BOOKS.
M. PAUL BOURGET ON AMERICA.* No one who begins this charming book will lay it down with- out finishing it, or without a doubt whether he has gained from its perusal quite so much as during its perusal he thought he was gaining. M. Paul Bourget is interesting throughout, but he is also superficial The extraordinary quickness of his impressions, his occasional flashes of insight, and his perfect lucidity of style, a lucidity unmistakable even in a translation that is a little too American—we do not, for example, in English, write "back of this" for "behind this" —make his pictures most attractive ; but they are not always equally instructive. The author brings into prominence what he sees in America with his eyes or hears with his ears, and the result is that life in America is all hillocks and depths, the plains being invisible or forgotten. M. Paul Bourget dis- cerns in America three governing " notes " distinguishing ita civilisation from that of Europe, the first of which is hurry. The rush of American life, its nerve-destroying pace, the vehemence with which everything is done by the crowds which do every- thing, is painted throughout with a touch which we can only describe as masterly. Whatever the subject of description, the reader is never left unaware that the atmosphere is rari- fied, that nerve-force is always being expended, that every- body is, so to speak, on the gallop :— " Town and country succeed one another. The train passes at full speed over low bridges, spanning broad rivers which flow between forests—remains of forests, rather—violated, massacred forests, whose vigorous vegetation still bears witness to the primi- tive splendour of this country, before 'the pale-faced destroyer of forests' had set foot upon it. Rows upon rows of cottages; without gardens, without a single one of those little, open-air drawing-rooms in which the French citizen loves to saunter, pruning-shears and watering-pot in hand. But where shall Americans find the time to saunter, the time to watch the budding rose trees, to let themselves live ? Their rose trees are those vast, ever-multiplying factory chimneys. Their gardens are these houses, so rapidly built that a single generation sees them increase fivefold, tenfold, and more. In 1800, New Haven, through which we have just passed, had five thousand in- habitants ; to-day it has eighty thousand, and its commerce is- valued at more than a hundred and fifty million francs a year. A little way back it was Bridgeport, which last year put out a hundred millions worth of sewing-machines and carriages ; or Hartford, where insurance companies have an aggregate capital of seven hundred millions of francs. These figures become, as it were, concrete in view of this landscape, which they explain and- with which they blend, so many are the steamboats in the most insignificant ports, the electric railways in the city streets, the factories in the country towns, and the advertisements, advertise- ments, everywhere. I had taken out paper to make a general summary of the impressions of this first week. I cannot do it, so much is my attention absorbed by the medley of primitive scenery—so little removed from aboriginal wildness—and ex- aggerated industrialism."
That description must be accurate, and indeed it is confirmed by all visitors to America, but then there must also be spread over those broad plains and low valleys a vast quiet beneath which millions lead lives that are never hurried and never change much, in which, in truth, the grand defect is an endless. monotony. This quiet, M. Paul Bourget does not describe, does not realise, does not import into his picture, and therefore its effect is that of an untrue glare. The reader who knew nothing else of America than this book would imagine that the whole population were living at top-speed, that every- where there were crowds, and that no one was quiet and slow and undemonstrative,—which is a false conclusion. The very essence of village life in America is that millions of strangely reserved persons are doing to-day silently and slowly what with equal slowness and silence they did yesterday and wilt do to-morrow. The second note is that of excess, which M. Paul Bourget attributes to everything as the most visible quality, to the architecture, to the extent of businesses, above all, to the machinery of luxury,—furniture, pictures, decora- tions :—
• Outre-Mer : Impressions of America. By Foul Bourget Loudon T. Fisher Uuwin.
"A first impression emerges from the homes of Newport. It ought to be correct, so much does it accord with the rest of American life, even outside of villas like these. This is a new evidence of excess, abuse, absence of moderation. On the floors of halls which are too high there are too many precious Persian and Oriental rugs. There are too many tapestries, too many paintings on the walls of the drawing-rooms. The guest-chambers have too many bibelots, too much rare furniture, and on the lunch or dinner table there are too many flowers, too many plants, too much crystal, too much silver. At this moment I can see in the centre of one of these tables a vase of solid silver, large and deep as the pot of a huge plant, two small, however, for a bunch of grapes, a prodigal bunch with grapes as large as small cannon balls. I see again a screen made of an Italian painting of the school of the Carracci, cut into four parts. The canvas has not been much injured and the work was well done, but what a symbol of this perpetual extravagance of luxury and refinement ! This excess has its prototype in the rose so justly called the American beauty,' enormous bunches of which crown these tables. It has so long a stem, it is so intensely red, so wide open, and so strongly perfumed, that it does not seem like a natural flower. It requires the greenhouse, the exposition, a public display. Splendid as it is, it makes one long for the frail wild eglantine with its rosy petals which a breath of wind will crumple. For the eglantine is a bit of nature, and also of aristocracy, at least in the sense in which we Europeans understand the word, for with us it is in- separable from an idea of soft colouring and absence of pretension. It is certain that this excess reveals in this people an energy much more like that of the Renascence, for example, under divers forms, than that meagreness if individuality which we moderns disguise under the name of distinction."
