LETTER II.
Having some delay in giving my little Imogen her first English dinner, we saved our passage by half a minute, and were off from Liverpool at 4 precisely. The distance to London is, I believe, 220 miles, and we did it in five hours—an acceleration of speed which is lately introduced upon the English railways. There are slower trains on the same route, and the price, by these, is less. There are also three or four different kinds of cars to each train, and at different prices. I chanced to light upon the first class, and paid £5 for two places—my nurse and child counting as one. I understand, since, that many gentlemen and ladies of the most respectable rank take the second-class cars—(as few Americans would, I am sorry to say, though there would be two degrees still below them.)
This travelling at forty odd miles the hour give one’s eyes hardly time to know a tree from a cow, but here and there I got a distant view in crossing a valley, and recognized the lovely rural beauty of England, the first impression of which lasts one, like an enchanted memory, through life. Notwithstanding the great speed, the cars ran so evenly on their admirable rails, that there was no jar to prevent one’s sleeping or being comfortable, and I awoke from a very pleasant dream to find myself in London.
As I was dressing to dine out on the following day, I stopped tying my cravat to send for a physician, and here, if you please, we will make a jump over twelve days, and come to a bright morning when I was let out for a walk in Regent-street.
It is extraordinary how little the English change! Regent-street, after four or five years, is exactly what Regent-streetwas. The men have the same tight cravats, coats too small, overbrushed whiskers, and look of being excessively wash’d. The carriages and horses exactly the same. The cheap shops have the same placard of “selling off” in their broad windows. The blind beggars tell the same story, and are led by the same dogs; but what is stranger than all this sameness, is that theladieslook the same! The fashions have perhaps changed—in the milliners’ shops! But theEnglishingthat is done to French bonnets after they are bought, or the English way in which they are worn, overpowers the novelty, and gives the fair occupants of the splendid carriages of London the very same look they had ten years ago.
Still there are some slight differences observable in the street, and among others, I observe that the economical private carriage called a “Brougham” is very common. These are low cabs, holding two or four persons, with a driver, and perhaps a footman in livery on the outside seat, and one horse seems to do the work as well as two. This fashion would be well, introduced into New York—that is to say, if our city is ever to be well enough paved to make a drive any thing but a dire necessity. The paving of London is really most admirable. Vast city as it is, the streets are smooth as a floor all over it, and to ride is indeed a luxury. The break-neck, hat-jamming and dislocating jolts of Broadway must seem to English judgment an inexcusable stain on our public spirit. And,aproposof paving—the wooden pavement seems to be entirely out of favor. Regent-street is laid in wooden blocks, and in wet weather (and it rains here some part of every day,) it is so slippery that an omnibus which has been stopped in goingupthe street is with difficulty started again. The horses almost always come to their knees, though the ascent is very slight, and the falls of cart and carriage-horses are occurring continually. Nothing seems to “do” like the McAdam pavement, and wherever you find it in London, you find it in as perfect order as the floor of a bowling-alley. I see that all heavy vehicles are compelled to have very broad wheels, and they rather improve the road than spoil it. A law to the same effect should be passed in New York, if it ever has a pavement worth preserving.
Observing Lady Blessington’s faultless equipage standing at the door of the Cosmorama, I went in and saw her Ladyship for a moment. She said she was suffering from recent illness, but I thought her looking far better than when I was last in England. Her two beautiful nieces were with her, and Lord ——; and the celebrated Vidocq (for this was what they had come to see,) was showing them the disguises he had worn in his wonderful detections of criminals, the weapons he had taken from them, and all the curiosities of his career—himself the greatest. I looked at the Prince of Policemen with no little interest of course, after reading his singular memoirs. He is a fat man, very like the outline of Louis Phillippe’s figure, and his head, enormously developed in the perceptive organs, goes up so small to the top, as to resemble the pear with which the King of the French is commonly caricatured. Vidocq’s bow to me when I came in was the model of elegant and respectful suavity, but I could not repress a feeling of repugnance to him, nevertheless.
I made a couple of calls before I went home. The chief topic of conversation at both houses was the charms and eccentricities of an American belle who had lately married into a noble family. She seems to have enchanted the exclusives by treating them with the most un-deferential freedom. A few evenings since, she chanced to be surrounded by a half-dozen high bred admirers, and conversation going rather heavily, she proposed a cock-fight. Dividing the party into two sides, she tied the legs of the young men together, and set them to a game of fisticuffs—ending in a very fair representation of an action between belligerent roosters! One of her expressions was narrated with great glee. She chanced to have occasion to sneeze when sitting at dinner between two venerable noblemen. “La!” she exclaimed, “I hope I didn’t splash either of you!” I have mentioned only the drolleries of what I heard. Several instances of her readiness and wit were given, and as those who mentioned them were of the class she is shining in, their admiring tone gave a fair reflection of how she is looked upon—as the most celebrated belle and notability of high life for the present season.
