"Those famous volumes, the advent of which was some time since
announced by the great transatlantic trumpet, have duly arrived. My
wife is properly grateful for her copy, which, indeed, impresses
both of us with respect for the American skill in binding. Neither
too gay to be gaudy, nor too grave, so as to affect the theological,
it hits that happy medium which agrees with the tastes of most
people and disgusts none. We should flatter ourselves that it is
intended to represent the matter within, but that we are afraid of
incurring the sin of vanity, and the indiscretion of taking
appearances too much upon trust. We suspend our conjectures on this
very interesting subject. The whole getting up of the book is
excellent.
"For the little scraps of (critical) sugar enclosed in your letter,
due thanks. These will sweeten our imagination for some time to
come.
"I have been obliged to give all the copies you sent me away. I dare
say you will not grudge me four or five copies more, to be sent at
your convenience, of course. Let me hear from you at the same time.
You can give me one of those frequent quarters of an hour which I
know you now devote to a meditation on 'things in general.'
"I am glad that you like Thackeray. He is well worth your liking. I
trust to his making both friends and money in America, and to his
_keeping_ both. I am not so sure of the money, however, for he has a
liberal hand. I should have liked to have been at one of the dinners
you speak of. When shall you begin that _bridge_? You seem to be a
long time about it. It will, I dare say, be a bridge of boats, after
all....
"I was reading (rather re-reading) the other evening the
introductory chapter to the 'Scarlet Letter.' It is admirably
written. Not having any great sympathy with a custom-house,--nor,
indeed, with Salem, except that it seems to be Hawthorne's
birthplace,--all my attention was concentrated on the _style_, which
seems to me excellent.
"The most striking book which has been recently published here is
'Villette,' by the authoress of 'Jane Eyre,' who, as you know, is a
Miss Bronte. The book does not give one the most pleasing notion of
the authoress, perhaps, but it is very clever, graphic, vigorous. It
is 'man's meat,' and not the whipped syllabub, which is _all_ froth,
without any jam at the bottom. The scene of the drama is Brussels.
"I was sorry to hear of poor Willis. Our critics here were too
severe upon him....
"The Frost King (vulg. Jack Frost) has come down upon us with all
his might. Banished from the pleasant shores of Boston, he has come
with his cold scythe and ice pincers to our undefended little
island, and is tyrannizing in every corner and over every part of
every person. Nothing is too great for him, nothing too mean. He
condescends even to lay hold of the nose (an offence for which any
one below the dignity of a King--or a President--would be kicked.)
As for me I have taken refuge in
"A SONG WITH A MORAL.
"When the winter bloweth loud,
And the earth is in a shroud,
Frozen rain or sleety snow
Dimming every dream below,--
There is e'er a spot of green
Whence the heavens may be seen.
"When our purse is shrinking fast,
And our friend is lost, (the last!)
And the world doth pour its pain,
Sharper than the frozen rain,--
There is still a spot of green
Whence the heavens may be seen.
"Let us never meet despair
While the little spot is there;
Winter brighteneth into May,
And sullen night to sunny day,--
Seek we then the spot of green
Whence the heavens may be seen.
"I have left myself little space for more small-talk. I must,
therefore, conclude with wishing that your English dreams may
continue bright, and that when they begin to fade you will come and
_relume_ at one of the white-bait dinners of which you used to talk
in such terms of rapture.
"Have I space to say that I am very truly yours?
"B.W. PROCTER."
A few months later, in the same year (1853), he sits by his open window
in London, on a morning of spring, and sends off the following pleasant
words:--
"You also must now be in the first burst and sunshine of spring.
Your spear-grass is showing its points, your succulent grass its
richness, even your little plant [?] (so useful for certain
invalids) is seen here and there; primroses are peeping out in your
neighborhood, and you are looking for cowslips to come. I say
nothing of your hawthorns (from the common May to the classic
Nathaniel), except that I trust they are thriving, and like to put
forth a world of blossoms soon.
'With all this wealth, present and future,
The yellow cowslip and the pale primrose,'
you will doubtless feel disposed to scatter your small coins abroad
on the poor, and, among other things, to forward to your humble
correspondent those copies of B---- C----'s prose works which you
promised I know not how long ago. 'He who gives _speedily_,' they
say, 'gives twice.' I quote, as you see, from the Latins.
