The Land of Contrasts Part 9

The contrasts between the poverty and wealth of New York are so extreme as sometimes to suggest even London, where misery and prosperity rub shoulders in a more heartrending way than, perhaps, anywhere else in the wide world. But the contrasts that strike even the most un.o.bservant visitor to the so-called American "metropolis"

are of a different nature. When I was asked by American friends what had most struck me in America, I sometimes answered, if in malicious mood, "The fact that the princ.i.p.al street of the largest and richest city in the Union is so miserably paved;" and, indeed, my recollections of the holes in Broadway, and of the fact that in wintry weather I had sometimes to diverge into University Place in order to avoid a mid-shin crossing of liquid mud in Broadway, seem as strange as if they related to a dream.[24] New York, again, possesses some of the most sumptuous private residences in the world, often adorned in particular with exquisite carvings in stone, such as Europeans have sometimes furnished for a cathedral or minster, but which it has been reserved for republican simplicity to apply to the residence of a private citizen.[25] Yet it is by no means _ausgeschlossen_, as the Germans say, that the pavement in front of this abode of luxury may not be seamed by huge cracks and rents that make walking after nightfall positively dangerous.

Fifth Avenue is not, to my mind, one of the most attractive city streets in the United States, but it is, perhaps, the one that makes the greatest impression of prosperity. It is eminently solid and substantial; it reeks with respectability and possibly dulness. It is a very alderman among streets. The shops at its lower end, and gradually creeping up higher like the modest guest of the parable, make no appeal to the lightly pursed, but are as aristocratic-looking as those of Hanover Square. Its hotels and clubs are equally suggestive of well-lined pockets. Its churches more than hint at golden offertories; and the visitor is not surprised to be a.s.sured (as he infallibly will be) that the pastor of one of them preaches every Sunday to "two hundred and fifty million dollars." Even the beautiful Roman Catholic cathedral lends its aid to this impression, and encourages the faithful by a charge of fifteen to twenty-five cents for a seat. The "stoops" of the lugubrious brown sandstone houses seem to retain something more of their Dutch origin than the mere name. The Sunday Parade here is better dressed than that of Hyde Park, but candour compels me to admit, at the expense of my present point, considerably less stiff and non-committal. Indeed, were it not for the miserable horses of the "stage lines" Fifth Avenue might present a clean bill of unimpeachable affluence.

Madison Avenue, hitherto uninvaded by shops, rivals Fifth Avenue in its suggestions of extreme well-to-do-ness, and should be visited, if for no other reason, to see the Tiffany house, one of the most daring and withal most captivating experiments known to me in city residences.

Unlike those of many other American cities, the best houses of New York are ranged side by side without the interposition of the tiniest bit of garden or greenery; it is only in the striking but unfinished Riverside Drive, with its grand views of the Hudson, that architecture derives any aid whatsoever from natural formations or scenic conditions. The student of architecture should not fail to note the success with which the problem of giving expression to a town house of comparatively simple outline has often been tackled, and he will find many charming single features, such as doors, or balconies, or windows. Good examples of these are the exquisite oriel and other decorative features of the house of Mr. W.K. Vanderbilt, by Mr. Hunt, in Fifth Avenue, at the corner of 52d Street, and specimens will also be found in 34th, 36th, 37th, 43d, 52d, 56th, and 57th Streets, near their junction with Fifth Avenue. The W.H. Vanderbilt houses (Fifth Avenue, between 50th and 51st Streets) have been described as "brown-stone boxes with architecture applique;" but the applied carving, though meaningless enough as far as its position goes, is so exquisite in itself as to deserve more than a pa.s.sing glance. The iron railings which surround the houses are beautiful specimens of metal-work. The house of Mr. Cornelius Vanderbilt, a little farther up the avenue, with its red brick and slates, and its articulations and dormers of grey limestone, is a good example of an effective use of colour in domestic architecture--an effect which the clear, dry climate of New York admits and perpetuates.[26] The row of quiet oldtime houses on the north side of Washington Square will interest at least the historical student of architecture, so characteristic are they of times of restfulness and peace to which New York has long been a stranger. Down towards the point of the island, in the "city"

proper, the visitor will find many happy creations for modern mercantile purposes, besides such older objects of architectural interest as Trinity Church and the City Hall, praised by Professor Freeman and many other connoisseurs of both continents. Among these business structures may be named the "Post Building," the building of the Union Trust Company (No. 80 Broadway), and the Guernsey Building (also in Broadway). At the extreme apex of Manhattan Island lie the historic Bowling Green and Battery Park, the charm of which has not been wholly annihilated by the intrusion of the elevated railway. Here rises the huge rotunda of Castle Garden, through which till lately all the immigrants to New York made their entry into the New World. Surely this has a pathetic interest of its own when we consider what this landing meant to so many thousands of the poor and needy. A suitable motto for its hospitable portals would have been, "Imbibe new hope, all ye who enter here."

As I have said, there is no lack of good Americanism in New York. Let the Englishman who does not believe in an American school of sculpture look at St. Gaudens' statue of Admiral Farragut in Madison Square, and say where we have a better or as good a single figure in any of our streets. Let him who thinks that fine public picture galleries are confined to Europe go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art,[27] with its treasures by Rembrandt and Rubens, Holbein and Van Dyck, Frans Hals and Teniers, Reynolds and Hogarth, Meissonier and Detaille, Rosa Bonheur and Troyon, Corot and Breton. Let the admirer of engineering marvels, after he has sufficiently appreciated the elastic strength of the Brooklyn Suspension Bridge, betake himself to the other end of the island and enjoy the more solid, but in their way no less imposing, proportions of the Washington Bridge over the Harlem, and let him choose his route by the Ninth-avenue Elevated Railroad with its dizzy curve at 110th street. And, finally, let not the lover of the picturesque fail to enjoy the views from the already named Riverside Drive, the cleverly created beauties of Central Park, and the district known as Washington Heights.

