September 16th.--I took the ten-o'clock train yesterday morning from the
Euston station, and arrived at Liverpool at about five, passing through
the valley of Trent, without touching at Birmingham. English scenery, on
the tracks, is the tamest of the tame, hardly a noticeable hill breaking
the ordinary gentle undulation of the landscape, but still the verdure
and finish of the fields and parks make it worth while to throw out a
glance now and then, as you rush by. Few separate houses are seen, as in
America; but sometimes a village, with the square, gray, battlemented
tower of its Norman church, and rows of thatched cottages, reminding one
of the clustered mud-nests of swallows, under the eaves of a barn; here
and there a lazy little river, like the Trent; perhaps, if you look
sharply where the guide-book indicates, the turrets of an old castle in
the distance; perhaps the great steeple and spires of a cathedral;
perhaps the tall chimney of a manufactory; but, on the whole, the
traveller comes to his journey's end unburdened with a single new idea.
I observe that the harvest is not all gathered in as yet, and this
rainy weather must look very gloomy to the farmer. I saw gleaners,
yesterday, in the stubble-fields. There were two gentlemen in the same
railway-carriage with me, and we did not exchange half a dozen words the
whole day.
I am here, established at Mrs. Blodgett's boarding-house, which I find
quite full; insomuch that she had to send one of her sea-captains to
sleep in another house, in order to make room for me. It is exclusively
American society: four shipmasters, and a doctor from Pennsylvania, who
has been travelling a year on the Continent, and who seems to be a man of
very active intelligence, interested in everything, and especially in
agriculture. . . . He asserted that we are fifty years ahead of England
in agricultural science, and that he could cultivate English soil to far
better advantage than English farmers do, and at vastly less expense.
Their tendency to cling to old ideas, which retards them in everything
else, keeps them behindhand in this matter too. Really, I do not know
any other place in England where a man can be made so sensible that he
lives in a progressive world as here in Mrs. Blodgett's boarding-house.
The captains talk together about their voyages, and how they manage with
their unruly mates and crews; and how freights are in America, and the
prospects of business; and of equinoctial gales, and the qualities of
different ships, and their commanders, and how crews, mates, and masters
have all deteriorated since their remembrance. . . . But these men are
alive, and talk of real matters, and of matters which they know. The
shipmasters who come to Mrs. Blodgett's are favorable specimens of their
class; being all respectable men, in the employ of good houses, and
raised by their capacity to the command of first-rate ships. In my
official intercourse with them, I do not generally see their best side;
as they are seldom before me except as complainants, or when summoned to
answer to some complaint made by a seaman. But hearing their daily talk,
and listening to what is in their minds, and their reminiscences of what
they have gone through, one becomes sensible that they are men of energy
and ability, fit to be trusted, and retaining a hardy sense of honor, and
a loyalty to their own country, the stronger because they have compared
it with many others. Most of them are gentlemen, too, to a certain
extent,--some more than others, perhaps; and none to a very exquisite
point, or, if so, it is none the better for them as sailors or as men.
September 17th.--It is singular to feel a sense of my own country
returning upon me with the intercourse of the people whom I find
here. . . .
The doctor is much the most talkative of our company, and sometimes bores
me thereby; though he seldom says anything that is not either instructive
or amusing. He tells a curious story of Prince Albert, and how he avails
himself of American sharp-shooting. During the doctor's tour in
Scotland, which he has just finished, he became acquainted with one of
the Prince's attaches, who invited him very earnestly to join his Royal
highness's party, promising him a good gun, and a keeper to load it for
him, two good dogs, besides as many cigars as he could smoke and as much
wine as he could drink, on the condition that whatever game he shot
should be the Prince's. "The Prince," said the attache, "is very fond of
having Americans in his shooting-parties, on account of their being such
excellent shots; and there was one with him last year who shot so
admirably that his Royal Highness himself left off shooting in utter
astonishment." The attache offered to introduce the doctor to the
Prince, who would be certain to receive him very graciously. . . .
I think, perhaps, we talk of kings and queens more at our table than
people do at other tables in England; not, of course, that we like them
better, or admire them more, but that they are curiosities. Yet I would
not say that the doctor may not be susceptible on the point of royal
attentions; for he told us with great complacency how emphatically, on
two or three occasions, Louis Napoleon had returned his bow, and the last
time had turned and made some remark (evidently about the doctor) to the
Empress. . . .
I ought not to omit mentioning that he has been told in France that he
personally resembles the Emperor, and I suspect he is trying to heighten
the resemblance by training his mustache on the pattern of that which
adorns the imperial upper lip. He is a genuine American character,
though modified by a good deal of travel; a very intelligent man, full of
various ability, with eyes all over him for any object of interest,--a
little of the bore, sometimes,--quick to appreciate character, with a
good deal of tact, gentlemanly in his manners, but yet lacking a deep and
delicate refinement. Not but that Americans are as capable of this last
quality as other people are; but what with the circumstances amid which
we grow up, and the peculiar activity of our minds, we certainly do often
miss it. By the by, he advanced a singular proposition the other
evening, namely, that the English people do not so well understand
comfort, or attain it so perfectly in their domestic arrangements, as we
do. I thought he hardly supported this opinion so satisfactorily as some
of his other new ideas.
I saw in an American paper yesterday, that an opera, still unfinished,
had been written on the story of The Scarlet Letter, and that several
scenes of it had been performed successfully in New York. I should think
it might possibly succeed as an opera, though it would certainly fail as
a play.