1
00:00:44,807 --> 00:00:48,402
This is the grand and glorious cliché of America,
2
00:00:48,647 --> 00:00:52,435
as the Acropolis is of Greece
and the Taj Mahal of India.
3
00:00:52,967 --> 00:00:56,960
A million tourists have said
there's nothing like it, and they're right.
4
00:00:56,807 --> 00:00:59,605
Many more millions got their first view of it
5
00:00:59,687 --> 00:01:04,158
after the long steerage journey
from Ireland or Italy or Russia.
6
00:01:04,487 --> 00:01:07,479
I was lucky. I came by choice.
7
00:01:07,847 --> 00:01:10,441
And I started from the opposite pole,
8
00:01:10,247 --> 00:01:14,559
from the protected pastoral haven
of Cambridge, England.
9
00:01:15,007 --> 00:01:17,726
I had graduated from Jesus College.
10
00:01:17,887 --> 00:01:22,836
Suddenly, in the spring of 1932,
I was offered a fellowship at Yale University.
11
00:01:23,007 --> 00:01:29,003
And I remember, one day, leaning on this bridge
and wondering what America must be like.
12
00:01:29,247 --> 00:01:32,842
I thought of myself
as a sophisticated character,
13
00:01:32,607 --> 00:01:35,201
but I must have realised dimly, even then,
14
00:01:35,487 --> 00:01:40,277
that the preconceptions that you hold
about a country, the ones that stick,
15
00:01:40,767 --> 00:01:43,565
are the ones you learn practically from birth.
16
00:01:43,647 --> 00:01:48,641
In the First World War, I was a very small boy
in a seaside town in the north
17
00:01:48,447 --> 00:01:51,245
where you could train soldiers on the sands.
18
00:01:51,807 --> 00:01:56,403
And we had billeted with us - on us -
seven American soldiers.
19
00:01:56,607 --> 00:02:01,078
I learned later that the men
who wrote the American Constitution
20
00:02:00,927 --> 00:02:05,921
put in a clause actually forbidding
the billeting of any soldier in a private house,
21
00:02:06,207 --> 00:02:11,201
but with their uncanny foresight,
they saw that this did not apply to England.
22
00:02:11,487 --> 00:02:17,278
Well, anyway, their soldiers were taller than ours,
but also paler, almost yellow.
23
00:02:17,247 --> 00:02:21,445
My father explained -
he had never been to America either -
24
00:02:21,567 --> 00:02:26,357
that this was because of the skyscrapers,
which kept the sun off their faces.
25
00:02:26,847 --> 00:02:29,645
This completed my childhood picture of America.
26
00:02:29,727 --> 00:02:34,517
New York City, with skyscrapers.
Yellow men. Maybe red men on the fringe.
27
00:02:34,527 --> 00:02:39,521
A prairie, through which ran the Mississippi,
thrashing with steamboats and gamblers,
28
00:02:39,807 --> 00:02:44,403
who were nudged aside from time to time
by a man in a white suit
29
00:02:44,607 --> 00:02:49,601
who kept rushing to the stern and dropping
a plumb line and shouting, "Mark Twain!"
30
00:02:49,407 --> 00:02:52,399
More prairie. The only mountains, the Rockies.
31
00:02:52,767 --> 00:02:55,759
And the only other city, San Francisco,
32
00:02:56,127 --> 00:02:59,324
which was founded by Australian convicts.
33
00:02:59,487 --> 00:03:05,483
And it was with this mental baggage,
and a few colourful additions from the movies,
34
00:03:05,247 --> 00:03:07,442
that I set sail.
35
00:03:07,647 --> 00:03:11,242
This is a personal memoir
of what I found in America,
36
00:03:11,487 --> 00:03:16,481
and of the institutions, the landscape,
the people that I came to admire most.
37
00:03:16,767 --> 00:03:20,237
In a word, what gave me the impulse to stay
38
00:03:20,607 --> 00:03:26,477
and look into the origins and the history
of the United States.
39
00:03:30,367 --> 00:03:33,564
I sailed into New York late on a fall evening.
40
00:03:33,727 --> 00:03:36,605
It was at once magical and sinister,
41
00:03:37,087 --> 00:03:41,080
and better than anything
that the movies had promised.
42
00:03:45,887 --> 00:03:48,481
The latest thing, something you had to see,
43
00:03:48,287 --> 00:03:53,281
was the George Washington Bridge,
the new single-span across the Hudson.
44
00:03:53,567 --> 00:03:57,765
This is today,
with the riverside parks and the motorway.
45
00:03:57,887 --> 00:04:00,685
In 1932, it was very different.
46
00:04:00,767 --> 00:04:07,366
The fairyland of Manhattan was shattered with
a nasty jolt of reality called the Depression.
47
00:04:16,607 --> 00:04:21,123
The banks of the Hudson
and of hundreds of other American rivers
48
00:04:21,527 --> 00:04:27,363
were littered with tar paper shacks, the homes
of a dribble of the 13 million unemployed.
49
00:04:27,527 --> 00:04:31,600
I'd actually been warned
by the sponsors of my fellowship
50
00:04:31,767 --> 00:04:34,361
that in the winter we could expect a revolution.
51
00:04:34,527 --> 00:04:40,318
In Germany I'd seen more hideous single sights,
skeleton children with bloated bellies,
52
00:04:40,487 --> 00:04:45,117
but I had never seen more poverty
everywhere at your elbow.
53
00:04:45,287 --> 00:04:48,962
Farmers with rotted crops that nobody could buy.
54
00:04:49,127 --> 00:04:52,915
In the cities, the rich defaulting on their rent.
55
00:04:54,687 --> 00:04:57,679
Middle-class people reduced to begging.
56
00:04:58,447 --> 00:05:00,915
It was a very bleak winter.
57
00:05:01,087 --> 00:05:04,079
But then America found a saviour.
58
00:05:04,447 --> 00:05:10,238
I remember how his voice on the day
of his inauguration sounded like a trumpet call.
59
00:05:10,807 --> 00:05:16,996
Nor need we shrink from honestly facing
conditions in our country today.
60
00:05:18,127 --> 00:05:23,042
This great nation will endure,
as it has endured,
61
00:05:23,287 --> 00:05:26,199
will revive and will prosper.
62
00:05:26,327 --> 00:05:31,720
This was immensely rousing, especially
to an Englishman fresh from, or tired from,
63
00:05:31,927 --> 00:05:37,240
our own complacent and bumbling leaders
crouching before the ranting of Adolf Hitler.
64
00:05:37,207 --> 00:05:40,438
Roosevelt really gave the sense of taking over.
65
00:05:40,767 --> 00:05:44,476
And I, for one, felt reassured, freed from guilt.
66
00:05:44,687 --> 00:05:50,159
I was, after all, 23 and subsidised
and maybe pretty callow.
67
00:05:50,327 --> 00:05:56,846
I'd one American passion I was dying to indulge,
so I headed for Mecca, for New Orleans,
68
00:05:56,687 --> 00:06:00,885
the cradle of what was, to me,
the American aristocracy -
69
00:06:01,367 --> 00:06:05,758
King Oliver, Duke Ellington and Earl Hines.
