XI
Chicago
Heard and seen by all stands the word personality, in solitary and unique grandeur. Heard and seen by all stands the word Personality, eminent, respectable, much admired.
Heard and seen by all in the crowd it calls together, and through which it deftly wanders like a shrewd hunchback, the word personality, now a dwarf, grimaces salaciously.
And now it is a word on fire; a tiger in the jungle; a python hanging from the limb, very still.
How deep, how shallow is that which we call the soul.
How monstrous, how fluent, how vagrant and timorous, how alert are the living things we call words. They are the giants and the fairies, the hobgoblins and the sprites; the warrior and the priest, the lowly and the high; the watchdog and the sheep; the tyrant and the slave—of that wonder-world we call speech.
How like hammers they strike. How like aspens they quiver. How like a crystal pool, a rivulet therefrom, becomes a river moving sinuously between the hills, growing stronger, broader as its affluents pour in their tributary power; and now looms the estuary, and the Ocean of Life.
Words are most malignant, the most treacherous possession of mankind. They are saturated with the sorrows of all time. They hold in most unstable equilibrium the vast heritage of man’s folly, his despair, his wrestling with the angel whose name is Fate; his vanity, his pride before a fall, his ever-resurrecting hope—arising as a winged spirit from the grave of disaster, to flit in the sunshine for a while, to return to the dust and arise again as his civilizations, so laboriously built up, have crumbled one by one. And yet all the beauty, all the joy, all the love that man has known, all his kindness, all his yearnings, all his dreams for better things; his passionate desire for peace and an anchorage within a universe that has filled him with fear and mystery and adoration; his daily round of toil, and commonplaces; his assumption of things as they are; his lofty and sublime contemplations, his gorgeous imageries; his valor, his dogged will, his patience in long suffering, his ecstacies, his sacrifices small and great—even to the casting aside of his life for a thought, a compassion, an ambition—all these are held bound up in words; hence words are dangerous when let loose. They may mean man’s destruction, they may signify a way out of the dark. For Light is a word, Courage is a word, and Vision is another. Therefore, it is wise to handle words with caution. Their content is so complex and explosive; and in combinations they may work beautiful or dreadful things.
All these thoughts have flowed from the one word, Personality, with which we began.
At Louis’s age upon reaching Chicago, personality meant little as a formal word. He recognized by sight and feeling, by observing action and appearances, many of the phases of the powers of man upon which a word is built for use.
For words in themselves he had come to form a passing aversion, since he had noted their tendency to eclipse the vibrant values of immediate reality. Therefore, he preferred to think and feel and contemplate without the use of words. Indeed, one of his favorite pastimes was deliberately to think and feel and contemplate without the use of words, to create thus a wordless universe, with himself, silent, at the center of it all. Thus came about a widening clarity; an increased sensitiveness to values; a separate isolation of the permanent and the ephemeral; and it seemed, also, as though within his small, self-created silence he listened to the strident noises of the world as coming from without. All this Louis did with buoyant jocularity, for fun, for “practice” as he called it. And yet now and then a word came to him of a sudden, in surprise, a sort of keyword that unlocked, that opened and revealed. Among such was the word self-expression, which gave him a rude shock of hilarity and wonder. He said: “What!”—which expressed quite well what he meant.
For the first week in the strange city, Louis was the prodigal returned; and the fatted calf was offered up in joy. The next week he spent in exploration. As everybody said: “Chicago had risen phoenix-like from its ashes.” But many ashes remained, and the sense of ruin was still blended with ambition of recovery. Louis thought it all magnificent and wild: A crude extravaganza: An intoxicating rawness: A sense of big things to be done. For “Big” was the word. “Biggest” was preferred, and the “biggest in the world” was the braggart phrase on every tongue. Chicago had had the biggest conflagration “in the world.” It was the biggest grain and lumber market “in the world.” It slaughtered more hogs than any city “in the world.” It was the greatest railroad center, the greatest this, and the greatest that. It shouted itself hoarse in reclame. The shouters could not well be classed with the proverbial liars of Ecclesiastes, because what they said was true; and had they said, in the din, we are the crudest, rawest, most savagely ambitious dreamers and would-be doers in the world, that also might be true. For with much gloating of self-flattering they bragged: “We are the most heavily mortgaged city in the world.” Louis rather liked all this, for his eye was ever on the boundless prairie and the mighty lake. All this frothing at the mouth amused him at first, but soon he saw the primal power assuming self-expression amid nature’s impelling urge. These men had vision. What they saw was real, they saw it as destiny.
