My Impressions of America

XVI: CRITICISM AND FAREWELL

XVI.

CRITICISM AND FAREWELL

DOLL SALESMAN TALKS ON PROHIBITION – PERILS OF COMMERCIALISM AND MATERIALISM IN AMERICA – PLEA FOR LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP

ON April 3 – the day before I sailed for England – I went out early to buy toys to entertain my grand-baby on our voyage in the Mauretania; and had an interesting talk with one of the many civil salesmen that I have met all over the United States in their beautiful shops. He said he regretted that he would not be able to attend my last lecture although he had been to the other three in New York, because he feared the daughter of a friend of his was dying. She was a little girl living in a suburb who had fainted some weeks before. Her mother had given her the only stimulant they had in the house; since when she had suffered from blood-poisoning and was lying in a critical condition.

"I do hope, madam, you will deal to-night with the abominable law of Prohibition. It has encouraged this country to manufacture liquors of the most dangerous kind," he said.

I told him I heard the same complaint wherever I had been and, while sympathising deeply with him, feared I could do no more, as I had dealt freely and at length with the subject.

I was advertised by the following card to make my last speech.

I put on my best dress and, armed with a bouquet of rare orchids given to me by my chairman, made my final public appearance in this country.

As Mr. Nelson Cromwell, who introduced me, is a fluent orator and had a great deal to say while paying a fine tribute to my husband – and knowing that I was to hold a reception afterwards – I cut my lecture as short as I could.

Among other subjects, I dealt with the exaggerated belief over here in commercial success; and the dangerous self-interest and lack of leisure which was encouraging not only this but every nation to materialism.

I had read in the morning papers a typical example of what I meant.

"First have what people want.

"Then let them know it.

"Thorough advertising is the Secret of Success.

"The old way was to let the people find it out gradually and slowly, in time for your grandson to get rich. The modern way is to have it to-day, and make everybody know it to-morrow, or, if possible, this afternoon."

I told them what I had observed at the Niagara Falls, and spoke of the many hideous bill boards and advertisements that desecrated the scenery wherever I had been, and pausing over the one among others that had really interested me, "A Good Name", was interrupted by my chairman who exclaimed in a clear voice:

"Asquith!"

This met with immense success.

I ended by saying that few countries really cared for one another. It was not rivalry or jealousy that produced this indifference, but a certain blindness of heart. That we were part of the same family, if we would only realise it, and had had a terrible object lesson in imagining that any of us, however much we prepared or tried, could succeed in crushing the other. We had seen enough hate, and enough death; and that I passionately hoped the English-speaking nations all the world over would try a new departure, and do what they could to promote friendship and love.

The next day we sailed for England in the Mauretania.

If I were to finish without criticism, it might be said that these pages should not have been called "Impressions," but "Experiences"; and against this I have not only been warned, but adjured.

Nevertheless it is difficult, without appearing unfriendly, to write with candour upon matters that have moved me in my American tour.

It must be said that the architecture, regulations of street-traffic, arrangement of flower-shops, plumbing, and telephone service are infinitely superior to our own, but these are not criticisms, they are facts, the truth of which is not disputed.

I realise that there is not a nation in the world that extends such a generous welcome to the many strangers that go there as the United States. But admiration for my husband, and the publication of the first volume of my autobiography – which aroused both favourable and unfavourable comment – prevented me at the outset from being a complete stranger. Indeed many of the people who attended my lectures seemed to know all about me; and I was surprised when crowding on to the stage they sometimes exclaimed:

"But you are so different to what we expected you would be! And you haven't told us what you think of us."

I begged them to be frank, and tell me without fear of offence what they had imagined I would be like; but they could only repeat:

"I don't know! But somehow we thought you would be the very opposite of what you are."

When I tried a little clumsy chaff by saying: "I am sorry to have disappointed you!" it was always met with a protest; and on one occasion I heard a man say to the woman who was with him:

"There you are! I told you all along; but you wouldn't read the book!" at which the woman grasped me by the hand and said:

"You are writing another volume of your life aren't you, Mrs. Asquith, in which you will tell us everything you think about us."

I explained that I was writing an article on my Impressions of America for immediate publication and the second and final volume of my life which would come out in winter.

Flattering cuttings were sent to me from papers, as: "The Margot myth." And others, which said it was abundantly clear that I was in a chastened humour and, by guarding myself from my critics, was exercising a caution that deprived me of all spontaneity; or words to this effect.

These remarks are of little interest, but they tend to show how much some people and nations depend on the approbation of others and are the reason why I am going to finish with a short summing-up.

XVII: THINKING IT OVER IN ENGLAND

XVII.

THINKING IT OVER IN ENGLAND

AMERICANS FRIENDLY BUT VAIN – THE LAND OF THE REFORMER – INTEREST IN EUROPE'S ARISTOCRACY – NEWSPAPERS PANDER TO VULGAR CURIOSITY – PLEA FOR ANGLO-AMERICAN FRIENDSHIP

IT is probably wiser in writing impressions to keep the conclusions you arrive at secret; and many may ask – and with justice – :

"What can a woman know who arrived on the 30th of January, and left on the 4th of April, of America or her people?" In answer to this I can only say that in those nine weeks I saw and talked to more varied types of persons than I could have done had I remained in either New York, Chicago or Washington for as many months. I met and conversed with senators and niggers, farmers and reporters, judges and preachers, hotel proprietors, mayors, solicitors, soldiers, shopmen, doctors, men of science and commerce, and a few of the rarer class of both the fashionable and the leisured. During this experience there are certain things I observed that I shall take the risk of writing down.

