One other example of American hospitality stands out in my memory. A Mrs. Catsinger, of Austin, invited a few of us one afternoon to meet her husband and children and some American alumnae. We didn’t go into the house, but were entertained in a large garden, where quite a poetical meal was served as we ‘sat around’. A full-sized English butler with his satellites brought salads and ices and most unusual little cakes of a dainty kind, as well as varied drinks. Conversation was at a high level, but not heavy or self-conscious; as an intellectual treat it was the best I had in Chicago.
As an extreme contrast to this I recall a visit to what was called a Chautauqua meeting, a kind of blend of education and religion. To these people the teaching of the young seemed to be too solemn and important to talk about calmly, and I was obliged to come away quite hurriedly.
Our two chief amusements, when the rigours of the conference were over for the day, were the Exhibition and shopping. To examine the shop-windows of a strange town is an unfailing source of recreation to a Londoner. I was puzzled by these in Chicago. Drapery was easy to find, but there appeared to be no simple bakers or grocers or chemists. I wanted some biscuits, and tried to describe them to a kindly shopkeeper. It is really harder to describe a biscuit than you would think. ‘Oh,’ he exclaimed at last, ‘what you want is crackers.’ ‘No, no,’ I protested, picturing the bon-bons of Christmas time. But he was right, and I learnt another American word. We should have spent more time in prowling about the city and watching people at work, if the streets had not been so filthy with spitting. No English person would believe how bad it was, requiring us to pick every step we took on the pavements in even the best streets. And in the trams it was far worse, because there was less accommodation for the disgusting habit. So we generally gravitated to the World’s Fair, which was kept, by some unknown means, beautifully clean, in spite of the crowds of people. But cleanliness isn’t everything, and I missed the tang of Chicago’s reality. Just like conferences, all exhibitions and fairs are very much alike—grand white temporary palaces, artificial lake, lit by fairy lights, Javan and Indian villages (one native village was rather too realistic with its war-cries), Saratoga gold-mine, glass-blowing, gun-making, and a big Transportation building. The midway Plaisance afforded endless side-shows (including ‘a peep at your future home’ and a Congress of Beauty). Restaurants at every corner were convenient and tempting but ruinously expensive. A phonograph band produced a more hideous noise than any I had previously known. On the whole I preferred the dirty streets, but was certainly shocked at the river of Chicago, in which I think a spoon would easily have stood up.
So far as we could discover there was no important ‘sight’ in Chicago that visitors were supposed to ‘do’. The only special thing that we had associated with the town was the pork factory, but we had been warned not on any account to visit the stock-yard, because the killing of the pigs was an insufferable sight. Of course we had heard that the organization was so complete that the pig walked in at one end and came out at the other in the form of sausages. Two of our party felt that such marvellous management must be well worth seeing, and really ought to be investigated, if Chicago was to be thoroughly visited. So they went to the office and explained to the man in charge that they wished to see something of the processes, but to avoid the actual scene of the killing. ‘Sure,’ said he, scenting no doubt that he had some elegant hypersensitive English ladies to deal with, and immediately he ushered them straight into the slaughter-house, where some thousand pigs were being dispatched. They rushed away and were really ill for a few hours. I had a sneaking sympathy with that man.
As soon as the conference was over our party was expected to return to England. Two of us, however, felt inclined to see some more of the continent, now we had come so far. We both had friends in Canada who had invited us to pay them a visit, and it was simply flying in the face of Providence not to go. My friend started off at once for Winnipeg, but I was only going as far as Toronto and was able to stay with the rest of our party a little longer. Our route was planned to give us a short stay at the Niagara Falls. I think we were all sorry to say goodbye to Chicago, where we had begun to feel at home, and started off on our night journey quite reluctantly. Early in the morning our train was halted to give the passengers a view of the Falls. This seemed to me extremely funny. In England one looked upon a train’s business as serious—speed—getting there—that was the main consideration; the idea of stopping to look at a beauty spot was merely frivolous. Nor on reflection did I think it good policy if Americans wanted mere passers-by to see the Falls. From the train they were as disappointing as a first glimpse of Stonehenge seems to anyone going by in a car. One has to come close to these monsters before one can feel the terrifying effect they must have had on the worshippers of the sun-god. And so with Niagara; it was only after we had been for an hour or two in an hotel overlooking the Falls and within sound of their roar that their grandeur seized us. While we were strolling round, getting various points of view and looking down into the whirlpool in which Captain Webb lost his life, we discovered that it was possible (for the sum of two dollars) to go right under one of the Falls. Why boggle at two dollars, we thought, for such a glory?
