in the nether regions than, I fear, would await the troublesome
personages just hinted at. Emerging on the Surrey side of the Thames, I
found myself in Rotherhithe, a neighborhood not unfamiliar to the
readers of old books of maritime adventure. There being a ferry hard by
the mouth of the tunnel, I recrossed the river in the primitive fashion
of an open boat, which the conflict of wind and tide, together with the
swash and swell of the passing steamers, tossed high and low rather
tumultuously. This inquietude of our frail skiff (which, indeed, bobbed
up and down like a cork) so much alarmed an old lady, the only other
passenger, that the boatmen essayed to comfort her. "Never fear,
mother!" grumbled one of them; "we'll make the river as smooth as we can
for you. We'll get a plane, and plane down the waves!" The joke may not
read very brilliantly; but I make bold to record it as the only specimen
that reached my ears of the old, rough water-wit for which the Thames
used to be so celebrated. Passing directly along the line of the sunken
tunnel, we landed in Wapping, which I should have presupposed to be the
most tarry and pitchy spot on earth, swarming with old salts, and full
of warm, bustling, coarse, homely, and cheerful life. Nevertheless, it
turned out to be a cold and torpid neighborhood, mean, shabby, and
unpicturesque, both as to its buildings and inhabitants: the latter
comprising (so far as was visible to me) not a single unmistakable
sailor, though plenty of land-sharks, who get a half-dishonest
livelihood by business connected with the sea. Ale and spirit vaults
(as petty drinking-establishments are styled in England, pretending to
contain vast cellars full of liquor within the compass of ten feet
square above ground) were particularly abundant, together with apples,
oranges, and oysters, the stalls of fishmongers and butchers, and
slop-shops, where blue jackets and duck trousers swung and capered
before the doors. Everything was on the poorest scale, and the place
bore an aspect of unredeemable decay. From this remote point of London I
strolled leisurely towards the heart of the city; while the streets, at
first but thinly occupied by man or vehicle, got more and more thronged
with foot-passengers, carts, drays, cabs, and the all-pervading and
all-accommodating omnibus. But I lack courage, and feel that I should
lack perseverance, as the gentlest reader would lack patience, to
undertake a descriptive stroll through London streets; more especially
as there would be a volume ready for the printer before we could reach a
midway resting-place at Charing Cross. It will be the easier course to
step aboard another passing steamer, and continue our trip up the
Thames.
The next notable group of objects is an assemblage of ancient walls,
battlements, and turrets, out of the midst of which rises prominently
one great square tower, of a grayish hue, bordered with white stone, and
having a small turret at each corner of the roof. This central structure
is the White Tower, and the whole circuit of ramparts and inclosed
edifices constitutes what is known in English history, and still more
widely and impressively in English poetry, as the Tower. A crowd of
river-craft are generally moored in front of it; but if we look sharply
at the right moment under the base of the rampart, we may catch a
glimpse of an arched water-entrance, half submerged, past which the
Thames glides as indifferently as if it were the mouth of a city-kennel.
Nevertheless, it is the Traitor's Gate, a dreary kind of triumphal
passage-way (now supposed to be shut up and barred forever), through
which a multitude of noble and illustrious personages have entered the
Tower and found it a brief resting-place on their way to heaven. Passing
it many times, I never observed that anybody glanced at this shadowy and
ominous trap-door, save myself. It is well that America exists, if it
were only that her vagrant children may be impressed and affected by
the historical monuments of England in a degree of which the native
inhabitants are evidently incapable. These matters are too familiar, too
real, and too hopelessly built in amongst and mixed up with the common
objects and affairs of life, to be easily susceptible of imaginative
coloring in their minds; and even their poets and romancers feel it a
toil, and almost a delusion, to extract poetic material out of what
seems embodied poetry itself to an American. An Englishman cares nothing
about the Tower, which to us is a haunted castle in dream-land. That
honest and excellent gentleman, the late Mr. G. P. R. James (whose
mechanical ability, one might have supposed, would nourish itself by
devouring every old stone of such a structure), once assured me that he
had never in his life set eyes upon the Tower, though for years an
historic novelist in London.
