perhaps. James Lowell, who has written the poems, is cousin to John
Lowell, whose father founded the Lowell Institution for lectures. One
of the family was the first setter up of manufactures here, and, as it
were, founded the town of Lowell. There is a town Lawrence, called
after Abbott Lawrence, in like manner.
I felt to-day as if I could be content to settle down here in America
for good and all, very fairly indeed; there is less that is wrong here,
on the whole, though less that is great. I was just reflecting that it
is better to be out here, and be away from London; and yet sometimes
when I was there, I thought it was dreadful to be torn away from what
I was learning and feeling and seeing. Now it seems as if all my time
there had been wrongly employed, and that it is an excellent thing to
have got away. However, it is more perhaps what one escapes than what
one gets.
Shall I tell you what an Old Hunker is?--a high-and-dry Tory; and
Democrats are the Radicals, the party now victorious over the Whigs,
who are the same as our Tories. Ticknor, Prescott, and Co. are Old
Hunkers; Hawthorne is a Democrat; Emerson is a Free Soiler. If I were
to be anything (on the Slavery question) I should be a Free Soiler,
which only means that you won’t have any new Slave States. I wouldn’t
interfere with existing Slave States, except to intimate that the
central Government is ready to assist in any measure any Slave State
will propose for getting rid of slavery; _i.e._ to give compensation.
I believe the Fugitive Slave Law was a piece of truckling to the
South--quite an unnecessary concession.
January 3, 1853.
There is no _stiffness_ here, I think. The ----s do the grand a little;
and the ----s are exclusive, but not grand; and the Nortons are neither
grand nor exclusive--very kind-hearted and good. Charles Norton is the
kindest creature in the shape of a young man of twenty-five that ever
befriended an emigrant stranger anywhere.
I am not _at all_ a distinguished literary man in some eyes here,
remember; and as for poets, ‘there are four poets in Cambridge,’
said some one to me the other day--‘Mr. Longfellow, and you, and
Mr. Batcheldor, and Mr. something else.’ I had, however, to send an
autograph to Cincinnati; two hexameter verses, observe.
Written by A. H. Clough, for a reader at Cincinnati.
Witness his hand and seal this 26th of December.
Ladies here usually carve and bring you things, even at great suppers;
no man seems expected to carve for a lady, and they don’t get up when
the ladies leave the dining-room, nor open the door, except casually.
Only in omnibuses, and the cars--as they call railway trains--they
expect you to give your place up; some, I believe, will even ask. The
worst thing is the service. Servants are very indifferent--dirty,
uninstructed Irish, who are very slow in learning to be clean, and very
quick in learning to be independent, and ‘I’m as good as you’ in their
manners.
Some people here do manage very nicely, but mostly there is the feeling
that there is nobody to do things for you. A meal is rather a matter of
business than of enjoyment. It is transacted. They don’t sit over it
like rational beings; they do it like washing their hands, or as people
dress who have got an engagement to be down to.
Last night I read my lecture, and it seems to have done very well.
Afterwards I went to supper to James Lowell, and stayed there from 8.30
to 1 A.M. Thackeray came at ten; Longfellow, Dana, Quincy, Estes Howe,
Felton, Fields, and another. Puns chiefly, but Dana is really amusing.
Thackeray doesn’t sneer; he is really very sentimental; but he sees the
silliness sentiment runs into, and so always tempers it by a little
banter or ridicule. He is much farther into actual life than I am; I
always feel that, but one can’t be two things at once, you know.
Here’s a story--Mr. Dana of himself. Mr. Dana lectures in a country
town; walks home to sleep, after it, with the ‘President of the ----
Lyceum,’ a country farmer. Dead silence. Farmer: ‘Mr. Dana, I b’lieve
you wrote a book once?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Waal, I never read it myself; my foaks
have, though.’ Dead silence again: arrival home. The wife, an _in_valid
(accented thus in America), as farmers’ wives mostly are, hasn’t been
at lecture, and states her sorrow, &c. Farmer: ‘My dear! b’lieve you’ve
read Mr. Dana’s book.’ Wife looks deadly blank, says at last, ‘She
b’lieves she’s heard speak of it.’ They sit down, and the apples are
brought in. A little black-eyed, sharp-looking, school-frequenting
daughter comes in. Farmer: ‘Susan ’Liza! you’ve read Mr. Dana’s “Two
Years before the Mast.”’ Susan ’Liza (quickly): ‘No, sir.’ Dead silence
till bedtime.
