Memoirs of Life and Literature Part 12

We met it on a lonely road. It was a kind of glazed cart, the transparent sides of which showed visions of the goods within.

Before leaving Westray we paid a visit to a much smaller island opposite, Papa Westray, with an area of two thousand acres. It was occupied by two farmers, whose average rent was more than ten shillings an acre. On one of these farmers, thus separated from their kind, we called. His farmstead was like a fortified town. His house was larger than many a substantial manse. The sideboard in his s.p.a.cious dining room was occupied by two expensive Bibles and a finely cut decanter of whisky, but his only neighbors from one year's end to another were apparently his rival, by whom the rest of the island was tenanted, and a female doctor lately imported from Edinburgh, whose business was more closely related to the births of the population than to their maladies.

We had hoped, on leaving the Orkneys, to have gone as far north as the Shetlands, but while we were lying off Westray the weather turned wet and chilly, so we settled on going south again, visiting on our way the islands of the outer Hebrides. The first stage of our journey was rougher and more disagreeable than anything we had yet experienced. Once again we were foiled in our efforts to get round Cape Wrath; and, having spent an afternoon lying down in our cabins, we woke up to find ourselves back again in the quiet of Scapa Flow. Next day we made a successful crossing over sixty miles of sea to Tarbet, a little town crouching on the neck of land which connects the Lewes with Harris. From every cottage door there issued a sound of hand looms. The town or village of Tarbet is in itself neat enough. One of its features is an inn which would, with its trim garden, do honor to the banks of the Thames; but a five minutes' stroll into the country brought us face to face with a world of colossal desolations, compared with which the scenery of Scapa Flow is suburban. The little houses of Westray were, at all events, unmistakably houses. The crofters' huts, almost within a stone's throw of Tarbet, many of them oval in shape, are like exhalations of rounded stones and heather. We felt, as we gravely looked at them, that we were back again in the Stone Age. In the island of North Ouist we were visited by the same illusion. The landing stage was, indeed, a scene of crowded life; but the life was the life of sea birds, which were hardly disturbed by our approach. Leaving North Ouist, we pa.s.sed the mounded sh.o.r.es of Benbecula, the island where Prince Charlie once lived as a fugitive, and where the islanders, all of them Catholics (as they still are to-day), sang songs in his honor which, without betraying his name, called him "the fair-haired herdsman." Far off on an eminence we could just distinguish the glimmerings of a Catholic church, in which, with strange ceremonies, St. Michael is still worshiped. South Ouist, dominated by the great mountain of Hecla, likewise holds a population whose Catholicism has never been broken. Facing the landing stage is an inn obtrusively modern in aspect, and a little colony of slate-roofed villas to match; but here, as at Tarbet, a few steps brought us into realms of mystery. Having strayed along an inland road which wavered among heaths and peat hags and gray boulders, we saw at a distance some building of hewn sandstone, and presently there emerged from its interior a solitary human being. For a moment he scrutinized our approach, and then, like a timid animal, before we could make him out, he was gone. When we reached the building we found that it was a little Catholic schoolhouse, and that the door was hermetically closed.

I tried the effect of a few very gentle knocks, and these proved so ingratiating that the inmate at last showed himself. He was the schoolmaster--a youngish man, perhaps rather more than thirty. Finding us not formidable, he had no objection to talking, though he still was oddly shy. He told us what he could, in answer to some questions which we put to him. I cannot remember what he said, but I remember his eyes and the gentle modulations of his voice. They were those of a man living in a world of dreams, for whom the outer world was as remote, and the inner world as pure, as the silver of the shining clouds that were streaking the peaks of Hecla. His face was my last memento of the mystery of the Outer Isles.

The rest of our journeyings lay among scenes better known to tourists.

We visited Skye and Rum, the latter of which islands was once occupied as a deer forest by the present Lord Salisbury's grandfather. Rum is infested by mosquitoes, which almost stung us to death. Lord Salisbury told a friend that he protected himself from their a.s.saults by varnishing his person completely with castor oil. The friend asked him if this was not very expensive. "Ah," he replied, "but I never use the best." The present owner has built there a great, inappropriate castle.

We wondered whether its walls were proof against these winged enemies.

Pursuing our southward course, we watched the Paps of Jura as they rose into the sky like sugar loaves. Plunging through drifts of spray we doubled the Mall of Cantyre, and got into waters familiar to half the population of Glasgow. We lay for a night off Arran. The following day we had returned to our original starting point. We were hardly more than a cable's length from Greenock, and once again we heard the whistling of locomotive engines. At Greenock we separated.

