Near Philadelphia I ate several times at the "Buck", an old inn which reminded me strongly of one particular English Inn, but when I revisited the Cheshire inn I found it converted into a sort of motel. Because the Americans also regard themselves as a new country, they cherish their older properties. When I light-heartedly made an offer for Philadelphia's Liberty Bell, based on its value as scrap iron, I realised from the stony silence that this was a joke in poor taste. There was a feeling of newness in some of the Australian cities, though even there, Sydney has a castle and some of its narrow streets off the city centre have an old-fashioned air about them. But America is far too old to masquerade any longer as the New World. It is as unseemly as a matron in mini-skirts.
In New York I fell asleep in the office of a Director of the Company we both work for, and though with ready presence of mind he threw a box of paper-clips at me, he did not seem to care.
In fact, thanks to an article in Readers' Digest, it is now widely understood that a businessman who falls asleep all over the place is not, as was previously assumed, a dissolute waster who has been racketing around the town all night, but a man whose inner-clock has been disturbed by the rigours of speeding across time-zones. The jet-propelled businessman is later free to snore peacefully anywhere and at any time, sure of sympathetic understanding. In a colleague's garden, near Philadelphia as I was dozing off, I heard lowered voices commenting on the terrible strain of flying. I had, that afternoon, arrived by train from New York, but who was I to contradict them?
New York's skyscrapers are awe-inspiring and, like the statues and monoliths of a long-vanished society, provoke the question, what manner of people built these? The mystery deepens after an examination of the shops, where everything is for sale - everything but intangibles such as tranquillity, love and friendship. Even these, by implication, are offered as the reward of buying deodorant, detergent, battery-powered back-scratchers, bar-stool safety-belts, and bedroom mood-indicators with settings on the dial such as: "Coax me", "Too tired", "Now about that mink!", "Too late", and "If I'm not back in ten minutes, start without me."
I travelled the Subway to Bronx Botanical Gardens to hear a Saturday Open-Air Concert, given by the New York Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra. Bronx Botanical Gardens deserve to be remembered as the site of a historic discovery by the Curator, Mr. Davis, which was reported thus:
"Gorillas in Bronx Zoo are encouraged to watch T.V. 'It keeps them quiet', says Mr. Joseph Davis. The gorillas, whose ages range from six to seventeen used to bicker incessantly. Now, they sit calmly together watching the screen through the bars of their cage."
The final step obviously is to remove the bars and then, hand in hand, humans and gorillas all, we can watch together.
The concert included the Meistersingers Overture and Beethoven's Choral Symphony, and was heard by thousands of people, black and white, seated on the grass. The conductor, William Steinberg, wore a beret against the strong sun, which gave him a rakish look. Many ruminant policemen patrolled the park, idly twirling their clubs. Presumably the authorities were nervous because of race-riots a few days earlier in other cities. But there was no trouble; black and white dotted the grass indiscriminately, listening peaceably to Beethoven's setting of Schiller's "Ode to Joy", whose words; "Alle Menschen werden Prüden", still ring out with dignity and conviction.
Saucon Valley Country Club is at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania and I accompanied four golfers there, one sunny Sunday. To the best of my recollection, two of them were called Walt and two Ed, but it may have been the other way round. As we drove through the lovely countryside from Philadelphia, some quiet boasting was going on in the car and I looked forward to seeing good golf. The grounds were magnificent, the weather good, and I was happy to walk and at the request of one of the Walts, to take cine shots of his golf action.
The score-card, still in my possession suggests that all of them had a bad day. "Par", for the nine holes out is 36, and the card shows 52, 54, 57 and 69. The return nine holes took 53, 58, 52 and 57, again with a “par" of 36. The reel of film I exposed must have looked like scenes from "Lawrence of Arabia" as clouds of sand ware hacked into the air from trap after trap. I never heard how the film turned out.
At this stage in my visit to the U.S.A. 1 had overcome the initial language problem and had learned the dozen or so phrases making up the local patois. The purpose of these is to enable a speaker with nothing to say, to continue talking, and since there is only one socially acceptable way of saying anything, an illusion of democratic "togetherness" is created. Each word or phrase serves for dozens of different expressions, thus eliminating those irritating shades of meaning in which the English language abounds.