Here are some stories which Webster told of his youth. His father was
a small farmer in New Hampshire, and had helped one of his neighbours,
who afterwards removed and went into the woods. Daniel was going in
that direction to College, and his father told him to inquire after
these people. He went, found them in a log hut, and said he would stop
Sunday with them, to which they were agreeable. At supper-time the
father of the family said to him that for the present they were living
upon grass. And grass fried with lard did actually constitute supper,
breakfast, dinner, and every meal; and, said Webster, ‘It wasn’t so
bad either.’ At parting, the man said to him, ‘Well, Daniel, what are
you going to be? A minister? they’re all hypocrites. A doctor? they’re
all impostors; and lawyers, all cheats. No honest young man would be
any of these trades. But there is a trade I can tell you of, by which
you can make your fortune. There used to be one or two in it, but I
don’t know of any in these parts now: you’d have it all to yourself.
I don’t know how it’s done, but it’s by larning, someways. You’d best
be a conjuror. When a man loses his cow, the conjuror tells him where
it is; don’t know how; by larning tho’.’ ‘Which advice,’ said Webster,
‘might have materially changed my after life.’
Another story. Webster’s father had a neighbour who was an honest,
well-behaved man, only given to drink. Once when drunk he took his
rifle and shot two friendly Indians. The Indians demanded to have him
given up, and the people put him in jail. But his friends thought it
hard he should be hung for killing Indians, and they broke open the
prison and sent him off to Canada. The Indians vowed they would be
revenged on him all the same. He lived in Canada with his wife and
children some time; but whether it was terror or conscience, at last he
made up his mind and left them, and went to the Indians and said, ‘It
was I killed your two chiefs; here am I, do what you please with me.’
So the Indians were astonished, and considered the matter, and said,
‘No, you shall be our chief.’ And there he remained with them the rest
of his days.
January 8.
Snow and sleighing in full force. The omnibuses are all on runners in
sleigh fashion; wheels are everywhere discarded.
January 10.
Thermometer down at 5° at sunset yesterday; so must, I think, have got
down to -5° during the night.
For me, I was taken yesterday to the College chapel, where an eminent
Unitarian preached on the parable of the prodigal son, or rather,
_against_ the said parable. To be sure there _was_ joy, because it was
so very uncommon and surprising a thing when a sinner repented. It was
a thing that _very rarely indeed_ came to pass.
I sometimes think that my course is one that must be walked alone,
and that it is altogether too unpleasant and poverty stricken for
married happiness. I sometimes, when I have heard people here talk, for
example, of Theodore Parker, as if he were the scum of the earth, think
that it will not do to keep silence. I have no particular love for
Theodore Parker; but he is so manifestly more right than the people who
despise him, I cannot, I think, in right altogether remain silent and
acquiesce. It looked to me as if orthodoxy (of the Unitarian kind) was
as bad for me as any realler orthodoxy elsewhere.
Anecdotes of the old clergy here are very rife: they were quite an
aristocracy, and could do as they pleased more than anyone else,
which now nobody can at all. They were appointed for life, with fixed
incomes; this is not the case so generally now. Religious opinions
contrary to the orthodox Unitarianism are represented as much disliked
here.
Mrs. ---- says Boston ladies suffer in their health through the endless
trouble of keeping servants doing things properly and nicely; that the
only way to live is to live rudely and simply. I think she is right.
Ornament in America is a failure. As England stands to France, so
America to England for ornamental things.
January 20.
I have just had a new pupil; he is a very good fellow and eager to
learn, and a ‘senior,’ _i.e._ a fourth year student in the College.
I am also going to write an article on the Oxford Commission in the
‘North American Review.’ Another book matter is, that Little & Brown,
the head booksellers here, want me to help towards republishing
Langhorne’s Plutarch. I am to have discretion to do it as I like, and
$350 for the work.
My fancy at present is, if possible, to live here in a humble way,
take a few pupils, and do booksellers’ work or lecture, and so make up
an income. I think it will be less fatiguing and less hazardous than
setting up a school, which any rumour of heterodoxy might upset. And I
do think that I can teach Greek better than most Yankee Grecians.
January 29.
