The Twentieth Century American Part 10

Which brings us to the second root-fact, which is almost as disturbing and confounding to casual observation as the first, namely, the much larger part in the intellectual life of the country played by women in America. Intellectuality or culture in its narrower sense--meaning a familiarity with art and letters--is not commonly regarded by Englishmen as an essential possession in a wife. The lack of it is certainly not considered by the American woman a cardinal offence in a husband. I know many American men who, on being consulted on any matter of literary or artistic taste, say at once: "I don't know. I leave all that to my wife."

An Englishman in an English house, looking at the family portraits, may ask his hostess who painted a certain picture.

"I don't know," she will say, "I must ask my husband. Will, who is the portrait of your grandfather by--the one over there in his robes?"

"Raeburn," says Will.

"Of course," says the wife. "I never can remember the artists' names; they are so confusing--especially the English ones."

The Englishman thinks no worse of her; but the American woman, listening, wishes that she had a portrait of her husband's grandfather by Raeburn and opines that she would know the artist's name.

The same Englishman goes to America and, being entertained, asks a similar question of his host.

"I don't know," says the man, "I must ask my wife. Mary, who painted that picture over there--the big tree and the blue sky?"

"Rousseau," says Mary.

"Of course," says the husband. "I never can remember the names of these fellows. They mix me all up--especially the French ones."

And the Englishman returning home tells his friends of the queer fellow with whom he dined over there--"an awfully good chap, you know"--who owned all sorts of jolly paintings--Rousseaux and things--and did not even know the names of the artists: "Had to ask his wife, by Jove!"

It is not for one moment claimed that there are not in England many women fully as cultured as the most cultured and fairest Americans; that there are not many Englishwomen much better informed, much more widely read, than their husbands. The phenomenon, however, is not nearly as common as in America, where, it has already been suggested, it is probably the result of the fact that the women have at the outset received precisely the same education as the men and, since leaving school or college, have had more leisure, being less engrossed in business and material things.

But this feminine predominance in matters of aesthetics in the United States does not as a rule increase the Englishman's opinion of the intellectuality or culture of the people as a whole. He still judges only by the men. Indeed, he is not entirely disposed to like so much intellectuality in women--such interest in politics, educational matters, art, and literature. Not having been accustomed to it he rather disapproves of it. Blue regimentals are only fit for the blue horse or the artillery.

The Englishman in an American house meets a man more rough and less polished than a man holding a similar position in society would be in England; and he thinks poorly of American society in consequence. He also meets that man's wife, who shows a familiarity with art, letters, and public affairs vastly more comprehensive than he would expect to find in a woman of similar position in England. But he does not therefore strike a balance and re-cast his estimate of American society, any more than in his estimate of the American press he makes allowance for the American magazines. He only thinks that the woman's knowledge is rather out of place and conjectures it to be probably superficial.

Wherein he is no less one-sided in his prejudice than the American who will not believe in English humour because he cannot understand it.

Philistinism is undoubtedly more on the surface in educated society in the United States than in Great Britain; but in England outside that society it is nearly all Philistinism. Step down from a social cla.s.s in England, and you come to a new and lower level of refinement and information. In America the people still "come mixed."

Twenty-five years ago in England, you did not expect a stock-broker, and to-day you do not expect a haberdasher (even though he may have been knighted), to know whether Botticelli is a wine or a cheese. In America, because the Englishman meets that stock-broker or that haberdasher in a society in which he would not be likely to meet him in England, he does expect him to know; and I suspect that if a census were taken there would be found more stock-brokers and haberdashers in America than in England who do know something of Botticelli. I am quite certain that more of their wives do. Matthew Arnold spoke not too pleasantly of the curious sensation that he experienced in addressing a bookseller in America as "General." The "bookseller" in question was a man widely respected in the United States, the head of a great house of publishers and booksellers, a conspicuously public-spirited citizen, and a _bona fide_ General who saw stern service in the Civil War. To Englishmen, knowing nothing of the background, the mere fact as stated by Matthew Arnold is curious.

But if civil war were to break out in Great Britain--England and Wales against Scotland and Ireland--and the conflict a.s.sumed such t.i.tanic proportions that single armies of a million men took the field, then would Tennyson's "smooth-faced snub-nosed rogue" indeed have to "leap from his counter and till and strike, were it but with his cheating yard-wand, home." The entire population of England that was not actually needed at home would be compelled to take the field, and in the slaughter (it is curious how little English men know of the terrific proportions of the conflict between the North and South) the demand for officers would be so great that there would not be enough men of previous training to fill the places. Men would rise from the ranks by merit and among those who rose to be generals there might well be a publisher or bookseller or two. On the termination of the war, the soldiers would turn from their soldiering to their old trades and it might be General Murray or General Macmillan or General b.u.mpus; and the thing would not then be strange to English ears.

