Introduction

INTRODUCTION AMERICANS have always had an almost insatiable curiosity to know what other peoples think about them. As a result, books by foreigners describing their impressions of this country have usually attracted considerable attention among the Ameri- can reading public. This has been true of all the notable travel accounts, whether they were harshly critical as were Mrs. Trol- lope's and Dickens', or laudatory like those of De Tocqueville and Lord Bryce. All of these accounts were written by West Europeans; those written by East European authors, on the other hand, are practically unknown in the United States. The reasons for this neglect are easy to understand. Travelers from distant eastern Europe have neither been as numerous nor generally as famous as those from England, France, and Ger- many. Written in difficult Slavic languages with which few Americans were familiar, their works were rarely translated into English. Nevertheless, it is astonishing that a book about America by so prominent a literary figure as Henry Sienkiewicz should have remained in relative obscurity on this side of the Atlantic. As the author of the Nobel Prize-winning novel, Quo Vadis?, Henry Sienkiewicz needs no introduction to Americans. But very few of those who have been thrilled by his tragic drama of early Christians, whether from reading the novel or viewing its most recent screen version, realize that he visited the United States in 1876-78 and, more important, that he recorded his impressions in his Letters from America. Born in 1846, Sienkiewicz was thirty years of age when he came to the United States. His literary reputation still remained to be made, but his writings as a journalist had already attracted x Introduction wide attention in the pages of the Warsaw Gazeta Polska for which he wrote a column, "The Present Moment," under the pseudonym, "Litwos." 1 Under the editorship of Dr. Edward Leo, the Gazeta Polska proved to be an excellent medium of expression for the talented young writer. Allowed complete freedom by his editor, Sienkiewicz did not hesitate to write on controversial subjects nor to voice unorthodox views. In the cafés and salons literate Varsovians engaged in animated discussions of the opinions expressed in Litwos' latest feuilleton. Only the strict Russian censorship and the resourcefulness of his mind and imagination placed limits on the scope of his literary activity. One may well wonder what motives prompted this well- educated Pole, descendant of an impoverished gentry family, to journey such vast distances to settle in California at a time when, to most East Europeans, America was still a land of mystery. As the writer himself acknowledged, "A person who is leaving for America is still a rarity among us." Yet for a venturesome and imaginative young man, eager for new sights and experiences and unencumbered by domestic ties, the name America had a bewitching attraction. The young man's curiosity was further heightened by the ecstatic accounts of Cali- fornia appearing in a local newspaper from the pen of Julian Horain, a fellow journalist, and by the appearance in 1875 of a highly colored account entitled In America by a woman writer, Christine Narbutt, who told alarming tales of gunfire below the windows of her New York hotel room. Two of Sienkiewicz's close friends, Helena Modjeska, the actress, and her husband, Count Charles Chlapowski, shared his intense interest in this country. Madame Modjeska de- scribes how one winter night in 1875 the writer and a group of young men were at her Warsaw home when the subject of the approaching Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia was 1 "Litwos" may be translated as "The Lithuanian." The original home of the Sienkiewicz family was in Lithuania. Introduction xi brought up. Immediately an enthusiastic discussion of the United States was begun in which Sienkiewicz took a leading part, describing the country, and especially California, in the most glowing terms. The consensus was that California was indeed the Promised Land where game of all kinds might be had for the shooting, fruits of every variety grew at least three times larger than anywhere else, coffee, pepper, and castor-oil beans grew wild, and gold was to be found almost everywhere. The eventual outcome of the evening's conversation was that Sienkiewicz, the Chlapowskis, and several other enthusiasts decided to seek adventure by going to California. When Count Chlapowski proposed the formation of a tiny Utopian colony on the model of Brook Farm, the idea was acclaimed by the others. Endless discussions ensued; statutes were written to regulate the life of the colony; the journey was planned in de- tail; happy fantasies of a new idyllic life close to nature were dreamed. Madame Modjeska's expectations were typical: Oh, but to cook under the sapphire-blue sky in the land of freedom! What joy! To bleach linen at the brook like the maidens of Homer's 'Iliad'! After