The Englishman in New York will probably here make his first acquaintance with the American system of street nomenclature; and if he at once masters its few simple principles, it will be strange if he does not find it of great utility and convenience. The objection usually made to it is that the numbering of streets, instead of naming them, is painfully arithmetical, bald, and uninteresting; but if a man stays long enough to be really familiar with the streets, he will find that the bare numbers soon clothe themselves with a.s.sociation, and Fifth Avenue will come to have as distinct an individuality as Broadway, while 23d Street will call up as definite a picture of shopping activity as Bond Street or Piccadilly. The chief trouble is the facility of confusing such an address as No. 44 East 45th Street with No. 45 East 44th Street; and so natural is an inversion of the kind that one is sometimes heedless enough to make it in writing one's own address.

The transition from New York to Boston in a chapter like this is as inevitable as the tax-collector, though perhaps less ingenuity is now spent in the invention of anecdotes typical of the contrasts between these two cities since Chicago, by the capture of the World's Fair, drew upon herself the full fire of the satire-shotted guns of New York's rivalry. It seems to me, however, that in many ways there is much more similarity between New York and Chicago than between New York and Boston, and that it is easier to use the latter couple than the former to point a moral or adorn a tale. In both New York and Chicago the prevailing note is that of wealth and commerce, the dominant social impression is one of boundless material luxury, the atmosphere is thick with the emanations of those who hurry to be rich.

I hasten to add that of course this is largely tempered by other tendencies and features; it would be especially unpardonable of me to forget the eminently intellectual, artistic, and refined aspects of New York life of which I was privileged to enjoy glimpses. In Boston, however, there is something different. Mere wealth, even in these degenerate days, does not seem to play so important a part in her society. The names one constantly hears or sees in New York are names like Astor, Vanderbilt, Jay Gould, and Bradley-Martin, names which, whatever other qualities they connote, stand first and foremost for mere crude wealth. In Boston the prominent public names--the names that naturally occur to my mind as I think of Boston as I saw it--are Oliver Wendell Holmes, the poet and novelist; Eliot, the college president; Francis Walker, the political economist; Higginson, the generous cultivator of cla.s.sical music; Robert Treat Paine, the philanthropist; Edward Everett Hale; and others of a more or less similar cla.s.s. Again, in New York and in Chicago (Pullman, Marshall Field, Armour) the prominent names are emphatically men of to-day and seem to change with each generation. In Boston we have the names of the first governor and other leaders of the early settlers still shining in their descendants with almost undiminished l.u.s.tre. The present mayor of Boston, for example, is a member of a family the name of which has been ill.u.s.trious in the city's annals for two hundred years. He is the fifth of his name in the direct line to gain fame in the public service, and the third to occupy the mayor's chair. No less than sixteen immediate members of the family are recorded in the standard biographical dictionaries of America.

While doubtless the Attic tales of Boeotian dulness were at least as often well invented as true, it is perhaps the case that there is generally some ground for the popular caricatures of any given community. I duly discounted the humorous and would-be humorous stories of Boston's pedantry that I heard in New York, and found that as a rule I had done right so to do. Blue spectacles are not more prominent in Boston than elsewhere; its theatres do not make a specialty of Greek plays; the little boys do not pet.i.tion the Legislature for an increase in the hours of school. There yet remains, however, a basis of truth quite large enough to show the observer how the reputation was acquired. It is a solemn fact that what would appear in England as "No spitting allowed in this car" is translated in the electric cars of Boston into: "The Board of Health hereby adjudges that the deposit of sputum in street-cars is a public nuisance."[28] The framer of this announcement would undoubtedly speak of the limbs of a piano and allude to a spade as an agricultural implement. And in social intercourse I have often noticed needless celerity in skating over ice that seemed to my ruder British sense quite well able to bear any ordinary weight, as well as a certain subtlety of allusiveness that appeared to exalt ingenuity of phrase at the expense of common sense and common candour. Too high praise cannot easily be given to the Boston Symphony Concerts; but it is difficult to avoid a suspicion of affectation in the severe criticism one hears of the conductor whenever he allows a little music of a lighter cla.s.s than usual to appear on the programme.

Boston is, in its way, as prolific of contrasts as any part of the United States. There is certainly no more cultivated centre in the country, and yet the letter _r_ is as badly maltreated by the Boston scholar as by the veriest c.o.c.kney. To the ear of Boston _centre_ has precisely the same sound as the name of the heroine of Wagner's "Flying Dutchman," and its most cultivated graduates speak of Herbert Spenc_ah_'s Data_r_ of Ethics. The critical programmes of the Symphony Concerts are prepared by one of the ablest of living musical critics, and are scholarly almost to excess; yet, as the observant Swiss critic, M. Wagniere, has pointed out, their refined and subtle text has to endure the immediate juxtaposition of the advertis.e.m.e.nts of tea-rooms and glove-sellers. Boston has the deserved reputation of being one of the best-governed cities in America, yet some of its important streets seldom see a munic.i.p.al watering-cart, dust flies in clouds both summer and winter, and myriads of life-endangering bicycles shoot through its thoroughfares at night without lamps. The Boston matron holds up her hands in sanctified horror at the freedom of Western manners, and yet it is a local saying, founded on a solid basis of fact, that Kenney & Clark (a well-known firm of livery-stable keepers) are the only chaperon that a Boston girl needs in going to or from a ball. The Bostonians are not the least intelligent of mortals, and yet I know no other city in America which is content with such an anomalous system of hack hire, where no reduction in rate is made for the number of persons. One person may drive in a comfortable two-horse brougham to any point within Boston proper for 50 cents; two persons pay $1, three persons $1.50, and so on. My advice to a quartette of travellers visiting Boston is to hire _four_ carriages at once and _go in a procession_, until they find a liveryman who sees the point.

