An American Girl Abroad
by Adeline Trafton · English · Gutenberg #32289 · 426,206 chars · public domain (US)
The Project Gutenberg eBook of An American Girl Abroad
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.
Title: An American Girl Abroad
Author: Adeline Trafton
Illustrator: Lizbeth Bullock Humphrey
Release date: May 8, 2010 [eBook #32289]
Most recently updated: January 6, 2021
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/32289
Credits: Produced by Emmy, Tor Martin Kristiansen and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AN AMERICAN GIRL ABROAD ***
Produced by Emmy, Tor Martin Kristiansen and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive)
[Illustration: "At night we descended into the depths of the steamer to
worship with the steerage passengers." Page 23]
AN
AMERICAN GIRL ABROAD.
BY
ADELINE TRAFTON.
_ILLUSTRATED_
_BY MISS L. B. HUMPHREY._
BOSTON:
LEE AND SHEPARD, PUBLISHERS.
NEW YORK:
LEE, SHEPARD AND DILLINGHAM.
Entered, according to the Act of Congress, in the year 1872,
BY LEE AND SHEPARD,
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.
Electrotyped at the Boston Stereotype Foundry,
No. 19 Spring Lane.
I DEDICATE
This Record of Pleasant Days
TO MY FATHER,
REV. MARK TRAFTON.
BOOKS FOR "OUR GIRLS."
THE GIRLHOOD SERIES.
By Popular Authors.
* * * * *
AN AMERICAN GIRL ABROAD.
By ADELINE F. TRAFTON. 16mo, cloth, illustrated. $1.50.
One of the most bright, chatty, wide-awake books of travel ever written.
It abounds in information, is as pleasant reading as a story book, and
full of the wit and sparkle of "An American Girl" let loose from school
and ready for a frolic.
ONLY GIRLS.
By VIRGINIA F. TOWNSEND, Author of "That Queer Girl," &c., &c. 12mo,
cloth, illustrated. $1.50.
"It is a thrilling story, written in a fascinating style, and the plot
is adroitly handled."
It might be placed in any Sabbath School library, so pure is it in tone,
and yet it is so free from the mawkishness and silliness that mar the
class of books usually found there, that the veteran novel reader is apt
to finish it at a sitting.
THE DOCTOR'S DAUGHTER.
By SOPHIE MAY, Author of "Our Helen," "The Asbury Twins," &c. 12mo,
cloth, illustrated. $1.50.
"A delightful book, original and enjoyable," says the _Brownville Echo_.
"A fascinating story, unfolding, with artistic touch, the young life of
one of our impulsive, sharp-witted, transparent and pure-minded girls of
the nineteenth century," says _The Contributor_, Boston.
SALLY WILLIAMS.
=The Mountain Girl.= By Mrs. EDNA D. CHENEY, Author of "Patience,"
"Social Games," "The Child of the Tide," &c. 12mo, cloth, illustrated.
$1.50.
Pure, strong, healthy, just what might be expected from the pen of so
gifted a writer as Mrs. Cheney. A very interesting picture of life among
the New Hampshire hills, enlivened by the tangle of a story of the ups
and downs of every-day life in this out-of-the-way locality. The
characters introduced are quaintly original, and the adventures are
narrated with remarkable skill.
LOTTIE EAMES.
=Or, do your best and leave the rest.= By a Popular Author. 16mo, illus.
$1.50.
"A wholesome story of home life, full of lessons of self-sacrifice, but
always bright and attractive in its varied incidents."
RHODA THORNTON'S GIRLHOOD.
By Mrs. MARY E. PRATT. 16mo, cloth, illustrated. $1.50.
A hearty and healthy story, dealing with young folks and home scenes,
with sleighing, fishing and other frolics to make things lively.
_The above six volumes are furnished in a handsome box, for $9.00, or
sold separately by all booksellers, or sent by mail, postpaid, on
receipt of price by_
LEE AND SHEPARD, Publishers, Boston.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
PAGE
I.
"At night we descended into the depths of the steamer
to worship with the steerage passengers." FRONTISPIECE.
II.
"A dozen umbrellas were tipped up; the rain fell
fast upon a dozen upturned, expectant faces." 57
III.
"At the word of command they struck the most
extraordinary attitudes." 157
IV.
"Frowsy, sleepy, cross, and caring nothing
whatever for the sun, moon, or stars, we stood
like a company of Bedlamites, ankle deep in
the wet grass upon the summit." 176
V.
"Evidently the little old woman is going a
journey." 196
VI.
"Together we stared at him with rigid and severe
countenances." 240
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
ABOARD THE STEAMER.
We two alone.--"Good by."--"Are you the captain of this
ship?"--Wretchedness.--The jolly Englishman and the
Yankee.--A sail!--The Cattle-man.--The Jersey-man
whose bark was on the sea.--Church services under
difficulties.--The sweet young English face.--Down
into the depths to worship.--"Beware! I stand by
the parson."--Singing to the fishes.--Green Erin.--One
long cheer.--Farewell, Ireland. 13
CHAPTER II.
FIRST DAYS IN ENGLAND.
Up the harbor of Liverpool.--We all emerge as
butterflies.--The Mersey tender.--Lot's
wife.--"Any tobacco?"--"Names, please."--St.
George's Hall.--The fashionable promenade.--The
coffee-room.--The military man who showed the
purple tide of war in his face.--The railway
carriage.--The young man with hair all
aflame.--English villages.--London.--No place
for us.--The H. house.--The Babes in the
Wood.--The party from the country.--We are taken
in charge by the Good Man.--The Golden
Cross.--Solitary confinement.--Mrs. B.'s at last. 27
CHAPTER III.
EXCURSIONS FROM LONDON.
Strange ways.--"The bears that went over to
Charlestown."--The delights of a runaway without
its dangers.--Flower show at the Crystal
Palace.--Whit-Monday at Hampton Court.--A queen
baby.--"But the carpets?"--Poor Nell Gwynne.--Vandyck
faces.--Royal beds.--Lunch at the King's Arms.--O
Music, how many murders have been committed in thy
name!--Queen Victoria's home at Windsor.--A new
"house that Jack built."--The Round Tower.--Stoke
Pogis.--Frogmore.--The Knights of the Garter.--The
queen's gallery.--The queen's plate.--The royal
mews.--The wicker baby-wagons.--The state equipages. 43
CHAPTER IV.
SIGHT-SEEING IN LONDON.
The Tower.--The tall Yankee of inquiring mind.--Our
guide in gorgeous array.--War trophies.--Knights
in armor.--A professional joke.--The crown
jewels.--The room where the little princes were
smothered.--The "Traitor's Gate."--The Houses of
Parliament.--What a throne is like.--The
"woolsack."--The Peeping Gallery for
ladies.--Westminster Hall and the law courts.--The
three drowsy old women.--The Great Panjandrum
himself.--Johnson and the pump.--St.
Paul's.--Wellington's funeral car.--The Whispering
Gallery.--The bell. 55
CHAPTER V.
AWAY TO PARIS.
The wedding party.--The canals.--New Haven.--Around
the tea-table.--Separating the sheep from the
goats.--"Will it be a rough passage?"--Gymnastic
feats of the little steamer.--O, what were officers
to us?--"Who ever invented earrings?"--Dieppe.--
Fish-wives.--Train for Paris.--Fellow-passengers.--
Rouen.--Babel.--Deliverance. 68
CHAPTER VI.
THE PARIS OF 1869.
The devil.--Cathedrals and churches.--The Louvre.--Modern
French art.--The Beauvais clock, with its droll, little
puppets.--Virtue in a red gown.--The Luxembourg
Palace.--The yawning statue of Marshal Ney.--Gay life
by gas-light.--The Imperial Circus.--The Opera.--How
the emperor and empress rode through the streets after
the riots.--The beautiful Spanish woman whose face was
her fortune.--Napoleon's tomb. 76
CHAPTER VII.
SIGHTS IN THE BEAUTIFUL CITY.
The Gobelin tapestry.--How and where it is made.--Père
La-Chaise.--Poor Rachel!--The baby establishment.--"Now
I lay me."--The little mother.--The old woman who lived
in a shoe.--The American chapel.--Beautiful women and
children.--The last conference meeting.--"I'm a
proof-reader, I am." 90
CHAPTER VIII.
SHOW PLACES IN THE SUBURBS OF PARIS.
The river omnibuses.--Sèvres and its porcelain.--St.
Cloud as it was.--The crooked little town.--
Versailles.--Eugenie's "spare bedroom."--The queen
who played she was a farmer's wife.--Seven miles of
paintings.--The portraits of the presidents. 100
CHAPTER IX.
A VISIT TO BRUSSELS.
To Brussels.--The old and new city.--The paradise and
purgatory of dogs.--The Hôtel de Ville and Grand
Place.--St. Gudule.--The picture galleries.--Wiertz
and his odd paintings.--Brussels lace and an hour
with the lace-makers.--How the girls found Charlotte
Brontë's school.--The scene of "Villette." 109
CHAPTER X.
WATERLOO AND THROUGH BELGIUM.
To Waterloo.--Beggars and guides.--The Mound.--Chateau
Hougomont.--Victor Hugo's "sunken road."--Antwerp.--A
visit to the cathedral.--A drive about the city.--An
excursion to Ghent.--The funeral services in the
cathedral.--"Poisoned? Ah, poor man!"--The
watch-tower.--The Friday-market square.--The
nunnery.--Longfellow's pilgrims to "the belfry of
Bruges." 122
CHAPTER XI.
A TRIP THROUGH HOLLAND.
Up the Meuse to Rotterdam.--Dutch sights and
ways.--The pretty milk-carriers.--The
tea-gardens.--Preparations for the Sabbath.--An
English chapel.--"The Lord's barn."--From Rotterdam
to the Hague.--The queen's "House in the
Wood."--Pictures in private drawing-rooms.--The
bazaar.--An evening in a Dutch tea-garden.--Amsterdam
to a stranger.--The "sights."--The Jews' quarter.--The
family whose home was upon the canals.--Out of the
city.--The pilgrims. 134
CHAPTER XII.
THE RHINE AND RHENISH PRUSSIA.
First glimpse of the Rhine.--Cologne and the
Cathedral.--"Shosef in ter red coat."--St. Ursula
and the eleven thousand virgins.--Up the Rhine to
Bonn.--The German students.--Rolandseck.--A search
for a resting-place.--Our Dutch friend and his
Malays.--The story of Hildegund.--A quiet Sabbath.--
Our Dutch friend's reply.--Coblentz.--The bridge of
boats.--Ehrenbreitstein, over the river.--A scorching
day upon the Rhine.--Romance under difficulties.--
Mayence.--Frankfort.--Heidelberg.--The ruined
castle.--Baden-Baden.--A glimpse at the gambling.--The
new and the old "Schloss."--The Black Forest.--
Strasbourg.--The mountains. 147
CHAPTER XIII.
DAYS IN SWITZERLAND.
The Lake of Lucerne.--Days of rest in the city.--An
excursion up the Righi.--The crowd at the summit.--
Dinner at midnight.--Rising before "the early
worm."--The "sun-rise" according to Murray.--Animated
scarecrows.--Off for a tour through Switzerland.--The
lake for the last time.--Grütlii.--William Tell's
chapel.--Fluellen.--Altorf.--Swiss haymakers.--An hour
at Amsteg.--The rocks close in.--The Devil's Bridge.--
The dangerous road.--"A carriage has gone over the
precipice!"--Andermatt.--Desolate rocks.--Exquisite
wild flowers.--The summit of the Furka.--A descent to
the Rhone glacier.--Into the ice.--Swiss villages.--
Brieg.--The convent inn.--The bare little chapel on the
hill.--To Martigny. 168
CHAPTER XIV.
AMONG THE EVERLASTING HILLS.
The quaint inn.--The Falls of the Sallenches, and the
Gorge de Trient.--Shopping in a Swiss village.--A
mule ride to Chamouni.--Peculiarities of the
animals.--Entrance to the village.--Egyptian mummies
lifted from the mules.--Rainy days.--Chamois.--The
Mer de Glace.--"Look out of your window."--Mont
Blanc.--Sallenches.--A diligence ride to Geneva.--Our
little old woman.--The clownish peasant.--The fork in
the road.--"Adieu." 189
CHAPTER XV.
LAST DAYS IN SWITZERLAND.
Geneva.--Calvin and jewelry.--Up Lake Leman.--Ouchy and
Lausanne.--"Sweet Clarens."--Chillon.--Freyburg.--
Sight-seers.--The Last Judgment.--Berne and its
bears.--The town like a story.--The Lake of Thun.--
Interlaken.--Over the Wengern Alp.--The Falls of
Giessbach.--The Brunig Pass.--Lucerne again. 201
CHAPTER XVI.
BACK TO PARIS ALONE.
Coming home.--The breaking up of the party.--We start
for Paris alone.--Basle, and a search for a hotel.--
The twilight ride.--The shopkeeper whose wits had
gone "a wool-gathering."--"Two tickets for Paris."--
What can be the matter now?--Michel Angelo's Moses.--
Paris at midnight.--The kind _commissionaire_.--The
good French gentleman and his fussy little wife.--A
search for Miss H.'s.--"Come up, come up."--"Can women
travel through Europe alone?" A word about a woman's
outfit. 220
AN
AMERICAN GIRL ABROAD.
CHAPTER I.
ABOARD THE STEAMER.
We two alone.--"Good by."--"Are you the captain of
this ship?"--Wretchedness.--The jolly Englishman
and the Yankee.--A sail!--The cattle-man.--The
Jersey-man whose bark was on the sea.--Church
services under difficulties.--The sweet young
English face.--Down into the depths to
worship.--"Beware! I stand by the
Parson."--Singing to the fishes.--Green Erin.--One
long cheer.--Farewell Ireland.
WE were going to Europe, Mrs. K. and I--alone, with the exception of the
ship's company--unprotected, save by Him who watches over the least of
his creatures. We packed our one trunk, upon which both name and
nationality were conspicuously blazoned, with the necessaries, not
luxuries, of a woman's toilet, and made our simple preparations for
departure without a shadow of anxiety. "They who know nothing, fear
nothing," said the paterfamilias, but added his consent and blessing.
The rain poured in torrents as we drove down to the wharf. But floods
could not have dampened our enthusiasm. A wild Irishman, with a
suggestion of spirituous things in his air and general appearance,
received us at the foot of the plank, one end of which touched earth,
the other that unexplored region, the steamer. We followed the direction
of his dirty finger, and there fell from our eyes, as it were, scales.
In our ignorance, we had expected to find vast space, elegant
surroundings, glass, glare, and glitter. We peered into the contracted
quarters of the ladies' cabin. One side was filled with boxes and
bundles; the other, with the prostrate form of an old lady, her head
enveloped in a mammoth ruffle. We explored the saloon. The purser, with
a wen and a gilt-banded cap on his head, was flying about like one
distracted. An old gentleman similarly attired, with the exception of
the wen,--the surgeon as we afterwards learned,--read a large book
complacently in one corner, murmuring gently to himself. His upper teeth
lacked fixity, so to speak; and as they fell with every word, he had the
appearance of gnashing them continually at the invisible author. There
was a hurrying to and fro of round, fresh-faced stewards in short
jackets, a pushing and pulling of trunks and boxes, the sudden
appearance and disappearance of nondescript individuals in slouched hats
and water-proofs, the stirring about of heavy feet upon the deck above,
the rattling of chains, the 'yo-ing' of hoarse voices, as the sailors
pulled at the ropes, and, with it all, that sickening odor of oil, of
dead dinners--of everything, so indescribable, so never-to-be-forgotten.
Somewhat saddened, and considerably enlightened upon the subject of
ocean steamers, we sought our state-room. It boasted two berths (the
upper conveniently gained by mounting the stationary wash-stand), and a
velvet-covered sofa beneath the large, square window, which last we
learned, months later, when reduced to a port-hole for light and air, to
appreciate. A rack and half a dozen hooks against the wall completed its
furniture.
The time of departure arrived. We said the two little words that bring
so many tears and heartaches, and ran up on the deck with the rain in
our faces, and something that was not all rain in our eyes, for one last
look at our friends; but they were hidden from sight. There comes to me
a dim recollection of attempting to mount to an inaccessible place: of
clinging to wet ropes with the intention of seeing the last of the land;
of thinking it, after a time, a senseless proceeding, and of resigning
ourselves finally to our berths and inevitable circumstances. Eight
bells and the dinner bell; some one darkened our doorway.
"What's this? Don't give it up so. D'ye hear the dinner bell?"
"Are--are you the captain of this ship?" gasped Mrs. K., feebly, from
the sofa.
"To be sure, madam. Don't give it up so."
Mrs. K. groaned. There came to me one last gleam of hope. What if it
were possible to brave it out! In a moment my feet were on the floor,
but whether my name were McGregor, or not, I could not tell. I made an
abortive attempt after the pretty hood, prepared with such pleasant
anticipations, and had a dim consciousness that somebody's hands tied it
about my head. Then we started. We climbed heights, we descended depths
indescribable, in that short walk to the saloon, and there was a queer
feeling of having a windmill, instead of a head, upon my shoulders. A
number of sympathizing faces were nodding in the most remarkable manner,
as we reached the door, and the tables performed antic evolutions.
"Take me back!" and the berth and the little round stewardess received
me. There followed a night of misery. One can form no idea, save from
experience, of the horrors of the first night upon an ocean steamer.
There are the whir, and buzz, and jar, and rattle, and bang of the screw
and engine; the pitching and rolling of the ship, with the sensation of
standing upright for a moment, and then of being made to rest
comfortably upon the top of your head; the sense of undergoing internal
somersaults, to say nothing of describing every known curve externally.
You study physiology involuntarily, and doubt if your heart, your lungs,
or indeed any of your internal organs, are firmly attached, after all;
if you shall not lose them at the next lurch of the ship. Your head is
burning with fever, your hands and feet like ice, and you feel dimly,
but wretchedly, that this is but the beginning of sorrows; that there
are a dozen more days to come. You are conscious of a vague wonder (as
the night lengthens out interminably) what eternity _can_ be, since time
is so long. The bells strike the half hours, tormenting you with
calculations which amount to nothing. Everything within the room, as
well as without, swings, and rolls, and rattles. You are confident your
bottles in the rack will go next, and don't much care if they do, though
you lie and dread the crash. You are tormented with thirst, and the
ice-water is in that same rack, just beyond your reach. The candle in
its silver case, hinged against the wall, swings back and forth with
dizzy motion, throwing moving distorted shadows over everything, and
making the night like a sickly day. You long for darkness, and, when at
last the light grows dim, until only a red spark remains and the smoke
that adds its mite to your misery, long for its return. At regular
intervals you hear the tramp, tramp, overhead, of the relieving watch;
and, in the midst of fitful slumbers, the hoarse voices of the sailors,
as the wind freshens and they hoist the sails, wake you from frightful
dreams. At the first gray dawn of light come the swash of water and the
trickling down of the stream against your window, with the sound of the
holy-stones pushed back and forth upon the deck. And with the light--O,
blessed light!--came to us a dawn of better things.
There followed days when we lay contented upon the narrow sofa, or
within the contracted berths, but when to lift our heads was woe. A kind
of negative blessedness--absence from misery. We felt as if we had lost
our heart, our conscience, and almost our immortal soul, to quote Mark
Twain. There remained to us only those principles and prejudices most
firmly rooted and grounded. Even our personal vanity left us at last,
and nothing could be more forsaken and appropriate than the plain green
gown with its one row of military buttons, attired in which, day after
day, I idly watched the faces that passed our door. "That's like you
Americans," said our handsome young Irish doctor, pointing to these same
buttons. "You can't leave your country without taking the spread-eagle
with you!"
Our officers, with this one exception, were English. Our captain, a
living representative of the traditional English sailor. Not young, save
in heart; simple, unaffected, and frank in manner, but with a natural
dignity that prevented undue familiarity, he sang about the ship from
morning till night, with a voice that could carry no air correctly, but
with an enjoyment delightful to witness--always a song suggested by
existing circumstances, but with
"Cheer, boys, cheer; my mother's sold her mangle,"
when everything else failed. He was forward among the men on the deck
with an eye to the wind, down below bringing fruit and comfort to the
sick in the steerage, dealing out apples and oranges to the children,
with an encouraging word and the first line of a song for everybody.
The life of the ship was an Englishman, with the fresh complexion almost
invariably seen upon Englishmen, and forty years upon a head that looked
twenty-five. He was going home after a short tour through the United
States, with his mind as full of prejudices as his memorandum-book was
of notes. He chanced, oddly enough, to room with the genuine Yankee of
the company--a long, lean, good-natured individual from one of the
eastern states, "close on ter Varmont," who had a way of rolling his
eyes fearfully, especially when he glared at his food. He represented a
mowing machine company, and we called him "the Mowing Machine Man." He
accosted us one day, sidling up to our door, with, "How d'ye do to-day?"
