Spanish literature. He has a fine house, at the corner of Park and
Beacon Streets, perhaps the very best position in Boston. A marble hall,
a wide and easy staircase, a respectable old man-servant evidently long
at home in the mansion, to admit us. We entered the library, Mr. Folsom
considerably in advance, as being familiar with the house; and I heard
Mr. Ticknor greet him in friendly tones, their scholar-like and
bibliographical pursuits, I suppose, bringing them into frequent
conjunction. Then I was introduced, and received with great distinction,
but yet without any ostentatious flourish of courtesy. Mr. Ticknor has a
great head, and his hair is gray or grayish. You recognize in him at
once the man who knows the world, the scholar, too, which probably is his
more distinctive character, though a little more under the surface. He
was in his slippers; a volume of his book was open on a table, and
apparently he had been engaged in revising or annotating it. His library
is a stately and beautiful room for a private dwelling, and itself looks
large and rich. The fireplace has a white marble frame about it,
sculptured with figures and reliefs. Over it hung a portrait of Sir
Walter Scott, a copy, I think, of the one that represents him in Melrose
Abbey.
Mr. Ticknor was most kind in his alacrity to solve the point on which Mr.
Folsom, in my behalf, had consulted him (as to whether there had been any
English translation of the Tales of Cervantes); and most liberal in his
offers of books from his library. Certainly, he is a fine example of a
generous-principled scholar, anxious to assist the human intellect in its
efforts and researches. Methinks he must have spent a happy life (as
happiness goes among mortals), writing his great three-volumed book for
twenty years; writing it, not for bread, nor with any uneasy desire of
fame, but only with a purpose to achieve something true and enduring. He
is, I apprehend, a man of great cultivation and refinement, and with
quite substance enough to be polished and refined, without being worn too
thin in the process,--a man of society. He related a singular story of
an attempt of his to become acquainted with me years ago, when he mistook
my kinsman Eben for me.
At half past four, I went to Mr. Thompson's, the artist who has requested
to paint my picture. This was the second sitting. The portrait looked
dimly out from the canvas, as from a cloud, with something that I could
recognize as my outline, but no strong resemblance as yet. I have had
three portraits taken before this,--an oil picture, a miniature, and a
crayon sketch,--neither of them satisfactory to those most familiar with
my physiognomy. In fact, there is no such thing as a true portrait; they
are all delusions, and I never saw any two alike, nor hardly any two that
I would recognize, merely by the portraits themselves, as being of the
same man. A bust has more reality. This artist is a man of thought, and
with no mean idea of his art; a Swedenborgian, or, as he prefers to call
it, a member of the New Church; and I have generally found something
marked in men who adopt that faith. He had painted a good picture of
Bryant. He seems to me to possess truth in himself, and to aim at it in
his artistic endeavors.
May 6th.--This morning it is an easterly rain (south-easterly, I should
say just now at twelve o'clock), and I went at nine, by appointment, to
sit for my picture. The artist painted awhile; but soon found that he
had not so much light as was desirable, and complained that his tints
were as muddy as the weather. Further sitting was therefore postponed
till to-morrow at eleven. It will be a good picture; but I see no
assurance, as yet, of the likeness. An artist's apartment is always very
interesting to me, with its pictures, finished and unfinished; its little
fancies in the pictorial way,--as here two sketches of children among
flowers and foliage, representing Spring and Summer, Winter and Autumn
being yet to come out of the artist's mild; the portraits of his wife and
children; here a clergyman, there a poet; here a woman with the stamp of
reality upon her, there a feminine conception which we feel not to have
existed. There was an infant Christ, or rather a child Christ, not
unbeautiful, but scarcely divine. I love the odor of paint in an
artist's room; his palette and all his other tools have a mysterious
charm for me. The pursuit has always interested my imagination more than
any other, and I remember before having my first portrait taken, there
was a great bewitchery in the idea, as if it were a magic process. Even
now, it is not without interest to me.
I left Mr. Thompson before ten, and took my way through the sloppy
streets to the Athenaeum, where I looked over the newspapers and
periodicals, and found two of my old stories (Peter Goldthwaite and the
Shaker Bridal) published as original in the last London Metropolitan!
The English are much more unscrupulous and dishonest pirates than
ourselves. However, if they are poor enough to perk themselves in such
false feathers as these, Heaven help them! I glanced over the stories,
and they seemed painfully cold and dull. It is the more singular that
these should be so published, inasmuch as the whole book was republished
in London, only a few months ago. Mr. Fields tells me that two
publishers in London had advertised the Scarlet Letter as in press, each
book at a shilling.
* * * * * *
Certainly life is made much more tolerable, and man respects himself far
more, when he takes his meals with a certain degree of order and state.