The n.o.bles were bound for England. I was myself going north to stay once more with Sir John and Lady Guendolen Ramsden. By the West Highland railway I reached the diminutive station of Tulloch, and a drive of twenty miles brought me to the woods, the waters, and the granite turrets of Ardverikie. After two months' acquaintance with the narrow quarters of a yacht there was something odd and agreeable in s.p.a.cious halls and staircases. Especially agreeable was my bedroom, equipped with a great, hospitable writing table, on which a pile of letters and postal packets was awaiting me. Of these I opened a few which alone promised to be interesting, allowing the others to keep for a more convenient season. By the following morning, which I spent with Lady Guendolen, sketching, I had, indeed, almost forgotten them, and not till the evening did I give them any attention. One of them I had recognized at once as the proofs of an article which I had just finished, before I joined the yacht, on "The Intellectual Position of the Labor Party in Parliament." The number of this party had been doubled at the last election, and my mind, in consequence, had again begun to busy itself with the question of mere manual labor as a factor in life and politics.

I had, indeed, on the yacht been making a rough sketch of a second article on this subject, which would develop the argument of the first.

That night I glanced at the proofs before going to bed, reflecting on the best methods by which the political intelligence of the ma.s.ses could be roused, reached, and guided. The unopened letters, none of which looked inviting, I put by my bedside, to be examined when I woke next morning. All except one were circulars. One, bearing a business monogram and evidently directed by a clerk, differed from the rest in having a foreign stamp on it. I indolently tore this open, and discovered that it was an invitation from a great political body in New York to visit the United States next winter and deliver a series of addresses on the fundamental fallacies of Socialism.

It was at Ardverikie, many years before, that I had first embarked on a serious study of statistics as essential to any clear comprehension of social principles and problems. By an odd coincidence, it was at Ardverikie likewise that, after years of laborious thought as to political questions which must soon, as I then foresaw, become for politicians the most vital questions of all, I received an invitation to address, with regard to these very questions, a public far wider than that of all Great Britain put together.

CHAPTER XVI

POLITICS AND SOCIETY IN AMERICA

Addresses on Socialism--Arrangements for Their Delivery--American Society in Long Island and New York--Harvard--Prof. William James--President Roosevelt--Chicago--Second Stay in New York--New York to Brittany--_A Critical Examination of Socialism_--Propaganda in England.

The invitation which I have just mentioned emanated from the Civic Federation of New York--a body established for the promotion, by knowledge and sober argument, of some rational harmony between the employing cla.s.ses and the employed. Its council comprised prominent members of both, such as Mr. Gompers, the trade-union leader, on one side, and industrial magnates of international fame on the other. It had just been decided to include in their educational scheme the delivery at various centers of special lectures on Socialism, by some thinker from Europe or England who would deal with the subject in a temperate and yet a conservative spirit. It had ultimately been decided that the person who would best suit them was myself. Arrangements were made accordingly, and I have every reason to be grateful to those concerned for the manner in which, on my arrival, they consulted both my judgment and my convenience. The great question to be settled related to the cla.s.s of audience to whom the lectures should be delivered, and to whose modes of thought they should be accommodated. I said that in my opinion far the best course would be to set the idea of ma.s.s meetings altogether aside, and address congregations of the educated cla.s.ses only. To this view it was objected that the cruder forms of Socialism are sufficiently repudiated by the educated cla.s.ses already, and that converting the converted would be merely a waste of time. My own reply was that the immediate object to aim at was not to convert the converted, but to teach the converted how to convert others. My position as thus stated was ultimately approved by all; and Mr. Easley, the distinguished secretary of the Federation, took measures accordingly. The best course, he said, would be to arrange with the heads of certain great universities for the delivery of the addresses to audiences of professors and students, other persons being admitted who felt any inclination to attend. These arrangements would take some weeks to complete. Meanwhile, the character of the expected audiences being known, I should have ample time to prepare the addresses accordingly.

The universities chosen were Columbia, Harvard, Chicago, Pennsylvania, and Johns Hopkins.

