Jonathan and His Continent Part 1

Jonathan and His Continent.

by Max O'Rell and Jack Allyn.

TO JONATHAN.

You have often asked me to write my impressions of America and the Americans, and your newspapers have been good enough to suggest _Jonathan and his Continent_ as a t.i.tle for the book.

The t.i.tle is good, and I accept it.

As for the book, since you wish it, here it is. But I must warn you that if ever you should fancy you see in this little volume a deep study of your great country and of your amiable compatriots, your worldwide reputation for humour would be exploded.

However, as my collaborator, JACK ALLYN, is an American citizen, some at least of the statements here set down regarding Jonathan ought to have weight and authority.

Jonathan and his Continent

CHAPTER I.

_Population of America.--An Anecdote about the Sun.--Where is the Centre of America?--Jonathan cannot get over it, nor can I.--America, the Land of Conjuring.--A Letter from Jonathan decides me to set out for the United States._

The population of America is about sixty millions--mostly colonels.

Yes, sixty millions--all alive and kicking!

If the earth is small, America is large, and the Americans are immense!

An Englishman was one day boasting to a Frenchman of the immensity of the British Empire.

"Yes, sir," he exclaimed to finish up with, "the sun never sets on the English possessions."

"I am not surprised at that," replied the Frenchman; "the sun is obliged to keep an eye on the rascals."

However, the sun can now travel from New York to San Francisco, and light, on his pa.s.sage, a free nation which, for the last hundred years, has been pretty successful in her efforts to get on in the world without John Bull's protection.

From east to west, America stretches over a breadth of more than three thousand miles. Here it is as well to put some readers on their guard, in case an American should one day ask them one of his favourite questions: "Where is the centre of America?" I myself imagined that, starting from New York and pushing westward, one would reach the extremity of America on arriving at San Francisco. Not so; and here Jonathan has you. He knows you are going to answer wrongly; and if you want to please him, you must let yourself be caught in this little trap, because it will give him such satisfaction to put you right. At San Francisco, it appears you are not quite half-way, and the centre of America is really the Pacific Ocean. Jonathan more than doubled the width of his continent in 1867, when for the sum of four[1] million dollars he purchased Alaska of the Russians.

[1] I have also heard "seven" million dollars.

Not satisfied with these immensities, Jonathan delights in contemplating his country through magnifying gla.s.ses; and one must forgive him the patriotism which makes him see everything double.

To-day population, progress, civilisation, every thing advances with giant's stride. Towns seem to spring up through the earth. A town with twenty thousand inhabitants, churches, libraries, schools, hotels, and banks, was perhaps, but a year or two ago, a patch of marsh or forest.

To-day Paris fashions are followed there as closely as in New York or London.

In America, everything is on an immense scale: the just pride of the citizens of the young Republic is fed by the grandeur of its rivers, mountains, deserts, cataracts, its suspension bridges, its huge cities, etc.

Jonathan pa.s.ses his life in admiration of all that is American. He cannot get over it.

I have been through part of the country, and I cannot get over it either. I am out of breath, turned topsy-turvy. It is pure conjuring; it is Robert Houdin over again--occasionally, perhaps, Robert Macaire too--but let us not antic.i.p.ate. Give me time to recover my breath and set my ideas in order. Those Americans are reeking with _unheard-of-ness_, I can tell you that to begin with. My ideas are all jostling in my poor old European brain. There is no longer anything impossible, and the fairy tales are child's play compared to what we may see every day. Everything is prodigious, done by steam, by electricity; it is dazzling, and I no longer wonder that Americans only use their adjectives in the superlative.

As an ill.u.s.tration of what I advance, here is a letter that I received from an American, in the month of May, 1887, and which finally decided me to go and see America. It is dated from Boston:

"Dear Sir,--I was on the point of taking the boat at twelve to-day to go and have a talk with you about an idea which occurred to me yesterday; but as I have already been across three times this year, and, in a month or six weeks, shall have to set out for St. Petersburg and j.a.pan, I am desirous, if possible, of arranging the matter I have at heart by correspondence...."