One acute observer has pointed out that it is the men of New York who grow haggard, wrinkled, anxious-looking, and prematurely old in their desperate efforts to provide diamonds and b.a.l.l.s and Worth costumes and trips to Europe for their debonair, handsome, easy-going, and well-nourished spouses and daughters; while the men of Boston are "jolly dogs, who make money by legitimate trade instead of wild speculation, and show it in their countenances, illumined with the light of good cigars and champagne and other little luxuries," while their womankind are constantly worried by the New England conscience, and constantly creating anxieties for themselves where none exist.

There is indeed a large amount of truth in this description, if allowance be made for pardonable exaggeration. It is among the women of Boston that one finds its traditional mantle of intellectuality worn most universally, and it is among the women of New York that one finds the most characteristic displays of love of pleasure and social triumphs. It is, perhaps, not a mere accident that the daughters of Boston's millionaires seem to marry their fellow-citizens rather than foreign n.o.blemen. "None of _their_ money goes to gild rococo coronets."

I have a good deal of sympathy with a Canadian friend who exclaimed: "Oh, Boston! I don't include _Boston_ when I speak of the United States." Max O'Rell has similarly noted that if you wish to hear severe criticism of America you have only to go to Boston. "_La on loue Boston et Angleterre, et l'on debine l'Amerique a dire d'experts._" It would be a mistake, however, to infer that Boston is not truly American, or that it devotes itself to any voluntary imitation of England. In a very deep sense Boston is one of the most intensely American cities in the Union; it represents, perhaps, the finest development of many of the most characteristic ideals of Americanism. Its resemblances to England seem to be due to the simple fact that like causes produce like results. The original English stock by which Boston was founded has remained less mixed here than, perhaps, in any other city of America; and the differences between the descendants of the Puritans who emigrated and the descendants of those of them who remained at home are not complicated by a material infusion of alien blood in either case. The independence of the original settlers, their hatred of coercion and tyranny, have naturally grown with two centuries and a half of democracy; even the munic.i.p.al administration has not been wholly captured by the Irish voter. The Bostonian has, to a very appreciable extent, solved the problem of combining the virtues of democracy with the manners of aristocracy; and I know not where you will find a better type of the American than the Boston gentleman: patriotic with enlightened patriotism; finely mannered even to the cla.s.s immediately below his own; energetic, but not a slave to the pursuit of wealth; liberal in his religion, but with something of the Puritan conscience still lying _perdu_ beneath his universalism; distributing his leisure between art, literature, and outdoor occupations; a little cool in his initial manner to strangers, but warmly hospitable when his confidence in your merit is satisfied. We, in England, may well feel proud that the blood which flows in the veins of the ideal Bostonian is as distinctly and as truly English as that of our own Gladstones and Morleys, our Brownings and our Tennysons.

Prof. Hugo Munsterberg, of Berlin, writes thus of Boston and Chicago: "_Ja, Boston ist die Hauptstadt jenes jungen, liebenswerthen, idealistischen Amerikas und wird es bleiben; Chicago dagegen ist die Hochburg der alten protzigen amerikanischen Dollarsucht, und die Weltausstellung schliesslich ist uberhaupt nicht Amerika, sondern chicagosirtes Europa._" Whatever may be thought of the first part of this judgment, the second member of it seems to me rather unfair to Chicago and emphatically so as regards the Chicago exhibition.

Since 1893 Chicago ought never to be mentioned as Porkopolis without a simultaneous reference to the fact that it was also the creator of the White City, with its Court of Honour, perhaps the most flawless and fairy-like creation, on a large scale, of man's invention. We expected that America would produce the largest, most costly, and most gorgeous of all international exhibitions; but who expected that she would produce anything so inexpressibly poetic, chaste, and restrained, such an absolutely refined and soul-satisfying picture, as the Court of Honour, with its lagoon and gondolas, its white marble steps and bal.u.s.trades, its varied yet harmonious buildings, its colonnaded vista of the great lake, its impressive fountain, its fairy-like outlining after dark by the gems of electricity, its s.p.a.cious and well-modulated proportions which made the largest crowd in it but an un.o.btrusive detail, its air of spontaneity and inevitableness which suggested nature itself, rather than art? No other scene of man's creation seemed to me so perfect as this Court of Honour. Venice, Naples, Rome, Florence, Edinburgh, Athens, Constantinople, each in its way is lovely indeed; but in each view of each of these there is some jarring feature, something that we have to _ignore_ in order to thoroughly lose ourselves in the beauty of the scene. The Court of Honour was practically blameless; the aesthetic sense of the beholder was as fully and unreservedly satisfied as in looking at a masterpiece of painting or sculpture, and at the same time was soothed and elevated by a sense of amplitude and grandeur such as no single work of art could produce.

The glamour of old a.s.sociation that illumines Athens or Venice was in a way compensated by our deep impression of the pathetic transitoriness of the dream of beauty before us, and by the revelation it afforded of the soul of a great nation. For it will to all time remain impossibly ridiculous to speak of a country or a city as wholly given over to the worship of Mammon which almost involuntarily gave birth to this ethereal emanation of pure and uneconomic beauty.