70
00:06:05,687 --> 00:06:08,485
(JAZZ PIANO )
71
00:06:48,487 --> 00:06:51,285
(WHISTLING)
72
00:06:57,127 --> 00:07:01,439
Well, this may seem to be
a very strange place of pilgrimage,
73
00:07:01,447 --> 00:07:04,837
here in a bar in New Orleans,
74
00:07:05,287 --> 00:07:10,486
in a crummy section
which, in those days, never saw a white man.
75
00:07:10,567 --> 00:07:15,163
But, you know, travellers always find
what they're looking for.
76
00:07:15,367 --> 00:07:17,835
Englishmen may urge Americans
77
00:07:17,767 --> 00:07:23,763
to go and watch the vital institution
of Question Time in the House of Commons,
78
00:07:24,007 --> 00:07:28,205
but Americans still trek off
to the Changing of the Guard.
79
00:07:28,327 --> 00:07:33,720
And I ought to have been looking
at the beautiful houses in the Garden District,
80
00:07:34,087 --> 00:07:36,476
and admiring Jackson Square,
81
00:07:36,487 --> 00:07:41,686
but I beat it to New Orleans with one purpose,
which was to rediscover the birthplace
82
00:07:41,767 --> 00:07:45,965
of what, to me,
was the supreme American invention,
83
00:07:46,087 --> 00:07:48,078
the 12-bar blues.
84
00:07:48,527 --> 00:07:51,599
(BLUESY INTRO )
85
00:08:00,527 --> 00:08:05,521
The blues had a particular poignancy during
the '30s because they're about depression,
86
00:08:05,807 --> 00:08:08,196
infidelity, the money all gone,
87
00:08:08,207 --> 00:08:13,076
taking a train to some greener pasture
that you know isn't there.
88
00:08:19,007 --> 00:08:22,397
I first heard the blues on a piano -
89
00:08:22,847 --> 00:08:28,843
they come out of the country, out of work song,
into the town, first onto a piano -
90
00:08:29,087 --> 00:08:35,606
in this bar, where there was a little,
very old, very raddled, bent-over negro,
91
00:08:35,807 --> 00:08:42,155
just playing the chords of the blues and
singing the lyrics that you could hear at nights
92
00:08:42,247 --> 00:08:47,116
drifting out over the lattices
of the prostitutes' cribs.
93
00:08:47,287 --> 00:08:53,078
For, certainly, 100 years,
New Orleans was a shambles of corruption,
94
00:08:53,047 --> 00:08:57,006
and the most easy-going town
in the United States.
95
00:08:57,367 --> 00:09:01,758
At the bottom of the underworld,
as usual, were the blacks.
96
00:09:01,687 --> 00:09:07,080
At the top of it were the bordellos
run by ferocious madams,
97
00:09:07,447 --> 00:09:13,443
the gaudiest of whom was undoubtedly a lady
who called herself, after several other tries,
98
00:09:13,687 --> 00:09:15,996
Josie Arlington.
99
00:09:16,087 --> 00:09:18,885
She had white girls, black girls and octoroons,
100
00:09:18,967 --> 00:09:24,360
and their charms were advertised
in a blue book that you could buy for 25 cents.
101
00:09:24,727 --> 00:09:29,118
Now, there was one black man - only one -
in these houses,
102
00:09:29,047 --> 00:09:31,766
and he was the so-called "Perfesser".
103
00:09:31,927 --> 00:09:38,116
The coloured pianist. At one time,
Josie Arlington had the best, Jelly Roll Morton.
104
00:09:38,167 --> 00:09:44,561
A man with a mouth like a clapper
and diamonds actually inset in his teeth.
105
00:09:44,887 --> 00:09:50,598
I saw him on his death bed. He maintained
that he'd invented jazz. Of course, he hadn't.
106
00:09:50,647 --> 00:09:55,721
But he said to me, "If you want
to play the blues, boy, just chords."
107
00:09:55,927 --> 00:09:58,919
(BLUES CHORDS)
108
00:10:02,167 --> 00:10:06,604
"And...cut out that picture-show right hand."
109
00:10:13,967 --> 00:10:19,121
His show closed, I guess, and Josie's house
was closed when she got religion.
110
00:10:19,207 --> 00:10:25,601
She bought herself a lavish tomb in the grandest
cemetery in order to clinch her lease in heaven.
111
00:10:38,247 --> 00:10:42,684
She herself posed for this figure,
intended not as her likeness,
112
00:10:43,087 --> 00:10:48,480
but to symbolise the only known species
she never allowed in her house, a virgin.
113
00:10:57,767 --> 00:11:03,046
Well, this was playing hooky. I had to get down
to work and up north to Yale University.
114
00:11:02,807 --> 00:11:08,120
There, in the next autumn, I discovered
the most beautiful of the six New England states.
115
00:11:08,567 --> 00:11:10,558
Vermont.
116
00:11:10,487 --> 00:11:14,685
At first glance you'd never believe
the geographer who said,
117
00:11:14,807 --> 00:11:20,404
"If America had been settled from west to east,
New England would still be uninhabited."
118
00:11:20,567 --> 00:11:26,358
But this mellow beauty is deceptive.
It cloaks the poorest, stoniest soil.
119
00:11:26,807 --> 00:11:31,801
For every acre you plant,
you have to plough up a hundred boulders.
120
00:11:33,967 --> 00:11:36,481
To me, there were two great surprises.
121
00:11:36,847 --> 00:11:41,443
One was the domestic architecture
of the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
122
00:11:41,167 --> 00:11:46,116
The classical style done in wood.
There were always dense forests, but no brick.
123
00:11:46,607 --> 00:11:50,805
This is the courthouse in New Fane, Vermont.
124
00:11:51,887 --> 00:11:54,276
The second surprise was better still,
125
00:11:54,607 --> 00:11:59,601
something that the most grudging English
visitors have conceded as a natural wonder.
126
00:11:59,887 --> 00:12:04,483
Even Anthony Trollope's sourpuss mother
broke down to say,
127
00:12:04,407 --> 00:12:09,003
"In what they call the fall,
the whole country goes to glory."
128
00:12:10,247 --> 00:12:15,367
The fall colouring is something
that everybody admires but nobody explains.
129
00:12:15,527 --> 00:12:20,237
Well, on rich, rainy soils,
the sap keeps flowing into the leaves
130
00:12:20,327 --> 00:12:22,795
and they stay green till they drop.
131
00:12:22,727 --> 00:12:26,720
But on the poor, rocky soil of Vermont,
the dry autumn blocks the sap
132
00:12:27,007 --> 00:12:31,717
with a new growth of hard cells
at the base of the twig, and the greens fade.
133
00:12:32,007 --> 00:12:37,400
In the oaks, abundant sunlight and the lack
of nitrogen bring out the lemons and golds.
134
00:12:37,287 --> 00:12:41,280
And the maples. In summer, they start like this.