"Better, thank you," I replied from the sofa.
"That's real nice. Tell ye what, we'll be glad to see the ladies out.
How's yer mar?" nodding towards the berth from which twinkled Mrs. K.'s
eyes. I laughed, and explained that our relations were of affection
rather than consanguinity. His interest increased when he found we were
travelling alone. He gave us his London address, evidently considering
us in the light of Daniels about to enter the lions' den. "Ef ye have
any trouble," said he, as he wrote down the street and number, "there's
one Yankee'll stand up for ye." He amused the Englishman by calling out,
"Hullo. D'ye feel _good_ this morning?" "No," would be the reply, with a
burst of laughter; "I feel awful wicked; think I'll go right out and
kill somebody."
There was a shout one morning, "A sail! See the stars and stripes!" I
had not raised my head for days, but staggered across the floor at that,
and clinging to the frame, thrust my head out of the window. Yes, there
was a ship close by, with the stars and stripes floating from the
mast-head, I found, when the roll of the steamer carried my window to
its level. "Seems good ter see the old rag!" I looked up to find the
Mowing Machine Man gazing upon it with eyes all afloat. "I'd been a
thinking," said he, "all them fellers have got somebody waiting for 'em
over there,"--our passengers were mostly English,--"but there wasn't
nobody a waiting for me. Tell ye what,"--and he shook out the folds of a
red and yellow handkerchief,--"it does my heart good ter see the old
flag." There was a bond of sympathy between us from that moment.
We had another and less agreeable specimen of this free people--a tall,
tough western cattle dealer, who quarrelled if he could find an
antagonist, swore occasionally, drank liquor, and chewed tobacco
perpetually, wore his trousers tucked into his long boots, his hands
tucked into his pockets, and, to crown these attributes, believed in
Andrew Johnson!--a middle-aged man, with soft, curling brown hair above
a face that could be cruelly cold and hard. His hair should have been
wire; his blue eyes were steel. But hard as was his face, it softened
and smoothed itself a little at sight of the sick women. He paused
beside us one day with a rough attempt to interest and amuse by
displaying a knife case containing a dozen different articles. "This is
ter take a stun out of a hoss's huf, and this, d'ye see, is a
tooth-pick;" putting it to immediate use by way of explanation. At the
table he talked long and loud upon the rinderpest, and other kindred and
appetizing topics. "I've been a butcher myself," he would say. "I've cut
up hundreds o' critters. What part of an ox, now, d'ye think that was
taken from?" pointing to the joint before him, and addressing a refined,
delicate-faced old gentleman across the table, who only stared in silent
horror.
But even the "Cattle Man" was less marked in his peculiarities than the
"Jersey Man," a melancholy-eyed, curly-wigged individual from the Jersey
shore, who wore his slouched hat upon one side of his head, and looked
as though he were doing the rakish lover in some fifth-rate theatre; who
was "in the musical line myself; Smith and Jones's organs, you know;
that's me;" and who, being neither Smith nor Jones, we naturally
concluded must be the organ. He recited poetry in a loud tone at
daybreak, and discussed politics for hours together, arguing in the most
satisfactory manner with the principles, and standing most willingly
upon the platform, of everybody. He assumed a patronizing air towards
the Mowing Machine Man. "Well, you _are_ a green Yankee," he would say;
"lucky for you that you fell in with me;" to which the latter only
chuckled, "That's so." He had much to tell of himself, of his
grandmother, and of his friends generally, who came to see him off;
"felt awfully, too," which we could hardly credit; rolled out snatches
of sentimental songs, iterating and reiterating that his bark was on the
sea,--and a most disagreeable one we found it; wished we had a piano on
board, to which we murmured, "The Lord forbid;" and hoped we should soon
be well enough to join him in the "White Squall." He was constantly
reminding us that we were a very happy family party, so "congenial," and
evidently agreed with the Mowing Machine Man, who said, "They're the
best set of fellows I ever see. They'll tell ye anything."
We numbered a clergyman among us, of course. "Always a head wind when
there's a parson aboard," say the sailors. So this poor dyspeptic little
man bore the blame of our constant adverse winds. Nothing more bigoted,
more fanatical than his religious belief could be imagined. You read the
terrors of the Lord in his eye; and yet he won respect, and something
more, by his consistency and zeal. Earnestness will tell. "The parson
will have great influence over the Cattle Man," the captain said,
Sabbath morning, as we were walking the deck. "The Cattle Man?" "Yes,
the parson will get a good hold of him." Just then, as if to prove the
old proverb true, that his satanic majesty is always in the immediate
neighborhood when his character is under discussion, the Cattle Man and
Jersey came up the companion-way. "If you please, captain," said the
former, "we are a committee to ask if the parson may preach to the
steerage people to-night." "Certainly," was the reply; "I will attend
myself." They thanked him, and went below, leaving me utterly amazed.
They were the last men upon the ship whom one would have selected as a
committee upon spiritual things!
The church service for the cabin passengers was held in the saloon. A
velvet cushion upon one end of the long table constituted the pulpit,
before which the minister stood, holding fast to the rack on either
side, and bracing himself against the captain's chair in the rear. Even
then he made, involuntarily, more bows than any ritualist, and the
scripture, "What went ye out for to see? A reed shaken by the wind?"
would present itself. The sailors in their neat dress filed in and
ranged themselves in one corner. The stewards gathered about the door,
one, with face like an owl, most conspicuous. The passengers filled
their usual seats, and a delegation from the steerage crept shyly into
the unoccupied space--women with shawls over their heads and babies in
their arms, shock-headed men and toddling children, but all with an
evident attempt at appropriate dress and manner. Among them was one
sweet young English face beneath an old crape bonnet. A pair of shapely
hands, which the shabby black gloves could not disguise, held fast a
little child. Widowhood and want in the old world; what was waiting her
in the new? The captain read the service, and all the people responded.
The women's eyes grew wet at the sound of the familiar words. The little
English widow bent her face over the head of the child in her lap, and
something glistened in its hair. Our sympathies grew wide, and we joined
in the prayer for the queen, that she might have victory over her
enemies, and even murmured a response to the petition for Albert Edward
and the nobility, dimly conscious that they needed prayers. The good
captain added a petition for the president of the United States, to
which the Mowing Machine Man and I said, "Amen." Then the minister,
having poised himself carefully, read a discourse, sulphurous but
sincere; the Mowing Machine Man thrusting his elbow into my side in a
most startling manner at every particularly blue point. We were
evidently in sympathy; but I could have dispensed with the expression of
it. We closed with the doxology, standing upon our feet and swaying back
and forth as though it had been a Shaker chant, led by an improvised
choir and the Jersey Man.
At night we descended into the depths of the steamer to worship with the
steerage passengers. It was like one of Rembrandt's pictures--the
darkness, the wild, strangely-attired people, the weird light from the
lanterns piercing the gloom, and bringing out group after group with
fearful distinctness; the pale, earnest face of the preacher, made
almost unearthly by the glare of the yellow light--a face with its
thin-drawn lips, its eyes like coals of fire such as the flames of
martyrdom lit once, I imagine. Close beside him stood the Cattle Man,
towering like Saul above the people, and with an air that plainly said,
"Beware--I stand by the parson."
"There is a land of pure delight,"
repeated the minister; and in a moment the words rolled out of the
Cattle Man's mouth while he beckoned with his long arm for the people to
rise. Throwing back his head, he sang with an unction indescribable,
verse after verse, caught doubtless at some western camp-meeting, where
he had tormented the saints. One after another took up the strain. Clear
and strong came the tones from every dark corner, until, like one mighty
voice, while the steamer rolled and the waves dashed against its sides,
rose the words
"Not Jordan's stream, nor death's cold flood,
Shall fright us from that shore."
A great stillness fell upon the people as the minister gave out his
text, and began his discourse. He had lacked freedom in the saloon, but
here he forgot everything save the words given him; hard words they
seemed to me, containing little of the love of God. I glanced at the
Mowing Machine Man, who had made a seat of half a barrel under the
stairs. He winked in a fearful manner, as though he would say, "Just see
how he's a goin' on!" But the people received it gladly. One after
another of the sailors crept down the stairs and stood in the shadow. I
watched them curiously. It may be that this stern, hard doctrine suited
these stern, hard men. It made me shudder.
But the record of all these days would have no end. How can I tell of
the long, happy hours, when more than strength, when perfect
exhilaration, came to us; when existence alone was a delight? To sit
upon the low wheel-house, with wraps and ribbons and hair flying in the
wind, while we sang,--
"O, a life on the ocean wave!"
to admiring fishes; to watch the long, lazy swell of the sea, or the
spray breaking from the tops of the white caps into tiny rainbows; to
walk the rolling deck for hours with never a shadow of weariness; to
cling to the flag-staff when the stern of the ship rose in the air then
dropped like a heavy stone into the sea, sending the spray far over and
above us; to count the stars at night, watching the other gleaming
phosphorescent stars that seemed to have fallen from heaven upon the
long wake of the steamer,--all this was a delight unspeakable.
One morning, when the land seemed a forgotten dream, we awoke to find
green Erin close beside us. All the day before the sea-gulls had been
hovering over us--beautiful creatures, gray above and white beneath,
clouds with a silver lining. Tiny land birds, too, flew about us,
resting wearily upon the rigging. The sea all at once became like glass.
It seemed like the book of Revelation when the sun shone on it,--the sea
of glass mingled with fire. For a time the land was but a line of rock,
with martello towers perched upon the points. On the right, Fastnet Rock
rose out of the sea, crowned with a light-house; then the gray barren
shore of Cape Clear Island, and soon the sharp-pointed Stag Rocks. It is
a treacherous coast. "I've been here many a night," said the captain, as
he gave us his glass, "when I never expected to see morning." And all
the while he was speaking, the sea smiled and smiled, as though it could
never be cruel.
We drew nearer and nearer, until we could see the green fields bounded
by stone walls, the white, winding roads, and little villages nestling
among the hills. Towards noon the lovely harbor of Queenstown opened
before us, surrounded and almost shut in by rocky islands. Through the
glass we could see the city, with its feet in the bay. We were no longer
alone. The horizon was dotted with sails. Sometimes a steamer crossed
our wake, or a ship bore down upon us. We hoisted our signals. We dipped
our flag. The sailors were busy painting the boats, and polishing the
brass till it shone again. Now the tender steams out from Queenstown.
The steerage passengers in unwonted finery, tall hats and unearthly
bonnets, and one in a black silk gown, are running about forward,
shaking hands, gathering up boxes and bundles, and pressing towards the
side which the tender has reached. There are the shouting of orders, the
throwing of a rope, and in a moment they are crowding the plank. One
long cheer, echoed from the stern of our steamer, and they are off.
All day we walked the deck; even the sick crawled up at last to see the
panorama. We still lingered when night fell, and we had turned away from
the land to strike across the channel, and the picture rests with me
now; the purple sky with one long stretch of purple, hazy cloud, behind
which the sun went down; the long, low line of purple rock, our last
glimpse of Ireland, and the shining, purple sea, with not a ripple upon
its surface.
CHAPTER II.
FIRST DAYS IN ENGLAND.
Up the harbor of Liverpool.--We all emerge as
butterflies.--The Mersey tender.--Lot's
wife.--"Any tobacco?"--"Names, please."--St.
George's Hall.--The fashionable promenade.--The
coffee-room.--The military man who showed the
purple tide of war in his face.--The railway
carriage.--The young man with hair all
aflame.--English villages.--London.--No place for
us.--The H. house.--The Babes in the Wood.--The
party from the country.--We are taken in charge by
the Good Man.--The Golden Cross.--Solitary
confinement.--Mrs. B.'s at last.
WE steamed up the harbor of Liverpool the next morning. New Brighton,
with its green terraces, its Chinese-pagoda villas, spread out upon one
side, upon the other that solid wall of docks, the barricade that breaks
the constant charges of the sea, with the masts of ships from every land
for an abattis. The wraps and shapeless garments worn so long were laid
aside; the pretty hood which had, like charity, covered so many sins of
omission, hidden, itself, at last, the soft wool stiffened with the sea
spray, the bright colors dimmed by smoke, and soot, and burning sun. We
crept shyly upon the deck in our unaccustomed finery, as though called
at a moment's notice to play another woman's part, half-learned. Not in
us alone was the transformation. The girl in blue had blossomed into a
bell--a blue bell. The Cattle Man, his hands released at last from the
thraldom of his pockets, stalked about, funereal, in wrinkled black. A
solferino neck-tie and tall hat of a pie-Adamite formation
transmogrified our Mowing Machine friend. Nondescripts, that had lain
about the deck wrapped in cocoons of rugs and shawls, emerged
suddenly--butterflies! A painful courtesy seized us all. We had doffed
the old familiar intercourse with our sea-garments. We gathered in
knots, or stood apart singly, mindful at last of our dignity.
The Mersey tender (a tender mercy to some) puffed out to meet us, and we
descended the plank as those who turn away from home, leaving much of
our thoughts, and something of our hearts, within the ship. It had been
such a place of rest, of blessed idleness! Only when our feet touched
the wharf did we take up the burden of life again. There were the
meeting of friends, in which we had no part; the maelstrom of horses,
and carts, and struggling humanity, in which we found a most unwilling
place; and then we followed fast in the footsteps of the Mowing Machine
Man, who in his turn followed a hair-covered trunk upon the shoulders of
a stout porter, our destination the custom-house shed close by. For a
moment, as we were tossed hither and thither by the swaying mass, our
desires followed our thoughts to a certain sheltered nook, upon a still,
white deck, with the sunbeams slanting down through the furled sails
above, with the lazy, lapping sea below, and only our own idle thoughts
for company. Then we remembered Lot's wife.
There was a little meek-faced custom-house officer in waiting, with a
voice so out of proportion to his size, that he seemed to have hired it
for the occasion, or come into it with his uniform by virtue of his
office. "Any tobacco?" he asked, severely, as we lifted the lid of our
one trunk. We gave a virtuous and indignant negative. That was all. We
might go our several ways now unmolested. One fervent expression of good
wishes among our little company, while we make for a moment a network of
clasped hands, and then we pass out of the great gates into our new
world, and into the clutches of the waiting cabmen. By what stroke of
good fortune we and our belongings were consigned to one and the same
cab, in the confusion and terror of the moment, we did not know at the
time. It was clearly through the intervention of a kind
fellow-passenger, who, seeing that amazement enveloped us like a
garment, kindly took us in charge. The dazed, as well as the lame and
lazy, are cared for, it seems. By what stroke of good fortune we ever
reached our destination, we knew still less. Our cab was a triumph of
impossibilities, uncertainties, and discomfort. Our attenuated beast,
like an animated hoop skirt, whose bones were only prevented, by the
encasing skin, from flying off as we turned the corners, experienced
hardly less difficulty in drawing his breath than in drawing his load.
We descended at the entrance to the hotel as those who have escaped from
imminent peril. We mounted the steps--two lone, but by no means lorn,
damsels, two anxious, but by no means aimless females, knowing little of
the world, less of travelling, and nothing whatever of foreign ways.
Our very air, as we entered the door, was an apology for the intrusion.
"Names, please," said the smiling man in waiting, opening what appeared
to be the book of fate. We added ours to the long list of pilgrims and
strangers who had sojourned here, dotting our i's and crossing our t's
in the most elegant manner imaginable. If any one has a doubt as to our
early advantages, let him examine the record of the Washington Hotel,
Liverpool. The heading, "Remarks," upon the page, puzzled us. Were they
to be of a sacred or profane nature? Of an autobiographical character?
Were they to refer to the dear land we had just left? Through some
political throes she had just brought forth a ruler. Should we add to
the U. S. against our names, "As well as could be expected"? We
hesitated,--and wrote nothing. Up the wide stairs, past the transparency
of Washington--in the bluest of blue coats, the yellowest of top boots,
and an air of making the best of an unsought and rather ridiculous
position--we followed the doily upon the head of the pretty chambermaid
to our wide, comfortable room, with its formidable, high-curtained beds.
The satchels and parcels innumerable were propped carefully into
rectitude upon the dressing table, under the impression that the ship
would give a lurch; and then, gazing out through the great plate glass
windows upon the busy square below, we endeavored to compose our
perturbed minds and gather our scattered wits.
It is not beautiful, this great city of Liverpool, creeping up from the
sea. It has little to interest a stranger aside from its magnificent
docks and warehouses. There are mammoth truck horses from Suffolk, with
feet like cart wheels; there is St. George's Hall, the pride of the
people, standing in the busy square of the same name, with a statue of
the saint himself--a terror to all dragons--just before it. It is gray,
many columned, wide stepped, vast in its proportions. Do you care for
its measurement? Having seen that, you are ready to depart; and, indeed,
there is nothing to detain one here beyond a day of rest, a moment to
regain composure after the tossing of the sea. There are some
substantial dwellings,--for commerce has its kings,--and some fine
shops,--for commerce also has its queens,--and one fine drive, of which
we learned too late. The air of endurance, which pervades the whole
city, as it does all cities in the old world, impresses one greatly, as
though they were built for eternity, not time; the founders having
forgotten that here we are to have no continuing city. In the new world,
man tears down and builds up. Every generation moulds and fashions its
towns and cities after its own desires, or to suit its own means. Man is
master. In the old world, one generation after another surges in and out
of these grim, gray walls, leaving not so much as the mark the waves
leave upon the rocks. Unchanged, unchanging, they stand age after age,
time only softening the hard outlines, deepening the shadows it has cast
upon them, and so bringing them into a likeness of each other that they
seem to have been the design of one mind, the work of one pair of hands,
and hardly of mortal mind or hands at that. They seem to say to man, "We
have stood here ages before you were born. We shall stand here ages
after you are forgotten." They must be filled with echoes, with ghosts,
and haunting memories.
Bold Street, a tolerably narrow and winding way, in which many are found
to walk,--contrary to all precedent,--boasts the finest shops. Here the
Lancashire witches, as the beauties of the county are called, walk, and
talk, and buy gewgaws of an afternoon. It was something strange to us to
see long silken skirts entirely destitute of crinoline, ruffle, or
flounce, trailed here through mud and mire, or raised displaying low
Congress gaiters, destitute of heels. For ourselves, if we had been the
king of the Cannibal Islands, we could hardly have attracted more
attention than we did in our plain, short travelling suits and
high-heeled boots. It grew embarrassing, especially when our expression
of unqualified benevolence drew after us a train of beggars. They
crossed the street to meet us. They emerged from every side street and
alley, thrusting dirty hands into our faces, and repeating twice-told
tales in our ears, until we were thankful when oblivion and the shadow
of the hotel fell upon us.
We dined in the coffee-room,--that comfortable and often delightfully
cosy apartment fitted with little tables, and with its corner devoted to
books, to papers and conversation,--that combination of dining, tea and
reading-room unknown to an American hotel,--sacred to the sterner sex
from all time, and only opened to us within a few years,--the gates
being forced then, I imagine, by American women, who will not consent to
hide their light under a bushel, or keep to some faraway corner,
unseeing and unseen. English women, as a rule, take their meals in
their own private parlors. Perhaps because English men generally desire
the flowers intrusted to their fostering care to blush unseen. It may be
better for the gardeners; it may be better for the flowers--I cannot
tell; but we dined in the coffee-room, as Americans usually do. One of
the _clergymen_, who attend at such places, received our order. It was
not so very formidable an affair, after all, this going down by
ourselves; or would not have been, if the big-eyed waiter, who watched
our every movement, would have left us, and the military man at the next
table, who showed "the purple tide of war," or something else, in his
face, and blew his nose like a trombone, ceased to stare. As it was, we
aired our most elegant table manners. We turned in our elbows and turned
out our toes,--so to speak,--and ate our mutton with a grace that
destroyed all appetite. We tried to appear as though we had frequently
dined in the presence of a whole battalion of soldiery, under the
scrutiny of innumerable waiters,--and failed, I am sure. "With verdure
clad" was written upon every line of our faces. The occasion of this
cross fire we do not know to this day. Was it unbounded admiration? Was
it spoons?
Having brushed off the spray of the sea, having balanced ourselves upon
the solid earth, having seen St. George's Hall, there was nothing to
detain us longer, and the next morning we were on our way to London. We
had scrutinized our bill,--which might have been reckoned in pounds,
ounces, and penny-weights, for aught we knew to the contrary,--and
informed the big-eyed waiter that it was correct. We had also offered
him imploringly our largest piece of silver, which he condescended to
accept; and having been presented with a ticket and a handful of silver
and copper by the porter who accompanied us to the station across the
way, in return for two or three gold pieces, we shook off the dust of
Liverpool from our feet, turned our eyes from the splendors of St.
George's Hall, and set our faces steadfastly towards our destination.
