and weeks gradually calms down. I can _be_ in those places where I
passed days and nights, and became habituated to the sight of the
cathedral, or of the Church of the Holy Trinity, at morning, at noon, at
evening, whenever I turned my eyes in its direction. I often close my
eyelids, and startle my household by saying, "Now I am in Salisbury," or
"Now I am in Stratford." It is a blessed thing to be able, in the
twilight of years, to illuminate the soul with such visions. The
Charles, which flows beneath my windows, which I look upon between the
words of the sentence I am now writing, only turning my head as I sit at
my table,--the Charles is hardly more real to me than Shakespeare's
Avon, since I floated on its still waters, or strayed along its banks
and saw the cows reflected in the smooth expanse, their legs upward, as
if they were walking the skies as the flies walk the ceiling. Salisbury
Cathedral stands as substantial in my thought as our own King's Chapel,
since I slumbered by its side, and arose in the morning to find it still
there, and not one of those unsubstantial fabrics built by the architect
of dreams.
On Thursday, the 22d of July, we left Salisbury for Brighton, where we
were to be guests at Arnold House, the residence of our kind host. Here
we passed another delightful week, with everything around us to
contribute to our quiet comfort and happiness. The most thoughtful of
entertainers, a house filled with choice works of art, fine paintings,
and wonderful pottery, pleasant walks and drives, a visitor now and
then, Mr. and Mrs. Goldwin Smith among the number, rest and peace in a
magnificent city built for enjoyment,--what more could we have asked to
make our visit memorable? Many watering-places look forlorn and desolate
in the intervals of "the season." This was not the time of Brighton's
influx of visitors, but the city was far from dull. The houses are very
large, and have the grand air, as if meant for princes; the shops are
well supplied; the salt breeze comes in fresh and wholesome, and the
noble esplanade is lively with promenaders and Bath chairs, some of them
occupied by people evidently ill or presumably lame, some, I suspect,
employed by healthy invalids who are too lazy to walk. I took one
myself, drawn by an old man, to see how I liked it, and found it very
convenient, but I was tempted to ask him to change places and let me
drag him.
With the aid of the guide-book I could describe the wonders of the
pavilion and the various changes which have come over the great
watering-place. The grand walks, the two piers, the aquarium, and all
the great sights which are shown to strangers deserve full attention
from the tourist who writes for other travellers, but none of these
things seem to me so interesting as what we saw and heard in a little
hamlet which has never, so far as I know, been vulgarized by sightseers.
We drove in an open carriage,--Mr. and Mrs. Willett, A----, and
myself,--into the country, which soon became bare, sparsely settled, a
long succession of rounded hills and hollows. These are the South Downs,
from which comes the famous mutton known all over England, not unknown
at the table of our Saturday Club and other well-spread boards. After a
drive of ten miles or more we arrived at a little "settlement," as we
Americans would call it, and drove up to the door of a modest parsonage,
where dwells the shepherd of the South Down flock of Christian
worshippers. I hope that the good clergyman, if he ever happens to see
what I am writing, will pardon me for making mention of his hidden
retreat, which he himself speaks of as "one of the remoter nooks of the
old country." Nothing I saw in England brought to my mind Goldsmith's
picture of "the man to all the country dear," and his surroundings, like
this visit. The church dates, if I remember right, from the thirteenth
century. Some of its stones show marks, as it is thought, of having
belonged to a Saxon edifice. The massive leaden font is of a very great
antiquity. In the wall of the church is a narrow opening, at which the
priest is supposed to have sat and listened to the confession of the
sinner on the outside of the building. The dead lie all around the
church, under stones bearing the dates of several centuries. One
epitaph, which the unlettered Muse must have dictated, is worth
recording. After giving the chief slumberer's name the epitaph adds,--
"Here lies on either side, the remains of each of his former wives."
Those of a third have found a resting-place close by, behind him.