There should be a sacred law in these matters; and, as consecrating the
whole business, the preliminary prayer is a good and real ordinance. The
advance of man from a savage and animal state may be as well measured by
his mode and morality of dining, as by any other circumstance. At Mr.
Fields's, soon after entering the house, I heard the brisk and cheerful
notes of a canary-bird, singing with great vivacity, and making its voice
echo through the large rooms. It was very pleasant, at the close of the
rainy, east-windy day, and seemed to fling sunshine through the dwelling.
May 7th.--I did not go out yesterday afternoon, but after tea I went to
Parker's. The drinking and smoking shop is no bad place to see one kind
of life. The front apartment is for drinking. The door opens into Court
Square, and is denoted, usually, by some choice specimens of dainties
exhibited in the windows, or hanging beside the door-post; as, for
instance, a pair of canvas-back ducks, distinguishable by their
delicately mottled feathers; an admirable cut of raw beefsteak; a ham,
ready boiled, and with curious figures traced in spices on its outward
fat; a half, or perchance the whole, of a large salmon, when in season; a
bunch of partridges, etc., etc. A screen stands directly before the
door, so as to conceal the interior from an outside barbarian. At the
counter stand, at almost all hours,--certainly at all hours when I have
chanced to observe,--tipplers, either taking a solitary glass, or
treating all round, veteran topers, flashy young men, visitors from the
country, the various petty officers connected with the law, whom the
vicinity of the Court-House brings hither. Chiefly, they drink plain
liquors, gin, brandy, or whiskey, sometimes a Tom and Jerry, a gin
cocktail (which the bar-tender makes artistically, tossing it in a large
parabola from one tumbler to another, until fit for drinking), a
brandy-smash, and numerous other concoctions. All this toping goes
forward with little or no apparent exhilaration of spirits; nor does this
seem to be the object sought,--it being rather, I imagine, to create a
titillation of the coats of the stomach and a general sense of
invigoration, without affecting the brain. Very seldom does a man grow
wild and unruly.
The inner room is hung round with pictures and engravings of various
kinds,--a painting of a premium ox, a lithograph of a Turk and of a
Turkish lady, . . . . and various showily engraved tailors'
advertisements, and other shop-bills; among them all, a small painting of
a drunken toper, sleeping on a bench beside the grog-shop,--a ragged,
half-hatless, bloated, red-nosed, jolly, miserable-looking devil, very
well done, and strangely suitable to the room in which it hangs. Round
the walls are placed some half a dozen marble-topped tables, and a
centre-table in the midst; most of them strewn with theatrical and other
show-bills; and the large theatre-bills, with their type of gigantic
solidity and blackness, hung against the walls.
Last evening, when I entered, there was one guest somewhat overcome with
liquor, and slumbering with his chair tipped against one of the marble
tables. In the course of a quarter of an hour, he roused himself (a
plain, middle-aged man), and went out with rather an unsteady step, and a
hot, red face. One or two others were smoking, and looking over the
papers, or glancing at a play-bill. From the centre of the ceiling
descended a branch with two gas-burners, which sufficiently illuminated
every corner of the room. Nothing is so remarkable in these bar-rooms
and drinking-places, as the perfect order that prevails: if a man gets
drunk, it is no otherwise perceptible than by his going to sleep, or his
inability to walk.
Pacing the sidewalk in front of this grog-shop of Parker's (or sometimes,
on cold and rainy days, taking his station inside), there is generally to
be observed an elderly ragamuffin, in a dingy and battered hat, an old
surtout, and a more than shabby general aspect; a thin face and red nose,
a patch over one eye, and the other half drowned in moisture. He leans
in a slightly stooping posture on a stick, forlorn and silent, addressing
nobody, but fixing his one moist eye on you with a certain intentness.
he is a man who has been in decent circumstances at some former period of
his life, but, falling into decay (perhaps by dint of too frequent visits
at Parker's bar), he now haunts about the place, as a ghost haunts the
spot where he was murdered, "to collect his rents," as Parker says,--that
is, to catch an occasional ninepence from some charitable acquaintances,
or a glass of liquor at the bar. The word "ragamuffin," which I have
used above, does not accurately express the man, because there is a sort
of shadow or delusion of respectability about him, and a sobriety too,
and a kind of decency in his groggy and red-nosed destitution.
Underground, beneath the drinking and smoking rooms, is Parker's
eating-hall, extending all the way to Court Street. All sorts of good
eating may be had there, and a gourmand may feast at what expense he
will.
I take an interest in all the nooks and crannies and every development of
cities; so here I try to make a description of the view from the back
windows of a house in the centre of Boston, at which I now glance in the
intervals of writing. The view is bounded, at perhaps thirty yards'
distance, by a row of opposite brick dwellings, standing, I think, on
Temple Place; houses of the better order, with tokens of genteel families
visible in all the rooms betwixt the basements and the attic windows in
the roof; plate-glass in the rear drawing-rooms, flower-pots in some of
the windows of the upper stories. Occasionally, a lady's figure, either
seated or appearing with a flitting grace, or dimly manifest farther
within the obscurity of the room. A balcony, with a wrought-iron fence
running along under the row of drawing-room windows, above the basement.
