out of Massachusetts, with whom we passed the afternoon, climbing higher
and higher among the pines, ferns, and blue-berries of the mountain, to
get wider and wider views. They told me that I saw Albany, but I was by
no means sure of it. This large city lay in the landscape like an
anthill in a meadow. Long before sunset I was at my window again,
watching the gradual lengthening of the shadows and purpling of the
landscape. It was more beautiful than the sunrise of this morning, and
less so than that of the morrow. Of this last I shall give no
description, for I would not weary others with what is most sacred to
me. Suffice it that it gave me a vivid idea of the process of creation,
from the moment when all was without form and void, to that when light
was commanded, and there was light. Here, again, I was humbled by seeing
what such things are to some who watch in vain for what they are not
made to see. A gentleman and lady in the hotel intended to have left the
place on Sunday. Having overslept that morning's sunrise, and arrived
too late for that on Saturday, they were persuaded to stay till Monday
noon; and I was pleased, on rising at four on Monday morning, to see
that they were in the piazza below, with a telescope. We met at
breakfast, all faint with hunger, of course.
"Well, Miss M.," said the gentleman, discontentedly, "I suppose you were
disappointed in the sunrise."
"No, I was not."
"Why, do you think the sun was any handsomer here than at New-York?"
I made no answer; for what could one say? But he drove me by questions
to tell what I expected to see in the sun.
"I did not expect to see the sun green or blue."
"What did you expect, then?"
I was obliged to explain that it was the effect of the sun on the
landscape that I had been looking for.
"Upon the landscape! Oh! but we saw that yesterday."
The gentleman was perfectly serious; quite earnest in all this. When we
were departing, a foreign tourist was heard to complain of the high
charges! High charges! As if we were to be supplied for nothing on a
perch where the wonder is if any but the young ravens get fed! When I
considered what a drawback it is in visiting mountain-tops that one is
driven down again almost immediately by one's bodily wants, I was ready
to thank the people devoutly for harbouring us on any terms, so that we
might think out our thoughts, and compose our emotions, and take our
fill of that portion of our universal and eternal inheritance.
WEDDINGS.
"God, the best maker of all marriages,
Combine your hearts in one!"
_Henry V._
I was present at four weddings in the United States, and at an offer of
marriage.
The offer of marriage ought hardly to be so called, however. It was a
petition from a slave to be allowed to wed (as slaves wed) the nursemaid
of a lady in whose house I was staying. The young man could either write
a little, or had employed some one who could to prepare his epistle for
him. It ran from corner to corner of the paper, which was daubed with
diluted wafer, like certain love-letters nearer home than Georgia. Here
are the contents:
"Miss Cunningham it is My wishes to companion in your Present and I
hope you will Be peeze at it and I hope that you will not think Hard
of Me I have Ben to the Doctor and he was very well satafide with Me
and I hope you is and Miss Mahuw all so
"thats all I has to say now wiheshen you will grant Me that honour I
will Be very glad.
"S.B. SMITH."
The nursemaid was granted; and as it was a love-match, and as the girl's
mistress is one of the tender, the sore-hearted about having slaves, I
hope the poor creatures are as happy as love in debasement can make
them.
The first wedding I saw in Boston was very like the common run of
weddings in England. It happened to be convenient that the parties
should be married in church; and in the Unitarian church in which they
usually worshipped we accordingly awaited them. I had no acquaintance
with the family, but went on the invitation of the pastor who married
them. The family connexion was large, and the church, therefore, about
half full. The form of celebration is at the pleasure of the pastor;
but, by consent, the administration by pastors of the same sect is very
nearly alike. The promises of the married parties are made reciprocal, I
observed. The service in this instance struck me as being very beautiful
from its simplicity, tenderness, and brevity. There was one variation
from the usual method, in the offering of one of the prayers by a second
pastor, who, being the uncle of the bridegroom, was invited to take a
share in the service.