There was a kind of luxury, notwithstanding our prejudices, in this
English railway carriage, with its cushions all about us, even beneath
our elbows; a restfulness unknown in past experience of travel, in the
ability to turn our eyes away from the flying landscape without, to the
peaceful quiet, never intruded upon, within. We did not miss the woman
who will insist upon closing the window behind you, or opening it, as
the case may be. Not one regret had we for the "B-o-s-t-o-n papers!" nor
for the last periodical or novel. The latest fashion gazette was not
thrown into our lap only to be snatched away, as we became interested in
a plan for rejuvenating our wardrobe; nor were we assailed by venders of
pop corn, apples, or gift packages of candy. Even the blind man, with
his offering of execrable poetry, was unknown, and the conductor
examined our tickets from outside the window. Settling back among our
cushions, while we mentally enumerated these blessings of omission,
there came a thought of the perils incurred by solitary females locked
into these same comfortable carriages with madmen. If the danger had
been so great for one solitary female, what must it be for two, we
thought with horror. We gave a quick glance at our fellow-passenger, a
young man with hair all aflame. Certainly his eyes did roll at that
moment, but it was only in search of a newsboy; and when he exclaimed,
like any American gentleman, "Hang the boy!" we became perfectly
reassured. He proved a most agreeable travelling companion. We exchanged
questions and opinions upon every subject of mutual interest, from the
geological formation of the earth to the Alabama claims. I can hardly
tell which astonished us most, his profound erudition or our own. Now, I
have not the least idea as to whether Lord John Russell sailed the
Alabama, or the Alabama sailed of itself, spontaneously; but, whichever
way it was, I am convinced it was a most iniquitous proceeding, and so
thought it safe to take high moral ground, and assure him that as a
nation we could not allow it to go unpunished. You have no idea what an
assistance it is, when one is somewhat ignorant and a good deal at a
loss for arguments, to take high moral ground.
When we were weary of discussion, when knowledge palled upon our taste,
we pulled aside the little blue curtain, and gave ourselves up to gazing
upon the picture from the window. I doubt if any part of England is
looked upon with more curious eyes than that lying between Liverpool and
London. It is to so many Americans the first glimpse of strange lands.
Spread out in almost imperceptible furrows were the velvet turfed
meadows, the unclipped hedges a mass of tangled greenness between. For
miles and miles they stretched away, with seldom a road, never a
solitary house. The banks on either side were tufted with broom and
yellow with gorse; the hill-sides in the distance, white with chalk, or
black with the heather that would blossom into purple beauty with the
summer. We rushed beneath arches festooned, as for a gala-day, with
hanging vines. Tiny gardens bloomed beside the track at every station,
and all along the walls, the arched bridges, and every bit of stone upon
the wayside, was a mass of clinging, glistening ivy. Not the half-dead,
straggling thing we tend and shield so carefully at home, with here and
there a leaf put forth for very shame. These, bright, clear-cut,
deep-tinted, crowded and overlapped each other, and ran riot over the
land, transforming the dingy, mildewy cottages, bits of imperishable
ugliness, into things of beauty, if not eternal joys. Not in the least
picturesque or pleasing to the eye were these English villages;
straggling rows of dull red brick houses set amidst the fields--dirty
city children upon a picnic--with a foot square garden before each door,
cared for possibly, possibly neglected. A row of flower-pots upon the
stone ledge of every little window, a row of chimney-pots upon the slate
roof of every dwelling. Sometimes a narrow road twisted and writhed
itself from one to another, edged by high brick walls, hidden beneath a
weight of ivy; sometimes romantic lanes, shaded by old elms, and green
beyond all telling. The towns were much the same,--outgrown villages.
And the glimpse we caught, as we flew by, so far above the roofs often
that we could almost peep down upon the hearths through the chimney
tops, was by no means inviting.
Dusk fell upon us with the smoke, and mist, and drizzling rain of
London, bringing no anxiety; for was there not, through the
thoughtfulness of friends, a place prepared for us? Our pleasant
acquaintance of the golden locks forsook his own boxes, and bundles, and
innumerable belongings to look for our baggage, and saw us safely
consigned to one of the dingy cabs in waiting. I trust the people of our
own country repay to wanderers there something of the kindness which
American women, travelling alone, receive at the hands of strangers
abroad. It was neither the first nor the last courtesy proffered most
respectfully, and received in the spirit in which it was offered. There
is a deal of nonsense in the touch-me-not air with which many go out to
see the world, as there is a deal of folly in the opposite extreme. But
these acquaintances of a day, the opportunity of coming face to face
with the people in whose country you chance to be, of hearing and
answering their strange questions in regard to our government, our
manners and customs, as well as in displaying our own ignorance in
regard to their institutions, in giving information and assistance when
it is in our power, and in gratefully receiving the same from
others,--all this constitutes one of the greatest pleasures of
journeying.
Our peace of mind received a rude shock, when, after rattling over the
pavings around the little park in Queen's Square, and pulling the bell
at Mr. B.'s boarding-house, we found that we were indeed expected, but
indefinitely, and no place awaited us. We had forgotten to telegraph. It
was May, the London season, and the hotels full. "X. told us you were
coming," said the most lady-like landlady, leading us into the
drawing-room from the dank darkness of the street. There was a glow of
red-hot coals in the grate, a suggestion of warmth and comfort in the
bright colors and cosy appointments of the room--but no place for us.
"I'm very sorry; if you had telegraphed--but we can take you by Monday
certainly," she said. I counted my fingers. Two days. Ah! but we might
perish in the streets before that. Everything began to grow dark and
doleful in contemplation. Some one entered the room. The landlady turned
to him: "O, here is the good man to whose care you were consigned by X."
We gave a sigh of relief, as we greeted the Good Man, for all our
courage, like the immortal Bob Acres's, had been oozing from our finger
ends. And if we possess one gift above another, it is an ability to be
taken care of. "Do you know X.?" asked another gentleman, glancing up
from his writing at the long, red-covered table. "We travelled with
him," nodding towards his daughter, whose feet touched the fender,
"through Italy, last winter." "Indeed--"
"I'll just send out to a hotel near by," interrupted kind Mrs. B., "and
see if you can be accommodated a day or two." How very bright the room
became! The world was not hollow, after all, nor our dolls stuffed with
sawdust. Even the cabman's rattle at the knocker, and demand of an extra
sixpence for waiting, could not disturb our serenity. The messenger
returned. Yes; we could be taken in (?) at the H. house; and accepting
Mrs. B.'s invitation to return and spend the evening, we mounted to our
places in the little cab, as though it had been a triumphal car, and
were whizzed around the corner at an alarming pace by the impatient
cabman.
I should be sorry to prejudice any one against the H. house--which I
might perhaps say is not the H. house at all; I hardly like to compare
it to a whited sepulchre, though that simile did occur to my mind. Very
fair in its exterior it was, with much plate glass, and ground glass,
and gilding of letters, and shining of brass. It had been two
dwelling-houses; it was now one select family hotel. But the two
dwelling-houses had never been completely merged into one; never
married, but joined, like the Siamese twins. There was a confusing
double stairway; having ascended the right one, you were morally certain
to descend the wrong. There was a confusing double hall, with doors in
every direction opening everywhere but upon the way you desired to go.
We mounted to the top of the house, followed by two porters with our
luggage, one chambermaid with the key, another to ask if we would dine,
and two more bearing large tin cans of hot water. We grew confused, and
gasped, "We--we believe we don't care for any more at present, thank
you," and so dismissed them all. The furniture was so out of proportion
to the room that I think it must have been introduced in an infant
state, and grown to its present proportions there. The one window was so
high that we were obliged to jump up to look out over the mirror upon
the bureau--a gymnastic feat we did not care to repeat. The bed curtains
were gray; indeed there was a gray chill through the whole place. We sat
down to hold a council of war. We resolved ourselves into a committee of
ways and means, our feet upon the cans of hot water. "Pleasant," I said,
as a leading remark, my heart beginning to warm under the influence of
the hot water. "Pleasant?" repeated Mrs. K.; "it's enough to make one
homesick. We can't stay here." "But," I interposed, "suppose we leave
here, and can't get in anywhere else?" A vision of the Babes in the Wood
rose before me. There was a rap at the door; the fourth chambermaid, to
announce dinner. We finished our consultation hurriedly, and descended
to the parlor, where we were to dine. It was a small room, already
occupied by a large table and a party from the country; an old lady to
play propriety, a middle-aged person of severe countenance to act it,
and a pair of incipient and insipid lovers. He was a spectacled prig in
a white necktie, a clergyman, I suppose, though he looked amazingly like
a waiter, and she a little round combination of dimples and giggle.
_He._ "Have you been out for a walk this morning?"
_She._ "No; te-he-he-he."
_He._ "You ought to, you know."
_She._ "Te-he-he-he--yes."
_He._ "You should always exercise before dinner."
_She._ "Te-he-he-he."
Here the words gave out entirely, and, it being remarkably droll, all
joined in the chorus. "We must go somewhere else, if possible," we
explained to Mrs. B., when, a little later, we found our way to her
door. "At least we shall be better contented if we make the attempt."
The Good Man offered his protection; we found a cab, and proceeded to
explore the city, asking admittance in vain at one hotel after another,
until at last the Golden Cross upon the Strand, more charitable than
its neighbor, or less full, opened its doors, and the good landlady, of
unbounded proportions, made us both welcome and comfortable. Quite
palatial did our neat bed-room, draped in white, appear. We were the
proud possessors, also, of a parlor, with a round mirror over the
mantel, a round table in the centre, a sofa, of which Pharaoh's heart is
no comparison as regards hardness, a row of stiff, proper arm-chairs,
and any amount of ornamentation in the way of works of art upon the
walls, and shining snuffers and candlesticks upon the mantel. Our
bargain completed, there remained nothing to be done but to remove our
baggage from the other house, which I am sure we could never have
attempted alone. Think of walking in and addressing the landlady, while
the chambermaids and waiters peeped from behind the doors, with, "We
don't like your house, madam. Your rooms are tucked up, your beds
uninviting, your chambermaids frowsy, your waiters stupid, and your
little parlor an abomination." How could we have done it? The Good Man
volunteered. "But do you not mind?" "Not in the least." Is it not
wonderful? How can we believe in the equality of the sexes? In less than
an hour we were temporarily settled in our new quarters, our rescued
trunks consigned to the little bed-room, our heart-felt gratitude in the
possession of the Good Man.
We took our meals now in our own parlor, trying the solitary confinement
system of the English during our two days' stay. It seemed a month. Not
a sign of life was there, save the landlady's pleasant face behind the
bar and the waiter who answered our bell, with the exception of a pair
of mammoth shoes before the next door, mornings, and the bearded face
of a man that startled us, once, upon the stairs. And yet the house was
full. It was a relief when our two days of banishment Mere over, when in
Mrs. B.'s pretty drawing-room, and around her table, we could again meet
friends, and realize that we were still in the world.
CHAPTER III.
EXCURSIONS FROM LONDON.
Strange ways.--"The bears that went over to
Charlestown."--The delights of a runaway without
its dangers.--Flower show at the Crystal
Palace.--Whit-Monday at Hampton Court.--A queen
baby.--"But the carpets?"--Poor Nell
Gwynne.--Vandyck faces.--Royal beds.--Lunch at the
King's Arms.--O Music, how many murders have been
committed in thy name!--Queen Victoria's home at
Windsor.--A new "house that Jack built."--The
Round Tower.--Stoke Pogis.--Frogmore.--The Knights
of the Garter.--The queen's gallery.--The queen's
plate.--The royal mews.--The wicker
baby-wagons.--The state equipages.
WE bought an umbrella,--every one buys an umbrella who goes to
London,--and this, in its alpaca glory, became our constant companion.
We purchased a guide-book to complete our equipments; but so
disreputable, so yellow-covered, was its outward appearance, so
suggestive of everything but facts, that we consigned it to oblivion,
and put ourselves under the guidance of our Boston friends, the Good Man
and his family.
For two busy weeks we rattled over the flat pavings of the city in the
low, one-horse cabs. We climbed towers, we descended into crypts, we
examined tombstones, we gazed upon mummies. Everything was new,
strange, and wonderful, even to the little boys in the street, who, as
well as the omnibus drivers, were decked out in tall silk hats--a piece
of absurdity in one case, and extravagance in the other, to our minds.
The one-horse carriages rolled about upon two wheels; the occupants,
like cross children, facing in every direction but the one they were
going, and everybody, contrary to all our preconceived ideas of law and
order, turned to the left, instead of to the right,--to say nothing of
other strange and perplexing ways that came under our observation. We
had come abroad upon the same errand as the bears who "went over to
Charlestown to see what they could see," and so stared into every
window, into every passing face, as though we were seeking the lost. We
became known as the women who wanted a cab; our appearance within the
iron posts that guard the entrance to Queen's Square from Southampton
Row being the signal for a perfect Babel of unintelligible shouts and
gesticulations down the long line of waiting vehicles, with the charging
down upon us of the first half dozen in a highly dangerous manner.
Wisdom is sometimes the growth of days; and we soon learned to dart out
in an unexpected moment, utterly deaf and blind to everything and
everybody but the first man and the first horse, and thus to go off in
triumph.
But if our exit was triumphant, what was our entry to the square, when
weary, faint with seeing, hearing, and trying in vain to fix everything
seen and heard in our minds, we returned in a hansom! English ladies do
not much affect this mode of conveyance, but American women abroad
have, or take, a wide margin in matters of mere conventionality,--and so
ride in hansom cabs at will. They are grown-up baby perambulators upon
two wheels; the driver sitting up behind, where the handle would be, and
drawing the reins of interminable length over the top of the vehicle.
Picture it in your mind, and then wonder, as I did, what power of
attraction keeps the horse upon the ground; what prevents his flying
into the air when the driver settles down into his seat. A pair of low,
folding doors take the place of a lap robe; you dash through the street
at an alarming rate without any visible guide, experiencing all the
delights of a runaway without any of its dangers.
FLOWER SHOW AT THE CRYSTAL PALACE.
A ride by rail of half an hour takes one to Sydenham. It is a charming
walk from the station through the tastefully arranged grounds, with
their shrubberies, roseries, and fountains, along the pebble-strewn
paths, crowded this day with visitors. The palace itself is so like its
familiar pictures as to need no description. Much of the grandeur of its
vast proportions within is lost by its divisions and subdivisions. There
are courts representing the various nations of the earth,--America, as
usual, felicitously and truthfully shown up by a pair of scantily
attired savages under a palm tree; there are the courts of the Alhambra,
of Nineveh, and of Pompeii; there are fountains, and statues, and
bazaars innumerable, where one may purchase almost anything as a
souvenir; there are cafés where one may refresh the body, and an immense
concert hall where one may delight the soul,--and how much more I
cannot tell, for the crowd was almost beyond belief, and a much more
interesting study than Egyptian remains, or even the exquisite mass of
perfumed bloom, that made the air like summer, and the whole place a
garden. They were of the English middle class, the upper middle class,
bordering upon the nobility,--these rotund, fine-looking gentlemen in
white vests and irreproachable broadcloth, these stout, red-faced,
richly-attired ladies, with their soft-eyed, angular daughters following
in their train, or clinging to their arms. We listened for an hour to
the queen's own band in scarlet and gold, and then came back to town,
meeting train after train filled to overflowing with expensively arrayed
humanity in white kids, going out for the evening.
A DAY AT HAMPTON COURT.
It was Whit-Monday,--the workingman's holiday,--a day of sun and shower;
but we took our turn upon the outside of the private omnibus chartered
for the occasion, unmindful of the drops; our propelling power, six gray
horses. By virtue of this private establishment we were free to pass
through Hyde Park,--that breathing-place of aristocracy, where no public
vehicle, no servant without livery, is tolerated. It was early, and only
the countless hoof-prints upon Rotten Row suggested the crowd of wealth
and fashion that would throng here later in the day. One solitary
equestrian there was; perched upon a guarded saddle, held in her place
by some concealed band, serenely content, rode a queen baby in long,
white robes. A groom led the little pony. She looked at us in grave
wonder as we dashed by,--born to the purple! I cannot begin to describe
to you the rising up of London for this day of pleasure; the decking of
itself out in holiday attire; the garnishing of itself with paper
flowers; the smooth, hard roads leading into the country, all alive; the
drinking, noisy crowd about the door of every pot-house along the way.
It was a delightful drive of a dozen or more miles, through the most
charming suburbs imaginable,--past lawns, and gardens, and green old
trees shading miniature parks; past "detached" villas that had blossomed
into windows; indeed, the plate glass upon houses of most modest
pretension was almost reckless extravagance in our eyes, forgetting, as
we did, the slight duty to be paid here upon what is, with us, an
expensive luxury. No wonder the English are a healthful people,--the sun
shines upon them. I like their manner of house-building, of home-making.
They set up first a great bay-window, with a room behind it, which is of
secondary importance, with wide steps leading up to a door at the side.
They fill this window with the rarest, rosiest, most rollicksome
flowers. Then, if there remain time, and space, and means, other rooms
are added, the bay-windows increasing in direct proportion; while
shades, drawn shades, are a thing unknown. "But the carpets?" They are
so foolish as to value health above carpets.
It was high noon when we rolled up the wide avenue of Bushey Park, with
its double border of gigantic chestnuts and limes, through Richmond
Park, with its vast sweep of greensward flecked with the sunbeams,
dripping like the rain through the royal oaks, past Richmond terrace,
with its fine residences looking out upon the Thames, the translucent
stream, pure and beautiful here, before going down to the city to be
defiled--like many a life. We dismounted at the gates to the palace, in
the rambling old village that clings to its skirts, and joined the crowd
passing through its wide portals.
It is an old palace thrown aside, given over to poor relatives, by
royalty,--as we throw aside an old gown; a vast pile of dingy, red brick
that has straggled over acres of Hampton parish, and is kept within
bounds by a high wall of the same ugly material. It has pushed itself up
into towers and turrets, with pinnacles and spires rising from its
battlemented walls. It has thrust itself out into oriel and queer little
latticed windows that peep into the gardens and overhang the three
quadrangles, and is with its vast gardens and park, with its wide canal
and avenues of green old trees, the most delightfully ugly, old place
imaginable. Here kings and queens have lived and loved, suffered and
died, from Cardinal Wolsey's time down to the days of Queen Anne. It is
now one of England's show places; one portion of its vast extent, with
the grounds, being thrown open to the public, the remainder given to
decayed nobility, or wandering, homeless representatives of royalty,--a
kind of royal almshouse, in fact. A curtained window, the flutter of a
white hand, were to us the only signs of inhabitation.
Through thirty or more narrow, dark, bare rooms,--bare but for the
pictures that crowded the walls,--we wandered. There were two or three
halls of stately proportions finely decorated with frescoes by Verrio,
and one or two royal stairways, up and down which slippered feet have
passed, silken skirts trailed, and heavy hearts been carried, in days
gone by. The pictures are mostly portraits of brave men and lovely
women, of kings and queens and royal favorites,--poor Nell Gwynne among
them, who began life by selling oranges in a theatre, and ended it by
selling virtue in a palace. The Vandyck faces are wonderfully beautiful.
They gaze upon you through a mist, a golden haze,--like that which hangs
over the hills in the Indian summer,--from out deep, spiritual eyes; a
dream of fair women they are.
There were one or two royal beds, where uneasy have lain the heads that
wore a crown, and half a dozen chairs worked in tapestry by royal
fingers,--whether preserved for their questionable beauty, or because of
the rarity of royal industry, I do not know. We wandered through the
shrubberies, paid a penny to see the largest grape vine in the
world,--and wished we had given it to the heathen, so like its less
distinguished sisters did the vine appear,--and at last lunched at the
King's Arms, a queer little inn just outside the gates, edging our way
with some difficulty through the noisy, guzzling crowd around the
door--the crowd that, having reached the acme of the day's felicity, was
fast degenerating into a quarrel. In the long, bare room at the head of
the narrow, winding stairs, we found comparative quiet. The tables were
covered with joints of beef, with loaves of bread, pitchers of ale, and
the ubiquitous cheese. A red-faced young man in tight new clothes--like
a strait-jacket--occupied one end of our table with his blushing
sweetheart. A band of wandering harpers harped upon their harps to the
crowd of wrangling men and blowsy women in the open court below;
strangely out of tune were the harps, out of time the measure, according
well with the spirit of the hour. A loud-voiced girl decked out in
tawdry finery, with face like solid brass, sang "Annie Laurie" in hard,
metallic tones,--O Music, how many murders have been committed in thy
name!--then passed a cup for pennies, with many a jest and rude, bold
laugh. We were glad when the day was done,--glad when we had turned away
from it all.
QUEEN VICTORIA'S HOME AT WINDSOR.
The castle itself is a huge, battlemented structure of gray stone,--a
fortress as well as a palace,--with a home park of five hundred acres,
the private grounds of Mrs. Guelph, and, beyond that, a grand park of
eighteen hundred acres. But do not imagine that she lives here with only
her children and servants about her,--this kindly German widow, whose
throne was once in the hearts of her people. Royalty is a complicated
affair,--a wheel within a wheel,--and reminds us of nothing so much as
"the house that Jack built."
