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 AMERICAN IMPERIALISM

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 BAAS Paperbacks

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5258_Burns.indd ii 15/12/16 4:54 PM

 American Imperialism
The Territorial Expansion of the
United States, 1783–2013

ADAM BURNS

5258_Burns.indd iii 15/12/16 4:54 PM

 Edinburgh University Press is one of the leading university presses in the UK.
We publish academic books and journals in our selected subject areas across the
humanities and social sciences, combining cutting-edge scholarship with high
editorial and production values to produce academic works of lasting importance.
For more information visit our website: edinburghuniversitypress.com

© Adam Burns, 2017

Edinburgh University Press Ltd

The Tun – Holyrood Road, 12(2f) Jackson’s Entry, Edinburgh EH8 8PJ

Typeset in 10/12 Adobe Sabon by

IDSUK (DataConnection) Ltd, and
printed and bound in Great Britain by
CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon CR0 4YY

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 4744 0213 2 (hardback)

ISBN 978 1 4744 0215 6 (webready PDF)
ISBN 978 1 4744 0214 9 (paperback)
ISBN 978 1 4744 0216 3 (epub)

The right of Adam Burns to be identified as the author of this work has been
asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, and
the Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 2003 (SI No. 2498).

5258_Burns.indd iv 15/12/16 4:54 PM

 Contents

Figures vi
Acknowledgements viii

Introduction: Defining an Empire 1

1 Atlantic to Pacific (1783–1893) 8

2 Heading Northwards (1812–1903) 30

3 Leaving the Continent (1817–90) 50

4 A Two-Ocean Empire (1890–98) 70

5 Spanish Plunder (1898–1917) 92

6 An Empire among Equals (1899–1917) 113

7 Occupation over Annexation (1912–73) 136

8 Continuing Imperialism (1940–2013) 159

Conclusion 180

Bibliography 182
Index 209

5258_Burns.indd v 15/12/16 4:54 PM

 Figures

Many thanks to the Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection, Uni-

versity of Texas Libraries (https://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/), from
which all of the following public domain maps were taken. The
images have been cropped and re-coloured from the originals.

Fig. 1.1 Map of Colonial North America (1989), from American Mili-
tary History, United States Army Center of Military History, available
at: http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/historical/colonial_1689-1783.jpg
(accessed 31 August 2016)
Fig. 1.2 Westward Expansion, 1815–1845 (1989), from American
Military History, United States Army Center of Military History,
available at: http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/historical/west_expan-
sion_1815-1845.jpg (accessed 31 August 2016)
Fig. 1.3 Admission of States and Territorial Acquisition (n.d.), US
Bureau of the Census, available at: http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/
united_states/territory.jpg (accessed 31 August 2016)
Fig. 3.1 Central America and the Caribbean (Reference Map) (2013),
CIA, available at: http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/americas/central_
america_ref_2013.pdf (accessed 31 August 2016)
Fig. 4.1 US and Outlying Areas, 1970 (1970), from The National
Atlas of the United States of America, A. C. Gerlach (ed.), Washing-
ton, DC: US Department of the Interior, Geological Survey, availa-
ble at: http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/united_states/us_terr_1970.
jpg (accessed 31 August 2016)
Fig. 5.1 Philippines (Small Map) (2015), CIA, available at: http://
www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/cia15/philippines_sm_2015.gif (accessed
31 August 2016)

vi

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 figures vii

Fig. 6.1 American Samoa (Small Map) (2015), CIA, available at:
http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/cia15/american_samoa_sm_2015.
gif (accessed 31 August 2016)
Fig. 6.2 Panama (Small Map) (2015), CIA, available at: http://
www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/cia15/panama_sm_2015.gif (accessed 31
August 2016)
Fig. 6.3 US Virgin Islands (Small Map) (2015), CIA, available at:
http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/cia15/virgin_islands_sm_2015.gif
(accessed 31 August 2016)
Fig. 8.1 Northern Mariana Islands (Small Map) (2015), CIA, avail-
able at: http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/cia15/northern_mariana_
islands_sm_2015.gif (accessed 31 August 2016)
Fig. 8.2 Arctic Region (Political) (2012), CIA, available at: http://
www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/islands_oceans_poles/arctic_region_
pol_2012.pdf (accessed 31 August 2016)

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 Acknowledgements

As with any extended writing project, I was keen to have as many

people pass judgement on my work as possible before letting
it out into the public domain. Special thanks must firstly go to
the wonderful American historians at the University of Edinburgh
who so generously gave up their time to read draft chapters and
provide invaluable feedback: Frank Cogliano, Fabian Hilfrich,
Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones and Robert Mason. I would also like to thank
Julie Burns, Charles Conquest and Brian Greenwood for reading
my draft chapters to ensure the volume worked as a whole. I am
most grateful to the libraries of the University of Leicester and Uni-
versity of Bristol, whose online and printed materials have proved
vital in making this book possible. Finally, I would like to express
my gratitude to the tireless series editors Emily West and Martin
Halliwell, the reviewers of my initial proposal, and Michelle
Houston and Adela Rauchova at EUP, without whom this book
would have likely remained unwritten.

viii

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 Introduction:
Defining an Empire

‘American imperialism’ is a term that is often used by both propo-

nents and critics of US foreign relations around the world today.1
However, a universally accepted definition of the term does not
exist, and this volume does not seek to attempt the arduous or ill-
fated task of providing one. Although the historiography of the
term is discussed synoptically later, it is useful to provide a working
definition. Historian Paul MacDonald critiques ‘narrow’ definitions
of empire – those that focus on ‘political sovereignty’ that is overt,
explicit and durable – and points to the fact that even when one
excludes informal or diffuse modes of political power, it is often
difficult to ascertain whether one state has assumed political sov-
ereignty over another.2 Into this latter category, MacDonald puts
more difficult-to-place examples such as protectorates, military
occupations, and foreign base agreements.3 This book takes the
very broadest approach to the narrowest definition of ‘American
imperialism’, including the overt, explicit and durable assertions of
political sovereignty alongside the more difficult-to-place examples.
Whether or not one deems it a useful term, the United States has
certainly been imperialist in the past. Almost all historians would
accept that the United States had an ‘imperialist moment’ at the
end of the nineteenth century when, in the wake of the Spanish-
American War of 1898, it annexed far-flung territories but with-
held full admission to the union. However, agreement beyond this
is difficult to find. Some trace US imperialism all the way back
to the earliest continental expansion, the subjugation of Native
Americans and the ideology of Manifest Destiny which spoke of a
divinely mandated mission for the United States in expanding from
the Atlantic to the Pacific.4 Others trace it forward to the present
day, including the proliferation of US military bases overseas and

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 2 american imperialism

the United States’ still unequal relationship with many of its insular
possessions where, for example, Puerto Ricans can help choose the
Democratic and Republican candidates for the US presidency, but
not actually vote for the president.5
This exploration of US territorial expansion, ranging from its
earliest days to the present day, aims to allow readers to form their
own opinions about the story of American imperialism. Here, the
relatively uncontested examples of US imperialism, such as that seen
in the Philippines between 1898 and 1946, are brought together
alongside less commonly identified cases, such as the US occupation
of Japan after the Second World War, and cases of unrealised impe-
rial ambition, such as in Liberia and Canada. This volume addition-
ally seeks to balance the coverage of US imperialism between places
more widely written about, such as Cuba, and those instances that
rarely merit more than a line or two in general volumes, for exam-
ple the US Virgin Islands or American Samoa. Finally, the follow-
ing chapters spend a relatively equal amount of time on the period
before 1898, the Spanish-American War period itself, and the years
that followed, in contrast to other volumes that often focus on only
one or two of these periods without seeking to explore the whole
span of US imperial history.6
This volume does not seek to include within its exploration of
‘American imperialism’ what most scholars would deem ‘informal
imperialism’, be it economic domination, cultural hegemony or
other varieties that do not require some assertion of formal politi-
cal sovereignty or, at the very least, military occupation. This is not
to say that other definitions of American imperialism are not valid,
but they are beyond the remit of this study. What is explored here is
the history of the United States as a nation that has been an empire
from the start. It spent decades expanding this empire, first in North
America and then overseas, and even in the present maintains a
strategic territorial presence across the globe.
The literature on American imperialism, especially when one
accepts the full variety of its definitions and forms, is vast and has
grown exponentially in the last few decades. As Alyosha Goldstein
noted in a recent edited collection on the topic, since 9/11, ‘debates
and discussions on U.S. empire have become ubiquitous through-
out scholarly and popular forums’.7 The resulting literature on the
US and its projection of imperial power almost always includes a
historiographical section that provides an overview of certain key

5258_Burns.indd 2 15/12/16 4:54 PM

 introduction 3

volumes, by or against which the authors define themselves.8 What

follows here is a short overview of the most important shifts in the
historiography over the last century.
Most overviews of this topic begin with A Diplomatic History of
the United States, the 1936 work of historian Samuel Flagg Bemis,
which is the paradigmatic ‘traditionalist’ interpretation of American
imperialism. Bemis’s so-called ‘aberration thesis’ suggested that the
imperial moment which followed the Spanish-American War of 1898
was both accidental and all-but-unique in US history, an idea prom-
ulgated by scholars such as Julius Pratt and Ernest May in subse-
quent years.9 The first major revisionist turn came with the New Left
(Wisconsin) school of the 1950s and early 1960s, including histori-
ans such as William Appleman Williams and Walter LaFeber, who
saw 1898 not as an aberration, but as the culmination of the eco-
nomic development of the United States in the nineteenth century.10
The revisionists brought US imperialism to the forefront of academic
interest and controversy but, although they expanded the roots of US
imperialism to well before 1898, they approached American imperi-
alism as something broadly informal and economic in nature, with
the inevitable exception of the 1898 period.11
In the early 1980s, historians such as Richard Drinnon and
Walter Williams examined the similarities between the conquest of
the American West and the imperialism of 1898 and beyond, look-
ing in particular at ethnicity and parallels in the subjugation of
native peoples.12 Indeed, where it is easy to see Native American
relations with the US and its citizens as domestic history, as scholar-
ship since the late 1980s has increasingly noted, it should perhaps
be considered more accurately as part of US foreign relations since
‘these relations took place in an international arena devoid of a
superior authority’.13 In more recent decades, an acceptance that
the roots of US imperialism lie in the Revolutionary era has grown.
A good example of such an approach is Walter Nugent’s Habits of
Empire (2008), which aims to give a continuous history of American
imperialism from the end of the Revolutionary War to more recent
times. Nugent’s work spends the vast majority of its time on the
period prior to 1898, arguing that tying together this initial phase
of US imperialism with later phases was his primary goal.14 At the
other end of the chronological spectrum, historian Niall Ferguson,
in his 2005 paperback Colossus: The Rise and Fall of the American
Empire, calls the United States in the period of the early twenty-first

