Another leading impression, which remains with me, is that Boston is not so English as it perhaps imagines itself to be.  An interviewer (among many) came to see me about Boston, and he came with the fixed and sole notion in his head that Boston was English.  He would have it that Boston was English.  Worn down by his persistency, I did, as a fact, admit in one obscure corner of the interview that Boston had certain English characteristics.  The scare-head editor of the interviewing paper, looking through his man’s copy for suitable prey, came across my admission.  It was just what he wanted; it was what he was thirsting for.  In an instant the scare-head was created:  “Boston as English as a muffin!” An ideal scare-head!  That I had never used the word “muffin” or any such phrase was a detail exquisitely unimportant.  The scare-head was immense.  It traveled in fine large type across the continent.  I met it for weeks afterward in my press-cuttings, and I doubt if Boston was altogether delighted with the comparison.  I will not deny that Boston is less strikingly un-English than sundry other cities.  I will not deny that I met men in Boston of a somewhat pronounced English type.  I will not deny that in certain respects old Kensington reminds me of a street here and there in Boston—­such as Mount Vernon Street or Chestnut Street.  But I do maintain that the Englishness of Boston has been seriously exaggerated.

And still another very striking memory of Boston—­indeed, perhaps, the paramount impression!—­is that it contains the loveliest modern thing I saw in America—­namely, the Puvis de Chavannes wall-paintings on the grand staircase of the Public Library.  The Library itself is a beautiful building, but it holds something more beautiful.  Never shall I forget my agitation on beholding these unsurpassed works of art, which alone would suffice to make Boston a place of pilgrimage.

When afterward I went back to Paris, the painters’ first question was:  “Et les Puvis a Boston—­vous les avez vus?  Qu’est-ce que vous en dites?”

It was very un-English on the part of Boston to commission these austere and classical works.  England would never have done it.  The nationality of the greatest decorative painter of modern times would have offended her sense of fitness.  What—­a French painter officially employed on an English public building?  Unthinkable!  England would have insisted on an English painter—­or, at worst, an American.  It is strange that a community which had the wit to honor itself by employing Puvis de Chavannes should be equally enthusiastic about the frigid theatricalities of an E.A.  Abbey or the forbidding and opaque intricate dexterity of a John Sargent in the same building.  Or, rather, it is not strange, for these contradictions are discoverable everywhere in the patronage of the arts.