gentleman, and is amusingly exclusive. No assiduities can win him to
take the least notice of the crew, and I soon discovered, that, when
the captain and myself were below, he endured many a persecution. In
an evil hour, a night or two since, I suffered his earnest appeals for
freedom to work upon my feelings, and, releasing him from his chain
under the windlass, I gave him the liberty of the cabin. He slept very
quietly on the floor till about midnight, when the wind rose and the
vessel began to roll very uncomfortably. With the first heavy lurch a
couple of chairs went tumbling to leeward, and by the yelp of
distress, Turk was somewhere in the way. He changed his position, and,
with the next roll, the mate's trunk "brought away," and shooting
across the cabin, jammed him with such violence against the captain's
state-room door, that he sprang howling to the deck, where the first
thing that met him was a washing sea, just taken in at midships, that
kept him swimming above the hatches for five minutes. Half-drowned,
and with a gallon of water in his long hair, he took again to the
cabin, and making a desperate leap into the steward's berth, crouched
down beside the sleeping creole with a long whine of satisfaction. The
water soon penetrated however, and with a "_sacre!_" and a blow that
he will remember for the remainder of the voyage, the poor dog was
again driven from the cabin, and I heard no more of him till morning.
His decided preference for me has since touched my vanity, and I have
taken him under my more special protection--a circumstance which costs
me two quarrels a day at least, with the cook and steward.
The only thing which forced a smile upon me during the first week of
the passage was the achievement of dinner. In rough weather, it is as
much as one person can do to keep his place at the table at all; and
to guard the dishes, bottles, and castors, from a general slide in
the direction of the lurch, requires a sleight and coolness reserved
only for a sailor. "_Prenez garde!_" shouts the captain, as the sea
strikes, and in the twinkling of an eye, everything is seized and held
up to wait for the other lurch in attitudes which it would puzzle the
pencil of Johnson to exaggerate. With his plate of soup in one hand,
and the larboard end of the tureen in the other, the claret bottle
between his teeth, and the crook of his elbow caught around the
mounting corner of the table, the captain maintains his seat upon the
transom, and, with a look of the most grave concern, keeps a wary eye
on the shifting level of his vermicelli; the old weather-beaten mate,
with the alacrity of a juggler, makes a long leg back to the cabin
panels at the same moment, and with his breast against the table,
takes his own plate and the castors, and one or two of the smaller
dishes under his charge; and the steward, if he can keep his legs,
looks out for the vegetables, or if he falls, makes as wide a lap as
possible to intercept the volant articles in their descent. "Gentlemen
that live at home at ease" forget to thank Providence for the
blessings of a permanent level.
OCT. 24.--We are on the Grand Bank, and surrounded by hundreds of
sea-birds. I have been watching them nearly all day. Their
performances on the wing are certainly the perfection of grace and
skill. With the steadiness of an eagle and the nice adroitness of a
swallow, they wheel round in their constant circles with an arrowy
swiftness, lifting their long tapering pinions scarce perceptibly, and
mounting and falling as if by a mere act of volition, without the
slightest apparent exertion of power. Their chief enjoyment seems to
be to scoop through the deep hollows of the sea, and they do it so
quickly that your eye can scarce follow them, just disturbing the
polish of the smooth crescent, and leaving a fine line of ripple from
swell to swell, but never wetting a wing, or dipping their white
breasts a feather too deep in the capricious and wind-driven surface.
I feel a strange interest in these wild-hearted birds. There is
something in this fearless instinct, leading them away from the
protecting and pleasant land to make their home on this tossing and
desolate element, that moves both my admiration and my pity. I cannot
comprehend it. It is unlike the self-caring instincts of the other
families of Heaven's creatures. If I were half the Pythagorean that I
used to be, I should believe they were souls in punishment--expiating
some lifetime sin in this restless metempsychosis.