In the space betwixt the opposite row of dwellings and that in which I am
situated are the low out-houses of the above-described houses, with flat
roofs; or solid brick walls, with walks on them, and high railings, for
the convenience of the washerwomen in hanging out their clothes. In the
intervals are grass-plots, already green, because so sheltered; and
fruit-trees, now beginning to put forth their leaves, and one of them, a
cherry-tree, almost in full blossom. Birds flutter and sing among these
trees. I should judge it a good site for the growth of delicate fruit;
for, quite enclosed on all sides by houses, the blighting winds cannot
molest the trees. They have sunshine on them a good part of the day,
though the shadow must come early, and I suppose there is a rich soil
about the roots. I see grapevines clambering against one wall, and also
peeping over another, where the main body of the vine is invisible to me.
In another place, a frame is erected for a grapevine, and probably it
will produce as rich clusters as the vines of Madeira, here in the heart
of the city, in this little spot of fructifying earth, while the thunder
of wheels rolls about it on every side. The trees are not all
fruit-trees. One pretty well-grown buttonwood-tree aspires upward above
the roofs of the houses. In the full verdure of summer, there will be
quite a mass or curtain of foliage between the hither and the thither row
of houses.
Afternoon.--At eleven, I went to give Mr. Thompson a sitting for my
picture. I like the painter. He seems to reverence his art and to aim
at truth in it, as I said before; a man of gentle disposition too, and
simplicity of life and character. I seated myself in the pictorial
chair, with the only light in the room descending upon me from a high
opening, almost at the ceiling, the rest of the sole window being
shuttered. He began to work, and we talked in an idle and desultory
way,--neither of us feeling very conversable,--which he attributed to the
atmosphere, it being a bright, west-windy, bracing day. We talked about
the pictures of Christ, and how inadequate and untrue they are. He said
he thought artists should attempt only to paint child-Christs, human
powers being inadequate to the task of painting such purity and holiness
in a manly development. Then he said that an idea of a picture had
occurred to him that morning, while reading a chapter in the New
Testament,--how "they parted his garments among them, and for his vesture
did cast lots." His picture was to represent the soldier to whom the
garment without a seam had fallen, after taking it home and examining it,
and becoming impressed with a sense of the former wearer's holiness. I
do not quite see how he would make such a picture tell its own story;--
but I find the idea suggestive to my own mind, and I think I could make
something of it. We talked of physiognomy and impressions of character,
--first impressions,--and how apt they are to come aright in the face of
the closest subsequent observation.
There were several visitors in the course of the sitting, one a
gentleman, a connection from the country, with whom the artist talked
about family matters and personal affairs,--observing on the poorness of
his own business, and that he had thoughts of returning to New York. I
wish he would meet with better success. Two or three ladies also looked
in. Meanwhile Mr. Thompson had been painting with more and more
eagerness, casting quick, keen glances at me, and then making hasty
touches on the picture, as if to secure with his brush what he had caught
with his eye. He observed that he was just getting interested in the
work, and I could recognize the feeling that was in him as akin to what I
have experienced myself in the glow of composition. Nevertheless, he
seemed able to talk about foreign matters, through it all. He continued
to paint in this rapid way, up to the moment of closing the sitting; when
he took the canvas from the easel, without giving me time to mark what
progress he had made, as he did the last time.
The artist is middle-sized, thin, a little stooping, with a quick,
nervous movement. He has black hair, not thick, a beard under his chin,
a small head, but well-developed forehead, black eyebrows, eyes keen, but
kindly, and a dark face, not indicating robust health, but agreeable in
its expression. His voice is gentle and sweet, and such as comes out
from amidst refined feelings. He dresses very simply and unpictorially
in a gray frock or sack, and does not seem to think of making a picture
of himself in his own person.
At dinner to-day there was a young Frenchman, whom ------ befriended a
year or so ago, when he had not another friend in America, and obtained
employment for him in a large dry-goods establishment. He is a young man
of eighteen or thereabouts, with smooth black hair, neatly dressed; his
face showing a good disposition, but with nothing of intellect or
character. It is funny to think of this poor little Frenchman, a
Parisian too, eating our most un-French victuals,--our beefsteaks, and
roasts, and various homely puddings and hams, and all things most
incongruent to his hereditary stomach; but nevertheless he eats most
cheerfully and uncomplainingly. He has not a large measure of French
vivacity, never rattles, never dances, nor breaks into ebullitions of
mirth and song; on the contrary, I have never known a youth of his age
more orderly and decorous. He is kind-hearted and grateful, and evinces
his gratitude to the mother of the family and to his benefactress by
occasional presents, not trifling when measured by his small emolument of
five dollars per week. Just at this time he is confined to his room by
indisposition, caused, it is suspected, by a spree on Sunday last. Our
gross Saxon orgies would soon be the ruin of his French constitution.
