THE FIRST VOYAGE OVEROBSERVATIONS AND IMPRESSIONS OF A NAÏVELY SOPHISTICATED TRAVELER AT FORTYBY THEODORE DREISERAuthor of “Sister Carrie,” “Jennie Gerhardt,” etc.WITH PICTURES BY W. J. GLACKENSIHAVE just turned forty. I have seen a little something of life. I have been a newspaper man, editor, magazine contributor, author, and, in earlier days, several odd kinds of clerk before I found out what I could do.Eleven years ago I wrote my first novel, which was issued by New York publishers, and suppressed by them. Heaven knows why, for the same autumn they suppressed my book because of its alleged immoral tendencies they published Zola’s “Fecundity” and “An Englishwoman’s Love-Letters.” I fancy now, after eleven years of wonder, that it was not so much the supposed immorality as the book’s straightforward, plain-spoken discussion of American life in general. We were not used then in America to calling a spade a spade, particularly in books. We had great admiration for Tolstoy and Flaubert and Balzac and De Maupassant at a distance,—some of us,—and it was an honor to have handsome sets of these men on our shelves; but mostly we had been schooled in the literature of Dickens, Thackeray, George Eliot, Charles Lamb, and that refined company of English sentimental realists who told us something about life, but not everything. I am quite sure that it never occurred to many of us that there was something really improving in a plain, straightforward understanding of life. For myself, I now accept no creeds. I do not know what truth is, what beauty is, what love is, what hope is. I do not believe any one absolutely and I do not doubt any one absolutely. I think people have both evil and good intentions.While I was opening my mail one morning I encountered a note, now memorable, which was addressed to me at my apartment. It was from an old literary friend of mine in England, who expressed himself as anxious to see me immediately. I have always liked him. I like him because he strikes me as amusingly English, decidedly literary and artistic in his point of view, a man with wide wisdom, discriminating taste, rare selection. He wears a monocle in his right eye,à laChamberlain, and I like him for that. I like people who take themselves with a grand air, whether they like me or not, particularly if the grand air is backed up by a real personality. In this case it is.Next morning G. took breakfast with me; it was a most interesting affair. He was late—very. He stalked in, his spats shining, his monocle glowing with a shrewd, inquisitive eye behind it, his whole manner genial, self-sufficient, almost dictatorial, and always final. He takes charge easily, rules sufficiently, does essentially well in all circumstances where he is interested so to do.“I have decided,” he observed with that managerial air which always delights me because my soul is not in the least managerial, “that you will come back to England with me. I have my passage arranged for the twenty-second. You will come to my house in England; you will stay there a few days; then I shall take you to London and put you up at a very good hotel. You will stay there until January first and then we shall go to the Continent. Sometime in the spring or summer, when you have all your notes, you will return to London or New York and write your impressions, and I will see that they are published.”“If it can be arranged,” I interpolated.“Itcanbe arranged,” he replied emphatically. “I will attend to the financial part, and arrange affairs with both an American and an English publisher.”Sometimes life is very generous. It walks in and says,“Here, I want you to do a certain thing,” and it proceeds to arrange all your affairs for you. I felt curiously at this time as though I was on the edge of a great change. When one turns forty and faces one’s first transatlantic voyage, it is a more portentous event than when it comes at twenty.I shall not soon forget reading in a morning paper, on the early ride downtown the day we sailed, of the suicide of a friend of mine, a brilliant man. He had fallen on hard lines, his wife had decided to desert him, he was badly in debt. I knew him well, I had known his erratic history. Here on this morning when I was sailing for Europe in the flush of a momentary literary victory, he was lying in death. It gave me pause. It brought to my mind the Latin phrase, “Memento mori.” I saw again, right in the heart of this hour of brightness, how grim life really is. Fate is kind or it is not. It puts you ahead or it does not. If it does not, nothing can save you. I acknowledge the Furies. I believe in them. I have heard the disastrous beating of their wings.When I reached the ship, it was already a perfect morning in full glow. The sun was up, a host of gulls were on the wing, an air of delicious adventure enveloped the great liner’s dock at the foot of Thirteenth Street. Did ever a boy thrill over a ship as I over this monster of the seas?In the first place, even at this early hour it was crowded with people. From the moment I came on board I was delighted by the eager, restless movement of the throng. The main deck was like the lobby of one of the great New York hotels at dinner-time. There was much call on the part of a company of dragooned ship-stewards to “keep moving, please,” and the enthusiasm of farewells and the inquiries after this person and that were delightful to hear. I encountered G. finally and exchanged greetings, and then perforce soon found myself taken in tow by him, for he obviously wanted to instruct me in all the details of this new world upon which I was now entering.Shortly before sailing I had my first glimpse of a Miss B., as discreet and charming a bit of English femininity as one would care to set eyes upon. She was an English actress in whose comfortable transit G. was apparently seriously interested. Shortly afterward a Miss X. was introduced to him and to Miss B. by a third acquaintance of Miss B.’s, a Mr. K. I noticed Mr. K. strolling about the deck some time before I saw him conversing with Miss B., and later, for a moment, with G., K. interested me as a direct, self-satisfied, and aggressive type of the Hebrew race. I saw these women only for a moment at first, but they impressed me at once as rather attractive examples of the stage world.It was nine o’clock, the hour of the ship’s sailing. I went forward to the prow. All the morning I had been particularly impressed with the cloud of gulls fluttering about the ship, but now the harbor, the magnificent wall of lower New York, set like a jewel in a green ring of sea-water, took my eye. When should I see it again? How soon should I be back? I stood there till theMauretaniafronted her prow outward to the broad Atlantic. Then I started to go below, but G. overtook me.“Come up here,” he said.We went to the boat-deck, where the towering red smoke-stacks were belching forth trailing clouds of smoke. I am quite sure that G., when he originally made his authoritative command that I come to England with him, was in no way satisfied that I would. It was a somewhat light venture on his part; but here I was. And now, having “let himself in” for this, as he would have phrased it, I could see that he was intensely interested in what Europe would do to me—and possibly in what I would do to Europe. Nevertheless, he had very little to say except to speak of the receding beauty of New York, to speculate as to my probable impressions of England and France, to congratulate himself that we were really under way. It was delightful.Absolutely ignorant of this world of the sea, a great ship like this interested me from the start. It impressed me no little that all the servants were English and that they were, shall I say, polite? Well, if not that, non-aggressive.Another thing that impressed and irritated me a little was the stolidity of the English countenance as I encountered it here on this ship. I didn’t know then whether it was accidental in this case or national. There is a certain type of Englishman—the robust, rosy-checked, blue-eyed Saxon—whom I cordially dislike, I think, speaking temperamentally and artistically. They are too solid, too rosy, too immobile as to their faces, and altogether too assured and stary. I don’t like them. They offend me. They thrust a silly race pride into my face, which isn’t necessary at all, and which I always resent with a race pride of my own. It has even occurred to me at times that these temperamental race differences could be quickly adjusted only by an appeal to arms, which is sillier yet. But so goes life. It’s foolish on both sides, but I mention it for what it is worth.I went to my room and began unpacking, but was not there long before I was called out by G. to meet Miss B. and Miss X.