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 4 american imperialism

century an ‘empire in denial’, but an empire nonetheless. One of

Ferguson’s main aims is to present the United States as a nation
that is, and always has been, an empire.15 Unlike Nugent, Ferguson
focuses mostly on the post-1898 period, and usefully ties examples
explored here (including the occupations of Germany and Japan)
to the post-9/11 interventions in the Middle East. These authors,
along with the many other scholars cited here, continued to fuel and
expand the debate over American imperialism among both academic
and popular readerships up to the present day.
This book analyses a broad range of such specialist secondary
literature to provide a clear sense of the disputes that exist to this
day regarding the course of American imperial history. In addition
to this, it draws upon a variety of primary source material to add
depth and colour to its evaluation, such as political speeches and
contemporaneous journals and newspapers. Newspapers were cru-
cial in disseminating both pro- and anti-imperialist messages across
the United States and, as such, are sources used here to help illustrate
the arguments that punctuate debates over American imperialism.
For example, in the late 1890s, powerful editors such as William
Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer used their New York-based
newspapers to call for intervention in the ongoing Spanish-Cuban
conflict, if largely to increase newspaper circulation.16 During this
same period, hundreds of anti-imperialist politicians and private US
citizens used newspapers, pamphlets and magazines to spread their
views to a more general audience.17 Combined, this mix of engage-
ment with secondary and primary materials helps to emphasise the
variety and complexity that continue to make the history of Ameri-
can imperialism such an intriguing subject.18
The following chapters are organised in a broadly chronological
manner, with each chapter divided into thematic subsections, most
of which are geographical in nature. In these subsections, where
appropriate, the tale of US imperialism is explored beyond the
broader chronological boundaries of the chapter as a whole. The
overall aim is to provide an accessible introduction to American
imperialism, narrowly defined, but broadly exemplified. In doing
so, this volume seeks to bring back together what are too often dealt
with as the separate parts of the history of American imperialism.
Chapters 1 and 2 explore the continental expansion of the
United States, taking the annexation of former European imperial
territories and/or Native American lands to be the earliest form of

5258_Burns.indd 4 15/12/16 4:54 PM

 introduction 5

US empire-building. Chapter 3 considers the same time period as

these early chapters, but serves to illuminate some frequently over-
looked early signs of imperial interest overseas. The colonisation
of Liberia and US designs on Cuba, for example, provide inter-
esting precedents for the discussions and debates over imperial-
ism that would re-emerge in the 1890s. The emphasis on overseas
imperialism continues into Chapters 4 and 5, which focus on the
era widely regarded as the least contentious period of ‘American
imperialism’: the series of annexations of overseas island territo-
ries that took place before and after the Spanish-American War of
1898. Chapter 4 additionally explores the debates of the era, from
the motivations for the war itself, through disagreements over
the subsequent annexations of the former Spanish overseas pos-
sessions, to the rise and decline of the American anti-imperialist
movement.
Chapter 6 considers annexations that took place in the years
following the Spanish-American War but were not a direct result
of it. These later annexations show that formal imperialism did
not end with the Spanish-American War, and illuminate the rising
importance of ‘preclusive imperialism’, the idea that the US should
annex territories at least partially to keep them out of enemy
hands. Chapter 7 deals with medium-to-long term ‘occupation’ of
territories rather than annexation. Though the long-term Carib-
bean occupations of the early twentieth century are frequently dis-
cussed alongside the post-1898 annexations, the medium-to-long
term occupations of Germany and Japan after the Second World
War are not. However, this book sees the evolution towards occu-
pations (rather than annexations) from the early 1900s to the mid-
century as the precursor of post-1950s foreign policy. Shorter-term
and often less direct ‘occupations’ have been more commonplace
since the Second World War, but there are many important paral-
lels with earlier forms of direct imperial rule. The occupations of
Germany and Japan provided a far more planned and overt asser-
tion of sovereignty than later occupations, and were a template
for US interventions such as that in Iraq from 2003. Chapter 8
concludes the book by looking at examples of how a more formal
imperialist drive still endures into the twenty-first century. From
overseas bases to claims over the Arctic, the United States has not
entirely drawn back from the formal imperialism it followed in the
previous centuries.

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 6 american imperialism

Notes
1. To clarify, this volume explores the imperialism of the United States.
The term ‘American imperialism’ is used in the title simply because
it is what many academics, as well as worldwide media, continue to
use to refer to the United States’ imperialist policies (see discussion by
Immerman, Empire for Liberty, p. 3). Though, generally speaking,
this volume uses the term United States (or US) throughout, where
possible, in places the lack of a malleable adjectival description for the
US has required the use of the term ‘American’, but its imprecision as
a descriptor is duly noted.
2. MacDonald, ‘Those who forget historiography’, p. 50.
3. Ibid.; Immerwahr, ‘Greater United States’, p. 390, suggests that bases
and other such small outposts ‘act as staging grounds for . . . economic,
military and cultural interventions’ and – as US imperial territories –
should not be underestimated. His lecture gives a fantastic overview
of US imperialism along the lines of that explored here – linking early
continental expansion to the annexations of 1898 and present-day US
base culture.
4. Nugent, Habits of Empire; Drinnon, Facing West; Williams, ‘US Indian
Policy’, pp. 810–31. The term ‘Manifest Destiny’ was coined by jour-
nalist John O’Sullivan in 1845.
5. Ferguson, Colossus; Immerwahr, ‘Greater United States’, pp. 373–91.
6. For example, Nugent’s Habits of Empire focuses on the pre-twentieth-
century US empire, while Ferguson’s Colossus focuses on the post-
1898 empire (for discussion see below).
7. Goldstein, ‘Genealogy of US Colonial Present’, p. 11.
8. For just two relatively recent overview introductions, see: Goldstein,
‘Genealogy of US Colonial Present’, pp. 1–32, and McCoy et al., ‘On
the Tropic of Cancer’, pp. 3–33.
9. Morgan, Into New Territory, p. 8.
10. The ‘Wisconsin School’ is so-called because many of its most famous
proponents taught or studied at the University of Wisconsin. See par-
ticularly Williams, Tragedy of American Diplomacy, and LaFeber, The
New Empire. They mainly represented thinkers from the New Left in
US politics, critical of US foreign policy in the period and thus drawn
to re-evaluate the nature of American imperialism. For exceptional
coverage of the Wisconsin School, see: Morgan, Into New Territory.
11. Mommsen, Theories of Imperialism, pp. 93–4.
12. Drinnon, Facing West; Williams, ‘US Indian Policy’, pp. 810–31.
13. DeLay, ‘Indian Polities’, p. 298.
14. Nugent, Habits of Empire, p. xiv.
15. Ferguson, Colossus, pp. 2–6.

5258_Burns.indd 6 15/12/16 4:54 PM

 introduction 7

16. Fellow, American Media History, p. 162. Though, as Fellow notes,

very few today would argue that the war would not have happened
without their editorial intervention.
17. Morgan, Into New Territory, p. 40.
18. The bibliography provides a list of online resources that will enable
readers to further explore these sources.

5258_Burns.indd 7 15/12/16 4:54 PM

 CHAPTER 1

Atlantic to Pacific (1783–1893)

This volume traces United States imperialism back to the year 1783,
the first occasion when the newly recognised nation of the United
States enhanced its territorial boundaries following the end of the
Revolutionary War (1775–83) with the signing of the Treaty of
Paris. In addition to the British there were, of course, many other
settlers residing across the rest of the North American continent in
the eighteenth century, including settlers of the very oldest variety,
Native Americans. Over the course of the next century the United
States came into contact, and often conflict, with all of these rival
settlers in the course of building what would become their new
empire. The westward expansion of the United States in this period
was truly remarkable and, in just over a century, the US grew from
a small group of Atlantic coastal colonies to a transcontinental
empire able to rival the far older imperial powers of Europe.

