The Trübners—George Eliot and G. H. Lewes—Heseltine—Edwards—Etched by Bracquemond and Legros—Jean Ingelow—Tennyson—Hepworth Dixon—Lord Lytton the elder—Lord Houghton—Bret Harte—France, Alsace, and Lorraine—Samuel Laing—Gypsies—The Misses Horace Smith—Brighton and odd fish—Work and books—Hunting—Doré—Art and Nature—Taglioni—Chevalier Wykoff—Octave Delepierre—Breitmann—Thomas Carlyle—George Borrow—A cathedral tour round about England—Salisbury, Wells, and York.
It is pleasant being anywhere in England in June, and the passing from picturesque Dover to London through laughing Kent is a good introduction to the country. The untravelled American, fresh from the “boundless prairies” and twenty-thousand-acre fields of wheat, sees nothing in it all but the close cultivation of limited land; but the tourist from the Continent perceives at once that, with most careful agriculture, there are indications of an exuberance of wealth, true comfort, and taste rarely seen in France or Germany. The many trees of a better quality and slower growth than the weedy sprouting poplar and willow of Normandy; the hedges, which are very beautiful and ever green; the flowerbeds and walks about the poorest cottage; the neatly planted, prettily bridged side roads, all indicate a superiority of wealth or refinement such as prevails only in New England, or rather whichdidprevail, until the native population, going westward, was supplanted by Irish or worse, if any worse there be at turning neatness into dirty disorder.
That older American population was deeply English, with a thousand rural English traditions religiously preserved; and the chief of these is cleanneatness, which, when fully carried out, always results in simple, unaffected beauty. This was very strongly shown in the Quaker gardens, once so common in Philadelphia—and in the people.
We arrived in London, and went directly to the Trübners’, No. 29 Upper Hamilton Terrace, N.W. The first person who welcomed me was Mr. Delepierre, an idol of mine for years; and the first thing I did was to borrow half-a-crown of him to pay the cab, having only French money with me. It was a charming house, with a large garden, so redolent of roses that it might have served Chriemhilda of old for a romance. For twenty years that house was destined to be an occasional home and a dwelling where we were ever welcome, and where every Sunday evening I had always an appointed place at dinner, and a special arm-chair for the never-failing Havannah. Mrs. Trübner had, in later years, two boxes of Havannahs of the best, which had belonged to G. H. Lewes, and which George Eliot gave her after his death. I have kept twoen souvenir. I knew a man once who had formed a large collection of such relics. There was a cigar which he had received from Louis Napoleon, and one from Bismarck, and so forth. But, alas! once while away on his travels, the whole museum was smoked up by a reckless under-graduate younger brother.In fumo exit.
How many people well known to the world—or rather how few who were not—have I met there—Edwin Arnold, G. H. Lewes, H. Dixon, M. Van der Weyer, Frith the artist, Mrs. Trübner’s uncle Lord Napier of Magdala, Pigott, Norman Lockyer, Bret Harte, “and full many more,” scholars, poets, editors, and, withal, lady writers of every good shade, grade, and quality. How many of them all have passed since then full silently into the Silent Land, where we may follow, but return no more! How many a pleasant smile and friendly voice and firm alliances and genial acquaintances, often carriedout in other lands, date their beginning in my memory to the house in Hamilton Terrace! How often have I heard by land or sea the familiar greeting, “I think I met you once at the Trübners’!” For it was a salon, a centre or sun with many bright and cheering rays—a civilising institution!
Mrs. Trübner was the life of this home. Anglo-Belgian by early relation and education, she combined four types in one. When speaking English, she struck me as the type of an accomplished and refined British matron; in French, her whole nature seemed Parisienne; in Flemish, she was altogether Flamande; and in German, Deutsch. If Cerberus was three gentlemen in one, Mrs. Trübner was four ladies united. Very well read, she conversed not only well on any subject, but, what is very unusual in her sex, with sincere interest, and not merely to entertain. If interrupted in a conversation she resumed the subject! This is a remarkable trait!
The next day after our arrival Mrs. Trübner took Mrs. Leland, during a walk, to call on George Eliot, and that evening G. H. Lewes, Hepworth Dixon, and some others came to a reception at the Trübners’. Both of these men were, as ever, very brilliant and amusing in conversation. I met them very often after this, both at their homes and about London. I also became acquainted with George Eliot or Mrs. Lewes, who left on me the marked impression, which she did on all, of being a woman of genius, though I cannot recall anything remarkable which I ever heard from her. I note this because there were most extraordinary reports of her utterances among her admirers. A young American lady once seriously asked me if it were true that at the Sunday afternoon receptions in South Bank one could always see rows of twenty or thirty of the greatest men in England, such as Carlyle, Froude, and Herbert Spencer, all sitting with their note-books silently taking down from her lips the ideas which they subsequently used in their writings! There seemed, indeed, to be afloat in America among certain folk an idea that something enormous,marvellous, and inspired went on at these receptions, and that George Eliot posed as a Pythia or Sibyl, as the great leading mind of England, and lectured while we listened. There is no good portrait, I believe, of her. She had long features and would have been called plain but for her solemn, earnest eyes, which had an expression quite in keeping with her voice, which was one not easily forgotten. I never detected in her any trace of genial humour, though I doubt not that it was latent in her; and I thought her a person who had drawn her ideas far more from books and an acquaintance with certain types of humanity whom she had set herself deliberately to study—albeit with rare perception—than from an easy intuitive familiarity with all sorts and conditions of men. But she worked outthoroughlywhat she knew by the intuition of genius, though in this she was very far inferior to Scott. Thus she wrote the “Spanish Gypsy,” having only seen such gypsies two or three times. One day she told me that in order to write “Daniel Deronda,” she had read through two hundred books. I longed to tell her that she had better have learned Yiddish and talked with two hundred Jews, and been taught, as I was by my friend Solomon the Sadducee, the art of distinguishing Fräulein Löwenthal of the Ashkenazim from Senorita Aguado of the Sephardimby the corners of their eyes!
I had read more than once Lewes’s “Life of Goethe,” his “History of Philosophy and Physiology,” and even “written him” for the Cyclopædia. With him I naturally at once became well acquainted. I remember here that Mr. Ripley had once reproved me for declaring that Lewes had really a claim to be an original philosopher or thinker; for Boston intellect always frowned on him after Margaret Fuller condemned him as “frivolous and atheistic.” I remember that Tom Powell had told me how he had dined somewhere in London, where there was a man present who had really been a cannibal, owing to dire stress of shipwreck, and how Lewes, who was there, was so fascinated with the man-eater that hecould think of nothing else. Lewes told me that once, having gone with a party of archæologists to visit a ruined church, he found on a twelfth-century tombstone some illegible letters which he persuaded the others to believe formed the name Golias, probably having in mind the poems of Walter de Mapes. When I returned from Russia I delighted him very much by describing how I had told the fortunes by hand of six gypsy girls. He declared that telling fortunes to gypsies was the very height of impudence!
“A hundred jests have passed between us twain,Which, had I space, I’d gladly tell again.”
“A hundred jests have passed between us twain,Which, had I space, I’d gladly tell again.”
