We there found parties, with an acquaintance, who was going, with two
French gentlemen, into the vaults. It is a good deal like going down
into a mine, each visitor being provided with a lamp at the end of a
stick; and following the guide along dismal passages, running beneath the
streets, and extending away interminably,--roughly arched overhead with
stone, from which depend festoons of a sort of black fungus, caused by
the exhalations of the wine. Nothing was ever uglier than this fungus.
It is strange that the most ethereal effervescence of rich wine can
produce nothing better.
The first series of vaults which we entered were filled with port-wine,
and occupied a space variously estimated at from eleven to sixteen
acres,--which I suppose would hold more port-wine than ever was made. At
any rate, the pipes and butts were so thickly piled that in some places
we could hardly squeeze past them. We drank from two or three vintages;
but I was not impressed with any especial excellence in the wine. We
were not the only visitors, for, far in the depths of the vault, we
passed a gentleman and two young ladies, wandering about like the ghosts
of defunct wine-bibhers, in a Tophet specially prepared for then. People
employed here sometimes go astray, and, their lamps being extinguished,
they remain long in this everlasting gloom. We went likewise to the
vaults of sherry-wine, which have the same characteristics as those just
described, but are less extensive.
It is no guaranty for the excellence or even for the purity of the wine,
that it is kept in these cellars, under the lock and key of the
government; for the merchants are allowed to mix different vintages,
according to their own pleasure, and to adulterate it as they like. Very
little of the wine probably comes out as it goes in, or is exactly what
it pretends to be. I went back to Mr. ------'s office, and we drove
together to make some calls jointly and separately. I went alone to Mrs.
Heywood's; afterwards with Mr. ------ to the American minister's, whom we
found at home; and I requested of him, on the part of the Americans at
Liverpool, to tell me the facts about the American gentleman being
refused admittance to the Levee. The ambassador did not seem to me to
make his point good for having withdrawn with the rejected guest.
July 9th. (Our wedding-day.)--We were invited yesterday evening to Mrs.
S. C. Hall's, where Jenny Lind was to sing; so we left Blackheath at
about eight o'clock in a brougham, and reached Ashley Place, as the dusk
was gathering, after nine. The Halls reside in a handsome suite of
apartments, arranged on the new system of flats, each story constituting
a separate tenement, and the various families having an entrance-hall in
common. The plan is borrowed from the Continent, and seems rather alien
to the traditionary habits of the English; though, no doubt, a good
degree of seclusion is compatible with it. Mr. Hall received us with the
greatest cordiality before we entered the drawing-room. Mrs. Hall, too,
greeted us with most kindly warmth. Jenny Lind had not yet arrived; but
I found Dr. Mackay there, and I was introduced to Miss Catherine
Sinclair, who is a literary lady, though none of her works happen to be
known to me. Soon the servant announced Madam Goldschmidt, and this
famous lady made her appearance, looking quite different from what I
expected. Mrs. Hall established her in the inner drawing-room, where was
a piano and a harp; and shortly after, our hostess came to me, and said
that Madam Goldschmidt wished to be introduced to me. There was a gentle
peremptoriness in the summons, that made it something like being
commanded into the presence of a princess; a great favor, no doubt, but
yet a little humbling to the recipient. However, I acquiesced with due
gratitude, and was presented accordingly. She made room for me on the
sofa, and I sat down, and began to talk.
Jenny Lind is rather tall,--quite tall, for a woman,--certainly no
beauty, but with sense and self-reliance in her aspect and manners. She
was suffering under a severe cold, and seemed worn down besides, so
probably I saw her under disadvantages. Her conversation is quite
simple, and I should have great faith in her sincerity; and there is
about her the manner of a person who knows the world, and has conquered
it. She said something or other about The Scarlet Letter; and, on my
part, I paid her such compliments as a man could pay who had never heard
her sing. . . . Her conversational voice is an agreeable one, rather
deep, and not particularly smooth. She talked about America, and of our
unwholesome modes of life, as to eating and exercise, and of the
ill-health especially of our women; but I opposed this view as far as I
could with any truth, insinuating my opinion that we are about as healthy
as other people, and affirming for a certainty that we live longer. In
good faith, so far as I have any knowledge of the matter, the women of
England are as generally out of health as those of America; always
something has gone wrong with them; and as for Jenny Lind, she looks wan
and worn enough to be an American herself. This charge of ill-health is
almost universally brought forward against us nowadays,--and, taking the
whole country together, I do not believe the statistics will bear it out.
The rooms, which were respectably filled when we arrived, were now
getting quite full. I saw Mr. Stevens, the American man of libraries,
and had some talk with him; and Durham, the sculptor; and Mr. and Mrs.
Hall introduced me to various people, some of whom were of note,--for
instance, Sir Emerson Tennent, a man of the world, of some parliamentary
distinction, wearing a star; Mr. Samuel Lover, a most good-natured,
pleasant Irishman, with a shining and twinkling visage; Miss Jewsbury,
whom I found very conversable. She is known in literature, but not to
me. We talked about Emerson, whom she seems to have been well acquainted
with while he was in England; and she mentioned that Miss Martineau had
given him a lock of hair; it was not her own hair, but a mummy's.
