My American Diary. Clare Sheridan

      INTRODUCTION

       Table of Contents

       The publication of an American diary requires neither apology nor explanation, especially when it is more a record than a criticism. Besides, the “best people” seem to do it. I have upon my desk an old volume entitled: “Travels in the United States, etc., during 1849 and 1850,” by the Lady Emmeline Stuart Wortly. It is dedicated with some pomp “to the Countess of Chesterfield by her most affectionate cousin the authoress.” By a strange coincidence we seem to have trodden the same paths, and ofttimes our impressions are the same. Her experiences in 1850 traveling with her little girl are in many ways not dissimilar to mine in 1921 traveling with my little son. She describes her visits to New York, Washington, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, etc., and then she goes to Vera Cruz, Mexico City, Puebla, and many other places. She has the unconscious arrogance of a genteel aristocrat; she describes the people she meets and writes of them as “Ladies and Gentlemen” instead of as “men and women.” For her there is no Bohemianism and she has no perplexities about world movements. Nevertheless she expresses a deep interest in Russia and some of her comments are not without value even in this day.

       I think I will allow Lady Emmeline to voice in her own mid-Victorian language some of my own opinions. Her condescension, her lack of humor and her naiveté have a charm that I cannot compete with.

       Beginning with New York, she says, “I like the Americans more and more, either they have improved wonderfully lately or else the criticisms on them have been cruelly exaggerated. They are particularly courteous and obliging; and seem, I think, amiably anxious that foreigners should carry away a favorable impression of them. As for me—I am determined not to be prejudiced, but to judge of them exactly as I find them; and I shall most pertinaciously continue to praise them (if I see no good cause to alter my present humble opinion). I have witnessed but very few isolated cases, as yet, of the wonderful habits so usually ascribed to them—the superior classes here have almost always excellent manners, and a great deal of real and natural, as well as acquired, refinement, and are often besides (which perhaps will not be believed in fastidious England) extremely distinguishing looking.”

       It is written in the spirit of her day and is meant to be extremely complimentary. It pleases me to note that I have already unconsciously corroborated her remark that: “The Americans, I think, are a very musically inclined people—far more naturally so, it strikes me, than we Britishers.”

       She tells of meeting Mr. Prescott in Boston. “Prescott is one of the most agreeable people I have ever met with—as delightful as his own most delightful books.—He tells me he has never visited either Mexico or Peru. I am surprised that the interest in his own matchless works did not impel him to go to both.”

       I agree with her, it does indeed seem strange.

       But what really interests me is a sidetrack in which she launches out in opinions about Russia. She writes: “There are but few Russian visitors here in New York, it seems; but I am very much struck by the apparent entente-cordiale that exists between Russia and the United States. There seems an inexplicable instinct of sympathy, some mysterious magnetism at work, which is drawing by degrees these two mighty nations into closer contact. Napoleon, we know, prophesied that the world, ere long, would be either Cossack or Republican. … I cannot resist dwelling a little on this interesting subject: Russia is certainly the grand representative of despotic principles, as the U. S. are the representatives of democratic ones. How is it that these antagonistic principles, embodied in these two mighty governments, allow them to be so friendly and cordial towards one another? … Russia and the U. S. are the two young giant nations of the world. … The Leviathans of the lands! … These two grand young nations are strong to the race, and fresh to the glorious contest. Far off in the future, centuries and ages beyond this present hour, is the culminating point. What to other Nations may be work and labor, to them is but, as it were, healthful relaxation, the exercising of their mammoth limbs, the quickening of the mighty current of their buoyant and bounding life-blood, the conscious enjoyment of their own inexhaustible vitality. There is much similarity, in short, in the position of these two vast powers. … She (Russia) has plenty of time, too, before her—she can watch and she can wait. …”

       If Lady Emmeline had had an American mother, to help her to be just a little less English and a little less class-conscious, she might have evolved into quite an emancipated thinker!

       I cannot help wishing that she, too, had kept a diary, instead of compiling her book from letters “after adding somewhat, to give them the usual narrative form,” as she says in the preface. Consequently one loses many of the little details often illustrative or human that only a daily diary can remember to record. Following her travels, I see that at Vera Cruz she probably stayed in the same hotel, “In the great Plaza, almost close to the fine old Cathedral.” In comparison with our experience at Vera Cruz hers was not so very unlike. They “ran into a Norther” which relieved them of the expected heat, but “in spite of all our precautions in the night, our balcony-doors blew open, and my little girl and I were almost blown away, beds and all.”

      Her journey to Mexico City is by stage coach; “not far from this spot is the beginning of a railroad, which, say the Americans, may perhaps be finished in 500 years. It is intended to be carried on to Mexico.” No doubt it would have taken 500 years, but that an English company “butted in” and so I have been privileged less than 100 years later to travel to Mexico on that railway. It can only be said, in comparison, that her discomforts were more prolonged.

       Arrived in Mexico, we have a similar experience when visiting Chapultepec Castle: “The commandant came forward and very courteously asked if we would like to see the views from the flat roof of the castle. … What a Paradise world we saw … , etc.” and we have both seen the same thing, and thought the same thing, only in different words. Lady Emmeline has a more fragrant style. She makes an effort, on occasions, to describe scenes that surpass mere words: “But it is not, after all, so much the scene itself, as the great and boundless story the imagination ever lends it; for the soul once awakened, and stirred and thrilled by the sight of that magnificent scenery, makes it ten thousand fold more glorious. …” There is much more of this.

       On her way to Puebla she describes how “we soon came in sight of the wonderful and huge pyramid of Cholula, built by the Aztecs; it is supposed

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