AMERICA AT THE TIME OF CHARLESTON

AS SEEN FROM A EUROPEAN FEMALE ARISTOCRAT

Approximately twenty years after Amy A. Bernardy wrote two passionate books, full of direct impressions, on the United States, another woman, Irene di Robilant,[1] a descendent from an ancient Piedmontese family, published a volume about life in America. It was not a book of memoirs, impressions, observations or portraits of things seen, despite the fact that she had seen a lot in her position of secretary (in reality, founder) of the Italy-America Society.[2] Her book was full of information, notions, facts, figures and quotations. It was the first book of its kind meant for the general public; with a wide panorama on many aspects of American civilization and complete with a bibliography after each chapter; witnessing the author’s impartiality and seriousness. It was a survey on the economic situation, the educational system, the primitive peoples of North America and other practical issues. It included accounts by other competent Italians who had traveled through the continent and saw it useful to report back what they had learned. Nothing similar had ever been published in Italy: di Robilant was the first and she did a great job. Let’s begin with an important fact that until today could be easily missed, namely the evolution of approaches in the books by European travelers to America in the decades straddling the last two centuries. Between 1880 and 1900 the main purpose appeared to be the need to report about this very distant land, a semi-barbaric country with plenty of unusual things that, to the observers, stood out as oddities. In di Robilant’s book we see the tendency to discover patterns of similarities and differences between Europe and America, even in terms of culture. For instance, in a little book with impressions of America published in 1897 [sic], the famous composer Jacques Offenbach[3] focused on the strident differences between the two cultures in the volume Orpheus in America. He mentioned, for instance, the fact that orchestra members in America would rehearse in shirt sleeves. It isn’t my intention to compare the two books: their goals are completely different, but I must add that they are both completely different and diametrically opposed. Di Robilant took pleasure in discussing the state of higher education; the press and journalism; publishers and magazines; music and the art scene; novelists, short-story writers and playwrights. Additionally, she wrote about cultural America, something that must have surprised many Italians (and Europeans); revealing for the first time the force, progress and successes of this country in fields where many would not have expected to find anything valuable. The many who didn’t know about the American cultural scene, by the way, also included people of higher status who had just immigrated to America but had no idea what was going on. Thus, despite the fact that most of the information is now obsolete, this catalog is a good document of those times. The other observation I want to make is di Robilant’s generally optimistic tone, and her favorable disposition toward America. This could be a consequence of the new relations that Europe and American developed after World War I in 1918. (In the same period, the genius of Giraudoux published a book whose title aptly expressed the mood of the time: Amica America.)

Di Robilant’s book belongs in the honeymoon-like atmosphere created by American intervention against Germany (1917). Unlike Giraudoux’s, though, her feelings are not expressed in dewy and mythical terms but rather with the lucidity and accuracy of a report. This intelligent, highly educated, curious and dedicated woman was a rare case in the Italy of old. Today, after World War II, things are different, but back then it was really unusual for the daughter of an aristocratic family to leave her home and country to end up working abroad as a secretary. This position put her in contact with the rich, sophisticated, artistic and powerful New York society: from Otto Kahn,[4] protector of the Metropolitan Museum, to the Morgan family[5]—the top international bankers—and their lawyer, Paul Cravath,[6] whose Wall Street office was open day and night. She considered herself a bit like an unofficial ambassador of the newer and better post-war [WW I] Italy and she conceived her book as part of her responsibilities and duties as an Italian abroad. Who knows how many times, hanging out with Italian diplomats or with nouveau-riche Italian immigrants, in her humble position of secretary of an organization—small compared to the greatness of the official and social New York—she felt a revulsion against the superficiality of the former and the vanity of the latter? But her book gives no hints of this. As a woman, she must have had strong inclinations for some of those people and personalities, but not for others. However, she controlled her pen very tightly to the point where her impartiality is almost excessive; at the cost of reducing essential differences to naught; swallowed by a sense of fairness that becomes injustice when she put on the same level both the great and the mediocre. She was a keen observer of reality and always referred to it in the background. After World War I, American democracy, maybe for the first time since 1779, became the inspirational model for European masses (while the harsher realities were hidden away).

This book also examined the problem of the historical experiences stored inside the various racial groups. In particular it examines the vicissitudes of people of color, of Jews and Irish; explaining what kind of treatment they had received upon arrival; always keeping the tone of an impartial observer. One chapter, of course, is devoted to Italian immigration, without the enthusiasms or the despair of Bernardy. She fully understood that the so-called inassimilable foreigners that Bernardy observed as prisoners of the ghettos—Chinatowns or Little Italies—would be replaced by a second generation that would be fully American and often even more patriotic than the descendants of the Mayflower.[7] Here we don’t run into visions of shantytowns, miserable jobs, horrible cohabitation with other races, cruel labor conditions and contagious diseases; as told in the stories by other visitors, from Adolfo Rossi to Giuseppe Giacosa. What she offered, instead, is a short chapter that defined the framework and guidelines for an analysis of the place of Italian immigration in the context of American history. It’s like focusing the lens of a camera; and the perspective, in its general outline, is still valid today.

Thirty years later, after World War II, the ties between the United States and Europe have been strengthened. The third generation of Italian Americans is now coming to age and a new chapter needs to be added. However, in terms of an analysis of Italian immigration within the context of American history, the book maintains its validity. The chapter in question does not indulge in useless national pride or acrimony toward America. Here and in other parts of the book, di Robilant ignored or omitted the tragic aspects of the conflicts in a nation that was formed artificially form powerful but abstract ideals, born from and reflected in the hopes of the ruling class. These were also ideals that derived from social, racial and economic realities in conflict with one another that often ended up squeezing out and mutilating those who got caught in the middle, whether they wanted or not, whether they knew it or not.

Since the end of World War II America has been the subject of many books. These are generally lively portraits and snapshots, colorful, impressionistic and full of anecdotes. However, none of them is grounded in the perspective of America’s history like this one. Rather than Vita Americana[8] the title should have been La cultura Americana. At the time of her writing, in 1929, the author of the introduction already noticed the Americanization of European culture, a phenomenon that involved customs, mentality, and forms of industrial and political organization; a phenomenon that has continued to grow to the point that it is now one of the essential traits of our time. One of the least predictable developments of this process is American influence on European literature and philosophy. One of the merits of the book I just described is the chapter on American Philosophy, which is certainly one of the first times American philosophy is even mentioned at all. The author did not foresee the popularity that pragmatism and Dewey’s[9] pedagogy would eventually reach in Europe, although some hints had already begun to appear. This is a typical example of the merits and demerits of this book: sensibility about new things but not always a good judgment about them.

New York, October 23, 1960