Europe Revised
Had he been a foreigner and especially had he been an American I am inclined to think the situation might have been different. I seem to recall what happened once when a certain middleweight from this side went over there and broke the British heart by licking the British champion; and again what happened when a Yankee boy won the Marathon at the Olympic games in London a few years ago. But as this man was a Briton himself these other Britons harkened to his sputterings, for England, you know, grants the right of free speech to all Englishmen—and denies it to all Englishwomen.
The settled Englishman declines always to be jostled out of his hereditary state of intense calm. They tell of a man who dashed into the reading room of the Savage Club with the announcement that a lion was loose on the Strand—a lion that had escaped from a traveling caravan and was rushing madly to and fro, scaring horses and frightening pedestrians.
"Great excitement! Most terrific, old dears—on my word!" he added, addressing the company.
Over the top of the Pink Un an elderly gentleman of a full habit of life regarded him sourly.
"Is that any reason," he inquired, "why a person should rush into a gentleman's club and kick up such a deuced hullabaloo?"
The first man—he must have been a Colonial—gazed at the other man in amazement.
"Well," he asked, "what would you do if you met a savage lion loose on the Strand?"
"Sir, I should take a cab!"
And after meeting an Englishman or two of this type I am quite prepared to say the story might have been a true one. If he met a lion on the Strand to-day he would take a cab; but if to-morrow, walking in the same place, he met two lions, he would write a letter to the Times complaining of the growing prevalence of lions in the public thoroughfares and placing the blame on the Suffragettes or Lloyd George or the Nonconformists or the increasing discontent of the working classes—that is what he would do.
On the other hand, if he met a squirrel on a street in America it would be a most extraordinary thing. Extraordinary would undoubtedly be the word he would use to describe it. Lions on the Strand would be merely annoying, but chipmunks on Broadway would constitute a striking manifestation of the unsettled conditions existing in a wild and misgoverned land; for, you see, to every right-minded Englishman of the insular variety—and that is the commonest variety there is in England—whatever happens at home is but part of an orderly and an ordered scheme of things, whereas whatever happens beyond the British domains must necessarily be highly unusual and exceedingly disorganizing. If so be it happens on English soil he can excuse it. He always has an explanation or an extenuation handy. But if it happens elsewhere—well, there you are, you see! What was it somebody once called England—Perfidious Alibi-in', wasn't it? Anyhow that was what he meant. The party's intentions were good but his spelling was faulty.
An Englishman's newspapers help him to attain this frame of mind; for an English newspaper does not print sensational stories about Englishmen residing in England; it prints them about people resident in other lands. There is a good reason for this and the reason is based on prudence. In the first place the private life of a private individual is a most holy thing, with which the papers dare not meddle; besides, the paper that printed a faked-up tale about a private citizen in England would speedily be exposed and also extensively sued. As for public men, they are protected by exceedingly stringent libel laws. As nearly as I might judge, anything true you printed about an English politician would be libelous, and anything libelous you printed about him would be true.
It befalls, therefore, as I was told on most excellent authority, that when the editor of a live London daily finds the local grist to be dull and uninteresting reading he straightway cables to his American correspondent or his Paris correspondent—these two being his main standbys for sensations—asking, if his choice falls on the man in America, for a snappy dispatch, say, about an American train smash-up, or a Nature freak, or a scandal in high society with a rich man mixed up in it. He wires for it, and in reply he gets it. I have been in my time a country correspondent for city papers, and I know that what Mr. Editor wants Mr. Editor gets.
As a result America, to the provincial Englishman's understanding, is a land where a hunter is always being nibbled to death by sheep; or a prospective mother is being so badly frightened by a chameleon that her child is born with a complexion changeable at will and an ungovernable appetite for flies; or a billionaire is giving a monkey dinner or poisoning his wife, or something. Also, he gets the idea that a through train in this country is so called because it invariably runs through the train ahead of it; and that when a man in Connecticut is expecting a friend on the fast express from Boston, and wants something to remember him by, he goes down to the station at train time with a bucket. Under the headlining system of the English newspapers the derailment of a work-train in Arizona, wherein several Mexican tracklayers get mussed up, becomes Another Frightful American Railway Disaster! But a head-on collision, attended by fatalities, in the suburbs of Liverpool or Manchester is a Distressing Suburban Incident. Yet the official Blue Book, issued by the British Board of Trade, showed that in the three months ending March 31, 1913, 284 persons were killed and 2,457 were injured on railway lines in the United Kingdom.
