IX

Two New England consciences--Inexhaustible faith and energy--

Deep and abiding love of England--"How the Water Comes Down

at Lodore"--"He took an' he let go"--Naked mountains--The

unsentimental little quadruped--The human element in things

sticks--The coasts of England--A string of sleepy donkeys--

Unutterable boy-thoughts--Grins and chuckles like an ogress--

Hideous maternal parody--The adorable inverted bell-glass--

Strange things happen in the world--An ominous clouding of

the water--Something the world has never known--Overweening

security--An admonition not to climb too high--How vice may

become virtue by repetition--Corporal Blair's chest--Black-

Bottle Cardigan--Called to Lisbon.

Emerson, as a matter of principle, was rather averse from travel, though

he made the trip to England twice; but he fortified his theory by his

practice of searching out great men rather than historic or picturesque

places. Ruskin's Modern Painters had not been written when Emerson first

left home, and I doubt if he read it at any time. He found his mountain

scenery in Carlyle and his lakes and vales elsewhere among agreeable

people. My father's conscience worked in a different way; he thought

himself under obligations to see whatever in the way of towns, ruins,

cathedrals, and scenery was accounted worthy a foreigner's attention;

but I think he would have enjoyed seeing them much more had that

feeling of obligation not been imposed upon him. Set sights, as he

often remarked, wearied him, just because they were set; things that he

happened upon unpremeditatedly, especially if they were not described

in guide-books, pleased him more and tired him less. It can hardly be

affirmed, however, that he would have missed the set sights if he could

have done so, and no doubt he was glad, after the job was done, that he

had done it. And he was greatly helped along by the inexhaustible faith

and energy in such matters of his wife; she shrank from no enterprise,

and seemed always in precisely the right mood to appreciate whatever she

beheld. She could go day after day to a picture-gallery, and stay all

day long; she would make herself as familiar with churches, castles, and

cathedrals as she was with her own house; she would wander interminably

and delightedly about old towns and cities, or gaze with never-waning

joy upon lakes and mountains, and my father, accompanying her, was, in a

measure, recuperated and strengthened by her enthusiasm. In the end, as

is evidenced by Our Old Home and The Marble Faun, he got a good deal out

of Europe. On the other hand, he seemed to think himself justified

in avoiding persons as much as he decently might, even the most

distinguished; and if he had not been a consul, and a writer of books

that had been read, I doubt if he would have formed any acquaintances

during his foreign residence, and he would thereby have missed one of

the greatest and most enduring pleasures of memory that he took back

with him. For no one cared more for a friend, or was more stimulated and

emancipated by one, than he. It may have been that he had passed the age

of youthful buoyancy, of appetite for novelties; that he had begun to

lack initiative. "I have seen many specimens of mankind," he wrote down,

in a mood of depression, in one of his note-books, "but come to the

conclusion that there is little variety among them all." That was

scarcely a full thought, and he would never have let it pass in one

of his considered books. He made and published many other remarks

on similar subjects of quite an opposite tenor, and these more truly

represented his true feeling. But he did flag a little, once in a while,

and the deep and abiding love of England which was his final sentiment

had somewhat the appearance of having been forced upon him against his

inclination. We may surmise that he feared disappointment more than he

craved gratification.

[IMAGE: FRANCIS BANNOCH]

From Liverpool we explored the strangeness of the land in all

directions. Bennoch or Bright sometimes took off my father alone;

sometimes my father and mother would go with me, leaving my sisters at

home with the governess. Once in a while we all went together, as,

for example, to the Isle of Man or to Rhyl. So far as practicable, we

children were made acquainted with the literature of places we were

to visit before going there. Thus, before journeying to the Lakes and

Scotland, I had by heart a good deal of Wordsworth, Southey, Burns, and

Walter Scott, and was able, standing amid the lovely uproar of Lodore,

to shout out the story of how the water comes down there; and, again, on

the shores of Loch Katrine, at sunset, after spending a long hour on

the little white beach opposite Ellen's Isle, I ran along the road in

advance of my parents, and, climbing a cliff, saw the breadth of the

lake below me, golden under the sunset clouds, and very aptly recited,

as they came up, Sir Walter's descriptive verse:

"One burnished sheet of living gold,

Loch Katrine lay, beneath him rolled!"

But I was not always so well attuned to the environment. I had got hold

of a hook and line at some hotel on the Lakes, and the old passion

for fishing, which had remained latent since Lenox days for lack of

opportunity, returned upon me with great virulence. So, one day, when

we had set out in a row-boat to visit Rob Roy's cave, I requested, on

arriving there, to be permitted to stay in the boat, moored at the foot

of the cliff, while the others climbed up into the cave, and, as soon as

they had disappeared, I pulled out my line, with a dried-up worm on the

hook, and cast it over the side. I wanted to see the cave, but I wanted

to catch a fish more. Up to that time, I think, I had caught nothing in

all our pilgrimages. If ever Providence is going to give me success (I

said to myself, devoutly), let it be now! Accordingly, just before the

others came back, I felt a strong pull on my line and hauled in amain.

In a moment the fish, which may have been nine inches long, but which

seemed to me leviathan himself, broke the surface, wriggling this way

and that vigorously; but that was the extent to which my prayer was

granted, for, in the words of a rustic fisherman who related his own

experience to me long afterwards, "Just as I was a-goin' to land 'im,

sir, he took an' he let go!" My fish not only took and let go, but he

carried off the hook with him.

I remember wandering with my father through a grassy old church-yard in

search of Wordsworth's grave, which we found at last, looking quite

as simple as his own most severely unadorned pastoral; but I had not

attained as yet to the region of sentiment which makes such things

impressive. The bare mountains, the blue lakes, and the gray ruins

filled me with riotous intoxication. The North of England and Scotch

mountains were much more effective in their nakedness than the wooded

hills I had seen in Berkshire of Massachusetts, and their contours were

more sharply modelled and various. They were just large enough to make

their ascent seem easy until you undertook it, then those seemingly

moderate slopes lengthened out unaccountably. The day we reached the

hotel at the base of Helvellyn, I started, nothing doubting, to climb to

its summit before supper; the weather was clear, the top looked close

at hand, and I felt great surprise that the young gentleman mentioned in

Scott's poem ("I climbed the dark brow of the mighty Helvellyn," etc.)

should have allowed himself to be lost. But after a breathless struggle

of fifteen or twenty minutes, finding myself apparently no nearer my

goal than at first, I thought differently. Mr. Bright told my father,

by-the-way, that the legend of the fidelity of the dead adventurer's

little dog, "who scared the hill-fox and the raven away," was far from

being in accordance with the prosaic facts. This unsentimental little

quadruped had, in truth, eaten up a large part of her master by the

time his remains were discovered, and had, furthermore, brought into the

world a litter of pups. Well, nothing can deprive us of the poem; but it

is wholesome to face realities once in a while.