After our return, Mrs. ------ told us that Miss Jewsbury had written,
among other things, three histories, and as she asked me to introduce her
to S-----, and means to cultivate our acquaintance, it would be well to
know something of them. We were told that she is now employed in some
literary undertaking of Lady Morgan's, who, at the age of ninety, is
still circulating in society, and is as brisk in faculties as ever. I
should like to see her ladyship, that is, I should not be sorry to see
her; for distinguished people are so much on a par with others, socially,
that it would be foolish to be overjoyed at seeing anybody whomsoever.
Leaving out the illustrious Jenny Lind, I suspect that I was myself the
greatest lion of the evening; for a good many persons sought the felicity
of knowing me, and had little or nothing to say when that honor and
happiness was conferred on them. It is surely very wrong and
ill-mannered in people to ask for an introduction unless they are
prepared to make talk; it throws too great an expense and trouble on the
wretched lion, who is compelled, on the spur of the moment, to convert a
conversable substance out of thin air, perhaps for the twentieth time
that evening. I am sure I did not say--and I think I did not hear said--
one rememberable word in the course of this visit; though, nevertheless,
it was a rather agreeable one. In due season ices and jellies were
handed about; and some ladies and gentlemen--professional, perhaps--were
kind enough to sing songs, and play on the piano and harp, while persons
in remote corners went on with whatever conversation they had in hand.
Then came supper; but there were so many people to go into the
supper-room that we could not all crowd thither together, and, coming
late, I got nothing but some sponge-cake and a glass of champagne,
neither of which I care for. After supper, Mr. Lover sang some Irish
songs, his own in music and words, with rich, humorous effect, to which
the comicality of his face contributed almost as much as his voice and
words. The Lord Mayor looked in for a little while, and though a
hard-featured Jew enough, was the most picturesque person there.
July 10th.--Mrs. Heywood had invited me to dinner last evening. . . .
Her house is very finely situated, overlooking Hyde Park, and not a great
way from where Tyburn tree used to stand. When I arrived, there were no
guests but Mr. and Mrs. D------; but by and by came Mr. Monckton Milnes
and lady, the Bishop of Lichfield, Mr. Tom Taylor, Mr. Ewart, M. P., Sir
Somebody Somerville, Mr. and Mrs. Musgrave, and others. Mr. Milnes, whom
I had not seen for more than a year, greeted me very cordially, and so
did Mr. Taylor. I took Mrs. Musgrave in to dinner. She is an Irish
lady, and Mrs. Heywood had recommended her to me as being very
conversable; but I had a good deal more talk with Mrs. M------, with whom
I was already acquainted, than with her. Mrs. M------ is of noble blood,
and therefore not snobbish,--quite unaffected, gentle, sweet, and easy to
get on with, reminding me of the best-mannered American women. But how
can anything characteristic be said or done among a dozen people sitting
at table in full dress? Speaking of full dress, the Bishop wore
small-clothes and silk stockings, and entered the drawing-room with a
three-cornered hat, which he kept flattened out under his arm. He asked
the briefest blessing possible, and, sitting at the ultra end of the
table, I heard nothing further from him till he officiated as briefly
before the cloth was withdrawn. Mrs. M------ talked about Tennyson, with
whom her husband was at the University, and whom he continues to know
intimately. She says that he considers Maud his best poem. He now lives
in the Isle of Wight, spending all the year round there, and has recently
bought the place on which he resides. She was of opinion that he would
have been gratified by my calling on him, which I had wished to do, while
we were at Southampton; but this is a liberty which I should hardly
venture upon with a shy man like Tennyson,--more especially as he might
perhaps suspect me of doing it on the score of my own literary character.
But I should like much to see him Mr. Tom Taylor, during dinner, made
some fun for the benefit of the ladies on either side of him. I liked
him very well this evening.
When the ladies had not long withdrawn, and after the wine had once gone
round, I asked Mr. Heywood to make my apologies to Mrs. Heywood, and took
leave; all London lying betwixt me and the London Bridge station, where I
was to take the rail homeward. At the station I found Mr. Bennoch, who
had been dining with the Lord Mayor to meet Sir William Williams, and we
railed to Greenwich, and reached home by midnight. Mr. and Mrs. Bennoch
have set out on their Continental journey to-day,--leaving us, for a
little space, in possession of what will be more like a home than
anything that we shall hereafter find in England.
This afternoon I had taken up the fourth volume of Jerdan's
Autobiography,--wretched twaddle, though it records such constant and
apparently intimate intercourse with distinguished people,--and was
reading it, between asleep and awake, on the sofa, when Mr. Jerdan
himself was announced. I saw him, in company with Mr. Bennoch, nearly
three years ago, at Rock Park, and wondered then what there was in so
uncouth an individual to get him so freely into polished society. He now
looks rougher than ever,--time-worn, but not reverend; a thatch of gray
hair on his head; an imperfect set of false teeth; a careless apparel,
checked trousers, and a stick, for he had walked a mile or two from his
own dwelling.