All this, however, is the mark of a class, a class which, as he says, has conquered civilisation too rapidly, and not of the average American, whose tendency is to live beneath his means, to decry all sumptuosity as vain, and even to delight in a form of humour of which the very essence is minimising, the paring away of all excess. M. Paul Bourget tells us nothing of all that, any more than he tells us that his third note, the prominence or dominance of young girls in the cities of the Union, is counterbalanced by the wonderful quiescence of millions of overworked women in the villages,
where, in thousands upon thousands of homesteads, the "old man," or family father, wields an authority as perfect as if he were an Arab or a Chinese. The whole of life in America is not described by M. Bourget, but only certain incidents of it, which are, in the great cities, doubtless very promi- nent. Like all Frenchmen, he generalises too rapidly from what he sees. He expects, for instance, a struggle of races, or even a war of races, because in the cities the immi- grants from Southern and Central Europe are not yet fully assimilated, and are more or less hostile to the social institutions under which they live, and forgets that of all the immigrants the immense majority are Germans, who either glide into the population, or ally themselves with the American and not the foreign sections. And he actually ventures, because he had seen much habit of hotel-life among the rich, upon this astounding generalisation, "Home-life is less known in the United States than in any other country." Thus too, while he gives enormous and unreal prominence to the artisan, the freeholder, who in the long-run dominates America, and who has repeatedly compelled the cities to order, is left un- described.
Nevertheless, in spite of this grave drawback, the book is a fascinating one. Whatever M. Paul Bourget sees with his own eyes, he has the gift of making you see whether the thing seen be pleasant or disagreeable. Witness, for instance, the matchless realism of his description of the gigantic abattoirs of Chicago, a horrid chapter reeking with blood and cruelty, yet containing the only description of the wonderful "pack- ing trade" of America that an outsider can understand. Or talus this sketch of Fifth Avenue :— " It is but too evident that money cannot have much value here. There is too much of it. The interminable succession of luxurious mansions which line Fifth Avenue proclaim its mad abundance. No shops—unless of articles of luxury—a few dressmakers, a few picture-dealers—the last froth of the spent wave of that tide of buainess which drowns the rest of the city—only independent dwellings, each one of which, including the ground on which it stands, implies a revenue which one dares not calculate. Here and there are vast constructions which reproduce the palaces and chateaux of Europe. I recognise one French country-seat of the sixteenth century ; another, a red and white house, is in the style of the time of Louis XIII. The absence of unity in this archi- tecture is a sufficient reminder that this is the country of the individual will, as the absence of gardens and trees around these sumptuous residences proves the newness of all this wealth and of the city. This avenue has visibly been willed and created by sheer force of millions, in a fever of land speculation, which has not left an inch of ground unoccupied. This rapidity is again
shown in the almost total absence of lifelike figures in the sculptures with which the windows and colonnades of these impromptu palaces are decorated. An artist needs time to observe and patiently follow the forms of life; and if the whole United States had not found means to get along without him, where would they have been ? They have made up for it by feats of energy. That is something to triumph over in the industrial world. The world of art requires less self-consciousness,—an impulse of life which forgets itself, the alternations of dreamy idleness with fervid execution. Years must pass before these conditions are possible on the banks of the Hudson."
