September 2d.--We got into our new house in Rock Park yesterday. It is
quite a good house, with three apartments, beside kitchen and pantry on
the lower floor; and it is three stories high, with four good chambers in
each story. It is a stone edifice, like almost all the English houses,
and handsome in its design. The rent, without furniture, would probably
have been one hundred pounds; furnished, it is one hundred and sixty
pounds. Rock Park, as the locality is called, is private property, and
is now nearly covered with residences for professional people, merchants,
and others of the upper middling class; the houses being mostly built, I
suppose, on speculation, and let to those who occupy them. It is the
quietest place imaginable, there being a police station at the entrance,
and the officer on duty allows no ragged or ill-looking person to pass.
There being a toll, it precludes all unnecessary passage of carriages;
and never were there more noiseless streets than those that give access
to these pretty residences. On either side there is thick shrubbery,
with glimpses through it of the ornamented portals, or into the trim
gardens with smooth-shaven lawns, of no large extent, but still affording
reasonable breathing-space. They are really an improvement on anything,
save what the very rich can enjoy, in America. The former occupants of
our house (Mrs. Campbell and family) having been fond of flowers, there
are many rare varieties in the garden, and we are told that there is
scarcely a month in the year when a flower will not be found there.
The house is respectably, though not very elegantly, furnished. It was a
dismal, rainy day yesterday, and we had a coal-fire in the sitting-room,
beside which I sat last evening as twilight came on, and thought, rather
sadly, how many times we have changed our home since we were married. In
the first place, our three years at the Old Manse; then a brief residence
at Salem, then at Boston, then two or three years at Salem again; then at
Lenox, then at West Newton, and then again at Concord, where we imagined
that we were fixed for life, but spent only a year. Then this farther
flight to England, where we expect to spend four years, and afterwards
another year or two in Italy, during all which time we shall have no real
home. For, as I sat in this English house, with the chill, rainy English
twilight brooding over the lawn, and a coal-fire to keep me comfortable
on the first evening of September, and the picture of a stranger--the
dead husband of Mrs. Campbell--gazing down at me from above the
mantel-piece,--I felt that I never should be quite at home here.
Nevertheless, the fire was very comfortable to look at, and the shape of
the fireplace--an arch, with a deep cavity--was an improvement on the
square, shallow opening of an American coal-grate.
September 7th.--It appears by the annals of Liverpool, contained in
Gore's Directory, that in 1076 there was a baronial castle built by Roger
de Poictiers on the site of the present St. George's Church. It was
taken down in 1721. The church now stands at one of the busiest points
of the principal street of the city. The old Church of St. Nicholas,
founded about the time of the Conquest, and more recently rebuilt, stood
within a quarter of a mile of the castle.
In 1150, Birkenhead Priory was founded on the Cheshire side of the
Mersey. The monks used to ferry passengers across to Liverpool until
1282, when Woodside Ferry was established,--twopence for a horseman, and
a farthing for a foot-passenger. Steam ferry-boats now cross to
Birkenhead, Monk's Ferry, and Woodside every ten minutes; and I believe
there are large hotels at all these places, and many of the business men
of Liverpool have residences in them.
In 1252 a tower was built by Sir John Stanley, which continued to be a
castle of defence to the Stanley family for many hundred years, and was
not finally taken down till 1820, when its site had become the present
Water Street, in the densest commercial centre of the city.
There appear to have been other baronial castles and residences in
different parts of the city, as a hall in old Hall Street, built by Sir
John de la More, on the site of which a counting-house now stands. This
knightly family of De la More sometimes supplied mayors to the city, as
did the family of the Earls of Derby.
About 1582, Edward, Earl of Derby, maintained two hundred and fifty
citizens of Liverpool, fed sixty aged persons twice a day, and provided
twenty-seven hundred persons with meat, drink, and money every Good
Friday.
In 1644, Prince Rupert besieged the town for twenty-four days, and
finally took it by storm. This was June 26th, and the Parliamentarians,
under Sir John Meldrum, repossessed it the following October.
In 1669 the Mayor of Liverpool kept an inn.
In 1730 there was only one carriage in town, and no stage-coach came
nearer than Warrington, the roads being impassable.
In 1734 the Earl of Derby gave a great entertainment in the tower.
In 1737 the Mayor was George Norton, a saddler, who frequently took, the
chair with his leather apron on. His immediate predecessor seems to have
been the Earl of Derby, who gave the above-mentioned entertainment during
his mayoralty. Where George's Dock now is, there used to be a battery of
fourteen eighteen-pounders for the defence of the town, and the old sport
of bull-baiting was carried on in that vicinity, close to the Church of
St. Nicholas.
September 12th.--On Saturday a young man was found wandering about in
West Derby, a suburb of Liverpool, in a state of insanity, and, being
taken before a magistrate, he proved to be an American. As he seemed to
be in a respectable station of life, the magistrate sent the master of
the workhouse to me, in order to find out whether I would take the
responsibility of his expenses, rather than have him put in the
workhouse. My clerk went to investigate the matter, and brought me his
papers. His name proves to be ---- ------, belonging to ------,
twenty-five years of age. One of the papers was a passport from our
legation in Naples; likewise there was a power of attorney from his
mother (who seems to have been married a second time) to dispose of some
property of hers abroad; a hotel bill, also, of some length, in which
were various charges for wine; and, among other evidences of low funds, a
pawnbroker's receipt for a watch, which he had pledged at five pounds.
There was also a ticket for his passage to America, by the screw steamer
Andes, which sailed on Wednesday last. The clerk found him to the last
degree incommunicative; and nothing could be discovered from him but what
the papers disclosed. There were about a dozen utterly unintelligible
notes among the papers, written by himself since his derangement.
I decided to put him into the insane hospital, where he now accordingly
is, and to-morrow (by which time he may be in a more conversable mood) I
mean to pay him a visit.
The clerk tells me that there is now, and has been for three years, an
American lady in the Liverpool almshouse, in a state of insanity. She is
very accomplished, especially in music; but in all this time it has been
impossible to find out who she is, or anything about her connections or
previous life. She calls herself Jenny Lind, and as for any other name
or identity she keeps her own secret.
September 14th.--It appears that Mr. ------ (the insane young gentleman)
being unable to pay his bill at the inn where he was latterly staying,
the landlord had taken possession of his luggage, and satisfied himself
in that way. My clerk, at my request, has taken his watch out of pawn.
It proves to be not a very good one, though doubtless worth more than
five pounds, for which it was pledged. The Governor of the Lunatic
Asylum wrote me yesterday, stating that the patient was in want of a
change of clothes, and that, according to his own account, he had left
his luggage at the American Hotel. After office-hours, I took a cab, and
set out with my clerk, to pay a visit to the Asylum, taking the American
Hotel in our way.
The American Hotel is a small house, not at all such a one as American
travellers of any pretension would think of stopping at, but still very
respectable, cleanly, and with a neat sitting-room, where the guests
might assemble, after the American fashion. We asked for the landlady,
and anon down she came, a round, rosy, comfortable-looking English dame
of fifty or thereabouts. On being asked whether she knew a Mr. ------,
she readily responded that he had been there, but, had left no luggage,
having taken it away before paying his bill; and that she had suspected
him of meaning to take his departure without paying her at all. Hereupon
she had traced him to the hotel before mentioned, where she had found
that he had stayed two nights,--but was then, I think, gone from thence.
Afterwards she encountered him again, and, demanding her due, went with
him to a pawnbroker's, where he pledged his watch and paid her. This was
about the extent of the landlady's knowledge of the matter. I liked the
woman very well, with her shrewd, good-humored, worldly, kindly
disposition.
Then we proceeded to the Lunatic Asylum, to which we were admitted by a
porter at the gate. Within doors we found some neat and comely
servant-women, one of whom showed us into a handsome parlor, and took my
card to the Governor. There was a large bookcase, with a glass front,
containing handsomely bound books, many of which, I observed, were of a
religious character. In a few minutes the Governor came in, a
middle-aged man, tall, and thin for an Englishman, kindly and agreeable
enough in aspect, but not with the marked look of a man of force and
ability. I should not judge from his conversation that he was an
educated man, or that he had any scientific acquaintance with the subject
of insanity.
He said that Mr. ------ was still quite incommunicative, and not in a
very promising state; that I had perhaps better defer seeing him for a
few days; that it would not be safe, at present, to send him home to
America without an attendant, and this was about all. But on returning
home I learned from my wife, who had had a call from Mrs. Blodgett, that
Mrs. Blodgett knew Mr. ------ and his mother, who has recently been
remarried to a young husband, and is now somewhere in Italy. They seemed
to have boarded at Mrs. Blodgett's house on their way to the Continent,
and within a week or two, an acquaintance and pastor of Mr. ------, the
Rev. Dr. ------, has sailed for America. If I could only have caught
him, I could have transferred the care, expense, and responsibility of
the patient to him. The Governor of the Asylum mentioned, by the way,
that Mr. ------ describes himself as having been formerly a midshipman in
the navy.
I walked through the St. James's cemetery yesterday. It is a very pretty
place, dug out of the rock, having formerly, I believe, been a
stone-quarry. It is now a deep and spacious valley, with graves and
monuments on its level and grassy floor, through which run gravel-paths,
and where grows luxuriant shrubbery. On one of the steep sides of the
valley, hewn out of the rock, are tombs, rising in tiers, to the height
of fifty feet or more; some of them cut directly into the rock with
arched portals, and others built with stone. On the other side the bank
is of earth, and rises abruptly, quite covered with trees, and looking
very pleasant with their green shades. It was a warm and sunny day, and
the cemetery really had a most agreeable aspect. I saw several
gravestones of Americans; but what struck me most was one line of an
epitaph on an English woman, "Here rests in peace a virtuous wife." The
statue of Huskisson stands in the midst of the valley, in a kind of
mausoleum, with a door of plate-glass, through which you look at the dead
statesman's effigy.
September 22d.--. . . . Some days ago an American captain came to the
office, and said he had shot one of his men, shortly after sailing from
New Orleans, and while the ship was still in the river. As he described
the event, he was in peril of his life from this man, who was an
Irishman; and he fired his pistol only when the man was coming upon him,
with a knife in one hand, and some other weapon of offence in the other,
while he himself was struggling with one or two more of the crew. He was
weak at the time, having just recovered from the yellow fever. The shots
struck the man in the pit of the stomach, and he lived only about a
quarter of an hour. No magistrate in England has a right to arrest or
examine the captain, unless by a warrant from the Secretary of State, on
the charge of murder. After his statement to me, the mother of the slain
man went to the police officer, and accused him of killing her son. Two
or three days since, moreover, two of the sailors came before me, and
gave their account of the matter; and it looked very differently from
that of the captain. According to them, the man had no idea of attacking
the captain, and was so drunk that he could not keep himself upright
without assistance. One of these two men was actually holding him up
when the captain fired two barrels of his pistol, one immediately after
the other, and lodged two balls in the pit of his stomach. The man sank
down at once, saying, "Jack, I am killed,"--and died very shortly.
