Off the north coast of Ireland, and a splendid coast it is. A stout
party, on whom I do not the least rely, told me an hour or so ago, when
I first went on deck, that we were passing the Giant’s Causeway. The
morning is deliciously fresh, and there is just a little roll in the
vessel which is slightly discomforting some of the passengers, I see. I
slept like a top without turning, for which, indeed, I haven’t room in
my tray on the top of the drawers. My only mishap has been that when
they were sluicing the decks this morning, the water running down the
ship’s side naturally turned into my wide-open porthole to see if I was
getting up. The device was quite successful, as I shot out of bed at
once to close it up and save my things lying on the sofa below. No
damage done fortunately.
9.30 a.m., Friday.
Here we are lying quietly at anchor in Lough Foyle after an excellent
breakfast. We wait here for the mails, but as it is nineteen miles
I find by road up to Derry, I shall not make the attempt. The plot
thickens on board, and I am already deeply interested. There are 150
emigrants from the East End, who are being taken over by their parson
and a philanthropist whose name I haven’t caught yet. I have been
forward amongst these poor folk, and have won several hearts or at least
opened many mouths by distributing some few spare stamps I luckily had
in my pocket. Lovely as the morning is, and delicious as the contrast
between the exquisite air on deck, where they are all sitting, when
contrasted with Whitechapel air, I can’t help looking at them with very
mingled feelings. They are a fine steady respectable class of poor. The
women nursing and caring for their children with grave, serious, sweet
faces, and the men really attentive. All of them anxious to send off
scraps of letters to their friends in Great Babylon. There is one
slip of the foredeck roped off entirely for nursing mothers and small
children, and there are a lot of quaint little plumps rolling and
tumbling about there, with some of whom I hope to make friends. A
bird-fancier from the East End has several cages full of larks and
sparrows, and a magpie and jay in state cabins by themselves, all of
which he hopes to make great merchandise of in Canada, where English
birds are longed for, but are very hard to keep. He had lost his
hempseed in Liverpool, but luckily a boat has gone ashore, and I think
there is good hope of getting him a fresh supply. There is a little
gathering of the emigrants for service at eight in the evening forward.
I didn’t know of it last night, but shall attend henceforth. No thought
of such a thing in the state saloon! “How hardly shall they that have
riches”!
Here, as elsewhere, the truest and deepest life, because the simplest,
lies amongst those who have little of the things of this world lying
between them and their Father and this invisible world, with its
realities.
On board the Peruvian.
We are well out on the broad Atlantic, which at present we are inclined
to think a little of an imposture. There is certainly a swell of some
kind, for the ship pitches more or less, but to the unpractised eye
looking out on the waste of waters it is quite impossible to account for
the swell, for, except for the better colour, the sea looks very much
as it does off the Isle of Wight; great waves like the slope of a chalk
down, following one another in solemn procession, up which the long ship
climbs like a white road. However, it is early days to grumble about
the want of swell, and when it comes I may not like it any more than
another. After finishing my letter to you this morning, I went ashore
to post it, and found that after all it wouldn’t reach London till
to-morrow night. So I sent you a telegram, which I hope you got before
bed-time at any rate, and redirected my letter to Cromer. To pass the
time I took a jaunting car with two other passengers, and we drove to
an old castle looking over Lough Foyle, formerly a stronghold of the
O’Doherty’s till it was sacked and knocked about their ears by an
expedition of Scotch Campbells, who did a good work for the district by
destroying it. We found lots of shamrock in the ruins, and enjoyed
the drive and still more a bathe afterwards. The country seems very
prosperous. The people, strapping, light-haired, blue-eyed Celts,
handsome and well-to-do; in fact, evidently much better fed and better
educated than almost any English country district I know. The mails
came down from Derry in a tender, which brought us the news of the first
battle and the Prussian victory, which I for one always looked for, and
we got away by seven, two hours later than we expected. However, the
wind is fair and we are making famous way, and by the time I get up in
the morning I expect we shall be 200 miles from the Irish coast.
9.30 p.m., Saturday.
A long calm day and we have made a splendid run--shall be in Quebec in
good time to-morrow week if this weather holds; but knowing persons say
it won’t, and that we have seen the last of fine weather, and must look
out for squalls--for why? the wind has gone round against the sun, and
it has settled to rain hard with a barometer steadily going down. The
Roman Catholic bishop (who is not very expert in weather that I know of,
but is a very, jovial party, who enjoys his cigar and gossip, and
was one of the first to go in for a game of shovel-board on deck this
morning) declares that we shall have it fine all the way, as he has made
the passage six times and has never had bad weather yet. In any case I
hope it won’t be rough to-morrow, for we are to have a real treat in the
way of spiritual dissipation. First, the bishop is to have some kind
of mass and preach a short sermon at nine (N.B. a time-table conscience
clause is to run all day, so that only latitudinarians like me will go
in for it all). Then the captain who is a rare good fellow, with a
spice of sentiment about him, which sits so well on such a bulletheaded,
broad-shouldered, resolute Jack-Tar, has his own service at eleven, in
which he will do the priest himself, an excellent example, with a sermon
by the emigrant parson, whose name is H------, afterwards. These in the
saloon; then at 2.30 a service in the steerage by H------, or G------,
the other parson, and a final wind up, also in the steerage at 7.30.
G------is the clergyman of Shaftesbury, George Glyn’s borough; was
formerly in the Navy, and was in the Ragged School movement of ’48, ’49,
when I used to go off twice a week in the evening to Ormond Yard, when
poor old M------ had the gas turned out, and his hat knocked over his
eyes by his boys. He knew Ludlow and Furnival, but I don’t remember
him. However, he is a right good fellow, and gave us a really good
_extempore_ prayer last night at the midships’ service. The steerage is
certainly most interesting. There are now nearly 500 emigrants on board
there, and the captain says they are about the best lot he has ever
had. Going round this morning I was struck by a dear little light-haired
girl, who was standing with her arm round the neck of a poor woman very
sick and ill, and such tenderness and love in her poor little face
as she turned it up to us as almost brought tears into one’s eyes. Of
course I thought the woman was her mother. No such thing; she was no
relation at all. The little dear had never seen her till she met her
on board, but was attracted by her misery, and had never left her side
since she had been so ill. The poor woman had two strapping daughters
on board who had never been near her. How strangely folk are fixed up in
this queer world.
Monday.
We know what a good swell in mid-Atlantic means at last. We were
pitching when I went to bed, finding it hard to get on with my
penmanship. Off I went as fast as usual, and never woke except for one
moment to grunt and turn round, or rather, try to turn round, in my tray
on top of the drawers at something which sounded like a crash. In the
morning we were swinging and bowing and jerking, so that I had to wait
for a favourable moment to bolt out of bed for fear of coming a cropper
if I didn’t mind.
As soon as I was out I saw what the crash had been in the night. My big
portmanteau, which had been set on its end the night before, had had a
jumping match with my water-jug in the night. Both of them had thrown a
somersault across the cabin against the door, but the jug being brittle
(jugs shouldn’t jump against portmanteaus), and coming down undermost,
had gone all into little bits, and the water, all that wasn’t in my
shoes at least, had soaked my carpet at the door end. But it was a
glorious bright morning and the dancing hills of water and the bounding
ship sent me up dancing on the deck. My high spirits were a little
subdued after breakfast, for I had scarcely got on deck when parson
H------ came to me to say the emigrants wanted me to give them an
address. Well, I couldn’t refuse, as my heart is full of them, poor dear
folk, so down I went to get my ideas straight, and put down the heads
on paper. I thought I wouldn’t miss the air, though, so set open my
porthole window, which as I told you is about a foot across, and set
to work--as I write, this blessed porthole is about a yard away from my
right ear, and perhaps two feet above my head. Well, I was just getting
into swing with my work, when suddenly a great pitch, and kerswash! in
comes all of a wave that could squeeze through my porthole, right on
to my ear and shoulder, over my desk, drenching all my papers,
lucifer-match boxes, hair-brushes, wideawake, tobacco-pouch and other
chattels, and flooding all of my floor which my water-jug had left dry.