“Get your cap and coat,” he said in his authoritative way, “and come out on deck. Miss B. is there. She’s reading your last novel. She likes it.”I went out, interested to meet these two, for the actress, the talented, good-looking representative of that peculiarly feminine world of art, appeals to me very much. I have always thought, since I have been able to reason about it, that the stage is almost the only ideal outlet for the artistic temperament of a talented and beautiful woman. Men? Well, I don’t care so much for the men of the stage. I acknowledge the distinction of such a temperament as that of David Garrick or Edwin Booth. These were great actors, and, by the same token, they were great artists, wonderful artists; but in the main the men of the stage are frail shadows of a much more real thing—the active, constructive man in other lines.I found that this very able patron of mine was doing everything that could be done to make the trip comfortable without show or fuss. Many have this executive or managerial gift. Sometimes I think it is a natural trait of the English—of their superior classes, anyhow. They go about colonizing efficiently, industriously. They make fine governors and patrons.Not only were all our chairs on deck here in a row, but our chairs at table had already been arranged for—four seats at the captain’s table. It seems that from previous voyages on this ship G. knew the captain. He also knew the chairman of the company in England. No doubt he knew the chief steward. Anyhow, he knew the man who sold us our tickets. Wherever he went, I found he was always finding somebody whom he knew. I like to get in tow of such a man as G. and see him plow the seas.I covertly observed the personality of Miss X. Here was some one who, on sight, at a glance, attracted me far more significantly than ever Miss B. could. I cannot tell you why, exactly. In a way, Miss B. appeared, at moments and from certain points of view, with her delicacy, refinement, sweetness of mood, the more attractive of the two. But Miss X., with her chic face, her dainty little chin, her narrow, lavender-lidded eyes, drew me quite like a magnet. I liked a certain snap and vigor which shot from her eyes, and which, I could feel, represented our raw American force. A foreigner will not, I am afraid, understand exactly what I mean; but there is something about the American climate, its soil, rain, winds, race spirit, which produces a raw, direct incisiveness of soul in its children. They are strong, erect, elated, enthusiastic. They look you in the eye, cut you with a glance, say what they mean in ten thousand ways without really saying anything at all. They come upon you fresh like cold water, and they have the luster of a hard, bright jewel and the fragrance of a rich, red, full-blown rose. Americans are wonderful to me—American men and American women. They are rarely polished or refined. They know little of the subtleties of life, its order and procedures. But oh, the glory of their spirit, the hope of them, the dreams of them, the desires and enthusiasm of them! That is what wins me. They give me the sense of being intensely, enthusiastically, humanly alive.After dinner we adjourned to the ship’s drawing-room, and there Miss X. fell to playing cards with G. at first, afterward with Mr. K., who came up and found us, thrusting his company upon us perforce. The man amused me, so typically aggressive, money-centered was he. However, not he so much as Miss X. and her mental and social attitude commanded my attention. Her card-playing and her boastful accounts of adventures at Ostend, Trouville, Nice, Monte Carlo, and Aix-les-Bains indicated plainly the trend of herinterests. She was all for the showy life that was to be found in these places, burning with a desire to glitter, not shine, in that half-world of which she was a smart atom. Her conversation was at once showy, naïve, sophisticated, and yet unschooled. I could see by G.’s attentions to her, that, aside from her crude Americanisms, which ordinarily would have alienated him, he was interested in her beauty, her taste in dress, her love of a certain continental café life which encompassed a portion of his own interests. Both were looking forward to a fresh season of it, G. with me, Miss X. with some one who was waiting for her in London.After dinner there was a concert. It was a dreary affair. When it was over, I started to go to bed, but, it being warm and fresh, I stopped outside. The night was beautiful. There were no fellow-passengers on the promenade. All had retired. The sky was magnificent for stars—Orion, the Pleiades, the Milky Way, the Big Dipper, the Little Dipper. I saw one star, off to my right, as I stood at the prow, under the bridge, which, owing the soft, velvety darkness, cast a faint, silvery glow on the water—just a trace. Think of it! One lone, silvery star over the great dark sea doing this. I stood at the prow and watched the boat speed on. I threw back my head and drank in the salt wind. I looked and listened. England, France, Italy, Switzerland, Germany—all these were coming to me mile by mile. As I stood there, a bell over me struck eight times. Another, farther off, sounded the same number. Then a voice at the prow called, “All’s well,” and another aloft, in the crow’s-nest, echoed, “All’s well.” The second voice was weak and quavering.Something came up in my throat—a quick, unbidden lump of emotion. Was it an echo of old journeys and old seas when life was not safe? What about Columbus and Raleigh and the Norsemen? What about the Phoenicians and the Egyptians and the Greeks? St. Paul writes, “And we being exceedingly tossed with a tempest.” Quite so—fears and pains and terrors. And now this vast ship, eight hundred and eighty-two feet long, eighty-eight feet beam, with huge pits of engines and furnaces and polite, veneered first-cabin decks and passengers! I love life. It is strange, dangerous, beautiful, cruel. I love forms and variations, but I mistrust them utterly. I do not know who I am, or whence I am, or why I am. Only I am here, and would that I were happy and could live so always!The close of the next day occurred in the lounging-or reception-room, where, after dinner, we all retired to listen to the music, and then began one of those really interesting conversations between G. and Miss X. that sometimes illuminate life and make one see things forever afterward.It is going to be very hard for me to define just how this could be, for I might say that I had at the moment considerable intellectual contempt for the point of view which the conversation represented. Consider first the American attitude. With us the business of life is not living, but achieving. Roughly speaking, we are willing to go hungry, dirty, to wait in the cold, and to fight gamely, if in the end we can achieve one or more of the seven stars in the human crown of life. Several of the forms of supremacy may seem the same, but they are not. Examine them closely. The average American is not born to place. He does not know what the English sense of order is. We have not that national esprit de corps which characterizes the English and the French, perhaps, certainly the Germans. We are loose, uncouth, but, in our way, wonderful. The spirit of God has once more breathed upon the waters.Well, the gentleman who was doing the talking in this instance and the lady who was coinciding, inciting, aiding, abetting, approving, and at times leading and demonstrating, represented two different and yet allied points of view. G. is distinctly a product of the English conservative school of thought, a gentleman who wishes sincerely he was not so conservative. His house is in order. You can feel it. His standards and ideals are fixed. He knows what life ought to be, how it ought to be lived. You would never catch him associating with the rag-tag and bobtail of humanity with any keen sense of human brotherhood or emotional tenderness of feeling. One cannot be considering the state of the under dog at any particular time. Government is established to do this sort of thing. The masses! Letthem behave. And let us, above all things, have order and peace. This is a section of G. Not all, mind you, but a section. I have described Miss X.“And oh, the life!” she said at one point. “Americans don’t know how to live. They are all engaged in doing something. They are such beginners. They are only interested in money. I see them in Paris now and then.” She lifted her hand. “Here in Europe people understand life better. They know how to live. They know before they begin how much it will take to do the things that they want to do, and they start out to make that much; not a fortune—just enough to do the things that they want to do. When they get that, they retire andlive.”“And what do they do when they live?” I asked. “What do they call living?”“Oh, having a nice country house within a short traveling distance of London or Paris; and being able to dine at the best restaurants and visit the best theaters once or twice a week; to go to Paris or Monte Carlo or Scheveningen or Ostend two or three or four, or as many times a year as they please; to wear good clothes; and to be thoroughly comfortable.”“That is not a bad standard,” I said, and then I added, “And what else do they do?”