Just as an English gentleman is the most modest person imaginable, and the most backward about offering lip-service in praise of his own achievements or his country's achievements, so, in the same superlative degree, some of his newspapers are the most blatant of boasters. About the time we were leaving England the job of remodeling and beautifying the front elevation of Buckingham Palace reached its conclusion, and a dinner was given to the workingmen who for some months had been engaged on the contract. It had been expected that the occasion would be graced by the presence of Their Majesties; but the king, as I recall, was pasting stamps in the new album the Czar of Russia sent him on his birthday, and the queen was looking through the files of Godey's Lady's Book for the year 1874, picking out suitable costumes for the ladies of her court to wear. At any rate they could not attend. Otherwise, though, the dinner must have been a success. Reading the account of it as published next morning in a London paper, I learned that some of the guests, "with rare British pluck," wore their caps and corduroys; that others, "with true British independence," smoked their pipes after dinner; that there was "real British beef" and "genuine British plum pudding" on the menu; and that repeatedly those present uttered "hearty British cheers." From top to bottom the column was studded thick with British thises and British thats.
Yet the editorial writers of that very paper are given to frequent and sneering attacks on the alleged yellowness and the boasting proclivities of the jingo Yankee sheets; also, they are prone to spasmodic attacks on the laxity of our marriage laws. Perhaps what they say of us is true; but for unadulterated nastiness I never saw anything in print to equal the front page of a so-called sporting weekly that circulates freely in London, and I know of nothing to compare with the brazen exhibition of a certain form of vice that is to be witnessed nightly in the balconies of two of London's largest music halls. It was upon the program of another London theater that I came across the advertisement of a lady styling herself "London's Woman Detective" and stating, in so many words, that her specialties were "Divorce Shadowings" and "Secret Inquiries." Maybe it is a fact that in certain of our states marriage is not so much a contract as a ninety-day option, but the lady detective who does divorce shadowing and advertises her qualifications publicly has not opened up her shop among us.
In the campaign to give the stay-at-home Englishman a strange conception of his American kinsman the press is ably assisted by the stage. In London I went to see a comedy written by a deservedly successful dramatist, and staged, I think, under his personal direction. The English characters in the play were whimsical and, as nearly as I might judge, true to the classes they purported to represent. There was an American character in this piece too—a multimillionaire, of course, and a collector of pictures—presumably a dramatically fair and realistic drawing of a wealthy, successful, art-loving American. I have forgotten now whether he was supposed to be one of our meaty Chicago millionaires, or one of our oily Cleveland millionaires, or one of our steely Pittsburgh millionaires, or just a plain millionaire from the country at large; and I doubt whether the man who wrote the lines had any conception when he did write them of the fashion in which they were afterward read. Be that as it may, the actor who essayed to play the American used an inflection, or an accent, or a dialect, or a jargon—or whatever you might choose to call it—which was partly of the oldtime drawly Wild Western school of expression and partly of the oldtime nasal Down East school. I had thought—and had hoped—that both these actor-created lingoes were happily obsolete; but in their full flower of perfection I now heard them here in London. Also, the actor who played the part interpreted the physical angles of the character in a manner to suggest a pleasing combination of Uncle Joshua Whitcomb, Mike the Bite, Jefferson Brick and Coal-Oil Johnny, with a suggestion of Jesse James interspersed here and there. True, he spat not on the carpet loudly, and he refrained from saying I vum! and Great Snakes!—quaint conceits that, I am told, every English actor who respected his art formally employed when wishful to type a stage American for an English audience; but he bragged loudly and emphatically of his money and of how he got it and of what he would do with it. I do not perceive why it is the English, who themselves so dearly love the dollar after it is translated into terms of pounds, shillings and pence, should insist on regarding us as a nation of dollar-grabbers, when they only see us in the act of freely dispensing the aforesaid dollar.