A call which I have had, since I wrote that last line, from John Postle Heseltine, Esq., reminds me that he was one of the first acquaintances I made in London. Mr. E. Edwards, a distinguished etcher and painter, gave me a dinner at Richmond, at which Mr. Heseltine was present. In Edwards’ studio I met with Bracquemond and Legros, both of whom etched my portrait on copper. Mr. Heseltine is well known as a very distinguished artist of the same kind, as well as for many other things. Edwards was very kind to me in many ways for years. Legros I found very interesting. There was in Edwards’ studio the uniquecompletecollection of the etchings of Méryon, which we examined. Legros remarked of the incredibly long-continued industry manifested in some of the pictures, that lunatics often manifested it to a high degree. Méryon, as is known, was mad. I had etched a very little myself and was free of the fraternity.
Within a few days Mr. Strahan, the publisher, took me to Mr. (now Lord) Tennyson’s reception, where I met with many well-known people. Among them were Lady Charlotte Locker and Miss Jean Ingelow. These ladies, with great kindness, finding that I was married, called on Mrs. Iceland, and invited us to dine. I became a constant visitor for years at Miss Ingelow’s receptions, where I have met Ruskin, Mr. and Mrs. S. C. Hall (whom I had seen in 1848),Calverly, Edmund Gosse, Hamilton Aïdé, Mr. and Mrs Alfred Hunt. I conversed with Tennyson, but little passed between us on that occasion. I got to know him far better “later on.”
I here anticipate by several years two interviews which I had with Tennyson in 1875, who hadad interimbeen deservedly “lauded into Lordliness,” and which, to him at least, were amusing enough to be recalled. The first was at a dinner at Lady Franklin’s, and her niece Miss Cracroft. And here I may, in passing, say a word as to the extraordinary kindly nature of Lady Franklin. I think it was almost as soon as we became acquainted that she, learning that I suffered at times from gout, sent me a dozen bottles of a kind of bitter water as a cure.
There were at the dinner as guests Mr. Tennyson, Sir Samuel and Lady Baker, Dr. Quain, and myself. There was no lack of varied anecdote, reminiscences of noted people and of travel; but by far the most delightful portion of it all was to watch the gradual unfreezing of Tennyson, and how from a grim winter of taciturnity, under the glowing influence of the sun of wine, as the Tuscan Redi hath it—
“Dell’ Indico OrienteDomator glorioso il Dio di Vino . . .Di quel Sol, che in Ciel vedete . . .”—
“Dell’ Indico OrienteDomator glorioso il Dio di Vino . . .Di quel Sol, che in Ciel vedete . . .”—
he passed into a glorious summer of genial feeling. I led unto it thus:—My friend Professor Palmer and I had projected a volume of songs in English Romany or Gypsy, which is by far the sweetest and most euphonious language in Europe. My friend had translated “Home they brought her warrior dead,” by Tennyson, into this tongue, and I had the MS. of it in my pocket. Tennyson was very much pleased at the compliment, and asked me to read the poem, which I did. The work was by permission dedicated to him. At last, when dinner was over, Tennyson, who had disposed of an entire bottle of port, rose, and approaching me, took megaily-gravely by both sides, as if he would lift me up, and drawing himself up to his full height, said, “I like to see a poet a full-sized substantial man,” or “tall and strong,” or words to that effect. I replied that it was very evident from the general appearance of Shakespeare’s bust that he was a very tall man, but that though the thunder of height had hit twice—the Poet Laureate being the second case—that I had been very slightly singed, tall as I was.Enfin, some days after, Tennyson in a letter invited me to call and see him should I ever be in the Isle of Wight; which took place by mere chance some time after—in fact, I did not know, when I was first at the hotel in Freshwater, that Tennyson lived at a mile’s distance.
I walked over one afternoon and sent in my card. Mr. Hallam Tennyson, then a very handsome young man of winsome manner, came out and said that his father was taking his usualsiesta, but begged me to remain, kindly adding, “Because I know, Mr. Leland, he would be very sorry to have missed you.” After a little time, however, Tennyson himself appeared, and took me up to his den or studio, where I was asked to take a pipe, which I did with great good-will, and blew a cloud, enjoying it greatly, because I felt with my host, as with Bulwer, that we had quickly crossed acquaintanceship into the more familiar realm where one can talk about whatever you please with the certainty of being understood and getting a sympathetic answer. There are lifelong friends with whom one never really gets to this, and there are acquaintances of an hour attable-d’hôtes, who “come like shadows, so depart,” who talk with a touch to our hearts. Bulwer and Tennyson were such to me, andapré miro zī, as the gypsies say—on my life-soul!—if I had talked with them, as I did, without knowing who they were, I should have recalled them with quite as much interest as I now do, and see them again in dreams. And here I may add, that the common-place saying that literary men are rarely good talkers, and generally disappointing, is not at all confirmed by my experiences.
After burning our tobacco, in Indian fashion, to better acquaintance (I forgot to say that the poet had two dozen clay pipes ranged in a small wooden rack), we went forth for a seven miles’ walk on the Downs. And at last, from the summit of one, I pointed down to a small field below, and said—
But first I must specify that the day before I had gone with a young lady of fourteen summers named Bee or Beatrice Fredericson, both of us bearing baskets, to pick blackberries for tea, and coming to a small field which was completely surrounded by a hedge, we saw therein illimitable blackberries glittering in the setting sunlight, and longed to enter. Finding a gap which had been filled by a dead thorn-bush, I removed the latter, and, going in, we soon picked a quart of the fruit. But on leaving we were met by the farmer, who made a to-do, charging us with trespassing. To which I replied, “Well, what is to pay?” He asked for two shillings, but was pacified with one; and so we departed.
Therefore I said to Tennyson, “I went into that field yesterday to pick your blackberries, and your farmer caught us and made me pay a shilling for trespassing.”
And he gravely replied, though evidently delighted—“Served you right! What business had you to come over my hedge into my field to steal my blackberries?”
“Mea culpa,” I answered, “mea maxima culpa.”
“Mr. Leland,” pursued Tennyson, as gravely as ever, grasping all the absurdity of the thing with evident enjoyment, “you have no idea how tourists trespass here to get at me. They climb over my gate and look in at my windows. It is a fact—one did so only last week. But I declare that you are the very first poet and man of letters who ever came here—to steal blackberries!” Here he paused, and then added forcibly—
“Idobelieve you are a gypsy, after all.”
Then we talked of the old manor-houses in the neighbourhood, and of the famous Mortstone, a supposed Saxon rudemonolith near by. I thought it prehistoric, because I had dug out from the pile of earth supporting and coeval with it (and indeed only with a lead-pencil) a flint flake chipped by hand and a bit of cannel coal, which indicate dedication. My host listened with great interest, and then told me a sad tale: how certain workmen employed by him to dig on his land had found a great number of old Roman bronze coins, but, instead of taking them to him, had kept them, though they cared so little for them that they gave a handful to a boy whom they met. “I told them,” said Tennyson, “that they had been guilty of malappropriation, and though I was not quite sure whether the coins belonged to me or to the Crown, that they certainly had no right to them. Whereupon their leader said that if I was not satisfied they would not work any longer for me, and so they went away.” I had on this occasion a long and interesting discussion with Mr. Tennyson relative to Walt Whitman, and involving the principles or nature of poetry. According to the poet-laureate, poetry, as he understood it, consisted of elevated or refined, or at least superior thought, expressed in melodious form, and in this latter it seemed to him (for it was very modestly expressed) that Whitman was wanting. Wherein he came nearer to the truth than does Symonds, who overrates, as it seems to me, the value, as regards art and poetry, of simplyequalisingall human intelligences. Though I never met Symonds, there was mutual knowledge between us, and when I published my “Etrusco-Roman Remains in Popular Traditions,” which contains the results of six years’ intimacy with witches and fortune-tellers, he wrote a letter expressing enthusiastic admiration of it to Mr. T. Fisher Unwin. Now all three of these great men are dead. I shall speak of Whitman anon, for in later years for a long time I met him almost daily.