Now and then a land-bird has flown on board, driven to sea probably by
the gale; and so fatigued as hardly to be able to rise again upon the
wing. Yesterday morning a large curlew came struggling down the wind,
and seemed to have just sufficient strength to reach the vessel. He
attempted to alight on the main yard, but failed and dropped heavily
into the long-boat, where he suffered himself to be taken without an
attempt to escape. He must have been on the wing two or three days
without food, for we were at least two hundred miles from land. His
heart was throbbing hard through his ruffled feathers, and he held his
head up with difficulty. He was passed aft; but, while I was
deliberating on the best means for resuscitating and fitting him to
get on the wing again, the captain had taken him from me and handed
him over to the cook, who had his head off before I could remember
French enough to arrest him. I dreamed all that night of the man "that
shot the albatross." The captain relieved my mind, however, by telling
me that he had tried repeatedly to preserve them, and that they died
invariably in a few hours. The least food, in their exhausted state,
swells in their throats and suffocates them. Poor Curlew! there was a
tenderness in one breast for him at least--a feeling I have the
melancholy satisfaction to know, fully reciprocated by the bird
himself--that seat of his affections having been allotted to me for my
breakfast the morning succeeding his demise.
OCT. 29.--We have a tandem of whales ahead. They have been playing
about the ship an hour, and now are coursing away to the east, one
after the other, in gallant style. If we could only get them into
traces now, how beautiful it would be to stand in the foretop and
drive a degree or two, on a summer sea! It would not be more
wonderful, _de novo_, than the discovery of the lightning-rod, or
navigation by steam! And by the way, the sight of these huge creatures
has made me realize, for the first time, the extent to which the sea
has _grown_ upon my mind during the voyage. I have seen one or two
whales, exhibited in the docks, and it seemed to me always that they
were monsters--out of proportion, entirely, to the range of the ocean.
I had been accustomed to look out to the horizon from land (the
radius, of course, as great as at sea), and, calculating the probable
speed with which they would compass the intervening space, and the
disturbance they would make in doing it, it appeared that in any
considerable numbers, they would occupy more than their share of
notice and sea-room. Now--after sailing five days, at two hundred
miles a day, and not meeting a single vessel--it seems to me that a
troop of a thousand might swim the sea a century and chance to be
never crossed, so endlessly does this eternal horizon open and stretch
away!
OCT. 30.--The day has passed more pleasantly than usual The man at the
helm cried "a sail," while we were at breakfast, and we gradually
overtook a large ship, standing on the same course, with every sail
set. We were passing half a mile to leeward, when she put up her helm
and ran down to us, hoisting the English flag. We raised the
"star-spangled banner" in answer, and "hove to," and she came dashing
along our quarter, heaving most majestically to the sea, till she was
near enough to speak us without a trumpet. Her fore-deck was covered
with sailors dressed all alike and very neatly, and around the gangway
stood a large group of officers in uniform, the oldest of whom, a
noble-looking man with gray hair, hailed and answered us. Several
ladies stood back by the cabin door--passengers apparently. She was a
man of war, sailing as a king's packet between Halifax and Falmouth,
and had been out from the former port nineteen days. After the usual
courtesies had passed, she bore away a little, and then kept on her
course again, the two vessels in company at the distance of half a
pistol shot. I rarely have seen a more beautiful sight. The fine
effect of a ship under sail is entirely lost to one on board, and it
is only at sea and under circumstances like these, that it can be
observed. The power of the swell, lifting such a huge body as lightly
as an egg-shell on its bosom, and tossing it sometimes half out of the
water without the slightest apparent effort, is astonishing. I sat on
deck watching her with undiminished interest for hours. Apart from the
spectacle, the feeling of companionship, meeting human beings in the
middle of the ocean after so long a deprivation of society (five days
without seeing a sail, and nearly three weeks unspoken from land), was
delightful. Our brig was the faster sailer of the two, but our captain
took in some of his canvas for company's sake; and all the afternoon
we heard her half-hour bells, and the boatswain's whistle, and the
orders of the officers of the deck, and I could distinguish very
well, with a glass, the expression of the faces watching our own
really beautiful vessel as she skimmed over the water like a bird. We
parted at sunset, the man-of-war making northerly for her port, and we
stretching south for the coast of France. I watched her till she went
over the horizon, and felt as if I had lost friends when the night
closed in and we were once more
"Alone on the wide, wide sea."