LETTER III.
S—— Vicarage.
I took yesterday an afternoon’s country-drive to a neighboring town, with no idea of finding anything of note-worthy interest, but it strikes me that one or two little matters that made a mark in my memory, may be worth recording. England is so paved and hedged with matter to think about, that you can scarce stir without pencilling by the way.
I strolled towards a very picturesque church while the ladies of my party were shopping. The town (Abingdon) is a tumbled-up, elbowy, crooked old place, with the houses all frowning at each other across the gutters, and the streets narrow and intricate. The church was a rough antique, with the mendings of a century or two on the originally beautiful turrets and windows, but as I walked around it, I came upon the church-yard, hemmed in at awkward angles by three long and venerable buildings. Two of these seemed to have been built with proper reference to the climate, for the lower stories were faced with covered galleries, wherein the occupants might take the air, and yet be sheltered from the rain. Through the low arches of one of the galleries, I saw a couple of old men pacing up and down, and on inquiring of one of them, I found it was a poor-house, of curious as well as ancient endowment—the funds being devoted to the support of twenty-five widowers and as many widows. What else, (beside being left destitute) was necessary to make one a recipient of the charity, I could not learn of my informant. He ushered me, however, into his apartment, and a charming little rubbishy, odd-angled, confused cupboard it was! I could not but mentally congratulate him on the difference between hissnuggery for one, (for each man had a niche to himself,) and the dreadfully whitewashed halls, like new churches that have never been prayed in, in which the poor are elsewhere imprisoned. He had old shoes lying in one corner, and a smoked print stuck against the wall, and things hung up and stuffed away untidily, here and there—in short, it looked like ahome! The whole building was but a row of these single rooms—a long, one-storied and narrow structure, and behind was a garden with a portion divided off to each pensioner—his window so near that he could sit in-doors and inhale the fragrance from flowers of his own tending. I rather think every man was his own turnkey and superintendent.
But we visited in the course of the afternoon, a poor-house which was in direct contrast to this. Abingdon is distinguished for possessing themodel work-houseof the newUnion System, which has diminished the burthensome cost of the poor, to the country, one half. It used to be customary to give the helpless paupers two shillings a week, and let them shift for themselves, if they preferred it. Now, the poor of half a dozen villages, more or less, are provided for in one “improved” work-house, and if they do not livein it, they can receive nothing. And, to live in it, they must work and submit to the discipline.
The new work-house was a building of three long wings, in the form of a Y; the superintendent’s room placed in the crotch, and his windows commanding a complete view of the two sides of each wing. The gardens and workshops were in the angles, and there was scarce an inch of the premises that was not overlooked from the centre. We were kindly shown over the different apartments. The cleanliness was enough to discourage a fly. A smell of soap-and-water’s utmost completely impregnated the atmosphere. The grain of the scrubbed tables stood on end. The little straight beds looked as if it must be a bold man who would crook his legs in them. The windows were too high for a child or a short person to look out. It was like an insane hospital or a prison. In one of the first rooms we entered, was a delicate and pretty child of seven or eight years of age, a new inmate. Her mother, who was her only relative, had just died in a neighboring village, and left her quite alone in the world. She was shut up in a room with an old woman, for by the “regulations,” she was to be separated some days from the other children, to make sure that she brought no disease into the work-house. But the sight of the poor little sobbing thing, sitting on the middle of a long clean bench, with no object to look at within the four white walls, except a table and a soured old woman, looked very little like “charity.” And the hopeless down-hill of her sob sounded as if she felt but little like one newly befriended. “She’s done nothing but cry all the day long!” said the old woman. Fortunately I had a pocket full of sweets, intended for a happier child, and I was able to make one break in her long day’s monotony.
In another room we found ten or twelve old women, who were too decrepid for work of any kind. But theyhad laps left![6]And in each one’s lap lay a baby. The old knees were trotting with the new-born of pauper mothers, and but for its dreadful uniformity—each old trunk grafted with a bud, and trunks and buds dressed and swathed in the poor-house uniform—this room full of life’s helpless extremities would have seemed the happiest of all. They cuddled up their druling charges as we approached the benches on which they sat, and chirruped their toothless “tsup! tsup! tsup!” as if each was proud of her charge. One of the old women complained bitterly of not being allowed to have a pinch of snuff. The reason why, was because the others would want it too, or demand an equivalent, paupers being cared forby system. The unhappy and improvident creature had educated a superfluous want!
The sick rooms were marked with the same painful naked neatness. Old people, disposed of to die, economically tucked up in rows against the wall, with no person to come near them except the one to nurse a dozen, form a dreadfulseries. Really, there should be some things sacred from classification. The fifth acts of dramas, like whole human lives, should not pass like the shelving of utensils that are one degree short of worthless. I stood looking for a minute or two at an old man whose only reply to “well, how are you now?” was a hopeless lifting and dropping of the eyelids, and I wondered whether a life was worth having, that had such possible terminations in its dark lottery.
