Some principal citizen always comes to the station to meet us in his
carriage, books our luggage by the express (an admirable institution
which saves you all the trouble with luggage), drives us up to his
house, lodges us in the best rooms, has all the best folks in the
neighbourhood to meet us at breakfast, dinner, tea, takes us to the
sights of the neighbourhood, keeps all his servants out of sight when we
are going, so that we can’t give any one a penny or even pay our washing
bills, and finally sends us and our luggage down to the next boat or
steamer, when we are booked already probably by a new friend. Certainly
I never saw, heard of, or could imagine anything like the hospitality.
It is no doubt in some degree, and in individual cases, owing to
the part I took during the war in England, but Democrats as well as
Republicans have been amongst our warmest hosts; in fact, I am fairly
puzzled, and allow the tide at last to carry me along, floating down it
and enjoying everything as well as I can. I think in my last I got to
our start from Boston. No! was it? At any rate, I wrote about our day at
Concord, I know, as to which I shall have to tell you more when we meet.
After we got home Miss Mabel rushed upstairs, got into her photographing
dress, the quaintest turn-out you can conceive, and commenced a series
of groups, etc., which you shall have specimens of when I get back. She
is endless fun; has the most arch way of talking to her father as “sir”
every now and then; is charming with her stepmother; and altogether as
bright a bit of life about a house as you would meet on a summer’s day.
I parted from Lowell and his home feeling that the meeting had been more
than successful. For these eighteen or nineteen years I have revelled
in his books--indeed, have got so much from them and learned to love
the parent of them so well, as I imagined him, that I almost feared
the meeting, lest pleasant illusions should be broken. I found him much
better than his books. We had a pleasant three hours’ rail to Newport,
finding Mr. Field, a Philadelphian banker, at the station with
his carriage. We were friends at once, for he is a famous, frank,
goodlooking, John Bullish man of the world, who has travelled all over
Europe and retained his new world simplicity and heartiness. He drove
us all round the fashionable watering-place, the description of which
I must postpone or I never shall get through (as we say here). His
cottage, as he calls it, in accordance with the fashion here, is a
charming villa, on the most southern point of Newport, close to the
rocks on which the grand Atlantic roll was beating magnificently as we
drove up.
Saturday morning a lot of men came to breakfast, including Colonel
H------, the officer who had been the first to volunteer to take
command of negroes in Virginia, before the New England States even began
mustering them. I was delighted to make his acquaintance, as I knew his
name in my anti-slavery standard as a real, advanced Radical, and I was
anxious to realise that type of Yankee of which I had only seen Lloyd
Garrison in England. He was very fascinating to my mind, and the
most refined man in manners and look I have yet met, but I should
say decidedly a cracked fellow in the good sense. We adjourned to the
spouting rock, just at the point where the surf was beating gloriously,
and as I continued talking with H------, of course I got a ducking by
getting too near this rock, which is hollow underneath, so that it
sends a spout of water up like a huge whale some second or two after the
breaker hits it. The sight was superb, and well worth the payment of an
unstarched waistcoat and shirt. We got home, and I changed at 11.30
or thereabouts, and when I came in to dress for dinner there was my
waistcoat, washed and starched, on the bed. Mrs. Field had heard me
say in joke that I should be out of white waistcoats. We went to the
Episcopal Church on Sunday morning and had a good sermon of a quarter
of an hour, sitting in the pew of an acquaintance of the previous day,
a Mrs. H------ of New York, who drove us about in her handsome carriage,
and insisted on giving me two books--one being extracts from Lincoln’s
_Speeches and Letters_, which I am very glad to have. In the evening
we were sent down to the pier, where we were picked up by the most
magnificent steamer ever seen in the world, I should think, and by
six next morning were running along the north river, one of the many
entrances by sea to New York harbour. The approaches to the city are
superb, but the first view of it disappointed me, the buildings along
the water-side being for the most part poor and almost mean. We found
Hewitt’s carriage waiting, he being out of town for his Sunday, and
drove up through Broadway and Fourth Avenue to his house, which is a
splendid roomy one, belonging to his father-inlaw, Mr. Cooper. The dear
old gentleman, a hearty veteran of seventy-nine, is the founder of the
Cooper’s Institute, a working-man’s college on a large scale. He has
spent nearly a million dollars upon it, and it is certainly the
best institution of the kind I have ever seen. He is one of the most
guileless and sweetest of old men, and I shall have much to tell you of
him. Mr. Hewitt, my friend, who is in partnership with him, and his wife
and family live with the old gentleman. Here I found free admission to
the four best clubs in New York--the Union League, the Century, and
even the Manhattan, a democrat club of which Hewitt is a distinguished
member. The nice brisk woman in the house gave us an excellent
breakfast, and we started for the town about eleven. One of the
first places I went to was Roebuck’s store, where I found him very
flourishing. But I can’t go on to catalogue our doings or shan’t get
this off. As very few folk are in New York, we are off to-day to West
Point up the Hudson, where we stay for a military ball to-morrow night;
on Friday we get to Niagara, and then away west, certainly as far as
Omaha, to see prairies, etc., and possibly to San Francisco. We must
be back here or in New England on the 1st of October, on the 6th is
the Harvard Memorial ceremony, laying the first stone of their memorial
building, on the 11th I am in for an address, and after that shall set
my face homewards. I have looked at myself in the glass at your request
and believe I look fabulous.
Garrison’s Landing, opposite West Point, Friday, 9th September 1870.
I already look wistfully along the pages of my pocket-book which
intervene between this and the beginning of November, and feel very like
bolting home instead of going west. The only moments I have for writing
are early (it is now 6.30) or after I come up to bed, as the dear, good
folk provide occupation for all the rest of the time. Well, we got to
New York on Monday mornings by the East River, and left it on Wednesday
afternoon by the Hudson, having, I think, seen it superficially, so that
I should retain a clear idea of it if I never saw it again. We dined
on Monday at the Union League Club, Tuesday at the Manhattan, going in
afterwards to the Century--all three clubs as complete, I think, as ours
and open to strangers in every corner. We left New York on Wednesday
afternoon with Mr. O------, Chairman of the Illinois Central Railway,
who has this delicious place on the slope of the mountain opposite
West Point. As usual there were carriages at the pier, and all trouble,
expense, etc., has been taken off our hands. Mrs. O------ is the nicest
Yankee lady we have seen (except Mabel), like Mrs. Goschen in face and
charmingly appreciative. Her husband, staunch American, about fifty. The
more fanatic Americans they are the more they seem to like to do for me,
and as I spend the greater part of my time in showing them how mistaken
they must be in their views as to England, else how is it that we didn’t
interfere and get to war, I feel I am doing good work. They take to me,
I can see, apart from my proclivities.
I am obliged to give up poor old Pam, the mercantile community of
England, and the majority of the aristocracy; but when I have made a
Jonah of these, I always succeed in bringing these good, simple,
candid, impulsive fellows to admit that we did them no bad turn in their
troubles. We leave to-day for Niagara, and during the next fortnight I
hardly know how or when I can write.
Clifton Hotel, opposite Niagara Falls, 11th September 1870.
