The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 2 by Harry Furniss (best ereader for comics TXT) 📗
- Author: Harry Furniss
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I had to wait for the train to start at Buffalo in a Deepo which eclipsed anything I have seen for gloom. The shoeblack's platform, of more than ordinary proportions, occupied a good fifth of the waiting-room. Its dusky proprietor was in possession of the throne, and was discussing politics with a brother brush whose massive feet were resting on the structure, an advertisement for the operating shoeblack, implying that both the quality and quantity of his shine were superior.
The train was also very gloomy. My vis-à-vis was an old Buffalo girl who must have remembered coming out to "dance[Pg 85] by the light of the moon" a couple of generations ago, when that melody was popular.
The exit from the town is made through a hideous quarter—wooden houses and huts, depressing dirty streets, and the sides of the railway covered with the refuse of a generation. Then some miles of open country, with a building here and there which might possibly have added a little picturesqueness to the dismal scene had not those despoilers of all picturesqueness, the advertisers—and, above all, the advertisers of pills—made an eyesore wherever the same was possible. Then through a mile or two of apple orchards and more country with huts advertising pills—probably the apples in those orchards are most particularly sour. The rain came down fast, the train went on slowly; at every station damp people with wet umbrellas came in and made me shudder. Altogether the prospect of my getting a favourable impression of Niagara was a black one. But it so happens the effect was quite the reverse—it was precisely the same as passing through the gloomy passages leading to the diorama.
As I walked to an hotel to have some lunch before seeing the Falls, I was startled to see in wood[Pg 87] (everything is either water or wood at Niagara) my old friend Mr. Punch standing outside a cigar shop, smiling as usual; so after I had taken one of his cigars and lighted it, we had a chat about Fleet Street and all his friends there.
"Guess, stranger, I'm here to draw the Britishers. 'Amurrcans' don't understand me. They try to draw me, but they might just as well try to draw one of these wooden cigars in my hand. Their sarcasm runs off me like this rain, and I keep on smiling. They laugh at the Britishers journeying thousands of miles to see this place, just as the English smile at the Americans pilgrimaging to Stratford-on-Avon. Why, it's real cheap to find natives round here who've lived all their lives within earshot of the Falls and never seen them yet!"
We compared notes—American and English—and parted.
At the hotel to which I repaired for the purpose of refreshing the inner man I was waited upon by a Hebe for the first, last and only time while I was in the States. Quick, quiet and clean—what a relief after the coloured gentleman!
Hiring a covered conveyance with two horses and a very intelligent driver, shaped something like his own whip, who was to act as my guide as well as my Jehu, I was driven through the town of wooden houses to an office where I bought tickets to pass me to the various places of interest. The purveyor of this pasteboard looked like a French peasant, spoke with an American accent, and came from the town of Huddersfield in England.
I had no doubt the driver had graduated in his work from the perch of a London hansom, and that probably the horses had[Pg 88] been trained at Newmarket. Everything is so very "English, you know," at Niagara, from the wooden Punch to the pasteboard man.
I was informed by everyone that Niagara would grow upon me. I was rather alarmed to find it growing upon me the moment I arrived, for it was raining in torrents and I had juvenile Niagaras all round my umbrella. I should rather say you grow upon Niagara—at least, for my own part, I felt that if I were left there long enough I should do so. It was the most fascinating sight I ever saw, and I felt as I stood motionless and riveted to the spot I had had enough water to last me for the remaining term of my existence.
Everyone, even the clerk of the weather, had arranged that my visit to America should be pleasant. Niagara, to be seen at its best, must be viewed on a pouring wet day. I know few of my readers will accept this assertion as a serious fact, but it's true. It is just as true as the fact that the way to obtain the full flavour of strawberries is to put pepper on them, and that the sole method of fully relishing ham is to use a dash of champagne as a sauce. There are people who even in this enlightened age vegetate upon the face of the earth and know not these things, and a very great many more who do not know that they ought to select a soakingly wet day to appreciate the Falls of Niagara at their highest value.
It is not for the extra bucketful or so of water that you may behold, for that is imperceptible, but for the water you don't see. A fine day is a mistake, and the finer the day the greater the mistake, for the reason that distances appear nearer, and the scene as a picture appears contracted in consequence. But when the rain falls in torrents at your feet, and then gradually[Pg 89] disappears in mist, it gives to the Falls a certain mystery and suggestion of vastness that cannot possibly be experienced by the spectator except upon a thoroughly wet, misty day.
Therefore I congratulated myself that I saw Niagara on my first visit at its wettest and best. Had I waited till the next day I could have gone to exactly the same points at Niagara and seen the same pictures, in water and colour of course, totally different in effect. You ought to allow at least three days instead of three hours to inspect Niagara. The first day ought to be wet, then one fine morning you should see it early and drive round it in the beautiful afternoon, and stroll there alone or otherwise by moonlight.