Expansion from the Atlantic

The first clear calls for territorial expansion in the thirteen colonies
can be traced back to the end of the French and Indian War (a satel-
lite conflict in the Seven Years’ War), the last major conflict in North
America prior to the Revolutionary War. At this stage, of course,
the thirteen colonies were still part of the British Empire. After
defeating its French and Spanish rivals in North America, the 1763
Treaty of Paris saw Britain take control of French Canada (New
France), Spanish Florida and the eastern half of French Louisiana
(referred to here as Appalachia). Following the end of hostilities,
King George III issued a proclamation that the new territory to the
west of the established colonies, mainly consisting of Appalachia,
was ‘out of bounds’ to any would-be settlers from the existing Brit-
ish colonies bound by the Atlantic coast in the east. The population
of the thirteen colonies duly added this restriction to their growing

5258_Burns.indd 8 15/12/16 4:54 PM

 atlantic to pacific (1783–1893) 9

Figure 1.1 Map of Colonial North America

list of grievances, which was gradually accruing in the years prior to

the United States’ Declaration of Independence in 1776. Although
those who wished to settle the western frontier generally ignored
the king’s proclamation, it was nevertheless seen as undue meddling
in the affairs of the colonists. Expansion – like representation and
taxation – became a fundamental concern for those seeking inde-
pendence and for the early republic itself.
The idea of the United States as an ‘empire’ was there from the
very beginning. Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of
Independence and one of the most influential founding fathers, har-
boured ideas of his new nation as a republican ‘Empire of Liberty’
that would spread across the continent. Jefferson did not want to
recreate the sort of empire the Americans had just overthrown to
gain their independence, but it was an empire he sought nonetheless.1
Historian Richard Immerman draws attention to a change in phras-
ing by Jefferson some years later when referring to empire – from an

5258_Burns.indd 9 15/12/16 4:54 PM

 10 american imperialism

‘Empire of Liberty’ to an ‘Empire for Liberty’. Immerman sees this

change as marking a ‘commitment to a more aggressive, proactive
extension of that sphere of liberty – and hence a greater American
empire’. Indeed, Immerman sees the use of the word ‘empire’ by
George Washington and his contemporaries as not simply a syno-
nym for ‘state’ but as something that signalled further ambitions
beyond consolidation of what already existed.2 The very founders
of the United States had made clear their vision for this new nation.
It was to be a transcontinental empire.
With such imperial visions in mind it is unsurprising that,
even before the Revolutionary War had ended, the Continental
Congress had passed the following resolution on ‘federal lands’
in October 1780:

The unappropriated lands that may be ceded or relinquished to

the United States . . . shall be disposed of for the common ben-
efit of the United States, and be settled and formed into distinct
republican States, which shall become members of the Federal
Union, and have the same rights of sovereignty, freedom and
independence as the other States.3

Many historians suggest that, at least up until 1898, this was

broadly speaking the regular course of events in American expan-
sion: and, for what eventually comprised the contiguous forty-eight
states, this was largely the case.4
The 1783 Treaty of Paris, which saw Britain officially recog-
nise that its thirteen American colonies were lost, also set out the
United States’ territorial gains in its second article.5 So large was the
amount of land conceded to the United States in 1783 that Charles
Gravier, comte de Vergennes, the French foreign minister and war-
time ally of the United States, was somewhat disappointed. Gravier
had hoped to keep the United States dependent on France and was
ready to support Spanish claims to the wider Appalachian region.6
As early as 1783, even the allies of the United States were aware that
the new nation had real potential to grow significantly in power if
its territorial expansion was left unchecked.
In the summer of 1787 the Northwest Ordinance took over from
the 1780 resolution, providing new rules for the territories that
were not part of the original thirteen colonies and how they might
become fully-fledged states. As one group of historians puts it, by

5258_Burns.indd 10 15/12/16 4:54 PM

 atlantic to pacific (1783–1893) 11

organising the first ‘territory’ of the United States (the Northwest

Territory), the Confederation Congress ‘bridged the gap between
wilderness and statehood by providing a system of limited self-
government, the essence of which has been repeated for all conti-
nental and most insular possessions of the United States’.7 In effect,
the ordinance, in line with the gradual cessation of wide-ranging
claims by the thirteen original states, led to the pattern that would
see a number of new territories admitted to the union later acquir-
ing separate statehood, rather than simply expanding the existing
states into the frontier territories.8
One state that did not fully fall into this organised model was the
‘Vermont Republic’. Here, Vermonter Ethan Allen and his ‘Green
Mountain Boys’ took the opportunity afforded by the Revolution-
ary War to try and assert the state (then the New Hampshire Grants)
as independent of both Britain and the two states that laid claim to
the territory at the time (New Hampshire and New York).9 Not
recognised by the revolutionary authorities, Allen and his followers
instead made an offer to place Vermont back into the British Empire
as ‘a separate government under the crown’.10 However, the State of
New York and the US Congress later moved to accept the claims of
Vermonters to statehood and they were admitted as the fourteenth
state, the first new state of the union, in 1791. Many other new
states (formed from the territories ceded by the original thirteen
states) entered the union in the following years but few declared
themselves independent republics before seeking admission.11 In
the mid-nineteenth century, two far larger states notably followed
the lead of Vermont by joining the United States as self-proclaimed
independent republics, though by this time the new states came
from lands situated far beyond the boundaries the Treaty of Paris
had fixed for the US.12
The first territory ceded to the United States by Great Britain
after the Revolutionary War had been conducted in line with the
well-established tradition of the ‘spoils of war’ – a transferral of
imperial possessions from one empire to another under duress.
However, the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, which roughly doubled
the size of the young nation, was to be the first example of the
United States buying territory from another empire. The French had
been allies of the Thirteen Colonies during the Revolutionary War
and during this time had signed a treaty of perpetual alliance. Their
common bond in 1778 was a mutual distaste for the British Empire,

5258_Burns.indd 11 15/12/16 4:54 PM

 12 american imperialism

rather than a shared love of democracy – France at the time being

ruled by the absolutist Bourbon monarchy. However, this in itself
does not help explain why, just twenty years after the Revolutionary
War ended, the French decided to sell what was left of their North
American mainland possessions to the United States.
If anything, the turn of events in France in the intervening years
made the 1803 sale of Louisiana to the United States even more
unlikely. France itself had undergone, and was still undergoing, rad-
ical change at home following its own Revolutionary Wars (1798–
1802). Just a few years before the sale of Louisiana, the French
had signed the Treaty of San Ildefonso with Spain, which saw them
retake control of it for the first time since 1762. Furthermore, the
treaty was not effectively enacted or made public until 1802, the
year before the sale, and – technically – it did not allow France
to sell the territory.13 Many saw Napoleon Bonaparte, now the
sole consul and effective dictator of the French Republic, as keen
to re-impose French imperial power in North America, hence the
retrocession from Spain. Having just re-established French power
in North America, it seemed unlikely that a man as ambitious as
Napoleon would relinquish it so soon afterwards.
The US did not harbour any great expectations for immediate
concessions from the French. Indeed, even the most vocal expan-
sionist US frontiersmen only really hoped for control of the port
of New Orleans and navigation rights on the Mississippi.14 Yet, for
only $15 million, Napoleon went several steps further than any-
body anticipated and sold the entirety of French Louisiana to the
United States. Napoleon’s volte-face on extending French influence
in North America might have been down to any number of com-
pelling reasons. The worsening situation in the profitable French
colony of St Domingue (Haiti) and increasing French interest in
India are two imperial explanations for the sale. Closer to home,
one might question the wisdom of sending troops to low-value colo-
nies in the Americas when the situation in France and its relations
with its European neighbours were so volatile. In addition, the sale
would avoid the territory falling into the hands of the British and
prevent a UK-US alliance (similar to the reasoning behind ceding
the territory to Spain back in 1762).15 As Ian Tyrell puts it, with-
out the Napoleonic Wars the Louisiana Purchase would have been
‘neither possible nor necessary’.16 It is fair to say that the sale was
first and foremost a result of imperial overstretch and represented

5258_Burns.indd 12 15/12/16 4:54 PM

 atlantic to pacific (1783–1893) 13

a rationalisation of French possessions overseas so that Napoleon

could concentrate on his European empire. The Louisiana Purchase
was at least understandable, if not foreseeable.
Historian Francis Cogliano describes Thomas Jefferson, the US
president in 1803, as the ‘father of the first American empire’.17
For Jefferson, the very success of the American republic was bound
to that of the ‘Empire of Liberty’ via the acquisition of land and
securing free trade. Nevertheless, the acquisition of the Louisiana
Purchase territory raised important questions about the role of
imperial expansion: for example, was such acquisition even within
the government’s power – especially considering Jefferson’s strict
constructionist views of the Constitution? Jefferson himself cer-
tainly doubted for a time whether his government had the power
to acquire the territory without a constitutional amendment.18 This
question was only answered twenty-five years later by Chief Justice
John Marshall, when he equated the government’s war- and treaty-
making powers with its ability to acquire territory ‘by conquest or
treaty’.19 In spite of this retrospective clarification, many anti-impe-
rialists over the subsequent two centuries continued to raise the
question of constitutionality when it came to imperial expansion.20
Though the political predispositions of monarchical and revo-
lutionary France proved decisive in both the establishment of the
United States and the nation’s rapid expansion, Spain, in contrast,
was a somewhat reluctant and powerless bystander. Although the
Spanish had ceded control of Louisiana to France by 1802, Spain
did nothing when the French ignored the treaty obligations that
barred transferring sovereignty to a third power. After the Loui-
siana Purchase, the United States was unquestionably a regional
power to be reckoned with, and Spain now stood in the way of the
United States’ inexorable growth towards the two Floridas.
The history of the Floridas was as complex and ever-changing
as much of the rest of North America in the eighteenth century.
Following the French and Indian War, Great Britain had seized con-
trol of the French and Spanish territories to the south and west
of the thirteen colonies and created the territories of East Florida
(the formerly Spanish peninsula), and West Florida (the formerly
French ‘panhandle’). After the Revolutionary War the Spanish had
regained control of the Floridas but, almost from the start, the US
regarded the nominally Spanish-controlled Floridas both with sus-
picion and potential.