This is the Castle of Windsor.
This is the queen that lives in the Castle of Windsor.
These are the ladies that 'tend on the queen that lives in the Castle of
Windsor.
These are the pages that bow to the ladies that 'tend on the queen that
lives in the Castle of Windsor.
These are the lackeys that wait on the pages that bow to the ladies that
'tend on the queen that lives in the Castle of Windsor.
These are the soldiers, tried and sworn, that guard the crown from the
unicorn, that stand by the lackeys that wait on the pages that bow to
the ladies that 'tend on the queen that lives in the Castle of Windsor.
These are the "military knights" forlorn, founded by Edward before you
were born, that outrank the soldiers, tried and sworn, that guard the
crown from the unicorn, that stand by the lackeys that wait on the pages
that bow to the ladies that 'tend on the queen that lives in the Castle
of Windsor.
These are the knights that the garter have worn, with armorial banners
tattered and torn, that look down on the military knights forlorn,
founded by Edward before you were born, that outrank the soldiers, tried
and sworn, that guard the crown from the unicorn, that stand by the
lackeys that wait on the pages that bow to the ladies that 'tend on the
queen that lives in the Castle of Windsor.
This is the dean, all shaven and shorn, with the canons and clerks that
doze in the morn, that install the knights that the garter have worn,
with armorial banners tattered and torn, that look down on the military
knights forlorn, founded by Edward before you were born, that outrank
the soldiers, tried and sworn, that guard the crown from the unicorn,
that stand by the lackeys that wait on the pages that bow to the ladies
that 'tend on the queen that lives in the Castle of Windsor.
And so on. The train within the castle walls that follows the queen is
endless.
We passed through the great, grand, state apartments, refurnished at the
time of the marriage of the Prince of Wales, for the use of the Danish
family. We mounted to the battlements of the Round Tower by the hundred
steps, the grim cannon gazing down upon us from the top. Half a dozen
visitors were already there, gathered as closely as possible about the
angular guide, listening to his geography lesson, and looking off upon
the wonderful panorama of park, and wood, and winding river. Away to the
right rose the spire of Stoke Pogis Church, where the curfew still
"tolls the knell of parting day." To the left, in the great park below,
lay Frogmore, where sleeps Prince Albert the Good. Eton College, too,
peeped out from among the trees, its gardens touching the Thames, and in
the distance,--beyond the sleeping villages tucked in among the
trees,--the shadowy blue hills held up the sky.
St. George's Chapel is in the quadrangle below. It is the chapel of the
Knights of the Garter. And now, when you read of the chapels, or
churches, or cathedrals in the old world,--and they are all in a sense
alike,--pray don't imagine a New England meeting-house with a double row
of stiff pews and a choir in the gallery singing "Antioch"! The body of
the chapel was a great, bare space, with tablets and elaborate monuments
against the walls. Opening from this were alcoves,--also called
chapels,--each one containing the tombs and monuments of some family. As
many of the inscriptions are dated centuries back, you can imagine they
are often quaintly expressed. One old knight, who died in Catholic
times, desired an open Breviary to remain always in the niche before his
tomb, that passers might read to their comfort, and say for him an
orison. Of course this would never do in the days when the chapel fell
into Protestant hands. A Bible was substituted, chained into its place;
but the old inscription, cut deep in the stone, still remains, beginning
"Who leyde thys book here?" with a startling appropriateness of which
the author never dreamed. Over another of these chapels is rudely cut an
ox, an N, and a bow,--the owner having, in an antic manner, hardly
befitting the place, thus written his name--Oxenbow.
You enter the choir, where the installations take place, by steps,
passing under the organ. In the chancel is a fine memorial window to
Prince Albert. On either side are the stalls or seats for the knights,
with the armorial banner of each hanging over his place. Projecting over
the chancel, upon one side, is what appears to be a bay-window. This is
the queen's gallery, a little room with blue silk hangings,--for blue is
the color worn by Knights of the Garter,--where she sits during the
service. Through these curtains she looked down upon the marriage of the
Prince of Wales. Think of being thus put away from everybody, as though
one were plague-stricken. A private station awaits her when she steps
from the train at the castle gates. A private room is attached to the
green-houses, to the riding-school in the park, and even to the private
chapel. A private photograph-room, for the taking of the royal pictures,
adjoins her apartments. It must be a fine thing to be a queen,--and so
tiresome! Even the gold spoon in one's mouth could not offset the
weariness of it all, and of gold spoons she has an unbounded supply;
from ten to fifteen millions of dollars worth of gold plate for her
majesty's table being guarded within the castle! Think of it, little
women who set up house-keeping with half a dozen silver teaspoons and a
salt-spoon!
We waited before a great gate until the striking of some forgotten hour,
to visit the royal mews. You may walk through all these stables in
slippers and in your daintiest gown, without fear. A stiff young man in
black--a cross between an undertaker and an incipient clergyman in
manner--acted as guide. Other parties, led by other stiff young men,
followed or crossed our path. There were stalls and stalls, upon either
side, in room after room,--for one could not think of calling them
stables,--filled by sleek bays for carriage or saddle. And the
ponies!--the dear little shaggy browns, with sweeping tails, and
wonderful eyes peeping out from beneath moppy manes, the milk-white,
tiny steeds, with hair like softest silk,--they won our hearts. Curled
up on the back of one, fast asleep, lay a Maltese kitten; the "royal
mew" some one called it. The carriages were all plain and dark, for the
ordinary use of the court. In one corner a prim row of little yellow,
wicker, baby-wagons attracted our attention, like those used by the
poorest mother in the land. In these the royal babies have taken their
first airings.
The state equipages we saw another day at Buckingham Palace,--the
cream-colored horses, the carriages and harnesses all crimson and gold.
There they stand, weeks and months together, waiting for an occasion.
The effect upon a fine day, under favoring auspices,--the sun shining,
the bands playing, the crowd of gazers, the prancing horses, the gilded
chariots,--must almost equal the triumphal entry of a first class circus
into a New England town!
CHAPTER IV.
SIGHT-SEEING IN LONDON.
The Tower.--The tall Yankee of inquiring
mind.--Our guide in gorgeous array.--War
trophies.--Knights in armor.--A professional
joke.--The crown jewels.--The house where the
little princes were smothered.--The "Traitor's
Gate."--The Houses of Parliament.--What a throne
is like.--The "woolsack."--The Peeping Gallery for
ladies.--Westminster Hall and the law courts.--The
three drowsy old women.--The Great Panjandrum
himself.--Johnson and the pump.--St.
Paul's.--Wellington's funeral car.--The Whispering
Gallery.--The bell.
THE TOWER.
IT is not a tower at all, as we reckon towers, you must know, but a
walled town upon the banks of the Thames, in the very heart of London.
Hundreds of years ago, when what is now this great city was only moor
and marsh, the Romans built here--a castle, perhaps. Only a bit of
crumbling wall, of mouldering pavement, remain to tell the story. When
the Normans came in to possess the land, William the Conqueror erected
upon this spot a square fortress, with towers rising from its four
corners. Every succeeding monarch added a castle, a tower, a moat, to
strengthen its strength and extend its limits, until, in time, it
covered twelve acres of land, as it does to this day. Here the kings
and queens of England lived in comfortless state, until the time of
Queen Elizabeth, having need to be hedged about with something more than
royalty to insure safety. Times have changed; swords have been beaten
into ploughshares; and where the moat once encircled the tower wall,
flowers blossom now. The dungeons that for centuries held prisoners of
state do not confine any one to-day; and the strongholds that guarded
the person of England's sovereign keep in safety now the jewels and the
crown. There are round towers, and square towers, and, for anything I
know, three-cornered towers, each with its own history of horrors. There
are windows from which people were thrown, bridges over which they were
dragged, and dark holes in which they were incarcerated.
[Illustration: "A dozen umbrellas were tipped up; the rain fell fast
upon a dozen upturned, expectant faces." Page 57.]
To appreciate all this, you should see it--as we did one chilly May
morning. We huddled about the stove in the waiting-room upon the site of
the old royal menagerie, our companions a round man, with a limp gingham
cravat and shabby coat, a little old woman in a poke bonnet, and half a
dozen or more schoolboys from the country. A tall Yankee of inquiring
mind joined us as we sallied from the door, led by a guide gorgeous in
ruff and buckles, cotton velvet and gilt lace, and with all these
glories surmounted by a black hat, that swelled out at the top in a
wonderful manner. Down the narrow street within the gates, over the
slippery cobble-stones, under considerable mental excitement, and our
alpaca umbrella, we followed our guide to an archway, before which he
paused, and struck an attitude. The long Yankee darted forward. "Stand
back, my friends, stand back," said the guide. "You will please form
a circle." Immediately a dozen umbrellas surrounded him. He pointed to a
narrow window over our heads; a dozen umbrellas were tipped up; the rain
fell fast upon a dozen upturned, expectant faces. "In that room, Sir
----" (I could not catch the name) "spent the night before his
execution, in solemn meditation and prayer." There was a circular groan
of sympathy and approval from a dozen lips, the re-cant of a dozen
dripping umbrellas, and we pattered on to the next point of interest,
following our leader through pools of blood, figuratively
speaking,--literally, through pools of water,--our eyes distended, our
cheeks pale with horror. Ah, what treasures of credulity we must have
been to the guides in those days! Time brought unbelief and hardness of
heart.
We mounted stairs narrow and dark; we descended stairs dark and narrow;
we entered chambers gloomy and grim. The half I could not tell--of the
rooms filled with war trophies--scalps in the belt of the nation--from
the Spanish Armada down to the Sepoy rebellion; the long hall, with its
double row of lumbering old warriors encased in steel, as though they
had stepped into a steel tower and walked off, tower and all, some fine
morning; the armory, with its stacked arms for thirty thousand men. "We
may have occasion to use them," said the guide, facetiously, making some
reference to the speech of Mr. Sumner, just then acting the part of a
stick to stir up the British lion. The Yankee chuckled complacently, and
we, too, refused to quake. There was a room filled with instruments of
torture, diabolical inventions, recalling the days of the Inquisition.
The Yankee expressed a desire to "see how some o' them things worked."
Opening from this was an unlighted apartment, with walls of stone, a
dungeon indeed, in which we were made to believe that Sir Walter Raleigh
spent twelve years of his life. No shadow of doubt would have fallen
upon our unquestioning minds, had we been told that he amused himself
during this time by standing upon his head. "Walk in, walk in," said the
smiling guide, as we peered into its darkness. We obeyed. "Now," said
he, "that you may appreciate his situation, I will step out and close
the door." The little old woman screamed; the Yankee made one stride to
the opening; the guide laughed. It was only a professional joke; there
was no door. We saw the bare prison-room, with its rough fireplace, the
slits between the stones of the wall to admit light and air, and the
initials of Lady Jane Grey, with a host more of forgotten names, upon
the walls. Just outside, within the quadrangle, where the grass grew
green beneath the summer rain, she was beheaded,--poor little
innocent,--who had no desire to be a queen! In another tower close by,
guarded by iron bars, were the royal jewels and the crown, for which all
this blood was shed--pretty baubles of gold and precious stones, but
hardly worth so many lives.
You remember the story of the princes smothered in the Tower by command
of their cruel uncle? There was the narrow passage in the wall where the
murderers came at night; the worn step by which they entered the great,
bare room where the little victims slept; the winding stairs down which
the bodies were thrown. Beneath the great stone at the foot they were
secretly buried. Then the stairway was walled up, lest the stones should
cry out; and no one knew the story of the burial until long, long
afterwards--only a few years since--when the walled-up stairway was
discovered, the stones at the foot displaced, and a heap of dust, of
little crumbling bones, revealed it. A rosy-faced, motherly woman, the
wife of a soldier quartered in the barracks here, answered the rap of
the guide upon the nail-studded door opening from one of the courts, and
told us the old story. "The bed of the princes stood just there," she
said, pointing to one corner, where, by a curious coincidence, a little
bed was standing now. She answered the question in our eyes with, "My
boys sleep there." "But do you not fear that the murderers will come
back some night by this same winding way, and smother them?" How she
laughed! And, indeed, what had ghosts to do with such a cheery body!
Down through the "Traitors' Gate," with its spiked portcullis, we could
see the steps leading to the water. Through this gate prisoners were
brought from trial at Westminster. It is said that the Princess
Elizabeth was dragged up here when she refused to come of her own will,
knowing too well that they who entered here left hope behind. A little
later, with music and the waving of banners, and amid the shouts of the
people, she rode out of the great gates into the city, the Queen of
England.
THE HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT.
Though they have stood barely thirty years, already the soft gray
limestone begins to crumble away,--the elements, with a sense of the
fitness of things, striving to act the part of time, and bring them into
a likeness of the adjoining abbey. There is an exquisite beauty in the
thousand gilded points and pinnacles that pierce the fog, or shine
softly through the mist that veils the city. Ethereal, shadowy, unreal
they are, like the spires of a celestial city, or the far away towers
and turrets we see sometimes at sunset in the western sky.
Here, you know, are the chambers of the Houses of Lords and Commons,
with the attendant lobbies, libraries, committee-rooms, &c., and a
withdrawing-room for the use of the queen when she is graciously pleased
to open Parliament in person. The speaker of the House of Commons, as
well as some other officials, reside here--a novel idea to us, who could
hardly imagine the speaker of our House of Representatives taking up his
abode in the Capitol! Parliament was not in session, and we walked
through the various rooms at will, even to the robing-room of the noble
lords, where the peg upon which Lord Stanley hangs his hat was pointed
out; and very like other pegs it was. At one end of the chamber of the
House of Lords is the throne. It is a simple affair enough--a gilded
arm-chair on a little platform reached by two or three steps, and with
crimson hangings. Extending down on either side are the
crimson-cushioned seats without desks. In the centre is a large square
ottoman,--the woolsack,--which might, with equal appropriateness, be
called almost anything else. Above, a narrow gallery offers a
lounging-place to the sons and friends of the peers; and at one end,
above the throne, is a high loft, a kind of uplifted amen corner, for
strangers, with a space where women may sit and look down through a
screen of lattice-work upon the proceedings below. It seems a remnant of
Eastern customs, strangely out of place in this Western world, and akin
to the shrouding of ourselves in veils, like our Oriental sisters. Or
can it be that the noble lords are more keenly sensitive to the
distracting influence of bright eyes than other men?
WESTMINSTER HALL AND THE LAW COURTS.
Adjoining the Houses of Parliament is this vast old hall. For almost
five hundred years has it stood, its curiously carved roof unsupported
by column or pillar. Here royal banquets, as well as Parliaments, have
been held, and more than one court of justice. Here was the great trial
of Warren Hastings. It was empty now of everything but echoes and the
long line of statuary on either side, except the lawyers in their long,
black gowns, who hastened up and down its length, or darted in and out
the three baize doors upon one side, opening into the Courts of
Chancery, Common Pleas, and the Exchequer. Our national curiosity was
aroused, and we mounted the steps to the second, which had won our
sympathies from its democratic name.
There were high, straight-backed pews of familiar appearance, rising one
above the other, into the last of which we climbed, a certain Sunday
solemnity stealing over us, a certain awkward consciousness that we were
the observed of all observers, since we were the only spectators--a
delusion of our vanity, however. In the high gallery before us, in
complacent comfort, sat three fat, drowsy old women (?) in white,
curling wigs, and voluminous gowns, asking all manner of distracting
questions, and requiring to be told over and over again,--after the
manner of drowsy old women,--to the utter confusion of a poor witness in
the front pew, who clung to the rail and swayed about hopelessly, while
he tried to tell his story, as if by this rotary motion he could churn
his ideas into form. Not only did he lose the thread of his
discourse,--he became hopelessly entangled in it. Scratch, scratch,
scratch, went the pens all around him. Every word, as it fell from his
lips, was pounced upon by the begowned, bewigged, bewildering judges,
was twisted and turned by the lawyers, was tossed back and forth
throughout the court-room, until there arose a question in our minds, as
to who was telling the story. All the while the lawyers were glaring
upon him as though he was perjuring himself with every word--as who
would not be, under the circumstances? And such lawyers! They dotted the
pews all around us. The long, black gowns were not so bad; they hid a
deal of awkwardness, I doubt not. But the wigs! the queer little curly
things, perched upon every head, and worn with such a perverse delight
in misfits! the small men being invariably hidden beneath the big wigs,
and the large men strutting about like the great Panjandrum himself with
the little round button at the top! The appearance of one, whose head,
through some uncommon development, rose to a ridge-pole behind, was
surprising, to say the least. It was not alone that his wig was too
small, that a fringe of straight, black hair fell below its entire white
circumference; it was not alone that it was parted upon the wrong side,
or that, being mansard in form, and his head hip-roofed, it could
never, by any process, have been shaped thereto; but I doubt if the
wearing of it upside down, added to all these little drawbacks, could
conduce to the beauty or dignity of any man. Unmindful of this reversed
order of nature, its happy possessor skipped about the court-room,
nodding to his brethren with a blithesome air, to the imminent peril of
his top-knot, which sustained about the same relation to his head as the
sword to that of Damocles. He speered down upon the poor witness. He
pretended to make notes of dreadful import with a screaming quill, and,
in fact, comported himself with an airy unconsciousness delightful to
see.
In regard to the proceedings of the court, I only know that the point
under discussion concerned one Johnson, and a pump; and Mr. Pickwick's
judge sat upon the bench. Whether he was originally round, red-faced,
with gooseberry eyes, I do not remember; but all these pleasing
characteristics he possessed at this present time, as well as a pudgy
forefinger, with which to point his remarks.
"You say," he repeated, with a solemnity of which my pen is incapable,
and impressing every word upon the poor man in the front pew with this
same forefinger, "that--Bunsen--went--to--the--pump?"
"Johnson, my lord," the witness ventured to correct him, in a low tone.
"It makes no difference," responded the judge, irate, "whether it is
Bunsen or Jillson. The question is, Did--Jillson--go--to--the--pump?"
Whom the gods destroy they first deprive of their five senses. Four, at
least, of the poor man's had departed some time since. The fifth
followed. "Johnson went, my lord," he replied, doggedly. Having found
one point upon which his mind was clear, he clung to it with the
tenacity of despair.
"Johnson! who's _Johnson_?" gasped the bewildered judge, over whose face
a net of perplexed lines spread itself upon the introduction of this new
character. In the confusion of denials and explanations that followed,
we descended from our perch, and stole away; nor are we at all sure, to
this day, as to whether Johnson did or did not really go to the pump.
ST. PAUL'S.
Imagine our surprise, one day, when admiring a pretty ribbon upon a
friend, to be told that it came from St. Paul's Churchyard. Hardly the
place for ribbons, one would think; but the narrow street which
encircles the cathedral in the form of a bow and its string goes by this
name, and contains, besides the bookstores and publishing houses, some
fine "silk mercers'" establishments.
The gray surface of the grand edifice is streaked with black, as though
time had beaten it with stripes, and a pall of smoke and dust covers the
statues in the court before it. Consecrated ground this is, indeed. From
the earliest times of the Christian religion, through all the bigotry
and fanaticism of the ages that followed, down to the present time, the
word of God has been proclaimed here--in weakness often, in bitterness
many times that belied the spirit of its message; by a priesthood more
corrupt than the people; by noble men, beyond the age in which they
lived, and whom the flames of martyrdom could not appall. Under
Diocletian the first church was destroyed. It was rebuilt, and destroyed
again by the Saxons. Twice has it been levelled to the ground by fire.
But neither sword nor flame could subdue it, and firm as a rock it
stands to-day, as it has stood for nearly two hundred years, and as it
seems likely to stand for ages to come. The sacred stillness that
invests the place was rudely broken, the morning of our visit, by the
blows from the hammers of the workmen, resounding through the dome like
a discharge of artillery. A great stage, and seats in the form of an
amphitheatre, were being erected in the nave for a children's festival,
which prevented our doing more than glance down its length. We read some
of the inscriptions upon the monuments, that one, so often quoted, of
Sir Christopher Wren, among them--"Do you seek his monument? Look around
you;" glanced into the choir, with its Gothic stalls, where the service
is performed, and then descended into the crypt beneath all this, that
labyrinth of damp darkness where so many lie entombed. Here is the
funeral car of Wellington, with candles burning around it, cast from the
conquering cannon which thundered victory to a nation, but sorrow and
death to many a home. Shrouded with velvet it is, as are the horses, in
imitation of those which bore him to his rest. All around were marble
effigies, blackened, broken, as they survived the burning of the late
cathedral, at the time of the great fire. Tombstones formed the
pavement. "Whose can this be?" I said, trying to follow with the point
of my umbrella the half-worn inscription beneath my feet. It was that of
Sir Joshua Reynolds. Strange enough it seemed to us, coming from a
country so new as to have been by no means prolific in great men, to
find them here lying about under our feet.