Yesterday evening out in a sleigh and four horses, with seven ladies
and one youth, making nine in all, to Jamaica Plain, four miles off. I
was put into a buffalo skin, which indeed was desirable, though it was
not very cold. Sleighs, you know, are all open; some are like great
barges, carrying thirty people inside, sitting all round, drawn by
perhaps eight horses.
There is living here in Cambridge a Greek named Evangelinus Sophocles,
who was bred up in a monastery, I think, on Mount Athos, and afterwards
in a branch of it at Alexandria. What strange recollections he must
have!
February 4.
Sleep as much as you can, eat plentifully, but don’t drink wine or
spirits much. Such is the rule they give for New England living.
I don’t think I shall ever do much work alone, not from laziness, but
really from having no proper rest to go to after it. I feel as if I had
a good deal of work in me, but it takes time to bring it out; and the
mere drudgery of the Plutarch, though not disagreeable, takes a deal of
time.
I am, I know, sometimes carried away into a world of abstraction when I
write or study, or so forth. I believe my ambition also, such as I have
(it is only lately that I have begun to believe that it exists in my
composition at all), tends in that direction. Yet I am always so glad
to come away from it. It is odd how much better I like this Plutarch
than I do anything which requires distinct statement of opinion. Yet it
bothers me a good deal, for mending up an old translation seems often
like putting new wine into old bottles. They would hardly allow time,
or else I could almost believe it would be best even for my own sake to
spend time in translating it myself.
I, I am sure, have always been inclined to believe in the good of
the world, and have always acted on that belief, except for a brief
interval (just when I was in London), and even then it was partly that
I was afraid lest I should be trusting my own vague hopefulness too
unreasonably. Turn the thing over as we will, we can’t _make_ sure; but
doubt as we will about things in particular, we can, for the whole,
_feel_ sure.
Fires of wood are the pleasantest one sees here: there is anthracite
coal and another coal, which I burn mixed. In many houses the rooms
are heated only by the furnace, which is found in almost all houses--a
great stove down below in the cellar, with pipes sent through the
various rooms, and what are called registers. What impairs the beauty
and youthfulness of the American women is, I believe, their hot fires
and furnaces, and the dryness of the heat given by the anthracite coal.
But Mrs. Longfellow looks as youthful as possible.
February 9.
Look in the ‘Fraser’ of this month for some verses about Napoleon and
the Duke of Wellington; Napoleon’s dying words ‘Tête d’armée.’ The
Duke didn’t say anything, did he? I went on that supposition. It has
been beautifully bright and sunny here to-day: there is always that
advantage here. The thermometer is down to 6° or 7° to-night, I dare
say.
I think I must have been getting into a little mysticism lately. It
won’t do: twice two are four, all the world over, and there’s no harm
in its being so; ’tisn’t the devil’s doing that it is; il faut s’y
soumettre, and all right. Some of my companions are too much in the
religiose vein to be always quite wholesome company. This climate also
is, I think, mystical.
February 10.
Only ten pages of Plutarch done to-day. But at twelve Emerson appeared,
and after sitting awhile with me took me off to dine in town with him.
He is just come back from the West. I go to stay Sunday with him, week
after next. I dined at his hotel, and sat in his room with him talking
till a quarter to five, and then came home to Plutarch.
Drive deep the furrow in the sluggish soil,
E’en to the rock force in the labouring share;
Earth, that with starveling ears mocks niggard toil,
To pain and strife will golden harvests bear.
This Plutarch is not a religious subject, fortunately. I have rather
the feeling that one day or other it will have to be done, whatever I
do now, and however undesirous I may be. The only thing to keep one
quiet is the perfect readiness to be unquiet at any moment that may
call for it or occasion it.
February 18.
Two hours and a bit at an evening party. _C’en est trop._ However,
there were some few reasonable beings there. I don’t much like going to
parties, or rather do not approve of their profuse expenditure of one’s
finest spirits: however, one must harden oneself. People are cleverer,
and know more over there, though perhaps they are more unworldly and
amiable here.
