I beg your pardon, but you were speaking of rash leaps at hasty
conclusions. Are you quite sure you designed that remark for me? Have
you not, in the hurry of correspondence, slipped a paragraph into my
letter which belongs of right to somebody else? When did you ever find
me leap at wrong conclusions? I pause for a reply.
Pray, sir, did you ever find me admiring Mr. ----? On the contrary, did
you never hear of my protesting through good, better, and best report
that he was not an open or a candid man, and would one day, beyond all
doubt, displease you by not being so? I pause again for a reply.
Are you quite sure, Mr. Macready--and I address myself to you with the
sternness of a man in the pit--are you quite sure, sir, that you do not
view America through the pleasant mirage which often surrounds a thing
that has been, but not a thing that is? Are you quite sure that when you
were here you relished it as well as you do now when you look back upon
it. The early spring birds, Mr. Macready, _do_ sing in the groves that
you were, very often, not over well pleased with many of the new
country's social aspects. Are the birds to be trusted? Again I pause for
a reply.
My dear Macready, I desire to be so honest and just to those who have so
enthusiastically and earnestly welcomed me, that I burned the last
letter I wrote to you--even to you to whom I would speak as to
myself--rather than let it come with anything that might seem like an
ill-considered word of disappointment. I preferred that you should think
me neglectful (if you could imagine anything so wild) rather than I
should do wrong in this respect. Still it is of no use. I _am_
disappointed. This is not the republic I came to see; this is not the
republic of my imagination. I infinitely prefer a liberal monarchy--even
with its sickening accompaniments of court circulars--to such a
government as this. The more I think of its youth and strength, the
poorer and more trifling in a thousand aspects it appears in my eyes. In
everything of which it has made a boast--excepting its education of the
people and its care for poor children--it sinks immeasurably below the
level I had placed it upon; and England, even England, bad and faulty as
the old land is, and miserable as millions of her people are, rises in
the comparison.
_You_ live here, Macready, as I have sometimes heard you imagining!
_You!_ Loving you with all my heart and soul, and knowing what your
disposition really is, I would not condemn you to a year's residence on
this side of the Atlantic for any money. Freedom of opinion! Where is
it? I see a press more mean, and paltry, and silly, and disgraceful than
any country I ever knew. If that is its standard, here it is. But I
speak of Bancroft, and am advised to be silent on that subject, for he
is "a black sheep--a Democrat." I speak of Bryant, and am entreated to
be more careful, for the same reason. I speak of international
copyright, and am implored not to ruin myself outright. I speak of Miss
Martineau, and all parties--Slave Upholders and Abolitionists, Whigs,
Tyler Whigs, and Democrats, shower down upon me a perfect cataract of
abuse. "But what has she done? Surely she praised America enough!" "Yes,
but she told us of some of our faults, and Americans can't bear to be
told of their faults. Don't split on that rock, Mr. Dickens, don't write
about America; we are so very suspicious."
Freedom of opinion! Macready, if I had been born here and had written my
books in this country, producing them with no stamp of approval from any
other land, it is my solemn belief that I should have lived and died
poor, unnoticed, and a "black sheep" to boot. I never was more convinced
of anything than I am of that.
The people are affectionate, generous, open-hearted, hospitable,
enthusiastic, good-humoured, polite to women, frank and candid to all
strangers, anxious to oblige, far less prejudiced than they have been
described to be, frequently polished and refined, very seldom rude or
disagreeable. I have made a great many friends here, even in public
conveyances, whom I have been truly sorry to part from. In the towns I
have formed perfect attachments. I have seen none of that greediness and
indecorousness on which travellers have laid so much emphasis. I have
returned frankness with frankness; met questions not intended to be
rude, with answers meant to be satisfactory; and have not spoken to one
man, woman, or child of any degree who has not grown positively
affectionate before we parted. In the respects of not being left alone,
and of being horribly disgusted by tobacco chewing and tobacco spittle,
I have suffered considerably. The sight of slavery in Virginia, the
hatred of British feeling upon the subject, and the miserable hints of
the impotent indignation of the South, have pained me very much; on the
last head, of course, I have felt nothing but a mingled pity and
amusement; on the other, sheer distress. But however much I like the
ingredients of this great dish, I cannot but come back to the point upon
which I started, and say that the dish itself goes against the grain
with me, and that I don't like it.
You know that I am truly a Liberal. I believe I have as little pride as
most men, and I am conscious of not the smallest annoyance from being
"hail fellow well met" with everybody. I have not had greater pleasure
in the company of any set of men among the thousands I have received (I
hold a regular levee every day, you know, which is duly heralded and
proclaimed in the newspapers) than in that of the carmen of Hertford,
who presented themselves in a body in their blue frocks, among a crowd
of well-dressed ladies and gentlemen, and bade me welcome through their
spokesman. They had all read my books, and all perfectly understood
them. It is not these things I have in my mind when I say that the man
who comes to this country a Radical and goes home again with his
opinions unchanged, must be a Radical on reason, sympathy, and
reflection, and one who has so well considered the subject that he has
no chance of wavering.
We have been to Boston, Worcester, Hertford, New Haven, New York,
Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, Fredericksburgh, Richmond, and back
to Washington again. The premature heat of the weather (it was eighty
yesterday in the shade) and Clay's advice--how you would like
Clay!--have made us determine not to go to Charleston; but having got to
Richmond, I think I should have turned back under any circumstances. We
remain at Baltimore for two days, of which this is one; then we go to
Harrisburgh. Then by the canal boat and the railroad over the Alleghany
Mountains to Pittsburgh, then down the Ohio to Cincinnati, then to
Louisville, and then to St. Louis. I have been invited to a public
entertainment in every town I have entered, and have refused them; but I
have excepted St. Louis as the farthest point of my travels. My friends
there have passed some resolutions which Forster has, and will show
you. From St. Louis we cross to Chicago, traversing immense prairies.
Thence by the lakes and Detroit to Buffalo, and so to Niagara. A run
into Canada follows of course, and then--let me write the blessed word
in capitals--we turn towards HOME.
Kate has written to Mrs. Macready, and it is useless for me to thank
you, my dearest friend, or her, for your care of our dear children,
which is our constant theme of discourse. Forster has gladdened our
hearts with his account of the triumph of "Acis and Galatea," and I am
anxiously looking for news of the tragedy. Forrest breakfasted with us
at Richmond last Saturday--he was acting there, and I invited him--and
he spoke very gratefully, and very like a man, of your kindness to him
when he was in London.
David Colden is as good a fellow as ever lived; and I am deeply in love
with his wife. Indeed we have received the greatest and most earnest and
zealous kindness from the whole family, and quite love them all. Do you
remember one Greenhow, whom you invited to pass some days with you at
the hotel on the Kaatskill Mountains? He is translator to the State
Office at Washington, has a very pretty wife, and a little girl of five
years old. We dined with them, and had a very pleasant day. The
President invited me to dinner, but I couldn't stay for it. I had a
private audience, however, and we attended the public drawing-room
besides.
Now, don't you rush at the quick conclusion that I have rushed at a
quick conclusion. Pray, be upon your guard. If you can by any process
estimate the extent of my affectionate regard for you, and the rush I
shall make when I reach London to take you by your true right hand, I
don't object. But let me entreat you to be very careful how you come
down upon the sharpsighted individual who pens these words, which you
seem to me to have done in what Willmott would call "one of Mr.
Macready's rushes." As my pen is getting past its work, I have taken a
new one to say that
I am ever, my dear Macready,
Your faithful Friend.
[Sidenote: Mr. Thomas Mitton.]