Undoubtedly there are few things more dismal than the sunless canons which in Chicago are called streets; and the luckless being who is concerned there with retail trade is condemned to pa.s.s the greater part of his life in unrelieved ugliness. Things, however, are rather better in the "office" quarter; and he who is ready to admit that exigency of site gives some excuse for "elevator architecture" will find a good deal to interest him in its practice at Chicago. Indeed, no one can fail to wonder at the marvellous skill of architectural engineering which can run up a building of twenty stories, the walls of which are merely a veneer or curtain. Few will cavil at the handsome and comfortable equipment of the best interiors; but, given the necessity of their existence, the wide-minded lover of art will find something to reward his attention even in their exteriors. In many instances their architects have succeeded admirably in steering a middle course between the ornate style of a palace on the one hand and the packing case with windows on the other; and the observer might unreservedly admire the general effect were it not for the crick in his neck that reminds him most forcibly that he cannot get far enough away for a proper estimate of the proportions. Any city might feel proud to count amid its commercial architecture such features as the entrance of the Phenix Building, the office of the American Express Company, and the monumental Field Building, by Richardson, with what Mr. Schuyler calls its grim utilitarianism of expression; and the same praise might, perhaps, be extended to the Auditorium, the Owings Building, the Rookery, and some others. In non-commercial architecture Chicago may point with some pride to its City Hall, its University, its libraries, the admirable Chicago Club (the old Art Inst.i.tute), and the new Art Inst.i.tute on the verge of Lake Michigan. Of its churches the less said the better; their architecture, regarded as a studied insult to religion, would go far to justify the highly uncomplimentary epithet Mr. Stead applied to Chicago.

In some respects Chicago deserves the name City of Contrasts, just as the United States is the Land of Contrasts; and in no way is this more marked than in the difference between its business and its residential quarters. In the one--height, narrowness, noise, monotony, dirt, sordid squalor, pretentiousness; in the other--light, s.p.a.ce, moderation, homelikeness. The houses in the Lake Sh.o.r.e Drive, the Michigan Boulevard, or the Drexel Boulevard are as varied in style as the brown-stone mansions of New York are monotonous; they face on parks or are surrounded with gardens of their own; they are seldom ostentatiously large; they suggest comfort, but not offensive affluence; they make credible the possession of some individuality of taste on the part of their owners. The number of ma.s.sive round openings, the strong rusticated masonry, the open loggie, the absence of mouldings, and the red-tiled roofs suggest to the cognoscenti that Mr. H.H. Richardson's spirit was the one which brooded most efficaciously over the domestic architecture of Chicago. The two houses I saw that were designed by Mr. Richardson himself are undoubtedly not so satisfactory as some of his public buildings, but they had at least the merit of interest and originality; some of the numerous imitations were by no means successful.

The parks of Chicago are both large and beautiful. They contain not a few very creditable pieces of sculpture, among which Mr. St. Gaudens'

statue of Lincoln is conspicuous as a wonderful triumph of artistic genius over unpromising material. The show of flowers in the parks is not easily paralleled in public domains elsewhere. Of these, rather than of its stockyards and its lightning rapidity in pig-sticking, will the visitor who wishes to think well of Chicago carry off a mental picture.

The man who has stood on Inspiration Point above Oakland and has watched the lights of San Francisco gleaming across its n.o.ble bay, or who has gazed down on the Golden Gate from the heights of the Presidio, must have an exceptionally rich gallery of memory if he does not feel that he has added to its treasures one of the most entrancing city views he has ever witnessed. The situation of San Francisco is indeed that of an empress among cities. Piled tier above tier on the hilly k.n.o.b at the north end of a long peninsula, it looks down on the one side over the roomy waters of San Francis...o...b..y (fifty miles long and ten miles wide), backed by the ridge of the Coast Range, while in the other direction it is reaching out across the peninsula, here six miles wide, to the placid expanse of the Pacific Ocean. On the north the peninsula ends abruptly in precipitous cliffs some hundreds of feet high, while a similar peninsula, stretching southwards, faces it in a similar ma.s.sive promontory, separated by a scant mile of water.

This is the famous Golden Gate, the superb gateway leading from the ocean to the shelters of the bay. To the south the eye loses itself among the fertile valleys of corn and fruit stretching away toward the Mexican frontier.

When we have once sated ourselves with the general effect, there still remains a number of details, picturesque, interesting, or quaint.

There is the Golden Gate Park, the cypresses and eucalypti at one end of which testify to the balminess of the climate, while the sand-dunes at its other end show the original condition of the whole surface of the peninsula, and add to our admiration of nature a sense of respectful awe for the transforming energy of man. Beyond Golden Gate Park we reach Sutro Heights, another desert that has been made to blossom like the rose. Here we look out over the Pacific to the musically named Farralone Islands, thirty miles to the west. Then we descend for luncheon to the Cliff House below, and watch the uncouth gambols of hundreds of fat sea-lions (Spanish _lobos marinos_), which, strictly protected from the rifle or harpoon, swim, and plunge, and bark unconcernedly within a stone's throw of the observer. The largest of these animals are fifteen feet long and weigh about a ton; and it is said that certain individuals, recognisable by some peculiarity, are known to have frequented the rocks for many years. On our way back to the lower part of the city we use one of the cable-cars crawling up and down the steep inclines like flies on a window-pane; and we find, if the long polished seat of the car be otherwise unoccupied, that we have positive difficulty in preventing ourselves slipping down from one end of the car to the other. By this time the strong afternoon wind[29] has set in from the sea, and we notice with surprise that the seasoned Friscans, still clad in the muslins and linens that seemed suitable enough at high noon, seek by preference the open seats of the locomotive car, while we, puny visitors, turn up our coat-collars and flee to the shelter of the "trailer" or covered car. As we come over "n.o.b Hill" we take in the size of the houses of the Californian millionaires, note that they are of wood (on account of the earthquakes?), and bemoan the misdirected efforts of their architects, who, instead of availing themselves of the unique chance of producing monuments of characteristically developed timber architecture, have known no better than to slavishly imitate the incongruous features of stone houses in the style of the Renaissance. Indeed, we shall feel that San Francisco is badly off for fine buildings of all and every kind. If daylight still allows we may visit the Mission Dolores, one of the interesting old Spanish foundations that form the origin of so many places in California, and if we are historically inclined we may inspect the old Spanish grants in the Surveyor-General's office. Those of us whose tastes are modern and literary may find our account in identifying some of the places in R.L. Stevenson's "Ebb Tide," and it will go hard with us if we do not also meet a few of his characters amid the cosmopolitan crowd in the streets or on the wharves. At night we may visit China without the trouble of a voyage, and perambulate a city of 25,000 Celestials under the safe guidance of an Irish-accented detective. So often have the features of Chinatown been described--its incense-scented joss-houses, its interminable stage-plays, its opium-joints, its drug-stores with their extraordinary remedies, its curiosity shops, and its restaurants--that no repet.i.tion need be attempted here. We leave it with a sense of the curious incongruity which allows this colony of Orientals to live in the most wide-awake of western countries with an apparently almost total neglect of such sanitary observances as are held indispensable in all other modern munic.i.p.alities. It is certain that no more horrible sight could be seen in the extreme East than the so-called "Hermit of Chinatown," an insane devotee who has lived for years crouched in a miserable little outhouse, subsisting on the offerings of the charitable, and degraded almost beyond the pale of humanity by his unbroken silence, his blank immobility, and his neglect of all the decencies of life. And this is an American resident, if not an American citizen! If the reader is as lucky as the writer, he may wind up the day with a smart shock of earthquake; and if he is equally sleepy and unintelligent (which Heaven forefend!), he may miss its keen relish by drowsily wondering what on earth they mean by moving that _very_ heavy grand piano overhead at that time of night.