Will you think it wrong if I do what I think best in itself, even if it
don’t seem the quickest way to get on? Apropos of this Plutarch, I feel
sometimes as if I must not trifle away time in anything which is not
really a work to some purpose, and that any attempt to be happy except
in doing that would be mere failure, even if apparently successful. It
sometimes seems to be said to me that I must do this, or else ‘from
him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he seemeth to
have.’ There is nothing very terrible in this, but I cannot get myself
to look at things as mere means to money-making; and yet, if I do not,
I seem in some sense guilty. It may be the sanguine atmosphere of a
new country has filled me with a vain confidence of there being really
something in me to be done beyond mere subsistence. In London I felt
myself pretty well helpless to effect anything.
‘Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these
things shall be added unto you.’ Is there any application for that, I
wonder, nowadays?
February 21.
Just back at Cambridge after my visit to Emerson. I was rather
_sleepless_ there, but it is very good to go to him. He appears to take
things very coolly, and not to meddle with religious matters of any
kind. Since visiting him, I feel a good deal more reconciled to mere
‘subsistence’; if one can only have a little reasonable satisfactory
intercourse now and then, subsistence may be to some purpose. But to
live in a vain show of society would not do long. The Boston people
have been too well off, and don’t know the realities. Emerson is really
substantive.
Cambridge is a town or a city, or both, if you like. It is a huge
district, a parish (which here they call a _town_) of several square
miles, with roads stretching away here and there and everywhere, and
houses all along them and off them. It is called a city because it has
a Mayor and Corporation; but it is more like a big suburban district,
a sort of Clapham or Highgate. There is scarcely anything that is a
street, properly speaking; but there are acres of roads with houses
along them, and cross lanes with houses too.
The College at Cambridge consists of a collection of old red brick
buildings, with a library of modern granite. There are students’ rooms,
much in our style, only humbler. The boys at College live partly in
lodgings, partly in halls, under some little superintendence, much
like College rooms; only they don’t dine together, but all about, in
families, &c. They learn French, and history, and German, and a great
many more things than in England, but only imperfectly.
February 23.
Just returned from dinner with the Longfellows, where I met Mrs. Stowe
and her husband; only I to meet them. She is small, and quiet, and
unobtrusive, but quick and ready-witted enough. Her husband is a very
pleasant, good-humoured country minister, with keen black eyes. He has
been in England before; she never.
I have done my article for the ‘North American’; not very well; but
that can’t be helped; it is not in a wrong style of speaking, which
is the main thing I care for. I have put a pretty good tail to a poor
body, like a squirrel. It is very cold to-night, and the wind bloweth
where it listeth in this room of mine.
Are you aware that life is very like a railway? One gets into deep
cuttings and long dark tunnels, where one sees nothing and hears twice
as much noise as usual, and one can’t read, and one shuts up the
window, and waits, and then it all comes clear again. Only in life it
sometimes feels as if one had to dig the tunnel as one goes along, all
new for oneself. Go straight on, however, and one’s sure to come out
into a new country, on the other side the hills, sunny and bright.
There’s an apologue for you!
Here is a little story about Napoleon told to me by S. C., and told
to him by some old soldier in Switzerland or France, probably a
courier. This man was one of the cuirassiers, and was in the Russian
campaign, and at his first battle was riding on to the charge, when
suddenly he found his kettle (they all carry their kettles behind them)
had dropped. So he jumped off, and was picking it up, when somebody
called out, ‘Hé; cuirassier, que fais-tu là?’ He looked up and saw the
Emperor. Touching his hat (which he did also in repeating it), ‘Ah,
votre Majesté, j’avais perdu ma chaudière.’ ‘En avant,’ replied the
Emperor, ‘les Russes en ont.’
March 9.
Just returned from a little party, to which I went in a very bad
humour, but have returned in much better. A pleasant tiny old house,
the oldest in Cambridge, perhaps, that is really a pleasure to one’s
eyes; beams across the ceilings, and solid wood-work, and so forth. I
went at nine, and back at half-past ten; that also is the right thing.
Tea, coffee, and chocolate; that also is sensible.
I am almost persuaded to be an Abolitionist, which, how ever, is not
true; but I am a decided Free Soiler for the present, and entirely give
up the cause of the Fugitive Slave Law.
