_Our English Cousins._
WE had seen the _Carnevale_ at Rome, and the wild confusion of the
_moccoletti_, which is its finale; _festas_, in Venice, Milan, and
almost every other Italian town where we had stayed overnight. There
are more festas than working-days in that laughter-loving land. In
Paris we had witnessed illuminations, and a royal funeral, or of such
shreds of royalty as appertained unto the dead King of Hanover,—the
Prince of Wales, very red of face in the broiling sun, officiating as
chief mourner in his mother’s absence. In Geneva we had made merry over
the extravaganzas of New Year’s Day, and the comicalities of patriotism
that rioted in the _Escalade_. We were _au fait_ to the beery and
musical glories of the German _fest_. We would see and be in the thick
of a British holiday. What better opportunity could we have than was
offered by the placards scattered broadcast in the streets, and pasted
upon the “hoardings” of Brighton, announcing a mammoth concert in the
Crystal Palace at Sydenham; a general muster of Temperance Societies;
an awarding of prizes to competitive brass bands, and a prospective
convocation of 100,000 souls from every town and shire within a radius
of fifty miles? Such facilities for beholding that overgrown monster,
the British Public, in his Sunday clothes and best humor—might not
occur again—for us—in a half-century.
True, the weather was warm, but the Palace and grounds were spacious.
The musical entertainment was not likely to be of the classic order,
but it would be something worth the hearing and the telling,—the
promised chorus of 5,000 voices, led by the immense organ, in “GOD SAVE
THE QUEEN!” Thus we reasoned away Caput’s predictions that we would
be heartily sick of the experiment before the day was half-gone, and
thankful to escape, as for our lives, from the hustling auditors of the
grand chorus. We yielded one point. Instead of going up to Sydenham in
an excursion-train, the better to note the appearance and manners of
the Public, we waited for a quieter and later, at regular prices, and
so reached the Crystal Palace Station about eleven o’clock.
The punishment of our contumacy began immediately. Wedged in a dark
passage with a thousand other steaming bodies, with barely room enough
for breathing—not for moving hand or foot—retreat cut off and advance
impracticable, we waited until the pen was filled to overflowing by the
arrival of the next train before the two-leaved doors at the Palaceward
end split suddenly and emptied us into the open air. We made a feint
of going through the main building with those of our party who had
not already seen it, but every staircase was blocked by ascending
and descending droves, and nobody gave an inch to anybody else. The
Mothers of England were all there, each with a babe in arms and another
tugging at her skirts. Men swore—good-humoredly,—women scolded as
naturally as in their own kitchens and butteries, and babies cried
without fear or favor. The police kept a wise eye upon the valuables of
the Palace, and let the people alone. Repelled in every advance upon
art-chamber and conservatory, we collected our flurried forces and
withdrew to the grounds. When sore-footed with walking from fountain
to flower-bed, the gentlemen watched for and obtained seats for the
ladies upon a bench near the stand, where the competitive brass bands
were performing, heard, perhaps by themselves and their rivals, but few
besides.
The avenues were choked in every direction with swarms of the
commonest-looking people our eyes had ever rested upon. Rags and
squalor were seldom seen, and the yeomanry and their families were
fresh-colored and plump. The representatives from London and other
large cities were easily distinguishable by a sharper, sometimes a
pinched look, leaden complexions and smarter clothes. There is a
Continental saying that in England, blacksmiths make the women’s
dresses and men’s hats. If the ladies of rank, beginning with the
queen, are notably ill-dressed, what shall we say of the apparel of
mechanics’, small tradesmen’s and farmers’ wives and daughters, such
as we beheld at Sydenham? Linsey skirts, quite clearing slippered feet
and ankles clothed in home-knit hose, were converted into gala-suits by
polonaises of low-priced grenadine, or worked muslin of a style twenty
years old, and bonnets out-flaunting the geranium-beds. The English
gardeners may have borrowed the device of massing lawn-flowers from
their countrywomen’s hats. White was in high favor with the young,
generally opaque stuffs such as _piqué_ and thick cambric, but we did
not see one that was really clean and smooth. Most had evidently done
holiday-duty for several seasons and were still considered “fresh
enough.” Elderly matrons and spinsters panted in rusty black silk
and shiny alpacas, set off by broad cotton lace collars, astounding
exhibitions of French lace, cheap flowers and often white feathers,
upon hats that had not seen a milliner’s block in a dozen seasons. Old
and young were prone to ribbon-sashes with flying or drooping ends,
and cotton gloves. Some wore fur tippets over their summer-robes. These
we remarked the less for having seen ladies, traveling first-class,
with footmen and maids in attendance, wear in August, grenadine and
muslin dresses and sealskin jackets.
