Lady Rosebery's,--over two thousand, my companion heard it said.
Whatever the number was, the crowd was very great,--so great that one
might well feel alarmed for the safety of any delicate person who was in
the _pack_ which formed itself at one place in the course of the
evening. Some obstruction must have existed _a fronte_, and the
_vis a tergo_ became fearful in its pressure on those who were
caught in the jam. I began thinking of the crushes in which I had been
caught, or which I had read and heard of: the terrible time at the
execution of Holloway and Haggerty, where some forty persons were
squeezed or trampled to death; the Brooklyn Theatre and other similar
tragedies; the crowd I was in at the unveiling of the statue on the
column of the Place Vendome, where I felt as one may suppose Giles Corey
did when, in his misery, he called for "more weight" to finish him. But
there was always a _deus ex machina_ for us when we were in
trouble. Looming up above the crowd was the smiling and encouraging
countenance of the ever active, always present, always helpful Mr.
Smalley. He cleared a breathing space before us. For a short time it was
really a formidable wedging together of people, and if a lady had
fainted in the press, she might have run a serious risk before she could
have been extricated. No more "marble halls" for us, if we had to
undergo the _peine forte et dure_ as the condition of our presence!
We were both glad to escape from this threatened asphyxia, and move
freely about the noble apartments. Lady Rosebery, who was kindness
itself, would have had us stay and sit down in comfort at the
supper-table, after the crowd had thinned, but we were tired with all we
had been through, and ordered our carriage. _Ordered our carriage!_
"I can call spirits from the vasty deep." ...
_But will they come when you do call for them?_"
The most formidable thing about a London party is getting away from it.
"C'est le _dernier_ pas qui coute." A crowd of anxious persons in
retreat is hanging about the windy door, and the breezy stairway, and
the airy hall.
A stentorian voice, hard as that of Rhadamanthus, exclaims,--
"Lady Vere de Vere's carriage stops the way!"
If my Lady Vere de Vere is not on hand, and that pretty quickly, off
goes her carriage, and the stern voice bawls again,--
"Mrs. Smith's carriage stops the way!"
Mrs. Smith's particular Smith may be worth his millions and live in his
marble palace; but if Mrs. Smith thinks her coachman is going to stand
with his horses at that door until she appears, she is mistaken, for she
is a minute late, and now the coach moves on, and Rhadamanthus calls
aloud,--
"Mrs. Brown's carriage stops the way!"
Half the lung fevers that carry off the great people are got waiting for
their carriages.
I know full well that many readers would be disappointed if I did not
mention some of the grand places and bring in some of the great names
that lend their lustre to London society. We were to go to a fine
musical party at Lady Rothschild's on the evening of the 30th of May. It
happened that the day was Sunday, and if we had been as punctilious as
some New England Sabbatarians, we might have felt compelled to decline
the tempting invitation. But the party was given by a daughter of
Abraham, and in every Hebrew household the true Sabbath was over. We
were content for that evening to shelter ourselves under the old
dispensation.
The party, or concert, was a very brilliant affair. Patti sang to us,
and a tenor, and a violinist played for us. How we two Americans came to
be in so favored a position I do not know; all I do know is that we were
shown to our places, and found them very agreeable ones. In the same row
of seats was the Prince of Wales, two chairs off from A----'s seat.
Directly in front of A---- was the Princess of Wales, "in ruby velvet,
with six rows of pearls encircling her throat, and two more strings
falling quite low;" and next her, in front of me, the startling presence
of Lady de Grey, formerly Lady Lonsdale, and before that Gladys Herbert.
On the other side of the Princess sat the Grand Duke Michael of Russia.
As we are among the grandest of the grandees, I must enliven my sober
account with an extract from my companion's diary:--
"There were several great beauties there, Lady Claude Hamilton, a
queenly blonde, being one. Minnie Stevens Paget had with her the pretty
Miss Langdon, of New York. Royalty had one room for supper, with its
attendant lords and ladies. Lord Rothschild took me down to a long table
for a sit-down supper,--there were some thirty of us. The most superb
pink orchids were on the table. The [Thane] of ---- sat next me, and how
he stared before he was introduced! ... This has been the finest party
we have been to, sitting comfortably in such a beautiful ball-room,
gazing at royalty in the flesh, and at the shades of departed beauties
on the wall, by Sir Joshua and Gainsborough. It was a new experience to
find that the royal lions fed upstairs, and mixed animals below!"
