UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 AT LOS ANGELES 
 
 ROLF HOFFMANN
 
 i 
 
 6- 
 
 Cu 
 
 
 7
 
 FAREWELL TO AMERICA
 
 HENRY W. NEVINSON 
 
 Farewell to America 
 
 NEWVORK THE VIKING PRESS MCMXXVI
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1922. BY 
 B. W. HUEBSCH, INC. 
 
 PRINTED IN U. S. A. 
 
 Second printing, May, 1923 
 
 Third printing, January, 1924 
 
 Fourth printing, April, 1925 
 
 fifth printing, November, 1926
 
 
 
 S 
 
 +* 
 
 53 
 
 This appeared originally in 
 The Nation and The Athenaum 
 
 of London 
 
 and is reprinted with revisions 
 by the author. 
 
 E 
 
 N4/f 
 
 158170
 
 FAREWELL TO AMERICA 
 
 IN mist and driving snow the tow- 
 ers of New York fade from view. 
 The great ship slides down the river. 
 Already the dark, broad seas gloom 
 before her. Good-bye, most beau- 
 tiful of modern cities ! Good-bye 
 to glimmering spires and lighted 
 bastions, dreamlike as the castles 
 and cathedrals of a romantic vision 
 though mainly devoted to commerce 
 and finance ! Good-bye to thin films 
 of white steam that issue from cen- 
 tral furnaces and flit in dissolving 
 wreaths around those precipitous 
 heights! Good-bye to heaven-piled 
 offices, so clean, so warm, where 
 lovely stenographers, with silk stock- 
 ings and powdered faces, sit leisurely 
 at work or converse in charming
 
 ease ! Good-bye, New York ! I am 
 going home. I am going to an an- 
 cient city of mean and mouldering 
 streets, of ignoble coverts for man- 
 kind, extended monotonously over 
 many miles; of grimy smoke clinging 
 closer than a blanket; of smudgy 
 typists who know something of pow- 
 der but little of silk, and less of leis- 
 ure and charming ease. Good-bye, 
 New York! I am going home.
 
 GOOD-BYE to beautiful "apart- 
 ments" and "homes" ! Good-bye to 
 windows looking far over the city as 
 from a mountain peak! Good-bye 
 to central heating and radiators, fit 
 symbols of the hearts they warm! 
 Good-bye to frequent and well- 
 appointed bath-rooms, the glory of 
 America's art! Good-bye to sub- 
 urban gardens running into each 
 other without hedge or fence to sep- 
 arate friend from friend or enemy 
 from enemy! Good-bye to shady 
 verandahs where rocking chairs stand 
 ranged in rows, ready for reading the 
 voluminous Sunday papers and the 
 "Saturday Evening Post" ! Good- 
 bye, America ! I am going home. 
 I am going to a land where every 
 man's house is his prison a land of 
 open fires and chilly rooms and fro- 
 zen water-pipes, of washing-stands 
 and slop-pails, and one bath per 
 household at the most; a land of 
 fences and hedges and walls, where 
 
 [3]
 
 people sit aloof, and see no reason 
 to make themselves seasick by rock- 
 ing upon shore. Good-bye, Amer- 
 ica! I am going home. 
 
 [4]
 
 GOOD-BYE to the copious meals 
 the early grape-fruit, the "cereals," 
 the eggs broken in a glass! Good- 
 bye to oysters, large and small, to 
 celery and olives beside the soup, to 
 "sea food," to sublimated viands, to 
 bleeding duck, to the salad course, to 
 the "individual pie" or the thick 
 wedge of apple pie, to the invariable 
 slab of ice-cream, to the coffee, also 
 bland with cream, to iced water and 
 home-brewed alcohol I ^1 am going 
 to the land of joints and roots and 
 solid pudding; the land of ham-and- 
 eggs and violent tea; the land where 
 oysters are good for suicides alone, 
 and where cream is seldom seen; the 
 land where mustard grows and whis- 
 ky flows. Good-bye, America! I 
 am going home. 
 
 [5]
 
 GOOD-BYE to the long stream of 
 motors "limousines" or "flivvers"! 
 Good-bye to the signal lights upon 
 Fifth Avenue, gold, crimson, and 
 green; the sudden halt when the 
 green light shines, as though at the 
 magic word an enchanted princess 
 had fallen asleep; the hurried rush 
 for the leisurely lunch at noon, the 
 deliberate appearance of hustle and 
 bustle in business, however little is 
 accomplished, the Jews, innumerable 
 as the Red Sea sand! Good-bye to 
 outside staircases for escape from 
 fire! Good-bye to scrappy suburbs 
 littered with rubbish of old boards, 
 tin pails, empty cans, and boots! 
 Good-bye to standardized villages 
 and small towns, alike in litter, in 
 ropes of electric wires along the 
 streets, in clanking "trolleys," in 
 chapels, stores, railway stations, 
 Main Streets, and isolated wooden 
 houses flung at random over the 
 country-side. Good-bye to miles of 
 