Unless one have a vein of Ruskin in him, one does not recollect scenery,

however enchanting, with the same particularity as persons. It is the

human element in things that sticks to us. Scenes are more punctually

recalled in proportion as they are steeped in historic or personal

interest. The thatched cottages of Burns and of Shakespeare stand clear

in my memory; I recall our ramble over the battlements of Carlisle,

where imprisoned Queen Mary had walked three centuries before; I

remember the dark stain on the floor of the dark room in which one of

her lovers was slain; I can see the gray towers of Warwick rising above

the green trees and reflected in the still water; and, entering the keep

of the castle, I behold myself again trying on the ponderous helmet of

the gigantic Guy, and climbing into his monstrous porridge-pot. But

vain would be the attempt to marshal before my mind's eye the glorious

pageantry of the Trosachs, though, at the time of its actual revelation,

it certainly seemed to make a far more vivid impression. The delight and

exhilaration which such magnificence inspired are easily summoned back,

but not the incarnate features of them. Wild nature takes us out of

ourselves and refreshes us; but she does not reveal her secret to us, or

ally herself with anything in us less deep than the abstract soul--which

also is beyond our reach.

I am not sure that my father did not like the seaside sojourns as well

as anything else, apart from the historical connections; for the spirits

of many seafaring forefathers murmured in his heart. But he did not so

much care for the soft, yielding, brown sands on which the sea-waves

broke. The coasts to which he had been used in his youth were either

rocky or firm as a macadamized road. Nor was he beguiled into

forgetting the tedium of walking over them, as his companion was, by the

fascination of the shells and sea curiosities to be picked up on them.

Many a mile have I trotted along beside him or behind him, gathering

these treasures, while he strode forward, abstracted, with his gaze

fixed towards the long ridge of the horizon. The sands at Rhyl, near

which Milton's friend was said to have been lost, were like a rolling

prairie; at low tide the white fringe of the surf could scarcely be

descried at their outermost verge, yet within a few hours it would

come tumbling back, flowing in between the higher levels, flooding and

brimming and overcoming, till it broke at our feet once more. Behind us

rose the tumultuous curves and peaks of the Welsh hills; before us, but

invisible across the Irish Channel, the black coast of rainy Ireland.

One night, during a gale, a ship came ashore, so far out that it still

seemed, in the morning, to be at sea, except for its motionlessness, and

the drenched and draggled crew came straggling in--or some of them.

At Southport the beach was narrower and the little sea-side settlement

larger and livelier; a string of sleepy donkeys always waited there,

with the rout of ragged and naughty little boys with sticks to thrash

them into a perfunctory and reluctant gallop for their riders. There was

always one boy, larger and also naughtier than the rest, who thrashed

the thrashers and took their pennies away from them. The prevailing

occupation of the children at these places, as on all civilized shores,

apparently, was the building of sand-mountains and the digging of pits

with their little wooden spades. One day an elderly gentleman, with a

square, ruddy face, edged with gray whiskers, who had stood observing my

labors in this kind for a long time, stepped up to me as I paused, and

said, with a sort of amused seriousness, "You'll do something when you

grow up, my little lad; your hill is bigger than any of the others'."

He nodded kindly to me and walked off, and I sat down beside my

mountain and watched the tide come up and level it, thinking unutterable

boy-thoughts.

The only approach to sea-side cliffs that we saw was at Whitby, on the

Yorkshire coast, where the abbey of St. Hilda stood, after whom the

American maiden in The Marble Faun was named. But the German Ocean was

bleak and cold, and my experiences in it were even more harrowing than

elsewhere; I can imagine nothing more dispiriting to a small boy than

to be dragged down over a harsh beach in an old-fashioned British

bathing-machine, its damp floor covered with gritty sand, with a tiny

window too high up for him to look out of; undressing in the cold

draughtiness and trying to hang up his clothes on pegs too high for

him to reach; being tossed from side to side, and forward and

backward, meanwhile, by the irregular jerking and swaying of the dismal

contrivance, drawn by the amphibious horses of the region; until at last

he hears the waves begin to dash against it, and it comes to a pause in

a depth which he feels must be fathomless. Then comes a thumping at

the door, and he knows that the bathing-woman is hungrily awaiting his

issuing forth. Nothing else is so terrible in the world--nothing even

in Alice in Wonderland--to a small, naked, shivering boy as the British

bathing-woman. There she stands, waist-deep in the swelling brine; she

grins and chuckles like an ogress; her red, grasping hands stretch

forth like the tentacles of an octopus; she seizes her victim in an

irresistible embrace, and with horrid glee plunges him head-under the

advancing wave. Ere he can fetch his breath to scream, down again he

goes, and yet again. The frigid, heavy water stings his cowering body;

he has swallowed quarts of it; his foot has come in contact with a crab

or a starfish; before him rolls the tumultuous expanse of desolation,

surging forward to take his life; behind him are the rickety steps of

the bathing-machine, which, but now a chamber of torture, has become his

sole haven of refuge. Buffeted by the billows, he makes shift at last

frantically to clamber back into it; he snatches the small, damp towels,

and attempts to dry his shivering limbs; his clothes have fallen on the

wet floor; he cannot force his blue toes into his oozy socks. At the

moment he is attempting to wriggle himself into his trousers the horse

is hitched-to again, and the jerky and jolty journey back up the

beach begins. If the hair of a boy of ten could turn white in a single

morning, there would be many a hoary-headed youngster in British

watering-places. John Leech, in Punch, used to make pictures of the

experiences I have outlined, and I studied them with deep attention and

sympathy. The artist, too, must have suffered from the sea-ogresses in

his youth, else he could not have portrayed the outrage so vividly. The

mock-cheerfulness and hideous maternal parody of their "Come, my little

man!" has no parallel in life or fiction. Nevertheless, such is the

fortunate recuperative faculty of boyhood that day after day I would

forget the horrors of that hour, and be happy in climbing over the

decayed chalk acclivities of Whitby, picking up the fossil shells that

nestle there. Yonder on my table, as I write, lies a coiled ammonite

found there; it had been there ten thousand years or ages before I

detached it from its bed, and, for aught I know, my remotest posterity

may use it, as I have done, for a paper-weight. Thanks to eternal

justice, the bathing-machines and the bathing-women will have gone to

their place long ere then!