"Two-thirds of them come here to die, and they can't do it." This was said by the famous Mr. Barnum about Colorado Springs; and the active life and cheerful manners of the condemned invalids who flourish in this charming little city go far to confirm the truth concealed beneath the jest. The land has insensibly sloped upwards since the traveller left the Mississippi behind him, and he now finds himself in a flowery prairie 6,000 feet above the sea level, while close by one of the finest sections of the Rocky Mountains rears its snowy peaks to a height of 6,000 to 8,000 feet more. The climate resembles that of Davos, and like it is preeminently suited for all predisposed to or already affected with consumption; but Colorado enjoys more sunshine than its Swiss rival, and has no disagreeable period of melting snow.

The town is sheltered by the foothills, except to the southeast, where it lies open to the great plains; and, being situated where they meet the mountains, it enjoys the openness and free supply of fresh air of the seash.o.r.e, without its dampness. The name is somewhat of a misnomer, as the nearest springs are those of Manitou, about five miles to the north.

Colorado Springs may be summed up as an oasis of Eastern civilisation and finish in an environment of Western rawness and enterprise. It has been described as "a charming big village, like the well-laid-out suburb of some large Eastern city." Its wide, tree-shaded streets are kept in excellent order. There is a refreshing absence of those "loose ends" of a new civilisation which even the largest of the Western cities are too apt to show. No manufactures are carried on, and no "saloons" are permitted. The inhabitants consist very largely of educated and refined people from the Eastern States and England, whose health does not allow them to live in their damper native climes. The tone of the place is a refreshing blend of the civilisation of the East and the unconventionalism of the West. Perhaps there is no pleasanter example of extreme social democracy. The young man of the East, unprovided with a private income, finds no scope here for his specially trained capacities, and is glad to turn an honest penny and occupy his time with anything he can get. Thus there are gentlemen in the conventional sense of the word among many of the so-called humbler callings, and one may rub shoulders at the charming little clubs with an Oxford-bred livery-stable keeper or a Harvard graduate who has turned his energies toward the selling of milk. Few visitors to Colorado Springs will fail to carry away a grateful and pleasant impression of the English doctor who has found vigorous life and a prosperous career in the place of exile to which his health condemned him in early manhood, and who has repaid the place for its gift of vitality by the most intelligent and effective championship of its advantages. These latter include an excellent hotel and a flourishing college for delicate girls and boys.

Denver, a near neighbour of Colorado Springs (if we speak _more Americano_), is an excellent example, both in theory and practice, of the confident expectation of growth with which new American cities are founded. The necessary public buildings are not huddled together as a nucleus from which the munic.i.p.al infant may grow outwards; but a large and generous view is taken of the possibilities of expansion. Events do not always justify this sanguine spirit of forethought. The capitol at Washington still turns its back on the city of which it was to be the centre as well as the crown. In a great number of cases, however, hope and fact eventually meet together. The capitol of Bismarck, chief town of North Dakota, was founded in 1883, nearly a mile from the city, on a rising site in the midst of the prairie. It has already been reached by the advancing tide of houses, and will doubtless, in no long time, occupy a conveniently central situation. Denver is an equally conspicuous instance of the same tendency. The changes that took place in that city between the date of my visit to it and the reading of the proof-sheets of "Baedeker's United States" a year or so later demanded an almost entire rewriting of the description.

Doubtless it has altered at least as much since then, and very likely the one or two slightly critical remarks of the handbook of 1893 are already grossly libellous. Denver quadrupled its population between 1880 and 1890. The value of its manufactures and of the precious ores smelted here reaches a fabulous amount of millions of dollars. The usual proportion of "million" and "two million dollar buildings" have been erected. Many of the princ.i.p.al streets are (most wonderful of all!) excellently paved and kept reasonably clean. But the crowning glory of Denver for every intelligent traveller is its magnificent view of the Rocky Mountains, which are seen to the West in an unbroken line of at least one hundred and fifty miles. Though forty miles distant, they look, owing to the purity of the atmosphere, as if they were within a walk of two or three hours. Denver is fond of calling herself the "Queen City of the Plains," and few will grudge the epithet queenly if it is applied to the possession of this matchless outlook on the grandest manifestations of nature. If the Denver citizen brags more of his State Capitol, his Metropole Hotel (no accent, please!), and his smelting works than of his snow-piled mountains and abysmal canons, he only follows a natural human instinct in estimating most highly that which has cost him most trouble.