The young people were to set out for Europe in the afternoon, the bride
being out of health, the dreary drawback upon almost every extensive
plan of action and fair promise of happiness in America. The lady has, I
rejoice to hear, been quite restored by travel; but her sickness threw a
gloom over the celebration, even in the minds of strangers. She and her
husband walked up the middle aisle to the desk where the pastors sat.
They were attended by only one bridesmaid and one groomsman, and were
all in plain travelling dresses. They said steadily and quietly what
they had to say, and walked down the aisle again as they came. Nothing
could be simpler and better, for this was not a marriage where festivity
could have place. If there is any natural scope for joy, let weddings by
all means be joyous; but here there was sickness, with the prospect of a
long family separation, and there was most truth in quietness.
The other wedding I saw in Boston was as gay a one as is often seen. The
parties were opulent, and in the first rank in society. They were
married in the drawing-room of the bride's house, at half past eight in
the evening, by Dr. Channing. The moment the ceremony was over, crowds
of company began to arrive; and the bride, young and delicate, and her
maidens, were niched in a corner of one of the drawing-rooms to courtesy
to all comers. They were so formally placed, so richly and (as it then
seemed) formally dressed, for the present revived antique style of dress
was then quite new, that, in the interval of their courtesies, they
looked like an old picture brought from Windsor Castle. The bride's
mother presided in the other drawing-room, and the bridegroom flitted
about, universally attentive, and on the watch to introduce all visiters
to his lady. The transition from the solemnity of Dr. Channing's service
to the noisy gayeties of a rout was not at all to my taste. I imagined
that it was not to Dr. Channing's either, for his talk with me was on
matters very little resembling anything that we had before our eyes; and
he soon went away. The noise became such as to silence all who were not
inured to the gabble of an American party, the noisiest kind of
assemblage, I imagine (not excepting a Jew's synagogue), on the face of
the globe. I doubt whether any pagans in their worship can raise any
hubbub to equal it. I constantly found in a large party, after trying in
vain every kind of scream that I was capable of, that I must give up,
and satisfy myself with nodding and shaking my head. If I was rightly
understood, well and good; if not, I must let it pass. As the noise
thickened and the heat grew more oppressive, I glanced towards the poor
bride in her corner, still standing, still courtesying; her pale face
growing paler; her nonchalant manner (perhaps the best she could assume)
more indifferent. I was afraid that if all this went on much longer, she
would faint or die upon the spot. It did not last much longer. By eleven
some of the company began to go away, and by a quarter before twelve all
were gone but the comparatively small party (including ourselves) who
were invited to stay to supper.
The chandelier and mantelpieces, I then saw, were dressed with flowers.
There was a splendid supper; and, before we departed, we were carried up
to a well-lighted apartment, where bride cake and the wedding presents
were set out in bright array.
Five days afterward we went, in common with all her acquaintance, to pay
our respects to the bride. The courtyard of her mother's house was
thronged with carriages, though no one seemed to stay five minutes. The
bridegroom received us at the head of the stairs, and led us to his
lady, who courtesied as before. Cake, wine, and liqueurs were handed
round, the visiters all standing. A few words on common subjects were
exchanged, and we were gone to make way for others.
A Quaker marriage which I saw at Philadelphia was scarcely less showy in
its way. It took place at the Cherrystreet church, belonging to the
Hicksites. The reformed Quaker Church, consisting of the followers of
Elias Hicks, bears about the same relation to the old Quakerism as the
Church of England to that of Rome; and, it seems to me, the mutual
dislike is as intense. I question whether religious enmity ever attained
a greater extreme than among the orthodox Friends of Philadelphia. The
Hicksites are more moderate, but are sometimes naturally worried out of
their patience by the meddling, the denunciations, and the calumnies of
the old Quaker societies. The new church is thinking of reforming and
relaxing a good deal farther, and in the celebration of marriage among
other things. It is under consideration (or was when I was there)
whether the process of betrothment should not be simplified, and
marriage in the father's house permitted to such as prefer it to the
church. The wedding at which I was present was, however, performed with
all the formalities.