I can remember that during the conversation Tennyson expressed himself, rather to my amazement, with some slight indignation at a paltry review abusing his latest work; to which I replied—
“If there is anything on earth for which I have envied you, even more than for your great renown as a poet, it has been because I supposed you were completely above all such attacks and were utterly indifferent to them.” Which he took amiably, and proceeded to discuss ripe fruit and wasps—or their equivalent. Yet I doubt whether I was quite in the right, since those who live for fame honourably acquired must ever be susceptible to stings, small or great. An editor who receives abusive letters so frequently that he ends by pitching them without reading into the waste-basket, and often treats ribald attacks in print in the same manner—as I have often done—has so many other affairs on his mind that he becomes case-hardened. But I have observed from long experience that there is a Nemesis who watches those who arrogate the right to lay on the rod, and gives it to them with interest in the end.
It was very soon after my arrival in London that I was invited to lunch at Hepworth Dixon’s to meet Lord Lytton, or Bulwer, the great writer. His works had been so intensely and sympathetically loved by me so long, that it seemed as if I had been asked to meet some great man of the past. I found him, as I expected, quite congenial and wondrous kind. I remember a droll incident. Standing at the head of the stairs, he courteously made way and asked me to go before. I replied, “When Louis XIV. asked Crillon to do the same, Crillon complied, saying, ‘Wherever your Majesty goes, be it before or behind, is always the first place or post of honour,’ and I say the same with him,” and so went in advance at once. I saw by his expression that he was pleased with the quotation.
We were looking at a portrait of Shakespeare which Dixon had found in Russia. Lord Lytton asked me if I thought it an original or true likeness. I observed that the face was full of many fine seamy lines, which infallibly indicate great nervous genius of the highest order—noting at the same time that Lord Lytton’s countenance was very muchmarked in a like manner. The observation was new to him, and he seemed to be interested in it, as he always was in anything like chiromancy or metoscopy. A few days later I was invited to come and pass nearly a week with Hepworth Dixon at Knebworth, Lord Lytton’s country seat. It is a very picturesquechâteau, profusely adorned with fifteenth-century Gothic grotesques, with a fine antique hall, stained glass windows, and gallery. There is in it a chamber containing a marvellous and massive carved oak bedstead, the posts of which are human figures the size of life, and in it and in the same room Queen Elizabeth is said to have slept when she heard of the destruction of the Spanish Armada. It was the room of honour, and it had been kindly assigned to me. It all seemed like a dream.
There was in the family of the late Lord Lytton his son, who made a most favourable impression on me. I think the firstcoupwas my finding that he knew the works of Andreini, and that it had occurred to him as well as to me that Euphues Lily’s book had been modelled on them. There was also his wife, a magnificent and graceful beauty; Lord Lytton’s nephew, Mr. Bulwer; and several ladies. The first morning we all fished in the pond, and, to my great amazement, Lord Lytton pulled outa great one-eyed perch! I almost expected to see him pull out Paul Clifford or Zanoni next! In the afternoon we were driven out to Cowper Castle to see a fine gallery of pictures, our host acting as cicerone, and as he soon found that I was fairly well educated in art, and had been a special pupil of Thiersch in Munich, and something more than an amateur, we had many interesting conversations. I think I may venture to say that he didnotexpect to find a whilom student of æsthetics, art-history, and Philosophy in the author of “Hans Breitmann.” What was delightful was his exquisite tact in never saying as much; but I could detect it in the sudden interest and involuntary compliment implied in his tone of conversation. In a very short time he began to speak to me on all literary or artisticsubjects without preliminary question, taking it for granted that I understood them and chimed in with him. I was with every interview more and more impressed with hisculture—I mean with what had resulted from his reading—his marvellous tact of kindness in small things to all, and his quick and vigorous comparing and contrasting of images and drawing conclusions. But there was evidently enough a firm bed-rock or hard pan under all this gold. I was amazed one day when a footman, who had committed somebévueor blunder, or apprehended something, actually turned pale and stammered with terror when Lord Lytton gravely addressed a question to him. I never in my life saw a man so much frightened, even before a revolver.
But Lord Lytton was beyond all question really interested when he found me so much at home in Rosicrucian and occult lore, and that I had been with Justinus Kerner in Weinsberg, and was familiar with the forgotten dusky paths of mysticism. He had in his house the famous Earl Stanhope crystal, and wished me to sleep with it under my pillow, but I was so afraid lest the precious relic should be injured, that I resolutely declined the honour, for which I am now sorry, for I sometimes have dreams of a most extraordinary character. This Stanhope crystal is not, however, the great mirror of Dr. Dee, though it has been said to be so. The latter belonged to a gentleman in London, who also offered to lend it to me. It is made of cannel coal. That Lord Lytton made a very remarkable impression on me is proved by the fact that I continued to dream of him at long intervals after his death; and I am quite sure that such feeling is, by its very nature, always to a certain slight degree reciprocal. He had a natural and unaffectedvoice, yet one with a marked character; something like Tennyson’s, which was even more striking. Both were far removed from the now fashionable intonation, which is the admiration and despair of American swells. It is only thefin de siècleform of thedemnitiondialect of the Forties and theLa-ardandLunnonof an earlier age.
Lord Lytton was generally invisible in the morning, sometimes after lunch. In the evening he came out splendidly groomed, fresh as a rose, and at dinner and after was as interesting as any of his books. He had known “everybody” to a surprising extent, and had anecdotes fresh and vivid of every one whom he had met. He loved music, and there was a lady who sang old Spanish ballads with rare taste. I enjoyed myself incredibly.
I may be excused for mentioning here that I sent a copy of the second edition of my “Meister Karl’s Sketch-Book” to Lord Lytton. No one but Irving and Trübner had ever praised it. When Lord Lytton published afterwards “Kenelm Chillingly,” I found in itthreepassages in which I recognised beyond dispute others suggested by my own work. I do not in the least mean that there wasanyborrowing or taking beyond the mere suggestion of thought. Why I think that Lord Lytton had these hints in his mind is that he gave the name of Leland to one of the minor characters in the book.
When I published a full edition of “Breitmann’s Poems,” he wrote me a long letter criticising and praising the work, and a much longer and closely written one, of seven pages, relating to my “Confucius and Other Poems.” I was subsequently invited to receptions at his house in London, where I first met Browning, and had a long conversation with him. I saw him afterwards at Mrs. Proctor’s. This was the wife of Barry Cornwall, whom I also saw. He was very old and infirm. I can remember when the “Cornlaw Rhymes” rang wherever English was read.
As I consider it almost a duty to record what I can remember of Bulwer, I may mention that one evening, at his house in London, he showed me and others some beautiful old brass salvers inrepousséwork, and how I astonished him by describing the process, and declaring that I could produceafacsimileof any one of them in a day or two; to which assertion hundreds to whom I have taught the art, as well as my “Manual of Repoussé,” and another on “Metal Work,” will, I trust, bear witness. And this I mention, not vainly, but because Lord Lytton seemed to be interested and pleased, and because, in after years, I had much to do with reviving the practice of this beautiful art. It was practising this, and a three years’ study of oak-wood carving, which led me to write on the Minor Arts.Mihi æs et triplex robur.
