I
Intending to sail for America in the early part of June, I determined to
spend the interval of six weeks in England, to which country my mind’s
eye only had as yet been introduced. I had formed in Italy and France a
resolute preference for old inns, considering that what they sometimes
cost the ungratified body they repay the delighted mind. On my arrival
in London, therefore, I lodged at a certain antique hostelry, much
to the east of Temple Bar, deep in the quarter that I had inevitably
figured as the Johnsonian. Here, on the first evening of my stay, I
descended to the little coffee-room and bespoke my dinner of the genius
of “attendance” in the person of the solitary waiter. No sooner had
I crossed the threshold of this retreat than I felt I had cut a
golden-ripe crop of English “impressions.” The coffee-room of the Red
Lion, like so many other places and things I was destined to see in the
motherland, seemed to have been waiting for long years, with just that
sturdy sufferance of time written on its visage, for me to come and
extract the romantic essence of it.
The latent preparedness of the American mind even for the most
characteristic features of English life was a matter I meanwhile failed
to get to the bottom of. The roots of it are indeed so deeply buried
in the soil of our early culture that, without some great upheaval
of feeling, we are at a loss to say exactly when and where and how it
begins. It makes an American’s enjoyment of England an emotion more
searching than anything Continental. I had seen the coffee-room of
the Red Lion years ago, at home--at Saragossa Illinois--in books, in
visions, in dreams, in Dickens, in Smollett, in Boswell. It was small
and subdivided into six narrow compartments by a series of perpendicular
screens of mahogany, something higher than a man’s stature, furnished
on either side with a meagre uncushioned ledge, denominated in ancient
Britain a seat. In each of these rigid receptacles was a narrow table--a
table expected under stress to accommodate no less than four pairs of
active British elbows. High pressure indeed had passed away from the
Red Lion for ever. It now knew only that of memories and ghosts and
atmosphere. Round the room there marched, breast-high, a magnificent
panelling of mahogany, so dark with time and so polished with unremitted
friction that by gazing a while into its lucid blackness I made out
the dim reflexion of a party of wigged gentlemen in knee-breeches just
arrived from York by the coach. On the dark yellow walls, coated by
the fumes of English coal, of English mutton, of Scotch whiskey, were a
dozen melancholy prints, sallow-toned with age--the Derby favourite of
the year 1807, the Bank of England, her Majesty the Queen. On the floor
was a Turkey carpet--as old as the mahogany almost, as the Bank
of England, as the Queen--into which the waiter had in his lonely
revolutions trodden so many massive soot-flakes and drops of overflowing
beer that the glowing looms of Smyrna would certainly not have
recognised it. To say that I ordered my dinner of this archaic type
would be altogether to misrepresent the process owing to which, having
dreamed of lamb and spinach and a _salade de saison_, I sat down in
penitence to a mutton-chop and a rice pudding. Bracing my feet against
the cross-beam of my little oaken table, I opposed to the mahogany
partition behind me the vigorous dorsal resistance that must have
expressed the old-English idea of repose. The sturdy screen refused even
to creak, but my poor Yankee joints made up the deficiency.
While I was waiting there for my chop there came into the room a person
whom, after I had looked at him a moment, I supposed to be a fellow
lodger and probably the only one. He seemed, like myself, to have
submitted to proposals for dinner; the table on the other side of my
partition had been prepared to receive him. He walked up to the fire,
exposed his back to it and, after consulting his watch, looked directly
out of the window and indirectly at me. He was a man of something less
than middle age and more than middle stature, though indeed you would
have called him neither young nor tall. He was chiefly remarkable for
his emphasised leanness. His hair, very thin on the summit of his head,
was dark short and fine. His eye was of a pale turbid grey, unsuited,
perhaps, to his dark hair and well-drawn brows, but not altogether out
of harmony with his colourless bilious complexion. His nose was aquiline
and delicate; beneath it his moustache languished much rather than
bristled. His mouth and chin were negative, or at the most provisional;
not vulgar, doubtless, but ineffectually refined. A cold fatal
gentlemanly weakness was expressed indeed in his attenuated person. His
eye was restless and deprecating; his whole physiognomy, his manner of
shifting his weight from foot to foot, the spiritless droop of his head,
told of exhausted intentions, of a will relaxed. His dress was neat and
“toned down”--he might have been in mourning. I made up my mind on three
points: he was a bachelor, he was out of health, he was not indigenous
to the soil. The waiter approached him, and they conversed in accents
barely audible. I heard the words “claret,” “sherry” with a tentative
inflexion, and finally “beer” with its last letter changed to “ah.”