Meanwhile the captain drove this man away, under threats of shooting him
likewise. Both the seamen described the captain's conduct, both then and
during the whole voyage, as outrageous, and I do not much doubt that it
was so. They gave their evidence like men who wished to tell the truth,
and were moved by no more than a natural indignation at the captain's
wrong.
I did not much like the captain from the first,--a hard, rough man, with
little education, and nothing of the gentleman about him, a red face and
a loud voice. He seemed a good deal excited, and talked fast and much
about the event, but yet not as if it had sunk deeply into him. He
observed that he "would not have had it happen for a thousand dollars,"
that being the amount of detriment which he conceives himself to suffer
by the ineffaceable blood-stain on his hand. In my opinion it is little
short of murder, if at all; but what would be murder on shore is almost a
natural occurrence when done in such a hell on earth as one of these
ships, in the first hours of the voyage. The men are then all drunk,--
some of them often in delirium tremens; and the captain feels no safety
for his life except in making himself as terrible as a fiend. It is the
universal testimony that there is a worse set of sailors in these short
voyages between Liverpool and America than in any other trade whatever.
There is no probability that the captain will ever be called to account
for this deed. He gave, at the time, his own version of the affair in
his log-book; and this was signed by the entire crew, with the exception
of one man, who had hidden himself in the hold in terror of the captain.
His mates will sustain his side of the question; and none of the sailors
would be within reach of the American courts, even should they be sought
for.
October 1st.--On Thursday I went with Mr. Ticknor to Chester by railway.
It is quite an indescribable old town, and I feel at last as if I had had
a glimpse of old England. The wall encloses a large space within the
town, but there are numerous houses and streets not included within its
precincts. Some of the principal streets pass under the ancient
gateways; and at the side there are flights of steps, giving access to
the summit. Around the top of the whole wall, a circuit of about two
miles, there runs a walk, well paved with flagstones, and broad enough
for three persons to walk abreast. On one side--that towards the
country--there is a parapet of red freestone three or four feet high. On
the other side there are houses, rising up immediately from the wall, so
that they seem a part of it. The height of it, I suppose, may be thirty
or forty feet, and, in some parts, you look down from the parapet into
orchards, where there are tall apple-trees, and men on the branches,
gathering fruit, and women and children among the grass, filling bags or
baskets. There are prospects of the surrounding country among the
buildings outside the wall; at one point, a view of the river Dee, with
an old bridge of arches. It is all very strange, very quaint, very
curious to see how the town has overflowed its barrier, and how, like
many institutions here, the ancient wall still exists, but is turned to
quite another purpose than what it was meant for,--so far as it serves
any purpose at all. There are three or four towers in the course of the
circuit; the most interesting being one from the top of which King
Charles the First is said to have seen the rout of his army by the
Parliamentarians. We ascended the short flight of steps that led up into
the tower, where an old man pointed out the site of the battle-field, now
thickly studded with buildings, and told us what we had already learned
from the guide-book. After this we went into the cathedral, which I will
perhaps describe on some other occasion, when I shall have seen more of
it, and to better advantage. The cloisters gave us the strongest
impression of antiquity; the stone arches being so worn and blackened by
time. Still an American must always have imagined a better cathedral
than this. There were some immense windows of painted glass, but all
modern. In the chapter-house we found a coal-fire burning in a grate,
and a large heap of old books--the library of the cathedral--in a
discreditable state of decay,--mildewed, rotten, neglected for years.
The sexton told us that they were to be arranged and better ordered.
Over the door, inside, hung two failed and tattered banners, being those
of the Cheshire regiment.
The most utterly indescribable feature of Chester is the Rows, which
every traveller has attempted to describe. At the height of several feet
above some of the oldest streets, a walk runs through the front of the
houses, which project over it. Back of the walk there are shops; on the
outer side is a space of two or three yards, where the shopmen place
their tables, and stands, and show-cases; overhead, just high enough for
persons to stand erect, a ceiling. At frequent intervals little narrow
passages go winding in among the houses, which all along are closely
conjoined, and seem to have no access or exit, except through the shops,
or into these narrow passages, where you can touch each side with your
elbows, and the top with your hand. We penetrated into one or two of
them, and they smelt anciently and disagreeably. At one of the doors
stood a pale-looking, but cheerful and good-natured woman, who told us
that she had come to that house when first married, twenty-one years
before, and had lived there ever since; and that she felt as if she had
been buried through the best years of her life. She allowed us to peep
into her kitchen and parlor,--small, dingy, dismal, but yet not wholly
destitute of a home look. She said that she had seen two or three
coffins in a day, during cholera times, carried out of that narrow
passage into which her door opened. These avenues put me in mind of
those which run through ant-hills, or those which a mole makes
underground. This fashion of Rows does not appear to be going out; and,
for aught I can see, it may last hundreds of years longer. When a house
becomes so old as to be untenantable, it is rebuilt, and the new one is
fashioned like the old, so far as regards the walk running through its
front. Many of the shops are very good, and even elegant, and these Rows
are the favorite places of business in Chester. Indeed, they have many
advantages, the passengers being sheltered from the rain, and there being
within the shops that dimmer light by which tradesmen like to exhibit
their wares.
A large proportion of the edifices in the Rows must be comparatively
modern; but there are some very ancient ones, with oaken frames visible
on the exterior. The Row, passing through these houses, is railed with
oak, so old that it has turned black, and grown to be as hard as stone,
which it might be mistaken for, if one did not see where names and
initials have been cut into it with knives at some bygone period.
Overhead, cross-beams project through the ceiling so low as almost to hit
the head. On the front of one of these buildings was the inscription,
"GOD'S PROVIDENCE IS MINE INHERITANCE," said to have been put there by
the occupant of the house two hundred years ago, when the plague spared
this one house only in the whole city. Not improbably the inscription
has operated as a safeguard to prevent the demolition of the house
hitherto; but a shopman of an adjacent dwelling told us that it was soon
to be taken down.
Here and there, about some of the streets through which the Rows do not
run, we saw houses of very aged aspect, with steep, peaked gables. The
front gable-end was supported on stone pillars, and the sidewalk passed
beneath. Most of these old houses seemed to be taverns,--the Black Bear,
the Green Dragon, and such names. We thought of dining at one of them,
but, on inspection, they looked rather too dingy and close, and of
questionable neatness. So we went to the Royal Hotel, where we probably
fared just as badly at much more expense, and where there was a
particularly gruff and crabbed old waiter, who, I suppose, thought
himself free to display his surliness because we arrived at the hotel on
foot. For my part, I love to see John Bull show himself. I must go
again and again and again to Chester, for I suppose there is not a more
curious place in the world.
Mr. Ticknor, who has been staying at Rock Park with us since Tuesday, has
steamed away in the Canada this morning. His departure seems to make me
feel more abroad, more dissevered from my native country, than before.
October 3d.--Saturday evening, at six, I went to dine with Mr. Aiken, a
wealthy merchant here, to meet two of the sons of Burns. There was a
party of ten or twelve, Mr. Aiken and his two daughters included. The
two sons of Burns have both been in the Indian army, and have attained
the ranks of Colonel and Major; one having spent thirty, and the other
twenty-seven years in India. They are now old gentlemen of sixty and
upwards, the elder with a gray head, the younger with a perfectly white
one,--rather under than above the middle stature, and with a British
roundness of figure,--plain, respectable, intelligent-looking persons,
with quiet manners. I saw no resemblance in either of them to any
portrait of their father. After the ladies left the table, I sat next to
the Major, the younger of the two, and had a good deal of talk with him.
He seemed a very kindly and social man, and was quite ready to speak
about his father, nor was he at all reluctant to let it be seen how much
he valued the glory of being descended from the poet. By and by, at Mr.
Aiken's instance, he sang one of Burns's songs,--the one about "Annie"
and the "rigs of barley." He sings in a perfectly simple style, so that
it is little more than a recitative, and yet the effect is very good as
to humor, sense, and pathos. After rejoining the ladies, he sang
another, "A posie for my ain dear May," and likewise "A man's a man for
a' that." My admiration of his father, and partly, perhaps, my being an
American, gained me some favor with him, and he promised to give me what
he considered the best engraving of Burns, and some other remembrance of
him. The Major is that son of Burns who spent an evening at Abbotsford
with Sir Walter Scott, when, as Lockhart writes, "the children sang the
ballads of their sires." He spoke with vast indignation of a recent
edition of his father's works by Robert Chambers, in which the latter
appears to have wronged the poet by some misstatements.--I liked them
both and they liked me, and asked me to go and see there at Cheltenham,
where they reside. We broke up at about midnight.
The members of this dinner-party were of the more liberal tone of
thinking here in Liverpool. The Colonel and Major seemed to be of
similar principles; and the eyes of the latter glowed, when he sang his
father's noble verse, "The rank is but the guinea's stamp," etc. It
would have been too pitiable if Burns had left a son who could not feel
the spirit of that verse.
October 8th.--Coning to my office, two or three mornings ago, I found
Mrs. ------, the mother of Mr. ------, the insane young man of whom I had
taken charge. She is a lady of fifty or thereabouts, and not very
remarkable anyway, nor particularly lady-like. However, she was just
come off a rapid journey, having travelled from Naples, with three small
children, without taking rest, since my letter reached her. A son (this
proved to be her new husband) of about twenty had come with her to the
Consulate. She was, of course, infinitely grieved about the young man's
insanity, and had two or three bursts of tears while we talked the matter
over. She said he was the hope of her life,--the best, purest, most
innocent child that ever was, and wholly free from every kind of vice.
But it appears that he had a previous attack of insanity, lasting three
months, about three years ago.
After I had told her all I knew about him, including my personal
observations at a visit a week or two since, we drove in a cab to the
Asylum. It must have been a dismal moment to the poor lady, as we
entered the gateway through a tall, prison-like wall. Being ushered into
the parlor, the Governor soon appeared, and informed us that Mr. ------
had had a relapse within a few days, and was not now so well as when I
saw him. He complains of unjust confinement, and seems to consider
himself, if I rightly understand, under persecution for political
reasons. The Governor, however, proposed to call him down, and I took my
leave, feeling that it would be indelicate to be present at his first
interview with his mother. So here ended my guardianship of the poor
young fellow.
In the afternoon I called at the Waterloo Hotel, where Mrs. ------ was
staying, and found her in the coffee-room with the children. She had
determined to take a lodging in the vicinity of the Asylum, and was going
to remove thither as soon as the children had had something to eat. They
seemed to be pleasant and well-behaved children, and impressed me more
favorably than the mother, whom I suspect to be rather a foolish woman,
although her present grief makes her appear in a more respectable light
than at other times. She seemed anxious to impress me with the
respectability and distinction of her connections in America, and I had
observed the same tendency in the insane patient, at my interview with
him. However, she has undoubtedly a mother's love for this poor
shatterbrain, and this may weigh against the folly of her marrying an
incongruously youthful second husband, and many other follies.
This was day before yesterday, and I have heard nothing of her since.
