Читать книгу From Dublin to Chicago - James Owen Hannay - Страница 4

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Our ship, after a prosperous and pleasant voyage, steamed up the Hudson River in a blinding downpour of rain which drove steadily across the decks. Our clothes had been packed up since very early in the morning, and we declined to get soaked to the skin when there was no chance of our being able to get dry again for several hours. Therefore, we missed seeing the Statue of Liberty and the Woolworth Building. We were cowards, and we suffered for our cowardice by losing what little respect our American fellow travelers may have had for us. They went out in the rain to gaze at the Statue of Liberty and the Woolworth Building. We saw nothing through the cabin windows except an advertisement of Colgate's tooth paste. The Woolworth Building we did indeed see later on. The Statue of Liberty we never saw at all. I could of course write eloquently about it without having seen it. Many people do things of this kind, but I desire to be perfectly honest. I leave out the Statue of Liberty. I am perfectly sure it is there; but beyond that fact I know nothing whatever about it.

We actually landed, set foot at last on the soil of the new world, a little before 8 a.m., which is a detestable hour of the day under any circumstances, and particularly abominable in a downpour of rain. If a stranger with whom I was very slightly acquainted were to land at that hour in Dublin, and if it were raining as hard there as it did that morning in New York—it never does, but it is conceivable that it might—I should no more think of going to meet him at the quay than I should think of swimming out a mile or two to wave my hand at his ship as she passed. A year ago I should have made this confession without the smallest shame. It would not have occurred to me as possible that I should make such an expedition. If a very honored guest arrived at a reasonable hour and at an accessible place—steamboat quays are never accessible anywhere in the world—if the day were fine and I had nothing particular to do, I might perhaps go to meet that guest, and I should expect him to be surprised and gratified. I now confess this with shame, and I intend to reform my habits. I blush hotly when I think of the feelings of Americans who come to visit us. They behave very much better than we do to strangers. There were three people to meet us that morning when we landed and two others arrived at the quay almost immediately afterwards. Of the five there was only one whom I had ever seen before, and him no oftener than twice. Yet they were there to shake our hands in warm welcome, to help us in every conceivable way, to whisper advice when advice seemed necessary.

There were also newspaper reporters, interviewers, and we had our first experience of that business as the Americans do it, in the shed where our baggage was examined by Custom House officers.

"Don't," said one of my friends, "say more than you can help about religion."

The warning seemed to me unnecessary. I value my religion, not as much as I ought to, but highly. Still it is not a subject which I should voluntarily discuss at eight o'clock in the morning in a shed with rain splashing on the roof. The very last thing I should dream of offering a newspaper reporter is a formal proof of any of the articles of the Apostle's Creed. Nor would any interviewer whom I ever met care to listen to a sermon. I was on the point of resenting the advice; but I reflected in time that it was certainly meant for my good and that the ways of the American interviewer were strange to me. He might want to find out whether I could say my catechism. I thanked my friend and promised to mention religion as little as possible. I confess that the warning made me nervous.

"What," I whispered, "are they likely to ask me?"

"Well, what you think of America, for one thing. They always begin with that."

I had been told that before I left home. I had even been advised by an experienced traveler to jot down, during the voyage out, all the things I thought about America, and have them ready on slips of paper to hand to the interviewers when I arrived. This plan, I was assured, would save me trouble and would give the Americans a high opinion of my business ability. I took the advice. I had quite a number of excellent remarks about America ready in my pocket when I landed. They were no use to me. Not one single interviewer asked me that question. Not even the one who chatted with me in the evening of the day on which I left for home. I do not know why I was not asked this question. Every other stranger who goes to America is asked it, or at all events says he is asked it. Perhaps the Americans have ceased to care what any stranger thinks about them. Perhaps they were uninterested only in my opinion. I can understand that.