Not to spend a whole summer's day upon the voyage, we will suppose
ourselves to have reached London Bridge, and thence to have taken
another steamer for a farther passage up the river. But here the
memorable objects succeed each other so rapidly that I can spare but a
single sentence even for the great Dome, though I deem it more
picturesque, in that dusky atmosphere, than St. Peter's in its clear
blue sky.[8] I must mention, however (since everything connected with
royalty is especially interesting to my dear countrymen), that I once
saw a large and beautiful barge, splendidly gilded and ornamented, and
overspread with a rich covering, lying at the pier nearest to St. Paul's
Cathedral; it had the royal banner of Great Britain displayed, besides
being decorated with a number of other flags; and many footmen (who are
universally the grandest and gaudiest objects to be seen in England at
this day, and these were regal ones, in a bright scarlet livery
bedizened with gold-lace, and white silk stockings) were in attendance.
I know not what festive or ceremonial occasion may have drawn out this
pageant; after all, it might have been merely a city-spectacle,
appertaining to the Lord Mayor; but the sight had its value in bringing
vividly before me the grand old times when the sovereign and nobles were
accustomed to use the Thames as the high street of the metropolis, and
join in pompous processions upon it; whereas, the desuetude of such
customs nowadays has caused the whole show of river-life to consist in a
multitude of smoke-begrimed steamers. An analogous change has taken
place in the streets, where cabs and the omnibus have crowded out a rich
variety of vehicles; and thus life gets more monotonous in hue from age
to age, and appears to seize every opportunity to strip off a bit of its
gold-lace among the wealthier classes, and to make itself decent in the
lower ones.
[8] St. Paul's appeared to me unspeakably grand and noble, and the more
so from the throng and bustle continually going on around its base,
without in the least disturbing the sublime repose of its great dome,
and, indeed, of all its massive height and breadth. Other edifices may
crowd close to its foundation, and people may tramp as they like about
it; but still the great cathedral is as quiet and serene as if it stood
in the middle of Salisbury Plain. There cannot be anything else in its
way so good in the world as just this effect of St. Paul's in the very
heart and densest tumult of London. I do not know whether the church is
built of marble, or of whatever other white or nearly white material;
but in the time that it has been standing there, it has grown black with
the smoke of ages, through which there are, nevertheless, gleams of
white, that make a most picturesque impression on the whole. It is much
better than staring white; the edifice would not be nearly so grand
without this drapery of black.--II. 91.
[Illustration: _Tower of London._]
Yonder is Whitefriars, the old rowdy Alsatia, now wearing as decorous a
face as any other portion of London; and, adjoining it, the avenues and
brick squares of the Temple, with that historic garden, close upon
the river-side, and still rich in shrubbery and flowers, where the
partisans of York and Lancaster plucked the fatal roses, and scattered
their pale and bloody petals over so many English battle-fields. Hard
by, we see the long white front or rear of Somerset House, and, farther
on, rise the two new Houses of Parliament, with a huge unfinished tower
already hiding its imperfect summit in the smoky canopy,--the whole vast
and cumbrous edifice a specimen of the best that modern architecture can
effect, elaborately imitating the masterpieces of those simple ages when
men "builded better than they knew."[9] Close by it, we have a glimpse
of the roof and upper towers of the holy Abbey; while that gray,
ancestral pile on the opposite side of the river is Lambeth Palace, a
venerable group of halls and turrets, chiefly built of brick, but with
at least one large tower of stone.[10] In our course, we have passed
beneath half a dozen bridges, and, emerging out of the black heart of
London, shall soon reach a cleanly suburb, where old Father Thames, if I
remember, begins to put on an aspect of unpolluted innocence. And now we
look back upon the mass of innumerable roofs, out of which rise
steeples, towers, columns, and the great crowning Dome,--look back, in
short, upon that mystery of the world's proudest city, amid which a man
so longs and loves to be; not, perhaps, because it contains much that is
positively admirable and enjoyable, but because, at all events, the
world has nothing better. The cream of external life is there; and
whatever merely intellectual or material good we fail to find perfect in
London, we may as well content ourselves to seek that unattainable thing
no farther on this earth.