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 14 american imperialism

The first signs of US manoeuvrings near Florida pre-dated the

Louisiana Purchase, and came with the Treaty of San Lorenzo
(1795–6), also known as Pinckney’s Treaty, after the US special
envoy to Spain, Thomas Pinckney. Though partly down to the vol-
atile situation in Europe, this treaty was mainly Spain’s cautious
response to the negotiations between the US and Great Britain that
had ended in the pro-British Jay’s Treaty (1794–5).21 Prior to Jay’s
Treaty, Spain had been keen to restrict US influence and trade in
its territories. Yet, with Pinckney’s Treaty, Spain changed direction
markedly, allowing the United States to use the Mississippi and
access the port of New Orleans. In addition, Spain accepted the
31st Parallel as the border between the United States and Span-
ish Florida. The signing of Pinckney’s Treaty was a significant
turning point in the expansion of the United States. It resulted in
improved suppression of Native Americans in the region; an end to
murmurings of cession in the Kentucky region, and thus increased
national unity; and a period of growth and consolidation for the
early republic.22 In the long run, though, it acted as a precursor to
further US expansionism.
In 1802 Thomas Jefferson tried to purchase West Florida (along
with New Orleans) for the United States, but the more appealing
Louisiana Purchase soon overshadowed his initiative.23 However,
after the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, the United States became
increasingly concerned about instability in West Florida, and began
to fear that it might fall into the hands of a power more dangerous
than Spain. Some argued that the Louisiana Purchase had included
West Florida within its boundaries, and – not coincidentally – many
living on the United States’ southern frontier coveted more land.24
In addition to these factors, West Florida remained a troublesome
refuge for escaped slaves and a launching platform for Native
American attacks upon southern US states.
William C. Davis argues that Presidents Jefferson and Madison
merely ‘allowed’ Spain to administer West Florida after 1803 until an
opportunity arose to strike. He regards Madison’s eventual annexa-
tion of the territory as ‘passive expansionism’.25 On 23 September
1810 an exceptionally short rebellion was staged in Baton Rouge,
West Florida, and the Republic of West Florida was born. Support in
West Florida itself for US annexation came more after the revolution
of 1810 than before it, as its majority of Anglo-American inhabit-
ants by the early 1800s were only superficially loyal to Spain as long

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 atlantic to pacific (1783–1893) 15

as it provided stability and cheap land.26 Four days later President

Madison issued a proclamation that, as disturbances in West Florida
had not been controlled by the Spanish authorities, ‘a failure of the
United States to take the said territory into its possession may lead
to events ultimately contravening the views of both parties, whilst in
the meantime the tranquillity and security of our adjoining territo-
ries are endangered’.27 By 10 December 1810 the US had annexed
the bulk of West Florida without either war or payment.
East Florida proved a little trickier to annex than its western
neighbour and contained fewer ‘revolutionary’ US settlers than the
western province. An 1811 resolution by the US Congress set out its
objections to any transfer of sovereignty of East Florida to a third
party and expressed approval for its future annexation if Spain
were to agree. This ‘No Transfer Resolution’ was aimed at denying
Britain the option of annexing the territory in the run-up to the War
of 1812.28 The US regarded East Florida, like the west before it, as
a safe haven for undesirables. The chief aggravator in the period
leading up to the annexation of East Florida proved to be the Semi-
nole tribe who, along with many escaped slaves, sided with Great
Britain in the War of 1812 and conducted cross-border raids into
the United States. In 1812 a band of renegade settler-revolutionaries
attempted to stage a West Florida-style rebellion that might result in
annexation. Although Madison officially rejected such calls, he only
mildly rebuked the rebels’ actions and even sought assurances from
Spain that they would not be prosecuted.29
Between 1817 and 1818 President Monroe authorised General
Andrew Jackson to cross the border into East Florida in what is
now called the First Seminole War. Jackson, however, exceeded his
mandate and launched what was effectively a full-scale invasion of
the Spanish territory. Spain was in a terrible negotiating position –
despite the illegality of Jackson’s actions – as its attention was torn,
particularly by its South American possessions, where revolutions
against Spanish rule were widespread. President Monroe adopted
the line that Spain needed either to control its territory fully or pass
over this responsibility to the United States. Spanish foreign min-
ister Don Luis de Onís had very few options if he were to avoid
war with the United States. Therefore, after lengthy negotiations,
both Secretary of State John Quincy Adams and Onís signed the
Transcontinental Treaty (1819), or Adams-Onís Treaty, which came
into force in 1821.30 This treaty not only ceded the rest of Florida

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 16 american imperialism

to the United States but also settled the full border between New
Spain (the rest of Spain’s North American land empire) and the
United States.31 In return the United States rescinded its claims on
Texas and, although the US did not pay for Florida as such, it did
accept liability for US claims against Spain up to the amount of $5
million.32 With extension into the Floridas, the United States had
shown that post-1783 expansion would not simply be explained
away as ‘accidental imperialism’, but that it was willing to apply
force and pressure – where necessary – to achieve its ends.

Expansion in the South-west

The Transcontinental Treaty with Spain, ratified by the US Senate
on 22 February 1821, had only limited efficacy, and within three
decades the United States had moved its border much further south
and west. Only six months after the ratification of the Transconti-
nental Treaty, the Treaty of Córdoba of 24 August 1821 saw Spain
relinquish control of New Spain and established the newly inde-
pendent Mexican Empire (Mexican Republic from 1824). From this
point onwards the United States had an independent Mexico to deal
with, rather than Spain, if it was to further its imperial ambitions.
At first the Mexican authorities encouraged the gradual infiltration
of settlers from the United States into the Texas region of northern
Mexico, where the population increased rapidly, but this policy was
later reversed when Mexico barred US immigration in 1830.33
Mexico became increasingly wary of potential US designs on
the region, and an 1826 uprising in Texas, coupled with attempts
by Presidents John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson to pur-
chase Texas for $1 million and $5 million respectively, did little to
assuage Mexican doubts.34 Great Britain also began to worry about
the future of Texas, largely due to its financial links with Mexico
and an ongoing campaign to promote the abolition of slavery in
the region, particularly after the institution had been abolished in
most of the British Empire in 1833.35 In October 1835, during a
period in which the new Mexican leader/dictator Antonio López
de Santa Anna tried to reassert Mexican control in the region, US
settlers in Texas resisted violently at what became known as the
Battle of Gonzales. In the months that followed, Texas declared
itself an independent republic and war between Texas and Mexico,
including the famous Battle of the Alamo in April 1836, continued

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5258_Burns.indd 17
Figure 1.2 Westward Expansion, 1815–1845

15/12/16 4:54 PM
 18 american imperialism

until May 1836 when Mexico conceded defeat. However, the US

did not annex Texas rapidly, as the bulk of West Florida had been
incorporated in 1810. In fact, annexation was more than a decade
in the making.
In 1835 President Andrew Jackson – the man who spearheaded
the annexation of Florida and attempted to buy Texas in 1829 –
rejected the overtures of the new Texan president Sam Houston.
The primary issue dividing the northern abolitionists and southern
slaveholders of the United States was the extension of slavery into
new territories. The predominantly southern US settlers in Mexican-
owned Texas began to outnumber the existing Tejano population
by the 1830s, and with them they had reimported the institution
of slavery (which the Mexicans had abolished in 1829). The burn-
ing question that therefore remained was whether the Republic of
Texas would be annexed as a slave or free state (or even states).
Added to these issues, recognition of Texan independence – and
even more so the annexation of the republic – could well have led
to prolonged conflict with Mexico.36 Jackson opted for a diplomatic
line and delayed official recognition of Texas until 3 March 1837,
the day before his successor Martin Van Buren was sworn in as
US president.
Britain and France welcomed the Republic of Texas as an inde-
pendent state, seeing this as preferable to US annexation and further
incursion on the Caribbean shoreline, as well as providing a useful
new trading partner. Van Buren went no further than Jackson in sim-
ply recognising Texan independence, but John Tyler – the Whig who
came to the presidency after William Henry Harrison’s untimely
death – promoted annexation far more fulsomely, especially after
his own party had disowned him.37 Tyler signed a treaty of annexa-
tion in 1844, which was then debated by the US Senate with both
Democrats and Whigs divided over its merits. Proponents of annexa-
tion pointed to the old Jeffersonian argument of the necessity for
large territorial expanses to achieve a true farming republic, as well
as stressing the commercial, communication and trading benefits.
Nevertheless the issues of slavery and war with Mexico remained
equally pressing – and the Whig Party in Congress (if not their
president) opposed immediate annexation.38 The issue also led to
the Democratic Party selecting the pro-annexation James K. Polk as
their presidential nominee in 1844 ahead of the anti-annexationist
Martin Van Buren.39

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 atlantic to pacific (1783–1893) 19

Texas provided the first real instance of the United States’ desire
to expand its territory having a substantial impact on both domes-
tic political parties. President Tyler lacked the two-thirds votes in
the Senate necessary to ratify his treaty, so instead he secured it by
means of a joint resolution of Congress, requiring only a simple
majority in both the House and the Senate, which passed in March
1845 and came into effect in December 1845. The resolution stated
that: ‘Congress doth consent that the territory properly included
within, and rightfully belonging to the Republic of Texas, may be
erected into a new State, to be called the State of Texas.’40
The annexation of Texas and its consequences in the later 1840s
were part of a grander movement called ‘Manifest Destiny’. This
phrase, coined by John L. O’Sullivan in 1845, would propound a
belief in the inexorable nature of the growth of federal democracy
across the Western Hemisphere. Frederick Merk deems the term
‘novel and right for a mood’, summing up a feeling of God-ordained
right to expand over a non-defined area that many regarded as
extending from the Atlantic to the Pacific, if not over the entire
Americas. He goes on to note that, to most Americans in the 1840s,
this meant that any peoples keen to apply for admission to the union
were welcome, though some, such as the Mexicans, might require
a period of tutelage before they were allowed in.41 Albert Weinberg
suggests that many factors encouraged expansion through Manifest
Destiny: ‘metaphysical dogmas of a providential mission and quasi-
scientific “laws” of national development, conceptions of national
right and ideals of social duty, legal rationalisations and appeals to
“the higher law”, aims of extending freedom and designs of extend-
ing benevolent absolutism’.42 A creed that served the United States
well beyond expansion into Texas, Manifest Destiny had long-
lasting implications for the development of US imperialism.
Although Texas had been annexed on 29 December 1845 with-
out recourse to war with Mexico, war was not long in coming. Just
as some in the US had argued that Texas lay within the bounds of
the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, so the boundaries of earlier trea-
ties and nations were once again disputed as regarded the extent
of Texas. The United States argued that the border between Texas
and Mexico was formed by the Rio Grande River, whereas the
Mexicans claimed that it was the Nueces River that truly marked
the border. President Polk sent John Slidell to negotiate with the
Mexicans over the border issue with a mandate to discuss further

