Part 8 (1/2)
(a) To strengthen and more closely cement our friendly relations with foreign Powers--I to furnish the cement.
(b) To reform things in general over here.
I found that there was no opening for a real reformer in the U.S.A., inasmuch as the magazines were upsetting munic.i.p.al rings, cornering the Beef Trust, and camping on the trail of every corporation that seemed to be making money. I said:--”If I wish to make a ten strike as a reformer I must seek new fields.”
So I decided to flit to Europe and spend all the time I could spare from dodging _table d'hote_ dinners to bolstering up and regulating the consular service.
In writing to-day about the happy experiences of an American consul I am following the advice of a friend who urged me to send some letters back home.
”Don't put in too much about your travels,” he said. ”People have read about European travel until they know Munich better than they do Montana. Whenever the opportunity presents itself write something entirely irrelevant--something that has nothing to do with anything in particular. The less you say about foreign countries the better you will please your readers, and if you can arrange to write a series of letters in which no reference is made to either Europe or Africa who knows but what you will score a hit?”
With no desire to boast of my accomplishments, I feel that up to date I have followed instructions rather closely. If any dates, statistics, or useful information have crept into these communications it is through oversight and not by intention.
In writing from Paris the natural impulse is to describe Napoleon's tomb and tell how the Champs Elysees runs right out to the Arc de Triomphe and then cuts through the Bois de Boulogne. Fearing that this subject matter had been touched upon by other visitors, I shall disregard Paris and go straight to my task of reforming the consular service.
To begin with, usually the American Consul is all right in his place, but his place is at home. Overpaid, possibly, but he does his best to earn his $800 per annum. If he kept all the money that he handled in the course of the year, he couldn't be a really successful grafter. He finds himself plumped down in a strange country. About the time that he begins to learn the language and has saved up enough money to buy evening clothes he is recalled and goes back home with a ”dress suit”
on his hands. Take the case of Mr. Eben Willoughby, of Michigan. It is a simple narrative, but it will give you a line on the shortcomings of our consular service, and it will carry its own moral.
”Old Man” Willoughby, as he was known at home, owned and edited a successful daily paper on the outskirts of the Michigan pine belt. He was a wheel horse in the party and for forty years had supported the caucus nominees. The aspiring politician who wished to go to Congress had to go and see Willoughby with his hat in his hand. He helped to make and unmake United States Senators and was consulted regarding appointments. But he never had asked anything for himself. His two boys went to college at Ann Arbor, and when the younger came home with his degree and began to take a hand in running the paper Mr. Willoughby found himself, for the first time in his life, relieved of wearing responsibilities. He was well fixed financially and still in the prime of life--not due to retire permanently, but ready to take it easy. For years he had nursed a vague desire to travel beyond the limits of his native land. Mrs. Willoughby, who in the home circle was known as ”Ma,” was a devotee of the Chautauqua Circle, and she, too, had an ambition born of much reading to pack up and go somewhere. The family doctor said that a visit to some milder climate, far from the rigours of northern winter, would be a positive benefit to her.
[Ill.u.s.tration: _Had to go and see Willoughby_]
So Mr. and Mrs. Willoughby began to study the atlas. One of the sons suggested to ”Old Man” Willoughby that he could take a trip to an attractive southern country at the minimum expense by securing an appointment as consul. And, of course, apart from the financial advantage, there would be the glory of representing a great nation and hoisting the flag over a benighted foreign population. The suggestion appealed very strongly to Mr. Willoughby. He wrote to the Congressman and the Senator, and wanted to know if there was a vacancy--salary no object, but he would like to go into a mild and equable climate where he could pick cocoanuts.
His friends at Was.h.i.+ngton simply overturned the State Department in their eagerness to give him what he wanted. They discovered that there was somewhere on the map a city called Gallivancia. It was down by the southern seas--the abode of perpetual summer and already enjoying a preliminary boom as a resort. The acting consul had been a British subject. The pay was so small that no enterprising American had wanted the job. ”United States Consul at Gallivancia” reverberated pleasantly in the imagination of Mr. Willoughby. He told his friends at Was.h.i.+ngton to go after the place, and in less than no time his daily paper announced that he had ”accepted” the appointment.
