My father and I remained between five and six months at Cincinnati, and
my remembrances of the time are pleasant ones. In the way of amusement,
to the best of my recollection, there was not much besides rambling over
the country with my brother, the old companion of those London rambles
which seemed to me then almost as far off in the dim past as they do
now. But we were free, tied to no bounds, and very slightly to any
hours. And I enjoyed those rambles immensely. I do not remember that the
country about Cincinnati struck me as especially interesting or
beautiful, and the Ohio, _la belle rivière_, distinctly disappointed me.
But it was a new world, and every object, whether animate or inanimate,
was for us full of interest.
Looking back to those Cincinnati days, I have to say that I liked the
Americans, principally, I think, at that time, as far as my remembrances
serve, because some quality in their manners and behaviour had the
effect of making me less shy with them than with others. I was then, and
to a great degree have never ceased to be, painfully shy. How miserably
this weakness afflicts those who suffer from it, how it disqualifies
them and puts them at a disadvantage in circumstances constantly
recurring, those who are free from it cannot imagine. And they glorify
their superiority by saying all sorts of hard things of those who suffer
from shyness--very unjustly in my opinion. Shyness proceeds in almost
all cases, I should say probably in all, from diffidence. A man who
thinks sufficiently well of himself is never shy. Did any one ever see a
vain man shy? I do not think the Americans are an especially vain
people; but there are specialties of their social condition which lead
to every American citizen’s estimate of himself, from the cradle
upwards, being equal to his estimate of any other man. And one
consequence of this is a certain frank and unconstrained manner in their
intercourse with strangers or new acquaintances which is invaluable to a
shy man.
I remember an incident of my first year at Winchester, when I was
between ten and eleven, which is illustrative of the misery which
shyness may inflict. A boy about a year my senior, and taller than I,
was constantly annoying and bullying me, and one day in the presence of
a considerable number of onlookers challenged me to fight him. I
refused, and naturally of course was considered a coward, and had to
endure the jibes and taunts due to one. The explanation of my refusal of
my enemy’s challenge however--never offered to mortal ear before the
confiding of it to this page--was not that I was afraid to fight, but
was too shy to do so. It was not that I could not face all that his
fists could do to me, as I shortly afterwards showed him; but I could
not bring myself to face the publicity of the proposed contest--the
formality of it, the ring, in the centre of which I should have to
perform, and to be a spectacle, and have my performance criticised. All
this was too absolutely intolerable to me. But early the next morning,
chancing to catch my adversary “in meads” with only one or two others
near him, I attacked him to his utter astonishment and dismay, and
without very much difficulty gave him as good a pummelling as my heart
desired.
Whether this incident originated the nickname “Badger,” which I bore at
Winchester, as being one indisposed to fight, but likely to prove
dangerous if “drawn,” I do not know.
It was during our stay at Cincinnati that my father and I paid a visit
to an establishment of “Shaking Quakers,” as they were called, and I
believe called themselves at Mount Lebanon, about five and twenty miles
from Cincinnati. We were hospitably received, paying a moderate
remuneration for our lodging and food. Both these were supplied of
exactly the same kind and quality as used by the inmates of the
establishment, and were, though very simple and plain, admirable in
quality. The extensive farm, on which the Shakers lived, and which they
cultivated by their own labour, was their own property, having been
originally purchased at a time when land was of very small market
value, and brought under tillage by the labour of the members. But
nothing in the nature of private property was held or retained by any
one.
The number of women was about equal to that of the men. But there were
no children. None were born in the establishment, and no man or woman
joining it was allowed to bring any. Nor was marriage or connubial life
in any sort recognised or permitted. And of course these conditions
rendered the whole experiment wholly useless as an example for the
conduct of any ordinary community, or for an indication of what may be
economically accomplished for such.
We did not eat in company with the members, though faring, as I have
said, exactly as they did, but we were present at their religious
worship, or at what stood in the place of such. This consisted in a
species of dance, if the uncouth jumping or “shaking” which they
practised could be so called. The men and women were assembled and
danced in the same room, but not together. They jumped and “shook”
themselves in two divided bodies. Any spectator would be disposed to
imagine that the whole object of the performance was bodily exercise. It
seemed to be carried on to the utmost extent that breath and bodily
fatigue would permit. Many were mopping the perspiration from their
faces. No laughing or gladness, or exhilaration whatever appeared to
accompany or to be caused by the exercise. All was done with an air of
perfect solemnity.