[9] After coming out of the Abbey, we looked at the two Houses of
Parliament, directly across the way,--an immense structure, and
certainly most splendid, built of a beautiful warm-colored stone. The
building has a very elaborate finish, and delighted me at first; but by
and by I began to be sensible of a weariness in the effect, a lack of
variety in the plan and ornament, a deficiency of invention; so that
instead of being more and more interested the longer one looks, as is
the case with an old Gothic edifice, and continually reading deeper into
it, one finds that one has seen all in seeing a little piece, and that
the magnificent palace has nothing better to show one or to do for one.
It is wonderful how the old weather-stained and smoke-blackened Abbey
shames down this brand-newness; not that the Parliament Houses are not
fine objects to look at, too.--II. 105.
[10] It stands immediately on the bank of the river, not far above the
bridge. We merely walked round it, and saw only an old stone tower or
two, partially renewed with brick, and a high connecting wall, within
which appeared gables and other portions of the palace, all of an
ancient plan and venerable aspect, though evidently much patched up and
restored in the course of the many ages since its foundation.--II. 193.
[Illustration: _St. Paul's Cathedral._]
The steamer terminates its trip at Chelsea, an old town endowed with a
prodigious number of pothouses, and some famous gardens, called the
Cremorne, for public amusement. The most noticeable thing, however, is
Chelsea Hospital, which, like that of Greenwich, was founded, I believe,
by Charles II. (whose bronze statue, in the guise of an old Roman,
stands in the centre of the quadrangle), and appropriated as a home for
aged and infirm soldiers of the British army. The edifices are of three
stories, with windows in the high roofs, and are built of dark, sombre
brick, with stone edgings and facings. The effect is by no means that of
grandeur (which is somewhat disagreeably an attribute of Greenwich
Hospital), but a quiet and venerable neatness. At each extremity of the
street-front there is a spacious and hospitably open gateway, lounging
about which I saw some gray veterans in long scarlet coats of an antique
fashion, and the cocked hats of a century ago, or occasionally a modern
foraging-cap. Almost all of them moved with a rheumatic gait, two or
three stumped on wooden legs, and here and there an arm was missing.
Inquiring of one of these fragmentary heroes whether a stranger could be
admitted to see the establishment, he replied most cordially, "Oh yes,
sir,--anywhere! Walk in and go where you please,--upstairs, or
anywhere!" So I entered, and, passing along the inner side of the
quadrangle, came to the door of the chapel, which forms a part of the
contiguity of edifices next the street. Here another pensioner, an old
warrior of exceedingly peaceable and Christian demeanor, touched his
three-cornered hat and asked if I wished to see the interior; to which I
assenting, he unlocked the door, and we went in.
The chapel consists of a great hall with a vaulted roof, and over the
altar is a large painting in fresco, the subject of which I did not
trouble myself to make out. More appropriate adornments of the place,
dedicated as well to martial reminiscences as religious worship, are the
long ranges of dusty and tattered banners, that hang from their staves
all round the ceiling of the chapel. They are trophies of battles
fought and won in every quarter of the world, comprising the captured
flags of all the nations with whom the British lion has waged war since
James II.'s time,--French, Dutch, East Indian, Prussian, Russian,
Chinese, and American,--collected together in this consecrated spot, not
to symbolize that there shall be no more discord upon earth, but
drooping over the aisle in sullen, though peaceable, humiliation. Yes, I
said "American" among the rest; for the good old pensioner mistook me
for an Englishman, and failed not to point out (and, methought, with an
especial emphasis of triumph) some flags that had been taken at
Bladensburg and Washington. I fancied, indeed, that they hung a little
higher and drooped a little lower than any of their companions in
disgrace. It is a comfort, however, that their proud devices are already
indistinguishable, or nearly so, owing to dust and tatters and the kind
offices of the moths, and that they will soon rot from the banner-staves
and be swept out in unrecognized fragments from the chapel-door.