The same day I had applications for assistance in two other domestic
affairs; one from an Irishman, naturalized in America, who wished me to
get him a passage thither, and to take charge of his wife and family
here, at my own private expense, until he could remit funds to carry them
across. Another was from an Irishman, who had a power of attorney from a
countrywoman of his in America, to find and take charge of an infant whom
she had left in the Liverpool work-house, two years ago. I have a great
mind to keep a list of all the business I am consulted about and employed
in. It would be very curious. Among other things, all penniless
Americans, or pretenders to Americanism, look upon me as their banker;
and I could ruin myself any week, if I had not laid down a rule to
consider every applicant for assistance an impostor until he prove
himself a true and responsible man,--which it is very difficult to do.
Yesterday there limped in a very respectable-looking old man, who
described himself as a citizen of Baltimore, who had been on a trip to
England and elsewhere, and, being detained longer than he expected, and
having had an attack of rheumatism, was now short of funds to pay his
passage home, and hoped that I would supply the deficiency. He had quite
a plain, homely, though respectable manner, and, for aught I know, was
the very honestest man alive; but as he could produce no kind of proof of
his character and responsibility, I very quietly explained the
impossibility of my helping him. I advised him to try to obtain a
passage on board of some Baltimore ship, the master of which might be
acquainted with him, or, at all events, take his word for payment, after
arrival. This he seemed inclined to do, and took his leave. There was a
decided aspect of simplicity about this old man, and yet I rather judge
him to be an impostor.
It is easy enough to refuse money to strangers and unknown people, or
whenever there may be any question about identity; but it will not be so
easy when I am asked for money by persons whom I know, but do not like to
trust. They shall meet the eternal "No," however.
October 13th.--In Ormerod's history of Chester it is mentioned that
Randal, Earl of Chester, having made an inroad into Wales about 1225, the
Welshmen gathered in mass against him, and drove him into the castle of
Nothelert in Flintshire. The Earl sent for succor to the Constable of
Chester, Roger Lacy, surnamed "Hell," on account of his fierceness. It
was then fair-time at Chester, and the constable collected a
miscellaneous rabble of fiddlers, players, cobblers, tailors, and all
manner of debauched people, and led them to the relief of the Earl. At
sight of this strange army the Welshmen fled; and forever after the Earl
assigned to the constable of Chester power over all fiddlers, shoemakers,
etc., within the bounds of Cheshire. The constable retained for himself
and his heirs the control of the shoemakers; and made over to his own
steward, Dutton, that of the fiddlers and players, and for many hundreds
of years afterwards the Duttons of Dutton retained the power. On
midsummer-day, they used to ride through Chester, attended by all the
minstrels playing on their several instruments, to the Church of St.
John, and there renew their licenses. It is a good theme for a legend.
Sir Peter Leycester, writing in Charles the Second's time, copies the
Latin deed from the constable to Dutton; rightly translated, it seems to
mean "the magisterial power over all the lewd people . . . . in the whole
of Cheshire," but the custom grew into what is above stated. In the time
of Henry VII., the Duttons claimed, by prescriptive right, that the
Cheshire minstrels should deliver them, at the feast of St. John, four
bottles of wine and a lance, and that each separate minstrel should pay
fourpence halfpenny. . . .
Another account says Ralph Dutton was the constable's son-in-law, and "a
lusty youth."
October 19th.--Coming to the ferry this morning a few minutes before the
boat arrived from town, I went into the ferry-house, a small stone
edifice, and found there an Irishman, his wife and three children, the
oldest eight or nine years old, and all girls. There was a good fire
burning in the room, and the family was clustered round it, apparently
enjoying the warmth very much; but when I went in both husband and wife
very hospitably asked me to come to the fire, although there was not more
than room at it for their own party. I declined on the plea that I was
warm enough, and then the woman said that they were very cold, having
been long on the road. The man was gray-haired and gray-bearded, clad in
an old drab overcoat, and laden with a huge bag, which seemed to contain
bedclothing or something of the kind. The woman was pale, with a thin,
anxious, wrinkled face, but with a good and kind expression. The
children were quite pretty, with delicate faces, and a look of patience
and endurance in them, but yet as if they had suffered as little as they
possibly could. The two elder were cuddled up close to the father, the
youngest, about four years old, sat in its mother's lap, and she had
taken off its small shoes and stockings, and was warming its feet at the
fire. Their little voices had a sweet and kindly sound as they talked in
low tones to their parents and one another. They all looked very shabby,
and yet had a decency about them; and it was touching to see how they
made themselves at home at this casual fireside, and got all the comfort
they could out of the circumstances. By and by two or three market-women
came in and looked pleasantly at them, and said a word or two to the
children.
They did not beg of me, as I supposed they would; but after looking at
them awhile, I pulled out a piece of silver, and handed it to one of the
little girls. She took it very readily, as if she partly expected it,
and then the father and mother thanked me, and said they had been
travelling a long distance, and had nothing to subsist upon, except what
they picked up on the road. They found it impossible to live in England,
and were now on their way to Liverpool, hoping to get a passage back to
Ireland, where, I suppose, extreme poverty is rather better off than
here. I heard the little girl say that she should buy bread with the
money. There is not much that can be caught in the description of this
scene; but it made me understand, better than before, how poor people
feel, wandering about in such destitute circumstances, and how they
suffer; and yet how they have a life not quite miserable, after all, and
how family love goes along with them. Soon the boat arrived at the pier,
and we all went on board; and as I sat in the cabin, looking up through a
broken pane in the skylight, I saw the woman's thin face, with its
anxious, motherly aspect; and the youngest child in her arms, shrinking
from the chill wind, but yet not impatiently; and the eldest of the girls
standing close by with her expression of childish endurance, but yet so
bright and intelligent that it would evidently take but a few days to
make a happy and playful child of her. I got into the interior of this
poor family, and understand, through sympathy, more of them than I can
tell. I am getting to possess some of the English indifference as to
beggars and poor people; but still, whenever I come face to face with
them, and have any intercourse, it seems as if they ought to be the
better for me. I wish, instead of sixpence, I had given the poor family
ten shillings, and denied it to a begging subscriptionist, who has just
fleeced me to that amount. How silly a man feels in this latter
predicament!
I have had a good many visitors at the Consulate from the United States
within a short time,--among others, Mr. D. D. Barnard, our late minister
to Berlin, returning homeward to-day by the Arctic; and Mr. Sickles,
Secretary of Legation to London, a fine-looking, intelligent, gentlemanly
young man. . . . With him came Judge Douglas, the chosen man of Young
America. He is very short, extremely short, but has an uncommonly good
head, and uncommon dignity without seeming to aim at it, being free and
simple in manners. I judge him to be a very able man, with the Western
sociability and free-fellowship. Generally I see no reason to be ashamed
of my countrymen who come out here in public position, or otherwise
assuming the rank of gentlemen.
October 20th.--One sees incidents in the streets here, occasionally,
which could not be seen in an American city. For instance, a week or two
since, I was passing a quiet-looking, elderly gentleman, when, all of a
sudden, without any apparent provocation, he uplifted his stick, and
struck a black-gowned boy a smart blow on the shoulders. The boy looked
at him wofully and resentfully, but said nothing, nor can I imagine why
the thing was done. In Tythebarne Street to-day I saw a woman suddenly
assault a man, clutch at his hair, and cuff him about the ears. The man,
who was of decent aspect enough, immediately took to his heels, full
speed, and the woman ran after him, and, as far as I could discern the
pair, the chase continued.
October 22d.--At a dinner-party at Mr. Holland's last evening, a
gentleman, in instance of Charles Dickens's unweariability, said that
during some theatrical performances in Liverpool he acted in play and
farce, spent the rest of the night making speeches, feasting, and
drinking at table, and ended at seven o'clock in the morning by jumping
leap-frog over the backs of the whole company.
In Moore's diary he mentions a beautiful Guernsey lily having been given
to his wife, and says that the flower was originally from Guernsey. A
ship from there had been wrecked on the coast of Japan, having many of
the lilies on board, and the next year the flowers appeared,--springing
up, I suppose, on the wave-beaten strand.
Wishing to send a letter to a dead man, who may be supposed to have gone
to Tophet,--throw it into the fire.
Sir Arthur Aston had his brains beaten out with his own wooden leg, at
the storming of Tredagh in Ireland by Cromwell.
In the county of Cheshire, many centuries ago, there lived a half-idiot,
named Nixon, who had the gift of prophecy, and made many predictions
about places, families, and important public events, since fulfilled. He
seems to have fallen into fits of insensibility previous to uttering his
prophecies.
The family of Mainwaring (pronounced Mannering), of Bromborough, had an
ass's head for a crest.
"Richard Dawson, being sick of the plague, and perceiving he must die,
rose out of his bed and made his grave, and caused his nephew to cast
straw into the grave, which was not far from the house, and went and laid
him down in the said grave, and caused clothes to be laid upon him, and
so departed out of this world. This he did because he was a strong man,
and heavier than his said nephew and a serving-wench were able to bury.
He died about the 24th of August. Thus was I credibly told he did,
1625." This was in the township of Malpas, recorded in the parish
register.
At Bickley Hall, taken down a few years ago, used to be shown the room
where the body of the Earl of Leicester was laid for a whole
twelvemonth,--1659 to 1660,--he having been kept unburied all that time,
owing to a dispute which of his heirs should pay his funeral expenses.
November 5th.--We all, together with Mr. Squarey, went to Chester last
Sunday, and attended the cathedral service. A great deal of ceremony,
and not unimposing, but rather tedious before it was finished,--occupying
two hours or more. The Bishop was present, but did nothing except to
pronounce the benediction. In America the sermon is the principal thing;
but here all this magnificent ceremonial of prayer and chanted responses
and psalms and anthems was the setting to a short, meagre discourse,
which would not have been considered of any account among the elaborate
intellectual efforts of New England ministers. While this was going on,
the light came through the stained glass windows and fell upon the
congregation, tingeing them with crimson. After service we wandered
about the aisles, and looked at the tombs and monuments,--the oldest of
which was that of some nameless abbot, with a staff and mitre half
obliterated from his tomb, which was under a shallow arch on one side of
the cathedral. There were also marbles on the walls, and lettered stones
in the pavement under our feet; but chiefly, if not entirely, of modern
date. We lunched at the Royal Hotel, and then walked round the city
walls, also crossing the bridge of one great arch over the Dee, and
penetrating as far into Wales as the entrance of the Marquis of
Westminster's Park at Eaton. It was, I think, the most lovely day as
regards weather that I have seen in England.
I passed, to-day, a man chanting a ballad in the street about a recent
murder, in a voice that had innumerable cracks in it, and was most
lugubrious. The other day I saw a man who was reading in a loud voice
what seemed to be an account of the late riots and loss of life in Wigan.
He walked slowly along the street as he read, surrounded by a small crowd
of men, women, and children; and close by his elbow stalked a policeman,
as if guarding against a disturbance.
November 14th.--There is a heavy dun fog on the river and over the city
to-day, the very gloomiest atmosphere that ever I was acquainted with.
On the river the steamboats strike gongs or ring bells to give warning of
their approach. There are lamps burning in the counting-rooms and
lobbies of the warehouses, and they gleam distinctly through the windows.
