January 2011

“Foreign devils approach, Comrade Premier.
Which is Head Mandarin and which is Hon. Kissinger?

“I regret I cannot say, Comrade Chairman.
All Americans, you know, look alike.”

We think of our own time as an Age of Enlightenment, but it flouts and even repudiates two essential principles of the Enlightenment: first the priority of the claims of science and culture over those of politics, and second the cosmopolitan and even universal nature of science and culture.

We observed in the February issue of AMERICAN HERITAGE that the compilation of the Index of American Design was a singularly happy byproduct of the Great Depression of the 1930’s. It was but one facet of a public-works program initiated to provide employment for thousands of idle people. The inclusion of art projects, along with more immediately practical undertakings such as road building and other public construction, was a big departure in a country where art patronage by the government was virtually unheard of, and all but anathema. In different areas of the program, artists of varying talents were covering the walls of public buildings with murals celebrating American history and local customs, often with strong overtones of social criticism. The Index required talents of a different order: strict objectivity, precise drawing, faithful rendering of material, color, and texture—peculiar talents that in many cases had to be developed during the course of the project.

One acquaintance nicknamed him Naso, for the long beak that dominated his dark, pinched face. Mohawk warriors, with whom he lived during the French and Indian War, called him Ounewaterika, or “Boiling Water”—a name that only partially suggested his disposition. And during the first year of the Revolution certain members of the Continental Congress regarded him as the greatest general in the world—the officer who should have led the American army had he not been an Englishman. A man around whom controversy swarmed like angry hornets, Charles Lee was a Jekyll-Hyde personality, a stormy character eaten with pride and ambition, brilliant, courtly, scholarly and at the same time uncouth, slovenly, and contentious.

The crowd roars. The bell clangs. The chute gate swings wide and a beleaguered animal dashes into the arena to put on an exciting exhibition of pain and panic.

The rodeo is presented as a colorful epic of the cattle industry in the days of the Chisholm Trail, evoking the sturdy moral values of frontier life or, as the Pendleton (Oregon) Round-Up recently rephrased the idea, “Four Big Days of Fun in the Ol’ West.” But what is rodeo, really?

The answer varies, depending upon one’s vantage point. The spectators see a show and read into it what they will. The riders and ropers see money and the fame that accompanies mass entertainment. The humane societies, far from being monolithic in their approach to rodeo’s undoubted cruelties, present divergent points of view, although no national animal-protection society approves of rodeo. But whatever rodeo is—stirring historical pageant, nostalgic symbol, popular entertainment, or commercialized brutality—it is undeniably Big Business.

Early in 1864 the Confederate States Steamer Alabama left the Indian Ocean and headed for European waters. Her captain, Raphael Semme—tired, ill, and bad-tempered after almost three years commanding Confederate raiders noted in his journal on May 21: “Our bottom is in such a state that everything passes us. We are like a crippled hunter limping home from a long chase.” During almost two years at sea the Alabama had never been long enough in any port for a thorough overhaul of her hull, rigging, and engines. Since her fires had never been allowed to go out, flues and pipes had not been properly cleaned. As First Officer John McIntosh Kell observed, the ship was “loose at every joint, her seams were open, and the copper on her bottom was in rolls.”

The first-night audience that poured out of Wallack’s Theatre in 1900 must have appreciated the cold February air, for they had just watched a thoroughly shocking play. Sapho , an American adaptation of a minor French novel, had burst upon the New York theatre like a thunderclap. The after-theatre crowds at Rector’s and Delmonico’s gabbled excitedly about what were the most explicit love scenes ever seen on the New York stage.

According to the Bible, a city that is set upon a hill cannot be hid. We used to repeat that text often, and I suppose we were a little smug and self-righteous about it; our city was built upon a hill, and if it was visible to all men it had been meant from the first to be a sign and a symbol of a better way of life, an outpost of the New Jerusalem sited in backwoods vacancy to show people the way they ought to go. To be sure, it was not exactly a city. It was in fact the tiniest of country villages, containing probably no more than 350 inhabitants, and it has grown no larger to this day. And the hill on which it was built was not really much of a hill. It was a small, flat plateau rising less than two hundred feet above the surrounding country, with a placid lake to the north, a narrow valley containing an insignificant creek to the east, and gentle slopes coming up from a broad river valley to the west and south. It was not impressive to look at, although it commanded some pleasant views and it was high enough to get a cooling breeze on all but the hottest summer days.

Oscar Wilde, who had something clever to say on almost any subject, visited Boston about 1880, attended a debutante ball, and is supposed to have found the state of feminine beauty so low that he now understood why the city’s artists were reduced to “painting only Niagara Falls and millionaires.” It has been thought sophisticated to slur Boston girls ever since. Of course, it is all nonsense.