My father had given me a book called The Aquarium, written by Philip

Henry Gosse (father of the present poet, essayist, and critic),

illustrated with pictures of sea-anemones and other marine creatures

done from his own drawings in color, and so well done that nothing which

has been done since in the way of color-reproductions surpasses them.

It was delightfully written, and I absorbed it into my very soul, and my

dreams by night and longings by day were for an aquarium of my own. At

last--I think this was at Southport--a glass jar was given me; it was

an inverted bell-glass, mounted on a wooden stand, and it cost ten

shillings. I wonder if men often love their wives or children with

the adoring tenderness that I lavished upon that bell-glass and its

contents! I got sand and covered the bottom; I found two jagged stones

and leaned them against each other on the sand; I gathered fronds of

ulva latissima; I persuaded a boatman to bring me a bucket of salt-water

from beyond the line of breakers, and I poured it carefully into the

jar. During the next twenty-four hours I waited impatiently for the

water to settle and clear; then I began to introduce the living inmates.

I collected prawns and crabs and sea-snails, and a tiny sole or two, a

couple of inches long, and by good chance I found a small sepiola, or

cuttle-fish, as big as a beetle, which burrowed in the sand and changed

color magically from dark brown to faintest buff. I also had a pair of

soldier-crabs, which fought each other continually. When the sunlight

fell on my aquarium, I saw the silver bubbles of oxygen form on the

green fronds of the sea-weed; the little snails crawled along the sides

of the glass, sweeping out their tiny, scythelike tongues at every step;

the prawns hovered in the shade of the stones or darted back and forward

light as thoughts; the soles scuffled over the surface of the sand or

hid themselves in it from the stalking, felonious crabs. But I had

no sea-anemones; they are not found on sandy coasts, and without

sea-anemones my felicity could not be complete.

But strange things happen in this world occasionally, good as well as

bad. There came up a heavy storm, and the next morning, walking with my

father on the beach, strewn with deep-sea flotsam and jetsam, we came

upon the mast of a ship, water-logged till it had the weight of iron; it

might have been, as my father remarked, a relic of the Spanish Armada.

And it was covered from end to end with the rarest and most beautiful

species of sea-anemones!

This was fairy-land come true. I chipped off a handkerchiefful of the

best specimens, wishing I could take them all, and carried them to

my aquarium. I deposited them, each in a coign of vantage, and in the

course of an hour or two they had swelled out their tinted bodies and

expanded their lovely tentacles, and the cup of my joy was full. This

prosperity continued for near a week, during which I remained with my

nose against the glass, as the street boys of Liverpool held theirs

against the windows of pastry-cooks' shops. At length I noticed an

ominous clouding of the water, which, as Mr. Gosse had forewarned me,

signified disaster of some sort, and, searching for the cause, I finally

discovered the body of the little sepiola, which had died without being

missed, and was contaminating with his decay the purity of the aquarium.

The water must be changed at once. I sent out the servant for a fresh

bucketful from the sea, while I poured the polluted liquid from the jar.

Presently the bucket of water was brought in. It was unusually clear.

I filled the jar with it, and then, as bedtime was near, I left the

aquarium to settle down to business again. The next morning I hastened

to it in my night-gown, and was confronted by a ghastly spectacle. The

crabs lay dead on the bottom, stomachs upward; the prawns hung lifeless

and white from the rocks; the soldier-crabs were motionless, half out of

their shells; the sea-anemones had contracted themselves into buttons,

and most of them had dropped from their perches. Death had been rampant

during the night; but what could be the cause?

A sudden suspicion caused me to put a finger in the water and apply it

to my tongue. It was not salt-water at all, but had been taken fresh

from the cistern. That traitress servant-girl, to save her indolence a

few steps, had destroyed my aquarium!

I was too heart-broken to think of killing her; but she had killed

something in me which does not readily grow again. My trust in my

fellow-creatures was as shrunken and inanimate as the sea-anemones. We

left Southport soon after, and that was my last aquarium.

Let us turn to lighter matters. I accompanied my father and mother on

that pilgrimage to Old Boston which is described in Our Old Home. The

world does not know that it is to my presence on the little steamer

on the trip down the level river, through the Lincolnshire fens, with

nothing but the three-hundred-foot tower of St. Botolph's Church, in the

extreme distance, to relieve the tedium of a twenty-four-mile journey

made at the rate of never more than six miles per hour--it is not known,

I say, that to that circumstance is due my father's description of the

only incident which enlivened the way--the tragedy, namely, of the duck

family. For it was that tragedy which stood out clearest in my memory,

and when I learned, in Concord, that my father was preparing his paper

about Old Boston for the Atlantic Monthly, I besought him to insert an

account of the episode. The duck and her five ducklings had probably

seen the steamer many times before, and had acquired a contempt for its

rate of progression, imagining that it would always be easy to escape

from it. But, somehow, in their overweening security, they lingered on

this occasion a little too long, and we succeeded in running them down.

Even then, as my father notes, it was only one of them that was carried

under; but the shock to the nerves of the other youngsters must have

stunted their growth, and the old bird cannot but have suffered tortures

from anxiety and remorse.

