THE COURIER
R
THROUGH BRITISH EYES
Some Impressions of American Social Life.
ALPH Allen Harding Berkley, a Briton who has lately travel
ed extensively in this country, writes an article on some of
the social aspects of life in the United States, as follows:
It is not enough that I should be reinforced in my views by the
straightforwardness of Mr. Hewitt when he complained that it was
high time for Americans to throw off the transparent disguise in
which bo many of them have so long and discontentedly masquerad
ed. In another Sunday paper your social maitre d'hote!, Mr. Ward
McAllister, also bore me out in the most unequivocal manner. After
directing American girls how to escape from the morass of colonial
mediocrity, in which they must perforce flounder over here, and
after complaining with a good deal of justice that the prematrimon
ial dower contracts of your rich people are seldom faithfully kept
by the parent of the American bride of an English or French or
German aristocrat, Mr. Ward McAllister pointedly goes on to tell
this truth.
"We must not forget," he says, "that the Americans are regarded
as colonials all over Europe."
That is to say all Europe regards America as a BriiBh colony,
regulated by a somewhat vague and hazy code of ethics based on
what are fondly supposed to be the ethics of England.
This slavish fidelity of yours to English principles, very often
much misunderstood, has rather a comical look from our point of
view. For instance, I heard a fellow very severly reprehend the
other day the social aspirations of a man whose grandfather used to
repair dilapidated tea kettles. The speaker looked like a rather bad
case of indigo planter the sort of indigo planter who is never so
happy as when an otherwise intelligent native puts him down for a
covenant service stipendiary magistrate in the Punjab.
Yet the man who, in this case, stigmatizes the pretender as an
"impudent cad" .and he was frightfully severe on him was himself
the son of a breeches maker, who made a fortune in twenty years
by the monstrous increase of the value of his little shop on Sixth
avenue in which he had meekly cut and made trousers for over half
a century.
I must say, however, that although this very sensitive fellow was
a master of a pack of hounds a truly colonial pack he had the
good taste not to wear home made breeches in the field.
It is in this sort of thing that jou Americans distinctly falljbehind
your brother-colonials of Austrailia. You never hear Australians
disparage each others' ancestry. There the eubject is quite as deli
cate a matter as it is here, and everybody has the good sense to
keep a still tongue in his head.
It is, by the way, this curious propensity of Americans on tour to
6ay nasty things about one another which makes Europeans not
only consider you colonials, but very ill bred, vulgar and back-biting
colonials into the bargain. The failure to so far find a definite
place for you at the English family table has had a most irritating
and vulgarizing effect, it you' will let me say, as your own domestic
manners. It is true that those of you who are honest enough to
confess your somewhat subservient relation to the mother country
a relation growing more subservient every day naturally look upon
London as a central focus of everything that is desirable and in any
degree laudable in your aspirations. But it is, perhaps, too much to
expect at present that so motley a population as that of your prov
inces should be content to avow an open dependence on the central
English idea as what constitutes decency, good taste or good form.
Naturally you cannot expect Chicago to be satisfied for a moment
with the New York idea; nor can you insist upon San Francisco sur
rendering her individual judgment to the dictation of Boston. AH
your great cities varying types of a great university, as they are
are by the nature of things driven to deny at all times any inferior
relationship to one another.
If you had no criterion of the sort you would wear loaded pistols
to a charity ball, after the manner of California, or desposit your
feet on the dinner table, as they do in the freer and less effete and
conventional social circles of Kansas.
That sort of thing most likely would be discouraged even in Bir
mingham. Here in New York, in Philadelphia, or in Boston the
most heterodox and independent society would beyond doubt hesi
tate, on that account, to venture upon such practices.
Really, the obviousness of. all thja is not only undeniable, but re
flects a good deal of credit on your native indisposition to be be
trayed in the practice of your own theories into behavior which, not
being English, is distinctly barbarous.