"I must make the acquaintance of that man," I exclaimed; "I must go and see Jonathan at home one of these days."

And as soon as circ.u.mstances allowed, I packed my trunks, took a cabin on board one of the brave "White Star" Liners, and set out to see Jonathan and his Continent.

CHAPTER II.

_Jonathan and his Critics.--An eminent American gives me Salutary Advice.--Travelling Impressions.--Why Jonathan does not love John Bull._

A few days before leaving America, I had a pleasant talk with Mr.

Whitelaw Reid, the chief editor of the _New York Tribune_.

"Do not fall into the great error of fancying that you have seen America in six months," he said to me.

"But I do not fancy anything of the kind," I replied; "I have no such pretension. When a man of average intelligence returns home after having made a voyage to a foreign land, he cannot help having formed a certain number of impressions, and he has a right to communicate them to his friends. They are but impressions, notes taken by the wayside; and, if there is an error committed by anyone, it is by the critic or the reader, when either of these looks for a perfect picture of the manners and inst.i.tutions of the people the author has visited, instead of simple _impressions de voyage_. Certainly, if there is a country in the world that it would be impossible to judge in six months, that country is America; and the author who, in such a little s.p.a.ce of time, allowed himself to fall into the error of sitting in judgment upon her would write himself down an a.s.s. In six months you cannot know America, you cannot even see the country; you can merely get a glimpse of it: but, by the end of a week, you may have been struck with various things, and have taken note of them. A serious study and an impression are two different things, and an error is committed by the person who takes one for the other. For instance, if, in criticising my little volume, you exclaim, 'The author has no deep knowledge of his subject,' it is you who commit an error, and not I. I do not pretend to a deep knowledge of my subject. How would that be possible in so short a time? How should you imagine it to be possible? To form a really exact idea of America, one would need to live twenty years in the country, nay, to be an American; and I may add that, in my opinion, the best books that exist upon the different countries of the world have been written by natives of those countries. Never has an author written of the English like Thackeray; never have the Scotch been painted with such fidelity as by Ramsay; and to describe Tartarin, it needed not only a Frenchman, but a Provencal, almost a Tarasconnais. I say all this to you, Mr. Reid, to warn you that, if on my return to Europe I should publish a little volume on America, it will be a book of impressions; and if you should persist in seeing in it anything but impressions, it is you who will be to blame. But in this matter I trust to the intelligence of those Americans who do me the honour of reading me. I shall be in good hands."

Upon this the editor of the _Tribune_ responded, as he shook my hand--

"You are right."

It must be allowed that Jonathan has good reason to mistrust his critics. Most books on America have been written by Englishmen. Now, the English are, of all people, those who can the least easily get rid of their prejudices in speaking of America. They are obliged to admit that the Americans have made their way pretty well since they have been their own masters; but John Bull has always a rankling remembrance, when he looks at America, of the day that the Americans sent him about his business, and his look seems to say to Jonathan: "Yes, yes; you have not done at all badly--for you; but just think what the country would have been by this time if it had remained in my hands."

He looks at everything he sees with a patronising air; with the arrogant calm that makes him, amiable as he is at home, so unbearable when he travels abroad. He expresses cavalierly, criticises freely. He goes over with the firm intention of admiring nothing American. If he finds nothing else to disparage, he will complain of the want of ruins and old cathedrals. He occasionally presents himself at Jonathan's dinner-parties in a tweed suit, fearing to do him too much honour by putting on evening dress. His little talent of making himself disagreeable abroad comes out more strongly in America; and Jonathan, one of whose little weaknesses is love of approbation, I honestly believe, has a cordial antipathy to the magnificent Briton.

The Englishman, on his side, has no antipathy whatever to the Americans.

For that matter, the Englishman has no antipathy for anyone. He despises, but he does not hate; a fact which is irritating to the last degree to the objects of his attention. When a man feels that he has some worth, he likes to be loved or hated: to be treated with indifference is galling. John Bull looks on the American as a _parvenu_, and smiles with incredulity when you say that American society is not only brilliant and witty, but quite as polished as the best European society.

It is this haughty disdain which exasperates Americans.