Nor was I tempted or goaded to talk about religion. The warning which I got to avoid that subject was wasted. No one seemed to care what I believed. I do not think I should have startled the very youngest interviewer if I had confided to him that I believed nothing at all. The nearest I ever got to religion in an interview was when I was asked what I thought about Ulster and Home Rule. That I was asked frequently, almost as frequently as I was asked what I thought of Synge's "Playboy of the Western World"; and both these seemed to me just the sort of questions I ought to be asked, if, indeed, I ought to be asked any questions at all. I do not, indeed cannot, think about Ulster and Home Rule. Nobody can. It is one of those things, like the fourth dimension, which baffle human thought. Just as you hope that you have got it into a thinkable shape it eludes you and you see it sneering at your discomfiture from the far side of the last ditch. But it was quite right and proper to expect that an Irishman, especially an Irishman who came originally from Belfast, would have something to say about it, some thought to express which would illuminate the morass of that controversy. I could not complain about being asked that question. I ought to have had something to say about Synge's play, too, but I had not. I think it is a wonderful play, by far the greatest piece of dramatic literature that Ireland has produced; but I cannot give any reasons for the faith that is in me. Therefore, I am afraid I must have been a most unsatisfactory subject for the interviewers. They cannot possibly have liked me.

I, on the other hand, liked them very much indeed. I found them delightful to talk to, and look back on the hours I spent with them as some of the most interesting of my whole American trip. They all, without exception, seemed to want to be pleasant. They were the least conceited set of people I ever came across and generally apologized for coming to see me. The apologies were entirely unnecessary. Their visits were favors conferred on me. They were strictly honorable. When, as very often happened, I said something particularly foolish and became conscious of the fact, I used to ask the interviewer to whom I had said it not to put it in print. He always promised to suppress it and he always kept his promise, though my sillinesses must often have offered attractive copy. Nor did any interviewer ever misrepresent me, except when he failed to understand what I said, and that must always have been more my fault than his. At first I used to be very cautious with interviewers and made no statements of any kind without hedging. I used to shy at topics which seemed dangerous, and trot away as quickly as I could to something which offered opportunity for platitudes. I gradually came to realize that this caution was unnecessary. I would talk confidently now to an American interviewer on any subject, even religion, for I know he would not print anything which I thought likely to get me into trouble.

I cannot understand how it is that American interviewers have such a bad reputation on this side of the Atlantic. They are a highly intelligent, well-educated body of men and women engaged in the particularly difficult job of trying to get stupid people, like me, or conceited people to say something interesting. They never made any attempt to pry into my private affairs. They never asked obviously silly questions. I have heard of people who resorted to desperate expedients to avoid interviewers in America. I should as soon think of trying to avoid a good play or any other agreeable form of entertainment. After all, there is no entertainment so pleasant as conversation with a clever man or woman. I have heard of people who were deliberately rude to interviewers and gloried in their rudeness afterwards. That seems to me just as grave a breach of manners as to say insolent things to a host or hostess at a dinner party.

Every now and then an interviewer, using a very slender foundation of fact, produces something which is brilliantly amusing. There was one, with whom I never came into personal contact at all, who published a version of a conversation between Miss Maire O'Neill and me. What we actually said to each other was dull enough. The interviewer, by the simple expedient of making us talk after the fashion which "Mr. Dooley" has made popular, represented us as exceedingly interesting and amusing people. No one but a fool would resent being flattered after this fashion.

The one thing which puzzles me about the business is why the public wants it done. It is pleasant enough for the hero of the occasion, and it is only affectation to call him a victim. The man who does the work, the interviewer, is, I suppose, paid. He ought to be paid very highly. But where does the public come in? It reads the interview—we must, I think, take it for granted that somebody reads interviews, but it is very difficult to imagine why. The American public, judging from the number of interviews published, seems particularly fond of this kind of reading. Yet, however clever the interviewer, the thing must be dull in nine cases out of ten.