Lord Lytton had the very curious habit of making almost invisible hieroglyphics or crosses in his letters—at least I found them in those to me, as it were for luck. It was a very common practice from the most ancient Egyptian times to within two centuries. Lord Lytton’s were evidently intended to escape observation. But there was indeed a great deal in his character which would escape most persons, and which has not been revealed by any writer on him. This I speedily divined, though, of course, I never discovered what it all was.
Lord Houghton, “Richard Monckton Milnes,” to whom I had a letter of introduction from Lorimer Graham, was very kind to me. I dined and lunched at his house, where I met Odo Russell or Lord Ampthill, the Duke of Bedford, the Hon. Mrs. Norton, W. W. Story, and I know not how many more distinguished in society, or letters. At Lord Lytton’s I made the acquaintance of the Duke of Wellington. I believe, however, that this meeting with Lord Houghton and the Duke was in my second year in London.
The first English garden-party which I ever attended was during this first season, at the villa of Mr. Bohn, the publisher, at Twickenham. There I made the acquaintance of George Cruikshank, whom I afterwards met often, and knew very well till his death. He was a gay old fellow, and on this occasion danced a jig with old Mr. Bohn on the lawn, and joked with me. There, too, we met Lady Martin, who had been the famed Helen Faucit. Cruikshank was alwaysinexhaustible in jokes, anecdotes, and reminiscences. At his house I made the acquaintance of Miss Ada Cavendish.
To revert to Mr. Trübner’s, I may say that one evening after dinner, when, genial though quiet, Bret Harte was one of the guests, he was asked to repeat the “Heathen Chinee,” which he could not do, as he had never learned it—which is not such an unusual thing, by the way, as many suppose. But I, who knew it, remarked, “Ladies and gentlemen, it is nothing to merelywritea poem. True genius consists in getting it by or from heart [fromBret Harte, for instance], and repeating it. This genius nature has denied to the illustrious poet before you—but not to me, as I will now illustrate by declaiming the ‘Heathen Chinee.’” Which performance was received with applause, in which Harte heartily joined. But my claim to possess genius would hardly have borne examination, for it was years before I ever learned “Hans Breitmann’s Barty,” nor would I like to risk even a pound to one hundred that I can do it now without mixing the verses or committing some error.
Once during the season I went with my wife and Mr. W. W. Story to Eton, where we supped with Oscar Browning. We were taken out boating on the river, and I enjoyed it very much. There is a romance about the Thames associated with a thousand passages in literature which goes to the very heart. I was much impressed by the marked character of Mr. Browning and his frank, genial nature; and I found some delightful old Latin books in his library. May I meet with many such men!
This year, what with the German war and the Trübner-Hotten controversy, my “Breitmann Ballads” had become, I may say, well known. The character of Hans was actually brought into plays on three stages at once. Boucicault, whom I knew well of yore in America, introduced it into something. I had found Ewan Colquhoun—the same old sixpence—and one night he took me to the Strand Theatre to see a play in which my hero was a prominent part. I wastold afterwards that the company having been informed of my presence, all came to look at me through the curtain-hole. There were some imitations of my ballads published inPunchand theStandard, and the latter were so admirably executed—pardon the vain word!—that I feared, because they satirised the German cause, that they might be credited to me; therefore I wrote to the journal, begging that the author would give some indication that I had not written them, which was kindly done. Finally, a newspaper was started calledHans Breitmann, and the Messrs. Cope, of Liverpool, issued a brand of Hans Breitmann cigars. Owing to the resemblance between the words Bret and Breit there was a confusion of names, and my photograph was to be seen about town, with the name of Bret Harte attached to it. This great injustice to Mr. Harte was not agreeable, and I, or my friends, remonstrated with the shop-folk with the to-be-expected result, “Yes-sir, yes-sir—very sorry, sir—we’ll correct the mistake, sir!” But I don’t think it was ever corrected till the sale ceased.
I was sometimes annoyed with many imitations of my poems by persons who knew no German, which were all attributed to me. A very pious Presbyterian publication, in alluding to something of the kind, said that “Mr. Leland,because he is the author of Bret Harte, thinks himself justified in publishing any trash of this description.” I thought this averyimproper allusion for a clergyman, not to say libellous. In fact, many people really believed that Bret Harte was anom de plumeor the title of a poem. And I may here say by the way that I never “wrote under” the pseudonym of Hans Breitmann in my life, nor called myself any such name at any time. It is simply the name of one of manybookswhich I have written. An American once insisting to me that Ishouldbe called so from my work, I asked him if he would familiarly accost Mr. Lowell as “Josh Biglow.” If there is anything in the world which denotes a subordinate position in the social scale or defect in education, it is thepassion to call men “out of their names,” and never feel really acquainted with any one until he is termed Tom or Jack. It is doubtless all very genial and jocose and sociable, but the man who shows a tendency to it shouldnotcomplain when his betters put him in a lower class or among the “lower orders.”
Once at a reception at George Boughton’s, the artist, there was, as I heard, an elderly gentleman rushing about asking to see or be introduced toHart Bretmann, whose works he declared he knew by heart, and with whom he was most anxious to become acquainted. Whether he ever discovered this remarkable conglomerate I do not know.
I once made the acquaintance of an American at the Langham Hotel who declared that I had made life a burden to him. His name was H. Brightman, and being in business in New York, he never went to the Custom-House or Post-Office but what the clerks cried “Hans Brightman! of course. Yes, we have read about you, sir—in history.”
But even in this London season I found more serious work to attend to than comic ballads or society. Mr. Trübner was very anxious to have me write a pamphlet vindicating the claim of Germany to Alsace and Lorraine, and I offered to do it gladly, if he would provide all the historical data or material. The result of this was thebrochureentitled “France, Alsace, and Lorraine,” which had a great success. It at once reappeared in America, and even in Spanish in South America. The German Minister in London ordered six copies, and theTimesmade the work, with all its facts and figures, into an editorial article, omitting, I regret to say, to mention the source whence it was derived; but this I forgive with all my heart, considering the good words which it has given me on other occasions. For the object of the work was not at all to glorify the author, but to send home great truths at a very critical time; and the article in theTimes, which was little else but my pamphlet condensed, caused a great sensation. But the principal result from it was this:I had in the work discussed the idea, then urged by the French and their friends, that, to avoid driving France to “desperation,” very moderate terms should be accepted in order to conciliate. For the French, as I observed in effect, will do theirvery worst in any case, and every possible extreme should be anticipated and assumed. This same argument had previously been urged in my “CentralisationversusStates Rights.”
When Prince Bismarck conversed with the French Commissioners to arrange terms of peace, he met this argument of not driving the French to extremes with a phrase so closely like the one which I had used in my pamphlet, that neither Mr. Trübner nor several others hesitated to declare to me that it was beyond all question taken from it. Bismarck hadcertainlyreceived the pamphlet, which had been recognised by theTimes, and in many other quarters, as a more than ordinary paper, and Prince Bismarck, like all great diplomatists,prend son bien où il le trouve. In any case this remains true, that that which formed the settling argument of Germany, found at the time expression in my pamphlet and in the Chancellor’s speech.