There I stood under my umbrella, with the rain coming down in sheets and the spray and mist rising up, feeling that I must do one or both of two things—write poetry or commit suicide. I had just got to—
"Oh, dashing, splashing King of Water,
Is that mist thy lovely daughter?
Tell me, through thy roar and thunder,
Canst thou——"
[Pg 90]
when the crack of a whip brought me to my senses. It was produced by my faithful driver, who had come in search of me. I was saved.
He explained to me the wonders of the Great Horseshoe Fall (who more able to do this than a driver?), and wound up by saying:
"Guess we'll harness Niagara yet—we've got the traces nearly on now."
We had reached the carriage and pair when this meditative remark escaped him. Thinking he was referring to some other gee-gee of his, possibly one called appropriately after the Falls, and which was being broken in, I said that I thought the present pair went very well in harness together and had a lot of work in them yet.
"Why, certn'ly," was all he said as he shut the carriage door, but he gave me a puzzled, anxious look, and I saw that he caught sight of my poetry. I evidently had not understood his[Pg 91] remark, nor had he comprehended mine. At the next stopping place, about a mile above the Falls, he explained that "there was seven million horse-power running wild." It is to be "harnessed" at a cost of about 5,200,000 dollars, and horse-power of upwards of 260,000 will be collared. Yes, Jonathan, mounted upon his thirsty steed Dollars, is about to lasso picturesque Niagara. I saw through the mist the destroyers at work; mills with their hideous chimneys and dirty smoke, and attendant railways puffing commerce will be seen when the landscape is clear. Jonathan cares not; as a writer on this act of ultra-vandalism declares:
"Nothing is sacred to the practical man of the present age, especially when he happens to dwell on the other side of the Atlantic. There he uses the wonders of Nature as advertising boards for puffing quack medicines or patent stoves, and the picturesque and the grandiose are only appreciated by him in proportion to their utilitarian value."
Of course I paid my respects to the sisters of Niagara, or rather, to the islands of that name. To do so I had to leave the carriage and walk to the islands over little bridges, and again that feeling of fascination overcame me, and looking round to see that the driver was not following me a second time, I stealthily pulled out my verse and abandoned myself to my poetical inspirations. I had my eyes fixed upon three rocks in front of me, round which the waters, in all sorts of forms and colours, were dashing. "The Three Sisters," I repeated to myself. "Three sisters—some idea to work in here. Let me see, the daughter is the mist—the three sisters—why, there they are!" Oh, why was I born a caricaturist? All poetry had vanished; Niagara's fascination was dispelled!
When next you visit Niagara stand on the last of the three[Pg 92] sisters and find the three portraits in the rocks. It is a puzzle picture; a fac-simile of which I here present you with.
I was next driven to the Inclined Railway, to descend which would enable me to see the Falls from below. Arrived there, I found an old lady cross-examining the attendant anent the safety of the railway, which, truth to tell, is somewhat appalling to look at, the incline being at an angle of thirty-one degrees. The motive-power is water, and what the old lady wanted to know was whether the water would hold out long enough to bring her back again.
"Niagara dry up in five minutes? Wal, old gal, that's clever! Guess this railway's bin workin' every day you have—forty-five years now."
The questioner, who had witnessed, at the least computation, sixty summers come and go, promptly vanished at this soft impeachment, and I descended alone.
Wonderful, magnificent as Niagara indubitably is, that sense which enables me to drink in and appreciate to the full Nature's works of sublime grandeur and vastness was ruined for the day. My eyes had beheld the "Three Sisters" in the rocks; after that they discovered faces in everything. They fell upon this mountain of ice and beheld spray that had frozen into a grinning mask. Cautiously I picked my way along the treacherous surface in the direction of its ear to see the spray rising up from the other side, when suddenly my feet slipped on the ice and I had had a fall as well as seen one.
In all probability this contretemps would have been avoided had I not been followed by one of those pests, a guide, the sight of whom caused me to make undue hurry over the frozen[Pg 93] surface. Harpies of this ilk are the bane of sight-seeing all the world over.
My next performance was to drive through the town of wood for the purpose of striking the water at another point; this accomplishment being attended with the risk of being run over by passing trains, which run vindictively as well as promiscuously over the unprotected thoroughfares.
Having run this gauntlet successfully, I passed through a house which is a store containing photographs and mementoes of the place and a couple of persevering, persuasive maidens, whose efforts to make life a burden to you until you buy some of the rubbish are usually rewarded with unqualified success. After fighting my way through this edifice I was taken in hand by a juvenile guide, who discoursed in the orthodox fashion of his kind about the Whirlpool Rapid, pointed out where plucky, foolish Captain Webb met his death, crushed by the force of water, and, lower down, the spot where his body was found. Then
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