A visit to Windsor had been planned, under the guidance of a friend
whose kindness had already shown itself in various forms, and who,
before we left England, did for us more than we could have thought of
owing to any one person. This gentleman, Mr. Willett, of Brighton,
called with Mrs. Willett to take us on the visit which had been arranged
between us.
Windsor Castle, which everybody knows, or can easily learn, all about,
is one of the largest of those huge caverns in which the descendants of
the original cave men, when they have reached the height of human
grandeur, delight to shelter themselves. It seems as if such a great
hollow quarry of rock would strike a chill through every tenant, but
modern improvements reach even the palaces of kings and queens, and the
regulation temperature of the castle, or of its inhabited portions, is
fixed at sixty-five degrees of Fahrenheit. The royal standard was not
floating from the tower of the castle, and everything was quiet and
lonely. We saw all we wanted to,--pictures, furniture, and the rest. My
namesake, the Queen's librarian, was not there to greet us, or I should
have had a pleasant half-hour in the library with that very polite
gentleman, whom I had afterwards the pleasure of meeting in London.
After going through all the apartments in the castle that we cared to
see, or our conductress cared to show us, we drove in the park, along
the "three-mile walk," and in the by-roads leading from it. The
beautiful avenue, the open spaces with scattered trees here and there,
made this a most delightful excursion. I saw many fine oaks, one about
sixteen feet of honest girth, but no one which was very remarkable. I
wished I could have compared the handsomest of them with one in Beverly,
which I never look at without taking my hat off. This is a young tree,
with a future before it, if barbarians do not meddle with it, more
conspicuous for its spread than its circumference, stretching not very
far from a hundred feet from bough-end to bough-end. I do not think I
saw a specimen of the British _Quercus robur_ of such consummate
beauty. But I know from Evelyn and Strutt what England has to boast of,
and I will not challenge the British oak.
Two sensations I had in Windsor park, or forest, for I am not quite sure
of the boundary which separates them. The first was the lovely sight of
the _hawthorn_ in full bloom. I had always thought of the hawthorn
as a pretty shrub, growing in hedges; as big as a currant bush or a
barberry bush, or some humble plant of that character. I was surprised
to see it as a tree, standing by itself, and making the most delicious
roof a pair of young lovers could imagine to sit under. It looked at a
little distance like a young apple-tree covered with new-fallen snow. I
shall never see the word hawthorn in poetry again without the image of
the snowy but far from chilling canopy rising before me. It is the very
bower of young love, and must have done more than any growth of the
forest to soften the doom brought upon man by the fruit of the forbidden
tree. No wonder that
"In the spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of
love,"
with the object of his affections awaiting him in this boudoir of
nature. What a pity that Zekle, who courted Huldy over the apples she
was peeling, could not have made love as the bucolic youth does, when
"Every shepherd tells his tale
Under the hawthorn in the dale!"
(I will have it _love_-tale, in spite of Warton's comment.) But
I suppose it does not make so much difference, for love transmutes the
fruit in Huldy's lap into the apples of the Hesperides.
In this way it is that the associations with the poetry we remember come
up when we find ourselves surrounded by English scenery. The great poets
build temples of song, and fill them with images and symbols which move
us almost to adoration; the lesser minstrels fill a panel or gild a
cornice here and there, and make our hearts glad with glimpses of
beauty. I felt all this as I looked around and saw the hawthorns in full
bloom, in the openings among the oaks and other trees of the forest.
Presently I heard a sound to which I had never listened before, and
which I have never heard since:--
Coooo--coooo!
Nature had sent one cuckoo from her aviary to sing his double note for
me, that I might not pass away from her pleasing show without once
hearing the call so dear to the poets. It was the last day of spring. A
few more days, and the solitary voice might have been often heard; for
the bird becomes so common as to furnish Shakespeare an image to fit
"the skipping king:"--
"He was but as the cuckoo is in June,
Heard, not regarded."