My first interviewer, my very first, photographed me. I told him that he was wasting a plate, but he went on and wasted three. Why did he do it? If I were a very beautiful woman I could understand it, though I think it would be a mistake to photograph Venus herself on the gangway of a steamer at eight o'clock in the morning in a downpour of rain. If I had been a Christian missionary who had been tortured by Chinese, I could understand it. Tortures might have left surprising marks on my face or twisted my spine in an interesting way. If I had been an apostle of physical culture, dressed in a pair of bathing drawers and part of a tiger skin, the photographing would have been intelligible. But I am none of these things. What pleasure could the public be expected to find in the reproduction of a picture of a common place middle-aged man? Yet the thing was done. I can only suppose that reading interviews and looking at the attendant photographs has become a habit with the American public, just as carrying a walking stick has with the English gentleman. A walking stick is no real use except to a lame man. The walker does not push himself along with it. He does not, when he sets out from home, expect to meet any one whom he wants to hit. It cannot be contended that the stick is ornamental or adds in any way to the beauty of his appearance. He carries it because he always does carry it and would feel strange if he did not. The Americans put up with interviews in their papers for the same sort of reason. After all, no one, least of all the subject, has any right to complain.

Those were our two first impressions of America, that it was a country of boundless hospitality and a country pervaded by agreeable newspaper men. I am told by those who make a study of such things that the first glance you get at a face tells you something true and reliable about the man or woman it belongs to, but that you get no further information by looking at the face day after day for months. When you come to know the man or woman really well, and have studied his actions and watched his private life closely for years, you find, if you still recollect what it was, that your first impression was right. I knew an Englishman once who lived for ten years in Ireland and was deeply interested in our affairs. He told me that when he had been a week in the country he understood it, understood us and all belonging to us thoroughly. At the end of three months he began to doubt whether he understood us quite as well as he thought. After five years he was sure he did not understand us at all. After ten years—he was a persevering man—he began to understand us a little, and was inclined to think he was getting back to the exact position he held at the end of the first week. Ten years hence, if he and I live so long, I intend to ask him again what he thinks about Ireland. Then, I expect, he will tell me that he is quite convinced that his earliest impressions were correct. This is my justification for recording my first impressions of America. I hope to get to know the country much better as years go on. I shall probably pass through the stage of laughing at my earliest ideas, but in the end I confidently expect to get back to my joyous admiration for American hospitality and my warm affection for American journalists.

Almost immediately—certainly before the end of our second day—we arrived at the conclusion that New York was a singularly clean city. We are, both of us, by inclination dwellers in country places. The noise of great towns worries us. The sense of being closely surrounded by large numbers of other people annoys us. But we should no doubt get used to these things if we were forced to dwell long in any city. I am, however, certain that I should always loathe the dirt of cities. The dirt of the country, good red mud, or the slime of wet stems of trees, does not trouble me, even if I am covered with it. I enjoy the dirt of quiet harbors, fish scales, dabs of tar and rust off old anchor chains. I am happier when these things are clinging to me than when I am free of them. I am no fanatical worshipper of cleanliness. I do not rank it, as the English proverb does, among the minor divinities of the world. But I do not like, I thoroughly detest, the dirt of cities, that impalpable grime which settles down visibly on face, hands, collar, cuffs, and invisibly but sensibly on coats, hats and trousers. New York, of all the cities I have ever been in, is freest of this grime. You can open your bedroom window at night in New York, and the pocket handkerchief you leave on your dressing table will still be white in the morning, fairly white. You can walk about New York all day and your nose will not be covered with smuts in the evening. I am told that the cleanness of New York is partly due to the fact that trains running in and out of the city are forced by the municipal authorities to use electricity as a motive power and are forbidden to burn coal till they get into the country. I am told that only a hard, comparatively smokeless coal may be burned by any one in the city. If these things are true, then the City Fathers of New York ought to be held up as a pattern to Town Councillors and corporations all over the world.

As a matter of fact—such is the injustice of man—the municipal government of New York is not very greatly admired by the rest of the world. It is supposed to be singularly corrupt, and my fellow countrymen are blamed for its corruptness. When an European city feels in a pharisaical mood it says: "Thank God I am not as other cities are, even as this New York." European cities may be morally cleaner. I do not know whether they are or not. They are certainly physically much dirtier. And from the point of view of the ordinary citizen physical dirt is more continuously annoying than the moral kind. If I lived in a community whose rulers openly sold contracts and offices, I should break out into a violent rage once a year or so, and swear that I would no longer pay taxes for the benefit of minor politicians and their henchmen. All the rest of the year I should be placid enough, for I should forget the corruption if I escaped the perpetual unpleasantness of dirt, city dirt. No government, after all, is honest. The most that can be expected from men placed in authority is that they should not outrage public opinion by flaunting their dishonesty. But I cannot help feeling that men in authority, whom after all the rest of us pay, should do their business, and part of their business is to keep smuts away from our faces. If it is really true that we Irish govern New York, then men ought to give up speaking of us as "the dirty Irish." Dirty! It appears that we are the only people who have ever kept a city clean. I wish we could do it at home.