We made soon after a visit to the Rev. Dean and Mrs. Carrington, in Bocking, Essex. They had a fair daughter, Eva, then quite a girl, who has since become well known as a writer, and is now the Countess Cesaresco Martinengro—an Italian name, and not Romany-Gypsy, as its terminations would seem to indicate. There is in the village of Bocking, at a corner, a curious and very large grotesque figure of oak, which was evidently in the time of Elizabeth a pilaster in some house-front. My friend Edwards, who was wont to roam all over England in a mule-waggon etching and sketching, when in Bocking was informed by a rustic that this figure was the image of Harkilés (Hercules), a heathen god formerly worshipped in the old Catholic convent upon the hill, in the old times!
From London we went in August, 1870, to Brighton, stayingat first at the Albion Hotel. There, under the influence of fresh sea-air, long walks and drives in all the country round, I began to feel better, yet it was not for many weeks that I fairly recovered. A chemist named Phillips, who supplied me with bromide of potass, suggested to me, to his own loss, that I took a great deal too much. I left it off altogether, substituting pale ale. Finding this far better, I asked Mr. Phillips if he could not prepare for melupulin, or the anodyne of hops. He laughed, and said, “Do you find the result required in ale?” I answered, “Yes.” “And do you like ale?” “Yes.” “Then,” he answered, “why don’t youdrinkale?” And I did, but before I took it up my very vitality seemed to be well-nigh exhausted with the bromide.
Samuel Laing, M.P., the chairman of the Brighton Railway, had at that time a house in Brighton, with several sons and daughters, the latter of whom have all been very remarkable for beauty and accomplishments. In this home there was a hospitality so profuse, so kind, so brilliant and refined, that I cannot really remember to have ever seen it equalled, and as we fully participated in it at all times in every form, I should feel that I had omitted the deepest claim to my gratitude if I did not here acknowledge it. Mr. Laing was or is of a stock which deeply appealed to my sympathies, for he is the son of the famous translator of theHeimskringla, a great collection of Norse sagas, which I had read, and in which he himself somewhat aided. Of late years, since he has retired from more active financial business, Mr. Laing has not merely turned his attention to literature; he has deservedly distinguished himself by translating, as I may say, into the clearest and most condensed or succinct and lucid English ever written, so as to be understood by the humblest mind, the doctrines of Darwin, Huxley, and the other leading scientific minds of the day. Heine in his time received a great deal of credit for having thus acted as the flux and furnace by which the ore of German philosophy wassmelted into pure gold for general circulation; but I, who have translated all that Heine wrote on this subject, declare that he was at such work as far inferior to Samuel Laing as a mere verbal description of a beautiful face is inferior to a first-class portrait. This family enters so largely into my reminiscences and experiences, that a chapter would hardly suffice to express all that I can recall of their hospitality for years, of the dinners, hunts, balls, excursions, and the many distinguished people whom I have met under their roof. It is worth noting of Mr. Laing’s daughters, that Mary, now Mrs. Kennard, is at the head of the sporting-novel writers; that the beautiful Cecilia, now Mrs. MacRae, was pronounced by G. H. Lewes, who was no mean judge, to be the first amateur pianiste in England; while the charming “Floy,” or Mrs. Kennedy, is a very able painter. With their two very pretty sisters, they formed in 1870 as brilliant, beautiful, and accomplished a quintette as England could have produced.
One day Mr. Laing organised an excursion with a special train to Arundel Castle. By myself at other times I found my way to Lewes and other places rich in legendary lore. Of this latter I recall something worth telling. Harold, the conquered Saxon king, had a son, and the conqueror William had a daughter, Gundrada. The former became a Viking pirate, and in his old age a monk, and was buried in a church, now a Presbyterian chapel. There his epitaph may be read in fine bold lettering, still distinct. That man is dear to me.
Gundrada married, died, and was buried in a church with a fine Norman tombstone over her remains. The church was levelled with the ground, but the slab was preserved here and there about Lewes as a relic. When the railway was built, about 1849, there was discovered, where the church had been, the bones of Gundrada and her husband in leaden coffins distinctly inscribed with their names. A very beautiful Norman chapel was then built to receive thecoffins, and over them is placed the original memorial in black marble. There is also in Lewes an archæological museum appropriately bestowed in an old Gothic tower. All of which things did greatly solace me. As did also the Norman or Gothic churches of Shoreham, Newport, the old manor of Rottingdean, and the marvellous Devil’s Dyke, which was probably a Roman fort, and from which it is said that fifty towns or villages may be seen “far in the blue.”
One day I went with my wife and two ladies to visit the latter. The living curiosity of the place was a famous old gypsy woman named Gentilla Cooper, a pure blood or realKaloratRomany. I had already in America studied Pott’s “Thesaurus of Gypsy Dialects,” and picked up many phrases of the tongue from the works of Borrow, Simson, and others. The old dame tackled us at once. As soon as I could, I whispered in her ear an improvised rhyme:—
“The bashno and kāni,The rye and the rāni,Hav’d akai ’pré o boro lon pāni.”
“The bashno and kāni,The rye and the rāni,Hav’d akai ’pré o boro lon pāni.”
Which means that the cock and the hen, the gentleman and the lady, came hither across the great salt water. The effect on the gypsy was startling; she fairly turned pale. Hustling the ladies away to one side to see a beautiful view, she got me alone and hurriedly exclaimed, “Rya—master!beyou one of our people?” with much more. We became very good friends, and this little incident had in time for me great results, and many strange experiences of gypsy life.
There live in Brighton two ladies, Miss Horace Smith and her sister Rosa, who were and are well known in the cultured world. They are daughters of Horace Smith, who, with his brother James, wrote the “Rejected Addresses.” Their reminiscences of distinguished men are extremely varied and interesting. The elder sister possesses an album to which Thackeray contributed many verses and pen-sketches.Their weekly receptions were very pleasant; at them might be seen most of the literary or social celebrities who came to Brighton. A visit there was like living a chapter in a book of memoirs and reminiscences. I have had, if it be only a quiet, and not very eventful or remarkable, at least a somewhat varied life, and the Laings and Smiths, with their surroundings, form two of its most interesting varieties. I believe they never missed an opportunity to do us or any one a kindly act, to aid us to make congenial friends, or the like. How many good people there really are in the world!
Of these ladies the author of “Gossip of the Century” writes:—
“Horace Smith’s two daughters are still living, and in Brighton. Their very pleasant house is frequented by the best and most interesting kind of society, affording what may be called asalon, that rare relic of ancient literary taste and cementer of literary intimacies—a salon which the cultivated consider it a privilege to frequent, and where these ladies receive with a grace and geniality which their friends know how to appreciate. It is much to be regretted that gatherings of this description seem to be becoming rarer every year, for as death disturbs them society seems to lack the spirit or the good taste, or the ability, to replace them.”
“Horace Smith’s two daughters are still living, and in Brighton. Their very pleasant house is frequented by the best and most interesting kind of society, affording what may be called asalon, that rare relic of ancient literary taste and cementer of literary intimacies—a salon which the cultivated consider it a privilege to frequent, and where these ladies receive with a grace and geniality which their friends know how to appreciate. It is much to be regretted that gatherings of this description seem to be becoming rarer every year, for as death disturbs them society seems to lack the spirit or the good taste, or the ability, to replace them.”
Brighton is a very pleasant place, because it combines the advantages of a seaside resort with those of a clean and cheerful city. Walking along the front, you have a brave outlook to the blue sea on one hand, and elegant shop-windows and fine hotels on the other. A little back in the town on a hill is the fine old fifteenth-century church of St. Nicholas, in which there is perhaps the most curious carved Norman font in England; but all this is known to so few visitors, that I feel as if I were telling a great secret in letting it out. Smith’s book-store on the Western Road, and Bohn’s near the station, are kept by very well-informed and very courteous men. I have been much indebted to the formerin many ways, and found by his aid many a greatly needed and rare work.