I bolted to the porthole and closed him up before another curious wave
could come prying in, and soon rubbed everything dry again with the help
of the Captain’s cabin-boy, and no harm is done except that I have to
sit with my feet up on my portmanteau while I write. This sheet was
dowsed in my shower-bath this morning, but I laid it on my bed, and it
seems all right now and doesn’t even blot; I shall however envelope it
now with another sheet for safety, as I’m not going to keep my porthole
shut notwithstanding the warning, and I don’t want my letters to you
floated again.
Peruvian, 9th August 1870.
Since I put my last sheet into No. 1 envelope, everything in the good
ship _Peruvian_ has been dancing. The long tables in the saloon, at
which we are always eating and drinking, have been covered with a small
framework, over which the cloth is laid, and which has the effect of
dividing them into three compartments; a sort of trough down each side
in which are the dishes. Notwithstanding these precautions there are
constant catastrophes in the shape of spoons, forks, tumblers, and
sometimes plates, jumping the partitions suddenly as the ship heels
over. The story of the Yankee skipper saying to the lady on his left,
“I’ll trouble you, marm, for that ’ere turkey--” the bird in question
having fled from the table into her lap as he was beginning to serve
it--becomes quite commonplace. How the steward’s men get about with
plates and dishes, goodness knows; but though there is a constant
clatter and smash going on all over the ship I haven’t seen them drop
anything. I am almost the only passenger who hasn’t even had a twinge
of squeamishness, but we muster pretty well considering all things. The
Captain is one of the cheeriest fellows alive, and keeps up the spirits
of all the women. If he sees any one of them who is still about looking
peeky, he whisks her off under his arm and walks her up and down the
deck, where they stagger along together, and the fresh breeze soon
revives the damsel. He is a sort of temporary father to all the girls,
and constantly has, it seems, three or four entrusted to him to take
over or bring back.
Of course there is a great deal of discomfort on board, but I have
visited the steerage and am delighted with the arrangements for feeding,
ventilation, etc. To poor seasick people, however, it must be very
trying. This morning I carried off to my cabin a poor forlorn young
married couple, whom I had noticed on shore at Moville, and afterwards
on board. I am sure they hadn’t been married a week, and they were
evidently ready to eat one another. When I saw them settling down on
a large bench in a covered place amidships where were twenty or thirty
folk, mostly ill, and several men smoking, she with her poor head tied
up tidily in a red handkerchief nestling on to his shoulder, I couldn’t
stand it, and took them off to my cabin, where they could nurse one
another for a few hours’ in peace. We have had a birth too on board, and
mother and child, I am glad to say, are doing well. She is a very nice
woman, I am told by one of the ladies who visits her, the wife of a
school teacher. The baby is to have Peruvian for one of its names. I
have really enjoyed the rough weather much; it has never been more than
half a gale, I believe, though several men have been thrown from the
sofas to the cabin floor, and more or less bruised. The cheery Captain
has comforted us all by announcing that we shall be through the storm
before midnight.
Up the St. Lawrence they say we shall want light summer clothing. If the
weather settles down we are to have an amateur concert on board, which
will be, I take it, very lame on the musical side, but amusing in other
ways.
R------ was entrusted by the Captain with the task of getting it up,
and before we got into rough weather had booked some six or seven
volunteers. I daresay he will be well enough to-morrow morning to go on
with it. My address is of course postponed for the present.
Wednesday.
The Captain was quite right--we sailed clear out of the storm before
midnight yesterday, and though to-day some swell is left, it is so calm
that the saloon tables have quite filled up again at meal-times. I was
of course nailed by the parson for my address in the afternoon, and
placed on one of the flat skylights amidships, as no other equally
convenient and fixed stump could be found. As I know you would sooner
get rubbish of mine than poetry of any one else, I give the outline. “I
was there,” I said, “at their parson’s request, to talk, but it seemed
to me that in the grand scene we were in, the great waves, the bright
sky, the free breezes, could talk to them more eloquently than human
lips. We were wont to use proverbs all our lives without realising their
meaning. ‘We’re all in the same boat’ had never impressed me till now.
Our week’s experience showed us before all things that the first duty
of those in the same boat was to help, comfort, and amuse the rest. If I
could do either I should be glad. What were we to talk about? (Shouts of
‘Canada.’) Well we would come to Canada, but first a word or two of the
old country they were leaving. Love of our birthplace, otherwise called
patriotism, is one of the strongest and noblest passions God has planted
in man’s heart. You have a great birthright as Englishmen, are members,
however humble, of the nation which has spread free speech and free
thought round the world, which was the first to declare that her
flag never should fly over a slave. Fellow-countrymen of Wycliffe,
Shakespeare, Milton. Wherever you go cherish these memories, be loyal
to the old country, keep a soft place in your heart for the land of your
birth. You are now making the passage from the old world to the new,
enjoying one of those rare resting-places which God gives us in our
lives. It is time for bracing up the whole man for new effort, for
casting off old, bad habits. One strong resolution made at such times
often is the turning-point in men’s lives. As to the land you are going
to, Remember you are getting a fresh start in life and all will depend
on yourselves. In the old land there is often not enough work for strong
and willing hands; in the new there are a hundred openings, and in all
more work than hands. One thing wanted is honest, hard work. Whatever
your hands find to do, do it with all your might, and you are sure of
comfort and independence. Your new home is England’s eldest child and
has a great destiny to work out. Be loyal therefore and true to your
birthplace, keeping old memories alive and giving her a share of your
love; be loyal to your new home, giving her your best work; above all,
be loyal and true to yourselves and you shall not be false to any man or
any land.” This, spread over half an hour, was my talk.
When I had finished I called on the Captain, who warned them against
drink in a straightforward sailor’s speech. Then a grizzled old boy,
who had been calling out “That’s true” whenever I spoke of hard work,
scrambled up on the skylight and told them that he had come out thirty
years ago from England with nine shillings in his pocket and seven
children. He had given each of his daughters fifteen hundred dollars on
their marriage, and helped each of his sons into a farm, and had a farm
of his own, which he was going back to after visiting his old home in
Cornwall. All this he had done by hard work. He was a blacksmith, but
would turn his hand to anything. Times were just as good now as then,
and every one of them might do the same. This was a splendid clencher to
the nail I had tried to drive in. The parson wound up with more advice
as to liquor, and an account of how well the sixteen hundred he had
already sent out had done. The whole was a great success, and we all
went off to dinner in the cabin in high spirits. If the fair weather
lasts we shall see land to-morrow afternoon. To-morrow night we are to
have our concert. My young couple have turned up trumps: he plays the
old piano in the saloon famously, being an excellent musician, and she
sings, they say, nicely when not sea-sick. The Canadians on board assure
him he will be caught up as an organist directly to help out his other
means of livelihood. Then for Friday we are to have “Box and Cox” in the
cabin, played by the Captain and R------, who knows the part of
Cox perfectly already, having played it at Cambridge. Mrs. Bouncer has
not yet been fixed on, but a nice little Canadian girl will, I think,
play it.
Tuesday evening.