The sadness caused by this event, added to the chilliness of the

sea-wind which blew against us all the way down the river, rendered my

first impressions of the ancient town, which had given its name to the

one I was born in, somewhat gloomy. But the next morning it brightened

up, and our own spirits were correspondingly improved; insomuch that

I struck my head a violent blow against the stone roof of the topmost

pinnacle of St. Botolph's tower, such was the zeal of my ascent into

it. All this happened two years after the aquarium, in 1857, when I was

older and wiser, but had not yet outgrown the ambition to climb to the

top of all high places; this bump may have been an admonition not

to climb too high. We went down and strayed into Mr. Porter's little

book-shop, and he transformed himself into a new and more genial

proprietor of a virtuoso's collection, and showed us treasures, some

of which his predecessor in Mosses from an Old Manse might not have

despised. I have never since then heard of his portrait in crayon of

the youthful Sterne; it would be worth a good deal to any latter-day

publisher of his works in a de luxe edition. As for the green tassel

from the bed of Queen Mary, in Holyrood House, there is a passage in

my father's description of it in his journal which, out of regard,

doubtless, for the feelings of Mr. Porter, he forbore to quote in his

published article; but as the good old gentleman (unless he has lived

to be more than one hundred and twenty years old) must have gone to the

place where treasures are indestructible, I will reproduce it now. "This

tassel," says my father, "Mr. Porter told us (with a quiet chuckle and

humorous self-gratulation), he had personally stolen, and really, for my

part, though I hope I would not have done it myself, I thought it no sin

in him--such valuables being attracted by a natural magnetism towards

such a man. He obeys, in stealing them, a higher law than he breaks.

I should like to know precisely what portion of his rich and rare

collection he has obtained in a similar manner. But far be it from me

to speak unkindly or sneeringly of the good man; for he showed us great

kindness, and obliged us so much the more by being greatly and evidently

pleased with the trouble that he took on our behalf." It may be added

that each new stealing enhances the value of all the previous ones,

and therefore creates an obligation to steal yet more. Thus does an act

which would, standing by itself, be criminal, become a virtue if often

enough repeated.

I am not arranging this narrative in chronological sequence; but I think

it was in this year that we went to Manchester to see the exposition.

The town itself was unlovely; but, as we had Italy in prospect, it

was deemed expedient to accustom ourselves in some measure to the

companionship of works of art, and the exhibition professed to contain

an exceptionally fine and catholic collection of them. My father made a

thorough study of them, going to learn and not to judge, and he learned

much, though not quite to believe in Turner or to like the old masters.

For my own part, when not taken on these expeditions, I busied myself

with the building of a kite six feet high, of engineer's cambric, with a

face painted on it, and used to go out and fly it on a vacant lot in the

rear of our lodgings, accompanied by a large portion of the unoccupied

population of Manchester. The kite broke its string one day, and I saw

it descend over the roofs of a remote slum region towards the south, and

I never recaptured it. But my chief energies were devoted to acquiring

the art of fencing with the small-sword from one Corporal Blair, of the

Fourth Dragoon Guards--a regiment which had distinguished itself in the

Crimean War. The corporal was a magnificent-looking creature, and he

was as admirable inwardly as outwardly--the model of an English

non-commissioned officer. He used to come to our lodgings in his

short scarlet jacket and black trousers, and my father once asked

him, remarking the extraordinary prominence of his chest, what kind of

padding was used to produce so impressive a contour. "There's nothing

here but my linen, sir," answered the corporal, modestly, and blushing

a good deal; a fact which I, having often taken my lessons at the

barracks, in the private quarters of the corporal, where he permitted

himself to appear in his shirt-sleeves, already knew. My experience of

the British army not being so large as that of some other persons, I

am unable to say whether there were many other soldiers in it fit to be

compared with Blair; but my acquaintance with mankind in general would

lead me to infer that there could not have been then, and that there are

still less of such to-day. An army of six--footers like him, with his

intelligence, instincts of discipline, capacity and expertness, physical

strength and activity, and personal courage, would easily account for

more than all of England's warlike renown and success; the puzzle is,

how to account for anything but disaster without them--though, to be

sure, other armies might be equally lacking in Blairs. He was well

educated, modest, and moral; he was a married man, with a wife who was

the model of a soldier's consort, and two or three little sons, all

of them experts with the foils and the broadsword. It was against the

regulations of the service for privates or non-commissioned officers to

have families, and, when Blair's connubial condition became known to the

authorities, he was degraded in rank from sergeant to corporal, though

he wore the Balaklava medal; for he had taken part in that immortal

charge, and I only wish I could recall the story of it as he

told it to me. His regiment had been under the command of Lord

Cardigan--"Black-Bottle Cardigan," as he was nicknamed in the army,

on account of the well-known (real or apocryphal) incident. It was

my good--fortune, by-the-way, once to see this eminent captain. I was

taking my lesson at the barracks, when Blair told me that his lordship

was expected to visit them that afternoon. The hour appointed was three

o'clock. Punctually at three o'clock a carriage drove rapidly through

the gates of the barracks, and the guard turned out on the run and

lined up to salute the noble occupant. But, much to their disgust, the

occupant turned out to be some one else, not meriting a salute. The

men returned to the guard-room feeling as men do when they have been

betrayed into exertion and enthusiasm for nothing. However, in about ten

minutes more, another carriage drove up, and out came the guard again

and ranged themselves smartly, to please the eye of their martinet

commander, when lo! they had again been deceived. Again they retired

with dark looks, not being at all in a mood to recognize the humor of

the situation. This same thing actually occurred twice more, by which

time it was near four o'clock, and the men were wellnigh mutinous, and

it became evident that, for some reason, Cardigan had been prevented

from coming. Such being the case, the approach of still another carriage

attracted no attention whatever, until it came to a half-pause, and I

saw, thrust out of the window, a stern, dark, warlike, soldierly face,

full of surprise and indignation--and this was Cardigan himself. The

unhappy guard tumbled over themselves in vain efforts to get into form;

it was too late, and the haughty and hot-tempered commander drove on

without his salute. Blair, not being on guard duty, had no part in this

catastrophe, but I well remember his unaffected sorrow over it. He was

a grave man, though of an equable and cheerful temper, and he felt his

comrades' misfortune as his own. But I never heard that any casualties

occurred in consequence of the mishap.

