deeply impressed by the spectacle, though by no means with such proud
and delightful emotions as seem to have affected all England on the
recent occasion of the marriage of its Prince. It was in the Cathedral
at Manchester, a particularly black and grim old structure, into which I
had stepped to examine some ancient and curious wood-carvings within the
choir. The woman in attendance greeted me with a smile (which always
glimmers forth on the feminine visage, I know not why, when a wedding is
in question), and asked me to take a seat in the nave till some poor
parties were married, it being the Easter holidays, and a good time for
them to marry, because no fees would be demanded by the clergyman. I sat
down accordingly, and soon the parson and his clerk appeared at the
altar, and a considerable crowd of people made their entrance at a
side-door, and ranged themselves in a long, huddled line across the
chancel. They were my acquaintances of the poor streets, or persons in a
precisely similar condition of life, and were now come to their
marriage-ceremony in just such garbs as I had always seen them wear: the
men in their loafers' coats, out at elbows, or their laborers' jackets,
defaced with grimy toil; the women drawing their shabby shawls tighter
about their shoulders, to hide the raggedness beneath; all of them
unbrushed, unshaven, unwashed, uncombed, and wrinkled with penury and
care; nothing virgin-like in the brides, nor hopeful or energetic in the
bridegrooms;--they were, in short, the mere rags and tatters of the
human race, whom some east-wind of evil omen, howling along the streets,
had chanced to sweep together into an unfragrant heap. Each and all of
them, conscious of his or her individual misery, had blundered into the
strange miscalculation of supposing that they could lessen the sum of it
by multiplying it into the misery of another person. All the couples
(and it was difficult, in such a confused crowd, to compute exactly
their number) stood up at once, and had execution done upon them in the
lump, the clergyman addressing only small parts of the service to each
individual pair, but so managing the larger portion as to include the
whole company without the trouble of repetition. By this compendious
contrivance, one would apprehend, he came dangerously near making every
man and woman the husband or wife of every other; nor, perhaps, would he
have perpetrated much additional mischief by the mistake; but, after
receiving a benediction in common, they assorted themselves in their own
fashion, as they only knew how, and departed to the garrets, or the
cellars, or the unsheltered street-corners, where their honeymoon and
subsequent lives were to be spent. The parson smiled decorously, the
clerk and the sexton grinned broadly, the female attendant tittered
almost aloud, and even the married parties seemed to see something
exceedingly funny in the affair; but for my part, though generally apt
enough to be tickled by a joke, I laid it away in my memory as one of
the saddest sights I ever looked upon.
Not very long afterwards, I happened to be passing the same venerable
cathedral, and heard a clang of joyful bells, and beheld a bridal party
coming down the steps towards a carriage and four horses, with a portly
coachman and two postilions, that waited at the gate. One parson and one
service had amalgamated the wretchedness of a score of paupers; a Bishop
and three or four clergymen had combined their spiritual might to forge
the golden links of this other marriage-bond. The bridegroom's mien had
a sort of careless and kindly English pride; the bride floated along in
her white drapery, a creature so nice and delicate that it was a luxury
to see her, and a pity that her silk slippers should touch anything so
grimy as the old stones of the churchyard avenue. The crowd of ragged
people, who always cluster to witness what they may of an aristocratic
wedding, broke into audible admiration of the bride's beauty and the
bridegroom's manliness, and uttered prayers and ejaculations (possibly
paid for in alms) for the happiness of both. If the most favorable of
earthly conditions could make them happy, they had every prospect of it.
They were going to live on their abundance in one of those stately and
delightful English homes, such as no other people ever created or
inherited, a hall set far and safe within its own private grounds, and
surrounded with venerable trees, shaven lawns, rich shrubbery, and
trimmest pathways, the whole so artfully contrived and tended that
summer rendered it a paradise, and even winter would hardly disrobe it
of its beauty; and all this fair property seemed more exclusively and
inalienably their own, because of its descent through many forefathers,
each of whom had added an improvement or a charm, and thus transmitted
it with a stronger stamp of rightful possession to his heir. And is it
possible, after all, that there may be a flaw in the title-deeds? Is, or
is not, the system wrong that gives one married pair so immense a
superfluity of luxurious home, and shuts out a million others from any
home whatever? One day or another, safe as they deem themselves, and
safe as the hereditary temper of the people really tends to make them,
the gentlemen of England will be compelled to face this question.