“And what else should they do? Isn’t that enough?”And there you have the European standard according to Miss X. as contrasted with the American standard which is, or has been up to this time, something decidedly different. I am sure. We have not been so eager to live. Our idea has been to work. No American that I have ever known has had the idea of laying up just so much, a moderate amount, and then retiring and living. He has had quite another thought in his mind. The American, the average American, I am sure loves power, the ability to do something, far more earnestly than he loves mere living. He wants to be an officer or a director of something, a poet, anything you please for the sake of being it, not for the sake of living.While I was lying in my berth the fifth morning, I heard the room steward outside my door tell some one that he thought we reached Fishguard at one-thirty.I packed my trunks, thinking of this big ship and the fact that my trip was over and that never again could I cross the Atlantic for the first time. A queer world this. We can only do any one thing significantly once. I remember when I first went to Chicago, I remember when I first went to St. Louis, I remember when I first went to New York. Other trips there were, but they are lost in vagueness. But the first time of any important thing sticks and lasts; it comes back at times, and haunts you with its beauty and its sadness. You know well you cannot do that any more; and, like a clock, it ticks and tells you that life is moving on. I shall never come to England any more for the first time. That is gone and done for, worse luck.So I packed—will you believe it?—a little sadly. I think most of us are a little silly at times, only we are cautious enough to conceal it. There is in me the spirit of a wistful child somewhere, and it clings pitifully to the hand of its big mama, Life, and cries when it is frightened. It longs for love and sympathy, and aches, oh, pathetically; and then there is a coarse, vulgar exterior which fronts the world defiantly and bids all and sundry to go to the devil. It sneers and barks and jeers bitterly at times, and guffaws and cackles and has a joyous time laughing at the follies of others.Then I went to hunt G. to find out what I should do. How much was I to give the deck steward, how much to the bath steward, how much to the room steward, how much to the dining-room steward, how much to “boots,” and so on.“Look here,” observed that most efficient of all managerial souls that I have ever known, “I’ll tell you what you do. No, I’ll write it.” And he drew forth an ever-ready envelope.I went forthwith and paid them, relieving my soul of a great weight. Then I came on deck, and found that I had forgotten to pack my ship blanket and a steamer rug, which I forthwith went and packed. Then I discovered that I had no place for my derby hat save on my head, so I went back and packed my cap. Then I thought I had lost one of my brushes, which I hadn’t, though I did lose one of my stylo-pencils. Finally I came on deck and sang coon-songs with Miss X., sittingin our steamer-chairs. The low shore of Ireland had come into view, with two faint hills in the distance, and these fascinated me. I thought I should have some slight emotion on seeing land again, but I didn’t. It was gray and misty at first, but presently the sun came out beautifully clear, and the day was as warm as May in New York. I felt a sudden elation of spirits with the coming of the sun, and I began to think what a lovely time I was going to have in Europe.Miss X. was a little more friendly this morning than heretofore. She is a tricky creature, coy, uncertain, and hard to please. She liked me intellectually and thought I was able, but her physical and emotional predilections, as far as men are concerned, did not include me.We rejoiced together singing coon-songs, and then we fought. There is a directness between experienced intellects which waves aside all formalities. She had seen a lot of life; so had I. She said she thought she would like to walk a little.We strolled back along the heaving deck to the end of the first-cabin section and then to the stern. When we reached there the sky was overcast again, for it was one of those changeable mornings which is now gray, now bright, now misty. Just now the heavens were black and lowering with soft, rain-charged clouds, like the wool of a smudgy sheep. The sea was a rich green in consequence; not a deal green, but a dark, muddy, oil-green. It rose and sank in its endless unrest, and one or two boats appeared—a light-ship, anchored out all alone against the lowering waste, and a small, black, passenger-steamer going somewhere.“I wish my path in life were as white as that and as straight,” observed Miss X., pointing to our white, propeller-churned wake, which extended back for half a mile or more.“Yes,” I observed, “you do and you don’t. You do, if it wouldn’t cost you trouble in the future—impose the straight and narrow, as it were.”“Oh, you don’t know,” she exclaimed irritably, that ugly fighting light coming into her eyes which I had seen there several times before. “You don’t know what my life has been. I haven’t been so bad. We all of us do the best we can. I have done the best I could, considering.”“Yes, yes,” I observed; “you’re ambitious and alive and you’re seeking—Heaven knows what. You would be fine with your pretty face and body if you were not so—so sophisticated. The trouble with you is—”“Oh, look at that cute little boat out there!” She was talking of the light-ship. “I always feel sorry for a poor little thing like that, set aside from the main tide of life and left lonely, with no one to care for it.”“The trouble with you is,” I went on, seizing this new remark as an additional pretext for analysis, “you’re romantic, not sympathetic. You’re interested in that poor little lonely boat because its state is romantic, not pathetic. It may be pathetic, but that isn’t the point with you.”“Well,” she said, “if you had had all the hard knocks I have had, you wouldn’t be sympathetic either. I’ve suffered, I have. My illusions have been killed dead.”“Yes, love is over with you. You can’t love any more. You can like to be loved, that’s all. If it were the other way about—”I paused to think how really lovely she would be with her narrow, lavender eyelids; her delicate, almost retroussé, little nose; her red cupid’s-bow mouth.“Oh,” she exclaimed, with a gesture of almost religious adoration, “I cannot love any one person any more; but I can love love, and I do—all the delicate things it stands for.”“Flowers,” I observed, “jewels, automobiles, hotel bills, fine dresses.”“Oh, you’re brutal. I hate you. You’ve said the cruelest, meanest things that have ever been said to me.”“But they’re so.”“I don’t care. Why shouldn’t I be hard? Why shouldn’t I love to live and be loved? Look at my life. See what I’ve had.”“You like me, in a way.”“I admire your intellect.”“Quite so; and others receive the gifts of your personality.”“I can’t help it. I can’t be mean to the man I’m with. He’s good to me. I won’t. I’d be sinning against the only conscience I have.”They were blowing a bugle for lunchwhen we came back, and down we went. G. was already at table. The orchestra was playing “Auld Lang Syne,” “Home, Sweet Home,” “Dixie,” and the “Suwanee River.” It even played one of those delicious American rags which I love so much—the “Oceana Roll.” I felt a little lump in my throat at “Auld Lang Syne” and “Dixie,” and together Miss X. and I hummed the “Oceana Roll” as it was played. One of the girl passengers came about with a plate to obtain money for the members of the orchestra, and half-crowns were generally deposited. Then I started to eat my dessert; but G., who had hurried off, came back to interfere.“Come, come,”—he is always most emphatic—“you’re missing it all. We’re landing.”I thought we were leaving at once. The eye behind the monocle was premonitory of some great loss to me. I hurried on deck, to thank his artistic and managerial instinct instantly I arrived there. Before me was Fishguard and the Welsh coast, and to my dying day I shall never forget it. Imagine, if you please, a land-locked harbor, as green as grass in this semi-cloudy, semi-gold-bathed afternoon, with a half-moon of granite scarp rising sheer and clear from the green waters to the low gray clouds overhead. On its top I could see fields laid out in pretty squares or oblongs, and at the bottom of what to me appeared to be the east end of the semicircle was a bit of gray scruff, which was the village, no doubt. On the green water were several other boats—steamers, much smaller, with red stacks, black sides, white rails and funnels, bearing a family resemblance to the one we were on. There was a long pier extending out into the water from what I took to be the village, and something farther inland that looked like a low shed.This black hotel of a ship, so vast, so graceful, now rocking gently in the enameled bay, was surrounded this hour by wheeling, squeaking gulls. I always like the squeak of a gull; it reminds me of a rusty car-wheel, and somehow it accords with a lone, rocky coast. Here they were, their little feet coral red, their beaks jade gray, their bodies snowy white or sober gray, wheeling and crying, “My heart remembers how.” I looked at them, and that old intense sensation of joy came back—the wish to fly, the wish to be young, the wish to be happy, the wish to be loved. I think my lips framed verses, and I thought that if nature, in her vast, sightless chemistry, would only give me something to feed this intense emotion