The other day, at the entrance of the market-house, I saw a woman sitting
in a small hand-wagon, apparently for the purpose of receiving alms.
There was no attendant at hand; but I noticed that one or two persons who
passed by seemed to inquire whether she wished her wagon to be moved.
Perhaps this is her mode of making progress about the city, by the
voluntary aid of boys and other people who help to drag her. There is
something in this--I don't yet well know what--that has impressed me, as
if I could make a romance out of the idea of a woman living in this
manner a public life, and moving about by such means.
November 29th.--Mr. H. A. B. told me of his friend Mr. ------ (who was
formerly attache to the British Legation at Washington, and whom I saw at
Concord), that his father, a clergyman, married a second wife. After the
marriage, the noise of a coffin being nightly carried down the stairs was
heard in the parsonage. It could be distinguished when the coffin
reached a certain broad lauding and rested on it. Finally, his father
had to remove to another residence. Besides this, Mr. ------ had had
another ghostly experience,--having seen a dim apparition of an uncle at
the precise instant when the latter died in a distant place. The attache
is a credible and honorable fellow, and talks of these matters as if he
positively believed them. But Ghostland lies beyond the jurisdiction of
veracity.
In a garden near Chester, in taking down a summer-house, a tomb was
discovered beneath it, with a Latin inscription to the memory of an old
doctor of medicine, William Bentley, who had owned the place long ago,
and died in 1680. And his dust and bones had lain beneath all the merry
times in the summer-house.
December 1st.--It is curious to observe how many methods people put in
practice here to pick up a halfpenny. Yesterday I saw a man standing
bareheaded and barelegged in the mud and misty weather, playing on a
fife, in hopes to get a circle of auditors. Nobody, however, seemed to
take any notice. Very often a whole band of musicians will strike up,--
passing a hat round after playing a tune or two. On board the ferry,
until the coldest weather began, there were always some wretched
musicians, with an old fiddle, an old clarinet, and an old verdigrised
brass bugle, performing during the passage, and, as the boat neared the
shore, sending round one of their number to gather contributions in the
hollow of the brass bugle. They were a very shabby set, and must have
made a very scanty living at best. Sometimes it was a boy with an
accordion, and his sister, a smart little girl, with a timbrel,--which,
being so shattered that she could not play on it, she used only to
collect halfpence in. Ballad-singers, or rather chanters or croakers,
are often to be met with in the streets, but hand-organ players are not
more frequent than in our cities.
I still observe little girls and other children barelegged and barefooted
on the wet sidewalks. There certainly never was anything so dismal as
the November weather has been; never any real sunshine; almost always a
mist; sometimes a dense fog, like slightly rarefied wool, pervading the
atmosphere.
An epitaph on a person buried on a hillside in Cheshire, together with
some others, supposed to have died of the plague, and therefore not
admitted into the churchyards:--
"Think it not strange our bones ly here,
Thine may ly thou knowst not where."
Elizabeth Hampson.
These graves were near the remains of two rude stone crosses, the purpose
of which was not certainly known, although they were supposed to be
boundary marks. Probably, as the plague-corpses were debarred from
sanctified ground, the vicinity of these crosses was chosen as having a
sort of sanctity.
"Bang beggar,"--an old Cheshire term for a parish beadle.
Hawthorne Hall, Cheshire, Macclesfield Hundred, Parish of Wilmslow, and
within the hamlet of Morley. It was vested at an early period in the
Lathoms of Irlam, Lancaster County, and passed through the Leighs to the
Pages of Earlshaw. Thomas Leigh Page sold it to Mr. Ralph Bower of
Wilmslow, whose children owned it in 1817. The Leighs built a chancel in
the church of Wilmslow, where some of them are buried, their arms painted
in the windows. The hall is an "ancient, respectable mansion of brick."
December 2d.--Yesterday, a chill, misty December day, yet I saw a woman
barefooted in the street, not to speak of children.
Cold and uncertain as the weather is, there is still a great deal of
small trade carried on in the open air. Women and men sit in the streets
with a stock of combs and such small things to sell, the women knitting
as if they sat by a fireside. Cheap crockery is laid out in the street,
so far out that without any great deviation from the regular
carriage-track a wheel might pass straight through it. Stalls of apples
are innumerable, but the apples are not fit for a pig. In some streets
herrings are very abundant, laid out on boards. Coals seem to be for
sale by the wheelbarrowful. Here and there you see children with some
small article for sale,--as, for instance, a girl with two linen caps. A
somewhat overladen cart of coal was passing along and some small quantity
of the coal fell off; no sooner had the wheels passed than several women
and children gathered to the spot, like hens and chickens round a handful
of corn, and picked it up in their aprons. We have nothing similar to
these street-women in our country.
December 10th.--I don't know any place that brings all classes into
contiguity on equal ground so completely as the waiting-room at Rock
Ferry on these frosty days. The room is not more than eight feet,
square, with walls of stone, and wooden benches ranged round them, and an
open stove in one corner, generally well furnished with coal. It is
almost always crowded, and I rather suspect that many persons who have no
fireside elsewhere creep in here and spend the most comfortable part of
their day.
This morning, when I looked into the room, there were one or two
gentlemen and other respectable persons; but in the best place, close to
the fire, and crouching almost into it, was an elderly beggar, with the
raggedest of overcoats, two great rents in the shoulders of it disclosing
the dingy lining, all bepatched with various stuff covered with dirt, and
on his shoes and trousers the mud of an interminable pilgrimage. Owing
to the posture in which he sat, I could not see his face, but only the
battered crown and rim of the very shabbiest hat that ever was worn.
Regardless of the presence of women (which, indeed, Englishmen seldom do
regard when they wish to smoke), he was smoking a pipe of vile tobacco;
but, after all, this was fortunate, because the man himself was not
personally fragrant. He was terribly squalid,--terribly; and when I had
a glimpse of his face, it well befitted the rest of his development,--
grizzled, wrinkled, weather-beaten, yet sallow, and down-looking, with a
watchful kind of eye turning upon everybody and everything, meeting the
glances of other people rather boldly, yet soon shrinking away; a long
thin nose, a gray beard of a week's growth; hair not much mixed with
gray, but rusty and lifeless;--a miserable object; but it was curious to
see how he was not ashamed of himself, but seemed to feel that he was one
of the estates of the kingdom, and had as much right to live as other
men. He did just as he pleased, took the best place by the fire, nor
would have cared though a nobleman were forced to stand aside for him.
When the steamer's bell rang, he shouldered a large and heavy pack, like
a pilgrim with his burden of sin, but certainly journeying to hell
instead of heaven. On board he looked round for the best position, at
first stationing himself near the boiler-pipe; but, finding the deck damp
underfoot, he went to the cabin-door, and took his stand on the stairs,
protected from the wind, but very incommodiously placed for those who
wished to pass. All this was done without any bravado or forced
impudence, but in the most quiet way, merely because he was seeking his
own comfort, and considered that he had a right to seek it. It was an
Englishman's spirit; but in our country, I imagine, a beggar considers
himself a kind of outlaw, and would hardly assume the privileges of a man
in any place of public resort. Here beggary is a system, and beggars are
a numerous class, and make themselves, in a certain way, respected as
such. Nobody evinced the slightest disapprobation of the man's
proceedings. In America, I think, we should see many aristocratic airs
on such provocation, and probably the ferry people would there have
rudely thrust the beggar aside; giving him a shilling, however, which no
Englishman would ever think of doing. There would also have been a great
deal of fun made of his squalid and ragged figure; whereas nobody smiled
at him this morning, nor in any way showed the slightest disrespect.
This is good; but it is the result of a state of things by no means good.
For many days there has been a great deal of fog on the river, and the
boats have groped their way along, continually striking their bells,
while, on all sides, there are responses of bell and gong; and the
vessels at anchor look shadow-like as we glide past them, and the master
of one steamer shouts a warning to the master of another which he meets.
The Englishmen, who hate to run any risk without an equivalent object,
show a good deal of caution and timidity on these foggy days.
December 13th.--Chill, frosty weather; such an atmosphere as forebodes
snow in New England, and there has been a little here. Yet I saw a
barefooted young woman yesterday. The feet of these poor creatures have
exactly the red complexion of their hands, acquired by constant exposure
to the cold air.
At the ferry-room, this morning, was a small, thin, anxious-looking
woman, with a bundle, seeming in rather poor circumstances, but decently
dressed, and eying other women, I thought, with an expression of slight
ill-will and distrust; also, an elderly, stout, gray-haired woman, of
respectable aspect, and two young lady-like persons, quite pretty, one of
whom was reading a shilling volume of James's "Arabella Stuart." They
talked to one another with that up-and-down intonation which English
ladies practise, and which strikes an unaccustomed ear as rather
affected, especially in women of size and mass. It is very different
from an American lady's mode of talking: there is the difference between
color and no color; the tone variegates it. One of these young ladies
spoke to me, making some remark about the weather,--the first instance I
have met with of a gentlewoman's speaking to an unintroduced gentleman.
Besides these, a middle-aged man of the lower class, and also a
gentleman's out-door servant, clad in a drab great-coat, corduroy
breeches, and drab cloth gaiters buttoned from the knee to the ankle. He
complained to the other man of the cold weather; said that a glass of
whiskey, every half-hour, would keep a man comfortable; and, accidentally
hitting his coarse foot against one of the young lady's feet, said, "Beg
pardon, ma'am,"--which she acknowledged with a slight movement of the
head. Somehow or other, different classes seem to encounter one another
in an easier manner than with us; the shock is less palpable. I suppose
the reason is that the distinctions are real, and therefore need not be
continually asserted.
Nervous and excitable persons need to talk a great deal, by way of
letting off their steam.
On board the Rock Ferry steamer, a gentleman coming into the cabin, a
voice addresses him from a dark corner, "How do you do, sir?"--"Speak
again!" says the gentleman. No answer from the dark corner; and the
gentleman repeats, "Speak again!" The speaker now comes out of the dark
corner, and sits down in a place where he can be seen. "Ah!" cries the
gentleman, "very well, I thank you. How do you do? I did not recognize
your voice." Observable, the English caution, shown in the gentleman's
not vouchsafing to say, "Very well, thank you!" till he knew his man.
What was the after life of the young man, whom Jesus, looking on,
"loved," and bade him sell all that he had, and give to the poor, and
take up his cross and follow him? Something very deep and beautiful
might be made out of this.
December 31st.--Among the beggars of Liverpool, the hardest to encounter
is a man without any legs, and, if I mistake not, likewise deficient in
arms. You see him before you all at once, as if he had sprouted halfway
out of the earth, and would sink down and reappear in some other place
the moment he has done with you. His countenance is large, fresh, and
very intelligent; but his great power lies in his fixed gaze, which is
inconceivably difficult to bear. He never once removes his eye from you
till you are quite past his range; and you feel it all the same, although
you do not meet his glance. He is perfectly respectful; but the
intentness and directness of his silent appeal is far worse than any
impudence. In fact, it is the very flower of impudence. I would rather
go a mile about than pass before his battery. I feel wronged by him, and
yet unutterably ashamed. There must be great force in the man to produce
such an effect. There is nothing of the customary squalidness of beggary
about him, but remarkable trimness and cleanliness. A girl of twenty or
thereabouts, who vagabondizes about the city on her hands and knees,
possesses, to a considerable degree, the same characteristics. I think
they hit their victims the more effectually from being below the common
level of vision.