XII.
CIVIC BANQUETS
It has often perplexed me to imagine how an Englishman will be able to
reconcile himself to any future state of existence from which the
earthly institution of dinner shall be excluded. Even if he fail to take
his appetite along with him (which it seems to me hardly possible to
believe, since this endowment is so essential to his composition), the
immortal day must still admit an interim of two or three hours during
which he will be conscious of a slight distaste, at all events, if not
an absolute repugnance, to merely spiritual nutriment. The idea of
dinner has so imbedded itself among his highest and deepest
characteristics, so illuminated itself with intellect and softened
itself with the kindest emotions of his heart, so linked itself with
Church and State, and grown so majestic with long hereditary customs and
ceremonies, that, by taking it utterly away, Death, instead of putting
the final touch to his perfection, would leave him infinitely less
complete than we have already known him. He could not be roundly happy.
Paradise, among all its enjoyments, would lack one daily felicity which
his sombre little island possessed. Perhaps it is not irreverent to
conjecture that a provision may have been made, in this particular, for
the Englishman's exceptional necessities. It strikes me that Milton was
of the opinion here suggested, and may have intended to throw out a
delightful and consolatory hope for his countrymen, when he represents
the genial archangel as playing his part with such excellent appetite at
Adam's dinner-table, and confining himself to fruit and vegetables only,
because, in those early days of her housekeeping, Eve had no more
acceptable viands to set before him. Milton, indeed, had a true English
taste for the pleasures of the table, though refined by the lofty and
poetic discipline to which he had subjected himself. It is delicately
implied in the refection in Paradise, and more substantially, though
still elegantly, betrayed in the sonnet proposing to "Laurence, of
virtuous father virtuous son," a series of nice little dinners in
midwinter; and it blazes fully out in that untasted banquet, which,
elaborate as it was, Satan tossed up in a trice from the kitchen-ranges
of Tartarus.
Among this people, indeed, so wise in their generation, dinner has a
kind of sanctity quite independent of the dishes that may be set upon
the table; so that, if it be only a mutton-chop, they treat it with due
reverence, and are rewarded with a degree of enjoyment which such
reckless devourers as ourselves do not often find in our richest
abundance. It is good to see how stanch they are after fifty or sixty
years of heroic eating, still relying upon their digestive powers and
indulging a vigorous appetite; whereas an American has generally lost
the one and learned to distrust the other long before reaching the
earliest decline of life; and thenceforward he makes little account of
his dinner, and dines at his peril, if at all. I know not whether my
countrymen will allow me to tell them, though I think it scarcely too
much to affirm, that on this side of the water people never dine. At any
rate, abundantly as Nature has provided us with most of the material
requisites, the highest possible dinner has never yet been eaten in
America. It is the consummate flower of civilization and refinement;
and our inability to produce it, or to appreciate its admirable beauty
if a happy inspiration should bring it into bloom, marks fatally the
limit of culture which we have attained.
It is not to be supposed, however, that the mob of cultivated Englishmen
know how to dine in this elevated sense. The unpolishable ruggedness of
the national character is still an impediment to them, even in that
particular line where they are best qualified to excel. Though often
present at good men's feasts, I remember only a single dinner, which,
while lamentably conscious that many of its higher excellences were
thrown away upon me, I yet could feel to be a perfect work of art. It
could not, without unpardonable coarseness, be styled a matter of animal
enjoyment, because, out of the very perfection of that lower bliss,
there had arisen a dream-like development of spiritual happiness. As in
the masterpieces of painting and poetry, there was a something
intangible, a final deliciousness that only fluttered about your
comprehension, vanishing whenever you tried to detain it, and compelling
you to recognize it by faith rather than sense. It seemed as if a
diviner set of senses were requisite, and had been partly supplied, for
the special fruition of this banquet, and that the guests around the
table (only eight in number) were becoming so educated, polished, and
softened, by the delicate influences of what they ate and drank, as to
be now a little more than mortal for the nonce. And there was that
gentle, delicious sadness, too, which we find in the very summit of our
most exquisite enjoyments, and feel it a charm beyond all the gayety
through which it keeps breathing its undertone. In the present case, it
was worth a heavier sigh to reflect that such a festal achievement--the
production of so much art, skill, fancy, invention, and perfect
taste--the growth of all the ages, which appeared to have been ripening
for this hour, since man first began to eat and to moisten his food with
wine--must lavish its happiness upon so brief a moment when other
beautiful things can be made a joy forever. Yet a dinner like this is no
better than we can get, any day, at the rejuvenescent Cornhill
Coffee-house, unless the whole man, with soul, intellect, and stomach,
is ready to appreciate it, and unless, moreover, there is such a harmony
in all the circumstances and accompaniments, and especially such a
pitch of well-according minds, that nothing shall jar rudely against the
guest's thoroughly awakened sensibilities. The world, and especially our
part of it, being the rough, ill-assorted, and tumultuous place we find
it, a beefsteak is about as good as any other dinner.
