O'Rell Max
A Frenchman in America: Recollections of Men and Things
CHAPTER XXI
Toronto – The City – The Ladies – The Sports – Strange Contrasts – The Canadian Schools
Toronto, February 9.
Have passed three very pleasant days in this city, and had two beautiful audiences in the Pavilion.
Toronto is a thoroughly American city in appearance, but only in appearance, for I find the inhabitants British in heart, in tastes, and habits. When I say that it is an American city, I mean to say that Toronto is a large area, covered with blocks of parallelograms and dirty streets, overspread with tangles of telegraph and telephone wires. The hotels are perfectly American in every respect.
The suburbs are exceedingly pretty. Here once more are fine villas standing in large gardens, a sight rarely seen near an American city. It reminds me of England. I admire many buildings, the University2 especially.
English-looking, too, are the rosy faces of the Toronto ladies whom I passed in my drive. How charming they are with the peach-like bloom that their outdoor exercise gives them!
I should like to be able to describe, as it deserves, the sight of these Canadian women in their sleighs, as the horses fly along with bells merrily jingling, the coachman in his curly black dogskin and huge busby on his head. Furs float over the back of the sleigh, and, in it, muffled up to the chin in sumptuous skins and also capped in furs, sits the radiant, lovely Canadienne, the milk and roses of her complexion enhanced by the proximity of the dark furs. As they skim past over the white snow, under a glorious sunlit blue sky, I can call to mind no prettier sight, no more beautiful picture, to be seen on this huge continent, so far as I have got yet.
One cannot help being struck, on coming here from the United States, at the number of lady pedestrians in the streets. They are not merely shopping, I am assured, nor going straight from one point to another of the town, but taking their constitutional walks in true English fashion. My impresario took me in the afternoon to a club for ladies and gentlemen, and there I had the, to me, novel sight of a game of hockey. On a large frozen pond there was a party of young people engaged in this graceful and invigorating game, and not far off was a group of little girls and boys imitating their elders very sensibly and, as it seemed to me, successfully. The clear, healthy complexion of the Canadian women is easy to account for, when one sees how deep-rooted, even after transplantation, is the good British love of exercise in the open air.
Last evening I was taken to a ball, and was able to see more of the Canadian ladies than is possible in furs, and on further acquaintance I found them as delightful in manners as in appearance; English in their coloring and in their simplicity of dress, American in their natural bearing and in their frankness of speech.
…
Churches, churches, everywhere. In my drive this afternoon, I counted twenty-eight in a quarter of an hour. They are of all denominations, Catholic, Anglican, Presbyterian, Baptist, Methodist, etc., etc. The Canadians must be still more religious – I mean still more church-going – than the English.
From seven in the evening on Saturday, all the taverns are closed, and remain closed throughout Sunday. In England the Bible has to compete with the gin bottle, but here the Bible has all its own way on Sundays. Neither tram-car, omnibus, cab, nor hired carriage of any description is to be seen abroad. Scotland itself is outdone completely; the land of John Knox has to take a back seat.
The walls of this city of churches and chapels are at the present moment covered with huge coarse posters announcing in loud colors the arrival of a company of performing women. Of these posters, one represents Cleopatra in a bark drawn through the water by nude female slaves. Another shows a cavalcade of women dressed in little more than a fig-leaf. Yet another represents the booking-office of the theater stormed by a crowd of blasé-looking, single eye-glassed old beaux, grinning with pleasure in anticipation of the show within. Another poster displays the charms of the proprietress of the undertaking. You must not, however, imagine any harm of the performers whose attractions are so liberally placarded. They are taken to their cars in the depot immediately after the performance and locked up; there is an announcement to that effect. These placards are merely eye-ticklers. But this mixture of churches, strict sabbatarianism, and posters of this kind, is part of the eternal history of the Anglo-Saxon race – violent contrast.
…
A school inspector has kindly shown me several schools in the town.