The politicians represented to the State Department that Mr. Willoughby was a st.u.r.dy patriot of unimpeachable character and great ability--all of which was true. They might have added that he would be just as much at home in Gallivancia as a polar bear would be on India's coral strand.
The news of his appointment gave one section of Michigan the trembles for several days, and the Willoughby family was bathed in a new importance. Mrs. Willoughby was given a formal farewell by the ladies of the congregation a.s.sembled in the church parlours. Mr. Willoughby was presented with a jewelled badge by the members of his lodge, and the band serenaded him the night before he went away.
He and ”ma” stood on the back platform and gazed with misty eyes at the flutter of handkerchiefs on the station platform until the train swung around a curve and they found themselves headed straight for Gallivancia and glory. Both of them felt a little heart-achey and dubious, but it was too late to back out. At New York they boarded a s.h.i.+p and after several days of unalloyed misery they landed at Gallivancia.
Now, Gallivancia is the make-believe capital of a runt of an island having no commercial or other importance. No matter where an island may be dropped down, some nation must grab it and hold it for fear that some other nation will take charge of it and pay the expenses. That is why Gallivancia had a governor general and a colonel in command, and the Right Honourable Skipper of the gunboat and a judge and a cl.u.s.ter of foreign consuls. The men had a club at which whiskey and water could be obtained, unless the bottle happened to be empty. The women exchanged calls and gave formal dinners and drove about in rickety little victorias with terrified natives in livery perched upon the box.
The lines of social precedence were closely drawn. At a dinner party the wife of the governor preceded the wife of the military commander who, in turn, queened it over the wife of the gunboat, who looked down upon the wife of the magistrate, and so on. The women smoked cigarettes and gambled at bridge, while every man who had won a medal at a shooting match pinned it on his coat when he went to a ball. It was a third-rate copy of court life, but these small dignitaries went through the motions and got a lot of fun out of it in one way and another. If we cannot afford a social position that is real ivory, the next best thing is to get one that is celluloid. It had all the intricate vices of a true n.o.bility without the bona fide t.i.tles to back them up and give the glamour.
Into this nest of pretentious, ceremonious, strutting little mortals came ”Old Man” Willoughby and ”Ma” Willoughby of Michigan. Of the outward form and artificialities of a Europeanised aristocratic society they were most profoundly ignorant. Mr. Willoughby did not even own a ”dress suit.” When he got a clean shave and put on a string tie and backed into a ”Prince Albert” coat he felt that he had made a very large concession to the mere fripperies of life. And ”Ma” had her own ideas about low-necked gowns.
Can you see Mr. and Mrs. Willoughby in Gallivancia? Can you understand what must have been the att.i.tude of these gold-braid pewees toward an old-fas.h.i.+oned apple pie couple from the tall timber?
Mind you, I am not poking fun at the Willoughbys. In the opinion of every real American a man of the Willoughby type is worth a ten-acre lot full of these two-by-four t.i.tles. The Willoughbys were good people--the kind of people one likes to meet in Michigan. But when the ladies of the foreign colony came to call on ”Ma” and said ”Dyuh me!”
and looked at her through their lorgnettes, she was like a staid old Plymouth Rock hen who suddenly finds herself among the birds of paradise. She told Mr. Willoughby that it was the queerest lot of ”women folks” she had ever seen, and although she didn't like to talk about people until she knew her ground, some of them did not seem any more respectable than the law allowed. Poor Mrs. Willoughby! She did not know it was good form for a woman to smoke and drink, but bad form for her to be interested in her husband. She tried to apply a Michigan training to Gallivancia conditions, and the two didn't seem to jibe.
[Ill.u.s.tration: ”_D'yuh me!_”]
If Mrs. Willoughby amused the women, Mr. Willoughby more than amused the men. He upset them and left them gasping.
The Acting Consul had used a small office adjoining his own place of business on the water front. Mr. Willoughby called on the former consul and found him to be a dignified Britisher of the gloomy and reticent sort, with a moustache shaped like a horseshoe. The dethroned official was courteous, but not cordial. He was saying good-by to some easy money, and the situation was not one calculated to promote good cheer. Mr. Willoughby's action in coming down and pulling the Consulate from underneath him seemed to him almost unfriendly.
However, he formally turned over to Mr. Willoughby a table, four chairs, several account books, and a letter press, all being the property of the United States of America.