An American story tells how, soon after the close of the Civil War, a stranger asked a farmer if he needed any labourers; and the farmer replied in the negative. He had just taken on three new ones, he said, all of them disbanded soldiers. One, he added, had been a private, one a captain, and one a full-blown colonel.

"And how do you find them?" asked the other.

"The private's a first-cla.s.s workman," said the farmer, "and the captain he isn't bad."

"And the colonel?"

"Well, I don't want to say nothing agin a man as fit as a colonel in the war," said the farmer, "but I know I ain't hiring no brigadier-generals if they come this way."

They are growing old now, and fewer, the men who held commissions in the war that ended over forty years ago; but during those forty years there has been no community, no trade or profession or calling, in which they have not been to be found, indistinguishable from their civilian colleagues, except by the tiny b.u.t.ton in the lapels of their coats.

Until Mr. Roosevelt, (and he won his spurs in another war) there has been no man elected President of the United States, except Mr.

Cleveland, the one Democrat, who had not a distinguished record as an officer in the Union armies--Grant, Hayes, Garfield, Harrison, and McKinley were all soldiers. You may still see that little b.u.t.ton in many pulpits. Farmers wear it, and cabinet ministers, millionaires, and mechanics.

The Anglo-Saxon is a fighting breed. The population of the British Isles sprang from the loins of successive waves of fighting men. It was not the weaklings of the Danes or Normans, Jutes, Saxons, or Angles who came to conquer Britain, but the bold, the hardy, the venturesome of each tribe or people. It was not the mere mixture of bloods that made the English character what it was, the race a race of empire builders; it was because of each blood there came to Britain only of the most adventurous. And through the centuries it has been the constant stress and training of the perpetual turmoil in which the people have lived that have kept the stock from degeneration. There has never been a time in English history, save when the people have been struggling in wars among themselves, when there has been an English family that has not at any given moment had sons or fathers, uncles or cousins out somewhere doing the work of the Empire.

And some are drowned in deep water, And some in sight of sh.o.r.e, And word goes back to the weary wife And ever she sends more.

For since that wife had gate or gear And hearth and garth and bield She willed her sons to the white Harvest, And that is a bitter yield.

The good wife's sons come home again With little into their hands, But the lore o' men that ha' dealt wi' men In the new and naked lands,

But the faith o' men that ha' brothered men By more than the easy breath, And the eyes o' men that ha' read wi' men In the open book of death.[188:1]

I have already explained how far Americans are from understanding the British Empire. It is a pity; they would understand Englishmen better and like them better. And what the building of the Empire and the keeping of it have done for Englishmen, the Civil War did in large measure for the Americans. Even the struggle with their own wilderness might not have sufficed to keep the people hard and sound of heart and limb through a century of peace and growing prosperity. The Civil War is already beginning to slip into the farther reaches of the people's memory; but twenty-five years ago the echoes of the guns had hardly died away--the minds of the people were still inspired. It was an awful, and a splendid, experience for the nation. It is not necessary, with Emerson, "always to respect war hereafter"; but there have been times when it has seemed to me that I would rather be able to wear that little tri-colour b.u.t.ton of the American Loyal Legion than any other decoration in the world.[189:1]

It is the great compensation of war that it does not breed in a people only a fighting spirit. All history shows that it is in the mental exhilaration and the moral uplift after a period of war successfully waged that a people puts forth the best that is in it, in the production of works of art and in its literature. It is an old legend--older than Omar--that the most beautiful flowers spring from the blood of heroes.

