My Impressions of America

Excerpt

I.
ABOARD THE CARMANIA

MARGOT NOT A NATURAL TOURIST; LACKS CURIOSITY—HEADLINES IN LONDON COMPARED WITH HEADLINES IN NEW YORK—AMERICAN WOMEN WORLDLY—AMERICAN MEN THE GENUINE ARTICLE

I MOTORED to Southampton on Saturday, the 21st of January, this year, and after saying good-bye to my husband and my son, retired to my berth on the Carmania. I am a bad traveller, and had been laid up with a sort of influenza until the day before I left London.

Kindly press people tempted me to confide in them on the ship. They asked me if I would be back in time for Princess Mary's wedding; where I was going when I arrived in America, and if I looked forward to my trip. I sometimes wonder what questions I would put if I were obliged to interview a traveller. I would ask with reluctance where they were going, but never what they had seen, because I know I could not listen to their answers. Everyone knows what you are likely to see if you go for any length of time to London, Rome, Athens or the United States; and is there a person living whose impressions you would care to hear either upon the Coliseum, Niagara Falls, or any other of the great works of art or of nature? On such subjects the remarks of the cleverest and stupidest are equally inadequate and the superb vocabulary of a Ruskin will probably not be more illuminating than what the school-boy writes in the Visitors' Book at Niagara, "Uncle and all very much pleased."

I am inclined to think it is a mild form of vanity that makes a certain type of rich person travel every year. I have heard these say that for all the interest we who are left behind take in what they have seen and heard, they might as well have remained at Brighton. Nevertheless, the world is full of tourists; and there are a number of people who like to pick up pieces of unimportant information without effort. The foolish majority of these read the Daily Mail; the political, the Manchester Guardian; the Liberals, the Westminster Gazette; the intellectual, the New Statesman; and to pass the time on Sundays there are always the long columns of the Observer or for the credulous, the "Secret History of the Week."

After glancing at the leading articles, the City man turns to "Round the Markets: Home Railways firm. The Chilian Scrip reacted to 1¼ premium and Norway sixes give way to ninety-five." They then read: "By the Silver Sea, the Sunny South, or Glowing East"; ponder over lists of those who are going to Egypt, America, or the Riviera; and end by learning that the site of the old General Post Office was in St. Martins-le-Grand.

In America it is rather different. On the front page of one of the most important papers you read:

"Kardos has hopes of father's aid," "Men faint in public and lose $153,000," "Death note writer caught in Capital," "Losses of women duped by Lindsay," "Iceland cabinet falls," "Tokio diet in uproar over snake on floor," "Saddle horse from Firestone, Harding's favourite mount," and short notices on Ireland, Paris and London; you are encouraged to turn to page 6, column five or column 8, page 5 and finish with "Dazzling display of Princess Mary's lingerie."

It is difficult to say why most travellers are uninteresting....