It is a good method of teaching a man how imperfectly cosmopolitan he
is, to show him his country's flag occupying a position of dishonor in
a foreign land. But, in truth, the whole system of a people crowing over
its military triumphs had far better be dispensed with, both on account
of the ill-blood that it helps to keep fermenting among the nations, and
because it operates as an accumulative inducement to future generations
to aim at a kind of glory, the gain of which has generally proved more
ruinous than its loss. I heartily wish that every trophy of victory
might crumble away, and that every reminiscence or tradition of a hero,
from the beginning of the world to this day, could pass out of all men's
memories at once and forever. I might feel very differently, to be sure,
if we Northerners had anything especially valuable to lose by the fading
of those illuminated names.
I gave the pensioner (but I am afraid there may have been a little
affectation in it) a magnificent guerdon of all the silver I had in my
pocket, to requite him for having unintentionally stirred up my
patriotic susceptibilities. He was a meek-looking, kindly old man, with
a humble freedom and affability of manner that made it pleasant to
converse with him. Old soldiers, I know not why, seem to be more
accostable than old sailors. One is apt to hear a growl beneath the
smoothest courtesy of the latter. The mild veteran, with his peaceful
voice, and gentle reverend aspect, told me that he had fought at a
cannon all through the Battle of Waterloo, and escaped unhurt; he had
now been in the hospital four or five years, and was married, but
necessarily underwent a separation from his wife, who lived outside of
the gates. To my inquiry whether his fellow-pensioners were comfortable
and happy, he answered, with great alacrity, "Oh yes, sir!" qualifying
his evidence, after a moment's consideration, by saying in an undertone,
"There are some people, your Honor knows, who could not be comfortable
anywhere." I did know it, and fear that the system of Chelsea Hospital
allows too little of that wholesome care and regulation of their own
occupations and interests which might assuage the sting of life to those
naturally uncomfortable individuals by giving them something external to
think about. But my old friend here was happy in the hospital, and by
this time, very likely, is happy in heaven, in spite of the bloodshed
that he may have caused by touching off a cannon at Waterloo.
Crossing Battersea Bridge, in the neighborhood of Chelsea, I remember
seeing a distant gleam of the Crystal Palace, glimmering afar in the
afternoon sunshine like an imaginary structure,--an air-castle by chance
descended upon earth, and resting there one instant before it vanished,
as we sometimes see a soap-bubble touch unharmed on the carpet,--a thing
of only momentary visibility and no substance, destined to be
overburdened and crushed down by the first cloud-shadow that might fall
upon that spot. Even as I looked, it disappeared.[11] Shall I attempt a
picture of this exhalation of modern ingenuity, or what else shall I try
to paint? Everything in London and its vicinity has been depicted
innumerable times, but never once translated into intelligible images;
it is an "old, old story," never yet told, nor to be told. While writing
these reminiscences, I am continually impressed with the futility of
the effort to give any creative truth to my sketch, so that it might
produce such pictures in the reader's mind as would cause the original
scenes to appear familiar when afterwards beheld. Nor have other writers
often been more successful in representing definite objects
prophetically to my own mind. In truth, I believe that the chief delight
and advantage of this kind of literature is not for any real information
that it supplies to untraveled people, but for reviving the
recollections and reawakening the emotions of persons already acquainted
with the scenes described. Thus I found an exquisite pleasure, the other
day, in reading Mr. Tuckerman's "Month in England,"--a fine example of
the way in which a refined and cultivated American looks at the Old
Country, the things that he naturally seeks there, and the modes of
feeling and reflection which they excite. Correct outlines avail little
or nothing, though truth of coloring may be somewhat more efficacious.
Impressions, however, states of mind produced by interesting and
remarkable objects, these, if truthfully and vividly recorded, may work
a genuine effect, and, though but the result of what we see, go further
towards representing the actual scene than any direct effort to paint
it. Give the emotions that cluster about it, and, without being able to
analyze the spell by which it is summoned up, you get something like a
simulachre of the object in the midst of them. From some of the above
reflections I draw the comfortable inference, that, the longer and
better known a thing may be, so much the more eligible is it as the
subject of a descriptive sketch.