When I first went to Brighton there was one evening a brilliant aurora borealis. As I looked at it, I heard an Englishman say, to my great amazement, it was the first time he had ever seen one in his life! I once saw one in America of such extraordinary brilliancy and duration, that it prolonged the daylight for half an hour or more, till I became amazed, and then found it was a Northern Light. It lasted till sunrise in all its splendour. I have taken down from Algonkin Indians several beautiful legends relating to them. In one, the Milky Way is the girdle of a stupendous deity, and the Northern Lights the splendid gleams emitted by his ball when playing. In another, the narrator describes him as clad in an ineffable glory of light, and in colours unknown on earth!
And this reminds me further that I have just read in the newspapers of the death of Edwin Booth, who was born during the famous star shower of 1833, which phenomenon I witnessed from beginning to end, and remember as if it were only yesterday. Now, I was actually dreaming that I was in a room in whichcigarswere flying about in every direction, when my father came and woke me and my brother Henry, to come and see an exceeding great marvel. There were for a long time many thousands of stars at once in the sky, all shooting, as it were, or converging towards a centre. They were not half so long as the meteors which we see; one or two had a crook or bend in the middle,e.g.
The meteor pattern
The next day I was almost alone at school in the glory of having seen it, for so few people were awake in sober Philadelphia at three in the morning that one of the newspapers ridiculed the whole story.
I can distinctly recall that the next day, at Mr. Alcott’s, I read through a very favourite work of mine, a translation of the GermanDas Mährchen ohne Ende—“The Story without an End.”
All kinds of odd fish came to Brighton, floating here and there; but two of the very oddest were encountered by me in it on my last visit. I was looking into a chemist’s window, when two well-dressed and decidedly jolly feminines, one perhaps of thirty years, and the other much younger and quite pretty, paused by me, while the elder asked—
“Are you looking for a hair-restorer?”
“I am not, though I fear I need one much more than you do.”
“The search for a good hair-restorer,” she replied in Italian, “is as vain as the search for happiness.”
“True,” I answered in the same tongue, “and unless you have the happiness in you, or a beautiful head of hair like yours already growing on you, you will find neither.”
“What weforget,” added the younger in Spanish, “is the best part of our happiness.”
“Señorita,parece que no ha olvidado su Español—The young lady appears not to have forgotten her Spanish—I replied. (Mine is not very good.)
“There is no use asking whetheryoutalk French,” said the elder. “Können Sie auch Deutsch sprechen?”
“Ja wohl! Even worse than German itself,” I answered.
Just then there came up to us a gypsy girl whom I knew, with a basket of flowers, and asked me in Gypsy to buy some; but I said, “Parraco pen,jā vrī,mandy kāms kek ruzhia kedívvus”—Thank you, sister, no flowers to-day—and she darted away.
“Did you understandthat?” I inquired.
“No; what was it?”
“Gitano—gypsy.”
“But how in Heaven’s name,” cried the girl, “could sheknowthatyouspoke Gitano?”
“Because I am,” I replied slowly and grimly, “the chief of all the gypsies in England, theboro Romany ryeand President of the Gypsy Society. Subscription one pound per annum, which entitles you to receive the journal for one year,and includes postage. Behold in me the gypsy king, whom all know and fear! I shall be happy to put your names down as subscribers.”
At this appalling announcement, which sounded like an extract from a penny dreadful, my two romantic friends looked absolutely bewildered. They seemed as if they had read in novels how mysterious gypsy chiefs cast aside their cloaks, revealing themselves to astonished maidens, and as I had actually spoken Gitano to a gypsy in their hearing, it must be so. They had come for wool with all their languages, poor little souls! and gone back shorn. The elder said something about their having just come to Brighton for six hours’ frolic, and so they departed. They had had their spree.
I have often wondered what under the sun they could have been. Attachés of an opera company—ladies’-maids who had made the grand tour—who knows? A mad world, my masters!
I can recall of that first year, as of many since at Brighton, long breezy walks on the brow of the chalk cliffs, looking out at the blue sea white capped, or at the downs rolling inland to Newport, sometimes alone, at times in company. On all this chalk the grass does not grow to more than an inch or so in length, and as the shortest, tenderest food is best for sheep, it is on this that they thrive—I believe by millions—yielding the famous South Downs mutton. In or on this grass are incredible numbers of minute snails, which the sheep are said to devour; in fact, I do not see how they could eat the grass without taking them in, and these contribute to give the mutton its delicate flavour. Snails are curious beings. Being epicene, they conduct their wooings on the mutual give and take principle, which would save human beings a great deal of spasmodic flirtation, and abolish the wholefemme incomprisebusiness, besides a great many bad novels, if we could adopt it. When winter comes, half-a-dozen of them retire into a hole in a bank, connect themselves firmly into a loving band like a bunch of grapes by the tenderest ties, andstay there till spring. Finally, in folk-lore the snail is an uncanny or demoniac being, because it has horns. Its shell is an amulet, and the presentation of one by a lady to a gentleman is a very decided declaration of love, especially in Germany.Sed mittamus hæc.
At this time, and for some time to come, I was engaged in collecting and correcting a book of poems of a more serious character than the “Breitmann Ballads.” This was “The Music Lesson of Confucius and other Poems.” Of which book I can say truly that it had asuccès d’estime, though it had a very small sale. There were in it ten or twelve ballads only which were adapted to singing, andallof these were set to music by Carlo Pinsutti, Virginia Gabriel, or others. There was in it a poem entitled “On Mount Meru.” In this the Creator is supposed to show the world when it was first made to Satan. The adversary finds that all is fit and well, save “the being called Man,” who seems to him to be the worst and most incongruous. To which the Demiurgus replies that Man will in the end conquer all things, even the devil himself. And at the last the demon lies dying at the feet of God, and confesses that “Man, thy creature hath vanquished me for ever—Vicisti Galilæe!” Some years after I read a work by a French writer in which this same idea of God and the devil is curiously carried out and illustrated by the history of architecture. And as in the case of the letter from Lord Lytton Bulwer, warm praise from other persons of high rank in the literary world and reviews, I had many proofs that these poems had made a favourable impression. The only exception which I can recall was a very sarcastic review in theAthenæum, in which the writer declared his belief that the poems or Legends of Perfumes in the book were originally written as advertisements of some barber or tradesman, and being by him rejected as worthless, had been thrown back on my hands! Other works by me it treated kindly—so it goes in this world—like a recipe for a cement which I have just copied into my great work on “Mendingand Repairing”—in which vinegar is combined with sugar.
While at Brighton we met Louis Blanc, whom we had previously seen several times at the Trübners’, in London. In Brighton he heard the news of the overthrow of the Empire and departed for Paris. At Christmas we went to London to visit the Trübners, and thence to the Langham Hotel, where we remained till July. I recall very little of what I witnessed or did beyond seeing the Queen prorogue Parliament and translating Scheffel’sGaudeamus, a little volume of German humorous poems. Scheffel, as I have before written, was an oldMitkneipant, or evening-beer companion of mine in Heidelberg.