And it is true. When the genius of a nation has been ploughed up with cannon-shot and bayonets and watered with blood--then it is that it breaks into the most nearly perfect blossom. It has been so through all history, back beyond the times of gun and bayonet, when spears and swords were the plough-shares, as far as we can see and doubtless farther. In America, the necessities of the case compelled the people to turn first to material works; it was to the civilising of their continent, the repairing of their shattered commercial and industrial structure (shattered when it was yet only half built), that their new inspiration had perforce to turn first. But there was impetus enough for that and to spare, and, after satisfying their mere physical needs, they swept on with a sort of inspired hunger for things to satisfy their minds and souls. Europeans are accustomed to think that the American desire for culture is something superficial--something put on for appearance's sake; and nothing could well be farther from the truth. It is an intense, deep-seated, national craving. War on the scale of the Civil War ploughs deep. It may be impossible for a nation to make itself cultivated--to grow century-old shrubberies and five-century-old turf--in ten years or forty; and when the Americans in their ravening famine reach out to grasp at once all that is good and beautiful in the world, it may be that at first they cannot a.s.similate all that they draw to them--they can grasp, but not absorb. To that extent there may be much that is superficial in American culture. But every year and every day they are sucking the nourishment deeper--the influences are penetrating, percolating, permeating the soil of their natures (yes, I know that I am running two metaphors abreast, but let them run)--and it is a mistake to conclude because in some places the culture lies only on the surface that there are not others where it has already sunk through and through. Above all is it a mistake to suppose that the emotion itself is shallow or that the yearning is not as deep as their--or any human--natures.

It is possible that some critics may be found cavilling enough to accuse me of inconsistency in thus celebrating the praise of War in a work which is avowedly intended for the promotion of Peace. Carlyle wisely, if somewhat brutally, pointed out that if an Oliver Cromwell be a.s.sa.s.sinated "it is certain you may get a cart-load of turnips from his carcase." But one does not therefore advocate regicide for the sake of the kitchen-gardens.

FOOTNOTES:

[167:1] What is said above--or at least what can be read between the lines--may throw some light on the fact, on which the English press happens as I write to be commenting in some perplexity, that whereas certain Australians among the Rhodes scholars have distinguished themselves conspicuously in the schools, the only honours that have fallen to Americans have been those of the athletic field. Those journals which have inferred therefrom a lack of apt.i.tude for scholars.h.i.+p on the part of American youth in general may be amiss in their diagnosis.

[169:1] To avoid misapprehension, let me say that, as an Oxford man, I have all the Oxford prejudices as fully developed as any Englishman could wish. Rather a year of Oxford than five of Harvard or ten of Minnesota. How much of this is sentiment, and worthless, and how much reason, it would be hard to say and is immaterial. The personal prepossession need not blind one either to the greatness of the work which the other inst.i.tutions do, nor to the defensibility of that point of view which sets other qualities, in an inst.i.tution the professed object of which is to educate and to fit youths for life, above even those possessed by Oxford or Cambridge.

[171:1] In 1906, under a stricter definition of the term "periodical,"

the privilege of sending as second-cla.s.s matter books issued at regular intervals was withdrawn.

[188:1] Rudyard Kipling, "The Sea Wife" (_The Seven Seas_).

[189:1] The Loyal Legion is the society of those who held commissions as officers on the side of the North. The Grand Army of the Republic is the society which includes all ranks.

CHAPTER VIII

A COMPARISON IN CULTURE

The Advantage of Youth--j.a.panese Eclecticism and American--The Craving for the Best--_Cyrano de Bergerac_--Verestschagin-- Music and the Drama--Culture by Paroxysms--Mr. Gladstone and the j.a.panese--Anglo-Saxon Crichtons--Americans as Linguists-- England's Past and America's Future--Americanisms in Speech-- Why they are Disappearing in America--And Appearing in England--The Press and the Copyright Laws--A Look into the Future.

Ruskin, speaking of the United States, said that he could never bring himself to live in a country so unfortunate as to possess no castles.

But, with its obvious disadvantages, youth in a nation has also compensations. Max O'Rell says that to be American is to be both fresh and mature, and I have certainly known many Americans who were fresh.

The shoulders are too young for the head to be very old. But when a man--let us say an Englishman of sixty--full of worldly wisdom, having travelled much and seen many men and cities, looks on a young man, just out of the university, perhaps, very keen on his profession, very certain of making his way in the world, with a hundred interests in what seem to the other "new-fangled" things--telephones and typewriters and bicycles and radio-activity and motor cars, things unknown to the old man's youth,--talking of philosophies and theories and principles which were not taught at college when the other was an undergraduate, the elder is likely to think that the young man's judgment is sadly crude and raw, that his education has been altogether too diffused and made up of smatterings of too many things, and to say to himself that the old sound, simple ways were better. Yet it may be--is it not almost certain?--that the youth has had the training which will give him a wider outlook than his father ever had, and will make him a broader man.