I am glad to find that I shall be able to get off this one more
letter to you by regular post before we plunge away west for nearly
a fortnight. I do so long for you every now and then when there is
something to see which you would specially appreciate, not only then as
you well know, but then specially, in the glorious reaches of the Hudson
near West Point, for instance, where you have all the beauty of the
Scotch Highlands, with a hundred well-kept rich men’s houses, and a
monster hotel or two crowning some high point,--an excellent substitute,
in my view, for the ruined keeps of robber barons on the Rhine,--and
endless steamers and sloops, with their white sails and great tows, as
they call them, of a dozen large flats lashed together and bringing down
lumber and corn from the west, passing up and down; but, above all,
last night, when we went under the light of a glorious full moon and saw
these mighty falls from above, and then went down some 200 steps, and
along under the overhanging cliffs, till we actually got under the end
of the horse-shoe fall on the Canadian side, and looked up and saw
the moon through the falling water. Just as we descended, an American
gentleman and his daughter and an English girl with them came up, to
whom we gave our seats, and when we came back they were still there, so
we told them what we had seen and offered to escort them down. They were
delighted, and “papa” did not object, so down we all went, and so we had
a second treat behind the cataract, and being with these ladies made
me horribly wishful to get you there. The girl (Philadelphian) was very
pretty and simple, so I handed her over to R------, and gave my arm to
the English one. To-day we went across the ferry amid a great turbulence
of waters, and looked up at the descending rivers, to the English Church
on the opposite side. An American bishop preached, and afterwards we
walked on Goat Island, above and between the two falls, and saw such
effects of rainbows, and lilac and green and purple and pure white
surges, as it is utterly impossible to describe, but I shall try to do
it by the help of photographs when I get back. Then we had a bath in the
rush just above the Falls; you have a little room through which a slice
some four feet wide of the water is allowed to rush; you get in at the
side, in the back water, and then take hold of a short rope fixed close
above the rush, and let the waters seize and tear at you, which it does
with a vengeance, tugging as if it would carry off your legs and pull
you in two in the middle. You can get out of it in a moment by just
slewing yourself round, and the sensation is marvellously delicious. I
forget whether you had one of the baths at Geneva, where the blue Rhone
rushes through at about a third of the pace. That is the only bath I
ever remember the least to be compared to this above Niagara. But let me
see, I hadn’t got farther with you than our chateau on the Hudson.
Well, we left it on Friday after breakfast at about nine o’clock, and
travelled away steadily with only twenty minutes’ stop at Albany, where
we dined, and a quarter of an hour at Rochester. The greater part of the
road was decidedly pretty, especially the earlier part which ran along
the banks of the Hudson. We stopped at Rome, Syracuse, and Utica amongst
other places, all busy, stirring places apparently, with their streets
all converging on and open to the line of rail. Every one has to look
out for themselves, and you get in and out of the trains at your own
peril. I have heard of very few accidents, and I don’t believe there are
as many as with us; but I should think a good many people must often
be left behind, as the train starts without any signal, leaving you to
climb in as you can, an easy enough feat for an active man, but scarcely
for any one else. This journey was our first really long one; we did
not get to Suspension Bridge, where we slept, till past midnight, but I
didn’t find it very tiring. There was a drawing-room car on, but I would
not go in it. The other cars are quite comfortable enough, and I like
seeing and being with the people, though they continue to be the most
silent and reserved of any race I have ever been amongst. Next day
(Saturday) just glanced at the Falls; we ran round the west of Lake
Ontario, by Hamilton, to Toronto, the capital of the province, and were
exceedingly struck and pleased with the signs of vigour and prosperity
both in the country and cities. The farming is certainly cleaner and
better than on the American side of the lake, and the towns don’t lose
by comparison with those of the same size over the border. At Toronto
I found Dymond, one of my best Lambeth supporters, in the Globe Office,
and we called on one of our _Peruvian_ acquaintances, who regaled us
with champagne in his huge store; we went over the law courts and
other public buildings, dined, and then on to the boat to cross back to
Niagara. It is about two hours’ sail and very pleasant. There were quite
a number of young and pretty girls on board going across for the trip,
as you might drive out in a carriage to any suburb. It seems the regular
afternoon amusement and lounge, and the heads of families take season
tickets which pass all their belongings. There were three Canadian
M.P.’s also on board, with whom I got a good deal of useful and pleasant
chat; one of them (M.P. for Niagara) induced me to “drink” twice in
ginger-ale and brandy, and again in champagne, which was the first
instance of that pressingly convivial habit supposed to be universal
on this side that I have seen. I am uncommonly glad it doesn’t really
prevail, as nothing I detest more than this irregular kind of drinking.
The pick-me-up is decidedly one of the most loathsome inventions of
a decrepit civilisation. We got to our hotel here, right opposite
the Falls, by about six, saw them first before tea and afterwards by
moonlight, as I have already narrated. In an hour’s time we start for
Chicago. Our late host, Mr. O------, the President of the Illinois
Central Kail, one of the greatest of the Western’s system of railways,
has followed us here, and is going round a tour of inspection of his
line, and to open 150 miles of new way for traffic. So we shall go round
in an express train with him, seeing everything in the most luxurious
and easiest manner--a wonderful piece of luck. It was his nice wife who
persuaded him to come off and do it now at once while he could have us
with him. I am sitting at my open window, outside of which is a broad
verandah with a magnificent view of the Falls. I am getting what I take
to be my last look at them, and for the last time the sound of many
waters, the finest to be heard in the world, I suppose, is in my ears.
The mid-Atlantic when the waves were highest struck me more, but nothing
else I have ever seen in Switzerland or elsewhere comes near this. It is
the first great hotel we have been in, and not a bad specimen I imagine.
We get heaps of meals, and though the cooking is not all one could wish,
there is nothing to hinder your living very well. We are waited on by
some fifteen or twenty real darkies--good, grinning, curly-pated
Sambos and Pompeys--so, of course, I am happy so far as service goes.
Seriously, though, they are much more obliging and quite as intelligent
as their white compeers here and in the States.
Storm Lake, 13th. September 1870.
One line from this odd little station, right in the middle of the Iowa
prairies, which slope away right out of sight in every direction. It is
the highest point between Fort Dodge and Sioux City. Fifteen months ago
there were not three settlers’ cabins on the whole 140 miles; now
they are dotted along every mile or so, sometimes turf huts, sometimes
wooden, with generally a group of barefooted, healthy children tumbling
about the doors. We are sitting in the little wooden post-office here,
on the walls of which hang maps of the splendid town which is to be
run up in the next three or four years, and notices of a meeting of the
citizens of Storm Lake to hear the addresses of Captain Jackson Orr,
the Republican candidate for Congress of the district, and of Governor
G------, who comes to support him. The whole place at present consists
of some ten or twelve wooden huts, with two more ambitious buildings
running up, one an hotel and the other a big store. The settlers are a
fine rough set of fellows, but full of intelligence, and determined
to make their place the most important city in the State. It is a most
exquisite climate, with a lake four miles by two, in which there are
plenty of pickerel, and as we came along in our express train we have
put up lots of coveys of prairie hens, like big tame grouse, most
delicious eating too. _Express train_, you will look at with wondering
eyes. Well, or rather wâàl, as they pronounce it here, that is the
explanation of the whole _city_, and accounts for all that is going to
happen on this glorious prairie. A line of rail has been _built_ right
across it by some enterprising folk in New York, who want now to lease
it to the Illinois Central Railway, with which it makes connections at
Fort Dodge. We left Chicago yesterday morning, got to Dubuque on the
Mississippi by night, travelled all through the night to Fort Dodge,
and are on here now fifty-three miles farther inspecting. It is regal
travelling. We have two carriages,--one a charming sleeping-car, in
which I have a beautiful little state-room, another carriage for dining,
etc., equally commodious, all our stores on board, so that we live
splendidly, two negro boys to wait on us. O------, the present
president, and the vice-president of the line, are our only
fellow-passengers, each of whom is as well lodged as I am. We go along
as we please, sometimes at forty, sometimes at ten miles an hour,
talking to the people at each little log-house station, and enjoying
the confines of civilisation in the most perfect luxury. While they are
talking about the price of land round here I have just this ten minutes,
and find I can fire off this note with some chance that it may get off
by the New York boat of Saturday, so that I shan’t lose a post or you a
letter.
Fort Dodge, 13th September 1870.
Here we are! September 15, 2 p.m. You will see, if you have got my last
from Sioux City, that the above heading is somewhat wild. The fact is,
that just as I had written the three first words (in fact, while I was
writing them, which accounts for their jerky look), our little train
moved on from Fort Dodge and I couldn’t write, even on our superb
springs. Now we are at Council Bluffs, opposite Omaha. Why, hang it!
here we go again moving on, and I must stop again.
