Our Hundred Days in Europe
by Oliver Wendell Holmes · English · Gutenberg #7322 · 369,956 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Our Hundred Days in Europe
Author: Oliver Wendell Holmes
Release date: January 1, 2005 [eBook #7322]
Most recently updated: February 12, 2015
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/7322
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE ***
Produced by Tonya Allen, Eric Eldred, Charles Franks and
the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
[Illustration: OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES AT THE AGE OF 82. From a painting
by Sarah W. Whitman]
OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE
BY
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
To
MY DAUGHTER AMELIA
(MRS. TURNER SARGENT)
MY FAITHFUL AND DEVOTED COMPANION
THIS OUTLINE OF OUR SUMMER EXCURSION
IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED
CONTENTS.
* * * * *
INTRODUCTORY
A PROSPECTIVE VISIT
OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE.
CHAPTER
I. THE VOYAGE.--LIVERPOOL.--CHESTER.--LONDON.--EPSOM
II. EPSOM.--LONDON.--WINDSOR
III. LONDON.--ISLE OF WIGHT.--CAMBRIDGE.--OXFORD.--YORK.--EDINBURGH
IV. STRATFORD-ON-AVON.--GREAT MALVERN.--TEWKESBURY.--BATH.--SALISBURY.
--STONEHENGE
V. STONEHENGE.--SALISBURY.--OLD SARUM.--BEMERTON.--BRIGHTON
VI. LONDON
VII. BOULOGNE.--PARIS.--LONDON.--LIVERPOOL.--THE HOMEWARD PASSAGE
VIII. GENERAL IMPRESSIONS.--MISCELLANEOUS OBSERVATIONS
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
* * * * *
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES AT THE AGE OF 82. From a painting by Sarah W.
Whitman
ROBERT BROWNING
MAGDALEN COLLEGE, OXFORD
SALISBURY CATHEDRAL
PLACE DE LA CONCORDE
INTRODUCTORY.
A PROSPECTIVE VISIT.
* * * * *
After an interval of more than fifty years, I propose taking a second
look at some parts of Europe. It is a Rip Van Winkle experiment which I
am promising myself. The changes wrought by half a century in the
countries I visited amount almost to a transformation. I left the
England of William the Fourth, of the Duke of Wellington, of Sir Robert
Peel; the France of Louis Philippe, of Marshal Soult, of Thiers, of
Guizot. I went from Manchester to Liverpool by the new railroad, the
only one I saw in Europe. I looked upon England from the box of a
stage-coach, upon France from the coupé of a diligence, upon Italy from
the cushion of a carrozza. The broken windows of Apsley House were still
boarded up when I was in London. The asphalt pavement was not laid in
Paris. The Obelisk of Luxor was lying in its great boat in the Seine, as
I remember it. I did not see it erected; it must have been an exciting
scene to witness, the engineer standing underneath, so as to be crushed
by the great stone if it disgraced him by falling in the process. As for
the dynasties which have overlaid each other like Dr. Schliemann's
Trojan cities, there is no need of moralizing over a history which
instead of Finis is constantly ending with What next?
With regard to the changes in the general conditions of society and the
advance in human knowledge, think for one moment what fifty years have
done! I have often imagined myself escorting some wise man of the past
to our Saturday Club, where we often have distinguished strangers as our
guests. Suppose there sat by me, I will not say Sir Isaac Newton, for he
has been too long away from us, but that other great man, whom Professor
Tyndall names as next to him in intellectual stature, as he passes along
the line of master minds of his country, from the days of Newton to our
own,--Dr. Thomas Young, who died in 1829. Would he or I be the listener,
if we were side by side? However humble I might feel in such a presence,
I should be so clad in the grandeur of the new discoveries, inventions,
ideas, I had to impart to him that I should seem to myself like the
ambassador of an Emperor. I should tell him of the ocean steamers, the
railroads that spread themselves like cobwebs over the civilized and
half-civilized portions of the earth, the telegraph and the telephone,
the photograph and the spectroscope. I should hand him a paper with the
morning news from London to read by the electric light, I should startle
him with a friction match, I should amaze him with the incredible truths
about anesthesia, I should astonish him with the later conclusions of
geology, I should dazzle him by the fully developed law of the
correlation of forces, I should delight him with the cell-doctrine, I
should confound him with the revolutionary apocalypse of Darwinism. All
this change in the aspects, position, beliefs, of humanity since the
time of Dr. Young's death, the date of my own graduation from college!
I ought to consider myself highly favored to have lived through such a
half century. But it seems to me that in walking the streets of London
and Paris I shall revert to my student days, and appear to myself like a
relic of a former generation. Those who have been born into the
inheritance of the new civilization feel very differently about it from
those who have lived their way into it. To the young and those
approaching middle age all these innovations in life and thought are as
natural, as much a matter of course, as the air they breathe; they form
a part of the inner framework of their intelligence, about which their
mental life is organized. To men and women of more than threescore and
ten they are external accretions, like the shell of a mollusk, the
jointed plates of an articulate. This must be remembered in reading
anything written by those who knew the century in its teens; it is not
likely to be forgotten, for the fact betrays itself in all the writer's
thoughts and expressions.
The story of my first visit to Europe is briefly this: my object was to
study the medical profession, chiefly in Paris, and I was in Europe
about two years and a half, from April, 1833, to October, 1835. I sailed
in the packet ship Philadelphia from New York for Portsmouth, where we
arrived after a passage of twenty-four days. A week was spent in
visiting Southampton, Salisbury, Stonehenge, Wilton, and the Isle of
Wight. I then crossed the Channel to Havre, from which I went to Paris.
In the spring and summer of 1834 I made my principal visit to England
and Scotland. There were other excursions to the Rhine and to Holland,
to Switzerland and to Italy, but of these I need say nothing here. I
returned in the packet ship Utica, sailing from Havre, and reaching New
York after a passage of forty-two days.
A few notes from my recollections will serve to recall the period of my
first visit to Europe, and form a natural introduction to the
experiences of my second. I take those circumstances which happen to
suggest themselves.
After a short excursion to Strasbourg, down the Rhine, and through
Holland, a small steamer took us from Rotterdam across the Channel, and
we found ourselves in the British capital.
The great sight in London is--London. No man understands himself as an
infinitesimal until he has been a drop in that ocean, a grain of sand on
that sea-margin, a mote in its sunbeam, or the fog or smoke which stands
for it; in plainer phrase, a unit among its millions.
I had two letters to persons in England: one to kind and worthy Mr.
Petty Vaughan, who asked me to dinner; one to pleasant Mr. William
Clift, conservator of the Hunterian Museum, who asked me to tea.
To Westminster Abbey. What a pity it could not borrow from Paris the
towers of Notre Dame! But the glory of its interior made up for this
shortcoming. Among the monuments, one to Rear Admiral Charles Holmes, a
descendant, perhaps, of another namesake, immortalized by Dryden in the
"Annus Mirabilis" as
"the Achates of the general's fight."
He accompanied Wolfe in his expedition which resulted in the capture of
Quebec. My relative, I will take it for granted, as I find him in
Westminster Abbey. Blood is thicker than water,--and warmer than marble,
I said to myself, as I laid my hand on the cold stone image of the once
famous Admiral.
To the Tower, to see the lions,--of all sorts. There I found a "poor
relation," who made my acquaintance without introduction. A large
baboon, or ape,--some creature of that family,--was sitting at the open
door of his cage, when I gave him offence by approaching too near and
inspecting him too narrowly. He made a spring at me, and if the keeper
had not pulled me back would have treated me unhandsomely, like a
quadrumanous rough, as he was. He succeeded in stripping my waistcoat of
its buttons, as one would strip a pea-pod of its peas.
To Vauxhall Gardens. All Americans went there in those days, as they go
to Madame Tussaud's in these times. There were fireworks and an
exhibition of polar scenery. "Mr. Collins, the English PAGANINI,"
treated us to music on his violin. A comic singer gave us a song, of
which I remember the line,
"You'll find it all in the agony bill."
This referred to a bill proposed by Sir Andrew Agnew, a noted Scotch
Sabbatarian agitator.
To the opera to hear Grisi. The king, William the Fourth, was in his
box; also the Princess Victoria, with the Duchess of Kent. The king
tapped with his white-gloved hand on the ledge of the box when he was
pleased with the singing.--To a morning concert and heard the real
Paganini. To one of the lesser theatres and heard a monologue by the
elder Mathews, who died a year or two after this time. To another
theatre, where I saw Listen in Paul Pry. Is it not a relief that I am
abstaining from description of what everybody has heard described?
To Windsor. Machinery to the left of the road. Recognized it instantly,
by recollection of the plate in "Rees's Cyclopedia," as Herschel's great
telescope.--Oxford. Saw only its outside. I knew no one there, and no
one knew me.--Blenheim,--the Titians best remembered of its objects on
exhibition. The great Derby day of the Epsom races. Went to the race
with a coach-load of friends and acquaintances. Plenipotentiary, the
winner, "rode by P. Connelly." So says Herring's picture of him, now
before me. Chestnut, a great "bullock" of a horse, who easily beat the
twenty-two that started. Every New England deacon ought to see one Derby
day to learn what sort of a world this is he lives in. Man is a sporting
as well as a praying animal.
Stratford-on-Avon. Emotions, but no scribbling of name on
walls.--Warwick. The castle. A village festival, "The Opening of the
Meadows," a true exhibition of the semi-barbarism which had come down
from Saxon times.--Yorkshire. "The Hangman's Stone." Story told in my
book called the "Autocrat," etc. York Cathedral.--Northumberland.
Alnwick Castle. The figures on the walls which so frightened my man John
when he ran away from Scotland in his boyhood. Berwick-on-Tweed. A
regatta going on; a very pretty show. Scotland. Most to be remembered,
the incomparable loveliness of Edinburgh.--Sterling. The view of the
Links of Forth from the castle. The whole country full of the romance of
history and poetry. Made one acquaintance in Scotland, Dr. Robert Knox,
who asked my companion and myself to breakfast. I was treated to five
entertainments in Great Britain: the breakfast just mentioned; lunch
with Mrs. Macadam,--the good old lady gave me bread, and not a stone;
dinner with Mr. Vaughan; one with Mr. Stanley, the surgeon; tea with Mr.
Clift,--for all which attentions I was then and am still grateful, for
they were more than I had any claim to expect. Fascinated with
Edinburgh. Strolls by Salisbury Crag; climb to the top of Arthur's Seat;
delight of looking up at the grand old castle, of looking down on
Holyrood Palace, of watching the groups on Calton Hill, wandering in the
quaint old streets and sauntering on the sidewalks of the noble avenues,
even at that time adding beauty to the new city. The weeks I spent in
Edinburgh are among the most memorable of my European experiences. To
the Highlands, to the Lakes, in short excursions; to Glasgow, seen to
disadvantage under gray skies and with slippery pavements. Through
England rapidly to Dover and to Calais, where I found the name of M.
Dessein still belonging to the hotel I sought, and where I read Sterne's
"Preface Written in a Désobligeante," sitting in the vehicle most like
one that I could find in the stable. From Calais back to Paris, where I
began working again.
All my travelling experiences, including a visit to Switzerland and
Italy in the summer and autumn of 1835, were merely interludes of my
student life in Paris. On my return to America, after a few years of
hospital and private practice, I became a Professor in Harvard
University, teaching Anatomy and Physiology, afterwards Anatomy alone,
for the period of thirty-five years, during part of which time I paid
some attention to literature, and became somewhat known as the author of
several works in prose and verse which have been well received. My
prospective visit will not be a professional one, as I resigned my
office in 1882, and am no longer known chiefly as a teacher or a
practitioner.
BOSTON, _April_, 1886.
OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE
* * * * *
I.
I begin this record with the columnar, self-reliant capital letter to
signify that there is no disguise in its egoisms. If it were a chapter
of autobiography, this is what the reader would look for as a matter of
course. Let him consider it as being such a chapter, and its egoisms
will require no apology.
I have called the record _our_ hundred days, because I was
accompanied by my daughter, without the aid of whose younger eyes and
livelier memory, and especially of her faithful diary, which no fatigue
or indisposition was allowed to interrupt, the whole experience would
have remained in my memory as a photograph out of focus.
We left Boston on the 29th of April, 1886, and reached New York on the
29th of August, four months of absence in all, of which nearly three
weeks were taken up by the two passages; one week was spent in Paris,
and the rest of the time in England and Scotland.
No one was so much surprised as myself at my undertaking this visit. Mr.
Gladstone, a strong man for his years, is reported as saying that he is
too old to travel, at least to cross the ocean, and he is younger than I
am,--just four months, to a day, younger. It is true that Sir Henry
Holland came to this country, and travelled freely about the world,
after he was eighty years old; but his pitcher went to the well once too
often, and met the usual doom of fragile articles. When my friends asked
me why I did not go to Europe, I reminded them of the fate of Thomas
Parr. He was only twice my age, and was getting on finely towards his
two hundredth year, when the Earl of Arundel carried him up to London,
and, being feasted and made a lion of, he found there a premature and
early grave at the age of only one hundred and fifty-two years. He lies
in Westminster Abbey, it is true, but he would probably have preferred
the upper side of his own hearth-stone to the under side of the slab
which covers him.
I should never have thought of such an expedition if it had not been
suggested by a member of my family that I should accompany my daughter,
who was meditating a trip to Europe. I remembered how many friends had
told me I ought to go; among the rest, Mr. Emerson, who had spoken to me
repeatedly about it. I had not seen Europe for more than half a century,
and I had a certain longing for one more sight of the places I
remembered, and others it would be a delight to look upon. There were a
few living persons whom I wished to meet. I was assured that I should be
kindly received in England. All this was tempting enough, but there was
an obstacle in the way which I feared, and, as it proved, not without
good reason. I doubted whether I could possibly breathe in a narrow
state-room. In certain localities I have found myself liable to attacks
of asthma, and, although I had not had one for years, I felt sure that I
could not escape it if I tried to sleep in a state-room.
I did not escape it, and I am glad to tell my story about it, because it
excuses some of my involuntary social shortcomings, and enables me to
thank collectively all those kind members of the profession who trained
all the artillery of the pharmacopoeia upon my troublesome enemy, from
bicarbonate of soda and Vichy water to arsenic and dynamite. One costly
contrivance, sent me by the Reverend Mr. Haweis, whom I have never duly
thanked for it, looked more like an angelic trump for me to blow in a
better world than what I believe it is, an inhaling tube intended to
prolong my mortal respiration. The best thing in my experience was
recommended to me by an old friend in London. It was Himrod's asthma
cure, one of the many powders, the smoke of which when burning is
inhaled. It is made in Providence, Rhode Island, and I had to go to
London to find it. It never failed to give at least temporary relief,
but nothing enabled me to sleep in my state-room, though I had it all to
myself, the upper berth being removed. After the first night and part of
the second, I never lay down at all while at sea. The captain allowed me
to have a candle and sit up in the saloon, where I worried through the
night as I best might. How could I be in a fit condition to accept the
attention of my friends in Liverpool, after sitting up every night for
more than a week; and how could I be in a mood for the catechizing of
interviewers, without having once lain down during the whole return
passage? I hope the reader will see why I mention these facts. They
explain and excuse many things; they have been alluded to, sometimes
with exaggeration, in the newspapers, and I could not tell my story
fairly without mentioning them. I got along well enough as soon as I
landed, and have had no return of the trouble since I have been back in
my own home. I will not advertise an assortment of asthma remedies for
sale, but I assure my kind friends I have had no use for any one of them
since I have walked the Boston pavements, drank, not the Cochituate, but
the Belmont spring water, and breathed the lusty air of my native
northeasters.
My companion and I required an attendant, and we found one of those
useful androgynous personages known as _courier-maids_, who had
travelled with friends of ours, and who was ready to start with us at a
moment's warning. She was of English birth, lively, short-gaited,
serviceable, more especially in the first of her dual capacities. So far
as my wants were concerned, I found her zealous and active in providing
for my comfort.
It was no sooner announced in the papers that I was going to England
than I began to hear of preparations to welcome me. An invitation to a
club meeting was cabled across the Atlantic. One of my countrywomen who
has a house in London made an engagement for me to meet friends at her
residence. A reverend friend, who thought I had certain projects in my
head, wrote to me about lecturing: where I should appear, what fees I
should obtain, and such business matters. I replied that I was going to
England to spend money, not to make it; to hear speeches, very possibly,
but not to make them; to revisit scenes I had known in my younger days;
to get a little change of my routine, which I certainly did; and to
enjoy a little rest, which I as certainly did not, at least in London.
In a word, I wished a short vacation, and had no thought of doing
anything more important than rubbing a little rust off and enjoying
myself, while at the same time I could make my companion's visit
somewhat pleasanter than it would be if she went without me. The visit
has answered most of its purposes for both of us, and if we have saved a
few recollections which our friends can take any pleasure in reading,
this slight record may be considered a work of supererogation.
The Cephalonia was to sail at half past six in the morning, and at that
early hour a company of well-wishers was gathered on the wharf at East
Boston to bid us good-by. We took with us many tokens of their
thoughtful kindness; flowers and fruits from Boston and Cambridge, and a
basket of champagne from a Concord friend whose company is as
exhilarating as the sparkling wine he sent us. With the other gifts came
a small tin box, about as big as a common round wooden match box. I
supposed it to hold some pretty gimcrack, sent as a pleasant parting
token of remembrance. It proved to be a most valued daily companion,
useful at all times, never more so than when the winds were blowing hard
and the ship was struggling with the waves. There must have been some
magic secret in it, for I am sure that I looked five years younger after
closing that little box than when I opened it. Time will explain its
mysterious power.
All the usual provisions for comfort made by seagoing experts we had
attended to. Impermeable rugs and fleecy shawls, head-gear to defy the
rudest northeasters, sea-chairs of ample dimensions, which we took care
to place in as sheltered situations as we could find,--all these were a
matter of course. Everybody stays on deck as much as possible, and lies
wrapped up and spread out at full length on his or her sea-chair, so
that the deck looks as if it had a row of mummies on exhibition. Nothing
is more comfortable, nothing, I should say, more indispensable, than a
hot-water bag,--or rather, _two_ hot-water bags; for they will
burst sometimes, as I found out, and a passenger who has become intimate
with one of these warm bosom friends feels its loss almost as if it were
human.
Passengers carry all sorts of luxuries on board, in the firm faith that
they shall be able to profit by them all. Friends send them various
indigestibles. To many all these well-meant preparations soon become a
mockery, almost an insult. It is a clear case of _Sic(k) vos non
vobis_. The tougher neighbor is the gainer by these acts of kindness;
the generosity of a sea-sick sufferer in giving away the delicacies
which seemed so desirable on starting is not ranked very high on the
books of the recording angel. With us three things were best: grapes,
oranges, and especially oysters, of which we had provided a half barrel
in the shell. The "butcher" of the ship opened them fresh for us every
day, and they were more acceptable than anything else.
Among our ship's company were a number of family relatives and
acquaintances. We formed a natural group at one of the tables, where we
met in more or less complete numbers. I myself never missed; my
companion, rarely. Others were sometimes absent, and sometimes came to
time when they were in a very doubtful state, looking as if they were
saying to themselves, with Lear,--
"Down, thou climbing sorrow,
Thy element's below."
As for the intellectual condition of the passengers, I should say that
faces were prevailingly vacuous, their owners half hypnotized, as it
seemed, by the monotonous throb and tremor of the great sea-monster on
whose back we were riding. I myself had few thoughts, fancies, emotions.
One thing above all struck me as never before,--the terrible solitude of
the ocean.
"So lonely 'twas that God himself
Scarce seemed there to be."
Whole days passed without our seeing a single sail. The creatures of the
deep which gather around sailing vessels are perhaps frightened off by
the noise and stir of the steamship. At any rate, we saw nothing more
than a few porpoises, so far as I remember.
No man can find himself over the abysses, the floor of which is paved
with wrecks and white with the bones of the shrieking myriads of human
beings whom the waves have swallowed up, without some thought of the
dread possibilities hanging over his fate. There is only one way to get
rid of them: that which an old sea-captain mentioned to me, namely, to
keep one's self under opiates until he wakes up in the harbor where he
is bound. I did not take this as serious advice, but its meaning is that
one who has all his senses about him cannot help being anxious. My old
friend, whose beard had been shaken in many a tempest, knew too well
that there is cause enough for anxiety.