The foregoing reminiscence, however, has drawn me aside from the main
object of my sketch, in which I purposed to give a slight idea of those
public, or partially public banquets, the custom of which so thoroughly
prevails among the English people, that nothing is ever decided upon, in
matters of peace and war, until they have chewed upon it in the shape of
roast-beef, and talked it fully over in their cups. Nor are these
festivities merely occasional, but of stated recurrence in all
considerable municipalities and associated bodies. The most ancient
times appear to have been as familiar with them as the Englishmen of
to-day. In many of the old English towns, you find some stately Gothic
hall or chamber in which the Mayor and other authorities of the place
have long held their sessions; and always, in convenient contiguity,
there is a dusky kitchen, with an immense fireplace where an ox might
lie roasting at his ease, though the less gigantic scale of modern
cookery may now have permitted the cobwebs to gather in its chimney. St.
Mary's Hall, in Coventry, is so good a specimen of an ancient
banqueting-room, that perhaps I may profitably devote a page or two to
the description of it.
In a narrow street opposite to St. Michael's Church, one of the three
famous spires of Coventry, you behold a mediaeval edifice, in the
basement of which is such a venerable and now deserted kitchen as I have
above alluded to, and, on the same level, a cellar, with low stone
pillars and intersecting arches, like the crypt of a cathedral. Passing
up a well-worn staircase, the oaken balustrade of which is as black as
ebony, you enter the fine old hall, some sixty feet in length, and broad
and lofty in proportion. It is lighted by six windows of modern stained
glass, on one side, and by the immense and magnificent arch of another
window at the farther end of the room, its rich and ancient panes
constituting a genuine historical piece, in which are represented some
of the kingly personages of old times, with their heraldic blazonries.
Not withstanding the colored light thus thrown into the hall, and
though it was noonday when I last saw it, the paneling of black-oak, and
some faded tapestry that hung round the walls, together with the cloudy
vault of the roof above, made a gloom, which the richness only
illuminated into more appreciable effect. The tapestry is wrought with
figures in the dress of Henry VI.'s time (which is the date of the
hall), and is regarded by antiquaries as authentic evidence both for the
costume of that epoch, and, I believe, for the actual portraiture of men
known in history. They are as colorless as ghosts, however, and vanish
drearily into the old stitch-work of their substance when you try to
make them out. Coats of arms were formerly emblazoned all round the
hall, but have been almost rubbed out by people hanging their overcoats
against them, or by women with dishclouts and scrubbing-brushes,
obliterating hereditary glories in their blind hostility to dust and
spiders' webs. Full-length portraits of several English kings, Charles
II. being the earliest, hang on the walls; and on the dais, or elevated
part of the floor, stands an antique chair of state, which several royal
characters are traditionally said to have occupied while feasting here
with their loyal subjects of Coventry. It is roomy enough for a person
of kingly bulk, or even two such, but angular and uncomfortable,
reminding me of the oaken settles which used to be seen in old-fashioned
New England kitchens.