Mr. Easley was so good an organizer that all the details of the program were settled in the course of a few weeks; and, owing to the kindness of American friends in England, I enjoyed meanwhile at New York so many social amenities that I sometimes could hardly tell whether I was in New York or in London. I was provided with a sheaf of introductions by Mrs. Bradley Martin, the d.u.c.h.ess of Marlborough, Lady Cunard, and others, while on my arrival I was to stay for ten days or a fortnight with Mr. Lloyd Bryce, who had been educated at Oxford, where he and I were intimates. He was, for the moment, at his country house in Long Island, and Sandy Hook was still some hundreds of miles distant when a wireless message reached me on board the steamer saying that his secretary would meet me, and be looking out for me when I landed. The secretary was there at his post. He promptly secured a carriage; he escorted me across the city, accompanied me in the ferryboat from the city to Long Island, and saw me into a train, which in less than an hour set me down at Rosslyn, a mile or so from my friend's house. At the station gates there were several footmen waiting, just as there might have been at Ascot or Three Bridges, and several private carriages. One of these--a large omnibus--was my host's. I entered it, followed by an orthodox lady's maid, who was laden with delicate parcels evidently from New York, and we were off. The country, for the time was January, was covered with deep snow, which clung to the boughs of pine trees and glittered on cottage roofs. A mile or two away from the station we turned into a private drive, which, mounting a parklike slope, with dark pines for its fringes, brought us to Lloyd Bryce's house. It was a house of true Georgian pattern--a central block with two symmetrical wings. Its red bricks might have been fading there for a couple of hundred years. Indoors there was the same quiet simplicity. The grave butler and two excellent footmen were English. The only features which were noticeably not English were the equable heat which seemed to prevail everywhere and the fact that half-drawn portieres were subst.i.tuted for closed doors.

On the evening of my arrival two young men came to dinner. They were brothers, sons of a father who had rented for several years Lord Lovat's castle in the Highlands. Next morning I was sent for a drive in a sleigh. Here, too, I came across things familiar. The coachman was Irish. He had been born on the lands of a family with which I was well acquainted, and I was pleased by the interest he displayed when I answered the questions which he put to me about the three young ladies.

A pleasant indolence would, however, have made me more contented with the glow of a wood fire and conversation with an old friend than with any ventures in the chill of the outer air. I was, therefore, somewhat disquieted when I found, a day or two later, that my host had arranged to give me a dinner in New York at the Metropolitan Club, then to take me on to the opera, and not bring me back till midnight. But the expedition was interesting. The marbles, the gilding, the G.o.ddesses, the gorgeous ceilings of the Metropolitan Club would have made the Golden House of Nero seem tame in comparison. The grand tier at the opera was a semicircle of dazzling dresses, though there was not, as happens in London, any obtrusion of diamonds. Here was an example of taste reticent as compared with our own.

Two nights later my host dispatched me alone, to dine at what he described to me as one of the pleasantest houses in New York. I shrank from the prospect of the wintry journey involved, but the dinner was worth the trouble. My entertainers--a mother and two unmarried daughters--belonged to one of the oldest and best known New York families. The house was in keeping with its inmates. It closely resembled an old-fashioned house in Curzon Street. As I drove up to the steps a butler and a groom of the chambers, both sedate with years and exhaling an atmosphere of long family service, threw open tall doors, and admitted me to the sober world within. The room in which the guests were a.s.sembled seemed to be lined with books. On the tables were half the literary reviews of Europe. My hostess and her daughters gave me the kindest welcome. I was somewhat bewildered by the number of strange faces, but among them was that of a diplomat whom I had known for many years in London; and the "high seriousness," as Matthew Arnold might have called it, of the men was tempered by the excellence of the dinner, and by the dresses, perfect though subtly subdued, of the women.

Some days later Mr. Easley and an a.s.sistant secretary came from New York to call on me and discuss the arrangements, of which I have already spoken. Meanwhile I had secured rooms in the city at the Savoy Hotel, to which in due time I migrated. The day after my arrival Mr. Easley appeared again, and with him Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler, the president of Columbia University. It was arranged that my first addresses should be given there under his auspices, and during the next three weeks I was daily occupied in preparing them. When the day approached which had been fixed for the delivery of the first, Doctor Butler gave a luncheon party at the Metropolitan Club, at which he invited me to meet the editors and other representatives of the weightiest of the New York papers. I explained the general scheme of argument which I proposed to follow, and it appeared, after an interchange of speeches, that it met with general approbation.

This luncheon party and its results struck me as a marked example of the prompt.i.tude and businesslike sagacity characteristic of American methods. Every address which I delivered at Columbia University was reported verbatim and fully in the columns of these great journals. The audiences immediately addressed were, from the nature of the case, limited, but my arguments were, in effect, at once brought home to the minds of innumerable thousands, and their main points emphasized by a concert of leading articles. The drastic efficiency of this procedure in New York and at other centers was sufficiently shown by the countless letters I received from Socialists in all parts of America, most of these letters being courteous, some very much the reverse; but all indicating that I had succeeded in making the writers reflect on problems to which they had previously given insufficient attention.

The composition of these addresses, and the reduction of them to their final form, was a work which, since time was limited, required much concentrated labor; but the labor was lightened by the extraordinary hospitality of friends, who made me feel that, so far as society goes, I had only exchanged one sort of London for another. In my sitting room at the Savoy Hotel, on arriving from Long Island, I found a number of notes inviting me to dinners, to concerts, and various other entertainments.