I suspect--and long practice at the Consulate has made me keen-sighted--
that Mr. Jerdan contemplated some benefit from my purse; and, to the
extent of a sovereign or so, I would not mind contributing to his
comfort. He spoke of a secret purpose of Mr. ------ and himself to
obtain me a degree or diploma in some Literary Institution,--what one I
know not, and did not ask; but the honor cannot be a high one, if this
poor old fellow can do aught towards it. I am afraid he is a very
disreputable senior, but certainly not the less to be pitied on that
account; and there was something very touching in his stiff and infirm
movement, as he resumed his stick and took leave, waving me a courteous
farewell, and turning upon me a smile, grim with age, as he went down the
steps. In that gesture and smile I fancied some trace of the polished
man of society, such as he may have once been; though time and hard
weather have roughened him, as they have the once polished marble pillars
which I saw so rude in aspect at Netley Abbey.
Speaking of Dickens last evening, Mr. ------ mentioned his domestic
tastes,--how he preferred home enjoyments to all others, and did not
willingly go much into society. Mrs. ------, too, the other day told us
of his taking on himself all possible trouble as regards his domestic
affairs. . . . There is a great variety of testimony, various and
varied, as to the character of Dickens. I must see him before I finally
leave England.
July 13th.--On Friday morning (11th), at nine o'clock, I took the rail
into town to breakfast with Mr. Milnes. As he had named a little after
ten as the hour, I could not immediately proceed to his house, and so
walked moderately over London Bridge and into the city, meaning to take a
cab from Charing Cross, or thereabouts. Passing through some street or
other, contiguous to Cheapside, I saw in a court-yard the entrance to the
Guildhall, and stepped in to look at it. It is a spacious hall, about
one hundred and fifty feet long, and perhaps half as broad, paved with
flagstones which look worn and some of them cracked across; the roof is
very lofty and was once vaulted, but has been shaped anew in modern
times. There is a vast window partly filled with painted glass,
extending quite along each end of the hall, and a row of arched windows
on either side, throwing their light from far above downward upon the
pavement. This fashion of high windows, not reaching within twenty or
thirty feet of the floor, serves to give great effect to the large
enclosed space of an antique hall. Against the walls are several marble
monuments; one to the Earl of Chatham, a statue of white marble, with
various allegorical contrivances, fronting an obelisk or pyramid of dark
marble; and another to his son, William Pitt, of somewhat similar design
and of equal size; each of them occupying the whole space, I believe,
between pavement and ceiling. There is likewise a statue of Beckford, a
famous Lord Mayor,--the most famous except Whittington, and that one who
killed Wat Tyler; and like those two, his fame is perhaps somewhat
mythological, though he lived and bustled within less than a century. He
is said to have made a bold speech to the King; but this I will not
believe of any Englishman--at least, of any plebeian Englishman--until I
hear it. But there stands his statue in the Guildhall in the act of
making his speech, as if the monstrous attempt had petrified him.
Lord Nelson, too, has a monument, and so, I think, has some other modern
worthy. At one end of the hall, under one of the great painted windows,
stand three or four old statues of mediaeval kings, whose identities I
forget; and in the two corners of the opposite end are two gigantic
absurdities of painted wood, with grotesque visages, whom I quickly
recognized as Gog and Magog. They stand each on a pillar, and seem to be
about fifteen feet high, and look like enormous playthings for the
children of giants; and it is strange to see them in this solemn old
hall, among the memorials of dead heroes and statesmen. There is an
annual banquet in the Guildhall, given by the Lord Mayor and sheriffs,
and I believe it is the very acme of civic feasting.
After viewing the hall, as it still lacked something of ten, I continued
my walk through that entanglement of city streets, and quickly found
myself getting beyond my reckoning. I cannot tell whither I went, but I
passed through a very dirty region, and I remember a long, narrow,
evil-odored street, cluttered up with stalls, in which were vegetables
and little bits of meat for sale; and there was a frowzy multitude of
buyers and sellers. Still I blundered on, and was getting out of the
density of the city into broader streets, but still shabby ones, when,
looking at my watch, I found it to be past ten, and no cab-stand within
sight. It was a quarter past when I finally got into one; and the driver
told me that it would take half an hour to go from thence to Upper Brook
Street; so that I was likely to exceed the license implied in Mr.
Milnes's invitation. Whether I was quite beyond rule I cannot say; but
it did not lack more than ten minutes of eleven when I was ushered up
stairs, and I found all the company assembled. However, it is of little
consequence, except that if I had come early, I should have been
introduced to many of the guests, whom now I could only know across the
table. Mrs. Milnes greeted me very kindly, and Mr. Milnes came towards
me with an elderly gentleman in a blue coat and gray pantaloons,--with a
long, rather thin, homely visage, exceedingly shaggy eyebrows, though no
great weight of brow, and thin gray hair, and introduced me to the
Marquis of Lansdowne. The Marquis had his right hand wrapped up in a
black-silk handkerchief; so he gave me his left, and, from some
awkwardness in meeting it, when I expected the right, I gave him only
three of my fingers,--a thing I never did before to any person, and it is
droll that I should have done it to a Marquis. He addressed me with
great simplicity and natural kindness, complimenting me on my works, and
speaking about the society of Liverpool in former days. Lord Lansdowne
was the friend of Moore, and has about him the aroma communicated by the
memories of many illustrious people with whom he has associated.
Mr. Ticknor, the Historian of Spanish Literature, now greeted me. Mr.