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 20 american imperialism

territorial concessions by Mexico for a variety of prices: from $5

million for New Mexico, up to $25 million for the territory extend-
ing to the Pacific Coast.43 When Slidell’s diplomacy failed, Polk sent
General Zachary Taylor to the Rio Grande to claim the territory the
US felt was Texan already, and by May 1846 the United States was
at war with Mexico. Many historians have blamed Polk’s aggressive
actions for starting the Mexican-American War, seeing Slidell’s mis-
sion as designed to engineer a diplomatic rejection that would allow
for war. However, Ward McAfee makes a compelling case that the
president had little choice other than to act as he did, and that,
though his actions were antagonistic, Polk had high expectations of
the mission’s success.44
In June 1846 the ongoing tension precipitated a revolt in Mexico’s
Alta Californian province, where fearful US settlers in the area seized
the Mexican outpost of Sonoma and declared independence in the
so-called ‘Bear Flag Revolt’.45 Later, led by the explorer John Fré-
mont, the rebels marched upon San Francisco and claimed the region
for the US, though US troops were not far behind.46 The parallels
with Texas seem relatively clear, but as John Pinheiro notes, the big
difference was that the Californian rebellion received support from
the US and the ‘republic’ lasted little over a week, whereas Texas
existed for an entire decade.47 Following the fall of Mexico City to
US forces in September 1847 the war reached its effective conclusion
by the end of that year, but negotiating a treaty still proved a distant
prospect. A number of factors stalled Mexican negotiations, from
pride and political instability in Mexico, to the political situation in
the United States. From the US point of view, many were frustrated
by the failure of diplomacy to date, and Polk was pushed to assume
a tougher line with Mexico.48 Nicholas Trist, a diplomat whom Polk
had attempted to recall on 6 October 1847, signed a peace treaty
almost four months after he had been recalled. On 2 February 1848
the two countries finally agreed to the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo,
by which the United States gained control of Alta (Upper) Califor-
nia and New Mexico, along with establishing the Rio Grande as the
border between Texas and Mexico. In addition to dealing with sev-
eral financial issues, including $15 million in compensation for lands
lost by Mexico, the treaty also guaranteed the property and rights of
Mexicans who now lived in US territory. Indeed, unless they wished
to return to Mexico or keep their Mexican citizenship, the residents