135
00:12:41,567 --> 00:12:46,960
But once the first frost sharpens the acid,
the sunlight develops it out into yellow,
136
00:12:47,207 --> 00:12:49,516
then streaks of red,
137
00:12:49,847 --> 00:12:53,237
and so into the full scarlet of their prime,
138
00:12:53,207 --> 00:12:56,597
before they turn and die again.
139
00:12:56,887 --> 00:13:02,484
The glory begins quickly, with a blaze of ferns
and blueberry bushes and sumach.
140
00:13:58,327 --> 00:14:01,524
The fall is nothing more than the burning out
141
00:14:01,687 --> 00:14:05,396
of what is poor in the soil
and bitter in the leaf.
142
00:14:05,527 --> 00:14:10,999
"It is," said a famous naturalist, "essentially
death that causes all the brave show."
143
00:14:23,807 --> 00:14:26,605
At the end of the college year, summer vacation,
144
00:14:27,167 --> 00:14:31,718
Chicago the first stop
on my grand tour of the West.
145
00:14:31,767 --> 00:14:34,361
It was having a World's Fair.
146
00:14:34,527 --> 00:14:39,885
That's me. 40 years ago,
my hair turned black, maybe from fright.
147
00:14:40,047 --> 00:14:46,236
I'd no sooner let my mother know where to write
than I had her cable begging me to escape
148
00:14:46,487 --> 00:14:49,684
from the incessant crossfire of the gangsters.
149
00:14:49,727 --> 00:14:52,446
So I got out of town before it was too late,
150
00:14:52,647 --> 00:14:55,445
and drove through the Midwest to the Prairie,
151
00:14:55,527 --> 00:15:00,123
where men were men
and boys had something called "get up and go".
152
00:15:00,327 --> 00:15:05,196
And this was it. The high, flat land
of broiling summers and Arctic winters.
153
00:15:05,127 --> 00:15:11,885
With a few homesteaders. Simple, square,
unlettered folk, I condescendingly assumed.
154
00:15:12,327 --> 00:15:17,640
I was in for a shock. It was here, I learned,
that "get up and go" was no myth.
155
00:15:17,607 --> 00:15:22,317
Here, for instance, two farm boys
had turned their small home town
156
00:15:22,407 --> 00:15:25,205
into a capital city of world medicine.
157
00:15:26,487 --> 00:15:32,039
I took an interest in medicine, partly because
my two closest friends were medical students,
158
00:15:32,247 --> 00:15:37,037
partly because I married a doctor's widow
and inherited a medical library,
159
00:15:37,047 --> 00:15:43,646
but mainly because of the great incentive
that comes from being a hypochondriac.
160
00:15:43,767 --> 00:15:48,363
The time came when I was invited to visit
as a guest and a reporter
161
00:15:48,567 --> 00:15:53,561
what, to me, is one of the most romantic
and impressive of American institutions.
162
00:15:53,847 --> 00:15:59,638
It's a story that any self-respecting publisher
would turn down as fiction.
163
00:16:00,247 --> 00:16:02,841
In 1862, the Sioux Indians of Minnesota
164
00:16:03,127 --> 00:16:07,678
were denied their annual food allowance
by a stupid government agent.
165
00:16:07,847 --> 00:16:12,398
So they looted the stores and murdered
and maimed the neighbouring families.
166
00:16:12,567 --> 00:16:16,958
The local doctor who took care of the casualties
was William Mayo,
167
00:16:16,887 --> 00:16:21,563
an immigrant from Salford, England,
who had some chemistry and an itch for medicine.
168
00:16:21,967 --> 00:16:25,960
He'd worked in a run-down New York hospital,
quit in disgust,
169
00:16:25,807 --> 00:16:29,800
and got a medical degree of sorts
from a Midwestern college.
170
00:16:30,287 --> 00:16:35,839
He moved on to the Prairie, to Rochester,
Minnesota, and became a doctor on horseback.
171
00:16:36,007 --> 00:16:40,603
The frontier then was seething with malaria
and typhoid and dysentery,
172
00:16:40,807 --> 00:16:43,367
and he was a very busy young man.
173
00:16:43,487 --> 00:16:47,878
And this is just about what remains
of his meagre equipment.
174
00:16:47,807 --> 00:16:50,196
This was his pride and joy.
175
00:16:50,687 --> 00:16:55,158
A microscope, a great rarity then.
It cost the fortune of $600.
176
00:16:55,007 --> 00:16:58,602
To buy it, he had to mortgage his house.
177
00:16:58,847 --> 00:17:04,240
Now, this was a time when doctors washed up,
if at all, AFTER an operation.
178
00:17:04,607 --> 00:17:08,202
Surgery was amputation, not yet repair.
179
00:17:08,447 --> 00:17:14,682
And these are some
of his rather grim and grimy operating tools.
180
00:17:14,767 --> 00:17:21,366
You see, Lister and antisepsis and asepsis,
microorganisms had never been heard of.
181
00:17:21,247 --> 00:17:26,241
The smallest thing that could infect you
was something you could touch and see,
182
00:17:26,527 --> 00:17:28,518
say, a house fly.
183
00:17:28,927 --> 00:17:31,919
Mayo operated in all weathers at all hours
184
00:17:31,807 --> 00:17:36,278
in kitchens and farmhouses
and shacks along flooded roads,
185
00:17:36,607 --> 00:17:38,996
opening up gall bladders,
186
00:17:39,007 --> 00:17:42,204
much more daringly, extracting tumours.
187
00:17:42,367 --> 00:17:45,165
Often with this corkscrew.
188
00:17:45,247 --> 00:17:50,446
And pretty soon his reputation spread
and patients came in from 100 miles around.
189
00:17:50,527 --> 00:17:52,597
Now, he had two sons.
190
00:17:53,087 --> 00:17:57,239
Will, who performed farm chores
with his younger brother Charlie.
191
00:17:57,407 --> 00:18:02,401
Before they were out of their teens,
they were off with their father on his rounds,
192
00:18:02,287 --> 00:18:06,075
mixing drugs, dressing wounds,
watching autopsies.
193
00:18:06,607 --> 00:18:09,201
They took their first anatomy lesson
194
00:18:09,407 --> 00:18:13,400
from the skeleton of this Indian
killed in the Sioux uprising.
195
00:18:14,207 --> 00:18:16,801
By the time they were ready for college,
196
00:18:17,087 --> 00:18:22,081
Michigan had a compulsory three-year instead
of the usual six-month course in medicine.
197
00:18:22,407 --> 00:18:24,602
So Will went there.
198
00:18:24,807 --> 00:18:29,722
Chicago had done the same thing,
and Charlie was sent to Chicago.
199
00:18:29,967 --> 00:18:33,960
From the start, they never meant
to make their careers in the East.
200
00:18:33,807 --> 00:18:39,643
They came back always to their home town.
"We were green," said Charlie, "and we knew it."
201
00:18:41,087 --> 00:18:46,286
The old man commanded them in their
childhood to read at least two hours a day.
202
00:18:46,367 --> 00:18:50,246
And they read and they bought
and they borrowed
203
00:18:50,207 --> 00:18:54,200
the medical literature
of the great men in the world outside.