What does the reader suppose was the source of the most ominous thought
which forced itself upon my mind, as I walked the decks of the mighty
vessel? Not the sound of the rushing winds, nor the sight of the
foam-crested billows; not the sense of the awful imprisoned force which
was wrestling in the depths below me. The ship is made to struggle with
the elements, and the giant has been tamed to obedience, and is manacled
in bonds which an earthquake would hardly rend asunder. No! It was the
sight of the _boats_ hanging along at the sides of the deck,--the
boats, always suggesting the fearful possibility that before another day
dawns one may be tossing about in the watery Sahara, shelterless,
fireless, almost foodless, with a fate before him he dares not
contemplate. No doubt we should feel worse without the boats; still they
are dreadful tell-tales. To all who remember Géricault's Wreck of the
Medusa,--and those who have seen it do not forget it,--the picture the
mind draws is one it shudders at. To be sure, the poor wretches in the
painting were on a raft, but to think of fifty people in one of these
open boats! Let us go down into the cabin, where at least we shall not
see them.
The first morning at sea revealed the mystery of the little round tin
box. The process of _shaving_, never a delightful one, is a very
unpleasant and awkward piece of business when the floor on which one
stands, the glass in which he looks, and he himself are all describing
those complex curves which make cycles and epicycles seem like
simplicity itself. The little box contained a reaping machine, which
gathered the capillary harvest of the past twenty-four hours with a
thoroughness, a rapidity, a security, and a facility which were a
surprise, almost a revelation. The idea of a guarded cutting edge is an
old one; I remember the "Plantagenet" razor, so called, with the
comb-like row of blunt teeth, leaving just enough of the edge free to do
its work. But this little affair had a blade only an inch and a half
long by three quarters of an inch wide. It had a long slender handle,
which took apart for packing, and was put together with the greatest
ease. It was, in short, a lawn-mower for the masculine growth of which
the proprietor wishes to rid his countenance. The mowing operation
required no glass, could be performed with almost reckless boldness, as
one cannot cut himself, and in fact had become a pleasant amusement
instead of an irksome task. I have never used any other means of shaving
from that day to this. I was so pleased with it that I exhibited it to
the distinguished tonsors of Burlington Arcade, half afraid they would
assassinate me for bringing in an innovation which bid fair to destroy
their business. They probably took me for an agent of the manufacturers;
and so I was, but not in their pay nor with their knowledge. I
determined to let other persons know what a convenience I had found the
"Star Razor" of Messrs. Kampf, of New York, without fear of reproach for
so doing. I know my danger,--does not Lord Byron say, "I have even been
accused of writing puffs for Warren's blacking"? I was once offered pay
for a poem in praise of a certain stove polish, but I declined. It is
pure good-will to my race which leads me to commend the Star Razor to
all who travel by land or by sea, as well as to all who stay at home.
With the first sight of land many a passenger draws a long sigh of
relief. Yet everybody knows that the worst dangers begin after we have
got near enough to see the shore, for there are several ways of landing,
not all of which are equally desirable. On Saturday, May 8th, we first
caught a glimpse of the Irish coast, and at half past four in the
afternoon we reached the harbor of Queenstown. A tug came off, bringing
newspapers, letters, and so forth, among the rest some thirty letters
and telegrams for me. This did not look much like rest, but this was
only a slight prelude to what was to follow. I was in no condition to go
on shore for sight-seeing, as some of the passengers did.
We made our way through the fog towards Liverpool, and arrived at 1.30,
on Sunday, May 9th. A special tug came to take us off: on it were the
American consul, Mr. Russell, the vice-consul, Mr. Sewall, Dr. Nevins,
and Mr. Rathbone, who came on behalf of our as yet unseen friend, Mr.
Willett, of Brighton, England. Our Liverpool friends were meditating
more hospitalities to us than, in our fatigued condition, we were equal
to supporting. They very kindly, however, acquiesced in our wishes,
which were for as much rest as we could possibly get before any attempt
to busy ourselves with social engagements. So they conveyed us to the
Grand Hotel for a short time, and then saw us safely off to the station
to take the train for Chester, where we arrived in due season, and soon
found ourselves comfortably established at the Grosvenor Arms Hotel. A
large basket of Surrey primroses was brought by Mr. Rathbone to my
companion. I had set before me at the hotel a very handsome floral harp,
which my friend's friend had offered me as a tribute. It made melody in
my ears as sweet as those hyacinths of Shelley's, the music of whose
bells was so
"delicate, soft, and intense,
It was felt like an odor within the sense."
At Chester we had the blissful security of being unknown, and were left
to ourselves. Americans know Chester better than most other old towns in
England, because they so frequently stop there awhile on their way from
Liverpool to London. It has a mouldy old cathedral, an old wall, partly
Roman, strange old houses with overhanging upper floors, which make
sheltered sidewalks and dark basements. When one sees an old house in
New England with the second floor projecting a foot or two beyond the
wall of the ground floor, the country boy will tell him that "them
haouses was built so th't th' folks upstairs could shoot the Injins when
they was tryin' to git threew th' door or int' th' winder." There are
plenty of such houses all over England, where there are no "Injins" to
shoot. But the story adds interest to the somewhat lean traditions of
our rather dreary past, and it is hardly worth while to disturb it. I
always heard it in my boyhood. Perhaps it is true; certainly it was a
very convenient arrangement for discouraging an untimely visit. The oval
lookouts in porches, common in our Essex County, have been said to
answer a similar purpose, that of warning against the intrusion of
undesirable visitors. The walk round the old wall of Chester is
wonderfully interesting and beautiful. At one part it overlooks a wide
level field, over which the annual races are run. I noticed that here as
elsewhere the short grass was starred with daisies. They are not
considered in place in a well-kept lawn. But remembering the cuckoo song
in "Love's Labour's Lost," "When daisies pied ... do paint the meadows
with delight," it was hard to look at them as unwelcome intruders.
The old cathedral seemed to me particularly mouldy, and in fact too
high-flavored with antiquity. I could not help comparing some of the
ancient cathedrals and abbey churches to so many old cheeses. They have
a tough gray rind and a rich interior, which find food and lodging for
numerous tenants who live and die under their shelter or their
shadow,--lowly servitors some of them, portly dignitaries others, humble
holy ministers of religion many, I doubt not,--larvae of angels, who
will get their wings by and by. It is a shame to carry the comparison so
far, but it is natural enough; for Cheshire cheeses are among the first
things we think of as we enter that section of the country, and this
venerable cathedral is the first that greets the eyes of great numbers
of Americans.
We drove out to Eaton Hall, the seat of the Duke of Westminster, the
many-millioned lord of a good part of London. It is a palace,
high-roofed, marble-columned, vast, magnificent, everything but
homelike, and perhaps homelike to persons born and bred in such
edifices. A painter like Paul Veronese finds a palace like this not too
grand for his banqueting scenes. But to those who live, as most of us
do, in houses of moderate dimensions, snug, comfortable, which the
owner's presence fills sufficiently, leaving room for a few visitors, a
vast marble palace is disheartening and uninviting. I never get into a
very large and lofty saloon without feeling as if I were a weak solution
of myself,--my personality almost drowned out in the flood of space
about me. The wigwam is more homelike than the cavern. Our wooden houses
are a better kind of wigwam; the marble palaces are artificial caverns,
vast, resonant, chilling, good to visit, not desirable to live in, for
most of us. One's individuality should betray itself in all that
surrounds him; he should _secrete_ his shell, like a mollusk; if he
can sprinkle a few pearls through it, so much the better. It is best,
perhaps, that one should avoid being a duke and living in a
palace,--that is, if he has his choice in the robing chamber where souls
are fitted with their earthly garments.
One of the most interesting parts of my visit to Eaton Hall was my tour
through the stables. The Duke is a famous breeder and lover of the turf.
Mr. Rathbone and myself soon made the acquaintance of the chief of the
stable department. Readers of Homer do not want to be reminded that
_hippodamoio_, horse-subduer, is the genitive of an epithet applied
as a chief honor to the most illustrious heroes. It is the last word of
the last line of the Iliad, and fitly closes the account of the funeral
pageant of Hector, the tamer of horses. We Americans are a little shy of
confessing that any title or conventional grandeur makes an impression
upon us. If at home we wince before any official with a sense of
blighted inferiority, it is by general confession the clerk at the hotel
office. There is an excuse for this, inasmuch as he holds our destinies
in his hands, and decides whether, in case of accident, we shall have to
jump from the third or sixth story window. Lesser grandeurs do not find
us very impressible. There is, however, something about the man who
deals in horses which takes down the spirit, however proud, of him who
is unskilled in equestrian matters and unused to the horse-lover's
vocabulary. We followed the master of the stables, meekly listening and
once in a while questioning. I had to fall back on my reserves, and
summoned up memories half a century old to gain the respect and win the
confidence of the great horse-subduer. He showed us various fine
animals, some in their stalls, some outside of them. Chief of all was
the renowned Bend Or, a Derby winner, a noble and beautiful bay,
destined in a few weeks to gain new honors on the same turf in the
triumph of his offspring Ormonde, whose acquaintance we shall make
by-and-by.
The next day, Tuesday, May 11th, at 4.25, we took the train for London.
We had a saloon car, which had been thoughtfully secured for us through
unseen, not unsuspected, agencies, which had also beautified the
compartment with flowers.
Here are some of my first impressions of England as seen from the
carriage and from the cars.--How very English! I recall Birket Foster's
Pictures of English Landscape,--a beautiful, poetical series of views,
but hardly more poetical than the reality. How thoroughly England _is
groomed_! Our New England out-of-doors landscape often looks as if it
had just got out of bed, and had not finished its toilet. The glowing
green of everything strikes me: green hedges in place of our
rail-fences, always ugly, and our rude stone-walls, which are not
wanting in a certain look of fitness approaching to comeliness, and are
really picturesque when lichen-coated, but poor features of landscape as
compared to these universal hedges. I am disappointed in the trees, so
far; I have not seen one large tree as yet. Most of those I see are of
very moderate dimensions, feathered all the way up their long slender
trunks, with a lop-sided mop of leaves at the top, like a wig which has
slipped awry. I trust that I am not finding everything _couleur de
rose_; but I certainly do find the cheeks of children and young
persons of such brilliant rosy hue as I do not remember that I have ever
seen before. I am almost ready to think this and that child's face has
been colored from a pink saucer. If the Saxon youth exposed for sale at
Rome, in the days of Pope Gregory the Great, had complexions like these
children, no wonder that the pontiff exclaimed, Not _Angli_, but
_angeli_! All this may sound a little extravagant, but I am giving
my impressions without any intentional exaggeration. How far these first
impressions may be modified by after-experiences there will be time
enough to find out and to tell. It is better to set them down at once
just as they are. A first impression is one never to be repeated; the
second look will see much that was not noticed before, but it will not
reproduce the sharp lines of the _first proof_, which is always
interesting, no matter what the eye or the mind fixes upon. "I see men
as trees walking." That first experience could not be mended. When
Dickens landed in Boston, he was struck with the brightness of all the
objects he saw,--buildings, signs, and so forth. When I landed in
Liverpool, everything looked very dark, very dingy, very massive, in the
streets I drove through. So in London, but in a week it all seemed
natural enough.
We got to the hotel where we had engaged quarters, at eleven o'clock in
the evening of Wednesday, the 12th of May. Everything was ready for
us,--a bright fire blazing and supper waiting. When we came to look at
the accommodations, we found they were not at all adapted to our needs.
It was impossible to stay there another night. So early the next morning
we sent out our courier-maid, a dove from the ark, to find us a place
where we could rest the soles of our feet. London is a nation of
something like four millions of inhabitants, and one does not feel easy
without he has an assured place of shelter. The dove flew all over the
habitable districts of the city,--inquired at as many as twenty houses.
No roosting-place for our little flock of three. At last the good angel
who followed us everywhere, in one shape or another, pointed the
wanderer to a place which corresponded with all our requirements and
wishes. This was at No. 17 Dover Street, Mackellar's Hotel, where we
found ourselves comfortably lodged and well cared for during the whole
time we were in London. It was close to Piccadilly and to Bond Street.
Near us, in the same range, were Brown's Hotel and Batt's Hotel, both
widely known to the temporary residents of London.
We were but partially recovered from the fatigues and trials of the
voyage when our arrival pulled the string of the social shower-bath, and
the invitations began pouring down upon us so fast that we caught our
breath, and felt as if we should be smothered. The first evening saw us
at a great dinner-party at our well-remembered friend Lady Harcourt's.
Twenty guests, celebrities and agreeable persons, with or without
titles. The tables were radiant with silver, glistening with choice
porcelain, blazing with a grand show of tulips. This was our "baptism of
fire" in that long conflict which lasts through the London season. After
dinner came a grand reception, most interesting, but fatiguing to
persons hardly as yet in good condition for social service. We lived
through it, however, and enjoyed meeting so many friends, known and
unknown, who were very cordial and pleasant in their way of receiving
us.
It was plain that we could not pretend to answer all the invitations
which flooded our tables. If we had attempted it, we should have found
no time for anything else. A secretary was evidently a matter of
immediate necessity. Through the kindness of Mrs. Pollock, we found a
young lady who was exactly fitted for the place. She was installed in
the little room intended for her, and began the work of accepting with
pleasure and regretting our inability, of acknowledging the receipt of
books, flowers, and other objects, and being very sorry that we could
not subscribe to this good object and attend that meeting in behalf of a
deserving charity,--in short, writing almost everything for us except
autographs, which I can warrant were always genuine. The poor young lady
was almost tired out sometimes, having to stay at her table, on one
occasion, so late as eleven in the evening, to get through her day's
work. I simplified matters for her by giving her a set of formulae as a
base to start from, and she proved very apt at the task of modifying
each particular letter to suit its purpose.
From this time forward continued a perpetual round of social
engagements. Breakfasts, luncheons, dinners, teas, receptions with
spread tables, two, three, and four deep of an evening, with receiving
company at our own rooms, took up the day, so that we had very little
time for common sight-seeing.
Of these kinds of entertainments, the breakfast, though pleasant enough
when the company is agreeable, as I always found it, is the least
convenient of all times and modes of visiting. You have already
interviewed one breakfast, and are expecting soon to be coquetting with
a tempting luncheon. If one had as many stomachs as a ruminant, he would
not mind three or four serious meals a day, not counting the tea as one
of them. The luncheon is a very convenient affair: it does not require
special dress; it is informal; it is soon over, and may be made light or
heavy, as one chooses. The afternoon tea is almost a necessity in London
life. It is considered useful as "a pick me up," and it serves an
admirable purpose in the social system. It costs the household hardly
any trouble or expense. It brings people together in the easiest
possible way, for ten minutes or an hour, just as their engagements or
fancies may settle it. A cup of tea at the right moment does for the
virtuous reveller all that Falstaff claims for a good sherris-sack, or
at least the first half of its "twofold operation:" "It ascends me into
the brain; dries me there all the foolish and dull and crudy vapors
which environ it; makes it apprehensive, quick, forgetive, full of
nimble, fiery and delectable shapes, which delivered over to the voice,
the tongue, which is the birth, becomes excellent wit."
But it must have the right brain to work upon, and I doubt if there is
any brain to which it is so congenial and from which it brings so much
as that of a first-rate London old lady. I came away from the great city
with the feeling that this most complex product of civilization was
nowhere else developed to such perfection. The octogenarian Londoness
has been in society,--let us say the highest society,--all her days. She
is as tough as an old macaw, or she would not have lasted so long. She
has seen and talked with all the celebrities of three generations, all
the beauties of at least half a dozen decades. Her wits have been kept
bright by constant use, and as she is free of speech it requires some
courage to face her. Yet nobody can be more agreeable, even to young
persons, than one of these precious old dowagers. A great beauty is
almost certainly thinking how she looks while one is talking with her;
an authoress is waiting to have one praise her book; but a grand old
lady, who loves London society, who lives in it, who understands young
people and all sorts of people, with her high-colored recollections of
the past and her grand-maternal interests in the new generation, is the
best of companions, especially over a cup of tea just strong enough to
stir up her talking ganglions.
A breakfast, a lunch, a tea, is a circumstance, an occurrence, in social
life, but a dinner is an event. It is the full-blown flower of that
cultivated growth of which those lesser products are the buds. I will
not try to enumerate, still less to describe, the various entertainments
to which we were invited, and many of which we attended. Among the
professional friends I found or made during this visit to London, none
were more kindly attentive than Dr. Priestley, who, with his charming
wife, the daughter of the late Robert Chambers, took more pains to carry
out our wishes than we could have asked or hoped for. At his house I
first met Sir James Paget and Sir William Gull, long well known to me,
as to the medical profession everywhere, as preëminent in their several
departments. If I were an interviewer or a newspaper reporter, I should
be tempted to give the impression which the men and women of distinction
I met made upon me; but where all were cordial, where all made me feel
as nearly as they could that I belonged where I found myself, whether
the ceiling were a low or a lofty one, I do not care to differentiate my
hosts and my other friends. _Fortemque Gyan fortemque Cloanthum_,--I
left my microscope and my test-papers at home.
Our friends, several of them, had a pleasant way of sending their
carriages to give us a drive in the Park, where, except in certain
permitted regions, the common numbered vehicles are not allowed to
enter. Lady Harcourt sent her carriage for us to go to her sister's,
Mrs. Mildmay's, where we had a pleasant little "tea," and met one of the
most agreeable and remarkable of those London old ladies I have spoken
of. For special occasions we hired an unnumbered carriage, with
professionally equipped driver and footman.
Mrs. Bloomfield Moore sent her carriage for us to take us to a lunch at
her house, where we met Mr. Browning, Sir Henry and Lady Layard, Oscar
Wilde and his handsome wife, and other well-known guests. After lunch,
recitations, songs, etc. House full of pretty things. Among other
curiosities a portfolio of drawings illustrating Keeley's motor, which,
up to this time, has manifested a remarkably powerful _vis
inertice_, but which promises miracles. In the evening a grand
reception at Lady Granville's, beginning (for us, at least) at eleven
o'clock. The house a palace, and A---- thinks there were a thousand
people there. We made the tour of the rooms, saw many great personages,
had to wait for our carriage a long time, but got home at one o'clock.
English people have queer notions about iced-water and ice-cream. "You
will surely die, eating such cold stuff," said a lady to my companion.
"Oh, no," she answered, "but I should certainly die were I to drink your
two cups of strong tea." I approved of this "counter" on the teacup, but
I did not think either of them was in much danger.
The next day Rev. Mr. Haweis sent his carriage, and we drove in the
Park. In the afternoon we went to our Minister's to see the American
ladies who had been presented at the drawing-room. After this, both of
us were glad to pass a day or two in comparative quiet, except that we
had a room full of visitors. So many persons expressed a desire to make
our acquaintance that we thought it would be acceptable to them if we
would give a reception ourselves. We were thinking how we could manage
it with our rooms at the hotel, which were not arranged so that they
could be thrown together. Still, we were planning to make the best of
them, when Dr. and Mrs. Priestley suggested that we should receive our
company at their house. This was a surprise, and a most welcome one, and
A---- and her kind friend busied themselves at once about the
arrangements.
We went to a luncheon at Lansdowne House, Lord Rosebery's residence, not
far from our hotel. My companion tells a little incident which may
please an American six-year-old: "The eldest of the four children,
Sibyl, a pretty, bright child of six, told me that she wrote a letter to
the Queen. I said, 'Did you begin, Dear Queen?' 'No,' she answered, 'I
began, Your Majesty, and signed myself, Your little humble servant,
Sibyl.'" A very cordial and homelike reception at this great house,
where a couple of hours were passed most agreeably.
On the following Sunday I went to Westminster Abbey to hear a sermon
from Canon Harford on A Cheerful Life. A lively, wholesome, and
encouraging discourse, such as it would do many a forlorn New England
congregation good to hear. In the afternoon we both went together to the
Abbey. Met our Beverly neighbor, Mrs. Vaughan, and adopted her as one of
our party. The seats we were to have were full, and we had to be stowed
where there was any place that would hold us. I was smuggled into a
stall, going through long and narrow passages, between crowded rows of
people, and found myself at last with a big book before me and a set of
official personages around me, whose duties I did not clearly
understand. I thought they might be mutes, or something of that sort,
salaried to look grave and keep quiet. After service we took tea with
Dean Bradley, and after tea we visited the Jerusalem Chamber. I had been
twice invited to weddings in that famous room: once to the marriage of
my friend Motley's daughter, then to that of Mr. Frederick Locker's
daughter to Lionel Tennyson, whose recent death has been so deeply
mourned. I never expected to see that Jerusalem in which Harry the
Fourth died, but there I found myself in the large panelled chamber,
with all its associations. The older memories came up but vaguely; an
American finds it as hard to call back anything over two or three
centuries old as a sucking-pump to draw up water from a depth of over
thirty-three feet and a fraction. After this A---- went to a musical
party, dined with the Vaughans, and had a good time among American
friends.