They do so regard us, though; and, with true British setness, I suppose they always will. Even so I think that, though they may dislike us as a nation, they like us as individuals; and it is certainly true that they seem to value us more highly than they value Colonials, as they call them—particularly Canadian Colonials. It would appear that your true Briton can never excuse another British subject for the shockingly poor taste he displayed in being born away from home. And, though in time he may forgive us for refusing to be licked by him, he can never forgive the Colonials for saving him from being licked in South Africa.
When I started in to write this chapter, I meant to conclude it with an apology for my audacity in undertaking—in any wise—to sum up the local characteristics of a country where I had tarried for so short a time, but I have changed my mind about that. I have merely borrowed a page from the book of rules of the British essayists and novelists who come over here to write us up. Why, bless your soul, I gave nearly eight weeks of time to the task of seeing Europe thoroughly, and, of those eight weeks, I spent upward of three weeks in and about London—indeed, a most unreasonably long time when measured by the standards of the Englishman of letters who does a book about us.
He has his itinerary all mapped out in advance. He will squander a whole week on us. We are scarcely worth it, but, such as we are, we shall have a week of his company! Landing on Monday morning, he will spend Monday in New York, Tuesday in San Francisco, and Wednesday in New Orleans. Thursday he will divide between Boston and Chicago, devoting the forenoon to one and the afternoon to the other. Friday morning he will range through the Rocky Mountains, and after luncheon, if he is not too fatigued, he will take a carriage and pop in on Yosemite Valley for an hour or so.
But Saturday—all of it—will be given over to the Far Southland. He is going 'way down South—to sunny South Dakota, in fact, to see the genuine native American darkies, the real Yankee blackamoors. Most interesting beings, the blackamoors! They live exclusively on poultry—fowls, you know—and all their women folk are named Honey Gal.
He will observe them in their hours of leisure, when, attired in their national costume, consisting of white duck breeches, banjos, and striped shirts with high collars, they gather beneath the rays of the silvery Southern moon to sing their tribal melodies on the melon-lined shores of the old Oswego; and by day he will study them at their customary employment as they climb from limb to limb of the cottonwood trees, picking cotton. On Sunday he will arrange and revise his notes, and on Monday morning he will sail for home.
Such is the program of Solomon Grundy, Esquire, the distinguished writing Englishman; but on his arrival he finds the country to be somewhat larger than he expected—larger actually than the Midlands. So he compromises by spending five days at a private hotel in New York, run by a very worthy and deserving Englishwoman of the middle classes, where one may get Yorkshire puddings every day; and two days more at a wealthy tufthunter's million-dollar cottage at Newport, studying the habits and idiosyncrasies of the common people. And then he rushes back to England and hurriedly embalms his impressions of us in a large volume, stating it to be his deliberate opinion that, though we mean well enough, we won't do—really. He necessarily has to hurry, because, you see, he has a contract to write a novel or a play—or both a novel and a play—with Lord Northcliffe as the central figure. In these days practically all English novels and most English comedies play up Lord Northcliffe as the central figure. Almost invariably the young English writer chooses him for the axis about which his plot shall revolve. English journalists who have been discharged from one of Northcliffe's publications make him their villian, and English journalists who hope to secure jobs on one of his publications make him their hero. The literature of a land is in perilous case when it depends on the personality of one man. One shudders to think what the future of English fiction would be should anything happen to his Lordship!
Business of shuddering!
Chapter XVIII. Guyed or Guided?