This Irish political corruption in New York is a very interesting thing, and I tried hard to arrive at some understanding of it. Tammany was defeated while we were in New York, and Mr. Mitchel became Mayor, promising a clean, morally clean, administration. He also is of Irish descent, so that there were countrymen of ours on both sides in the struggle, and we are, evidently, not all of us lovers of corruption. The scene in Broadway when the defeat of Tammany was announced surpassed anything I have ever beheld in the way of a demonstration of popular rejoicing, except perhaps "Mafeking Night" in London. Huge crowds paraded the streets. Youths with horns marched in procession making music like that of Edouard Strauss, but even louder. Hawkers did an immense trade in small gongs with balls attached to them which made a noise like cymbals. Grave-looking men wore on their heads huge plumes of cut, wrinkled paper, like the paper with which some people hide fireplaces in summer time. Others had notices on their hats which declared "We told you so," notices printed beforehand and equally applicable to a victory of the other side. Sky signs and lights of all sorts blazed above our heads. Newspaper offices flashed election figures on screens in front of their windows. Now and then an explosion rose clear above the din, and we knew that some enterprising photographer was making a flashlight picture of the scene.

There was no question about the fact that New York was pleased with itself. The demonstration of popular delight would have followed very appropriately the capture of a Bastille, some stronghold of an ancient tyranny which held people down against their will. The supporters of Tammany Rule were, of course, not in Broadway that night. They may have been sitting at home behind drawn blinds, meditating on the fickleness of men, or perhaps on the ingratitude of democracies. Tammany was corrupt, no doubt, but the water supply of New York is very good, and it was no easy matter to get water there. Also the city is strikingly clean. But there was no question about the general disgust with Tammany rule. No man whom I talked to before or after the election had a good word to say for the organization. Only, if I were suspected of glorying in their shame, patriotic Americans used occasionally to remind me of Marconi scandals at home and the English sale of patents of nobility. And this was no real defense of Tammany. But I was not glorying, and Heaven forbid that I should ever hold up European political methods as a model to any one. All I wanted was to understand. I was eagerly curious to know how Tammany came to be, whence its power came. It did not satisfy me to be told that Tammany bribed people and sold offices, and therefore was powerful. That is like saying that Mohammed spread his religion by force of arms. I am sure that Tammany did bribe, and I am sure that Mohammedans did ultimately conquer and put pressure on the conquered to accept the Koran. But before you can conquer you must have soldiers, soldiers who believe of their own free will. Before you can bribe you must have money to bribe with. Before you can sell offices you must have offices to sell. How did Tammany get itself into the position of being able to bribe?

I was always asking these questions and always failing to get satisfying answers to them. In the end, when I had almost given up hope, I did get a little light of the sort I wanted. It was after dinner one night at a private house in New York. The ladies had left the room, and there were five men sitting round the table. Four of them were clever and distinguished men, and they might have talked very satisfactorily about things which interested them. But with that thoughtful courtesy which is one of the charms of American hospitality, they allowed the fifth man, the stranger in their midst, to guide the conversation. I asked one of my usual questions about Tammany. For a time I got nothing but the familiar stories of Tammany corruption given with more than the usual detail. We had names and dates put to scandalous achievements, and learned who had been allowed a "rake off" on this or that financial transaction. I heard about the alliance, under the banner of Tammany, between the Irish and the Jews. I reflected that other things besides misfortune makes strange bedfellows. Then came the illumination. One of the men present leaned back in his chair and laid down his cigar.

"A Tammany ward boss," he said, "has the confidence of the people in his ward. If he had not he would not be a ward boss."