Milnes introduced me to Mrs. Browning, and assigned her to me to conduct
into the breakfast-room. She is a small, delicate woman, with ringlets
of dark hair, a pleasant, intelligent, and sensitive face, and a low,
agreeable voice. She looks youthful and comely, and is very gentle and
lady-like. And so we proceeded to the breakfast-room, which is hung
round with pictures; and in the middle of it stood a large round table,
worthy to have been King Arthur's, and here we seated ourselves without
any question of precedence or ceremony. On one side of me was an elderly
lady, with a very fine countenance, and in the course of breakfast I
discovered her to be the mother of Florence Nightingale. One of her
daughters (not Florence) was likewise present. Mrs. Milnes, Mrs.
Browning, Mrs. Nightingale, and her daughter were the only ladies at
table; and I think there were as many as eight or ten gentlemen, whose
names--as I came so late--I was left to find out for myself, or to leave
unknown.
It was a pleasant and sociable meal, and, thanks to my cold beef and
coffee at home, I had no occasion to trouble myself much about the fare;
so I just ate some delicate chicken, and a very small cutlet, and a slice
of dry toast, and thereupon surceased from my labors. Mrs. Browning and
I talked a good deal during breakfast, for she is of that quickly
appreciative and responsive order of women with whom I can talk more
freely than with any man; and she has, besides, her own originality,
wherewith to help on conversation, though, I should say, not of a
loquacious tendency. She introduced the subject of spiritualism, which,
she says, interests her very much; indeed, she seems to be a believer.
Mr. Browning, she told me, utterly rejects the subject, and will not
believe even in the outward manifestations, of which there is such
overwhelming evidence. We also talked of Miss Bacon; and I developed
something of that lady's theory respecting Shakespeare, greatly to the
horror of Mrs. Browning, and that of her next neighbor,--a nobleman,
whose name I did not hear. On the whole, I like her the better for
loving the man Shakespeare with a personal love. We talked, too, of
Margaret Fuller, who spent her last night in Italy with the Brownings;
and of William Story, with whom they have been intimate, and who, Mrs.
Browning says, is much stirred about spiritualism. Really, I cannot help
wondering that so fine a spirit as hers should not reject the matter,
till, at least, it is forced upon her. I like her very much.
Mrs. Nightingale had been talking at first with Lord Lansdowne, who sat
next her, but by and by she turned to nee, and began to speak of London
smoke Then, there being a discussion about Lord Byron on the other side
of the table, she spoke to me about Lady Byron, whom she knows
intimately, characterizing her as a most excellent and exemplary person,
high-principled, unselfish, and now devoting herself to the care of her
two grandchildren,--their mother, Byron's daughter, being dead. Lady
Byron, she says, writes beautiful verses. Somehow or other, all this
praise, and more of the same kind, gave me an idea of an intolerably
irreproachable person; and I asked Mrs. Nightingale if Lady Byron were
warm-hearted. With some hesitation, or mental reservation,--at all
events, not quite outspokenly,--she answered that she was.
I was too much engaged with these personal talks to attend much to what
was going on elsewhere; but all through breakfast I had been more and
more impressed by the aspect of one of the guests, sitting next to
Milnes. He was a man of large presence,--a portly personage,
gray-haired, but scarcely as yet aged; and his face had a remarkable
intelligence, not vivid nor sparkling, but conjoined with great
quietude,--and if it gleamed or brightened at one time more than another,
it was like the sheen over a broad surface of sea. There was a somewhat
careless self-possession, large and broad enough to be called dignity;
and the more I looked at him, the more I knew that he was a distinguished
person, and wondered who. He might have been a minister of state; only
there is not one of them who has any right to such a face and presence.
At last,--I do not know how the conviction came,--but I became aware that
it was Macaulay, and began to see some slight resemblance to his
portraits. But I have never seen any that is not wretchedly unworthy of
the original. As soon as I knew him, I began to listen to his
conversation, but he did not talk a great deal, contrary to his usual
custom; for I am told he is apt to engross all the talk to himself.
Probably he may have been restrained by the presence of Ticknor, and Mr.
Palfrey, who were among his auditors and interlocutors; and as the
conversation seemed to turn much on American subjects, he could not well
have assumed to talk them down. I am glad to have seen him,--a face fit
for a scholar, a man of the world, a cultivated intelligence.
After we left the table, and went into the library, Mr. Browning
introduced himself to me,--a younger man than I expected to see,
handsome, with brown hair. He is very simple and agreeable in manner,
gently impulsive, talking as if his heart were uppermost. He spoke of
his pleasure in meeting me, and his appreciation of my books; and--which
has not often happened to me--mentioned that The Blithedale Romance was
the one he admired most. I wonder why. I hope I showed as much pleasure
at his praise as he did at mine; for I was glad to see how pleasantly it
moved him. After this, I talked with Ticknor and Miles, and with Mr.
Palfrey, to whom I had been introduced very long ago by George Hillard,
and had never seen him since. We looked at some autographs, of which Mr.
Milnes has two or three large volumes. I recollect a leaf from Swift's
Journal to Stella; a letter from Addison; one from Chatterton, in a most
neat and legible hand; and a characteristic sentence or two and signature
of Oliver Cromwell, written in a religious book. There were many curious
volumes in the library, but I had not time to look at them.