 [6]
 
 advertisement imploring me in ten- 
 foot letters to eat somebody's cod 
 fish ("No Bones!"), or smoke some- 
 body's cigarettes ("They Satisfy!") 
 or sleep with innocence in the "Fault- 
 less Nightgown"! Good-bye to the 
 long trains where one smokes in a 
 lavatory, and sleeps at night upon a 
 shelf screened with heavy green cur- 
 tains and heated with stifling air, 
 while over your head or under your 
 back a baby yells and the mother 
 tosses moaning, until at last you reach 
 your "stopping-off place," and a semi- 
 negro sweeps you down with a little 
 broom, as in a supreme rite of unc- 
 tion ! Good-bye to the house that is 
 labelled "One Hundred Years Old," 
 for the amazement of mortality! 
 Good-bye to thin woods, and fields 
 enclosed with casual pales, old hoops, 
 and lengths of wire! I am going 
 to a land of the policeman's finger, 
 where the horse and the bicycle still 
 drag out a lingering life; a land of
 
 persistent and silent toil; a land of 
 old villages and towns as little like 
 each other as one woman is like the 
 next; a land where trains are short, 
 and one seldom sleeps in them, for 
 in any direction within a day they 
 will reach a sea; a land of vast and 
 ancient trees, of houses time-honored 
 three centuries ago, of cathedrals 
 that have been growing for a thou- 
 sand years, and of village churches 
 built while people believed in God. 
 Good-bye, America! I am going 
 home. 
 
 [8]
 
 GOOD-BYE to the land of a new 
 language in growth, of split infin- 
 itives and cross-bred words; the 
 land where a dinner-jacket is a "Tux- 
 edo," a spittoon a "Cuspidor"; 
 where your opinion is called your 
 "reaction," and where "vamp," in- 
 stead of meaning an improvised ac- 
 companiment to a song, means a 
 dangerous female ! Good-bye to the 
 land where grotesque exaggeration is 
 called humor, and people gape in be- 
 wilderment at irony, as a bullock 
 gapes at a dog straying in his field! 
 Good-bye to the land where stran- 
 gers say "Glad to meet you, sir," 
 and really seem glad; where children 
 incessantly whine and wail their little 
 desires, and never grow much older; 
 where men keep their trousers up 
 with belts that run through loops, 
 and women have to bathe in stock- 
 ings. ,1 am going to a land of an- 
 cient speech, where we still say 
 "record" and "concord" for "recud" 
 [9]
 
 and "conoid"; where "unnecessarily" 
 and "extraordinarily" must be taken 
 at one rush, as hedge-ditch-and-rail 
 in the hunting field; where we do not 
 "commute" or "check" or "page," 
 but "take a season" and "register" 
 and "send a boy round"; where we 
 never say we are glad to meet a 
 stranger, and seldom are; where 
 humor is understatement, and irony 
 is our habitual resource in danger or 
 distress ; where children are told they 
 are meant to be seen and not heard; 
 where it is "bad form" to express 
 emotion, and suspenders are a strictly 
 feminine article of attire. Good- 
 bye, America! I am going home. 
 
 [10]
 
 GOOD-BYE to the multitudinous pa- 
 pers, indefinite of opinion, crammed 
 with insignificant news, and asking 
 you to continue a first-page article 
 on page 23 column 5 ! Good-bye to 
 the weary platitude, accepted as 
 wisdom's latest revelation! Good- 
 bye to the docile audiences that lap 
 rhetoric for sustenance ! Good-bye 
 to politicians contending for aim's 
 more practical than principles! 
 Good-bye to Republicans and Dem- 
 ocrats, distinguishable only by mu- 
 tual hatred! Good-bye to the land 
 where Liberals are thought danger- 
 ous, and Radicals show red ! Where 
 Mr. Gompers is called a Socialist, 
 and Mr. Asquith would seem ad- 
 vanced! A land too large for con- 
 centrated indignation; a land where 
 wealth beyond the dreams of British 
 profiteers dwells, dresses, gorges, and 
 luxuriates, emulated and unashamed ! 
 I am going to a land of politics vio- 
 lently divergent; a land where even
 
 Coalitions cannot coalesce; where 
 meetings break up in turbulent dis- 
 order, and no platitude avails to 
 soothe the savage breast; a land 
 fierce for personal freedom, and in- 
 dignant with rage for justice; a land 
 where wealth is taxed out of sight, 
 or for very shame strives to disguise 
 its luxury; a land where an ancient 
 order of feudal families is passing 
 away, and Labour leaders whom 
 Wall Street would shudder at are 
 hailed by Lord Chancellors as 
 the very fortifications of security. 
 Good-bye, America! I am going 
 home. 
 
 [12]
 
 GOOD-BYE to prose chopped up to 
 look like verse ! Good-bye to the 
 indiscriminating appetite which gulps 
 lectures as opiates, and "printed 
 matter" as literature ! Good-bye to 
 the wizards and witches who claim 
 to psycho-analyze my complexes, in- 
 hibitions, and silly dreams! Good- 
 bye to the exuberant religious or fan- 
 tastic beliefs by which unsatisfied 
 mankind still strives desperately to 
 penetrate beyond the flaming bul- 
 warks of the world! Good-bye, 
 Americans! I am going to a coun- 
 try very much like yours. I am 
 going to your spiritual home. 
 February, 1922. 
 
 [13] 
 
 15817O
 
 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below 
 
 'JAN 2 
 
 MAR i tq^A 
 
 \ 
 
 OtC 1 1 
 
 'JAN 4 
 
 1934 
 
 Form L-9-35m-8,'28
 
 fle v ins on - 
 to America 
 
 UMVESSITY of CALIFORNIA 
 
 AT 
 
 LOS ANGELES 
 [JBRARY