The next evening we went to the Lyceum Theatre to see Mr. Irving. He had
placed the Royal box at our disposal, so we invited our friends the
Priestleys to go with us, and we all enjoyed the evening mightily.
Between the scenes we went behind the curtain, and saw the very curious
and admirable machinery of the dramatic spectacle. We made the
acquaintance of several imps and demons, who were got up wonderfully
well. Ellen Terry was as fascinating as ever. I remembered that once
before I had met her and Mr. Irving behind the scenes. It was at the
Boston Theatre, and while I was talking with them a very heavy piece of
scenery came crashing down, and filled the whole place with dust. It was
but a short distance from where we were standing, and I could not help
thinking how near our several life-dramas came to a simultaneous
_exeunt omnes_.
A long visit from a polite interviewer, shopping, driving, calling,
arranging about the people to be invited to our reception, and an
agreeable dinner at Chelsea with my American friend, Mrs. Merritt,
filled up this day full enough, and left us in good condition for the
next, which was to be a very busy one.
In the Introduction to these papers, I mentioned the fact that more than
half a century ago I went to the famous Derby race at Epsom. I
determined, if possible, to see the Derby of 1886, as I had seen that of
1834. I must have spoken of this intention to some interviewer, for I
find the following paragraph in an English sporting newspaper, "The
Field," for May 29th, 1886:--
"The Derby has always been the one event in the racing year which
statesmen, philosophers, poets, essayists, and _littérateurs_
desire to see once in their lives. A few years since Mr. Gladstone was
induced by Lord Granville and Lord Wolverton to run down to Epsom on the
Derby day. The impression produced upon the Prime Minister's sensitive
and emotional mind was that the mirth and hilarity displayed by his
compatriots upon Epsom race-course was Italian rather than English in
its character. On the other hand, Gustave Doré, who also saw the Derby
for the first and only time in his life, exclaimed, as he gazed with
horror upon the faces below him, _Quelle scène brutale!_ We wonder
to which of these two impressions Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes inclined, if
he went last Wednesday to Epsom! Probably the well-known, etc., etc.--Of
one thing Dr. Holmes may rest finally satisfied: the Derby of 1886 may
possibly have seemed to him far less exciting than that of 1834; but
neither in 1834 nor in any other year was the great race ever won by a
better sportsman or more honorable man than the Duke of Westminster."
My desire to see the Derby of this year was of the same origin and
character as that which led me to revisit many scenes which I
remembered. I cared quite as much about renewing old impressions as
about getting new ones. I enjoyed everything which I had once seen all
the more from the blending of my recollections with the present as it
was before me.
The Derby day of 1834 was exceedingly windy and dusty. Our party, riding
on the outside of the coach, was half smothered with the dust, and
arrived in a very deteriorated condition, but recompensed for it by the
extraordinary sights we had witnessed. There was no train in those days,
and the whole road between London and Epsom was choked with vehicles of
all kinds, from four-in-hands to donkey-carts and wheelbarrows. My
friends and I mingled freely in the crowds, and saw all the "humours" of
the occasion. The thimble-riggers were out in great force, with their
light, movable tables, the cups or thimbles, and the "little jokers,"
and the coachman, the sham gentleman, the country greenhorn, all
properly got up and gathered about the table. I think we had "Aunt
Sally," too,--the figure with a pipe in her mouth, which one might shy a
stick at for a penny or two and win something, I forget what. The
clearing the course of stragglers, and the chasing about of the
frightened little dog who had got in between the thick ranks of
spectators, reminded me of what I used to see on old "artillery
election" days.
It was no common race that I went to see in 1834. "It is asserted in the
columns of a contemporary that Plenipotentiary was absolutely the best
horse of the century." This was the winner of the race I saw so long
ago. Herring's colored portrait, which I have always kept, shows him as
a great, powerful chestnut horse, well deserving the name of "bullock,"
which one of the jockeys applied to him. "Rumor credits Dr. Holmes," so
"The Field" says, "with desiring mentally to compare his two Derbies
with each other." I was most fortunate in my objects of comparison. The
horse I was about to see win was not unworthy of being named with the
renowned champion of my earlier day. I quote from a writer in the
"London Morning Post," whose words, it will be seen, carry authority
with them:--
"Deep as has hitherto been my reverence for Plenipotentiary, Bay
Middleton, and Queen of Trumps from hearsay, and for Don John, Crucifix,
etc., etc., from my own personal knowledge, I am inclined to award the
palm to Ormonde as the best three-year-old I have ever seen during close
upon half a century's connection with the turf."
Ormonde, the Duke of Westminster's horse, was the son of that other
winner of the Derby, Bend Or, whom I saw at Eaton Hall.
Perhaps some coeval of mine may think it was a rather youthful idea to
go to the race. I cannot help that. I was off on my first long vacation
for half a century, and had a right to my whims and fancies. But it was
one thing to go in with a vast crowd at five and twenty, and another
thing to run the risks of the excursion at more than thrice that age. I
looked about me for means of going safely, and could think of nothing
better than to ask one of the pleasantest and kindest of gentlemen, to
whom I had a letter from Mr. Winthrop, at whose house I had had the
pleasure of making his acquaintance. Lord Rosebery suggested that the
best way would be for me to go in the special train which was to carry
the Prince of Wales. First, then, I was to be introduced to his Royal
Highness, which office was kindly undertaken by our very obliging and
courteous Minister, Mr. Phelps. After this all was easily arranged, and
I was cared for as well as if I had been Mr. Phelps himself. On the
grand stand I found myself in the midst of the great people, who were
all very natural, and as much at their ease as the rest of the world.
The Prince is of a lively temperament and a very cheerful aspect,--a
young girl would call him "jolly" as well as "nice." I recall the story
of "Mr. Pope" and his Prince of Wales, as told by Horace Walpole. "Mr.
Pope, you don't love princes." "Sir, I beg your pardon." "Well, you
don't love kings, then." "Sir, I own I love the lion best before his
claws are grown." Certainly, nothing in Prince Albert Edward suggests
any aggressive weapons or tendencies. The lovely, youthful-looking,
gracious Alexandra, the always affable and amiable Princess Louise, the
tall youth who sees the crown and sceptre afar off in his dreams, the
slips of girls so like many school misses we left behind us,--all these
grand personages, not being on exhibition, but off enjoying themselves,
just as I was and as other people were, seemed very much like their
fellow-mortals. It is really easier to feel at home with the highest
people in the land than with the awkward commoner who was knighted
yesterday. When "My Lord and Sir Paul" came into the Club which
Goldsmith tells us of, the hilarity of the evening was instantly
checked. The entrance of a dignitary like the present Prince of Wales
would not have spoiled the fun of the evening. If there is any one
accomplishment specially belonging to princes, it is that of making the
persons they meet feel at ease.
The grand stand to which I was admitted was a little privileged
republic. I remember Thackeray's story of his asking some simple
question of a royal or semi-royal personage whom he met in the courtyard
of an hotel, which question his Highness did not answer, but called a
subordinate to answer for him. I had been talking some time with a tall,
good-looking gentleman, whom I took for a nobleman to whom I had been
introduced. Something led me to think I was mistaken in the identity of
this gentleman. I asked him, at last, if he were not So and So. "No," he
said, "I am Prince Christian." You are a Christian prince, anyhow, I
said to myself, if I may judge by your manners.
I once made a similar mistake in addressing a young fellow-citizen of
some social pretensions. I apologized for my error.
"No offence," he answered.
_Offence_ indeed! I should hope not. But he had not the "_manière
de prince_", or he would never have used that word.
I must say something about the race I had taken so much pains to see.
There was a preliminary race, which excited comparatively little
interest. After this the horses were shown in the paddock, and many of
our privileged party went down from the stand to look at them. Then they
were brought out, smooth, shining, fine-drawn, frisky, spirit-stirring
to look upon,--most beautiful of all the bay horse Ormonde, who could
hardly be restrained, such was his eagerness for action. The horses
disappear in the distance.--They are off,--not yet distinguishable, at
least to me. A little waiting time, and they swim into our ken, but in
what order of precedence it is as yet not easy to say. Here they come!
Two horses have emerged from the ruck, and are sweeping, rushing,
storming, towards us, almost side by side. One slides by the other, half
a length, a length, a length and a half. Those are Archer's colors, and
the beautiful bay Ormonde flashes by the line, winner of the Derby of
1886. "The Bard" has made a good fight for the first place, and comes in
second. Poor Archer, the king of the jockeys! He will bestride no more
Derby winners. A few weeks later he died by his own hand.
While the race was going on, the yells of the betting crowd beneath us
were incessant. It must have been the frantic cries and movements of
these people that caused Gustave Doré to characterize it as a brutal
scene. The vast mob which thronged the wide space beyond the shouting
circle just round us was much like that of any other fair, so far as I
could see from my royal perch. The most conspicuous object was a man on
an immensely tall pair of stilts, stalking about among the crowd. I
think it probable that I had as much enjoyment in forming one of the
great mob in 1834 as I had among the grandeurs in 1886, but the last is
pleasanter to remember and especially to tell of.
After the race we had a luncheon served us, a comfortable and
substantial one, which was very far from unwelcome. I did not go to the
Derby to bet on the winner. But as I went in to luncheon, I passed a
gentleman standing in custody of a plate half covered with sovereigns.
He politely asked me if I would take a little paper from a heap there
was lying by the plate, and add a sovereign to the collection already
there. I did so, and, unfolding my paper, found it was a blank, and
passed on. The pool, as I afterwards learned, fell to the lot of the
Turkish Ambassador. I found it very windy and uncomfortable on the more
exposed parts of the grand stand, and was glad that I had taken a shawl
with me, in which I wrapped myself as if I had been on shipboard. This,
I told my English friends, was the more civilized form of the Indian's
blanket. My report of the weather does not say much for the English May,
but it is generally agreed upon that this is a backward and unpleasant
spring.
After my return from the race we went to a large dinner at Mr. Phelps's
house, where we met Mr. Browning again, and the Lord Chancellor
Herschell, among others. Then to Mrs. Cyril Flower's, one of the most
sumptuous houses in London; and after that to Lady Rothschild's, another
of the private palaces, with ceilings lofty as firmaments, and walls
that might have been copied from the New Jerusalem. There was still
another great and splendid reception at Lady Dalhousie's, and a party at
Mrs. Smith's, but we were both tired enough to be willing to go home
after what may be called a pretty good day's work at enjoying ourselves.
We had been a fortnight in London, and were now inextricably entangled
in the meshes of the golden web of London social life.
II.
The reader who glances over these papers, and, finding them too full of
small details and the lesser personal matters which belong naturally to
private correspondences, turns impatiently from them, has my entire
sympathy and good-will. He is not one of those for whom these pages are
meant. Having no particular interest in the writer or his affairs, he
does not care for the history of "the migrations from the blue bed to
the brown" and the many Mistress Quicklyisms of circumstantial
narrative. Yet all this may be pleasant reading to relatives and
friends.
But I must not forget that a new generation of readers has come into
being since I have been writing for the public, and that a new
generation of aspiring and brilliant authors has grown into general
recognition. The dome of Boston State House, which is the centre of my
little universe, was glittering in its fresh golden pellicle before I
had reached the scriptural boundary of life. It has lost its lustre now,
and the years which have dulled its surface have whitened the dome of
that fragile structure in which my consciousness holds the session of
its faculties. Time is not to be cheated. It is easy to talk of
perennial youth, and to toy with the flattering fictions which every
ancient personage accepts as true so far as he himself is concerned, and
laughs at as foolish talk when he hears them applied to others. When, in
my exulting immaturity, I wrote the lines not unknown to the reading
public under the name of "The Last Leaf", I spoke of the possibility
that I myself might linger on the old bough until the buds and blossoms
of a new spring were opening and spreading all around me. I am not as
yet the solitary survivor of my literary contemporaries, and,
remembering who my few coevals are, it may well be hoped that I shall
not be. But I feel lonely, very lonely, in the pages through which I
wander. These are new names in the midst of which I find my own. In
another sense I am very far from alone. I have daily assurances that I
have a constituency of known and unknown personal friends, whose
indulgence I have no need of asking. I know there are readers enough who
will be pleased to follow me in my brief excursion, _because I am
myself_, and will demand no better reason. If I choose to write for
them, I do no injury to those for whom my personality is an object of
indifference. They will find on every shelf some publications which are
not intended for them, and which they prefer to let alone. No person is
expected to help himself to everything set before him at a public table.
I will not, therefore, hesitate to go on with the simple story of our
Old World experiences.
Thanks to my Indian blanket,--my shawl, I mean,--I found myself nothing
the worse for my manifold adventures of the 27th of May. The cold wind
sweeping over Epsom downs reminded me of our own chilling easterly
breezes; especially the northeasterly ones, which are to me less
disagreeable than the southeasterly. But the poetical illusion about an
English May,--
"Zephyr with Aurora playing,
As he met her once a-Maying,"--
and all that, received a shrewd thrust. Zephyr ought to have come in an
ulster, and offered Aurora a warm petticoat. However, in spite of all
difficulties, I brought off my recollections of the Derby of 1886 in
triumph, and am now waiting for the colored portrait of Ormonde with
Archer on his back,--Archer, the winner of five Derby races, one of
which was won by the American horse Iroquois. When that picture, which I
am daily expecting, arrives, I shall have it framed and hung by the side
of Herring's picture of Plenipotentiary, the horse I saw win the Derby
in 1834. These two, with an old portrait of the great Eclipse, who, as
my engraving of 1780 (Stubbs's) says, "was never beat, or ever had
occation for Whip or Spur," will constitute my entire sporting gallery.
I have not that vicious and demoralizing love of horse-flesh which makes
it next to impossible to find a perfectly honest hippophile. But a racer
is the realization of an ideal quadruped,--
"A pard-like spirit, beautiful and swift;"
so ethereal, so bird-like, that it is no wonder that the horse about
whom those old story-tellers lied so stoutly,--telling of his running a
mile in a minute,--was called Flying Childers.
The roses in Mrs. Pfeiffer's garden were hardly out of flower when I
lunched with her at her pretty villa at Putney. There I met Mr.
Browning, Mr. Holman Hunt, Mrs. Ritchie, Miss Anna Swanwick, the
translator of Æschylus, and other good company, besides that of my
entertainer.
One of my very agreeable experiences was a call from a gentleman with
whom I had corresponded, but whom I had never met. This was Mr. John
Bellows, of Gloucester, publisher, printer, man of letters, or rather of
words; for he is the author of that truly remarkable little manual, "The
Bona Fide Pocket Dictionary of the French and English Languages." To the
review of this little book, which is dedicated to Prince Lucien
Bonaparte, the "London Times" devoted a full column. I never heard any
one who had used it speak of it except with admiration. The modest
Friend may be surprised to find himself at full length in my pages, but
those who know the little miracle of typography, its conciseness,
completeness, arrangement, will not wonder that I was gratified to see
the author, who sent it to me, and who has written me most interesting
letters on the local antiquities of Gloucester and its neighborhood.
We lunched that day at Lady Camperdown's, where we were happy to meet
Miss Frances Power Cobbe. In the afternoon we went by invitation to a
"tea and talk" at the Reverend Mr. Haweis's, at Chelsea. We found the
house close packed, but managed to get through the rooms, shaking
innumerable hands of the reverend gentleman's parishioners and other
visitors. It was very well arranged, so as not to be too fatiguing, and
we left the cordial gathering in good condition. We drove home with
Bishop and Mrs. Ellicott.
After this Sir James Paget called, and took me to a small and early
dinner-party; and A---- went with my secretary, the young lady of whom I
have spoken, to see "Human Nature," at Drury Lane Theatre.
On the following day, after dining with Lady Holland (wife of Sir Henry,
niece of Macaulay), we went across the street to our neighbor's, Lady
Stanley's. There was to be a great meeting of schoolmistresses, in whose
work her son, the Honorable Lyulph Stanley, is deeply interested. Alas!
The schoolma'ams were just leaving as we entered the door, and all we
saw of them was the trail of their descending robes. I was very sorry
for this, for I have a good many friends among our own
schoolmistresses,--friends whom I never saw, but know through the kind
words they have addressed to me.
No place in London looks more reserved and exclusive than Devonshire
House, standing back behind its high wall, extending along Piccadilly.
There is certainly nothing in its exterior which invites intrusion. We
had the pleasure of taking tea in the great house, accompanying our
American friend, Lady Harcourt, and were graciously received and
entertained by Lady Edward Cavendish. Like the other great houses, it is
a museum of paintings, statues, objects of interest of all sorts. It
must be confessed that it is pleasanter to go through the rooms with one
of the ladies of the household than under the lead of a liveried
servant. Lord Hartington came in while we were there. All the men who
are distinguished in political life become so familiar to the readers of
"Punch" in their caricatures, that we know them at sight. Even those who
can claim no such public distinction are occasionally the subjects of
the caricaturist, as some of us have found out for ourselves. A good
caricature, which seizes the prominent features and gives them the
character Nature hinted, but did not fully carry out, is a work of
genius. Nature herself is a remorseless caricaturist, as our daily
intercourse with our fellow men and women makes evident to us, and as is
curiously illustrated in the figures of Charles Lebrun, showing the
relations between certain human faces and those of various animals.
Hardly an English statesman in bodily presence could be mistaken by any
of "Punch's" readers.
On the same day that we made this quiet visit we attended a great and
ceremonious assembly. There were two parts in the programme, in the
first of which I was on the stage _solus_,--that is, without my
companion; in the second we were together. This day, Saturday, the 29th
of May, was observed as the Queen's birthday, although she was born on
the 24th. Sir William Harcourt gave a great dinner to the officials of
his department, and later in the evening Lady Rosebery held a reception
at the Foreign Office. On both these occasions everybody is expected to
be in court dress, but my host told me I might present myself in
ordinary evening dress. I thought that I might feel awkwardly among so
many guests, all in the wedding garments, knee-breeches and the rest,
without which I ventured among them. I never passed an easier evening in
any company than among these official personages. Sir William took me
under the shield of his ample presence, and answered all my questions
about the various notable personages at his table in a way to have made
my fortune if I had been a reporter. From the dinner I went to Mrs.
Gladstone's, at 10 Downing Street, where A---- called for me. She had
found a very small and distinguished company there, Prince Albert Victor
among the rest. At half past eleven we walked over to the Foreign Office
to Lady Rosebery's reception.
Here Mr. Gladstone was of course the centre of a group, to which I was
glad to add myself. His features are almost as familiar to me as my own,
for a photograph of him in his library has long stood on my revolving
bookcase, with a large lens before it. He is one of a small circle of
individuals in whom I have had and still have a special personal
interest. The year 1809, which introduced me to atmospheric existence,
was the birth-year of Gladstone, Tennyson, Lord Houghton, and Darwin. It
seems like an honor to have come into the world in such company, but it
is more likely to promote humility than vanity in a common mortal to
find himself coeval with such illustrious personages. Men born in the
same year watch each other, especially as the sands of life begin to run
low, as we can imagine so many damaged hour-glasses to keep an eye on
each other. Women, of course, never know who are their contemporaries.
Familiar to me as were the features of Mr. Gladstone, I looked upon him
with astonishment. For he stood before me with epaulets on his shoulders
and a rapier at his side, as military in his aspect as if he had been
Lord Wolseley, to whom I was introduced a short time afterwards. I was
fortunate enough to see and hear Mr. Gladstone on a still more memorable
occasion, and can afford to leave saying what were my impressions of the
very eminent statesman until I speak of that occasion.
A great number of invitations had been given out for the reception at
Lady Rosebery's,--over two thousand, my companion heard it said.
Whatever the number was, the crowd was very great,--so great that one
might well feel alarmed for the safety of any delicate person who was in
the _pack_ which formed itself at one place in the course of the
evening. Some obstruction must have existed _a fronte_, and the
_vis a tergo_ became fearful in its pressure on those who were
caught in the jam. I began thinking of the crushes in which I had been
caught, or which I had read and heard of: the terrible time at the
execution of Holloway and Haggerty, where some forty persons were
squeezed or trampled to death; the Brooklyn Theatre and other similar
tragedies; the crowd I was in at the unveiling of the statue on the
column of the Place Vendome, where I felt as one may suppose Giles Corey
did when, in his misery, he called for "more weight" to finish him. But
there was always a _deus ex machina_ for us when we were in
trouble. Looming up above the crowd was the smiling and encouraging
countenance of the ever active, always present, always helpful Mr.