The first of these was a luncheon at Mrs. John Jacob Astor's. Her house was one which might have been in Grosvenor Place; and, for matter of that, so might half the company. I found myself sitting by Mrs. Hwfa Williams. Not far off was her husband, an eminent figure in the racing world of England. There, too, I discovered Harry Higgins, whom I had known in his Oxford days, before his translation from Merton to Knightsbridge barracks; and opposite to me was Monsignor Vay di Vaya, an Austrian ornament of the Vatican, who wore a dazzling cross on a perfectly cut waistcoat, and who, when I last saw him, had been winding wool in the Highlands for Mrs. Bradley Martin. Mrs. Astor, if I may pay her a very inadequate compliment, merely by her delicate presence seemed to turn life into a picture on an old French fan.

My first evening party was, if I remember rightly, a concert at the house of one of the Vanderbilt families. I had hardly entered the music room before my host, with extreme kindness, indicated a lady who was sitting next a vacant chair, and said, "Over there is someone you would like to know." He introduced me to this lady, who was Mrs. Stuyvesant Fish--one of the best-known and important figures in the social world of New York. I was subsequently often at her house. I have rarely been better entertained than I was by her conversation that night during the intervals of the musical program.

This kindness in introducing a stranger to persons likely to be agreeable to him struck me as a distinguishing feature of the New York world generally. I experienced it often at the opera, where the occupants of the grand tier form practically a social club, as well as a mere musical gathering. On one occasion, when I was with Mr. and Mrs.

Sloane in their box, Mr. Sloane took me round to the opposite side of the house to present me to a lady whose attractions he praised, and did not praise too highly. I asked him the name of another of singularly charming aspect. Her box was close to his. "Come," he said, "I will introduce you now." Here is one of those graces of social conduct which are, as I have observed already with reference to London, possible only in societies which are more or less carefully restricted.

There is another matter in which the social world of New York struck me as differing from that of London, and differing from it in a manner precisely opposite to that which those who derive their views from the gossip of journalists would suppose. According to ordinary rumor, fashionable entertainments in New York are scenes of extravagance so wild that they cease to be luxurious and a.s.sume the characteristics of a farce. My own short experience led me to a conclusion the very reverse of this. Certain hotels, no doubt, are notoriously over-gilded. A story is told of a certain country couple who stayed for a night at one of them. The wife said to the husband, "Why don't you put your boots outside the door to be blacked?" "My dear," said the husband, "I'm afraid I should find them gilt." I speak here of private houses and private entertainments only. The ultrafashionable concert which I mentioned just now is an instance. The music was followed by supper. The company strayed slowly through some intervening rooms to the dining room. It was full of little round tables at which little groups were seating themselves, but when I entered the tables were entirely bare.

Presently servants went round placing a cloth on each of them. Then on each were deposited a bottle of champagne and two or three plates of sandwiches. That was all. At a corresponding party in London there would have been soups, souffles, aspic, truffles, and ortolans. As it was, the affair was a simple picnic _de luxe_. To the dinner parties at which I was present the same observation applies. The New York fashionable dinner, so far as its menu is concerned, seemed to me incomparably simpler than its fashionable counterpart in London. The only form of extravagance, or of what one might call ostentation, so far as I could see, was what would have been thought in London the mult.i.tude of superfluous footmen, and in houses like that of Lloyd Bryce even this feature was wanting. The only dinner which, within the limits of my own experience, represented the extravagance so often depicted by journalists--a dinner which was signalized by monumental plate, which rose from the table to the ceiling--was at a house which, despite its magnitude, was practically ignored by the arbitresses of polite society.

When the delivery of my addresses at Columbia University was completed I went from New York to Cambridge and remained there for ten days. Harvard in many ways reminded me of our own Cambridge. The professors, among whom I made many charming acquaintances, had not only the accent, but also the intonation of Englishmen. They had with them more, too, of the ways of the outer world than is commonly found in the university dons of England. Notable among these was Prof. William James, with whom I was already familiar through his singularly interesting book, _Varieties of Religious Experience_--to me very much more interesting than his brother's later novels.