to the full, I should welcome eternal sleep.But my scene, beautiful as it was, was slipping away. One of the pretty steamers I had noted lying on the water some distance away was drawing alongside—to get mails, they said. There were hurrying and shuffling people on all the first-cabin decks.Then the mail and trunks being off, and that boat having veered away, another and somewhat smaller one came alongside, and we first- and then the second-class passengers went aboard, and I watched the great ship growing less and less as we pulled away from it. It was immense from alongside, a vast skyscraper of a ship. At a hundred feet it seemed not so large, but exceedingly more graceful; at a thousand feet all its exquisite lines were perfect, its bulk not so great, but the pathos of its departing beauty wonderful; at two thousand feet it was still beautiful and large against the granite ring of the harbor; but, alas! it was moving. The captain was an almost indistinguishable spot upon the bridge. The stacks, in their way gorgeous, took on beautiful proportions. I thought, as we veered in near the pier and the ship turned within her length or thereabouts and steamed out, I had never seen a more beautiful sight. Her convoy of gulls was still about her. Her smoke-stacks flung back their graceful streamers. The propeller left a white trail of foam.Just then the lighter bumped against the dock. I walked under a long, low train-shed covering four tracks, and then I saw my first English passenger-train. I didn’t like the looks of the cars. I can prove in a moment by any traveler that our trains are vastly more luxurious. I can see where there isn’t heat enough, and where one lavatory for men and women on any train, let alone a first-class one, is an abomination; but, still, and notwithstanding, I say the English railway service is better. Why? Because it’s more human; it’s more considerate. You aren’t driven and urged to step lively and called at in loud, harsh voices, and made to feelthat you are being tolerated aboard something that was never made for you at all, but for the employees of the company.Drawn by W. J. Glackens“THE MAGNIFICENT WALL OF LOWER NEW YORK, SET LIKE A JEWEL IN A GREEN RING OF SEA-WATER”But finally the train was started, and we were off. The track was not so wide as ours, if I am not mistaken, and the little freight-cars were positively ridiculous, mere wheelbarrows by comparison with the American type. As for the passenger-cars, when I came to examine them, they reminded me of some of our fine street-cars that run from, say, Schenectady to Gloversville. They were the first-class cars, too—the English Pullmans. The train started out briskly and you could feel that it did not have the powerful weight to it which the American train has. An American Pullman creaks significantly, just as a great ship does when it begins to move. An American engine begins to pull slowly because it has something to pull—like a team with a heavy load. I didn’t feel that I was in a train half so much as I did that I was in a string of baby-carriages.As I think of it now, I can never be sufficiently grateful to G. for a certain affectionate, thoughtful, sympathetic regard for my every possible mood on this occasion. This was my first trip to this England of which of course he was intensely proud. He was so humanly anxious that I should not miss any of its charms or, if need be, defects. He wanted me to be able to judge it fairly and humanly and to see, as he phrased it, “the eventual result sieved through your temperament.” The soul of attention, the soul of courtesy, patient, long-suffering, humane, gentle, how I have tried the patience of that man at times! An iron mood he has on occasion; a stoic one always. Gentle, even, smiling, living a rule and a standard, every thought of him produces a grateful smile.It was three-thirty when the train began to move, and from the lovely, misty sunshine of the morning the sky had become overcast with low, gray, almost black, rain-clouds. I looked at the hills and valleys. They told me we were in Wales. Curiously, as we sped along, first came Wordsworth into my mind, and then Thomas Hardy. I thought ofWordsworth first because these smooth, kempt hills, wet with the rain and static with deep, gray shadows, suggested him. England owes much to William Wordsworth, I think. So far as I can see, he epitomized in his verses this sweet, simple hominess that tugs at the heart-strings like some old call that one has heard before. My father was a German, my mother of Pennsylvania Dutch extraction, and yet there is a pull here in this Shaksperian-Wordsworthian-Hardyesque world which is precisely like the call of a tender mother to a child. I can’t resist it. I love it. I love it so much that it even hurts me; and I am not English, but radically American.Drawn by W. J. Glackens“I SAW K. CONVERSING WITH MISS B.”I understand that Hardy is not so well thought of in England as he might be; that, somehow, some large conservative class thinks that his books are immoral or destructive. I should say the English would better make much of Thomas Hardy while he is alive. He is one of its great traditions. His works are beautiful. The spirit of all the things he has done or attempted is lovely. He is a master mind, simple, noble, dignified, serene. He is as fine as any of the English cathedrals. St. Paul’s or Canterbury has no more significance to me than Thomas Hardy. I shall see St. Paul’s. I wish I could see the spirit of Thomas Hardy indicated in some such definite way. And yet I do not. Monuments do not indicate great men, but the fields and valleys of a country suggest them.At twenty or thirty miles from Fishguard we came to the Bay of Bristol. Then came more open country, and then the lovely, alternating hues of this rain-washed world. The water under these dark clouds took on a peculiar luster. It looked at times like burnished steel, at times like muddy lead. I thought of our own George Inness and what he would have done with these scenes and what the English Turner has done, though he preferred, as a rule, another key.At four-thirty one of the charming English trainmen came and asked if we would have tea in the dining-car. We would. We arose and in a few moments were entering one of those dainty little basket cars. The tables were covered with white linen and simple, pretty china and a silver tea-service. It wasn’t as though you were traveling at all. I felt as though I were stopping at the house of a friend, or as though I were in the cozy corner of some well-known and friendly inn. Tea was served. We ate toast and talked cheerfully. G. was most anxious that I should not miss any of the significance of the landscape, and insisted that I keep my nose to the window.Having started so late, it grew nearly dark after tea, and the distant landscapeswere not so easy to descry. We came presently, in the mist, to a place called Carmarthen, I think, where were great black stacks and flaming forges and lights burning wistfully in the dark; and then to another similar place, Swansea; and finally to a third, Cardiff, great centers of manufacture, for there were flaming lights from forges; great, golden gleams from open furnaces; and dark blue smoke, visible even at this hour, from tall stacks overhead; and gleaming electric lights, like bright, lucent diamonds.Drawn by W. J. Glackens“ONE OF THOSE REALLY INTERESTING CONVERSATIONS BETWEEN G. AND MISS X.”It has always seemed a great, sad, heroic thing,—plain day labor. Those common, ignorant men, working before flaming forges, stripped to the waist in some instances, fascinated my imagination. I have always marveled at the inequalities of nature—the way it will give one man a low brow and a narrow mind, a narrow round of thought, and make a slave or horse of him, and another a light, nimble mind, a quick wit, and air, and make a gentleman of him. No human being can solve either the question of ability or utility. Is your gentleman useful? Yes and no, perhaps. Is your laborer useful? Yes and no, perhaps. I should say obviously yes. But see the differences in the reward of labor, physical labor. One eats his hard-earned crust in the sweat of his face; the other picks at his surfeit of courses, and wonders why this or that doesn’t taste better. I did not make my mind. I did not make my art. I cannot choose my taste except by predestined instinct, and yet here I am sitting in a comfortable English home as I write, commiserating the poor working-man. I indict nature here and now, as I always do and always shall do, as being aimless, pointless, unfair, unjust. I see in the whole thing no scheme but an accidental one, no justice save accidental justice. Now and then, in a way, some justice is done, but it is accidental; no individual man seems to will it. He can’t. He doesn’t know how. He can’t think how. And there’s an end of it.
THE FIRST VOYAGE OVEROBSERVATIONS AND IMPRESSIONS OF A NAÏVELY SOPHISTICATED TRAVELER AT FORTYBY THEODORE DREISERAuthor of “Sister Carrie,” “Jennie Gerhardt,” etc.WITH PICTURES BY W. J. GLACKENS
OBSERVATIONS AND IMPRESSIONS OF A NAÏVELY SOPHISTICATED TRAVELER AT FORTY
BY THEODORE DREISER
Author of “Sister Carrie,” “Jennie Gerhardt,” etc.