Smalley. He cleared a breathing space before us. For a short time it was
really a formidable wedging together of people, and if a lady had
fainted in the press, she might have run a serious risk before she could
have been extricated. No more "marble halls" for us, if we had to
undergo the _peine forte et dure_ as the condition of our presence!
We were both glad to escape from this threatened asphyxia, and move
freely about the noble apartments. Lady Rosebery, who was kindness
itself, would have had us stay and sit down in comfort at the
supper-table, after the crowd had thinned, but we were tired with all we
had been through, and ordered our carriage. _Ordered our carriage!_
"I can call spirits from the vasty deep." ...
_But will they come when you do call for them?_"
The most formidable thing about a London party is getting away from it.
"C'est le _dernier_ pas qui coute." A crowd of anxious persons in
retreat is hanging about the windy door, and the breezy stairway, and
the airy hall.
A stentorian voice, hard as that of Rhadamanthus, exclaims,--
"Lady Vere de Vere's carriage stops the way!"
If my Lady Vere de Vere is not on hand, and that pretty quickly, off
goes her carriage, and the stern voice bawls again,--
"Mrs. Smith's carriage stops the way!"
Mrs. Smith's particular Smith may be worth his millions and live in his
marble palace; but if Mrs. Smith thinks her coachman is going to stand
with his horses at that door until she appears, she is mistaken, for she
is a minute late, and now the coach moves on, and Rhadamanthus calls
aloud,--
"Mrs. Brown's carriage stops the way!"
Half the lung fevers that carry off the great people are got waiting for
their carriages.
I know full well that many readers would be disappointed if I did not
mention some of the grand places and bring in some of the great names
that lend their lustre to London society. We were to go to a fine
musical party at Lady Rothschild's on the evening of the 30th of May. It
happened that the day was Sunday, and if we had been as punctilious as
some New England Sabbatarians, we might have felt compelled to decline
the tempting invitation. But the party was given by a daughter of
Abraham, and in every Hebrew household the true Sabbath was over. We
were content for that evening to shelter ourselves under the old
dispensation.
The party, or concert, was a very brilliant affair. Patti sang to us,
and a tenor, and a violinist played for us. How we two Americans came to
be in so favored a position I do not know; all I do know is that we were
shown to our places, and found them very agreeable ones. In the same row
of seats was the Prince of Wales, two chairs off from A----'s seat.
Directly in front of A---- was the Princess of Wales, "in ruby velvet,
with six rows of pearls encircling her throat, and two more strings
falling quite low;" and next her, in front of me, the startling presence
of Lady de Grey, formerly Lady Lonsdale, and before that Gladys Herbert.
On the other side of the Princess sat the Grand Duke Michael of Russia.
As we are among the grandest of the grandees, I must enliven my sober
account with an extract from my companion's diary:--
"There were several great beauties there, Lady Claude Hamilton, a
queenly blonde, being one. Minnie Stevens Paget had with her the pretty
Miss Langdon, of New York. Royalty had one room for supper, with its
attendant lords and ladies. Lord Rothschild took me down to a long table
for a sit-down supper,--there were some thirty of us. The most superb
pink orchids were on the table. The [Thane] of ---- sat next me, and how
he stared before he was introduced! ... This has been the finest party
we have been to, sitting comfortably in such a beautiful ball-room,
gazing at royalty in the flesh, and at the shades of departed beauties
on the wall, by Sir Joshua and Gainsborough. It was a new experience to
find that the royal lions fed upstairs, and mixed animals below!"
A visit to Windsor had been planned, under the guidance of a friend
whose kindness had already shown itself in various forms, and who,
before we left England, did for us more than we could have thought of
owing to any one person. This gentleman, Mr. Willett, of Brighton,
called with Mrs. Willett to take us on the visit which had been arranged
between us.
Windsor Castle, which everybody knows, or can easily learn, all about,
is one of the largest of those huge caverns in which the descendants of
the original cave men, when they have reached the height of human
grandeur, delight to shelter themselves. It seems as if such a great
hollow quarry of rock would strike a chill through every tenant, but
modern improvements reach even the palaces of kings and queens, and the
regulation temperature of the castle, or of its inhabited portions, is
fixed at sixty-five degrees of Fahrenheit. The royal standard was not
floating from the tower of the castle, and everything was quiet and
lonely. We saw all we wanted to,--pictures, furniture, and the rest. My
namesake, the Queen's librarian, was not there to greet us, or I should
have had a pleasant half-hour in the library with that very polite
gentleman, whom I had afterwards the pleasure of meeting in London.
After going through all the apartments in the castle that we cared to
see, or our conductress cared to show us, we drove in the park, along
the "three-mile walk," and in the by-roads leading from it. The
beautiful avenue, the open spaces with scattered trees here and there,
made this a most delightful excursion. I saw many fine oaks, one about
sixteen feet of honest girth, but no one which was very remarkable. I
wished I could have compared the handsomest of them with one in Beverly,
which I never look at without taking my hat off. This is a young tree,
with a future before it, if barbarians do not meddle with it, more
conspicuous for its spread than its circumference, stretching not very
far from a hundred feet from bough-end to bough-end. I do not think I
saw a specimen of the British _Quercus robur_ of such consummate
beauty. But I know from Evelyn and Strutt what England has to boast of,
and I will not challenge the British oak.
Two sensations I had in Windsor park, or forest, for I am not quite sure
of the boundary which separates them. The first was the lovely sight of
the _hawthorn_ in full bloom. I had always thought of the hawthorn
as a pretty shrub, growing in hedges; as big as a currant bush or a
barberry bush, or some humble plant of that character. I was surprised
to see it as a tree, standing by itself, and making the most delicious
roof a pair of young lovers could imagine to sit under. It looked at a
little distance like a young apple-tree covered with new-fallen snow. I
shall never see the word hawthorn in poetry again without the image of
the snowy but far from chilling canopy rising before me. It is the very
bower of young love, and must have done more than any growth of the
forest to soften the doom brought upon man by the fruit of the forbidden
tree. No wonder that
"In the spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of
love,"
with the object of his affections awaiting him in this boudoir of
nature. What a pity that Zekle, who courted Huldy over the apples she
was peeling, could not have made love as the bucolic youth does, when
"Every shepherd tells his tale
Under the hawthorn in the dale!"
(I will have it _love_-tale, in spite of Warton's comment.) But
I suppose it does not make so much difference, for love transmutes the
fruit in Huldy's lap into the apples of the Hesperides.
In this way it is that the associations with the poetry we remember come
up when we find ourselves surrounded by English scenery. The great poets
build temples of song, and fill them with images and symbols which move
us almost to adoration; the lesser minstrels fill a panel or gild a
cornice here and there, and make our hearts glad with glimpses of
beauty. I felt all this as I looked around and saw the hawthorns in full
bloom, in the openings among the oaks and other trees of the forest.
Presently I heard a sound to which I had never listened before, and
which I have never heard since:--
Coooo--coooo!
Nature had sent one cuckoo from her aviary to sing his double note for
me, that I might not pass away from her pleasing show without once
hearing the call so dear to the poets. It was the last day of spring. A
few more days, and the solitary voice might have been often heard; for
the bird becomes so common as to furnish Shakespeare an image to fit
"the skipping king:"--
"He was but as the cuckoo is in June,
Heard, not regarded."
For the lyric poets the cuckoo is "companion of the spring," "darling of
the spring;" coming with the daisy, and the primrose, and the blossoming
sweet-pea. Where the sound came from I could not tell; it puzzled
Wordsworth, with younger eyes than mine, to find whence issued
"that cry
Which made me look a thousand ways
In bush, and tree, and sky."
Only one hint of the prosaic troubled my emotional delight: I could not
help thinking how capitally the little rogue imitated the cuckoo clock,
with the sound of which I was pretty well acquainted.
On our return from Windsor we had to get ready for another great dinner
with our Minister, Mr. Phelps. As we are in the habit of considering our
great officials as public property, and as some of my readers want as
many glimpses of high life as a decent regard to republican
sensibilities will permit, I will borrow a few words from the diary to
which I have often referred:--
"The Princess Louise was there with the Marquis, and I had the best
opportunity of seeing how they receive royalty at private houses. Mr.
and Mrs. Phelps went down to the door to meet her the moment she came,
and then Mr. Phelps entered the drawing-room with the Princess on his
arm, and made the tour of the room with her, she bowing and speaking to
each one of us. Mr. Goschen took me in to dinner, and Lord Lorne was on
my other side. All of the flowers were of the royal color, red. It was a
grand dinner.... The Austrian Ambassador, Count Karoli, took Mrs. Phelps
in [to dinner], his position being higher than that of even the Duke [of
Argyll], who sat upon her right."
It was a very rich experience for a single day: the stately abode of
royalty, with all its manifold historical recollections, the magnificent
avenue of forest trees, the old oaks, the hawthorn in full bloom, and
the one cry of the cuckoo, calling me back to Nature in her spring-time
freshness and glory; then, after that, a great London dinner-party at a
house where the kind host and the gracious hostess made us feel at home,
and where we could meet the highest people in the land,--the people whom
we who live in a simpler way at home are naturally pleased to be with
under such auspices. What of all this shall I remember longest? Let me
not seem ungrateful to my friends who planned the excursion for us, or
to those who asked us to the brilliant evening entertainment, but I feel
as Wordsworth felt about the cuckoo,--he will survive all the other
memories.
"And I can listen to thee yet,
Can lie upon the plain
And listen, till I do beget
That golden time again."
Nothing is more hackneyed than an American's description of his feelings
in the midst of the scenes and objects he has read of all his days, and
is looking upon for the first time. To each of us it appears in some
respects in the same way, but with a difference for every individual. We
may smile at Irving's emotions at the first sight of a distinguished
Englishman on his own soil,--the ingenious Mr. Roscoe, as an earlier
generation would have called him. Our tourists, who are constantly going
forward and back between England and America, lose all sense of the
special distinctions between the two countries which do not bear on
their personal convenience. Happy are those who go with unworn,
unsatiated sensibilities from the New World to the Old; as happy, it may
be, those who come from the Old World to the New, but of that I cannot
form a judgment.
On the first day of June we called by appointment upon Mr. Peel, the
Speaker of the House of Commons, and went through the Houses of
Parliament. We began with the train-bearer, then met the housekeeper,
and presently were joined by Mr. Palgrave. The "Golden Treasury" stands
on my drawing-room table at home, and the name on its title-page had a
familiar sound. This gentleman is, I believe, a near relative of
Professor Francis Turner Palgrave, its editor.
Among other things to which Mr. Palgrave called our attention was the
death-warrant of Charles the First. One name in the list of signers
naturally fixed our eyes upon it. It was that of John Dixwell. A lineal
descendant of the old regicide is very near to me by family connection,
Colonel Dixwell having come to this country, married, and left a
posterity, which has resumed the name, dropped for the sake of safety at
the time when he, Goffe, and Whalley, were in concealment in various
parts of New England.
We lunched with the Speaker, and had the pleasure of the company of
Archdeacon Farrar. In the afternoon we went to a tea at a very grand
house, where, as my companion says in her diary, "it took full six men
in red satin knee-breeches to let us in." Another grand personage asked
us to dine with her at her country place, but we were too full of
engagements. In the evening we went to a large reception at Mr. Gosse's.
It was pleasant to meet artists and scholars,--the kind of company to
which we are much used in our aesthetic city. I found our host as
agreeable at home as he was when in Boston, where he became a favorite,
both as a lecturer and as a visitor.
Another day we visited Stafford House, where Lord Ronald Gower, himself
an artist, did the honors of the house, showing us the pictures and
sculptures, his own included, in a very obliging and agreeable way. I
have often taken note of the resemblances of living persons to the
portraits and statues of their remote ancestors. In showing us the
portrait of one of his own far-back progenitors, Lord Ronald placed a
photograph of himself in the corner of the frame. The likeness was so
close that the photograph might seem to have been copied from the
painting, the dress only being changed. The Duke of Sutherland, who had
just come back from America, complained that the dinners and lunches had
used him up. I was fast learning how to sympathize with him.
Then to Grosvenor House to see the pictures. I best remember
Gainsborough's beautiful Blue Boy, commonly so called, from the color of
his dress, and Sir Joshua's Mrs. Siddons as the Tragic Muse, which
everybody knows in engravings. We lunched in clerical company that day,
at the Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol's, with the Archbishop of York,
the Reverend Mr. Haweis, and others as guests. I told A---- that she was
not sufficiently impressed with her position at the side of an
archbishop; she was not _crumbling bread_ in her nervous
excitement. The company did not seem to remember Sydney Smith's remark
to the young lady next him at a dinner-party: "My dear, I see you are
nervous, by your crumbling your bread as you do. _I_ always crumble
bread when I sit by a bishop, and when I sit by an archbishop I crumble
bread with both hands." That evening I had the pleasure of dining with
the distinguished Mr. Bryce, whose acquaintance I made in our own
country, through my son, who has introduced me to many agreeable persons
of his own generation, with whose companionship I am glad to mend the
broken and merely fragmentary circle of old friendships.
The 3d of June was a memorable day for us, for on the evening of that
day we were to hold our reception. If Dean Bradley had proposed our
meeting our guests in the Jerusalem Chamber, I should hardly have been
more astonished. But these kind friends meant what they said, and put
the offer in such a shape that it was impossible to resist it. So we
sent out our cards to a few hundreds of persons,--those who we thought
might like invitations. I was particularly desirous that many members of
the medical profession whom I had not met, but who felt well disposed
towards me, should be at this gathering. The meeting was in every
respect a success. I wrote a prescription for as many baskets of
champagne as would be consistent with the well-being of our guests, and
such light accompaniments as a London company is wont to expect under
similar circumstances. My own recollections of the evening, unclouded by
its festivities, but confused by its multitudinous succession of
introductions, are about as definite as the Duke of Wellington's alleged
monosyllabic description of the battle of Waterloo. But A---- writes in
her diary: "From nine to twelve we stood, receiving over three hundred
people out of the four hundred and fifty we invited." As I did not go to
Europe to visit hospitals or museums, I might have missed seeing some of
those professional brethren whose names I hold in honor and whose
writings are in my library. If any such failed to receive our cards of
invitation, it was an accident which, if I had known, I should have
deeply regretted. So far as we could judge by all we heard, our
unpretentious party gave general satisfaction. Many different social
circles were represented, but it passed off easily and agreeably. I can
say this more freely, as the credit of it belongs so largely to the care
and self-sacrificing efforts of Dr. Priestley and his charming wife.
I never refused to write in the birthday book or the album of the
humblest schoolgirl or schoolboy, and I could not refuse to set my name,
with a verse from one of my poems, in the album of the Princess of
Wales, which was sent me for that purpose. It was a nice new book, with
only two or three names in it, and those of musical
composers,--Rubinstein's, I think, was one of them,--so that I felt
honored by the great lady's request. I ought to describe the book,
but I only remember that it was quite large and sumptuously elegant,
and that I copied into it the last verse of a poem of mine called
"The Chambered Nautilus," as I have often done for plain republican
albums.
The day after our simple reception was notable for three social events
in which we had our part. The first was a lunch at the house of Mrs.
Cyril Flower, one of the finest in London,--Surrey House, as it is
called. Mr. Browning, who seems to go everywhere, and is one of the
vital elements of London society, was there as a matter of course. Miss
Cobbe, many of whose essays I have read with great satisfaction, though
I cannot accept all her views, was a guest whom I was very glad to meet
a second time.
In the afternoon we went to a garden-party given by the Princess Louise
at Kensington Palace, a gloomy-looking edifice, which might be taken
for a hospital or a poorhouse. Of all the festive occasions which I
attended, the garden-parties were to me the most formidable. They are
all very well for young people, and for those who do not mind the
nipping and eager air, with which, as I have said, the climate of
England, no less than that of America, falsifies all the fine things the
poets have said about May, and, I may add, even June. We wandered about
the grounds, spoke with the great people, stared at the odd ones, and
said to ourselves,--at least I said to myself,--with Hamlet,
"The air bites shrewdly, it is very cold."
[Illustration: Robert Browning.]
The most curious personages were some East Indians, a chocolate-colored
lady, her husband, and children. The mother had a diamond on the side of
her nose, its setting riveted on the inside, one might suppose; the
effect was peculiar, far from captivating. A---- said that she should
prefer the good old-fashioned nose-ring, as we find it described and
pictured by travellers. She saw a great deal more than I did, of course.
I quote from her diary: "The little Eastern children made their native
salaam to the Princess by prostrating themselves flat on their little
stomachs in front of her, putting their hands between her feet, pushing
them aside, and kissing the print of her feet!"
I really believe one or both of us would have run serious risks of
catching our "death o' cold," if we had waited for our own carriage,
which seemed forever in coming forward. The good Lady Holland, who was
more than once our guardian angel, brought us home in hers. So we got
warmed up at our own hearth, and were ready in due season for the large
and fine dinner-party at Archdeacon Farrar's, where, among other guests,
were Mrs. Phelps, our Minister's wife, who is a great favorite alike
with Americans and English, Sir John Millais, Mr. Tyndall, and other
interesting people.
I am sorry that we could not have visited Newstead Abbey. I had a letter
from Mr. Thornton Lothrop to Colonel Webb, the present proprietor, with
whom we lunched. I have spoken of the pleasure I had when I came
accidentally upon persons with whose name and fame I had long been
acquainted. A similar impression was that which I received when I found
myself in the company of the bearer of an old historic name. When my
host at the lunch introduced a stately-looking gentleman as Sir Kenelm
Digby, it gave me a start, as if a ghost had stood before me. I
recovered myself immediately, however, for there was nothing of the
impalpable or immaterial about the stalwart personage who bore the name.
I wanted to ask him if he carried any of his ancestor's "powder of
sympathy" about with him. Many, but not all, of my readers remember that
famous man's famous preparation. When used to cure a wound, it was
applied to the weapon that made it; the part was bound up so as to bring
the edges of the wound together, and by the wondrous influence of the
sympathetic powder the healing process took place in the kindest
possible manner. Sir Kenelm, the ancestor, was a gallant soldier, a
grand gentleman, and the husband of a wonderfully beautiful wife, whose
charms he tried to preserve from the ravages of time by various
experiments. He was also the homoeopathist of his day, the Elisha
Perkins (metallic tractors) of his generation. The "mind cure" people
might adopt him as one of their precursors.
I heard a curious statement which was illustrated in the person of one
of the gentlemen we met at this table. It is that English sporting men
are often deaf on one side, in consequence of the noise of the frequent
discharge of their guns affecting the right ear. This is a very
convenient infirmity for gentlemen who indulge in slightly aggressive
remarks, but when they are hit back never seem to be conscious at all of
the _riposte_,--the return thrust of the fencer.
Dr. Allchin called and took me to a dinner, where I met many
professional brothers, and enjoyed myself highly.
By this time every day was pledged for one or more engagements, so that
many very attractive invitations had to be declined. I will not follow
the days one by one, but content myself with mentioning some of the more
memorable visits. I had been invited to the Rabelais Club, as I have
before mentioned, by a cable message. This is a club of which the late
Lord Houghton was president, and of which I am a member, as are several
other Americans. I was afraid that the gentlemen who met,
"To laugh and shake in Rabelais's easy chair,"
might be more hilarious and demonstrative in their mirth than I, a sober
New Englander in the superfluous decade, might find myself equal to. But
there was no uproarious jollity; on the contrary, it was a pleasant
gathering of literary people and artists, who took their pleasure not
sadly, but serenely, and I do not remember a single explosive guffaw.
Another day, after going all over Dudley House, including Lady Dudley's
boudoir, "in light blue satin, the prettiest room we have seen," A----
says, we went, by appointment, to Westminster Abbey, where we spent two
hours under the guidance of Archdeacon Farrar. I think no part of the
Abbey is visited with so much interest as Poets' Corner. We are all
familiarly acquainted with it beforehand. We are all ready for "O rare
Ben Jonson!" as we stand over the place where he was planted standing
upright, as if he had been dropped into a post-hole. We remember too
well the foolish and flippant mockery of Gay's "Life is a Jest." If I
were dean of the cathedral, I should be tempted to alter the _J_ to
a _G_. Then we could read it without contempt; for life _is_ a
gest, an achievement,--or always ought to be. Westminster Abbey is too
crowded with monuments to the illustrious dead and those who have been
considered so in their day to produce any other than a confused
impression. When we visit the tomb of Napoleon at the Invalides, no
side-lights interfere with the view before us in the field of mental
vision. We see the Emperor; Marengo, Austerlitz, Waterloo, Saint Helena,
come before us, with him as their central figure. So at Stratford,--the
Cloptons and the John a Combes, with all their memorials, cannot make us
lift our eyes from the stone which covers the dust that once breathed
and walked the streets of Stratford as Shakespeare.
