gone to _Ferney_ in an _omnibus_! Voltaire lived just under the Jura,
on a hill-side, overlooking Geneva and the lake, with a landscape
before him in the foreground, that a painter could not improve, and
Mont Blanc and its neighbor mountains, the breaks to his horizon. At
six miles off, Geneva looks very beautifully, astride the exit of the
Rhone from the lake; and the lake itself looks more like a broad
river, with its edges of verdure and its outer-frame of mountains. We
walked up an avenue to a large old villa, embosomed in trees, where an
old gardener appeared, to show us the grounds. We said the proper
thing under the tree planted by the philosopher, fell in love with the
view from twenty points, met an English lady in one of the arbors, the
wife of a French nobleman to whom the house belongs, and were bowed
into the hall by the old man and handed over to his daughter to be
shown the curiosities of the interior. These were Voltaire's rooms,
just as he left them. The ridiculous picture of his own apotheosis,
painted under his own direction, and representing him offering his
Henriade to Apollo, with all the authors of his time dying of envy at
his feet, occupies the most conspicuous place over his chamber-door.
Within was his bed, the curtains nibbled quite bare by relic-gathering
travellers; a portrait of the Empress Catharine, embroidered by her
own hand, and presented to Voltaire; his own portrait and Frederick
the Great's, and many of the philosophers', including Franklin. A
little monument stands opposite the fireplace, with the inscription,
"_mon esprit est partout, et mon coeur est ici_." It is a snug
little dormitory, opening with one window to the west; and, to those
who admire the character of the once illustrious occupant, a place for
very tangible musing. They showed us afterward his walking-stick, a
pair of silk-stockings he had half worn, and a night-cap. The last
article is getting quite fashionable as a relic of genius. They show
Byron's at Venice.
LETTER LXVI.
PRACTICAL BATHOS OF CELEBRATED PLACES--TRAVELLING COMPANIONS
AT THE SIMPLON--CUSTOM-HOUSE COMFORTS--TRIALS OF
TEMPER--CONQUERED AT LAST!--DIFFERENT ASPECTS OF FRANCE,
ITALY, AND SWITZERLAND--FORCE OF POLITENESS.
Whether it was that I had offended the genius of the spot, by coming
in an omnibus, or from a desire I never can resist in such places, to
travesty and ridicule the mock solemnities with which they are
exhibited, certain it is that I left Ferney, without having
encountered, even in the shape of a more serious thought, the spirit
of Voltaire. One reads the third canto of Childe Harold in his
library, and feels as if "Lausanne and Ferney" _should_ be very
interesting places to the traveller, and yet when he is shown Gibbon's
bower by a fellow scratching his head and hitching up his trousers the
while, and the nightcap that enclosed the busy brain from which sprang
the fifty brilliant _tomes_ on his shelves, by a country-girl, who
hurries through her drilled description, with her eye on the silver
_douceur_ in his fingers, he is very likely to rub his hand over his
eyes, and disclaim, quite honestly, all pretensions to enthusiasm. And
yet, I dare say, I shall have a great deal of pleasure in remembering
that I _have been_ at Ferney. As an English traveller would say, "I
have _done_ Voltaire!"
Quite of the opinion that it was not doing justice to Geneva to have
made but a three days' stay in it, regretting not having seen Sismondi
and Simond, and a whole coterie of scholars and authors, whose home it
is, and with a mind quite made up to return to Switzerland, when my
_beaux jours_ of love, money, and leisure, shall have arrived, I
crossed the Rhone at sunrise, and turned my face toward Paris.
The Simplon is much safer travelling than the pass of the Jura. We
were all day getting up the mountains by roads that would make me
anxious, if there were a neck in the carriage I would rather should
not be broken. My company, fortunately, consisted of three Scotch
spinsters, who would try any precipice of the Jura, I think, if there
were a lover at the bottom. If the horses had backed in the wrong
place, it would have been to all three, I am sure, a deliverance from
a world in whose volume of happiness,
"their leaf
By some o'er-hasty angel was misplaced."
As to my own neck and my friend's, there is a special providence for
bachelors, even if they were of importance enough to merit a care.
Spinsters and bachelors, we all arrived safely at Rousses, the
entrance to France, and here, if I were to write before repeating the
alphabet, you would see what a pen could do in a passion.