I have left two years of our English sojourn unaccounted for. In

the summer of 1855, my father nearly made up his mind to resign his

consulship (since it had become hardly worth keeping from the money

point of view), and, after making a visit to Italy, going back to

Concord. This plan seemed the more advisable, because my mother's lungs

could not endure the English climate. But while he was weighing the

matter, John O'Sullivan wrote from Lisbon, urgently inviting my mother

and sisters to come out and spend a few months with him and his family

there. The Lisbon climate was a specific for bronchial disease; my

father could complete his term, and we could go to Italy the following

year. There was only one objection to this--it involved the parting of

my father from my mother, a thing which had never before happened. But

it did not take him long to decide that it would be a good thing for

her, and, therefore, in the long run, for him. Each loved the other

unselfishly, and had the courage of such love. Liverpool without my

mother would be a dismal trial for him to face; Lisbon without my father

would be tenfold an exile for her. But they made up their minds, each

for the other's sake, to undergo the separation, and accordingly, in the

autumn of the year, she and my sisters sailed from Southampton, and my

father and I went back to Liverpool. How we fared there shall be told in

the next chapter.

X

If there were boarding-houses in paradise--Blodgett, the

delight of mankind--Solomon foresaw her--A withering retort--

A modest, puny poise about her--Hidden thoughts derived

from Mother Eve and Grecian Helen--The feminine council that

ruled the Yankee captains--Bonds of fraternity, double-

riveted and copper-fastened--Through the looking-glass--Men

only of the manliest sort--The lady-paramount--Hands which

were true works of art--Retained his dignity without putting

it on--Sighed heavily over my efforts--Unctuous M. Huguenin--

"From dawn to eve I fell"--The multum-in-parvo machine--

"Beauty and the Beast"--Frank Channing--"Blood-and water!"--

A lapful of Irish stew.

It was observed a little way back that English boarding-houses were much

like other boarding-houses in the civilized world. The rule is proved

by the exception of Mrs. Blodgett's establishment. There never was such

another; there never will be; it was unique. It has vanished from earth

long since; but if there were boarding-houses in paradise, I should

certainly expect it to be found again there. Who was Mrs. Blodgett? Save

that she was a widow of the British middle class, I doubt if any one of

her boarders knew. She had once been rich, and had lived at Gibraltar. I

have often meditated with fruitless longing about what manner of man Mr.

Blodgett could have been. He must have been, like the Emperor Titus,

the delight of mankind in his day. He was a man, we must surmise, whose

charms and virtues were such that his wife, having felt the bliss and

privilege of knowing and living with him, registered a vow over his bier

that she would devote her future career to the attempt to make others as

happy as he had made her; that she would serve others as faithfully

and generously as she had served him. It was a lofty and beautiful

conception, for she must have perceived that only in that way could she

keep his blessed spirit near her; that the little heaven she would make

in Duke Street, Liverpool, would attract him from the kindred heaven

above; that he would choose to hover, invisible, above her plenteous

table, inhaling the grateful aromas that arose from it as from a savory

sacrifice, basking in the smiles and sympathizing in the satisfaction

of the fortunate guests, triumphing in their recognition of his beloved

consort as a queen among women. One might almost fancy that the steam

arising from the portly soup-tureen assumed as it arose something

suggesting a human form; that from its airy and fragrant mistiness a

shadowy countenance beamed down upon the good lady in black, with

the white cap, who ladled out the delicious compound to her waiting

devotees. The murmur of the tea-urn would seem to fashion itself into

airy accents, syllabling, "Mary, thy Blodgett is here!" His genial

spirit would preside over her labors in the kitchen, suggesting ever

more delightsome dishes and delicate desserts. He would warn her against

undesirable inmates and intractable servants, and would inspire her

tradesmen to serve her with the choicest comestibles and to temper

their bills to the unprotected widow. At night he would bless her lonely

pillow with peace, and would gently rouse her in the morning to a new

day of beneficences.

Mrs. Blodgett was about five feet four inches high, and may have weighed

twelve stone; into such limits were her virtues packed. She was perhaps

in the neighborhood of her fiftieth year; her dark hair was threaded

with honorable gray. Her countenance was rotund and ruddy; it was the

flower of kindness and hospitality in full bloom; but there was also

power in the thick eyebrows and in the massy substance of the chin--of

the chins, indeed, for here, as in other gifts, nature had been generous

with her. There was shrewdness and discernment in the good-nature of her

eyes; she knew human nature, although no one judged it with more charity

than she. Her old men were her brothers, her young men were her sons,

all children were her children. Solomon foresaw her in the most engaging

of his Proverbs. Her maid-servants arose at six in the morning and

called her blessed, for though her rule was strict it was just and

loving. She was at once the mistress and the friend of her household; no

Yankee captain so audacious that he ventured to oppose her law; no cynic

so cold as not to be melted by her tenderness. She was clad always in

black, with a white cap and ribbons, always spotless amid the grime of

Liverpool; in her more active moments--though she was always active--she

added a white apron to her attire. She was ever anywhere where she

was needed; she was never anywhere where she could be dispensed with.

Wherever she went she brought comfort and a cheerful but not restless

animation. Her boarders were busy men, but it was always with an effort

that they wrenched themselves from her breakfast-table, and they sat

down to dinner as one man. She made them happy, but she would not spoil

them. "You're a pretty young man!" she said, severely, to complacent

Mr. Crane, when, one morning, he came late to breakfast. "I always knew

that," returned he, reaching self-satisfiedly for the toast-rack. "Well,

I'm sure your glass never told you so!" was the withering retort. Mr.

Crane did not lift his neck so high after that. The grin that went round

the table was too crushingly unanimous.