204
00:18:54,527 --> 00:19:00,841
They did everything that a town and country
doctor did, but they wanted to go on learning.
205
00:19:00,767 --> 00:19:06,239
There was nowhere to go. There was
no graduate school of advanced medicine.
206
00:19:06,527 --> 00:19:10,725
So they kept in touch with their idols
by writing and visiting.
207
00:19:10,847 --> 00:19:13,441
They heard about an operation in Munich,
208
00:19:13,727 --> 00:19:18,323
and they tried it out in one-horse towns
called Henderson and Le Sueur.
209
00:19:18,527 --> 00:19:21,519
No surgeon was too far away to visit.
210
00:19:21,887 --> 00:19:26,438
They picked up the latest knowledge
about perforated ulcers from Germany,
211
00:19:26,207 --> 00:19:32,203
abdominal surgery from England, diagnosis from
a Dane, Fallopian tubes from a Philadelphian.
212
00:19:33,407 --> 00:19:39,004
And one day Charlie made a pilgrimage
just to look at Louis Pasteur.
213
00:19:39,407 --> 00:19:42,956
In all, they made over 80 journeys to Europe.
214
00:19:43,127 --> 00:19:48,326
By the 1900s, their fame as surgeons
was such that the traffic went into reverse.
215
00:19:48,407 --> 00:19:52,605
The world's doctors came to Rochester.
And so would the patients.
216
00:19:52,847 --> 00:19:58,638
They flooded out the offices the brothers shared
with their father in an old Masonic building.
217
00:20:00,047 --> 00:20:03,437
Today, this Prairie town, population 50,000,
218
00:20:03,887 --> 00:20:07,277
takes in an annual
quarter of a million patients,
219
00:20:07,247 --> 00:20:12,037
mostly medical puzzles coming not to a hospital
for prescribed treatment,
220
00:20:12,327 --> 00:20:16,320
but to a clinic for expert diagnosis,
the Mayo Clinic.
221
00:20:17,127 --> 00:20:22,838
Every Monday morning, extra chairs are set out
for people who start lining up at 6am.
222
00:20:23,527 --> 00:20:27,725
Some have appointments.
Some come in hope or desperation.
223
00:20:27,847 --> 00:20:33,205
Nobody, rich or poor, is turned away
from this self-endowed and supporting clinic.
224
00:20:37,607 --> 00:20:43,079
Over 70 years ago, the Mayos had come
on an organising genius, Henry Plummer,
225
00:20:43,167 --> 00:20:49,959
who devised a filing system, a layout of lights
to indicate which specialists are on call,
226
00:20:50,287 --> 00:20:55,281
a system which gave to the doctor
the maximum possible time with his patient.
227
00:20:55,567 --> 00:21:02,564
We will get a chest X-ray, an electrocardiogram,
some routine blood tests and a urine analysis.
228
00:21:02,767 --> 00:21:07,079
When these are completed,
I'll see you again and go over these.
229
00:21:07,167 --> 00:21:11,046
Six-five-eight. Calcified granuloma.
230
00:21:17,687 --> 00:21:23,876
Plummer had the foresight to see
that the filing of every patient's medical history
231
00:21:23,927 --> 00:21:26,395
could be a priceless research tool.
232
00:21:26,807 --> 00:21:31,597
And here they are, nearly three million of them,
a huge memory bank
233
00:21:31,767 --> 00:21:38,684
contributing to the aim of helping specialists
unravel a skein of similar medical puzzles
234
00:21:38,607 --> 00:21:42,805
and arrive at a new diagnosis
and better treatment.
235
00:21:42,927 --> 00:21:47,523
Yes, because there were fistulae like crazy,
all over the place.
236
00:21:47,647 --> 00:21:51,845
Um...there were multiple ulcers
and multiple fistulae.
237
00:21:52,447 --> 00:21:57,885
I think this is very probably Crohn's disease,
rather than CUC, though it's recorded as CUC,
238
00:21:57,927 --> 00:22:03,718
From the start, the Mayos had pioneered
the practice of teaching as they operated.
239
00:22:03,687 --> 00:22:09,478
What the doctors gained from seeing
the minutiae of an operation in a ceiling mirror
240
00:22:09,727 --> 00:22:15,120
was the sense of participation in a problem
that could then be discussed at length.
241
00:22:20,727 --> 00:22:23,525
If you all take your stethoscopes, please.
242
00:22:23,927 --> 00:22:30,400
These are not medical students, but physicians
come here to advance towards a specialty.
243
00:22:30,567 --> 00:22:35,561
The patient must be on his left side.
If you'll turn over on your left side, please.
244
00:22:36,807 --> 00:22:41,278
Then, if you will find
the point of maximum impulse.
245
00:22:43,047 --> 00:22:47,518
Gently place the bell of the scope over that area.
246
00:22:47,367 --> 00:22:52,441
You will then hear all the classical findings
of mitral stenosis.
247
00:22:52,887 --> 00:22:56,084
- (HEARTBEAT)
- There you are.
248
00:22:56,327 --> 00:23:01,685
A loud first heart sound.
Second sound, followed by the opening snap.
249
00:23:01,767 --> 00:23:06,363
And then the long, low-frequency
hollow diastolic rumble,
250
00:23:06,567 --> 00:23:09,957
ending again in the loud first heart sound.
251
00:23:09,927 --> 00:23:13,761
Do you all hear that? You all do? Fine.
252
00:23:14,087 --> 00:23:17,079
What it all means is that a baffling case
253
00:23:16,967 --> 00:23:21,358
needn't go limping from Houston to London
to Tokyo to Berlin.
254
00:23:21,647 --> 00:23:28,041
He comes here and finds 100 variations
of his problem filed and on tap in 15 minutes,
255
00:23:28,367 --> 00:23:32,565
and international experts
available on a single floor.
256
00:23:32,687 --> 00:23:39,001
The possibilities are thymomas,
teratomas and lymphomas.
257
00:23:38,927 --> 00:23:42,920
And...it appears to be extremely large.
258
00:23:43,367 --> 00:23:45,961
Well, things do look pretty bad for him,
259
00:23:46,247 --> 00:23:51,844
but anything that you can do to help us would be
appreciated both by the patient and by myself.
260
00:23:52,007 --> 00:23:57,206
I'll introduce you to him. Meantime,
take those other films for another patient.
261
00:23:59,927 --> 00:24:05,320
Well, sir, everything looks pretty good
on these tests we've been running for you.
262
00:24:05,527 --> 00:24:10,123
The blood tests have come out very well.
Your analysis is negative.
263
00:24:10,327 --> 00:24:16,118
The only thing to mention are changes
on the chest X-ray, probably due to tuberculosis.
264
00:24:16,567 --> 00:24:22,437
Ah, that would be this, politely called swollen
glands when it was taken out at the age of four.
265
00:24:22,487 --> 00:24:24,478
- Due to raw milk?
- It was.
266
00:24:24,407 --> 00:24:28,400
We don't see very much of that
since milk has all been pasteurised.
267
00:24:28,727 --> 00:24:34,438
It's long-standing. We see it on your old films.
