Its gray nave impressed me more than at any former visit. Passing into
the cloisters, an attendant took possession of us, and showed us about.
Within the choir there is a profusion of very rich oaken carving, both on
the screen that separates it from the nave, and on the seats and walls;
very curious and most elaborate, and lavished (one would say) most
wastefully, where nobody would think of looking for it,--where, indeed,
amid the dimness of the cathedral, the exquisite detail of the
elaboration could not possibly be seen. Our guide lighted some of the
gas-burners, of which there are many hundreds, to help us see them; but
it required close scrutiny, even then. It must have been out of the
question, when the whole means of illumination were only a few smoky
torches or candles. There was a row of niches, where the monks used to
stand, for four hours together, in the performance of some of their
services; and to relieve them a little, they were allowed partially to
sit on a projection of the seats, which were turned up in the niche for
that purpose; but if they grew drowsy, so as to fail to balance
themselves, the seat was so contrived as to slip down, thus bringing the
monk to the floor. These projections on the seats are each and all of
them carved with curious devices, no two alike. The guide showed us one,
representing, apparently, the first quarrel of a new-married couple,
wrought with wonderful expression. Indeed, the artist never failed to
bring out his idea in the most striking manner,--as, for instance, Satan,
under the guise of a lion, devouring a sinner bodily; and again in the
figure of a dragon, with a man halfway down his gullet, the legs hanging
out. The carver may not have seen anything grotesque in this, nor
intended it at all by way of joke; but certainly there would appear to be
a grim mirthfulness in some of the designs. One does not see why such
fantasies should be strewn about the holy interior of a cathedral, unless
it were intended to contain everything that belongs to the heart of man,
both upward and downward.
In a side aisle of the choir, we saw a tomb, said to be that of the
Emperor Henry IV. of Germany, though on very indistinct authority. This
is an oblong tomb, carved, and, on one side, painted with bright colors
and gilded. During a very long period it was built and plastered into
the wall, and the exterior side was whitewashed; but, on being removed,
the inner side was found to have been ornamented with gold and color, in
the manner in which we now see it. If this were customary with tombs, it
must have added vastly to the gorgeous magnificence, to which the painted
windows and polished pillars and ornamented ceilings contributed so much.
In fact, a cathedral in its fresh estate seems to have been like a
pavilion of the sunset, all purple and gold; whereas now it more
resembles deepest and grayest twilight.
Afterwards, we were shown into the ancient refectory, now used as the
city grammar-school, and furnished with the usual desks and seats for the
boys. In one corner of this large room was the sort of pulpit or
elevated seat, with a broken staircase of stone ascending to it, where
one of the monks used to read to his brethren, while sitting at their
meals. The desks were cut and carved with the scholars' knives, just as
they used to be in the school-rooms where I was a scholar. Thence we
passed into the chapter-house, but, before that, we went through a small
room, in which Melville opened a cupboard, and discovered a dozen or two
of wine-bottles; but our guide told us that they were now empty, and
never were meant for jollity, having held only sacramental wine. In the
chapter-house, we saw the library, some of the volumes of which were
antique folios. There were two dusty and tattered banners hanging on the
wall, and the attendant promised to make us laugh by something that he
would tell us about them. The joke was that these two banners had been
in the battle of Bunker Hill; and our countrymen, he said, always
smiled on hearing this. He had discovered us to be Americans by the
notice we took of a mural tablet in the choir, to the memory of a
Lieutenant-Governor Clarke, of New York, who died in Chester before the
Revolution. From the chapter-house he ushered us back into the nave,
ever and anon pointing out some portion of the edifice more ancient than
the rest, and when I asked him how he knew this, he said that he had
learnt it from the archaeologists, who could read off such things like a
book. This guide was a lively, quick-witted man, who did his business
less by rote, and more with a vivacious interest, than any guide I ever
met.
After leaving the cathedral we sought out the Yacht Inn, near the
water-gate. This was, for a long period of time, the principal inn of
Chester, and was the house at which Swift once put up, on his way to
Holyhead, and where he invited the clergy to come and sup with him. We
sat down in a small snuggery, conversing with the landlord. The Chester
people, according to my experience, are very affable, and fond of talking
with strangers about the antiquities and picturesque characteristics of
their town. It partly lives, the landlord told us, by its visitors, and
many people spend the summer here on account of the antiquities and the
good air. He showed us a broad, balustraded staircase, leading into a
large, comfortable, old-fashioned parlor, with windows looking on the
street and on the Custom House that stood opposite. This was the room
where Swift expected to receive the clergy of Chester; and on one of the
window-panes were two acrid lines, written with the diamond of his ring,
satirizing those venerable gentlemen, in revenge for their refusing his
invitation. The first line begins rather indistinctly; but the writing
grows fully legible, as it proceeds.