The women were more easy in their finery than were the men in
broadcloth, shirt-fronts and blackened boots. These huddled in awkward
groups, talked loudly and laughed blusteringly, while their feminine
companions strolled about, exchanging greetings and gossip. The little
girls kept close to their mothers in conformity with British traditions
on the government of girls of all ages; the small boys munched apples
and gingerbread-nuts, and stared stolidly around; those of the bigger
lads who could afford the few pence paid for the privilege, rode
bicycles up and down the avenues until the blood threatened to start
from the pores of their purple faces, and their eyes from the sockets.
From that date to this, the picture of a half-grown Briton,—done up
to the extreme of uncomfortableness in best jacket and breeches that
would “just meet,”—careering violently over the gravel under the fierce
July sun, directing two-thirds of his energies to the maintenance
of his centre of gravity upon the ticklish seat, the rest to the
perpetual motion of arms and legs,—stands with me as the type of the
pitiable-ludicrous. Of men, women and children, at least one-half wore
ribbon badges, variously lettered and illuminated. Standards were
borne in oblique, undress fashion, upon shoulders, and leaned against
trees, advertising the presence of “Bands of Hope,” “Rain Drops,”
“Rechabites,” “Summer Clouds,” “Snow-Flakes” and “Cooling Springs.”
Many men, and of women not a few, had velvet trappings, in shape and
size resembling Flemish horse-collars, about their necks, labeled in
gold with cabalistic characters, denoting the title borne by the
wearer in some one of the Temperance Societies represented.
Caput was right. The element of the picturesque was utterly wanting
from the holiday crowd. The naïve jollity that almost compensates
for this deficiency in the _fests_ of Deutschland was likewise
absent. The brass bands pealed on perseveringly, the crowd shifted
lumberingly to and fro, and we grew hungry as well as tired. The Palace
Restaurant would be crowded, we knew, but we worked our way thither
by a circuitous course, avoiding the densest “jams” in corridors and
stairways, and were agreeably surprised at finding less than twenty
persons at lunch, and in the long, lofty dining-room, the coolest,
quietest retreat we had had that day. The dinner was excellent, the
waiters prompt and attentive, and with the feeling that the doors
(bolted by the restaurant-prices), were an effectual bulwark against
the roaring rabble, we dallied over our dessert as we might in the back
drawing-room in Brighton with good Mr. Chipp behind Caput’s chair.
We would fain have lingered in the concert-hall to hear the chorus of
five thousand voices upborne by the full swell of the mighty organ.
There were the tiers of singers, mostly school-girls in white frocks,
piled up to the ceiling, waiting for the signal to rise. Somebody
said the organ was preluding, but of this we were not sure, such was
the reigning hubbub. The important moment came. The thousands of
the choir were upon their feet; opened their mouths as moved by one
unseen spring. The conductor swung his bâton with musical emphasis
and discretion. The mouths expanded and contracted in good time. We
heard not one note of it all. Men shouted to one another and laughed
uproariously; women scolded and cackled; babies screamed,—as if music,
“heavenly maid,” had never been born, and it was no concern of theirs
whether the Queen might, could, would, or should be saved.
Caput put his mouth to my ear.
“This will kill you!” he said, and by dint of strong elbows and broad
shoulders, fought a way for us out of the press.
“From all such—and the rest of it!” gasped Prima, when we were seeking
lost breath, and smoothing rumpled plumage in the outer air.