5258_Burns.indd 20 15/12/16 4:54 PM

Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 CHAPTER II

I HAVE decided not to show Edelgard my manuscript again, and my reason

is that I may have a freer hand. For the same reason I will not, as we at
first proposed, send it round by itself among our relations, but will either
accompany it in person or invite our relations to a cozy beer-evening, with a
simple little cold something to follow, and read aloud such portions of it as I
think fit, omitting of course much that I say about Edelgard and probably
also a good deal that I say about everybody else. A reasonable man is not a
woman, and does not willingly pander to a love of gossip. Besides, as I have
already hinted, the Edelgard who came back from England is by no means
the Edelgard who went there. It will wear off, I am confident, in time, and
we will return to the status quo ante—(how naturally that came out: it
gratifies me to see I still remember)—a status quo full of trust and obedience
on the one side and of kind and wise guidance on the other. Surely I have a
right to refuse to be driven, except by a silken thread? When I, noticing a
tendency on Edelgard’s part to attempt to substitute, if I may so express it,
leather, asked her the above question, will it be believed that what she
answered was Bosh?
It gave me a great shock to hear her talk like that. Bosh is not a German
expression at all. It is purest English. And it amazes me with what rapidity
she picked it and similar portions of the language up, adding them in
quantities to the knowledge she already possessed of the tongue, a fairly
complete knowledge (she having been well educated), but altogether
excluding words of that sort. Of course I am aware it was all Jellaby’s fault
—but more of him in his proper place; I will not now dwell on later
incidents while my narrative is still only at the point where everything was
eager anticipation and preparation.
Our caravan had been hired; I had sent, at Frau von Eckthum’s direction,
the money to the owner, the price (unfortunately) having to be paid
beforehand; and August the first, the very day of my wedding with poor
Marie-Luise, was to see us start. Naturally there was much to do and
arrange, but it was pleasurable work such as getting a suit of civilian clothes
adapted to the uses it would be put to, searching for stockings to match the
knickerbockers, and for a hat that would be useful in both wet weather and
sunshine.
 “It will be all sunshine,” said Frau von Eckthum with her really unusually
pretty smile (it includes the sudden appearance of two dimples) when I
expressed fears as to the effect of rain on the Panama that I finally bought
and which, not being a real one, made me anxious.
We saw her several times because of our need for hints as to luggage,
meeting place, etc., and I found her each time more charming. When she was
on her feet, too, her dress hid the shoes; and she was really helpful, and was
apparently looking forward greatly to showing us the beauties of her sister’s
more or less native land.
As soon as my costume was ready I put it on and drove out to see her.
The stockings had been a difficulty because I could not bear, accustomed as I
am to cotton socks, their woollen feet. This was at last surmounted by
cutting off their feet and sewing my ordinary sock feet on to the woollen
legs. It answered splendidly, and Edelgard assured me that with care no
portion of the sock (which was not of the same colour) would protrude. She
herself had sent to Berlin to Wertheim for one of the tailor-made dresses in
his catalogue, which turned out to be of really astonishing value for the
money, and in which she looked very nice. With a tartan silk blouse and a
little Tyrolese hat and a pheasant’s feather stuck in it she was so much
transformed that I declared I could not believe it was our silver wedding
journey, and I felt exactly as I did twenty-five years before.
“But it is not our silver wedding journey,” she said with some sharpness.
“Dear wife,” I retorted surprised, “you know very well that it is mine, and
what is mine is also by law yours, and that therefore without the least
admissible logical doubt it is yours.”
She made a sudden gesture with her shoulders that was almost like
impatience; but I, knowing what victims the best of women are to
incomprehensible moods, went out and bought her a pretty little bag with a
leather strap to wear over one shoulder and complete her attire, thus proving
to her that a reasonable man is not a child and knows when and how to be
indulgent.
Frau von Eckthum, who was going to stay with her sister for a fortnight
before they both joined us (the sister, I regretted to hear, was coming too),
left in the middle of July. Flitz, at that time incomprehensibly to me, made
excuses for not taking part in the caravan tour, but since then light has been
thrown on his behaviour: he said, I remember, that he could not leave his
pigs.
“Much better not leave his sister,” said Edelgard who, I fancy, was just
then a little envious of Frau von Eckthum.
“Dear wife,” I said gently, “we shall be there to take care of her and he
knows she is safe in our hands. Besides, we do not want Flitz. He is the last
man I can imagine myself ever wanting.”
It was perfectly natural that Edelgard should be a little envious, and I felt
it was and did not therefore in any way check her. I need not remind those
relatives who will next winter listen to this that the Flitzes of Flitzburg, of
whom Frau von Eckthum was one, are a most ancient and still more
penniless family. Frau von Eckthum and her gaunt sister (last time she was
staying in Prussia both Edelgard and I were struck with her extreme
gauntness) each married a wealthy man by two most extraordinary strokes of
luck; for what man nowadays will marry a girl who cannot take, if not the
lion’s share, at least a very substantial one of the household expenses upon
herself? What is the use of a father if he cannot provide his daughter with the
money required suitably to support her husband and his children? I myself
have never been a father, so that I am qualified to speak with perfect
impartiality; that is, strictly, I was one twice, but only for so few minutes
each time that they can hardly be said to count. The two von Flitz girls
married so young and so well, and have been, without in any way really
deserving it, so snugly wrapped in comfort ever since (Frau von Eckthum
actually losing her husband two years after marriage and coming into
everything) that naturally Edelgard cannot be expected to like it. Edelgard
had a portion herself of six thousand marks a year besides an unusual
quantity of house linen, which enabled her at last—she was twenty-four
when I married her—to find a good husband; and she cannot understand by
what wiles the two sisters, without a penny or a table cloth, secured theirs at
eighteen. She does not see that they are—“were” is the better word in the
case of the gaunt sister—attractive; but then the type is so completely
opposed to her own that she would not be likely to. Certainly I agree that a
married woman verging, as the sister must be, on thirty should settle down to
a smooth head and at least the beginnings of a suitable embonpoint. We do
not want wives like lieutenants in a cavalry regiment; and Edelgard is not
altogether wrong when she says that both Frau von Eckthum and her sister
make her think of those lean and elegant young men. Your lean woman with
her restlessness of limb and brain is far indeed removed from the soft
amplitudes and slow movements of her who is the ideal wife of every
German better-class bosom. Privately, however, I feel I can at least
understand that there may have been something to be said at the time for the
Englishman’s conduct, and I more than understand that of the deceased
Eckthum. No one can deny that his widow is undoubtedly—well, well; let
me return to the narrative.
We had naturally told everybody we met what we were going to do, and it
was intensely amusing to see the astonishment created. Bad health for the
rest of our days was the smallest of the evils predicted. Also our digestions
were much commiserated. “Oh,” said I with jaunty recklessness at that, “we
shall live on boiled hedgehogs, preceded by mice soup,”—for I had studied
the article Gipsies in our Encyclopædia, and discovered that they often eat
the above fare.
The faces of our friends when I happened to be in this jocose vein were a
study. “God in heaven,” they cried, “what will become of your poor wife?”
But a sense of humour carries a man through anything, and I did not
allow myself to be daunted. Indeed it was not likely, I reminded myself
sometimes when inclined to be thoughtful at night, that Frau von Eckthum,
who so obviously was delicately nurtured, would consent to eat hedgehogs
or risk years in which all her attractiveness would evaporate on a sofa of
sickness.
“Oh, but Frau von Eckthum——!” was the invariable reply, accompanied
by a shrug when I reassured the ladies of our circle by pointing this out.
I am aware Frau von Eckthum is unpopular in Storchwerder. Perhaps it is
because the art of conversation is considerably developed there, and she will
not talk. I know she will not go to its balls, refuses its dinners, and turns her
back on its coffees. I know she is with difficulty induced to sit on its
philanthropic boards, and when she finally has been induced to sit on them
does not do so after all but stays at home. I know she is different from the
type of woman prevailing in our town, the plain, flat-haired, tightly buttoned
up, God-fearing wife and mother, who looks up to her husband and after her
children, and is extremely intelligent in the kitchen and not at all intelligent
out of it. I know that this is the type that has made our great nation what it is,
hoisting it up on ample shoulders to the first place in the world, and I know
that we would have to request heaven to help us if we ever changed it. But—
she is an attractive lady.
 Truly it is an excellent thing to be able to put down one’s opinions on
paper as they occur to one without risk of irritating interruption—I hope my
hearers will not interrupt at the reading aloud—and now that I have at last
begun to write a book—for years I have intended doing so—I see clearly the
superiority of writing over speaking. It is the same kind of superiority that
the pulpit enjoys over the (very properly) muzzled pews. When, during my
stay on British soil, I said anything, however short, of the nature of the
above remarks about our German wives and mothers, it was most annoying
the way I was interrupted and the sort of questions that were instantly put me
by, chiefly, the gaunt sister. But of that more in its place. I am still at the
point where she had not yet loomed on my horizon, and all was pleasurable
anticipation.
We left our home on August 1st, punctually as we had arranged, after
some very hard-worked days at the end during which the furniture was
beaten and strewn with napthalin (against moths), curtains, etc., taken down
and piled neatly in heaps, pictures covered up in newspapers, and groceries
carefully weighed and locked up. I spent these days at the Club, for my leave
had begun on the 25th of July and there was nothing for me to do. And I
must say, though the discomfort in our flat was intense, when I returned to it
in the evening in order to go to bed I was never anything but patient with the
unappetisingly heated and disheveled Edelgard. And she noticed it and was
grateful. It would be hard to say what would make her grateful now. These
last bad days, however, came to their natural end, and the morning of the
first arrived and by ten we had taken leave, with many last injunctions, of
Clothilde who showed an amount of concern at our departure that gratified
us, and were on the station platform with Hermann standing respectfully
behind us carrying our hand luggage in both his gloved hands, and with what
he could not carry piled about his feet, while I could see by the expression
on their faces that the few strangers present recognized we were people of
good family or, as England would say, of the Upper Ten. We had no luggage
for registration because of the new law by which every kilo has to be paid
for, but we each had a well-filled, substantial hold-all and a leather
portmanteau, and into these we had succeeded in packing most of the things
Frau von Eckthum had from time to time suggested we might want.
Edelgard is a good packer, and got far more in than I should have thought
possible, and what was left over was stowed away in different bags and
baskets. Also we took a plentiful supply of vaseline and bandages. “For,” as
I remarked to Edelgard when she giddily did not want to, quoting the most
modern (though rightly disapproved of in Storchwerder) of English writers,
“you never can possibly tell,”—besides a good sized ox-tongue, smoked
specially for us by our Storchwerder butcher and which was later on to be
concealed in our caravan for private use in case of need at night.
The train did not start till 10:45, but we wanted to be early in order to see
who would come to see us off; and it was a very good thing we were in such
good time, for hardly a quarter of an hour had elapsed before, to my dismay,
I recollected that I had left my Panama at home. It was Edelgard’s fault, who
had persuaded me to wear a cap for the journey and carry my Panama in my
hand, and I had put it down on some table and in the heat of departure
forgotten it. I was deeply annoyed, for the whole point of the type of
costume I had chosen would be missed without just that kind of hat, and, at
my sudden exclamation and subsequent explanation of my exclamation,
Edelgard showed that she felt her position by becoming exceedingly red.
There was nothing for it but to leave her there and rush off in a droschke
to our deserted flat. Hurrying up the stairs two steps at a time and letting
myself in with my latch-key I immediately found the Panama on the head of
one of the privates in my own battalion, who was lolling in my chair at the
breakfast-table I had so lately left being plied with our food by the miserable
Clothilde, she sitting on Edelgard’s chair and most shamelessly imitating her
mistress’s manner when she is affectionately persuading me to eat a little bit
more.
The wretched soldier, I presume, was endeavouring to imitate me, for he
called her a dear little hare, an endearment I sometimes apply to my wife, on
Clothilde’s addressing him as Edelgard sometimes does (or rather did) me in
her softer moments as sweet snail. The man’s imitation of me was a very
poor affair, but Clothilde hit my wife off astoundingly well, and both
creatures were so riotously mirthful that they neither heard nor saw me as I
stood struck dumb in the door. The clock on the wall, however, chiming the
half-hour recalled me to the necessity for instant action, and rushing forward
I snatched the Panama off the amazed man’s head, hurled a furious dismissal
at Clothilde, and was out of the house and in the droschke before they could
so much as pray for mercy. Immediately on arriving at the station I took
Hermann aside and gave him instructions about the removal within an hour
of Clothilde, and then, swallowing my agitation with a gulp of the man of
the world, I was able to chat courteously and amiably with friends who had
collected to see us off, and even to make little jokes as though nothing
whatever had happened. Of course directly the last smile had died away at
the carriage window and the last handkerchief had been fluttered and the last
promise to send many picture postcards had been made, and our friends had
become mere black and shapeless masses without bodies, parts or passions
on the grey of the receding platform, I recounted the affair to Edelgard, and
she was so much upset that she actually wanted to get out at the next station
and give up our holiday and go back and look after her house.
Strangely enough, what upset her more than the soldier’s being feasted at
our expense and more than his wearing my new hat while he feasted, was the
fact that I had dismissed Clothilde.
“Where and when am I to get another?” was her question, repeated with a
plaintiveness that was at length wearisome. “And what will become of all
our things now during our absence?”
“Would you have had me not dismiss her instantly, then?” I cried at last,
goaded by this persistence. “Is every shamelessness to be endured? Why, if
the woman were a man and of my own station, honour would demand that I
should fight a duel with her.”
“But you cannot fight a duel with a cook,” said Edelgard stupidly.
“Did I not expressly say that I could not?” I retorted; and having with this
reached the point where patience becomes a weakness I was obliged to put it
aside and explain to her with vigour that I am not only not a fool but decline
to be talked to as if I were. And when I had done, she having given no
further rise to discussion, we were both silent for the rest of the way to
Berlin.
This was not a bright beginning to my holiday, and I thought with some
gloom of the difference between it and the start twenty-five years before
with my poor Marie-Luise. There was no Clothilde then, and no Panama hat
(for they were not yet the fashion), and all was peace. Unwilling, however,
to send Edelgard, as the English say, any longer to Coventry—we are both
good English scholars as my hearers know—when we got into the droschke
in Berlin that was to take us across to the Potsdamer Bahnhof (from which
station we departed for London via Flushing) I took her hand, and turning
(not without effort) an unclouded face to her, said some little things which
enabled her to become aware that I was willing once again to overlook and
forgive.
 Now I do not propose to describe the journey to London. So many of our
friends know people who have done it that it is not necessary for me to dwell
upon it further than to say that, being all new to us, it was not without its
charm—at least, up to the moment when it became so late that there were no
more meals taking place in the restaurant-car and no more attractive trays
being held up to our windows at the stations on the way. About what
happened later in the night I would not willingly speak: suffice it to say that
I had not before realized the immense and apparently endless distance of
England from the good dry land of the Continent. Edelgard, indeed, behaved
the whole way up to London as if she had not yet got to England at all; and I
was forced at last to comment very seriously on her conduct, for it looked as
much like wilfulness as any conduct I can remember to have witnessed.
We reached London at the uncomfortable hour of 8 A.M., or thereabouts,
chilled, unwell, and disordered. Although it was only the second of August a
damp autumn draught pervaded the station. Shivering, we went into the sort
of sheep-pen in which our luggage was searched for dutiable articles,
Edelgard most inconsiderately leaving me to bear the entire burden of
opening and shutting our things, while she huddled into a corner and
assumed (very conveniently) the air of a sufferer. I had to speak to her quite
sharply once when I could not fit the key of her portmanteau into its lock
and remind her that I am not a lady’s maid, but even this did not rouse her,
and she continued to huddle apathetically. It is absurd for a wife to collapse
at the very moment when she ought to be most helpful; the whole theory of
the helpmeet is shattered by such behaviour. And what can I possibly know
about Customs? She looked on quite unmoved while I struggled to replace
the disturbed contents of our bags, and my glances, in turn appealing and
indignant, did not make her even raise her head. There were too many
strangers between us for me to be able to do more than glance, so
Edelgard most inconsiderately leaving me to bear the entire burden of opening and shutting
our things