Ah, but here is one marble countenance that I know full well, and knew
for many a year in the flesh! Is there an American who sees the bust of
Longfellow among the effigies of the great authors of England without
feeling a thrill of pleasure at recognizing the features of his native
fellow-countryman in the Valhalla of his ancestral fellow-countrymen?
There are many memorials in Poets' Corner and elsewhere in the Abbey
which could be better spared than that. Too many that were placed there
as luminaries have become conspicuous by their obscurity in the midst of
that illustrious company. On the whole, the Abbey produces a distinct
sense of being overcrowded. It appears too much like a lapidary's
store-room. Look up at the lofty roof, which we willingly pardon for
shutting out the heaven above us,--at least in an average London day;
look down at the floor and think of what precious relics it covers; but
do not look around you with the hope of getting any clear, concentrated,
satisfying effect from this great museum of gigantic funereal bricabrac.
Pardon me, shades of the mighty dead! I had something of this feeling,
but at another hour I might perhaps be overcome by emotion, and weep, as
my fellow-countryman did at the grave of the earliest of his ancestors.
I should love myself better in that aspect than I do in this coldblooded
criticism; but it suggested itself, and as no flattery can soothe, so no
censure can wound, "the dull, cold ear of death."
Of course we saw all the sights of the Abbey in a hurried way, yet with
such a guide and expositor as Archdeacon Farrar our two hours' visit was
worth a whole day with an undiscriminating verger, who recites his
lesson by rote, and takes the life out of the little mob that follows
him round by emphasizing the details of his lesson, until "Patience on a
monument" seems to the sufferer, who knows what he wants and what he
does not want, the nearest emblem of himself he can think of. Amidst all
the imposing recollections of the ancient edifice, one impressed me in
the inverse ratio of its importance. The Archdeacon pointed out the
little holes in the stones, in one place, where the boys of the choir
used to play marbles, before America was discovered, probably,--centuries
before, it may be. It is a strangely impressive glimpse
of a living past, like the _graffiti_ of Pompeii. I find it
is often the accident rather than the essential which fixes my attention
and takes hold of my memory. This is a tendency of which I suppose I
ought to be ashamed, if we have any right to be ashamed of those
idiosyncrasies which are ordered for us. It is the same tendency which
often leads us to prefer the picturesque to the beautiful. Mr. Gilpin
liked the donkey in a forest landscape better than the horse. A touch of
imperfection interferes with the beauty of an object and lowers its
level to that of the picturesque. The accident of the holes in the stone
of the noble building, for the boys to play marbles with, makes me a boy
again and at home with them, after looking with awe upon the statue of
Newton, and turning with a shudder from the ghastly monument of Mrs.
Nightingale.
What a life must be that of one whose years are passed chiefly in and
about the great Abbey! Nowhere does Macbeth's expression "dusty death"
seem so true to all around us. The dust of those who have been lying
century after century below the marbles piled over them,--the dust on
the monuments they lie beneath; the dust on the memories those monuments
were raised to keep living in the recollection of posterity,--dust,
dust, dust, everywhere, and we ourselves but shapes of breathing dust
moving amidst these objects and remembrances! Come away! The good
Archdeacon of the "Eternal Hope" has asked us to take a cup of tea with
him. The tea-cup will be a cheerful substitute for the funeral urn, and
a freshly made infusion of the fragrant leaf is one of the best things
in the world to lay the dust of sad reflections.
It is a somewhat fatiguing pleasure to go through the Abbey, in spite of
the intense interest no one can help feeling. But my day had but just
begun when the two hours we had devoted to the visit were over. At a
quarter before eight, my friend Mr. Frederick Locker called for me to go
to a dinner at the Literary Club. I was particularly pleased to dine
with this association, as it reminded me of our own Saturday Club, which
sometimes goes by the same name as the London one. They complimented me
with a toast, and I made some kind of a reply. As I never went prepared
with a speech for any such occasion, I take it for granted that I
thanked the company in a way that showed my gratitude rather than my
eloquence. And now, the dinner being over, my day was fairly begun.
This was to be a memorable date in the record of the year, one long to
be remembered in the political history of Great Britain. For on this
day, the 7th of June, Mr. Gladstone was to make his great speech on the
Irish question, and the division of the House on the Government of
Ireland Bill was to take place. The whole country, to the corners of its
remotest colony, was looking forward to the results of this evening's
meeting of Parliament. The kindness of the Speaker had furnished me with
a ticket, entitling me to a place among the "distinguished guests,"
which I presented without modestly questioning my right to the title.
The pressure for entrance that evening was very great, and I, coming
after my dinner with the Literary Club, was late upon the ground. The
places for "distinguished guests" were already filled. But all England
was in a conspiracy to do everything possible to make my visit
agreeable. I did not take up a great deal of room,--I might be put into
a seat with the ambassadors and foreign ministers. And among them I was
presently installed. It was now between ten and eleven o'clock, as
nearly as I recollect. The House had been in session since four o'clock.
A gentleman was speaking, who was, as my unknown next neighbor told me,
Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, a leading member, as we all know, of the
opposition. When he sat down there was a hush of expectation, and
presently Mr. Gladstone rose to his feet. A great burst of applause
welcomed him, lasting more than a minute. His clean-cut features, his
furrowed cheeks, his scanty and whitened hair, his well-shaped but not
extraordinary head, all familiarized by innumerable portraits and
emphasized in hundreds of caricatures, revealed him at once to every
spectator. His great speech has been universally read, and I need only
speak of the way in which it was delivered. His manner was forcible
rather than impassioned or eloquent; his voice was clear enough, but
must have troubled him somewhat, for he had a small bottle from which he
poured something into a glass from time to time and swallowed a little,
yet I heard him very well for the most part. In the last portion of his
speech he became animated and inspiriting, and his closing words were
uttered with an impressive solemnity: "Think, I beseech you, think well,
think wisely, think not for a moment, but for the years that are to
come, before you reject this bill."
After the burst of applause which followed the conclusion of Mr.
Gladstone's speech, the House proceeded to the division on the question
of passing the bill to a second reading. While the counting of the votes
was going on there was the most intense excitement. A rumor ran round
the House at one moment that the vote was going in favor of the second
reading. It soon became evident that this was not the case, and
presently the result was announced, giving a majority of thirty against
the bill, and practically overthrowing the liberal administration. Then
arose a tumult of applause from the conservatives and a wild confusion,
in the midst of which an Irish member shouted, "Three cheers for the
Grand Old Man!" which were lustily given, with waving of hats and all
but Donnybrook manifestations of enthusiasm.
I forgot to mention that I had a very advantageous seat among the
diplomatic gentlemen, and was felicitating myself on occupying one of
the best positions in the House, when an usher politely informed me that
the Russian Ambassador, in whose place I was sitting, had arrived, and
that I must submit to the fate of eviction. Fortunately, there were some
steps close by, on one of which I found a seat almost as good as the one
I had just left.
It was now two o'clock in the morning, and I had to walk home, not a
vehicle being attainable. I did not know my way to my headquarters, and
I had no friend to go with me, but I fastened on a stray gentleman, who
proved to be an ex-member of the House, and who accompanied me to 17
Dover Street, where I sought my bed with a satisfying sense of having
done a good day's work and having been well paid for it.
III.
On the 8th of June we visited the Record Office for a sight of the
Domesday Book and other ancient objects of interest there preserved. As
I looked at this too faithful memorial of an inexorable past, I thought
of the battle of Hastings and all its consequences, and that reminded me
of what I have long remembered as I read it in Dr. Robert Knox's "Races
of Men." Dr. Knox was the monoculous Waterloo surgeon, with whom I
remember breakfasting, on my first visit to England and Scotland. His
celebrity is less owing to his book than to the unfortunate connection
of his name with the unforgotten Burke and Hare horrors. This is his
language in speaking of Hastings: "... that bloody field, surpassing far
in its terrible results the unhappy day of Waterloo. From this the Celt
has recovered, but not so the Saxon. To this day he feels, and feels
deeply, the most disastrous day that ever befell his race; here he was
trodden down by the Norman, whose iron heel is on him yet.... To this
day the Saxon race in England have never recovered a tithe of their
rights, and probably never will."
The Conqueror meant to have a thorough summing up of his stolen
property. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle says,--I quote it at second
hand,--"So very straitly did he cause the survey to be made, that there
was not a single hyde, nor a yardland of ground, nor--it is shameful to
say what he thought no shame to do--was there an ox or a cow, or a pig
passed by, and that was not down in the accounts, and then all these
writings were brought to him." The "looting" of England by William and
his "twenty thousand thieves," as Mr. Emerson calls his army, was a
singularly methodical proceeding, and Domesday Book is a searching
inventory of their booty, movable and immovable.
From this reminder of the past we turned to the remembrances of home;
A---- going to dine with a transplanted Boston friend and other ladies
from that blessed centre of New England life, while I dined with a party
of gentlemen at my friend Mr. James Russell Lowell's.
I had looked forward to this meeting with high expectations, and they
were abundantly satisfied. I knew that Mr. Lowell must gather about him,
wherever he might be, the choicest company, but what his selection would
be I was curious to learn. I found with me at the table my own
countrymen and his, Mr. Smalley and Mr. Henry James. Of the other
guests, Mr. Leslie Stephen was my only old acquaintance in person; but
Du Maurier and Tenniel I have met in my weekly "Punch" for many a year;
Mr. Lang, Mr. Oliphant, Mr. Townsend, we all know through their
writings; Mr. Burne-Jones and Mr. Alma Tadema, through the frequent
reproductions of their works in engravings, as well as by their
paintings. If I could report a dinner-table conversation, I might be
tempted to say something of my talk with Mr. Oliphant. I like well
enough conversation which floats safely over the shallows, touching
bottom at intervals with a commonplace incident or truism to push it
along; I like better to find a few fathoms of depth under the surface;
there is a still higher pleasure in the philosophical discourse which
calls for the deep sea line to reach bottom; but best of all, when one
is in the right mood, is the contact of intelligences when they are off
soundings in the ocean of thought. Mr. Oliphant is what many of us call
a mystic, and I found a singular pleasure in listening to him. This
dinner at Mr. Lowell's was a very remarkable one for the men it brought
together, and I remember it with peculiar interest. My entertainer holds
a master-key to London society, and he opened the gate for me into one
of its choicest preserves on that evening.
I did not undertake to renew my old acquaintance with hospitals and
museums. I regretted that I could not be with my companion, who went
through the Natural History Museum with the accomplished director,
Professor W. H. Flower. One old acquaintance I did resuscitate. For the
second time I took the hand of Charles O'Byrne, the celebrated Irish
giant of the last century. I met him, as in my first visit, at the Royal
College of Surgeons, where I accompanied Mr. Jonathan Hutchinson. He was
in the condition so longed for by Sydney Smith on a very hot day;
namely, with his flesh taken off, and sitting, or rather standing, in
his bones. The skeleton measures eight feet, and the living man's height
is stated as having been eight feet two, or four inches, by different
authorities. His hand was the only one I took, either in England or
Scotland, which had not a warm grasp and a hearty welcome in it.
A---- went with Boston friends to see "Faust" a second time, Mr. Irving
having offered her the Royal box, and the polite Mr. Bram Stoker serving
the party with tea in the little drawing-room behind the box; so that
she had a good time while I was enjoying myself at a dinner at Sir Henry
Thompson's, where I met Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Browning, and other
distinguished gentlemen. These dinners of Sir Henry's are well known for
the good company one meets at them, and I felt myself honored to be a
guest on this occasion.
Among the pleasures I had promised myself was that of a visit to
Tennyson, at the Isle of Wight. I feared, however, that this would be
rendered impracticable by reason of the very recent death of his younger
son, Lionel. But I learned from Mr. Locker-Lampson, whose daughter Mr.
Lionel Tennyson had married, that the poet would be pleased to see me at
his place, Farringford; and by the kind intervention of Mr.
Locker-Lampson, better known to the literary world as Frederick Locker,
arrangements were made for my daughter and myself to visit him. I
considered it a very great favor, for Lord Tennyson has a poet's
fondness for the tranquillity of seclusion, which many curious explorers
of society fail to remember. Lady Tennyson is an invalid, and though
nothing could be more gracious than her reception of us both, I fear it
may have cost her an effort which she would not allow to betray itself.
Mr. Hallam Tennyson and his wife, both of most pleasing presence and
manners, did everything to make our stay agreeable. I saw the poet to
the best advantage, under his own trees and walking over his own domain.
He took delight in pointing out to me the finest and the rarest of his
trees,--and there were many beauties among them. I recalled my morning's
visit to Whittier at Oak Knoll, in Danvers, a little more than a year
ago, when he led me to one of his favorites, an aspiring evergreen which
shot up like a flame. I thought of the graceful American elms in front
of Longfellow's house and the sturdy English elms that stand in front of
Lowell's. In this garden of England, the Isle of Wight, where everything
grows with such a lavish extravagance of greenness that it seems as if
it must bankrupt the soil before autumn, I felt as if weary eyes and
overtasked brains might reach their happiest haven of rest. We all
remember Shenstone's epigram on the pane of a tavern window. If we find
our "warmest welcome at an inn," we find our most soothing companionship
in the trees among which we have lived, some of which we may ourselves
have planted. We lean against them, and they never betray our trust;
they shield us from the sun and from the rain; their spring welcome is a
new birth, which never loses its freshness; they lay their beautiful
robes at our feet in autumn; in winter they "stand and wait," emblems of
patience and of truth, for they hide nothing, not even the little
leaf-buds which hint to us of hope, the last element in their triple
symbolism.
This digression, suggested by the remembrance of the poet under his
trees, breaks my narrative, but gives me the opportunity of paying a
debt of gratitude. For I have owned many beautiful trees, and loved many
more outside of my own leafy harem. Those who write verses have no
special claim to be lovers of trees, but so far as one is of the
poetical temperament he is likely to be a tree-lover. Poets have, as a
rule, more than the average nervous sensibility and irritability. Trees
have no nerves. They live and die without suffering, without
self-questioning or self-reproach. They have the divine gift of silence.
They cannot obtrude upon the solitary moments when one is to himself the
most agreeable of companions. The whole vegetable world, even "the
meanest flower that blows," is lovely to contemplate. What if creation
had paused there, and you or I had been called upon to decide whether
self-conscious life should be added in the form of the existing animal
creation, and the hitherto peaceful universe should come under the rule
of Nature as we now know her,
"red in tooth and claw"?
Are we not glad that the responsibility of the decision did not rest on
us?
I am sorry that I did not ask Tennyson to read or repeat to me some
lines of his own. Hardly any one perfectly understands a poem but the
poet himself. One naturally loves his own poem as no one else can. It
fits the mental mould in which it was cast, and it will not exactly fit
any other. For this reason I had rather listen to a poet reading his own
verses than hear the best elocutionist that ever spouted recite them. He
may not have a good voice or enunciation, but he puts his heart and his
inter-penetrative intelligence into every line, word, and syllable. I
should have liked to hear Tennyson read such lines as
"Laborious orient ivory, sphere in sphere;"
and in spite of my good friend Matthew Arnold's _in terrorem_, I
should have liked to hear Macaulay read,
"And Aulus the Dictator
Stroked Auster's raven mane,"
and other good mouthable lines, from the "Lays of Ancient Rome." Not
less should I like to hear Mr. Arnold himself read the passage
beginning,--
"In his cool hall with haggard eyes
The Roman noble lay."
The next day Mrs. Hallam Tennyson took A---- in her pony cart to see
Alum Bay, The Needles, and other objects of interest, while I wandered
over the grounds with Tennyson. After lunch his carriage called for us,
and we were driven across the island, through beautiful scenery, to
Ventnor, where we took the train to Ryde, and there the steamer to
Portsmouth, from which two hours and a half of travel carried us to
London.
* * * * *
My first visit to Cambridge was at the invitation of Mr. Gosse, who
asked me to spend Sunday, the 13th of June, with him. The rooms in
Neville Court, Trinity College, occupied by Sir William Vernon Harcourt
when lecturing at Cambridge, were placed at my disposal. The room I
slept in was imposing with the ensigns armorial of the Harcourts and
others which ornamented its walls. I had great delight in walking
through the quadrangles, along the banks of the Cam, and beneath the
beautiful trees which border it. Mr. Gosse says that I stopped in the
second court of Clare, and looked around and smiled as if I were
bestowing my benediction. He was mistaken: I smiled as if I were
receiving a benediction from my dear old grandmother; for Cambridge in
New England is my mother town, and Harvard University in Cambridge is my
Alma Mater. She is the daughter of Cambridge in Old England, and my
relationship is thus made clear.
Mr. Gosse introduced me to many of the younger and some of the older men
of the university. Among my visits was one never to be renewed and never
to be forgotten. It was to the Master of Trinity, the Reverend William
Hepworth Thompson. I hardly expected to have the privilege of meeting
this very distinguished and greatly beloved personage, famous not alone
for scholarship, or as the successor of Dr. Whewell in his high office,
but also as having said some of the wittiest things which we have heard
since Voltaire's _pour encourager les autres_. I saw him in his
chamber, a feeble old man, but noble to look upon in all "the monumental
pomp of age." He came very near belonging to the little group I have
mentioned as my coevals, but was a year after us. Gentle, dignified,
kindly in his address as if I had been his schoolmate, he left a very
charming impression. He gave me several mementoes of my visit, among
them a beautiful engraving of Sir Isaac Newton, representing him as one
of the handsomest of men. Dr. Thompson looked as if he could not be very
long for this world, but his death, a few weeks after my visit, was a
painful surprise to me. I had been just in time to see "the last of the
great men" at Cambridge, as my correspondent calls him, and I was very
grateful that I could store this memory among the hoarded treasures I
have been laying by for such possible extra stretch of time as may be
allowed me.
My second visit to Cambridge will be spoken of in due season.
While I was visiting Mr. Gosse at Cambridge, A---- was not idle. On
Saturday she went to Lambeth, where she had the pleasure and honor of
shaking hands with the Archbishop of Canterbury in his study, and of
looking about the palace with Mrs. Benson. On Sunday she went to the
Abbey, and heard "a broad and liberal sermon" from Archdeacon Farrar.
Our young lady-secretary stayed and dined with her, and after dinner
sang to her. "A peaceful, happy Sunday," A---- says in her diary,--not
less peaceful, I suspect, for my being away, as my callers must have got
many a "not at 'ome" from young Robert of the multitudinous buttons.
On Monday, the 14th of June, after getting ready for our projected
excursions, we had an appointment which promised us a great deal of
pleasure. Mr. Augustus Harris, the enterprising and celebrated manager
of Drury Lane Theatre, had sent us an invitation to occupy a box, having
eight seats, at the representation of "Carmen." We invited the
Priestleys and our Boston friends, the Shimminses, to take seats with
us. The chief singer in the opera was Marie Roze, who looked well and
sang well, and the evening went off very happily. After the performance
we were invited by Mr. Harris to a supper of some thirty persons, where
we were the special guests. The manager toasted me, and I said
something,--I trust appropriate; but just what I said is as
irrecoverable as the orations of Demosthenes on the seashore, or the
sermons of St. Francis to the beasts and birds.
Of all the attentions I received in England, this was, perhaps, the
least to be anticipated or dreamed of. To be fêted and toasted and to
make a speech in Drury Lane Theatre would not have entered into my
flightiest conceptions, if I had made out a programme beforehand. It is
a singularly gratifying recollection. Drury Lane Theatre is so full of
associations with literature, with the great actors and actresses of the
past, with the famous beauties who have stood behind the footlights and
the splendid audiences that have sat before them, that it is an
admirable nucleus for remembrances to cluster around. It was but a vague
spot in memory before, but now it is a bright centre for other images of
the past. That one evening seems to make me the possessor of all its
traditions from the time when it rose from its ashes, when Byron's poem
was written and recited, and when the brothers Smith gave us the
"Address without a Phoenix," and all those exquisite parodies which make
us feel towards their originals somewhat as our dearly remembered Tom
Appleton did when he said, in praise of some real green turtle soup,
that it was almost as good as mock.
With much regret we gave up an invitation we had accepted to go to
Durdans to dine with Lord Rosebery. We must have felt very tired indeed
to make so great a sacrifice, but we had to be up until one o'clock
getting ready for the next day's journey; writing, packing, and
attending to what we left behind us as well as what was in prospect.