WITH PICTURES BY W. J. GLACKENS
IHAVE just turned forty. I have seen a little something of life. I have been a newspaper man, editor, magazine contributor, author, and, in earlier days, several odd kinds of clerk before I found out what I could do.
Eleven years ago I wrote my first novel, which was issued by New York publishers, and suppressed by them. Heaven knows why, for the same autumn they suppressed my book because of its alleged immoral tendencies they published Zola’s “Fecundity” and “An Englishwoman’s Love-Letters.” I fancy now, after eleven years of wonder, that it was not so much the supposed immorality as the book’s straightforward, plain-spoken discussion of American life in general. We were not used then in America to calling a spade a spade, particularly in books. We had great admiration for Tolstoy and Flaubert and Balzac and De Maupassant at a distance,—some of us,—and it was an honor to have handsome sets of these men on our shelves; but mostly we had been schooled in the literature of Dickens, Thackeray, George Eliot, Charles Lamb, and that refined company of English sentimental realists who told us something about life, but not everything. I am quite sure that it never occurred to many of us that there was something really improving in a plain, straightforward understanding of life. For myself, I now accept no creeds. I do not know what truth is, what beauty is, what love is, what hope is. I do not believe any one absolutely and I do not doubt any one absolutely. I think people have both evil and good intentions.
While I was opening my mail one morning I encountered a note, now memorable, which was addressed to me at my apartment. It was from an old literary friend of mine in England, who expressed himself as anxious to see me immediately. I have always liked him. I like him because he strikes me as amusingly English, decidedly literary and artistic in his point of view, a man with wide wisdom, discriminating taste, rare selection. He wears a monocle in his right eye,à laChamberlain, and I like him for that. I like people who take themselves with a grand air, whether they like me or not, particularly if the grand air is backed up by a real personality. In this case it is.
Next morning G. took breakfast with me; it was a most interesting affair. He was late—very. He stalked in, his spats shining, his monocle glowing with a shrewd, inquisitive eye behind it, his whole manner genial, self-sufficient, almost dictatorial, and always final. He takes charge easily, rules sufficiently, does essentially well in all circumstances where he is interested so to do.
“I have decided,” he observed with that managerial air which always delights me because my soul is not in the least managerial, “that you will come back to England with me. I have my passage arranged for the twenty-second. You will come to my house in England; you will stay there a few days; then I shall take you to London and put you up at a very good hotel. You will stay there until January first and then we shall go to the Continent. Sometime in the spring or summer, when you have all your notes, you will return to London or New York and write your impressions, and I will see that they are published.”
“If it can be arranged,” I interpolated.
“Itcanbe arranged,” he replied emphatically. “I will attend to the financial part, and arrange affairs with both an American and an English publisher.”
Sometimes life is very generous. It walks in and says,“Here, I want you to do a certain thing,” and it proceeds to arrange all your affairs for you. I felt curiously at this time as though I was on the edge of a great change. When one turns forty and faces one’s first transatlantic voyage, it is a more portentous event than when it comes at twenty.
I shall not soon forget reading in a morning paper, on the early ride downtown the day we sailed, of the suicide of a friend of mine, a brilliant man. He had fallen on hard lines, his wife had decided to desert him, he was badly in debt. I knew him well, I had known his erratic history. Here on this morning when I was sailing for Europe in the flush of a momentary literary victory, he was lying in death. It gave me pause. It brought to my mind the Latin phrase, “Memento mori.” I saw again, right in the heart of this hour of brightness, how grim life really is. Fate is kind or it is not. It puts you ahead or it does not. If it does not, nothing can save you. I acknowledge the Furies. I believe in them. I have heard the disastrous beating of their wings.
When I reached the ship, it was already a perfect morning in full glow. The sun was up, a host of gulls were on the wing, an air of delicious adventure enveloped the great liner’s dock at the foot of Thirteenth Street. Did ever a boy thrill over a ship as I over this monster of the seas?
In the first place, even at this early hour it was crowded with people. From the moment I came on board I was delighted by the eager, restless movement of the throng. The main deck was like the lobby of one of the great New York hotels at dinner-time. There was much call on the part of a company of dragooned ship-stewards to “keep moving, please,” and the enthusiasm of farewells and the inquiries after this person and that were delightful to hear. I encountered G. finally and exchanged greetings, and then perforce soon found myself taken in tow by him, for he obviously wanted to instruct me in all the details of this new world upon which I was now entering.
Shortly before sailing I had my first glimpse of a Miss B., as discreet and charming a bit of English femininity as one would care to set eyes upon. She was an English actress in whose comfortable transit G. was apparently seriously interested. Shortly afterward a Miss X. was introduced to him and to Miss B. by a third acquaintance of Miss B.’s, a Mr. K. I noticed Mr. K. strolling about the deck some time before I saw him conversing with Miss B., and later, for a moment, with G., K. interested me as a direct, self-satisfied, and aggressive type of the Hebrew race. I saw these women only for a moment at first, but they impressed me at once as rather attractive examples of the stage world.
It was nine o’clock, the hour of the ship’s sailing. I went forward to the prow. All the morning I had been particularly impressed with the cloud of gulls fluttering about the ship, but now the harbor, the magnificent wall of lower New York, set like a jewel in a green ring of sea-water, took my eye. When should I see it again? How soon should I be back? I stood there till theMauretaniafronted her prow outward to the broad Atlantic. Then I started to go below, but G. overtook me.
“Come up here,” he said.
We went to the boat-deck, where the towering red smoke-stacks were belching forth trailing clouds of smoke. I am quite sure that G., when he originally made his authoritative command that I come to England with him, was in no way satisfied that I would. It was a somewhat light venture on his part; but here I was. And now, having “let himself in” for this, as he would have phrased it, I could see that he was intensely interested in what Europe would do to me—and possibly in what I would do to Europe. Nevertheless, he had very little to say except to speak of the receding beauty of New York, to speculate as to my probable impressions of England and France, to congratulate himself that we were really under way. It was delightful.
Absolutely ignorant of this world of the sea, a great ship like this interested me from the start. It impressed me no little that all the servants were English and that they were, shall I say, polite? Well, if not that, non-aggressive.
Another thing that impressed and irritated me a little was the stolidity of the English countenance as I encountered it here on this ship. I didn’t know then whether it was accidental in this case or national. There is a certain type of Englishman—the robust, rosy-checked, blue-eyed Saxon—whom I cordially dislike, I think, speaking temperamentally and artistically. They are too solid, too rosy, too immobile as to their faces, and altogether too assured and stary. I don’t like them. They offend me. They thrust a silly race pride into my face, which isn’t necessary at all, and which I always resent with a race pride of my own. It has even occurred to me at times that these temperamental race differences could be quickly adjusted only by an appeal to arms, which is sillier yet. But so goes life. It’s foolish on both sides, but I mention it for what it is worth.
I went to my room and began unpacking, but was not there long before I was called out by G. to meet Miss B. and Miss X.
“Get your cap and coat,” he said in his authoritative way, “and come out on deck. Miss B. is there. She’s reading your last novel. She likes it.”
I went out, interested to meet these two, for the actress, the talented, good-looking representative of that peculiarly feminine world of art, appeals to me very much. I have always thought, since I have been able to reason about it, that the stage is almost the only ideal outlet for the artistic temperament of a talented and beautiful woman. Men? Well, I don’t care so much for the men of the stage. I acknowledge the distinction of such a temperament as that of David Garrick or Edwin Booth. These were great actors, and, by the same token, they were great artists, wonderful artists; but in the main the men of the stage are frail shadows of a much more real thing—the active, constructive man in other lines.