The elevated wooden sidewalks in the business district, with steps at each street corner, seemed shabby and grotesque; but when Louis learned that this meant that the city had determined to raise itself three feet more out of the mud, his soul declared that this resolve meant high courage; that the idea was big; that there must be big men here. The shabby walks now became a symbol of stout hearts.
The pavements were vile, because hastily laid; they erupted here and there and everywhere in ooze. Most of the buildings, too, were paltry. When Louis came to understand the vast area of disaster, he saw clearly and with applause that this new half-built city was a hasty improvization made in dire need by men who did not falter. And again spread out in thought, the boundless prairie and the mighty lake, and what they meant for men of destiny, even as the city lay stretched out, unseemly as a Caliban.
In spite of the panic, there was stir; an energy that made him tingle to be in the game.
So he bethought him he would enter the office of some architect; for a few buildings showed talent in design, and a certain stability. Outstanding among these was the Portland Block, a four-story structure of pressed brick and sandstone at Washington and Dearborn Streets. So he inquired concerning the architect of this structure and was told the name was Jenney: Major Jenney; or in full, Major William Le Baron Jenney. There were still some buildings under way, or arranged for, on the momentum of pre-panic days, though the town was otherwise badly hurt. A great fire, and a panic in finance, certainly made load enough for any community to carry, but Chicago, hard hit, bore up bravely.
Louis learned incidentally that the Portland Block had in fact been designed by a clever draftsman named Cudell. This gave him a shock. For he had supposed that all architects made buildings out of their own heads, not out of the heads of others. His experience in the office of Furness & Hewitt, in Philadelphia, it seems, had given him an erroneous idea. Yet the new knowledge cheered him in this hope: That he might some day make buildings out of his head for architects who did not have any heads of their own for such purpose.
He had once supposed that the genius for creating ugliness was peculiarly a Yankee monopoly; but he later found in New York and Philadelphia that almost all the buildings in these cities were of the same crassness of type; a singularly sordid, vulgar vernacular in architectural speech. So when he found the same thing almost universally in evidence in Chicago, he assumed that this illiteracy was general, and a jargon peculiar to the American people at large. The only difference he could see between the vernacular of the East and that of the West was that one was older and staler; and he cited Fifth Avenue, New York, as an instance. It is true that, scattered through the east were architects of book-attainment in fair number, and a few of marked personality and red blood—particularly one Henry Richardson, he of the strong arm and virile mind—sole giant of his day. In Chicago there were two or three who were bookish and timid, and there were some who were intelligently conscientious in the interest of their clients. Among the latter may be mentioned Major Jenney. The Major was a free-and-easy cultured gentleman, but not an architect except by courtesy of terms. His true profession was that of engineer. He had received his technical training, or education at the École Polytechnique in France, and had served through the Civil War as Major of Engineers. He had been with Sherman on the march to the sea.
He spoke French with an accent so atrocious that it jarred Louis’s teeth, while his English speech jerked about as though it had St. Vitus’s dance. He was monstrously pop-eyed, with hanging mobile features, sensuous lips, and he disposed of matters easily in the manner of a war veteran who believed he knew what was what. Louis soon found out that the Major was not, really, in his heart, an engineer at all, but by nature, and in toto, a bon vivant, a gourmet. He lived at Riverside, a suburb, and Louis often smiled to see him carry home by their naked feet, with all plumage, a brace or two of choice wild ducks, or other game birds, or a rare and odorous cheese from abroad. And the Major knew his vintages, every one, and his sauces, every one; he also was a master of the chafing dish and the charcoal grille. All in all the Major was effusive; a hale fellow well met, an officer of the Loyal Legion, a welcome guest anywhere, but by preference a host. He was also an excellent raconteur, with a lively sense of humor and a certain piquancy of fancy that seemed Gallic. In his stories or his monologues, his unique vocal mannerisms or gyrations or gymnastics were a rich asset, as he squeaked or blew, or lost his voice, or ran in arpeggio from deep bass to harmonics, or took octaves, or fifths, or sevenths, or ninths in spasmodic splendor. His audience roared, for his stories were choice, and his voice, as one caught bits of it, was plastic, rich and sweet, and these bits, in sequence and collectively had a warming effect. The Major was really and truly funny. Louis thought him funny all the time, and noted with glee how akin were the Major’s thoughts to the vertiginous gyrations of his speech. Thus we have a semblance of the Major’s relations to the justly celebrated art of architecture.