The children’s school seemed under more genial charge, and there were prints hung upon the walls of their school-room. The weaving and spinning-rooms looked cheerful also. Some thirty boys singing hymns together while at work, and seeming contentedly employed. To the old of both sexes, however, this kind of poor-house is utterly repulsive, I was told, and the taking refuge in it is considered by the poor hardly better than starvation. One of the rules seems to bear very hard—married paupers (an old couple for instance,) being put into different wards, and only permitted to see each otheronce a week, and then in the presence of superintendents.
The flower-beds at the front door were in great splendor with the lillies in bloom. I called the door keeper’s attention to the inappropriateness of this particular ornament to the threshold of a work-house. “They toil not, neither do they spin,” etc., etc., etc.
[6]Bloomers please take notice.
[6]
Bloomers please take notice.
LETTER IV.
An excursion of fifty miles and back “to pass the day” at a place—setting off after breakfast, and getting home “before tea”—used to be done on a witch’s broom exclusively. People who are neither bewitched norbewitchingcan do it now! Railroads have disenchanted the world. The secluded Vicarage of S——, is half way from London toBath, in a village lying upon the route of the Great Western Railroad. I had never seen the Saratoga of England, and, chatting with my kind relatives, over the things that were to be seen in the neighborhood, I was rather startled to hear of the possibility of “passing the day at Bath.” Beau Nash and the Pumproom, rose up, of course, vividly and instantly. The scene of the loves and gayeties of the gayest age of England, was close at my elbow—near enough, at least, to visit without a carpet-bag. The opportunity was not to be lost.
By the “Express” train we might “do” the fifty miles inan hour, but we preferred theslowtrain to do it intwo. We in-car-cerated ourselves, at 10 o’clock of the first fair day I have seen in a month, and were presently getting, (very literally indeed,) a bird’s eye view of the carpet-like scenery of Berkshire.
At the second or third station, we took in, for passengers, four idiots, under the care of an hospital-keeper. When taken out of the carriage in which they were brought, two of themcollapsedto the ground, not having mind enough to stand on their legs, though apparently in perfect health. One minute thus and the next minute going at the rate of thirty miles an hour, is a contrast!
At Swindon, the junction between the Gloucester Railway and this, the station buildings are really unnecessarily splendid. The reception room, with its immense mirrors, velvet sofas, bronzes and waiting women in full dress, is as sumptuous as a royal palace. The windows are as large as doors, and of one pane of pier-glass. The room itself is as large and high as the gentlemen’s dining room at the Astor, and yet a room exactly corresponding is on the other side of the track—one to accommodate the “up train,” and the other the “down train.” The rustic inhabitants of the little village of Swindon must live in surprise at the magnificent wants of travellers—the curls and chemisettes of the waiting-girls behind the counter included!
At the little village of “Box,” (a snug name for a village, by the bye) commences the two mile tunnel under the chalk hills, and so suddenly do the cars dive into the darkness, that one’s eyes are at a loss to know what to do with the light left in the eyeballs. If a man ever threatens to “knock the daylight out of me” again, I shall have a glimmer of its having been done before—(at Box.) But I predict an awful smash in this tunnel, yet. Chalk and flint-stones are very friable neighbors, and hills are heavy, and the concussion of air, with a train going under ground at the rate of a mile a minute, is enough to sift away particles very speedily. A train might come out with a load of stone it never went in with, and there is gloomy time enough to anticipate it, while one is whizzing and thundering onwards toward the black dark of the Box tunnel.
The villages thicken, and the hills grow steeper as we approach Bath, and at last you are suddenly shot into a bowl of palaces and verdure—the bottom covered with gardens, and the sides with terraced crescents of architecture. I had just time to exclaim with wonder at the unexpected splendor of the hill-sides rounding us in, when the station roof slid over us like an extinguisher, and the conductor’s voice announced that we were at Bath.
LETTER V.
Boys by dozens, offering to be our guides, and six or seven rival omnibusses begging us for the hotels.
Leaving cloak and shawl, and ordering dinner at three, at the hotel adjoining the station, we sallied forth to ramble the town over, with three good hours before us—the return-cars leaving at four. As I just now said, the bottom of this vase of hills is laid out in gardens, and we crossed to the other side upon a raised road which looks down upon a beautiful parterre of gravel walks and flowers, free to the public to look at. But the stranger stops at every second step, to gaze about and wonder. I had read very glowing descriptions of Bath, but my anticipation, even of its size, was three fourths less than the reality. Its picturesqueness is theatrical. No scene painter could cluster and pile up palaces, gardens and spires, with more daring extravagance. The abundant quarries of free-stone in the neighborhood, have furnished all their building materials, andevery housethat is not beautifully antique, is of ornamental architecture. I saw one or two beggars, but I did not see where they could live. Splendid squares, crescents, terraces and colonades, monopolize the town.