Perhaps he was a Russian in reduced circumstances; he reminded me
slightly of certain sceptical cosmopolite Russians whom I had met on the
Continent. While in my extravagant way I followed this train--for
you see I was interested--there appeared a short brisk man with
reddish-brown hair, with a vulgar nose, a sharp blue eye and a red
beard confined to his lower jaw and chin. My putative Russian, still in
possession of the rug, let his mild gaze stray over the dingy ornaments
of the room. The other drew near, and his umbrella dealt a playful
poke at the concave melancholy waistcoat. “A penny ha’penny for your
thoughts!”
My friend, as I call him, uttered an exclamation, stared, then laid
his two hands on the other’s shoulders. The latter looked round at me
keenly, compassing me in a momentary glance. I read in its own vague
light that this was a transatlantic eyebeam; and with such confidence
that I hardly needed to see its owner, as he prepared, with his
companion, to seat himself at the table adjoining my own, take from his
overcoat-pocket three New York newspapers and lay them beside his
plate. As my neighbours proceeded to dine I felt the crumbs of their
conversation scattered pretty freely abroad. I could hear almost all
they said, without straining to catch it, over the top of the partition
that divided us. Occasionally their voices dropped to recovery of
discretion, but the mystery pieced itself together as if on purpose to
entertain me. Their speech was pitched in the key that may in English
air be called alien in spite of a few coincidences. The voices were
American, however, with a difference; and I had no hesitation in
assigning the softer and clearer sound to the pale thin gentleman, whom
I decidedly preferred to his comrade. The latter began to question him
about his voyage.
“Horrible, horrible! I was deadly sick from the hour we left New York.”
“Well, you do look considerably reduced,” said the second-comer.
“Reduced! I’ve been on the verge of the grave. I haven’t slept six hours
for three weeks.” This was said with great gravity.
“Well, I’ve made the voyage for the last time.”
“The plague you have! You mean to locate here permanently?”
“Oh it won’t be so very permanent!”
There was a pause; after which: “You’re the same merry old boy, Searle.
Going to give up the ghost to-morrow, eh?”
“I almost wish I were.”
“You’re not so sweet on England then? I’ve heard people say at home that
you dress and talk and act like an Englishman. But I know these people
here and I know you. You’re not one of this crowd, Clement Searle, not
you. You’ll go under here, sir; you’ll go under as sure as my name’s
Simmons.”
Following this I heard a sudden clatter as of the drop of a knife and
fork. “Well, you’re a delicate sort of creature, if it IS your ugly
name! I’ve been wandering about all day in this accursed city, ready
to cry with homesickness and heartsickness and every possible sort of
sickness, and thinking, in the absence of anything better, of meeting
you here this evening and of your uttering some sound of cheer and
comfort and giving me some glimmer of hope. Go under? Ain’t I under now?
I can’t do more than get under the ground!”
Mr. Simmons’s superior brightness appeared to flicker a moment in this
gust of despair, but the next it was burning steady again. “_Don’t_ ‘cry,’
Searle,” I heard him say. “Remember the waiter. I’ve grown Englishman
enough for that. For heaven’s sake don’t let’s have any nerves. Nerves
won’t do anything for you here. It’s best to come to the point. Tell me
in three words what you expect of me.”
I heard another movement, as if poor Searle had collapsed in his
chair. “Upon my word, sir, you’re quite inconceivable. You never got my
letter?”
“Yes, I got your letter. I was never sorrier to get anything in my
life.”
At this declaration Mr. Searle rattled out an oath, which it was well
perhaps that I but partially heard. “Abijah Simmons,” he then cried,
“what demon of perversity possesses you? Are you going to betray me here
in a foreign land, to turn out a false friend, a heartless rogue?”