We had a fog this morning which lost us a couple of hours, seeing
however, as compensation, a fog rainbow--a colourless arch, which as you
looked over the side seemed to spring from the two ends of the ship. As
the fog cleared away and we went ahead we saw an iceberg to the north,
which soon looked like a great white lion lying on the horizon. During
the day, which has been wonderfully bright and cold, we have seen
several more icebergs and a lot of whales, one of which came quite
close to the ship. We sighted land about seven, and in six miles more
we should have passed into the Bay of St. Lawrence, when a rascally fog
came on and forced us to lay-to. The Captain can’t leave the deck, so we
didn’t have our concert, and we are all going to bed anxious to hear the
screw at work again.
Friday.
We lay-to all last night, the jolly Captain up on the bridge, to watch
for any lifting of the fog, so that he might go ahead at once; but the
fog wouldn’t lift, and so we lay until eight this morning. Just before
breakfast it cleared, and away we went, and soon entered the strait
between Newfoundland and Labrador. By the time we had done breakfast
we were running close by a huge iceberg, like a great irregular wedding
cake, except near the water, where the colour changed from sugary white
into the most delicious green. There were nine other icebergs in sight
to the north, and a number of others round us, just showing above the
water, one like a great ichthyosaurus creeping along the waves, or a
white bear with a very long neck. Had we gone on last night it would
have been a perilous adventure. Soon afterwards we sighted the _North
American_, a companion ship belonging to the same Company, running some
miles in front of us to the north. We had a most exciting race, coming
abreast of her about twelve, and communicating by signals. Then we drew
ahead, and shall be in Quebec nearly a day before her. Then we played
shovel-board on deck, the air getting more balmy every minute as we drew
out of the ice region. We had a grand gathering of emigrants amidships,
and sung hymns, “Jesus, lover of my soul,” and others, with a few
words from G------, the busy parson, who has recovered from his long
sea-sickness at last, and is a famous fellow. The concert of the
Peruvians came off with a great _eclat_ after dinner. They put me in the
chair, and I introduced the performers with a slight discourse about the
Smith family (the Captain’s name is Smith), and at the end they voted
thanks to me, imparting the great success of the voyage to my remarkable
talent for making folk agree and pull together--very flattering, but
scarcely accurate. Then somebody discovered that it was a glorious
moonlight, so up we all went, and very soon there was a fiddler and a
dance on deck, which is only just over. We are well in the Gulf of St.
Lawrence, and all going as well as possible.
Mouth of the St. Lawrence.
I am much pleased with the specimens of Canadians whom we have on
board. There are some twenty of them, with their wives, daughters, and
small boys. They are a quiet, well-informed, pleasant set of men,
and ready and pleased to talk of their country and her prospects. My
conversation runs to a great extent, as you may suppose, on the chances
of farming in Canada West, which is the part of the colony with the
greatest future, and I am much pleased with what I hear. Any man with a
capital of from £2000 to £3000 may do very well, and make money quite as
fast as is good for him, if he will only keep steady and work; and the
life is exceedingly fascinating for youngsters.
There is a very nice fellow on board, a gentleman in the conventional
sense, who is returning from a run to Gloucestershire to see his
friends. He has been out for seven years only, two of which he spent as
an apprentice with a farmer, learning his trade. He is quite independent
now, and I would not wish to meet a better specimen of a man.
I doubt whether you, being so orderly a party, would quite appreciate
what appears to be the favourite form of pleasuring amongst the
up-country farmers, but I own that it would have suited my natural
man down to the ground. Half a dozen of them, in the bright, still
wintertime, will agree that they haven’t seen Jones for some weeks, so
will give him “a surprise.” Accordingly they all start from their own
houses so as to meet at his farm about 9.30 or 10 o’clock--the time he
would be going to bed.
They drive over in sledges, each taking his wife, sister, or sweetheart,
a good hamper of provisions and plenty of buffalo robes. Jones finds his
yard full of neighing horses and sledges as he is going to bed. If he
has already gone they knock him up. They then take possession of his
house and premises. The men litter down their horses, the women light
his fire and lay the supper, the only absolute rule being, that Jones
and his family and servants do nothing at all.
They all sit down to supper and then dance till they are tired, and
then the women go to bed; and the men, if there are no beds for them,
as generally happens, roll themselves in their buffalo robes and go to
sleep. In the morning they breakfast, and then start away home again
over the snow in their sledges, after the men have cut up firewood
enough to keep Jones warm for a week.
There is magnificent trout and salmon fishing, and deer, wolf, and bear
shooting, for those who like to seek it in the backwoods, and plenty of
time for sport when the farm work is over, or in the winter. At the big
towns, such as Montreal and Toronto, there is plenty of society,
and evidently cultivated society, though young Guardsmen may speak
shudderingly of colonists.
Box and Cox, by the way, went off very well considering that the
Captain, who played Box, had been up on the bridge almost the whole of
the two previous nights, and consequently did not quite know his part.
Sunday 14th.
Last night we danced on deck till nearly eleven under the most lovely
soft moon I have ever seen. This morning we are running up the St.
Lawrence along the southern bank, the northern being dim in the extreme
distance. There is a long continuous range of hills covered entirely
with forest, except just along the water’s edge, where it has been
cleared by the French-Canadian settlers. They live along the shore, too
close, I should say, to the water line for comfort; but as their chief
occupation is fishing, I have no doubt they have good reasons for their
selection. There is scarcely a quarter of a mile for the last twenty
or thirty miles, I should say, in which there is not a cottage, but the
villages are far between. The people are a simple, quiet folk, living
just as their fathers lived, happy, clean, contented, and stationary.
This last quality provokes the English of Upper Canada dreadfully, who
complain that the French make everything they require at home, and buy
nothing whatever which contributes to the revenue of the Dominion except
a little cheap tea. However, there is much to be said for the Frenchmen,
and I am very glad that our English people have constantly before them
the example of such a self-sufficing and unambitious life. In two or
three hours, probably before our morning service is over, the pilot will
be on board with papers, and we shall know what has been doing in the
great outside world. I was thinking of telegraphing to you, but as the
Company telegraph, and publish our arrival “all well” in the English
papers, it seems scarcely worth while.
The pilot has just come on board and brought us Canadian papers with
copies of telegrams, and general vague rumours of terrible reverses for
France. I always looked for them, as you know. This frightful reign
of eighteen years, begun in perjury and bloodshed, and continued by
constant pandering to the worst tendencies of France, must have taken
the power and heart out of any nation. I pity the poor Canadians who
still hold themselves more French than anything else, as indeed they
are. They gather on deck and tell one another that the news is German,
that it is all mere rumour. They will find it too true in another day or
two. I am very glad to hear that the Orleans princes are now to go back.
They are a family of very gallant and able gentlemen, and ought to be
with France at this moment. Wrong as I think her, I hope she may soon be
able to rally, shake off the charlatans whom she has allowed to misrule
her, and conclude an honourable peace. The pilot-boat went back at once,
and when she lands our safe arrival will be telegraphed at once, so that
I hope you may see it before to-morrow evening--if you only know where
to look in the newspaper. I often think how very different those short
announcements at the head of the Shipping news will seem to me in the
future.
“Allan Line. The _Peruvian_ arrived off Father Point yesterday. All
well.”
Wednesday.
Events have been crowding us during the last thirty-six hours--bless
me, I mean the last sixty hours--I had positively written Tuesday
instead of Wednesday at the top of this. I let my watch run down on the
_Peruvian_, as it was too provoking to have to put it back thirty-five
minutes every morning. Since then time has gone all whiz! however, I
shall pick up the time now and get to my bearings, at least I shall try.