We made straight for the “Pump-Room,” of course. It lies behind a prodigally Gothic abbey, (one of the most ornate and beautiful specimens of the Gothic I ever saw,) and with a large paved court before it, surrounded by shops. It is merely one large room in a building, which is one of a block, and though it was doubtless a very splendid hall when first built, it is now outdone by the saloons of common theatres, and by the “refreshment rooms” of railroad stations. A semicircular counter projects from the wall on one side, studded with cake and glasses of chalybeate water, a large mirror hangs opposite, and the recess at one end is filled with seats and lounges for rest or gossip. Had I been the solitary traveller I usually am, I should have sat down in a corner and “put the screws” to the ghost of Beau Nash and the belles of his brilliant time and circle—but I had better company than my own imagination, and the old master of ceremonies had only a thought sent after him.
LETTER VI.
London.
I could copy a new leaf from my memory that would be very interesting to you, for I dined yesterday in a party of admirable talkers, and heard much that I shall remember. But, though the brilliant peoplethemselves, whose conversation we thus record, are far from being offended at the record—the critics (who were not so fortunateas to be there too) are offendedfor them. The giving the talk without naming the talkers would make common-place of it, I am afraid, just as taking the wooden labels from the large trees, in the botanical park at Kew, would make the exotic groves look indigenous—but we must submit to this noisy demand of the critics notwithstanding. In a world where onemight, possibly, have arealfault to be defended for by his friends, it is a pity to put them to the trouble of defending themfor nothing!
I hear much said of two of our countrymen who seem to have made a strong impression on society in England. Mr. Colman, the agriculturist, is one of them, and his strong good sense, and fresh originality of mind were well suited to be relished in this country. The other is a gentleman whose peculiar talent was never before brought to its best market, popular as it is in New York—“Major Jack Downing;” and of his power as araconteur, I hear frequent and strong expressions of admiration. This, by the way, and similar talents, which are only used for the enlivening of private society, are, in our country, like gold ingots at the mine—scarce recognised as value till brought over the water and stamped. I know more than one man in America who has gifts from nature that would be most valuable to him in English society, and are of no value to him in ours.
To-night is Taglioni’s farewell performance, before quitting the stage, and I had made up my mind to go and see her, “on her last legs,” but a more tempting engagement draws me another way. I saw her a few nights since, when she was doing her best in honor of the approbation of the King of the Netherlands. It was in the new ballet of “Diana,” but though there were certainly some beautiful overcomings of “obedience to the centre of gravity,” it was dull’d in the memory by the dancing of Cerito who followed her. May this latter dancer live and stay pretty, till you see her, my dear General!
The presence of the King of the Netherlands was quite an event at the opera, accustomed as are stall and pit to royal company. You know, that, besides being a king, he is a distinguishedman—(better known as the Prince of Orange who fought in the English army at Waterloo.) He looks like a person of superior talent. His face is cleanly chiselled, and his eye is keen. He was dressed in plain clothes, and wore a white cravat, and had the air of a high-bred barrister, or of one whose constant exercise of his intellect had made its mark on his physiognomy. He was received first in the box of the Duke of Cambridge, all the ladies in the box standing till he was seated. The Duke, who talks very loud, and who makes the audience smile several times every evening, with some remark audible all over the house, kept up a conversation with him, for a while, and His Majesty then made a visit to the adjoining box, where sat the superb and influential Lady Jersey, and her very beautiful daughter, Lady Clementina Villiers. (You have seen portraits of these ladies in the annuals.) I did not envy him his reception in the first box very particularly, though one would like very well to “see how it feels” to be a king—but his reception in the second box seemed a heaven that would reward one for a great deal of virtue.
Lady Morgan was present in widows’ weeds, and thereby very much improved in appearance—(as many women are!) I had not seen her ladyship for five or six years, but time seems to have been content with taking away Sir Charles. She looks well as in 1840—a longstatu quo! She had with her a very fascinating niece, and a very large bouquet.
I write my letters so hastily that I digress as one does in conversation. I began with the intention of telling a curious story that I had from no less than second hand touching the King of the Netherlands and the Princess Charlotte. It was told me, a few days since by my neighbor at dinner, a distinguished person, a great admirer of his Majesty, and who prefaced it with a wonder at the caprice of taste. The Prince of Orange, as is well known, was originally chalked off, by the “high contracting powers,” to be the husband of the lovely English princess. It was of the first moment to him, then, that he should second Destiny in its kind endeavors, and succeed in winning her royal affections. He was, however, a prince, and princes in those days, drank hard. He had the misfortune to come in tipsy from the dinner-table, when rejoining the ladies after a party at which he met his designated future. The Princess took an invincible dislike to him on that occasion. The lady who told the anecdote (to her who told it to me) was in attendance on the princess when the prince called upon his return from a campaign in which he had distinguished himself. He was received very coldly. His uniform was a red coat with green feathers in his cap, and when he took his leave, the princess walked to the window to see him go down the avenue. “Aha!” thought the lady in waiting; “if she goes to look after him, the case is not so desperate, after all!” But the remark of the princess, as she looked at his red coat and green feathers, undid the momentary illusion—“How like a radish he looks!” said the royal Charlotte. A lady often hates the man she loves, but she seldom ridicules him. The princess was resolute in her aversion, and the “forked radish” (which we all resemble according to Shakspeare) was superseded by Prince Leopold.
