Schools—Climate—Water Melons—Fourth of July—Storms—Pigs—Moving
Houses—Mr. Flint—Literature
Cincinnati contains many schools, but of their rank or merit I had very
little opportunity of judging; the only one which I visited was kept by
Dr. Lock, a gentleman who appears to have liberal and enlarged opinions
on the subject of female education. Should his system produce practical
results proportionably excellent, the ladies of Cincinnati will
probably some years hence be much improved in their powers of
companionship. I attended the annual public exhibition at this school,
and perceived, with some surprise, that the higher branches of science
were among the studies of the pretty creatures I saw assembled there.
One lovely girl of sixteen took her degree in mathematics, and another
was examined in moral philosophy. They blushed so sweetly, and looked
so beautifully puzzled and confounded, that it might have been
difficult for an abler judge than I was to decide how far they merited
the diploma they received.
This method of letting young ladies graduate, and granting them
diplomas on quitting the establishment, was quite new to me; at least,
I do not remember to have heard of any thing similar elsewhere. I
should fear that the time allowed to the fair graduates of Cincinnati
for the acquirement of these various branches of education would seldom
be sufficient to permit their reaching the eminence in each which their
enlightened instructor anticipates. “A quarter’s” mathematics, or “two
quarters” political economy, moral philosophy, algebra, and quadratic
equations, would seldom, I should think, enable the teacher and the
scholar, by their joint efforts, to lay in such a stock of these
sciences as would stand the wear and tear of half a score of children,
and one help.
Towards the end of May we began to feel that we were in a climate
warmer than any we had been accustomed to, and my son suffered severely
from the effects of it. A bilious complaint, attended by a frightful
degree of fever, seized him, and for some days we feared for his life.
The treatment he received was, I have no doubt, judicious, but the
quantity of calomel prescribed was enormous. I asked one day how many
grains I should prepare, and was told to give half a teaspoonful. The
difference of climate must, I imagine, make a difference in the effect
of this drug, or the practice of the old and new world could hardly
differ so widely as it does in the use of it. Anstey, speaking of the
Bath physicians, says,
“No one e’er viewed
Any one of the medical gentlemen stewed.”
But I can vouch, upon my own experience, that no similar imputation
lies against the gentlemen who prescribe large quantities of calomel in
America. To give one instance in proof of this, when I was afterwards
in Montgomery county, near Washington, a physician attended one of our
neighbours, and complained that he was himself unwell. “You must take
care of yourself, Doctor,” said the patient; “I do so,” he replied, “I
took forty grains of calomel yesterday, and I feel better than I did.”
Repeated and violent bleeding was also had recourse to in the case of
my son, and in a few days he was able to leave his room, but he was
dreadfully emaciated, and it was many weeks before he recovered his
strength.
As the heat of the weather increased we heard of much sickness around
us. The city is full of physicians, and they were all to be seen
driving about in their cabs at a very alarming rate. One of these
gentlemen told us, that when a medical man intended settling in a new
situation, he always, if he knew his business, walked through the
streets at nights, before he decided. If he saw the dismal twinkle of
the watch-light from many windows he might be sure that disease was
busy, and the the “location” might suit him well. Judging, by this
criterion, Cincinnati was far from healthy, I began to fear for our
health, and determined to leave the city; but, for a considerable time
I found it impossible to procure a dwelling out of it. There were many
boarding-houses in the vicinity, but they were all overflowing with
guests. We were advised to avoid, as much as possible, walking out in
the heat of the day; but the mornings and evenings were delightful,
particularly the former, if taken sufficiently early. For several weeks
I was never in bed after four o’clock, and at this hour I almost daily
accompanied my “help” to market, where the busy novelty of the scene
afforded me much amusement.
Many waggon-loads of enormous water-melons were brought to market every
day, and I was sure to see groups of men, women, and children seated on
the pavement round the spot where they were sold, sucking in prodigious
quantities of this water-fruit. Their manner of devouring them is
extremely unpleasant; the huge fruit is cut into half a dozen sections,
of about a foot long, and then, dripping as it is with water, applied
to the mouth, from either side of which pour copious streams of the
fluid, while, ever and anon, a mouthful of the hard black seeds are
shot out in all directions, to the great annoyance of all within reach.
