Ruth Cranston

“ The great artist’s eye knows no distinction of nationality or an iota of provincial prejudice. When it lights upon ugliness, it is disgusted—or amused, if the ugliness has a touch of the comic; when, on the other hand, it lights upon beauty—and how instant it is to spy out the most obscure trait of this—enthusiasm is kindled, regardless of kind or race, and the vif French features break into a smile of pleased appreciation. Here, he would say, is someone who contributes to the scene; someone who helps to make, not mar, the radiant ensemble we are striving for. ”

“ People scuttle to their seats, the arena is cleared as by magic, and, to a burst of music and thunderous applause from ten thousand pairs of hands, the splendid entrada takes place.
Matadors in their bright suits heavy with gold, banderilleros in their silver, picadors on their sorry horses, march proudly round the ring; while the band plays and the crowd shouts itself hoarse—just for a starter. Then the picadors go out, the torero who is to kill the first bull asks the President for the keys to the ring; the President throws them into the arena, and—the first bull is loosed! ”

“ But, again, this is not the shifting, impermanent temper of Madame New York; it is the fickle variability of the great artist, exercising her eternal prerogative: caprice. She accepts a fashion one week, discards it the next for one newer; throws that aside two days later, and demands to know where everyone’s ideas have gone. It is not that she is pettish, but simply that she is used to being slaved for, and to being pleased—by something different, something more charming every hour. Infinite pains are taken to produce the merest trifle she may fancy. ”

“ But this has long since ceased to be characteristic of ragtime as a whole, which takes its inspiration from every phase of nervous, precipitate American life.
In the jerky, syncopated measures, one can almost40 hear between beats the familiar rush of feet, hurrying along—stumbling—halting abruptly—only to fly ahead faster. Ragtime is the pell-mell, helter-skelter, headlong spirit of America expressed in tune; and no other people, however charmed by its peculiar fascination and wild swing, can play or dance to it like Americans. It is instinctive with them ”

“ The American house-party on the whole is a much more serious affair than its original English model. The anxious American hostess never quite gains that casual, easy manner of putting her house at the disposal of her guests, and then forgetting it and them. She must be always “entertaining,” than which there is no more dreary persecution for the long-suffering visitor. Except for this, her hospitality is delightful; and it is a joy to leave the dust and roar of New York, and motor out to one of the many charming country houses on Long Island or up the Hudson for a peaceful week-end. ”

“ An Anglo-Saxon audience is tepid, for both music and drama, being roused to fervour not by either art in itself, but only by a great name made actual upon the stage. In Germany music is a religion; in Vienna there is added a fire and dash which make it no less pure, while more seductive. From operette to concerto, the Viennese run the gamut of musical expression, in every phase pre-eminent.
Nor have they an ounce of the artistic snobbishness made fashionable by peoples with whom music is an acquired taste rather than an instinct. ”

“ No one is so ready to be “bluffed” as the American who spends his life “bluffing.” In him are united the extremes of ingenuousness and shrewdness; so that often through pretending to be something he is not, he does actually come to be it. A Frenchman or a German or an Englishman is born a barber; he remains a barber and dies a barber, like his father and grandfather before him. His one idea is to be the best barber he can be; to excell every other barber in his street. The American scorns such lack of “push.” ”

“ The personal contact makes all the difference, with one’s flattered vanity. The policeman, the porter, the guard who finds one a seat, the boy who brings one a tea-basket, finally the chauffeur who drives one to an hotel and the doorman who grasps one’s bag: each and all tacitly insinuate that they exist to look out for oneself in particular, for all men in general. What wonder that Englishmen are snobs? Their universe revolves round them, is made for as well as by them; and what they want, when they want it, is always within arm’s reach. ”

“ MISS NEW YORK, JR.
There is no woman in modern times of whom so much has been written, so little said, as of the American woman. Essayists have echoed one another in pronouncing her the handsomest, the best dressed, the most virtuous, and altogether the most attractive woman the world round. Psychologists have let her carefully alone; she is not a simple problem to expound. She is, however, a most interesting one, and I have not the courage to slight her with the usual cursory remarks on eyes, hair, and figure. She deserves a second and more searching glance. ”

“ They are allowed to wander, unshielded, among the perplexing mixed motives, the standards in disarray, of this theatre where life in its myriad relations is still in adjustment. Like small troubled gnomes seeking light, they flit across the hazardous stage; where their more experienced leaders have yet to extricate order out of a sea of sentimental hypocrisies, inflated ideals, and makeshift laws.
American men and women have been at great pains to construct “a world not better than the world it curtains, only foolisher.” ”