This being the ‘town-talk’ (as is the Dutch king at present) revives all the defunct anecdotes, of course, and greatness has to take into account what it awakes, besides homage, when it makes the world take notice of its existence! (Alas, for drawbacks!)
LETTER VII.
Tired of visiting, dining out, and endless new acquaintances, I determined yesterday, to encounter, if possible, nobody who would need to be spoken to, but to see sights all day, and try what mere absorption would do in the way of mental refreshment. I began with what I presume, is the most varied show in the world, theColosseumin the Regent’s Park. This is such an aggregation of wonders that the visitor must have very small compassion not to be sorry for everybody who has not been there, and very large confidence in his powers of description to undertake to describe it. How so much is represented in so small a compass is as puzzling as the miracles of clairvoyance. If one were conjured, bodily, indeed, for five minutes to the ruins of Athens, the next five minutes left lounging in a Moorish palace, then dropped into Switzerland, then held in an angel’s lap high over London—winding up with a wilderness of galleries, aviaries, conservatories, statuary and grottoes—it would, probably, be not a bit more astonishing than a visit to the Colosseum, and, of course, not near so agreeable. The guide-book, by the way, with drawings of everything, which one buys for a shilling at the door, is rather graphically written, and an extract from it may help me in conveying an idea of the place:—
“The conservatories are elaborately decorated in the Arabesque style. In the centre is the Gothic aviary, superbly fitted up with gilt carved work and looking-glass, such as Isabella of Castile might be supposed to have constructed amidst the relics of a Moorish palace; or Abu-Abdallah, with true Arabian gallantry, to have conjured up for the solace of some fair Christian captive, within the enchanted halls of his own Alhambra. But of the ingenious and tasteful combination of Moorish and Gothic architecture, and decoration of this spot, amidst the murmur of sparkling fountains, the songs of gaily-plumed birds, and the fragrance of exotic plants and flowers, may transport us in imagination to the country of the Cid and the borders of the Xenil, we have but to open the glass door which leads to the exterior promenade; and, in an instant, the still more picturesque and instructive sight of golden pinnacles and eastern domes, springing up amongst the marble columns and mouldering frescoes of ancient Greece and Rome, wafts us at once to the banks of the Bosphorus or the shores of the Mediterranean. In these days of steam-navigation, and overland journeys to India, when Parisianflâneursare to be met among the ruins of Carthage, and Bond street loungers in the great desert of Sahara—when, in turning a corner of the great pyramid you may run against your London friend in a Chesterfield wrapper, or, in ascending Mount Lebanon, recognize a recent partner at Almack’s, in all the glory of her last new bonnet from Maradan’s, the reality of the scene before us is nowise impaired by the modern European costume of the visitors, and we may sit us down upon this mossy stone, and look upon them as the latest arrivals by “the Oriental,”viaMalta and Alexandria, or by the “Dampschiff” from Vienna to the “Golden Horn.” It is perhaps more than half an hour since we flew from the top of St. Paul’s to the south of Spain, to the shores of the Mediterranean, to the verge of Christendom. We must hurry home by the shortest cut—through Switzerland—but not without halting for one moment to gaze from the windows of an Alpine cottage upon the never-trodden snow, and the hoar glaciers of Mont Blanc. We enter then the chalet, or Swiss cottage, guided by the roar of the mountain torrent, which, leaping over the nearest rocks, comes thundering down the precipices, and, after forming a small lake in front of the cottage windows, overflows its stony basin, and with a second fall, disappears in the gulf below.”