When I first tasted this fruit I thought it very vile stuff indeed, but
before the end of the season we all learned to like it. When taken with
claret and sugar it makes delicious wine and water.
It is the custom for the gentlemen to go to market at Cincinnati; the
smartest men in the place, and those of the “highest standing” do not
scruple to leave their beds with the sun, six days in the week, and,
prepared with a mighty basket, to sally forth in search of meat,
butter, eggs and vegetables. I have continually seen them returning,
with their weighty basket on one arm and an enormous ham depending from
the other.
And now arrived the 4th of July, that greatest of all American
festivals. On the 4th of July, 1776, the declaration of their
independence was signed, at the State-house in Philadelphia.
To me, the dreary coldness and want of enthusiasm in American manners
is one of their greatest defects, and I therefore hailed the
demonstrations of general feeling which this day elicits with real
pleasure. On the 4th of July the hearts of the people seem to awaken
from a three hundred and sixty-four days’ sleep; they appear
high-spirited, gay, animated, social, generous, or at least liberal in
expense; and would they but refrain from spitting on that hallowed day,
I should say, that on the 4th of July, at least, they appeared to be an
amiable people. It is true that the women have but little to do with
the pageantry, the splendour, or the gaiety of the day; but, setting
this defect aside, it was indeed a glorious sight to behold a jubilee
so heartfelt as this; and had they not the bad taste and bad feeling to
utter an annual oration, with unvarying abuse of the mother country, to
say nothing of the warlike manifesto called Declaration of
Independence, our gracious king himself might look upon the scene and
say that it was good; nay, even rejoice, that twelve millions of
bustling bodies, at four thousand miles distance from his throne and
his altars, should make their own laws, and drink their own tea, after
the fashion that pleased them best.
One source of deep interest to us, in this new clime, was the frequent
recurrence of thunderstorms. Those who have only listened to thunder in
England have but a faint idea of the language which the gods speak when
they are angry. Thomson’s description, however, will do: it is hardly
possible that words can better paint the spectacle, or more truly echo
to the sound, than his do. The only point he does not reach is the vast
blaze of rose-coloured light that ever and anon sets the landscape on
fire.
In reading this celebrated description in America, and observing how
admirably true it was to nature there, I seemed to get a glimpse at a
poet’s machinery, and to perceive, that in order to produce effect he
must give his images more vast than he finds them in nature; but the
proportions must be just, and the colouring true. Every thing seems
colossal on this great continent; if it rains, if it blows, if it
thunders, it is all done _fortissimo_; but I often felt terror yield to
wonder and delight, so grand, so glorious were the scenes a storm
exhibited. Accidents are certainly more frequent than with us, but not
so much so as reasonably to bring terror home to one’s bosom every time
a mass of lurid clouds is seen rolling up against the wind.
It seems hardly fair to quarrel with a place because its staple
commodity is not pretty, but I am sure I should have liked Cincinnati
much better if the people had not dealt so very largely in hogs. The
immense quantity of business done in this line would hardly be believed
by those who had not witnessed it. I never saw a newspaper without
remarking such advertisements as the following:
“Wanted, immediately, 4,000 fat hogs.”
“For sale, 2,000 barrels of prime pork.”
But the annoyance came nearer than this; if I determined upon a walk up
Main-street, the chances were five hundred to one against my reaching
the shady side without brushing by a snout fresh dripping from the
kennel; when we had screwed our courage to the enterprise of mounting a
certain noble looking sugar-loaf hill, that promised pure air and a
fine view, we found the brook we had to cross, at its foot, red with
the stream from a pig slaughter house; while our noses, instead of
meeting “the thyme that loves the green hill’s breast,” were greeted by
odours that I will not describe, and which I heartily hope my readers
cannot imagine; our feet, that on leaving the city had expected to
press the flowery sod, literally got entangled in pigs’ tails and
jaw-bones: and thus the prettiest walk in the neighbourhood was
interdicted for ever.