The children of rich and poor alike are educated together in the public schools, from which they get promoted to the high schools. All these schools are free. Boys and girls sit on the same benches and receive the same education, as in the United States. This enables the women in the New World to compete with men for all the posts that we Europeans consider the monopoly of man; it also enables them to enjoy all the intellectual pleasures of life. If it does not prevent them, as it has yet to be proved that it does, from being good wives and mothers, the educational system of the New World is much superior to the European one. It is essentially democratic. Europe will have to adopt it.
Society in the Old World will not stand long on its present basis. There will always be rich and poor, but every child that is born will require to be given a chance, and, according as he avails himself of it or not, will be successful or a failure. But give him a chance, and the greatest and most real grievance of mankind in the present day will be removed.
Every child that is born in America, whether in the United States or in Canada, has that chance.
CHAPTER XXII
West Canada – Relations between British and Indians – Return to the United States – Difficulties in the Way – Encounter with an American Custom-House Officer
In the train from Canada to Chicago, February 15.
Lectured in Bowmanville, Ont., on the 12th, in Brantford on the 13th, and in Sarnia on the 14th, and am now on my way to Chicago, to go from there to Wisconsin and Minnesota.
From Brantford I drove to the Indian Reservation, a few miles from the town. This visit explained to me why the English are so successful with their colonies: they have inborn in them the instinct of diplomacy and government.
Whereas the Americans often swindle, starve, and shoot the Indians, the English keep them in comfort. England makes paupers and lazy drunkards of them, and they quietly and gradually disappear. She supplies them with bread, food, Bibles, and fire-water, and they become so lazy that they will not even take the trouble to sow the land of their reservations. Having a dinner supplied to them, they give up hunting, riding, and all their native sports, and become enervated. They go to school and die of attacks of civilization. England gives them money to celebrate their national fêtes and rejoicings, and the good Indians shout at the top of their voices, God save the Queen! that is —God save our pensions!
England, or Great Britain, or again, if you prefer, Greater Britain, goes further than that. In Brantford, in the middle of a large square, you can see the statue of the Indian chief Brant, erected to his memory by public subscriptions collected among the British Canadians.
Here lies the secret of John Bull’s success as a colonizer. To erect a statue to an Indian chief is a stroke of genius.
…
What has struck me as most American in Canada is, perhaps, journalism.
Montreal, Toronto, Ottawa, Quebec possess excellent newspapers, and every little town can boast one or two journals.
The tone of these papers is thoroughly American in its liveliness – I had almost said, in its loudness. All are readable and most cleverly edited. Each paragraph is preceded by a neat and attractive heading. As in the American papers, the editorials, or leading articles, are of secondary importance. The main portion of the publication is devoted to news, interviews, stories, gossip, jokes, anecdotes, etc.
The Montreal papers are read by everybody in the Province of Quebec, and the Toronto papers in the Province of Ontario, so that the newspapers published in small towns are content with giving all the news of the locality. Each of these has a “society” column. Nothing is more amusing than to read of the society doings in these little towns. “Miss Brown is visiting Miss Smith.” “Miss Smith had tea with Miss Robinson yesterday.” When Miss Brown, or Miss Smith, or Miss Robinson has given a party, the names of all the guests are inserted as well as what they had for dinner, or for supper, as the case may be. So I take it for granted that when anybody gives a party, a ball, a dinner, a reporter receives an invitation to describe the party in the next issue of the paper.
…
At nine o’clock this evening, I left Sarnia, on the frontier of Canada, to cross the river and pass into the United States. The train left the town, and, on arriving on the bank of the River St. Clair, was divided into two sections which were run on board the ferry-boat and made the crossing side by side. The passage across the river occupied about twenty minutes. On arriving at the other bank, at Port Huron, in the State of Michigan, the train left the boat in the same fashion as it had gone on board, the two parts were coupled together, and the journey on terra firma was smoothly resumed.