Mr. James Bryce has an interesting chapter on the absence of a capital in the United States. By capital he means "a city which is not only the seat of political government, but is also by the size, wealth, and character of its population the head and centre of the country, a leading seat of commerce and industry, a reservoir of financial resources, the favoured residence of the great and powerful, the spot in which the chiefs of the learned professions are to be found, where the most potent and widely read journals are published, whither men of literary and scientific capacity are drawn." New York journalists, with a happy disregard of the historical connotation of language, are p.r.o.ne to speak of their city as a metropolis; but it is very evident that the most liberal interpretation of the word cannot elevate New York to the relative position of such European metropolitan cities as Paris or London. Washington, the nominal capital of the United States, is perhaps still farther from satisfying Mr. Bryce's definition. It certainly is a relatively small city, and it is not a leading seat of trade, manufacture, or finance. It is also true that its journals do not rank among the leading papers of the land; but, on the other hand, it must be remembered that every important American journal has its Washington correspondent, and that in critical times the letters of these gentlemen are of very great weight. As the seat of the Supreme Judicial Bench of the United States, it has as good a claim as any other American city to be the residence of the "chiefs of the learned professions;" and it is quite remarkable how, owing to the great national collections and departments, it has come to the front as the main focus of the scientific interests of the country. The Cosmos Club's list of members is alone sufficient to ill.u.s.trate this. Its attraction to men of letters has proved less cogent; but the life of an eminent literary man of (say) New Orleans or Boston is much more likely to include a prolonged visit to Washington than to any other American city not his own. The Library of Congress alone, now magnificently housed in an elaborately decorated new building, is a strong magnet. In the same way there is a growing tendency for all who can afford it to spend at least one season in Washington. The belle of Kalamazoo or Little Rock is not satisfied till she has made her bow in Washington under the wing of her State representative, and the senator is no-wise loath to see his wife's tea-parties brightened by a bevy of the prettiest girls from his native wilds. University men throughout the Union, leaders of provincial bars, and a host of others have often occasion to visit Washington. When we add to all this the army of government employees and the cosmopolitan element of the diplomatic corps, we can easily see that, so far as "society" is concerned, Washington is more like a European capital than any other American city. Nothing is more amusing--for a short time, at least--than a round of the teas, dinners, receptions, and b.a.l.l.s of Washington, where the American girl is seen in all her glory, with captives of every clime, from the almond-eyed Chinaman to the most faultlessly correct Piccadilly exquisite, at her dainty feet. I never saw a bevy of more beautiful women than officiated at one senatorial afternoon tea I visited; so beautiful were they as to make me entirely forget what seemed to my untutored European taste the absurdity of their wearing low-necked evening gowns while their guests sported hat and jacket and fur. The whole tone of Washington society from the President downward is one of the greatest hospitality and geniality towards strangers.

The city is beautifully laid out, and its plan may be described as that of a wheel laid on a gridiron, the rectangular arrangement of the streets having superimposed on it a system of radiating avenues, lined with trees and named for the different States of the Union. The city is governed and kept admirably in order by a board of commissioners appointed by the President. The sobriquet of "City of Magnificent Distances," applied to Washington when its framework seemed unnecessarily large for its growth, is still deserved, perhaps, for the width of its streets and the s.p.a.ciousness of its parks and squares. The floating white dome of the Capitol dominates the entire city, and almost every street-vista ends in an imposing public building, a ma.s.s of luxuriant greenery, or at the least a memorial statue. The little wooden houses of the coloured squatters that used to alternate freely with the statelier mansions of officialdom are now rapidly disappearing; and some, perhaps, will regret the obliteration of the element of picturesqueness suggested in the quaint contrast.

The absence of the wealth-suggesting but artistically somewhat sordid accompaniments of a busy industrialism also contributes to Washington's position as one of the most singularly handsome cities on the globe. Among the other striking features of the American capital is the Washington Memorial, a huge obelisk raising its metal-tipped apex to a height of five hundred and fifty-five feet. There are those who consider this a meaningless pile of masonry; but the writer sympathises rather with the critics who find it, in its ma.s.sive and heaven-reaching simplicity, a fit counterpart to the Capitol and one of the n.o.blest monuments ever raised to mortal man. When gleaming in the westering sun, like a slender, tapering, sky-pointing finger of gold, no finer index can be imagined to direct the gazer to the record of a glorious history. Near the monument is the White House, a building which, in its modest yet adequate dimensions, embodies the democratic ideal more fitly, it may be feared, than certain other phases of the Great Republic. Without cataloguing the other public buildings of Washington, we may quit it with a glow of patriotic fervour over the fact that the Smithsonian Inst.i.tute here, one of the most important scientific inst.i.tutions in the world, was founded by an Englishman, who, so far as is known, never even visited the United States, but left his large fortune for "the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men," to the care of that country with whose generous and popular principles he was most in sympathy.

FOOTNOTES:

[24] This refers to 1893; things are much better now.

[25] This suggestion of topsy-turvydom in the relations of G.o.d and Mammon is much intensified when we find an apartment house like the "Osborne" towering high above the church-spire on the opposite side of the way, or see Trinity Church simply smothered by the contiguous office buildings.

[26] Compare Montgomery Schuyler's "American Architecture," an excellent though brief account and appreciation of modern American building.

[27] The position of the Metropolitan Museum of Art is so a.s.sured that in 1896 its trustees declined a bequest of 90 paintings (claiming to include specimens of Velazquez, t.i.tian, Rubens, and other great artists), because it was hampered with the condition that it had to be accepted and exhibited _en bloc_.

[28] This was changed to simple English in 1898.

[29] It is to this wind, the temperature of which varies little all the year round, that San Francisco owes her wonderfully equable climate, which is never either too hot or too cold for comfortable work or play. The mean annual temperature is about 57 Fahr., or rather higher than that of New York; but while the difference between the mean of the months is 40 at the latter city, it is about 10 only at the Golden Gate. The mean of July is about 60, that of January about 50. September is a shade warmer than July. Observations extending over 30 years show that the freezing point on the one hand and 80 Fahr. on the other are reached on an average only about half a dozen times a year. The hottest day of the year is more likely to occur in September than any other month.