3 p.m.--We only ran three miles and then stopped to lunch and let a
Union-Pacific train pass. Now after a famous lunch in our second or
commissariat car, I am getting a smoke and a few more lines to you
before we are off eastward again. Thank Heaven! after all the wonderful
new sights and sensations of the last three and a half days since we
left Niagara, I confess to the utmost delight at feeling that we have
made our farthest point, and that I am already some three miles plus the
breadth of the Missouri River and Omaha City on my way back to you. It
is still more than a month before we embark for home (if I can hold out
as long); still, we are on our way! However, you must not think that
I am not enjoying myself wonderfully. I am, and am also, I hope, good
company, for when one is treated like the Grand Turk or the Emperor of
Russia, the least one can do is to be pleasant. But if I go on with my
sensations, I shall never pick up my narrative; as it is, I shall be
obliged to leave thousands of things till we meet, when I do hope I
shan’t have forgotten anything. Well, didn’t I leave off at Niagara?
We left the hotel in front of the Falls there on Monday morning after
breakfast with O----, who had no power except for himself till we got
to Chicago; we had been furnished with free passes, and rode in the
ordinary cars through Ontario province to Windsor, opposite Detroit.
In Canada, again, the difference was at once visible between the two
peoples; but I am not at all prepared to admit that the Canadians have
the worst of it, certainly not in the roadside cookery, for we had the
best joint of beef we have seen since we left home at dinner, and the
best bread and butter at tea. At Windsor the train ran quietly on to the
huge ferry-boat-steamer, and we had a moonlight passage to the railway
station at Detroit. Here we secured berths in the Pullman sleeping car,
for which you pay rather more than you would for a bed at a first-class
hotel. However, they are an admirable institution, and enable one to get
through really wonderful travelling feats. We were at Chicago early
next morning, and transferred ourselves directly into our small express
train, getting glimpses of the city of forty years, which within living
men’s memory was a small Indian station.
It is enormous, spreading over certainly three times the space which an
English city of 250,000 inhabitants would occupy. We shall see the town
on our return; meantime, as we ran out of the suburbs, we saw a house of
considerable size waiting at the crossing for our train to pass before
it went over, as coolly as a farmer’s waggon of hay would wait in
England. O------told us that all the old houses in Chicago are moved in
this way. As building is very expensive, when one of the big folk wants
to put up some splendid new structure--bank, store, or the like--there
are always men ready to buy the old house as it stands. They then just
cut away its foundation, put it on rollers, and tote it away to the
site they have bought in the suburbs. We fell upon breakfast in a
half-famished state as we steamed away westward, and through the whole
day were kept on the stretch. Not that there was any great beauty in the
scenery, but the interest of getting actually into half-settled country
was exceedingly absorbing. The most notable town we passed was Galena,
in Northern Illinois, from which Grant went to the war, leaving his
leather yard for that purpose. The citizens of Galena have bought and
presented him a good square house of red brick on the top of the hill
there. Then we ran along a tributary of the Mississippi, and about 4.30
came out on the father of waters; where we struck the mighty stream it
was not impressive. We came upon a mighty swamp, not a river, miles and
miles of trees, some of them fine large ones, standing in the water and
covered with creepers. The river was luckily high, so that we had this
effect of a forest rising out of water to perfection. Then there were
miles of swamp, half water, half land, dreary and horrible to look at,
sometimes sound enough for cattle to pick about, and then only fit for
alligators and wild-fowl; of the latter we saw a number, including a
white heron. At last we came upon the river, some three-quarters of a
mile wide-up there, 1600 miles from the sea, and crossed by a gossamer
bridge, a real work of high art. On the opposite side we stopped for
tea-dinner at Dubuque, one of the largest towns in Iowa, and the first
border city we had seen,--very quaint to behold, with streets laid out
as broad as Regent Street, here and there a huge block of stores full of
dry goods or groceries, and then a lot of wooden hovels, a vacant plot
perhaps, and then a big hotel, or another great store,--the streets all
as soft as Rotten Row, and much deeper in dirt, side pavements of wood,
every house placarded in huge letters with the name and business of the
owner. Here, for the first time, we saw emigrants’ waggons packed with
their household goods and lumber (sawed planks) for their houses, bound
for the prairies beyond, on which they settle under the homestead
acts. In short, the pushing slipshod character of the great West was
thoroughly mirrored in the place, and above all the other buildings was
a fine common school open to every child in the place. This is the one
universal characteristic of these towns and villages; almost the first
thing they do is to build a famous big school. The member of Congress
for the place and one or two other notables came down to see us after
tea, and smoked a cigar with us in our saloon car before we started.
The talk was, of course, on the wonders of the West, and the chances of
Dubuque to be a big city in a year or two. Then we turned in and ran
all night to Fort Dodge, from which the first line of this letter was
written, a village with the same characteristics as the towns, except
that the only building not of wood was the station, which, strange to
say, was built of gypsum, found in great quantities here, and the only
sort of stone they have. The president of the line--a shrewd, honest,
Western man named Douglas, one of our party--guessed that in another
five years they would have to pull the station down and manure the land
with it. From this place we ran right up into the wild prairies, and at
the highest point between the Mississippi and Missouri, at Storm Lake,
I wrote you the hasty note which, I hope, you have received from those
unknown parts. It is about the largest settlement in the 180 miles,
consisting of perhaps twelve or fourteen wooden houses, one of which
was a billiard saloon kept by an old Cornish man. He said that quite
a number of Cornish miners are over in this district, some at lead and
coal mines of a very primitive kind, others farming. On the whole, the
people seemed a good, steady, independent lot, and the children looked
wonderfully healthy, running about barefooted on the shore of the little
lake or amongst the prairie grass. We made acquaintance with prairie
chicken and the little earth squirrel, a jolly little dog, with a
prettily marked back, who frisks into his hole instead of up a tree like
ours. Then we dropped down, still through wild prairie, over which the
single line of rail runs with no protection at all, till we came to
Sioux City on the Missouri, and the biggest town on the river for 2000
miles from its source. There are 12,000 inhabitants, and precisely the
same features as at Dubuque, except that it is a far more rowdy place,
being still almost under the dominion of Judge Lynch. Only the day
before we arrived, a border ruffian had been swaggering about the town,
pistol in hand, and defying arrest. However, they did take him at last,
and he was safe in prison. A fortnight earlier a rascal, who confessed
to nine murders, had been taken and hung on the other side of the
river. There are sixty-three saloons, at most of which gambling goes
on regularly every night. The editor of the _Sioux Tribune_, an Irish
Yankee of queer morals and extraordinary “go,” took us into one, stood
drinks round, and expounded the ingenious games by which the settlers
and officers of the Indian fort up the stream are cleared of their
money. A rowdy, loafing, vagabond city, but there they have three or
four fine schools (one had just cost 45,000 dollars), for which they
tax the saloons mercilessly. I have no doubt the place will be quite
respectable in another five years. We slept quietly and dropped down
south along the Missouri to Council Bluffs, from which the earlier part
of this was written. The Missouri is a doleful stream, shallow, with
huge sandbanks in the middle, and great swamps at the side, but striking
green bluffs rising above on the east bank under which we went; and
behind them I saw the sun rise in great beauty. We just crossed the
river to Omaha to say we had been in Missouri and seen the terminus
of the Union-Pacific Railway, and a fine go-ahead place it is, like
Dubuque, only twice as big and finely situate on hills above the
Missouri River. We are now back at Chicago, having seen more frontier
towns and prairies on our way here, and in five days, by the good
fortune of this private train, have done more than we could have managed
otherwise in nine.
Chicago, September 1870.
I am so afraid that I shan’t get off a letter regularly twice a week
from this run in the West, that I begin this in a spare three minutes
between packing and a testimonial which is to be given me here by a
lot of young graduates of the American Universities at the Club at four
o’clock. This place is the wonder of the wonderful West, as you know
already. A gentleman I met to-day tells me he came up to this place in
1830, when it consisted of a fort with two companies, a dozen little
wooden huts, and an encampment of 3000 or 4000 Indians who had come in
to get their allowances under treaty with the United States. Now it is
one of the handsomest cities I ever saw, with 300,000 inhabitants, and
progressing at the rate of 1500 a week or thereabouts. We have had our
first experience of a first-rate American hotel, the Fremont House here.