The Yacht Tavern is a very old house, in the gabled style. The timbers
and framework are still perfectly sound. In the same street is the
Bishop's house (so called as having been the residence of a prelate long
ago), which is covered with curious sculpture, representing Scriptural
scenes. And in the same neighborhood is the county court, accessible by
an archway, through which we penetrated, and found ourselves in a
passage, very ancient and dusky, overlooked from the upper story by a
gallery, to which an antique staircase ascended, with balustrades and
square landing-places. A printer saw us here, and asked us into his
printing-office, and talked very affably; indeed, he could have hardly
been more civil, if he had known that both Melville and I have given a
good deal of employment to the brethren of his craft.
December 15th.--An old gentleman has recently paid me a good many
visits,--a Kentucky man, who has been a good deal in England and Europe
generally without losing the freshness and unconventionality of his
earlier life. He was a boatman, and afterwards captain of a steamer on
the Ohio and Mississippi; but has gained property, and is now the owner
of mines of coal and iron, which he is endeavoring to dispose of here in
England. A plain, respectable, well-to-do-looking personage, of more
than seventy years; very free of conversation, and beginning to talk with
everybody as a matter of course; tall, stalwart, a dark face, with white
curly hair and keen eyes; and an expression shrewd, yet kindly and
benign. He fought through the whole War of 1812, beginning with General
Harrison at the battle of Tippecanoe, which he described to me. He says
that at the beginning of the battle, and for a considerable time, he
heard Tecumseh's voice, loudly giving orders. There was a man named
Wheatley in the American camp, a strange, incommunicative person,--a
volunteer, making war entirely on his own book, and seeking revenge for
some relatives of his, who had been killed by the Indians. In the midst
of the battle this Wheatley ran at a slow trot past R------ (my
informant), trailing his rifle, and making towards the point where
Tecumseh's voice was heard. The fight drifted around, and R------ along
with it; and by and by he reached a spot where Wheatley lay dead, with
his head on Tecumseh's breast. Tecumseh had been shot with a rifle, but,
before expiring, appeared to have shot Wheatley with a pistol, which he
still held in his hand. R------ affirms that Tecumseh was flayed by the
Kentucky men on the spot, and his skin converted into razor-straps. I
have left out the most striking point of the narrative, after all, as
R------ told it, viz. that soon after Wheatley passed him, he suddenly
ceased to hear Tecumseh's voice ringing through the forest, as he gave
his orders. He was at the battle of New Orleans, and gave me the story
of it from beginning to end; but I remember only a few particulars in
which he was personally concerned. He confesses that his hair bristled
upright--every hair in his head--when he heard the shouts of the British
soldiers before advancing to the attack. His uncomfortable sensations
lasted till he began to fire, after which he felt no more of them. It
was in the dusk of the morning, or a little before sunrise, when the
assault was made; and the fight lasted about two hours and a half, during
which R------ fired twenty-four times; and said he, "I saw my object
distinctly each time, and I was a good rifle-shot." He was raising his
rifle to fire the twenty-fifth time, when an American officer, General
Carroll, pressed it down, and bade him fire no more. "Enough is enough,"
quoth the General. For there needed no more slaughter, the British being
in utter rout and confusion. In this retreat many of the enemy would
drop down among the dead, then rise, run a considerable distance, and
drop again, thus confusing the riflemen's aim. One fellow had thus got
about four hundred and fifty yards from the American line, and, thinking
himself secure, he made a derisive gesture. "I'll have a shot at him
anyhow," cried a rifleman; so he fired, and the poor devil dropped.
R------ himself, with one of his twenty-four shots, hit a British
officer, who fell forward on his face, about thirty paces from our line,
and as the enemy were then retreating (they advanced and were repelled
two or three times) he ran out, and turned him over on his back. The
officer was a man about thirty-eight, tall and fine-looking; his eyes
were wide open, clear and bright, and were fixed full on R------ with a
somewhat stern glance, but there was the sweetest and happiest smile over
his face that could be conceived. He seemed to be dead;--at least,
R------ thinks that he did not really see him, fixedly as he appeared to
gaze. The officer held his sword in his hand, and R------ tried in vain
to wrest it from him, until suddenly the clutch relaxed. R------ still
keeps the sword hung up over his mantel-piece. I asked him how the dead
man's aspect affected him. He replied that he felt nothing at the time;
but that ever since, in all trouble, in uneasy sleep, and whenever he is
out of tune, or waking early, or lying awake at night, he sees this
officer's face, with the clear bright eyes and the pleasant smile, just
as distinctly as if he were bending over him. His wound was in the
breast, exactly on the spot that R------ had aimed at, and bled
profusely. The enemy advanced in such masses, he says, that it was
impossible not to hit them unless by purposely firing over their heads.