January 3d, 1854.--Night before last there was a fall of snow, about
three or four inches, and, following it, a pretty hard frost. On the
river, the vessels at anchor showed the snow along their yards, and on
every ledge where it could lie. A blue sky and sunshine overhead, and
apparently a clear atmosphere close at hand; but in the distance a
mistiness became perceptible, obscuring the shores of the river, and
making the vessels look dim and uncertain. The steamers were ploughing
along, smoking their pipes through the frosty air. On the landing stage
and in the streets, hard-trodden snow, looking more like my New England
Home than anything I have yet seen. Last night the thermometer fell as
low as 13 degrees, nor probably is it above 20 degrees to-day. No such
frost has been known in England these forty years! and Mr. Wilding tells
me that he never saw so much snow before.
January 6th.--I saw, yesterday, stopping at a cabinet-maker's shop in
Church Street, a coach with four beautiful white horses, and a postilion
on each near-horse; behind, in the dicky, a footman; and on the box a
coachman, all dressed in livery. The coach-panel bore a coat-of-arms
with a coronet, and I presume it must have been the equipage of the Earl
of Derby. A crowd of people stood round, gazing at the coach and horses;
and when any of them spoke, it was in a lower tone than usual. I doubt
not they all had a kind of enjoyment of the spectacle, for these English
are strangely proud of having a class above them.
Every Englishman runs to "The Times" with his little grievance, as a
child runs to his mother.
I was sent for to the police court the other morning, in the case of an
American sailor accused of robbing a shipmate at sea. A large room, with
a great coal-fire burning on one side, and above it the portrait of Mr.
Rushton, deceased, a magistrate of many years' continuance. A long
table, with chairs, and a witness-box. One of the borough magistrates, a
merchant of the city, sat at the head of the table, with paper and pen
and ink before him; but the real judge was the clerk of the court, whose
professional knowledge and experience governed all the proceedings. In
the short time while I was waiting, two cases were tried, in the first of
which the prisoner was discharged. The second case was of a woman,--a
thin, sallow, hard-looking, careworn, rather young woman,--for stealing a
pair of slippers out of a shop: The trial occupied five minutes or less,
and she was sentenced to twenty-one days' imprisonment,--whereupon,
without speaking, she looked up wildly first into one policeman's face,
then into another's, at the same time wringing her hands with no theatric
gesture, but because her torment took this outward shape,--and was led
away. The Yankee sailor was then brought up,--an intelligent, but
ruffian-like fellow,--and as the case was out of the jurisdiction of the
English magistrates, and as it was not worth while to get him sent over
to America for trial, he was forthwith discharged. He stole a comforter.
If mankind were all intellect, they would be continually changing, so
that one age would be entirely unlike another. The great conservative is
the heart, which remains the same in all ages; so that commonplaces of a
thousand years' standing are as effective as ever.
Monday, February 20th.--At the police court on Saturday, I attended the
case of the second mate and four seamen of the John and Albert, for
assaulting, beating, and stabbing the chief mate. The chief mate has
been in the hospital ever since the assault, and was brought into the
court to-day to give evidence,--a man of thirty, black hair, black eyes,
a dark complexion, disagreeable expression; sallow, emaciated, feeble,
apparently in pain, one arm disabled. He sat bent and drawn upward, and
had evidently been severely hurt, and was not yet fit to be out of bed.
He had some brandy-and-water to enable him to sustain himself. He gave
his evidence very clearly, beginning (sailor-like) with telling in what
quarter the wind was at the time of the assault, and which sail was taken
in. His testimony bore on one man only, at whom he cast a vindictive
look; but I think he told the truth as far as he knew and remembered it.
Of the prisoners the second mate was a mere youth, with long sandy hair,
and an intelligent and not unprepossessing face, dressed as neatly as a
three or four weeks' captive, with small, or no means, could well allow,
in a frock-coat, and with clean linen,--the only linen or cotton shirt in
the company. The other four were rude, brutish sailors, in flannel or
red-baize shirts. Three of them appeared to give themselves little
concern; but the fourth, a red-haired and red-bearded man,--Paraman, by
name,--evidently felt the pressure of the case upon himself. He was the
one whom the mate swore to have given him the first blow; and there was
other evidence of his having been stabbed with a knife. The captain of
the ship, the pilot, the cook, and the steward, all gave their evidence;
and the general bearing of it was, that the chief mate had a devilish
temper, and had misused the second mate and crew,--that the four seamen
had attacked him, and that Paraman had stabbed him; while all but the
steward concurred in saying that the second mate had taken no part in the
affray. The steward, however, swore to having seen him strike the chief
mate with a wooden marlinspike, which was broken by the blow. The
magistrate dismissed all but Paraman, whom I am to send to America for
trial. In my opinion the chief mate got pretty nearly what he deserved,
under the code of natural justice. While business was going forward, the
magistrate, Mr. Mansfield, talked about a fancy ball at which he had been
present the evening before, and of other matters grave and gay. It was
very informal; we sat at the table, or stood with our backs to the fire;
policemen came and went; witnesses were sworn on the greasiest copy of
the Gospels I ever saw, polluted by hundreds and thousands of perjured
kisses; and for hours the prisoners were kept standing at the foot of the
table, interested to the full extent of their capacity, while all others
were indifferent. At the close of the case, the police officers and
witnesses applied to me about their expenses.
Yesterday I took a walk with my wife and two children to Bebbington
Church. A beautifully sunny morning. My wife and U. attended church, J.
and I continued our walk. When we were at a little distance from the
church, the bells suddenly chimed out with a most cheerful sound, and
sunny as the morning. It is a pity we have no chimes of bells, to give
the churchward summons, at home. People were standing about the ancient
church-porch and among the tombstones. In the course of our walk, we
passed many old thatched cottages, built of stone, and with what looked
like a cow-house or pigsty at one end, making part of the cottage; also
an old stone farm-house, which may have been a residence of gentility in
its day. We passed, too, a small Methodist chapel, making one of a row
of low brick edifices. There was a sound of prayer within. I never saw
a more unbeautiful place of worship; and it had not even a separate
existence for itself, the adjoining tenement being an alehouse.
The grass along the wayside was green, with a few daisies. There was
green holly in the hedges, and we passed through a wood, up some of the
tree-trunks of which ran clustering ivy.
February 23d.--There came to see me the other day a young gentleman with
a mustache and a blue cloak, who announced himself as William Allingham,
and handed me a copy of his poems, a thin volume, with paper covers,
published by Routledge. I thought I remembered hearing his name, but had
never seen any of his works. His face was intelligent, dark, pleasing,
and not at all John-Bullish. He said that he had been employed in the
Customs in Ireland, and was now going to London to live by literature,--
to be connected with some newspaper, I imagine. He had been in London
before, and was acquainted with some of the principal literary people,--
among others, Tennyson and Carlyle. He seemed to have been on rather
intimate terms with Tennyson. We talked awhile in my dingy and dusky
Consulate, and he then took leave. His manners are good, and he appears
to possess independence of mind.
Yesterday I saw a British regiment march down to George's Pier, to embark
in the Niagara for Malta. The troops had nothing very remarkable about
them; but the thousands of ragged and squalid wretches, who thronged the
pier and streets to gaze on them, were what I had not seen before in such
masses. This was the first populace I have beheld; for even the Irish,
on the other side of the water, acquire a respectability of aspect. John
Bull is going with his whole heart into the Turkish war. He is very
foolish. Whatever the Czar may propose to himself, it is for the
interest of democracy that he should not be easily put down. The
regiment, on its way to embark, carried the Queen's colors, and, side by
side with them, the banner of the 28th,--yellow, with the names of the
Peninsular and other battles in which it had been engaged inscribed on it
in a double column. It is a very distinguished regiment; and Mr. Henry
Bright mentioned as one of its distinctions, that Washington had formerly
been an officer in it. I never heard of this.
February 27th.--We walked to Woodside in the pleasant forenoon, and
thence crossed to Liverpool. On our way to Woodside, we saw the remains
of the old Birkenhead Priory, built of the common red freestone, much
time-worn, with ivy creeping over it, and birds evidently at hone in its
old crevices. These ruins are pretty extensive, and seem to be the
remains of a quadrangle. A handsome modern church, likewise of the same
red freestone, has been built on part of the site occupied by the Priory;
and the organ was sounding within, while we walked about the premises.
On some of the ancient arches, there were grotesquely carved stone faces.
The old walls have been sufficiently restored to make them secure,
without destroying their venerable aspect. It is a very interesting
spot; and so much the more so because a modern town, with its brick and
stone houses, its flags and pavements, has sprung up about the ruins,
which were new a thousand years ago. The station of the Chester railway
is within a hundred yards. Formerly the monks of this Priory kept the
only ferry that then existed on the Mersey.
At a dinner at Mr. Bramley Moore's a little while ago, we had a
prairie-hen from the West of America. It was a very delicate bird, and a
gentleman carved it most skilfully to a dozen guests, and had still a
second slice to offer to them.
Aboard the ferry-boat yesterday, there was a laboring man eating oysters.
He took them one by one from his pocket in interminable succession,
opened them with his jack-knife, swallowed each one, threw the shell
overboard, and then sought for another. Having concluded his meal, he
took out a clay tobacco-pipe, filled it, lighted it with a match, and
smoked it,--all this, while the other passengers were looking at him, and
with a perfect coolness and independence, such as no single man can ever
feel in America. Here a man does not seem to consider what other people
will think of his conduct, but only whether it suits his own convenience
to do so and so. It may be the better way.
A French military man, a veteran of all Napoleon's wars, is now living,
with a false leg and arm, both movable by springs, false teeth, a false
eye, a silver nose with a flesh-colored covering, and a silver plate
replacing part of the skull. He has the cross of the Legion of Honor.
March 18th.--On Saturday I went with Mr. B---- to the Dingle, a pleasant
domain on the banks of the Mersey almost opposite to Rock Ferry. Walking
home, we looked into Mr. Thorn's Unitarian Chapel, Mr. B----'s family's
place of worship. There is a little graveyard connected with the chapel,
a most uninviting and unpicturesque square of ground, perhaps thirty or
forty yards across, in the midst of back fronts of city buildings. About
half the space was occupied by flat tombstones, level with the ground,
the remainder being yet vacant. Nevertheless, there were perhaps more
names of men generally known to the world on these few tombstones than in
any other churchyard in Liverpool,--Roscoe, Blanco White, and the Rev.
William Enfield, whose name has a classical sound in my ears, because,
when a little boy, I used to read his "Speaker" at school. In the vestry
of the chapel there were many books, chiefly old theological works, in
ancient print and binding, much mildewed and injured by the damp. The
body of the chapel is neat, but plain, and, being not very large, has a
kind of social and family aspect, as if the clergyman and his people must
needs have intimate relations among themselves. The Unitarian sect in
Liverpool have, as a body, great wealth and respectability.