That blessed man was magnanimous! He never so much as _looked_—“You
would come!”
He only said solicitously to me—“I am afraid your head aches! Would you
like to sit quietly in the shade for awhile before we go home?”
Fallacious dream! The British Public had lunched out-of-doors while
we sat at ease within. The park, containing more than two hundred
acres, was littered with whitey-brown papers that had enwrapped the
“British Sangwich;” empty beer-bottles were piled under the trees, and
the late consumers of the regulation-refreshments lounged upon the
grass in every shady corner, smoking, talking and snoring. Abandoning
the project of rest within the grounds, we walked toward the gate of
egress. Everywhere was the same waste of greasy papers, cheese-parings,
bacon-rinds and recumbent figures, and, at as many points of our
progress we saw three drunken women—too drunk to walk or rise. One lay
in the blazing sunshine, untouched by Good Samaritan or paid police,
a baby not over two years old sitting by her, crying bitterly. Caput
directed a policeman to the shocking spectacle. He shook his head.
“She’s werry drunk!” he admitted. “But she h’aint noisy. We must give
the h’attention of the Force to them w’ot _h’is_!”
It was but two o’clock when we entered the waiting-room of the station.
Out-going trains were infrequent at that time of the day, and we must
wait an hour. I found a comfortable sofa in the ladies’ parlor and laid
down my throbbing head upon a pillow of the spare shawls without which
we never stirred abroad. A kindly-faced woman suspended her knitting
and asked what she could do for me.
“Maybe the lady would like a cup of tea with a teaspoonful of brandy in
it? Or a glass of h’ale?”
I thanked her, but said I only wanted rest and quiet.
“Which I mean to say, mem, it’s ’ard to get to-day. I’ve been ’ere five
year, keeper of this ’ere waiting-room, and never ’ave I seen such
crowds. The trains h’are a-comin’ h’in constant still, and will, till
h’evening. And h’every train, h’it do bring a thousand. A Temperance
pic-nic, you see, mem, _do_ allers draw h’uncommon!”
We saw, not of choice, one more fête-day in England—the Bank
holiday lately granted to all classes of working-people. It fell
on Monday, August 5th, and caught us in London with a day full
of not-to-be-deferred engagements, the departure of some of our
family-party being near at hand. The Banks, all public offices and
shops were closed. The British Museum, Zoölogical Gardens, The Tower
and parks would be crowded, we agreed, in modifying our plans. St.
Paul’s and Westminster Abbey seemed safe. We were right with respect
to the Cathedral. An unusually large number of people strayed in and
sauntered about, looking at monuments and tablets in church and crypt,
but we were free to move and examine. It was a “free day” at the Abbey.
The chapels locked at other seasons, and only to be seen in the conduct
of a verger, were now open to everybody, and everybody was there.
We threaded the passage-ways in the wake of a fleet of cockneys,
great and small, to whom the tomb that holds the remains of the Tudor
sisters, and on which their greatest queen lies in marble state,
signified no more than a revolving doll in a hair-dresser’s window; who
slouched aimlessly from Ben Jonson’s bust to Chaucer’s monument, and
trod with equal apathy the white slab covering “Old Parr,” and the gray
flagging lettered, “CHARLES DICKENS.”
That this judgment of the rank and file is not uncharitable we had
proof in the demeanor and talk of the visitors.
“James!” cried a wife to her heedless husband, when abreast of the tomb
of Henry III. “You don’t look at nothink you parss. Don’t you see this
is the tomb of ’Enry Thirteenth?”
“’Enry or ’Arry!” growled her lord without taking his hands from his
pocket—“Wot do I care for _he_?”
None of the comments, we overheard, upon the treasures of this grandest
of burial-places amused us more than the talk of a respectable-looking
man with his bright-eyed ten-year old son over the memorial to Sir John
Franklin. Beneath a fine bust of the hero-explorer is a bas-relief of
the Erebus and Terror locked in the ice.
“See the vessels in the rocks, Pa!” cried the boy. “Or—is it ice?”