Having explored the crypt, we prepared to mount the endless winding
stairs, whose final termination is the ball under the cross that
surmounts the whole. Our ambition aimed only at the bell beneath the
ball. We paid an occasional sixpence for the privilege of peeping into
the library,--a most tidy and put-to-rights room, with a floor of wood
patchwork,--and for the right to look down upon the geometrical
staircase which winds around and clings to the wall upon one side, but
is without any visible support upon the other. The "whispering gallery"
was reached after a time. It is the encircling cornice within the dome,
surrounded by a railing, and forming a narrow gallery. "I will remain
here," said the guide, "while you pass around until you are exactly
opposite; wait there until I whisper." Had we possessed the spirit of
Casabianca, we should at this moment be sitting upon that narrow bench
against the wall, with our feet upon the gas-pipes. We waited and
listened, and listened and waited; but the sound of the blows from the
hammers below reverberated like thunder around us. We could not have
heard the crack of doom. Becoming conscious, after a time, that our
guide had disappeared, we came out and continued our ascent. Mrs. K.'s
curiosity, if not satisfied, was at least quenched, and she refused to
go farther. My aspirations still pointed upward. There was another
sixpence, another dizzy mount of dark, twisting stairs, with strength,
ambition, and even curiosity gradually left behind, and with only one
blind instinct remaining--to go on. There was a long, dingy passage,
through which ghostly forms were flitting; there were more stairs, with
twists and turns, forgotten now with other torments; there was the
mounting of half a dozen rickety wooden steps at last, for no object but
to descend shakily upon the other side, and then we found ourselves in a
little dark corner, peering over a dingy rail, with a great, dusky
object filling all the space below. And that was the bell! "Well, and
what of it?" I don't know; but we saw it!
CHAPTER V.
AWAY TO PARIS.
The wedding party.--The canals.--New
Haven.--Around the tea-table.--Separating the
sheep from the goats.--"Will it be a rough
passage?"--Gymnastic feats of the little
steamer.--O, what were officers to us?--"Who ever
invented earrings!"--Dieppe.--Fish-wives.--Train
for
Paris.--Fellow-passengers.--Rouen.--Babel.--Deliverance.
IT was the last week in May, and by no means the "merry, merry month of
May" had we found it. Not only was the sky weighed down with clouds, but
they dripped upon the earth continually, the sun showing his ghastly,
white, half-drowned face for a moment only to be swept from sight again
by the cloud waves. A friend was going to Paris. Would we shake the
drops from our garments, close our umbrellas, and go with him? We not
only would, we did. We gathered a lunch, packed our trunk, said our
adieus, and drove down to the station in the usual pouring rain, the
tearful accompaniment to all our movements. But one party besides our
own awaited the train upon the platform--a young man with the insignia
of bliss in the gloves of startling whiteness upon his hands, and a
middle-aged woman of seraphic expression of countenance, clad in robes
of spotless white, her feet encased in capacious white slippers. In
this airy costume, one hand grasping a huge bouquet devoid of color, the
other the arm of her companion, she paced back and forth, to the great
amusement of the laughing porters, casting upon us less fortunate ones,
who shivered meekly in our wraps, glances of triumphant pity
indescribable.
"Weddin' party, zur," explained the guard, touching his cap to our
friend. "Jus' come down in fly." They looked to us a good deal more as
if they were just going up in a "fly." The train shrieked into the
station, and we were soon rushing over the road to New Haven, from
which, in an evil moment, we had planned to cross the Channel. There was
little new or strange in the picture seen from our window. The cottages
were now of a dull, clay color, instead of the dingy red we had observed
before, as though they had been erected in sudden need, without waiting
for the burning of the bricks. There were brick-yards all along the way,
answering a vexed question in my mind as to where all the bricks came
from which were used so entirely in town and village here, in the
absence of the wood so plentiful with us. The canals added much to the
beauty of the landscape, winding through the meadows as if they were
going to no particular place, and were in no haste to reach their
destination. They turned aside for a clump of willows or a mound of
daisy-crowned earth; they went quite out of their way to peep into the
back doors of a village, and, in fact, strolled along in a lazy,
serpentine manner that would have crazed the proprietor of a Yankee
canal boat.
It was five o'clock when we reached New Haven, having dropped our
fellow-passengers along the way, the blissful couple among them.
Through some error in calculation we had taken an earlier train than we
need have, and found hours of doleful leisure awaiting us in this sleepy
little town, lying upon an arm of the sea. Its outer appearance was not
inviting. Here were the first and last houses of wood we saw in
England,--high, ugly things, that might have been built of old boats or
drift wood, with an economy that precluded all thought of grace in
architecture. The train, in a gracious spirit of accommodation, instead
of plunging into the sea, as it might have done, paused before the door
of a hotel upon the wharf. There, in a little parlor, we improvised a
home for a time. Our friend went off to explore the town. We took
possession of the faded red arm-chairs by the wide windows. Down below,
beyond the wet platform, rose the well-colored meerschaum of the little
French steamer, whose long-boats hung just above the edge of the wharf.
Through the closed window stole the breath of the salt sea, that, only a
hand-breadth here, widened out below into boundlessness, bringing
visions of the ocean and a thrill of remembered delight. The rain had
ceased. The breeze rolled the clouds into snow-balls, pure white against
the blue of the sky. Over the narrow stream came the twitter of birds,
hidden in the hawthorn hedge all abloom. Everything smiled, and beamed,
and glistened without, though far out to sea the white caps crowned the
dancing waves. When night fell, and the lights glimmered all through the
town, we drew the heavy curtains, lighted the candles in the shining
candlesticks, whose light cast a delusive glow over the dingy dustiness
of the room, bringing out cheerfully the little round tea-table in the
centre, with its bright silver and steaming urn, over which we lingered
a long hour, measuring and weighing our comfort, telling tales, seeing
visions, and dreaming dreams of home.
The clock struck nine as we crossed the plank to the Alexandra, trying
in vain to find in its toy appointments some likeness to our ocean
steamer of delightful memory. The train whizzed in from London, bringing
our fellow-voyagers. The sheep were separated from the goats by the
officer at the foot of the plank, who asked each one descending, "First
or second cabin?"--sending one to the right, the other to the left. The
wind swept in from the sea raw and cold. The foot-square deck was
cheerless and wet. Even a diagonal promenade proved short and
unsatisfactory, and in despair we descended the slippery, perpendicular
stairs between boxes and bales, and down still another flight, to the
cabin. A narrow, cushioned seat clung to its four sides, divided into
lengths for berths. "Will it be a rough night?" we carelessly asked the
young stewardess. "O, no!" was the stereotyped reply, though all the
while the wicked waves were dancing beneath the white caps just outside.
We divested ourselves of hats, and wraps, and useless ornaments,
reserving only that of a meek and quiet spirit, which, under a nameless
fear, grew every moment meeker and more quiet. We undid the interminable
buttons of our American boots, and prepared for a comfortable rest, with
an ignorance that at the time approximated bliss. There was leisure for
the working out of elaborate schemes. Something possessed the tide.
Whether it was high or low, narrow or wide, I do not know; but there at
the wharf we were to await the working of its own will, regardless of
time. Accordingly we selected our places with a deliberation that bore
no proportion to the time we were to fill them, advising with the
stewardess, who had settled herself comfortably to sleep. We tried our
heads to England and our feet to the foe, and then reversed the order,
finally compromising by taking a position across the Channel. But the
loading of the steamer overhead, with the chattering of our
fellow-passengers below,--two English girls, a pretty brunette and her
sister,--banished sleep. At three o'clock our voyage began--the
succession of quivering leaps, plunges, and somersaults which
miraculously landed us upon the French coast. I can think of no words to
describe it. The first night upon the ocean was paradise and the
perfection of peace in comparison. To this day the thought of the
swashing water, beaten white against the port-hole before my eyes, is
sickening. A calm--to me, of utter prostration--fell upon us long after
the day dawned, only to be broken by the stewardess, when sleep had
brought partial forgetfulness, with, "It's nine o'clock; we're at
Dieppe, and the officers want to come in here." We tried to raise our
heads. Officers! What officers? Had we crossed the Styx? Were they of
light or darkness? We sank back. O, what were officers to us!
"But you must get up!"--and she began an awkward attempt at the buttons
of those horrible boots. That recalled to life. American boots are of
this world, and we made a feeble attempt to don some of its vanities.
O, how senseless did the cuffs appear that went on upside down!--the
collar which was fastened under one ear!--the ribbons that were
consigned to our pockets! Making blind stabs at our ears, "Good
heavens!" we ejaculated, "who ever invented earrings? Relics of
barbarism!" We made hasty thrusts at the hair-pins, standing out from
our heads in every direction like enraged porcupine quills; being
pulled, and twisted, and scolded by the stewardess all the while;
hearing the thump, thump, upon our door as one pair of knuckles after
another awoke the echoes, as one strange voice after another shouted,
"Why don't those ladies come out?" O the trembling fingers that refused
to hold the pins!--the trembling feet that staggered up the ladder-like
stairs as we were thrust out of the cabin--out of the cruel little
steamer to take refuge in one of the waiting cabs! O the blessedness of
our thick veils and charitable wraps!
I recall, as though it were a dream, the narrow, roughly-paved street of
Dieppe; a latticed window filled with flowers, and a dark-eyed maiden
peeping through the leaves; the fish-wives in short petticoats and with
high white caps, clattering over the stones in their wooden _sabots_,
wheeling barrows of fish to the market near the station, where they
bartered, and bargained, and gossiped. Evidently it is a woman's right
in Normandy to work--to grow as withered, and hard, and old before the
time as she chooses, or as she has need; for to put away year after
year, as do these poor women, every grace and charm of womanhood, cannot
be of choice.
At the long table in the refreshment-room of the station we drank the
tasteless tea, and ate a slice from the roll four feet in length. The
English-speaking girl who attended us found a place--rough enough, to be
sure--where in the few moments of waiting we could complete our hasty
toilets. Beside us at the table, our fellow-voyagers, were two
professors from a Connecticut college of familiar name, whom we had met
in London. They joined us in the comfortable railway carriage, and added
not a little to the pleasant chat that shortened the long day and the
weary journey to Paris. Our number--for the compartment held eight--was
completed by a young American gentleman, and a Frenchman of evil
countenance, who drank wine and made love to his pretty Lizette in an
unblushing manner, strange, and by no means pleasing, to us,
demonstrating the annoyance, if nothing worse, to which one is often
subjected in these compartment cars. It needed but one glance from the
window to convince us that we were no longer in England. To be sure, the
sky is blue, the grass green, in all lands; but in place of the level
sweep of meadow through which we had passed across the Channel, the land
swelled here into hills on every side. Long rows of stiff poplars
divided the fields, or stretched away in straight avenues as far as the
eye could reach. The English remember the beauty of a curved line; the
French, with a painful rectitude, describe only right angles. Scarlet
poppies blushed among the purple, yellow, and white wild flowers along
the way. The plastered cottages with their high, thatched roofs, the
tortuous River Seine with its green islands, as we neared Paris, the
neat little stations along the way--like gingerbread houses--made for us
a new and charming panorama. Hanging over a gate at one of these
stations was an old man, white-haired, blind; his guide, an old woman,
who waited, with a kind of wondering awe stealing over her withered
face, while he played some simple air upon a little pipe--thus asking
alms. So simple was the air, the very shadow of a melody, that the scene
might have been amusing, had it not been so pitiful.
At noon we lunched in the comfortless waiting-room at Rouen, while the
professors made a hasty visit to the cathedral during our stay of half
an hour. We still suffered from the tossing of the sea, and cathedrals
possessed no charms in our eyes. It was almost night when we reached
Paris, and joined the hurrying crowd descending from the train. It was a
descent into Pandemonium. There was a confusion of unintelligible sounds
in our ears like the roll of a watchman's rattle, bringing no suggestion
of meaning. The calmness of despair fell upon our crushed spirits, with
a sense of powerlessness such as we never experienced before or since. A
dim recollection of school-days--of Ollendorff--rose above the chaos in
our minds. "Has the physician of the shoemaker the canary of the
carpenter?" we repeated mechanically; and with that our minds became a
blank.
Deliverance awaited us; and when, just outside the closed gates, first
in the expectant crowd, we espied the face of a friend, peace enveloped
us like a garment. Our troubles were over.
CHAPTER VI.
THE PARIS OF 1869.
The devil.--Cathedrals and churches.--The
Louvre.--Modern French art.--The Beauvais clock,
with its droll little puppets.--Virtue in a red
gown.--The Luxembourg Palace.--The yawning statue
of Marshal Ney.--Gay life by gas-light.--The
Imperial Circus.--The Opera.--How the emperor and
empress rode through the streets after the
riots.--The beautiful Spanish woman whose face was
her fortune.--Napoleon's tomb.
IT may be the City of Destruction, the very gateway to depths unknown;
but with its fair, white dwellings, its fair, white streets, that
gleamed almost like gold beneath a summer sun, it seemed much more a
City Celestial. It may be, as some affirm, that the devil here walks
abroad at midday; but we saw neither the print of his hoofs upon the
asphaltum, nor the shadow of his horns upon the cream-like Caen stone.
We walked, and rode, and dwelt a time within its limits; and but for a
certain reckless gayety that gave to the Sabbath an air of Vanity Fair,
but for the mallet of the workman that disturbed our Sunday worship, we
should never have known that we were not in the most Christian of all
Christian cities. It is by no means imperative to do in Rome as the
Romans do, and one need not in Paris drink absinthe or visit the Jardin
Mabille.
Our first expedition was to the banker's and to the shops, and having
replenished our purse and wardrobe, we were prepared to besiege the
city. There was a day or two of rest in the gilded chairs, cushioned
with blue satin, of our pretty _salon_, whence we peeped down upon the
street below between the yellow satin curtains that draped its wide
French window; or rolled our eyes meditatively to the delicately tinted
ceiling, with its rose-colored clouds skimmed by tiny, impossible birds;
or made abortive attempts to penetrate the secrets of the buhl cabinets,
and to guess at the time from the pretty clocks of disordered organism;
or admired ourselves in the mirrors which gazed at each other from
morning till night, for our apartments in the little Hotel Friedland we
found most charming.
You will hardly care for a description of the dozen, more or less,
churches, old, new, and restored, with which we began and ended our
sight-seeing in Paris, where we looked upon sculptured saints without
number, and studied ecclesiastical architecture to more than our hearts'
content. There was St. Germain L'Auxerrois, the wicked old bell of which
tolled the signal for the massacre of St. Bartholomew. We stood with the
_bonnes_ and babies under the trees of the square before it, gazing up
at the belfry with most severe countenances,--and learned, afterwards,
that the bell had been long since removed! There was the Madeleine of
more recent date, built in the form of a Greek temple, and interesting
just now for having been the church of Father Hyacinthe, to which we
could for a time find no entrance. We shook the iron gate; we inquired
in excellent English of a French shopkeeper, and found at last an open
gateway, a little unlocked door, beyond which we spent a time of search
and inquiry in darkness, and among wood, and shavings, and broken
chairs, and holy dust-pans, before passing around and entering the great
bronze doors. There were the Pantheon and St. Sulpice, grand and
beautiful, erected piously from the proceeds of lotteries. There was St.
Etienne du Mont, and within one of its chapels the gilded tomb of the
patron saint of Paris--St. Genevieve. Who she was, or what she did to
gain this rather unenviable position, I failed to learn. Her name seems
to have outlived her deeds. Whether she was beautiful and beloved, and
put away earthly vanities for a holy life, or old and ugly, and bore her
lot with a patience that won saintship, I do not know. I can only tell
that tapers burn always upon her tomb, and if you buy one it will burn a
prayer for you. So we were told. There is one old church, St. Germain
des Prés, most beautifully colored within. Its pictures seem to have
melted upon the walls. But admired above all is the Sainte Chapelle, in
the Palais de Justice, a chapel fitted up by the fanatical St. Louis,
when this palace of justice, which holds now the courts of law, was a
royal residence. Of course all its brightness was dimmed long ago. Its
glories became dust, like its founder. But it has recently been
restored, and is a marvel of gilt, well-blended colors, and stained
glass. A graceful spire surmounts it, but the old, cone-capped towers,
rising from another part of the same building, possessed far greater
interest in our eyes; for here was the Conciergerie, where were confined
Marie Antoinette and so many more victims of the reign of terror.
On the "isle of the city," in the Seine, where, under the Roman rule, a
few mud huts constituted Paris, stands the church of Notre Dame, which
was three hundred years in building. With its spire and two square
towers, it may be seen from almost any part of the city. I wish you
might look upon the relics and the vestments which the priests wear upon
occasions of ceremony, hidden within this church, and displayed upon the
payment of an extra fee. I did not wonder that the Sisters of Charity,
who went into the little room with us, gazed aghast upon the gold and
silver, and precious stones.
Every one visits the galleries of the Louvre, of course. A little, worn
shoe, belonging once to Marie Antoinette, and the old gray coat of the
first emperor, were to us the most interesting objects among the relics.
From out the sea of pictures rise Murillo's Madonna, the lovely face
with a soul behind it, shining through, and the burial of the heroine of
Chateaubriand. Do you know it? The fair form, the sweeping hair of
Attila, and the dark lover with despair in his face? As for the Rubens
gallery,--his fat, red, undraped women here among the clouds, surrounded
by puffy little cherubs, had for us no charms. Rubens in Antwerp was a
revelation. We wandered through room after room, lighted from above,
crowded with paintings. To live for a time among them would be a
delight; to glance at them for a moment was tantalization. All around
were the easels of the artists who come here to sketch--sharp-featured,
heavy-browed men, with unkempt hair and flowing beards, and in shabby
coats, stood before them, pallet and brushes in hand; and women by the
score,--some of them young and pleasing, with duennas patiently waiting
near by; but more often they were neither young nor beautiful, and with
an evident renunciation of pomps and vanities. We glanced at their
copies curiously. Sometimes they seemed the original in miniature, and
sometimes,--ah well, we all fail.
We looked in upon the annual exhibition of pictures at the Palais de
l'Industrie one day, and were particularly impressed with the _nudité_
of the modern school of French art. Pink-tinted flesh may be very
beautiful, but there must be something higher! We saw there, too,
another day, the clock on exhibition for a time before being consigned
to its destined place at Beauvais. It was even more wonderful than the
one so famous at Strasbourg. This was of the size of an ordinary church
organ, and of similar shape; a mass of gilt and chocolate-colored wood;
a mass of dials, great and small--of time tables, and, indeed, of tables
for computing everything earthly and heavenly, with dials to show the
time in fifty different places, and everything else that could, by any
possible connection with time, be supposed to belong to a clock. Upon
the top, Christ, seated in an arm-chair, was represented as judging the
world, his feet upon the clouds; on either side kneeling female figures
adored him. Just below, a pair of scales bided their time. On every peak
stood little images, while fifty puppets peeped out of fifty windows.
Just below the image of the Saviour, a figure emerged through an open
door at the striking of every quarter of an hour,--coming out with a
slide and occasional jerk by no means graceful. We had an opportunity of
observing all this in the three quarters of an hour of waiting. We
viewed the clock upon every side, being especially interested in a
picture at one point representing a rocky coast, a light-house, and a
long stretch of waves upon which labored two ships attached in some way
to the works within. They pitched back and forth without making any
progress whatever, in a way very suggestive to us, who had lately
suffered from a similar motion. A dozen priests seated themselves with
us upon the bench before the clock as the hand approached the hour. They
wore the long black robes and odd little skull-caps, that fit so like a
plaster, and which are, I am sure, kept in place by some law of
attraction unknown to us. One, of a different order, or higher grade, in
a shorter robe and with very thin legs, encased in black stockings that
added to their shadowy appearance, shuffled up to his place just in time
to throw back his head and open his mouth as the clock struck, and the
last judgment began. The cock upon the front gave a preliminary and weak
flap of his wings, and emitted three feeble, squeaky crows, that must, I
am sure, have convulsed the very puppets. Certainly they all disappeared
from the windows, and something jumped into their places intended to
represent flames, but which looked so much like reversed tin petticoats,
that we supposed for a moment they were all standing on their heads. All
the figures upon the peaks turned their backs upon us. The image of
Christ began to wave its hands. The kneeling women swayed back and
forth, clasping their own. Two angels raised to their lips long, gilt
trumpets, as if to blow a blast; then dropped them; then raised them a
second time, and even made a third abortive attempt. From one of the
open doors Virtue was jerked out to be judged, Virtue in a red gown. The
scales began to dance up and down. An angel appeared playing a guitar,
and Virtue went triumphantly off to the right, to slow and appropriate
music, an invisible organ playing meanwhile. Then Vice appeared. I
confess he excited my instant and profound pity. Such a poor, naked,
wretched-looking object as he was! with his hands to his face, as though
he were heartily ashamed to come out in such a plight. I venture to say,
if he had been decked out like Virtue, he might have stolen off to the
right, and nobody been the wiser. Good clothes do a great deal in Paris.