Yesterday I walked with my wife and children to the brow of a hill,
overlooking Birkenhead and Tranmere, and commanding a fine view of the
river, and Liverpool beyond. All round about new and neat residences for
city people are springing up, with fine names,--Eldon Terrace, Rose
Cottage, Belvoir Villa, etc., etc., with little patches of ornamented
garden or lawn in front, and heaps of curious rock-work, with which the
English are ridiculously fond of adorning their front yards. I rather
think the middling classes--meaning shopkeepers, and other
respectabilities of that level--are better lodged here than in America;
and, what I did not expect, the houses are a great deal newer than in our
new country! Of course, this can only be the case in places
circumstanced like Liverpool and its suburbs. But, scattered among these
modern villas, there are old stone cottages of the rudest structure, and
doubtless hundreds of years old, with thatched roofs, into which the
grass has rooted itself, and now looks verdant. These cottages are in
themselves as ugly as possible, resembling a large kind of pigsty; but
often, by dint of the verdure on their thatch and the shrubbery
clustering about them, they look picturesque.
The old-fashioned flowers in the gardens of New England--blue-bells,
crocuses, primroses, foxglove, and many others--appear to be wild flowers
here on English soil. There is something very touching and pretty in
this fact, that the Puritans should have carried their field and hedge
flowers, and nurtured theme in their gardens, until, to us, they seem
entirely the product of cultivation.
March 16th.--Yesterday, at the coroner's court, attending the inquest on
a black sailor who died on board an American vessel, after her arrival at
this port. The court-room is capable of accommodating perhaps fifty
people, dingy, with a pyramidal skylight above, and a single window on
one side, opening into a gloomy back court. A private room, also lighted
with a pyramidal skylight, is behind the court-room, into which I was
asked, and found the coroner, a gray-headed, grave, intelligent, broad,
red-faced man, with an air of some authority, well mannered and
dignified, but not exactly a gentleman,--dressed in a blue coat, with a
black cravat, showing a shirt-collar above it. Considering how many and
what a variety of cases of the ugliest death are constantly coming before
him, he was much more cheerful than could be expected, and had a kind of
formality and orderliness which I suppose balances the exceptionalities
with which he has to deal. In the private room with him was likewise the
surgeon, who professionally attends the court. We chatted about suicide
and such matters,--the surgeon, the coroner, and I,--until the American
case was ready, when we adjourned to the court-room, and the coroner
began the examination. The American captain was a rude, uncouth
Down-Easter, about thirty years old, and sat on a bench, doubled and bent
into an indescribable attitude, out of which he occasionally straightened
himself, all the time toying with a ruler, or some such article. The
case was one of no interest; the man had been frost-bitten, and died from
natural causes, so that no censure was deserved or passed upon the
captain. The jury, who had been examining the body, were at first
inclined to think that the man had not been frostbitten, but that his
feet had been immersed in boiling water; but, on explanation by the
surgeon, readily yielded their opinion, and gave the verdict which the
coroner put into their mouths, exculpating the captain from all blame.
In fact, it is utterly impossible that a jury of chance individuals
should not be entirely governed by the judgment of so experienced and
weighty a man as the coroner. In the court-room were two or three police
officers in uniform, and some other officials, a very few idle
spectators, and a few witnesses waiting to be examined. And while the
case was going forward, a poor-looking woman came in, and I heard her, in
an undertone, telling an attendant of a death that had just occurred.
The attendant received the communication in a very quiet and
matter-of-course way, said that it should be attended to, and the woman
retired.
THE DIARY OF A CORONER would be a work likely to meet with large popular
acceptance. A dark passageway, only a few yards in extent, leads from
the liveliest street in Liverpool to this coroner's court-room, where all
the discussion is about murder and suicide. It seems, that, after a
verdict of suicide, the corpse can only be buried at midnight, without
religious rites.
"His lines are cast in pleasant places,"--applied to a successful angler.
A woman's chastity consists, like an onion, of a series of coats. You
may strip off the outer ones without doing much mischief, perhaps none at
all; but you keep taking off one after another, in expectation of coming
to the inner nucleus, including the whole value of the matter. It proves
however, that there is no such nucleus, and that chastity is diffused
through the whole series of coats, is lessened with the removal of each,
and vanishes with the final one, which you supposed would introduce you
to the hidden pearl.
March 23d.--Mr. B. and I took a cab Saturday afternoon, and drove out of
the city in the direction of Knowsley. On our way we saw many
gentlemen's or rich people's places, some of them dignified with the
title of Halls,--with lodges at their gates, and standing considerably
removed from the road. The greater part of them were built of brick,--a
material with which I have not been accustomed to associate ideas of
grandeur; but it was much in use here in Lancashire, in the Elizabethan
age,--more, I think, than now. These suburban residences, however, are
of much later date than Elizabeth's time. Among other places, Mr. B.
called at the Hazels, the residence of Sir Thomas Birch, a kinsman of
his. It is a large brick mansion, and has old trees and shrubbery about
it, the latter very fine and verdant,--hazels, holly, rhododendron, etc.
Mr. B. went in, and shortly afterwards Sir Thomas Birch came out,--a very
frank and hospitable gentleman,--and pressed me to enter and take
luncheon, which latter hospitality I declined.
His house is in very nice order. He had a good many pictures, and,
amongst them, a small portrait of his mother, painted by Sir Thomas
Lawrence, when a youth. It is unfinished, and when the painter was at
the height of his fame, he was asked to finish it. But Lawrence, after
looking at the picture, refused to retouch it, saying that there was a
merit in this early sketch which he could no longer attain. It was
really a very beautiful picture of a lovely woman.
Sir Thomas Birch proposed to go with us and get us admittance into
Knowsley Park, where we could not possibly find entrance without his aid.
So we went to the stables, where the old groom had already shown
hospitality to our cabman, by giving his horse some provender, and
himself some beer. There seemed to be a kindly and familiar sort of
intercourse between the old servant and the Baronet, each of them, I
presume, looking on their connection as indissoluble.
The gate-warden of Knowsley Park was an old woman, who readily gave us
admittance at Sir Thomas Birch's request. The family of the Earl of
Derby is not now at the Park. It was a very bad time of year to see it;
the trees just showing the earliest symptoms of vitality, while whole
acres of ground were covered with large, dry, brown ferns,--which I
suppose are very beautiful when green. Two or three hares scampered out
of these ferns, and sat on their hind legs looking about them, as we
drove by. A sheet of water had been drawn off, in order to deepen its
bed. The oaks did not seem to me so magnificent as they should be in an
ancient noble property like this. A century does not accomplish so much
for a tree, in this slow region, as it does in ours. I think, however,
that they were more individual and picturesque, with more character in
their contorted trunks; therein somewhat resembling apple-trees. Our
forest-trees have a great sameness of character, like our people,--
because one and the other grow too closely.
In one part of the Park we came to a small tower, for what purpose I know
not, unless as an observatory; and near it was a marble statue on a high
pedestal. The statue had been long exposed to the weather, and was
overgrown and ingrained with moss and lichens, so that its classic beauty
was in some sort gothicized. A half-mile or so from this point, we saw
the mansion of Knowsley, in the midst of a very fine prospect, with a
tolerably high ridge of hills in the distance. The house itself is
exceedingly vast, a front and two wings, with suites of rooms, I suppose,
interminable. The oldest part, Sir Thomas Birch told us, is a tower of
the time of Henry VII. Nevertheless, the effect is not overwhelming,
because the edifice looks low in proportion to its great extent over the
ground; and besides, a good deal of it is built of brick, with white
window-frames, so that, looking at separate parts, I might think them
American structures, without the smart addition of green Venetian blinds,
so universal with us. Portions, however, were built of red freestone;
and if I had looked at it longer, no doubt I should have admired it more.
We merely drove round it from the rear to the front. It stands in my
memory rather like a college or a hospital, than as the ancestral
residence of a great English noble.
We left the Park in another direction, and passed through a part of Lord
Sefton's property, by a private road.
By the by, we saw half a dozen policemen, in their blue coats and
embroidered collars, after entering Knowsley Park; but the Earl's own
servants would probably have supplied their place, had the family been at
home. The mansion of Croxteth, the seat of Lord Sefton, stands near the
public road, and, though large, looked of rather narrow compass after
Knowsley.
The rooks were talking together very loquaciously in the high tops of the
trees near Sir Thomas Birch's house, it being now their building-time.
It was a very pleasant sound, the noise being comfortably softened by the
remote height. Sir Thomas said that more than half a century ago the
rooks used to inhabit another grove of lofty trees, close in front of the
house; but being noisy, and not altogether cleanly in their habits, the
ladies of the family grew weary of them and wished to remove them.
Accordingly, the colony was driven away, and made their present
settlement in a grove behind the house. Ever since that time not a rook
has built in the ancient grove; every year, however, one or another pair
of young rooks attempt to build among the deserted tree-tops, but the old
rooks tear the new nest to pieces as often as it is put together. Thus,
either the memory of aged individual rooks or an authenticated tradition
in their society has preserved the idea that the old grove is forbidden
and inauspicious to them.
A soil of General Arnold, named William Fitch Arnold, and born in 1794,
now possesses the estate of Little Messenden Abbey, Bucks County, and is
a magistrate for that county. He was formerly Captain of the 19th
Lancers. He has now two sons and four daughters. The other three sons
of General Arnold, all older than this one, and all military men, do not
appear to have left children; but a daughter married to Colonel Phipps,
of the Mulgrave family, has a son and two daughters. I question whether
any of our true-hearted Revolutionary heroes have left a more prosperous
progeny than this arch-traitor. I should like to know their feelings
with respect to their ancestor.
April 3d.--I walked with J-----, two days ago, to Eastham, a village on
the road to Chester, and five or six miles from Rock Ferry. On our way
we passed through a village, in the centre of which was a small stone
pillar, standing on a pedestal of several steps, on which children were
sitting and playing. I take it to have been an old Catholic cross; at
least, I know not what else it is. It seemed very ancient. Eastham is
the finest old English village I have seen, with many antique houses, and
with altogether a rural and picturesque aspect, unlike anything in
America, and yet possessing a familiar look, as if it were something I
had dreamed about. There were thatched stone cottages intermixed with
houses of a better kind, and likewise a gateway and gravelled walk, that
perhaps gave admittance to the Squire's mansion. It was not merely one
long, wide street, as in most New England villages, but there were
several crooked ways, gathering the whole settlement into a pretty small
compass. In the midst of it stood a venerable church of the common red
freestone, with a most reverend air, considerably smaller than that of
Bebbington, but more beautiful, and looking quite as old. There was ivy
on its spire and elsewhere. It looked very quiet and peaceful, and as if
it had received the people into its low arched door every Sabbath for
many centuries. There were many tombstones about it, some level with the
ground, some raised on blocks of stone, on low pillars, moss-grown and
weather-worn; and probably these were but the successors of other stones
that had quite crumbled away, or been buried by the accumulation of dead
men's dust above them. In the centre of the churchyard stood an old
yew-tree, with immense trunk, which was all decayed within, so that it is
a wonder how the tree retains any life,--which, nevertheless, it does.