It is decidedly not cheap. At present rates about fifteen shillings
or four dollars a day; but you can eat and drink anything but wine and
spirits all day, with the exception of one hour in the afternoon between
lunch and dinner. I ordered a peach just now for lunch, and they brought
me a whole plateful, not so good as our hot-house ones, but very fine
fruit. Yesterday I went twice to hear Robert Collyer, a famous
Unitarian minister here. He was born in Yorkshire, where he worked as
a blacksmith, preaching as a Methodist, and finally, twenty years ago,
came out to the West and established himself here. He has great and
deserved influence, and is altogether the finest man of the kind I have
ever met. His text was out of Job: “Dost thou know the springs of the
deep?” I forget the exact words, but you will find them in the splendid
38th chapter, where God is showing Job who is master (as the cabman put
it). He had been for his holiday at the sea, and was full of thoughts
which, as he said, he wanted to get off to his people. He began by a
quotation from Ruskin as to the fantastic power and beauty of the sea,
said that no trace of love for the sea could be found in the Bible, only
fear of it. In the New Jerusalem, St. John dreamed “there shall be no
more sea.” Same with all great poets, even English, illustrated by Burns
and Shakespere, and Dr. Johnson’s saying, “That a ship was a prison with
a chance of being drowned.” Even sailors don’t really look on sea as
home, and fear it, and weave mystical notions of all kinds round it. Yet
the sea has its sweet and gentle side too; it nourishes every plant and
flower that grows by its exhalations, and keeps the rivers sweet and
running; and look at one of the exquisite little shells which you may
find after the fiercest storm, or the bit of sea-weed lying on the
shore, or the limpet on the rock. The lashing of the storm has done them
no harm, and there they lie as perfect as if it had never been raging.
about them. So the great stormy sea of life has its gentle and loving
side for every one of us so long as we trust in God and just obey His
laws and do His will. I have given you the very barest outline of a very
striking sermon. In the evening I went to tea with him, and there was
a large bunch of grapes on my plate with the enclosed little paper, “To
Mr. Hughes from the children,” which touched me much. The children are
very nice. Robert Lincoln, Abe’s son, and a lot of his friends are our
entertainers to-day, and in the evening we go by the night train to St.
Louis. I laid aside the other sheet to go off to this club dinner with
the young Chicago men, and I have never had a more hearty greeting or
kinder words and looks than amongst these youngsters, all graduates of
some university, most of them officers in the late war, who are settled
down in the great money-making town, and are living brave and sterling
and earnest lives there. I really can’t tell you the sort of things they
said (they drank your health, and the proposer made one of the
prettiest little speeches in proposing it I ever heard); in short, I was
positively ashamed, and scarcely knew how to meet it all or what to say
to them; but it was less embarrassing than it would have been with any
other young men, for this kind of young American (like Holmes) is so
transparently sincere that you can come out quite square with him before
you have known him an hour. Our good friends of the Illinois Central
gave us free passage to St. Louis, to which we travelled all night.
It is the biggest town in Missouri, was a great slave-holding place in
1860, and very “secesh” during the war. A fine city it is too, with
its grand quay lined with huge steamers, and its miles of fine streets.
Rowdy though, still, full of low saloons and gambling-houses. The most
drunken town in the United States, the gentleman who met us, and drove
us about and got us free papers here to Cincinnati, told us. The most
characteristic thing that happened to me was that I was shaved by a
negro (and better shaved than I ever was in my life before). He had been
body servant to his master, a rich Southern planter, through the first
three years of the war. His master was at last shot and he managed to
get taken, and so “I’se no slave now,” as he said, with all his ivories
shining. His education has not been much improved, however, for he
thought England was at war, as being somehow part either of France or
Germany, he couldn’t just say which, and would scarcely believe me
when I declared that we were separated by the sea from both. Then we
travelled all night again (I sleep splendidly in these palace cars, so
don’t be alarmed), and got here to the queen city of Ohio this morning,
after the most glorious sunrise I ever saw. This also is a very fine
city on the Ohio, with fine hills all round and a magnificent suspension
bridge. The most characteristic sight I have seen here, however, was
two small boys trotting along together barefooted, with a piece of
sugar-cane between them, each sucking one end. I had a note to Force,
one of Sherman’s generals, now a judge here, who kindly sent us round in
a carriage, but was too busy to come with us. To-night we make another
long run to Philadelphia. We should have gone to Washington and so
worked north, but Philadelphia is the next place where I shall get
letters, and I can’t do any longer without hearing from you, so that’s
all about it. I have lots of friends in Philadelphia, so shall probably
make two days’ stay there.
Continental Hotel, Philadelphia, 23rd September 1870.
Where was I in my narrative? I guess (I am getting a thorough Yankee
in my vernacular) I gave you a short account of the queen city, as they
call Cincinnati. We left Cincinnati at ten o’clock on Wednesday night
and came right away for 600 miles to Philadelphia.
The most interesting part of the road was the crossing the Alleghanies,
up which we wound through vast forest tracks for some thirty miles, and
down the eastern slopes in the sunset, getting daylight for all the most
beautiful parts. As we were rushing up one of the finest gorges, some
200 yards wide, we were suddenly aware of a huge eagle (bigger than
those we saw on the Danube as we steamed through the Iron Cates) sailing
up on the opposite side, perhaps 100 yards from the train. We were going
eighty miles an hour at the least, and the grand old fellow swept along
without the least apparent effort, keeping abreast of our car for I
should think a couple of miles, when he suddenly turned and settled on a
fine pine-tree.
After breakfast we had a real field-day in this splendid city, which
rivals Boston in interest and character. Outside it is built of red
brick and white marble, the contrast of which materials is to me
singularly taking, though I daresay it is very bad art.
Then the chief streets run away long and straight, and as you look down
them all seem to dive into groups of trees. Walnut Street, Chestnut
Street, and Spruce Street are the names of the oldest and handsomest
avenues. Our friend Field, the banker, was all ready for us, and a dozen
new friends, including General Meade, the first Federal general who
won the battle in the East, and a charming, tall, handsome,
grizzled, gentlemanly soldier. We went over the old State House, a
pre-revolutionary building, from the top of which there is a splendid
view of the town, with the two rivers, the Delaware and Schuylkill,
on which it stands. There is the hall in which the Declaration of
Independence was signed, and the chair in which Hancock sat, and the
table on which it lay for signature. The square is charming, with its
old trees and turf, just as it has always stood, and I am happy to say
the Pennsylvanians are very proud «of the old place, won’t allow it to
be touched, and are likely to keep it there till it burns, as I suppose
the State House, with all the old-fashioned timbers in wall and roof,
will some day. Then we went to the great Normal School for girls here,
five hundred strong, the daughters of all sorts of folk, from physicians
and lawyers to labourers. I was exceedingly interested and instructed
in many classes, especially in the history class. The handsome,
self-possessed young woman who was teaching was just beginning the
Revolutionary War as we came in, and “felt like” changing the subject
as she said, but I begged her to go on, and heard the old story from
Lexington down to Cornwallis’s surrender without turning a hair. After
classes, at two, the whole school was gathered for Scripture reading
and singing a hymn. After the hymn, in compliment to us, they began “God
save the Queen”; Rawlins and I got up by a sort of instinct, and to my
immense amusement up got the whole company. Then I was asked to say
a few words; and talked about the grand education they were getting,
referred to the history class and told them no Englishman worth the name
now regretted the end of the struggle one hundred years old, but only
that any of the bitterness should still be left; spoke of the grand
country which has been entrusted to them to be filled with the poor of
the whole world, told them that we had a woman’s rights movement at
home as well as they, which I hoped would not fall into any great
absurdities, but there were two rights they would always insist on--the
right of every girl in the States to such an education as they were
getting, and their own right (they are all being educated as teachers)
to go and give this education to those who want it most in West and
South. Then the girls all filed out to march music, played by a senior
girl, winding in and out of the rows of benches on which they had sat,
and so away downstairs and to all parts of the town, the prettiest sight
you can imagine. The girls are at the most awkward age, and, of course,
many of them plain, but altogether as comely as the same sort would be
with us, and not a sign of poverty amongst them, though many were quite
plainly dressed. My democratic soul rejoiced at the sight as you may
fancy. What a chance for straining the nonsense out of a girl if she has
any! We adjourned from the great training-school for girls to the
Girard College for orphan boys, founded by a queer old French Voltairian
citizen of Philadelphia, who died some forty years ago and left property