This flowery naming-over of the things one sees at the Colosseum is anything but adequate to the reality—the Swiss valley (which has arealwaterfall, forty-feet high, and areallake) being, particularly, a complete illusion. And there is another illusion quite as complete, which you would scarcely think possible—a viewdown uponLondon by night, with all the streets illuminated, the shop-windows glittering, the markets crowded, and the moon shining over all! I could not persuade myself that part of it, at least, was not a bit of real London let in to the view, and I believed in the moon till I had seen it for half an hour—just such a one being really outside. The guide-book says:—“We confidently state, that it is next to impossible that any person can lean over the balustrade for five or six minutes, and mark the fleecy clouds sailing steadily along, lighted as they come within the influence of the halo-encircled moon, which has just emerged from the smoke of the great city, and then fading from sight, or occasionally obscuring the stars that twinkle here and there in the apparently illimitable space—we say it is next to impossible that they can, after such contemplation, recall themselves immediately to the conviction that the scene before them is but an illusion. Add to this the reflection of the innumerable lights upon the bridges in the river, and that of the moon, as the flow of the tide occasionally causes the ripple to catch for a moment, again to be lost as speedily, the silvery beams of the rising luminary, the brilliancy of the shops in Cheapside, and on Ludgate Hill—the colored lights of the chemists in all directions—the flaring naked gas in the open stalls and markets—the cold, pale, moonlight on the windows of Christ Church Hospital, and other high and isolated buildings, and nothing short of reality can equal the amazingcoup d’œilbefore us.”
I wanted some one to monosyllable-ize to—(for it is as bad to be astonished alone, as it is to be astonishingly tired of people) but with this one lack, the morning and the evening—(I returned in the evening,) were plenitudes of occupation. I felt afterwards, and feel now, as if I had been to the far countries represented, and up in air and down in caverns. Many a traveller earns the rightreallyto wear the green turban, whose impressions and memories are less worth having.
One sight I saw, by the way, that was not “down on the bill.” The centre of the Colosseum is occupied by a circular gallery, carpeted and filled with lounges, and in many respects luxurious,besidesexhibiting an admirable collection of statuary. I was standing before a bust of Mrs. Norton, (the poetess) and comparing its exquisite chiselling with my remembrance of her beautiful features, when a party of ladies with very refined, soft voices, approached a statue near by, and began criticising it. An instinctive feeling of delicacy forbad me to look around, at first, as the statue was the rude figure of a reclining woman, but averymasculine guttural following a critical remark, I ventured to turn my head towards the party. Three ladies, dressed with the most respectable elegance, one elderly, and the other two, apparently her daughters, and both pretty, stood in a patronizing tripod—surrounding a negro!It was a lad of nineteen or twenty, in a jacket and trowsers, entirely black, and as ugly and ill-shaped a negro as you could easily find. His hands showed that he had been used to hard work, and he had evidently newly arrived in London. The ladies were making a pet of him. One caught hold of his arm, and pointed to a bust, and another pulled him to see a statue, and they were evidently enjoying the sights, only through his astonishment. The figure of the naked saint, asleep, with the cross in her bosom, didnotseem to shock the ladies, butdidseem to shock the negro. These ladies were probably enthusiasts in anti-slavery, and had got aprotégéwho was interesting as having been a slave. At least, this was the only theory I could build to account for their excessive interest in him—but one need not be an American to wonder at their mode of amusing him. I see, daily, blacks, walking with white women, and occupying seats in the dress-circle of theatres, quite unnoticed by the English; but it was a degree too much to see a black boy in a fair way tohave his taste corruptedby white ladies!
There is a superb bust of D’Orsay’s father in this collection—by the Count himself. It represents a magnificent man. My letter is getting long.
LETTER VIII.
There is little need of widening the ditch of prejudice over which American books must jump, to be read in England, but one of the most original and readable books ever published in our country, (Mr. Poe’s Tales,) “is fixed,” for the present, on the nether side of popularity, by the use of a single Americanism. The wordbug, which with us, may mean an honorable insect, as well as an unclean one, is hardly nameable in England, to ears polite. The first story opened to, in Mr. Poe’s book, is “The Golden Bug,” and the publisher informs me that his English brethren of the craft turn their backs upon it for this disqualification only. The work is too full of genius to be kept, finally, from English admiration, but a word on the first page which makes publishers shut the book without looking farther, will retard its departure from the shelf.
And,apropos—I see that our brilliant contributor “Fanny Forrester,” is about to collect her stories, letters, etc., into a volume. You will remember the confidence with which I hailed the advent of genius in the first letter we received from this now well-known pet of the periodicals. I saw, even in that hasty production, the rare quality ofplayfulness ever constant to good sense—a frolicsome gayety that was rememberable for its wisdom when the laugh had died away. The playfulness is common enough, and the good sense is common enough, but they are not often found together; and, apart, they form the two large classes of writers, the trivial and the heavy. With one quality to relieve the other, however, as is seen in all the productions of charming “Fanny Forrester,” a style is formed which is eminently captivating to the casual reader, and therefore the very best for a contributor to periodicals. But hers is a style, also, the charm of which is lasting. For the thoughts it is freighted with, are from one of the most gifted and most loveable of female natures—thoughts first schooled by heavenly purity and tenderness, and then loosed to play with the freedom of birds on the wing. I take no small pride in having been the first to pronounce the “Eureka” at the discovery of this bright star. And she has risen rapidly in the literary firmament, for it is but a year since “Fanny Forrester” was first heard of, through our columns, and there are few readers now in our wide country who do not know her well.