All the men and all the women seemed to be in the enjoyment of excellent
health. Most of them seemed to be somewhat more than well
nourished--rather tending to obesity. They were florid, round-faced,
sleek and heavy in figure. I observed no laughter, and very little
conversation among them. The women were almost all in the prime of life,
and many young. But there was a singular absence of good looks among
them. Some had regular features enough, but they were all heavy, fat,
dull-looking, like well-kept animals. I could not spy one pair of bright
eyes in the place. All, men and women, were quite simply but thoroughly
well and cleanly dressed, not altogether, as I remember, in uniform, but
with very great uniformity. Grey cloth of very fair quality was the
prevailing material of dress for both sexes.
Various articles useful for country life of the simpler sort were
manufactured by them for sale. And I learned that all the articles so
made had throughout the country side a high reputation for excellence in
their kinds. And there could be no doubt that the Shaker community was
thriving and probably accumulating money. To what object they should do
so seems a difficult question.
I heard of no sickness or infirmity among them. Such there must of
course have been occasionally, and I presume that the infirm, the sick,
and the dying must have been cared for.
These people lived in perfect equality; and their community proved that
a community of men and women (unburthened with children) could by an
amount of labour by no means excessive, or even arduous, provide
themselves with an ample sufficiency of all things needful for their
material well-being and comfort. It is true that they paid no rent, but
I am disposed to think, from what I heard, that they might have paid a
moderate rent for the land they cultivated, and still continued to do
well. But it was impossible to avoid the reflection that this well-being
was merely that of well-kept animals. There was an air of unmistakable
stupidity over the whole establishment. Nobody laughed. Nobody seemed to
converse. There was excellent lodging, clothing, and food in plenty till
they died! And that was all. Perhaps it may be fairly assumed that no
one, save people of very mediocre powers and intelligence, had ever felt
tempted to become a Shaking Quaker. But it can hardly be said that their
experiment exhibited a very tempting sample of a world to be modelled
after their fashion!
It has been said by some observers that this materially flourishing
establishment has so many points of similarity with the conventual
institutions of Roman Catholicism that it may be considered as supplying
the same natural want to which those institutions are supposed to
correspond, an asylum, that is to say, for those of either sex, who,
from various circumstances of fortune, or of temperament, are unfitted
for the struggles of the world, and find themselves left stranded on
the banks of the great social stream. The impressions I received from
my visit to Mount Lebanon do not dispose me to accept any such
explanation of the Shaking Quaker _raison d’être_. I saw no signs
whatever, among either the men or the women, of individuals who had been
tempest-tossed in any of the world’s _maelstroms_, or of temperaments
for which the contemplative life might be supposed to have had greater
attractions than the active life of the world. The characteristics which
were most notably observable were of a diametrically opposed kind. One
would say that they were men and women thoroughly and unanimously minded
to make for themselves in the most judiciously contrived manner a
comfortable and clean sty, with abundant and perennial supply of
everything needed for their bodily wants. Whether love or hatred, as
they are found to exist in monastic communities, existed among them, of
course I had not sufficient opportunity for even guessing. But assuredly
it may be said with some confidence of not being mistaken, that neither
those nor any other passions had left any of their usual marks on those
sleek bodies and placid meaningless faces. One would have said that the
main and engrossing object of existence at Mount Lebanon was digesting.
I have recently learned that the community continues to exist under the
same conditions as those under which I saw it.
I made acquaintance, I remember, at Cincinnati, with Mr. Longworth, who
was, or became well known throughout America for his successful efforts
in viticulture. He was one of those men who, being by no means
entertaining companions on any other subject, become so, if you will
talk to them upon their own. I have often thought that the “sink the
shop” maxim is a great mistake. If I had to pass an hour with a
chimney-sweep, I should probably find him very good company if he would
talk exclusively about sweeping chimneys. Mr. Longworth was extremely
willing to talk exclusively on schemes for the introduction of the vine
into the western states, and on that subject was well worth listening
to. I find a note in a diary, written by me at that time, to the effect
that he was then (1828) employing a large number of Germans on his
estate at Columbia near Cincinnati at a little less than one shilling a
day and their food. I remarked that this seemed scarcely in accord with
the current accounts of the high price of labour in the states, and was
answered that his--Mr. Longworth’s--bailiff had said to him the other
day, “If those men get to Cincinnati they will be _spoiled_”--a little
touch which rather vividly illustrates one phase of the difference made
in all things by railway communication.