Well, all Sunday afternoon we ran up the glorious St. Lawrence, past
the mouths of what we should call big rivers, past the Canadian
watering-places, past one long straggling village except where the hills
are too steep or the soil absolutely barren. The view is not unlike many
Scotch ones, substituting scrub or stunted forest for heather. This of
course is a great disadvantage in a picturesque point of view, but it is
more than compensated by the great river. I am very glad I came to the
new world up the St. Lawrence. Nothing could have brought the startling
contrast of the old and new world so vividly home to me as this steaming
literally day after day up the stream, and finding it still at 700 miles
from the mouth two miles broad, with anchorage for the largest ships
that float. We went the round of the ship with the Captain after dinner,
to see the wonderful detail of the storerooms, and the huge fire-system
which goes glowing on through all the voyage. The sight of the
twenty-five great furnaces glowing, and consuming fifty-two tons of coal
a day, quite scared several of the ladies, who seemed to think that the
Peruvian was flying, I should say sailing, presumptuously in the face
of Providence not to have caught fire during the voyage. Luckily we were
within a few hours of port, so their anxiety was not of long duration.
I went to bed for the last time in my crib on the top of the drawers,
leaving word for the quartermaster to call me when we were getting near
Quebec. Accordingly I was roused at about three from one of the sleeps
without a turn even (by reason that there is no room to turn) which one
gets on board ship, and scuffled up on deck in my trousers and fur coat
to find myself in the most perfect moonlight rounding the last point
below Quebec. Then up went three rockets, and as we slacked our speed
at the side of the wharf right opposite the citadel, two guns were fired
and the voyage of the Peruvian was over. My packing was all done, so
while the vessel was being unladen I went quietly to bed again and slept
for another two or three hours amid all the din. Between six and seven
I turned out again and had a good breakfast on board, after which came
leave-takings, and then those of us who were not going on by train and
were ready to start, went on board a little tug ferry-boat and were
paddled across to Quebec. I have sent a small map to show you how the
land lies. Our ferry-boat took us over from Port Levi to the quay just
under the Citadel along the line I have dotted, and we at once chartered
two carriages to visit the falls of Montmorency, to which you will see a
line drawn on the map and which is about six miles from Quebec. Oh, the
air! You know what it is when we land at Dieppe, or at Brussels, or
Aix. Well, all that air is fog, depressing wet blanket compared to this
Canadian nectar. I really doubt whether it would not be almost worth
while to emigrate merely for the exquisite pleasure of the act of living
in this country.
Montreal, 19th August 1870.
I must get on with my journal or shall fall altogether astern--you
have no idea how hard it is even to find time to write a few lines home;
however if I can only make up the time to-day I hope to keep down the
arrears more regularly hereafter. We had a long day of sightseeing in
and about Quebec. First we drove down to the Montmorency Falls, 220 feet
high and very beautiful, then back to the Citadel, which rises some 600
or 700 feet right above the river--a regular little Gibraltar;
then we went off to the Heights of Abraham, at the back of the
Citadel, where Wolfe fought his battle and was killed after scaling the
cliffs in the early morning. Then we drove down into the town, and had
lunch at a restaurant, and walked about to see the place. Well worth
seeing it is; a quaint, old, thoroughly French town of the last century
dropped down into the middle of the new world. In the evening we went
on board the great river steamer, and came away all night up the St.
Lawrence to Montreal. There were 1000 passengers on board, every one of
whom had an excellent berth--mine was broader and lighter than that on
the _Peruvian._ We were not the least crowded in the splendid saloon
(some 150 feet long), and the open galleries running all round the ship
in two tiers. I preferred the latter, though there was music, Yankee and
Canadian, in the saloon, and spent my evening till bedtime out in the
stern gallery looking at the most superb moonlight on the smooth water
you can conceive. We had a small English party there, and there were
half a dozen constantly changing groups round us. The girls have
evidently much more freedom than at home, at least more than they had
in our day--two or three would come out with as many young men, and sit
round in a ring. The men lighted cigars, and then they would all set to
work singing glees, songs, or what not, and chaffing and laughing away
for half an hour perhaps, after which they would disappear into the
saloon. There was a regular bar on board at which all manner of cool
drinks were sold. We tried several, which I thought, I must say, very
nasty, especially brandy-smash. After a most comfortable night I awoke
between five and six as we were nearing Montreal. The city is very fine,
the river still two miles broad, and ocean steamer drawing twenty feet
and more of water able to lie right up against the quay. S------, a
friend of Sir J. Rose’s, a great manufacturer here, whom I had taken to
the “Cosmopolitan,” was in waiting on the landing-place, and took us at
once up to his charming house on the hill (the mountain they call it)
at the back of the city. He is a man of forty-three or forty-four; his
wife, a very pleasant woman a little younger, and adopted daughter,
Alice (a very sweet girl of nineteen, just home from an English school),
form the whole family. I can’t tell you how kind they are and how
perfectly at home they have made us. After breakfast we went down to see
the city, got photographed with the rest of the above-named Peruvians,
had a delicious lunch of fried oysters at a luncheon shop kept by a
Yankee, washed it down with a drink called John Collins, a pleasant,
cold, weak, scented kind of gin and water. Sir Geo. Carter and Sir Fras.
Hinks, two of the present Government, both of whom I had met in England,
came to dinner, also Holton the leading senator of the Opposition, and
the two young Roses, one bringing his pretty young wife, and we had a
long and very interesting political talk afterwards. Nothing could have
suited me better, as there are many points of Canadian politics I am
very anxious to get views on. We didn’t get to bed till 12.30, so I had
no time to write. On Wednesday we saw more of the city which I shan’t
attempt to describe till I can sit by you with photographs and explain,
lunched at the Club, of which we have been made honorary members, with
a large party of merchants and other big folk, and then at three were
picked up by Mrs. S.---, who drove us up the river to a place called
Lachine, past the rapids (see Canadian boat-song), “The rapids are near
and the daylight’s past.” Lachine gets its queer name from the first
French Missionaries who started up the St. Lawrence to get to China, and
for some unaccountable reason thought they had reached the flowery land
when they got to this place, so settled down and called it China. The
air was still charming, but the sky was beginning to get less bright,
and Mrs. S---- and A------agreed that there must be a forest burning
somewhere. And so it proved, for in a few hours the whole sky was
covered with a smoke-cloud, light but not depressing, like our fogs, but
still so dense that we could scarcely see across the river. We got back
in time for dinner, to which came Colonel Buller, now commanding the
Rifles here; Hugh Allan, the head of the great firm of ship-owners to
whom the _Peruvian_ and all the rest of the Allan line packets belong;
and several young Canadians. It was very pleasant again, and again I
got a heap of information on Canadian subjects from Allan, who is a
longheaded able old Scotchman, the founder of the immense prosperity of
himself and all his family. He has his private steam yacht and a great
place on a lake near here, wherein is a private telegraph, so that he
can wire all over the world from his own hall. Prince Arthur went to
stay with him when he was out here in the late autumn and spring, and
the Queen wired him every day while he was there. Early next morning
S------,
Miss A------, I, and R------ were off by rail to a station ten or twelve
miles up the river, where we waited till the Montreal market-boat came
down and picked us up to shoot the rapids. We had a very pleasant run
to Quebec, and the shooting the rapids is very interesting, but neither
dangerous nor even exciting. The river widens out perhaps to two and a
half miles in width, and for some mile or mile and a half breaks into
these rapids, which boil and rush along at a great pace, and in quite a
little boat would no doubt keep the steerer and oarsmen on the stretch.
The approach to Montreal under the great Victoria Bridge, two miles
long, is very noble. We got back to breakfast at ten, and afterwards
went up the mountain at the back of the town, but the haze from the
burning forest quite spoiled the view. The carriage is announced, so I
must close.