Accordingly the three of us went into a little wooden cabin, stripped off all our clothes and got into mackintoshes provided for us. Then we went into a rather crazy-looking lift and were lowered to the base of the Fall. Here we stepped out and followed our guide. He led us over a stony way and soon we were right under the great cataract of water. The noise was now deafening. Although well accustomed to jumping from boulder to boulder on the Cornish shore, I found these slippery rocks far worse. We were not roped, and in the semi-darkness I was aware that the least mistake of a step would send one down into the ugly backwash of the river swirling round us. I lost my nerve and yelled to the guide to take us back, but the noise was so great that I might as well have yelled to the moon. Fortunately the others had not heard me either, and were sturdily following me. In fact there was no possible means of turning safely however much we had wanted to. So, facing up to the idea that any moment might be my last, I fixed my gaze on the guide’s broad back and trod forward. What a relief it was to come out from the gloom and roar, and to be able to take hold of something wooden. There is something human and comforting in the touch of wood. Is this a relic of our simian past? On looking back on that expedition, however, I think that our next bit of walk was quite as crazy an undertaking as the struggle over the wet rocks. A series of planks was placed over the foot of the Fall, and provided with a hand-rail, and along this ‘bridge’ we made our way amid the foam back again to our lift. There was no room for thoughts of danger, for we were quite overcome with the beauty of the scene. We looked right up at the mass of falling water dazzling white in the sunshine, with an undertone of emerald. No view from the top could ever have come near it. When the hotel clerks and visitors heard where we had been they declared that nothing would induce them to go down. We felt quite distinguished, especially as we had been given certificates to show beyond doubt that we had actually gone under the Fall.
On the next day I parted from my original cabin companions—they were for New York and England, and I took ship for Toronto, where I was to be met by my Canadian host and hostess.
IV. I Find Robinson Crusoe
§ 1
CANADA was easy. As I cruised across the lake to Toronto I felt almost like going home. I knew all about Canada. Not only Ungava, but Hiawatha and all Red Indian romances and legends and The hast of the Mohicans…. I had given all of them a Canadian setting. Then there was Wolfe, and I knew that everything was safely English.
The people I was to meet were complete strangers to me, introduced by the member of Bedford College Council who had ‘supported’ me. My host, Mr. Kyle, was her cousin, and I concluded that he would be of the same wealthy and influential type. In his letter giving me instructions where to meet him he said that he lived in a small village on the shores of La
ke Ontario. Its name, Oakville, had an unpleasingly hybrid sound, but what did that matter? I pictured a village on the lines of a hundred English ones…old church, old inn, thatched cottages, village green with an old oak-tree and a pump. These people, oddly enough, actually lived in the inn…probably with low ceilings, old rafters, uneven floors. Again the name was a bit disconcerting—the International Hotel—rather pretentious for a village, I thought, but many inns had absurd names. The idea of being near the lake was a great attraction, for my loveliest thoughts of Canada had always been connected with the Canadian boat song, a dreamy thing we used to sing at school.
My mind was a confused medley of such expectations when I was met on the quay at Toronto by Mr. and Mrs. Kyle, and shipped off immediately on another steamer for Oakville. I was at once disabused of the idea of ‘wealth and influence’ in my new friends. Mr. Kyle was very tall and thin, dressed in homely ‘slacks’ and a hat with an immense brim. His sunburn was of the kind that suggests continual open-air life. His speech was drawling and punctuated with spitting, and his tobacco of such a nature that I kept as much to windward of him as I could without appearing to. At all points he struck me as real, and I took an immediate liking to him. His wife was a curious contrast, giving an air of unreality to all she said and did. Both her speech and clothes sat uncomfortably on her. It wasn’t long before I discovered the reason: while he was a thoroughbred Englishman, she was a Canadian; while he had adopted Canadian life wholeheartedly and seemed to care not a snap for England, she was for ever striving to be the complete English lady.