worth half a million of our money to found this college, with the
express _proviso_ that no parson of any denomination was ever to
be admitted within the walls. I am happy to say, however, that,
notwithstanding this provision, which is observed to the letter, the
Bible is read and every day’s instruction is begun and ended by a
religious service. This, by the way, is the case almost everywhere in
the States. Notwithstanding all the assertions to the contrary, I have
found only one place in which the education is purely secular. This was
Cincinnati, where the result is obtained by a combination of the Roman
Catholics with the German town population. Well, this college, as it is
called, is simply a vast boys’ home, just like our own, except that
the boys live in a most superb white marble building, copied from the
Parthenon. The classes were being taught, and kept in right good order
by women, who indeed almost monopolise teaching in this State, and
they are in the proportion of more than ten to one. The fault of Girard
College is that it is not wanted; the public school system which has
grown up since its foundation being open to every one, and offering at
least as good an education. If its funds could have been used to support
the boys while at the public schools it would have been better. The
whole arrangements are decidedly more luxurious than those at Rugby in
my time, and they have not yet established workshops. After our round
of institutions we were entertained at the Union League Club. The dinner
was good and the company better, Mr. MacMichael, the mayor, who had
been the chief mover in establishing the club in the dark days of 1861,
presided, with General Meade, who commanded at Gettysburg on his left
and me on his right. Dear old Field, the most furious and impulsive
of Republicans, and the most ardent lover and abuser of England and
Englishmen, vice-president, and the rest of the company, staff-officers
in the war or marked men in some other way. The club had sent eleven
regiments to the war at its own expense, and had exercised immense
influence on the Union at the most critical time. At last I was fairly
cornered; I had often before had to defend our position in sharp
skirmishes, but now, for the first time, was in for a general
engagement. Well, I just threw away all defensive arms, and attacked
them at once. “You say we were led by our aristocracy, who were savagely
hostile to you; I admit they were hostile, though with many notable
exceptions, such as the Duke of Argyll, Lord Carlisle, Howards and
Cavendishes; but what did you expect? I have taken in three or four
American papers for years, and in your debates in Congress, in your
newspapers, in every utterance of your public men, I have never heard or
read anything but savage abuse of our aristocracy. They don’t reply to
your insults, but they don’t forget them, so when you got into such hard
lines they went in heartily for your enemies. Well, you say the
South were England’s real enemies for the last forty years. True, but
aristocracy did not care for that, democracy was represented by you, and
that was what they went against.” There was an outcry: “Why, here’s a
pretty business, we thought you were a Democrat.”
“So I am, in our English sense, but I am before all things an
Englishman. I have nothing to do with our aristocracy (except knowing a
few of them), and I fought as hard against them in England through the
war as you did against the rebels; but I am not going to allow you to
separate them from the nation, or to suppose that they can be punished
except through the nation.”
“Well, but what do you say for all your great commercial world--bankers,
merchants, manufacturers, our correspondents, look how they turned on
us!”
“It’s no part of my business to defend them; they were mean, I allow,
but their business was, as they supposed, and as all of you agree,
to make money; besides, after all, who fought your battle better
than Cobden, Bright, Forster, and such men as Kirkman-Hodson, and Tom
Baring?” Then they fell back on the general position that our Government
was hostile to them, and I went through what had really happened
in Parliament, and made them admit that if we had listened to Louis
Napoleon, and the blockade had been broken, it would have been a narrow
squeak for the Union. On the whole, I think, I made a good deal of
impression on most of them. General Meade and the soldiers were on my
side throughout, and admitted at once that, after all the abuse their
press heaped on our governing classes, it was childish to cry out when
they proved that they knew of the abuse and didn’t love the abusers. We
all parted the warmest friends, and I went off to tea at Mrs. W------s’,
where we met Dr. Mitchell, a scientific man, and his sister, and other
very pleasant folk, and heard many interesting stories of the war. The
next morning we started for Gettysburg. I had always made a point with
myself of seeing this one at any rate of the great battlefields. It was
the real turning-point of the war, fought on the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd of
July 1863, after the series of defeats and failures under M’Clellan,
Pope Hooker, Burnside. I well remember what a long breath we (the
Abolitionists) drew in England when the news came of Lee’s defeat at
the farthest point he had ever made to the North, and felt sure, for the
first time, that the war would be put through, and slavery be abolished
right down to the Gulf of Mexico. We had the best escort possible in
the person of Rosengarten, who was aide-decamp to General Reynolds,
commander of the corps which came up first and sustained the whole
weight of battle on the first day. Field also “came along,” and we had
a first-rate time on our journey over the Susquehanna bridge, which the
Northern militia burnt behind them as they escaped from Lee’s advance.
Then we stopped for an hour or two, waiting for a train at York, a nice
shady quiet country town of 11,000 inhabitants. The rebels had occupied
the place for three days and levied a matter of 80,000 dollars on the
people; in all other respects they seem to have behaved excellently and
to have been well under command. The old Episcopalian clergyman, a warm
friend of England, who had been Rosengarten’s tutor, and to whom we paid
a visit, gave us a capital description of the three days’ occupation,
and of the relief the York folk experienced when the poor ragged rebels
marched off for Gettysburg, and left the town very little poorer than
they had found it. We didn’t get to our inn, a huge wooden building on
the first day’s battlefield, till after sunset. Tea over, we came out
on the wooden platform which runs all round the house, and saw the most
glorious sight I have ever seen, I think, in the skies. Steaming up
Memphremagog we saw the aurora borealis splendidly, but that was nothing
to this. In Canada there was no colour in the pure flashes of light
which lit and pulsed over the whole sky, but on Saturday the changes of
colour were splendid, and I should say for half an hour the heavens were
throbbing with the most lovely rose-coloured streamers and sheets and
flashes. With my view of the importance to the poor old world of
the struggle which was descending there, you can fancy that such an
introduction to it was welcome and impressive. Next day we devoted to
the battlefield: began at the beginning where, on Thursday the 1st July
1863, Rosengarten himself, as Reynolds’s aide-decamp, had ridden forward
and placed the first Federal regiments which came on the ground in
position between the town of Gettysburg, which contains about 3000
inhabitants and lies in a hollow, and the advancing rebels. Gettysburg
is at the junction of three roads and was a point which both armies were
bent on seizing. The fight on this the north-east side of the town began
early on Thursday. Rosengarten, after carrying out his orders, rode
back, and was just in time to see his General fall from his horse, shot
through the neck by a sharpshooter, and helped to carry him off the
field. After many hours’ hard fighting the Federals were driven back
through the town with heavy loss. Our friend, General Barlow, who
commanded a brigade, was also badly wounded. Luckily, during the day
two more corps of the army of the Potomac had come up and been placed in
position on a hill just to the south of the town, on part of which
the cemetery now stands, which was made immortal by Lincoln’s glorious
speech at the inauguration. Behind these fresh troops the broken 1st and
11th corps rallied and prepared for the next day. Reinforcements came up
to Lee also, and in the town the shopkeepers and other inhabitants
heard them making certain of an easy victory in the morning. Meade is
evidently a man who gains and holds the confidence of his troops; but
as he was slightly outnumbered, and the rebels had the prestige of the
first day’s victory, I take it he must have been beaten but for the
splendid position he had selected. His troops lay along two lines of
hills, covered in many places with wood which sloped away from the point
overlooking the town, leaving a space between them secure from fire, in
which he could move his troops without being seen, while every move of
Lee’s was open to him. The Confederates began attacks early and kept
them up throughout the day, but could not force the position except at
one point, where, after dark, they succeeded in making a lodgment and
spent the night within Meade’s lines. In the morning they were driven
out after a desperate struggle, and later in the day Lee made a
determined attempt with Longstreet’s corps to break the line again. He
lost three generals and about 4000 men in the great effort, and when
it failed, and he had to fall back to his own lines, the back of the
Rebellion was broken and the doom of slavery sealed for ever in North
America. At night he went away south, leaving most of his wounded, but
Meade was too much exhausted to do more than follow slowly. I am writing
in hot haste to catch the post, so can give you no clear idea, I fear,
of the great day. The hotel was a nice, clean, reasonable place, with
a landlord and servants really civil, and we enjoyed our excursion more
than I can tell you.