It seemed to me that Mr. Bunner's young man in search of Arcady might
look for it here with as good a chance of being satisfied as anywhere I
can think of. But I suppose that men and women and especially boys,
would prove to be a good deal like the rest of the world, if one lived
here long enough to learn all about them. One thing I can safely
say,--an English man or boy never goes anywhere without his fists. I saw
a boy of ten or twelve years, whose pleasant face attracted my
attention. I said to the rector, "That is a fine-looking little fellow,
and I should think an intelligent and amiable kind of boy." "Yes," he
said, "yes; he can strike from the shoulder pretty well, too. I had to
stop him the other day, indulging in that exercise." Well, I said to
myself, we have not yet reached the heaven on earth which I was fancying
might be embosomed in this peaceful-looking hollow. Youthful angels can
hardly be in the habit of striking from the shoulder. But the well-known
phrase, belonging to the pugilist rather than to the priest, brought me
back from the ideal world into which my imagination had wandered.
Our week at Brighton was passed in a very quiet but most enjoyable way.
It could not be otherwise with such a host and hostess, always arranging
everything with reference to our well-being and in accordance with our
wishes. I became very fond of the esplanade, such a public walk as I
never saw anything to compare with. In these tranquil days, and long,
honest nights of sleep, the fatigues of what we had been through were
forgotten, the scales showed that we were becoming less ethereal every
day, and we were ready for another move.
We bade good-by to our hosts with the most grateful and the warmest
feeling towards them, after a month of delightful companionship and the
experience of a hospitality almost too generous to accept, but which
they were pleased to look upon as if we were doing them a favor.
On the 29th of July we found ourselves once more in London.
VI.
We found our old quarters all ready and awaiting us. Mrs. Mackellar's
motherly smile, Sam's civil bow, and the rosy cheeks of many-buttoned
Robert made us feel at home as soon as we crossed the threshold.
The dissolution of Parliament had brought "the season" abruptly to an
end. London was empty. There were three or four millions of people in
it, but the great houses were for the most part left without occupants
except their liveried guardians. We kept as quiet as possible, to avoid
all engagements. For now we were in London for London itself, to do
shopping, to see sights, to be our own master and mistress, and to live
as independent a life as we possibly could.
The first thing we did on the day of our arrival was to take a hansom
and drive over to Chelsea, to look at the place where Carlyle passed the
larger part of his life. The whole region about him must have been
greatly changed during his residence there, for the Thames Embankment
was constructed long after he removed to Chelsea. We had some little
difficulty in finding the place we were in search of. Cheyne (pronounced
"Chainie") Walk is a somewhat extended range of buildings. Cheyne Row is
a passage which reminded me a little of my old habitat, Montgomery
Place, now Bosworth Street. Presently our attention was drawn to a
marble medallion portrait on the corner building of an ordinary-looking
row of houses. This was the head of Carlyle, and an inscription informed
us that he lived for forty-seven years in the house No. 24 of this row
of buildings. Since Carlyle's home life has been made public, he has
appeared to us in a different aspect from the ideal one which he had
before occupied. He did not show to as much advantage under the
Boswellizing process as the dogmatist of the last century, dear old Dr.
Johnson. But he remains not the less one of the really interesting men
of his generation, a man about whom we wish to know all that we have a
right to know.
The sight of an old nest over which two or three winters have passed is
a rather saddening one. The dingy three-story brick house in which
Carlyle lived, one in a block of similar houses, was far from
attractive. It was untenanted, neglected; its windows were unwashed, a
pane of glass was broken; its threshold appeared untrodden, its whole
aspect forlorn and desolate. Yet there it stood before me, all covered
with its associations as an ivy-clad tower with its foliage. I wanted to
see its interior, but it looked as if it did not expect a tenant and
would not welcome a visitor. Was there nothing but this forbidding
house-front to make the place alive with some breathing memory? I saw
crossing the street a middle-aged woman,--a decent body, who looked as
if she might have come from the lower level of some not opulent but
respectable household. She might have some recollection of an old man
who was once her neighbor. I asked her if she remembered Mr. Carlyle.