NOV. 3.--We have just made the port of Havre, and the pilot tells us
that the packet has been delayed by contrary winds, and sails early
to-morrow morning. The town bells are ringing "nine" (as delightful a
sound as I ever heard, to my sea-weary ear), and I close in haste, for
all is confusion on board.
LETTER III.
HAVRE.--This is one of those places which scribbling travellers hurry
through with a crisp mention of their arrival and departure, but, as I
have passed a day here upon customhouse compulsion, and passed it
pleasantly too, and as I have an evening entirely to myself, and a
good fire, why I will order another _pound_ of wood (they sell it like
a drug here), and Monsieur and Mademoiselle Somebodies, "violin
players right from the hands of Paganini, only fifteen years of age,
and miracles of music," (so says the placard), may delight other
lovers of precocious talent than I. Pen, ink, and paper for No. 2!
If I had not been warned against being astonished, short of Paris, I
should have thought Havre quite an affair. I certainly have seen more
that is novel and amusing since morning than I ever saw before in any
seven days of my life. Not a face, not a building, not a dress, not a
child even, not a stone in the street, nor shop, nor woman, nor beast
of burden, looks in any comparable degree like its namesake the other
side of the water.
It was very provoking to eat a salt supper and go to bed in that
tiresome berth again last night, with a French hotel in full view, and
no permission to send for a fresh biscuit even, or a cup of milk. It
was nine o'clock when we reached the pier, and at that late hour there
was, of course, no officer to be had for permission to land; and there
paced the patrole, with his high black cap and red pompon, up and down
the quay, within six feet of our tafferel, and a shot from his
arquebuss would have been the consequence of any unlicensed
communication with the shore. It was something, however, to sleep
without rocking; and, after a fit of musing anticipation, which kept
me conscious of the sentinel's measured tread till midnight, the
"gentle goddess" sealed up my cares effectually, and I awoke at
sunrise--in France!
It is a common thing enough to go abroad, and it may seem idle and
common-place to be enthusiastic about it; but nothing is common or a
trifle, to me, that can send the blood so warm to my heart, and the
color to my temples as generously, as did my first conscious thought
when I awoke this morning. _In France._ I would not have had it a
dream for the price of an empire.
Early in the morning a woman came clattering into the cabin with
wooden shoes, and a _patois_ of mingled French and English--a
_blanchisseuse_--spattered to the knees with mud, but with a cap and
'kerchief that would have made the fortune of a New York milliner.
_Ciel!_ what politeness! and what white teeth and what a knowing row
of papillotes, laid in precise parallel, on her clear brunette
temples.
"_Quelle nouvelle!_" said the captain.
"_Poland est a bas!_" was the answer, with a look of heroic sorrow,
that would have become a tragedy queen, mourning for the loss of a
throne. The French manner, for once, did not appear exaggerated. It
was news to sadden us all. Pity! pity! that the broad Christian world
could look on and see this glorious people trampled to the dust in one
of the most noble and desperate struggles for liberty that the earth
ever saw! What an opportunity was here lost to France for setting a
seal of double truth and splendor on her own newly-achieved triumph
over despotism. The washerwoman broke the silence with "_Any clothes
to wash, Monsieur?_" and in the instant return of my thoughts to my
own comparatively-pitiful interests, I found the philosophy for all I
had condemned in kings--the humiliating and selfish individuality of
human nature! And yet I believe with Dr. Channing on that dogma.