For the lyric poets the cuckoo is "companion of the spring," "darling of
the spring;" coming with the daisy, and the primrose, and the blossoming
sweet-pea. Where the sound came from I could not tell; it puzzled
Wordsworth, with younger eyes than mine, to find whence issued
"that cry
Which made me look a thousand ways
In bush, and tree, and sky."
Only one hint of the prosaic troubled my emotional delight: I could not
help thinking how capitally the little rogue imitated the cuckoo clock,
with the sound of which I was pretty well acquainted.
On our return from Windsor we had to get ready for another great dinner
with our Minister, Mr. Phelps. As we are in the habit of considering our
great officials as public property, and as some of my readers want as
many glimpses of high life as a decent regard to republican
sensibilities will permit, I will borrow a few words from the diary to
which I have often referred:--
"The Princess Louise was there with the Marquis, and I had the best
opportunity of seeing how they receive royalty at private houses. Mr.
and Mrs. Phelps went down to the door to meet her the moment she came,
and then Mr. Phelps entered the drawing-room with the Princess on his
arm, and made the tour of the room with her, she bowing and speaking to
each one of us. Mr. Goschen took me in to dinner, and Lord Lorne was on
my other side. All of the flowers were of the royal color, red. It was a
grand dinner.... The Austrian Ambassador, Count Karoli, took Mrs. Phelps
in [to dinner], his position being higher than that of even the Duke [of
Argyll], who sat upon her right."
It was a very rich experience for a single day: the stately abode of
royalty, with all its manifold historical recollections, the magnificent
avenue of forest trees, the old oaks, the hawthorn in full bloom, and
the one cry of the cuckoo, calling me back to Nature in her spring-time
freshness and glory; then, after that, a great London dinner-party at a
house where the kind host and the gracious hostess made us feel at home,
and where we could meet the highest people in the land,--the people whom
we who live in a simpler way at home are naturally pleased to be with
under such auspices. What of all this shall I remember longest? Let me
not seem ungrateful to my friends who planned the excursion for us, or
to those who asked us to the brilliant evening entertainment, but I feel
as Wordsworth felt about the cuckoo,--he will survive all the other
memories.
"And I can listen to thee yet,
Can lie upon the plain
And listen, till I do beget
That golden time again."
Nothing is more hackneyed than an American's description of his feelings
in the midst of the scenes and objects he has read of all his days, and
is looking upon for the first time. To each of us it appears in some
respects in the same way, but with a difference for every individual. We
may smile at Irving's emotions at the first sight of a distinguished
Englishman on his own soil,--the ingenious Mr. Roscoe, as an earlier
generation would have called him. Our tourists, who are constantly going
forward and back between England and America, lose all sense of the
special distinctions between the two countries which do not bear on
their personal convenience. Happy are those who go with unworn,
unsatiated sensibilities from the New World to the Old; as happy, it may
be, those who come from the Old World to the New, but of that I cannot
form a judgment.
On the first day of June we called by appointment upon Mr. Peel, the
Speaker of the House of Commons, and went through the Houses of
Parliament. We began with the train-bearer, then met the housekeeper,
and presently were joined by Mr. Palgrave. The "Golden Treasury" stands
on my drawing-room table at home, and the name on its title-page had a
familiar sound. This gentleman is, I believe, a near relative of
Professor Francis Turner Palgrave, its editor.
Among other things to which Mr. Palgrave called our attention was the
death-warrant of Charles the First. One name in the list of signers
naturally fixed our eyes upon it. It was that of John Dixwell. A lineal
descendant of the old regicide is very near to me by family connection,
Colonel Dixwell having come to this country, married, and left a
posterity, which has resumed the name, dropped for the sake of safety at
the time when he, Goffe, and Whalley, were in concealment in various
parts of New England.
We lunched with the Speaker, and had the pleasure of the company of
Archdeacon Farrar. In the afternoon we went to a tea at a very grand
house, where, as my companion says in her diary, "it took full six men
in red satin knee-breeches to let us in." Another grand personage asked
us to dine with her at her country place, but we were too full of
engagements. In the evening we went to a large reception at Mr. Gosse's.
It was pleasant to meet artists and scholars,--the kind of company to
which we are much used in our aesthetic city. I found our host as
agreeable at home as he was when in Boston, where he became a favorite,
both as a lecturer and as a visitor.