There is something fascinating about crossing a river at night, and I had promised myself some agreeable moments on board the ferry-boat, from which I should be able to see Port Huron lit up with twinkling lights. I was also curious to watch the train boarding the boat. But, alas, I had reckoned without my host. Instead of star-gazing and rêverie, there was in store for me a “bad quarter of an hour.”
No sooner had the train boarded the ferry-boat than there came to the door of the parlor car a surly-looking, ill-mannered creature, who roughly bade me come to the baggage van, in the other section of the train, and open my trunks for him to inspect.
As soon as I had complied, he went down on his knees among my baggage, and it was plain to see that he meant business.
The first thing he took out was a suit of clothes, which he threw on the dirty floor of the van.
“Have these been worn?” he said.
“They have,” I replied.
Then he took out a blue jacket which I used to cross the Atlantic.
“Have you worn this?”
“Yes, for the last two years.”
“Is that all?” he said, with a low sardonic grin.
My trunk was the only one he had to examine, as I was the only passenger in the parlor car; and I saw that he meant to annoy me, which, I imagined, he could do with perfect impunity.
The best thing, in fact, the only thing to do was to take the misadventure good-humoredly.
He took out my linen and examined it in detail.
“Have these shirts all been worn?”
“Well, I guess they have. But how is it that you, an official of the government, seem to ignore the law of your own country? Don’t you know that if all these articles are for my own private use, they are not dutiable, whether new or not?”
The man did not answer.
He took out more linen, which he put on the floor, and spreading open a pair of unmentionables, he asked again:
“Have you worn this? It looks quite new.”
I nodded affirmatively.
He then took out a pair of socks.
“Have you worn these?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Have a sniff at them.”
He continued his examination, and was about to throw my evening suit on the floor. I had up to now been almost amused at the proceedings, but I felt my good-humor was going, and the lion began to wag its tail. I took the man by the arm, and looking at him sternly, I said:
“Now, you put this carefully on the top of some other clothes.”
He looked at me and complied.
By this time all the contents of my large trunk were spread on the floor.
He got up on his feet and said:
“Have I looked everywhere?”
“No,” I said, “you haven’t. Do you know how the famous Regent diamond, worn by the last kings of France on their crowns, was smuggled into French territory?”
The creature looked at me with an air of impudence.
“No, I don’t,” he replied.
I explained to him, and added:
“You have not looked there.”
The lion, that lies dormant at the bottom of the quietest man, was fairly roused in me, and on the least provocation, I would have given this man a first-class hiding.
He went away, wondering whether I had insulted him or not, and left me in the van to repack my trunk as best I could, an operation which, I understand, it was his duty to perform himself.
CHAPTER XXIII
Chicago (First Visit) – The “Neighborhood” of Chicago – The History of Chicago – Public Servants – A Very Deaf Man
Chicago, February 17.
Oh! a lecturing tour in America!
I am here on my way to St. Paul and Minneapolis.
Just before leaving New York, I saw in a comic paper that Bismarck must really now be considered as a great man, because, since his departure from office, there had been no rumor of his having applied to Major Pond to get up a lecturing tour for him in the United States.
It was not news to me that there are plenty of people in America who laugh at the European author’s trick of going to the American platform as soon as he has made a little name for himself in his own country. The laugh finds an echo in England, especially from some journalists who have never been asked to go, and from a few men who, having done one tour, think it wise not to repeat the experience. For my part, when I consider that Emerson, Holmes, Mark Twain, have been lecturers, that Dickens, Thackeray, Matthew Arnold, Sala, Stanley, Archdeacon Farrar, and many more, all have made their bow to American audiences, I fail to discover anything very derogatory in the proceeding.
Besides, I feel bound to say that there is nothing in a lecturing tour in America, even in a highly successful one, that can excite the envy of the most jealous “failure” in the world. Such work is about the hardest that a man, used to the comforts of this life, can undertake. Actors, at all events, stop a week, sometimes a fortnight, in the cities they visit; but a lecturer is on the road every day, happy when he has not to start at night.