After the battle, R------ leaped over the rampart, and took a prisoner
who was standing unarmed in the midst of the slain, having probably
dropped down during the heat of the action, to avoid the hail-storm of
rifle-shots. As he led him in, the prisoner paused, and pointed to an
officer who was lying dead beside his dead horse, with his foot still in
the stirrup. "There lies our General," said he. The horse had been
killed by a grape-shot, and Pakenham himself, apparently, by a
six-pounder ball, which had first struck the earth, covering him from
head to foot with mud and clay, and had then entered his side, and gone
upward through his breast. His face was all besmirched with the moist
earth. R------ took the slain General's foot out of the stirrup, and
then went to report his death.
Much more he told me, being an exceedingly talkative old man, and seldom,
I suppose, finding so good a listener as myself. I like the man,--a
good-tempered, upright, bold and free old fellow; of a rough breeding,
but sufficiently smoothed by society to be of pleasant intercourse. He
is as dogmatic as possible, having formed his own opinions, often on very
disputable grounds, and hardened in them; taking queer views of matters
and things, and giving shrewd and not ridiculous reasons for them; but
with a keen, strong sense at the bottom of his character.
A little while ago I met an Englishman in a railway carriage, who
suggests himself as a kind of contrast to this warlike and
vicissitudinous backwoodsman. He was about the same age as R------, but
had spent, apparently, his whole life in Liverpool, and has long occupied
the post of Inspector of Nuisances,--a rather puffy and consequential
man; gracious, however, and affable, even to casual strangers like
myself. The great contrast betwixt him and the American lies in the
narrower circuit of his ideas; the latter talking about matters of
history of his own country and the world,--glancing over the whole field
of politics, propounding opinions and theories of his own, and showing
evidence that his mind had operated for better or worse on almost all
conceivable matters; while the Englishman was odorous of his office,
strongly flavored with that, and otherwise most insipid. He began his
talk by telling me of a dead body which he had lately discovered in a
house in Liverpool, where it had been kept about a fortnight by the
relatives, partly from want of funds for the burial, and partly in
expectation of the arrival of some friends from Glasgow. There was a
plate of glass in the coffin-lid, through which the Inspector of
Nuisances, as he told me, had looked and seen the dead man's face in an
ugly state of decay, which he minutely described. However, his
conversation was not altogether of this quality; for he spoke about
larks, and how abundant they are just now, and what a good pie they make,
only they must be skinned, else they will have a bitter taste. We have
since had a lark-pie ourselves, and I believe it was very good in itself;
only the recollection of the Nuisance-man's talk was not a very agreeable
flavor. A very racy and peculiarly English character might be made out
of a man like this, having his life-concern wholly with the disagreeables
of a great city. He seemed to be a good and kindly person, too, but
earthy,--even as if his frame had been moulded of clay impregnated with
the draining of slaughter-houses.
December 21st.--On Thursday evening I dined for the first time with the
new Mayor at the Town Hall. I wish to preserve all the characteristic
traits of such banquets, because, being peculiar to England, these
municipal feasts may do well to picture in a novel. There was a big old
silver tobacco-box, nearly or quite as large round as an ordinary plate,
out of which the dignitaries of Liverpool used to fill their pipes, while
sitting in council or after their dinners. The date "1690" was on the
lid. It is now used as a snuff-box, and wends its way, from guest to
guest, round the table. We had turtle, and, among other good things,
American canvasback ducks. . . . . These dinners are certainly a good
institution, and likely to be promotive of good feeling; the Mayor giving
them often, and inviting, in their turn, all the respectable and eminent
citizens of whatever political bias. About fifty gentlemen were present
that evening. I had the post of honor at the Mayor's right hand; and
France, Turkey, and Austria were toasted before the Republic, for, as the
Mayor whispered me, he must first get his allies out of the way. The
Turkish Consul and the Austrian both made better English speeches than
any Englishman, during the evening; for it is inconceivable what
shapeless and ragged utterances Englishmen are content to put forth,
without attempting anything like a wholeness; but inserting a patch here
and a patch there, and finally getting out what they wish to say, indeed,
but in most disorganized guise. . . . . I can conceive of very high
enjoyment in making a speech; one is in such a curious sympathy with his
audience, feeling instantly how every sentence affects them, and
wonderfully excited and encouraged by the sense that it has gone to the
right spot. Then, too, the imminent emergency, when a man is overboard,
and must sink or swim, sharpens, concentrates, and invigorates the mind,
and causes matters of thought and sentiment to assume shape and
expression, though, perhaps, it seemed hopeless to express them, just
before you rose to speak. Yet I question much whether public speaking
tends to elevate the orator, intellectually or morally; the effort, of
course, being to say what is immediately received by the audience, and to
produce an effect on the instant. I don't quite see how an honest man
can be a good and successful orator; but I shall hardly undertake to
decide the question on my merely post-prandial experience.