The Major took Louis in immediately upon application, as he needed more help. And to the fact that Louis had been at Tech he attached the highest importance—as alumni of any school are apt to do; so much for temperamental personality.
There was work enough in the office to keep five men busy and a boy, provided they took intervals of rest, which they did. In the Major’s absences, which were frequent and long, bedlam reigned. John Edelmann would mount a drawing table and make a howling stump speech on greenback currency, or single tax, while at the same time Louis, at the top of his voice, sang selections from the oratorios, beginning with his favorite, “Why Do the Nations so Furiously Rage Together”; and so all the force furiously raged together in joyous deviltry, and bang-bang-bang. For a moment Louis quieted the riot and sang, “Ye people rend your hearts, rend your hearts, but not your garments,” whereupon there followed a clamor of affronts directed toward Elijah the Prophet. The office rat suddenly appears: “Cheese it, Cullies; the Boss!”, which in high English signifies: “Gentlemen, Major William Le Baron Jenney, our esteemed benefactor, approaches!” Sudden silence, sudden industry, intense concentration. The Major enters and announces his pleasure in something less than three octaves. Thus the day’s work comes out fairly even. For “when they work they work; and when they don’t they just don’t.”
On the stool next to Louis sat patient Martin Roche, now, and for many years, of Holabird & Roche. There was a tall, fleshy, mild-voiced American-German who had taught school; and a rachitic, sharp-faced, droll, nasal Yankee, who drawled comic cynicisms and did the engineering. “The old man,” he would say, “is some engineer. … Like the Almighty, he watches the ‘sparrow’s fall,’ but when it comes to the tons he’s a l-e-e-t-l-e shy now and then, and sometimes then and now. You fellows work for glory, but I just work for coin.” And then he rasped in song: “And as I said be-f-o-o-o-r, don’t fall in love with a groceryman what keeps a grocery store,” and thus he cackled on, as he figured strains; this time, he said, on a basis of three sparrows, while Louis hummed: “And as I said before, don’t fall in love with a groceryman what keeps a grocery store.”
John was the foreman. By nature indolent, by vanity and practice very rapid. He laughed to scorn and scattered to dust those that were slow; and would illustrate, in roseate tales, how fast he had done this and that. It speedily became evident that John was a hero-worshipper, as John blandly worshipped John in the presence of all; and Louis casually remarked that John’s unconsciousness of his own personality was remarkable to the point of the fabulous and the legendary, whereupon they became fast friends.
Louis had instantly noted in John a new personality; brawny, twenty-four, bearded, unkempt, careless, his voice rich, sonorous, modulant, his vocabulary an overflowing reservoir. A born orator—he must talk or perish. His inveterate formula was, “I myself”—did—was—said—am—think—know—to the sixteenth decimal and the nth power of egoism. It gradually dawned upon Louis that he had run across a thinker, a profound thinker, a man of immense range of reading, a brain of extraordinary keenness, strong, vivid, that ranged in its operations from saturnine intelligence concerning men and their motives, to the highest transcendentalisms of German metaphysics. He was as familiar with the great philosophers as with the daily newspapers. As an immediate psychologist, never before or since has Louis met his equal in vitality, in verity, and in perspicacity of thought. He, John, knew all that all the psychologists had written, and much, of his own discernment, that they but recently have begun to unveil. Louis found in John a highly gifted talker, and John found in Louis a practised listener, so their bond of union may be summed up in the token “I myself.”
