to west we have narrowed it into a strait. Why, even for the seasick (and on this point I speak with melancholy authority) the Atlantic has not half the terrors of the Straits of Dover; comfort at sea being a question, not of the size of the waves, but of the proportion between the size of the waves and the size of the s.h.i.+p. Our imagination is still beguiled by the fuss the world made over Columbus, whose exploit was intellectually and morally rather than physically great. The map-makers, too, throw dust in our eyes by their absurd figment of two ”hemispheres,” as though Nature had sliced her orange in two, and held one half in either hand.

We are slow to realise, in fact, that time is the only true measure of s.p.a.ce, and that London to-day is nearer to New York than it was to Edinburgh a hundred and fifty years ago. The essential facts of the case, as they at present stand, would come home much more closely to the popular mind of both continents if we called this strip of sea the Straits of New York, and cla.s.sed our liners, not as the successors of Columbus's caravels, but simply as what they are: giant ferry-boats plying with clockwork punctuality between the twin landing-stages of the English-speaking world.

To-morrow we shall be in New York harbour; it seems but yesterday that we slipped out of the Cove of Cork. As I look at the chart on the companion staircase, where our daily runs are marked off, I feel the abject poverty of our verbs of speed. We have not rushed, or dashed, or hurtled along--these words do grave injustice to the majesty of our progress. I can think of nothing but the strides of some t.i.tan, so vast as to beggar even the myth-making imagination. It is not seven-league, no, nor hundred-league boots that we wear--we do our 520, 509, 518, 530 knots at a stride. Nor is it to be imagined that we are anywhere near the limit of speed. Already the _Lucania's_ record is threatened by the _Oceanic_; and the _Oceanic_, if she fulfils her promises, will only spur on some still swifter t.i.tan to the emprise.[A] Then, again, it is hard to believe that the difficulties are insuperable which as yet prevent us from utilising, as a point of arrival and departure, that almost mid-Atlantic outpost of the younger world, Newfoundland--or at the least Nova Scotia. By this means the actual waterway between the two continents will be shortened by something like a third. What with the acceleration of the ferry-boats and the narrowing of the ferry, it is surely no visionary Jules-Vernism to look forward to the time when one may set foot on American soil, within, say, sixty-five hours of leaving the Liverpool landing-stage; supposing, that is to say, that steam navigation be not in the meantime superseded.

As yet, to be sure, the Atlantic possesses a certain strategic importance as a coal-consuming force. To contract its time-width we have to expand our coal-bunkers; and the s.h.i.+p which has crossed it in six days, be she ferryboat or cruiser, is apt to arrive, as it were, a little out of breath. But even this drawback can scarcely be permanent.

Science must presently achieve the storage of motive-power in some less bulky form than that of crude coal. Then the Atlantic will be as extinct, politically, as the Great Wall of China; or, rather, it will retain for America the abiding significance which the ”silver streak”

possesses for England--an effectual bulwark against aggression, but a highway to influence and world-moulding power.

Think of the time when the _Lucania_ shall have fallen behind in the race, and shall be plying to Boston or Philadelphia, while larger and swifter hotel-s.h.i.+ps shall put forth almost daily from Liverpool, Southampton, and New York! Think of the growth of intercourse which even the next ten years will probably bring, and the increase of mutual comprehension involved in it! Is it an illusion of mine, or do we not already observe in England, during the past year, a new interest and pride in our trans-Atlantic service, which now ranks close to the Navy in the popular affections? It dates, I think, from those first days of the late war, when the _Paris_ was vainly supposed to be in danger of capture by Spanish cruisers, and when all England was wis.h.i.+ng her G.o.d-speed.