Overhead, supported by a self-sustaining power, without the aid of a
single pillar, is the original ceiling of oak, precisely similar in
shape to the roof of a barn, with all the beams and rafters plainly to
be seen. At the remote height of sixty feet, you hardly discern that
they are carved with figures of angels, and doubtless many other
devices, of which the admirable Gothic art is wasted in the duskiness
that has so long been brooding there. Over the entrance of the hall,
opposite the great arched window, the party-colored radiance of which
glimmers faintly through the interval, is a gallery for minstrels; and a
row of ancient suits of armor is suspended from its balustrade. It
impresses me, too (for, having gone so far, I would fain leave nothing
untouched upon), that I remember, somewhere about these venerable
precincts, a picture of the Countess Godiva on horseback, in which the
artist has been so niggardly of that illustrious lady's hair, that, if
she had no ampler garniture, there was certainly much need for the good
people of Coventry to shut their eyes. After all my pains, I fear that I
have made but a poor hand at the description, as regards a transference
of the scene from my own mind to the reader's. It gave me a most vivid
idea of antiquity that had been very little tampered with; insomuch
that, if a group of steel-clad knights had come clanking through the
doorway, and a bearded and beruffed old figure had handed in a stately
dame, rustling in gorgeous robes of a long-forgotten fashion, unveiling
a face of beauty somewhat tarnished in the mouldy tomb, yet stepping
majestically to the trill of harp and viol from the minstrels' gallery,
while the rusty armor responded with a hollow ringing sound
beneath,--why, I should have felt that these shadows, once so familiar
with the spot, had a better right in St. Mary's Hall than I, a stranger
from a far country which has no Past. But the moral of the foregoing
description is to show how tenaciously this love of pompous dinners,
this reverence for dinner as a sacred institution, has caught hold of
the English character; since, from the earliest recognizable period, we
find them building their civic banqueting-halls as magnificently as
their palaces or cathedrals.
I know not whether the hall just described is now used for festive
purposes, but others of similar antiquity and splendor still are. For
example, there is Barber Surgeons' Hall, in London, a very fine old
room, adorned with admirably carved wood-work on the ceiling and walls.
It is also enriched with Holbein's masterpiece, representing a grave
assemblage of barbers and surgeons, all portraits (with such extensive
beards that methinks one half of the company might have been profitably
occupied in trimming the other), kneeling before King Henry VIII. Sir
Robert Peel is said to have offered a thousand pounds for the liberty of
cutting out one of the heads from this picture, he conditioning to have
a perfect facsimile painted in.[18] The room has many other pictures of
distinguished members of the company in long-past times, and of some of
the monarchs and statesmen of England, all darkened with age, but
darkened into such ripe magnificence as only age could bestow. It is not
my design to inflict any more specimens of ancient hall-painting on the
reader; but it may be worth while to touch upon other modes of
stateliness that still survive in these time-honored civic feasts, where
there appears to be a singular assumption of dignity and solemn pomp by
respectable citizens who would never dream of claiming any privilege of
rank outside of their own sphere. Thus, I saw two caps of state for the
warden and junior warden of the company, caps of silver (real coronets
or crowns, indeed, for these city-grandees) wrought in open-work and
lined with crimson velvet. In a strong-closet, opening from the hall,
there was a great deal of rich plate to furnish forth the banquet-table,
comprising hundreds of forks and spoons, a vast silver punch-bowl, the
gift of some jolly king or other, and, besides a multitude of less
noticeable vessels, two loving-cups, very elaborately wrought in silver
gilt, one presented by Henry VIII., the other by Charles II. These cups,
including the covers and pedestals, are very large and weighty, although
the bowl-part would hardly contain more than half a pint of wine, which,
when the custom was first established, each guest was probably expected
to drink off at a draught. In passing them from hand to hand adown a
long table of compotators, there is a peculiar ceremony which I may
hereafter have occasion to describe. Meanwhile, if I might assume such a
liberty, I should be glad to invite the reader to the official
dinner-table of his Worship, the Mayor, at a large English seaport where
I spent several years.
[18] In this room hangs the most valuable picture by Holbein now in
existence, representing the company of Barber Surgeons kneeling before
Henry VIII., and receiving their charter from his hands. The picture is
about six feet square. The king is dressed in scarlet, and quite
fulfills one's idea of his aspect. The Barber-Surgeons, all portraits,
are an assemblage of grave-looking personages, in dark costumes. The
company has refused five thousand pounds for this unique picture; and
the keeper of the Hall told me that Sir Robert Peel had offered a
thousand pounds for liberty to take out only one of the heads, that of a
person named Penn, he conditioning to have a perfect facsimile painted
in. I did not see any merit in this head over the others.--II. 200.