Next day we came on to Baltimore, drove as usual in the beautiful park
and about the town in a carriage sent for us by some patriotic citizen,
dined at the Union Club, to which they gave us the _entrée_, and came on
to Washington.
Washington, Friday.
You ask whether I read our papers and the news from Europe. No, except
just so far as to keep abreast of the bare facts. You know how I hate
details of battlefields, and that I have never got over my intense
dislike to the glowing and semi-scientific descriptions of “our own
correspondents,” sitting down in the midst of dying and agonised men to
do their penny or guinea a line. The dry report of a general or staff
officer, whose sad duty it is to be there, I follow with the deepest
interest, and recognise a battlefield as one of the very noblest places
from which a true man may make a “bee-line track” to heaven. The noblest
death in our times was Robert Shaw’s at the attack on Fort Wagner, at
the head of his niggers, under whom he was buried; but, for all that,
war and its details are a ghastly and horrible evil, which the faith of
our Master is going yet to root out of this silly old world, and which
none of His servants should touch unless it is the clear path of supreme
duty.
I pity the poor French, utterly unmanned as they seem to be by this
nineteen years of the rule of Mammon, and heartily wish they could find
their manhood again, though I see no glimmer of it yet. Trochu seems a
fine fellow, and I can’t help believing that many of my acquaintance and
the members of the Paris associations, will be found ready to die like
men on the walls of the city if they get a chance. By the way, where is
N------? I wonder if he has gone back? If so, there is another brave and
true man in Paris, and perhaps ten may save it. But I must be getting
back to my journal or I shall be dropping stitches. If I don’t forget,
my last brought you with us to Willard’s Hotel, Washington, a great
three-hundred-roomed hotel, mixed, if not of Southern proclivities
during the war, before the door of which more than one duel was fought
in those searching times. At breakfast we found ourselves next the
Wards, father and son, G. B------‘s friends, to whom I had given some
letters. I found they had been even farther west than we; in fact, up to
Denver City, in the bosom of the Rocky Mountains, and had also managed
to get into four or five Southern states; but they had done it at the
sacrifice not only of comfort but of the chance of seeing the home-life
of the Americans, and I value the latter infinitely higher than mere
sight-seeing, so do not regret the least that we didn’t get through the
extra 1500 miles, which at the cost of five days’ more travel would have
let us see the Rocky Mountains and shoot at buffaloes.
We went after breakfast to leave some of my letters, and over the White
House, a fine residence of white marble splendidly situated some one
and a half miles from the Capitol, with which it is connected by
Pennsylvania avenue, wider than Portland Place. I shall keep the details
till we meet; the house is as big as the Mansion House I should say,
and not very unlike it. Luckily, soon after we got outside we were
recognised (at least I was) in the street by Blackie, who was over in
England with the Harvard crew. He is in the attorney-general’s office,
and consequently has the run of all the public apartments, and he took
us in hand and lionised us splendidly. The Capitol Patent Office and
Treasury I shall bring you photographs of, and describe at leisure in
our winter evenings. The view from the top, over the city and Maryland
to the north, and across the Potomac over Virginia to the south, is as
fine as any I ever saw, General Lee’s house at Arlington Heights, now
a national cemetery, being the most conspicuous point in the southern
view. The thing that struck one most was the staff of women, mostly
young and many pretty, serving in the Treasury. They say there are
upwards of two thousand, and that for counting, sorting, and repairing
the paper currency, they are far superior to men. They earn one thousand
dollars (or £200) a year on an average. Fancy the boon to the orphan
girls of soldiers and sailors. One of the first we saw was the daughter
of a very distinguished Colonel of Marines, who had left her quite
destitute, as ladylike, pretty-looking a girl as you ever saw, and she
was running over bundles of dollar notes with her fingers as fast as if
she were playing the overture to _Semiramide_ with you on the piano.
It nearly took my breath away, and yet I was assured she never made an
error in counting. I wish we could get off a lot of our poor girls in
some such way in Somerset House, and send a lot of our Government clerks
to till the ground or hammer or do some hard, productive work.
Perhaps, however, the pleasantest part of the day was the end, when he
took us off on the street-cars down to the Potomac, where we found
a boating club, with their boat-house, etc., just like an Oxford or
Cambridge College. There were eight or ten of them down there who
received us with open arms, and in a few minutes manned a heavy
eight-oared boat with room enough for me and R------ to sit in the
stern, and away we went up under the long bridge, over which the armies
used to cross in the war time, and saw a glorious sunset on the river,
with the stars and stripes floating proudly over our stern. I enjoyed
the row vastly and liked the men, who are just training for a race with
the Potomac club. Boating flourishes all over the states I have been in,
and they have learnt a lesson from their defeat two years ago and pull
now in just as good style as our boys. Oxford and Cambridge must mind
their hits, for they will have a tough job of it the next time they have
to meet a crew from this side.
Next morning I called on our minister after breakfast, having heard by
chance that he was in town. I am very glad I did, as I had the pleasure
of hearing him praise C------, his ability, willingness, and capacity
for work, in a strain which would have rejoiced the heart of poor, dear
R. F------ and of the F------ family. He seems to think C------ will
come back here, and desires it most earnestly. I got from him Lord
Clarendon’s last despatch on the Alabama claims, which will be most
useful to me in my stump in the Boston Music Hall on the 11th. It is
the room and the course in which Wendell Phillips, Emerson, and all the
orators and philosophers figure. I have taken for my subject, “John to
Jonathan,” suggested by Lowell’s famous “Jonathan to John.” They won’t
get any eloquence or oratory out of me, as you know; but I am sure I can
say some things in a plain, straightforward way which will do good and
help to heal wounded pride and other sorely irritating places in the
over-sensitive, but simple and gallant Yankee mind. They have treated me
so like a spoilt child from Boston to Omaha and back, that I know they
will let me say anything and will listen to it affectionately. I really
love them too well to say anything that will really hurt them, and when
they see that this kind of feeling and appreciation is genuine, the more
thorough John Bull you are the better they like it; that is, all the
best of them, who rule the nation in the long run though not directly.
When I got back from our embassy, it was just time to be starting
for the train to Philadelphia, and lo! there were a dozen folk, from
secretaries of state downwards, waiting to offer lodgings, dinners,
excursions, lecturings, every sort of kindness in creation. It was hard
work to get off, but I managed somehow to make tracks, suppressing, I
fear, the fact that I was not likely to get to Washington again. The
journey to Philadelphia is very interesting along the coast, though
seldom within sight of the sea, but crossing huge inlets and rivers
(the abode of canvas-backs) on spider bridges. We didn’t change cars at
Baltimore, but were dropped by our engine in the outskirts of the town.
Six fine horses in a string were then hitched on to each long car, and
away we went through the crowded streets along the tramway rails, our
driver, or rather, conductor, for he had no reins, blowing his horn
loudly to warn all good people, and shouting to the train of horses
who trotted along by instinct between the rails. How we missed fifty
collisions I can’t conceive; at last we had one--crash into a confusion
of carts and drays, driven by shouting negroes who had got them all into
a hopeless jam as we bore down on them. Bang we went into the nearest; I
saw the comical, scared look of the grisly old Sambo who was driving, as
he was shot from his seat, but no harm was done except knocking off our
own step, and as we shot past I saw his face light up into a broad grin
as he sat on the bottom of his cart. We had cleared him right away from
his dead-lock with two other vehicles, and he went on his way delighted.