A Quaker friend of mine, a frequent preacher, suggested, a few days
previously, that a seat had better be reserved for me near the speakers,
that I might have a chance of hearing "in case there should be
communications." I had hopes from this that my friend would speak, and
my wishes were not disappointed.
The spacious church was crowded; and for three or four hours the poor
bride had to sit facing the assemblage, aware, doubtless, that during
the time of silence the occupation of the strangers present, if not of
the friends themselves, would be watching her and her party. She was
pretty, and most beautifully dressed. I have seldom pitied anybody more
than I did her, while she sat palpitating for three hours under the gaze
of some hundreds of people; but, towards the end of the time of silence,
my compassion was transferred to the bridegroom. For want of something
to do, after suppressing many yawns, he looked up to the ceiling; and in
the midst of an empty stare, I imagine he caught the eye of an
acquaintance in the back seats; for he was instantly troubled with a
most irrepressible and unseasonable inclination to laugh. He struggled
manfully with his difficulty; but the smiles would come, broader and
broader. If, by dint of looking steadfastly into his hat for a few
minutes, he attained a becoming gravity, it was gone the moment he
raised his head. I was in a panic lest we should have a scandalous peal
of merriment if something was not given him to do or listen to. Happily
"there were communications," and the course of his ideas was changed.
Of the five speakers, one was an old gentleman whose discourse was an
entire perplexity to me. For nearly an hour he discoursed on Jacob's
ladder; but in a style so rambling, and in a chant so singularly
unmusical as to set attention and remembrace at defiance. Some
parenthetical observations alone stood a chance of being retained, from
their singularity; one, for instance, which he introduced in the course
of his narrative about Jacob setting a stone for a pillow; "a very
different," cried the preacher, raising his chant to the highest pitch,
"a very different pillow, by-the-way, from any that
we--are--accommodated--with." What a contrast was the brief discourse of
my Quaker friend which followed! Her noble countenance was radiant as
the morning; her soft voice, though low, so firm that she was heard to
the farthest corner, and her little sermon as philosophical as it was
devout. "Send forth thy light and thy truth," was her text. She spoke
gratefully of intellectual light as a guide to spiritual truth, and
anticipated and prayed for an ultimate universal diffusion of both. The
certificate of the marriage was read by Dr. Parrish, an elderly
physician of Philadelphia, the very realization of all my imaginings of
the personal appearance of William Penn; with all the dignity and
bonhommie that one fancies Penn invested with in his dealings with the
Indians. Dr. Parrish speaks with affection of the Indians, from the
experience some ancestors of his had of the hospitality of these poor
people when they were in a condition to show hospitality. His
grandfather's family were shipwrecked, and the Indians took the poor
lady and her children home to an inhabited cave, and fed them for many
weeks or months. The tree stump round which they used to sit at meals is
still standing; and Dr. Parrish says that, let it stand as long as it
will, the love of his family to the Indians shall outlast it.
The matrimonial promise was distinctly and well spoken by both the
parties. At the request of the bride and bridegroom, Dr. Parrish asked
me to put the first signature, after their own, to the certificate of
the marriage; and we adjourned for the purpose to an apartment connected
with the church. Most ample sheets of parchment were provided for the
signatures; and there was a prodigious array of names before we left,
when a crowd was still waiting to testify. This multitudinous witnessing
is the pleasantest part of being married by acclamation. If weddings are
not to be private, there seems no question of the superiority of this
Quaker method to that of the Boston marriage I beheld, where there was
all the publicity, without the co-operation and sanction.
The last wedding which I have to give an account of is full of a
melancholy interest to me now. All was so joyous, so simple, so right,
that there seemed no suggestion to evil-boding, no excuse for
anticipating such wo as has followed. On one of the latter days of July,
1835, I reached the village of Stockbridge; the Sedgwicks' village, for
the second time, intending to stay four or five days with my friends
there. I had heard of an approaching wedding in the family connexion,
and was glad that I had planned to leave, so as to be out of the way at
a time when I supposed the presence of foreigners, though friends, might
be easily dispensed with. But when Miss Sedgwick and I were sitting in
her room one bright morning, there was a tap at the door. It was the
pretty black-eyed girl who was to be married the next week. She stood
only a minute on the threshold to say, with grave simplicity, "I am come
to ask you to join our friends at my father's house next Tuesday
evening." Being thus invited, I joyfully assented, and put off my
journey.