“Go on, sir,” said sturdy Simmons. “Pour it all out. I’ll wait till
you’ve done. Your beer’s lovely,” he observed independently to the
waiter. “I’ll have some more.”
“For God’s sake explain yourself!” his companion appealed.
There was a pause, at the end of which I heard Mr. Simmons set down his
empty tankard with emphasis. “You poor morbid mooning man,” he resumed,
“I don’t want to say anything to make you feel sore. I regularly pity
you. But you must allow that you’ve acted more like a confirmed crank
than a member of our best society--in which every one’s so sensible.”
Mr. Searle seemed to have made an effort to compose himself. “Be so good
as to tell me then what was the meaning of your letter.”
“Well, you had got on _my_ nerves, if you want to know, when I wrote it.
It came of my always wishing so to please folks. I had much better have
let you alone. To tell you the plain truth I never was so horrified in
my life as when I found that on the strength of my few kind words you
had come out here to seek your fortune.”
“What then did you expect me to do?”
“I expected you to wait patiently till I had made further enquiries and
had written you again.”
“And you’ve made further enquiries now?”
“Enquiries! I’ve committed assaults.”
“And you find I’ve no claim?”
“No claim that one of _these_ big bugs will look at. It struck me at first
that you had rather a neat little case. I confess the look of it took
hold of me--”
“Thanks to your liking so to please folks!” Mr. Simmons appeared for
a moment at odds with something; it proved to be with his liquor. “I
rather think your beer’s too good to be true,” he said to the waiter. “I
guess I’ll take water. Come, old man,” he resumed, “don’t challenge me
to the arts of debate, or you’ll have me right down on you, and then you
_will_ feel me. My native sweetness, as I say, was part of it. The idea
that if I put the thing through it would be a very pretty feather in
my cap and a very pretty penny in my purse was part of it. And the
satisfaction of seeing a horrid low American walk right into an old
English estate was a good deal of it. Upon my word, Searle, when I think
of it I wish with all my heart that, extravagant vain man as you are, I
_could_, for the charm of it, put you through! I should hardly care what
you did with the blamed place when you got it. I could leave you alone
to turn it into Yankee notions--into ducks and drakes as they call ‘em
here. I should like to see you tearing round over it and kicking up its
sacred dust in their very faces!”
“You don’t know me one little bit,” said Mr. Searle, rather shirking,
I thought, the burden of this tribute and for all response to the
ambiguity of the compliment.
“I should be very glad to think I didn’t, sir. I’ve been to no small
amount of personal inconvenience for you. I’ve pushed my way right up
to the headspring. I’ve got the best opinion that’s to be had. The best
opinion that’s to be had just gives you one leer over its spectacles. I
guess that look will fix you if you ever get it straight. I’ve been
able to tap, indirectly,” Mr. Simmons went on, “the solicitor of your
usurping cousin, and he evidently knows something to be in the wind. It
seems your elder brother twenty years ago put out a feeler. So you’re
not to have the glory of even making them sit up.”
“I never made any one sit up,” I heard Mr. Searle plead. “I shouldn’t
begin at this time of day. I should approach the subject like a
gentleman.”
“Well, if you want very much to do something like a gentleman you’ve got
a capital chance. Take your disappointment like a gentleman.”
I had finished my dinner and had become keenly interested in poor Mr.
Searle’s unencouraging--or unencouraged--claim; so interested that I
at last hated to hear his trouble reflected in his voice without being
able--all respectfully!--to follow it in his face. I left my place, went
over to the fire, took up the evening paper and established a post of
observation behind it.
His cold counsellor was in the act of choosing a soft chop from the
dish--an act accompanied by a great deal of prying and poking with that
gentleman’s own fork. My disillusioned compatriot had pushed away his
plate; he sat with his elbows on the table, gloomily nursing his head
with his hands. His companion watched him and then seemed to wonder--to
do Mr. Simmons justice--how he could least ungracefully give him up.
“I say, Searle,”--and for my benefit, I think, taking me for a native
ingenuous enough to be dazzled by his wit, he lifted his voice a little
and gave it an ironical ring--“in this country it’s the inestimable
privilege of a loyal citizen, under whatsoever stress of pleasure or of
pain, to make a point of eating his dinner.”
Mr. Searle gave his plate another push. “Anything may happen now. I
don’t care a straw.”