It was called "the old Yew of Eastham," six hundred years ago!
After passing through the churchyard, we saw the village inn on the other
side. The doors were fastened, but a girl peeped out of the window at
us, and let us in, ushering us into a very neat parlor. There was a
cheerful fire in the grate, a straw carpet on the floor, a mahogany
sideboard, and a mahogany table in the middle of the room; and, on the
walls, the portraits of mine host (no doubt) and of his wife and
daughters,--a very nice parlor, and looking like what I might have found
in a country tavern at home, only this was an ancient house, and there is
nothing at home like the glimpse, from the window, of the church, and its
red, ivy-grown tower. I ordered some lunch, being waited on by the girl,
who was very neat, intelligent, and comely,--and more respectful than a
New England maid. As we came out of the inn, some village urchins left
their play, and ran to me begging, calling me "Master!" They turned at
once from play to begging, and, as I gave them nothing, they turned to
their play again.
This village is too far from Liverpool to have been much injured as yet
by the novelty of cockney residences, which have grown up almost
everywhere else, so far as I have visited. About a mile from it,
however, is the landing-place of a steamer (which runs regularly, except
in the winter months), where a large, new hotel is built. The grounds
about it are extensive and well wooded. We got some biscuits at the
hotel, and I gave the waiter (a splendid gentleman in black) four
halfpence, being the surplus of a shilling. He bowed and thanked me very
humbly. An American does not easily bring his mind to the small measure
of English liberality to servants; if anything is to be given, we are
ashamed not to give more, especially to clerical-looking persons, in
black suits and white neckcloths.
I stood on the Exchange at noon, to-day, to see the 18th Regiment, the
Connaught Rangers, marching down to embark for the East. They were a
body of young, healthy, and cheerful-looking men, and looked greatly
better than the dirty crowd that thronged to gaze at them. The royal
banner of England, quartering the lion, the leopard, and the harp, waved
on the town-house, and looked gorgeous and venerable. Here and there a
woman exchanged greetings with an individual soldier, as he marched
along, and gentlemen shook hands with officers with whom they happened to
be acquainted. Being a stranger in the land, it seemed as if I could see
the future in the present better than if I had been an Englishman; so I
questioned with myself how many of these ruddy-cheeked young fellows,
marching so stoutly away, would ever tread English ground again. The
populace did not evince any enthusiasm, yet there could not possibly be a
war to which the country could assent more fully than to this. I
somewhat doubt whether the English populace really feels a vital interest
in the nation.
Some years ago, a piece of rude marble sculpture, representing St. George
and the Dragon, was found over the fireplace of a cottage near Rock
Ferry, on the road to Chester. It was plastered over with pipe-clay, and
its existence was unknown to the cottagers, until a lady noticed the
projection and asked what it was. It was supposed to have originally
adorned the walls of the Priory at Birkenhead. It measured fourteen and
a half by nine inches, in which space were the heads of a king and queen,
with uplifted hands, in prayer; their daughters also in prayer, and
looking very grim; a lamb, the slain dragon, and St. George, proudly
prancing on what looks like a donkey, brandishing a sword over his head.
The following is a legend inscribed on the inner margin of a curious old
box:--
"From Birkenhead into Hilbree
A squirrel might leap from tree to tree."
I do not know where Hilbree is; but all round Birkenhead a squirrel would
scarcely find a single tree to climb upon. All is pavement and brick
buildings now.
Good Friday.--The English and Irish think it good to plant on this day,
because it was the day when our Saviour's body was laid in the grave.
Seeds, therefore, are certain to rise again.
At dinner the other day, Mrs. ------ mentioned the origin of Franklin's
adoption of the customary civil dress, when going to court as a
diplomatist. It was simply that his tailor had disappointed him of his
court suit, and he wore his plain one with great reluctance, because he
had no other. Afterwards, gaining great success and praise by his
mishap, he continued to wear it from policy.
The grandmother of Mrs. ------ died fifty years ago, at the age of
twenty-eight. She had great personal charms, and among them a head of
beautiful chestnut hair. After her burial in the family tomb, the coffin
of one of her children was laid on her own, so that the lid seems to have
decayed, or been broken from this cause; at any rate, this was the case
when the tomb was opened about a year ago. The grandmother's coffin was
then found to be filled with beautiful, glossy, living chestnut ringlets,
into which her whole substance seems to have been transformed, for there
was nothing else but these shining curls, the growth of half a century in
the tomb. An old man, with a ringlet of his youthful mistress treasured
on his heart, might be supposed to witness this wonderful thing.
Madam ------, who is now at my house, and very infirm, though not old,
was once carried to the grave, and on the point of being buried. It was
in Barbary, where her husband was Consul-General. He was greatly
attached to her, and told the pall-bearers at the grave that he must see
her once more. When her face was uncovered, he thought he discerned
signs of life, and felt a warmth. Finally she revived, and for many
years afterwards supposed the funeral procession to have been a dream;
she having been partially conscious throughout, and having felt the wind
blowing on her, and lifting the shroud from her feet,--for I presume she
was to be buried in Oriental style, without a coffin. Long after, in
London, when she was speaking of this dream, her husband told her the
facts, and she fainted away. Whenever it is now mentioned, her face
turns white. Mr. ------, her son, was born on shipboard, on the coast of
Spain, and claims four nationalities,--those of Spain, England, Ireland,
and the United States; his father being Irish, his mother a native of
England, himself a naturalized citizen of the United States, and his
father having registered his birth and baptism in a Catholic church of
Gibraltar, which gives him Spanish privileges. He has hereditary claims
to a Spanish countship. His infancy was spent in Barbary, and his lips
first lisped in Arabic. There has been an unsettled and wandering
character in his whole life.
The grandfather of Madam ------, who was a British officer, once
horsewhipped Paul Jones,--Jones being a poltroon. How singular it is
that the personal courage of famous warriors should be so often called in
question!
May 20th.--I went yesterday to a hospital to take the oath of a mate to a
protest. He had met with a severe accident by a fall on shipboard. The
hospital is a large edifice of red freestone, with wide, airy passages,
resounding with footsteps passing through them. A porter was waiting in
the vestibule. Mr. Wilding and myself were shown to the parlor, in the
first instance,--a neat, plainly furnished room, with newspapers and
pamphlets lying on the table and sofas. Soon the surgeon of the house
came,--a brisk, alacritous, civil, cheerful young man, by whom we were
shown to the apartment where the mate was lying. As we went through the
principal passage, a man was borne along in a chair looking very pale,
rather wild, and altogether as if he had just been through great
tribulation, and hardly knew as yet whereabouts he was. I noticed that
his left arm was but a stump, and seemed done up in red baize,--at all
events it was of a scarlet line. The surgeon shook his right hand
cheerily, and he was carried on. This was a patient who had just had his
arm cut off. He had been a rough person apparently, but now there was a
kind of tenderness about him, through pain and helplessness.
In the chamber where the mate lay, there were seven beds, all of them
occupied by persons who had met with accidents. In the centre of the
room was a stationary pine table, about the length of a man, intended, I
suppose, to stretch patients upon for necessary operations. The
furniture of the beds was plain and homely. I thought that the faces of
the patients all looked remarkably intelligent, though they were
evidently men of the lower classes. Suffering had educated them morally
and intellectually. They gazed curiously at Mr. Wilding and me, but
nobody said a word. In the bed next to the mate lay a little boy with a
broken thigh. The surgeon observed that children generally did well with
accidents; and this boy certainly looked very bright and cheerful. There
was nothing particularly interesting about the mate.
After finishing our business, the surgeon showed us into another room of
the surgical ward, likewise devoted to cases of accident and injury. All
the beds were occupied, and in two of them lay two American sailors who
had recently been stabbed. They had been severely hurt, but were doing
very well. The surgeon thought that it was a good arrangement to have
several cases together, and that the patients kept up one another's
spirits,--being often merry together. Smiles and laughter may operate
favorably enough from bed to bed; but dying groans, I should think, must
be somewhat of a discouragement. Nevertheless, the previous habits and
modes of life of such people as compose the more numerous class of
patients in a hospital must be considered before deciding this matter.
It is very possible that their misery likes such bedfellows as it here
finds.
As we were taking our leave, the surgeon asked us if we should not like
to see the operating-room; and before we could reply he threw open the
door, and behold, there was a roll of linen "garments rolled in blood,"--
and a bloody fragment of a human arm! The surgeon glanced at me, and
smiled kindly, but as if pitying my discomposure.
Gervase Elwes, son of Sir Gervase Elwes, Baronet, of Stoke, Suffolk,
married Isabella, daughter of Sir Thomas Hervey, Knight, and sister of
the first Earl of Bristol. This Gervase died before his father, but left
a son, Henry, who succeeded to the Baronetcy. Sir Henry died without
issue, and was succeeded by his sister's son, John Maggott Twining, who
assumed the name of Elwes. He was the famous miser, and must have had
Hawthorne blood in him, through his grandfather, Gervase, whose mother
was a Hawthorne. It was to this Gervase that my ancestor, William
Hawthorne, devised some land in Massachusetts, "if he would come over,
and enjoy it." My ancestor calls him his nephew.
June 12th.--Barry Cornwall, Mr. Procter, called on me a week or more ago,
but I happened not to be in the office. Saturday last he called again,
and as I had crossed to Rock Park he followed me thither. A plain,
middle-sized, English-looking gentleman, elderly, with short, white hair,
and particularly quiet in his manners. He talks in a somewhat low tone
without emphasis, scarcely distinct. His head has a good outline, and
would look well in marble. I liked him very well. He talked
unaffectedly, showing an author's regard to his reputation, and was
evidently pleased to hear of his American celebrity. He said that in his
younger days he was a scientific pugilist, and once took a journey to
have a sparring encounter with the Game-Chicken. Certainly, no one would
have looked for a pugilist in this subdued old gentleman. He is now
Commissioner of Lunacy, and makes periodical circuits through the
country, attending to the business of his office. He is slightly deaf,
and this may be the cause of his unaccented utterance,--owing to his not
being able to regulate his voice exactly by his own ear. He is a good
man, and much better expressed by his real name, Procter, than by his
poetical one, Barry Cornwall. . . . He took my hand in both of his at
parting. . . .
June 17th.--At eleven, at this season (and how much longer I know not),
there is still a twilight. If we could only have such dry, deliciously
warm evenings as we used to have in our own land, what enjoyment there
might be in these interminable twilights! But here we close the
window-shutters, and make ourselves cosey by a coal-fire.
All three of the children, and, I think, my wife and myself, are going
through the hooping-cough. The east-wind of this season and region is
most horrible. There have been no really warm days; for though the
sunshine is sometimes hot, there is never any diffused heat throughout
the air. On passing from the sunshine into the shade, we immediately
feel too cool.