We don't have anything but good news for you.
268
00:24:34,487 --> 00:24:38,685
If you want to put your things on,
we'll get you released.
269
00:24:38,807 --> 00:24:41,526
Thank you very much.
270
00:24:43,847 --> 00:24:50,241
Charlie Mayo, by the way, had as hard a time
as anybody persuading the local farmers
271
00:24:50,567 --> 00:24:55,436
to submit their herds to a tuberculin test
or have the milk pasteurised.
272
00:24:55,367 --> 00:25:00,566
They came through with the argument universal
among farmers. Took the good out of the milk.
273
00:25:00,647 --> 00:25:04,640
He persuaded them
that it also took out the tubercle bacillus.
274
00:25:04,967 --> 00:25:08,960
They yielded when they found
it was economically profitable.
275
00:25:09,287 --> 00:25:15,681
Charlie actually founded a demonstration farm
which is now a great dairy-producing centre.
276
00:25:17,447 --> 00:25:23,443
I hope you've seen enough to make you think
again about the Prairie and its human products.
277
00:25:23,207 --> 00:25:29,601
There's a legend which is accepted everywhere
in the cities of Europe and the Eastern seaboard
278
00:25:29,927 --> 00:25:32,919
that whatever's square comes from the Midwest,
279
00:25:33,287 --> 00:25:40,079
that nothing but corn and bigotry are grown
on the Prairie and through the rural South.
280
00:25:40,007 --> 00:25:42,805
Well, it may be nauseating to sophisticates,
281
00:25:42,887 --> 00:25:49,281
but they have to think of the hundreds of giants
who imbibed their values here in the hinterland
282
00:25:49,607 --> 00:25:52,405
and gave something good to this country,
283
00:25:52,487 --> 00:25:55,877
from Andrew Jackson to Henry Clay,
284
00:25:56,327 --> 00:26:00,320
Abraham Lincoln, William Jennings Bryan,
Mark Twain.
285
00:26:00,167 --> 00:26:04,160
And in our own time,
Senator Norris of Nebraska,
286
00:26:04,487 --> 00:26:09,481
Eisenhower of Kansas, Admiral Nimitz of Texas,
Frank Lloyd Wright, Sherwood Anderson,
287
00:26:09,727 --> 00:26:14,721
not to mention the boy whose mother said
that he ploughed the straightest furrow
288
00:26:15,007 --> 00:26:17,396
in Jackson County, Missouri,
289
00:26:17,407 --> 00:26:22,401
and who became a man able to shoulder
the presidency with enough confidence
290
00:26:22,687 --> 00:26:26,077
to coin two immortal political axioms.
291
00:26:26,047 --> 00:26:30,040
"If you don't like the heat,
stay out of the kitchen."
292
00:26:30,367 --> 00:26:34,645
And "The buck stops here." Harry S Truman.
293
00:26:43,287 --> 00:26:47,280
Back in 1933, I thought the Prairie was the West.
294
00:26:47,127 --> 00:26:53,236
But after rattling over another 1,000 miles
in a second-hand $60 Ford, this was the West,
295
00:26:53,367 --> 00:26:59,966
and I still had another 600 miles to go
before I came, at last, to look out on the Pacific.
296
00:27:01,087 --> 00:27:04,079
I was relieved to find it was well named.
297
00:27:04,447 --> 00:27:09,077
You see, I'd been exposed to the newspapers
of William Randolph Hearst,
298
00:27:09,247 --> 00:27:11,841
looked out from his castle across to the Orient,
299
00:27:11,887 --> 00:27:18,565
and he seemed to live in a stew of apprehension
about either the yellow peril or the red menace.
300
00:27:18,727 --> 00:27:24,279
So much so that I half expected to see
the Russian navy ploughing into Monterey Bay.
301
00:27:24,447 --> 00:27:29,043
But I was fascinated to learn later
something that may have haunted Hearst.
302
00:27:29,287 --> 00:27:35,681
A century and a half before him, this coastline
was really threatened by a Russian invasion.
303
00:27:35,887 --> 00:27:41,883
And all because of this plump and comical animal,
a Disney version of Colonel Blimp,
304
00:27:41,727 --> 00:27:43,922
the sea otter.
305
00:27:44,287 --> 00:27:48,280
The Russians were the first
to hear about this precious animal,
306
00:27:48,127 --> 00:27:54,316
and they sent ships down from the Aleutians
to fish for him in Monterey Bay, his habitat.
307
00:27:54,847 --> 00:28:01,844
Now, at that time, the 1760s, upper California,
what we call California, was part of New Spain.
308
00:28:02,047 --> 00:28:05,244
It had been vaguely explored, not settled,
309
00:28:05,407 --> 00:28:09,798
and the only people known to live here
were Indians so fierce
310
00:28:09,727 --> 00:28:14,323
that the general who conquered lower California
said that to subdue them
311
00:28:14,527 --> 00:28:18,520
you'd need to hire 60 gorillas from Guatemala.
312
00:28:18,847 --> 00:28:24,717
And he wasn't talking about foot soldiers.
He was talking about GO-rillas, the beasts.
313
00:28:24,607 --> 00:28:30,398
However, King Charles III of Spain, when he
heard about the Russians coming into this bay,
314
00:28:30,847 --> 00:28:33,645
assumed they were going to set up an empire.
315
00:28:33,727 --> 00:28:38,323
All they were out for was the sea otter.
When they fished him out, they left.
316
00:28:38,527 --> 00:28:43,999
But King Charles ordered a military expedition
to go up from Mexico, build a chain of forts,
317
00:28:44,287 --> 00:28:46,755
and hold the coast of California.
318
00:28:48,247 --> 00:28:53,037
The Spanish conquered California,
and it remained Mexican till 1848.
319
00:28:53,047 --> 00:28:55,515
Every spring we're reminded of them
320
00:28:55,447 --> 00:29:02,319
by the mustard seed they scattered along their
600-mile march as a trail for later travellers.
321
00:29:02,687 --> 00:29:05,599
If we follow it north today,
322
00:29:05,887 --> 00:29:08,606
it brings us to San Francisco,
323
00:29:08,767 --> 00:29:11,884
the one city every foreigner falls in love with,
324
00:29:12,127 --> 00:29:18,362
an infatuation which San Franciscans
themselves regard as sensible and inevitable.
325
00:29:18,447 --> 00:29:23,965
First, it has a majestic site
between an ocean and a spacious bay.
326
00:29:24,127 --> 00:29:28,325
I know no other city so splendid from afar
327
00:29:28,447 --> 00:29:31,439
and so cosy from close quarters.
328
00:29:35,647 --> 00:29:38,559
Seeing it was built on precipitous hills,
329
00:29:38,487 --> 00:29:42,685
the first thing I did was to see the city
from its unique form of transport,
330
00:29:43,047 --> 00:29:49,236
cable cars, so-called because they are tethered
to a cable running through underground tunnels.
331
00:30:41,167 --> 00:30:47,276
It was an exhilarating surprise to find
that the capital of the West exploited its streets
332
00:30:47,407 --> 00:30:50,205
as switchbacks in an amusement park.