reserving what I had to say for a more private moment I got the bags shut as
well as I could, directed the most stupid porter (who was also apparently
deaf, for each time I said anything to him he answered perfectly irrelevantly
with the first letter of the alphabet) I have ever met to conduct me and the
luggage to the refreshment room, and far too greatly displeased with
Edelgard to take any further notice of her, walked on after the man leaving
her to follow or not as she chose.
I think people must have detected as I strode along that I was a Prussian
officer, for so many looked at me with interest. I wished I had had my
uniform and spurs on, so that for once the non-martial island could have seen
what the real thing is like. It was strange to me to be in a crowd of nothing
but civilians. In spite of the early hour every arriving train disgorged
myriads of them of both sexes. Not the flash of a button was to be seen; not
the clink of a sabre to be heard; but, will it be believed? at least every third
person arriving carried a bunch of flowers, often wrapped in tissue paper and
always as carefully as though it had been a specially good belegtes
Brödchen. That seemed to me very characteristic of the effeminate and non-
military nation. In Prussia useless persons like old women sometimes
transport bunches of flowers from one point to another—but that a man
should be seen doing so, a man going evidently to his office, with his bag of
business papers and his grave face, is a sight I never expected to see. The
softness of this conduct greatly struck me. I could understand a packet of
some good thing to eat between meals being brought, some tit-bit from the
home kitchen—but a bunch of flowers! Well, well; let them go on in their
effeminacy. It is what has always preceded a fall, and the fat little land will
be a luscious morsel some day for muscular continental (and almost
certainly German) jaws.
We had arranged to go straight that very day to the place in Kent where
the caravans and Frau von Eckthum and her sister were waiting for us,
leaving the sights of London for the end of our holiday, by which time our
already extremely good though slow and slightly literary English (by which I
mean that we talked more as the language is written than other people do,
and that we were singularly pure in the matter of slang) would have
developed into an up-to-date agility; and there being about an hour and a
half’s time before the train for Wrotham started—which it conveniently did
from the same station we arrived at—our idea was to have breakfast first and
then, perhaps, to wash. This we accordingly did in the station restaurant, and
made the astonishing acquaintance of British coffee and butter. Why, such
stuff would not be tolerated for a moment in the poorest wayside inn in
Germany, and I told the waiter so very plainly; but he only stared with an
extremely stupid face, and when I had done speaking said “Eh?”
 It was what the porter had said each time I addressed him, and I had
already, therefore, not then knowing what it was or how it was spelt, had
about as much of it as I could stand.
“Sir,” said I, endeavoring to annihilate the man with that most powerful
engine of destruction, a witticism, “what has the first letter of the alphabet to
do with everything I say?”
“Eh?” said he.
“Suppose, sir,” said I, “I were to confine my remarks to you to a strictly
logical sequence, and when you say A merely reply B—do you imagine we
should ever come to a satisfactory understanding?”
“Eh?” said he.
“Yet, sir,” I continued, becoming angry, for this was deliberate
impertinence, “it is certain that one letter of the alphabet is every bit as good
as another for conversational purposes.”
“Eh?” said he; and began to cast glances about him for help.
“This,” said I to Edelgard, “is typical. It is what you must expect in
England.”
The head waiter here caught one of the man’s glances and hurried up.
“This gentleman,” said I, addressing the head waiter and pointing to his
colleague, “is both impertinent and a fool.”
“Yes, sir. German, sir,” said the head waiter, flicking away a crumb.
Well, I gave neither of them a tip. The German was not given one for not
at once explaining his inability to get away from alphabetical repartee and so
shamefully hiding the nationality he ought to have openly rejoiced in, and
the head waiter because of the following conversation:
“Can’t get ’em to talk their own tongue, sir,” said he, when I indignantly
inquired why he had not. “None of ’em will, sir. Hear ’em putting German
gentry who don’t know English to the greatest inconvenience. ‘Eh?’ this
one’ll say—it’s what he picks up his first week, sir. ‘A thousand damns,’ say
the German gentry, or something to that effect. ‘All right,’ says the waiter—
that’s what he picks up his second week—and makes it worse. Then the
German gentry gets really put out, and I see ’em almost foamin’ at the
mouth. Impatient set of people, sir——”
“I conclude,” said I, interrupting him with a frown, “that the object of
these poor exiled fellows is to learn the language as rapidly as possible and
get back to their own country.”
“Or else they’re ashamed of theirs, sir,” said he, scribbling down the bill.
“Rolls, sir? Eight, sir? Thank you, sir——”
“Ashamed?”
“Quite right, sir. Nasty cursin’ language. Not fit for a young man to get
into the habit of. Most of the words got a swear about ’em somewhere, sir.”
“Perhaps you are not aware,” said I icily, “that at this very moment you
are speaking to a German gentleman.”
“Sorry, sir. Didn’t notice it. No offence meant. Two coffees, four boiled
eggs, eight—you did say eight rolls, sir? Compliment really, you know, sir.”
“Compliment!” I exclaimed, as he whisked away with the money to the
paying desk; and when he came back I pocketed, with elaborate deliberation,
every particle of change.
“That is how,” said I to Edelgard while he watched me, “one should treat
these fellows.”
To which she, restored by the hot coffee to speaking point, replied (rather
stupidly I thought),
“Is it?”
 CHAPTER III

S HE became, however, more normal as the morning wore on, and by

about eleven o’clock was taking an intelligent interest in hop-kilns.
These objects, recurring at frequent intervals as one travels through
the county of Kent, are striking and picturesque additions to the landscape,
and as our guide-book described them very fully I was able to talk a good
deal about them. Kent pleased me very well. It looked as if there were
money in it. Many thriving villages, many comfortable farmhouses, and
many hoary churches peeping slyly at us through surrounding groups of
timber so ancient that its not yet having been cut down and sold is in itself a
testimony to the prevailing prosperity. It did not need much imagination to
picture the comfortable clergyman lurking in the recesses of his snug
parsonage and rubbing his well-nourished hands at life. Well, let him rub.
Some day perhaps—and who knows how soon?—we shall have a decent
Lutheran pastor in his black gown preaching the amended faith in every one
of those churches.
Shortly, then, Kent is obviously flowing with milk and honey and well-to-
do inhabitants; and when on referring to our guide-book I found it described
as the Garden of England I was not in the least surprised, and neither was
Edelgard. In this county, as we knew, part at any rate of our gipsying was to
take place, for the caravans were stationed at a village about three miles
from Wrotham, and we were very well satisfied that we were going to
examine it more closely, because though no one could call the scenery
majestic it yet looked full of promise of a comfortable nature. I observed for
instance that the roads seemed firm and good, which was clearly important;
also that the villages were so plentiful that there would be no fear of our ever
getting beyond the reach of provisions. Unfortunately, the weather was not
true August weather, which I take it is properly described by the word bland.
This is not bland. The remains of the violent wind that had blown us across
from Flushing still hurried hither and thither, and gleams of sunshine only
too frequently gave place to heavy squalls of rain and hail. It was more like a
blustering October day than one in what is supposed to be the very height
and ripeness of summer, and we could only both hope, as the carriage
windows banged and rattled, that our caravan would be heavy enough to
withstand the temptation to go on by itself during the night, urged on from
behind by the relentless forces of nature. Still, each time the sun got the
better of the inky clouds and the Garden of England laughed at us from out
of its bravery of graceful hop-fields and ripening corn, we could not resist a
feeling of holiday hopefulness. Edelgard’s spirits rose with every mile, and I,
having readily forgiven her on her asking me to and acknowledging she had
been selfish, was quite like a boy; and when we got out of the train at
Wrotham beneath a blue sky and a hot sun with the hail-clouds retreating
over the hills and found we would have to pack ourselves and our many
packages into a fly so small that, as I jocularly remarked in English, it was
not a fly at all but an insect, Edelgard was so much entertained that for
several minutes she was perfectly convulsed with laughter.
By means of the address neatly written in Latin characters on an
envelope, we had no difficulty in getting the driver to start off as though he
knew where he was going, but after we had been on the way for about half
an hour he grew restless, and began to twist round on his box and ask me
unintelligible questions. I suppose he talked and understood only patois, for
I could not in the least make out what he meant, and when I requested him to
be more clear I could see by his foolish face that he was constitutionally
unable to be it. A second exhibition of the addressed envelope, however,
soothed him for a time, and we continued to advance up and down chalky
roads, over the hedges on each side of which leapt the wind and tried to blow
our hats off. The sun was in our eyes, the dust was in our eyes, and the wind
was in our faces. Wrotham, when we looked behind, had disappeared. In
front was a chalky desolation. We could see nothing approaching a village,
yet Panthers, the village we were bound for, was only three miles from the
station, and not, observe, three full-blooded German miles, but the dwindled
and anæmic English kind that are typical, as so much else is, of the soul and
temper of the nation. Therefore we began to be uneasy, and to wonder
whether the man were trustworthy. It occurred to me that the chalk pits we
constantly met would not be bad places to take us into and rob us, and I
certainly could not speak English quickly enough to meet a situation
demanding rapid dialogue, nor are there any directions in my German-
English Conversational Guide as to what you are to say when you are being
murdered.
Still jocose, but as my hearers will notice, jocose with a tinge of
grimness, I imparted these two linguistic facts to Edelgard, who shuddered
and suggested renewed applications of the addressed envelope to the driver.
“Also it is past dinner time,” she added anxiously. “I know because mein
Magen knurrt.”
By means of repeated calls and my umbrella I drew the driver’s attention
to us and informed him that I would stand no further nonsense. I told him
this with great distinctness and the deliberation forced upon me by want of
practice. He pulled up to hear me out, and then, merely grinning, drove on.
“The youngest Storchwerder droschke driver,” I cried indignantly to
Edelgard, “would die of shame on his box if he did not know every village,
nay, every house within three miles of it with the same exactitude with
which he knows the inside of his own pocket.”
Then I called up to the man once more, and recollecting that nothing
clears our Hermann’s brain at home quicker than to address him as Esel I
said, “Ask, ass.”
He looked down over his shoulder at me with an expression of great
surprise.
“What?” said he.
“What?” said I, confounded by this obtuseness. “What? The way, of
course.”
He pulled up once more and turned right round on his box.
“Look here——” he said, and paused.
“Look where?” said I, very naturally supposing he had something to
show me.
“Who are you talkin’ to?” said he.
The question on the face of it was so foolish that a qualm gripped my
heart lest we had to do with a madman. Edelgard felt the same, for she drew
closer to me.
Luckily at that moment I saw a passer-by some way down the road, and
springing out of the fly hastened to meet him in spite of Edelgard’s demand
that I should not leave her alone. On reaching him I took off my hat and
courteously asked him to direct us to Panthers, at the same time expressing
my belief that the flyman was not normal. He listened with the earnest and
strained attention English people gave to my utterances, an attention caused,
I believe, by the slightly unpractised pronunciation combined with the
number and variety of words at my command, and then going up (quite
fearlessly) to the flyman he pointed in the direction entirely opposed to the
one we were following and bade him go there.
 “I won’t take him nowhere,” said the flyman with strange passion; “he
calls me a ass.”
“It is not your fault,” said I (very handsomely, I thought). “You are what
you were made. You cannot help yourself.”
“I won’t take him nowhere,” repeated the flyman, with, if anything,
increased passion.
The passer-by looked from one to another with a faint smile.
“The expression,” said he to the flyman, “is, you see, merely a term of
recognition in the gentleman’s country. You can’t reasonably object to that,
you know. Drive on like a sensible man, and get your fare.”
And lifting his hat to Edelgard he continued his passing by.
Well, we did finally arrive at the appointed place—indeed, my hearers
next winter will know all the time that we must have, or why should I be
reading this aloud?—after being forced by the flyman to walk the last twenty
minutes up a hill which, he declared, his horse would not otherwise be able
to ascend. The sun shone its hottest while we slowly surmounted this last
obstacle—a hard one to encounter when it is long past dinner-time. I am
aware that by English clocks it was not past it, but what was that to me? My
watch showed that in Storchwerder, the place our inner natures were used to,
it was half-past two, a good hour beyond the time at which they are
accustomed daily to be replenished, and no arbitrary theory, anyhow no
perilously near approach to one, will convince a man against the evidence of
his senses that he is not hungry because a foreign clock says it is not dinner-
time when it is.
Panthers, we found on reaching the top of the hill and pausing to regain
our composure, is but a house here and a house there scattered over a
 The sun shone its hottest while we slowly surmounted this last obstacle