[11] The Crystal Palace gleamed in the sunshine; but I do not think a
very impressive edifice can be built of glass,--light and airy, to be
sure, but still it will be no other than an overgrown conservatory. It
is unlike anything else in England; uncongenial with the English
character, without privacy, destitute of mass, weight, and shadow,
unsusceptible of ivy, lichens, or any mellowness from age.--II. 135.
On a Sunday afternoon, I passed through a side-entrance in the
time-blackened wall of a place of worship, and found myself among a
congregation assembled in one of the transepts and the immediately
contiguous portion of the nave. It was a vast old edifice, spacious
enough, within the extent covered by its pillared roof and overspread by
its stone pavement, to accommodate the whole of church-going London, and
with a far wider and loftier concave than any human power of lungs could
fill with audible prayer. Oaken benches were arranged in the transept,
on one of which I seated myself, and joined, as well as I knew how, in
the sacred business that was going forward. But when it came to the
sermon, the voice of the preacher was puny, and so were his thoughts,
and both seemed impertinent at such a time and place, where he and all
of us were bodily included within a sublime act of religion, which could
be seen above and around us and felt beneath our feet. The structure
itself was the worship of the devout men of long ago, miraculously
preserved in stone without losing an atom of its fragrance and fervor;
it was a kind of anthem-strain that they had sung and poured out of the
organ in centuries gone by; and being so grand and sweet, the Divine
benevolence had willed it to be prolonged for the behoof of auditors
unborn. I therefore came to the conclusion, that, in my individual case,
it would be better and more reverent to let my eyes wander about the
edifice than to fasten them and my thoughts on the evidently uninspired
mortal who was venturing--and felt it no venture at all--to speak here
above his breath.
The interior of Westminster Abbey (for the reader recognized it, no
doubt, the moment we entered) is built of rich brown stone; and the
whole of it--the lofty roof, the tall, clustered pillars, and the
pointed arches--appears to be in consummate repair. At all points where
decay has laid its finger, the structure is clamped with iron or
otherwise carefully protected; and being thus watched over,--whether as
a place of ancient sanctity, a noble specimen of Gothic art, or an
object of national interest and pride,--it may reasonably be expected to
survive for as many ages as have passed over it already. It was sweet to
feel its venerable quietude, its long-enduring peace, and yet to observe
how kindly and even cheerfully it received the sunshine of to-day, which
fell from the great windows into the fretted aisles and arches that laid
aside somewhat of their aged gloom to welcome it. Sunshine always seems
friendly to old abbeys, churches, and castles, kissing them, as it were,
with a more affectionate, though still reverential familiarity, than it
accords to edifices of later date. A square of golden light lay on the
sombre pavement of the nave, afar off, falling through the grand western
entrance, the folding leaves of which were wide open, and afforded
glimpses of people passing to and fro in the outer world, while we sat
dimly enveloped in the solemnity of antique devotion. In the south
transept, separated from us by the full breadth of the minster, there
were painted glass windows, of which the uppermost appeared to be a
great orb of many-colored radiance, being, indeed, a cluster of saints
and angels whose glorified bodies formed the rays of an aureole
emanating from a cross in the midst. These windows are modern, but
combine softness with wonderful brilliancy of effect. Through the
pillars and arches, I saw that the walls in that distant region of the
edifice were almost wholly incrusted with marble, now grown yellow with
time, no blank, unlettered slabs, but memorials of such men as their
respective generations deemed wisest and bravest. Some of them were
commemorated merely by inscriptions on mural tablets, others by
sculptured bas-reliefs, others (once famous, but now forgotten, generals
or admirals, these) by ponderous tombs that aspired towards the roof of
the aisle, or partly curtained the immense arch of a window. These
mountains of marble were peopled with the sisterhood of Allegory, winged
trumpeters, and classic figures in full-bottomed wigs; but it was
strange to observe how the old Abbey melted all such absurdities into
the breadth of its own grandeur, even magnifying itself by what would
elsewhere have been ridiculous. Methinks it is the test of Gothic
sublimity to overpower the ridiculous without deigning to hide it; and
these grotesque monuments of the last century answer a similar purpose
with the grinning faces which the old architects scattered among their
most solemn conceptions.