"I have just got the two additional volumes of De Quincey, for
which--thanks! I have not seen Mr. Parker, who brought them, and who
left his card here yesterday, but I have asked if he will come and
breakfast with me on Sunday,--my only certain leisure day. Your De
Quincey is a man of a good deal of reading, and has thought on
divers and sundry matters; but he is evidently so thoroughly well
pleased with the Sieur 'Thomas De Quincey' that his self-sufficiency
spoils even his best works. Then some of his facts are, I hear,
_quasi_ facts only, not unfrequently. He has his moments when he
sleeps, and becomes oblivious of all but the aforesaid 'Thomas,' who
pervades both his sleeping and waking visions. I, like all authors,
am glad to have a little praise now and then (it is my hydromel),
but it must be dispensed by others. I do not think it decent to
manufacture the sweet liquor myself, and I hate a coxcomb, whether
in dress or print.
"We have little or no literary news here. Our poets are all going
to the poorhouse (except Tennyson), and our prose writers are
piling up their works for the next 5th of November, when there will
be a great bonfire. It is deuced lucky that my immortal (ah! I am De
Quinceying)--I mean my humble--performances were printed in America,
so that they will escape. By the by, are they on foolscap? for I
forgot to caution you on that head.
"I have been spending a week at Liverpool, where I rejoiced to hear
that Hawthorne's appointment was settled, and that it was a valuable
post; but I hear that it lasts for three years only. This is
melancholy. I hope, however, that he will 'realize' (as you
trans-atlantics say) as much as he can during his consulate, and
that your next President will have the good taste and the good sense
to renew his lease for three years more.
"I have not seen Mrs. Stowe. I shall probably meet her somewhere or
other when she comes to London.
"I dare not ask after Mr. Longfellow. He was kind enough to write me
a very agreeable letter some time ago, which I ought to have
answered. I dare say he has forgotten it, but my conscience is a
serpent that gives me a bite or a sting every now and then when I
think of him. The first time I am in fit condition (I mean in point
of brightness) to reply to so famous a correspondent, I shall try
what an English pen and ink will enable me to say. In the mean time,
God be thanked for all things!
"My wife heard from Thackeray about ten days ago. He speaks
gratefully of the kindness that he has met with in America. Among
other things, it appears that he has seen something of your slaves,
whom he represents as leading a very easy life, and as being fat,
cheerful, and happy. Nevertheless, _I_ (for one) would rather be a
free man,--such is the singularity of my opinions. If my prosings
should ever in the course of the next twenty years require to be
reprinted, pray take note of the above opinion.
"And now I have no more paper; I have scarcely room left to say that
I hope you are well, and to remind you that for your ten lines of
writing I have sent you back a hundred. Give my best compliments to
all whom I know, personally or otherwise. God be with you!
"Yours, very sincerely,
"B.W. PROCTER."
Procter always seemed to be astounded at the travelling spirit of
Americans, and in his letters he makes frequent reference to our
"national propensity," as he calls it.
"Half an hour ago," he writes in. July, 1853, "we had three of your
countrymen here to lunch,--countrymen I mean, Hibernically, for two
of them wore petticoats. They are all going to Switzerland, France,
Italy, Egypt, and Syria. What an adventurous race you are, you
Americans! Here the women go merely 'from the blue bed to the
brown,' and think that they have travelled and seen the world. I
myself should not care much to be confined to a circle reaching six
or seven miles round London. There are the fresh winds and wild
thyme on Hampstead Heath, and from Richmond you may survey the
Naiades. Highgate, where Coleridge lived, Enfield, where Charles
Lamb dwelt, are not far off. Turning eastward, there is the river
Lea, in which Izaak Walton fished; and farther on--ha! what do I
see? What are those little fish frisking in the batter (the great
Naval Hospital close by), which fixed the affections of the enamored
American while he resided in London, and have been floating in his
dreams ever since? They are said by the naturalists to be of the
species _Blandamentum album_, and are by vulgar aldermen spoken
carelessly of as _white-bait_.
"London is full of carriages, full of strangers, full of parties
feasting on strawberries and ices and other things intended to allay
the heat of summer; but the Summer herself (fickle virgin) keeps
back, or has been stopped somewhere or other,--perhaps at the
Liverpool custom-house, where the very brains of men (their books)
are held in durance, as I know to my cost.
"Thackeray is about to publish a new work in numbers,--a serial, as
the newspapers call it. Thomas Carlyle is publishing (a sixpenny
matter) in favor of the slave-trade. Novelists of all shades are
plying their trades. Husbands are killing their wives in every day's
newspaper. Burglars are peaching against each other; there is no
longer honor among thieves. I am starting for Leicester on a week's
expedition amidst the mad people; and the Emperor of Russia has
crossed the Pruth, and intends to make a tour of Turkey.