Mrs. Blodgett was helped in her duties by her niece, Miss Maria, and by

her sister, Miss Williams. Miss Maria was a little wisp of a woman; I

do not know her age then, but I think, were she alive today, she would

confess to about eighty-three. She wore ringlets, after the fashion

of the early nineteenth-century books of beauty. Her face was thin and

narrow, and ordinarily pale; but when Miss Maria had been a little while

in conversation with one or more of the gallant Yankee captains you

might see in the upper corner of each cheek a slight touch of red. For

though I would not call the little lady coquettish--that is too coarse

and obvious a word--yet there was in her that inalienable consciousness

of maidenhood, that sentiment, at once of attraction and of recoil,

towards creatures of the opposite sex, that gentle hope of pleasing man,

that secret emotion of being pleased by him, that tremor at the idea of

being desired, and that flush at the thought of being desirable, which,

I suppose, may animate the mystic sensibilities of spinsterhood. She

was anything but aggressive and confident, yet there was a modest, puny

poise about her; she was like a plant that has always lived in a narrow,

city flower-pot, at a window too seldom visited by the sun, which has

never known the freedom of the rain, but has been skimpingly watered

out of a toy watering-pot; which has never so much as conceived of the

daring and voluptuous charms of its remote sisters of the forest and

garden, but has cherished its rudimentary perfume and its incipient

tints in a light reflected from brick walls and in the thin, stale

atmosphere of rear sitting-rooms. Yet it knows that it is a flower, and

that it might, somehow, fulfil its destiny and be beautiful. So Miss

Maria had, no doubt, hidden thoughts remotely derived from Mother Eve

and from Grecian Helen; she was aware of the potentiality in herself of

all virgin privileges and powers, and assumed thereupon her own little

dignity. Never but once did I see a masculine arm round Miss Maria's

trig, stiff little waist, and that was at Christmas-time, when there

were sprigs of mistletoe over every doorway; but, mistletoe or not, the

owner of that arm, if he did succeed in ravishing a kiss, got his ears

smartly boxed the next moment. I don't know precisely what was Miss

Maria's function in the economy of the household; I can fancy her

setting the table, and adding touches of neatness and prettiness;

dusting the ornaments and fine china on the shelves of the whatnot;

straightening the frames of the pictures on the walls; and, in her less

romantic moments, hemming towels or sheets, or putting up preserved

fruits. I know she was always amiable and obliging and that everybody

loved her.

Miss Williams was a good deal the elder of her sister, and was of a

clear white pallor and an aged delicacy and shyness that were very

captivating. She had judgment and a clear, dispassionate brain, and

I presume she acted the part in the little firm of a sort of court of

appeals and final adviser and referee. She talked little and had little

to do with outward affairs, but she sat observant and penetrating

and formed conclusions in her mind. There had been no brother of The

Blodgett to induce her to change her maidenly state, but I think there

must have been a quiet, touching romance somewhere hidden in the shadows

of the previous forty or fifty years. She admired and delighted in her

energetic, practical sister as much as the latter adored her for her

serenity and wisdom. There was between them an intimacy, confidence,

and mutual understanding that were charming to behold. When the blessed

Blodgett had died, one can imagine the vital support and consolation

which Miss Williams had been able to afford to her afflicted sister.

Each of them seemed, in some way, to explain and enlarge one's

conception of the other. Widely different as they appeared outwardly,

there was a true sisterly likeness deep down in them. Such was the

feminine council that ruled the destinies of the Yankee captains and of

their consul.

These captains and this consul formed nine-tenths of the population of

the house, and such other denizens as it had were at least Americans. I

never learned the cause of this predilection for representatives of the

great republic and for the seafaring variety of them in particular. Be

that as it might (and it is an interesting inquiry in itself), it can

be readily understood that it worked out well as a business idea. There

were no quarrels or heart-burnings among the jolly occupants of Mrs.

Blodgett's table; first, because they were all Americans in the country

of their hereditary enemies, and, secondly, because they were all men

of the same calling, and that calling the sea. The bonds of fraternity

between them were double-riveted and copper-fastened. Thus all who had

experienced the Blodgett regime proclaimed its excellence far and wide,

and the number of applicants always exceeded the accommodations; in

fact, during this year 1855-56, our hostess was compelled to buy the

house adjoining her own, and I had the rare delight of watching every

stroke of work done by the carpenters and bricklayers who had the job

of cutting a doorway through the wall from the old house to the new one.

There was something magical and adventurous in stepping through that

opening for the first time--crossing a boundary which had maintained

itself so long. Probably the sensation resembled that which Alice

afterwards experienced when she stepped through the looking-glass into

the room on the other side. The additional accommodations were speedily

filled; but after the first fascination had worn off nobody regarded the

new house as comparable with the old one, and the people who roomed in

it were looked down upon by their associates of the original dwelling.

They were, I believe, as much alike as two houses could be, and that is

saying much in this age, but the feeling was different, and the feeling

is everything if you have a soul.

If the Blodgett house, or houses, were unique, so were the Yankee

boarders. The race of our merchant-marine captains disappeared with

their ships, and they will return no more. The loss is irretrievable,

for in many respects they held the ideal of patriotic and energetic

Americanism higher than it is likely to go again. When at sea, in

command of and responsible for their ships and cargoes, they were, no

doubt, upon occasion, despots and slave-drivers; but their crews were

often recruited from among the dregs of men of all nations, who would

interpret kindness as timidity and take an ell where you gave them

an inch. No doubt, too, there were incarnate devils among these

captains--actual monomaniacs of cruelty and viciousness--though none of

these were known at Mrs. Blodgett's. Round her board sat men only of

the manliest sort. They had the handiness and versatility of the sailor,

wide and various knowledge of all quarters of the globe and of types of

mankind, though, to be sure, their investigations did not proceed far

beyond their ports, and you were sometimes more astonished at what

they did not know than at what they did. They had the self-poise and

self-confidence of men who day by day and month by month hold their

lives in their hands, and are practised in finding a way out of danger

and difficulty. They had a code of good manners and polite behavior

which was not highly refined, but contained the sound, essential

elements of courtesy; not expressed in fancy, but honest and solid. They

had great shrewdness, and were capable of really fine diplomacy, for

the school they attended demanded such proficiency. They had a dry,

chuckling humor; a homely philosophy, often mingled with the queerest

superstitions; a racy wit, smacking somewhat, of course, of the

quarter-deck, or even of the forecastle; a seemingly incongruous

sensibility, so that tears easily sprang to their eyes if the right

chord of pathos were touched; a disposition to wear a high-colored

necktie and a broad, gold watch-chain, and to observe a certain

smartness in their boots and their general shore rigging; a good

appetite for good food, and not a little discernment of what was good; a

great and boylike enjoyment of primitive pleasures; a love of practical

jokes and a hearty roar of laughter for hearty fun; a self-respecting

naturalness, which made them gentlemen in substance if not in all

technical details; a pungent contempt for humbug and artifice, though

they might not mind a good, swaggering lie upon occasion; a robust sense

of honor in all matters which were trusted to their honorable feeling;