I found that this very able patron of mine was doing everything that could be done to make the trip comfortable without show or fuss. Many have this executive or managerial gift. Sometimes I think it is a natural trait of the English—of their superior classes, anyhow. They go about colonizing efficiently, industriously. They make fine governors and patrons.
Not only were all our chairs on deck here in a row, but our chairs at table had already been arranged for—four seats at the captain’s table. It seems that from previous voyages on this ship G. knew the captain. He also knew the chairman of the company in England. No doubt he knew the chief steward. Anyhow, he knew the man who sold us our tickets. Wherever he went, I found he was always finding somebody whom he knew. I like to get in tow of such a man as G. and see him plow the seas.
I covertly observed the personality of Miss X. Here was some one who, on sight, at a glance, attracted me far more significantly than ever Miss B. could. I cannot tell you why, exactly. In a way, Miss B. appeared, at moments and from certain points of view, with her delicacy, refinement, sweetness of mood, the more attractive of the two. But Miss X., with her chic face, her dainty little chin, her narrow, lavender-lidded eyes, drew me quite like a magnet. I liked a certain snap and vigor which shot from her eyes, and which, I could feel, represented our raw American force. A foreigner will not, I am afraid, understand exactly what I mean; but there is something about the American climate, its soil, rain, winds, race spirit, which produces a raw, direct incisiveness of soul in its children. They are strong, erect, elated, enthusiastic. They look you in the eye, cut you with a glance, say what they mean in ten thousand ways without really saying anything at all. They come upon you fresh like cold water, and they have the luster of a hard, bright jewel and the fragrance of a rich, red, full-blown rose. Americans are wonderful to me—American men and American women. They are rarely polished or refined. They know little of the subtleties of life, its order and procedures. But oh, the glory of their spirit, the hope of them, the dreams of them, the desires and enthusiasm of them! That is what wins me. They give me the sense of being intensely, enthusiastically, humanly alive.
After dinner we adjourned to the ship’s drawing-room, and there Miss X. fell to playing cards with G. at first, afterward with Mr. K., who came up and found us, thrusting his company upon us perforce. The man amused me, so typically aggressive, money-centered was he. However, not he so much as Miss X. and her mental and social attitude commanded my attention. Her card-playing and her boastful accounts of adventures at Ostend, Trouville, Nice, Monte Carlo, and Aix-les-Bains indicated plainly the trend of herinterests. She was all for the showy life that was to be found in these places, burning with a desire to glitter, not shine, in that half-world of which she was a smart atom. Her conversation was at once showy, naïve, sophisticated, and yet unschooled. I could see by G.’s attentions to her, that, aside from her crude Americanisms, which ordinarily would have alienated him, he was interested in her beauty, her taste in dress, her love of a certain continental café life which encompassed a portion of his own interests. Both were looking forward to a fresh season of it, G. with me, Miss X. with some one who was waiting for her in London.
After dinner there was a concert. It was a dreary affair. When it was over, I started to go to bed, but, it being warm and fresh, I stopped outside. The night was beautiful. There were no fellow-passengers on the promenade. All had retired. The sky was magnificent for stars—Orion, the Pleiades, the Milky Way, the Big Dipper, the Little Dipper. I saw one star, off to my right, as I stood at the prow, under the bridge, which, owing the soft, velvety darkness, cast a faint, silvery glow on the water—just a trace. Think of it! One lone, silvery star over the great dark sea doing this. I stood at the prow and watched the boat speed on. I threw back my head and drank in the salt wind. I looked and listened. England, France, Italy, Switzerland, Germany—all these were coming to me mile by mile. As I stood there, a bell over me struck eight times. Another, farther off, sounded the same number. Then a voice at the prow called, “All’s well,” and another aloft, in the crow’s-nest, echoed, “All’s well.” The second voice was weak and quavering.
Something came up in my throat—a quick, unbidden lump of emotion. Was it an echo of old journeys and old seas when life was not safe? What about Columbus and Raleigh and the Norsemen? What about the Phoenicians and the Egyptians and the Greeks? St. Paul writes, “And we being exceedingly tossed with a tempest.” Quite so—fears and pains and terrors. And now this vast ship, eight hundred and eighty-two feet long, eighty-eight feet beam, with huge pits of engines and furnaces and polite, veneered first-cabin decks and passengers! I love life. It is strange, dangerous, beautiful, cruel. I love forms and variations, but I mistrust them utterly. I do not know who I am, or whence I am, or why I am. Only I am here, and would that I were happy and could live so always!
The close of the next day occurred in the lounging-or reception-room, where, after dinner, we all retired to listen to the music, and then began one of those really interesting conversations between G. and Miss X. that sometimes illuminate life and make one see things forever afterward.
It is going to be very hard for me to define just how this could be, for I might say that I had at the moment considerable intellectual contempt for the point of view which the conversation represented. Consider first the American attitude. With us the business of life is not living, but achieving. Roughly speaking, we are willing to go hungry, dirty, to wait in the cold, and to fight gamely, if in the end we can achieve one or more of the seven stars in the human crown of life. Several of the forms of supremacy may seem the same, but they are not. Examine them closely. The average American is not born to place. He does not know what the English sense of order is. We have not that national esprit de corps which characterizes the English and the French, perhaps, certainly the Germans. We are loose, uncouth, but, in our way, wonderful. The spirit of God has once more breathed upon the waters.
Well, the gentleman who was doing the talking in this instance and the lady who was coinciding, inciting, aiding, abetting, approving, and at times leading and demonstrating, represented two different and yet allied points of view. G. is distinctly a product of the English conservative school of thought, a gentleman who wishes sincerely he was not so conservative. His house is in order. You can feel it. His standards and ideals are fixed. He knows what life ought to be, how it ought to be lived. You would never catch him associating with the rag-tag and bobtail of humanity with any keen sense of human brotherhood or emotional tenderness of feeling. One cannot be considering the state of the under dog at any particular time. Government is established to do this sort of thing. The masses! Letthem behave. And let us, above all things, have order and peace. This is a section of G. Not all, mind you, but a section. I have described Miss X.
“And oh, the life!” she said at one point. “Americans don’t know how to live. They are all engaged in doing something. They are such beginners. They are only interested in money. I see them in Paris now and then.” She lifted her hand. “Here in Europe people understand life better. They know how to live. They know before they begin how much it will take to do the things that they want to do, and they start out to make that much; not a fortune—just enough to do the things that they want to do. When they get that, they retire andlive.”
“And what do they do when they live?” I asked. “What do they call living?”
“Oh, having a nice country house within a short traveling distance of London or Paris; and being able to dine at the best restaurants and visit the best theaters once or twice a week; to go to Paris or Monte Carlo or Scheveningen or Ostend two or three or four, or as many times a year as they please; to wear good clothes; and to be thoroughly comfortable.”
“That is not a bad standard,” I said, and then I added, “And what else do they do?”
“And what else should they do? Isn’t that enough?”
And there you have the European standard according to Miss X. as contrasted with the American standard which is, or has been up to this time, something decidedly different. I am sure. We have not been so eager to live. Our idea has been to work. No American that I have ever known has had the idea of laying up just so much, a moderate amount, and then retiring and living. He has had quite another thought in his mind. The American, the average American, I am sure loves power, the ability to do something, far more earnestly than he loves mere living. He wants to be an officer or a director of something, a poet, anything you please for the sake of being it, not for the sake of living.
While I was lying in my berth the fifth morning, I heard the room steward outside my door tell some one that he thought we reached Fishguard at one-thirty.