On the morning of Wednesday, June 16th, Dr. Donald Macalister called to
attend us on our second visit to Cambridge, where we were to be the
guests of his cousin, Alexander Macalister, Professor of Anatomy, who,
with Mrs. Macalister, received us most cordially. There was a large
luncheon-party at their house, to which we sat down in our travelling
dresses. In the evening they had a dinner-party, at which were present,
among others, Professor Stokes, President of the Royal Society, and
Professor Wright. We had not heard much talk of political matters at the
dinner-tables where we had been guests, but A---- sat near a lady who
was very earnest in advocating the Irish side of the great impending
question.
The 17th of June is memorable in the annals of my country. On that day
of the year 1775 the battle of Bunker's Hill was fought on the height I
see from the window of my library, where I am now writing. The monument
raised in memory of our defeat, which was in truth a victory, is almost
as much a part of the furniture of the room as its chairs and tables;
outside, as they are inside, furniture. But the 17th of June, 1886, is
memorable to me above all the other anniversaries of that day I have
known. For on that day I received from the ancient University of
Cambridge, England, the degree of Doctor of Letters, "Doctor Litt.," in
its abbreviated academic form. The honor was an unexpected one; that is,
until a short time before it was conferred.
Invested with the academic gown and cap, I repaired in due form at the
appointed hour to the Senate Chamber. Every seat was filled, and among
the audience were youthful faces in large numbers, looking as if they
were ready for any kind of outbreak of enthusiasm or hilarity.
The first degree conferred was that of LL.D., on Sir W. A. White,
G.C.M., G.C.B., to whose long list of appended initials it seemed like
throwing a perfume on the violet to add three more letters.
When I was called up to receive my honorary title, the young voices were
true to the promise of the young faces. There was a great noise, not
hostile nor unpleasant in its character, in answer to which I could
hardly help smiling my acknowledgments. In presenting me for my degree
the Public Orator made a Latin speech, from which I venture to give a
short extract, which I would not do for the world if it were not
disguised by being hidden in the mask of a dead language. But there will
be here and there a Latin scholar who will be pleased with the way in
which the speaker turned a compliment to the candidate before him, with
a reference to one of his poems and to some of his prose works.
_"Juvat nuper audivisse eum cujus carmen prope primum 'Folium ultimum'
nominatum est, folia adhuc plura e scriniis suis esse prolaturum.
Novimus quanta lepore descripserit colloquia illa antemeridiana,
symposia illa sobria et severa, sed eadem festiva et faceta, in quibus
totiens mutata persona, modo poeta, modo professor, modo princeps et
arbiter, loquendi, inter convivas suos regnat."_
I had no sooner got through listening to the speech and receiving my
formal sentence as Doctor of Letters than the young voices broke out in
fresh clamor. There were cries of "A speech! a speech!" mingled with the
title of a favorite poem by John Howard Payne, having a certain amount
of coincidence with the sound of my name. The play upon the word was not
absolutely a novelty to my ear, but it was good-natured, and I smiled
again, and perhaps made a faint inclination, as much as to say, "I hear
you, young gentlemen, but I do not forget that I am standing on my
dignity, especially now since a new degree has added a moral cubit to my
stature." Still the cries went on, and at last I saw nothing else to do
than to edge back among the silk gowns, and so lose myself and be lost
to the clamorous crowd in the mass of dignitaries. It was not
indifference to the warmth of my welcome, but a feeling that I had no
claim to address the audience because some of its younger members were
too demonstrative. I have not forgotten my very cordial reception, which
made me feel almost as much at home in the old Cambridge as in the new,
where I was born and took my degrees, academic, professional, and
honorary.
The university town left a very deep impression upon my mind, in which a
few grand objects predominate over the rest, all being of a delightful
character. I was fortunate enough to see the gathering of the boats,
which was the last scene in their annual procession. The show was
altogether lovely. The pretty river, about as wide as the Housatonic, I
should judge, as that slender stream winds through "Canoe Meadow," my
old Pittsfield residence, the gaily dressed people who crowded the
banks, the flower-crowned boats, with the gallant young oarsmen who
handled them so skilfully, made a picture not often equalled. The walks,
the bridges, the quadrangles, the historic college buildings, all
conspired to make the place a delight and a fascination. The library of
Trinity College, with its rows of busts by Roubiliac and Woolner, is a
truly noble hall. But beyond, above all the rest, the remembrance of
King's College Chapel, with its audacious and richly wrought roof and
its wide and lofty windows, glowing with old devices in colors which are
ever fresh, as if just from the furnace, holds the first place in my
gallery of Cambridge recollections.
I cannot do justice to the hospitalities which were bestowed upon us in
Cambridge. Professor and Mrs. Macalister, aided by Dr. Donald
Macalister, did all that thoughtful hosts could do to make us feel at
home. In the afternoon the ladies took tea at Mr. Oscar Browning's. In
the evening we went to a large dinner at the invitation of the
Vice-Chancellor. Many little points which I should not have thought of
are mentioned in A----'s diary. I take the following extract from it,
toning down its vivacity more nearly to my own standard:--
"Twenty were there. The Master of St. John's took me in, and the
Vice-Chancellor was on the other side.... The Vice-Chancellor rose and
returned thanks after the meats and before the sweets, as usual. I have
now got used to this proceeding, which strikes me as extraordinary.
Everywhere here in Cambridge, and the same in Oxford, I believe, they
say grace and give thanks. A gilded ewer and flat basin were passed,
with water in the basin to wash with, and we all took our turn at the
bath! Next to this came the course with the finger-bowls!... Why two
baths?"
On Friday, the 18th, I went to a breakfast at the Combination Room, at
which about fifty gentlemen were present, Dr. Sandys taking the chair.
After the more serious business of the morning's repast was over, Dr.
Macalister, at the call of the chairman, arose, and proposed my welfare
in a very complimentary way. I of course had to respond, and I did so in
the words which came of their own accord to my lips. After my
unpremeditated answer, which was kindly received, a young gentleman of
the university, Mr. Heitland, read a short poem, of which the following
is the title:--
LINES OF GREETING TO DR. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.
AT BREAKFAST IN COMBINATION ROOM, ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE,
ENGLAND.
I wish I dared quote more than the last two verses of these lines, which
seemed to me, not unused to giving and receiving complimentary tributes,
singularly happy, and were so considered by all who heard them. I think
I may venture to give the two verses referred to:--
"By all sweet memory of the saints and sages
Who wrought among us in the days of yore;
By youths who, turning now life's early pages,
Ripen to match the worthies gone before:
"On us, O son of England's greatest daughter,
A kindly word from heart and tongue bestow;
Then chase the sunsets o'er the western water,
And bear our blessing with you as you go."
I need not say that I left the English Cambridge with a heart full of
all grateful and kindly emotions.
I must not forget that I found at Cambridge, very pleasantly established
and successfully practising his profession, a former student in the
dental department of our Harvard Medical School, Dr. George Cunningham,
who used to attend my lectures on anatomy. In the garden behind the
quaint old house in which he lives is a large medlar-tree,--the first I
remember seeing.
On this same day we bade good-by to Cambridge, and took the two o'clock
train to Oxford, where we arrived at half past five. At this first visit
we were to be the guests of Professor Max Müller, at his fine residence
in Norham Gardens. We met there, at dinner, Mr. Herkomer, whom we have
recently had with us in Boston, and one or two others. In the evening we
had music; the professor playing on the piano, his two daughters, Mrs.
Conybeare and her unmarried sister, singing, and a young lady playing
the violin. It was a very lovely family picture; a pretty house,
surrounded by attractive scenery; scholarship, refinement, simple
elegance, giving distinction to a home which to us seemed a pattern of
all we could wish to see beneath an English roof. It all comes back to
me very sweetly, but very tenderly and sadly, for the voice of the elder
of the two sisters who sang to us is heard no more on earth, and a deep
shadow has fallen over the household we found so bright and cheerful.
Everything was done to make me enjoy my visit to Oxford, but I was
suffering from a severe cold, and was paying the penalty of too much
occupation and excitement. I missed a great deal in consequence, and
carried away a less distinct recollection of this magnificent seat of
learning than of the sister university.
If one wishes to know the magic of names, let him visit the places made
memorable by the lives of the illustrious men of the past in the Old
World. As a boy I used to read the poetry of Pope, of Goldsmith, and of
Johnson. How could I look at the Bodleian Library, or wander beneath its
roof, without recalling the lines from "The Vanity of Human Wishes"?
"When first the college rolls receive his name,
The young enthusiast quits his ease for fame;
Resistless burns the fever of renown,
Caught from the strong contagion of the gown:
O'er Bodley's dome his future labors spread,
And Bacon's mansion trembles o'er his head."
The last line refers to Roger Bacon. "There is a tradition that the
study of Friar Bacon, built on an arch over the bridge, will fall when a
man greater than Bacon shall pass under it. To prevent so shocking an
accident, it was pulled down many years since." We shall meet with a
similar legend in another university city. Many persons have been shy of
these localities, who were in no danger whatever of meeting the fate
threatened by the prediction.
We passed through the Bodleian Library, only glancing at a few of its
choicest treasures, among which the exquisitely illuminated missals were
especially tempting objects of study. It was almost like a mockery to
see them opened and closed, without having the time to study their
wonderful miniature paintings. A walk through the grounds of Magdalen
College, under the guidance of the president of that college, showed us
some of the fine trees for which I was always looking. One of these, a
wych-elm (Scotch elm of some books), was so large that I insisted on
having it measured. A string was procured and carefully carried round
the trunk, above the spread of the roots and below that of the branches,
so as to give the smallest circumference. I was curious to know how the
size of the trunk of this tree would compare with that of the trunks of
some of our largest New England elms. I have measured a good many of
these. About sixteen feet is the measurement of a large elm, like that
on Boston Common, which all middle-aged people remember. From twenty-two
to twenty-three feet is the ordinary maximum of the very largest trees.
I never found but one exceed it: that was the great Springfield elm,
which looked as if it might have been formed by the coalescence from the
earliest period of growth, of two young trees. When I measured this in
1837, it was twenty-four feet eight inches in circumference at five feet
from the ground; growing larger above and below. I remembered this tree
well, as we measured the string which was to tell the size of its
English rival. As we came near the end of the string, I felt as I did
when I was looking at the last dash of Ormonde and The Bard at
Epsom.--Twenty feet, and a long piece of string left.--Twenty-one.
--Twenty-two.--Twenty-three.--An extra heartbeat or two.--Twenty-four!
--Twenty-five and six inches over!!--The Springfield elm may have grown
a foot or more since I measured it, fifty years ago, but the tree at
Magdalen stands ahead of all my old measurements. Many of the fine old
trees, this in particular, may have been known in their younger days to
Addison, whose favorite walk is still pointed out to the visitor.
I would not try to compare the two university towns, as one might who
had to choose between them. They have a noble rivalry, each honoring the
other, and it would take a great deal of weighing one point of
superiority against another to call either of them the first, except in
its claim to antiquity.
After a garden-party in the afternoon, a pleasant evening at home, when
the professor played and his daughter Beatrice sang, and a garden-party
the next day, I found myself in somewhat better condition, and ready for
the next move.
[Illustration: Magdalen College, Oxford.]
At noon on the 23d of June we left for Edinburgh, stopping over night at
York, where we found close by the station an excellent hotel, and where
the next morning we got one of the best breakfasts we had in our whole
travelling experience. At York we wandered to and through a flower-show,
and _did_ the cathedral, as people _do_ all the sights they
see under the lead of a paid exhibitor, who goes through his lesson like
a sleepy old professor. I missed seeing the slab with the inscription
_miserrimus_. There may be other stones bearing this sad
superlative, but there is a story connected with this one, which sounds
as if it might be true.
In the year 1834, I spent several weeks in Edinburgh. I was fascinated
by the singular beauties of that "romantic town," which Scott called his
own, and which holds his memory, with that of Burns, as a most precious
part of its inheritance. The castle with the precipitous rocky wall out
of which it grows, the deep ravines with their bridges, pleasant Calton
Hill and memorable Holyrood Palace, the new town and the old town with
their strange contrasts, and Arthur's Seat overlooking all,--these
varied and enchanting objects account for the fondness with which all
who have once seen Edinburgh will always regard it.
We were the guests of Professor Alexander Crum Brown, a near relative of
the late beloved and admired Dr. John Brown. Professor and Mrs. Crum
Brown did everything to make our visit a pleasant one. We met at their
house many of the best known and most distinguished people of Scotland.
The son of Dr. John Brown dined with us on the day of our arrival, and
also a friend of the family, Mr. Barclay, to whom we made a visit on the
Sunday following. Among the visits I paid, none was more gratifying to
me than one which I made to Dr. John Brown's sister. No man could leave
a sweeter memory than the author of "Rab and his Friends," of "Pet
Marjorie," and other writings, all full of the same loving, human
spirit. I have often exchanged letters with him, and I thought how much
it would have added to the enjoyment of my visit if I could have taken
his warm hand and listened to his friendly voice. I brought home with me
a precious little manuscript, written expressly for me by one who had
known Dr. John Brown from the days of her girlhood, in which his
character appears in the same lovable and loving light as that which
shines in every page he himself has written.
On Friday, the 25th, I went to the hall of the university, where I was
to receive the degree of LL.D. The ceremony was not unlike that at
Cambridge, but had one peculiar feature: the separate special investment
of the candidate with the _hood_, which Johnson defines as "an
ornamental fold which hangs down the back of a graduate." There were
great numbers of students present, and they showed the same exuberance
of spirits as that which had forced me to withdraw from the urgent calls
at Cambridge. The cries, if possible, were still louder and more
persistent; they must have a speech and they would have a speech, and
what could I do about it? I saw but one way of pacifying a crowd as
noisy and long-breathed as that which for about the space of two hours
cried out, "Great is Diana of the Ephesians!" So I stepped to the front
and made a brief speech, in which, of course, I spoke of the
"_perfervidum ingenium Scotorum_." A speech without that would have
been like that "Address without a Phoenix" before referred to. My few
remarks were well received, and quieted the shouting Ephesians of the
warm-brained and warm-hearted northern university. It gave me great
pleasure to meet my friend Mr. Underwood, now American consul in
Glasgow, where he has made himself highly esteemed and respected.
In my previous visit to Edinburgh in 1834, I was fond of rambling along
under Salisbury Crags, and climbing the sides of Arthur's Seat. I had
neither time nor impulse for such walks during this visit, but in
driving out to dine at Nidrie, the fine old place now lived in by Mr.
Barclay and his daughters, we passed under the crags and by the side of
the great hill. I had never heard, or if I had I had forgotten, the name
and the story of "Samson's Ribs." These are the columnar masses of rock
which form the face of Salisbury Crags. There is a legend that one day
one of these pillars will fall and crush the greatest man that ever
passes under them. It is said that a certain professor was always very
shy of "Samson's Ribs," for fear the prophecy might be fulfilled in his
person. We were most hospitably received at Mr. Barclay's, and the
presence of his accomplished and pleasing daughters made the visit
memorable to both of us. There was one picture on their walls, that of a
lady, by Sir Joshua, which both of us found very captivating. This is
what is often happening in the visits we make. Some painting by a master
looks down upon us from its old canvas, and leaves a lasting copy of
itself, to be stored in memory's picture gallery. These surprises are
not so likely to happen in the New World as in the Old.
It seemed cruel to be forced to tear ourselves away from Edinburgh,
where so much had been done to make us happy, where so much was left to
see and enjoy, but we were due in Oxford, where I was to receive the
last of the three degrees with which I was honored in Great Britain.
Our visit to Scotland gave us a mere glimpse of the land and its people,
but I have a very vivid recollection of both as I saw them on my first
visit, when I made an excursion into the Highlands to Stirling and to
Glasgow, where I went to church, and wondered over the uncouth ancient
psalmody, which I believe is still retained in use to this day. I was
seasoned to that kind of poetry in my early days by the verses of Tate
and Brady, which I used to hear "entuned in the nose ful swetely,"
accompanied by vigorous rasping of a huge bass-viol. No wonder that
Scotland welcomed the song of Burns!
On our second visit to Oxford we were to be the guests of the
Vice-Chancellor of the university, Dr. Jowett. This famous scholar and
administrator lives in a very pleasant establishment, presided over by
the Muses, but without the aid of a Vice-Chancelloress. The hospitality
of this classic mansion is well known, and we added a second pleasant
chapter to our previous experience under the roof of Professor Max
Müller. There was a little company there before us, including the Lord
Chancellor and Lady Herschell, Lady Camilla Wallop, Mr. Browning, and
Mr. Lowell. We were too late, in consequence of the bad arrangement of
the trains, and had to dine by ourselves, as the whole party had gone
out to a dinner, to which we should have accompanied them had we not
been delayed. We sat up long enough to see them on their return, and
were glad to get to bed, after our day's journey from Edinburgh to
Oxford.
At eleven o'clock on the following day we who were to receive degrees
met at Balliol College, whence we proceeded in solemn procession to the
Sheldonian Theatre. Among my companions on this occasion were Mr. John
Bright, the Lord Chancellor Herschell, and Mr. Aldis Wright. I have an
instantaneous photograph, which was sent me, of this procession. I can
identify Mr. Bright and myself, but hardly any of the others, though
many better acquainted with their faces would no doubt recognize them.
There is a certain sensation in finding one's self invested with the
academic gown, conspicuous by its red facings, and the cap with its
square top and depending tassel, which is not without its accompanying
satisfaction. One can walk the streets of any of the university towns in
his academic robes without being jeered at, as I am afraid he would be
in some of our own thoroughfares. There is a noticeable complacency in
the members of our Phi Beta Kappa society when they get the pink and
blue ribbons in their buttonholes, on the day of annual meeting. How
much more when the scholar is wrapped in those flowing folds, with their
flaming borders, and feels the dignity of the distinction of which they
are the symbol! I do not know how Mr. John Bright felt, but I cannot
avoid the impression that some in the ranks which moved from Balliol to
the Sheldonian felt as if Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like
the candidates for the degree of D.C.L.
After my experience at Cambridge and Edinburgh, I might have felt some
apprehension about my reception at Oxford. I had always supposed the
audience assembled there at the conferring of degrees was a more
demonstrative one than that at any other of the universities, and I did
not wish to be forced into a retreat by calls for a speech, as I was at
Cambridge, nor to repeat my somewhat irregular proceeding of addressing
the audience, as at Edinburgh. But when I found that Mr. John Bright was
to be one of the recipients of the degree I felt safe, for if he made a
speech I should be justified in saying a few words, if I thought it
best; and if he, one of the most eloquent men in England, remained
silent, I surely need not make myself heard on the occasion. It was a
great triumph for him, a liberal leader, to receive the testimonial of a
degree from the old conservative university. To myself it was a graceful
and pleasing compliment; to him it was a grave and significant tribute.
As we marched through the crowd on our way from Balliol, the people
standing around recognized Mr. Bright, and cheered him vociferously.
The exercises in the Sheldonian Theatre were more complex and lasted
longer than those at the other two universities. The candidate stepped
forward and listened to one sentence, then made another move forward and
listened to other words, and at last was welcomed to all the privileges
conferred by the degree of Doctor of Civil Law, which was announced as
being bestowed upon him. Mr. Bright, of course, was received with
immense enthusiasm. I had every reason to be gratified with my own
reception. The only "chaffing" I heard was the question from one of the
galleries, "Did he come in the One-Hoss Shay?"--at which there was a
hearty laugh, joined in as heartily by myself. A part of the
entertainment at this ceremony consisted in the listening to the reading
of short extracts from the prize essays, some or all of them in the dead
languages, which could not have been particularly intelligible to a
large part of the audience. During these readings there were frequent
_interpellations_, as the French call such interruptions, something
like these: "That will do, sir!" or "You had better stop, sir!"--always,
I noticed, with the sir at the end of the remark. With us it
would have been "Dry up!" or "Hold on!" At last came forward the young
poet of the occasion, who read an elaborate poem, "Savonarola," which
was listened to in most respectful silence, and loudly applauded at its
close, as I thought, deservedly. Prince and Princess Christian were
among the audience. They were staying with Professor and Mrs. Max
Müller, whose hospitalities I hope they enjoyed as much as we did. One
or two short extracts from A----'s diary will enliven my record: "The
Princess had a huge bouquet, and going down the aisle had to bow both
ways at once, it seemed to me: but then she has the Guelph spine and
neck! Of course it is necessary that royalty should have more elasticity
in the frame than we poor ordinary mortals. After all this we started
for a luncheon at All Souls, but had to wait (impatiently) for H. R. H.
to rest herself, while our resting was done standing."