One day John explained his theory of suppressed functions; and Louis, startled, saw in a flash that this meant the real clue to the mystery that lay behind the veil of appearances. Louis was peculiarly subject to shock from unexpected explosion of a single word; and when the word “function” was detonated by the word “suppressed,” a new, an immense idea came suddenly into being and lit up his inner and his outer world as one. Thus, with John’s aid, Louis saw the outer and the inner world more clearly, and the world of men began to assume a semblance of form, and of function. But, alas, what he had assumed to be a single vast veil of mystery that might perhaps lift of a sudden, like a cloud, proved in experience to be a series of gossamer hangings that must slowly rise up one by one, in a grand transformation scene, such as he had viewed when, as a small boy, he saw The Forty Thieves, where all was transformed into reality by a child’s imagination. Now would it be possible for him, through the reverse power of imagination, to cause the veils of the hidden world to rise and reveal? On this threshold, for a passing moment, he faltered. Then resurging courage came.
Louis soon noticed that while he himself had a clear program in life, John had none. That all this talk, while of deep import to him, was for John merely luxurious self-indulgence and a luscious hour with parade of vanity; that he, the elder, regarded the younger with patronage, much as a bright child, but a tyro in the active world; while Louis saw that John was merely drifting. In this regard each kept his thoughts to himself, while encouraging the other.
In Philadelphia, one hot summer’s evening, Louis had gone to the Academy of Music to hear a Thomas Concert. During the course of the program he had become listless, when of a sudden came the first bars of a piece so fiery, that, startled, all alert, he listened in amazement to the end. What was this? It was new—brand new. The program now consulted, said: Vorspiel, Third Act, Lohengrin—Richard Wagner. Who was Richard Wagner? Why had he never heard of him? He must look him up; for one could see at a glance that this piece was a work of genius.
He mentioned this episode to John Edelmann, shortly after they had become acquainted; and John said: “Why, at the North Side Turner Hall, Hans Balatka and his fine orchestra give a concert every Sunday afternoon, and Hans is introducing Wagner to Chicago; let’s go.” They went.
Louis heard the Pilgrims’ Chorus—and raved. They went every Sunday afternoon until Spring. There followed in course, the Vorspiel to Lohengrin, to Die Meistersinger, to the Flying Dutchman, the Ride of the Walkyrie, the amazing fabric of the overture to Tristan und Isolde, the immense solemnity of Siegfried’s Tod, the exquisite shimmering beauty of the Waldweben.
Louis needed no interpreter. It was all plain to him. He saw it all. It was all as though addressed to himself alone. And as piece after piece was deployed, before his open mind, he saw arise a Mighty Personality—a great Free Spirit, a Poet, a Master Craftsman, striding in power through a vast domain that was his own, that imagination and will had bodied forth out of himself. Suffice it—as useless to say—Louis became an ardent Wagnerite. Here, indeed, had been lifted a great veil, revealing anew, refreshing as dawn, the enormous power of man to build as a mirage, the fabric of his dreams, and with his wand of toil to make them real. Thus Louis’s heart was stirred, his courage was ten-folded in this raw city by the Great Lake in the West.
Yet John had the good sense to caution Louis to let the philosophers alone for a while; to let them lie in possession—paraphrasing Siegfried’s Dragon—as each had merely built an elaborate scaffolding, but no edifice within, and each was more concerned with the symmetry of his scaffold than with aught else, unless it be to scorn the flimsy scaffoldings of others. He said that Schopenhauer showed some intelligence, because he was a man of the world, while the others were more like spiders, weaving, in the gloom of obscurantism, festoons of cobwebs in their dens, far from the light of the world of men and things. That Louis had better let the ding an sich—the ultimate thing—alone, and keep his eyes on the world as it is; that he would find plenty to interest him there, and that if he had the eyesight he would find a great romance there, also a great tragedy. That—quoting Carlyle—he said: “The eye sees that which it brings the power to see”; which again shocked Louis; for the thought rose up: Maybe the veil is not without, but covers my own eyes; as John went on, preaching of the world of men and their significance, for worth or ill, in the social order, Louis again was shocked at the words “social order.”