In July we made up a travelling party with Mrs. S. Laing and her daughters Cecilia and Floy, and departed for a visit to the Rhine—that is to say, these ladies preceded us, and we joined them at the Hotel des Quatre Saisons in Homburg. It was a very brilliant season, for the German Emperor, fresh with the glory of his great victory, was beingfêtedeverywhere, and Homburg the brilliant was not behind the German world in this respect. I saw the great man frequently, near and far, and was much impressed with his appearance.Punchhad not long before represented him as Hans Breitmann in a cartoon, deploring that he had not squeezed more milliards out of the French, and I indeed found in the original very closely my ideal of Hans, who always occurs to me as a German gentleman, who drinks, fights, and plunders, not as a mere rowdy, raised above his natural sphere, but as a rough cavalier. And that the great-bearded giant Emperor Wilhelm did drink heavily, fight hard, and mulct France mightily, is matter of history. This was the last year of the gaming-tables at Homburg. Apropos of these, the roulette-table was placed in the Homburg Museum, where it may be seen amid many Roman relics. Two or three years ago, while I was in the room, there came in a small party of English or Yankee looking or gazing tourists, to whom the attendantpointed out the roulette-table. “And did the old Romans really play at roulette, and wasthatone of their tables?” said the leader of the visitors. This ready simple faith indicates the Englishman. The ordinary American is always possessed with the conviction that everything antique is a forgery. Once when I was examining the old Viking armour in the Museum of Copenhagen, a Yankee, in whose face a general vulgar distrust of all earthly things was strongly marked, came up to me and asked, “Do you believe that all these curiosities airgenooine?” “I certainly do,” I replied. With an intensely self-satisfied air he rejoined, “I guess you can’t foolmewith no such humbug.”
There was a great deal of cholera that year in Germany, and I had a very severe attack of it either in an incipient form or something thereunto allied: suffice it to say that for twelve hours I almost thought I should die of pure pain. I took in vain laudanum, cayenne pepper, brandy, camphor, and kino—nothing would remain. At last, at midnight, when I was beginning to despair, or just as I felt like being wrecked, I succeeded in keeping a little weak laudanum and water on my stomach, and then the point was cleared. After that I took the other remedies, and was soon well. But it was a crisis of such fearful suffering that it all remains vividly impressed on my memory. I do not know whether any sensible book has ever been written on the moral influence of pain, but it is certain that a wonderful one might be. So far as I can understand it, I think that in the vast majority of cases it is an evil, or one of Nature’s innumerable mistakes or divagations, not as yet outgrown or corrected; and it is the great error of Buddhistic-Christianity that itacceptspain not merely as inevitable, but glorifies and increases it, instead of making every conceivable exertion todiminishit. Herein clearly lies the difference between Science and Religion. Science strives in every way to alleviate pain and suffering; erroneous “Religion” is based on it. During the Middle Ages, the Church did all in its power to hinder, if not destroy, thehealing art. It made anatomy of the human body a crime, and carried its precautions so far that, quite till the Reformation, the art of healing (as Paracelsus declares) was chiefly in the hands of witches and public executioners.Torturers, chiefly clergymen such as Grillandus, were in great honour, while the healing leech was disreputable. It was not, as people say, “the age” which caused all this—it was the result of religion based on crucifixion and martyrdoms and pain—in fact, on that element oftorturewhich we are elsewhere taught, most inconsistently, is the special province of the devil in hell. Thecantof this still survives in Longfellow’s “Suffer and be strong,” and in the pious praise of endurance of pain. What the world wants is the hope held out to it, or enforced on it as a religion or conviction, that pain and suffering are to be diminished, and that our chief duty should consist in diminishing them, instead of always praising or worshipping them as a cross!
We left our friends and went for a short time to Switzerland, where we visited Lucerne, Interlaken, Basle, and Berne. Thence we returned to London and the Langham Hotel. This was at that time under the management of Mr. John Sanderson, an American, whom I had known of old. He was a brother of Professor Sanderson, of Philadelphia, who wrote a remarkably clever work entitledThe American in Paris. John Sanderson himself had contributed many articles to Appletons’Cyclopædia, belonged to the New York Century Club, and, like all the members of his family, had culture in music and literary taste. While he managed the Langham it was crowded during all the year, as indeed any decent hotel almost anywhere may be by simple proper liberal management. This is a subject which I have studiedau fond, having readDas Hotel wesen der Gegenwart, a very remarkable work, and passed more than twenty years of my life in hotels in all countries.
I can remember that during the first year of my residence in England I tried to persuade a chemist to import fromSouth America thecocaleaf, of which not an ounce was then consumed in Europe. Weston the walker brought it into fashion “later on.” I had heard extraordinary and authentic accounts of its enabling Indian messengers to run all day from a friend who had employed them. Apropos of this, “I do recall a wondrous pleasant tale.” My cousin, Godfrey Davenport, a son of the Uncle Seth mentioned in my earlier life, owned what was regarded as the model plantation of Louisiana. My brother Henry visited him one winter, and while there was kindly treated by a very genial, hospitable neighbouring planter, whom I afterwards met at my father’s house in Philadelphia. He was a good-looking, finely-formed man, lithe and active as a panther—thereplicaof Albert Pike’s “fine Arkansas gentleman.” And here I would fain disquisit on Pike, but type and time are pressing. Well, this gentleman had one day a difference of opinion with another planter, who was, like himself, a great runner, and drawing his bowie knife, pursued him on the run,twenty-two miles, ere he “got” his victim. The distance was subsequently measured and verified by the admiring neighbours, who put up posts in commemoration of such an unparalleled pedestrian feat.
When I returned to Brighton, after getting into lodgings, I began to employ or amuse myself in novel fashion. Old Gentilla Cooper, the gypsy, had an old brother named Matthias, a full-blood Romany, of whom all his people spoke as being very eccentric and wild, but who had all his life a fancy for picking up the old “Egyptian” tongue. I engaged him to come to me two or three times a week, at half-a-crown a visit, to give me lessons in it. As he had never lived in houses, and, like Regnar Lodbrog, had never slept under a fixed roof, unless when he had taken a nap in a tavern or stable, and finally, as his whole life had been utterly that of a gypsy in the roads, at fairs, or “by wood and wold as outlaws wont to do,” I found him abundantly original and interesting. And as on account of his eccentricity and amusinggifts he had always been welcome in every camp or tent, and was watchful withal and crafty, there was not a phase, hole, or corner of gypsy life or a member of the fraternity with which or whom he was not familiar. I soon learned his jargon, with every kind of gypsy device, dodge, or peculiar custom, and, with the aid of several works, succeeded in drawing from the recesses of his memory an astonishing number of forgotten words. Thus, to begin with, I read to him aloud the Turkish Gypsy Dictionary of Paspati. When he remembered or recognised a word, or it recalled another, I wrote it down. Then I went through the vocabularies of Liebrich, Pott, Simson, &c., and finally through Brice’s Hindustani Dictionary and the great part of a much larger work, and one in Persian. The reader may find most of the results of Matty’s teaching in my work entitled “The English Gypsies and their Language.” Very often I went with my professor to visit the gypsies camped about Brighton, far or near, and certainly never failed to amuse myself and pick up many quaint observations. In due time I passed to that singular state when I could never walk a mile or two in the country anywhere without meeting or making acquaintance with some wanderer on the highways, by use of my newly-acquired knowledge. Thus, I needed only say, “Seen any of the Coopers or Bosvilles lately on the drum?” (road), or “Do you know Sam Smith?” &c., to be recognised as one of the grand army in some fashion. Then it was widely rumoured that the Coopers had got arye, or master, who spoke Romany, and was withal not ungenerous, so that in due time there was hardly a wanderer of gypsy kind in Southern England who had not heard of me. And though there are thousands of people who are more thoroughly versed in Society than I am, I do not think there are many so much at home in such extremelyvariedphases of it as I have been. I have sat in a gypsy camp, like one of them, hearing all their little secrets and talking familiarly in Romany, and an hour after dined with distinguished people; and this life had manyother variations, and they came daily for many years. My gypsy experiences have not been so great as those of Francis H. Groome (once a pupil andprotégéof Benfey), or the Grand Duke Josef of Hungary, or of Dr. Wlislocki, but next after these great masters, and as an all-round gypsy rye in many lands, I believe that I am not far behind anyaficionadowho has as yet manifested himself.