"All this appears to me little better than idle, restless vanity. O
my friend, what a fuss and a pother we are all making, we little
flies who are going round on the great wheel of time! To-day we are
flickering and buzzing about, our little bits of wings glittering in
the sunshine, and to-morrow we are safe enough in the little crevice
at the back of the fireplace, or hid in the folds of the old
curtain, shut up, stiff and torpid, for the long winter. What do you
say to that profound reflection?
"I struggle against the lassitude which besets me, and strive in
vain to be either sensible or jocose. I had better say farewell."
On Christmas day, 1854, he writes in rather flagging spirits, induced
by ill health:--
"I have owed you a letter for these many months, my good friend. I
am afraid to think _how_ long, lest the interest on the debt should
have exceeded the capital, and be beyond my power to pay.
"You must be good-natured and excuse me, for I have been ill--very
frequently--and dispirited. A bodily complaint torments me, that has
tormented me for the last two years. I no longer look at the world
through a rose-colored glass. The prospect, I am sorry to say, is
gray, grim, dull, barren, full of withered leaves, without flowers,
or if there be any, all of them trampled down, soiled, discolored,
and without fragrance. You see what a bit of half-smoked glass I am
looking through. At all events, you must see how entirely I am
disabled from returning, except in sober sentences, the lively and
good-natured letters and other things which you have sent me from
America. They were welcome, and I thank you for them now, in a few
words, as you observe, but sincerely. I am somewhat brief, even in
my gratitude. Had I been in braver spirits, I might have spurred my
poor Pegasus, and sent you some lines on the Alma, or the
Inkerman,--bloody battles, but exhibiting marks not to be mistaken
of the old English heroism, which, after all is said about the
enervating effects of luxury, is as grand and manifest as in the
ancient fights which English history talks of so much. Even you,
sternest of republicans, will, I think, be proud of the indomitable
courage of Englishmen, and gladly refer to your old paternity. I, at
least, should be proud of Americans fighting after the same fashion
(and without doubt they _would_ fight thus), just as old people
exult in the brave conduct of their runaway sons. I cannot read of
these later battles without the tears coming into my eyes. It is
said by 'our correspondent' at _New York_ that the folks there
rejoice in the losses and disasters of the allies. This can never be
the case, surely? No one whose opinion is worth a rap can rejoice at
any success of the Czar, whose double-dealing and unscrupulous
greediness must have rendered him an object of loathing to every
well-thinking man. But what have I to do with politics, or you? Our
'pleasant object and serene employ' are books, books. Let us return
to pacific thoughts.
"What a number of things have happened since I saw you! I looked for
you in the last spring, little dreaming that so fat and flourishing
a 'Statesman' could be overthrown by a little fever. I had even
begun some doggerel, announcing to you the advent of the
white-bait, which I imagined were likely to be all eaten up in your
absence. My memory is so bad that I cannot recollect half a dozen
lines, probably not one, as it originally stood.
"I was at Liverpool last June. After two or three attempts I
contrived to seize on the famous Nathaniel Hawthorne. Need I say
that I like him _very_ much? He is very sensible, very genial,--a
little shy, I think (for an American!)--and altogether extremely
agreeable. I wish that I could see more of him, but our orbits are
wide apart. Now and then--once in two years--I diverge into and
cross his circle, but at other times we are separated by a space
amounting to 210 miles. He has three children, and a nice little
wife, who has good-humor engraved on her countenance.
"As to verse--yes, I have begun a dozen trifling things, which are
in my drawer unfinished; poor rags with ink upon them, none of them,
I am afraid, properly labelled for posterity. I was for six weeks at
Ryde, in the Isle of Wight, this year, but so unwell that I could
not write a line, scarcely read one; sitting out in the sun, eating,
drinking, sleeping, and sometimes (poor soul!) imagining I was
thinking. One Sunday I saw a magnificent steamer go by, and on
placing my eye to the telescope I saw some Stars and Stripes
(streaming from the mast-head) that carried me away to Boston. By
the way, when _will_ you finish the bridge?
"I hear strange hints of you all quarrelling about the slave
question. Is it so? You are so happy and prosperous in America that
you must be on the lookout for clouds, surely! When you see Emerson,
Longfellow, Sumner, any one I know, pray bespeak for me a kind
thought or word from them."