During our scientific explorations in the Eastern Hemisphere, we met two guides who had served the late Samuel L. Clemens, one who had served the late J. Pierpont Morgan, and one who had acted as courier to ex-President Theodore Roosevelt. After inquiry among persons who were also lately abroad, I have come to the conclusion that my experience in this regard was remarkable, not because I met so many as four of the guides who had attended these distinguished Americans, but because I met so few as four of them. One man with whom I discussed the matter told of having encountered, in the course of a brief scurry across Europe, five members in good standing of the International Association of Former Guides to Mark Twain. All of them had union cards to prove it too. Others said that in practically every city of any size visited by them there was a guide who told of his deep attachment to the memory of Mr. Morgan, and described how Mr. Morgan had hired him without inquiring in advance what his rate for professional services a day would be; and how—lingering with wistful emphasis on the words along here and looking meaningly the while at the present patron—how very, very generous Mr. Morgan had been in bestowing gratuities on parting.
Our first experience with guides was at Westminster Abbey. As it happened, this guide was one of the Mark Twain survivors. I think, though, he was genuine; he had documents of apparent authenticity in his possession to help him in proving up his title. Anyhow, he knew his trade. He led us up and down those parts of the Abbey which are free to the general public and brought us finally to a wicket gate, opening on the royal chapels, which was as far as he could go. There he turned us over to a severe-looking dignitary in robes—an archbishop, I judged, or possibly only a canon—who, on payment by us of a shilling a head, escorted our party through the remaining inclosures, showing us the tombs of England's queens and kings, or a good many of them anyway; and the Black Prince's helmet and breastplate; and the exquisite chapel of Henry the Seventh, and the ancient chair on which all the kings sat for their coronations, with the famous Scotch Stone of Scone under it.
The chair itself was not particularly impressive. It was not nearly so rickety and decrepit as the chairs one sees in almost any London barber shop. Nor was my emotion particularly excited by the stone. I would engage to get a better-looking one out of the handiest rock quarry inside of twenty minutes. This stone should not be confused with the ordinary scones, which also come from Scotland and which are by some regarded as edible.
What did seem to us rather a queer thing was that the authorities of Westminster should make capital of the dead rulers of the realm and, except on certain days of the week, should charge an admission fee to their sepulchers. Later, on the Continent, we sustained an even more severe shock when we saw royal palaces—palaces that on occasion are used by the royal proprietors—with the quarters of the monarchs upstairs and downstairs novelty shops and tourist agencies and restaurants, and the like of that. I jotted down a few crisp notes concerning these matters, my intention being to comment on them as evidence of an incomprehensible thrift on the part of our European kins-people; but on second thought I decided to refrain from so doing. I recalled the fact that we ourselves are not entirely free from certain petty national economies. Abroad we house our embassies up back streets, next door to bird and animal stores; and at home there is many a public institution where the doormat says WELCOME! in large letters, but the soap is chained and the roller towel is padlocked to its little roller.
Guides are not particularly numerous in England. Even in the places most frequented by the sightseer they do not abound in any profusion. At Madame Tussaud's, for example, we found only one guide. We encountered him just after we had spent a mournful five minutes in contemplation of ex-President Taft. Friends and acquaintances of Mr. Taft will be shocked to note the great change in him when they see him here in wax. He does not weigh so much as he used to weigh by at least one hundred and fifty pounds; he has lost considerable height too; his hair has turned another color and his eyes also; his mustache is not a close fit any more, either; and he is wearing a suit of English-made clothes.
On leaving the sadly altered form of our former Chief Executive we descended a flight of stone steps leading to the Chamber of Horrors. This department was quite crowded with parents escorting their children about. Like America, England appears to be well stocked with parents who make a custom of taking their young and susceptible offspring to places where the young ones stand a good chance of being scared into connipshun fits. The official guide was in the Chamber of Horrors. He was piloting a large group of visitors about, but as soon as he saw our smaller party he left them and came directly to us; for they were Scotch and we were Americans, citizens of the happy land where tips come from. Undoubtedly that guide knew best.