Emerson is the only profound man in this country. There are some other
nice people at Concord; but for society generally the advantage is
greatly on the side of Cambridge. Concord would be but dull, but the
walks are far prettier than here. It is nearly an hour’s journey from
Boston. People don’t the least despise one for being poor in Cambridge,
and indeed I recommend them not! There are two Miss ---- and their
mother living here; their father, now dead, was American minister for
many years at ---- and ----; and now one Miss ---- teaches French, and
the other music. My opinion is that the true position in this country
is that of comparative poverty. No sort of real superiority of breeding
or anything attaches as it does in England to the rich. The poor man
can get his children educated at the public schools, to which the rich
children go also, _for nothing_, prepared for College even. And very
few people indeed are so rich by patrimony as not to be in business.
What I mean by mysticism, is letting feelings run on without thinking
of the reality of their object, letting them out merely like water.
The plain rule in all matters is, not to think what you are thinking
about the question, but to look straight out at the things and let them
affect you; otherwise how can you judge at all? look at them at any
rate, and judge while looking. I was just now looking into a book of
verse which I brought with me, at what is called there ὔμνος ἀύμνος;
it wants a good deal of mending as it stands, but it is on the whole
in sense very satisfactory to me still. However, we shall learn more
together, I do not doubt. The only way to become really religious is to
enter into those relations and those actualities of life which demand
and create religion.
In the years 1844 and 1845 I was in very great force, and used to be
taken for an undergraduate just come up to College. I am wiser perhaps
now, but I have lost a good deal to become so.
March 16.
Here comes a letter from Carlyle, about my coming home and about the
Council Office. I tell him I shall be very glad to come home, and
very grateful to be brought; but I don’t dwell on what must be an
uncertainty. I should like you, even if it were but for a little while,
to see this worthy Yankee-land. From the specimens I occasionally
meet with, I infer it to be a good deal the best part of the American
Republic. But I should like to see the West.
March 30.
This morning I went for a walk of an hour and a half to Fresh Pond,
the pond where they cut the ice to go to England, India, or wherever
it may be. There are odd birds here. The rooks fly to the South, and
have just reappeared; that is, I have seen one. There is a bird about
as big as a starling, with a black head, and a slight tinge of red on
the breast; this they call the robin. There are little things they call
sparrows, more like sedge-birds, I think; and black-birds with long
tails, that hold Sunday meetings in the pines, bigger than ours. But
the prettiest bird I have seen is the blue-bird, rather less than the
robin, with blue back and wings, and a red-tinted breast, something
like a bullfinch, only larger.
The extremely-respectables of Boston attend ‘the Stone Chapel,’ an
Episcopalian church of old time, whose minister, some thirty years ago
perhaps, told his congregation that he had become a Unitarian, and
therewith resigned. So they considered and consulted, and said, Well,
they liked him very much, and they thought they would turn Unitarians
too; what was good enough for him was likely to be as much as would
do very well for them. So they took the English liturgy (for moreover
certain endowments depended on the use of the Church liturgy) and cut
off the tails of the prayers, and pruned things here and there, and
lo! they have a very handsome Common Prayer Book, quite as good as any
genuine one. And to this Stone Chapel go all the fashionable Unitarian
people of Boston, in their best dresses, just as if they were Church of
England people, and are deeply attached to their liturgy just as if it
was the real thing. Is not that curious?
Did I tell you of the aged Calvinist woman, who being asked about the
Universalists, said, ‘Yes, they expect that everybody will be saved,
but we “look for better things”?’
April 1.
I went last night to Dana’s, where was pretty nearly all Cambridge;
and where I had some port wine, I believe the first I have seen since
I came to America. He showed us a copy of Hallam’s works handsomely
bound, received by him in gratitude for his services in their behalf
from the negroes of Boston. He defended their cause in some of the
trials about the Fugitive Law.
Before the end of this month the Nortons depart, which will reduce my
stock of sociabilities materially. They go in summer to Newport.
I have already established two decent walks, not to mention a sort of
half-hour stroll, at the end of which there is a little spot where one
can pause and be solaced. On southern slopes there is positively a
slight tinge of green. The common, however, which is level, seems to me
as brown as ever it was. Mind you tell me as soon as ever the little
ferns begin to curl up out of the ground over with you.
April 4.
I have just had my little Ethics class, who seem to enjoy themselves
very well, and certainly relieve my inactive life of Plutarchising very
pleasantly. This sort of thing, the class of six or seven, is what
I have always got on best with. I might get on as far as twelve or
fifteen, but after that it gets disagreeable comparatively. I got on
famously with some five of the youths at University College with these
same Ethics, in the year 1851.
April 6.