Your United States by Arnold Bennett (top books to read .txt) 📕

intimacy. You ate standing; you ate sitting; you ate walking the length of the long table; you ate at one small table, and then you ate at another. You talked at random to strangers behind and strangers before. And when you couldn't think of anything to say, you just smiled inclusively. You knew scarcely anybody's name, but the heart of everybody. Impossible to be ceremonious! When a young woman bluntly inquired the significance of that far-away look in your eye, impossible not to reply frankly that you were dreaming of a second helping of a marvelous pie up there at the end of the long table; and impossible not to eat all the three separate second helpings that were instantly thrust upon you! The chatter and the good-nature were enormous. This home was an expression of the democracy of the university at its best. Fraternity was abroad; kindliness was abroad; and therefore joy. Whatever else was taught at the university, these were taught, and they were learnt. If a publicist asked me what American civilization had achieved, I would answer that among other things it had achieved this hour in this modest home.

Occasionally a face would darken and a voice grow serious, exposing the terrible secret apprehensions, based on expert opinion, that the home side could not win. But the cloud would pass. And occasionally there would be a reference to the victim whose muddy boots I had seen. "Dreadful, isn't it?" and a twinge of compassion for the victim or for his mother! But the cloud would immediately pass.

And then we all had to leave, for none must be late on this solemn and gay occasion. And now the roads were so many converging torrents of automobiles and carriages, and excitement had developed into fever. Life was at its highest, and the world held but one problem ... Sign that reaction was approaching!

A proud spectacle for the agitated vision, when the vast business of filling the stands had been accomplished, and the eye ranged over acres of black hats and variegated hats, hats flowered and feathered, and plain male caps--a carpet intricately patterned with the rival colors! At a signal the mimic battle began. And in a moment occurred the first casualty--most grave of a series of casualties. A pale hero, with a useless limb, was led off the field amid loud cheers. Then it was that I became aware of some dozens of supplementary heroes shivering beneath brilliant blankets under the lee of the stands. In this species of football every casualty was foreseen, and the rules allowed it to be repaired. Not two teams, but two regiments, were, in fact, fighting. And my European ideal of sport was offended.

Was it possible that a team could be permitted to replace a wounded man by another, and so on ad infinitum? Was it possible that a team need not abide by its misfortunes? Well, it was! I did not like this. It seemed to me that the organizers, forgetting that this was a mimic battle, had made it into a real battle, and that there was an imperfect appreciation of what strictly amateur sport is. The desire to win, laudable and essential in itself, may by excessive indulgence become a morbid obsession. Surely, I thought, and still think, the means ought to suit the end! An enthusiast for American organization, I was nevertheless forced to conclude that here organization is being carried too far, outraging the sense of proportion and of general fitness. For me, such organization disclosed even a misapprehension as to the principal aim and purpose of a university. If ever the fate of the Republic should depend on the result of football matches, then such organization would be justifiable, and courses of intellectual study might properly be suppressed. Until that dread hour I would be inclined to dwell heavily on the admitted fact that a football match is not Waterloo, but simply a transient game in which two sets of youngsters bump up against one another in opposing endeavors to put a bouncing toy on two different spots of the earth's surface. The ultimate location of the inflated bauble will not affect the national destiny, and such moral value as the game has will not be increased but diminished by any enlargement of organization. After all, if the brains of the world gave themselves exclusively to football matches, the efficiency of football matches would be immensely improved--but what then?... I seemed to behold on this field the American passion for "getting results"--which I admire very much; but it occurred to me that that passion, with its eyes fixed hungrily on the result it wants, may sometimes fail to see that it is getting a number of other results which it emphatically doesn't want.

Another example of excessive organization presented itself to me in the almost military arrangements for shrieking the official yells. I was sorry for the young men whose duty it was, by the aid of megaphones and of grotesque and undignified contortions, to encourage and even force the spectators to emit in unison the complex noises which constitute the yell. I have no doubt that my pity was misdirected, for these young men were obviously content with themselves; still, I felt sorry for them. Assuming for an instant that the official yell is not monstrously absurd and surpassingly ugly, admitting that it is a beautiful series of sounds, enheartening, noble, an utterance worthy of a great and ancient university at a crisis, even then one is bound to remember that its essential quality should be its spontaneity. Enthusiasm cannot be created at the word of command, nor can heroes be inspired by cheers artificially produced under megaphonic intimidation. Indeed, no moral phenomenon could be less hopeful to heroes than a perfunctory response to a military order for enthusiasm. Perfunctory responses were frequent. Partly, no doubt, because the imperious young men with megaphones would not leave us alone. Just when we were nicely absorbed in the caprices of the ball they would call us off and compel us to execute their preposterous chorus; and we--the spectators--did not always like it.

