On the election of Franklin Pierce as President of the United
States, Hawthorne was appointed consul at Liverpool, whither
he sailed in 1853, resigning in 1857 to go to Rome, and
returning to America four years later. "Our Old Home" is the
fruit of this period spent in England. It was written at
Concord, and first appeared serially during 1863 in the
"Atlantic Monthly." Although "Our Old Home" gave no little
offence to English readers, nevertheless it exhibits the
author as keenly observant of their characteristics and life.
(See FICTION.)
_I.--Consular Experiences_
The Liverpool Consulate of the United States, in my day, was located in
Washington Buildings, in the neighbourhood of some of the oldest docks.
Here in a stifled and dusky chamber I spent wearily four good years of
my existence. Hither came a great variety of visitors, principally
Americans, but including almost every other nationality, especially the
distressed and downfallen ones. All sufferers, or pretended ones, in the
cause of Liberty sought the American Consulate in hopes of bread, and
perhaps to beg a passage to the blessed home of Freedom.
My countrymen seemed chiselled in sharper angles than I had imagined at
home. They often came to the Consulate in parties merely to see how
their public servant was getting on with his duties.
No people on earth have such vagabond habits as ourselves. A young
American will deliberately spend all his resources in an aesthetic
peregrination of Europe. Often their funds held out just long enough to
bring them to the doors of my Consulate. Among these stray Americans I
remember one ragged, patient old man, who soberly affirmed that he had
been wandering about England more than a quarter of a century, doing his
utmost to get home, but never rich enough to pay his passage.
I recollect another queer, stupid, fat-faced individual, a country
shopkeeper from Connecticut, who had come over to England solely to have
an interview with the queen. He had named one of his children for her
majesty, and the other for Prince Albert, and had transmitted
photographs of them to the illustrious godmother, which had been
acknowledged by her secretary. He also had a fantastic notion that he
was rightful heir to a rich English estate. The cause of this particular
insanity lies deep in the Anglo-American heart. We still have an
unspeakable yearning towards England, and I might fill many pages with
instances of this diseased American appetite for English soil. A
respectable-looking woman, exceedingly homely, but decidedly New
Englandish, came to my office with a great bundle of documents,
containing evidences of her indubitable claim to the site on which all
the principal business part of Liverpool has long been situated.
All these matters, however, were quite distinct from the real business
of that great Consulate, which is now woefully fallen off. The technical
details I left to the treatment of two faithful, competent English
subordinates. An American has never time to make himself thoroughly
qualified for a foreign post before the revolution of the political
wheel discards him from his office. For myself, I was not at all the
kind of man to grow into an ideal consul. I never desired to be burdened
with public influence, and the official business was irksome. When my
successor arrived, I drew a long, delightful breath.
These English sketches comprise a few of the things that I took note of,
in many escapes from my consular servitude. Liverpool is a most
convenient point to get away from. I hope that I do not compromise my
American patriotism by acknowledging that in visiting many famous
localities, I was often conscious of a fervent hereditary attachment to
the native soil of our forefathers, and felt it to be our Old Home.
_II.--A Sentimental Experience_
There is a small nest of a place in Leamington which I remember as one
of the cosiest nooks in England. The ordinary stream of life does not
run through this quiet little pool, and few of the inhabitants seem to
be troubled with any outside activities.
Its original nucleus lies in the fiction of a chalybeate well. I know
not if its waters are ever tasted nowadays, but it continues to be a
resort of transient visitors. It lies in pleasant Warwickshire at the
very midmost point of England, surrounded by country seats and castles,
and is the more permanent abode of genteel, unoccupied, not very wealthy
people.
My chief enjoyment there lay in rural walks to places of interest in the
neighbourhood. The high-roads are pleasant, but a fresher interest is to
be found in the footpaths which go wandering from stile to stile, along
hedges and across broad fields, and through wooded parks. These by-paths
admit the wayfarer into the very heart of rural life. Their antiquity
probably exceeds that of the Roman ways; the footsteps of the aboriginal
Britons first wore away the grass, and the natural flow of intercourse
from village to village has kept the track bare ever since. An American
farmer would plough across any such path. Old associations are sure to
be fragrant herbs in English nostrils, but we pull them up as weeds.