The numerous children of the family connexion were in wild spirits all
that Tuesday. In the morning we went a strong party to the Ice Hole; a
defile between two hills, so perplexed and encumbered with rocks that
none but practised climbers need attempt the passage. It was a good way
for the young people to work off their exuberant spirits. Their laughter
was heard from amid the nooks and hiding-places of the labyrinth, and
smiling faces might be seen behind every shrubby screen which sprang up
from the crevices. How we tried to surpass each other in the ferns and
mosses we gathered, rich in size and variety! What skipping and
scrambling there was; what trunk bridges and ladders of roots! How
valiant the ladies looked with their stout sticks! How glad every one
was to feast upon the wild raspberries when we struggled through the
close defile into the cool, green, breezy meadow on the banks of the
Housatonic! During the afternoon we were very quiet, reading one of
Carlyle's reviews aloud (for the twentieth time, I believe, to some of
the party), and discussing it and other things. By eight o'clock we were
all dressed for the wedding; and some of the children ran over the green
before us, but came back, saying that all was not quite ready; so we got
one of the girls to sing to us for another half hour.
The house of the bride's father was well lighted, and dressed with
flowers. She had no mother; but her elder sisters aided her father in
bidding us welcome. The drawing-room was quite full; and while the
grown-up friends found it difficult to talk, and to repress the
indefinable anxiety and agitation which always attend a wedding, the
younger members of the party were amusing themselves with whispered
mirth. The domestics looked as if the most joyous event of their lives
were taking place, and the old father seemed placid and satisfied.
In a few minutes we were summoned to another room, at the top of which
stood the tall bridegroom, with his pretty little lady on his arm; on
either side, the three gentlemen and three ladies who attended them; and
in front, the Episcopalian minister who was to marry them, and who has
since been united to one of the sisters. It was the first time of his
performing the ceremony, and his manner was solemn and somewhat anxious,
as might be expected.
The bridegroom was a professor in a college in the neighbouring State of
New-York; a young man of high acquirements and character, to whom the
old father might well be proud to give his daughter. His manners were
remarkably pleasing; and there was a joyous, dignified serenity visible
in them this evening, which at once favourably prepossessed us who did
not previously know him. He was attended by a brother professor from the
same college. When the service was over, we all kissed the grave and
quiet bride. I trust that no bodings of the woes which awaited her cast
a shadow over her spirits then. I think, though grave, she was not sad.
She spoke with all her father's guests in the course of the evening, as
did her husband. How often have I of late tried to recall precisely
what they said to me, and every look with which they said it!
We went back to the drawing-room for cake and wine; and then ensued the
search for the ring in the great wedding cake, with much merriment among
those who were alive to all the fun of a festivity like this, and to
none of the care. There was much moving about between the rooms, and
dressing with flowers in the hall; and lively conversation, as it must
needs be where there are Sedgwicks. Then Champagne and drinking of
healths went round, the guests poured out upon the green, all the ladies
with handkerchiefs tied over their heads. There we bade good-night, and
parted off to our several homes.
When I left the village the next morning two or three carriages full of
young people were setting off, as attendants upon the bride and
bridegroom, to Lebanon. After a few such short excursions in the
neighbourhood, the young couple went home to begin their quiet college
and domestic life.
