Maria Talaczyńska
Travelers to the New Nation: Henryk Sienkiewicz ( 1846 – 1916)
1 HENRYK SIENKIEWICZ, winner of the Nobel Prize in 1905 for his novel Quo Vadis, was thirty years old when he sailed for America in 1876. At that time, he was already a well-established columnist for a Warsaw newspaper, Gazeta Polska. It was a difficult 5 time in Polish history. The uprising of 1863 for Polish independence had failed, and the country was still partitioned among Prussia, Austria, and Russia.
In this pessimistic political climate, Sienkiewicz and a group of his fellow intellectuals – among them Count Charles Chalapowski and his wife, the famous actress Helena
10 Modjeska – became interested in America. Intrigued by the approaching Centennial Exposition, they had the idea of founding a Utopian colony modeled on the Brook Farm community of Transcendentalists in New England. Sienkiewicz, who had been reading a romantic account of California by the Polish journalist Julian Horain, was chosen, with Julius Sypniewski, another 15 member of the group, to scout an appropriate location in that state.
Sienkiewicz arrived in centennial America in March 1876 and, after a few days’ stay in New York, took a transcontinental train to San Francisco.
His earliest letters from America were not sympathetic to the new country. Making the same mistake which most foreign visitors make today, he
20 judged America at first by what he saw in New York. The city disappointed him, There were too many hotels and banks and no historical monuments:
You must look for history of the United States in Washington; in New York you will find only merchants. Business, business, business, from morning till night, that is all you see, read, and hear …… Wealth is the chief criterion by which men are measured, and even the
25 idiom of the language reflects this sentiment. Here people do not say a man has a certain amount of money, but that he is worth so many thousands.
Sienkiewicz was offended, too, by the filth and corruption of the city. No city spent as much as did New York for the maintenance of order and municipal services, yet it was ‘a hundred times dirtier’ than other cities: “I predict at the outset that all the efforts of the 30 Warsaw municipal authorities to compete with New York in untidiness will be of no avail”. And so skilled were New York’s municipal thieves that “European corruption pales into insignificance”.
Sienkiewicz’s views on America underwent a certain evolution. After his initial bad impression, he gradually became more optimistic: “ I can only repeat that while not shutting 35 my eyes to the darker aspects of American society, the longer and more closely I observe it, the brighter it appears to me”. He liked his neighbours in California and marveled at the prosperity:
One cannot speak here of poverty in the same sense as one does in Europe, where it is synonymous with hunger. In Anaheim I was told, for example, that Brown or Harrison or
40 Down was extremely poor. But what does this mean?… Is this person on the point of starvation? Far from it! He eats meat three times per day and has wine with his meals, for this is the least expensive drink here. Why, then, is he considered poor? Simply because he does not have on hand a hundred dollars in cash! Good heavens! How many literary figures, lawyers, and doctors do I know in Warsaw…none of whom has on hand a hundred dollars in 45 cash! But we do not call this poverty, and certainly not destitution… Destitution in Poland makes teeth chatter from cold, blots bodies from hunger; it begs, steals, and murders.
Sienkiewicz was acutely sensitive to the benefits of American democracy. “It exists,” he wrote, “ not only as an institution and a theory, but also in men’s relations with one another”.
50 He was somewhat naïve about the American social structure: “ Everybody here stands on the same social level, with no one towering above another”. Though he was partly right in his belief that social classes in the European sense did not exist in America, it is difficult to understand why he failed to notice any social ladder in the United States.
The second element of American democracy was the accessibility of education. Sienkiewicz 55 felt that the average American was not a learned person; but he was impressed by the fact that education was more widespread and more evenly distributed in America than in Europe: “The mental development of the people is more uniform, and mutual understanding is therefore more easily achieved.” There was, however, a price to pay. He was critical of the intellectual level of Americans and found newspapers in the United States 60 inferior to European ones: “In Poland a newspaper subscription tends to satisfy purely intellectual needs 60 and is regarded as somewhat of a luxury which the majority of the people can heroically forego; in the United States a newspaper is regarded as a basic need of every person, indispensable as bread itself.”
The third factor of American democracy, according to Sienkiewicz, was “the lack of 65 marked disparity in manners”. In Europe, he observed, the upper class differed from the lower not only in wealth and education, but also in manners: “Knowledge may not be so profound nor good manners so refined in the United States as in Europe but both are certainly more widely diffused.” And this was the essence of American democracy.
As a reporter, Sienkiewicz knew that his readers back home would be very interested 70 in the social customs of the Americans, and particularly in those which differed from their own. His first impressions were not favourable. He noted: “the disgusting custom” of chewing tobacco: “ If you glance at any group of people you will notice that majority of the men are moving their jaws rhythmically, as though they were some species of ruminating animals.” He was astonished to see men at the dinner table with their hats on. “They do not take off their 75 hats even in private homes, and yet they remove their coats everywhere, even in the presence of ladies or in places where dignity would require otherwise.” It shocked him to see Americans reading newspapers with their feet propped up on the table, or leaving the table at the end of a meal without expressing thanks to fellow diners. And he found American eating customs disgraceful:
80 According to American custom, numerous porcelain dishes filled with a variety of
foods are placed simultaneously before the guest. You have before you all at one time soup, meats, fish, eggs, puddings, tomatoes, potatoes, ice cream, strawberries, apples, almonds, coffee – in a word, a countless variety of dishes in small servings. Begin with whatever dish you please, eat what you like; nobody pays any attention to you. A Negro stands over you like 85 an executioner over a condemned man. He keeps filling your glass with ice water whenever you take a sip and replies invariably, “ Yes, sir! “ to all your requests. As a result of this mode of serving, everything you eat is cold , stale, and unappetizing, even in the best restaurants. American cuisine is the worst on earth. It ignores all consideration for your health and well-being in order to speed you through your meal so that you can return as 90 quickly as possible to business.
He concludes that this lack of graciousness “makes even the most enthusiastic admirer of the Americans admit that in this respect European nations surpass the United States.” He admitted, however, that the observation was superficial. Americans possessed many fine qualities, “but these can be appreciated only after closer acquaintance”.
95 These are only a few of Sienkiewicz’s thoughts. His letters create a much more
detailed and diverse portrait of America. His descriptions of landscapes, for example, are remarkable. He also discussed Polish-American communities in the United States and recorded their attempts to preserve their native culture. In a melancholy mood, he concluded that
100 sooner or later they will forget. They will change everything, even their names, which English teeth find too difficult to chew and which interfere with business. How long this will take is difficult to say. But just as Poland disappeared, so will this same, sad fate inevitably befall her children who, today, are scattered throughout the world
But Sienkiewicz felt that his poverty-stricken countrymen had radically improved their lives. 105 For all the costs, and whatever America’s shortcomings, the New World was finer than the Old. “ If I were asked,’” Sienkiewcz wrote, “ which society has produced the better civilization, I should without hesitation concede superiority to the American.” He thought that the main task of civilization was to promote happiness. “ We must admit that the opportunity for happiness is incomparably greater in America than anywhere in Europe. American 110 democracy approaches nearest that ideal society for which he have striven through the ages”.
Source: fragments from Travelers to the New Nation 1776-1914, Henryk Sienkiewicz by Longin Pastusiak, 1976
Volakis