I packed my trunks, thinking of this big ship and the fact that my trip was over and that never again could I cross the Atlantic for the first time. A queer world this. We can only do any one thing significantly once. I remember when I first went to Chicago, I remember when I first went to St. Louis, I remember when I first went to New York. Other trips there were, but they are lost in vagueness. But the first time of any important thing sticks and lasts; it comes back at times, and haunts you with its beauty and its sadness. You know well you cannot do that any more; and, like a clock, it ticks and tells you that life is moving on. I shall never come to England any more for the first time. That is gone and done for, worse luck.
So I packed—will you believe it?—a little sadly. I think most of us are a little silly at times, only we are cautious enough to conceal it. There is in me the spirit of a wistful child somewhere, and it clings pitifully to the hand of its big mama, Life, and cries when it is frightened. It longs for love and sympathy, and aches, oh, pathetically; and then there is a coarse, vulgar exterior which fronts the world defiantly and bids all and sundry to go to the devil. It sneers and barks and jeers bitterly at times, and guffaws and cackles and has a joyous time laughing at the follies of others.
Then I went to hunt G. to find out what I should do. How much was I to give the deck steward, how much to the bath steward, how much to the room steward, how much to the dining-room steward, how much to “boots,” and so on.
“Look here,” observed that most efficient of all managerial souls that I have ever known, “I’ll tell you what you do. No, I’ll write it.” And he drew forth an ever-ready envelope.
I went forthwith and paid them, relieving my soul of a great weight. Then I came on deck, and found that I had forgotten to pack my ship blanket and a steamer rug, which I forthwith went and packed. Then I discovered that I had no place for my derby hat save on my head, so I went back and packed my cap. Then I thought I had lost one of my brushes, which I hadn’t, though I did lose one of my stylo-pencils. Finally I came on deck and sang coon-songs with Miss X., sittingin our steamer-chairs. The low shore of Ireland had come into view, with two faint hills in the distance, and these fascinated me. I thought I should have some slight emotion on seeing land again, but I didn’t. It was gray and misty at first, but presently the sun came out beautifully clear, and the day was as warm as May in New York. I felt a sudden elation of spirits with the coming of the sun, and I began to think what a lovely time I was going to have in Europe.
Miss X. was a little more friendly this morning than heretofore. She is a tricky creature, coy, uncertain, and hard to please. She liked me intellectually and thought I was able, but her physical and emotional predilections, as far as men are concerned, did not include me.
We rejoiced together singing coon-songs, and then we fought. There is a directness between experienced intellects which waves aside all formalities. She had seen a lot of life; so had I. She said she thought she would like to walk a little.
We strolled back along the heaving deck to the end of the first-cabin section and then to the stern. When we reached there the sky was overcast again, for it was one of those changeable mornings which is now gray, now bright, now misty. Just now the heavens were black and lowering with soft, rain-charged clouds, like the wool of a smudgy sheep. The sea was a rich green in consequence; not a deal green, but a dark, muddy, oil-green. It rose and sank in its endless unrest, and one or two boats appeared—a light-ship, anchored out all alone against the lowering waste, and a small, black, passenger-steamer going somewhere.
“I wish my path in life were as white as that and as straight,” observed Miss X., pointing to our white, propeller-churned wake, which extended back for half a mile or more.
“Yes,” I observed, “you do and you don’t. You do, if it wouldn’t cost you trouble in the future—impose the straight and narrow, as it were.”
“Oh, you don’t know,” she exclaimed irritably, that ugly fighting light coming into her eyes which I had seen there several times before. “You don’t know what my life has been. I haven’t been so bad. We all of us do the best we can. I have done the best I could, considering.”
“Yes, yes,” I observed; “you’re ambitious and alive and you’re seeking—Heaven knows what. You would be fine with your pretty face and body if you were not so—so sophisticated. The trouble with you is—”
“Oh, look at that cute little boat out there!” She was talking of the light-ship. “I always feel sorry for a poor little thing like that, set aside from the main tide of life and left lonely, with no one to care for it.”
“The trouble with you is,” I went on, seizing this new remark as an additional pretext for analysis, “you’re romantic, not sympathetic. You’re interested in that poor little lonely boat because its state is romantic, not pathetic. It may be pathetic, but that isn’t the point with you.”
“Well,” she said, “if you had had all the hard knocks I have had, you wouldn’t be sympathetic either. I’ve suffered, I have. My illusions have been killed dead.”
“Yes, love is over with you. You can’t love any more. You can like to be loved, that’s all. If it were the other way about—”
I paused to think how really lovely she would be with her narrow, lavender eyelids; her delicate, almost retroussé, little nose; her red cupid’s-bow mouth.
“Oh,” she exclaimed, with a gesture of almost religious adoration, “I cannot love any one person any more; but I can love love, and I do—all the delicate things it stands for.”
“Flowers,” I observed, “jewels, automobiles, hotel bills, fine dresses.”
“Oh, you’re brutal. I hate you. You’ve said the cruelest, meanest things that have ever been said to me.”
“But they’re so.”
“I don’t care. Why shouldn’t I be hard? Why shouldn’t I love to live and be loved? Look at my life. See what I’ve had.”
“You like me, in a way.”
“I admire your intellect.”
“Quite so; and others receive the gifts of your personality.”
“I can’t help it. I can’t be mean to the man I’m with. He’s good to me. I won’t. I’d be sinning against the only conscience I have.”
They were blowing a bugle for lunchwhen we came back, and down we went. G. was already at table. The orchestra was playing “Auld Lang Syne,” “Home, Sweet Home,” “Dixie,” and the “Suwanee River.” It even played one of those delicious American rags which I love so much—the “Oceana Roll.” I felt a little lump in my throat at “Auld Lang Syne” and “Dixie,” and together Miss X. and I hummed the “Oceana Roll” as it was played. One of the girl passengers came about with a plate to obtain money for the members of the orchestra, and half-crowns were generally deposited. Then I started to eat my dessert; but G., who had hurried off, came back to interfere.
“Come, come,”—he is always most emphatic—“you’re missing it all. We’re landing.”
I thought we were leaving at once. The eye behind the monocle was premonitory of some great loss to me. I hurried on deck, to thank his artistic and managerial instinct instantly I arrived there. Before me was Fishguard and the Welsh coast, and to my dying day I shall never forget it. Imagine, if you please, a land-locked harbor, as green as grass in this semi-cloudy, semi-gold-bathed afternoon, with a half-moon of granite scarp rising sheer and clear from the green waters to the low gray clouds overhead. On its top I could see fields laid out in pretty squares or oblongs, and at the bottom of what to me appeared to be the east end of the semicircle was a bit of gray scruff, which was the village, no doubt. On the green water were several other boats—steamers, much smaller, with red stacks, black sides, white rails and funnels, bearing a family resemblance to the one we were on. There was a long pier extending out into the water from what I took to be the village, and something farther inland that looked like a low shed.
This black hotel of a ship, so vast, so graceful, now rocking gently in the enameled bay, was surrounded this hour by wheeling, squeaking gulls. I always like the squeak of a gull; it reminds me of a rusty car-wheel, and somehow it accords with a lone, rocky coast. Here they were, their little feet coral red, their beaks jade gray, their bodies snowy white or sober gray, wheeling and crying, “My heart remembers how.” I looked at them, and that old intense sensation of joy came back—the wish to fly, the wish to be young, the wish to be happy, the wish to be loved. I think my lips framed verses, and I thought that if nature, in her vast, sightless chemistry, would only give me something to feed this intense emotion to the full, I should welcome eternal sleep.
But my scene, beautiful as it was, was slipping away. One of the pretty steamers I had noted lying on the water some distance away was drawing alongside—to get mails, they said. There were hurrying and shuffling people on all the first-cabin decks.