I remember such a path, which connects Leamington with the small village
of Lillington. The village consists chiefly of one row of dwellings,
growing together like the cells of a honeycomb, without intervening
gardens, grass-plots, orchards, or shade trees. Beyond the first row
there was another block of small, old cottages with thatched roofs. I
never saw a prettier rural scene. In front of the whole row was a
luxuriant hawthorne hedge, and belonging to each cottage was a little
square of garden ground. The gardens were chock-full of familiar,
bright-coloured flowers. The cottagers evidently loved their little
nests, and kindly nature helped their humble efforts with its flowers,
moss, and lichens.
Not far from these cottages a green lane turned aside to an ideal
country church and churchyard. The tower was low, massive, and crowned
with battlements. We looked into the windows and beheld the dim and
quiet interior, a narrow space, but venerable with the consecration of
many centuries. A well-trodden path led across the churchyard. Time
gnaws an English gravestone with wonderful appetite. And yet this, same
ungenial climate has a lovely way of dealing with certain horizontal
monuments. The unseen seeds of mosses find their way into the lettered
furrows, and are made to germinate by the watery sunshine of the English
sky; and by-and-bye, behold, the complete inscription beautifully
embossed in velvet moss on the marble slab! I found an almost illegible
stone very close to the church, and made out this forlorn verse.
Poorly lived,
And poorly died;
Poorly buried,
And no one cried.
From Leamington, the road to Warwick is straight and level till it
brings you to an arched bridge over the Avon. Casting our eyes along the
quiet stream through a vista of willows, we behold the grey magnificence
of Warwick Castle. From the bridge the road passes in front of the
Castle Gate, and enters the principal street of Warwick.
Proceeding westward through the town, we find ourselves confronted by a
huge mass of rock, penetrated by a vaulted passage, which may well have
been one of King Cymbeline's gateways; and on the top of the rock sits a
small, old church, communicating with an ancient edifice that
looks down on the street. It presents a venerable specimen of the
timber-and-plaster style of building; the front rises into many gables,
the windows mostly open on hinges; the whole affair looks very old, but
the state of repair is perfect.
On a bench, enjoying the sunshine, and looking into the street, a few
old men are generally to be seen, wrapped in old-fashioned cloaks and
wearing the identical silver badges which the Earl of Leicester gave to
the twelve original Brethren of Leicester's Hospital--a community which
exists to-day under the modes established for it in the reign of Queen
Elizabeth. This sudden cropping-up of an apparently dead and buried
state of society produces a picturesque effect.
The charm of an English scene consists in the rich verdure of the
fields, in the stately wayside trees, and in the old and high
cultivation that has humanised the very sods. To an American there is a
kind of sanctity even in an English turnip-field.
After my first visit to Leamington, I went to Lichfield to see its
beautiful cathedral, and because it was the birthplace of Dr. Johnson,
with whose sturdy English character I became acquainted through the good
offices of Mr. Boswell. As a man, a talker, and a humorist, I knew and
loved him. I might, indeed, have had a wiser friend; the atmosphere in
which he breathed was dense, and he meddled only with the surface of
life. But then, how English!
I know not what rank the cathedral of Lichfield holds among its sister
edifices. To my uninstructed vision it seemed the object best worth
gazing at in the whole world.
Seeking for Johnson's birthplace, I found a tall and thin house, with a
roof rising steep and high. In a corner-room of the basement, where old
Michael Johnson may have sold books, is now what we should call a
dry-goods store. I could get no admittance, and had to console myself
with a sight of the marble figure sitting in the middle of the Square
with his face turned towards the house. A bas-relief on the pedestal
shows Johnson doing penance in the market-place of Uttoxeter for an act
of disobedience to his father, committed fifty years before.
The next day I went to Uttoxeter on a sentimental pilgrimage to see the
very spot where Johnson had stood. How strange it is that tradition
should not have kept in mind the place! How shameful that there should
be no local memorial of this incident, as beautiful and touching a
passage as can be cited out of any human life!
_III.--The English Vanity Fair_
One summer we found a particularly delightful abode in one of the oases
that have grown up on the wide waste of Blackheath. A friend had given
us pilgrims and dusty wayfarers his suburban residence, with all its
conveniences, elegances, and snuggeries, its lawn and its cosy
garden-nooks. I already knew London well, and I found the quiet of my
temporary haven more attractive than anything that the great town could
offer. Our domain was shut in by a brick wall, softened by shrubbery,
and beyond our immediate precincts there was an abundance of foliage.