It is a long while since I read Madame d'Arblay's Recollections, but if
I remember right, _standing_ while royalty rests its bones is one
of the drawbacks to a maid of honor's felicity.
"Finally, at near three, we went into a great luncheon of some fifty.
There were different tables, and I sat at the one with royalty. The
Provost of Oriel took me in, and Mr. Browning was on my other side.
Finally, we went home to rest, but the others started out again to go to
a garden-party, but that was beyond us." After all this came a
dinner-party of twenty at the Vice-Chancellor's, and after that a
reception, where among others we met Lord and Lady Coleridge, the lady
resplendent in jewels. Even after London, this could hardly be called a
day of rest.
The Chinese have a punishment which consists simply in keeping the
subject of it awake, by the constant teasing of a succession of
individuals employed for the purpose. The best of our social pleasures,
if carried beyond the natural power of physical and mental endurance,
begin to approach the character of such a penance. After this we got a
little rest; did some mild sight-seeing, heard some good music, called
on the Max Müllers, and bade them good-by with the warmest feeling to
all the members of a household which it was a privilege to enter. There
only remained the parting from our kind entertainer, the
Vice-Chancellor, who added another to the list of places which in
England and Scotland were made dear to us by hospitality, and are
remembered as true homes to us while we were under their roofs.
On the second day of July we left the Vice-Chancellor's, and went to the
Randolph Hotel to meet our friends, Mr. and Mrs. Willett, from Brighton,
with whom we had an appointment of long standing. With them we left
Oxford, to enter on the next stage of our pilgrimage.
IV.
It had been the intention of Mr. Willett to go with us to visit Mr.
Ruskin, with whom he is in the most friendly relations. But a letter
from Mr. Ruskin's sister spoke of his illness as being too serious for
him to see company, and we reluctantly gave up this part of our plan.
My first wish was to revisit Stratford-on-Avon, and as our travelling
host was guided in everything by our inclinations, we took the cars for
Stratford, where we arrived at five o'clock in the afternoon. It had
been arranged beforehand that we should be the guests of Mr. Charles E.
Flower, one of the chief citizens of Stratford, who welcomed us to his
beautiful mansion in the most cordial way, and made us once more at home
under an English roof.
I well remembered my visit to Stratford in 1834. The condition of the
old house in which Shakespeare was born was very different from that in
which we see it to-day. A series of photographs taken in different years
shows its gradual transformation since the time when the old projecting
angular sign-board told all who approached "The immortal Shakespeare was
born in this House." How near the old house came to sharing the fortunes
of Jumbo under the management of our enterprising countryman, Mr.
Barnum, I am not sure; but that he would have "traded" for it, if the
proprietors had been willing, I do not doubt, any more than I doubt that
he would make an offer for the Tower of London, if that venerable
structure were in the market. The house in which Shakespeare was born is
the Santa Casa of England. What with my recollections and the
photographs with which I was familiarly acquainted, it had nothing very
new for me. Its outside had undergone great changes, but its bare
interior was little altered.
My previous visit was a hurried one,--I took but a glimpse, and then
went on my way. Now, for nearly a week I was a resident of
Stratford-on-Avon. How shall I describe the perfectly ideal beauty of
the new home in which I found myself! It is a fine house, surrounded by
delightful grounds, which skirt the banks of the Avon for a considerable
distance, and come close up to the enclosure of the Church of the Holy
Trinity, beneath the floor of which lie the mortal remains of
Shakespeare. The Avon is one of those narrow English rivers in which
half a dozen boats might lie side by side, but hardly wide enough for a
race between two rowing abreast of each other. Just here the river is
comparatively broad and quiet, there being a dam a little lower down the
stream. The waters were a perfect mirror, as I saw them on one of the
still days we had at Stratford. I do not remember ever before seeing
cows walking with their legs in the air, as I saw them reflected in the
Avon. Along the banks the young people were straying. I wondered if the
youthful swains quoted Shakespeare to their ladyloves. Could they help
recalling Romeo and Juliet? It is quite impossible to think of any human
being growing up in this place which claims Shakespeare as its child,
about the streets of which he ran as a boy, on the waters of which he
must have often floated, without having his image ever present. Is it
so? There are some boys, from eight to ten or a dozen years old, fishing
in the Avon, close by the grounds of "Avonbank," the place at which we
are staying. I call to the little group. I say, "Boys, who was this man
Shakespeare, people talk so much about?" Boys turn round and look up
with a plentiful lack of intelligence in their countenances. "Don't you
know who he was nor what he was?" Boys look at each other, but confess
ignorance.--Let us try the universal stimulant of human faculties. "Here
are some pennies for the boy that will tell me what that Mr. Shakespeare
was." The biggest boy finds his tongue at last. "He was a writer,--he
wrote plays." That was as much as I could get out of the youngling. I
remember meeting some boys under the monument upon Bunker Hill, and
testing their knowledge as I did that of the Stratford boys. "What is
this great stone pillar here for?" I asked. "Battle fought here,--great
battle." "Who fought?" "Americans and British." (I never hear the
expression Britishers.) "Who was the general on the American side?"
"Don' know,--General Washington or somebody."--What is an old battle,
though it may have settled the destinies of a nation, to the game of
base-ball between the Boston and Chicago Nines which is to come off
to-morrow, or to the game of marbles which Tom and Dick are just going
to play together under the shadow of the great obelisk which
commemorates the conflict?
The room more especially assigned to me looked out, at a distance of not
more than a stone's-throw, on the northern aspect of the church where
Shakespeare lies buried. Workmen were busy on the roof of the transept.
I could not conveniently climb up to have a talk with the roofers, but I
have my doubts whether they were thinking all the time of the dust over
which they were working. How small a matter literature is to the great
seething, toiling, struggling, love-making, bread-winning,
child-rearing, death-awaiting men and women who fill this huge,
palpitating world of ours! It would be worth while to pass a week or a
month among the plain, average people of Stratford. What is the relative
importance in human well-being of the emendations of the text of Hamlet
and the patching of the old trousers and the darning of the old
stockings which task the needles of the hard-working households that
fight the battle of life in these narrow streets and alleys? I ask the
question; the reader may answer it.
Our host, Mr. Flower, is more deeply interested, perhaps, than any other
individual in the "Shakespeare Memorial" buildings which have been
erected on the banks of the Avon, a short distance above the Church of
the Holy Trinity. Under Mr. Flower's guidance we got into one of his
boats, and were rowed up the stream to the Memorial edifice. There is a
theatre, in a round tower which has borrowed some traits from the
octagon "Globe" theatre of Shakespeare's day; a Shakespeare library and
portrait gallery are forming; and in due time these buildings, of
stately dimensions and built solidly of brick, will constitute a
Shakespearean centre which will attract to itself many mementoes now
scattered about in various parts of the country.
On the 4th of July we remembered our native land with all the
affectionate pride of temporary exiles, and did not forget to drink at
lunch to the prosperity and continued happiness of the United States of
America. In the afternoon we took to the boat again, and were rowed up
the river to the residence of Mr. Edgar Flower, where we found another
characteristic English family, with its nine children, one of whom was
the typical English boy, most pleasing and attractive in look, voice,
and manner.
I attempt no description of the church, the birthplace, or the other
constantly visited and often described localities. The noble bridge,
built in the reign of Henry VII. by Sir Hugh Clopton, and afterwards
widened, excited my admiration. It was a much finer piece of work than
the one built long afterwards. I have hardly seen anything which gave me
a more striking proof of the thoroughness of the old English workmen.
They built not for an age, but for all time, and the New Zealander will
have to wait a long while before he will find in any one of the older
bridges that broken arch from which he is to survey the ruins of London.
It is very pleasant to pick up a new epithet to apply to the poet upon
whose genius our language has nearly exhausted itself. It delights me to
speak of him in the words which I have just found in a memoir not yet a
century old, as "the Warwickshire bard," "the inestimable Shakespeare."
Ever since Miss Bacon made her insane attempt to unearth what is left of
Shakespeare's bodily frame, the thought of doing reverently and openly
what she would have done by stealth has been entertained by
psychologists, artists, and others who would like to know what were his
cranial developments, and to judge from the conformation of the skull
and face which of the various portraits is probably the true one. There
is little doubt that but for the curse invoked upon the person who
should disturb his bones, in the well-known lines on the slab which
covers him, he would rest, like Napoleon, like Washington, in a fitting
receptacle of marble or porphyry. In the transfer of his remains the
curiosity of men of science and artists would have been gratified, if
decay had spared the more durable portions of his material structure. It
was probably not against such a transfer that the lines were
written,--whoever was their author,--but in the fear that they would be
carried to the charnel-house.
"In this charnel-house was contained a vast collection of human bones.
How long they had been deposited there is not easily to be determined;
but it is evident, from the immense quantity contained in the vault, it
could have been used for no other purpose for many ages." "It is
probable that from an early contemplation of this dreary spot
Shakespeare imbibed that horror of a violation of sepulture which is
observable in many parts of his writings."
The body of Raphael was disinterred in 1833 to settle a question of
identity of the remains, and placed in a new coffin of lead, which was
deposited in a marble sarcophagus presented by the Pope. The
sarcophagus, with its contents, was replaced in the same spot from which
the remains had been taken. But for the inscription such a transfer of
the bones of Shakespeare would have been proposed, and possibly carried
out. Kings and emperors have frequently been treated in this way after
death, and the proposition is no more an indignity than was that of the
exhumation of the remains of Napoleon, or of André, or of the author of
"Home, Sweet Home." But sentiment, a tender regard for the supposed
wishes of the dead poet, and a natural dread of the consequences of
violating a dying wish, coupled with the execration of its contemner,
are too powerful for the arguments of science and the pleadings of art.
If Shakespeare's body had been embalmed,--which there is no reason that
I know of to suppose,--the desire to compare his features with the bust
and the portraits would have been much more imperative. When the body of
Charles the First was examined, under the direction of Sir Henry
Halford, in the presence of the Regent, afterwards George the Fourth,
the face would have been recognized at once by all who were acquainted
with Vandyke's portrait of the monarch, if the lithograph which comes
attached to Sir Henry's memoir is an accurate representation of what
they found. Even the bony framework of the face, as I have had occasion
to know, has sometimes a striking likeness to what it was when clothed
in its natural features. As between the first engraved portrait and the
bust in the church, the form of the bones of the head and face would
probably be decisive. But the world can afford to live without solving
this doubt, and leave his perishing vesture of decay to its repose.
After seeing the Shakespeare shrines, we drove over to Shottery, and
visited the Anne Hathaway cottage. I am not sure whether I ever saw it
before, but it was as familiar to me as if I had lived in it. The old
lady who showed it was agreeably communicative, and in perfect keeping
with the place.
A delightful excursion of ten or a dozen miles carried our party,
consisting of Mr. and Mrs. Flower, Mr. and Mrs. Willett, with A---- and
myself, to Compton Wynyate, a most interesting old mansion, belonging to
the Marquis of Northampton, who, with his daughter-in-law, Lady William
Compton, welcomed us and showed us all the wonders of the place. It was
a fine morning, but hot enough for one of our American July days. The
drive was through English rural scenery; that is to say, it was lovely.
The old house is a great curiosity. It was built in the reign of Henry
the Eighth, and has passed through many vicissitudes. The place, as well
as the edifice, is a study for the antiquarian. Remains of the old moat
which surrounded it are still distinguishable. The twisted and variously
figured chimneys are of singular variety and exceptional forms. Compton
_Wynyate_ is thought to get its name from the vineyards formerly
under cultivation on the hillsides, which show the signs of having been
laid out in terraces. The great hall, with its gallery, and its
hangings, and the long table made from the trunk of a single tree,
carries one back into the past centuries. There are strange nooks and
corners and passages in the old building, and one place, a queer little
"cubby-hole," has the appearance of having been a Roman Catholic chapel.
I asked the master of the house, who pointed out the curiosities of the
place most courteously, about the ghosts who of course were tenants in
common with the living proprietors. I was surprised when he told me
there were none. It was incredible, for here was every accommodation for
a spiritual visitant. I should have expected at least one haunted
chamber, to say nothing of blood-stains that could never be got rid of;
but there were no legends of the supernatural or the terrible.
Refreshments were served us, among which were some hot-house peaches,
ethereally delicate as if they had grown in the Elysian Fields and been
stolen from a banquet of angels. After this we went out on the lawn,
where, at Lady William Compton's request, I recited one or two poems;
the only time I did such a thing in England.
It seems as if Compton Wynyate must have been written about in some
novel or romance,--perhaps in more than one of both. It is the place of
all others to be the scene of a romantic story. It lies so hidden away
among the hills that its vulgar name, according to old Camden, was
"Compton in the Hole." I am not sure that it was the scene of any actual
conflict, but it narrowly escaped demolition in the great civil war, and
in 1646 it was garrisoned by the Parliament army.
On the afternoon of July 6th, our hosts had a large garden-party. If
nothing is more trying than one of these out-of-door meetings on a cold,
windy, damp day, nothing can be more delightful than such a social
gathering if the place and the weather are just what we could wish them.
The garden-party of this afternoon was as near perfection as such a
meeting could well be. The day was bright and warm, but not
uncomfortably hot, to me, at least. The company strolled about the
grounds, or rested on the piazzas, or watched the birds in the aviary,
or studied rudimentary humanity in the monkey, or, better still, in a
charming baby, for the first time on exhibition since she made the
acquaintance of sunshine. Every one could dispose of himself or herself
as fancy might suggest. I broke away at one time, and wandered alone by
the side of the Avon, under the shadow of the tall trees upon its bank.
The whole scene was as poetical, as inspiring, as any that I remember.
It would be easy to write verses about it, but unwritten poems are so
much better!
One reminiscence of that afternoon claims precedence over all the rest.
The reader must not forget that I have been a medical practitioner, and
for thirty-five years a professor in a medical school. Among the guests
whom I met in the grounds was a gentleman of the medical profession,
whose name I had often heard, and whom I was very glad to see and talk
with. This was Mr. Lawson Tait, F.R.C.S., M.D., of Birmingham. Mr., or
more properly Dr., Tait has had the most extraordinary success in a
class of cases long considered beyond the reach of surgery. If I refer
to it as a scientific _hari kari_, not for the taking but for the
saving of life, I shall come near enough to its description. This
operation is said to have been first performed by an American surgeon in
Danville, Kentucky, in the year 1809. So rash and dangerous did it seem
to most of the profession that it was sometimes spoken of as if to
attempt it were a crime. Gradually, however, by improved methods, and
especially by the most assiduous care in nursing the patient after the
operation, the mortality grew less and less, until it was recognized as
a legitimate and indeed an invaluable addition to the resources of
surgery. Mr. Lawson Tait has had, so far as I have been able to learn,
the most wonderful series of successful cases on record: namely, one
hundred and thirty-nine consecutive operations without a single death.
As I sat by the side of this great surgeon, a question suggested itself
to my mind which I leave the reader to think over. Which would give the
most satisfaction to a thoroughly humane and unselfish being, of
cultivated intelligence and lively sensibilities: to have written all
the plays which Shakespeare has left as an inheritance for mankind, or
to have snatched from the jaws of death more than a hundred
fellow-creatures,--almost seven scores of suffering women,--and restored
them to sound and comfortable existence? It would be curious to get the
answers of a hundred men and a hundred women, of a hundred young people
and a hundred old ones, of a hundred scholars and a hundred operatives.
My own specialty is asking questions, not answering them, and I trust I
shall not receive a peck or two of letters inquiring of me how I should
choose if such a question were asked me. It may prove as fertile a
source of dispute as "The Lady or the Tiger."
It would have been a great thing to pass a single night close to the
church where Shakespeare's dust lies buried. A single visit by daylight
leaves a comparatively slight impression. But when, after a night's
sleep, one wakes up and sees the spire and the old walls full before
him, that impression is very greatly deepened, and the whole scene
becomes far more a reality. Now I was nearly a whole week at
Stratford-on-Avon. The church, its exterior, its interior, the
birthplace, the river, had time to make themselves permanent images in
my mind. To effect this requires a certain amount of exposure, as much
as in the case of a photographic negative.
* * * * *
And so we bade good-by to Stratford-on-Avon and its hospitalities, with
grateful remembrances of our kind entertainers and all they did for our
comfort and enjoyment.
Where should we go next? Our travelling host proposed Great Malvern, a
famous watering-place, where we should find peace, rest, and good
accommodations. So there we went, and soon found ourselves installed at
the "Foley Arms" hotel. The room I was shown to looked out upon an
apothecary's shop, and from the window of that shop stared out upon me a
plaster bust which I recognized as that of Samuel Hahnemann. I was glad
to change to another apartment, but it may be a comfort to some of his
American followers to know that traces of homoeopathy,--or what still
continues to call itself so,--survive in the Old World, which we have
understood was pretty well tired of it.
We spent several days very pleasantly at Great Malvern. It lies at the
foot of a range of hills, the loftiest of which is over a thousand feet
in height. A---- and I thought we would go to the top of one of these,
known as the Beacon. We hired a "four-wheeler," dragged by a
much-enduring horse and in charge of a civil young man. We turned out of
one of the streets not far from the hotel, and found ourselves facing an
ascent which looked like what I should suppose would be a pretty steep
toboggan slide. We both drew back. _"Facilis ascensus,"_ I said to
myself, _"sed revocare gradum."_ It is easy enough to get up if you
are dragged up, but how will it be to come down such a declivity? When
we reached it on our return, the semi-precipice had lost all its
terrors. We had seen and travelled over so much worse places that this
little bit of slanting road seemed as nothing. The road which wound up
to the summit of the Beacon was narrow and uneven. It ran close to the
edge of the steep hillside,--so close that there were times when every
one of our forty digits curled up like a bird's claw. If we went over,
it would not be a fall down a good honest precipice,--a swish through
the air and a smash at the bottom,--but a tumbling, and a rolling over
and over, and a bouncing and bumping, ever accelerating, until we
bounded into the level below, all ready for the coroner. At one sudden
turn of the road the horse's body projected so far over its edge that
A---- declared if the beast had been an inch longer he would have
toppled over. When we got close to the summit we found the wind blowing
almost a gale. A---- says in her diary that I (meaning her honored
parent) "nearly blew off from the top of the mountain." It is true that
the force of the wind was something fearful, and seeing that two young
men near me were exposed to its fury, I offered an arm to each of them,
which they were not too proud to accept; A---- was equally attentive to
another young person; and having seen as much of the prospect as we
cared to, we were glad to get back to our four-wheeler and our hotel,
after a perilous journey almost comparable to Mark Twain's ascent of the
Riffelberg.
At Great Malvern we were deliciously idle. We walked about the place,
rested quietly, drove into the neighboring country, and made a single
excursion,--to Tewkesbury. There are few places better worth seeing than
this fine old town, full of historical associations and monumental
relics. The magnificent old abbey church is the central object of
interest. The noble Norman tower, one hundred and thirty-two feet in
height, was once surmounted by a spire, which fell during divine service
on Easter Day of the year 1559. The arch of the west entrance is sixteen
feet high and thirty-four feet wide. The fourteen columns of the nave
are each six feet and three inches in diameter and thirty feet in
height. I did not take these measurements from the fabric itself, but
from the guidebook, and I give them here instead of saying that the
columns were huge, enormous, colossal, as they did most assuredly seem
to me. The old houses of Tewkesbury compare well with the finest of
those in Chester. I have a photograph before me of one of them, in which
each of the three upper floors overhangs the one beneath it, and the
windows in the pointed gable above project over those of the fourth
floor.
I ought to have visited the site of Holme Castle, the name of which
reminds me of my own origin. "The meaning of the Saxon word 'Holme' is a
meadow surrounded with brooks, and here not only did the castle bear the
name, but the meadow is described as the 'Holme,--where the castle
was.'" The final _s_ in the name as we spell it is a frequent
addition to old English names, as Camden mentions, giving the name
Holmes among the examples. As there is no castle at the Holme now, I
need not pursue my inquiries any further. It was by accident that I
stumbled on this bit of archaeology, and as I have a good many
namesakes, it may perhaps please some of them to be told about it. Few
of us hold any castles, I think, in these days, except those _châteaux
en Espagne_, of which I doubt not, many of us are lords and masters.
In another of our excursions we visited a venerable church, where our
attention was called to a particular monument. It was erected to the
memory of one of the best of husbands by his "wretched widow," who
records upon the marble that there never was such a man on the face of
the earth before, and never will be again, and that there never was
anybody so miserable as she,--no, never, never, never! These are not the
exact words, but this is pretty nearly what she declares. The story is
that she married again within a year.