I liked greatly the manners of almost all,--yes, as far as I observed,--
all the people at this breakfast, and it was doubtless owing to their
being all people either of high rank or remarkable intellect, or both.
An Englishman can hardly be a gentleman, unless he enjoy one or other of
these advantages; and perhaps the surest way to give him good manners is
to make a lord of him, or rather of his grandfather or great-grandfather.
In the third generation, scarcely sooner, he will be polished into
simplicity and elegance, and his deportment will be all the better for
the homely material out of which it is wrought and refined. The Marquis
of Lansdowne, for instance, would have been a very commonplace man in the
common ranks of life; but it has done him good to be a nobleman. Not
that his tact is quite perfect. In going up to breakfast, he made me
precede him; in returning to the library, he did the same, although I
drew back, till he impelled me up the first stair, with gentle
persistence. By insisting upon it, he showed his sense of condescension
much more than if, when he saw me unwilling to take precedence, he had
passed forward, as if the point were not worth either asserting or
yielding. Heaven knows, it was in no humility that I would have trodden
behind him. But he is a kind old man; and I am willing to believe of the
English aristocracy generally that they are kind, and of beautiful
deportment; for certainly there never can have been mortals in a position
more advantageous for becoming so. I hope there will come a time when we
shall be so; and I already know a few Americans, whose noble and delicate
manners may compare well with any I have seen.
I left the house with Mr. Palfrey. He has cone to England to make some
researches in the State Paper Office, for the purposes of a work which he
has in hand. He mentioned to me a letter which he had seen, written from
New England in the time of Charles II. and referring to the order sent by
the minister of that day for the appearance of Governor Bellingham and my
ancestor on this side of the water. The signature of this letter is an
anagram of my ancestor's name. The letter itself is a very bold and able
one, controverting the propriety of the measure above indicated; and Mr.
Palfrey feels certain that it was written by my aforesaid ancestor. I
mentioned my wish to ascertain the place in England whence the family
emigrated; and Mr. Palfrey took me to the Record Office, and introduced
me to Mr. Joseph Hunter,--a venerable and courteous gentleman, of
antiquarian pursuits. The office was odorous of musty parchments,
hundreds of years old. Mr. Hunter received me with great kindness, and
gave me various old records and rolls of parchment, in which to seek for
my family name; but I was perplexed with the crabbed characters, and soon
grew weary and gave up the quest. He says that it is very seldom that an
American family, springing from the early settlers, can be satisfactorily
traced back to their English ancestry.
July 16th.--Monday morning I took the rail from Blackheath to London. It
is a very pleasant place, Blackheath, and far more rural than one would
expect, within five or six miles of London,--a great many trees, making
quite a mass of foliage in the distance; green enclosures; pretty villas,
with their nicely kept lawns, and gardens, with grass-plots and flower
borders; and village streets, set along the sidewalks with ornamental
trees; and the houses standing a little back, and separated one from
another,--all this within what is called the Park, which has its
gateways, and the sort of semi-privacy with which I first became
acquainted at Rock Park.
From the London Bridge station I took a cab for Paddington, and then had
to wait above two hours before a train started for Birkenhead. Meanwhile
I walked a little about the neighborhood, which is very dull and
uninteresting; made up of crescents and terraces, and rows of houses that
have no individuality, and second-rate shops,--in short, the outskirts of
the vast city, when it begins to have a kind of village character but no
rurality or sylvan aspect, as at Blackheath. My journey, when at last we
started, was quite unmarked by incident, and extremely tedious; it being
a slow train, which plods on without haste and without rest. At about
ten o'clock we reached Birkenhead, and there crossed the familiar and
detestable Mersey, which, as usual, had a cloudy sky brooding over it.
Mrs. Blodgett received me most hospitably, but was impelled, by an
overflow of guests, to put me into a little back room, looking into
the court, and formerly occupied by my predecessor, General
Armstrong. . . . She expressed a hope that I might not see his
ghost,--nor have I, as yet.
Speaking of ghosts, Mr. H. A. B------ told me a singular story to-day of
an apparition that haunts the Times Office, in Printing-House Square. A
Mr. W------ is the engineer of the establishment, and has his residence
in the edifice, which is built, I believe, on the site of Merchant
Taylor's school,--an old house that was no longer occupied for its
original purpose, and, being supposed haunted, was left untenanted. The
father-in-law of Mr. W------, an old sea-captain, came on a visit to him
and his wife, and was put into their guest-chamber, where he passed the
night. The next morning, assigning no very satisfactory reason, he cut
his visit short and went away. Shortly afterwards, a young lady came to
visit the W------'s; but she too went away the next morning,--going first
to make a call, as she said, to a friend, and sending thence for her
trunks. Mrs. W------ wrote to this young lady, asking an explanation.
The young lady replied, and gave a singular account of an apparition,--
how she was awakened in the night by a bright light shining through the
window, which was parallel to the bed; then, if I remember rightly, her
curtains were withdrawn, and a shape looked in upon her,--a woman's
shape, she called it; but it was a skeleton, with lambent flames playing
about its bones, and in and out among the ribs. Other persons have since
slept in this chamber, and some have seen the shape, others not. Mr.