June 20th.--The vagabond musicians about town are very numerous. On
board the steam ferry-boats, I have heretofore spoken of them. They
infest them from May to November, for very little gain apparently. A
shilling a day per man must be the utmost of their emolument. It is
rather sad to see somewhat respectable old men engaged in this way, with
two or three younger associates. Their instruments look much the worse
for wear, and even my unmusical ear can distinguish more discord than
harmony. They appear to be a very quiet and harmless people. Sometimes
there is a woman playing on a fiddle, while her husband blows a wind
instrument. In the streets it is not unusual to find a band of half a
dozen performers, who, without any provocation or reason whatever, sound
their brazen instruments till the houses re-echo. Sometimes one passes a
man who stands whistling a tune most unweariably, though I never saw
anybody give him anything. The ballad-singers are the strangest, from
the total lack of any music in their cracked voices. Sometimes you see a
space cleared in the street, and a foreigner playing, while a girl--
weather-beaten, tanned, and wholly uncomely in face and shabby in attire
dances ballets. The common people look on, and never criticise or treat
any of these poor devils unkindly or uncivilly; but I do not observe that
they give them anything.
A crowd--or, at all events, a moderate-sized group--is much more easily
drawn together here than with us. The people have a good deal of idle
and momentary curiosity, and are always ready to stop when another person
has stopped, so as to see what has attracted his attention. I hardly
ever pause to look at a shop-window, without being immediately incommoded
by boys and men, who stop likewise, and would forthwith throng the
pavement if I did not move on.
June 30th.--If it is not known how and when a man dies, it makes a ghost
of him for many years thereafter, perhaps for centuries. King Arthur is
an example; also the Emperor Frederic, and other famous men, who were
thought to be alive ages after their disappearance. So with private
individuals. I had an uncle John, who went a voyage to sea about the
beginning of the War of 1812, and has never returned to this hour. But
as long as his mother lived, as many as twenty years, she never gave up
the hope of his return, and was constantly hearing stories of persons
whose description answered to his. Some people actually affirmed that
they had seen him in various parts of the world. Thus, so far as her
belief was concerned, he still walked the earth. And even to this day I
never see his name, which is no very uncommon one, without thinking that
this may be the lost uncle.
Thus, too, the French Dauphin still exists, or a kind of ghost of him;
the three Tells, too, in the cavern of Uri.
July 6th.--Mr. Cecil, the other day, was saying that England could
produce as fine peaches as any other country. I asked what was the
particular excellence of a peach, and he answered, "Its cooling and
refreshing quality, like that of a melon!" Just think of this idea of
the richest, most luscious, of all fruits! But the untravelled
Englishman has no more idea of what fruit is than of what sunshine is; he
thinks he has tasted the first and felt the last, but they are both alike
watery. I heard a lady in Lord Street talking about the "broiling sun,"
when I was almost in a shiver. They keep up their animal heat by means
of wine and ale, else they could not bear this climate.
July 19th.--A week ago I made a little tour in North Wales with Mr.
Bright. We left Birkenhead by railway for Chester at two o'clock; thence
for Bangor; thence by carriage over the Menai bridge to Beaumaris. At
Beaumaris, a fine old castle,--quite coming up to my idea of what an old
castle should be. A gray, ivy-hung exterior wall, with large round
towers at intervals; within this another wall, the place of the
portcullis between; and again, within the second wall the castle itself,
with a spacious green court-yard in front. The outer wall is so thick
that a passage runs in it all round the castle, which covers a space of
three acres. This passage gives access to a chapel, still very perfect,
and to various apartments in the towers,--all exceedingly dismal, and
giving very unpleasant impressions of the way in which the garrison of
the castle lived. The main castle is entirely roofless, but the hall and
other rooms are pointed out by the guide, and the whole is tapestried
with abundant ivy, so that my impression is of gray walls, with here and
there a vast green curtain; a carpet of green over the floors of halls
and apartments; and festoons around all the outer battlement, with an
uneven and rather perilous foot-path running along the top. There is a
fine vista through the castle itself, and the two gateways of the two
encompassing walls. The passage within the wall is very rude, both
underfoot and on each side, with various ascents and descents of rough
steps,--sometimes so low that your head is in danger; and dark, except
where a little light comes through a loophole or window in the thickness
of the wall. In front of the castle a tennis-court was fitted up, by
laying a smooth pavement on the ground, and casing the walls with tin or
zinc, if I recollect aright. All this was open to the sky; and when we
were there, some young men of the town were playing at the game. There
are but very few of these tennis-courts in England; and this old castle
was a very strange place for one.
The castle is the property of Sir Richard Bulkely, whose seat is in the
vicinity, and who owns a great part of the island of Anglesea, on which
Beaumaris lies. The hotel where we stopped was the Bulkely Arms, and Sir
Richard has a kind of feudal influence in the town.
In the morning we walked along a delightful road, bordering on the Menai
Straits, to Bangor Ferry. It was really a very pleasant road, overhung
by a growth of young wood, exceedingly green and fresh. English trees
are green all about their stems, owing to the creeping plants that
overrun them. There were some flowers in the hedges, such as we
cultivate in gardens. At the ferry, there was a whitewashed cottage; a
woman or two, some children, and a fisherman-like personage, walking to
and fro before the door. The scenery of the strait is very beautiful and
picturesque, and directly opposite to us lay Bangor,--the strait being
here almost a mile across. An American ship from Boston lay in the
middle of it. The ferry-boat was just putting off for the Bangor side,
and, by the aid of a sail, soon neared the shore.
At Bangor we went to a handsome hotel, and hired a carriage and two
horses for some Welsh place, the name of which I forget; neither can I
remember a single name of the places through which we posted that day,
nor could I spell them if I heard them pronounced, nor pronounce them if
I saw them spelt. It was a circuit of about forty miles, bringing us to
Conway at last. I remember a great slate-quarry; and also that many of
the cottages, in the first part of our drive, were built of blocks of
slate. The mountains were very bold, thrusting themselves up abruptly in
peaks,--not of the dumpling formation, which is somewhat too prevalent
among the New England mountains. At one point we saw Snowdon, with its
bifold summit. We also visited the smaller waterfall (this is a
translation of an unpronounceable Welsh name), which is the largest in
Wales. It was a very beautiful rapid, and the guide-book considers it
equal in sublimity to Niagara. Likewise there were one or two lakes
which the guide-book greatly admired, but which to me, who remembered a
hundred sheets of blue water in New England, seemed nothing more than
sullen and dreary puddles, with bare banks, and wholly destitute of
beauty. I think they were nowhere more than a hundred yards across. But
the hills were certainly very good, and, though generally bare of trees,
their outlines thereby were rendered the stronger and more striking.
Many of the Welsh women, particularly the older ones, wear black beaver
hats, high-crowned, and almost precisely like men's. It makes them look
ugly and witchlike. Welsh is still the prevalent language, and the only
one spoken by a great many of the inhabitants. I have had Welsh people
in my office, on official business, with whom I could not communicate
except through an interpreter.
At some unutterable village we went into a little church, where we saw an
old stone image of a warrior, lying on his back, with his hands clasped.
It was the natural son (if I remember rightly) of David, Prince of Wales,
and was doubtless the better part of a thousand years old. There was
likewise a stone coffin of still greater age; some person of rank and
renown had mouldered to dust within it, but it was now open and empty.
Also, there were monumental brasses on the walls, engraved with portraits
of a gentleman and lady in the costumes of Elizabeth's time. Also, on
one of the pews, a brass record of some persons who slept in the vault
beneath; so that, every Sunday, the survivors and descendants kneel and
worship directly over their dead ancestors. In the churchyard, on a flat
tombstone, there was the representation of a harp. I supposed that it
must be the resting-place of a bard; but the inscription was in memory of
a merchant, and a skilful manufacturer of harps.
This was a very delightful town. We saw a great many things which it is
now too late to describe, the sharpness of the first impression being
gone; but I think I can produce something of the sentiment of it
hereafter.
We arrived at Conway late in the afternoon, to take the rail for Chester.
I must see Conway, with its old gray wall and its unrivalled castle,
again. It was better than Beaumaris, and I never saw anything more
picturesque than the prospect from the castle-wall towards the sea. We
reached Chester at 10 P. M. The next morning, Mr. Bright left for
Liverpool before I was awake. I visited the Cathedral, where the organ
was sounding, sauntered through the Rows, bought some playthings for the
children, and left for home soon after twelve.
Liverpool, August 8th.--Visiting the Zoological Gardens the other day
with J-----, it occurred to me what a fantastic kind of life a person
connected with them might be depicted as leading,--a child, for instance.
The grounds are very extensive, and include arrangements for all kinds of
exhibitions calculated to attract the idle people of a great city. In
one enclosure is a bear, who climbs a pole to get cake and gingerbread
from the spectators. Elsewhere, a circular building, with compartments
for lions, wolves, and tigers. In another part of the garden is a colony
of monkeys, the skeleton of an elephant, birds of all kinds. Swans and
various rare water-fowl were swimming on a piece of water, which was
green, by the by, and when the fowls dived they stirred up black mud. A
stork was parading along the margin, with melancholy strides of its long
legs, and came slowly towards us, as if for companionship. In one
apartment was an obstreperously noisy society of parrots and macaws, most
gorgeous and diversified of hue. These different colonies of birds and
beasts were scattered about in various parts of the grounds, so that you
came upon them unexpectedly. Also, there were archery and
shooting-grounds, and a sewing. A theatre, also, at which a rehearsal
was going on,--we standing at one of the doors, and looking in towards the
dusky stage where the company, in their ordinary dresses, were rehearsing
something that had a good deal of dance and action in it. In the open
air there was an arrangement of painted scenery representing a wide
expanse of mountains, with a city at their feet, and before it the sea,
with actual water, and large vessels upon it, the vessels having only the
side that would be presented to the spectator. But the scenery was so
good that at a first casual glance I almost mistook it for reality.
There was a refreshment-room, with drinks and cakes and pastry, but, so
far as I saw, no substantial victual. About in the centre of the garden
there was an actual, homely-looking, small dwelling-house, where perhaps
the overlookers of the place live. Now this might be wrought, in an
imaginative description, into a pleasant sort of a fool's paradise, where
all sorts of unreal delights should cluster round some suitable
personage; and it would relieve, in a very odd and effective way, the
stern realities of life on the outside of the garden-walls. I saw a
little girl, simply dressed, who seemed to have her habitat within the
grounds. There was also a daguerreotypist, with his wife and family,
carrying on his business in a shanty, and perhaps having his home in its
inner room. He seemed to be an honest, intelligent, pleasant young man,
and his wife a pleasant woman; and I had J-----'s daguerreotype taken for
three shillings, in a little gilded frame. In the description of the
garden, the velvet turf, of a charming verdure, and the shrubbery and
shadowy walks and large trees, and the slopes and inequalities of ground,
must not be forgotten. In one place there was a maze and labyrinth,
where a person might wander a long while in the vain endeavor to get out,
although all the time looking at the exterior garden, over the low hedges
that border the walks of the maze. And this is like the inappreciable
difficulties that often beset us in life.