XII

Baedekeriana

This chapter deals with subjects related to the tourist and the guidebook, and with certain points of a more personal nature connected with the preparation of "Baedeker's Handbook to the United States."

Readers uninterested in topics of so practical and commonplace a character will do well to skip it altogether.

When the scheme of publishing a "Baedeker" to the United States was originally entertained, the first thought was to invite an American to write the book for us. On more mature deliberation it was, however, decided that a member of our regular staff would, perhaps, do the work equally well, inasmuch as he would combine, with actual experience in the art of guidebook making, the stranger's point of view, and thus the more acutely realise, by experiment in his own _corpus vile_, the points on which the ignorant European would require advice, warning, or a.s.sistance. So far as my own voice had aught to do with this decision, I have to confess that I severely grudged the interesting task to an outsider. The opportunity of making a somewhat extensive survey of the country that stood preeminently for the modern ideas of democracy and progress was a peculiarly grateful one; and I even contrived to infuse (for my own consumption) a spice of the ideal into the homely brew of the guidebook by reflecting that it would contribute (so far as it went) to that mutual knowledge, intimacy of which is perhaps all that is necessary to ensure true friendship between the two great Anglo-Saxon powers.

While thus reserving the editing of the book for one of our own household, we realised thoroughly that no approach to completeness would be attainable without the cooperation of the Americans themselves; and I welcome this opportunity to reiterate my keen appreciation of the open-handed and open-minded way in which this was accorded. Besides the signed articles by men of letters and science in the introductory part of the handbook, I have to acknowledge thousands of other kindly offices and useful hints, many of which hardly allow themselves to be cla.s.sified or defined, but all of which had their share in producing aught of good that the volume may contain. So many Americans have used their Baedekers in Europe that I found troops of ready-made sympathisers, who, half-interested, half-amused, at the attempt to Baedekerise their own continent, knew pretty well what was wanted, and were able to put me on the right track for procuring information. Indeed, the book could hardly have been written but for these innumerable streams of disinterested a.s.sistance, which enabled the writer so to economise his time as to finish his task before the part first written was entirely obsolete.

The process of change in the United States goes on so rapidly that the attempt of a guidebook to keep abreast of the times (not easy in any country) becomes almost futile. The speed with which Denver metamorphosed her outward appearance has already been commented on at page 214; and this is but one instance in a thousand. Towns spring up literally in a night. McGregor in Texas, at the junction of two new railways, had twelve houses the day after it was fixed upon as a town site, and in two months contained five hundred souls. Towns may also disappear in a night, as Johnstown (Penn.) was swept away by the bursting of a dam on May 31, 1889, or as Chicago was destroyed by the great fire of 1871. These are simply exaggerated examples of what is happening less obtrusively all the time. The means of access to points of interest are constantly changing; the rough horse-trail of to-day becomes the stage-road of to-morrow and the railway of the day after.

The conservative clinging to the old, so common in Europe, has no place in the New World; an apparently infinitesimal advantage will occasion a _boulevers.e.m.e.nt_ that is by no means infinitesimal.

Next to the interest and beauty of the places to be visited, perhaps the two things in which a visitor to a new country has most concern are the means of moving from point to point and the accommodation provided for him at his nightly stopping-places--in brief, its conveyances and its inns. During the year or more I spent in almost continuous travelling in the United States I had abundant opportunity of testing both of these. In all I must have slept in over two hundred different beds, ranging from one in a hotel-chamber so gorgeous that it seemed almost as indelicate to go to bed in it as to undress in the drawing-room, down through the berths of Pullman cars and river steamboats, to an open-air couch of balsam boughs in the Adirondack forests. My means of locomotion included a safety bicycle, an Adirondack canoe, the back of a horse, the omnipresent buggy, a bob-sleigh, a "cutter," a "b.o.o.by," four-horse "stages," river, lake, and sea-going steamers, horse-cars, cable-cars, electric cars, mountain elevators, narrow-gauge railways, and the Vestibuled Limited Express from New York to Chicago.

Perhaps it is significant of the amount of truth in many of the a.s.sertions made about travelling in the United States that I traversed about 35,000 miles in the various ways indicated above without a scratch and almost without serious detention or delay. Once we were nearly swamped in a sudden squall in a mountain lake, and once we had a minute or two's pleasant experience of the iron-shod heels of our horse _inside_ the buggy, the unfortunate animal having hitched his hind-legs over the dash-board and nearly kicking out our brains in his frantic efforts to get free. These, however, were accidents that might have happened anywhere, and if my experiences by road and rail in America prove anything, they prove that travelling in the United States is just as safe as in Europe.[30] Some varieties of it are rougher than anything of the kind I know in the Old World; but on the other hand much of it is far pleasanter. The European system of small railway compartments, in spite of its advantage of privacy and quiet, would be simply unendurable in the long journeys that have to be made in the western hemisphere. The journey of twenty-four to thirty hours from New York to Chicago, if made by the Vestibuled Limited, is probably less fatiguing than the day-journey of half the time from London to Edinburgh. The comforts of this superb train include those of the drawing-room, the dining-room, the smoking-room, and the library. These apartments are perfectly ventilated by compressed air and lighted by movable electric lights, while in winter they are warmed to an agreeable temperature by steam-pipes. Card-tables and a selection of the daily papers minister to the traveller's amus.e.m.e.nt, while bulletin boards give the latest Stock Exchange quotations and the reports of the Government Weather Bureau. Those who desire it may enjoy a bath _en route_, or avail themselves of the services of a lady's maid, a barber, a stenographer, and a type-writer. There is even a small and carefully selected medicine chest within reach; and the way in which the minor delicacies of life are consulted may be ill.u.s.trated by the fact that powdered soap is provided in the lavatories, so that no one may have to use the same cake of soap as his neighbour.