But their talks were not always so strenuous and disturbing; for John was mercurial—an inventor of self-moods—a poseur, infatuated with the pessimistic attitudinizing he assumed at will, for the sake of the sensation of gazing into the mirror of his thoughts which reflected the image of one he deemed the greatest philosopher and psychic of all time, still unknown to the world. But John had many other moods, as many as he chose to summon, and on the whole, he was jolly bombastic, much alive, and in public, loud of speech in an overweening beggary to attract attention, and thereby feed his hungry vanity. But withal he was Louis’s warm friend, and showed it by a devotion and self-sacrifice singular in one so absorbed in self worship. And be this said here and now: The passing years have isolated and revealed John Edelmann, as unique in personality among fine and brilliant minds. Be assured he will not turn in his grave, unless in bliss, should he hear it said that he was the benefactor and Louis the parasite and profiteer.
They were both fond of exercise, and frequented the gymnasium. John, though not so very tall, was huge in bulk and over-muscled. He excelled in feats of strength, while Louis was dexterous and nimble in lighter work. As spring approached, John talked more and more about the “Lotus Club,” whose members had boat houses on the bank of the Calumet, near the bridge where the I.C.R.R. crosses. He spoke of a “Great Chief,” one William B. Curtis by name, who had founded the Club, who had beaten Dr. Winship at heavy lifting; was a champion all-round athlete, and had chosen the club name because of a bed of lotus not far down the sluggish stream. He had said briefly, he preferred the Greek word Lotos to the Latin Lotus.
So in the spring the two went to live in John’s boathouse. There were three other houses, one occupied by said William B. Curtis, who, when asked, said his middle name was Bill—and “Bill” he was called. Louis was simply wild with joy over this new life. He was now actually a member of a real athletic club. He had never been a member of any club. And these young men, all older than he, were heroes in his eyes, if not demigods; they showed such skill in performance, and were so amiable toward a youngster. The mighty “Bill” was thirty-eight, so he said. He was the man of brains who never bragged. He was too cynical to brag, and deadly literal in speech. As a mathematician he had revised Haswell. His brain was hard, his manner human. He knew his anatomy, and had devised special exercises to develop each separate muscle in his body. So when in the sunlight he walked the pier for a plunge, he was a sight for the Greeks, and Louis was enraptured at the play of light and shade. He had won a barrel full of medals and he said he kept them there.
By a strange paradox he detested display. He had no vanity. He had a quizzical sense of humor which he displayed when he said the club was no club, because there were no dues, no entrance fees, no bylaws. All that was needed in an applicant was a sound constitution and a paper shell. And yet he said he had named the Club the Lotus because of his love of flowers, and the nearby presence of the lotus field. His brain was remarkably well stocked with varied information of the so-called higher sort, but he seldom talked of such, except briefly in derision. He was the exact opposite of John, but with an equal egoism which he kept under cover, and which passed as modesty—although he cared not in the least. All this interested Louis, who was beginning to observe men as individuals, and to study personalities; to observe in particular the working of men’s brains; for he had begun to notice, with keen and growing interest, that the thoughts of a man corresponded exactly to his real nature. So Louis discerned in Bill a highly trained mind, self-centered and selfish in its nature. Louis guessed that the man had a past; that at least there was something hidden. So he spoke to John, who said: “You are right. Bill is not in athletics for fun, but for his health. Medals interest him only as tokens of condition. When he was a young man he was attacked by consumption. The doctors gave him up. Bill took to open air exercise. With his scientific brain you can imagine how systematically he went about it. He effected a cure; but now he has only one lung—would you guess it?” Briefly to complete the story of this man, the most remarkable that has ever appeared in the field of amateur athletics—he became editor of Wilkes Spirit of the Times and remained such for years. At the age of sixty-three he, with a companion, was making the ascent of Mt. Washington when a blizzard overtook them near the summit. The bodies were found a quarter of a mile apart.