For my own taste, this sumptuous hotel-s.h.i.+p is rather too much of a hotel and too little of a s.h.i.+p. I resent the absolute exclusion of the pa.s.sengers from even the most distant view of the propelling and guiding forces. Practically, the _Lucania_ is a s.h.i.+p without a deck; and the deck is to the s.h.i.+p what the face is to the human being. The so-called promenade-deck is simply a long roofed balcony on either side of the hotel building. It is roofed by the ”shade deck,” which is rigidly reserved ”for navigators only.” There the true life of the s.h.i.+p goes on, and we are vouchsafed no glimpse of it. One is reminded of the Chinaman's description of a three-masted screw steamer with two funnels: ”Thlee piecee bamboo, two piecee puff-puff, walk-along nside, no can see.” Here the ”walk-along,” the motive power, is ”nside” with a vengeance. I have not at this moment the remotest conception where the engine-room is, or where lies the descent to that Avernus. Not even the communicator-gong can be heard in the hotel. I have not set eyes on an engineer or a stoker, scarcely on a sailor. The captain I do not even know by sight. Occasionally an officer flits past, on his way up to or down from the ”shade deck”; I regard him with awe, and guess reverently at his rank. The s.h.i.+p's company, as I know it, consists of the purser, the doctor, and the army of stewards and stewardesses. The roof of the promenade-deck weighs upon my brain. It shuts off the better half of the sky, the zenith. In order even to see the masts and funnels of the s.h.i.+p one has to go far forward or far aft and crane one's neck upward. Not a single human being have I ever descried on the ”shade-deck” or on the towering bridge. The genii of the hundred-league boots remain not only inaccessible but invisible. The effect is inhuman, uncanny. All the luxury of the saloons and staterooms does not compensate for the lack of a frank, straightforward deck. The _Lucania_, in my eyes, has no individuality as a s.h.i.+p. It--I instinctively say ”it,” not ”she”--is merely a rather low-roofed hotel, with sea-sickness superadded to all the comforts of home. But a first-cla.s.s hotel it is: the living good and plentiful, if not superfine, the service excellent, and the charges, all things considered, remarkably moderate.

What chiefly strikes one about the pa.s.sengers is their h.o.m.ogeneity of race. Apart from a small (but influential) Semitic contingent, the whole body is thoroughly Anglo-Saxon in type. About half are British, I take it, and half American; but in most cases the nationality is to be distinguished only by accent, not by any characteristic of appearance or of demeanour. The strongly-marked Semites always excepted, there is not a man or woman among the saloon pa.s.sengers who strikes me as a foreigner, a person of alien race. I do not feel my sympathies chill toward my very agreeable table-companion because he drinks ice-water at breakfast; and he views my tea with an eye of equal tolerance. It is not till one looks at the second-cla.s.s pa.s.sengers that one sees signs of the heterogeneity of the American people; and then one remembers with misgivings the emigrants who crowded on board at Queenstown, with their household goods done up in bundles and gaping, ill-roped boxes. The thought of them recalls an anecdote which was new to me the other day, and may be fresh to some of my readers. In any case it will bear repet.i.tion. An Irishman coming to America for the first time, found New York gay with bunting as he sailed up the harbour. He asked an American fellow-pa.s.senger the reason of the display, and was told it was in honour of Evacuation Day. ”And what's that?” he inquired. ”Why, the day the British troops evacuated New York.” Presently an Englishman came up to the Irishman and asked him if he knew what the flags were for. ”For Evacuation Day, to be sure!” was the reply. ”What is Evacuation Day?”

asked the Sa.s.senach. ”The day we drove you blackguards out of the country, bedad!” was the immediate reply. If not literally true, the story is at least profoundly typical.

There is a light on our starboard bow: my first glimpse, for two and twenty years, of America. It has been literally the dream of my life to revisit the United States. Not once, but fifty times, have I dreamed that the ocean (which loomed absurdly large even in my waking thoughts) was comfortably crossed, and I was landing in New York. I can clearly recall at this moment some of the fantastic shapes the city put on in my dreams--utterly different, of course, from my actual recollections of it. Well, that dream is now realised; the gates of the Western world are opening to me. What experience awaits me I know not; but this I do know, that the emotion with which I confront it is not one of idle curiosity, or even of calmly sympathetic interest. It is not primarily to my intelligence, but to my imagination, that the word ”America” appeals. To many people that word conveys none but prosaic a.s.sociations; to me it is electric with romance. Only one other word in existence can give me a comparable thrill; the word one sees graven on a roadside pillar as one walks down the southern slope of an Alpine pa.s.s: ITALIA. But that word carries the imagination backward only, whereas AMERICA stands for the meeting-place of the past and the future. What the land of Cooper and Mayne Reid was to my boyish fancy, the land of Was.h.i.+ngton and Lincoln, Hawthorne and Emerson, is to my adult thoughts. Does this mean that I approach America in the temper of a romantic schoolboy? Perhaps; but, bias for bias, I would rather own to that of the romantic schoolboy than to that of the cynical Old-Worldling.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote A: The _Oceanic_, it appears, is designed to break the record in punctuality, not in speed. Nevertheless there are several indications that our engineers are not resting on their oars, but will presently put on another spurt. The very shortest Atlantic pa.s.sage, I understand, has been made by a German s.h.i.+p. Surely England and America cannot long be content to leave the record for speed, of all things, in the hands of Germany.]

