GREAT BRITAIN SIXTY YEARS AGO
_Wordsworth--Dickens--The Land of Burns, etc_.
The year after leaving college I made a visit to Europe, which, in those
days, was a notable event. As the stormy Atlantic had not yet been
carpeted by six-day steamers, I crossed in a fine new packet-ship, the
"Patrick Henry," of the Grinnell & Minturn Line. Captain Joseph C.
Delano was a gentleman of high intelligence and culture who, after he
had abandoned salt water, became an active member of the American
Association of Science. After twenty-one days under canvas and the
instructions of the captain, I learned more of nautical affairs and of
the ocean and its ways than in a dozen subsequent passages in the
steamships.
On the second morning after our arrival in Liverpool I breakfasted with
that eminent clergyman, Dr. Raffles, who boasted the possession of one
of the finest collections of autographs in England. He showed me the
signature of John Bunyan; the original manuscript of one of Sir Walter
Scott's novels; the original of Burns' poem addressed to the parasite
on a lady's bonnet, which contained the famous lines:
"Oh wad some power the giftie gie us
To see our sel's as others see us,"
besides several other manuscripts by the same poet, and also the
autograph of a challenge sent by Byron to Lord Brougham for alleged
insult, a fact to which no reference has been made in Byron's biography.
From Liverpool, with my friends Professor Renwick and Professor
Cuningham, I set out on a journey to the lakes of England. We reached
Bowness, on Lake Windermere, in the evening. The next morning we went up
to Elleray, the country residence of Professor Wilson ("Christopher
North"), who, unfortunately, was absent in Edinburgh. We hired a boatman
to row us through exquisitely beautiful Windermere, and in the evening
reached the Salutation Inn, at the foot of the lake. My great interest
in visiting Ambleside was to see the venerable poet, Wordsworth, who
lived about a mile from the village. I happened, just before supper, to
look out of the window of the traveller's room and espied an old man in
a blue cloak and Glengarry cap, with a bunch of heather stuck jauntily
in the top, driving by in a little brown phaeton from Rydal Mount.
"Perhaps," thought I to myself, "that may be the patriarch himself," and
sure enough it was. For, when I inquired about Mr. Wordsworth, the
landlord said to me, "A few minutes ago he went by here in his little
carriage." The next morning I called upon him. The walk to his cottage
was delightful, with the dew still lingering in the shady nooks by the
roadside, and the morning songs of thanksgiving bursting forth from
every grove. At the summit of a deeply shaded hill I found "Rydal Mount"
cottage. I was shown, at once, into the sitting-room, where I found him
with his wife, who sat sewing beside him. The old man rose and received
me graciously. By his appearance I was somewhat startled. Instead of a
grave recluse in scholastic black, whom I expected to see, I found an
affable and lovable old man dressed in the roughest coat of blue with
metal buttons, and checked trousers, more like a New York farmer than an
English poet. His nose was very large, his forehead a lofty dome of
thought, and his long white locks hung over his stooping shoulders; his
eyes presented a singular, half closed appearance. We entered at once
into a delightful conversation. He made many inquiries about Irving,
Mrs. Sigourney and our other American authors, and spoke, with great
vehemence, in favor of an international copyright law. He said that at
one time he had hoped to visit America, but the duties of a small office
which he held (Distributer of Stamps), and upon which he was partly
dependent, prevented the undertaking. He occasionally made a trip to
London to see the few survivors of the friends of his early days, but he
told me that his last excursion had proved a wearisome effort. His
library was small but select. He took down an American edition of his
works, edited by Professor Reed, and told me that London had never
produced an edition equal to it. When I was about to leave, the good old
poet got his broad slouched hat and put on his double purple glasses to
protect his eyes, and we went out to enjoy the neighboring views. We
walked about from one point to another and kept up a lively
conversation. He displayed such a winning familiarity that, in the
language of his own poem, we seemed
"A pair of friends, though I was young,
And he was seventy-four."
From the rear of his court-yard he showed me Rydal Water, a little lake
about a mile long, the beautiful church, and beyond it, Grassmere, and
still further beyond, Helvelyn, the mountain-king with a retinue of a
hundred hills. I might have spent the whole day in delightful
intercourse with the old man, but my fellow-travellers were going, and I
could make no longer inroads upon their time. When we returned to the
door of his cottage, he gave me a parting blessing; he picked a small
yellow flower and handed it to me, and I still preserve it in my
edition of his works, as a relic of the most profound and the most
sublime poet that England has produced during the nineteenth century I
know of but one other living American who has ever visited Wordsworth at
Rydal Mount.