Montreal, 20th August 1870.
I hurried up my letters yesterday, so as to bring my journal down to
the day I was writing on, fearing lest otherwise I should never catch
the thread again. I doubt whether I told you anything about this very
fine city, in the suburbs of which we are stopping, and which we leave
to-day. Well, I scarcely know how to begin to give you an idea of it. It
isn’t the least like an English or indeed any European town, the reason
being, I take it, that it has been built with the necessity of meeting
extremes of heat and cold, which we never get. Except in the heart of
the city, where the great business streets are, there are trees along
the sides of all the thoroughfares--maples, which give real shade, and
are in many places indeed too thick, and too near the houses for comfort
I should say--as near as the plane-tree was to our drawing-room window
at 33. This arrangement makes walking about very pleasant to me, even
when the thermometer stands at 90° in the shade as it did yesterday.
Then instead of a stone foot-pavement you have almost everywhere boards,
timber being the most plentiful production of the country. Walking along
the boards in the morning you see at every door a great lump of ice,
twenty pounds weight or so, lying there for the maid to take in when
she comes out to clean. This is supplied by the ice merchants for a
few shillings a year. The houses are square, built generally of a fine
limestone found all over the island (Montreal is an island thirty-six
miles long by nine wide), and have all green open shutter-blinds, which
they keep constantly shut all day, as in Greece, to keep out the heat,
and double windows to keep out the cold. The roofs are generally covered
with tin instead of tiles or slates, and all the church steeples, of
which there are a very large number, are tinned, as you remember we saw
them in parts of Austria and Hungary. There are magnificent stores of
dry goods, groceries, etc., but scarcely any shops in our sense. No
butcher, milkman, greengrocer, etc., calls at the door, and the ladies
have all to go down to the market or send there. Nothing can be better
than the living, but Mrs. S------ complains that it is very hard work
for _hausfraus_, and I have heard Lady K------ say the same thing. This
house is in one of the shaded avenues on the slopes of the mountain,
two miles I should say from the market. Mrs. S------- drives down every
marketday and buys provisions, market-days being twice a week, but the
stalls are open on other days also, so that if a flood of company
comes in on the intermediate days, the anxious housewife need not be
absolutely done for. The living is as good as can be, not aspiring
to first-rate French cookery, but equal to anything you find in good
English houses. Prices are very reasonable except for fancy articles of
clothing, etc. Furs, which you would expect to find cheap, are at least
as high as in London, and R------made an investment in gloves for which
he paid six shillings a pair. The city is the quietest and best-behaved
I ever was in. We dined at the mess of the 60th Rifles last night, and
walked home through the heart of the city at 10.30. Every one had gone
to bed, apparently, for there wasn’t a light in fifty houses and we
literally met no one--not half a dozen people certainly in the whole
distance. Altogether I am very much impressed with the healthiness of
the life, morally and physically, and can scarcely imagine any country I
would sooner start in were I beginning life again.
Tuesday morning, 23rd August 1870.
Well, to continue, on Saturday we broke up from Montreal, having I
think seen very thoroughly all the persons and things best worth seeing
in the place. Our host had arranged that we should go and spend Sunday
with Mr. Hugh Allan, the head of the family which has established the
line of mail steamers to Liverpool and Glasgow. He has been forty years
out here, and when he came Montreal had only 17,000 inhabitants, now it
has 150,000; there was scarcely water for a 200 ton ship to lie at the
wharf, now you can see steamers of 2000 tons and upwards always there.
Hugh Allan is evidently a very rich man now. He has a big house on the
mountain behind Montreal, and this place where I am now writing from, on
Memphremagog Lake, which if you have a good map, you will find half
in Canada and half in the New England state of Vermont. It is a lovely
inland sea, about thirty-five miles long and varying from one to three
miles broad. Mr. Allan’s house, where he entertained Prince Arthur in
the spring, stands on the top of a high well-wooded promontory, about
half-way up. It is a good, commodious, gentleman’s house, with deep
verandahs, thoroughly comfortable, but without pretence or show of any
kind. There is a large wooden out-building called the Hermitage, about
one hundred yards off, divided entirely into bedrooms, so that there is
room for lots of guests besides the family, seven or eight of whom are
here. In another building there is an American bowling-alley, and an
excellent croquet ground before the house. Mr. Allan keeps a nice steam
yacht, which runs about the lake daily with any one who likes to go, and
there are half a dozen rowing boats, so time need not hang heavily on
the most restless hands. I accepted the invitation, as a few days at
Memphremagog is evidently considered the thing to do by all Canadians,
and the last twenty miles or so of the railway to Newport (Vermont), the
place at the foot of the lake at which you embark, has only just been
finished, right through the forest, so that it was a good chance of
seeing the beginnings of colonial life in the bush. And I am very glad
that I did come, for certainly if the journey (120 miles altogether) had
been planned for the purpose, it couldn’t have been more interesting.
After leaving Montreal we travelled I should say for from thirty to
forty miles through reclaimed country, dotted with French villages and
the homesteads of well-to-do farmers. Then we gradually slipped into
half-cleared woods, and then into virgin forest. Presently we came
across a great block of the forest on fire, but in broad daylight the
sight is not the least grand, though unpleasant from the smoke, and
melancholy from the waste and mischief which the fires do. I think I
told you in my last that the forests about Ottawa, the capital of the
Dominion, were on fire last week. The fire became so serious that great
fears were entertained for the town, the militia and volunteers were
called out, and a special train with fire-engines was sent up from
Montreal. Scores of poor settlers were in the streets, having with
difficulty escaped with their lives, and last of all several wretched
bears trotted out of the burning woods into the town. The fire we passed
through was not at all on this scale, and didn’t seem likely to get
ahead. There were the marks of fires of former years on all sides in
these forests. Tall stems by hundreds, standing up charred and gaunt out
of the middle of the bright green maple underwood, which is fast growing
up round them, and in a very short time makes the tangle as thick as
ever. Before long we came to small clearings of from three to four
acres, on each of which was a rough wooden shanty, with half a dozen
wild, brown, healthy-looking children rolling and scrambling about it,
and standing up in their single garments to cheer the train. On these
plots the trees had all been felled about two feet from the ground, and
the brushwood cleared away, and there were crops of Indian corn, oats,
or buckwheat growing all round the stumps. Then we came to plots which
had been occupied longer, where the shanty had grown into a nice-sized
cottage, with a good-sized outhouse near. Here all the stumps had been
cleared, and the plot divided by fences, and three or four cows would
be poking about. Then we came to a fine river and ran along the bank,
passing here and there sawmills of huge size, and stopping at one or two
large primitive villages, gathered round a manufactory. In short, in
the day’s run we saw Canadian life in all its phases, ending with a
delicious twelve miles’ run up the lake in Mr. Allan’s steam yacht, with
the whole sky flickering with Northern lights, which shot and played
about for our special delight. Our railway party were Mr.