As it was, the scales danced up and down a moment, and then the devil
appeared with a sharp stick, and drove him around the corner to the
left, with very distant and feeble thunder for an accompaniment. That
ended the show. All the little puppets jumped back into all the little
windows, and we came away.
Speaking of picture galleries, we spent a pleasant hour in the gallery
of the Luxembourg--a collection of paintings made up from the works of
living artists, and of those who have been less than a year deceased. It
is sufficiently small to be enjoyable. There is something positively
oppressive in the vastness of many of these galleries. You feel utterly
unequal to them; as though the finite were about to attempt the
comprehension of the infinite. One picture here, by Ary Scheffer, was
exhibited in America, a few years since. It is the head and bust of a
dead youth in armor--a youth with a girlish face. There are others by
Henri Scheffer, Paulin Guerin, and a host more I will not name. One, a
scene in the Conciergerie, "Reading the List of the Condemned to the
Prisoners," by Müller, haunted me long after the doors had swung
together behind us. The palace of the Luxembourg, small, remarkable for
the beauty of its architecture and charming garden, built for that
graceless regent, Marie de Medici, is now the residence of the president
of the Senate; and indeed the Senate itself meets here. We were shown
through the rooms open to the public, the private apartments of Marie de
Medici among them, in one of which was a bust of the regent. The garden,
like all gardens, is filled with trees and shrubs, flowers and
fountains, but yet with a certain charm of its own. The festooning of
vines from point to point was a novelty to us, as was the design of one
of the fountains. Approaching it from the rear, we thought it a
tomb,--perhaps the tomb of Marshal Ney, we said, whose statue we were
seeking. It proved to be an artificial grotto, and within it, sprinkled
with the spray of the fountain, embowered in a mass of glistening, green
ivy, reclined a pair of pretty, marble lovers; peering in upon them from
above, scowled a dreadful ogre--a horrible giant. The whole effect,
coming upon it unexpectedly, was startling.
We had a tiresome search for this same statue of Marshal Ney. We chased
every marble nymph in the garden, and walked and walked, over burning
pebbles and under a scorching sun, until we almost wished he had never
been shot. At last, away beyond the garden, out upon a long avenue,
longer and hotter if possible than the garden paths, we found
it,--erected upon the very spot where he was executed. He stands with
arm outstretched, and mouth opened wide, as though he were yawning with
the wearisomeness of it all. It is a pity that he should give way to his
feelings so soon, since he must stand there for hundreds of years to
come. The guide-books say he is represented in the act of encouraging
his men. They must have been easily encouraged.
Of the out-door gay life by gas-light, we saw less than we had hoped to
see in the French capital. The season was unusually cold and wet, and
most of the time it would have required the spirit of a martyr to sip
coffee upon the sidewalk. One garden concert we did attend, and found it
very bright and fairy-like, and all the other adjectives used in this
connection. We sat wrapped in shawls, our feet upon the rounds of the
chair before us, and shivered a little, and enjoyed a great deal. We
went one night--in most orthodox company--to the Cirque de
l'Impératrice, a royal amphitheatre with handsome horses, pretty
equestriennes, and a child balanced and tossed about on horseback,
showing a frightened, painful smile, which made of the man who held her
a Herod in our eyes. A girl very rich in paint and powder, but somewhat
destitute in other particulars, skipped and danced upon a slack rope in
a most joyous and airy manner. When we came out, a haggard woman, with
an old, worn face, was crouching in a little weary heap by the door that
led into the stables, wrapped in an old cloak; and that was our dancing
girl!
We went to the opera, too; it was Les Huguenots. To this day I cannot
tell who were the singers. I never knew, or thought, or cared. And the
bare shoulders flashing with jewels in the boxes around us, the
_claqueurs_ in the centre, hired to applaud, clapping their hands with
the regularity of clock-work, the empty imperial box, were nothing to
the sight of Paris portrayed within itself. You know the familiar opera;
do think how strange it was to see it in Paris; to look upon the stage
and behold the Seine and the towers of Notre Dame; the excited populace
rising up to slay and to be slain, with all the while this same fickle
French people serenely smiling, and chatting, and looking upon it--the
people who were even then ready at a word to reënact the same scenes for
a different cause. Just outside, only a day or two before, something of
the same spirit, portrayed here for our amusement, had broken out again
in the election riots. And we remembered that, as we drove around the
corner to the opera house, mounted soldiers stood upon either side,
while every other man upon the street was the eye, and ear, and arm of
the emperor, who knew that the very ground beneath his fair, white city
tottered and reeled.
We saw the emperor and empress one day, after having looked for them
long and in vain upon the Champs Elysées, and in the Bois de Boulogne
where gay Paris disports itself. It was the morning after the riot, when
they drove unattended, you will remember, through the streets where the
rioters had gathered. We were in one of the shops upon the Rue de
Rivoli. Just across the way rose the Tuileries from the sidewalk. A
crowd began to collect about the open archway through the palace, which
affords entrance and egress to the great square around which the palace
is built. "What is it?" we asked of the voluble Frenchman who was
gradually persuading us that brass was gold. "L'Empereur," he replied;
which sent us to the sidewalk, and put from our minds all thoughts of
oxidized silver and copper-colored gold. Just within the arch paced a
lackey in livery of scarlet and gold, wearing a powdered wig and general
air of importance. On either side, the sentries froze into position. The
_gendarmes_ shouted and gesticulated, clearing the streets. A mounted
attendant emerged from the archway; there followed four bay horses
attached to a plain, dark, open carriage; upon the front seat were two
gentlemen, upon the back, a gentleman with a lady by his side. His hair
was iron gray, almost silvery. He turned his face from us as he raised
his hat gravely to the crowd, displaying a very perceptible bald spot
upon the back of his head as he was whizzed around the corner and down
the street. And that was Napoleon III. We saw no American lady in Paris
dressed so simply as the empress. Something of black lace draped her
shoulders; a white straw bonnet, trimmed with black, with a few pink
roses resting upon her hair, crowned her head. She bowed low to the
right and left, with a peculiar, graceful motion, and a smile upon the
face a little worn and pale, a little faded,--but yet the face we all
know so well. Beautiful Spanish woman, whose face was your fortune,
though you smiled that day upon the people, your cheeks were pale, your
eyes were full of tears.
There is nothing more wonderful in Paris than the tomb prepared to
receive the remains of the first Napoleon, in the chapel of the Hôtel
des Invalides; fitting, it would seem to be, that he should rest here
among his old soldiers. We left the carriage at the gateway, and crossed
the open court, mounted the wide steps, followed the half dozen other
parties through the open doors, and this was what we saw. At the farther
end of the great chapel or church, an altar, approached by wide, marble
steps; gilt and candles embellished it, and a large, gilt cross upon it
bore an image of the crucified Lord. All this was not unlike what we had
seen many times. But four immense twisted columns rose from its four
corners--columns of Egyptian marble, writhing like spotted serpents.
They supported a canopy of gold, and the play of lights upon this,
through the stained windows above and on either side, was indescribable.
As we entered the door, darkness enveloped it, save where an invisible
sun seemed to touch the roof of gold and rest lightly upon the pillars;
an invisible sun, indeed, for, without, the sky was heavy with clouds.
As we advanced, this unearthly light touched new points--the gilded
candlesticks, the dying Saviour, but above all the writhings of these
monster serpents, until the whole seemed a thing of life, a something
which grew and expanded every moment, and was almost fearful to look
upon. Filling the centre of the chapel was a circular marble wall
breast-high. Do you remember, in going to the old Senate chamber at
Washington, after passing through the rotunda, the great marble
well-curb down which you could look into the room below? This was like
that, only more vast. Over it leaned a hundred people, at least, gazing
down upon what? A circular, roofless room, a crypt to hold a tomb; each
pillar around its circumference was the colossal figure of a woman;
between these hung the tattered tri-colors borne in many a fierce
conflict, beneath the burning suns of Egypt and over the dreary snows of
Russia, with seventy colors captured from the enemies of France. A
wreath of laurel in the mosaic floor surrounded the names Austerlitz,
Marengo, Friedland, Jena, Wagram, Moscow, and Pyramids, and in the
centre rose the sarcophagus of Finland granite, prepared to hold the
body of him whose ambition knew no bounds. The letter N upon one
polished side was the only inscription it bore. He who wrote his name in
blood needed no epitaph. The entrance to this crypt is through bronze
doors, behind the altar, and gained by passing under it. On either side
stood a colossal figure in bronze; kings they seemed to be, giant kings,
in long black robes and with crowns of black upon their heads. One held,
upon the black cushion in his hands, a crown of gold and a golden sword;
the other, a globe crowned with a cross and a golden sceptre. They were
so grand, and dark, and still, they gazed upon us so fixedly from out
their great, grave eyes, that I felt a chill in all my bones. They guard
his tomb. They hold his sword and sceptre while he sleeps. I almost
expected the great doors to swing open at the touch of his hand, and to
see him come forth. Over these doors were his own words: "I desire that
my ashes may repose upon the banks of the Seine, in the midst of the
French people I have loved so well." On either side, as we came out, we
read upon the tombs the names of Bertrand and Duroc,--faithful in death!
We wondered idly whose remains were guarded in the simple tomb near the
door. It was surrounded by an iron railing, and bore no inscription. Who
can it be, we said, that is nameless here among the brave? Little did we
imagine at the time that here rested the body of the great Napoleon, as
it was brought from St. Helena; but his spirit seemed to pervade the
very atmosphere, and we came out into the gloom of the day as though we
had, indeed, come from the presence of the dead.
CHAPTER VII.
SIGHTS IN THE BEAUTIFUL CITY.
The Gobelin tapestry.--How and where it is
made.--Père la-Chaise.--Poor Rachel!--The baby
establishment.--"Now I lay me."--The little
mother.--The old woman who lived in a shoe.--The
American chapel.--Beautiful women and
children.--The last conference-meeting.--"I'm a
proof-reader, I am."
BY no means least among the places of interest in Paris is the
manufactory of the Gobelin tapestry which serves to adorn the walls of
the palace _salons_. O, these long, tiresome _salons_, which must be
visited, though your head is ready to burst with seeing, your feet to
drop off with sliding and slipping over the polished floors. The wicked
_stand_ upon slippery places, and nothing so convinced us of the
demoralizing effect of foreign travel as our growing ability to do the
same. When you have seen one or two, you have seen all. There may be
degrees in gorgeous splendor, but we were filled with all the
appropriate and now-forgotten emotions at sight of the first, and one
cannot be more than full. Many of the old palace apartments are dull and
dingy beyond belief, by no means the marble halls of our dreams; but of
the others let me say something once for all. Under your feet is the
treacherous, bare floor of dark wood, laid in diamonds, squares, &c.;
over your head, exquisite frescoes of gods and goddesses, and all manner
of unearthly and impossible beings enveloped in clouds by the
bale,--usually an apotheosis of some king or queen, or both, and, as a
rule, of the most wicked known at that time. The Medici were especially
glorified and raised above the flesh,--and they had need to be. On every
side pictures in Gobelin tapestry, framed into the walls, often so large
as to cover the entire space from corner to corner, from cornice to
within a few feet of the floor, and in this latter space doors, formed
of a panel sometimes, for the entrance and egress of servants. Imagine,
with all this, the gilt, and stucco, and wood-carving; the flowers, and
arabesques, and entwined initials; the massive chandeliers, with
glittering pendants; the mantels of rare marbles, of porphyry, and
malachite; the cabinets, and tables, and escritoires of marqueterie and
mosaic; the gilded chairs, stiff and stark, richly covered; the bronzes,
vases, and curious clocks: and over all the air of having never been
used from all time, and of continuing to be a bare show to all
eternity,--and you have a faint conception of the _salons_ of half the
palaces.
As for the tapestry, pray don't confound it with the worsted dogs and
Rebekahs-at-the-Well with which we sometimes adorn (?) our homes, since
one would never in any way suggest the other. In these every delicate
line is faithfully reproduced, and the effect exactly that of an oil
painting. After long years the colors fade; and we were startled
sometimes, in the old palaces, to come upon one of these gray shadows
of pictures, out from which, perhaps, a pair of wonderful eyes alone
would seem to shine. In old times the rough walls of the grim prison
palaces were hung with tapestry wrought by the fair fingers of court
ladies, the designs of tournament and battle being rudely sketched by
gay gallants. Many a bright dream was worked into the canvas, I doubt
not, never found upon the pattern; many a sweet word said over the task
that beguiled the dull hours, and kept from mischief idle hands. But in
the reign of Louis XIV. the art of weaving tapestry was brought from
Flanders, and a manufactory established on the outskirts of Paris which
still remains. To visit it a pass is required. Accordingly we addressed
a note of solicitation to some high official, and in due time came a
permit for Madame K. and family; and an ill-assorted family we must have
appeared to the official at the gate. There were the rooms, hung with
specimens of the tapestry, for which we did not care, and then the six
devoted to the weaving; long, low, and narrow they were, with hand-looms
ranged down one side. Through the threads of the warp we could see the
weavers sitting behind their work, each with his box of worsteds and
pattern beside him. The colors were wound upon quills, numbers of which
hung, each by its thread, from the half-completed work. Taking one of
these in one hand, the workman dexterously separated the threads of the
warp with the other, and passed the quill through, pressing down the one
stitch thus formed with its pointed end. You can imagine how slow this
work must be. How tiresome a task it is to delight the eyes of princes!
The making of carpets, which has been recently added, is equally
tiresome. This, too, is hand work, they being woven in some way over a
round stick, and then cut and trimmed with a pair of shears. To make one
requires from five to ten years, and their cost is from six to twenty
thousand dollars. About six hundred weavers are said to be here, though
we saw but a small proportion of that number. They receive only from
three to five hundred dollars a year, with a pension of about half as
much if they are disabled.
From the Gobelins we drove across the Seine again, and out to Père
la-Chaise, where stood once the house of the confessor of Louis XIV.,
from whom the cemetery takes its name, the Jesuit priest through whose
influence the edict of Nantes was revoked. A kind of ghastly imitation
of life it all seemed--the narrow houses on either side of the paved
streets, that were not houses at all, hung with dead flowers and
corpse-like wreaths, stained an unnatural hue. We peered through the
bars of the locked gate opening into the Jews' quarter, trying to
distinguish the tomb where lie the ashes of a life that blazed, and
burned itself out. Poor Rachel! Through the solemn streets, among the
quiet dwellings of the noiseless city, whence comes no sound of joy or
grief, where they need no candle, neither light of the sun, we walked a
while, then plucked a leaf or two, and came away.
One day, when the sun lay hot upon the white streets of the beautiful
city, we searched among the shops of the crooked Faubourg St. Honoré for
a number forgotten now, and the Créche, where the working mothers may
leave their children during the day. In another and more quiet street
we found it. We pulled the bell before a massive gateway; the wide doors
opened upon a smiling portress, who led the way across the paved court
to the house, where she pointed up some stairs, and left us to mount and
turn until it was no longer possible, until a confusion of doors barred
our way, when we rapped upon one. Another was opened, and we found
ourselves among the babies. There were, perhaps, twenty in all, the
larger children being in the school-room below; but even twenty
toddling, rolling babies, looking so very like the same image done in
putty over and over again, appears an alarming and unlimited number when
taken in a body. They rolled beneath our feet, they clung to our skirts,
they peeped out, finger in mouth, from behind the doors, they kicked
pink toes up from the swinging cradles, and in fact, like the clansmen
of Rhoderic Dhu, appeared in a most startling manner from the most
unexpected places. Plump little things they were, encased in shells of
blue-checked aprons, from the outer one of which they were
surreptitiously slipped upon our entrance to disclose a fresher one
beneath. How long this process could have continued with a similar happy
result, we did not inquire. Every head was tied up in a tight little
night-cap, giving them the appearance of so many little bag puddings.
Every face was a marvel of health and contentment, with one kicking,
screaming exception upon the floor. "Eengleesh," explained the Sister of
Charity who seemed to have them in charge, giving a sweeping wipe to the
eyes, nose, and mouth, gradually liquidizing, of this one, and trying in
vain to pacify a nature that seemed peaceless. Who was its mother, or
how the little stranger chanced to be here, we did not learn. On either
side of the long, narrow room hung the white-curtained cradles, each
with its pretty, pink quilt. At one end was an altar, most modest in its
appointments, consisting of hardly more than a crucifix and a vase of
flowers upon the mantel. As we entered the room, the sister stood before
it with a circle of white caps and blue checked aprons around her, a
circle of little clasped hands, of upturned eyes and lisping lips,
repeating what might have been, "Now I lay me," for anything we knew.
Our entrance brought wandering eyes and thoughts.
At the opposite end of the room, a wide, long window swung open,
revealing a pleasant garden down below, all green and blossoming, with
an image of the Virgin half hid among the vines. Cool, and fresh, and
green it seemed after the glare of the hot streets, a pleasant picture
for the baby eyes. Out from this window the little feet could trot upon
the guarded roof of a piazza. A little chair, a broken doll, and
limbless horse here were familiar objects to the eyes of the mothers in
our party, and when two children seized upon one block with a
determination which threatened a breach of the peace, we were convinced
that even baby nature was the same the world over. Supper time came, and
the children were gathered together in a small room, before the drollest
little table imaginable--a kind of elongated doughnut, raised a foot
from the floor, with a circular seat around it. All the little outer
shells of blue check were slipped on, all the little fat bodies lifted
over and set into their places, to roll off, or about, at will. A grace
was said, to us, I think, since all the little eyes turned towards us,
and a plate of oatmeal porridge put before each one. Some ate with a
relish, and a painful search over the face with a spoon for the open,
waiting mouth; some leaned back to stare at the company; and others
persisted in dipping into the dish of their next neighbor. One little
thing, hardly more than a year old, drew down the corners of her mouth
in a portentous manner, when the motherly one beside her, of the
advanced age of three years, perhaps, rapped on the table with her
spoon, and patted the doleful little face, smiling all the while, until
she actually drew out smiles in return. The dear little mother! An
attendant with a homely face, creased into all manner of good-natured
lines, resolved herself into the old woman who lived in a shoe, holding
two babies and the porridge dish in her lap, balancing one upon the end
of the low bench beside her, while two or three more stood at her knee,
clinging to her apron. It was like a nest of open-mouthed birdlings.
Blessings on the babies, and those, whether of our faith or not, who
teach and care for them, we thought, as we came away. "Inasmuch as ye
have done it unto one of the least of these, ye did it unto me," said
the Master.
Although I said nothing of our church-going in London, I cannot pass
over our American chapel in Paris, with its carved, umbrella-like
canopy, shading the good Dr. R., who did so much socially, as well as
spiritually, for Americans there. Here came many whose names are well
known; among them our minister to France, an elderly gentleman of
unpretending dress and manner, with a kindly, care-worn face. And here
gathered also a company of beautiful women and children, proving the
truth of all that has been said of our countrywomen. A blending of all
types were they, as our people are a blending of all nationalities, each
more lovely than the other, and all making up a picture well worth
seeing. I wish I might say as much for the opposite sex. One gentleman,
who wore a red rose always in his button-hole, and turned his back upon
the minister to stare at the women, had a handsome though _blasé_ face,
and more than one head above the pews would have been marked anywhere;
but the women and children bore away the palm. The delicate, sensitive
faces which characterize American women, whether the effect of climate,
manner of life, or of the nerves for which we are so celebrated, are
found nowhere else, I am sure.
Besides the Sabbath services a weekly prayer-meeting was held here. They
were singing some sweet familiar hymn as we entered one evening and took
our place among the pilgrims and strangers like ourselves. It was the
last gathering for the winter. Some were off for home, some for a summer
of travel; only a few, with the pastor, were to remain. One followed
another in words of retrospection, and regret at parting, until a pall
settled over the little company--until even we, who had never been there
before, wiped our eyes because of the general dolefulness. A hush and
universal mistiness pervaded the air of the dimly-lighted house; the
assembly seemed about to pass out of existence, Niobe-like. Then up rose
Dr. R., the pastor. I wondered what he could say to add to the gloom;
something like this, perhaps: "Dear people, everybody is off; let us
shut up the church, lock the door, and throw away the key. Receive the
benediction." But no; I wish you might feel the thrill that went through
the little company as his words fell from his lips. I wish I dared
attempt to repeat them. "And now to you who go," he said, at last, "who
take with you something of our hearts, be sure our prayers will follow
you. Keep us in memory; but, above all, keep in memory your church vows.
Make yourselves known as Christians among Christians. And when you have
reached home--the home to which our thoughts have so often turned
together--let this be a lesson. When summer comes and you leave the city
for the country, for the mountains, for the sea-side, take your religion
with you. Search out some struggling little church with a discouraged
pastor,--you'll not look far or long to find such a one,--and work for
that, as you have worked for us. And one thing more; send your friends
who are coming abroad to us. Send us the Christians, for we need them,
and by all means send us those who are not Christians; they may need us;
and the Lord bless you, and keep you in all your goings, and give you
peace."