After passing through Keswick, where the venerable poet Southey was
still lingering in sadly failing intelligence, we reached Carlisle the
same evening. From Carlisle we took the mail-coach for Edinburgh by the
same route over which Sir Walter Scott was accustomed to make his
journeys up to London. The driver, who might have answered to Washington
Irving's description, pointed out to me Netherby Hall, the mansion of
the Grahams, on "Cannobie lea," over which the young Lochinvar bore away
his stolen bride. We passed also Branksome Tower, the scene of the "Lay
of the Last Minstrel," and reached Selkirk in the early evening. The
next day I spent at Abbotsford. The Great Magician had been dead only
ten years, and his family still occupied the house with some of his old
employees who figure in Lockhart's biography. I sat in the great
arm-chair where Sir Walter Scott wrote many of his novels, and looked
out of the window of his bedchamber, through which came the rippling
murmurs of the Tweed, that consoled his dying hours. I heartily
subscribe to the opinion, expressed by Tennyson, that Sir Walter Scott
was the most extraordinary man in British literature since the days of
Shakespeare.
After reaching Glasgow I made a brief trip into the Land of Burns. At
the town of Ayr I found an omnibus waiting to take me down to the
birthplace of the poet. At that time the number of visitors to these
regions was comparatively few, and the birthplace of the poet had not
been transformed, as now, into a crowded museum. On reaching a slight
elevation, since consecrated by the muse of Burns, there broke upon the
view his monument, his native cottage, Alloway Kirk, the scene of the
inimitable Tam o' Shanter, and behind them all the "Banks and Braes of
Bonnie Doon." I went first to the monument, within which on a centre
table are the two volumes of the Bible given by Burns to Highland Mary
when they "lived one day of parting love" beneath the hawthorn of
Coilsfield. One of the volumes contains, in Burns' handwriting, "Thou
shalt not forswear thyself, but shalt perform unto the Lord thy vows,"
and a lock of Mary's hair, of a light brown color, given at the time, is
preserved in the treasured volumes. A few steps away is Alloway Kirk.
The old sexton was standing by the grave of Burns' father, and described
to me the route of "Tam o' Shanter." He showed me the chinks in the
sides through which the kirk seemed "all in a bleeze," and he pointed
out the identical place on the wall where Old Nick was presiding over
the midnight revels of the beldames when--
"Louder and louder the piper blew,
Swifter and swifter the dancers flew."
After the old man had finished his recital, I asked him whether he had
ever seen the poet. "Only aince," he replied. "That was one day when he
was ridin' on a road near here. I met a friend who told me to hurry up,
for Rabbie Burns was just ahead. I whippit up my horse, and came up to a
roughly dressed man, ridin' slowly along, with his blue bonnet pulled
down over his forehead, and his eyes turned toward the groond." "Didn't
you speak to him?" I said. "Nay, nay," replied the man, in a tone of
deep reverence, "he was Rabbie Burns. _I dare na speak to him_. If he
had been any other mon I would have said 'good morrow to ye.'" Beautiful
and eloquent tribute, paid by an unlettered peasant, not to rank or to
wealth, but to a soul--a mighty soul though clad in "hodden grey" like
himself!
The most interesting object was yet to be visited--the cottage of his
birth, I entered it with reverence; and a well dressed, but very old,
woman welcomed me in. "This is the room," she said. I looked around on
the rough stone walls and could not believe that it ever contained such
a soul; for the cottage, with all its subsequent repairs, was hardly
equal to the generality of our early log cabins. The old lady was very
affable. In her early life she had been connected with an inn at
Mauchline, and had seen the poet often. "Rabbie was a funny fellow," she
said; "I ken'd him weel; and he stoppit at our hoose on his way up to
Edinburgh to see the lairds." I asked her if he was not always humorous.