LETTER II

Fog in New York Harbour--The Customs--The Note-Taker's Hyperaesthesia--a Literary Car-Conductor--Mr. Kipling and the American Public--The City of Elevators.

NEW YORK.

By way of making us feel quite at home, New-York receives us with a dank Scotch mist. On the sh.o.r.es of Staten Island the leafless trees stand out grey and gaunt against the whity-grey snow, a legacy, no doubt, from the great blizzard. Though I keep a sharp look-out, I can descry no Liberty Enlightening the World. Liberty (_absit omen!_) is wrapped away in grimy cotton-wool. There, however, are the ”sky-sc.r.a.per” buildings, looming out through the mist, like the Jotuns in Niflheim of Scandinavian mythology. They are grandiose, certainly, and not, to my thinking, ugly.

That word has no application in this context. ”Pretty” and ”ugly”--why should we for ever carry about these aesthetic labels in our pockets, and insist on dabbing them down on everything that comes in our way? If we cannot get, with Nietzsche, _Jenseits von Gut und Bose_, we might at least allow our souls an occasional breathing-s.p.a.ce in a region ”Back of the Beautiful and the Ugly,” as they say in President's English. While I am trying to formulate my feelings with regard to this deputation of giants which the giant Republic sends down to the waterside to welcome us, behold, we have crept up abreast of the Cunard wharf, and there stands a little crowd of human welcomers, waving handkerchiefs and American flags. An energetic tug-boat b.u.t.ts her head gallantly into the flank of the huge liner, in order to help her round. She glides up to her berth, the gangway is run out, and at last I set foot upon American--lumber.

What are my emotions? I have only one; single, simple, easily-expressed: dread of the United States Custom House. Its terrors and its tyrannies have been depicted in such lurid colours on the other side that I am almost surprised to observe no manifest ogres in uniform caps, but only, it would seem, ordinary human beings. And, on closer acquaintances.h.i.+p, they prove to be civil and even helpful human beings, with none of the lazy superciliousness which so often characterises the European toll-taker. At first the scene is chaotic enough, but, by aid of an arrangement in alphabetical groups, cosmos soon emerges. The system by which you declare your dutiable goods and are a.s.signed an examiner, and if necessary an appraiser, is admirably simple and free from red-tape. I shall not describe it, for it would be more tedious in description than in act. Enough that the whole thing is conducted, so far as I could see, promptly, efficiently, and with perfect good temper. One brief discussion I heard, between an official and an American citizen, who was heavily a.s.sessed on some article or articles which he declared to have been manufactured in America and taken out of the country by himself only a few months before. The official insisted that there was no proof of this; but just as the discussion threatened to become an altercation (a ”sc.r.a.p” they would call it here) some one found a way out. The goods were forwarded in bond to the traveller's place of residence (Hartford, I think) where he declared that he could produce proof of their American origin. For myself, I had to pay two dollars and a half on some magic-lantern slides. I could have imported the lantern, had I owned one, free of charge, as a philosophical instrument used in my profession; but the courts have held, it appears, that though the lantern comes under that rubric, the slides do not. I cannot pretend to grasp the distinction, or to admire the system which necessitates it.

But whatever the economic merits or demerits of the tariff, I take pleasure in bearing testimony to the civility with which I found it enforced.