No words can picture the monotony of journeys through an immense continent, the sameness of which strikes you as almost unbearable. Everything is made on one pattern. All the towns are alike. To be in a railroad car for ten or twelve hours day after day can hardly be called luxury, or even comfort. To have one’s poor brain matter thus shaken in the cranium is terrible, especially when the cranium is not quite full. Constant traveling softens the brain, liquefies it, churns it, evaporates it, and it runs out of you through all the cracks of your head. I own that traveling is comfortable in America, even luxurious; but the best fare becomes monotonous and unpalatable when the dose is repeated every day.
To-morrow night I lecture in Minneapolis. The next night I am in Detroit. Distance about seven hundred miles.
“Can I manage it?” said I to my impresario, when he showed me my route.
“Why, certn’ly,” he replied; “if you catch a train after your lecture, I guess you will arrive in time for your lecture in Detroit the next day.”
These remarks, in America, are made without a smile.
On arriving at Chicago this morning, I found awaiting me at the Grand Pacific Hotel, a letter from my impresario. Here is the purport of it:
I know you have with you a trunk and a small portmanteau. I would advise you to leave your trunk at the Grand Pacific, and to take with you only the portmanteau, while you are in the neighborhood of Chicago. You will thus save trouble, expense, etc.
On looking at my route, I found that the “neighborhood of Chicago” included St. Paul, Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Detroit, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Indianapolis: something like a little two-thousand-mile tour “in the neighborhood of Chicago,” to be done in about one week.
When I confided my troubles to my American friends, I got little sympathy from them.
“That’s quite right,” they would say; “we call the neighborhood of a city any place which, by starting after dinner, you can reach at about breakfast time the next day. You dine, you go on board the car, you have a smoke, you go to bed, you sleep, you wake up, you dress – and there you are. Do you see?”
After all you may be of this opinion, if you do not reckon sleeping time. But I do reckon it, when I have to spend the night in a closed box, six feet long, and three feet wide, and about two feet high, and especially when the operation has to be repeated three or four times a week.
…
And the long weary days that are not spent in traveling, how can they be passed, even tolerably, in an American city, where the lonely lecturer knows nobody, and where there is absolutely nothing to be seen beyond the hotels and the dry-goods stores? Worse still: he sometimes has the good luck to make the acquaintance of some charming people: but he has hardly had time to fix their features in his memory, when he has to go, probably never to see them again.
The lecturer speaks for an hour and a half on the platform every evening, the rest of his time is exclusively devoted to keeping silence. Poor fellow! how grateful he is to the hotel clerk who sometimes – alas, very seldom – will chat with him for a few minutes. As a rule the hotel clerk is a mute, who assigns a room to you, or hands you the letters waiting for you in the box corresponding to your number. His mouth is closed. He may have seen you for half a minute only; he will remember you. Even in a hotel accommodating over a thousand guests, he will know you, he will know the number of your room, but he won’t speak. He is not the only American that won’t speak. Every man in America who is attending to some duty of other, has his mouth closed. I have tried the railroad conductor, and found him mute. I have had a shot at the porter in the Pullman car, and found him mute. I have endeavored to draw out the janitors of the halls where I was to speak in the evening, and I have failed. Even the negroes won’t speak. You would imagine that speaking was prohibited by the statute-book. When my lecture was over, I returned to the hotel, and like a culprit crept to bed.
How I do love New York! It is not that it possesses a single building that I really care for; it is because it contains scores and scores of delightful people, brilliant, affable, hospitable, warm-hearted friends, who were kind enough to welcome me when I returned from a tour, and in whose company I could break up the cobwebs that had had time to form in the corners of my mouth.
…
The history of Chicago can be written in a few lines. So can the history of the whole of America.