"Configuration", for instance, is always used for "shape", "design" or a number of other alternatives, and has the advantage of being longer than any of them. At a meeting I attended, an engineer said: "We may have to do something about it configurationwise."
"As long as" may mean "since", "as", "while", "when" if or even "as long as", and should soon replace about six of the old Parts of Speech. "Right now" is just a noise. "The time right now is a quarter of four" means: "It's quarter to four." In the sentence: "She had herself a ball", "a ball" means a good time, or about four hundred alternatives. I heard of a girl who had "a ball of a party", and had I stayed longer might have been told that someone had a "ball of a ball". "She's a doll!" is the standardised description of any female still with pretentious to youth, and not demonstrably ugly. "Right." means "yes", or "that's, true", or "I understand", or "I certainly agree with you!" according to the intonation, and proves that the listener has not fallen asleep or gone away.
Thus, I was quickly able to translate: "As long as you're going to the bar, why don't I join you there?" - as, "I'll meet you in the bar." This "why don't I?" construction can, however, be confusing. In Singapore I saw a waiter continue standing patiently, after receiving an order: "Why don't I just have a double order of pancakes with maple syrup, and some black coffee?" The waiter, thinking that the American was communing with himself, was waiting for the result of this auto-interrogation.
It was also in Singapore that I suddenly realised that I was hearing an American version of "Oh, to be in England, now that April's there!" The American was sitting slumped over a bar, stirring the pack-ice in his drink with an abstracted forefinger, and his "Home Thoughts from Abroad", voiced to a sympathetic compatriot, went like this:
"Why don't I take some leave,
And visit with my folks,
As lawng as things are quiet
Businesswise.
(Compatriot: "Too goddam quiet, if you ask me!")
"You sure get goddam sick
Of the humidity here.
For my money the place stinks,
Climatewise."
(Compatriot: "You can say that again!")
"Brother! What wouldn't I give
To be in N.J. right now.
Things will be looking real nice
Scenerywise."
(Compatriot: "That's for sure!")
Arid now, effectively, my journey was finished. To the East lay England, and once more I could believe in its existence. For the first fortnight of my tour, I had felt mentally disorientated, and conscious always of my remoteness from home.
Then, by a sudden shift of its axis, the world again revolved around me and continued this comforting practice throughout my wanderings. England became no more than a convenient intellectual concept, incapable of proof. In a play I once read, the dead lived again, during those brief and ever less frequent moments when the living spoke of them. Similarly, family and friends would be with me fleetingly in Rangoon, in Christchurch, or in Memphis, evoked by a phrase in a letter, a familiar object, or something of the sort. Apart from these briefly glowing points of illumination, all was a vast darkness and even Bishop Berkeley had ceased to exist. I had brought family photographs with me, but destroyed them when I found myself remembering the photograph and not the person.
After one of his epic lone voyages across the world, Francis Chichester commented that when, far out at sea, he played some of his favourite music, it made him so unutterably sad that he played it no more that trip. Thinking about this, he decided that during an enterprise of that sort, faculties not essential to success hibernated, and that music, by reminding him of the dormant aspects of his personality, made him unhappy.
His, of course, was an extreme case, since he was living with danger, physical stress and solitude, but even I felt now as though emerging from a dreary winter, so prolonged that no memory of other seasons remained - into a bounteous May.
Recently my harmonica playing had been confined to "Home, Sweet Home", partly, it is true, because it is easy to play, but also because its melancholy mood matched my own. As time went by, "Home, Sweet Home" became slower in tempo, more plaintive, more dirge—like, and once as I had the last anguished notes by the throat, I heard a burst of violent sobbing from the next room, followed by a single revolver shot.
From Philadelphia to New York again, and by air to Buffalo with a colleague, for a meeting in Batavia. Then a sunny drive through tranquil countryside to the shore of Lake Ontario and along it to Niagara. The wide horizons and rural scene reminded me of past journeys through Lincolnshire. When I said this to my companion he pointed out on his map the names Welland and Grimsby, so the early settlers had clearly seen the resemblance too. We stopped to buy apples and plums from a roadside stall and to drink tea. After a period of city life I was in a mood to appreciate the change, and my colleague seemed to be enjoying the escape from his New York office.
We stayed the night at the town of Niagara, apparently the only couple not on a honeymoon, and the next morning crossed into Canada. After business calls in St. Catherine's and Toronto, I boarded my 'plane and a few hours later was back in London.