The carriage was stopped by three custom-house officers, and taken
under a shed, where the doors were closed behind it. We were then
required to dismount and give our honors that we had nothing new in
the way of clothes; no "jewelry; no unused manufactures of wool,
thread, or lace; no silk of floss silk; no polished metals, plated or
varnished; no toys, (except a heart each); nor leather, glass, or
crystal manufactures." So far, I kept my temper.
Our trunks, carpet-bags, hat-boxes, dressing-cases, and
_portfeuilles_, were then dismounted and critically examined--every
dress and article unfolded; shirts, cravats, unmentionables and all,
and searched thoroughly by two ruffians, whose fingers were no
improvement upon the labors of the washerwoman. In an hour's time or
so we were allowed to commence repacking. Still, I kept my temper.
We were then requested to walk into a private room, while the ladies,
for the same purpose, were taken, by a woman, into another. Here we
were requested to unbutton our coats, and, begging pardon for the
liberty, these courteous gentlemen thrust their hands into our
pockets, felt in our bosoms, pantaloons, and shoes, examined our hats,
and even eyed our "pet curls" very earnestly, in the expectation of
finding us crammed with Geneva jewelry. Still, I kept my temper.
Our trunks were then put upon the carriage, and a sealed string put
upon them, which we were not to cut till we arrived in Paris. (Nine
days!) They then demanded to be paid for the sealing, and the fellows
who had unladen the carriage were to be paid for their labor. This
done, we were permitted to drive on. Still, I kept my temper!
We arrived, in the evening, at Morez, in a heavy rain. We were sitting
around a comfortable fire, and the soup and fish were just brought
upon the table. A soldier entered and requested us to walk to the
police-office. "But it rains hard, and our dinner is just ready." The
man in the mustache was inexorable. The commissary closed his office
at eight, and we must go instantly to certify to our passports, and
get new ones for the interior. Cloaks and umbrellas were brought, and,
_bon gre_, _mal gre_, we walked half a mile in the mud and rain to a
dirty commissary, who kept us waiting in the dark fifteen minutes, and
then, making out a description of the person of each, demanded half a
dollar for the new passport, and permitted us to wade back to our
dinner. This had occupied an hour, and no improvement to soup or fish.
Still, I kept my temper--rather!
The next morning, while we were forgetting the annoyances of the
previous night, and admiring the new-pranked livery of May by a
glorious sunshine, a civil _arretez vous_ brought up the carriage to
the door of _another custom-house_! The order was to dismount, and
down came once more carpet-bags, hat-boxes, and dressing-cases, and a
couple of hours were lost again in a fruitless search for contraband
articles. When it was all through, and the officers and men _paid_ as
before, we were permitted to proceed with the gracious assurance that
we should not be troubled again till we got to Paris! I bade the
commissary good morning, felicitated him on the liberal institutions
of his country and his zeal in the exercise of his own agreeable
vocation, and--I am free to confess--lost my temper! Job and
Xantippe's husband! could I help it!
I confess I expected better things of _France_. In Italy, where you
come to a new dukedom every half-day, you do not much mind opening
your trunks, for they are petty princes and need the pitiful revenue
of contraband articles and the officer's fee. Yet even they leave the
person of the traveller sacred; and where in the world, except in
France, is a party, travelling evidently for pleasure, subjected
_twice at the same border_ to the degrading indignity of a search! Ye
"hunters of Kentucky"--thank heaven that you can go into Tennessee
without having your "plunder" overhauled and your pockets searched by
successive parties of scoundrels, whom you are to pay "by order of the
government," for their trouble!
* * * * *
The Simplon, which you pass in a day, divides two nations, each
other's physical and moral antipodes. The handsome, picturesque, lazy,
unprincipled Italian, is left in the morning in his own dirty and
exorbitant inn; and, on the evening of the same day, having crossed
but a chain of mountains, you find yourself in a clean auberge,
nestled in the bosom of a Swiss valley, another language spoken around
you, and in the midst of a people, who seem to require the virtues
they possess to compensate them for more than their share of
uncomeliness. You travel a day or two down the valley of the Rhone,
and when you are become reconciled to _cretins_ and _goitres_, and
ill-dressed and worse formed men and women, you pass in another single
day the chain of the Jura, and find yourself in France--a country as
different from both Switzerland and Italy, as they are from each
other. How is it that these diminutive cantons preserve so completely
their nationality? It seems a problem to the traveller who passes from
one to the other without leaving his carriage.