They were both undisguisedly relieved at my appearance and manner. Almost at once they confessed that they had dreaded my visit, imagining an English girl not only learned, but full of ‘frills’—a word they used to describe English fastidiousness and standoffishness. Our short run on the steamer convinced Mr. Kyle that he could be himself, and Mrs. Kyle that she need not strain so much.
We arrived at a formal little new landing-stage, and were immediately in the ‘village’, which was quite unlike any English one I had ever seen. The ‘cottages’ consisted of neat wooden shanties laid out along neat roads in square formation, as though a future Chicago had been envisaged. There were pretty gardens, but so neat, so unlike the glorious medley of flowers sprawling about the approaches to our cottages. The International Hotel was a tall, ugly, new building, but happily free from any attempt at architectural ornament. Quietly shedding my disappointment I embraced the idea that I was seeing something new and strange—an American city in its birth throes. So when Mr. Kyle asked me what I would like to see or do, I said, ‘Let me potter about with you and just look’.
His first suggestion was that we should go for a row, as he had some business at a mill. The combination of a row and a mill—nothing could better fit my fancy. And I was delighted to find that he headed, not towards the tame-looking lake, but to a creek, wide and deep, of irregular course, with richly wooded banks and with water-lilies in it. Moored to the bank was the family boat, into which we all got. The Kyles had one son, aged about ten, their only child, born to them after twenty years of married life, about whom naturally there was much maternal anxiety; where exactly he was, how clothed, and what eating, absorbed most of his mother’s mental life; but he was quite hearty, pert, and could spit almost as well as his father. Well, the boat was capacious enough to hold us all and more. Out of idle politeness I commented on its good qualities. ‘Glad you like it,’ said Mr. Kyle, ‘for it’s all our own make.’ Yes, he had made the boat single-handed, its oars and all its appurtenances. Here was Robinson Crusoe in person. I no longer regretted that my surroundings were not like England. Thankful that I had learnt to row in Wales, I offered to take an oar, and managed it to his satisfaction, but to the obvious terror of Mrs. Kyle, who feared the worst for her boy. Some distance up the creek we moored the boat so that I might be shown a pleasant walk among the woods. Here we came upon a splendid patch of wild raspberries, all ripe for eating, and the only check to our complete enjoyment was the constant cry to the boy not to eat too many.
A mill has always had a fascination for me since the days of my childhood when I loved to plunge my arms up to the elbows in the grain as it came rushing down the wooden shoot of the old Cornish mill. This Canadian mill was more modern in its methods, but doing just the same work. The miller’s man seemed quite pleased to have an interested spectator, and showed me the flour in all its stages, and the precise purpose of each wheel. He allowed me to stencil names on the sacks, to fill a sack with flour, and to tie one up.
A day or two later Mr. Kyle brought in a mass of fish he had caught, chiefly perch and bass, and announcing that he was going into the yard to skin and clean them, asked me to come and help him. Mrs. Kyle was shocked at my being asked to do such a thing; but I was for trying everything I could, and readily joined him. It was nasty, dirty work, but I stuck to it. He then told me that I had made a great impression on the people round by merely enjoying myself, and that I had ‘made a mash of the miller’s man’. Mr. Kyle was a jolly companion, and as far as I was concerned he had only two drawbacks. One was that he measured the value of everything in dollars—the cost of a thing, that was always the main point, and sometimes I felt that if I heard the word dollar again I should scream. His other failing was to disparage everything English. No sooner did I speak of some building or process or improvement that I had seen lately in England than he would say, ‘Oh, that’s a back number; you should see what we have over here in Canada.’ This annoyed me at first, and I argued the point, but his trick became so frequent that I either laughed or took no notice or heartily agreed with him. I discovered, to my amusement, that agreement with him annoyed him far more than contradiction. Once, when he had been particularly militant against England, I asked which of the poor old country’s failings had driven him to Canada (where he had now been for twenty years). ‘Rheumatism,’ was his reply. ‘But you have it very cold here in Canada, don’t you?’ said I. ‘Cold, yes, but dry; not the damp cold I used to get at home. In England if you put clothes away dry they get wet, but in Canada if you put them away wet they get dry.’ I felt sorry at the moment that I had made him recall his past illness, but that conversation explained a lot. I believe that at heart he was really homesick, and attacked everything English in order to hear me defend it. In a word, he was an exile, with the knowledge that a return would be a death sentence. In later years I have come to think that the world must be dotted over with poor fellows trying desperately to make out that the land of their adoption is superior to England.