“ You see them in the streets and cafés, in the topmost gallery at the Opera, and forming enthusiastic groups at all concerts; their shabby velveteens a nice contrast with their vivid, impressionable faces.
During Carnival they are natural leaders in the routs and festivities; this entire season is for them one rollicking fancy-dress ball. They may go hungry, but they can always arrange a new and clever costume; and one meets them coming home arm-in-arm through the dusk, carrying bulky parcels and humming the waltz from the latest operette. ”

“ They are the swarm of shop-keepers and “specialists,” mechanics and small retailers, newspaper reporters and petty clerks, such as flood the Subways and Elevated railways of New York morning and night; fighting like savages for a seat. They are the army of tailors’ and shirt-makers’ and milliners’ girls who daily pour through the cross-streets, to and from their sordid work; they are the palely determined hordes who batter at the artistic door of the city, and live on nothing a week. ”

“ Like so many French importations, stripped in transit of their saving coat of French esprit, the cabaret in American becomes helplessly vulgar. Extreme youth cannot carry off the risqué, which requires the salt of worldly wisdom; it only succeeds in being rowdy. And the noisy songs, the loud jokes, the blatant dances—all the spurious clap-trap which in these New York feeding-resorts passes for amusement—point to the most youthful sort of rowdyism: to a popular discrimination still in embryo. ”

“ Coming into London from Paris or New York, or even from Madrid, is like alighting from a brilliant panoramic railway onto solid, unpretentious mother earth. The massive bulk of bridges, the serene stateliness of ancient towers and spires, the restful green sweep of park—unbroken by flower-beds or too many trees; the quiet leisure of the Mall, and the sedate brown palace overlooking it: all is tranquil, dignified, soothing. One leans against the cushions of one’s beautifully luxurious taxi, and sighs profound contentment. ”

“ On the contrary, they are won over in no time by something the American would never think of using as a wedge—unaffected simplicity. But why should one want to win them—whether one be American or French, Spanish, German, or any other self-respecting egoist-on-one’s-own? Why does one always want to win the critical?
Because they set a standard. The English have set standards since ever they were at all: wise standards, foolish standards, some broad and finely tolerant, others absurdly narrow and short-sighted. ”

“ The American in general distinguishes himself in the “individual” rather than the team sports—in running, swimming, skating, and tennis; all of which display to fine advantage his wiry, lean agility.
At the same time, there is nothing more typically American or more inspiring to watch than one of the great collegiate team games, when thirty thousand spectators are massed round the field, breathlessly intent on every detail. Even in an immense city like New York, on the day of a big game, one feels a peculiar excitement in the air. ”

“ I am talking always of the American girl of good parentage and refinement, who is the average New York business girl; not of the gum-chewing, haughty misses of stupendous pompadour and impertinence, who condescend to wait on one in the cheaper shops. The average girl is sinned against rather than sinning, in the matter of impudence. Often of remarkable prettiness, and always of neat and attractive appearance, she has not only the usual masculine advances to contend with, but also the liberties of that inter-sex freedom peculiar to America. ”

“ Nothing succeeds in New York without girls; the more there are, the more triumphant the success. So the Hippodrome, being in every way triumphant, has mountains of them: tall girls and little girls, Spanish girls, Japanese girls, Hindoo girls and French girls; and at the very top of the peak, where the “spot” points its dazzling ray, the American girl, wrapped in the Stars and Stripes of her apotheosis. ”

“ Observing the crowds of Viennese who daily go to and from Semmering, and knowing as one does many of them who would think a week without this excursion shorn of its greatest pleasure, one does not wonder at the happy healthy faces and splendid colour of this sport-loving people.
In the Spring and Fall they play tennis and ride in the Prater—a large park on the outskirts of Vienna; while in the summer everyone who can goes walking in the Tyrol or the German mountains. Women as well as men are expert walkers and mountain-climbers, and their horsemanship is the pride of the nation. ”

“ Here, not money value but beauty of line—blend of colour, grace, verve—is the criterion. And the modestly gowned little midinette receives as many admiring glances as the gorgeous demi-mondaine, if only she has contrived an original cut to her frock, or tied a clever, new kind of bow to her hat. Novelty, novelty, is the cry of the exacting artiste; and who obeys wins approval—who has exhausted imagination is laid upon the shelf. ”

“ Travel for amusement or education is simply outside their comprehension—naturally enough, since it is outside the possibilities of most of them today as it was in the middle ages. We have already seen their ideas of other countries to be of the most naïve. I have been seriously congratulated by Madrileños on the privilege of beholding so fine a thoroughfare as the Castellana, such splendid shops as the handful scattered along the San Geronimo, such a wonderful building as the Opera House, which they fondly believe “the most beautiful in the world.” ”