But the most remarkable acquaintance we made at Cincinnati was Hiram
Powers, the subsequently well-known sculptor, with whom I again fell in
many years afterwards at Florence, when he was living there with his
large family, having just acquired a large and lucrative degree of
celebrity by his statue of “The Greek Slave,” purchased by an
Englishman whom my mother had taken to visit his studio. I do not know
by what chance she had first become acquainted with him at Cincinnati.
He was at that time about eighteen years old, much about my own
contemporary; and my mother at once remarked him as a young man of
exceptional talent and promise. He was at that time seeking to live by
his wits, with every prospect of finding that capital abundantly
sufficient for the purpose. There was a Frenchman named Dorfeuille at
Cincinnati, who had established what he called a “museum,”--a show, in
fact, in which he collected anything and everything that he thought
would excite the curiosity of the people and induce them to pay their
quarter dollars for admission. And this M. Dorfeuille, cleverly enough
appreciating young Powers’s capabilities of being useful to him, had
engaged him as factotum and general manager of his establishment.
Powers, casting about for some new “attraction” for the museum, chanced
one evening to talk over the matter with my mother. And it occurred to
her to suggest to him to get up a representation of one of Dante’s
_bolgias_ as described in the _Inferno_, The nascent sculptor, with his
imaginative brain, artistic eye, and clever fingers, caught at the idea
on the instant. And forthwith they set to work, my mother explaining the
poet’s conceptions, suggesting the composition of “tableaux,” and
supplying details, while Powers designed and executed the figures and
the necessary _mise en scène_.
Some months of preparation were needed before the work could be
accomplished, and Dorfeuille, I remember, began to have misgivings as to
recouping himself for the not inconsiderable cost. But at last all was
ready. A vast amount of curiosity had been excited in the place by
preliminary announcements, and the result was an immense success. I have
preserved for nearly sixty years, and have now before me, the programme
and bill of the exhibition as it was drawn up by my mother. It is truly
a curiosity in its kind, and I am tempted to reproduce it here. But it
is too long, occupying four pages of a folio sheet. There are quotations
from the _Inferno_, translated by my mother (no copy of any published
translation being then and there procurable), explanations of the
author’s meaning, and descriptions in very bugaboo style, and in every
variety of type with capitals of every sort of size, of all the horrors
of the supposed scene.
The success was so great, and the curiosity, not only of the Cincinnati
world but of the farmers round about and their families, was so eager,
that the press of spectators was inconveniently great, and M. Dorfeuille
began to fear that his properties might be damaged by indiscreet desires
to touch as well as see. So Powers arranged a slight metal rod as a
barrier between the show and the spectators, and contrived to charge it
with electricity, while an announcement, couched in terrible and mystic
terms and in verse, by my mother, to the effect that an awful doom
awaited any mortal rash enough to approach the mysteries of the nether
world too nearly, was appended to the doors and walls. The astonishment
and dismay felt, and the laughter provoked, by those who were rash
enough to do so, may be imagined!
Upon the whole those autumn and winter months passed pleasantly, and
have left pleasant recollections in my memory. Doubtless there were many
causes of anxiety for my elders; but to the best of my remembrance they
touched us young people very lightly. We had many more or less agreeable
acquaintances, and I have a vivid recollection of the pleasure I
received from the fact that they all belonged to types that were
altogether new to me--if indeed it could be said of people, to me so
apparently unclassifiable, that they belonged to any type at all. The
cleverest among them was a Dr. Price, a very competent physician with a
large practice, a foolish friendly little wife and a pair of pretty
daughters. He was a jovial, florid, rotund little man who professed,
more even, as I remember, to my astonishment than my horror, perfect
Atheism. His wife and daughters used to go to church without apparently
producing the slightest interruption of domestic harmony. “La! the
Doctor don’t think anything more of the Bible than of an old newspaper!”