I have been shivering about town to-day, as usual, in a great-coat—scarce having seen a day this summer when I was comfortable without it. What do you mean by keeping the upper end of the thermometer all to yourselves? The English live in overcoats and under umbrellas, while you are recording the dropping down of people in the street with the heat of the weather! Among other pastimes I went over the river and spent a chilly hour in that vast village of wild beasts and birds, the Surrey Zoological Gardens. It is enough to give one the heart ache to see the many shapes of the agony of imprisonment undergone within these pretty shrubberies and hedges. The expression of distress by all manner of creatures except monkeys, is so painful, that I wonder it should be popular as a place of resort for ladies. But there they lounge out the day in great numbers, feeding the elephants, tormenting the monkeys, and gazing in upon the howling bears, tigers and lions, as if the poor creatures were as happy as parlor poodles. I saw, by the way, that most of the names upon the cages had the wordAmericanbefore them, which helps account for the common English wonder at seeing a white man from New York! I was very glad to get out of the “Gardens!” It would be better named a Hell of wild animals.
I see the dark complexions of the East Indies plentifully sprinkled among the beggars and street sweepers in London. People in turbans and Hindoo coats walk in the crowd unnoticed. The subjugated nations of this modern Rome, are represented among the wretched, though half the globe lies between their begging place and their home. These Asiatics are a symmetrical little people by the way, and their graceful Oriental touch to the turban, when they ask alms, looks strangely out of place amid a populace of such angular rudeness.
London for once, reallylooksdeserted. It is often said to be, when there is very little sign of it to a stranger’s eye. But the Queen’s trip to Germany has taken off an unusual number to the land of beer, and Bond-street is gloomy.
LETTER IX.
London has been enshrouded to-day in what they call a ‘blight’—a blanket-like atmosphere which dulls the sun without the aid of clouds. By taking the pains to hold your arm close to your eye, on days like this you find it covered with small insects, and the trees, in the course of a week will show what is their errand from the morasses. Why these leaf-eaters did not come before, or why they did not stay longer where they were, seems to be a mystery, even to the newspapers.
I saw a new combination this morning—a whip and a parasol. A lady most unhappily plain, (whose impression, however, was very much mollified by the beautiful equipage she drove,) came very near running me down at the crowded corner of Oxford and Regent streets. She was driving a pair of snow-white ponies at a famous pace, and, as she laid the lash on very vigorously, in passing me by, I discovered that the whip was but acontinuation of the handle of the parasol.—In holding up the protector for her own skin, therefore, she held up the terror of the skins of her ponies! It was like so many other things in this world, that I went on my way moralizing.
It should be recorded, by the way, that though one sees good-looking and cleanly-dressed women trundling wheelbarrows in the streets of London, one sees also that very many of the equipages of pleasure are driven by ladies—the usurpation covering the sunshiny and voluntary, as well as the shady and involuntary extreme of masculine pursuit. It really does somewhat modify one’s ideas of the fragile sex, however, to see some hundreds of them mounted on spirited blood horses every day, and every third carriage in the Park driven by the fingers that we are taught to press the like of, so very lightly. How far this near blending of pursuits, male and female, adds to the sympathy and rationality of their intercourse, or how far it breaks down the barriers that enshrine delicacy and romance, are questions that our friend Godey should settle in the “Lady’s Book.”
One does not very often see Americans in London, somehow, though one sees them by hundreds in Paris: but last night, I saw one or two distinguished country people at the opera. Mr. Bryant’s sachem-like head was in un-recognised contact with the profane miscellany of the pit. Mr. Reed, the able Philadelphia lawyer, (who made the capital speech, you will remember, at the dinner of the Historical Society a year ago) was with a party in the stalls. Mr. Colden of New York was present also. A very distinguishedlookingcountryman of ours, as well as a very distinguished one, by the way, passed through London a few days since on his route to Vienna—Mr. Stiles, of Georgia, who was lately appointed ourChargeto the capital of Austria. With this gentleman, I was delighted to meet, as he was a school-boy friend whom I had not seen for many years, and for the pleasure of joining him at Vienna, I have changed my plans, and given up my proposed wintering in Paris. Mr. Stiles was kind enough to confer upon me a very easily-given, but, at the same time, very useful addition to my passport, since as aCharge’ssecretary andattaché, I may defy custom-houses and see courts—privileges denied to Mr.’s and editors! I shall leave London soon, and zig-zag it to Austria, visiting the intermediate cities in the centre of Europe, where you know I have never been, and in the police-ified and etiquettical atmosphere of which my embroidered passport, trifling as is the addition to it, will save me a deal of trouble.[7]
To return once more to the subject of the paragraph preceeding the last:—I have often remarked another interchange of male and female occupation, which, if not peculiar to England, is at least different from the habits of the sexes in our country. Themen, of the middle and lower classes,share freely in the out-doors’ care of the children. Ten minutes ago, a handsome young soldier, a private of the Queen’s Guards—an elegant fellow, in a high bear-skin cap and full uniform—passed up Regent-street before my window, carrying a baby in his arms, very leisurely, andnot at all remarked by the crowd, though no woman accompanied him. He was probably carrying “the child” home, having left the mother to shop or gossip; but what one of your private soldiers, my dear General, would quietly walk up Broadway in full uniform, with a baby in his arms? You could not take a walk in London, any pleasant day, without meeting a number of well-dressed men drawing children in basket wagons. They sit at shop-doors with them in their laps, or smoke their pipes while keeping the cradle going behind the counter. To any possibility of ridicule of such duties, the men of this country seem wholly insensible. In this and some other matters we have a false pride in America, which is both peculiarly American and peculiarly against nature.