The Mayor toasted his guests by their professions,--the merchants, for
instance, the bankers, the solicitors,--and while one of the number
responded, his brethren also stood up, each in his place, thus giving
their assent to what he said. I think the very worst orator was a major
of Artillery, who spoke in a meek, little, nervous voice, and seemed a
good deal more discomposed than probably he would have been in the face
of the enemy. The first toast was "The Ladies," to which an old bachelor
responded.
December 31st.--Thus far we have come through the winter, on this bleak
and blasty shore of the Irish Sea, where, perhaps, the drowned body of
Milton's friend Lycidas might have been washed ashore more than two
centuries ago. This would not be very likely, however, so wide a tract
of sands, never deeply covered by the tide, intervening betwixt us and
the sea. But it is an excessively windy place, especially here on the
Promenade; always a whistle and a howl,--always an eddying gust through
the corridors and chambers,--often a patter of hail or rain or snow
against the windows; and in the long evenings the sounds outside are very
much as if we were on shipboard in mid-ocean, with the waves dashing
against the vessel's sides. I go to town almost daily, starting at about
eleven, and reaching Southport again at a little past live; by which time
it is quite dark, and continues so till nearly eight in the morning.
Christmas time has been marked by few characteristics. For a week or two
previous to Christmas day, the newspapers contained rich details
respecting market-stalls and butchers' shops,--what magnificent carcasses
of prize oxen and sheep they displayed. . . . .
The Christmas Waits came to us on Christmas eve, and on the day itself,
in the shape of little parties of boys or girls, singing wretched
doggerel rhymes, and going away well pleased with the guerdon of a penny
or two. Last evening came two or three older choristers at pretty near
bedtime, and sang some carols at our door. They were psalm tunes,
however. Everybody with whom we have had to do, in any manner of
service, expects a Christmas-box; but, in most cases, a shilling is quite
a satisfactory amount. We have had holly and mistletoe stuck up on the
gas-fixtures and elsewhere about the house.
On the mantel-piece in the coroner's court the other day, I saw corked
and labelled phials, which it may be presumed contained samples of
poisons that have brought some poor wretches to their deaths, either by
murder or suicide. This court might be wrought into a very good and
pregnant description, with its grimy gloom illuminated by a conical
skylight, constructed to throw daylight down on corpses; its greasy
Testament covered over with millions of perjured kisses; the coroner
himself, whose life is fed on all kinds of unnatural death; its
subordinate officials, who go about scenting murder, and might be
supposed to have caught the scent in their own garments; its stupid,
brutish juries, settling round corpses like flies; its criminals, whose
guilt is brought face to face with them here, in closer contact than at
the subsequent trial.
O---- P------, the famous Mormonite, called on me a little while ago,--a
short, black-haired, dark-complexioned man; a shrewd, intelligent, but
unrefined countenance, excessively unprepossessing; an uncouth gait and
deportment; the aspect of a person in comfortable circumstances, and
decently behaved, but of a vulgar nature and destitute of early culture.
I think I should have taken him for a shoemaker, accustomed to reflect in
a rude, strong, evil-disposed way on matters of this world and the next,
as he sat on his bench. He said he had been residing in Liverpool about
six months; and his business with me was to ask for a letter of
introduction that should gain him admittance to the British Museum, he
intending a visit to London. He offered to refer me to respectable
people for his character; but I advised him to apply to Mr. Dallas, as
the proper person for his purpose.