From my window at the Foley Arms I can see the tower of the fine old
abbey church of Malvern, which would be a centre of pilgrimages if it
were in our country. But England is full of such monumental structures,
into the history of which the local antiquarians burrow, and pass their
peaceful lives in studying and writing about them with the same innocent
enthusiasm that White of Selborne manifested in studying nature as his
village showed it to him.
In our long drives we have seen everywhere the same picturesque old
cottages, with the pretty gardens, and abundant flowers, and noble
trees, more frequently elms than any other. One day--it was on the 10th
of July--we found ourselves driving through what seemed to be a
gentleman's estate, an ample domain, well wooded and well kept. On
inquiring to whom this place belonged, I was told that the owner was Sir
Edmund Lechmere. The name had a very familiar sound to my ears. Without
rising from the table at which I am now writing, I have only to turn my
head, and in full view, at the distance of a mile, just across the
estuary of the Charles, shining in the morning sun, are the roofs and
spires and chimneys of East Cambridge, always known in my younger days
as Lechmere's Point. Judge Richard Lechmere was one of our old Cambridge
Tories, whose property was confiscated at the time of the Revolution. An
engraving of his handsome house, which stands next to the Vassall house,
long known as Washington's headquarters, and since not less celebrated
as the residence of Longfellow, is before me, on one of the pages of the
pleasing little volume, "The Cambridge of 1776." I take it for granted
that our Lechmeres were of the same stock as the owner of this property.
If so, he probably knows all that I could tell him about his colonial
relatives, who were very grand people, belonging to a little
aristocratic circle of friends and relatives who were faithful to their
king and their church. The Baroness Riedesel, wife of a Hessian officer
who had been captured, was for a while resident in this house, and her
name, scratched on a window-pane, was long shown as a sight for eyes
unused to titles other than governor, judge, colonel, and the like. I
was tempted to present myself at Sir Edmund's door as one who knew
something about the Lechmeres in America, but I did not feel sure how
cordially a descendant of the rebels who drove off Richard and Mary
Lechmere would be received.
From Great Malvern we went to Bath, another place where we could rest
and be comfortable. The Grand Pump-Room Hotel was a stately building,
and the bath-rooms were far beyond anything I had ever seen of that
kind. The remains of the old Roman baths, which appear to have been very
extensive, are partially exposed. What surprises one all over the Old
World is to see how deeply all the old civilizations contrive to get
buried. Everybody seems to have lived in the cellar. It is hard to
believe that the cellar floor was once the sun surface of the smiling
earth.
I looked forward to seeing Bath with a curious kind of interest. I once
knew one of those dear old English ladies whom one finds all the world
over, with their prim little ways, and their gilt prayer-books, and
lavender-scented handkerchiefs, and family recollections. She gave me
the idea that Bath, a city where the great people often congregate, was
more especially the paradise of decayed gentlewomen. There, she told me,
persons with very narrow incomes--not _demi-fortunes_, but
_demi-quart-de-fortunes_--could find everything arranged to
accommodate their modest incomes. I saw the evidence of this everywhere.
So great was the delight I had in looking in at the shop-windows of the
long street which seemed to be one of the chief thoroughfares that,
after exploring it in its full extent by myself, I went for A----, and
led her down one side its whole length and up the other. In these shops
the precious old dears could buy everything they wanted in the most
minute quantities. Such tempting heaps of lumps of white sugar, only
twopence! Such delectable cakes, two for a penny! Such seductive scraps
of meat, which would make a breakfast nourishing as well as relishing,
possibly even what called itself a dinner, blushing to see themselves
labelled threepence or fourpence! We did not know whether to smile or to
drop a tear, as we contemplated these baits hung out to tempt the coins
from the exiguous purses of ancient maidens, forlorn widows, withered
annuitants, stranded humanity in every stage of shipwrecked penury. I am
reminded of Thackeray's "Jack Spiggot." "And what are your pursuits,
Jack? says I. 'Sold out when the governor died. Mother lives at Bath. Go
down there once a year for a week. Dreadful slow. Shilling whist.'" Mrs.
Gaskell's picture of "Cranford" is said to have been drawn from a
village in Cheshire, but Bath must have a great deal in common with its
"elegant economies." Do not make the mistake, however, of supposing that
this splendid watering-place, sometimes spoken of as "the handsomest
city in Britain," is only a city of refuge for people that have seen
better days. Lord Macaulay speaks of it as "that beautiful city which
charms even eyes familiar with the masterpieces of Bramante and
Palladio." If it is not quite so conspicuous as a fashionable resort as
it was in the days of Beau Nash or of Christopher Anstey, it has never
lost its popularity. Chesterfield writes in 1764, "The number of people
in this place is infinite," and at the present time the annual influx of
visitors is said to vary from ten to fourteen thousand. Many of its
public buildings are fine, and the abbey church, dating from 1499, is an
object of much curiosity, especially on account of the sculptures on its
western façade. These represent two ladders, with angels going up and
down upon them,--suggested by a dream of the founder of the church,
repeating that of Jacob.
On the 14th of July we left Bath for Salisbury. While passing Westbury,
one of our fellow-passengers exclaimed, "Look out! Look out!" "What is
it?" "The horse! the horse!" All our heads turned to the window, and all
our eyes fastened on the figure of a white horse, upon a hillside some
miles distant. This was not the white horse which Mr. Thomas Hughes has
made famous, but one of much less archaic aspect and more questionable
history. A little book which we bought tells us all we care to know
about it. "It is formed by excoriating the turf over the steep slope of
the northern escarpment of Salisbury Plain." It was "remodelled" in
1778, and "restored" in 1873 at a cost of between sixty and seventy
pounds. It is said that a smaller and ruder horse stood here from time
immemorial, and was made to commemorate a victory of Alfred over the
Danes. However that may be, the horse we now see on the hillside is a
very modern-looking and well-shaped animal, and is of the following
dimensions: length, 170 feet; height from highest part of back, 128
feet; thickness of body, 55 feet; length of head, 50 feet; eye, 6 by 8
feet. It is a very pretty little object as we see it in the distance.
Salisbury Cathedral was my first love among all the wonderful
ecclesiastical buildings which I saw during my earlier journey. I looked
forward to seeing it again with great anticipations of pleasure, which
were more than realized.
Our travelling host had taken a whole house in the Close,--a privileged
enclosure, containing the cathedral, the bishop's palace, houses of the
clergy, and a limited number of private residences, one of the very best
of which was given over entirely into the hands of our party during our
visit. The house was about as near the cathedral as Mr. Flower's house,
where we stayed at Stratford-on-Avon, was to the Church of the Holy
Trinity. It was very completely furnished, and in the room assigned to
me as my library I found books in various languages, showing that the
residence was that of a scholarly person.
If one had to name the apple of the eye of England, I think he would be
likely to say that Salisbury Cathedral was as near as he could come to
it, and that the white of the eye was Salisbury Close. The cathedral is
surrounded by a high wall, the gates of which,--its eyelids,--are closed
every night at a seasonable hour, at which the virtuous inhabitants are
expected to be in their safe and sacred quarters. Houses within this
hallowed precinct naturally bring a higher rent than those of the
unsanctified and unprotected region outside of its walls. It is a realm
of peace, glorified by the divine edifice, which lifts the least
imaginative soul upward to the heavens its spire seems trying to reach;
beautified by rows of noble elms which stretch high aloft, as if in
emulation of the spire; beatified by holy memories of the good and great
men who have worn their lives out in the service of the church of which
it is one of the noblest temples.
For a whole week we lived under the shadow of the spire of the great
cathedral. Our house was opposite the north transept, only separated by
the road in front of it from the cathedral grounds. Here, as at
Stratford, I learned what it was to awake morning after morning and find
that I was not dreaming, but there in the truth-telling daylight the
object of my admiration, devotion, almost worship, stood before me. I
need not here say anything more of the cathedral, except that its
perfect exterior is hardly equalled in beauty by its interior, which
looks somewhat bare and cold. It was my impression that there is more to
study than to admire in the interior, but I saw the cathedral so much
oftener on the outside than on the inside that I may not have done
justice to the latter aspect of the noble building.
Nothing could be more restful than our week at Salisbury. There was
enough in the old town besides the cathedral to interest us,--old
buildings, a museum, full of curious objects, and the old town itself.
When I was there the first time, I remember that we picked up a
guide-book in which we found a verse that has remained in my memory ever
since. It is an epitaph on a native of Salisbury who died in Venice.
"Born in the English Venice, thou didst dye
Dear Friend, in the Italian Salisbury."
This would be hard to understand except for the explanation which the
local antiquarians give us of its significance. The Wiltshire Avon flows
by or through the town, which is drained by brooks that run through its
streets. These, which used to be open, are now covered over, and thus
the epitaph becomes somewhat puzzling, as there is nothing to remind one
of Venice in walking about the town.
While at Salisbury we made several excursions: to Old Sarum; to
Bemerton, where we saw the residence of holy George Herbert, and visited
the little atom of a church in which he ministered; to Clarendon Park;
to Wilton, the seat of the Earl of Pembroke, a most interesting place
for itself and its recollections; and lastly to Stonehenge. My second
visit to the great stones after so long an interval was a strange
experience. But what is half a century to a place like Stonehenge?
Nothing dwarfs an individual life like one of these massive, almost
unchanging monuments of an antiquity which refuses to be measured. The
"Shepherd of Salisbury Plain" was represented by an old man, who told
all he knew and a good deal more about the great stones, and sheared a
living, not from sheep, but from visitors, in the shape of shillings and
sixpences. I saw nothing that wore unwoven wool on its back in the
neighborhood of the monuments, but sheep are shown straggling among them
in the photographs.
The broken circle of stones, some in their original position, some
bending over like old men, some lying prostrate, suggested the thoughts
which took form in the following verses. They were read at the annual
meeting, in January, of the class which graduated at Harvard College in
the year 1829. Eight of the fifty-nine men who graduated sat round the
small table. There were several other classmates living, but infirmity,
distance, and other peremptory reasons kept them from being with us. I
have read forty poems at our successive annual meetings. I will
introduce this last one by quoting a stanza from the poem I read in
1851:--
As one by one is falling
Beneath the leaves or snows,
Each memory still recalling
The broken ring shall close,
Till the night winds softly pass
O'er the green and growing grass,
Where it waves on the graves
Of the "Boys of 'Twenty-nine."
THE BROKEN CIRCLE.
I stood on Sarum's treeless plain,
The waste that careless Nature owns;
Lone tenants of her bleak domain,
Loomed huge and gray the Druid stones.
Upheaved in many a billowy mound
The sea-like, naked turf arose,
Where wandering flocks went nibbling round
The mingled graves of friends and foes.
The Briton, Roman, Saxon, Dane,
This windy desert roamed in turn;
Unmoved these mighty blocks remain
Whose story none that lives may learn.
Erect, half buried, slant or prone,
These awful listeners, blind and dumb,
Hear the strange tongues of tribes unknown,
As wave on wave they go and come.
"Who are you, giants, whence and why?"
I stand and ask in blank amaze;
My soul accepts their mute reply:
"A mystery, as are you that gaze.
"A silent Orpheus wrought the charm
From riven rocks their spoils to bring;
A nameless Titan lent his arm
To range us in our magic ring.
"But Time with still and stealthy stride,
That climbs and treads and levels all,
That bids the loosening keystone slide,
And topples down the crumbling wall,--
"Time, that unbuilds the quarried past,
Leans on these wrecks that press the sod;
They slant, they stoop, they fall at last,
And strew the turf their priests have trod.
"No more our altar's wreath of smoke
Floats up with morning's fragrant dew;
The fires are dead, the ring is broke,
Where stood the many stand the few."
--My thoughts had wandered far away,
Borne off on Memory's outspread wing,
To where in deepening twilight lay
The wrecks of friendship's broken ring.
Ah me! of all our goodly train
How few will find our banquet hall!
Yet why with coward lips complain
That this must lean and that must fall?
Cold is the Druid's altar-stone,
Its vanished flame no more returns;
But ours no chilling damp has known,--
Unchanged, unchanging, still it burns.
So let our broken circle stand
A wreck, a remnant, yet the same,
While one last, loving, faithful hand
Still lives to feed its altar-flame!
My heart has gone back over the waters to my old friends and my own
home. When this vision has faded, I will return to the silence of the
lovely Close and the shadow of the great Cathedral.
V.
The remembrance of home, with its early and precious and long-enduring
friendships, has intruded itself among my recollections of what I saw
and heard, of what I felt and thought, in the distant land I was
visiting. I must return to the scene where I found myself when the
suggestion of the broken circle ran away with my imagination.
The literature of Stonehenge is extensive, and illustrates the weakness
of archaeologists almost as well as the "Praetorium" of Scott's
"Antiquary." "In 1823," says a local handbook, "H. Browne, of Amesbury,
published 'An Illustration of Stonehenge and Abury,' in which he
endeavored to show that both of these monuments were antediluvian, and
that the latter was formed under the direction of Adam. He ascribes the
present dilapidated condition of Stonehenge to the operation of the
general deluge; for, he adds, 'to suppose it to be the work of any
people since the flood is entirely monstrous.'"
We know well enough how great stones--pillars and obelisks--are brought
into place by means of our modern appliances. But if the great blocks
were raised by a mob of naked Picts, or any tribe that knew none of the
mechanical powers but the lever, how did they set them up and lay the
cross-stones, the imposts, upon the uprights? It is pleasant, once in a
while, to think how we should have managed any such matters as this if
left to our natural resources. We are all interested in the make-shifts
of Robinson Crusoe. Now the rudest tribes make cords of some kind, and
the earliest, or almost the earliest, of artificial structures is an
earth-mound. If a hundred, or hundreds, of men could drag the huge
stones many leagues, as they must have done to bring them to their
destined place, they could have drawn each of them up a long slanting
mound ending in a sharp declivity, with a hole for the foot of the stone
at its base. If the stone were now tipped over, it would slide into its
place, and could be easily raised from its slanting position to the
perpendicular. Then filling in the space between the mound and two
contiguous stones, the impost could be dragged up to its position. I
found a pleasure in working at this simple mechanical problem, as a
change from the more imaginative thoughts suggested by the mysterious
monuments.
One incident of our excursion to Stonehenge had a significance for me
which renders it memorable in my personal experience. As we drove over
the barren plain, one of the party suddenly exclaimed, "Look! Look! See
the lark rising!" I looked up with the rest. There was the bright blue
sky, but not a speck upon it which my eyes could distinguish. Again, one
called out, "Hark! Hark! Hear him singing!" I listened, but not a sound
reached my ear. Was it strange that I felt a momentary pang? _Those
that look out at the windows are darkened, and all the daughters of
music are brought low._ Was I never to see or hear the soaring
songster at Heaven's gate,--unless,--unless,--if our mild humanized
theology promises truly, I may perhaps hereafter listen to him singing
far down beneath me? For in whatever world I may find myself, I hope I
shall always love our poor little spheroid, so long my home, which some
kind angel may point out to me as a gilded globule swimming in the
sunlight far away. After walking the streets of pure gold in the New
Jerusalem, might not one like a short vacation, to visit the
well-remembered green fields and flowery meadows? I had a very sweet
emotion of self-pity, which took the sting out of my painful discovery
that the orchestra of my pleasing life-entertainment was unstringing its
instruments, and the lights were being extinguished,--that the show was
almost over. All this I kept to myself, of course, except so far as I
whispered it to the unseen presence which we all feel is in sympathy
with us, and which, as it seemed to my fancy, was looking into my eyes,
and through them into my soul, with the tender, tearful smile of a
mother who for the first time gently presses back the longing lips of
her as yet unweaned infant.
On our way back from Stonehenge we stopped and took a cup of tea with a
friend of our host, Mr. Nightingale. His house, a bachelor
establishment, was very attractive to us by the beauty within and around
it. His collection of "china," as Pope and old-fashioned people call all
sorts of earthenware, excited the enthusiasm of our host, whose
admiration of some rare pieces in the collection was so great that it
would have run into envy in a less generous nature.
It is very delightful to find one's self in one of these English country
residences. The house is commonly old, and has a history. It is
oftentimes itself a record, like that old farmhouse my friend John
Bellows wrote to me about, which chronicled half a dozen reigns by
various architectural marks as exactly as if it had been an official
register. "The stately homes of England," as we see them at Wilton and
Longford Castle, are not more admirable in their splendors than "the
blessed homes of England" in their modest beauty. Everywhere one may see
here old parsonages by the side of ivy-mantled churches, and the
comfortable mansions where generations of country squires have lived in
peace, while their sons have gone forth to fight England's battles, and
carry her flags of war and commerce all over the world. We in America
can hardly be said to have such a possession as a family home. We
encamp,--not under canvas, but in fabrics of wood or more lasting
materials, which are pulled down after a brief occupancy by the
builders, and possibly their children, or are modernized so that the
former dwellers in them would never recognize their old habitations.
In my various excursions from Salisbury I was followed everywhere by the
all-pervading presence of the towering spire. Just what it was in that
earlier visit, when my eyes were undimmed and my sensibilities unworn,
just such I found it now. As one drives away from the town, the roofs of
the houses drop out of the landscape, the lesser spires disappear one by
one, until the great shaft is left standing alone,--solitary as the
broken statue of Ozymandias in the desert, as the mast of some mighty
ship above the waves which have rolled over the foundering vessel. Most
persons will, I think, own to a feeling of awe in looking up at it. Few
can look down from a great height without creepings and crispations, if
they do not get as far as vertigos and that aerial calenture which
prompts them to jump from the pinnacle on which they are standing. It
does not take much imagination to make one experience something of the
same feeling in looking up at a very tall steeple or chimney. To one
whose eyes are used to Park Street and the Old South steeples as
standards of height, a spire which climbs four hundred feet towards the
sky is a new sensation. Whether I am more "afraid of that which is high"
than I was at my first visit, as I should be on the authority of
Ecclesiastes, I cannot say, but it was quite enough for me to let my
eyes climb the spire, and I had no desire whatever to stand upon that
"bad eminence," as I am sure that I should have found it.
I soon noticed a slight deflection from the perpendicular at the upper
part of the spire. This has long been observed. I could not say that I
saw the spire quivering in the wind, as I felt that of Strasburg doing
when I ascended it,--swaying like a blade of grass when a breath of air
passes over it. But it has been, for at least two hundred years, nearly
two feet out of the perpendicular. No increase in the deviation was
found to exist when it was examined early in the present century. It is
a wonder that this slight-looking structure can have survived the
blasts, and thunderbolts, and earthquakes, and the weakening effects of
time on its stones and timbers for five hundred years. Since the spire
of Chichester Cathedral fell in 1861, sheathing itself in its tower like
a sword dropping into its scabbard, one can hardly help looking with
apprehension at all these lofty fabrics. I have before referred to the
fall of the spire of Tewkesbury Abbey church, three centuries earlier.
There has been a good deal of fear for the Salisbury spire, and great
precautions have been taken to keep it firm, so that we may hope it will
stand for another five hundred years. It ought to be a "joy forever,"
for it is a thing of beauty, if ever there were one.
I never felt inclined to play the part of the young enthusiast in
"Excelsior," as I looked up at the weathercock which surmounts the
spire. But the man who oils the weathercock-spindle has to get up to it
in some way, and that way is by ladders which reach to within thirty
feet of the top, where there is a small door, through which he emerges,
to crawl up the remaining distance on the outside. "The situation and
appearance," says one of the guide-books, "must be terrific, yet many
persons have voluntarily and daringly clambered to the top, even in a
state of intoxication." Such, I feel sure, was not the state of my most
valued and exemplary clerical friend, who, with a cool head and steady
nerves, found himself standing in safety at the top of the spire, with
his hand upon the vane, which nothing terrestrial had ever looked down
upon in its lofty position, except a bird, a bat, a sky-rocket, or a
balloon.
In saying that the exterior of Salisbury Cathedral is more interesting
than its interior, I was perhaps unfair to the latter, which only yields
to the surpassing claims of the wonderful structure as seen from the
outside. One may get a little tired of marble Crusaders, with their
crossed legs and broken noses, especially if, as one sometimes finds
them, they are covered with the pencilled autographs of cockney
scribblers. But there are monuments in this cathedral which excite
curiosity, and others which awaken the most striking associations. There
is the "Boy Bishop," his marble effigy protected from vandalism by an
iron cage. There is the skeleton figure representing Fox (who should
have been called Goose), the poor creature who starved himself to death
in trying to imitate the fast of forty days in the wilderness. Since
this performance has been ta
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