333
00:30:51,687 --> 00:30:56,283
What made it possible to build streets
and houses all over the nine hills
334
00:30:56,287 --> 00:30:59,279
is the fact that San Francisco is free of frost.
335
00:30:59,487 --> 00:31:05,483
If it weren't, there'd be an unholy pile-up of
trucks and cars worthy of a James Bond chase.
336
00:31:07,647 --> 00:31:11,640
Admittedly, it's quite a strain
teetering up and down the streets,
337
00:31:11,487 --> 00:31:15,480
but it imposes in a frantic world
an easy tempo of life,
338
00:31:16,007 --> 00:31:20,000
not only on the halt and aged,
but on you and me.
339
00:31:20,847 --> 00:31:26,956
This leisurely pace gives you the sensation
of living in a series of hilly villages,
340
00:31:27,087 --> 00:31:32,115
which somehow compose a city
that is huge, but unforbidding.
341
00:31:32,527 --> 00:31:36,725
And it was from the start
a polyglot collection of villages.
342
00:31:36,647 --> 00:31:39,036
The Chinese came in to build the railroads.
343
00:31:39,447 --> 00:31:44,043
The Gold Rush brought Yankees, Russians,
Scots, Italians, Cornishmen
344
00:31:44,247 --> 00:31:47,045
to rub elbows and to roost.
345
00:32:06,647 --> 00:32:09,445
A tolerant city, where the oddity,
346
00:32:09,687 --> 00:32:14,477
the old and young, the hobbyist, athlete,
businessman, hippy and hobo
347
00:32:14,607 --> 00:32:19,203
can, in the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson,
do their own thing.
348
00:32:21,807 --> 00:32:26,323
You discover a garden which, somewhere else,
would be in a quiet suburb,
349
00:32:26,127 --> 00:32:30,120
but here it's on a rooftop
bang in the middle of the city.
350
00:32:31,407 --> 00:32:33,796
I think that's the main thing.
351
00:32:34,287 --> 00:32:36,881
It's the least monolithic of American cities
352
00:32:36,687 --> 00:32:42,159
because most of it was rebuilt in a hurry
soon after the earthquake and the fire of 1906.
353
00:32:42,447 --> 00:32:45,245
Not the best period for domestic architecture,
354
00:32:45,327 --> 00:32:49,525
but families then had a prejudice
in favour of having their own houses,
355
00:32:49,767 --> 00:32:54,477
crazy, rambling little castles,
by force of the geography on many levels,
356
00:32:54,807 --> 00:32:59,403
where you can take the air
or hide, garden, work, play, drink
357
00:32:59,447 --> 00:33:03,281
and reproduce the species in an orderly manner.
358
00:33:05,207 --> 00:33:09,200
They have not swept away
poky little alleys and gardens.
359
00:33:09,527 --> 00:33:14,123
This, for instance, is a public right of way
where you can snooze or squat
360
00:33:14,247 --> 00:33:19,640
and look out on Alcatraz, the old prison
fortress for the nation's desperadoes,
361
00:33:19,607 --> 00:33:24,203
who had only this narrow slip of icy water
between them and freedom.
362
00:33:24,407 --> 00:33:27,205
19 men tried to swim it. None of them made it.
363
00:33:27,287 --> 00:33:34,159
If one had, he might have been a hero, because
San Francisco has cherished far wilder types.
364
00:33:38,167 --> 00:33:44,481
I don't suppose any other city ever brought out
10,000 people for the funeral of a dog.
365
00:33:44,407 --> 00:33:47,604
And a mongrel, at that. It's quite a story.
366
00:33:47,647 --> 00:33:52,357
The dog belonged to a really wild eccentric.
An Englishman, naturally.
367
00:33:52,727 --> 00:33:55,241
His name was Joshua Norton.
368
00:33:55,607 --> 00:34:01,603
He was a trader who came here in the Gold
Rush year, 1849, but he didn't need the money.
369
00:34:01,367 --> 00:34:06,361
He had $40,000 in his pocket,
and he parlayed it into a quarter of a million,
370
00:34:06,687 --> 00:34:09,679
which today would be two or three millions.
371
00:34:09,927 --> 00:34:13,920
Then he tried to corner the rice market,
and failed.
372
00:34:14,247 --> 00:34:17,444
And he went broke, and he went barmy.
373
00:34:17,167 --> 00:34:22,241
One day he appeared at a newspaper office
with what he said was a proclamation.
374
00:34:22,727 --> 00:34:25,116
And this is how it began.
375
00:34:25,127 --> 00:34:30,997
"At the peremptory request and desire of a large
majority of the citizens of the United States,
376
00:34:31,407 --> 00:34:35,878
"I do declare and proclaim myself
Emperor of the United States."
377
00:34:35,727 --> 00:34:38,446
Later he added, "Protector of Mexico".
378
00:34:38,607 --> 00:34:43,601
Well, the paper printed it
and the whole town rallied to this masquerade.
379
00:34:43,727 --> 00:34:47,959
He was allowed to eat and drink free
in all public restaurants.
380
00:34:48,527 --> 00:34:53,681
He had his own currency printed, and it was
honoured by the banks, up to 50 cents.
381
00:34:53,727 --> 00:34:59,802
At the theatre, three seats were always reserved
on opening nights for him and his two mongrels,
382
00:34:59,967 --> 00:35:02,356
Bummer and Lazarus.
383
00:35:02,367 --> 00:35:04,676
It was Lazarus who died,
384
00:35:04,767 --> 00:35:10,125
and thereafter the Emperor and Bummer
sat flanking an empty reserved seat.
385
00:35:10,527 --> 00:35:14,122
He set out each morning to bow to his citizens.
386
00:35:14,367 --> 00:35:18,406
Up at the Presidio,
which is the San Francisco military fort,
387
00:35:18,487 --> 00:35:21,604
he was allowed once a year to review his troops.
388
00:35:21,847 --> 00:35:27,444
It was not an easy-going life. As King-Emperor,
he conducted his own foreign policy.
389
00:35:27,527 --> 00:35:32,920
He was very devoted
to amicable Anglo-American relations,
390
00:35:32,807 --> 00:35:37,483
and during a very sticky period
he wired President Lincoln
391
00:35:37,607 --> 00:35:40,917
and commanded him to marry Queen Victoria.
392
00:35:42,407 --> 00:35:45,365
Just for the record, Lincoln let it go.
393
00:35:47,687 --> 00:35:52,681
He had three ideas so insane
that the city would not indulge him.
394
00:35:52,967 --> 00:35:57,757
He proposed a league of nations,
he urged the building of a great bridge,
395
00:35:58,087 --> 00:36:03,605
he suggested that they pour land into the bay
to provide hundreds of acres for new buildings.
396
00:36:03,807 --> 00:36:09,120
All these ideas were considered preposterous
until they were acted on.
397
00:36:09,327 --> 00:36:12,763
When he died, 30,000 people turned out,
398
00:36:12,887 --> 00:36:17,881
and today in the San Francisco Cemetery
there is a simple grave and a headstone,
399
00:36:18,087 --> 00:36:24,686
and on it, "Norton the First, Emperor
of the United States, Protector of Mexico,
400
00:36:24,887 --> 00:36:28,323
"1819 to 1880."
