Presentation from 2010.

1. A Visit to Imperialist Relatives
The England Travelogues of John L.
Stoddard and Burton Holmes

2. What is England?
England as the past; the United States as
land of the future

3. Travel in the 19th
century
Steam powered ships = faster and more
frequent voyages
Returns to Atlantic and Gulf ports from
abroad:
 1820: 1,926
 1849: 2,659
 1860: 19,387
Rising middle class
Greater value placed on education

4. British Imperialism
period of new popular approach to
imperialism: “spectacle of empire”
 Popular literature: Kipling, H. Rider Haggard
In a context of:
 Increased nationalism in the 19th
century
 Social Darwinism: emphasizing Anglo-Saxon
racial link, English as relatives, increased
marriages in late 19th
century between new
American money and old British aristocracy

5. Anglo-American Relationship
Industrial concerns/urbanization in U.S.
Power shifts from Britain to U.S.
American imperialism
 Spanish-American War
 1904: Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe
Doctrine, asserting U.S. right to intervene in
Western Hemisphere – but NOT European
powers

6. John L. Stoddard
(1850-1931)
Father was a Boston
stockbroker and private
banker
Lectured to an elite,
cosmopolitan clientele

7. Stoddard and Old England

8. Stoddard and Old England
Four Wheeler Carriage:
 “Have any new four-wheelers been
manufactured during the last twenty years?”
The London Underground:
 “few metropolitan means of conveyance are so
disagreeable. The smell of smoke, the oily,
humid atmosphere of coal gas, the single jet of
fog-dimmed light in the roof of the railway
carriage…”

9. Stoddard and Literary England
The East End, where
 “few tourists care to go unless on errands of
philanthropy or in the study of sociology”
Dickens:
 “nothing worse could be said of the slums of
London than is found in the pathetic pages of
Charles Dickens.”

10. Stoddard and Literary England

11. Stoddard: Anglo-American Relationship
Anglo-Saxon democracy as organic,
scientific:
 “In the political evolution of the Anglo-Saxon…
there has been no serious retrogression in the
evolution of democracy.”
 “Since the separation of mother and child, in
1776, Great Britain has been developing the
democratic idea almost as rapidly as the United
States.”

12. Stoddard: England is the Past
Westminster Abbey graves

13. Burton Holmes (1870-1958)
First trip abroad with
grandmother
First met Stoddard in Italy
while watching a
performance of the Passion
Play
First lecture: fundraiser for
the Chicago Camera Club in
1897
In later career, work became
a brand of its own

14. Coined term “travelogue” to describe his
illustrated lectures
Film shorts
 Sound
 Color
 As prologue to motion pictures

16. Holmes and the Old World
Affinity for things of the New World
 raw nature over the constructed city = response
to industrialization, loss of the individual in
urban environments, the loss of American
individual spirit
Focus on pre-WWII travelogues, WWII as
changing the landscape, later productions
created by his company and Thayer
Soules

17. Holmes and the Old World
Beauty and heritage, but an absence of
the present
Kenilworth Castle:
 “is the haunt of the traveler, but it is the home of
no man.”
 Quotes Sir Walter: “Of this lordly palace, where
princes feasted and heroes fought, now in the
bloody earnest of storm and siege, and not in
the games of chivalry, all is now desolate”

18. Holmes and Humor
Greater detail, more cavalier than
Stoddard
The monotony of the English boiled
potato:
 How about “German fried, mashed, French
fried, saute, hashed brown, stewed in cream,
hashed au gratin, Lyonnaise, souffle, rissole, or
even in the form of crisp Saratoga chips.”

19. Holmes and Literary England
William Wordsworth’s home in Grasmere
in the Lakes District:
 “Oh, the gentle country, the kind green country,
how it purrs at you as it lies there basking in the
tepid sun! It has no harm in it – it would never
do you ill, this tamed and fattened England.”

20. What is England?
 The countryside: quaint, historic
 The city (London): avoiding praise for the
modern, urban, industrial
 Little on gender
 The past, an old relative: emphasize England’s
weaknesses, history, quaintness to emphasize
America’s modernity and underplay the British
Empire
 U.S. as a younger nation: appreciate the English
past, but assert that the U.S. is not presently
eclipsed by it