I did not want to interrupt by asking questions, and felt that I could guess sufficiently nearly the functions and business of a "ward boss" to do without an explanation.

"He wouldn't," said my friend, "win or keep the confidence of the people unless he deserved it more or less, unless he deserved it a good deal, unless he really was a friend to the people. He may not be a man of much ability. He generally isn't, but he has a good heart."

This was startling. My preconceived idea of a Tammany boss of any kind was of a man of considerable ability and a bad heart. I suppose I looked surprised. The speaker qualified his statement a little.

"A good heart, to start with. Every one in the ward who is in any kind of difficulty or trouble goes to the boss. Most of them are poor ignorant people and don't know how to manage things for themselves. There's a sick child who ought to be got into a hospital. The ward boss sees about it. There's a boy who ought to be in a situation. The ward boss gets a situation for him. There's a man who has been badly treated by his employer—— Oh! you know the sort of things which turn up. They're the same with poor people all the world over."

I did know, very well. I was also beginning to understand.

"Then I suppose," I said, "the people vote the way the ward boss tells them."

"Naturally."

Well, yes, naturally. What do political rights and wrongs matter to them?

"After a while," my informant went on, "if he manages well, he is let a little bit into the inner ring. He gets a bit of money dropped to him here and another bit there. That makes a difference to him. He begins to do himself pretty well, and he likes it."

Most men do. These "bits of money," however they come, bring very pleasant things with them. That is the same everywhere.

"After a while—I don't say this is exactly what happens every time, but it's something like this. After a while he goes uptown and dines at one of the swagger restaurants, just to see what it's like. He is a bit out of it at first, but he goes again. He sees people there and he picks up their names. They are people with very impressive names, names he's been hearing all his life and associating with millions and automobiles and diamonds. It gives him rather a pleasant feeling to find himself sitting at the next table and hearing the voices of these men; seeing the women with their jewels, and smelling the scent off their clothes. You know the sort of thing."

I could guess. I have, in my time, dined at restaurants of the kind, though not often enough to get to know the looks of their native millionaires.

"Then some night or other one of these men steps across to our man's table and talks to him. He's as friendly as the devil. He introduces him to one or two others, and perhaps to some women; but women don't come much into business over here. Well, the poor fellow is a little bit above himself, and no wonder. He's never been anything before but just a 'Mick,' and never expected to be anything else."

Here I had to interrupt.

"A Mick?" I said.

"An Irishman. That's what we generally call Irishmen."

They call us "Pat" on this side of the Atlantic, and I think I prefer it, but I have no particular quarrel with "Mick." Both names are conveniently short.

"There's nothing more than friendliness at first. Then, perhaps a week later, there's something said about a contract or a new loan that is to be floated. Influence, a word in the right quarter, comes in useful in these cases. Our man, the man we're talking of, doesn't know very clearly what the talk is about. He doesn't know that he has any influence; but it rather pleases him to feel that the other men think he has. There is a hint dropped about a subscription to the party funds and—well, that's how it's done."

I grasped at ideas which flitted past me. There always are "party funds." Politics cannot go on without them. There always are desirable things, whether contracts, rakes off, appointments, or—as in our monarch-ridden states—titles. But I wonder where the blame for the corruption really lies, the heavy part of the blame. Tammany Mick had a good heart to start with and he was not a man of much ability.

However, these are only the speculations of an inquisitive man. They do not matter. New York smashed Tammany last autumn and perhaps will keep it smashed. But a mere alliance of anti-Tammany forces will not permanently get the better of a well-constructed machine, nor is enthusiasm for clean government good in a long-distance race. An American poet has noted as one of the characteristics of truth that, though slain, it will rise again, and of error that when vanquished it dies among its worshippers. In politics it is the machine which possesses truth's valuable powers of recuperation, and idealism which gets counted out after a knockdown blow. It seems as if a machine will only go under finally in competition with another more efficient machine, and the new, more efficient machine is just as great a danger to political morality as the old one was. This is the vicious circle in which democracies go round and round. Perhaps the truth is that politics, like art, are non-moral in nature, that politicians have nothing to do with right or wrong, honesty or dishonesty.