Mrs. Price would say; “but then doctors, you know, they have their own
opinions!” And the girls used to say, “Papa is an Atheist,” just as they
would have said of the multiform persuasions of their acquaintances,
“Mr. This is a Baptist,” and “Mrs. That is a Methodist.” And I remember
well the confusion and displacement occasioned in my mind by finding
that Dr. Price did not seem on the whole to be an abandoned man, and
enjoyed to a high degree the respect of his townsmen.
The two pretty daughters, girls of eighteen or nineteen, used to have at
their house frequent dances. We were constant and welcome guests, but
alas! I was not--either then or ever since--a dancer; the reason being
precisely the same as that which prevented my fighting at Winchester, as
above recorded. I was too shy! In other words I had too low an opinion
of myself, of my performance as a dancer, should I attempt it, and above
all of my acceptability as a partner, ever to overcome my diffidence.
I was, as I have said when speaking of my earliest years, by no means a
prepossessing child, and as a young man I was probably less so. I had
never any sort of pretension to good looks, or to elegance of figure. I
was five feet eight in height, and thick, sturdy, and ungainly in make,
healthy and pure in complexion and skin as a baby, but with an
“abbreviated nose”--as George Eliot says of me in finding me like a
portrait of Galileo--and pale coloured lanky hair. All which would not
have signified a button, if I could have been as ignorant of the facts
in question as hundreds of my contemporaries, labouring under equal
disadvantages, were in their own case; but I was _not_ ignorant of these
facts, and the consciousness of them constituted a most mischievous and
disqualifying little repast off the tree of knowledge. It has, among
many other results, prevented me from ever dancing. I should have liked
much, very much to do so. I was abundantly well disposed to seek the
society of the other sex. Though I never had a very perfect ear for
tune, I had a markedly strong perception of time, and feeling for
rhythm, and therefore should probably have danced well. But the
persuasion that any girl, whom I might have induced to dance with me,
would have far rather been dancing with somebody else, was too much for
me!
I should unquestionably have been a far happier young fellow, if I had
undoubtingly believed myself to have been adapted in all respects to
attract the favourable attention and conciliate the liking of all I met.
But can I even now, looking back over the vista of sixty years, regret
that I was able to see myself as others saw me, and wish that I had
inhabited that fool’s paradise, which is planted with conceits in place
of insights?
So I got no dancing with the Cincinnati girls. But there were
theatricals, also at the house of Dr. and Mrs. Price, and in those I did
not refuse to join. It may seem that this would have been at least as
great a trial to a shy man as any other form of self-exhibition; but it
was not so. I think, so far as I am able at this distance of time to
examine my mind upon the subject, it would have been impossible for me
to attempt the representation of any personage intended to be attractive
to the spectator, or such as to be confounded in his mind with my own
personality. But it was proposed that I should act Falstaff in the
_Merry Wives of Windsor_, and to this the difficulties referred to did
not apply. I played Falstaff with immense success to an assuredly not
very critical audience. My own impression however is, that I did it
well. I think that I had reason to flatter myself, as I did flatter
myself at the time, that all those, who heard me, understood the play,
and enjoyed the humour of the situations better than they had done
before.
I have played many parts since on various stages in different parts of
the world, but that, I think, was my sole Shakesperian attempt. And the
members of that merry and kindly theatrical company! They have made
their last exit from the larger boards we are all treading, every man
and woman, every lad and lass of them. Not one but the old Falstaff of
the company remains to write this chronicle of sixty years since!
There were very few formal meetings among the notabilities of the little
Cincinnati world of that time, but there was an amount of homely
friendliness that impressed me very favourably; and there was plenty of
that generous and abounding hospitality which subsequent experience has
taught me to consider an especially American characteristic. I have
since that time shared the splendid hospitality of splendid American
hosts, and I have been under American roofs where there was little save
a heartfelt welcome to offer. But the heartwarming effect produced by
the latter was the same in both cases. How often have we all sat at
magnificent boards where the host’s too evident delight consisted in
giving you what you could not give him, and in the exulting
manifestation of his magnificence. This is very rarely the feeling of an
American host. He is thinking not of himself, but of you; and the object
he is striving at when giving you of his best is that you should enjoy
yourself while under his roof; that you should have, as he would phrase
it, “a good time.” And upon my word he almost invariably succeeds.