A thought to-day. Great men need to be lifted upon the shoulders of the
whole world, in order to conceive their great ideas or perform their
great deeds. That is, there must be an atmosphere of greatness round
about them. A hero cannot be a hero unless in an heroic world.
May 8th.--I went last evening to the National Theatre to see a pantomime.
It was Jack the Giant-Killer, and somewhat heavy and tedious. The
audience was more noteworthy than the play. The theatre itself is for
the middling and lower classes, and I had not taken my seat in the most
aristocratic part of the house; so that I found myself surrounded chiefly
by young sailors, Hanover Street shopmen, mechanics, and other people of
that class. It is wonderful! the difference that exists in the personal
aspect and dress, and no less in the manners, of people in this quarter
of the city, as compared with other parts of it.
One would think that Oak Hall should give a common garb and air to the
great mass of the Boston population; but it seems not to be so; and
perhaps what is most singular is, that the natural make of the men has a
conformity and suitableness to the dress. Glazed caps and Palo Alto hats
were much worn. It is a pity that this picturesque and comparatively
graceful hat should not have been generally adopted, instead of falling
to the exclusive use of a rowdy class.
In the next box to me were two young women, with an infant, but to which
of them appertaining I could not at first discover. One was a large,
plump girl, with a heavy face, a snub nose, coarse-looking, but
good-natured, and with no traits of evil,--save, indeed, that she had on
the vilest gown of dirty white cotton, so pervadingly dingy that it was
white no longer, as it seemed to me. The sleeves were short, and ragged
at the borders, and her shawl, which she took off on account of the heat,
was old and faded,--the shabbiest and dirtiest dress that I ever saw a
woman wear. Yet she was plump, and looked comfortable in body and mind.
I imagine that she must have had a better dress at home, but had come to
the theatre extemporaneously, and, not going to the dress circle,
considered her ordinary gown good enough for the occasion. The other
girl seemed as young or younger than herself. She was small, with a
particularly intelligent and pleasant face, not handsome, perhaps, but as
good or better than if it were. It was mobile with whatever sentiment
chanced to be in her mind, as quick and vivacious a face in its movements
as I have ever seen; cheerful, too, and indicative of a sunny, though I
should think it might be a hasty, temper. She was dressed in a dark gown
(chintz, I suppose the women call it), a good, homely dress, proper
enough for the fireside, but a strange one to appear in at a theatre.
Both these girls appeared to enjoy themselves very much,--the large and
heavy one in her own duller mode; the smaller manifesting her interest by
gestures, pointing at the stage, and with so vivid a talk of countenance
that it was precisely as if she had spoken. She was not a brunette, and
this made the vivacity of her expression the more agreeable. Her
companion, on the other hand, was so dark, that I rather suspected her to
have a tinge of African blood.
There were two men who seemed to have some connection with these girls,--
one an elderly, gray-headed personage, well-stricken in liquor, talking
loudly and foolishly, but good-humoredly; the other a young man, sober,
and doing his best to keep his elder friend quiet. The girls seemed to
give themselves no uneasiness about the matter.--Both the men wore Palo
Alto hats. I could not make out whether either of the men were the
father of the child, though I was inclined to set it down as a family
party.
As the play went on, the house became crowded and oppressively warm, and
the poor little baby grew dark red, or purple almost, with the
uncomfortable heat in its small body. It must have been accustomed to
discomfort, and have concluded it to be the condition of mortal life,
else it never would have remained so quiet. Perhaps it had been quieted
with a sleeping-potion. The two young women were not negligent of it;
but passed it to and fro between them, each willingly putting herself to
inconvenience for the sake of tending it. But I really feared it might
die in some kind of a fit, so hot was the theatre, so purple with heat,
yet strangely quiet, was the child. I was glad to hear it cry at last;
but it did not cry with any great rage and vigor, as it should, but in a
stupid kind of way. Hereupon the smaller of the two girls, after a
little inefficacious dandling, at once settled the question of maternity
by nursing her baby. Children must be hard to kill, however injudicious
the treatment. The two girls and their cavaliers remained till nearly
the close of the play. I should like well to know who they are,--of what
condition in life, and whether reputable as members of the class to which
they belong. My own judgment is that they are so. Throughout the
evening, drunken young sailors kept stumbling into and out of the boxes,
calling to one another from different parts of the house, shouting to the
performers, and singing the burden of songs. It was a scene of life in
the rough.