At Philadelphia we found our kindest of hosts, Field, waiting supper for
us in his delightful house, where he is living for a few days’ business
as a bachelor. Quiet evening, with talk till eleven o’clock on all
manner of places, people, and things, mostly English. Lippincott, the
great American publisher, and Rosengarten to breakfast, then a visit
from Morrison’s friend Welsh, reproachful that we had not occupied his
house, and full of interesting stories of the Indian commission, of
which he is the moving spirit. Then more schools, workmen’s houses,
etc., with Rosengarten, and a drive in the park, five miles long on both
sides of the river Schuylkill (as broad as the Thames at Putney), and
with views combining Richmond Hill and Oxford. The Central Park is
nothing to it, or any other I ever saw on heard of. The Quaker city
of white marble and red brick fascinated me more and more. A most
interesting dinner at Dr. Mitchell’s, a scientific man--talk of the war,
prairie stories, Yankee stories, wonderful old Madeira and excellent
cigars. This morning, after seeing Lippincott’s store, and a most
interesting talk with Sheridan’s adjutant-general on the last
campaigns (he came to breakfast), we literally tore ourselves away from
Philadelphia and came on here to this splendid, great, empty house, to
be received most hospitably by Maria, the big, handsome, good-natured
Irishwoman in charge.
Everything is getting so crowded with me that I have hardly time to turn
round. All sorts of kind friends urging me to stop just for one day here
or there, a few hundred miles making no difference with them, hundreds
(almost) of applications for lectures or addresses, and the engagements
already made driving me nearly wild to know how I am to get through with
them. I shall never get my journal straight. Where was I? With dear old
Peter Cooper, the simplest, most utterly guileless of old men who ever
made a big fortune in this world or any other, I should think. That
I remember, but can’t the least get further. Nothing, however, very
particular happened, except that I was again caught and had to speak a
few words to the Normal Training School of New York, consisting of nine
hundred girls. I managed to get out of going with the beautiful Miss
P------ to her school, but thought I should be safe in going with the
dear old gentleman to the Normal School to be present at the morning
service. We were of course on the dais, and Mr. Cooper, after the
singing of a hymn, read a chapter of the Bible, then another hymn, and
then, instead of the adjournment to their classes at once, as I had
expected, I was called upon. You must imagine what I said, for I really
don’t remember. Then I was photographed alone, and with Mr. Cooper. I
enclose a proof of the latter which, I hope, will not quite fade on
the way. They tell me the prints will be very good, and I hope to have
several to bring home. We left on Wednesday by the afternoon boat to
Fall River, the finest boat in the States, the great cabin of which
I shall bring you a photograph, all the family grouped round the door
breaking one down with their kindness. I slept as usual famously on
board the _Bristol,_ and waked at Fall River about three, and so on by
rail to Boston, and by car up here, where I feel quite at home. Miss
Mabel appeared at breakfast, and produced her photographs made at the
time of our last visit with great triumph. They are excellent, and
I shall bring you lots of them. At eleven was the Harvard memorial
ceremony on the laying of the corner-stone of the hall they are building
in honour of the members who died in the war. I walked in with Mr
A------ and heard a good account of his wife and family. They want me
to go out there for a quiet day or two, but, I fear, it is quite
impossible. Two of his sons, the Colonel, and our friend Henry, who is
just named as one of the lecturers, were there also, and Emerson, Dana,
and a number of old and new friends. The ceremony was very simple,
Luther’s hymn, a short _extempore_ prayer, a report, and two addresses,
and the benediction, and then we just broke up and left the great
tent as we pleased. The point of greatest interest was, of course, the
gathering of some seventy or eighty of those who had been in the army,
almost all in their old uniforms, and many of them carrying the marks of
war about them too plainly. Colonel Holmes amongst them as nice as ever,
and young F------ and General M------, with half a dozen other generals.
Lunch afterwards at a very quaint and attractive little club founded in
1792, and recruited by a few of the best fellows in each year, like the
Apostles at our Cambridge. Longfellow and our friend Field came to dine
here, and the poet was fascinating, full of his English doings, and
genial and modest as a big man should be. To-day I have been preparing
for my lecture, “John to Jonathan,” which comes off next Tuesday, as to
which I am considerably anxious, as it is exceedingly difficult to get
a line which will have the healing effect I intend. Let us hope for the
best. I go for Sunday to Lowell’s brother’s school, twenty miles away.
On Monday evening I meet the Harvard undergraduates, and on Wednesday
spend the day with Emerson at Concord. On Thursday I hope to get away,
but where? All our plans are changing. We now propose, if it can be so
arranged, to go first to Montreal for two or three days to pick up our
things, returning to Ithaca to Goldwin Smith for a long day about the
18th, and so to New York, from which we should sail about the 22nd.
You will, I daresay, be glad that we don’t go from Quebec; but I don’t
believe there is the least more danger at this time of year by this
route than any other. All I have resolved on is, that nothing shall keep
me beyond my time.
St. Mark’s School, Southborough, Mass., Tuesday, 9th October.
We have had a very charming visit to this little village, twenty
miles from Boston, in which is established a Church of England
boarding-school, modelled as nearly as possible on our public school
system, and intended to do for American boys precisely what Eton, Rugby,
etc., do for ours. I am not sure that such schools are wanted here.
Were I living here I should certainly try the public schools first for
my boys. But they say that the teaching there is too forcing in the
earlier stages, and afterwards not liberal enough in the direction of
“_the humanities_,” so that the boys get trained more into competitive
money-making machines than into thinking cultivated men. There is a very
considerable demand at any rate for this kind of school, as this is only
one of several in New England. There is an objection too amongst New
England mothers. I find that the high schools (as I ought to call them,
and not public schools) being open to every one, a large class of Irish
and other recent arrivals go there whose manners and language make them
dangerous class-mates for their own children. At any rate, St. Mark’s
school is a successful fact, and seeing how fast they go ahead here
I shouldn’t be astonished to hear that in a few years it is as big as
Rugby. Dr. Lowell is the principal, and a first-rate one, a High Church
of England clergyman, not a ritualist. The school is founded as a
denominational one, with a little chancel, which opens from the end of
the big schoolroom, and in which the doctor, in his robes, reads our
prayers morning and evening to the boys. He and his family live entirely
with the boys, taking all their meals in the hall, and there is no
fagging, the monitors having no power or responsibility, except just
to keep order in the schoolroom at certain hours. They have a monthly
reception of the friends from the neighbourhood, which took place on
Saturday evening. All the boys were there, and handed round ices, cakes,
and tea to some thirty ladies and gentlemen who came in, including
several of the trustees, a judge whom I had met in England, a
neighbouring squire (Boston merchant by profession), who is farming
largely down there, reclaiming the stony lands and getting up a most
beautiful herd of cattle. Of course I had to “address a few words” to
them, all which they took most kindly. On Sunday we had two Church of
England services in the pretty parish church, a copy of one in England,
the plans of which the Squire, Bartlett, had brought over. We dined in
the middle of the day at his house, which would be a good squire’s house
at home. The family were very nice--a sweet, pretty wife, a strapping
great eldest son now at Harvard, and good in all ways. He is bent on
going out West as soon as he is through college, and, as a preparation,
hired himself out to a farmer this summer vacation, earned ten dollars
a week for some two months at hoeing and other hard work, and then had
a sporting run to Canada. Two more big sons and any number of younger
children. The house was tastefully furnished with some really good
pictures, and altogether it was as nice a home as I have seen here.
On Monday we got back to dear Elmwood, and I went hard at work on my
lecture. Newspaper men came buzzing about all day and seizing my MS. as
I got through with it. Also came up Julian H------, one of the Chartist
prisoners of 1848. I had known him in the socialist times, and I had
always a respect and liking for him, but he had quite slipped out of
sight for some eighteen years. His errand touched me. He reminded me
(which I had entirely forgotten) that he had applied to Lord R------
in 1851 for a loan of £20 which had been advanced to him through me. He
told the long story of his life since, full of interest; I must keep it
till we meet. At last he landed in the Massachussets state house, where
he is a Government clerk, on a small salary for this country, but out of
it he has saved a few hundred dollars, and the object of his visit was
to say that he was now anxious to pay his old debt with many hearty
thanks to Lord R------. Would I settle whether he should pay for
interest, and he would go and draw it out and send it by me? I said I
couldn’t say whether our friend would take interest, or at what rate,
but promised to let him know when I got back, so that he can remit the
exact amount to London. Even he has never taken up his citizenship here,
but remains an Englishman, and means at any rate to come back and die in
the old country. In the evening we went down to a gathering of all the
Harvard students who had petitioned me to come and talk to them. They
were gathered some five hundred strong in the Massachusetts Hall, and
a finer and manlier set of boys I have never seen. I talked to them on
Muscular Christianity and its proper limits, as they are likely to run
into professional athletics like our boys at home. Told them they lived
in a land which had “struck ile” and was so overflowing with wealth that
every one was hasting to get rich too quick. Exhorted to patience and
thoroughness; read to them Lowell’s “Hebe” (you remember the little gem
of a poem); told them they ought to take more part in public affairs
than their class usually do. All which they swallowed devoutly, and
cheered vehemently, like good boys, and then sang a lot of their college
songs: “Marching through Georgia” splendid, the rest much like our own.