"Nae, nae," she replied, "he used to come in and sit doun wi' his hands
in his lap like a bashful country lad; very glum, till he got a drap o'
whuskey, or heard a gude story, _and then he was aff!_ He was very
poorly in his latter days." Those closing days in Dumfries, steeped in
poverty to the lips, forms one of the most tragic chapters in literary
history; and I know scarcely anything in our language more pathetic than
the letter which he wrote describing his wretched bondage to the
dominion of strong drink. An old lady of Kilmarnock told my friend, the
late Dr. Taylor of New York, that when a young woman she had gone to
Burns' house to assist in preparations for his funeral, and stated that
there was not enough decent linen in the house to lay out the most
splendid genius in all Scotland! When I was at Ayr, a sister of Burns,
Mrs. Begg, was still living, and I am always regretting that I did not
call upon her. His widow, Jean Armour, had died but a few years before;
and when a certain pert American who called upon the old lady had the
audacity to ask her: "Can you show me any relics of the poet?" answered
with majestic dignity: "Sir, _I am the only relic of Robert Burns_."
I went abroad on this first visit to Europe keen for lion hunting, and
with an eager desire to see some of the men who had been my literary
benefactors. On my arrival in London, having a letter of introduction to
Charles Dickens, which a mutual friend had given to me, I resolved to
present it. Charles Dickens was an idol of my college days, and I had
spent a few minutes with him in Philadelphia during his recent visit to
the United States. He had returned from his triumphal tour about a month
before I landed in Liverpool. I called at his house, but he was not at
home. The next day he did me the honor to call on me at Morley's Hotel,
and, not finding me in, invited me up to his house near York Gate,
Regents Park. It was a dingy, brick house surrounded by a high wall, but
cheerful and cozy within. I found him in his sanctum, a singularly
shaped room, with statuettes of Sam Weller and others of his creations
on the mantelpiece. A portrait of his beautiful wife was upon the
wall--that wife, the separation from whom threw a strange, sad shadow
over his home. How handsome he was then! With his deep, dark, lustrous
eyes, that you saw yourself in, and the merry mouth wreathed with
laughter, and the luxuriant mass of dark hair that he wore in a sort of
stack over his lofty forehead! He had a slight lisp in his pleasant
voice, and ran on in rapid talk for an hour, with a shy reluctance to
talk about his own works, but with the most superabounding vivacity I
have ever met with in any man. His two daughters, one of whom afterward
married the younger Collins, a brother novelist, were then schoolgirls
of eight and ten years, came in, with books in their hands, to give
their father a good-morning kiss. After parting with him, when I had
reached his gate, he called after me in a very loud voice, "If you see
Mrs. Lucretia Mott, tell her that I have not forgotten the slave." His
"American Notes" appeared the next week. There were some things in that
hasty and faulty volume for which I sent him a cordial note of thanks,
and I speedily received the following characteristic reply, which I
still prize as a precious relic of the man:
I DEVONSHIRE TERRACE,
REGENTS PARK, Oct. 26th, 1842.
MY DEAR SIR:--I am heartily obliged to you for your
frank and manly letter. I shall always remember it in connection
with my American book; and never--believe me--save
in the foremost rank of its pleasant and honorable
associations.
Let me subscribe myself, as I really am
Faithfully your Friend,
CHARLES DICKENS.
Mr. Theodore Ledyard Cuyler.
I hold that Dickens was the most original genius in our fictitious
literature since the days of Walter Scott. As a social reformer his fame
is quite as great as it is as a master of romance. His pen was mighty to
the pulling down of many a social abuse, and from the loving kindness of
his writings has been got many an inspiration to deeds of charity. But
how could a man who went so far as he did go no further? How could the
reformer who struck at so many social wrongs spare that hideous
fountain-head of misery in London, the dram-shop? And how could he
descend to scurrilously satirize all societies formed for the promotion
of temperance? A still greater marvel is that so kind-hearted a man as
Mr. Dickens, who sought honestly the amelioration of the condition of
his fellow-men, could utterly ignore the transforming power of
Christianity. He did not cast contempt on the Bible, and never soiled
his pages with infidelity, neither did he ever enlighten, and warm and
vivify them with evangelical uplifting truth. Only a few feet of earth
separate the grave of Charles Dickens from the grave of William
Wilberforce. Both loved their fellow-men; but the great difference
between them was that one of them invoked the spiritual power of the
Gospel of Christ, which the other lamentably ignored.