W------ has slept there himself without seeing anything. He has had
investigations by scientific people, apparently under the idea that the
phenomenon might have been caused by some of the Times's work-people,
playing tricks on the magic-lantern principle; but nothing satisfactory
has thus far been elucidated. Mr. B------ had this story from Mrs.
Gaskell. . . . Supposing it a ghost, nothing else is so remarkable as
its choosing to haunt the precincts of the Times newspaper.
July 29th.--On Saturday, 26th, I took the rail from the Lime Street
station for London, via the Trent Valley, and reached Blackheath in the
evening. . . .
Sunday morning my wife and I, with J-----, railed into London, and drove
to the Essex Street Chapel, where Mr. Channing was to preach. The Chapel
is the same where Priestley and Belsham used to preach,--one of the
plainest houses of worship I was ever in, as simple and undecorated as
the faith there inculcated. They retain, however, all the form and
ceremonial of the English Established Church, though so modified as to
meet the doctrinal views of the Unitarians. There may be good sense in
this, inasmuch as it greatly lessens the ministerial labor to have a
stated form of prayer, instead of a necessity for extempore outpourings;
but it must be, I should think, excessively tedious to the congregation,
especially as, having made alterations in these prayers, they cannot
attach much idea of sanctity to them.
[Here follows a long record of Mr. Hawthorne's visit to Miss Bacon,--
condensed in Our Old Hone, in the paper called "Recollections of a Gifted
Woman."]
August 2d.--On Wednesday (30th July) we went to Marlborough House to see
the Vernon gallery of pictures. They are the works, almost entirely of
English artists of the last and present century, and comprise many famous
paintings; and I must acknowledge that I had more enjoyment of them than
of those portions of the National Gallery which I had before seen,--
including specimens of the grand old masters. My comprehension has not
reached their height. I think nothing pleased me more than a picture by
Sir David Wilkie,--The Parish Beadle, with a vagrant boy and a monkey in
custody; it is exceedingly good and true throughout, and especially the
monkey's face is a wonderful production of genius, condensing within
itself the whole moral and pathos of the picture.
Marlborough House was the residence of the Great Duke, and is to be that
of the Prince of Wales, when another place is found for the pictures. It
adjoins St. James's Palace. In its present state it is not a very
splendid mansion, the rooms being small, though handsomely shaped, with
vaulted ceilings, and carved white-marble fireplaces. I left S----- here
after an hour or two, and walked forth into the hot and busy city with
J-----. . . . I called at Routledge's bookshop, in hopes to make an
arrangement with him about Miss Bacon's business. But Routledge himself
is making a journey in the north, and neither of the partners was there,
so that I shall have to go thither some other day. Then we stepped into
St. Paul's Cathedral to cool ourselves, and it was delightful so to
escape from the sunny, sultry turmoil of Fleet Street and Ludgate, and
find ourselves at once in this remote, solemn, shadowy seclusion,
marble-cool. O that we had cathedrals in America, were it only for the
sensuous luxury! We strolled round the cathedral, and I delighted
J----- much by pointing out the monuments of three British generals, who
were slain in America in the last war,--the naughty and bloodthirsty
little man! We then went to Guildhall, where I thought J----- would like
to see Gog and Magog; but he had never heard of those illustrious
personages, and took no interest in them. . . . But truly I am grateful
to the piety of former times for raising this vast, cool canopy of marble
[St. Paul's] in the midst of the feverish city. I wandered quite round
it, and saw, in a remote corner, a monument to the officers of the
Coldstream Guards, slain in the Crimea. It was a mural tablet, with the
names of the officers on an escutcheon; and two privates of the Guards,
in marble bas-relief, were mourning over them. Over the tablet hung two
silken banners, new and glossy, with the battles in which the regiment
has been engaged inscribed on them,--not merely Crimean but Peninsular
battles. These banners will bang there till they drop away in tatters.
After thus refreshing myself in the cathedral, I went again to
Routledge's in Farrington Street, and saw one of the firm. He expressed
great pleasure at seeing me, as indeed he might, having published and
sold, without any profit on my part, uncounted thousands of my books. I
introduced the subject of Miss Bacon's work; and he expressed the utmost
willingness to do everything in his power towards bringing it before the
world, but thought that his firm--it being their business to publish for
the largest circle of readers--was not the most eligible for the
publication of such a book. Very likely this may be so. At all events,
however, I am to send him the manuscript, and he will at least give me
his advice and assistance in finding a publisher. He was good enough to
express great regret that I had no work of my own to give him for
publication; and, truly, I regret it too, since, being a resident in
England, I could now have all the publishing privileges of a native
author. He presented me with a copy of an illustrated edition of
Longfellow's Poems, and I took my leave.
Thence I went to the Picture Gallery at the British Institution, where
there are three rooms full of paintings by the first masters, the
property of private persons. Every one of them, no doubt, was worth
studying for a long, long time; and I suppose I may have given, on an
average, a minute to each. What an absurdity it would seem, to pretend
to read two or three hundred poems, of all degrees between an epic and a
ballad, in an hour or two! And a picture is a poem, only requiring the
greater study to be felt and comprehended; because the spectator must
necessarily do much for himself towards that end. I saw many beautiful
things,--among them some landscapes by Claude, which to the eye were like
the flavor of a rich, ripe melon to the palate.