One of the sights to stare at in America is that of houses moving from
place to place. We were often amused by watching this exhibition of
mechanical skill in the streets. They make no difficulty of moving
dwellings from one part of the town to another. Those I saw travelling
were all of them frame-houses, that is, built wholly of wood, except
the chimneys; but it is said that brick buildings are sometimes treated
in the same manner. The largest dwelling that I saw in motion was one
containing two stories of four rooms each; forty oxen were yoked to it.
The first few yards brought down the two stacks of chimneys, but it
afterwards went on well. The great difficulties were the first getting
it in motion and the stopping exactly in the right place. This
locomotive power was extremely convenient at Cincinnati, as the
constant improvements going on there made it often desirable to change
a wooden dwelling for one of brick; and whenever this happened, we were
sure to see the ex No.100 of Main-street or the ex No.55 of Second
street creeping quietly out of town, to take possession of a humble
suburban station on the common above it.
The most agreeable acquaintance I made in Cincinnati, and indeed one of
the most talented men I ever met, was Mr. Flint, the author of several
extremely clever volumes, and the editor of the Western Monthly Review.
His conversational powers are of the highest order: he is the only
person I remember to have known with first rate powers of satire, and
even of sarcasm, whose kindness of nature and of manner remained
perfectly uninjured. In some of his critical notices there is a
strength and keenness second to nothing of the kind I have ever read.
He is a warm patriot, and so true-hearted an American, that we could
not always be of the same opinion on all the subjects we discussed; but
whether it were the force and brilliancy of his language, his genuine
and manly sincerity of feeling, or his bland and gentleman-like manner
that beguiled me, I know not, but certainly he is the only American I
ever listened to whose unqualified praise of his country did not appear
to me somewhat overstrained and ridiculous.
On one occasion, but not at the house of Mr. Flint, I passed an evening
in company with a gentleman said to be a scholar and a man of reading;
he was also what is called a _serious_ gentleman, and he appeared to
have pleasure in feeling that his claim to distinction was acknowledged
in both capacities. There was a very amiable _serious_ lady in the
company, to whom he seemed to trust for the development of his
celestial pretensions, and to me he did the honour of addressing most
of his terrestrial superiority. The difference between us was, that
when he spoke to her, he spoke as to a being who, if not his equal, was
at least deserving high distinction; and he gave her smiles, such as
Michael might have vouchsafed to Eve. To me he spoke as Paul to the
offending Jews; he did not, indeed, shake his raiment at me, but he
used his pocket-handkerchief so as to answer the purpose; and if every
sentence did not end with “I am clean,” pronounced by his lips, his
tone, his look, his action, fully supplied the deficiency.
Our poor Lord Byron, as may be supposed, was the bull’s-eye against
which every dart in his black little quiver was aimed. I had never
heard any serious gentleman talk of Lord Byron at full length before,
and I listened attentively. It was evident that the noble passages
which are graven on the hearts of the genuine lovers of poetry had
altogether escaped the serious gentleman’s attention; and it was
equally evident that he knew by rote all those that they wish the
mighty master had never written. I told him so, and I shall not soon
forget the look he gave me.
Of other authors his knowledge was very imperfect, but his criticisms
very amusing. Of Pope, he said, “He is so entirely gone by, that in
_our_ country it is considered quite fustian to speak of him”
But I persevered, and named “the Rape of the Lock” as evincing some
little talent, and being in a tone that might still hope for admittance
in the drawing-room; but, on the mention of this poem, the serious
gentleman became almost as strongly agitated as when he talked of Don
Juan; and I was unfeignedly at a loss to comprehend the nature of his
feelings, till he muttered, with an indignant shake of the
handkerchief, “The very title!”
At the name of Dryden he smiled, and the smile spoke as plainly as a
smile could speak, “How the old woman twaddles!”
“We only know Dryden by quotations. Madam, and these, indeed, are found
only in books that have long since had their day.”
“And Shakspeare, sir?”