The war has given a magnificent lift to all the young men and boys of
this country, and I think the rising generation will put America in a
very different place from that which she holds now. Last night I gave
my lecture in the Music Hall, which was crammed, and the whole affair a
brilliant success. “John to Jonathan” is printed verbatim in the morning
newspapers, so you will probably see it before I get back, and I think
like it. No more time for the moment.
Ithaca, N.Y., 16th October 1870.
I missed the last mail through stress of work, chiefly on my lecture,
which I mentioned in my last. The applications for lectures were so
numerous and urgent that I really felt that I ought not to leave the
country without giving one at any rate, and all my friends said that
the Music Hall at Boston was the place if I only spoke once. It is the
largest room in New England, holds nearly three thousand people, is
easy to speak in, though it has great deep galleries running round three
sides, and in it all the big folk talk and lecture, Wendell Phillips and
Sumner follow me, so you see the class of thing at once. Well, as I was
in for it much against my will, I was determined to talk out with
the whole Yankee nation the controversy which. I had been carrying on
already with many of them in private. I was anxious not to leave them
with any false impressions, and to let them see clearly that in our
national differences I think that we have a very good case, and that
even if I didn’t think so, I am too good a John Bull not to stand by my
own country. Lowell agreed as to the title and object, but I think had
serious misgivings as to how the affair might turn out. Mundella thought
it very risky and so did most other folk. However, as you know, I don’t
care a straw for applause, and do care about speaking my own mind, so
whether it made me unpopular or not I determined to have my say. In
order that I might say nothing on the spur of the moment, I wrote out
the whole address carefully, and I am very glad I did, as the reporters
all copied from my MS., and consequently I was thoroughly well reported.
The _Tribune and Boston Advertiser_ printed it in full, and I will bring
you home copies. I was a little nervous myself when I got to the hall.
Two ex-Governors and the present Governor of the State were on the
platform, the two Senators (Sumner and Wilson), Longfellow, Judge Hoare,
Dana, Wendell Holmes, Wendell Phillips, Lowell, and, in short, pretty
nearly all the Boston big wigs. The great organ played “God save the
Queen” as I came in, and the audience, generally, I am told, a very
undemonstrative one, cheered heartily. My nervousness, however, wore off
at once, when I got on my legs. I found that my voice filled the hall
easily, and so was at my ease and got through just within the hour,
without once losing the attention of the audience for a minute. They
were indeed wonderfully sympathetic and hearty, and gave me three rounds
of cheers at the end, far more warmly than at the beginning. Every one
came and said that it was a great success; that they had never heard
our side fairly stated before; that this and that fact were quite new to
them, etc. In fact, if I didn’t know how soon the reaction comes in
such cases, I should think I had done some good work towards a better
understanding between the nations, and, as it is, I am sure I have done
no harm, and have at any rate made my own position perfectly clear, and
shown them that in the event of a quarrel, they can’t reckon upon me for
any kind of sympathy or aid. After the lecture whom should I meet as I
went out but Craft, the negro who had been the cause of one of the most
exciting meetings ever held in that hall some twenty years before,
when the attempt was made to seize him and his wife in Boston. I was
delighted to see him and to hear a capital account of his experiment
at association in Georgia. Then I went to Field’s, the publisher, to
supper, where were Longfellow, Holmes, Dana, and others, and so home by
the last car, thankful that it was all well over. Next morning I got a
cheque for 250 dollars (£50). I had, of course, never said a word about
any payment, so it was an agreeable surprise. The post brought me I know
not how many letters, begging me to lecture in a dozen states on my own
terms, so when all trades fail, I can come over here and earn a good
living easily enough, which is a consolation. Wednesday, our last whole
day with the dear Lowells, I spent peaceably. Went to his lecture in the
University on Arthurian legends; Miss Mabel photographed the house and
us in groups, and we talked and loafed. In the evening a supper at
the house of one of the professors, to meet the whole staff, and a
pleasanter or abler set of men I have never come across. Thursday, lunch
with Longfellow after packing, then a run down on the car to Boston, to
change my cheque, to take a berth on a packet, so as to be armed against
any appeals for another day or two in New York, and to get a last look
at the favourite points in the old Puritan capital, the place where
I should certainly settle if I ever had to leave England. We drove
a rather sad party to Mrs. Lowell’s sister, and the mother of the
beautiful boy whose photograph we have, and who was killed early in
the war, to tea, and from her house went to the station and took
sleeping-car for Syracuse. I cannot tell you how I like Lowell and all
his belongings. It is a dangerous thing to make acquaintance in the
flesh with one with whose writings one is so familiar, but he has quite
come up to my idea of him, and his wife and Miss Mabel are both very
charming in their own ways. I slept well, woke at Albany, breakfasted,
and then on to Syracuse, where Mr. Wansey, Mrs. Hamilton’s uncle, lives.
We got there at two, and I was immediately seized at the station by
Wilkinson, the local banker, whom I had just met at Ned’s this summer.
He drove us all through and round the most characteristic town in
America. Great broad streets lined with lovely maple trees, all turned
now to clouds of scarlet and gold; down the principal one the railway
runs without any fence. Old Mr. Wansey and others came to dine, he a
dear old man of eighty, but hale and handsome, rather like my dear
old grandfather’s picture, the rest pleasant country folk. We played
billiards, and told stories after dinner, and had a decidedly good time
till nearly midnight. The next morning we breakfasted with Mr. White,
the President of this new University, and came on here with him. He is
a young man of about thirty-five, and one of the finest scholars America
has to boast of at present. By the way, he was a classmate of Smalley
at Yale. He is a rich man, and he has nothing whatever to gain by
undertaking this work. In short, he is quite worthy of having Goldwin
Smith as a fellow-worker, and between them, with the excellent staff
of professors and teachers they have got round them, I expect they will
make this place in a wondrous short time a great working-men’s college.
Everything is of course rough at present, as the buildings are still
in progress, but two blocks are completed, and there are about seven
hundred pupils living in them and in the town at the bottom of the hill
on which Cornell stands. It is a most magnificent situation, looking
over a large lake, forty miles long, and two splendid valleys, which are
now ablaze with the crimson and purple colours of the maples, shumachs,
American walnuts, and other trees, which make the hillsides here glow
all the later autumn through. We found Goldwin Smith waiting for us at
the wharf and looking much stronger than he used to do in England, and
quite warm in his welcome. All the professors, with their wives and
families, if married, live for the present in a huge square block of
buildings originally intended for a hydropathic establishment, in which
they have a private sitting-room and bedrooms and dine and take all
meals in the hall. You may fancy how much I am interested in this great
practical step towards association.
New York, Tuesday.
Here I am in the great city again, to spend the last few days before
my start for home. The reception in the great hall, speech, visit to
lecture rooms, etc., enthusiasm of boys, baseball games, and football
given in my honour, must all keep till we meet. For, alas! I have no
time to spend here for writing, as I have another address to give before
I start, on Friday evening, and I must write it carefully, as it is
to be on the labour question, which is mightily exercising our cousins
here. They are getting into the controversy which we are nearly through
at home, and if I can give them a little good advice before I come away,
I shall be very glad. As I am engaged every evening, it will not be easy
to find time to do it as I should like, but I can give the morning, I
think, and can at any rate make sure of not talking nonsense.