Then the people gathered in knots for last words--for hand-clasps and
good-byes. Now a spirit of peace and good will having fallen upon us
with the pastor's benediction, we gazed wistfully upon the strangers in
the hope of finding one familiar face; but there was none; so we came
sorrowfully down the aisle. The door was almost reached when a sharp,
twanging voice behind us began, "I'm sent out by X. & Y., book
publishers." "O," said I to the friend at my side, "I believe I will
speak to that man. I know Mr. X., and I do so want to speak to
somebody." How he accomplished the introduction I cannot tell, but in a
moment my hand was grasped by that of a stout little man, with bushy
hair and twinkling eyes. "Know Mr. X.? Mr. Q. X.?" he began. To tell the
truth I had not that honor, my acquaintance having been with his
brother; but there was no time to explain, and retreat was equally
impossible; so I replied that my father knew him well; then thinking
that something more was necessary to explain the sudden and intense
interest manifested in his behalf, added, desperately, "indeed,
intimately." To this he paid no manner of attention,--I doubt if he
heard it,--but rattled on: "Fine man, Mr. X., Mr. Q. X. Know Mr. Y.?
Fine man, Mr. Y.; been abroad a year; I'm goin' out to meet him, I am.
He's in Switzerland, Mr. Y. is; been abroad a year. I'm a proof-reader,
I am. I s'pose you know what a proof-reader is." "Yes," I succeeded in
inserting while he took breath, remembering some amateur attempts of my
own in that direction. He began anew: "I'm sent out by X. & Y.; expect
to find Mr. Y. in Switzerland; fine man--" Will he never stop, I
thought, beginning a backward retreat from the pew down the aisle, with
all the while ringing in my ears, "I'm a proof-reader, I am," &c. "Don't
laugh, pray don't," I said to the friends waiting at the door. "It's
dreadful--is it not?" What became of him we never knew, but in all
probability the sexton removed him--still vocal--to the sidewalk that
night; where, since we do not know for how long a time he was wound up,
he may be iterating and reiterating to this day the interesting fact of
his occupation, with the eulogy upon Messrs. X. & Y.
CHAPTER VIII.
SHOW PLACES IN THE SUBURBS OF PARIS.
The river omnibuses.--Sèvres and its
porcelain.--St. Cloud as it was.--The crooked
little town.--Versailles.--Eugenie's "spare
bedroom."--The queen who played she was a farmer's
wife.--Seven miles of paintings.--The portraits of
the presidents.
THERE are four ways of going to St. Cloud, from Paris, says the
guide-book; we chose the fifth, and took one of the little
steamboats--the river omnibuses--that follow the course of the Seine,
stopping at the piers along the city, which occur almost as often as the
street crossings. Very insignificant little steamers they are, made up
of puff, and snort, and smoke, a miniature deck, and a man with a big
bell. Up the river we steamed through a mist that hid everything but the
green banks, the pretty villas whose lawns drabbled their skirts in the
river, and after a time the islands that seemed to have dropped cool,
wet, and green into the middle of the stream. We plunged beneath the
dark arches of the stone bridges--the Pont d'Alma not to be forgotten,
with its colossal sentinels on either side of the middle arch, calm,
white, and still, leaning upon their muskets, their feet almost dipping
into the water, their great, stony eyes gazing away down the river.
What is it they seem to see beyond the bend? What is it they watch and
wait for, gun in hand? We pulled our wraps about us, found a sheltered
place, and went on far beyond our destination, through the gray vapor
that gathered sometimes into great, plashing drops to fall upon the
deck, or, hovering in mid-air, wiped out the distance from the landscape
as effectually as the sweep of a painter's brush, while it softened and
spiritualized everything near, from the sharply outlined eaves, and
gables, and narrow windows of the village struggling up from the water,
to the shadowy span of the bridges that seemed to rest upon air. Then
down with the rain and the current we swept again, to land at the
forsaken pier of Sèvres, from which we made our way over the pavings, so
inviting in these French towns for missile or barricade, to the
porcelain factory. No fear of missing it, since it is the one object of
interest to strangers in the town; and whatever question we asked, the
reply would have been the pointing of the finger in that one direction.
Once there, we clattered and slipped over the tiled floor after a polite
attendant, through its many show-rooms, and among its wilderness of
pottery, ancient and modern. The manufactory was established by--I'm
sure I don't know whom--in seventeen hundred and--something, at
Vincennes, quite the other side of Paris; but a few years later, in the
reign of Louis XV., was transferred to Sèvres, and put under the
direction of government. It is almost impossible to gain permission to
visit the workshops, but a permit to pass through the show-rooms can
easily be obtained. There were queer old-fashioned attempts at glazed
ware here, some of them adorned with pictures like those we used to see
in our grandmothers' china closets, of puffy little pink gentlemen and
ladies ambling over a pink foreground; a pink mountain, of pyramidal
form, rising from the wide-rimmed hat of the roseate gentlemen; a pink
lake standing on end at the feet of the lady, and a little pink house,
upon which they might both have sat comfortably, with a few clouds of
jeweller's cotton completing the picture. A striking contrast were these
to the marvels of frailty and grace of later times. The rooms were hung
with paintings upon porcelain, the burial of Attila, which we had seen
at the Louvre, among them. Every conceivable model of vase, pitcher, and
jar was here--quaint, beautiful conceptions of form adorned by the hand
of skilful artists, from mammoth vases, whirling upon stationary
pedestals, to the most delicate cup that ever touched red lips.
At noon we strolled over to St. Cloud, a pleasant walk of a mile,
beginning with a shaded avenue, rough as a country road; then on, down a
street leading to the gates of the park of St. Cloud--a street so vain
of its destination that it was actually lifted up above the gardens on
either side. From the wide gates we passed into a labyrinth of shaded,
clean-swept ways, and followed one to the avenue of the fountains, where
we sat upon the edge of a stone basin to await the opening of the
palace. For do not imagine, dear reader, that you can run in and out of
palaces without ceremony and at all hours of the day. There is an
appointed time; there is the gathering outside of the curious; there is
the coming of a man with rattling, ringing keys; there is the throwing
open of wide gates and massive doors, and then--and not until then--the
entering in. As for the fountains, next to those at Versailles they have
been widely celebrated; but as they only played upon Sundays and fête
days, we did not see them. Their Sunday gowns of mist and flowing water
were laid aside, and naked and bare enough they were this day. The wide
basins, the lions and dolphins, were here, with the marble nymphs, and
fauns and satyrs, that make a shower-bath spectacle of themselves upon
gala days. When the hour refused to strike, and we grew hungry,--as one
will among the rarest and most wonderful things,--we left the park, to
find the crooked little town that sits in the dust always at the feet of
palaces. Its narrow streets ran close up to the gates, and would have
run in had they not been shut. Here in the low, smoke-stained room of an
inn that was only a wine-shop, we spent the time of waiting,--our elbows
upon the round, dark table, which, with the dirt and wooden chairs, made
up its only furnishing,--sipping the sour wine, cutting slices from the
long, melancholy stick of bread, all dust and ashes, and nibbling the
cheese that might have vied with Samson for strength. The diamond-paned
window was flung wide open, for the air seemed soiled and stained, like
the floor. Just across the narrow, empty street, an old house elbowed
our inn. The eaves of its thatched roof were tufted with moss, out from
which rose a mass of delicate pink blossoms--pretty innocents, fairly
blushing for shame of their surroundings. Through the long passage-way
came the sound of high-pitched voices--of a strange jargon from the
room opening upon the street, where a heavy-eyed maid, behind a pewter
bar, served the blue-bloused workmen gathered about the little tables.
The white palace of St. Cloud, with its Corinthian columns, stood
daintily back from its gates and the low-bred town; but its long wings
had run down, like curious children, to peep out through the bars; so,
you will see, it formed three sides of a square. It had lately been
refurnished for the prince imperial. The grand _salons_ need not be
described; one is especially noted as having been the place where a baby
was once baptized, who is now ex-emperor of France. In the same room the
civil contract of marriage between Napoleon I. and Marie Louise was
celebrated. A few elegant but less spacious rooms were interesting from
having been the private apartments of the poor queens and empresses who
have shared the throne of France. Gorgeous they were in tapestry and
gilding, filled with a gaping crowd of visitors, and echoing to the
voice of a voluble guide. Royal fingers may have touched the pretty
trinkets lying about; royal forms reclined upon the soft couches; royal
aching hearts beat to the tick of the curious gilt clock, that bore as
many faces as a woman, some one wickedly said; but it was impossible to
realize it, or to believe that high heels, and panniers, and jaunty hats
upon sweet-faced, shrill-voiced American girls had not ruled and reigned
here always, as they did this day.
Versailles lies out beyond St. Cloud, but we gave to it another day. We
were a merry party, led by Dr. R., who left the train at the station,
and filled the omnibus for the palace. There was an air of having seen
better days about the city, which was at one time the second of
importance in France; it fed and fattened upon the court, and when at
last the court went away not to return, it came to grief. The most vivid
recollection I have of the great court-yard, around which extend three
sides of the palace, is of its round paving-stones--that seemed to have
risen up preparatory to crying out--and the grove of weather-stained
statues upon high pedestals,--generals, cardinals, and statesmen who
hated and connived against each other in life, doomed now in stone to
stare each other out of countenance. I am sure we detected a wry face
here and there, to say nothing of clinched fists. It is a gloomy old
court-yard at best. The front of the main building is all that remains
of the old hunting-seat of Louis XIII., which his son would not suffer
to be destroyed. It is of dingy, mildewed brick, that can never in any
possible light appear palatial; and so blackened and purple-stained are
the statues before it that they might have been just brought from the
Morgue. The whole palace is only a show place now--a museum of painting
and statuary. As for the celebrated gardens, we walked for hours, and
still they stretched away on every side. We explored paths wide and
narrow, crooked and straight, and saw clipped trees by the mile, with
grottoes and the skeletons of the fountains that, like naughty children,
play o' Sundays, and all the wonderful trees, shrubs, and flowers
brought from the ends of the earth, and ate honey gingerbread (flavored
with extract of turpentine) before an open booth, and were ready to
faint with weariness; and when at last a broad avenue opened before us
with the Trianons, which must be seen, at the farther end, we would not
have taken the whole place as a gift. It must have been at this point
that we fortified ourselves with the gingerbread.
The Grand Trianon alone were we permitted to enter. It is in the form of
an Italian villa, with a ground floor only, and long windows opening
upon delightful gardens. Like Versailles, it is now a mere show,
although a suit of apartments was fitted up here some time since, in
anticipation of a neighborly visit from Queen Victoria to Eugenie,
making of the little palace a kind of guest chamber, a spare bedroom. As
we followed a winding path through the park, we came suddenly upon an
open glade, surrounded and shaded by forest trees. Over the tiny lake,
in the centre, swans were sailing. Half hidden among the wide-spread,
sweeping branches of the trees were the scattered farm-houses of a
deserted village--only half a dozen in all, of rude, half Swiss
architecture, made to imitate age and decay, quaintly picturesque. Here
Marie Antoinette and her court played at poverty. Do you remember how,
when she grew weary of solemn state, she came here with a few favored
ones to forget her crown, and dream she was a farmer's wife? The dairy
was empty, the marble slab bare upon which she made butter for her
guests. Just beyond was the mill, but the wheel was still. It was a
pleasant dream--a dream of Arcadia. Ah, but there was a fearful
awakening! "The poorest peasant in the land," said the queen, "has one
little spot which she can call her own; the Queen of France asks no
more." So she shut the gates upon the people who had claimed and held
the right, from all time, to wander at will through the gardens of
their kings. Then they hated her, whom they had greeted with shouts of
welcome when she came a bride from over the border. "The Austrian! the
Austrian!" they hissed through the closed gates. And one day they
dragged her out from a bare cell in the Conciergerie,--no make-believe
of rough walls, of coarse fare there,--they bound the slender hands
behind her, they thrust into a prison cart the form that had been used
to rest upon down and silken cushions, and bore her over the rough
stones to the scaffold. Ah, it makes one shudder!
To see the two hundred rooms of the palace of Versailles requires a day,
at least; but we, fearful that this might be our last opportunity,
determined to spend the remaining hour or two and our last atom of
strength in the attempt. A wandering cabman pounced upon us as we came
down the avenue from the Trianons, and bore us back to the palace, where
we toiled up and down the grand stairway, and peeped into the chapel
that had echoed to the mockery of worship in the time of the king who
built all this--the king who loved everybody's wife but his own--so
faithlessly! There was a dizzy hurrying through corridors lined with
statuary, through one _salon_ after another hung with Horace Vernet's
paintings describing the glories of France--the crowning of its kings,
the reception of its ambassadors, the signing of its treaties, the
winning of its battles; but was all this bloodshed, and all this agony
depicted upon canvas, for the glory of France? There were immense
galleries, where, on every side, from cornice to floor, one was
conscious of nothing but smoke and cannon, wounds and gore, and rolling
eyes. We walked over the prescribed three miles and a half of floors
slippery as ice, and gazed upon the seven miles of pictures, with a
feeling less of pleasure or gratified curiosity than of satisfaction at
having _done_ Versailles. Room after room was devoted to portraits, full
lengths and half lengths, side faces and full fronts; faces to be
remembered, if one had not been in such mortal haste, and faces that
would never have been missed from the ermined robes. In a quiet corner
we were startled to find some of our good presidents staring down upon
us from the wall. A mutual surprise it seemed to be. But if we Americans
must be awkward and clownish to the last degree, half civilized, and but
one remove from barbarism, don't let us put the acme of all this upon
canvas, and hang it in the palace of kings. Here was President Grant
represented in the saloon of a steamboat,--America to the last,--one leg
crossed, one heel upon the opposite knee, and his head about to sink
into his coat collar in an agony of terror at finding himself among
quality. His attitude might have been considered graceful and dignified
in a bar-room, or even in the saloon of a Mississippi steamer; but it
utterly failed in both particulars in the Palace of Versailles, among
courtly men and high-bred women.
CHAPTER IX.
A VISIT TO BRUSSELS.
To Brussels.--The old and new city.--The paradise
and purgatory of dogs.--The Hôtel de Ville and
Grand Place.--St. Gudule.--The picture
galleries.--Wiertz and his odd
paintings.--Brussels lace and an hour with the
lace-makers. How the girls found Charlotte
Brontë's school.--The scene of "Villette."
THERE were one or two more excursions from Paris, and then, when we had
grasped the fat hand of Monsieur, our landlord, and kissed the dark
cheeks of Madame, his wife, and submitted to the same from Mademoiselle,
their daughter, with light hearts, serene consciences, and the ----
family we started for Brussels. It is a six hours' ride by rail.
Almost as soon as the line between France and Belgium is passed, the low
hills drop away, the thatch-roofed cottages give place to those of
whitewashed brick, with bright, red-tiled roofs. All along the way were
the straight poplars overrun with ivy, and the land was cared for,
coaxed, and fairly driven to the highest point of cultivation. Women
were at work in the fields, and more than one Maud Müller leaned upon
her rake to gaze after us. Soon, when there were only level fields
beneath a level sky, the windmills began to appear in the distance,
slowly swinging the ghostly arms that became long, narrow sails as we
neared them. At two o'clock we reached Brussels, after being nearly
resolved into our original element--dust. Nothing but a sand-hill ever
equalled the appearance we presented when we stepped from the train; nor
did we need anything so much as to be thrown over a line and beaten like
a carpet when we finally gained our hotel.
The old city of Brussels is crooked, and dull, and picturesque; but
joined to it--like an old man with a gay young wife--is the beautiful
Paris-like upper town, with its houses covered with white stucco, and a
little mirror outside of every window, placed at an angle of forty-five
degrees, so that Madame, sitting within, can see all that passes upon
the street, herself unseen. Here in the new town are the palaces, the
finest churches, the hotels, and Marie Therese's park, where young and
old walk, and chat, and make eyes at each other summer evenings. Scores
of strings, with a poodle at one extremity and a woman at the other, may
here be seen, with little rugs laid upon the ground for the pink-eyed
puff-balls to rest upon. Truly Brussels is the paradise and purgatory of
dogs. Anywhere upon the streets you may see great, hungry-eyed animals
dragging little carts pushed by women; and it is difficult to determine
which is the most forlorn--the dog, the cart, or the woman. We never
understood before what it was to "work like a dog." At one extremity of
the park was the white, new Senate-house; opposite, the gray,
barrack-like palace of the king; upon the third side, among others, our
hotel. Here we were happy in finding another family of friends. With
them we strolled down into the old town, after dinner, taking to the
middle of the street, in continental fashion, as naturally as ducks to
water; crossing back and forth to stare up at a church or into a shop
window,--straggling along one after another in a way that would have
been marked at home, but was evidently neither new nor strange here,
where the native population attended to their own affairs with a zeal
worthy of reward, and other parties of sight-seers were plying their
vocation with a perseverance that would have won eminence in any other
profession. Through crooked by-ways we wandered to the Grand Place of
the old city--a paved square shut in by high Spanish-gabled houses
ornamented with the designs of the various guilds. From the windows of
one hung the red, yellow, and black Belgian flag. There was no rattle of
carts, no clatter of hoofs. Down upon the dark paving-stones a crowd of
women, old and young, with handkerchiefs crossed over their bosoms, were
holding a flower-market. Just behind them rose the grim statues of the
two counts, Egmont and Van Horn,--who lost their heads while striving to
gain their cause against Spanish tyranny and the Spanish
Inquisition,--and the old royal palace, blackened and battered by time
and the hand of forgotten sculptors, until it seemed like the mummy of a
palace, half eaten away. Just before them was the Hôtel de Ville, with
its beautiful tower of gray stone, its roof a mass of dormer windows. It
comes to me like a picture now--the gathering shadows of a summer night,
the time-worn houses, lovely in decay, the tawdry flag, and the heads of
the old women nodding over their flowers.
Brussels has a grand church dedicated to Saints Michael and Gudule. If I
could only give to you, who have not seen them, some idea of the
vastness and beauty of these cathedrals! But descriptions are tiresome,
and dimensions nobody reads. If I could only tell you how far extending
they are, both upon earth and towards heaven--how they seem not so much
to have been built stone upon stone, as to have stood from the
foundation of the world, solitary, alone, until, after long ages, some
strolling town came to wonder, and worship, and sit at their feet in
awe! We crept in through the narrow door that shut behind us with a dull
echo. A chill like that of a tomb pervaded the air, though a summer sun
beat down upon the stones outside. A forest of clustered columns rose
all around us. Far above our heads was a gray sky, the groined arches
where little birds flew about. Stained windows gleamed down the vast
length, broken by the divisions and subdivisions,--one, far above the
grand entrance, like the wheel of a chariot of fire. All along the
walls, over the altar, and filling the chapel niches, were pictures of
saints, and martyrs, and blessed virgins, that seemed in the dim
distance like dots upon the wall. Muffled voices broke upon the
stillness. Far up the nave a little company of worshippers knelt before
the altar--workingmen who had thrown down mallet and chisel for a
moment, to creep within the shadows of the sanctuary; market-women, a
stray water-cress still clinging to the folds of their gowns; children
dropping upon the rush kneeling-chairs, to mutter a prayer God grant
they feel, with ever and anon, above the murmur of the prayer, above the
drone of white-robed priests, the low, full chant from hidden singers,
echoing through the arches and among the pillars, following us down the
aisles to where we read upon the monuments the deeds of some old knight
of heathen times, whose image has survived his dust--whose works have
followed him.
After leaving the church we wandered among and through the picture
galleries in the old palaces of the city,--galleries of modern Belgian
art, with one exception, where were numberless flat old Flemish
pictures, and dead Christs, livid, ghastly, horrible to look upon. The
best of Flemish art is not in Brussels. Among the galleries of modern
paintings, that of the odd artist, recently deceased, Wiertz, certainly
deserves mention. It contains materials for a fortune to an enterprising
Yankee. The subjects of the pictures are allegorical, parabolical, and
diabolical, the scenes being laid in heaven, hell, and mid-air. In one,
Napoleon I. is represented surrounded by the flames of hell, folding his
arms in the Napoleonic attitude, while his soldiers crowd around him to
hold up maimed limbs and ghastly wounds with a denunciatory and angry
air. Widows and orphans thrust themselves before his face with
anathematizing countenances. In fact, the situation is decidedly
unpleasant for the hero, and one longs for a bucket of cold water. Many
of the pictures were behind screens, and to be seen through
peep-holes--one of them a ghastly thing, of coffins broken open and
their risen occupants emerging in shrouds. Upon the walls around the
room were painted half-open doors and windows with pretty girls peeping
out; close down to the floor, a dog kennel, from which its savage
occupant was ready to spring; just above him, from a latticed window,
an old _concierge_ leaned out to ask our business. Even in the pictures
hanging upon the walls was something of this trickery. In one the foot
and hand of a giant were painted out upon the frame, so that he seemed
to be just stepping out from his place; and I am half inclined to think
that many of the people walking about the room were originally framed
upon the walls.