“I don’t rightly know, Charley. Don’t touch!”
“I wont, Pa! I just want to read what this is on the ship. E, R, E, B,
U, S!—_E. R. Bruce!_ Is he buried here, do you ’spose?”
“In course he is, me lard! They wouldn’t never put h’another man’s name
h’upon ’is tombstone—would they?”
It is obviously unfair, say some of those for whom I am writing, to
gauge the intelligence and breeding of a great nation by the manners of
the lower classes. Should I retort that upon such data, as collected
by British tourists in a flying trip through our country, is founded
the popular English belief that we are vulgar in manner and speech,
superficial in education and crude in thought, I should be told that
these are the impressions and opinions of a bygone period,—belong to
a generation that read Mrs. Trollope’s and Marryatt’s “Travels,” and
Boz’s “American Notes;” that the Briton of to-day harbors neither
prejudice nor contempt for us; appreciates all that is praiseworthy in
us as individuals and a people; is charitable to our faults. There are
Americans resident abroad who will assert this. Some, because having
made friends of enlightened English men and women, true and noble,
they see the masses through the veil of affectionate regard they have
for the few. Others, flattered in every fibre of their petty natures
by the notice of those who arrogate superiority of race and training,
affect to despise their own land and kind; would rather be Anglicized
curs beneath the tables of the nobility than independent citizens of a
free and growing country. We know both classes. We met them every day
and everywhere for two years. America can justify herself against such
children as those I have last described.
But I have somewhat to say about the popular estimate in England of
America and Americans, and I foresee that I shall write of other
matters with more comfort when I have eased my spirit by a little plain
speech upon this subject:
“You agree with me, I am sure, in saying, ‘My country, right or
wrong!’” said a dear old English lady, turning to me during a
discussion upon the policy of Great Britain with regard to the
Russian-Turkish war.
“We say—‘My country, always right!’” replied I, smiling. “We are,
as you often tell us, ‘very young’—too young to have committed many
national sins. Perhaps when we are a thousand or fifteen hundred
years nearer the age of European governments, we, too, may have made
dangerous blunders.”
An English gentleman, hearing a portion of this badinage, came up to me.
“You were not in earnest in what you said just now?” he began,
interrogatively. “I honor America. I have studied her history,
and I hail every step of her march to the place I believe GOD has
assigned her—the leadership of the Christian world. She is fresh and
enthusiastic. She is _sound_ to the core. But she does make mistakes.
Let us reason together for a little while. There is the Silver Bill,
for example.”
“I was talking nonsense,” I said, impulsively. “Mere braggadocio, and
in questionable taste. But it _irks_ me that the best and kindest of
you patronize my country, and excuse me! that so many who do it know
next to nothing about us. Mrs. B—— asked me, just now, if it were
‘quite safe to promenade Broadway unarmed—on account of the savages,
you know.’ And when I answered—‘the nearest savages to us are in your
Canadian provinces,’ she said, without a tinge of embarrassment—‘Ah!
I am very, very excessively ignorant about America. In point of fact,
it is a country in which I have no personal interest whatever. I have
a son in India, and one in Australia, but no friends on your side of
the world.’ Yet she is a _lady_, well educated and well-born. She has
traveled much; speaks several languages, and converses intelligently
upon most topics. She is, moreover, too kind to have told me that
my country is uninteresting had she dreamed that I could be hurt or
offended by the remark. Another lady, a disciple of Dr. Cummings, and
his personal friend, asked my countrywoman, Mrs. T——, ‘if she came
from America by steamer or by the overland route?’ and a member of
Parliament told Mr. J——, the other day, that the ‘North should have
let the South go when she tried to separate herself from the Union. The
geographical position of the two countries showed they should never
have been one nation.’ ‘The hand of the Creator,’ he went on to say,
‘had placed a rocky rampart between them.’ ‘A rocky rampart!’ repeated
Mr. J——, his mind running upon Mason’s and Dixon’s line. ‘Yes! The
_Isthmus of Darien_!’