Nor were the Cincinnati girls in 1829 like the New York belles of 1887.
But there was much of the same charm about them, which arises from
unaffected and unself-regarding desire to please. American girls are
accused of being desperate flirts. But many an Englishman has been
deceived by imagining that the smiles and cheerfulness and laughing
chatter of some charming girl new to Europe were intended for _his_
special benefit, when they were in truth only the perfectly natural and
unaffected outcome of a desire to do her duty in that state of life to
which it had pleased God to call her! Only beams falling, like those of
the sun, upon the just and the unjust alike!
There is another point on which Americans, both men and women, are very
generally called over the coals by English people, as I think somewhat
unreasonably. They are, it is said, everlastingly talking about the
greatness and grandeur of their country, and never easy without
extorting admissions of this. All this is to a great extent true--at
least to this extent, that an American is always pleased to hear the
greatness of his country recognised. But when I remember the
thoroughness with which that cardinal article of an Englishman’s faith
(sixty years ago!), that every Englishman could thrash three Frenchmen,
was enforced with entire success on my youthful mind, I can hardly find
it in my conscience to blame an American’s pride in his country. Why,
good heavens! what an insensible block he would be if he was _not_ proud
of his country, to whose greatness, it is to be observed, each
individual American now extant has contributed in a greater degree than
can be said to be the case as regards England and every extant
Englishman; inasmuch as our position has been won by the work of, say, a
thousand years, and his by that of less than a century. Surely the
creation of the United States as they now exist within that time _is_
such a feat of human intelligence and energy as the world has never
before seen, and is scarcely likely to see again. I confess that the
expression of American patriotism is never offensive to me. I feel
somewhat as the old Cornish wrestler felt, who said with immense pride,
when he was told that his son had “whopped” the whole parish, “Ay, I
should think so! Why, he has whopped _me_ afore now!”
Yes! I liked the Americans as I first made acquaintance with them almost
among the backwoods at Cincinnati sixty years ago; and I like them as I
have since known them better. For I have seen a great deal of them; far
more than an Englishman living at home would be likely to do, during my
many years’ residence in Italy. The American “colony,” to use the common
though incorrect phrase, is large both at Florence and in Rome--of late
years fully as large, I think, as that from England. And not only do the
two bodies associate indiscriminately with each other in perfect
neighbourliness and good fellowship, but they do so, forming one single
oasis in the midst of the surrounding continental life, in a manner
which makes one constantly feel how infinitely nearer an American is to
an Englishman in ideas, habits, ways, and civilisation, than either of
them are to any other denizen of earth’s surface.
I was sorry when the time came for us to leave Cincinnati, though as
usual with me, the prospect of the journey, which we were to make by a
different route from that by which we had travelled westward, was a joy
and a consolation. My father and I returned, leaving my mother, my two
sisters still quite children, and my brother Henry at Cincinnati. The
proposed institution--bazaar, athenæum, lecture-hall, or whatever it was
to be, or to be called--had been determined on, and the site, to the
best of my recollection, selected and purchased; but nothing had yet
been done towards raising the building. Contracts had been entered into,
and my father was on his return to London to send out a quantity of
goods for the carrying out of the commercial part of the scheme.
He did so. But I had no share in or knowledge of the operations
undertaken for this purpose, and may therefore as well relate here the
upshot of the ill-fated enterprise. I learned subsequently that very
large quantities of goods were sent out, of kinds and qualities totally
unfitted for the purpose. The building was duly raised, and I have been
told by Americans who had seen it, that it was a handsome and imposing
one. But the net result was disaster and ruin. My father having been
educated to be a Chancery barrister, was a good one. He became a farmer
with no training or knowledge necessary for the calling, and it proved
ruinous to him. He then embarked on this commercial speculation, which,
inasmuch as he was still more ignorant of all such matters, than he was
even of farming, turned out still more entirely disastrous.