Allan; Mr. and Mrs. S------, and Miss B------, their adopted daughter;
General Lindsay, whom I knew well in England and like very much; Colonel
Eyre, his military secretary, and ourselves. Then there are eight
children here. “We had a most luxurious car, with a little sitting-room
in which we each had an easy chair, and there were two most
enticing-looking little bedrooms, everything as clean and neat as you
could have it, and we could walk out on to a platform at either end to
look at the view. There was a boy also in attendance in a little sort
of spare room where the luggage went, who ministered any amount of
iced water to any one who called. This is decidedly the most luxurious
travelling I ever had, but then the car was the private one of the
manager of the Grand Trunk Railway; and the democratic cars in which
every one else went, and in which indeed we had to travel for the last
few miles, were very different affairs. Fancy my intense delight on
Sunday morning, as I walked from the Hermitage up to the house to
breakfast through some flower-beds, to see two humming-birds, poising
themselves before flower after flower while probing and trying the
blooms with their long bills, and then springing back with a stroke of
their lovely little tails, and whisking off to the next bloom. They
were green and brown, not so lovely in colour as many you have seen in
collections, but exquisite as eye need ask to look at. The humming-birds
have been certainly my greatest natural history treat as yet, not
excepting the whales. I had seen a whale before, a small one, in the
Hebrides, and I had never seen a hummingbird except stuffed; moreover
I expected to see whales, but not humming-birds. We saw a fine great
bald-headed eagle to-day, too, sailing over the lake, but his flight was
not anything like so fine as those we saw soaring over the Iron Gates as
we went spinning down the Danube nine years ago. We have a very charming
visit here steaming about the lake, driving along the banks, playing
croquet and bowls and billiards, and laughing, chaffing, and loafing to
any extent. The family are very nice, and I hope he will soon be made a
baronet and one of the first grandees of the Dominion. To-morrow morning
at five we start for Boston in the steam yacht, which takes us down to
Newport at the end of the lake. So by the evening I shall perhaps get
a letter from you. How I do thirst for home news after three weeks’
absence.
Elmwood, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 25th August 1870.
I forget just where I left off, whether I had brought my journal up to
our leaving Memphremagog or not. The last day there was as pleasant
as the rest. The young folks played croquet and American bowls all the
morning, while I lay on the grass watching for humming-birds and talking
occasional politics to any one who would join me. At about twelve a
retired judge, Day by name, who lives four or five miles off, drove over
with a member of the Government (I forget his name) who was to start
from the pier below the house in the lake steamer. Mr. Allan owns this
steamer, which stops at his pier whenever he runs up a flag; so you
see the privileged classes are not extinct by any means in the British
dominion in the new world. Now the Judge, having a seat in his light
sort of phaeton, proposed to drive me over to the post-office, about
four miles off, where he was going, and to bring me back to luncheon.
So I embarked behind his two strong little trotting nags and had a most
interesting drive. The roads were not worse than many Devonshire lanes,
and where the pitches were steepest, the stout little nags made nothing
of them.
The views of the lake were exquisite, and the Judge one of the
pleasantest of men. He had been employed in 1865 on a mission to
Washington, and gave me very graphic accounts of his interviews with
Lincoln and the other leading men there, and confirmed many of my own
views as to the comparative chances of the two great sections of our
race in the new world in the future. He is less apprehensive of Canada
joining the United States than most men of his standing, and I think
has good reason for his confidence. Material interest will perhaps for
a time (or rather, after a time, for at present it is very doubtful on
which side they weigh) sway in the direction of annexation to the United
States, but the ablest and most energetic of the younger men of the
cultivated classes are so strongly bent on developing a distinct
national life, that I expect to see them carry their country for
independence rather than annexation, when the time comes, if it ever
should, of a final cutting of the ropes which bind them to us. After
luncheon we went off in the steam yacht to a bay in the lake, and then
in row boats four or five miles up the bay into the heart of the hills,
where we saw bald-headed eagles, and black and white king-fishers
five times the size of ours, and after a very interesting and pleasant
excursion got back to dinner, finishing the evening with dancing. At
five next morning we heard the steamer’s whistle calling us. The young
ladies were up to give us a cup of coffee and parting good words, and
then we-steamed down for Newport, where we were to take the rail through
the Connecticut valley to Boston. On the Newport wharf which joins the
station we said good-bye to Allan and Stephen, and shall carry away most
charming memories of our stay in Canada. General Lindsay and Eyre went
with us, and their companionship made the journey very agreeable, though
it was as hot as the Lower Danube, and the dust more uncomfortable and
dirtying than any we have at home. Most part of the way the soil is
as light and sandy as that about Dorking, and the trains seem to raise
greater clouds of it.
The greater part of the journey was along the banks of the Merrimac, a
fine river with as much water as the Thames at Richmond, I should
say, but spread over a bed generally twice as broad. We saw the White
Mountains at a distance on our left, and passed through a number of
flourishing towns. The thing that struck me most was the apparent fusion
into one class of the whole community. As you know, every one goes into
the same long carriages, holding from sixty to eighty people. Of these
there were four or often five on our train, and I often passed through
them (as you may do, up the middle, without disturbing the passengers,
who sit in pairs with their faces to the engine on each side of the
passage), as there was a great deal of local traffic, seventy people
often getting out at a station, I thus saw really a very considerable
number of people on this first day in the States, and certainly should
have been exceedingly puzzled to sort them in the broadest way, either
into rich and poor, gentlemen or ladies (in the conventional sense) and
common people, or any other radical division. I certainly saw at some
stations children running about without shoes, and workmen in as
dirty blouses as those of Europe; but in the trains they were all well
dressed, quiet, self-respecting people, without any pretence to polish,
or any approach to vulgarity. The bad taste in women’s dress, which I am
told to expect elsewhere, does not certainly prevail in New England. All
the women wore neat short dresses, with moderate trimmings according to
taste; but I did not see an extravagant garment or, I am bound to add, a
really pretty one along the whole line. On the whole I thought the women
as good looking as any I have ever travelled amongst, but paler and
sadder, or at any rate quieter, than a like number of Englishwomen.
Once or twice men in stove-pipe hats (the ordinary tile of so-called
civilisation), and wearing perhaps better cloth and whiter linen than
the average, got in, but not one whom you would have picked out as a
person bred and brought up in a different way, and occupying a station
above or apart from the rest, as you see in every train in England.
It may have been chance, but certainly it was startling. Then another
surprise. They are certainly the least demonstrative people so far
as strangers are concerned that I have ever been amongst. I had the
prevailing idea that a Yankee was a note of interrogation walking about
the world, and besides craving for all sorts of information about you,
was always ready to impart to you the particulars of his own birth,
parentage, and education, and his opinion on everything, “from Adam’s
fall to Huldy’s bonnet.” Well, I left our party purposely several times
on the journey to try the experiment of sitting on one of the small
seats carrying two only with a Yankee. In not one single case did either
of those I sat by say a single word to me, and when I commenced they
just answered my question very civilly and relapsed into total silence.
I may add that this first experience has been confirmed since, both in
street and railway cars.
We got to Boston at about seven, and then had our first experience of
the price of things here. It is only four miles out to Lowell’s, who
lives on the other side of Cambridge, but we were obliged to pay five
dollars for a carriage to get out there. We could get nothing but a
great handsome family coach with two horses, and in that, accordingly,
out we lumbered. Cambridge is a very pretty suburb of Boston, the centre
point of it being Harvard College, consisting of four or five large
blocks of red brick building and a stone chapel, standing in the midst
of some fine trees. Elmwood Avenue in which Lowell lives is about half
a mile beyond the College--a broad road shaded on both sides by tows
of trees planted as in the Boulevards, as indeed is done along all the
roads. The Professor’s house is a good, roomy, wooden one standing in
the midst of some thirty acres of his own land, on which stand many good
trees, and especially some pre-revolutionary English elms of which he is
very proud. He was sitting on the piazza of the house with his wife and
Holmes’ brother, taking a pipe and not the least expecting us. The Irish
maid told us to “_sit right down_” while she went to fetch him. In a
minute he and his wife came and put us at our ease, explaining that no
letter had ever come since we had landed. Mabel was away at the sea for
a few days.
Elmwood Avenue, Cambridge, 31s£ August 1870.