At Harvard, also, I was presented to Mr. Roosevelt, who had come there for the purpose of addressing a great meeting of students. The presentation took place in a large private room, and was a ceremony resembling that of a presentation to the King of England. Some dozen or more persons were introduced to the President in succession, their names being announced by some _de facto_ official. With each of these he entered into a more or less prolonged conversation. I observed his methods with interest. In each case he displayed a remarkable knowledge of the achievements or opinions of the person whom he was for the time addressing; and, having thus done his duty to these, he proceeded to an exposition, much more lengthy, of his own. When my turn came he was very soon confiding to me that nothing which he had read for years had struck him so forcibly as parts of my own _Veil of the Temple_, which he had evidently read with care. He crowned these flattering remarks by asking me, should this be possible, to come and see him at Washington before I returned to England; and then, I cannot remember how, he got on the subject of the Black Republic, and of how, in his opinion, such states ought to be governed. On this matter he was voluble, and voluble with unguarded emphasis. I never heard the accents of instinctive autocracy more clearly than, for some ten minutes, I then heard them in his. I wished I could have seen him at Washington, but I had no unoccupied week during which he would have been able to receive me.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THEODORE ROOSEVELT]

From Cambridge I went in succession to Chicago, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. At each of these places I addressed considerable gatherings, and everywhere (except at Philadelphia) I encountered some hostile, though no acrimonious, questioning. At the doors, however, on some occasions a quiet Socialist emissary would offer some tract to the in-goers, in which my arguments were attacked before they had been so much as uttered. Why the temperament of one place should differ from that at another is not easy to say, but at Philadelphia I was not only listened to without question, but at every salient point I was greeted with uproarious applause. Having spent some days at Baltimore, and having accomplished what I had undertaken to do on behalf of the Civic Federation, I returned to New York, and, except for two speeches outside our formal program, I gave myself up for a month to the relaxations of society.

My return to New York was marked by a curious incident, which occurred when I left the ferryboat. The porter whom I secured told me, having looked about him, that there was not a cab available. I pointed to a row of four-wheeled motor hansoms, but none of these, he said, was going out to-night, except one which had been just appropriated. While he was explaining this to me, from the darkness of one of these vehicles a courteous voice emerged, asking where I was going, as the speaker perhaps might be able to drop me somewhere. I told him my destination; he agreed to take me, and I was presently seated at his side, perceiving, indeed, that he was a man and not a woman, but quite unable to distinguish anything else. He presently informed me that he was just back from a golf course. I informed him that I was from Baltimore.

"You," he said, "to judge from your voice, must, I think, be English. I have often played golf in England not very far from Chichester." I asked him where, on those occasions, he stayed. He answered, "With Willie James." I told him that I had known Willie James years ago at Cannes.

"My own name is James," he said. "Will you think me inquisitive if I venture to ask yours?" I, told him, and he at once "placed" me. "I should think," he said, "you must know Baltimore well." I asked him why he thought so. "Well," he said, "in the book of yours that I like best--in _The Old Order Changes_--you introduce an American colonel--a Southerner, and you describe him on one occasion as absorbed in the perusal of the Baltimore _Weekly Sun_. That paper's a real paper, and, because you introduced its name, I thought that you must know Baltimore." The name, so far as I was concerned, was entirely my own invention.

Lloyd Bryce, who knew of my arrival, and who had, during my absence, left Long Island for New York, asked me next day to dine with him. This was the first of a new series of hospitalities. The company was extremely entertaining. It comprised Mr. Jerome, celebrated in the legal world, and at that time especially celebrated in connection with a sensational case which was exciting the attention of the public from New York to San Francisco. This was the trial of Thaw for the murder of Stanford White, of which dramatic incident Evelyn Nesbit was the heroine. She was, at least in appearance, little more than a schoolgirl.

She had lived with Stanford White, however, on terms of precocious intimacy. Subsequently Thaw, a rich "degenerate," had married her, but the thought of Stanford White was always ready to sting him into moods of morbid jealousy. He took her one evening after dinner to a roof garden in New York. Stanford White was by accident sitting at a table in front of him. Watching his wife closely, Thaw detected, or thought he detected, signs of a continued understanding between her and her late "protector." Quietly leaving her side, he approached Stanford White from behind and shot him dead with a pistol before the whole of the a.s.sembled company. The defense was that his rival had given him outrageous provocation, and that he himself was temporarily, if not chronically, insane. Every attempt was made by the partisans of his wife to enlist public feeling in her favor; to prove that Stanford White was the aggressor, and that her husband's deed was unpremeditated. The trial was protracted, and the story, as it was brought to light, was one which could hardly be equaled outside Balzac's novels. Had the heroine of this drama not been a beautiful young woman, she and her husband would probably have been forgotten in a week. As it was, if any man in the street was seen to be absolutely stationary and absorbed in an evening paper, an observer would have discovered that the main feature of its pages was a portrait of Evelyn Nesbit in some new dress or att.i.tude, with her eyes half raised or drooping, and her hair tied up behind in a black, semichildish bow. Mr. Jerome, with a good deal of pungent humor, told me many anecdotes of the trial, and wound up with an allusion to what he considered the defects of American judges. "In England," he said, "you make men judges because they understand the law. The trouble with us is that here, as often as not, a man will be made a judge because he can play football."