the day of toil, to play the guitar and sing by moon- light, to recite poems, or to listen to the mockingbird! And listening to our songs would be charming Indian maidens, our neighbors, making wreaths of luxuriant wild flowers for us! And in exchange we should give them trinkets for their handsome brown necks and wrists! And oh, wc should be so far away from every-day gossip and malice, nearer to God, and better.2 The participants imagined everything except what really lay in store for them. Sienkiewicz and a companion, Julius Sypniewski, were desig- nated to proceed to America ahead of the rest and to select a suitable location for the proposed colony in California. What helped to make the trip financially possible for Sienkiewicz was the suggestion by his editor that he send back a series of articles 'Helena Modjeska, Memories and Impressions (New York, 1910), pp. 250-51. xii Introduction on what he saw in the United States for publication in the Gazeta Polska. Early in 1876 Sienkiewicz sailed for the New World. After a brief stay in New York City, he and his friend set out for California via Chicago over the recently completed transcon- tinental railroad. Upon reaching the West Coast, the two selected the small but thriving community of Anaheim in southern California as the most promising place to launch the Utopian experiment. Not only did this location offer a sunny and salubrious climate, but it also had the advantage of being predominantly German. Since all of the colonists knew the German language, communication with their neighbors would be no problem during the interim they were learning English. Enthusiastic letters were dispatched to those who remained behind, urging them to come at the earliest opportunity. Sypniewski returned to Europe to give a firsthand oral report and to assist his family in making the long move to California. The colonists, eight in number, arrived early in the fall of that year, equipped for the dangerous exigencies of American life with two huge boxes of medicine, an assortment of surgical in- struments, telescopes, and a formidable armament of several rifles, brass knuckles, and six revolvers! It was almost a foregone conclusion that a project so light- heartedly embarked upon was doomed to failure, for the soft- handed intellectuals who composed the group possessed no previous knowledge of practical agriculture, nor were they ac- customed to the strenuous physical labor involved. These amateur farmers did not know how to milk their cows or kill the poultry they raised. Neighbors' cattle trampled and munched upon the winter barley crop, while the animals' owners helped themselves freely to the fruit in the vineyard. As a result, many of the food supplies for the group had to be purchased. Aching backs and blistered hands soon took a toll of the colonists' early enthusiasm, and within a few short months the disillusioned idealists were ready to admit their Introduction xiii defeat. Madame Modjeska, alarmed by the steady diminution of her husband's capital invested in the farm and the complete absence of any financial return, announced her intention of going to San Francisco to study English and to recoup their fortunes by resuming her acting career. Sienkiewicz, for his part, went off to investigate new aspects of life in the American West and to write up his findings for his readers back in Warsaw. Most of the European travelers who wrote accounts about America had several characteristics in common. They were generally well-educated and therefore their interpretations of what they witnessed and experienced tended to reflect the viewpoint of the educated class. All of them arrived with certain preconceptions about the United States firmly entrenched in their minds, derived from the accounts of earlier travelers with which they had familiarized themselves or based upon the prevailing image of America in their native land. As Europeans, they were all bred under political and social systems quite dif- ferent from what they encountered in the United States. Thus, the entire background and experience of the visitors, the in- formation or misinformation with which they came equipped, the nature of the government under which they had lived, their own niche in the social milieu—all of these were factors which inevitably affected the observations even of those travelers who endeavored to give a true and objective account of what they saw. In spite of these handicaps, or perhaps because of them, the more perceptive and penetrating analyses of the institutions and meanings of American life have usually come from foreign observers. All too frequently the vision of native commentators was obscured by their very familiarity with the American scene, their matter-of-fact acceptance of phenomena they deemed commonplace, and their ready assumption that certain facets of life in this country were not in the least unique.

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