The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1884-01-19
ENGLISH LECTURERS ON AMERICA.
No More Severe or Critical Towards Us Than
to Their Own COuntrymen.


to Their Own COuntrymen.
George William Curtis, in Harpers Magazine.
There is evidently disposition to resent lit
tie the coming of foreigners, and especially of
Englishmen, not to deliver lectures, but to ect
ure us. The come over. as is often warmly
alleged to criticise us, and even to censure us
"a proceeding which implies kind of superior
lty upon their part, and a childishness upon
ours. Why don't they stay at home, and lecture
their own people2 The answer is that they do.
In fact, it is generally by doing that very thing
that they make the reputation which causes us
to be interested in them, and DESTROYS to see
them Even Mrs. Trollope, the mother of
Anthony, the novelist, as the Easy Chair has
already mentioned, described only what she saw,
and she was certainly not responsible for the
spectacle If she described with what is called
British disdain, it was only the same spirit
which carries Brother Jonathan through Europe
with an air of lofty pity for the effete mon
arches and the oppressed nationalitieS. r
After Mrs. Trollope and her Jonathan Jeffer-
son Whitlaw7 came Dickens with his American
Notes. and his Martin Chuzzlewit." The gentle
reader remembers, of course, how we famed up
at those books. The author had actually sat at
our table, he had slept in the best chamber, we
had asked for his autograph and for locks of his
hair, and then he went home and objected to
splitting and slavery That was little too much,
and the feeling that followed with the failure of
his international copyright effort, undoubtedly
accounted for Diekens's want of sympathy dur
ing the civil war, and his undisgused dislike of
us. But what was it that commended him to US,
and had prepared the extraordinary welcome
that we gave him? What, but his plain-speaking
of defects and wrongs, of such splitting and slav-
cry as he saw in his own country! If he lectured
us, still more cOgently had he lectured England;
and upon what grounds were exempt from
the searching eye and the satiFic pen of any man
of genius of our blood, and language, and ira
ditionsl
Then came Thackery, beloved of all who knew
him, and he lectured too But he only eastigated
his own eountrymen. What pictures he gave us
of Swift and Sterne and Congreve! What ten
der and exquisite touches of Goldsmith and Ad-
Olson! How he drubbed the luekless Georges
through the land! Did he spare his own peoplel
Were the Marquis of Steyne, and the grim piano.
rama of Vanity Fair, and the singing sleet of
the Snob Papers, merciful to England and En-
glish society," Did he condescend to us! He
wrote no book about US but the Nirginians and
parts of Esmond, and he did not know the great
ness of Washington, but there could have been
no just resentment against that great-hearted,
manly Englishman, even if he, too, had told the
young American, One thing thou lackest!
More recently Herbert Spencer lectured us,
and gave us some exceedingly good advice, even
If it was not very new advice. He told that
ought to play more, and so We are perpetu-
ally telling ourselves, and perpetualy disre-
garding our own injunction. But what did Mr..
Spencer here that he has not been doing at home
for thirty years. He has lectured his own peo-
pie very much more vigorously than he lectured
Us, and he said nothing about until in
sisted that he should speak Yet the Easy Chair
has heard him publicly ''ehaffed" for his mis-
sionary labors among the American savages
And now Matthew Arnold, one of the most
eminent of living critics. and master Of
English speech, arrives, and he too, we are told,
with caustie humor, lectures us in a strain of
mingled honey and cream. What does he do at
home! Who is it that has long depicted the
British Phlistine, and deplored the want of
sweetness and light in the life of this native
land!
If we are justly aggrieved by the coming of
eminent Englishmen to see us ant to speak to
us, the remedy is obvious and easy. And we
add to the refusal to hear what they have to
say the further vengeance of carrying the war
into the enemy's country We can cross the
ocean and lecture Englishmen in England. But,
brethren, let us beware of verifying and justify
ing every criticism which they make.
There were once countries in which it was
capital crime to be stranger There are GER
tain parts of civilized countries to-day in which
the popular impulse, when stranger arrives, is
to cave rock at i'm. 1t is remarkable how per
sistent this tendency is, and in what humorous
and courteous phrase the same sentiment may
be expressed