With pride and pleasure he showed us a representative assortment of England's most popular and prominent murderers. The English dearly love a murderer. Perhaps that is because they have fewer murderers than we have, and have less luck than we do in keeping them alive and in good spirits to a ripe old age. Almost any American community of fair size can afford at least two murderers—one in jail, under sentence, receiving gifts of flowers and angel cake from kind ladies, and waiting for the court above to reverse the verdict in his case because the indictment was shy a comma; and the other out on bail, awaiting his time for going through the same procedure. But with the English it is different.
We rarely hang anybody who is anybody, and only occasionally make an issue of stretching the neck of the veriest nobody. They will hang almost anybody Haman-high, or even higher than that. They do not exactly hang their murderer before they catch him, but the two events occur in such close succession that one can readily understand why a confusion should have arisen in the public mind on these points. First of all, though, they catch him; and then some morning between ten and twelve they try him. This is a brief and businesslike formality. While the judge is looking in a drawer of his desk to see whether the black cap is handy the bailiffs shoo twelve tradesmen into the jury box. A tradesman is generally chosen for jury service because he is naturally anxious to get the thing over and hurry back to his shop before his helper goes to lunch. The judge tells the jurors to look on the prisoner, because he is going away shortly and is not expected back; so they take full advantage of the opportunity, realizing it to be their last chance. Then, in order to comply with the forms, the judge asks the accused whether he is guilty or not guilty, and the jurors promptly say he is. His Worship, concurring heartily, fixes the date of execution for the first Friday morning when the hangman has no other engagements. It is never necessary to postpone this event through failure of the condemned to be present. He is always there; there is no record of his having disappointed an audience. So, on the date named, rain or shine, he is hanged very thoroughly; but after the hanging is over they write songs and books about him and revere his memory forevermore.
Our guide was pleased to introduce us to the late Mr. Charles Pease, as done in paraffin, with creped hair and bright, shiny glass eyes. Mr. Pease was undoubtedly England's most fashionable murderer of the past century and his name is imperishably enshrined in the British affections. The guide spoke of his life and works with deep and sincere feeling. He also appeared to derive unfeigned pleasure from describing the accomplishments of another murderer, only slightly less famous than the late Mr. Pease. It seemed that this murderer, after slaying his victim, set to dismembering the body and boiling it. They boil nearly everything in England. But the police broke in on him and interrupted the job.
Our attention was directed to a large chart showing the form of the victim, the boiled portions being outlined in red and the unboiled portions in black. Considered as a murderer solely this particular murderer may have been deserving of his fame; but when it came to boiling, that was another matter. He showed poor judgment there. It all goes to show that a man should stick to his own trade and not try to follow two or more widely dissimilar callings at the same time. Sooner or later he is bound to slip up.
We found Stratford-upon-Avon to be the one town in England where guides are really abundant. There are as many guides in Stratford as there are historic spots. I started to say that there is at least one guide in Stratford for every American who goes there; but that would be stretching real facts, because nearly every American who goes to England manages to spend at least a day in Stratford, it being a spot very dear to his heart. The very name of it is associated with two of the most conspicuous figures in our literature. I refer first to Andrew Carnegie; second to William Shakspere. Shakspere, who wrote the books, was born here; but Carnegie, who built the libraries in which to keep the books, and who has done some writing himself, provided money for preserving and perpetuating the relics.
We met a guide in the ancient schoolhouse where the Bard—I am speaking now of William, not of Andrew—acquired the rudiments of his education; and on duty at the old village church was another guide, who for a price showed us the identical gravestone bearing the identical inscription which, reproduced in a design of burnt wood, is to-day to be found on the walls of every American household, however humble, whose members are wishful of imparting an artistic and literary atmosphere to their home. A third guide greeted us warmly when we drove to the cottage, a mile or two from the town, where the Hathaway family lived. Here we saw the high-backed settle on which Shakspere sat, night after night, wooing Anne Hathaway. I myself sat on it to test it. I should say that the wooing could not have been particularly good there, especially for a thin man. That settle had a very hard seat and history does not record that there was a cushion. Shakspere's affections for the lady must indeed have been steadfast. Or perhaps he was of stouter build than his pictures show him to have been.