“You ought to care. Have another chop and you _will_ care. Have some
better tipple. Take my advice!” Mr. Simmons went on.
My friend--I adopt that name for him--gazed from between his two hands
coldly before him. “I’ve had enough of your advice.”
“A little more,” said Simmons mildly; “I shan’t trouble you again. What
do you mean to do?”
“Nothing.”
“Oh come!”
“Nothing, nothing, nothing!”
“Nothing but starve. How about meeting expenses?”
“Why do you ask?” said my friend. “You don’t care.”
“My dear fellow, if you want to make me offer you twenty pounds you set
most clumsily about it. You said just now I don’t know you,” Mr. Simmons
went on. “Possibly. Come back with me then,” he said kindly enough, “and
let’s improve our acquaintance.”
“I won’t go back. I shall never go back.”
“Never?”
“Never.”
Mr. Simmons thought it shrewdly over. “Well, you _are_ sick!” he exclaimed
presently. “All I can say is that if you’re working out a plan for cold
poison, or for any other act of desperation, you had better give it
right up. You can’t get a dose of the commonest kind of cold poison
for nothing, you know. Look here, Searle”--and the worthy man made what
struck me as a very decent appeal. “If you’ll consent to return home
with me by the steamer of the twenty-third I’ll pay your passage down.
More than that, I’ll pay for your beer.”
My poor gentleman met it. “I believe I never made up my mind to anything
before, but I think it’s made up now. I shall stay here till I take my
departure for a newer world than any patched-up newness of ours. It’s an
odd feeling--I rather like it! What should I do at home?”
“You said just now you were homesick.”
“I meant I was sick for a home. Don’t I belong here? Haven’t I longed to
get here all my life? Haven’t I counted the months and the years till I
should be able to ‘go’ as we say? And now that I’ve ‘gone,’ that is that
I’ve come, must I just back out? No, no, I’ll move on. I’m much obliged
to you for your offer. I’ve enough money for the present. I’ve about my
person some forty pounds’ worth of British gold, and the same amount,
say, of the toughness of the heaven-sent idiot. They’ll see me through
together! After they’re gone I shall lay my head in some English
churchyard, beside some ivied tower, beneath an old gnarled black yew.”
I had so far distinctly followed the dialogue; but at this point the
landlord entered and, begging my pardon, would suggest that number 12,
a most superior apartment, having now been vacated, it would give him
pleasure if I would look in. I declined to look in, but agreed for
number 12 at a venture and gave myself again, with dissimulation, to
my friends. They had got up; Simmons had put on his overcoat; he stood
polishing his rusty black hat with his napkin. “Do you mean to go down
to the place?” he asked.
“Possibly. I’ve thought of it so often that I should like to see it.”
“Shall you call on Mr. Searle?”
“Heaven forbid!”
“Something has just occurred to me,” Simmons pursued with a grin that
made his upper lip look more than ever denuded by the razor and jerked
the ugly ornament of his chin into the air. “There’s a certain Miss
Searle, the old man’s sister.”
“Well?” my gentleman quavered.
“Well, sir!--you talk of moving on. You might move on the damsel.”
Mr. Searle frowned in silence and his companion gave him a tap on the
stomach. “Line those ribs a bit first!” He blushed crimson; his eyes
filled with tears. “You ARE a coarse brute,” he said. The scene
quite harrowed me, but I was prevented from seeing it through by the
reappearance of the landlord on behalf of number 12. He represented to
me that I ought in justice to him to come and see how tidy they _had_
made it. Half an hour afterwards I was rattling along in a hansom toward
Covent Garden, where I heard Madame Bosio in _The Barber of Seville_. On
my return from the opera I went into the coffee-room; it had occurred
to me I might catch there another glimpse of Mr. Searle. I was not
disappointed. I found him seated before the fire with his head sunk on
his breast: he slept, dreaming perhaps of Abijah Simmons. I watched him
for some moments. His closed eyes, in the dim lamplight, looked even
more helpless and resigned, and I seemed to see the fine grain of his
nature in his unconscious mask. They say fortune comes while we sleep,
and, standing there, I felt really tender enough--though otherwise most
unqualified--to be poor Mr. Searle’s fortune. As I walked away I noted
in one of the little prandial pews I have described the melancholy
waiter, whose whiskered chin also reposed on the bulge of his
shirt-front. I lingered a moment beside the old inn-yard in which, upon
a time, the coaches and post-chaises found space to turn and disgorge.