At ten o'clock I had performed the traveller's routine--had submitted
my trunk and my passport to the three authorities, and had got into
(and out of) as many mounting passions at what seemed to me the
intolerable impertinencies of searching my linen, and inspecting my
person for scars. I had paid the porter three times his due rather
than endure his cataract of French expostulation; and with a bunch of
keys, and a landlady attached to it, had ascended by a cold, wet,
marble staircase, to a parlor and bedroom on the fifth floor: as
pretty a place, when you get there, and as difficult to get to as if
it were a palace in thin air. It is perfectly French! Fine, old,
last-century chairs, covered with splendid yellow damask, two sofas of
the same, the legs or arms of every one imperfect; a coarse wood
dressing-table, covered with fringed drapery and a sort of throne
pincushion, with an immense glass leaning over it, gilded probably in
the time of Henri Quatre; artificial flowers all around the room, and
prints of Atala and _Napoleon mourant_ over the walls; windows opening
to the floor on hinges, damask and muslin curtains inside, and boxes
for flower-pots without; a bell-wire that pulls no bell, a bellows too
asthmatic even to wheeze, tongs that refuse to meet, and a carpet as
large as a table-cloth in the centre of the floor, may answer for an
inventory of the "parlor." The bedchamber, about half as large as the
boxes in Rattle-row, at Saratoga, opens by folding doors, and
discloses a bed, that, for tricksy ornament as well as size, might
look the bridal couch for a faery queen in a panorama; the same
golden-sprig damask looped over it, tent-fashion, with splendid
crimson cord, tassels, fringes, etc., and a pillow beneath that I
shall be afraid to sleep on, it is so dainty a piece of needle-work.
There is a delusion about it, positively. One cannot help imagining,
that all this splendor means something, and it would require a worse
evil than any of these little deficiencies of _comfort_ to disturb the
self-complacent, Captain-Jackson sort of feeling, with which one
throws his cloak on one sofa and his hat on the other, and spreads
himself out for a lounge before this mere apology of a French fire.
But, for eating and drinking! if they cook better in Paris, I shall
have my passport altered. The next _prefet_ that signs it shall
substitute _gourmand_ for _proprietaire_. I will profess a palate, and
live to eat. Making every allowance for an appetite newly from sea, my
experience hitherto in this department of science is transcended in
the degree of a rushlight to Arcturus.
I strolled about Havre from breakfast till dinner, seven or eight
hours, following curiosity at random, up one street and down another,
with a prying avidity which I fear travel will wear fast away. I must
compress my observations into a sentence or two, for my fire is out,
and this old castle of a hotel lets in the wind "shrewdly cold," and,
besides, the diligence calls for me in a few hours and one must sleep.
Among my impressions the most vivid are--that, of the twenty thousand
inhabitants of Havre, by far the greater portion are women and
soldiers--that the buildings all look toppling, and insecurely antique
and unsightly--that the privates of the regular army are the most
stupid, and those of the national guard the most intelligent-looking
troops I ever saw--that the streets are filthy beyond endurance, and
the shops clean beyond all praise--that the women do all the buying
and selling, and cart-driving and sweeping, and even shoe-making, and
other sedentary craftswork, and at the same time have (the meanest of
them) an air of ambitious elegance and neatness, that sends your hand
to your hat involuntarily when you speak to them--that the children
speak French, and look like little old men and women, and the horses,
(the famed Norman breed) are the best of draught animals, and the
worst for speed in the world--and that, for extremes ridiculously
near, dirt and neatness, politeness and knavery, chivalry and
_petitesse_, of bearing and language, the people I have seen to-day
_must_ be pre-eminently remarkable, or France, for a laughing
philosopher, is a paradise indeed! And now for my pillow, till the
diligence calls. Good night.
LETTER IV.
PARIS.--It seems to me as if I were going back a month to recall my
departure from Havre, my memory is so clouded with later incidents. I
was awaked on the morning after I had written to you, by a servant,
who brought me at the same time a cup of coffee, and at about an hour
before daylight we were passing through the huge gates of the town on
our way to Paris. The whole business of diligence-travelling amused me
exceedingly. The construction of this vehicle has often been
described; but its separate apartments (at four different prices), its
enormous size, its comfort and clumsiness, and, more than all, the
driving of its postillions, struck me as equally novel and diverting.
This last mentioned performer on the whip and voice (the only two
accomplishments he at all cultivates), rides one of the three wheel
horses, and drives the four or seven which are in advance, as a
grazier in our country drives a herd of cattle, and they travel very
much in the same manner. There is leather enough in two of their
clumsy harnesses, to say nothing of the postillion's boots, to load a
common horse heavily. I never witnessed such a ludicrous absence of
contrivance and tact as in the appointments and driving of horses in a
diligence. It is so in everything in France, indeed. They do not
possess the quality as a nation. The story of the Gascoigne, who saw a
bridge for the first time, and admired the ingenious economy that
placed it across the river, instead of lengthwise, is hardly an
exaggeration.