One is compelled to like France in spite of himself. You are no sooner
over the Jura than you are enslaved, past all possible ill-humor, by
the universal politeness. You stop for the night at a place, which, as
my friend remarked, resembles an inn only in its _in_-attention, and
after a bad supper, worse beds, and every kind of annoyance, down
comes my lady-hostess in the morning to receive her coin, and if you
can fly into a passion with _such_ a cap, and _such_ a smile, and
_such_ a "_bon jour_," you are of less penetrable stuff than man is
commonly made of.
I loved Italy, but detested the Italians. I detest France, but I can
not help liking the French. "Politeness is among the virtues," says
the philosopher. Rather, it takes the place of them all. What can you
believe ill of a people whose slightest look toward you is made up of
grace and kindness.
We are dawdling along thirty miles a day through Burgundy, sick to
death of the bare vine-stakes, and longing to see a festooned vineyard
of Lombardy. France is such an ugly country! The diligences lumber by,
noisy and ludicrous; the cow-tenders wear cocked hats; the beggars are
in the true French extreme, theatrical in all their misery; the
climate is rainy and cold, and as unlike that of Italy as if a
thousand leagues separated them, and the roads are long, straight,
dirty, and uneven. There is neither pleasure nor comfort, neither
scenery nor antiquities, nor accommodations for the weary--nothing but
_politeness_. And it is odd how it reconciles you to it all.
LETTER LXVII.
PARIS AND LONDON--REASONS FOR LIKING PARIS--JOYOUSNESS OF ITS
CITIZENS--LAFAYETTE'S FUNERAL--ROYAL RESPECT AND
GRATITUDE--ENGLAND--DOVER--ENGLISH NEATNESS AND COMFORT, AS
DISPLAYED IN THE HOTELS, WAITERS, FIRES, BELL-ROPES,
LANDSCAPES, WINDOW-CURTAINS, TEA-KETTLES, STAGE-COACHES,
HORSES, AND EVERYTHING ELSE--SPECIMEN OF ENGLISH RESERVE--THE
GENTLEMAN DRIVER OF FASHION--A CASE FOR MRS. TROLLOPE.
It is pleasant to get back to Paris. One meets everybody there one
ever saw; and operas and coffee, Taglioni and Leontine Fay, the belles
and the Boulevards, the shops, spectacles, life, lions, and lures to
every species of pleasure, rather give you the impression that,
outside the barriers of Paris, time is wasted in travel.
What pleasant idlers they look! The very shopkeepers seem standing
behind their counters for amusement. The soubrette who sells you a
cigar, or ties a crape on your arm (it was for poor old Lafayette), is
coiffed as for a ball; the _frotteur_ who takes the dust from your
boots, sings his lovesong as he brushes away, the old man has his
bouquet in his bosom, and the beggar looks up at the new statue of
Napoleon in the Place Vendome--everybody has some touch of fancy, some
trace of a heart on the look-out, at least, for pleasure.
I was at Lafayette's funeral. They buried the old patriot like a
criminal. Fixed bayonets before and behind his hearse, his own
National Guard disarmed, and troops enough to beleaguer a city, were
the honors paid by the "citizen king" to the man who had made him! The
indignation, the scorn, the bitterness, expressed on every side among
the people, and the ill-smothered cries of disgust as the two _empty_
royal carriages went by, in the funeral train, seemed to me strong
enough to indicate a settled and universal hostility to the
government.
I met Dr. Bowring on the Boulevard after the funeral was over. I had
not seen him for two years, but he could talk of nothing but the great
event of the day--"You have come in time," he said, "to see how they
carried the old general to his grave! What would they say to this in
America? Well--let them go on! We shall see what will come of it? They
have buried Liberty and Lafayette together--our last hope in Europe is
quite dead with him!"
* * * * *
After three delightful days in Paris we took the northern diligence;
and, on the second evening, having passed hastily through Montreuil,
Abbeville, Boulogne, and voted the road the dullest couple of hundred
miles we had seen in our travels, we were set down in Calais. A stroll
through some very indifferent streets, a farewell visit to the last
French _cafe_, we were likely to see for a long time, and some
unsatisfactory inquiries about Beau Brummel, who is said to live here
still, filled up till bedtime our last day on the continent.
The celebrated Countess of Jersey was on board the steamer, and some
forty or fifty plebeian stomachs shared with her fashionable ladyship
and ourselves the horrors of a passage across the channel. It is
rather the most disagreeable sea I ever traversed, though I _have_
seen "the Euxine," "the roughest sea the traveller e'er ----s," etc.,
according to Don Juan.