The effect of Bill Curtis upon Louis was not merely that of a magnificent athlete and man of brains, but primarily, and most valuably that of exemplar in the use of the imagination and the will, doggedly to carry out a program. That a consumptive should have risen to become a great athlete, was enough for him. The living fact profoundly and permanently strengthened Louis’s courage in carrying out his own program. Though Louis did not especially warm up to the man, because their natures were not sufficiently alike, he has never forgotten what he then owed to the force of example of a clear brain. So Louis added “Bill” to his growing collection of personalities.
In the carrying out of his own program Louis’s thoughts turned definitely towards France; which meant, specifically, the École des Beaux Arts. He wished now to go to the fountain head of theory. Of practice he had enough for present purpose.
Thus on 10 July, 1874, he sailed from New York on the steamship Britannic, on her maiden trip eastward. Before she left her pier there were grand doings aboard—flowers, speeches, high society. For she was proclaimed “The Pride of the Seas.” She displaced three thousand tons. She was headed for Liverpool.
Prior to leaving, Louis called again upon his friend Stratton in New York, and was given further pointers—first of all, to call at the American Legation.
Louis found the ocean trip disappointing and stupid, with exception of the ship’s great vertical engines and deep stokehole, the various apparatus, and the working of the ship by officers and crew, which he studied carefully, as he had become much interested in engineering.
While Louis was leaning on the railing, watching, with vague emotion, his native land fade in the mist, and sink from sight, as though irrevocably lost, he felt a pang of nostalgia; the sea seemed so lonely—after brisk excitement. Near by at the rail were others also watching the land disappear. As it became dim, a grating voice spoke out: “Thank God we have seen the last of the damned Yankees.” The words were said in savage bitterness and contempt. Another voice agreed. Louis turned to the left and saw two short swarthy men, black bearded, black eyed. For a moment Louis thought it would be nice to throw them both overboard. He looked at them, wide-eyed, with something of the sort in view, and they talked on in lower tones. Louis was puzzled by the speech. Why “damned Yankees” he asked himself. Why this hatred, this anathema? The phrase sounded racial; it stuck in his mind like a burr. It was said with such conviction as to seem impersonal; as though included in something larger. Never had he heard such virulence addressed to his own people. He pondered long over this; were the “Yankees” a hated people? If so, who hated them?
Louis did not know a soul aboard. He was proud of the ship, proud to be on it, but he was lonesome, and no one paid the slightest heed as he prowled up and down, in and out. The weather was fair all the way. The waves seemed eternally to roll and roll—without crests. A vast expanse of water, dark blue, almost black; the circular horizon always present and only fifteen miles away. Never had his world seemed so small in fact, yet so limitless and grim in suggestion. He seemed to be always at the top of the world, always in the selfsame spot, always in the midst of deadening monotony; day after day not a sail in sight, not a sign of a storm. Day after day confined to a solitary ship moving on through a wilderness of water, the vessel rhythmically rolling and heaving in its course, night and day, night and day; would it never end? Laughter, aboard, had long since ceased. Where was the romance of the high seas? The end came in a total lapse of ten days. The waters turned blue and then green. The boat came to a stop off Queenstown. Enshrouded in heavy mist, Louis saw a coastline of mountains or high hills. This is all he ever saw of Ireland.
The way along St. George’s Channel seemed glorious. The clear, deep waters, and the glimpses of coastline restored his spirits as he felt his normal condition of clarity return. Here at last was an old world, which, as a new world he was to discover. How high his hopes, how buoyant his thoughts, as they swung into the Mersey. England came near to him, and nearer, then slowly nearer, then in contact, as the ship came to dock. Then came all the bustle and the joyous greetings about him, as Louis pressed his foot on English soil. Ah, what fluttering emotion, the overflow of bubbling youth. At last, at last, he had arrived where for years he had dreamed to come, and the broad Atlantic now lay between him and his native land. Now was to come that Great Adventure, which, as a joyous youth sans peur he faced with elation, and a confidence known only to pure fools. He stayed but a day or two in Liverpool, for his immediate objective was London. He was at pains to make it a daylight ride, for he wished to give his eyes all the treat of novelty.