Above the dusky shaft of the enclosing galleries, where lounging lodgers
and crumpled chambermaids and all the picturesque domesticity of a
rattling tavern must have leaned on their elbows for many a year, I made
out the far-off lurid twinkle of the London constellations. At the foot
of the stairs, enshrined in the glittering niche of her well-appointed
bar, the landlady sat napping like some solemn idol amid votive brass
and plate.
The next morning, not finding the subject of my benevolent curiosity in
the coffee-room, I learned from the waiter that he had ordered breakfast
in bed. Into this asylum I was not yet prepared to pursue him. I spent
the morning in the streets, partly under pressure of business, but
catching all kinds of romantic impressions by the way. To the searching
American eye there is no tint of association with which the great grimy
face of London doesn’t flush. As the afternoon approached, however,
I began to yearn for some site more gracefully classic than what
surrounded me, and, thinking over the excursions recommended to the
ingenuous stranger, decided to take the train to Hampton Court. The day
was the more propitious that it yielded just that dim subaqueous light
which sleeps so fondly upon the English landscape.
At the end of an hour I found myself wandering through the apartments of
the great palace. They follow each other in infinite succession, with no
great variety of interest or aspect, but with persistent pomp and a fine
specific effect. They are exactly of their various times. You pass from
painted and panelled bedchambers and closets, anterooms, drawing-rooms,
council-rooms, through king’s suite, queen’s suite, prince’s suite,
until you feel yourself move through the appointed hours and stages
of some rigid monarchical day. On one side are the old monumental
upholsteries, the big cold tarnished beds and canopies, with the
circumference of disapparelled royalty symbolised by a gilded
balustrade, and the great carved and yawning chimney-places where
dukes-in-waiting may have warmed their weary heels; on the other,
in deep recesses, rise the immense windows, the framed and draped
embrasures where the sovereign whispered and favourites smiled, looking
out on terraced gardens and misty park. The brown walls are dimly
illumined by innumerable portraits of courtiers and captains, more
especially with various members of the Batavian _entourage_ of William
of Orange, the restorer of the palace; with good store too of the
lily-bosomed models of Lely and Kneller. The whole tone of this
processional interior is singularly stale and sad. The tints of all
things have both faded and darkened--you taste the chill of the place
as you walk from room to room. It was still early in the day and in
the season, and I flattered myself that I was the only visitor. This
complacency, however, dropped at sight of a person standing motionless
before a simpering countess of Sir Peter Lely’s creation. On hearing
my footstep this victim of an evaporated spell turned his head and I
recognised my fellow lodger of the Red Lion. I was apparently recognised
as well; he looked as if he could scarce wait for me to be kind to him,
and in fact didn’t wait. Seeing I had a catalogue he asked the name of
the portrait. On my satisfying him he appealed, rather timidly, as to my
opinion of the lady.
“Well,” said I, not quite timidly enough perhaps, “I confess she strikes
me as no great matter.”
He remained silent and was evidently a little abashed. As we strolled
away he stole a sidelong glance of farewell at his leering shepherdess.