and, to make an end of this long catalogue, a practical command of

language regarded as a means of expressing and communicating the

essential core of thoughts, though the words might not always be

discoverable in Johnson's dictionary or the grammatical constructions

such as would be warranted by Lindley Murray. They were, upon the

average, good-looking, active, able men, and most of them were on the

sunny side of forty. They were ready to converse on any subject, but

if left to themselves they would choose topics proper to their

calling-ships and shipwrecks, maritime usages of various countries, of

laws of insurance, of sea-rights, of feats of seamanship, of luck and

ill luck, and here and there a little politics of the old-fashioned,

elementary sort. They boasted themselves and their country not a little,

and criticised everybody else, and John Bull especially, very severely

often, but almost always very acutely, too. They would play euchre and

smoke cigars from nine o'clock till eleven, and would then go to bed and

sleep till the breakfast-bell. Altogether, they were fine company, and

they did me much good. Such were the captains of our merchant marine

about the middle of the last century.

Some of them would bring their wives with them for the voyage; uniformly

rather pretty women, a trifle dressy, somewhat fragile in appearance,

but really sound enough; naive, simple, good souls, loving their

husbands and magnifying them, and taking a vicarious pride in their

ships and sea-craft. The lady-paramount of these, in my estimation, was

the wife of old Captain Howes, the inventor of Howes' patent rig, which

he was at that time perfecting. He would sometimes invite me up to his

room to see the exquisitely finished model which he had made with his

own hands. He was the commodore of the captains, the oldest, wisest, and

most impressive of them; a handsome, massive, Jovelike old gentleman,

with the gentlest and most indulgent manners, and a straightforward,

simple mariner withal. He had ceased to make voyages, and was settled,

for the time being, in Liverpool. Mrs. Howes seemed, to my boyish

apprehension, to be a sort of princess of exquisite and gracious

refinement; I could imagine nothing in feminine shape more delicate,

of more languid grace, of finer patrician elegance. She was certainly

immensely good-natured and indulgent towards me, and, in the absence of

my mother, tried to teach me to be less of an Orson; she had hands which

were true works of art, flexible, fine-grained, taper-fingered, and

lily-white; these she used very effectively, and would fain have induced

me to attempt the regeneration of my own dirty and ragged little fists.

She would beseech me, also, to part my hair straight, to forbear to soil

my jacket, and even to get my shoes blacked. I was thankful for these

attentions, though I was unable to profit by them. Sometimes, at table,

I would glance up to find her eyes dwelling with mild reproach upon me;

doubtless I was continually perpetrating terrible enormities. Had she

herself been less perfect and immaculate, I might have felt more hopes

of my own amendment; but I felt that I was not in her class at all, and

I gave up at the start. She was a wonderful human ornament, the despair,

I thought, of all pursuit, not to mention rivalry. Beside the heroic

figure of her captain, she looked like a lily mated with an oak; but

they were as happy a pair, and as well mated, as one could hope to see.

I was, perhaps, more in my proper element among the captains down in

the smoking-room, which was at the back of the house, at the end of the

hallway, on the left. My father sat there foot to foot with them, played

euchre with them, listened to their yarns, laughed at their jokes, and

felt, probably, the spirit of his own old sea-captain ancestors stirring

within him. Some of them were a little shy of his official position at

first, and indeed he was occasionally constrained to adopt towards one

or another of them, in the consulate, a bearing very different from the

easy comradeship of the Blodgett evenings; but in process of time they

came to understand him, and accepted him, on the human basis, as a

friend and brother. My father had the rare faculty of retaining his

dignity without putting it on. No one ever took liberties with him, and

he took none with anybody; yet there was no trace in his intercourse of

stiffness or pose; there did not need to be, since there was behind his

eye that potentiality of self--protection which renders superfluous

all outward demonstration of personal sanctity. On the other hand, he

obviously elevated the tone of our little society; the stout captains,

who feared nothing else, feared their worser selves in his presence.

None of them knew or cared a straw for his literary genius and its

productions; but they were aware of something in him which they

respected as well as liked, and there was no member of the company who

was more popular or influential.

Without letting me feel that I was the object of special solicitude or

watchfulness, my father knew all that I did, and saw to it that my

time was decently occupied. In addition to the dancing-lessons already

mentioned (in which I became brilliantly proficient, and achieved such

feats in the way of polkas, mazurkas, hornpipes, and Scotch reels as

filled my instructor and myself with pride)--in addition to this, I was

closeted twice a week with a very serious and earnest drawing-master,

who taught me with infinite conscientiousness, and sighed heavily

over the efforts which I submitted to him. The captains, who were my

champions and abettors in all things, might take in their large hands a

drawing of mine and the copy by the master which had been my model,

and say, one to the other, "Well, now, I couldn't tell which was

which--could you?" But the master could tell, and the certainty of it

steeped his soul in constant gloom. I doubt if he recovered from the

pangs I gave him. The fact was, I thought an hour of dancing with lovely

Mary Warren was worth all the art in the world. Another instructor to

whom I brought honor was thick-shouldered, portly, unctuous M. Huguenin,

a Swiss, proprietor of the once-famous gymnasium which bore his name.

He so anointed me with praise that I waxed indiscreet, and one day, as

I was swinging on the rings, and he was pointing out to some prospective

patrons my extraordinary merits, my grasp relaxed at the wrong moment

and I came sailing earthward from on high. It seemed to me that, like

Milton's Lucifer, "from dawn to eve I fell," M. Huguenin sprinting to

intercept my fall; but I landed on a mat and was little the worse

for it. I fear the prospective patrons were not persuaded, by my

performance, of the expediency of gymnastic training. On the other

hand, M. Huguenin managed to dispose to my father of one of his

multum-in-parvo exercising-machines, on the understanding that it was to

be taken back at half-price on the expiration of our stay in Liverpool;

but, when that time came, M. Huguenin failed to remember having been a

party to any such understanding; so the big framework was boxed up, and

finally was resurrected in Concord, where I labored with it for seven or

eight years more during my home-comings from Harvard.