At daylight I found myself in the _coupe_ (a single seat for three in
the front of the body of the carriage, with windows before and at the
sides), with two whiskered and mustached companions, both very polite,
and very unintelligible. I soon suspected, by the science with which
my neighbor on the left hummed little snatches of popular operas, that
he was a professed singer (a conjecture which proved true), and it was
equally clear, from the complexion of the portfeuille on the lap of
the other, that his vocation was a liberal one--a conjecture which
proved true also, as he confessed himself a _diplomat_, when we became
better acquainted. For the first hour or more my attention was divided
between the dim but beautiful outline of the country by the slowly
approaching light of the dawn, and my nervousness at the distressing
want of skill in the postillion's driving. The increasing and singular
beauty of the country, even under the disadvantage of rain and the
late season, soon absorbed all my attention, however, and my
involuntary and half-suppressed exclamations of pleasure, so unusual
in an Englishman (for whom I found I was taken), warmed the
diplomatist into conversation, and I passed the three ensuing hours
very pleasantly. My companion was on his return from Lithuania, having
been sent out by the French committee with arms and money for Poland.
He was, of course, a most interesting fellow-traveller; and, allowing
for the difficulty with which I understood the language, in the rapid
articulation of an enthusiastic Frenchman, I rarely have been better
pleased with a chance acquaintance. I found he had been in Greece
during the revolution, and knew intimately my friend, Dr. Howe, the
best claim he could have on my interest, and, I soon discovered, an
answering recommendation of myself to him.
The province of Normandy is celebrated for its picturesque beauty, but
I had no conception before of the _cultivated_ picturesque of an old
country. I have been a great scenery-hunter in America, and my eye was
new, like its hills and forests. The massive, battlemented buildings
of the small villages we passed through, the heavy gateways and
winding avenues and antique structure of the distant and half-hidden
chateaux, the perfect cultivation, and, to me, singular appearance of
a whole landscape without a fence or a stone, the absence of all that
we define by _comfort_ and _neatness_, and the presence of all that we
have seen in pictures and read of in books, but consider as the
representations and descriptions of ages gone by--all seemed to me
irresistibly like a dream. I could not rub my hand over my eyes, and
realize myself. I could not believe that, within a month's voyage of
my home, these spirit-stirring places had stood all my lifetime as
they do, and have--for ages--every stone as it was laid in times of
worm-eaten history--and looking to my eyes now as they did to the eyes
of knights and dames in the days of French chivalry. I looked at the
constantly-occurring ruins of the old priories, and the magnificent
and still-used churches, and my blood tingled in my veins, as I saw,
in the stepping-stones at their doors, cavities that the sandals of
monks, and the iron-shod feet of knights in armor a thousand years
ago, had trodden and helped to wear, and the stone cross over the
threshold, that hundreds of generations had gazed upon and passed
under.
By a fortunate chance the postillion left the usual route at Balbec,
and pursued what appeared to be a bye-road through the grain-fields
and vineyards for twenty or twenty-five miles. I can only describe it
as an uninterrupted green lane, winding almost the whole distance
through the bosom of a valley that must be one of the very loveliest
in the world. Imagine one of such extent, without a fence to break the
broad swells of verdure, stretching up from the winding and unenclosed
road on either side, to the apparent sky; the houses occurring at
distances of miles, and every one with its thatched roof covered all
over with bright green moss, and its walls of marl interlaid through
all the crevices with clinging vines, the whole structure and its
appurtenances faultlessly picturesque, and, when you have conceived a
valley that might have contented Rasselas, scatter over it here and
there groups of men, women, and children, the Norman peasantry in
their dresses of all colors, as you see them in the prints--and if
there is anything that can better please the eye, or make the
imagination more willing to fold up its wings and rest, my travels
have not crossed it. I have recorded a vow to walk through Normandy.