My father and I, as I have said, did not return from Cincinnati to New
York by the same route by which we had travelled westward. We went by
the lakes and Niagara, visiting also Trenton Falls _en route_. Had I
written this page immediately after my journey, instead of sixty years
after, I might have been justified in attempting--and no doubt should in
any case have attempted--some description of the great “water
privilege,” which I saw as it will never be seen again. The two great
cataclysms which have occurred since that time, have entirely changed,
and in a great measure spoiled, the great sight. And now, I am told,
this “so-called nineteenth century” (as I read the other day in the
fervid discourse of some pessimist orator) intends before it closes to
utilise the lake as a milldam and the fall as so much “power.”
I remember that I enjoyed Trenton most. It appealed much less, of
course, to the imagination and the sense of wonder, but far more to
one’s, appreciation of the beautiful.
Our Niagara visit was in great measure spoiled by my father’s illness.
He was suffering from one of his worst sick headaches. He dragged
himself painfully to the usual spot near the hotel whence the fall is
commanded, and, having looked, got back to his bed. I had plenty of
hours at my disposal for rambling in all directions, but, as usual with
me, had not a coin of any sort in my pocket. The fall and its environs
were not as jealously locked and gated and guarded as has been the case
since; but I was assured that I should be very unwise to attempt to
penetrate below and behind the fall without a guide, and I should have
been most willing to employ one had I possessed the means. But to lose
the opportunity of enjoying a sight to which I had so eagerly looked
forward, was out of the question; and I did succeed in making my way by
the slippery and rather terrible path behind the fall, rewarded by an
effect of the sun on the sheet of falling water as perfect and admirable
as if it had been ordered expressly for me, and none the worse for the
enterprise save returning to the inn as thoroughly drenched as if I had
been dragged through the fall! Little enough I cared for that--in those
days!
I may mention here one of those singular coincidences which, though in
reality so frequently occurring, are objected to in a novelist’s pages
as passing the bounds of credibility. Many years after the date of my
visit to Niagara the mother of my present wife was there, and saw from
the balcony of the hotel a boat with two rowers in it, who had
incautiously approached too near the fall, carried over it! Her account
of the horror of the sight, and of the sudden and evident despair of the
frantically struggling rowers was very impressive, and hardly less so
when I heard it for the second time from an American met by chance in
Italy, who, sitting in that same balcony at that same hour, had
witnessed the same catastrophe!
At New York we were again most kindly and cordially received by Mr.
Wilkes, who gave my father much advice respecting his projected
Cincinnati venture--advice wholly, as I take it, ignored.
Taught by experience, however, my father did not attempt a second
steerage passage. We came back comfortably enough, and had an entirely
prosperous voyage, the result being that my remembrances of it are very
far less vivid than those of my steerage experience. We reached England
in March, and again took up our abode at Harrow Weald, where I, with
such very imperfect means and appliances as were at my disposition, was
to employ the abundant hours in preparing, in accordance with my own
unassisted lights, for the university.
Bad, however, as my father’s circumstances were at this time, and little
pleasant in any way as was our life in the farm-house at Harrow Weald, I
remember an excursion made by him and me, the only object of which, I
think, could have been amusement. My father had an old friend named
Skinner (no relative of the vicar of my uncle Meetkerke’s parish of
Julians, of whom I have spoken in a former chapter), who was the rector
of a parish near Bath. He was a widower, living with an only daughter,
and was, I remember, an enthusiastic student of ancient British history
in connection with the localities around him. One of the two days we
remained with him was devoted to a visit to Cheddar Cliffs. Mr. Skinner
mounted us, and we rode a _partie carrée_, he and my father, Miss
Skinner and I, some twelve or fourteen miles to Cheddar. She was a
pretty, bright girl, and I found her a charming companion in a scramble
to the top of the cliffs overlooking the gorge through which the road
runs. We became, indeed, such good friends, that, on our homeward ride,
we gradually drew away from our respective parents and reached home a
good half hour before they did--which procured for us both a scolding
for knocking the horses up.
It was roughish riding, too, as I remember, for the road was very
different from what I found it some months ago, when, revisiting
Cheddar, I saw on the top of the hill a notice to bicycle riders that
the descent is dangerous for them.