401
00:36:34,047 --> 00:36:37,357
Most cities have some characteristic sound.
402
00:36:37,407 --> 00:36:41,923
The theme song of San Francisco
is the bellow of the foghorn.
403
00:36:44,887 --> 00:36:47,276
(FOGHORN)
404
00:36:47,447 --> 00:36:53,966
Far out in the Pacific Ocean
is an icy patch of water which is 50 miles long.
405
00:36:54,167 --> 00:37:00,356
And across it the west winds blow,
and they condense into plumes of cold, white fog,
406
00:37:00,647 --> 00:37:05,323
which come hurtling in through the Golden Gate
Bridge at the speed of freight cars.
407
00:37:05,367 --> 00:37:08,165
This gives the city its air-conditioning system
408
00:37:08,247 --> 00:37:13,241
and guarantees an average temperature
in the 60s all through the year,
409
00:37:13,167 --> 00:37:16,159
varying very little more than 5 or 8 degrees,
410
00:37:16,527 --> 00:37:20,520
so that anything over 70 here is a heatwave.
411
00:37:20,847 --> 00:37:25,637
And when that happens,
the natives, like Londoners, tend to panic.
412
00:37:25,647 --> 00:37:29,640
Which reminds me
of my favourite London newspaper headline.
413
00:37:29,727 --> 00:37:33,037
"73 again tomorrow. No relief in sight."
414
00:37:33,407 --> 00:37:36,205
(FOGHORN)
415
00:38:54,367 --> 00:38:59,361
In the second and last year of my fellowship,
I moved to Harvard University.
416
00:38:59,487 --> 00:39:02,206
During my tour, something had dawned on me
417
00:39:02,367 --> 00:39:07,077
that every Englishman since the 17th century
has claimed as a personal discovery,
418
00:39:07,287 --> 00:39:11,599
that the English of England and America
are separate languages.
419
00:39:11,607 --> 00:39:14,326
So I went to study the American language,
420
00:39:14,487 --> 00:39:19,515
and soon was lucky enough to be corresponding
with the greatest living authority.
421
00:39:19,847 --> 00:39:23,442
One morning I had a letter,
postmarked Baltimore,
422
00:39:23,687 --> 00:39:29,080
which invited me to "come down here
and share with me some of the gorgeous crabs
423
00:39:28,967 --> 00:39:33,563
"that infest the protein factory
of Chesapeake Bay."
424
00:39:33,767 --> 00:39:38,443
A highly individual invitation
that came from a man who, at one time,
425
00:39:38,567 --> 00:39:42,560
was as influential in America
as Bernard Shaw in Britain,
426
00:39:42,887 --> 00:39:46,880
and was the most unforgettable American
that I've ever met,
427
00:39:47,207 --> 00:39:53,806
and remains, I believe, the most entertaining
journalist of the 20th century, HL Mencken.
428
00:39:53,927 --> 00:39:58,523
He was born the grandson
of a German immigrant in Baltimore,
429
00:39:58,687 --> 00:40:04,683
and was brought at the age of three to this
typical row house by his father, a cigar maker.
430
00:40:04,447 --> 00:40:08,440
He never left it, though he was offered
fat money to move to New York,
431
00:40:08,767 --> 00:40:11,486
which he dismissed as a third-rate Babylon.
432
00:40:11,647 --> 00:40:17,882
He wanted none of his father's cigar business
and decided to become a newspaperman,
433
00:40:18,167 --> 00:40:22,718
and so lay in all the worldly wisdom
of a police lieutenant,
434
00:40:22,767 --> 00:40:26,237
a bartender, a shyster lawyer and a midwife.
435
00:40:26,567 --> 00:40:30,560
He was an unbeliever
in every pillar of the establishment,
436
00:40:30,407 --> 00:40:34,366
from labour leaders and chiropractors
to bishops and presidents.
437
00:40:34,847 --> 00:40:41,161
President Coolidge, for example,
slept more than any president before or since.
438
00:40:41,087 --> 00:40:46,207
When an excited reporter rushed in
to announce that Coolidge was dead,
439
00:40:46,607 --> 00:40:49,963
Mencken said, "How do they know?"
440
00:40:49,967 --> 00:40:54,438
And he promptly sat down
and wrote Coolidge's epitaph.
441
00:40:54,767 --> 00:40:58,316
"He had no ideas and was not a nuisance."
442
00:40:58,487 --> 00:41:03,880
Mencken was the terror of the churches,
the politicians, all respectable people,
443
00:41:03,767 --> 00:41:06,361
and the delight of college intellectuals.
444
00:41:06,647 --> 00:41:12,961
There was a time in the 1920s when his campus
followers carried this magazine around
445
00:41:13,367 --> 00:41:18,885
as reverently as the Chinese, so we are told,
carry "The Thoughts Of Chairman Mao".
446
00:41:18,647 --> 00:41:24,244
He started this magazine, and in it he undertook
his most serious and best crusade,
447
00:41:24,407 --> 00:41:31,199
to destroy what he called "the marshmallow
gentility" of the then current American fiction,
448
00:41:31,607 --> 00:41:35,805
and to throw the doors open
to the new and the young realists,
449
00:41:35,927 --> 00:41:40,921
to Theodore Dreiser and James T Farrell
and James M Cain and Scott Fitzgerald
450
00:41:41,207 --> 00:41:43,675
and O'Neill and Sinclair Lewis.
451
00:41:43,607 --> 00:41:49,921
In fact, he launched the first body of genuinely
first-rate native American literature.
452
00:41:51,767 --> 00:41:57,160
The odd thing about my friendship with him
was that I amalgamated in one person
453
00:41:57,247 --> 00:41:59,841
every human type he disliked.
454
00:42:00,127 --> 00:42:05,121
He distrusted Englishmen, abominated
radio broadcasting, which became my trade.
455
00:42:04,927 --> 00:42:09,318
He said that broadcasters
suffered from "perfumed tonsils".
456
00:42:09,727 --> 00:42:13,925
He despised Methodists,
and I had been brought up as one.
457
00:42:14,047 --> 00:42:20,236
As for golf, which I regard as a holy exercise,
if not a marvellous mania,
458
00:42:20,287 --> 00:42:25,486
he wrote, "If I had my way, any man guilty of golf
459
00:42:25,567 --> 00:42:30,960
"would be ineligible for any office of trust
under these United States."
460
00:42:32,287 --> 00:42:37,486
Well, human chemistry, as it can,
prevailed over a lifelong prejudice.
461
00:42:37,567 --> 00:42:41,003
And, like many another giant of idiosyncrasy,
462
00:42:40,927 --> 00:42:45,717
he astonished his opponents
by being in private so mild, so courteous,
463
00:42:46,207 --> 00:42:51,201
preferring, as he said, "an opponent
who fights like a gentleman in a duel
464
00:42:51,007 --> 00:42:54,716
"to a sailor cleaning out a waterfront saloon."