“Shakspeare, Madam, is obscene, and, thank God, WE are sufficiently
advanced to have found it out! If we must have the abomination of stage
plays, let them at least be marked by the refinement of the age in
which we live.”
This was certainly being _au courant du jour_.
Of Massenger he knew nothing. Of Ford he had never heard. Gray had had
his day. Prior he had never read, but understood he was a very childish
writer. Chaucer and Spenser he tied in a couple, and dismissed by
saying, that he thought it was neither more nor less than affectation
to talk of authors who wrote in a tongue no longer intelligible.
This was the most literary conversation I was ever present at in
Cincinnati.[1]
[1] The pleasant, easy, unpretending talk on all subjects, which I
enjoyed in Mr. Flint’s family, was an exception to every thing else I
met at Cincinnati.
In truth, there are many reasons which render a very general diffusion
of literature impossible in America. I can scarcely class the universal
reading of newspapers as an exception to this remark; if I could, my
statement would be exactly the reverse, and I should say that America
beat the world in letters. The fact is, that throughout all ranks of
society, from the successful merchant, which is the highest, to the
domestic serving man, which is the lowest, they are all too actively
employed to read, except at such broken moments as may suffice for a
peep at a newspaper. It is for this reason, I presume, that every
_American newspaper_ is more or less a magazine, wherein the merchant
may scan while he holds out his hand for an invoice, “Stanzas by Mrs.
Hemans,” or a garbled extract from Moore’s Life of Byron; the lawyer
may study his brief faithfully, and yet contrive to pick up the
valuable dictum of some American critic, that “Bulwer’s novels are
decidedly superior to Sir Walter Scott’s;” nay, even the auctioneer may
find time, as he bustles to his tub, or his tribune, to support his
pretensions to polite learning, by glancing his quick eye over the
columns, and reading that “Miss Mitford’s descriptions are
indescribable.” If you buy a yard of ribbon, the shopkeeper lays down
his newspaper, perhaps two or three, to measure it. I have seen a
brewer’s drayman perched on the shaft of his dray and reading one
newspaper, while another was tucked under his arm; and I once went into
the cottage of a country shoemaker, of the name of Harris, where I saw
a newspaper half full of “original” poetry, directed to Madison F.
Harris. To be sure of the fact, I asked the man if his name were
Madison. “Yes, Madam, Madison Franklin Harris is my name.” The last and
the lyre divided his time, I fear too equally, for he looked pale and
poor.
This, I presume, is what is meant by the general diffusion of
knowledge, so boasted of in the United States; such as it is, the
diffusion of it is general enough, certainly; but I greatly doubt its
being advantageous to the population.
The only reading men I met with were those who made letters their
profession; and of these, there were some who would hold a higher rank
in the great Republic (not of America, but of letters), did they write
for persons less given to the study of magazines and newspapers; and
they might hold a higher rank still, did they write for the few and not
for the many. I was always drawing a parallel, perhaps a childish one,
between the external and internal deficiency of polish and of elegance
in the native volumes of the country. Their compositions have not that
condensation of thought, or that elaborate finish, which the
consciousness of writing for the scholar and the man of taste is
calculated to give; nor have their dirty blue paper and slovenly
types[2] the polished elegance that fits a volume for the hand or the
eye of the fastidious epicure in literary enjoyment. The first book I
bought in America was the “Chronicles of the Cannongate.” In asking the
price, I was agreeably surprised to hear a dollar and a half named,
being about one sixth of what I used to pay for its fellows in England;
but on opening the grim pages, it was long before I could again call
them cheap. To be sure the pleasure of a bright well-printed page ought
to be quite lost sight of in the glowing, galloping, bewitching course
that the imagination sets out upon with a new Waverley novel; and so it
was with me till I felt the want of it; and then I am almost ashamed to
confess how often, in turning the thin dusky pages, my poor earth-born
spirit paused in its pleasure, to sigh for hot-pressed wire-wove.
[2] I must make an exception in favour of the American Quarterly
Review. To the eye of the body it is in all respects exactly the same
thing as the English Quarterly Review.