bleak, ungenial landscape. It seemed an odd, high up district to use as a

terminus for caravans, and I looked down the steep, narrow lane we had just
ascended and wondered how a caravan would get up it. Afterward I found
that they never do get up it, but arrive home from the exactly opposite
direction along a fair road which was the one any but an imbecile driver
would have brought us. We reached our destination by, so to speak, its back
door; and we were still standing on the top of the hill doing what is known as
getting one’s wind, for I am not what would be called an ill-covered man but
rather, as I jestingly tell Edelgard, a walking compliment to her good
cooking, and she herself was always of a substantial build, not exaggeratedly
but agreeably so—we were standing, I say, struggling for breath when some
one came out quickly from a neighbouring gate and stopped with a smile of
greeting upon seeing us.
It was the gaunt sister.
We were greatly pleased. Here we were, then, safely arrived, and joined
to at least a portion of our party. Enthusiastically we grasped both her hands
and shook them. She laughed as she returned our greetings, and I was so
much pleased to find some one I knew that though Edelgard commented
afterward somewhat severely on her dress because it was so short that it
nowhere touched the ground, I noticed nothing except that it seemed to be
extremely neat, and as for not touching the ground Edelgard’s skirt was
followed wherever she went by a cloud of chalky dust which was most
unpleasant.
Now why were we so glad to see this lady again? Why, indeed, are people
ever glad to see each other again? I mean people who when they last saw
each other did not like each other. Given a sufficient lapse of time, and I
have observed that even those who parted in an atmosphere thick with
sulphur of implied cursings will smile and genially inquire how the other
does. I have observed this, I say, but I cannot explain it. There had, it is true,
never been any sulphur about our limited intercourse with the lady on the
few occasions on which proper feeling prevailed enough to induce her to
visit her flesh and blood in Prussia—our attitude toward her had simply been
one of well-bred chill, of chill because no thinking German can, to start with,
be anything but prejudiced against a person who commits the unpatriotism—
not to call it by a harsher name—of selling her inestimable German
birthright for the mess of an English marriage. Also she was personally not
what Storchwerder could like, for she was entirely wanting in the graces and
undulations of form which are the least one has a right to expect of a being
professing to be a woman. Also she had a way of talking which disconcerted
Storchwerder, and nobody likes being disconcerted. Our reasons for joining
issue with her in the matter of caravans were first, that we could not help it,
only having discovered she was coming when it was too late; and secondly,
that it was a cheap and convenient way of seeing a new country. She with
her intimate knowledge of English was to be, we privately told each other,
our unpaid courier—I remember Edelgard’s amusement when the
consolatory cleverness of this way of looking at it first struck her.
But I am still at a loss to explain how it was that when she unexpectedly
appeared at the top of the hill at Panthers we both rushed at her with an
effusiveness that could hardly have been exceeded if it had been Edelgard’s
grandmother Podhaben who had suddenly stood before us, an old lady of
ninety-two of whom we are both extremely fond, and who, as is well known,
is going to leave my wife her money when she (which I trust sincerely she
will not do for a long time yet) dies. I cannot explain it, I say, but there it is.
Rush we did, and effusive we were, and it was reserved for a quieter moment
to remember with some natural discomposure that we had showed far more
enthusiasm than she had. Not that she was not pleasant, but there is a gap
between pleasantness and enthusiasm, and to be the one of two persons who
is most pleased is to put yourself in the position of the inferior, of the
suppliant, of him who hopes, or is eager to ingratiate himself. Will it be
believed that when later on I said something to this effect about some other
matter in general conversation, the gaunt sister immediately cried, “Oh, but
that’s not generous.”
“What is not generous?” I asked surprised, for it was the first day of the
tour and I was not then as much used as I subsequently became to her instant
criticism of all I said.
“That way of thinking,” said she.
Edelgard immediately bristled—(alas, what would make her bristle now?)
“Otto is the most generous of men,” she said. “Every year on Sylvester
evening he allows me to invite six orphans to look at the remains of our
Christmas tree and be given, before they go away, doughnuts and grog.”
“What! Grog for orphans?” cried the gaunt sister, neither silenced nor
impressed; and there ensued a warm discussion on, as she put it, (a) the
effect of grog on orphans, (b) the effect of grog on doughnuts, (c) the effect
of grog on combined orphans and doughnuts.
But I not only anticipate, I digress.
Inside the gate through which this lady had emerged stood the caravans
and her gentle sister. I was so much pleased at seeing Frau von Eckthum
again that at first I did not notice our future homes. She was looking
remarkably well and was in good spirits, and, though dressed in the same
way as her sister, by adding to the attire all those graces so peculiarly her
own the effect she produced was totally different. At least, I thought so.
Edelgard said she saw nothing to choose between them.
After the first greetings she half turned to the row of caravans, and with a
little motion of the hand and a pretty smile of proprietary pride said, “There
they are.”
There, indeed, they were.
There were three; all alike, sober brown vehicles, easily distinguishable,
as I was pleased to notice, from common gipsy carts. Clean curtains fluttered
at the windows, the metal portions were bright, and the names painted
prettily on them were the Elsa, the Ilsa, and the Ailsa. It was an impressive
moment, the moment of our first setting eyes upon them. Under those frail
roofs were we for the next four weeks to be happy, as Edelgard said, and
healthy and wise—“Or,” I amended shrewdly on hearing her say this, “vice
versa.”
Frau von Eckthum, however, preferred Edelgard’s prophecy, and gave her
an appreciative look—my hearers will remember, I am sure, how agreeably
her dark eyelashes contrast with the fairness of her hair. The gaunt sister
laughed, and suggested that we should paint out the names already on the
caravans and substitute in large letters Happy, Healthy, and Wise, but not
considering this particularly amusing I did not take any trouble to smile.
Three large horses that were to draw them and us stood peacefully side by
side in a shed being fed with oats by a weather-beaten person the gaunt sister
introduced as old James. This old person, a most untidy, dusty-looking
creature, touched his cap, which is the inadequate English way of showing
respect to superiors—as inadequate at its end of the scale as the British army
is at the other—and shuffled off to fetch in our luggage, and the gaunt sister
suggesting that we should climb up and see the interior of our new home
with some difficulty we did so, there being a small ladder to help us which,
as a fact, did not help us either then or later, no means being discovered from
beginning to end of the tour by which it could be fixed firmly at a
convenient angle.
I think I could have climbed up better if Frau von Eckthum had not been
looking on; besides, at that moment I was less desirous of inspecting the
caravans than I was of learning when, where, and how we were going to
have our delayed dinner. Edelgard, however, behaved like a girl of sixteen
once she had succeeded in reaching the inside of the Elsa, and most
inconsiderately kept me lingering there too while she examined every corner
and cried with tiresome iteration that it was wundervoll, herrlich, and putzig.
“I knew you’d like it,” said Frau von Eckthum from below, amused
apparently by this kittenish conduct.
“Like it?” called back Edelgard. “But it is delicious—so clean, so neat, so
miniature.”
“May I ask where we dine?” I inquired, endeavouring to free the skirts of
my new mackintosh from the door, which had swung to (the caravan not
standing perfectly level) and jammed them tightly. I did not need to raise my
voice, for in a caravan even with its door and windows shut people outside
can hear what you say just as distinctly as people inside, unless you take the
extreme measure of putting something thick over your head and whispering.