Or read the account of West Point, the centre of the military strength of the Union, with its wonderfully rigid discipline and hard work, and its peculiar method of recruiting its ranks,—a method of which, as it will be absolutely new to most English readers, we will extract the description :—
"They began by absolutely suppressing all competition for entrance. Each electoral district which nominates a Congress- man has a right to name a candidate for a cadetship, and to that Congressman belongs the right of designating the candidate, whom the War Secretary nominates on that presentation. Ten places • at large' are added, which the President of the United States fills at his will. He reserves them, as a rule, for the sons of soldiers or sailors. On this list of candidates an entrance examination, or rather one of qualification, exercises a kind of weeding out. Is it necessary to add that politics almost wholly determines the choice of Congressmen ? Vainly do they try to escape therefrom, as, for example, by offering for competition the place of a candidate which they have at their disposal. In fact, one-third of those places remain unoccupied, in consequence of the deficiencies of the youths whom the Congressmen present. The person from whom I gather these details and those which follow, one of the most remarkable officers of our Army, was astonished on visiting West Point at such an anomaly, evidently so harmful to the service. 'There are in it two advantages,' was the reply made to him. In the first place, this recruiting answers to the spirit of equality which forms the very foundation of our democracy ; each district of the country shares the, expenses, and it is, therefore, right that each should share the benefits. If admission to West Point were thrown open to com- petition, the candidates coming from New England would necessarily beat the candidates from the South and West, where. the average of development is feebler. In the second place, the- present procedure singles out in the lowest classes, if only as an electoral bait, boys who, without this, would otherwise remain. destitute of instruction. It is a means, among thousands. of others, of giving the poorest the same facilities of culture as the richest. And the statistics of the callings exercised by the parents of the pupils testify that the method has suc- ceeded. We count since the foundation, eight hundred and twenty.seven sons of farmers and planters, four hundred and ninety-five sons of merchants, four hundred and fifty-five of• lawyers, two hundred and seventy-one of doctors, only two hundred and forty-six of officers, then the sons of all trades-- butchers, innkeepers, footmen, detectives, house-servants, washer- women. There are many chances that an army commanded by chiefs who to such an extent are the issue of the people, will not become an army of pretorians ; there are great chances also that those officers, thus aided by the Republic in the struggle for life,. will remain faithful to the Constitution. The written oath of allegiance which they take on their entry to serve the federal power in preference to their native State—without doubt as a provision in the case of a new war, like that of the North an& South—will cost them nothing to keep. The United States have done too much for them."
M. Bourget, penetrated as he evidently is with the fear of
Socialism as it manifests itself on the Continent, comes at last to the conclusion that democracy in America has recon- ciled itself to the freest individualism, and has therefore removed most of the objections to that form of social organi- sation. That is pleasant hearing ; but is he not a little too. hasty in this conclusion, as in many others ? Democracy in America has hardly yet been tried, for what is a hundred years in the life of a nation, and it is not thirty since it began to be menaced by American Socialism, or that more insidious. enemy who, under the guise of justice to the poor, is pleading in truth for a new scheme of redistribution to be effected by legal violence. M. Paul Bourget is right in being so appre- ciative of the country which entertained him so royally ; but his knowledge goes hardly deep enough to enable him to do more than just sketch what he saw, which he has done most charmingly, quite realistically, yet with the feeling which shines out in the last extract we shall make, a description of the tropical scenery, near Lake Worth, on the coast of
Florida :—
" What a country to be happy in, after the manner of a plant that grows in the sun, unmindful and without desire to be else- where ! In opening my window in the morning, I see, between the lake and the house, a forest of cocoanut trees. The fruit appears in the middle of the leaved, hung in bunches, and each is as large as a child's head. In going towards the ocean just now, I inhaled the perfume of a rose laurel wood, which a. tram- way, drawn by a single horse, crosses for a mile. The carriage in passing brushes the beautiful trees with their flesh-coloured flowers, and, as the people have not even trimmed the branches, we tear and destroy living flowers. But this vegetation is so rank, that the damage will be repaired to-morrow. A warm odour and a sense of growth which inebriates, exhales from these trees and from these grasses, from these fields of pineapples, and forests of cocoanut trees. Nature is at one and the same time too violent and too soft. The sea at the end of this alley of rose-laurels is too blue. It is no longer the wild ocean, it is the Mediterranean, the voluptuous, the feminine—. But no. We look closer, and the colossal swelling of the waves shows that it is the great and powerful Atlantic. Over that azure there passes again the great dark artery of the Gulf Stream, and we notice gigantic forms of fishes as they sport in the blue and violet tints of the billows. They are sharks. Their presence does not prevent the young Americans from bathing on that free beach. I hear one say to another who hesitates, Go, and run your risk.' That saying contains an entire philosophy."
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