Then the mail and trunks being off, and that boat having veered away, another and somewhat smaller one came alongside, and we first- and then the second-class passengers went aboard, and I watched the great ship growing less and less as we pulled away from it. It was immense from alongside, a vast skyscraper of a ship. At a hundred feet it seemed not so large, but exceedingly more graceful; at a thousand feet all its exquisite lines were perfect, its bulk not so great, but the pathos of its departing beauty wonderful; at two thousand feet it was still beautiful and large against the granite ring of the harbor; but, alas! it was moving. The captain was an almost indistinguishable spot upon the bridge. The stacks, in their way gorgeous, took on beautiful proportions. I thought, as we veered in near the pier and the ship turned within her length or thereabouts and steamed out, I had never seen a more beautiful sight. Her convoy of gulls was still about her. Her smoke-stacks flung back their graceful streamers. The propeller left a white trail of foam.
Just then the lighter bumped against the dock. I walked under a long, low train-shed covering four tracks, and then I saw my first English passenger-train. I didn’t like the looks of the cars. I can prove in a moment by any traveler that our trains are vastly more luxurious. I can see where there isn’t heat enough, and where one lavatory for men and women on any train, let alone a first-class one, is an abomination; but, still, and notwithstanding, I say the English railway service is better. Why? Because it’s more human; it’s more considerate. You aren’t driven and urged to step lively and called at in loud, harsh voices, and made to feelthat you are being tolerated aboard something that was never made for you at all, but for the employees of the company.
Drawn by W. J. Glackens“THE MAGNIFICENT WALL OF LOWER NEW YORK, SET LIKE A JEWEL IN A GREEN RING OF SEA-WATER”
Drawn by W. J. Glackens
“THE MAGNIFICENT WALL OF LOWER NEW YORK, SET LIKE A JEWEL IN A GREEN RING OF SEA-WATER”
But finally the train was started, and we were off. The track was not so wide as ours, if I am not mistaken, and the little freight-cars were positively ridiculous, mere wheelbarrows by comparison with the American type. As for the passenger-cars, when I came to examine them, they reminded me of some of our fine street-cars that run from, say, Schenectady to Gloversville. They were the first-class cars, too—the English Pullmans. The train started out briskly and you could feel that it did not have the powerful weight to it which the American train has. An American Pullman creaks significantly, just as a great ship does when it begins to move. An American engine begins to pull slowly because it has something to pull—like a team with a heavy load. I didn’t feel that I was in a train half so much as I did that I was in a string of baby-carriages.
As I think of it now, I can never be sufficiently grateful to G. for a certain affectionate, thoughtful, sympathetic regard for my every possible mood on this occasion. This was my first trip to this England of which of course he was intensely proud. He was so humanly anxious that I should not miss any of its charms or, if need be, defects. He wanted me to be able to judge it fairly and humanly and to see, as he phrased it, “the eventual result sieved through your temperament.” The soul of attention, the soul of courtesy, patient, long-suffering, humane, gentle, how I have tried the patience of that man at times! An iron mood he has on occasion; a stoic one always. Gentle, even, smiling, living a rule and a standard, every thought of him produces a grateful smile.
It was three-thirty when the train began to move, and from the lovely, misty sunshine of the morning the sky had become overcast with low, gray, almost black, rain-clouds. I looked at the hills and valleys. They told me we were in Wales. Curiously, as we sped along, first came Wordsworth into my mind, and then Thomas Hardy. I thought ofWordsworth first because these smooth, kempt hills, wet with the rain and static with deep, gray shadows, suggested him. England owes much to William Wordsworth, I think. So far as I can see, he epitomized in his verses this sweet, simple hominess that tugs at the heart-strings like some old call that one has heard before. My father was a German, my mother of Pennsylvania Dutch extraction, and yet there is a pull here in this Shaksperian-Wordsworthian-Hardyesque world which is precisely like the call of a tender mother to a child. I can’t resist it. I love it. I love it so much that it even hurts me; and I am not English, but radically American.
Drawn by W. J. Glackens“I SAW K. CONVERSING WITH MISS B.”
Drawn by W. J. Glackens
“I SAW K. CONVERSING WITH MISS B.”
I understand that Hardy is not so well thought of in England as he might be; that, somehow, some large conservative class thinks that his books are immoral or destructive. I should say the English would better make much of Thomas Hardy while he is alive. He is one of its great traditions. His works are beautiful. The spirit of all the things he has done or attempted is lovely. He is a master mind, simple, noble, dignified, serene. He is as fine as any of the English cathedrals. St. Paul’s or Canterbury has no more significance to me than Thomas Hardy. I shall see St. Paul’s. I wish I could see the spirit of Thomas Hardy indicated in some such definite way. And yet I do not. Monuments do not indicate great men, but the fields and valleys of a country suggest them.
At twenty or thirty miles from Fishguard we came to the Bay of Bristol. Then came more open country, and then the lovely, alternating hues of this rain-washed world. The water under these dark clouds took on a peculiar luster. It looked at times like burnished steel, at times like muddy lead. I thought of our own George Inness and what he would have done with these scenes and what the English Turner has done, though he preferred, as a rule, another key.
At four-thirty one of the charming English trainmen came and asked if we would have tea in the dining-car. We would. We arose and in a few moments were entering one of those dainty little basket cars. The tables were covered with white linen and simple, pretty china and a silver tea-service. It wasn’t as though you were traveling at all. I felt as though I were stopping at the house of a friend, or as though I were in the cozy corner of some well-known and friendly inn. Tea was served. We ate toast and talked cheerfully. G. was most anxious that I should not miss any of the significance of the landscape, and insisted that I keep my nose to the window.
Having started so late, it grew nearly dark after tea, and the distant landscapeswere not so easy to descry. We came presently, in the mist, to a place called Carmarthen, I think, where were great black stacks and flaming forges and lights burning wistfully in the dark; and then to another similar place, Swansea; and finally to a third, Cardiff, great centers of manufacture, for there were flaming lights from forges; great, golden gleams from open furnaces; and dark blue smoke, visible even at this hour, from tall stacks overhead; and gleaming electric lights, like bright, lucent diamonds.
Drawn by W. J. Glackens“ONE OF THOSE REALLY INTERESTING CONVERSATIONS BETWEEN G. AND MISS X.”
Drawn by W. J. Glackens
“ONE OF THOSE REALLY INTERESTING CONVERSATIONS BETWEEN G. AND MISS X.”
It has always seemed a great, sad, heroic thing,—plain day labor. Those common, ignorant men, working before flaming forges, stripped to the waist in some instances, fascinated my imagination. I have always marveled at the inequalities of nature—the way it will give one man a low brow and a narrow mind, a narrow round of thought, and make a slave or horse of him, and another a light, nimble mind, a quick wit, and air, and make a gentleman of him. No human being can solve either the question of ability or utility. Is your gentleman useful? Yes and no, perhaps. Is your laborer useful? Yes and no, perhaps. I should say obviously yes. But see the differences in the reward of labor, physical labor. One eats his hard-earned crust in the sweat of his face; the other picks at his surfeit of courses, and wonders why this or that doesn’t taste better. I did not make my mind. I did not make my art. I cannot choose my taste except by predestined instinct, and yet here I am sitting in a comfortable English home as I write, commiserating the poor working-man. I indict nature here and now, as I always do and always shall do, as being aimless, pointless, unfair, unjust. I see in the whole thing no scheme but an accidental one, no justice save accidental justice. Now and then, in a way, some justice is done, but it is accidental; no individual man seems to will it. He can’t. He doesn’t know how. He can’t think how. And there’s an end of it.