The Mayor's dinner-parties occur as often as once a fortnight, and,
inviting his guests by fifty or sixty at a time, his Worship probably
assembles at his board most of the eminent citizens and distinguished
personages of the town and neighborhood more than once during his year's
incumbency, and very much, no doubt, to the promotion of good feeling
among individuals of opposite parties and diverse pursuits in life. A
miscellaneous party of Englishmen can always find more comfortable
ground to meet upon than as many Americans, their differences of opinion
being incomparably less radical than ours, and it being the sincerest
wish of all their hearts, whether they call themselves Liberals or what
not, that nothing in this world shall ever be greatly altered from what
it has been and is. Thus there is seldom such a virulence of political
hostility that it may not be dissolved in a glass or two of wine,
without making the good liquor any more dry or bitter than accords with
English taste.
The first dinner of this kind at which I had the honor to be present
took place during assize-time, and included among the guests the judges
and the prominent members of the bar. Reaching the Town Hall at seven
o'clock, I communicated my name to one of several splendidly dressed
footmen, and he repeated it to another on the first staircase, by whom
it was passed to a third, and thence to a fourth at the door of the
reception-room, losing all resemblance to the original sound in the
course of these transmissions; so that I had the advantage of making my
entrance in the character of a stranger, not only to the whole company,
but to myself as well. His Worship, however, kindly recognized me, and
put me on speaking-terms with two or three gentlemen, whom I found very
affable, and all the more hospitably attentive on the score of my
nationality. It is very singular how kind an Englishman will almost
invariably be to an individual American, without ever bating a jot of
his prejudice against the American character in the lump. My new
acquaintances took evident pains to put me at my ease; and, in requital
of their good-nature, I soon began to look round at the general company
in a critical spirit, making my crude observations apart, and drawing
silent inferences, of the correctness of which I should not have been
half so well satisfied a year afterwards as at that moment.
There were two judges present, a good many lawyers, and a few officers
of the army in uniform. The other guests seemed to be principally of the
mercantile class, and among them was a ship-owner from Nova Scotia, with
whom I coalesced a little, inasmuch as we were born with the same sky
over our heads, and an unbroken continuity of soil between his abode and
mine. There was one old gentleman, whose character I never made out,
with powdered hair, clad in black breeches and silk stockings, and
wearing a rapier at his side; otherwise, with the exception of the
military uniforms, there was little or no pretense of official costume.
It being the first considerable assemblage of Englishmen that I had
seen, my honest impression about them was that they were a heavy and
homely set of people, with a remarkable roughness of aspect and
behavior, not repulsive, but beneath which it required more familiarity
with the national character than I then possessed always to detect the
good breeding of a gentleman. Being generally middle-aged, or still
further advanced, they were by no means graceful in figure; for the
comeliness of the youthful Englishman rapidly diminishes with years, his
body appearing to grow longer, his legs to abbreviate themselves, and
his stomach to assume the dignified prominence which justly belongs to
that metropolis of his system. His face (what with the acridity of the
atmosphere, ale at lunch, wine at dinner, and a well-digested abundance
of succulent food) gets red and mottled, and develops at least one
additional chin, with a promise of more; so that, finally, a stranger
recognizes his animal part at the most superficial glance, but must take
time and a little pains to discover the intellectual. Comparing him with
an American, I really thought that our national paleness and lean habit
of flesh gave us greatly the advantage in an aesthetic point of view. It
seemed to me, moreover, that the English tailor had not done so much as
he might and ought for these heavy figures, but had gone on willfully
exaggerating their uncouthness by the roominess of their garments; he
had evidently no idea of accuracy of fit, and smartness was entirely out
of his line. But, to be quite open with the reader, I afterwards learned
to think that this aforesaid tailor has a deeper art than his brethren
among ourselves, knowing how to dress his customers with such individual
propriety that they look as if they were born in their clothes, the fit
being to the character rather than the form. If you make an Englishman
smart (unless he be a very exceptional one, of whom I have seen a few),
you make him a monster; his best aspect is that of ponderous
respectability.