“Americans are accused of over-sensitiveness and boastfulness. Is it
natural that we should submit tamely to patronage and criticism from
those who calmly avow their ‘excessive ignorance’ of all that pertains
to our land and institutions? Can we respect those who assume to
teach when they know less upon many subjects than we do? A celebrated
English divine once persisted in declaring to my husband that Georgia
is a city, not a State. Another informed us that Pennsylvania is the
capital of New England. Even my dear Miss W—— cannot be convinced that
boys of nine years old are considered minors with us. She says she has
been told by those who ought to know that, at that age, they discard
parental authority; while her sister questioned me seriously as to
the truth of the story that the feet of all American babies—boys and
girls—are bandaged in infancy to make them small. Don’t laugh! This is
all true, and I have not told you the tenth. The Silver Bill! I have
never met another Englishman who knew anything about it!”
My friend laughed, in spite of my injunction.
“It is not ‘natural’ for Americans to ‘submit tamely’ to any kind of
injustice, I fancy. But be merciful! Have you read in the ‘Nineteenth
Century’ Dr. Dale’s ‘Impressions of America?’”
“I have. They are like himself, honest, sincere, thorough! But I have
also read Trollope’s ‘American Senator,’ a product of the nineteenth
century that will be read and credited by many who cannot appreciate
Dr. Dale’s scholarship and logic. May I tell you an anecdote—true
in every particular—to offset the Senator’s behavior in the Earl’s
drawing-room? An English novelist, than whom none is better known on
both sides of the water, dined, by invitation, at the house of a _bona
fide_ Senator in Washington. After dinner he approached the hostess in
the drawing-room to take leave.
“‘It is very early yet, Mr.——,’ she said politely.
“‘I know it. But the fact is I _must write ten pounds’ worth_ before I
go to bed!’
“Yet this man is especially happy in clever flings at American society.
We _have_ faults—many and grievous! But we might drop them the sooner
if our monitors were better qualified to instruct us, and would
admonish in kindness, not disdain.”
Because he was an Englishman, and I liked him, I withheld from my
excited harangue many and yet more atrocious absurdities uttered in
my hearing by his compatriots. At this distance and time, and under
the shelter of a _nom de plume_, I may relate an incident I forebore
religiously from giving to my transatlantic acquaintances, albeit
sorely tempted, occasionally, by their unconscious condescension and
simplicity of arrogance—too amusing to be always offensive.
We were taking a cup of “_arf_ternoon tea” with some agreeable English
people, who had invited their rector and his wife to meet us. My seat
was next the wife, a pretty, refined little woman, who graciously
turned the talk into a channel where she fancied I would be at ease.
She began to question me about America. Perceiving her motive, and
being by this time somewhat weary of cruising in one strait, I, as
civilly, fought shy of my native shores, and plied her with queries in
my turn. I asked information, among other things, concerning Yorkshire
and Haworth, stating our intention of visiting the home and church
of the Brontës. The rectoress knew nothing about the topography of
Yorkshire, but had heard of the Brontë novels.
“Wasn’t ‘Jane Eyre’ just a little—_naughty_? I fancy I have heard
something of the kind.”
Our English cousins “farncy” quite as often as we “guess,” or “reckon,”
or “presume,” and sometimes as incorrectly.
I waived the subject of Jane Eyre’s morals by a brief tribute to the
author’s genius, and passed to Mrs. Gaskell’s description of the West
Riding town, Haworth. Our hostess caught the word “Keighley.”
“I was in Keighley last year, at a wedding,” she interpolated. “It is
near Haworth—did you say? And you have friends in Haworth?”
I explained.
“Ah!” politely. “I did not know Charlotte Brontë ever lived there. Her
‘Jane Eyre’ was a good deal talked about when I was a girl. She was
English—did you say?”
Dropping the topic for that of certain local antiquities, I discussed
these with my gentle neighbor until I happened to mention the name of
an early Saxon king.
“The familiarity, of Americans with early English history quite
astonishes me,” she remarked. “I cannot understand why they should be
conversant with what concerns them so remotely.”