I managed with some difficulty and scramble to get off a letter to
you by yesterday’s post, which _ought_ to go by steamer from New York
to-day, bringing my narrative up to our arrival here. We found Lowell on
his verandah with his wife and friend, and sat there talking till ten. I
am not the least disappointed with him, Henry Cowper notwithstanding. I
have never met a more agreeable talker, and his kindness to me is quite
unbounded. Then he has not a grain of vanity in his composition, but is
as simple and truthful as the best kind of boy. The house is a wooden
one, as four-fifths of the houses in New England are. It is roomy, airy,
and furnished with quaint old heavy pieces, bureaus like ours, and solid
heavy little mahogany tables, all dating from the last century. The
plate in the same way is all of the Queen Anne shape, like your little
tea-service and my grandmother’s milk jugs and tea-pots which
George has. The plainness and simplicity of the living, too, is most
attractive. We breakfast at 8.30, beginning with porridge, and following
up with eggs, some hot dish, corn cakes, toast and fruit. Then there is
no regular meal till six--a terribly late and fashionable dinner hour
here, as the prevalent hour is two or three--and afterwards we have a
cup of coffee and crackers (good plain biscuits) and a glass of toddy
at ten. Miss Mabel and others have given us a desperate idea of the
difficulties as to service, but they certainly do not exist in this
establishment just now. The principal servant that we see is an Irish
girl, Rose by name, who reminds me of one of Mrs. Cameron’s servants
except that she is far more diligent. The ingenious way in which she hid
away all my wardrobe in the ample cupboards and recesses of the bureau
in my room was a perfect caution, and she whisks away my things and gets
them beautifully washed, wholly refusing to allow me to pay for them.
The parlour-maid is a little, slight, ladylike girl, who certainly is
not a first-rate waiter, but then there is no need of one. The dinner
is confined to one thing at a time--soup, sometimes fish, a joint, or
chickens, and a sweet. The Professor opens his own wine at the table and
passes it round, and very good it is, but one scarcely needs it in this
climate. A cook whose acquaintance I have also made, and an Irishman who
has been thirty years on the place in a roomy cottage, and attends to
the cows, garden, and farm of thirty acres, complete the establishment.
Mrs. Lowell, who is a very nice, quiet, and clever woman, is very fond
of flowers, and manages to keep a few beds going about the house,
and there are a number of very fine trees, so that though there is no
pretence to the neatness and finish of English grounds and garden, the
place has a thoroughly homely, cultivated atmosphere and look which is
very attractive, and the whole town of Cambridge seems to be made up of
just such houses. We have lost no time in lionising men and places.
On Thursday we took the car into Boston and ascended the monument on
Bunker’s Hill, 290 steps up a dark spiral staircase. Lowell had never
been up it before, nor indeed has any native as far as I can find
out. The view at the top repays you thoroughly for the grind with the
thermometer at eighty in the shade. Boston Harbour, where the tea was
thrown out of the English ships in 1775, and> the whole town and suburbs
lie below you like a map, and are very striking. After descending we
hunted up a number of people, including young Holmes, our Colonel,
who was as charming as ever, absorbed in his law at which he is doing
famously, and resolved in his first holiday to revisit England. He came
out to dine, and fraternised immensely with R----, and with him a young
Howells, the editor of the Atlantic Monthly, whom Conway had brought to
our house years ago, and I had entirely forgotten. However he is a very
nice fellow, and I don’t think I betrayed my obliviousness. Next day,
Friday, we had a long country drive in the morning through broad avenues
lined with three fascinating wooden houses, each standing with plenty of
elbow-room in its own grounds, up to a wooded hill from which we got
a splendid view of the city. Then I went into Boston and called on the
Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, who is one of the best talkers I ever
met, and quite worthy to be the Colonel’s father. He is one of Motley’s
oldest friends, and deeply grieved, as all good men here, at his recall.
His chief talk was of his memories of his English visits, and the
folk he met, and so I find it with all the best men and women here.
Notwithstanding the bitterness which our press created during the war, I
am convinced that with a very little tact and judicious handling on our
side the international relations may be easily made all we can wish as
far as New England is concerned. Afterwards I sauntered about the town,
looking at some good statues in their park (Boston Common), and letting
the place sink into me. The Common is about the size, I should say, of
Green Park, but of a regular shape. It lies on the side of a hill at the
top of which are the State House and other public buildings and
private houses. It is well wooded with fine American and English elms
(pre-revolutionary, they say, but I don’t believe it. They are not used
to our elms, and I doubt whether any of these are 100 years old) on the
upper part and along the sides; the middle is a great playground for the
boys, who are diligent there all day at base-ball, our rounders, which
I should think must spoil the enjoyment of the place for ladies and
children. However they can always take to the pretty gardens at the
lower end, in which is a very fine equestrian statue of Washington, and
one of Everett by Story, by no means fine in my opinion. How should it
be, when he insisted on being taken with his arm right up in the air,
his favourite attitude in speaking, and stands up in that attitude
in ordinary buttoned frock coat and trousers? Everett has not been a
trustworthy public man to my mind, and is simply nothing unless it is
an orator, and I can’t say I think it wise to put him up there on the
palpable stump. But we have made so many mistakes in our public statues
that I suppose it must run in the blood. The best houses in the town,
really charming residences, line the two sides and top of the Common,
and fine stores the bottom. I have never seen a place I would so soon
live in out of England as in one of these houses looking on to Boston
Common. The old business town is being rebuilt just as London--red brick
two or three story houses giving way everywhere to five or six stories
of granite or stone. The town has as old and settled a look and feeling
about it as any I know; but they have few old buildings, and I am afraid
are going to pull down the most characteristic, the old State House,
because it has ceased to be used for public purposes, and its removal
will make a fine broad place and relieve the traffic of several
narrow streets in the heart of the town. It will be a sad pity, and so
unnecessary here, for they might carry it off bodily to any other site.
You know how we have often heard, and wondered, scarce believing, of the
raising bodily of the great hotels, etc., at Chicago. Well, suddenly, in
Boston I came across a great market, three stories high (the upper part
being occupied as houses) and 150 or 200 feet long, as big, say, as
three houses in Grosvenor Square, which they were moving bodily back on
rollers so as to widen the street. There were the wooden ways and
the rollers, and the great block with all its marketing and living
inhabitants lying on them, and already some twelve feet on its journey.
It did not look any the worse for its journey unless it were in the
foundations, where there were a few places which had been filled up, I
saw, with new brickwork. The long pit twelve feet deep which has been
left between the market and the street will now be turned into cellars,
over which the new pavement will pass. On the Saturday we dined with the
Saturday Club at 2.30 P.M., where were all the New England notables now
in town. I sat on the right of Sumner, the State Senator, who was in the
chair, with Boutwell, the Secretary of the Treasury, on my right, and
Emerson on the other side of Sumner. So you may fancy how I enjoyed
the sitting. Emerson is perfectly delightful: simple, wise, and full
of humour and sunshine. The number of good Yankee stories I shall bring
back unless they burst me will be a caution. Forbes, a great Boston
merchant who owns an island seventy-two miles long off the coast close
to Nantucket and Cape Cod, which you will find in the map, came up and
claimed to have seen me for five minutes when I had the small-pox in
1863.
He knows J------ well, and insisted on carrying us off to his island
that night, that we might attend a huge campmeeting on a neighbouring
island on Sunday. So he drove up here with us and we packed--the dear
Professor agreeing that we ought to do it--went down sixty miles by
rail, slept on his yacht, and found ourselves in the morning at his
wharf on the island. Your second letter came to hand from Cromer when we
returned here, and has as usual lighted up my life.
Cambridge, 2nd September 1870.