Brussels is always associated in one's mind with its laces. We visited
one of the manufactories. A dozen or twenty women were busy in a sunny,
cheerful room, working out the pretty leaves and flowers, with needle
and thread, for the _point_ lace, or twisting the bobbins among the
innumerable pins in the cushion before them to follow the pattern for
the _point appliqué_. When completed, you know, the delicate designs are
sewed upon gossamer lace. Upon a long, crimson-covered table in the room
above were spread out, in tempting array, the results of this tiresome
labor--coiffures that would almost resign one to a bald spot,
handkerchiefs insnaring as cobwebs, _barbes_ that fairly pierced our
hearts, and shawls for which there are no words. I confess that these
soft, delicate things have for women a wonderful charm--that as we
turned over and over in our hands the frail, yellow-white cobwebs, some
of us more than half forgot the tenth commandment.
_Table-d'hôte_ over, one evening, "Where shall we go? What can we do?"
queried one of the four girls in our party, two of whom had but just now
escaped from the thraldom of a French _pensionnat_.
"It would be so delightful if we could walk out for once by ourselves.
If there were only something to see--somewhere to go."
"Girls!" exclaimed Axelle, suddenly, "was not the scene of _Villette_
laid in Brussels? Is not Charlotte Brontë's boarding-school here? I am
sure it is. Suppose we seek it out--we four girls alone."
"But how, and where?" and "Wouldn't that be fine?" chorused the others.
There was a hasty search through guide-books; but alas! not a clew could
we find, not a peg upon which to hang the suspicions that were almost
certainties.
"I am sure it was here," persisted Axelle. "I wish we had a _Villette_."
"We could get one at an English library," suggested another.
"If there is any English library here," added a third, doubtfully.
Evidently that must be our first point of departure. We could ask for
information there. Accordingly we planned our crusade, as girls do,--the
elders smiling unbelief, as elders will,--and sallied out at last into
the summer sunshine, very brave in our hopes, very glad in our unwonted
liberty. A _commissionaire_ gave us the address of the bookstore we
sought as we were leaving the hotel. "There are no obstacles in the path
of the determined," we said, stepping out upon the Rue Royale. Across
the way was the grand park, a maze of winding avenues, shaded by lofty
trees, with nymphs, and fauns, and satyrs hiding among the shrubbery,
and with all the tortuous paths made into mosaic pavement by the
shimmering sunlight. But to Axelle _Villette_ was more real than that
June day.
"Do you remember," she said, "how Lucy Snow reached the city alone and
at night?--how a young English stranger conducted her across the park,
she following in his footsteps through the darkness, and hearing only
the tramp, tramp, before her, and the drip of the rain as it fell from
the soaked leaves? This must be the park."
When we had passed beyond its limits, we espied a little square, only a
kind of alcove in the street, in the centre of which was the statue of
some military hero. Behind it a quadruple flight of broad stone steps
led down into a lower and more quiet street. Facing us, as we looked
down, was a white stuccoed house, with a glimpse of a garden at one
side.
"See!" exclaimed Axelle, joyfully; "I believe this is the very place.
Don't you remember when they had come out from the park, and Lucy's
guide left her to find an inn near by, she ran,--being frightened,--and
losing her way, came at last to a flight of steps like these, which she
descended, and found, instead of the inn, the _pensionnat_ of Madame
Beck?" Only the superior discretion and worldly wisdom of the others
prevented Axelle from following in Lucy Snow's footsteps, and settling
the question of identity then and there. As it was, we went on to the
library, a stuffy little place, with a withered old man for sole
attendant, who, seated before a table in the back shop, was poring over
an old book. We darted in, making a bewildering flutter of wings, and
pecked him with a dozen questions at once, oddly inflected: "_Was_ the
scene of _Villette_ laid in Brussels?" and "_Is_ the school really
here?" and "You _don't_ say so!" though we had insisted upon it from the
first, and he had just replied in the affirmative; lastly, "O, _do_ tell
us how we may find it."
"You must go so-and-so," he said at length, when we paused.
"Yes," we replied in chorus; "we have just come from there."
"And," he went on, "you will see the statue of General Beliard."
We nudged each other significantly.
"Go down the steps in the rear, and the house facing you--"
"We knew it. We felt it," we cried, triumphantly; and his directions
ended there. We neither heeded nor interpreted the expression of
expectation that stole over his face. We poured out only a stream of
thanks which should have moistened the parched sands of his soul, and
then hastened to retrace our steps. We found the statue again. We
descended into the narrow, noiseless street, and stood,--an awe-struck
group,--before the great square house, upon the door-plate of which we
read,--
"PENSIONNAT DE DEMOISELLES.
HÉGER--PARENT."
"Now," said Axelle, when we had drawn in with a deep breath, the
satisfaction and content which shone out again from our glad eyes, "we
will ring the bell."
"You will not think of it," gasped the choir of startled girls.
"To be sure; what have we come for?" was her reply. "We will only ask
permission to see the garden, and as the portress will doubtless speak
nothing but French, some one of you, fresh from school, must act as
mouthpiece." They stared at Axelle, at each other, and at the steps
leading into the upper town, as though they meditated flight. "I
cannot," and "_I_ cannot," said each one of the shrinking group.
Axelle laid her hand upon the bell, and gave one long, strong pull.
"Now," she said, quietly, "some one of you must speak. You are ladies:
you will not run away."
And they accepted the situation.
We were shown into a small _salon_, where presently there entered to us
a brisk, sharp-featured little French woman,--a teacher in the
establishment,--who smiled a courteous welcome from out her black eyes
as we apologized for the intrusion, and made known our wishes.
"We are a party of American girls," we said, "who, having learned to
know and love Charlotte Brontë through her books, desire to see the
garden of which she wrote in _Villette_."
"O, certainly, certainly," was the gracious response. "Americans often
come to visit the school and the garden."
"Then this _is_ the school where she was for so long a time?" we burst
out simultaneously, forgetting our little prepared speeches.
"Yes, _mesdemoiselles_; I also was a pupil at that time," was the
reply. We viewed the dark little woman with sudden awe.
"But tell us," we said, crowding around her, "was she like--like--" We
could think of no comparison that would do justice to the subject.
The reply was a shrug of the shoulders, and, "She was just a quiet
little thing, in no way remarkable. I am sure," she added, "we did not
think her a genius; and indeed, though I have read her books, I can see
nothing in them to admire or praise so highly!"
"But they are _so_ wonderful!" ventured one of our number, gushingly.
"They are very untrue," she replied, while something like a spark shot
from the dark eyes.
O, shades of departed story-tellers, is it thus ye are to be judged?
"Madame Héger," she went on, "who still has charge of the school, is a
most excellent lady, and not at all the person described as 'Madame
Beck.'"
"And M. Paul Emmanuel,--Lucy Snow's teacher-lover,"--we ventured to
suggest with some timidity.
"Is Madame Héger's husband, and was at that time," she replied, with a
little angry toss of the head. After this terrible revelation there was
nothing more to be said.
She led the way through a narrow passage, and opening a door at the end,
we stepped into the garden. We had passed the class-rooms on our
right--where, "on the last row, in the quietest corner," Charlotte and
Emily used to sit. We could almost see the pale faces, the shy figures
bending over the desk in the gathering dusk.
The garden is less spacious than it was in Charlotte's time, new
class-rooms having been added, which cut off something from its length.
But the whole place was strangely familiar and pleasant to our eyes.
Shut in by surrounding houses, more than one window overlooks its narrow
space. Down its length upon one side extends the shaded walk, the
"_allée défendue_," which Charlotte paced alone so many weary hours,
when Emily had returned to England. Parallel to this is the row of giant
pear trees,--huge, misshapen, gnarled,--that bore no fruit to us but
associations vivid as memories. From behind these, in the summer
twilight, the ghost of _Villette_ was wont to steal, and buried at the
foot of "Methuselah," the oldest, we knew poor Lucy's love-letters were
hidden to-day. A seat here and there, a few scattered shrubs, evergreen,
laurel, and yew, scant blossoms, paths damp, green-crusted--that was
all. Not a cheerful place at its brightest; not a sunny spot associated
in one's mind with summer and girlish voices. It was very still that
day; the pupils were off for the long vacation, and yet how full the
place was to us! The very leaves overhead, the stones in the walls
around us, whispered a story, as we walked to and fro where little feet,
that tired even then of life's rough way, had gone long years before.
"May we take one leaf--only one?" we asked, as we turned away.
"As many as you please;" and the little French woman grasped at the
leaves growing thick and dark above her head. We plucked them with our
own hands, tenderly, almost reverently; then, with many thanks, and our
adieus, we came away.
"We have found it!" we exclaimed, when we had returned to the hotel and
our friends. They only smiled their unbelief.
"Do you not know--can you not see--O, do you not feel?" we cried,
displaying our glistening trophies, "that these could have grown nowhere
but upon the pear trees in the old garden where Charlotte Brontë used to
walk and dream?"
And our words carried conviction to their hearts.
CHAPTER X.
WATERLOO AND THROUGH BELGIUM.
To Waterloo.--Beggars and guides.--The
Mound.--Chateau Hougomont.--Victor Hugo's "sunken
road."--Antwerp.--A visit to the cathedral.--A
drive about the city.--An excursion to Ghent.--The
funeral services in the cathedral.--"Poisoned? Ah,
poor man!"--The watch-tower.--The Friday-market
square.--The nunnery.--Longfellow's pilgrims to
"the belfry of Bruges."
WE could not leave the city without driving out to the battle-field of
Waterloo. It is about a dozen miles to The Mound, and you may take the
public coach if you choose--it runs daily. Our party being large, we
preferred to engage a carriage.
We left the house after breakfast, and passed through the wide,
delightful avenues of the Forêt de Soignes,--the Bois de Boulogne of
Brussels,--then across the peaceful country which seemed never to have
known anything so disturbing as war. Beyond the park lies the village
which gave its name to the battle-field though the thickest of the fight
was not there. In an old brick church, surmounted by a dome, lie
intombed many minor heroes of the conflict. But heroes soon pall upon
the taste, and nothing less than Wellington or Napoleon himself could
have awakened a spark of interest in us by this time. Then, too, the
vivid present blinded us to the past. The air was sweet with summer
scents. Mowers were busy in the hayfields. A swarm of little barefooted
beggars importuned us, turning dizzy somersaults until we could see only
a maze of flying, dusty feet on either side. One troop, satisfied or
despairing, gave way to another, and the guides were almost as annoying
as the beggars. They walk for miles out of their villages to forestall
each other, and meet the carriages that are sure to come from Brussels
on pleasant days. They drive sharp bargains. As you near the centre of
interest, competition is greater, and their demands proportionately
less. We refused the extortionate overtures of two or three, and finally
picked up a shrewd-faced young fellow in a blue blouse, who hung upon
the step of the carriage, or ran beside it for the last mile or two of
the distance. The village of Mont St. Jean follows that of Waterloo. It
is only a scant collection of whitewashed farm buildings of brick. We
rolled through it without stopping, and out again between the quiet,
smiling fields, our minds utterly refusing to grasp the idea that they
had swarmed once with an army; that in this little village we had just
left--dull, half asleep in the sunshine--dreadful slaughter had held
high carnival one July day, not many years before. Even when the guide,
clinging to the door of the carriage, rattled over the story of the
struggle in a _patois_ all his own, hardly a shadow of the scene was
presented to us.
As our horses slackened their pace, he stepped down from his perch to
gather a nosegay of the flowers by the road-side, making no pause in his
mechanical narrative--of how the Anglo-Belgian army were gathered upon
this road and the fields back to the wood, on the last day of the fight;
how many of the officers had been called at a moment's notice from the
gayeties at Brussels, and more than one was found dead upon the field
the next day, under the soaking rain, dressed as for a ball. He pushed
back his visorless cap, uttering an exclamation over the heat, and
adding, in the same breath, that just here, about Mont St. Jean, the
battle waged fiercely in the afternoon, when Ney, with his brave
cuirassiers, tried in vain to carry the position; and all the time, the
summer sounds of twittering birds and hum of locusts were in our ears;
the barefooted children still turned upon their axles beside the
carriage wheels as we rolled along, and that other day seemed so far
away, that we could neither bring it near nor realize it. One grim
reminder of the past rose in the distance, and, as we drew near, swelled
and grew before our eyes. It was the huge mound of earth raised two
hundred feet, to commemorate the victory of the allies. Hills were cut
down, the very face of nature changed for miles around, to rear this
monument to pride and vain-glory. Upon its summit crouches the Belgian
lion.
We turn from the paved road, when we have reached what seems to be a
mass of unsightly ruins, with only a tumbling outbuilding left here and
there. The whole is enclosed by a wall, which skirts also an orchard,
neglected, grown to weeds. The carriage stops before the great gates. It
is very cool and quiet in the shaded angle of the battered wall as we
step down. It has been broken and chipped as if by pick-axes. Ah! the
shot struck hardest here. The top of the low wall is irregular; the
bricks have been knocked out; the dust has sifted down; the mosses have
gathered, and a fringe of grass follows all its length. Even sweet wild
flowers blossom where the muskets rested in those dreadful days. At
intervals, half way up its height, a brick is missing. Accident? Ah, no;
hastily constructed loopholes, through which the English fired at first,
before the horrible time when they beat each other down with the butts
of their guns while they fought hand to hand here, like wild beasts.
We enter the court-yard. Only a roughly plastered room or two remain,
where the greed that gloats even over the field of blood offers
_souvenirs_ of the place importunately. In the centre of this court-yard
may still be seen the well that was filled with corpses. It must have
given out blood for many a day. Upon one side are the remains of the
building used for a hospital in the beginning of the fight, but where
the wounded and dying perished in torment, when the French succeeded in
firing the chateau; for this is _Hougomont_.
We came out at the gateway where we had entered; crossed the slope under
the shadow of the branches from the apple trees, and followed the road
winding through wheat-fields to The Mound. Breast-high on either side
rose the nodding crests; and among them wild flowers, purple, scarlet,
and blue, fairly dazzled our eyes, as they waved with the golden grain
in the sunshine. "O, smiling harvest-fields," we said, "you have been
sown with heroes; you have been enriched with blood!"
It was a long, dizzy climb up the face of The Mound to the narrow
foothold beside the platform where rests that grim, gigantic lion. Once
there, we held to every possible support in the hurricane of wind that
seized us, while the guide gave a name to each historic farm and village
spread out before our eyes. Only a couple of miles cover all the
battle-field--the smallest where grand armies ever met; but the
slaughter was the more terrible.
Connected with an inn at the foot of The Mound is a museum of
curiosities. Here are queer old helmets worn by the cuirassiers, hacked
and rust-stained; broken swords, and old-fashioned muskets; buttons, and
bullets even--everything that could be garnered after such a sowing of
the earth.
In unquestioning faith we bought buttons stained with mildew, and
bearing upon them, in raised letters, the number of a regiment. Alas!
reason told us, later, that the buttons disposed of annually here would
supply an ordinary army. And rumor added, that they are buried now in
quantities, to be exhumed as often as the supply fails.
I remembered Victor Hugo to have said in _Les Misérables_ something in
regard to a sunken road here, which proved a pitfall to the French, and
helped, in his judgment, to turn the fortunes of the day. But we had
seen no sunken road. I mentioned it to the guide, who said that Victor
Hugo spent a fortnight examining the ground before writing that
description of the battle. "He lodged at our house," he added. "My
father was his guide. What he wrote was all quite true. There is now no
road such as he described; that was all changed when the earth was
scraped together to form The Mound."
We lunched at the inn, surrounded by mementos and trophies, and served
by an elderly woman, whose father had been a sergeant in the Belgian
army, then late in the afternoon drove back to town.
The pleasant days at Brussels soon slipped by, and then we were off to
Antwerp--only an hour's ride. I will tell you nothing about the former
wealth and commercial activity of the city--that in the sixteenth
century it was the wealthiest city in Europe, &c, &c. For all these
interesting particulars, see Murray's Handbook of Northern Germany. As
soon as we had secured rooms at the hotel, dropped our satchels and
umbrellas, we followed the chimes to the cathedral. The houses of the
people have crept close to it, until many of them, old and gray, have
fairly grown to it, like barnacles to a ship; or it seemed as though
they had built their nests, like the rooks, under the moss-grown eaves.
The interior of the cathedral was singularly grand and open. As we threw
our shawls about us--a precaution never omitted--an old man shuffled out
from a dark corner to show the church, take our _francs_, and pull aside
the curtains from before the principal pictures, if so dignified a name
as curtain can be applied to the dusty, brown cambric that obstructed
our vision. Rubens's finest pictures are here, and indeed the city
abounds in all that is best of Flemish art,--most justly, since it was
the birthplace of its master. Rubens in the flesh we had seen at the
Louvre; the spiritual manifestation was reserved for Antwerp; and to
recall the city is to recall a series of visions of which one may not
speak lightly.
Across, from the cathedral, upon a wide wooden bench in the market-place
we sat a moment to consider our ways--the signal for the immediate
swooping down upon us of guides and carriages, and the result of which
was, our departure in a couple of dingy open vehicles to finish the
city. We crawled about the town like a diminutive funeral procession,
dismounting at the Church of St. Jacques to see the pictures, with which
it is filled. In one of the chapels was a young American artist, copying
Rubens's picture of "A Holy Family"--the one in which his two wives and
others of his family enact the part of Mary, Martha, St. Jerome, &c.
Behind the high altar is the tomb of Rubens, with an inscription of
sufficient length to extinguish an ordinary man. There was a museum,
too, in the city, rich in the works of Rubens and Vandyck, and the fine
park in the new part of the town, as well as the massive docks built by
the first Napoleon, were yet to be seen. The older members of the party
were in the first carriage, and received any amount of valuable
information, which was transmitted to us who followed in a succession of
shouts sounding as much like "fire!" as anything else, with all manner
of beckoning, and pointing, and wild throwing up of arms, that
undoubtedly gave vent to their feelings, but brought only confusion and
distraction to our minds. Not to be outdone, our driver began a series
of utterly unintelligible explanations, the only part of which we
understood in the least was, when pointing to the docks, he ejaculated,
"Napoleon!" At that we nodded our heads frantically, which only
encouraged him to go on. Pausing before a low, black house, exactly like
all the others, he pointed to it with his whip. It said "Hydraulics"
upon a rickety sign over the door. There were old casks, and anchors,
and ropes, and rotting wood all around, for it was down upon the
wharves. We tried to look enlightened, gratified even, and succeeded so
well that he entered upon an elaborate dissertation in an unknown
tongue. What do you suppose it was all about? Can it be that he was
explaining the principles of hydraulics?
We made, one clay, an excursion from Antwerp to Ghent and Bruges. We
left the train at Ghent to walk up through the narrow streets, that have
no sidewalks, to the cathedral. There was a funeral within. The driver
of the hearse profusely decorated with inverted feather dusters, was
comfortably smoking his pipe outside. A little hunchbacked guide, with
great, glassy eyes, and teeth like yellow fangs, led us up the aisle to
the screen beside the high altar, where we looked between the tombs and
the monuments, upon the long procession of men circling around the
coffin in the choir, each with a lighted candle in hand. As there were
only about a dozen candles in all, and each must hold one while he
passed the coffin, it was a piece of dexterity, at least, to manage
them, which so engrossed our attention, that we caught but an occasional
sentence from our guide's whispered story of the seventh bishop of
Ghent, who donated the pulpit to the cathedral, and around whose marble
feet we were trying to peep; of the ninth, who was poisoned as he went
upon some mission ("Poisoned? Ah, poor man!" we ejaculated, absently,
our eyes anxiously fixed upon one man to whom had been given no candle
as yet); of the tall brass candlesticks, supposed to have been brought
from England in the time of Cromwell, and a host more of fragmentary
information, forgotten now. The whole interior of the church is rich in
decoration, black and white marble predominating, with pictures of the
early Flemish school filling every available space. Once out of the
church, we climbed into an ark of a carriage, and drove about the city,
our little guide standing beside the driver, back to the horses most of
the time, to pour out a torrent of history and romance. A most edifying
spectacle it would have been anywhere else. Do read Henry Taylor's
"Philip von Artevelde" before going to Ghent: the mingled romance and
history throw a charm about the place and people which bare history can
never give. Veritable Yankees these old Flemish weavers seem to have
been, with a touch of the Irish in their composition--always up in arms
for their rights, and striking out wherever they saw a head. There is a
new part to the city, with a grand opera-house, shaded promenades and
palatial dwellings, but one cares only for the narrow, dingy streets,
and the old market squares
Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/32289