I was lying on my back in a berth when the steamer reached her
moorings at Dover, and had neither eyes nor disposition to indulge in
the proper sentiment on approaching the "white cliffs" of my
fatherland. I crawled on deck, and was met by a wind as cold as
December, and a crowd of rosy English faces on the pier, wrapped in
cloaks and shawls, and indulging curiosity evidently at the expense of
a shiver. It was the first of June!
My companion led the way to a hotel, and we were introduced by
_English_ waiters (I had not seen such a thing in three years, and it
was quite like being waited on by gentlemen), to two blazing coal
fires in the "coffee room" of the "Ship." Oh what a comfortable place
it appeared! A rich Turkey carpet snugly fitted, nice-rubbed mahogany
tables, the morning papers from London, bellropes that _would_ ring
the bell, doors that _would_ shut, a landlady that spoke English, and
was kind and civil; and, though there were eight or ten people in the
room, no noise above the rustle of a newspaper, and positively, rich
red damask curtains, neither second-hand nor shabby, to the windows! A
greater contrast than this to the things that answer to them on the
continent, could scarcely be imagined.
_Malgre_ all my observations on the English, whom I have found
elsewhere the most open-hearted and social people in the world, they
are said by themselves and others to be just the contrary; and,
presuming they were different in England, I had made up my mind to
seal my lips in all public places, and be conscious of nobody's
existence but my own. There were several elderly persons dining at the
different tables; and one party, of a father and son, waited on by
their own servants in livery. Candles were brought in, the different
cloths were removed; and, as my companion had gone to bed, I took up a
newspaper to keep me company over my wine. In the course of an hour,
some remark had been addressed to me, provocative of conversation, by
almost every individual in the room! The subjects of discussion soon
became general, and I have seldom passed a more social and agreeable
evening. And so much for the first specimen of English reserve!
The fires were burning brilliantly, and the coffee-room was in the
nicest order when we descended to our breakfast at six the next
morning. The tea-kettle sung on the hearth, the toast was hot, and
done to a turn, and the waiter was neither sleepy nor uncivil--all,
again, very unlike a morning at a hotel in _la belle_ France.
The coach rattled up to the door punctually at the hour; and, while
they were putting on my way-worn baggage, I stood looking in
admiration at the carriage and horses. They were four beautiful bays,
in small, neat harness of glazed leather, brass-mounted, their coats
shining like a racer's, their small, blood-looking heads curbed up to
stand exactly together, and their hoofs blacked and brushed with the
polish of a gentleman's boots. The coach was gaudily painted, the only
thing out of taste about it; but it was admirably built, the
wheel-horses were quite under the coachman's box, and the whole
affair, though it would carry twelve or fourteen people, covered less
ground than a French one-horse cabriolet. It was altogether quite a
study.
We mounted to the top of the coach; "all right," said the ostler, and
away shot the four fine creatures, turning their small ears, and
stepping together with the ease of a cat, at ten miles in the hour.
The driver was dressed like a Broadway idler, and sat in his place,
and held his "ribands" and his tandemwhip with a confident air of
superiority, as if he were quite convinced that he and his team were
beyond criticism--and so they were! I could not but smile at
contrasting his silence and the speed and ease with which we went
along, with the clumsy, cumbrous diligence or vetturino, and the
crying, whipping, cursing and ill-appointed postillions of France and
Italy. It seems odd, in a two hours' passage, to pass over such strong
lines of national difference--so near, and not even a shading of one
into the other.
England is described always very justly, and always in the same words:
"it is all one garden." There is not a cottage between Dover and
London (seventy miles), where a poet might not be happy to live. I saw
a hundred little spots I coveted with quite a heart-ache. There was no
poverty on the road. Everybody seemed employed, and everybody
well-made and healthy. The relief from the deformity and disease of
the wayside beggars of the continent was very striking.
We were at Canterbury before I had time to get accustomed to my seat.
The horses had been changed twice; the coach, it seemed to me, hardly
stopping while it was done; way-passengers were taken up and put down,
with their baggage, without a word, and in half a minute; money was
tossed to the keeper of the turnpike gate as we dashed through; the
wheels went over the smooth road without noise, and with scarce a
sense of motion--it was the perfection of travel.