And,aproposof children—I have taken some vain pains, the last day or two, to find in the London shops, India-rubber shoes for my little daughter. This article and suspenders of curled India-rubber, which I have also enquired for in vain, are two out of many varieties of this particular manufacture in which London still remains to be civilized, and for that step in civilization, the Queen (whose children go out in all weathers, and whose husband wears suspenders,) would probably be willing to thank our friendDayof Maiden-lane. Most of the uses to which the magical king of Caoutchouc has put his subject gum, would be novelties in England, I fancy, and he should be advised to set up a branch shop in Regent street, with his celebrated portable India-rubber canoe for a sign.
The Morning Post states thatFrederika Bremeris on her way to our country. If ever there was a writer who sees things as every one wishes to, and nobody else can—whose eyes penetrate just to the right depth through the skin of human nature, neither too much nor too little—who describes people with an unequalled novelty and just-enough-ness, that is to say, and at the same time, invariably betters the heart of the reader, it is this Swedish authoress. I would rather see her than any woman living whom I have not seen, and I feel very much interested that our country should cherish her, and show her its appreciation of her womanly and yet wonderful genius.
I write with a pen keeping tune with some very indifferent music under my window. My lodgings look out upon Regent street, and they have but one objection—the neighborhood of a vender of beer who draws customers by giving some manner or other of music, nightly, in front of his shop. It is now ten o’clock, and six musicians are posted on the side-walk who play just well enough to entertain a street crowd of two or three hundred people—just well enough to bewitch a man’s pen, without making it worth his while to stop and listen. They are just now murdering the incomparable air to Mrs. Norton’s song of “Love not,” and, to one who has ever had his tears startled with it, (as who has not?) it is a desecration indeed. But what a tune to play to such an audience! The flaunting guilt that nightly parades the broad sidewalks of Regent-street is now embodied in one dense crowd listening attentively to the bitter caution of the song! It would be curious to know how many among them would be now on the other side of the possibility of profiting by it, had they been blessed with more careful example and education.
I went on Sunday to “the city,” to hear the poet Croly preach in the chapel of St. Stephen’s—a small church adjoining the mansion house of the Lord Mayor. Of Croly’s drama of “Cataline” and of his poems, I am (as you know by my frequent quoting from them,) a very great admirer. He is a fine scholar, and a man of naturally a mostdramaticcast of mind—all his poems being conceived and presented to the reader with invariable stage effect, so to speak. I was curious to see him—for, to begin to know a man,mind-first, is like living in a house without having ever seen the outside of it. The church service was long—precisely two hours and a quarter before the sermon—and though there was a fine picture of the stoning of Stephen over the altar, and tablets to the memory of several worthy citizens on the walls and columns which it was profitable to read, I found the time pass heavily. Mr. Croly was shown into the pulpit at last. He is a tall powerfully built man of sixty—stern, gray, and more military than clerical in his look and manner. His voice, too, was very much more suited to command than to plead. He preaches extemporaneously, and he took the chapter from the morning service for his subject—the prophet’s triumph over the prophets of Baal. His sermon lasted half an hour, and it was,entirely and only, a magnificent painting of the sublime scene outlined in the Bible. It was done in admirable language, and altogether like a scholar-poet inspired with his theme—(itspoetry, that is to say)—but very little like most efforts one hears in the pulpit. When he had pronounced his Amen, I suposed he had only laid out foreground of his sermon. Incidentally he expressed two sentiments—one, that God chose to have miracles prayed for, even when they were certain to come to pass, having been predicted by Himself. Second, that thepopular voice(to which the prophet appealed to pass judgment on the trial between the Lord and Baal) was theonly true test of everything! I thought this lastrathera republican sentiment for the Lord Mayor’s chapel.
Dr. Croly would have made a modern Peter the Hermit, if a new crusade were to be preached up, but he is little likely to lead much faster to Heaven than they would otherwise go, the charity-school of girls who sit in the broad aisle of his chapel. I shall return to my ideal of him as a poet.