One afternoon I felt bold enough to ask him if I might try my hand at fishing, when I saw him starting off for the creek with his tackle. Although I had watched it often enough I had never attempted it, supposing it far too sacred a business to be undertaken in a light spirit. I was at once supplied with the necessaries, and with beginner’s luck I caught four good-sized perch, while Mr. Kyle caught only one. I understood in that blissful hour why it was that Dym and Arthur could spend whole days at the job, dead to the world. With great pride I carried them back to the hotel, cleaned them in the yard and took them to the kitchen to be cooked for supper, when Mr. Kyle duly advertised my success to the visitors. These consisted mostly of permanent boarders, interspersed with a few ‘casuals’. On discovering quite a good piano in the dining-room I suggested that we should have a dance one wet evening. While they pushed aside the tables I struck up as lively a measure as I knew, and soon they were all whirling round, and to my amused astonishment I noted Mrs. Kyle having a turn with the postman, who had been distracted from his round for a minute or two!
Among the casual inhabitants one lunch-time was a stranger, pointed out to me as ‘Professor Cavanagh’. The idea of a professor in such surroundings was odd in itself, and this one had none of the hall-marks that one expects to see in a professor.
‘What is he a professor of?’ I asked Mrs. Kyle.
‘Phrenology,’ she whispered in a deferential tone. �
��He examines people’s heads and reports on them for a dollar.’
When I laughed she added, ‘Do be done; no one is coming forward, and he wants a little encouragement.’
My dollars were getting dismally few, but I hadn’t the heart to refuse, and after lunch I asked to be ‘done’ and was solemnly conducted to an empty room. He was young and cheery and opened with a learned discourse on the relation of size of head to brain power, with many an ancient saw and modern instance, and sufficient statistics to convince the most sceptical. Among these he had slightly emphasized the fact that ‘a measurement of less than nineteen inches indicates idiocy.’ He then arranged his instruments and proceeded to measure my head. ‘Just eighteen and seven-eighths inches’ he exclaimed in feigned distress. I gave him the expected laugh, concluded that the whole affair was to be an elaborate joke on such lines, and thought of putting down in my accounts, ‘To entertainment—I dollar’. But he assumed a more business-like air again after the laugh, and went on measuring this and that, and giving me quite sound advice without any compliments. I expect he had become pretty quick at deducing personal traits as he chatted with anyone. He warned me against doing things in a hurry, such as jumping on moving cars and trying to do two things at once (thereby often giving myself more work). Hurry was my chief enemy, and I was specially to beware of spending money in a hurry, and of throwing good money after bad. If I could only have borne his good advice in mind it would have repaid me many times over the dollar I laid out for it.
My Londoner’s love of shop-gazing led me inevitably to examine the few windows that Oakville displayed. One specially attracted me, for within I could see a cobbler in the act of making a pair of boots. After watching him in silence for some time I apologized for staring, and explained it as due to interest in his job. I had only to open my mouth to say anything in America to cause surprise and welcome at once. ‘You come from England!’ he exclaimed, ‘Do you know Yorkshire?’ I felt like saying with the indignant little French boy, when asked if he knew Paris, ‘Si je connais Paris!’ I soon persuaded him that I knew Yorkshire by talking familiarly of the main interests of York, Middlesbrough, Whitby, Salt-burn, and lots of smaller places, including Danby Wiske (to his ecstasy). He had left his job to fetch out a Darlington and Stockton paper and a map of Yorkshire.
A London Home in the Nineties Page 6