The Americans, while the most friendly people in the world, are too much concerned about each other; and, though not personally, they are nationally vain. They would rather hear themselves abused than undiscussed; which inclines one to imagine that they are suffering from the uneasiness of the nouveaux riches.

What do you think of us? or, how do you compare our men and women and their clothes and customs with your own? was the substance of every question that was put to me.

There are things of surpassing interest in this country, but have any of us heard an English man or woman ask a foreigner what he thought of us? Or, if they were silly enough to do so, who would be interested in the reply?

Some will say that this comes from pride, or insularity; but they would be wrong. We are not obsessed by the desire to interfere with our neighbour that is noticeable all over America.

In spite of true generosity and kindliness, I was aware of an undercurrent of illiberalism and violence which amazed me.

In every city that I have visited there are clubs, both male and female, to forbid or promote some harmless triviality and until these are ridiculed they will prevent the United States from ever becoming what we should call a free country.

Because there is little gallantry and no reserve, people do not necessarily become of one class. We cannot regulate equality, since we are born with different brains, natures, and environment, and so far from being equal, there is such a rigid regard for precedence in America that you are even congratulated after a dinner party because you have been seated "one off Mrs. – ".

While more than severe on anyone who accepts a title, there was no detail too insignificant about our Court or aristocracy that did not excite an almost emotional interest in my audiences. Every day of my tour I received letters begging me to tell them more about the life and habits of our upper classes or anything that I could "about Princess Mary's underwear."

If these letters had been merely the cackle of the feminine goose who likes writing to an advertised person, I would have torn them up, but they were sometimes signed by men, and often expressed the opinions of important local editors.

One night after I was in bed, having had a long talk with an intellectual reporter upon the dearth of great literature in his country, he rang me up to say his paper was annoyed that he had not brought back an accurate description of my hat and dress.

He apologised profusely, but said that that was what the public really cared for: that none of our discussion upon Lincoln, Edgar Allan Poe or William James's fine style, or anything else of interest would be printed in the morning paper. But what I had said to one of the lady reporters, when we were left to ourselves, about Princess Mary's marriage being one of love, would probably be enlarged by headlines into a paragraph. I said I forgave him for waking me up, but was quite unaware that I had even mentioned our royal family.

The next day I read that I had said I was:

"On smoking terms with Queen Mary."

You may say that certain journalism of a similar kind panders to the same curiosity in what is low and vulgar over here, but it is more harmful in the States because the press has more power.

So far from guiding public opinion, the papers in America stimulate all that is worthless and credulous; and you may search in vain to find careful criticism either upon art, music or international affairs.

England has been called a nation of shop-keepers, but I think we spend as much time upon the moors and playing fields as Americans do in elevators and offices.

Perhaps we waste too much time on grass and games; but it has encouraged a certain aloofness and leisure, which produces a quiet mind.

Whether it is from the difficulties of the climate and the overheated rooms, the voices of even the nicest people appeared to me to be loud, and however generously you may have been entertained, you are left with a sense of suffocation, which it would be difficult to explain.

The excuse of being a young country will not continue to cover the rush and noise and lack of privacy that prevail; and the number of small children that I have seen in hotels, shops and restaurants that go to bed at midnight after sucking candy between enormous meals, is not promising for a nation which is always growing up.

The ingrained idea that, because there is no king and they despise titles, the Americans are a free people is pathetically untrue; and you have only to watch the working of the Prohibition law to see the dangers of repressive legislation. There is a perpetual interference with personal liberty over there that would not be tolerated in England for a week.

It is probably due to our passion for understatement and that we have inherited wise and tested regulations that the British are a law abiding race; but I think if the Americans were given a chance they would be the same. I can only say, if they are not, Democracy will prove as great a failure as Czardom.

It is enormously to the credit of the American public that they have never chosen a bad character in their presidents and have produced, in Abraham Lincoln, a man of genius, ability and courage who will live for ever in the hearts and minds of every country in the world. Nor must we forget that he dominated the people in spite of a campaign of calumny by the press only equalled by the one to which my husband was subjected in the latter days of the war.

Men at the head of affairs must be independent of public opinion if they wish to achieve anything and never try to conciliate a press that, in all fairness, it must be said, – with a few exceptions – does not attempt to guide, for more than a transitory moment, anyone to any goal.

The present Government in America from all I heard – some of its heads I had the honour to meet – seems to be an admirable one, and working smoothly in times of exceptional difficulty. President Harding has had the wisdom to get good men round him and is a man of open mind and wide views himself.

With some of the faults I have found during my tour I am told that "The American Credo"1 (given to me by my friend Mr. Anderson of the St. Louis Dispatch) deals with searching fidelity. I daresay when I read it I shall learn where I have been wrong; but in criticising as I have, I am merely fulfilling the promise I made to write my impressions which at best can be but superficial.

Among thoughtful people there is a great deal of pro-American propaganda going on in this country, and in conclusion I would like to say that there is so much that is fine and keen in the American race, so much that is disarming and lovable, that if I have written anything exaggerated or erroneous, I should feel of all people the most ungrateful.

I can only plead to be forgiven where I have erred, as I was not only shown unforgettable courtesy and friendship, but I feel it is vital to the peace of the world that our people and those of the United States should understand and care for one another.

1

By G. J. Nathan and H. L. Mencken.