A pleasing combination of Uncle
Joshua Whitcomb, Mike the Bite, Jefferson Brick and Coal-Oil Johnny,
with a suggestion of Jesse James interspersed here and there.
True, he spat not on the carpet loudly, and he refrained from
saying I vum! and Great Snakes! - quaint conceits that, I am told,
every English actor who respected his art formally employed when
wishful to type a stage American for an English audience; but he
bragged loudly and emphatically of his money and of how he got it
and of what he would do with it. I do not perceive why it is the
English, who themselves so dearly love the dollar after it is
translated into terms of pounds, shillings and pence, should insist
on regarding us as a nation of dollar-grabbers, when they only see
us in the act of freely dispensing the aforesaid dollar.
They do so regard us, though; and, with true British setness, I
suppose they always will. Even so I think that, though they may
dislike us as a nation, they like us as individuals; and it is
certainly true that they seem to value us more highly than they
value Colonials, as they call them - particularly Canadian Colonials.
It would appear that your true Briton can never excuse another
British subject for the shockingly poor taste he displayed in being
born away from home. And, though in time he may forgive us for
refusing to be licked by him, he can never forgive the Colonials
for saving him from being licked in South Africa.
When I started in to write this chapter, I meant to conclude it
with an apology for my audacity in undertaking - in any wise - to
sum up the local characteristics of a country where I had tarried
for so short a time, but I have changed my mind about that. I
have merely borrowed a page from the book of rules of the British
essayists and novelists who come over here to write us up. Why,
bless your soul, I gave nearly eight weeks of time to the task of
seeing Europe thoroughly, and, of those eight weeks, I spent upward
of three weeks in and about London - indeed, a most unreasonably
long time when measured by the standards of the Englishman of
letters who does a book about us.
He has his itinerary all mapped out in advance. He will squander
a whole week on us. We are scarcely worth it, but, such as we
are, we shall have a week of his company! Landing on Monday morning,
he will spend Monday in New York, Tuesday in San Francisco, and
Wednesday in New Orleans. Thursday he will divide between Boston
and Chicago, devoting the forenoon to one and the afternoon to the
other. Friday morning he will range through the Rocky Mountains,
and after luncheon, if he is not too fatigued, he will take a
carriage and pop in on Yosemite Valley for an hour or so.
But Saturday - all of it - will be given over to the Far Southland.
He is going 'way down South - to sunny South Dakota, in fact, to
see the genuine native American darkies, the real Yankee blackamoors.
Most interesting beings, the blackamoors! They live exclusively
on poultry - fowls, you know - and all their women folk are named
Honey Gal.
He will observe them in their hours of leisure, when, attired in
their national costume, consisting of white duck breeches, banjos,
and striped shirts with high collars, they gather beneath the rays
of the silvery Southern moon to sing their tribal melodies on the
melon-lined shores of the old Oswego; and by day he will study
them at their customary employment as they climb from limb to limb
of the cottonwood trees, picking cotton. On Sunday he will arrange
and revise his notes, and on Monday morning he will sail for home.
Such is the program of Solomon Grundy, Esquire, the distinguished
writing Englishman; but on his arrival he finds the country to be
somewhat larger than he expected - larger actually than the Midlands.
So he compromises by spending five days at a private hotel in New
York, run by a very worthy and deserving Englishwoman of the middle
classes, where one may get Yorkshire puddings every day; and two
days more at a wealthy tufthunter's million-dollar cottage at
Newport, studying the habits and idiosyncrasies of the common
people. And then he rushes back to England and hurriedly embalms
his impressions of us in a large volume, stating it to be his
deliberate opinion that, though we mean well enough, we won't do
- really. He necessarily has to hurry, because, you see, he has
a contract to write a novel or a play - or both a novel and a play
- with Lord Northcliffe as the central figure. In these days
practically all English novels and most English comedies play up
Lord Northcliffe as the central figure. Almost invariably the
young English writer chooses him for the axis about which his plot
shall revolve. English journalists who have been discharged from
one of Northcliffe's publications make him their villian, and
English journalists who hope to secure jobs on one of his publications
make him their hero. The literature of a land is in perilous case
when it depends on the personality of one man. One shudders to
think what the future of English fiction would be should anything
happen to his Lordship!
Business of shuddering!
Chapter XVIII
Guyed or Guided?
During our scientific explorations in the Eastern Hemisphere, we
met two guides who had served the late Samuel L. Clemens, one who
had served the late J. Pierpont Morgan, and one who had acted as
courier to ex-President Theodore Roosevelt.