August 7th.--Yesterday we took the rail for London, it being a fine,
sunny day, though not so very warm as many of the preceding days have
been. . . . We went along Piccadilly as far as the Egyptian Hall. It
is quite remarkable how comparatively quiet the town has become, now that
the season is over. One can see the difference in all the region west of
Temple Bar; and, indeed, either the hot weather or some other cause seems
to have operated in assuaging the turmoil in the city itself. I never
saw London Bridge so little thronged as yesterday. At the Egyptian Hall,
or in the same edifice, there is a gallery of pictures, the property of
Lord Ward, who allows the public to see them, five days of the week,
without any trouble or restriction,--a great kindness on his Lordship's
part, it must be owned. It is a very valuable collection, I presume,
containing specimens of many famous old masters; some of the early and
hard pictures by Raphael and his master and fellow-pupils,--very curious,
and nowise beautiful; a perfect, sunny glimpse of Venice, by Canaletto;
and saints, and Scriptural, allegorical, and mythological people, by
Titian, Guido, Correggio, and many more names than I can remember. There
is likewise a dead Magdalen by Canova, and a Venus by the same, very
pretty, and with a vivid light of joyous expression in her face; . . . .
also Powers's Greek Slave, in which I see little beauty or merit; and two
or three other statues.
We then drove to Ashley Place, to call on Mrs. S. C. Hall, whom we found
at home. In fact, Wednesday is her reception-day; although, as now
everybody is out of town, we were the only callers. She is an agreeable
and kindly woman. She told us that her husband and herself propose going
to America next year, and I heartily wish they may meet with a warm and
friendly reception. I have been seldom more assured of the existence of
a heart than in her; also a good deal of sentiment. She had been
visiting Bessie, the widow of Moore, at Sloperton, and gave S----- a rose
from his cottage. Such things are very true and unaffected in her. The
only wonder is that she has not lost such girlish freshness of feeling as
prompts them. We did not see Mr. Hall, he having gone to the Crystal
Palace.
Taking our leave, we returned along Victoria Street--a new street,
penetrating through what was recently one of the worst parts of the town,
and now bordered with large blocks of buildings, in a dreary,
half-finished state, and left so for want of funds--till we came to
Westminster Abbey. We went in and spent an hour there, wandering all
round the nave and aisles, admiring the grand old edifice itself, but
finding more to smile at than to admire in the monuments. . . . The
interior view of the Abbey is better than can be described; the heart
aches, as one gazes at it, for lack of power and breadth enough to take
its beauty and grandeur in. The effect was heightened by the sun shining
through the painted window in the western end, and by the bright sunshine
that came through the open portal, and lay on the pavement,--that space
so bright, the rest of the vast floor so solemn and sombre. At the
western end, in a corner from which spectators are barred out, there is a
statue of Wordsworth, which I do not recollect seeing at any former
visit. Its only companion in the same nook is Pope's friend, Secretary
Craggs.
Downing Street, that famous official precinct, took its name from Sir
George Downing, who was proprietor or lessee of property there. He was a
native of my own old native town, and his descendants still reside
there,--collateral descendants, I suppose,--and follow the drygoods
business (drapers).
August 10th.--I journeyed to Liverpool via Chester. . . . One sees a
variety of climate, temperature, and season in a ride of two hundred
miles, north and south, through England. Near London, for instance, the
grain was reaped, and stood in sheaves in the stubble-fields, over which
girls and children might be seen gleaning; farther north, the golden, or
greenish-golden, crops were waving in the wind. In one part of our way
the atmosphere was hot and dry; at another point it had been cooled and
refreshed by a heavy thunder-shower, the pools of which still lay
along our track. It seems to me that local varieties of weather are
more common in this island, and within narrower precincts, than in
America. . . . I never saw England of such a dusky and dusty green
before,--almost sunbrowned, indeed. Sometimes the green hedges formed a
marked framework to a broad sheet of golden grain-field. As we drew near
Oxford, just before reaching the station I had a good view of its domes,
towers, and spires,--better, I think, than when J----- and I rambled
through the town a month or two ago.
Mr. Frank Scott Haydon, of the Record Office, London, writes me that he
has found a "Henry Atte Hawthorne" on a roll which he is transcribing, of
the first Edward III. He belonged to the Parish of Aldremeston, in the
hundred of Blakenhurste, Worcester County.
August 21st.--Yesterday, at twelve o'clock, I took the steamer for
Runcorn, from the pier-head. In the streets, I had noticed that it was a
breezy day; but on the river there was a very stiff breeze from the
northeast, right ahead, blowing directly in our face the whole way; and
truly this river Mersey is never without a breeze, and generally in the
direction of its course,--an evil-tempered, unkindly, blustering wind,
that you cannot meet without being exasperated by it. As it came
straight against us, it was impossible to find a shelter anywhere on
deck, except it were behind the stove-pipe; and, besides, the day was
overcast and threatening rain.