And the difficulty of following the game was already acute enough! Whenever the play quickened in interest we stood up. In fact, we were standing up and sitting down throughout the afternoon. And as we all stood up and we all sat down together, nobody gained any advantage from these muscular exercises. We saw no better, and we saw no worse. Toward the end we stood on the seats, with the same result. We behaved in exactly the child-like manner of an Italian audience at a fashionable concert. And to crown all, an aviator had the ineffably bad taste and the culpable foolhardiness to circle round and round within a few dozen yards of our heads.

In spite of all this, the sum of one's sensations amounted to lively pleasure. The pleasure would have been livelier if university football were a better game than in candid truth it is. At this juncture I seem to hear a million voices of students and ex-students roaring out at me with menaces that the game is perfect and the greatest of all games. A national game always was and is perfect. This particular game was perfect years ago. Nevertheless, I learned that it had recently been improved, in deference to criticisms. Therefore, it is now pluperfect. I was told on the field--and sharply--that experience of it was needed for the proper appreciation of its finesse. Admitted! But just as devotees of a favorite author will put sublime significances into his least phrase, so will devotees of a game put marvels of finesse into its clumsiest features. The process is psychological. I was new to this particular game, but I had been following various footballs with my feet or with my eyes for some thirty years, and I was not to be bullied out of my opinion that the American university game, though goodish, lacked certain virtues. Its characteristics tend ever to a too close formation, and inevitably favor tedium and monotony. In some aspects an unemotional critic might occasionally be tempted to call it naive and barbaric. But I was not unemotional. I recognize, and in my own person I proved, that as a vehicle for emotion the American university game will serve. What else is such a game for? In the match I witnessed there were some really great moments, and one or two masterly exhibitions of skill and force. And as "my" side won, against all odds, I departed in a state of felicity.

* * * * *


If the great cities of the East and Middle West are not strikingly sportive, perhaps the reason is that they are impassioned theater-goers; they could not well be both, at any rate without neglecting the financial pursuits which are their chief real amusement and hobby. I mention the theaters in connection with sports, rather than in connection with the arts, because the American drama is more closely related to sporting diversions than to dramatic art. If this seems a hard saying, I will add that I am ready to apply it with similar force to the English and French drama, and, indeed, to almost all modern drama outside Germany. It was astonishing to me that America, unhampered by English traditions, should take seriously, for instance, the fashionable and utterly meretricious French dramatists, who receive nothing but a chilly ridicule from people of genuine discrimination in Paris. Whatever American dramatists have to learn, they will not learn it in Paris; and I was charmed once to hear a popular New York playwright, one who sincerely and frankly wrote for money alone, assert boldly that the notoriously successful French plays were bad, and clumsily bad. It was a proof of taste. As a rule, one finds the popular playwright taking off his hat to contemporaries who at best are no better than his equals.

A few minor cases apart, the drama is artistically negligible throughout the world; but if there is a large hope for it in any special country, that country is the United States. The extraordinary prevalence of big theaters, the quickly increasing number of native dramatists, the enormous profits of the successful ones--it is simply inconceivable in the face of the phenomena, and of the educational process so rapidly going on, that serious and first-class creative artists shall not arise in America. Nothing is more likely to foster the production of first-class artists than the existence of a vast machinery for winning money and glory. When I reflect that there are nearly twice as many first-class theaters in New York as in London, and that a very successful play in New York plays to eighteen thousand dollars a week, while in London ten thousand dollars a week is enormous, and that the American public has a preference for its own dramatists, I have little fear for the artistic importance of the drama of the future in America. And from the discrepancy between my own observations and the observations of a reliable European critic in New York only five years ago, I should imagine that appreciable progress had already been made, though I will not pretend that I was much impressed by the achievements up to date, either of playwrights, actors, or audiences. A huge popular institution, however, such as the American theatrical system, is always interesting to the amateur of human nature.

The first thing noted by the curious stranger in American theaters is that American theatrical architects have made a great discovery--namely, that every member of the audience goes to the play with a desire to be able