The mention of Stanford White suggests a topic more creditable to himself than his death, and also possessing a different and wider interest. Stanford White, whatever may have been his private life, was the greatest architect in America. Some of the finest buildings in New York are due to his signal genius, and here I am led on to reflections of a yet more extensive kind. My own impression was that architecture in America generally possesses a vitality which to-day is absent from it in older countries. This observation is pertinent to New York more especially. New York being built on a narrow island, it has there become necessary, to a degree hardly to be paralleled elsewhere in the world, to extend new buildings not laterally, but upward. To this living upward pressure are due the towering structures vulgarly called "skysc.r.a.pers."

These, if properly understood, resemble rather the old campanili of Italy, and suggest the work of Giotto. They make New York, seen from a distance, look like a San Gimignano reconstructed by giants. I am, however, thinking not of the "skysc.r.a.pers" only. I am thinking rather of buildings, lofty indeed, but not tower-like, such as certain clubs, blocks of residential flats, or business premises in Fifth Avenue--such, for instance, as those of the great firm of Tiffany. Though metal frameworks are, no doubt, embedded in these, the stonework is structurally true to the strains of the metal which it incases, and the stones of the rusticated bases might have been hewn and put together by t.i.tans. We have more here than an academic repet.i.tion of bygone tastes and models. We have an expression in stone of the needs of a new world.

One of the most charming examples of architectural art in New York, lighter in kind than these, and when I was there the most recent, was a new ladies' club, which largely owed its existence--so I was told--to the aid of Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan. Within and without, from its halls to its numerous bedrooms, the taste displayed was perfect. When I was in New York it was just about to be opened, and I was invited to take part in the ceremony by delivering an inaugural address. I took for my subject the Influence of Women on Industry; and the pith of what I had to say was compressed into a single anecdote which I had heard only the day before. My informant had just been told it by one of Tiffany's salesmen. A few days previously the great jeweler's shop had been entered by a couple singularly unlike in aspect to the patrons who were accustomed to frequent it. One of them was a weather-beaten man in a rough pilot jacket; the other was an odd old woman bundled up in a threadbare coat of the cheapest imitation fur. The man, with a gruff shyness, blurted out, "I should like to see a diamond necklace." The salesman with some hesitation put a necklace before him of no very precious kind. The man eyed it askance and said, dubiously, "Is that the best you've got?" The price of this was twenty pounds. The salesman produced another and a somewhat larger ornament. The price of this was forty. The man, still dissatisfied, said, "Have you nothing better still?" "If," said the salesman, by way of getting rid of him, "by better you mean more expensive, I can show you another. The price of that is four hundred." This drama was still repeated, till the salesman, out of pure curiosity, put before him one the price of which was a thousand. The man, however, again repeated his one unvarying question, "Is that the best you've got?" The salesman, at last losing patience, said, "Well, if it should happen to interest you, I can let you have a look at the most magnificent necklace that money could buy in New York City to-day. The price of that necklace is fifty thousand pounds." He turned to put it away, but the weather-beaten man stopped him. He thrust a hand into the pocket of his rough jacket and extracted from its recesses an immense bundle of notes. He counted out the sum which the salesman named. He clasped the necklace round the old woman's threadbare collar and exclaimed, in a tone of triumph, "Didn't I always tell you that as soon as I'd made my pile you should have the finest necklace that money in New York could buy?" "That necklace," said Tiffany's salesman to my informant, "will never be stolen so long as it's worn like that, for no one in his senses will ever believe it's real." The moral which I drew from this anecdote for the benefit of my fair audience was that women, if not the producers of wealth, are the main incentives to production, that if it were not for them half of the civilized industries of the entire world would cease, and that the Spirit of Commerce, looking at any well-dressed woman, might say, in the words of Marlow, "This is the face that launched a thousand ships"; while the Spirit of Socialism could do nothing but "burn the topless towers." In this way of putting the case there was perhaps some slight exaggeration, but there is in it, at all events, more truth than falsehood.