We are off this afternoon for Newport on our way to New York, and so
south and west. The express man will be here directly for my luggage,
which will be a little curtailed, as these dear kind people insist on
our returning, and leaving all we don’t want in our rooms. So I shall
drop my beaver, leaving it with the most serious admonitions in the
charge of Rose, the Irish girl, who is a character. I will now take up
the thread of my story, merely remarking that what you seem to think
a dull catalogue of small doings at a small watering-place is quite
unspeakably delightful to me away here. On the wharf at Nashont Island
we found the two young F------s, the elder a colonel in the war, and
five months a prisoner in the South, the younger, Malcolm, just left
college. I never saw two finer young men, both of them models of
strength. They had come down to meet us and bathe, so we stopped and
had a splendid header off the wharf and a swim in the bay, after careful
inquiries by R------ as to sharks, to which young F------ replied with
a twinkle in his eye, that they didn’t lose _many_ friends that way. We
walked up to the house after our dip, a large wooden building, with deep
verandahs and sun-blinds, furnished quite plainly, even roughly, but
capable of holding nearly any number of people. We were about eighteen
at breakfast: Mrs. F------ a handsome, clever, elderly lady, born a
Quaker, and with their charm of manner, who made tea for the party, and
on whose right I sat. Opposite her was her husband with Mrs. L------,
the young widow of Lowell’s nephew Charles, the famous soldier, on his
left, and therefore opposite me. On my right, a young woman, a cousin of
the F------s, a Mrs. P------, whose husband sat down towards the end of
the table, the manager of a Western railway, who has given us free
passes over his line. Colonel F------, the eldest son, was Lowell’s
major, and served with distinction in the war, in which he was taken
prisoner, and spent five months in Southern prisons; his wife, a buxom
young woman with very good eyes, is Emerson’s daughter, and her brother,
a bright boy of twenty-two or twenty-three, was near me. There were two
daughters of the family, and two other girls and several boys, all
pleasant and easy in hand; but the gem of the party was the young widow.
She is not actually pretty, but with a face full of the nobleness of
sorrow, which has done its work. I have seldom been more touched than in
watching her gentle, cheerful ways, and her sympathy with all the bright
life around her. Since the war, in which her husband and only brother R.
S------(who commanded the first coloured regiment from Massachusetts,
and was buried under his negroes at Fort Wagner) were killed, she has
devoted herself to the Freedmen, and is Honorary Secretary to the
Society for educating them. After breakfast we started in the yacht for
the neighbouring island, on which the great Methodist camp-meeting was
going on. This Sunday was the great day. They have occupied this island
for some years, and have built there a whole town of pretty little
wooden houses like big Chinese toys, dotted about amongst the trees.
Most of them consist of only one long room, divided by curtains in the
middle. The front half opens to the street, but raised one step above it
is the sitting-room, and the inmates sleep in the back, behind the
curtains. A few houses have a story above; but F------ bought a lot of
photographs for us, which will show you the style of house better than a
page of description. There were literally thousands of people on the
island, upwards of two thousand collected in a huge circular tent in the
middle of the houses, where a preacher was shouting to them. We sat on
the skirts of the congregation and listened for some time, but as he was
only talking wildly about Nebuddah, Positivism, Theodore Parker, and
other heresies and heretics, I was not edified, and got no worship till
he had done, when we all stood up and sang the doxology, which was very
impressive. I was much disappointed at the gathering in a religious
point of view. It was a rare chance for a man with a living word in him,
those thousands of decent, sober, attentive New England men and women.
They told me that in the evening it would be much more interesting, when
there would be great singing of hymns, and many persons would tell how
they came to experience religion as they call it; but we could not stay
for this. The meeting lasts for weeks, and is in fact an excuse for the
gathering at a pretty sea-place in the early autumn of a number of good
folk who would think the ordinary watering-places ungodly, but have a
longing for a break in their ordinary colourless lives. We sailed back
in time for early dinner, meeting on the way huge steamers packed with
passengers for the campmeeting, till they were top heavy. Next day we
spent in, fishing off the rocks for blue-fish, and in a beautiful little
lake of three-quarters of a mile long (one of several in the island) for
bass. I caught a blue fish of nine lbs., the biggest and strongest I
have ever caught, also the only bass which was taken; so I naturally
crowed loudly. The island hours are: breakfast, eight o’clock or half
past eight; dinner, two or three; tea, with cold meat, half-past six or
seven. After tea on both evenings we got into full swing on the war. I
found Mr. F------ and his wife deeply grieved and prejudiced as to our
conduct, our feeling to them as a nation, etc., and set myself to work
hard to remove all this as far as I could. As he is a very energetic and
influential man it is worth taking any amount of trouble about, and I
think I succeeded. In the evenings the young folk sang a number of the
war songs, several composed by or for the negro soldiers, going to
famous airs, and full of humour and pathos. The March through Georgia is
very spirited, and a version of the “John Brown” March, which seems to
have superseded “We’ll hang Jef Davies,” etc., exceedingly touching--at
least I know it was so to me, as all the young folk sang--
He hath sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat,
He is sifting out the souls of men before His judgment seat:
Be swift, my soul, to welcome Him! be jubilant, my feet.
In the beauty of the lilies, Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me.
As he died to make men holy, let us die to make them free.
Our God is marching on.
To think of what that sweet young woman had gone through (the news of
her husband’s death at the head of his brigade, was read by her in a
newspaper), and to see her sitting there calmly and trying to join
in the chorus, was quite too much for me. However, nobody noticed my
emotion. Our last morning, Tuesday, was spent in a famous wild ride over
the island. After breakfast we found seven very excellent riding horses
(three with sidesaddles) at the door. At home there would have been
three grooms, here each horse has a leathern strap fixed to the bit,
which you just buckle round his neck till you want to stop, and then
fasten it to the nearest tree or lamp-post. The whole turn-out is of
course rough, but I don’t wish to see nicer ladies’ hacks than the three
which the two Miss F------s and Mrs. P------ rode. We sailed back in the
yacht to another little port, a few miles north of New Bedford, F------
having provided us as a parting present with free passes over almost all
the Western railways, which will save me at least £20 I should think. He
is Chairman of several, and so can do it without any trouble. We found
the dear Lowells expecting us, and my second letter also waiting, so you
may think that I had a joyful evening. Next day, Wednesday, we drove to
Concord to dine with Judge Hoar, the late Attorney-General of the United
States, a very able, fine fellow. We passed over classic ground, the
very road along which the English troops marched in April 1776 to
destroy the stores, when the first collision of the War of Independence
took place at Concord Bridge and in the village of Lexington. You may
perhaps remember in the second series of the _Biglow Papers_ “Sumthin’
in the Pastoral Line,” in which old Concord Bridge and the monument
which has been put up to commemorate the fight, talk together over the
_Trent_ affair. The Judge’s two sons, very nice young fellows, pulled us
up Concord River, which runs at the bottom of their garden, to the spot,
and on the way (which is very pretty) we saw lots of tortoises sitting
and basking on the stones, and popping in when we approached, and heard
a lot of capital Yankee stories from the Judge. Dinner at three; Emerson
came, and there were two Miss H------s, and a Miss S------, a handsome
girl, sister of the best oar in the Harvard boat of last year. I enjoyed
the dinner and smoke afterwards immensely, and am at last quite sure
that I am doing some good with some of these men, all of whom are
influential, and most of them sadly prejudiced against us still as a
nation. For myself it is quite impossible to express their kindness.
They seem as if they can never do enough for me. When we got back to
Cambridge, we found Miss M------ and Dr. Lowell, brother to James, an
English clergyman, and quite charming too in his way.
New York.