Before a year had elapsed, a year which to me seemed gone like a month,
I was at Stockbridge again and found the young wife's family in great
trouble. She was in a raging fever, consequent on her confinement, and
great fears were entertained for her life. Her infant seemed to have but
a small chance under the circumstances, and there was a passing mention
of her husband being ill. Every one spoke of him with a respect and
affection which showed how worthy he was of this young creature's love;
and it was our feeling for him which made our prayers for her
restoration so earnest as they were. The last I heard of her before I
left the country was that she was slowly and doubtfully recovering, but
had not yet been removed from her father's house. The next intelligence
that I received after my return to England was of her husband's death;
that he had died in a calm and satisfied state of mind; satisfied that
if their reasonable hopes of domestic joy and usefulness had not been
fulfilled, it was for wise and kind reasons; and that the strong hand
which thus early divided them would uphold the gentle surviver. No one
who beheld and blessed their union can help beseeching and trusting,
since all other hope is over, that it may be even thus.
HIGH ROAD TRAVELLING.
"How far my pen has been fatigued like those of other travellers in
this journey of it, the world must judge; but the traces of it,
which are now all set o'vibrating together this moment, tell me it
is the most fruitful and busy period of my life; for, as I had made
no convention with my man with the gun as to time--by seizing every
handle, of what size or shape soever which chance held out to me in
this journey--I was always in company, and with great variety
too."--STERNE.
Our first land travelling, in which we had to take our chance with the
world in general, was across the State of New-York. My account of what
we saw may seem excessively minute in some of its details; but this
style of particularity is not adopted without reasons. While writing my
journal, I always endeavoured to bear in mind the rapidity with which
civilization advances in America, and the desirablness of recording
things precisely in their present state, in order to have materials for
comparison some few years hence, when travelling may probably be as
unlike what it is now, as a journey from London to Liverpool by the new
railroad differs from the same enterprise as undertaken a century and a
half ago.
To avoid some of the fatigues and liabilities of common travelling,
certain of our shipmates and their friends and ourselves had made up a
party to traverse the State of New-York in an "exclusive extra;" a stage
hired, with the driver, for our own use, to proceed at our own time. Our
fellow-travellers were a German and a Dutch gentleman, and the Prussian
physician and young South Carolinian whom I have mentioned in the list
of our shipmates. We were to meet at the Congress Hall hotel in Albany
on the 6th of October.
On our way from Stockbridge to Albany we saw a few objects
characteristic of the country. While the horses were baiting we wandered
into a graveyard, where the names on the tombstones were enough to
inform any observer what country of the world he was in. One inscription
was laudatory of Nelson and Nabby Bullis; another of Amasa and Polly
Fielding. Hiram and Keziah were there too. The signs in the American
streets are as ludicrous for their confusion of Greek, Roman, and Hebrew
names, as those of Irish towns are for the arbitrary divisions of words.
One sees Rudolphus figuring beside Eliakim, and Aristides beside Zerug.
I pitied an acquaintance of mine for being named Peleg, till I found he
had baptized his two boys Peleg and Seth. On a table in a little wayside
inn I found Fox's Martyr's; and against the wall hung a framed sampler,
with the following lines worked upon it:--
"Jesus, permit thine awful name to stand
As the first offering of an infant's hand:
And as her fingers o'er the canvass move,
Oh fill her thoughtful bosom with thy love,
With thy dear children let her bear a part,
And write thy name thyself upon her heart."
In these small inns the disagreeable practice of rocking in the chair is
seen in its excess. In the inn parlour are three or four rocking-chairs,
in which sit ladies who are vibrating in different directions, and at
various velocities, so as to try the head of a stranger almost as
severely as the tobacco-chewer his stomach. How this lazy and ungraceful
indulgence ever became general, I cannot imagine; but the nation seems
so wedded to it, that I see little chance of its being forsaken. When
American ladies come to live in Europe, they sometimes send home for a
rocking-chair. A common wedding-present is a rocking-chair. A beloved
pastor has every room in his house furnished with a rocking-chair by his
grateful and devoted people. It is well that the gentlemen can be
satisfied to sit still, or the world might be treated with the spectacle
of the sublime American Senate in a new position; its fifty-two senators
see-sawing in full deliberation, like the wise birds of a rookery in a
breeze. If such a thing should ever happen, it will be time for them to
leave off laughing at the Shaker worship.