Another address--it took a more serious form--I delivered by special request to a more comprehensive audience, in which ladies likewise abounded. It was delivered in one of the theaters. The subject I was asked to discuss was a manifesto which had just been issued by a well-to-do cleric in favor of Christian Socialism. The argument of this divine was interesting and certain parts of it were sound. Its fault was that the end of it quite forgot the beginning. He began by admitting that the great fortunes of to-day were due for the most part to the few who possessed to an exceptional degree the talents by which wealth is produced; but talents of this special cla.s.s were, he said, wholly unconnected with any moral desert. Indeed, the mere production of such goods as are estimable in terms of money was, of all forms of human activity, the lowest, and the men who made money were the last people in the world who ought to be allowed to keep it. The demand of Socialism was, he said, that this gross and despicable thing should be distributed among other people. The special demand of Christian Socialism was that the princ.i.p.al claimant on all growing wealth should be the Church. The fault, he said, of the existing situation was due to the fathers of the Const.i.tution of the United States, who laid it down that one of the primary rights of the individual was freedom to produce as much as he could, and keep it; the true formula being, according to him, that every man who produced appreciably more than his neighbors should be either hampered in production or else deprived of his products. It was not difficult to show, without pa.s.sing the bounds of good humor, that the arguments of this semienlightened reformer were, in the end, like a snake whose head was biting off its tail.

Except for Monsignor Vay di Vaya, the only cleric whom I met in New York society was one of distinguished aspect and exceedingly charming manners, who was certainly not an apostle of Christian or any other form of Socialism; but an anecdote was told me of another whose congregation, according to a reporter, was "the most exclusive in New York," and had the honor of comprising Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan. This clergyman was one morning surprised by receiving a visit from a negro, who expressed a desire to join his exclusive flock. The shepherd was somewhat embarra.s.sed, but received his visitor kindly. "You are," he said, "contemplating a very serious step. My advice to you is that you seek counsel in prayer; that, if possible, you should see our Lord; that you make quite sure that this step is one of which our Lord would approve; and that in three weeks' time you come and talk again to me." The postulant thanked him, and in three weeks reappeared. "Well," said the clergyman, "have you prayed earnestly, as I advised you?" The negro said that he had. "And may I," said the clergyman, "ask you if you have seen our Lord?" "Yes, sah," said the negro, "I have." "And what," asked the clergyman, "was it that our Lord said to you? Could you manage to tell me?" "What our Lord said to me," the negro replied, "was this: 'I've been trying for eighteen years to get into that church, but I can't. I guess that your trying will come to no more than mine.'"

Meanwhile I had begun, in the intervals between social engagements, to recast my addresses, with a view, as I have said already, to transforming them into a connected book. The first stage in this process was the preparation of an intermediate version of them, which was to be issued as a series of articles in an important monthly journal, these serving as the foundation of the book in its complete form, which was by and by to be issued in America and England simultaneously.

I had arranged to return by the French steamer _Provence_--a magnificent vessel--the largest that the harbor of Havre could accommodate. The restaurant was decorated like a _Salon_ of the time of Louis Quinze. The cooking was admirable, the tables were bright with flowers. I was asked to sit at a table reserved for a charming lady, who was bringing with her her own champagne and b.u.t.ter, with both of which she insisted on providing her friends also. My cabin, though small, was perfect in the way of decoration. An ormolu reading lamp stood by the silken curtains of the bed. The washing basin was of pink marble.

Before returning to England I had settled on spending some solitary months in Brittany, during which it was my object to bring my forthcoming work to completion. I spent a week in Paris, where my French servant rejoined me, whom I had left to enjoy during my absence a holiday, with his family near Gren.o.ble. I never in my life met anyone with more satisfaction.

Paris is notoriously congenial to the upper cla.s.ses of America; and yet between Paris and New York there is one subtle and pervading difference.

Paris has behind it in its buildings and the ways of its people what New York has not--a thousand years of history. The influence of the past is even more apparent in Brittany; and New York became something hardly credible when I found myself in a little hotel--at which I had engaged rooms--an hotel girdled by the ramparts and medieval towers of Dinan. I remained there for six weeks, during which time my book, to which I gave the name _A Critical Examination of Socialism_, was very nearly completed. In spite, however, of my labor, I from time to time found leisure for pilgrimages to moated chateaux, which seemed still to be enjoying a siesta of social and religious peace, unbroken by revolutions and even undisturbed by republics. Of these chateaux one was the home of Chateaubriand. Another, which I traveled a hundred miles to see, was the Chateau de Kerjaen, its gray gates approached by three huge converging avenues, and the outer walls by which the chateau itself is sheltered measuring seven hundred by four hundred feet. Though parts of it are habitable and inhabited, Kerjaen is partly ruinous, but its ruin was not due to violence. It was due to an accidental fire which took place when Robespierre was still in his cradle and even in his dreams was "guiltless of his country's blood." Coming, as I did, fresh from the New World, there was for me in Brittany something of the magic of Hungary.