To speak with him face to face was to feel keenly that he was no less
interesting than infirm. We talked of our inn, of London, of the palace;
he uttered his mind freely, but seemed to struggle with a weight of
depression. It was an honest mind enough, with no great cultivation but
with a certain natural love of excellent things. I foresaw that I
should find him quite to the manner born--to ours; full of glimpses and
responses, of deserts and desolations. His perceptions would be fine and
his opinions pathetic; I should moreover take refuge from his sense of
proportion in his sense of humour, and then refuge from _that_, ah me!--in
what? On my telling him that I was a fellow citizen he stopped short,
deeply touched, and, silently passing his arm into my own, suffered me
to lead him through the other apartments and down into the gardens. A
large gravelled platform stretches itself before the basement of the
palace, taking the afternoon sun. Parts of the great structure are
reserved for private use and habitation, occupied by state-pensioners,
reduced gentlewomen in receipt of the Queen’s bounty and other deserving
persons. Many of the apartments have their dependent gardens, and here
and there, between the verdure-coated walls, you catch a glimpse of
these somewhat stuffy bowers. My companion and I measured more than once
this long expanse, looking down on the floral figures of the rest of the
affair and on the stoutly-woven tapestry of creeping plants that muffle
the foundations of the huge red pile. I thought of the various images of
old-world gentility which, early and late, must have strolled in front
of it and felt the protection and security of the place. We peeped
through an antique grating into one of the mossy cages and saw an old
lady with a black mantilla on her head, a decanter of water in one hand
and a crutch in the other, come forth, followed by three little dogs and
a cat, to sprinkle a plant. She would probably have had an opinion on
the virtue of Queen Caroline. Feeling these things together made us
quickly, made us extraordinarily, intimate. My companion seemed to ache
with his impression; he scowled, all gently, as if it gave him pain. I
proposed at last that we should dine somewhere on the spot and take
a late train to town. We made our way out of the gardens into the
adjoining village, where we entered an inn which I pronounced, very
sincerely, exactly what we wanted. Mr. Searle had approached our board
as shyly as if it had been a cold bath; but, gradually warming to his
work, he declared at the end of half an hour that for the first time in
a month he enjoyed his victuals.
“I’m afraid you’re rather out of health,” I risked.
“Yes, sir--I’m an incurable.”
The little village of Hampton Court stands clustered about the entrance
of Bushey Park, and after we had dined we lounged along into the
celebrated avenue of horse-chestnuts. There is a rare emotion, familiar
to every intelligent traveller, in which the mind seems to swallow the
sum total of its impressions at a gulp. You take in the whole place,
whatever it be. You feel England, you feel Italy, and the sensation
involves for the moment a kind of thrill. I had known it from time to
time in Italy and had opened my soul to it as to the spirit of the
Lord. Since my landing in England I had been waiting for it to arrive. A
bottle of tolerable Burgundy, at dinner, had perhaps unlocked to it the
gates of sense; it arrived now with irresistible force. Just the scene
around me was the England of one’s early reveries. Over against us, amid
the ripeness of its gardens, the dark red residence, with its formal
facings and its vacant windows, seemed to make the past definite and
massive; the little village, nestling between park and palace, around
a patch of turfy common, with its taverns of figurative names, its
ivy-towered church, its mossy roofs, looked like the property of a
feudal lord. It was in this dark composite light that I had read the
British classics; it was this mild moist air that had blown from the
pages of the poets; while I seemed to feel the buried generations in the
dense and elastic sod. And that I must have testified in some form or
other to what I have called my thrill I gather, remembering it, from a
remark of my companion’s.
“You’ve the advantage over me in coming to all this with an educated
eye. You already know what old things can be. I’ve never known it but by
report. I’ve always fancied I should like it. In a small way at home, of
course, I did try to stand by my idea of it. I must be a conservative by
nature. People at home used to call me a cockney and a fribble. But it
wasn’t true,” he went on; “if it had been I should have made my way over
here long ago: before--before--” He paused, and his head dropped sadly
on his breast.
The bottle of Burgundy had loosened his tongue; I had but to choose my
time for learning his story. Something told me that I had gained his
confidence and that, so far as attention and attitude might go, I was
“in” for responsibilities. But somehow I didn’t dread them. “Before you
lost your health,” I suggested.
“Before I lost my health,” he answered. “And my property--the little I
had. And my ambition. And any power to take myself seriously.”
“Come!” I cried. “You shall recover everything. This tonic English
climate will wind you up in a month. And _then_ see how you’ll take
yourself--and how I shall take you!”
“Oh,” he gratefully smiled, “I may turn to dust in your hands! I should
like,” he presently pursued, “to be an old genteel pensioner, lodged
over there in the palace and spending my days in maundering about these
vistas. I should go every morning, at the hour when it gets the sun,
into that long gallery where all those pretty women of Lely’s are
hung--I know you despise them!--and stroll up and down and say something
kind to them. Poor precious forsaken creatures! So flattered and courted
in their day, so neglected now! Offering up their shoulders and ringlets
and smiles to that musty deadly silence!”