465
00:42:55,807 --> 00:43:00,801
Well, I, being terrified of violence,
found a link in that. And there were others.
466
00:43:01,087 --> 00:43:05,080
He taught me first, and I confirmed it
many times on the road,
467
00:43:05,407 --> 00:43:08,205
that there's no such thing as ideological truth.
468
00:43:08,287 --> 00:43:12,280
To the extent that a reporter
is a liberal reporter,
469
00:43:12,127 --> 00:43:17,804
or a communist or a conservative or a republican
reporter, he's no reporter at all.
470
00:43:18,247 --> 00:43:21,796
Well, he was floored by the Depression.
471
00:43:21,967 --> 00:43:27,599
To jeer at democracy when it paid off in steaks
and a car in every garage was one thing.
472
00:43:27,767 --> 00:43:33,956
To pipe the same tune in the unfunny days
of 13 million unemployed, that was another.
473
00:43:34,007 --> 00:43:38,797
His fame dwindled, and he devoted himself
to his old hobby of the language,
474
00:43:38,807 --> 00:43:41,605
adding two volumes to the incomparable original.
475
00:43:42,047 --> 00:43:45,039
And then he sat down and wrote his memoir.
476
00:43:44,927 --> 00:43:47,919
By now, he was no longer a reporter on the hop.
477
00:43:48,287 --> 00:43:52,166
But every four years
he pinned on his press badge
478
00:43:52,407 --> 00:43:56,878
and he went off to cover
what he called "the nine-ring circuses"
479
00:43:57,127 --> 00:44:00,119
of the presidential nominating conventions.
480
00:44:00,007 --> 00:44:05,400
I was with him at the last convention
he ever attended - Philadelphia, 1948.
481
00:44:05,767 --> 00:44:10,761
It was a third party convention
of a renegade Democrat, Henry Wallace,
482
00:44:10,687 --> 00:44:14,362
who assembled a very motley army of disciples.
483
00:44:14,527 --> 00:44:20,238
When it was all over, we were sitting around
in a hotel suite when the door burst open
484
00:44:20,767 --> 00:44:26,637
and we were invaded by a posse of young
radicals looking for the villain, Mencken.
485
00:44:26,527 --> 00:44:31,521
It was a very touchy moment,
but he solved it by getting down on his feet.
486
00:44:31,807 --> 00:44:36,801
I say "down" because he was smaller
standing up than he was sitting down.
487
00:44:36,887 --> 00:44:43,360
He asked them to rise and honour his guest, me,
by singing "God Save The King".
488
00:44:43,607 --> 00:44:47,600
Which they did.
Then he fed them beer and sandwiches.
489
00:44:47,927 --> 00:44:53,718
I remember there was a...there was a girl,
grim, sweaty, unpalatable.
490
00:44:53,687 --> 00:44:58,681
And Mencken kept looking,
and he put his glasses on and he goggled at her.
491
00:44:58,967 --> 00:45:03,757
And then he leaned over
and he whispered to me, "Look at that girl.
492
00:45:03,767 --> 00:45:07,362
"Makes you want to burn every bed in the world."
493
00:45:08,567 --> 00:45:11,286
Well, it was his last happy fling.
494
00:45:11,447 --> 00:45:17,841
Three months later, he had a stroke,
and he was never able to read or write again.
495
00:45:18,047 --> 00:45:24,043
Through his last years, he sat at home,
surrounded by an ocean of books,
496
00:45:23,807 --> 00:45:30,155
like a castaway sailor, mocked by
the one element that he had loved and mastered.
497
00:45:30,607 --> 00:45:35,397
But while he was alive and kicking,
he skinned everything in America
498
00:45:35,407 --> 00:45:41,403
that he thought pretentious, shoddy,
pompous and glossily second-rate.
499
00:45:41,647 --> 00:45:47,040
And when high gifts are at hand,
nobody can skin America like an American.
500
00:45:47,007 --> 00:45:49,805
He didn't give a damn and he couldn't be bought,
501
00:45:50,367 --> 00:45:54,360
though he was offered fortunes
to do some other man's bidding.
502
00:45:54,207 --> 00:45:58,200
When I was a starting newspaperman,
he gave me this advice.
503
00:45:58,527 --> 00:46:02,042
"Never accept a free ticket
from a theatre manager,
504
00:46:02,367 --> 00:46:06,758
"a free ride from the Chamber of Commerce
or a favour from a politician.
505
00:46:06,687 --> 00:46:10,885
"That way," he said,
"you will find that shaving in the morning
506
00:46:11,007 --> 00:46:13,999
"can be a relatively agreeable pastime."
507
00:46:15,807 --> 00:46:21,598
He died in his 76th year,
listening to his favourite composer, Beethoven.
508
00:46:21,567 --> 00:46:25,560
He was a lifelong atheist,
and we don't know where he is now.
509
00:46:25,887 --> 00:46:31,280
But when someone asked him what would
happen if he found himself in heaven,
510
00:46:31,167 --> 00:46:37,436
he said, "If I do fetch up with the twelve Apostles,
I shall say, 'Gentlemen, I was wrong."'
511
00:46:44,007 --> 00:46:49,604
After the influence of this man, I realised
at the end of the two years of my first stay
512
00:46:49,767 --> 00:46:55,239
that the one indelible memory of America
was the landscape of the West.
513
00:46:55,287 --> 00:46:57,881
Most of all, those mammoth canyons
514
00:46:58,167 --> 00:47:04,561
which white men stumbled on, and incorporated
a century ago into a national park system.
515
00:47:04,407 --> 00:47:11,199
Here in two canyons in Utah, Zion and Bryce,
a geologist can think he's gone to heaven
516
00:47:11,607 --> 00:47:15,805
and count the layers of gravel
and lime and silica and iron
517
00:47:15,927 --> 00:47:22,526
which were carved into these fantasies
by nothing but water, wind, rain, snow and frost
518
00:47:22,647 --> 00:47:25,036
through 20 million years.
519
00:47:25,047 --> 00:47:29,643
But the rest of us don't even peer
to look for the embedded fossils
520
00:47:29,847 --> 00:47:32,645
of trees, snails and dinosaurs.
521
00:47:32,727 --> 00:47:37,926
We simply stand dumbfounded
before these natural cathedrals,
522
00:47:38,007 --> 00:47:45,004
a visual expression of the straightforward
grandeur of Johann Sebastian Bach.
523
00:47:45,207 --> 00:47:48,199
(CHOIR SINGING)
524
00:48:18,327 --> 00:48:21,922
Here, man himself is a Johnny-come-lately.
525
00:48:22,167 --> 00:48:26,957
And it was here, I was amazed to discover,
that America was settled.
526
00:48:27,447 --> 00:48:30,439
Not in Florida or Virginia or Massachusetts.
527
00:48:30,327 --> 00:48:36,436
It was in this sort of country that men who had
come from Asia made the first American homes.
528
00:48:36,807 --> 00:48:41,881
This is where it all started,
and this is where we shall begin our history
529
00:48:42,007 --> 00:48:46,000
of the land that became
the United States of America.