Procter was always on the lookout for Hawthorne, whom he greatly
admired. In November, 1855, he says, in a brief letter:--
"I have not seen Hawthorne since I wrote to you. He came to London
this summer, but, I am sorry to say, did not inquire for me. As it
turned out, I was absent from town, but sent him (by Mrs. Russell
Sturgis) a letter of introduction to Leigh Hunt, who was very much
pleased with him. Poor Hunt! he is the most genial of men; and, now
that his wife is confined to her bed by rheumatism, is recovering
himself, and, I hope, doing well. He asked to come and see me the
other day. I willingly assented, and when I saw him--grown old and
sad and broken down in health--all my ancient liking for him
revived.
"You ask me to send you some verse. I accordingly send you a scrap
of recent manufacture, and you will observe that instead of
forwarding my epic on Sevastopol, I select something that is fitter
for these present vernal love days than the blaster of heroic verse:--
"SONG.
"Within the chambers of her breast
Love lives and makes his spicy nest,
Midst downy blooms and fragrant flowers,
And there he dreams away the hours--
There let him rest!
Some time hence, when the cuckoo sings,
I'll come by night and bind his wings,--
Bind him that he shall not roam
From his warm white virgin home.
"Maiden of the summer season,
Angel of the rosy time,
Come, unless some graver reason
Bid thee scorn my rhyme;
Come from thy serener height,
On a golden cloud descending,
Come ere Love hath taken flight,
And let thy stay be like the light,
When its glory hath no ending
In the Northern night!"
Now and then we get a glimpse of Thackeray in his letters. In one of
them he says:--
"Thackeray came a few days ago and read one of his lectures at our
house (that on George the Third), and we asked about a dozen persons
to come and hear it, among the rest, your handsome countrywoman,
Mrs. R---- S----. It was very pleasant, with that agreeable
intermixture of tragedy and comedy that tells so well when
judiciously managed. He will not print them for some time to come,
intending to read them at some of the principal places in England,
and perhaps Scotland.
"What are you doing in America? You are too happy and independent!
'O fortunatos Agricolas, sua si bona nôrint!' I am not quite sure of
my Latin (which is rusty from old age), but I am sure of the
sentiment, which is that when people are too happy, they don't know
it, and so take to quarrelling to relieve the monotony of their
blue sky. Some of these days you will split your great kingdom in
two, I suppose, and then--
"My wife's mother, Mrs. Basil Montagu, is very ill, and we are
apprehensive of a fatal result, which, in truth, the mere fact of
her age (eighty-two or eighty-three) is enough to warrant. Ah, this
terrible _age_! The young people, I dare say, think that we live too
long. Yet how short it is to look back on life! Why, I saw the house
the other day where I used to play with a wooden sword when I was
five years old! It cannot surely be eighty years ago! What has
occurred since? Why, nothing that is worth putting down on paper. A
few nonsense verses, a flogging or two (richly deserved), and a few
white-bait dinners, and the whole is reckoned up. Let us begin
again." [Here he makes some big letters in a school-boy hand, which
have a very pathetic look on the page.]
In a letter written in 1856 he gives me a graphic picture of sad times
in India:--
"All our anxiety here at present is the Indian mutiny. We ourselves
have great cause for trouble. Our son (the only son I have, indeed)
escaped from Delhi lately. He is now at Meerut. He and four or five
other officers, four women, and a child escaped. The men were
obliged to drop the women a fearful height from the walls of the
fort, amidst showers of bullets. A round shot passed within a yard
of my son, and one of the ladies had a bullet through her shoulder.
They were seven days and seven nights in the jungle, without money
or meat, scarcely any clothes, no shoes. They forded rivers, lay on
the wet ground at night, lapped water from the puddles, and finally
reached Meerut. The lady (the mother of the three other ladies) had
not her wound dressed, or seen, indeed, for upward of a week. Their
feet were full of thorns. My son had nothing but a shirt, a pair of
trousers, and a flannel waistcoat. How they contrived to _live_ I
don't know; I suppose from small gifts of rice, etc., from the
natives.
"When I find any little thing now that disturbs my serenity, and
which I might in former times have magnified into an evil, I think
of what Europeans suffer from the vengeance of the Indians, and pass
it by in quiet.
"I received Mr. Hillard's epitaph on my dear kind friend Kenyon.
Thank him in my name for it. There are some copies to be reserved of
a lithograph now in progress (a portrait of Kenyon) for his American
friends. Should it be completed in time, Mr. Sumner will be asked
to take them over. I have put down your name for one of those who
would wish to have this little memento of a good kind man....
"I shall never visit America, be assured, or the continent of
Europe, or any distant region. I have reached nearly to the length
of my tether. I have grown old and apathetic and stupid. All I care
for, in the way of personal enjoyment, is quiet, ease,--to have
nothing to do, nothing to think of. My only glance is backward.
There is so little before me that I would rather not look that way."