And what he saw was a finished land—something that had ripened through the centuries. This finished land impressed him with a sense of the faraway. It did not seem to vibrate; and, sub audite, came to him a stream of ancient tales. He found quiet, unobtrusive charm in the countryside, he noted patches of crops arranged with a precision, an inch by inch economy of space, that gave him a feeling that the people of this Island must be crowded, as each small farm was pressed tight against its neighbors, and each crop pressed tight against the others. This tightness confirmed his impression of a finished land. It was a revelation to him, who had come from the middle west of America with its vast prairies sparsely settled. He noticed, too, the amazing solidity of the roadbed, and the smoothness with which the train flew on at high speed. He saw, too, that there were no grade crossings; that everything was immensely solid in contrast to the flimsiness with which he was familiar. And the country roads were wonderful, so sound, so smooth, as they wound their way; and the charming streams he crossed; the verdure, the lovely groves, the hamlets, the villages, the many church spires rising from masses of green; the rural air everywhere, charmed him with the softness, the velvet, the down of age and tradition. Surely it was a finished land, beautifully finished, sturdy, vigorous, solid, set, and he felt the power of this land, this tight-crowded land, and he thought as an inference it must be true that in such a crowded land its people must be tightly self-conscious and self-centered. But he did not as yet clearly discern the portrait of this Island crowded on all sides by the sea.
Arriving in London, he thought the roof of Euston Station would fall down upon him. It was so solid, so oppressively heavy, he was glad to escape to the street. In London he spent two weeks, most of the time joyfully. The weather, it appears, was extra fine. In this strange world called London, he walked many miles every day and examined most carefully everything within reach, and he thrilled to the booming of Big Ben, the like of which he had never heard. It seemed to be an old world sound, a remnant or an aftermath of the Age of Romance. The power of its stroke almost said to him: “I am that I am!”
One evening in his wanderings he found himself in the Haymarket and saw there shoals of wretches. He was rudely shocked, in horror, in pity and dismay. When he finally escaped from the many fingers clutching at his sleeve, he thought: Is this also London—does Big Ben boom in pride for these?—and a veil slowly lifted by degrees. And in the shops where he went to make his small purchases, the rudeness, the brutal rawness of the clerks, or “clarks,” amazed him. At the Music Halls, he was equally astonished at the brilliance of the demimonde. London was too much for Louis. He lacked the worldly wisdom to grasp its immensity, the significance of its teeming, struggling population, the cold reserve in certain places. But he noted the manifold variety, the surging crowds, the dismal hardness of so many faces, and a certain ruthlessness; and everywhere, in the jammed highways, the selfish push of those who must live. So he confined himself to the pleasanter aspects, such as Hyde Park, Rotten Row, and the Thames embankment. He was curious at the vast Houses of Parliament, vertical everywhere; and St. Paul’s black with soot; and many structures in which he sensed, in their visages, the solemn weight of age. They did not appeal to him in their historic message so much as in the sense of that which is old. This massive oldness made a new sensation for him. So passed the days.
Louis left England with so many intermingling impressions thrust suddenly upon him, so many seeming contradictions and paradoxes, that time was needed for the turbid mixture to settle, to clarify, and to reveal a dominant idea.
Thus Louis reached the shores of France much puzzled as to England.
He had sailed from Dover to Dieppe.
In the course of the passage, all the transcendental curves, known and unknown to mathematics, were revealed to him by the packet, which distorted and twirled the very heavens, in its cancan with the sea.
As they moved into the little harbor of Dieppe, what was left of Louis gazed at the quaint city with acceptance and delight. How different from England. What a change in physiognomy. How cheerful the aspect—a delicate suggestion not so much of age as of medievalism; he had read about it in many books—a surviving fragrance of romance. But on the way through Normandy, Louis was equally startled, at the rigid spacing of trees, at the dinky châteaux, new-made, stuck here and there as though forming the heads of pins. All was clean, all was stiff. But the farms and the cattle were a revelation, especially the cattle—never had he seen such.
As the train passed through Rouen, twilight was under way, and the spire of the Cathedral seemed to float in the air as though there were no earth.
Arrived in Paris after nightfall, Louis saw the streets aglow. He boarded a fiacre, and shouted to the cocher:
“Hotel Saint Honoré!”