Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
throats of travellers,” he grumbles, “is not at all uncommon in America.” Perhaps it was
not uncommon then, but it was certainly untrue of the early American Puritans. Drinking
alcohol was quite acceptable to them, if only because their water tended to be contamin-
ated by human and animal waste, milk before pasteurisation was risky, and coffee, tea and
chocolate were yet to catch on. It is true that the Irish do not require such austerely rational
grounds for knocking back booze, or indeed any rational grounds at all, but neither did the
early Puritans. There was regular feasting and partying among them, along with singing
and even card-playing. One Puritan minister wrote that sexual intercourse should be con-
ducted “willingly, often, and cheerfully.” He meant, of course, between husband and wife.
The earliest American immigrants enjoyed themselves a lot more than some of their grim-
faced progeny. They also differed from them in their profound respect for tradition, as well
as in their vision of human society as an organic whole.
It was a lack of fun that struck Dickens about America, long before the fun industry was
invented there. He found its earnestness mildly oppressive. Philadelphia seemed to him
“distractingly regular. After walking about it for an hour or two, I felt that I would have
given the world for a crooked street. The collar of my coat appeared to stiffen, and the brim
of my hat to expand, beneath its Quakerly influence. My hair shrunk into a sleek short crop,
my hands folded themselves upon my breast of their own calm accord, and thoughts of . . .
making a large fortune by speculations in corn, came over me involuntarily.” Speaking of
Calvinist gloom, he confesses that “I so abhor, and from my soul detest that bad spirit, no
matter by what class or sect it may be entertained, which would strip life of its healthful
graces, rob youth of its innocent pleasures, pluck from maturity and age their pleasant orna-
ments, and make existence but a narrow path towards the grave.” There is an odious spirit
of “stiff-necked solemn-visaged piety” abroad in the nation, which a writer who at one level
clearly prefers his Fagin to his Oliver Twist finds hard to stomach. He would have been
astounded by Las Vegas. Since Dickens's day, pleasure and enjoyment have been among
the United States's most precious heritage to humanity.
Tidying the body away to avoid unpleasantness is a familiar American practice. People
do not die, they pass away, rather as an exploding spaceship is not a calamity but an an-
omaly. Toilets or lavatories become restrooms or bathrooms. The British find it amusing
to be asked by American tourists on trains where the bathroom is. Being a disgustingly
unhygienic bunch, they would never dream of taking a bath on a train themselves. I once
overheard a young American tourist phoning home to her mother in the middle of Dublin.
“Mom,” she whispered, aghast, “they have stores here full of dead animals!” She presum-
ably meant butcher's shops. These days in the States, the Mafia probably wrap their victims
in Saran Wrap before hoisting them on to meat hooks.
Samuel Butler's novel
Erewhon
, published in late-nineteenth-century England, portrays
a civilisation in which illness is seen as a moral defect, while vice is regarded as a kind
of disease. The latter view is untypical of America, since it smacks too much of moral de-
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