In about 1830 a man called Benjamin Harris, with his family, moved to Chicago, or Fort Dearborn, as it was then called. Not more than half a dozen whites, all of whom were Indian traders, had preceded them. In 1832 they had a child, the first white female born in Chicago – now married, called Mrs. S. A. Holmes, and the mother of fourteen children. In 1871 Chicago had over 100,000 inhabitants, and was burned to the ground. To-day Chicago has over 1,200,000 inhabitants, and in ten years’ time will have two millions.
The activity in Chicago is perfectly amazing. And I don’t mean commercial activity only. Compare the following statistics: In the great reading rooms of the British Museum, there was an average of 620 readers daily during the year 1888. In the reading-room of the Chicago Public Library, there was an average of 1569 each day in the same year. Considering that the population of London is nearly five times that of Chicago, it shows that the reading public is ten times more numerous in Chicago than in London.
…
It is a never failing source of amusement to watch the ways of public servants in this country.
I went to pay a visit to a public museum this afternoon.
In Europe, the keepers, that is to say, the servants of the public, have cautions posted in the museums, in which “the public are requested not to touch.” In France, they are “begged,” which is perhaps a more suitable expression, as the museums, after all, belong to the public.
In America, the notice is “Hands off!” This is short and to the point. The servants of the public allow you to enter the museums, charge you twenty-five cents, and warn you to behave well. “Hands off” struck me as rather off-handed.
I really admire the independence of all the servants in this country. You may give them a tip, you will not run the risk of making them servile or even polite.
The railway conductor says “ticket!” The word please does not belong to his vocabulary any more than the words “thank you.” He says “ticket” and frowns. You show it to him. He looks at it suspiciously, and gives it back to you with a haughty air that seems to say: “I hope you will behave properly while you are in my car.”
The tip in America is not de rigueur as in Europe. The cabman charges you so much, and expects nothing more. He would lose his dignity by accepting a tip (many run the risk). He will often ask you for more than you owe him; but this is the act of a sharp man of business, not the act of a servant. In doing so, he does not derogate from his character.
The negro is the only servant who smiles in America, the only one who is sometimes polite and attentive, and the only one who speaks English with a pleasant accent.
The negro porter in the sleeping cars has seldom failed to thank me for the twenty-five or fifty cent piece I always give him after he has brushed – or rather, swept – my clothes with his little broom.
…
A few minutes ago, as I was packing my valise for a journey to St. Paul and Minneapolis to-night, the porter brought in a card. The name was unknown to me; but the porter having said that it was the card of a gentleman who was most anxious to speak to me, I said, “Very well, bring him here.”
The gentleman entered the room, saluted me, shook hands, and said:
“I hope I am not intruding.”
“Well,” said I, “I must ask you not to detain me long, because I am off in a few minutes.”
“I understand, sir, that some time ago you were engaged in teaching the French language in one of the great public schools of England.”
“I was, sir,” I replied.
“Well, I have a son whom I wish to speak French properly, and I have come to ask for your views on the subject. In other words, will you be good enough to tell me what are the best methods for teaching this language? Only excuse me, I am very deaf.”
He pulled out of his back pocket two yards of gutta-percha tube, and, applying one end to his ear and placing the other against my mouth, he said, “Go ahead.”
“Really?” I shouted through the tube. “Now please shut your eyes; nothing is better for increasing the power of hearing.”
The man shut his eyes and turned his head sideways, so as to have the listening ear in front of me. I took my valise and ran to the elevator as fast as I could.
That man may still be waiting for aught I know and care.
…
Before leaving the hotel, I made the acquaintance of Mr. George Kennan, the Russian traveler. His articles on Russia and Siberia, published in the Century Magazine, attracted a great deal of public attention, and people everywhere throng to hear him relate his terrible experiences on the platform. He has two hundred lectures to give this season. He struck me as a most remarkable man – simple, unaffected in his manner, with unflinching resolution written on his face; a man in earnest, you can see. I am delighted to find that I shall have the pleasure of meeting him again in New York in the middle of April. He looks tired. He, too, is lecturing in the “neighborhood of Chicago,” and is off now to the night train for Cincinnati.