Another day we visited Stafford House, where Lord Ronald Gower, himself
an artist, did the honors of the house, showing us the pictures and
sculptures, his own included, in a very obliging and agreeable way. I
have often taken note of the resemblances of living persons to the
portraits and statues of their remote ancestors. In showing us the
portrait of one of his own far-back progenitors, Lord Ronald placed a
photograph of himself in the corner of the frame. The likeness was so
close that the photograph might seem to have been copied from the
painting, the dress only being changed. The Duke of Sutherland, who had
just come back from America, complained that the dinners and lunches had
used him up. I was fast learning how to sympathize with him.
Then to Grosvenor House to see the pictures. I best remember
Gainsborough's beautiful Blue Boy, commonly so called, from the color of
his dress, and Sir Joshua's Mrs. Siddons as the Tragic Muse, which
everybody knows in engravings. We lunched in clerical company that day,
at the Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol's, with the Archbishop of York,
the Reverend Mr. Haweis, and others as guests. I told A---- that she was
not sufficiently impressed with her position at the side of an
archbishop; she was not _crumbling bread_ in her nervous
excitement. The company did not seem to remember Sydney Smith's remark
to the young lady next him at a dinner-party: "My dear, I see you are
nervous, by your crumbling your bread as you do. _I_ always crumble
bread when I sit by a bishop, and when I sit by an archbishop I crumble
bread with both hands." That evening I had the pleasure of dining with
the distinguished Mr. Bryce, whose acquaintance I made in our own
country, through my son, who has introduced me to many agreeable persons
of his own generation, with whose companionship I am glad to mend the
broken and merely fragmentary circle of old friendships.
The 3d of June was a memorable day for us, for on the evening of that
day we were to hold our reception. If Dean Bradley had proposed our
meeting our guests in the Jerusalem Chamber, I should hardly have been
more astonished. But these kind friends meant what they said, and put
the offer in such a shape that it was impossible to resist it. So we
sent out our cards to a few hundreds of persons,--those who we thought
might like invitations. I was particularly desirous that many members of
the medical profession whom I had not met, but who felt well disposed
towards me, should be at this gathering. The meeting was in every
respect a success. I wrote a prescription for as many baskets of
champagne as would be consistent with the well-being of our guests, and
such light accompaniments as a London company is wont to expect under
similar circumstances. My own recollections of the evening, unclouded by
its festivities, but confused by its multitudinous succession of
introductions, are about as definite as the Duke of Wellington's alleged
monosyllabic description of the battle of Waterloo. But A---- writes in
her diary: "From nine to twelve we stood, receiving over three hundred
people out of the four hundred and fifty we invited." As I did not go to
Europe to visit hospitals or museums, I might have missed seeing some of
those professional brethren whose names I hold in honor and whose
writings are in my library. If any such failed to receive our cards of
invitation, it was an accident which, if I had known, I should have
deeply regretted. So far as we could judge by all we heard, our
unpretentious party gave general satisfaction. Many different social
circles were represented, but it passed off easily and agreeably. I can
say this more freely, as the credit of it belongs so largely to the care
and self-sacrificing efforts of Dr. Priestley and his charming wife.
I never refused to write in the birthday book or the album of the
humblest schoolgirl or schoolboy, and I could not refuse to set my name,
with a verse from one of my poems, in the album of the Princess of
Wales, which was sent me for that purpose. It was a nice new book, with
only two or three names in it, and those of musical
composers,--Rubinstein's, I think, was one of them,--so that I felt
honored by the great lady's request. I ought to describe the book,
but I only remember that it was quite large and sumptuously elegant,
and that I copied into it the last verse of a poem of mine called
"The Chambered Nautilus," as I have often done for plain republican
albums.
The day after our simple reception was notable for three social events
in which we had our part. The first was a lunch at the house of Mrs.
Cyril Flower, one of the finest in London,--Surrey House, as it is
called. Mr. Browning, who seems to go everywhere, and is one of the
vital elements of London society, was there as a matter of course. Miss
Cobbe, many of whose essays I have read with great satisfaction, though
I cannot accept all her views, was a guest whom I was very glad to meet
a second time.