The new driver from Canterbury rather astonished me. He drove into
London every day, and was more of a "_swell_." He owned the first team
himself, four blood horses of great beauty, and it was a sight to see
him drive them! His language was free from all slang, and very
gentlemanlike and well chosen, and he discussed everything. He found
out that I was an American, and said we did not think enough of the
memory of Washington. Leaving his bones in the miserable brick tomb,
of which he had descriptions, was not, in his opinion, worthy of a
country like mine. He went on to criticise Julia Grisi (the new singer
just then setting London on fire), hummed airs from "_Il Pirati_," to
show her manner; sang an English song like Braham; gave a decayed
Count, who sat on the box, some very sensible advice about the
management of a wild son; drew a comparison between French and Italian
women (he had travelled); told us who the old Count was in very
tolerable French, and preferred Edmund Kean and Fanny Kemble to all
actors in the world. His taste and his philosophy, like his driving,
were quite unexceptionable. He was, withal, very handsome, and had the
easy and respectful manners of a well-bred person. It seemed very odd
to give him a shilling at the end of the journey.
At Chatham we took up a very elegantly dressed young man, who had come
down on a fishing excursion. He was in the army, and an Irishman. We
had not been half an hour on the seat together, before he had
discovered, by so many plain questions, that I was an American, a
stranger in England, and an acquaintance of a whole regiment of his
friends in Malta and Corfu. If this had been a Yankee, thought I, what
a chapter it would have made for Basil Hall or Madame Trollope! With
all his inquisitiveness I liked my companion, and half accepted his
offer to drive me down to Epsom the next day to the races. I know no
American who would have beaten _that_ on a stage-coach acquaintance.
LETTER LXVIII.
FIRST VIEW OF LONDON--THE KING'S BIRTHDAY--PROCESSION OF MAIL
COACHES--REGENT STREET--LADY BLESSINGTON--THE ORIGINAL
PELHAM--BULWER, THE NOVELIST--JOHN GALT--D'ISRAELI, THE AUTHOR
OF VIVIAN GREY--RECOLLECTIONS OF BYRON--INFLUENCE OF AMERICAN
OPINIONS ON ENGLISH LITERATURE.
LONDON.--From the top of Shooter's Hill we got our first view of
London--an indistinct, architectural mass, extending all round to the
horizon, and half enveloped in a dim and lurid smoke. "That is St.
Paul's!--there is Westminster Abbey!--there is the tower of London!"
What directions were these to follow for the first time with the eye!
From Blackheath (seven or eight miles from the centre of London), the
beautiful hedges disappeared, and it was one continued mass of
buildings. The houses were amazingly small, a kind of thing that would
do for an object in an imitation perspective park, but the soul of
neatness pervaded them. Trelises were nailed between the little
windows, roses quite overshadowed the low doors, a painted fence
enclosed the hand's breadth of grass-plot, and very, oh, _very_ sweet
faces bent over lapfuls of work beneath the snowy and looped-up
curtains. It was all home-like and amiable. There was an
_affectionateness_ in the mere outside of every one of them.
After crossing Waterloo Bridge, it was busy work for the eyes. The
brilliant shops, the dense crowds of people, the absorbed air of every
passenger, the lovely women, the cries, the flying vehicles of every
description, passing with the most dangerous speed--accustomed as I am
to large cities, it quite made me dizzy. We got into a "jarvey" at the
coach-office, and in half an hour I was in comfortable quarters, with
windows looking down St. James street, and the most agreeable leaf of
my life to turn over. "Great emotions interfere little with the
mechanical operations of life," however, and I dressed and dined,
though it was my first hour in London.
I was sitting in the little parlor alone over a fried sole and a
mutton cutlet, when the waiter came in, and pleading the crowded state
of the hotel, asked my permission to spread the other side of the
table for a clergyman. I have a kindly preference for the cloth, and
made not the slightest objection. Enter a fat man, with top-boots and
a hunting-whip, rosy as Bacchus, and excessively out of breath with
mounting one flight of stairs. Beefsteak and potatoes, a pot of
porter, and a bottle of sherry followed close on his heels. With a
single apology for the intrusion, the reverend gentleman fell to, and
we ate and drank for a while in true English silence.
"From Oxford, sir, I presume," he said at last, pushing back his
plate, with an air of satisfaction.
"No, I had never the pleasure of seeing Oxford."
"R--e--ally! may I take a glass of wine with you, sir?"