The effect was wonderfully sylvan and rural; only we could hear the
discordant screech of a railway-train as it reached Blackheath. It gave
a deeper delight to my luxurious idleness that we could contrast it with
the turmoil which I escaped.
Beyond our own gate I often went astray on the great, bare, dreary
common, with a strange and unexpected sense of desert freedom. Once,
about sunset, I had a view of immense London, four or five miles off,
with the vast dome in the midst, and the towers of the Houses of
Parliament rising up into the smoky canopy--a glorious and sombre
picture, but irresistibly attractive.
The frequent trains and steamers to Greenwich have made Blackheath a
playground and breathing-place for Londoners. Passing among these
holiday people, we come to one of the gateways of Greenwich Park; it
admits us from the bare heath into a scene of antique cultivation,
traversed by avenues of trees. On the loftiest of the gentle hills which
diversify the surface of the park is Greenwich Observatory. I used to
regulate my watch by the broad dial-plate against the Observatory wall,
and felt it pleasant to be standing at the very centre of time and
space.
The English character is by no means a lofty one, and yet an observer
has a sense of natural kindness towards them in the lump. They adhere
closer to original simplicity; they love, quarrel, laugh, cry, and turn
their actual selves inside out with greater freedom than Americans would
consider decorous. It was often so with these holiday folk in Greenwich
Park, and I fancy myself to have caught very satisfactory glimpses of
Arcadian life among the cockneys there.
After traversing the park, we come into the neighbourhood of Greenwich
Hospital, an establishment which does more honour to the heart of
England than anything else that I am acquainted with. The hospital
stands close to the town, where, on Easter Monday, it was my good
fortune to behold the festivity known as Greenwich Fair.
I remember little more of it than a confusion of unwashed and shabbily
dressed people, such as we never see in our own country. On our side of
the water every man and woman has a holiday suit. There are few sadder
spectacles than a ragged coat or a soiled gown at a festival.
The unfragrant crowd was exceedingly dense. There were oyster-stands,
stalls of oranges, and booths with gilt gingerbread and toys for the
children. The mob were quiet, civil, and remarkably good-humoured,
making allowance for the national gruffness; there was no riot. What
immensely perplexed me was a sharp, angry sort of rattle sounding in all
quarters, until I discovered that the noise was produced by a little
instrument called "the fun of the fair," which was drawn smartly against
people's backs. The ladies draw their rattles against the young men's
backs, and the young men return the compliment. There were theatrical
booths, fighting men and jugglers, and in the midst of the confusion
little boys very solicitous to brush your boots. The scene reminded me
of Bunyan's description of Vanity Fair.
These Englishmen are certainly a franker and simpler people than
ourselves, from peer to peasant; but it may be that they owe those manly
qualities to a coarser grain in their nature, and that, with a fine one
in ours, we shall ultimately acquire a marble polish of which they are
unsusceptible.
From Greenwich the steamers offer much the most agreeable mode of
getting to London. At least, it might be agreeable except for the soot
from the stove-pipe, the heavy heat of the unsheltered deck, the
spiteful little showers of rain, the inexhaustible throng of passengers,
and the possibility of getting your pocket picked.
A notable group of objects on the bank of the river is an assemblage of
walls, battlements, and turrets, out of the midst of which rises one
great, greyish, square tower, known in English history as the Tower.
Under the base of the rampart we may catch a glimpse of an arched
water-entrance; it is the Traitor's Gate, through which a multitude of
noble and illustrious personages have entered the Tower on their way to
Heaven.
Later, we have a glimpse of the holy Abbey; while that grey, ancestral
pile on the opposite side of the river is Lambeth Palace. We have passed
beneath half a dozen bridges in our course, and now we look back upon
the mass of innumerable roofs, out of which rise steeples, towers,
columns, and the great crowning Dome--look back upon that mystery of the
world's proudest city, amid which a man so longs and loves to be, not,
perhaps, because it contains much that is positively admirable and
enjoyable, but because the world has nothing better.