To become intimate, as I did in time, during years in Brighton, off and on, with all the gypsies who roamed the south of England, to be beloved of the old fortune-tellers and the children and mothers as I was, and to be much in tents, involves a great deal of strangely picturesque rural life, night-scenes by firelight, in forests and by river-banks, and marvellously odd reminiscences of other days. There was a gypsy child who knew me so well that the very first words she could speak were “O ’omany ’i” (O Romany rye), to the great delight of her parents.
After a little while I found that theRomanyelement was spread strangely and mysteriously round about among the rural population in many ways. I went one day with Francis H. Groome to Cobham Fair. As I was about to enter a tavern, there stood near by three men whose faces and general appearance had nothing of the gypsy, but as I passed one said to the other so that I could hear—
“Dikk adovo rye,se o Romany rye,yuv,tàcho!” (Look at that gentleman; he is a gypsy gentleman, sure!)
I naturally turned my head hearing this, when he burst out laughing, and said—
“I told you I’d make him look round.”
Once I was startled at hearing a well-dressed, I may say a gentlemanly-looking man, seated in a gig with a fine horse stopping by the road, say, as I passed with my wife—
“Dikk adovo gorgio adoi!” (Look at that Gentile, of no-gypsy!)
Not being accustomed to hear myself called agorgio, I glanced up at him angrily, when he, perceiving that I understoodhim and was of the mysterious brotherhood, smiled, and touched his hat to me. One touch of nature makes the whole world grin.
But the drollest proposal ever made to me in serious earnest came from that indomitable incarnate oldgypssissimus Tsingarorum, Matthew Cooper, who proposed that I should buy a donkey. He knew where to get one for a pound, but £2 10s. would buy a “stunner.” He would borrow a small cart and a tent, and brown my face and hands so that I would be dark enough, and then on thedrum—“over the hills.” As for all the expenses of the journey, I need not spend anything, for he could provide a neat nut-brown maid, who would not only do all our cooking, but earn money enough by fortune-telling to support us all. I would be expected, however, to greatly aid by my superior knowledge of ladies and gentlemen; and so all would go merrily on, with unlimited bread and cheese, bacon and ale, and tobacco—into the blue away!
I regret to say that Matthew expected to inherit the donkey.
About this time, as all my friends went hunting once or twice a week, I determined to do the same. Now, as I had never been a good rider, and had anything but an English seat in the saddle, I went to a riding-school and underwent a thorough course both on the pig-skin and bare-backed. My teacher, Mr. Goodchild, said eventually of me that I was the only person whom he had ever known who had at my time of life learned to ride well. But to do this I gave my whole mind and soul to it; and Goodchild’s standard, and still more that of his riding-master, who had been a captain in a cavalry regiment, was very high. I used to feel quite as if I were a boy again, and one under pretty severe discipline at that, when the Captain was drilling me. For his life he could not treat his pupils otherwise than as recruits. “Sit up straighter, sir! Do you callthatsitting up?That’snot the way to hold your arms! Knees in!Why, sir, when I was learning to ride I was made to put shillings between my knees and the side, and if I dropped oneI forfeited it!”
Then in due time came the meets, and the fox and hare hunting, during which I found my way, I believe, into every village or nook for twenty miles round. By this time I had forgotten all my troubles, mental or physical, and after riding six or seven hours in a soft fog, would come home the picture of health.
I remember that one very cold morning I was riding alone to the meet on a monstrous high black horse which Goodchild had bought specially for me, when I met two gypsy women, full blood, selling wares, among them woollen mittens—just what I wanted, for my hands were almost frozen in Paris kids. The women did not know me, but I knew them by description, and great was the amazement of one when I addressed her by name and in Romany.
“Pen a mandy,Priscilla Cooper,sa buti me sosti del tute for adovo pustini vashtini?” (Tell me, Priscilla Cooper, how much should I give you for those woollen gloves?)
“Eighteen pence, master.” The common price was ninepence.
“I willnotgive you eighteen pence,” I replied.
“Then how muchwillyou give, master?” asked Priscilla.
“Four shillingswill I give, and not a penny less—miri pen—you may take it or leave it.”
I went off with the gloves, while the women roared out blessings in Romany. There was something in the whole style of the gift, or themannerof giving it, which was specially gratifying to gypsies, and the account thereof soon spread far and wide over the roads as a beautiful deed.
The fraternity of the roads is a strange thing. Once when I lived at Walton there was an old gypsy woman named Lizzie Buckland who often camped near us. A good and winsome young lady named Lillie Doering had taken a likingto the old lady, and sent her a nice Christmas present of clothing, tea, &c., which was sent to me to give to the Egyptian mother. But when I went to seek her, she had flown over the hills and far away. It made no difference. I walked on till I met a perfect stranger to me, a woman, but “evidently a traveller.” “Where is old Liz?” I asked. “Somewhere about four miles beyond Moulsey.” “I’ve got a present for her; are you going that way?” “Not exactly, but I’ll take it to her; a few miles don’t signify.” I learned that it had gone from hand to hand and been safely delivered. It seems a strange way to deliver valuables, to walk forth and give them to the first tramp whom you meet; but I knew my people.
I may here say that during this and the previous winter I had practised wood-carving. In which, as in studying Gypsy, I had certain ultimate aims, which were fully developed in later years. I have several times observed in this record that when I get an idea I cherish it, think it over, and work it up. Out of this wood-carving andrepousséand the designing which it involved I in time developed ideas which led to what I may fairly call a great result.
We remained at Brighton until February, when we went to London and stayed at the Langham Hotel. Then began the London life of visits, dinners, and for me, as usual, of literary work. In those days I began to meet and know Professor E. H. Palmer, Walter Besant, Walter H. Pollock, and many other men of the time of whom I shall anon have more to say. I arranged with Mr. Trübner as to the publication of “The English Gypsies.” I think it was at this time that I dined one evening at Sir Charles Dilke’s, where a droll incident took place. There was present a small Frenchman, to whom I had not been introduced, and whose name therefore I did not know. After dinner in the smoking-room I turned over with this gentleman a very curious collection of the works of Blake, which were new to him. Finding that he evidently knew something about art, I explained to him thatBlake was a very strange visionary—that he believed that the spirits of the dead appeared to him, and that he took their portraits.
“C’était donc un fou,” remarked the Frenchman.
“Non, Monsieur,” I replied, “he was not a madman. He was almost a genius. Indeed,c’était un Doré manqué” (he was all but a Doré).
There was a roar of laughter from all around, and I, innocently supposing that I had said something clever unawares, laughed too.
After all had departed, and I was smoking alone with Sir Charles, he said—
“Well, what did you think of Doré?”
“Doré!” I replied astonished, “why, I never saw Doré in all my life.”