March 1st, 1857.--On the night of last Wednesday week, our house was
broken into by robbers. They entered by the back window of the
breakfast-room, which is the children's school-room, breaking or cutting
a pane of glass, so as to undo the fastening. I have a dim idea of
having heard a noise through my sleep; but if so, it did not more than
slightly disturb me. U---- heard it, she being at watch with R-----; and
J-----, having a cold, was also wakeful, and thought the noise was of
servants moving about below. Neither did the idea of robbers occur to
U----. J-----, however, hearing U---- at her mother's door, asking for
medicine for R-----, called out for medicine for his cold, and the thieves
probably thought we were bestirring ourselves, and so took flight. In
the morning the servants found the hall door and the breakfast-room
window open; some silver cups and some other trifles of plate were gone
from the sideboard, and there were tokens that the whole lower part of
the house had been ransacked; but the thieves had evidently gone off in a
hurry, leaving some articles which they would have taken, had they been
more at leisure.
We gave information to the police, and an inspector and constable soon
came to make investigations, taking a list of the missing articles, and
informing themselves as to all particulars that could be known. I did
not much expect ever to hear any more of the stolen property; but on
Sunday a constable came to request my presence at the police-office to
identify the lost things. The thieves had been caught in Liverpool,
and some of the property found upon them, and some of it at a
pawnbroker's where they had pledged it. The police-office is a small
dark room, in the basement story of the Town Hall of Southport; and over
the mantel-piece, hanging one upon another, there are innumerable
advertisements of robberies in houses, and on the highway,--murders, too,
and garrotings; and offences of all sorts, not only in this district, but
wide away, and forwarded from other police-stations. Bring thus
aggregated together, one realizes that there are a great many more
offences than the public generally takes note of. Most of these
advertisements were in pen and ink, with minute lists of the articles
stolen; but the more important were in print; and there, too, I saw the
printed advertisement of our own robbery, not for public circulation, but
to be handed about privately, among police-officers and pawnbrokers. A
rogue has a very poor chance in England, the police being so numerous,
and their system so well organized.
In a corner of the police-office stood a contrivance for precisely
measuring the heights of prisoners; and I took occasion to measure
J-----, and found him four feet seven inches and a half high. A set of
rules for the self-government of police-officers was nailed on the door,
between twenty and thirty in number, and composing a system of
constabulary ethics. The rules would be good for men in almost any walk
of life; and I rather think the police-officers conform to them with
tolerable strictness. They appear to be subordinated to one another on
the military plan. The ordinary constable does not sit down in the
presence of his inspector, and this latter seems to be half a gentleman;
at least, such is the bearing of our Southport inspector, who wears a
handsome uniform of green and silver, and salutes the principal
inhabitants, when meeting them in the street, with an air of something
like equality. Then again there is a superintendent, who certainly
claims the rank of a gentleman, and has perhaps been an officer in the
army. The superintendent of this district was present on this occasion.
The thieves were brought down from Liverpool on Tuesday, and examined in
the Town Hall. I had been notified to be present, but, as a matter of
courtesy, the police-officers refrained from calling me as a witness, the
evidence of the servants being sufficient to identify the property. The
thieves were two young men, not much over twenty,--James and John
Macdonald, terribly shabby, dirty, jail-bird like, yet intelligent of
aspect, and one of them handsome. The police knew them already, and they
seemed not much abashed by their position. There were half a dozen
magistrates on the bench,--idle old gentlemen of Southport and the
vicinity, who lounged into the court, more as a matter of amusement than
anything else, and lounged out again at their own pleasure; for these
magisterial duties are a part of the pastime of the country gentlemen of
England. They wore their hats on the bench. There were one or two of
them more active than their fellows; but the real duty was done by the
Clerk of the Court. The seats within the bar were occupied by the
witnesses, and around the great table sat some of the more respectable
people of Southport; and without the bar were the commonalty in great
numbers; for this is said to be the first burglary that has occurred here
within the memory of man, and so it has caused a great stir.
There seems to be a strong case against the prisoners. A boy attached to
the railway testified to having seen them at Birchdale on Wednesday
afternoon, and directed them on their way to Southport; Peter Pickup
recognized them as having applied to him for lodgings in the course of
that evening; a pawnbroker swore to one of them as having offered my
top-coat for sale or pledge in Liverpool; and my boots were found on the
feet of one of them,--all this in addition to other circumstances of
pregnant suspicion. So they were committed for trial at the Liverpool
assizes, to be holden some time in the present month. I rather wished
them to escape.
February 27th.--Coming along the promenade, a little before sunset, I saw
the mountains of the Welsh coast shadowed very distinctly against the
horizon. Mr. Channing told me that he had seen these mountains once or
twice during his stay at Southport; but, though constantly looking for
them, they have never before greeted my eyes in all the months that we
have spent here. It is said that the Isle of Man is likewise discernible
occasionally; but as the distance must be between sixty and seventy
miles, I should doubt it. How misty is England! I have spent four years
in a gray gloom. And yet it suits me pretty well.