I am told by a highly esteemed American friend that no more
striking proof of the rapid advance of colonialism among you is to
found than the fact that your public characters your parsons, your
statesmen, you comedians, your dancers, your second chop literary
people, who, being closer to the ground, hear its subterraneous ut
terances all the more distinctly are never tired of talking of the
way Englishmen are apt to honor all social drafts made upon them
by their American fellow subjects.
It is, I say, a most reassuring sign of the times to find your repre
sentative public men eager to drop all pretences and publicly confess
their joy at every step taken in the direction of your restoration to
the ancient status. For example, that eminent American, Mr.
Chauncey Depew, has just returned from Europe. In the exuber
ance of the popular regard this great man has Lccn spontaneously
christened "Our Chauncey." In a manner ho is a sort of social am
bassador, who carries round with him. in hisanuual bagman's tour,
the passport of the universal esteem and confidence of his fellow
countrymen a passport vised by the unaminous approval of the
entire American press.
It is undeniable that he represents the aristocracy of business. It
is equally undeniable that he typifies the condescension of business
to the lower class that equally typical American republican-democratic
stratum of your society.
Hardly has he come ashore before he hastens to tell you that he
has again spent a great deal of time at Hamburg, in tho enjoyable
company of the Prince of Wales, that HiB Royal Highness is in ex
cellent health and spiritB, that the Prince'? present regimen agrees
with him wonderfully well, that he never felt better in all his life
than he does now, that he is not quite so stout as he used to be,
but is much quicker on his feet; that he is not above alluding, with
great good humor, to his new grandfathcrly estate in short, Mr.
Depew came back all but over-burdened with the minutest particu
lars of news about the Prince of Wales news moat admirably cal
culated to thrill all loyal colonial hearts, such as yours, with the
most ardent and loyal rapture.
And Mr. Depew doesn't forget the aristocracy either. He knows
what a warm corner American colonialism has got for all real lords
and ladies sometimes even for mock ones. So he tells, with a natu
ral complacency, how Lord Rosebery once invited him to take dinner.
Hs describes how cordially he was on one occasion received by Lady
This, how the Countess That made room for him by her side at a
four o'clock tea at Camberwell, how the Duchess of T'other Thing
was not above appealing to him for confirmation of Her Grace's
statement that American ladies had at last given up wearing nose
rings.
Of course, the present state of things is somewhat threatening to
a continuation of your historic relationship to English socioty. That,
of course, will have to undergo a decided change. S( long as you
were a queer, hybrid race, English people admitted you to a strange
and special intimacy. Naturally we could not ask you to estimate
your social standing by our formulas. It was none "of our business
how you got the money we expected of you 60 long as we had it.
We might adopt your daughters under the stress of necessity into
our noble families. Your sons were not to seriously considered for
a moment and as to the tathers and mothers of your girls, why, there
was never the slightest pretensions made to demanding any consider
ation of them. We had to take them, coute que coute, as something
undesirable thrown in with the bargain.
But now that you insist on becoming colonial, you have really got
to take the consequences all the consequences. There is no shirk
ing them. " You can no longer extenuate yourselves or plead mitiga
ting circumstances. You really must be taken au pied do la lettre.
This you will find, I fear, has always been the trouble with colonials
of all kinds. As a matter of fact, the royal army establishment had
to be withdrawn from Canada because the subaltern officers got ad
dicted to a most reprehensible habit of marrying the daughters of
Canada's trades-people.
This sort of thing puts your girls in a most humiliating light. As
your Mr. McAllister said the other day, no lot can be imagined more
unhappy than that of an American girl who marries an English
nobleman and "stacks" up against his real title and noble qualities a
monstrous accumulation of the rubbish which is known as "securi
ties" among Americans.
You can't expect an English nobleman really to put his best foot
forward as a husband whose wife brings him nothing more valuable
than a trunk full of worthless poker chips chips for a game which
it takes an especial education to learn how to play. -
You must, m the language of Mr. Sparkler, drop all vour "beeod
nonsense" and come down to the truth, the plain truth and nothinir
but the truth. b
This is my very friendly and unbiased advice to you.
A
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