_A Critical Examination of Socialism_ was published a few months after my return to England, where Socialist agitation meanwhile had become more active than ever, and I presently discovered that certain attempts were being made to establish some organized body for the purpose of systematically counteracting it. I put myself in connection with those who were taking, or willing to take, some leading part in this enterprise. The final result was the establishment of two bodies--the Anti-Socialist Union, under the presidency of Col. Claude Lowther, and a School of Anti-Socialist Economics, which, through the agency of Captain (now Sir Herbert) Jessel, was affiliated to the London Munic.i.p.al Society--a body which, owing to him, was already proving itself influential. All the persons concerned had precisely the same objects, but there were certain disagreements as to the methods which at starting were most imperative. So far as principles were concerned, the Anti-Socialist Union were so completely in agreement with myself that they bought a large edition of my _Critical a.n.a.lysis of Socialism_ for distribution as a textbook among the speakers and writers whom it was part of their program to employ. There were, however, certain details of procedure in respect of which Captain Jessel's opinions were more in accordance with my own. He and I, therefore, settled on working together, taking the existing machinery of the London Munic.i.p.al Society as our basis, while the Anti-Socialist Union proceeded on parallel, though on somewhat different, lines. Captain Jessel and I established, by way of a beginning, a school for speakers--mostly active young men--who would speak Sunday by Sunday in the parks and other public places, and attract audiences whose attention had been previously secured by Socialists. These speakers sent in weekly reports, describing the results of their work, which were for the most part of a singularly encouraging kind. But the number of these speakers was small, and, since all their expenses were paid, the funds at our immediate disposal would not enable us to increase it. It appeared to me, therefore, that our work would be best extended by a distribution of literature--leaflets or small pamphlets--simple in style, but coherent in their general import, and appealing not to the man in the street only, but to educated men, even Members of Parliament, also. A start in this direction was made by the publication of skeleton speeches, many of them written by myself, which any orator in the parks or in Parliament might fill in as he pleased, and which was supplemented by weekly pamphlets called "Facts Against Socialism." I found, however, that in preparing these my attention was more and more occupied by industrial and social statistics, and I was, in my colleague's opinion, concerning myself too much with matters which were over the heads of the people.

For several reasons my view of the matter was not quite the same as his.

It was, therefore, settled that this statistical work should be prosecuted by myself independently, and in something like two years I issued, at the rate of two or three a month, a series of pamphlets called "Statistical Monographs," addressed especially to Members of Parliament. Three of these pamphlets dealt with the land of the United Kingdom, the number of owners and the acreage and value of their holdings. Two of them dealt with the number and value of the houses which had been annually built during the past ten or fifteen years. Two of them dealt with coal-mining and the ratio in that industry of wages to net profits. Each was a digest of elaborate official figures, which an average speaker, if left to his own devices, could hardly have collected in a twelvemonth, but which when thus tabulated he could master in a couple of days.

Many of these monographs, as I know, were used in practical controversy; but the Conservative party, as a whole--this is my strong impression--was but partly awake to the importance of statistics as a basis of political argument. The use of systematic statistics was at that time left to Socialists, and wild misstatements as to figures formed at that time their princ.i.p.al and most effective weapon. The issue of these monographs was continued till the outbreak of the recent war, when conditions were so suddenly and so completely changed that the then continuance of the monographs would not have been appropriate, even if it had not been rendered impossible. Being, however, unfit for active service, I devoted myself to a volume applicable, so I hoped, to conditions which were bound to arise after the war was over. This volume was _The Limits of Pure Democracy_, to the composition of which I devoted the labor of four years. It has gone through four editions. A translation of it has been published in France. Increased costs of production have rendered a price necessary which would once have been thought prohibitive, but if conditions improve the intention is to reissue it in a cheaper form, when certain of its arguments will be ill.u.s.trated by events which have taken place since its last page was completed.

Much of the matter contained in the "Statistical Monographs" was condensed by me in a volume called _Social Reform_. This was a study, more minute and extensive than any which I had attempted before, of the income of this country and its distribution among various cla.s.ses of the population, not only as they were at the beginning of the twentieth century, but also as they were in the earlier years of the nineteenth.

My authorities with regard to the latter were certain elaborate but little known official papers showing the results of the income tax of the year 1801. These returns, by means of a minute cla.s.sification, show the number of incomes from those between 60 and 70 up to those exceeding 5,000, the upshot being that the ma.s.ses--manual and other wage-workers--were enjoying just before the war an average income per head more than double that which would have been possible a hundred years ago had the entire income of the country--the incomes of rich and poor alike--been then divided in equal shares among everybody. This same general fact had been broadly insisted on in _Labor and the Popular Welfare_. It was here demonstrated in detail by official records, to which I had not had access at the time when I wrote that volume, and of the very existence of which most politicians are probably unaware to-day. _Social Reform_ was, however, published at an unlucky moment. It had not reached more than a small number of readers before the war, for a time, put a stop to economic thought, and left men to ill.u.s.trate economic principles by action, thereby providing fresh data for economic theory of the future.