I have undergone very miserable hours on the Mersey, where, in the space
of two years, I voyaged thousands of miles,--and this trip to Runcorn
reminded me of them, though it was less disagreeable after more than a
twelvemonth's respite. We had a good many passengers on board, most of
whom were of the second class, and congregated on the forward deck; more
women than men, I think, and some of them with their husbands and
children. Several produced lunch and bottles, and refreshed themselves
very soon after we started. By and by the wind became so disagreeable
that I went below, and sat in the cabin, only occasionally looking out,
to get a peep at the shores of the river, which I had never before seen
above Eastham. However, they are not worth looking at; level and
monotonous, without trees or beauty of any kind,--here and there a
village, and a modern church, on the low ridge behind; perhaps, a
windmill, which the gusty day had set busily to work. The river
continues very wide--no river indeed, but an estuary--during almost the
whole distance to Runcorn; and nearly at the end of our voyage we
approached some abrupt and prominent hills, which, many a time, I have
seen on my passages to Rock Ferry, looking blue and dim, and serving for
prophets of the weather; for when they can be distinctly seen adown the
river, it is a token of coming rain. We met many vessels, and passed
many which were beating up against the wind, and which keeled over, so
that their decks must have dipped,--schooners and vessels that come from
the Bridgewater Canal. We shipped a sea ourselves, which gave the
fore-deck passengers a wetting.
Before reaching Runcorn, we stopped to land some passengers at another
little port, where there was a pier and a lighthouse, and a church within
a few yards of the river-side,--a good many of the river-craft, too, in
dock, forming quite a crowd of masts. About ten minutes' further
steaming brought us to Runcorn, where were two or three tall
manufacturing chimneys, with a pennant of black smoke from each; two
vessels of considerable size on the stocks; a church or two; and a
meagre, uninteresting, shabby, brick-built town, rising from the edge of
the river, with irregular streets,--not village-like, but paved, and
looking like a dwarfed, stunted city. I wandered through it till I came
to a tall, high-pedestalled windmill on the outer verge, the vans of
which were going briskly round. Thence retracing my steps, I stopped at
a poor hotel, and took lunch, and, finding that I was in time to take the
steamer back, I hurried on board, and we set sail (or steam) before
three. I have heard of an old castle at Runcorn, but could discover
nothing of it. It was well that I returned so promptly, for we had
hardly left the pier before it began to rain, and there was a heavy
downfall throughout the voyage homeward. Runcorn is fourteen miles from
Liverpool, and is the farthest point to which a steamer runs. I had
intended to come home by rail,--a circuitous route,--but the advice of
the landlady of the hotel, and the aspect of the weather, and a feeling
of general discouragement prevented me.
An incident in S. C. Hall's Ireland, of a stone cross, buried in
Cromwell's time, to prevent its destruction by his soldiers. It was
forgotten, and became a mere doubtful tradition, but one old man had been
told by his father, and he by his father, etc., that it was buried near a
certain spot; and at last, two hundred years after the cross was buried,
the vicar of the parish dug in that spot and found it. In my (English)
romance, an American might bring the tradition from over the sea, and so
discover the cross, which had been altogether forgotten.
August 24th.--Day before yesterday I took the rail for Southport,--a
cool, generally overcast day, with glimmers of faint sunshine. The ride
is through a most uninteresting tract of country, at first, glimpses of
the river, with the thousands of masts in the docks; the dismal outskirts
of a great town, still spreading onward, with beginnings of streets, and
insulated brick buildings and blocks; farther on, a wide monotony of
level plain, and here and there a village and a church; almost always a
windmill in sight, there being plenty of breeze to turn its vans on this
windy coast. The railway skirts along the sea the whole distance, but is
shut out from the sight of it by the low sand-hills, which seem to have
been heaped up by the waves. There are one or two lighthouses on the
shore. I have not seen a drearier landscape, even in Lancashire.
Reaching Southport at three, I rambled about, with a view to discover
whether it be a suitable residence for my family during September. It is
a large village, or rather more than a village, which seems to be almost
entirely made up of lodging-houses, and, at any rate, has been built up
by the influx of summer visitors,--a sandy soil, level, and laid out with
well-paved streets, the principal of which are enlivened with bazaars,
markets, shops, hotels of various degrees, and a showy vivacity of
aspect. There are a great many donkey-carriages,--large vehicles, drawn
by a pair of donkeys; bath-chairs, with invalid ladies; refreshment-rooms
in great numbers,--a place where everybody seems to be a transitory
guest, nobody at home. The main street leads directly down to the
sea-shore, along which there is an elevated embankment, with a promenade
on the top, and seats, and the toll of a penny. The shore itself, the
tide being then low, stretched out interminably seaward, a wide waste of
glistering sands; and on the dry border, people were riding on donkeys,
with the drivers whipping behind; and children were digging with their
little wooden spades; and there were donkey-carriages far out on the
sands,--a pleasant and breezy drive. A whole city of bathing-machines
was stationed near the shore, and I saw others in the seaward distance.
The sea-air was refreshing and exhilarating, and if S----- needs a
seaside residence, I should think this might do as well as any other.
I saw a large brick edifice, enclosed within a wall, and with somewhat
the look of an almshouse or hospital; and it proved to be an Infirmary,
charitably established for the reception of poor invalids, who need
sea-air and cannot afford to pay for it. Two or three of such persons
were sitting under its windows. I do not think that the visitors of
Southport are generally of a very opulent class, but of the middle
rank, from Manchester and other parts of this northern region. The
lodging-houses, however, are of sufficiently handsome style and
arrangement.