I suggested that their history was also ours until within a hundred
years. That their great men in letters, statesmanship and war belonged
to us up to that time as much as to the dwellers upon English soil, the
two countries being under one and the same government.
The blue eyes were slightly hazy with bewilderment.
“A hundred years! I beg your pardon—but I fancied—I was surely under
the impression that America was discovered more than a hundred years
ago?”
“It was!” I hastened to say. “Every American child is taught to say—
‘In fourteen hundred, ninety-two,
Columbus crossed the ocean blue.’
But”—feeling that I touched upon delicate ground,—“we were provinces
until 1776, when we became a separate government.”
I just avoided adding—“and independent.”
The little lady’s eyes cleared before a gleam that was more than the
joy of discovery. It was, in a mild and decorous way, the rapture of
creation. Her speech grew animated.
“1776! And last year was 1876! Pardon me! but perhaps you never
thought—I would say—has it ever occurred to you that possibly that may
have been the reason why your National Exposition was called ‘_The
Centennial_’?”
Magnanimity and politeness are a powerful combination. By their aid, I
said—“Very probably!” and sipped my tea as demurely as an Englishwoman
could have done in the circumstances.
It is both diverting and exasperating to hear Englishmen sneer openly
and coarsely at the attentions bestowed by American gentlemen upon
the ladies under their care. Their dogged assumption—and disdainful
as dogged—that this is an empty show exacted by us cannot be shaken
by the fact of which _they_ certainly are not ignorant,—to wit, that
our countrymen are cowards in naught else. I will cite but one of the
many illustrations that fell under my eye of their different policy
toward the weaker sex. I had climbed the Ventnor Downs one afternoon
by the help of my escort, and stood upon the brow of the highest hill,
when we espied three English people, known to us by sight, approaching.
The short grass was slippery, the direct ascent so steep that the last
of the party, a handsome woman of fifty or thereabouts, was obliged,
several times, to fall upon her hands and knees to keep from slipping
backward. Her son, a robust Oxonian, led the way, cane in hand. Her
hale, bluff husband came next, also grasping a stout staff. At the top
they stopped to remark upon the beauty of the view and evening, thus
giving time to the wife and mother to join them. She was very pale;
the sweat streamed down her face; she caught her breath in convulsive
gasps. Her attendants smiled good-humoredly.
“Pretty well blown—eh?” said her lord.
Her affectionate son—“Quite knocked-up, in fact!”
Yet these were _gentlemen_ in blood and reputation.
I do not defend the ways and means by which the Travelling American
makes his name, and, too often, that of his country a by-word and
a hissing in the course of the European tour, which is, in his
parlance, “just about the thing” for the opulent butcher, baker, and
candlestick-maker, now-a-days. I do affirm that, judging him by the
representative of the class corresponding to his in the Mother Country,
he is no more blatant and objectionable to people of education and
refinement than the Briton who is his fellow-traveller. In aptness
and general intelligence he will assuredly bear off the palm. If the
American of a higher grade be slow to abandon his provincial accent,
and his wife her shrill, “clipping” speech; if what Bayard Taylor
termed “the national catarrh” be obstinate in both,—the Englishman
has his “aws” and “you knows,” and lumbering articulation; calls the
_garçon_ who cannot comprehend his order at the _table d’hôte_ “a
stupid ass,” in the hearing of all, declares the weather to be “nosty,”
the wine “beastly,” and the soup “filthy,” while I have seen his wife
bring her black-nosed pug to dinner with her, and feed him and herself
with blanc mange from the same spoon.
We received much courtesy and many kindnesses from English people in
their own country and upon the continent; formed friendships with some
the memory of which must warm our hearts until they cease to beat.
Their statesmen, their scholars, and their philanthropists have, as
such, no equals in any clime or age. If we wince under censures we feel
are unjust, and under sarcasms that cut the more keenly because edged
with truth:—if, when they tell us we are “young,” we are disposed to
retort that they are old enough to know and to do better, let us, in
solemn remembrance of our kinship in blood and in faith, borrow, in
thought, my friend’s advice, and “be merciful.”