In the afternoon we went to a garden-party given by the Princess Louise
at Kensington Palace, a gloomy-looking edifice, which might be taken
for a hospital or a poorhouse. Of all the festive occasions which I
attended, the garden-parties were to me the most formidable. They are
all very well for young people, and for those who do not mind the
nipping and eager air, with which, as I have said, the climate of
England, no less than that of America, falsifies all the fine things the
poets have said about May, and, I may add, even June. We wandered about
the grounds, spoke with the great people, stared at the odd ones, and
said to ourselves,--at least I said to myself,--with Hamlet,
"The air bites shrewdly, it is very cold."
[Illustration: Robert Browning.]
The most curious personages were some East Indians, a chocolate-colored
lady, her husband, and children. The mother had a diamond on the side of
her nose, its setting riveted on the inside, one might suppose; the
effect was peculiar, far from captivating. A---- said that she should
prefer the good old-fashioned nose-ring, as we find it described and
pictured by travellers. She saw a great deal more than I did, of course.
I quote from her diary: "The little Eastern children made their native
salaam to the Princess by prostrating themselves flat on their little
stomachs in front of her, putting their hands between her feet, pushing
them aside, and kissing the print of her feet!"
I really believe one or both of us would have run serious risks of
catching our "death o' cold," if we had waited for our own carriage,
which seemed forever in coming forward. The good Lady Holland, who was
more than once our guardian angel, brought us home in hers. So we got
warmed up at our own hearth, and were ready in due season for the large
and fine dinner-party at Archdeacon Farrar's, where, among other guests,
were Mrs. Phelps, our Minister's wife, who is a great favorite alike
with Americans and English, Sir John Millais, Mr. Tyndall, and other
interesting people.
I am sorry that we could not have visited Newstead Abbey. I had a letter
from Mr. Thornton Lothrop to Colonel Webb, the present proprietor, with
whom we lunched. I have spoken of the pleasure I had when I came
accidentally upon persons with whose name and fame I had long been
acquainted. A similar impression was that which I received when I found
myself in the company of the bearer of an old historic name. When my
host at the lunch introduced a stately-looking gentleman as Sir Kenelm
Digby, it gave me a start, as if a ghost had stood before me. I
recovered myself immediately, however, for there was nothing of the
impalpable or immaterial about the stalwart personage who bore the name.
I wanted to ask him if he carried any of his ancestor's "powder of
sympathy" about with him. Many, but not all, of my readers remember that
famous man's famous preparation. When used to cure a wound, it was
applied to the weapon that made it; the part was bound up so as to bring
the edges of the wound together, and by the wondrous influence of the
sympathetic powder the healing process took place in the kindest
possible manner. Sir Kenelm, the ancestor, was a gallant soldier, a
grand gentleman, and the husband of a wonderfully beautiful wife, whose
charms he tried to preserve from the ravages of time by various
experiments. He was also the homoeopathist of his day, the Elisha
Perkins (metallic tractors) of his generation. The "mind cure" people
might adopt him as one of their precursors.
I heard a curious statement which was illustrated in the person of one
of the gentlemen we met at this table. It is that English sporting men
are often deaf on one side, in consequence of the noise of the frequent
discharge of their guns affecting the right ear. This is a very
convenient infirmity for gentlemen who indulge in slightly aggressive
remarks, but when they are hit back never seem to be conscious at all of
the _riposte_,--the return thrust of the fencer.
Dr. Allchin called and took me to a dinner, where I met many
professional brothers, and enjoyed myself highly.
By this time every day was pledged for one or more engagements, so that
many very attractive invitations had to be declined. I will not follow
the days one by one, but content myself with mentioning some of the more
memorable visits. I had been invited to the Rabelais Club, as I have
before mentioned, by a cable message. This is a club of which the late
Lord Houghton was president, and of which I am a member, as are several
other Americans. I was afraid that the gentlemen who met,
"To laugh and shake in Rabelais's easy chair,"
might be more hilarious and demonstrative in their mirth than I, a sober
New Englander in the superfluous decade, might find myself equal to. But
there was no uproarious jollity; on the contrary, it was a pleasant
gathering of literary people and artists, who took their pleasure not
sadly, but serenely, and I do not remember a single explosive guffaw.