In the intervals of my other pursuits, I was, at this period, sent into

society. The society at Mrs. Blodgett's was, indeed, all that I desired;

but it was doubtless perceived that it was not all that my polite

development required; my Orsonism was too much indulged. I was sent

alone to Sandheys, the Brights' and Heywoods' place, where I was

moderately ill at ease; and also to the house of a lady in town, who

received a good deal of company, and there I was, at first, acutely

miserable. The formalities of the drawing-room and the elegant

conversation overwhelmed me with the kind of torture which Swedenborg

ascribes to those spirits of the lower orders who are admitted

temporarily into the upper heavens. Unlike these unfortunates, however,

I presently got acclimated; other boys of my age appeared, and numbers

of little girls (Mary Warren among them), and now society occupied all

my thoughts. The lady of the house got up private theatricals--"Beauty

and the Beast" was the play. I was cast for the parts of the Second

Sister and of the Beast; Mary Warren was the Beauty. I got by heart not

only my own lines, but those of all the other performers and the stage

directions. The play was received with applause, and after it was

done the actors were feted; my father was not present, but he appeared

greatly diverted by my account of the proceedings. He was probably

testing me in various ways to see what I was made of, and whether

anything could be made of me. He encouraged my predilection for natural

history by getting me books on conchology and taking me to museums

to study the specimens and make pencil drawings of them. In these

avocations I was also companioned by Frank Channing, whose specialty

was ornithology, and who was making a series of colored portraits of the

birds in the museum, very cleverly done.

[IMAGE: WILLIAM HENRY CHANNING, 1855]

Frank was the son of the Rev. William Henry Channing, who was pastor of

a Unitarian church in Liverpool; he had brought his family to England

at about the same time that we came. He was a nephew, I believe, of

the William Ellery Channing who was one of the founders of American

Unitarianism, and the brother, therefore, of the Ellery Channing of

Concord. Frank inherited much of the talent of his family. He was

afterwards sent to Oxford, where he took the highest honors. All

intellectual operations came easy to him. He also showed a strong

proclivity to art, and he was wonderfully clever in all kinds of fine

handwork. He was at this time a tall and very handsome boy, about two

years my senior. He was, like myself, fanatically patriotic, an American

of Americans, and this brought us together in a foreign land; but, aside

from that, I have seldom met a more fascinating companion. I followed

him about with joy and admiration. He used to make for me tiny little

three-masted ships, about six inches long, with all the rigging

complete; they were named after the famous American clippers of the day,

and he painted microscopic American flags to hoist over the taff-rail.

He tried to teach me how to paint in water-colors, but I responded

better to his eloquence regarding the future of our country. He proved

to me by a mathematical demonstration, which I accepted without in the

least understanding it, that in fifty years New York would be larger and

more populous than London at the end of the same period. This brilliant

boy seemed fitted for the highest career in his native country; his

father did not contemplate a permanent stay in England, and in after

years I used to look for his name in our Senate, or among the occupants

of the Supreme Bench. But, as it turned out, he never revisited America,

except for short periods. His father was induced to remain abroad by

the success of his preaching, and Frank, after his career at Oxford, was

overpowered by the subtle attractions of English culture, and could not

separate himself from the old country. I saw him once while I was at

Harvard. He was an Englishman in all outward respects, and seemed to

be so inwardly likewise. The other day I heard of a Frank Channing in

Parliament; probably the same man. But either the effect upon him of his

voluntary expatriation--his failure to obey at eve the voice obeyed at

prime--or some other cause, has prevented him from ever doing anything

to attract attention, or to appear commensurate with his radiant

promise. Henry James is the only American I know who has not suffered

from adopting England; and even he might have risen higher than he has

done had he overcome his distaste to the external discomforts of the

democracy and cast in his lot with ours.

Frank's father was a tall, intellectual, slender Yankee, endowed with

splendid natural gifts, which he had improved by assiduous cultivation.

In the pulpit he rose to an almost divine eloquence and passion, and

a light would shine over his face as if reflected from the Holy Spirit

itself. My father took a pew in his church, and sent me to sit in it

every Sunday; he never went himself. He was resolved, I suppose, if

there was any religion in me, to afford it an opportunity to come out.

Now, I had a religious reverence for divine things, but no understanding

whatever of dogma of any sort. I never learned to repeat a creed, far

less to comprehend its significance. I was moved and charmed by Mr.

Channing's discourses, but I did not like to sit in the pew; I did

not like "church." I remember nothing of the purport of any of those

sermons; but, oddly enough, I do recall one preached by a gentleman who

united the profession of preacher with that of medicine; he occupied

Channing's pulpit on a certain occasion, and preached on the text in

John xix., 34: "But one of the soldiers with a spear pierced his side,

and forthwith came thereout blood and water." The good doctor, drawing

on his physiological erudition, demonstrated at great length how it was

possible that blood should be mingled with the water, and showed at what

precise point in Christ's body the spear must have entered. I seem to

hear again his mellifluous voice, repeating at the close of each passage

of his argument, "And forthwith came thereout blood-AND WATER!" I did

not approve of this sermon; I was not carried to heaven in the spirit

by it, as by Channing's; but somehow it has stuck in my memory all these

forty-eight years.

Often I stayed for a few days at a time at Channing's house; his wife

was a handsome, delicate, very nervous woman; his daughter Fanny was a

beauty, and became still more beautiful in after years; she was married,

when past her first youth, to Edwin Arnold, author of "The Light of

Asia," and of many rhetorical leading articles in the London Telegraph.

She died a few years ago. They were, all of them, kind to me. I did

the best I could to be a good little boy there; but I recollect Mrs.

Channing's face of sorrow and distress when, one day at dinner, I upset

into my lap my plate, which she had just filled with Irish stew--one

of my best-loved dishes. "Frank never does that," she murmured, as she

wiped me up; "never-never!" Nobody looked cheerful, and I never got over

that mortification.