No one who has not tried both can appreciate the immense difference in comfort given by the opportunity to move about in the train. No matter how pleasant one's companions are in an English first-cla.s.s compartment, their _enforced_ proximity makes one heartily sick of them before many hours have elapsed; while a conversation with Daisy Miller in the American parlour car is rendered doubly delightful by the consciousness that you may at any moment transfer yourself and your _bons mots_ to Lydia Blood at the other end of the car, or retire with Gilead P. Beck to the snug little smoking-room. The great size and weight of the American cars make them very steady on well-laid tracks like those of the Pennsylvania Railway, and thus letter-writing need not be a lost art on a railway journey. Even when the permanent way is inferior, the same cause often makes the vibration less than on the admirable road-beds of England.

Theoretically, there is no distinction of cla.s.ses on an American railway; practically, there is whenever the line is important enough or the journey long enough to make it worth while. The parlour car corresponds to our first cla.s.s; and its use has this advantage (rather curious in a democratic country), that the increased fare for its admirable comforts is relatively very low, usually (in my experience) not exceeding 1/2_d._ a mile. The ordinary fare from New York to Boston (220 to 250 miles) is $5 (1); a seat in a parlour car costs $1 (4_s._), and a sleeping-berth $1.50 (6_s._). Thus the ordinary pa.s.senger pays at the rate of about 1-1/4_d._ per mile, while the luxury of the Pullman may be obtained for an additional expenditure of just about 1/2_d._ a mile. The extra fare on even the Chicago Vestibuled Limited is only $8 (32_s._) for 912 miles, or considerably less than 1/2_d._ a mile. These rates are not only less than the difference between first-cla.s.s and third-cla.s.s fares in Europe, but also compare very advantageously with the rates for sleeping-berths on European lines, being usually 50 to 75 per cent. lower. The parlour-car rates, however, increase considerably as we go on towards the West and get into regions where compet.i.tion is less active. A good instance of this is afforded by the parlour-car fares of the Canadian Pacific Railway, which I select because it spans the continent with its own rails from the Atlantic to the Pacific; the principle on the United States lines is similar. The price of a "sleeper" ticket from Montreal to Fort William (998 miles) is $6, or about 3/5_d._ per mile; that from Banff to Vancouver (560 miles) is the same, or at the rate of about 14/15_d._ per mile. The rate for the whole journey from Halifax to Vancouver (3,362 miles) is about 2/3_d._ per mile.

Travellers who prefer the privacy of the European system may combine it with the liberty of the American system by hiring, at a small extra rate, the so-called "drawing-room" or "state-room," a small compartment containing four seats or berths, divided by part.i.tions from the rest of the parlour car. The ordinary carriage or "day coach"

corresponds to the English second-cla.s.s carriage, or, rather, to the excellent third-cla.s.s carriages on such railways as the Midland. It does not, I think, excel them in comfort except in the greater size, the greater liberty of motion, and the element of variety afforded by the greater number of fellow-pa.s.sengers. The seats are disposed on each side of a narrow central aisle, and are so arranged that the occupants can ride forward or backward as they prefer. Each seat holds two persons, but with some difficulty if either has any amplitude of bulk. The s.p.a.ce for the legs is also very limited. The chief discomfort, however, is the fact that there is no support for the head and shoulders, though this disability might be easily remedied by a movable head-rest. Very little provision is made for hand luggage, the American custom being to "check" anything checkable and have it put in the "baggage car." Rugs are entirely superfluous, as the cars are far more likely to be too warm than too cold. The windows are usually another weak point. They move vertically as ours do, but up instead of down; and they are frequently made so that they cannot be opened more than a few inches. The handles by which they are lifted are very small, and afford very little purchase; and the windows are frequently so stiff that it requires a strong man to move them. I have often seen half a dozen pa.s.sengers struggle in vain with a refractory gla.s.s, and finally have to call in the help of the brawny brakeman. This difficulty, however, is of less consequence from the fact that even if you can open your window, there is sure to be some one among your forty or fifty fellow-pa.s.sengers who objects to the draught. Or if _you_ object to the draught of a window in front of you, you have either to grin and bear it or do violence to your British diffidence in requesting its closure. The windows are all furnished with small slatted blinds, which can be arranged in hot weather so as to exclude the sun and let in the air. The conductor communicates with the engine-driver by a bell-cord suspended from the roof of the carriages and running throughout the entire length of the train. It is well to remember that this tempting clothes-rope is not meant for hanging up one's overcoat. Whatever be the reason, the plague of cinders from the locomotive smoke is often much worse in America than in England. As we proceed, they patter on the roof like hailstones, in a way that is often very trying to the nerves, and they not unfrequently make open windows a doubtful blessing, even on immoderately warm days. At intervals the brakeman carries round a pitcher of iced water, which he serves gratis to all who want it; and it is a pleasant sight on sultry summer days to see how the children welcome his coming. In some cases there is a permanent filter of ice-water with a tap in a corner of the car. At each end of the car is a lavatory, one for men and one for women. In spite, then, of the discomforts noted above, it may be a.s.serted that the poor man is more comfortable on a long journey than in Europe; and that on a short journey the American system affords more entertainment than the European. When Richard Grant White announced his preference for the English system because it preserves the traveller's individuality, looks after his personal comfort, and carries all his baggage, he must have forgotten that it is practically first-cla.s.s pa.s.sengers only who reap the benefit of those advantages.

One most unpleasantly suggestive equipment of an American railway carriage is the axe and crowbar suspended on the wall for use in an accident. This makes one reflect that there are only two doors in an American car containing sixty people, whereas the same number of pa.s.sengers in Europe would have six, eight, or even ten. This is extremely inconvenient in crowded trains (_e.g._, in the New York Elevated), and might conceivably add immensely to the horrors of an accident. The latter reflection is emphasised by the fact that there are practically no soft places to fall on, sharp angles presenting themselves on every side, and the very arm-rests of the seats being made of polished iron.