Indeed she did, she told us. She used to see him often, in front of his
house, putting bits of bread on the railing for the birds. He did not
like to see anything wasted, she said. The merest scrap of information,
but genuine and pleasing; an instantaneous photograph only, but it makes
a pretty vignette in the volume of my reminiscences. There are many
considerable men in every generation of mankind, but not a great number
who are personally interesting,--not a great many of whom we feel that
we cannot know too much; whose foibles, even, we care to know about;
whose shortcomings we try to excuse; who are not models, but whose
special traits make them attractive. Carlyle is one of these few, and no
revelations can prevent his interesting us. He was not quite finished in
his parental existence. The bricklayer's mortar of his father's calling
stuck to his fingers through life, but only as the soil he turned with
his ploughshare clung to the fingers of Burns. We do not wish either to
have been other than what he was. Their breeding brings them to the
average level, carries them more nearly to the heart, makes them a
simpler expression of our common humanity. As we rolled in the cars by
Ecclefechan, I strained my eyes to take in every point of the landscape,
every cottage, every spire, if by any chance I could find one in that
lonely region. There was not a bridge nor a bit of masonry of any kind
that I did not eagerly scrutinize, to see if it were solid and honest
enough to have been built by Carlyle's father. Solitary enough the
country looked. I admired Mr. Emerson's devotion in seeking his friend
in his bare home among what he describes as the "desolate heathery
hills" about Craigenputtock, which were, I suppose, much like the region
through which we were passing.
It is one of the regrets of my life that I never saw or heard Carlyle.
Nature, who seems to be fond of trios, has given us three dogmatists,
all of whom greatly interested their own generation, and whose
personality, especially in the case of the first and the last of the
trio, still interests us,--Johnson, Coleridge, and Carlyle. Each was an
oracle in his way, but unfortunately oracles are fallible to their
descendants. The author of "Taxation no Tyranny" had wholesale opinions,
and pretty harsh ones, about us Americans, and did not soften them in
expression: "Sir, they are a race of convicts, and ought to be thankful
for anything we allow them short of hanging." We smile complacently when
we read this outburst, which Mr. Croker calls in question, but which
agrees with his saying in the presence of Miss Seward, "I am willing to
love all mankind _except an American_."
A generation or two later comes along Coleridge, with his circle of
reverential listeners. He says of Johnson that his fame rests
principally upon Boswell, and that "his _bow-wow_ manner must have
had a good deal to do with the effect produced." As to Coleridge
himself, his contemporaries hardly know how to set bounds to their
exaltation of his genius. Dibdin comes pretty near going into rhetorical
hysterics in reporting a conversation of Coleridge's to which he
listened: "The auditors seemed to be wrapt in wonder and delight, as one
observation more profound, or clothed in more forcible language, than
another fell from his tongue.... As I retired homeward I thought a
SECOND JOHNSON had visited the earth to make wise the sons of men." And
De Quincey speaks of him as "the largest and most spacious intellect,
the subtlest and most comprehensive, in my judgment, that has yet
existed amongst men." One is sometimes tempted to wish that the
superlative could be abolished, or its use allowed only to old experts.
What are men to do when they get to heaven, after having exhausted their
vocabulary of admiration on earth?
Now let us come down to Carlyle, and see what he says of Coleridge. We
need not take those conversational utterances which called down the
wrath of Mr. Swinburne, and found expression in an epigram which
violates all the proprieties of literary language. Look at the
full-length portrait in the Life of Sterling. Each oracle denies his
predecessor, each magician breaks the wand of the one who went before
him. There were Americans enough ready to swear by Carlyle until he
broke his staff in meddling with our anti-slavery conflict, and buried
it so many fathoms deep that it could never be fished out again. It is
rather singular that Johnson and Carlyle should each of them have
shipwrecked his sagacity and shown a terrible leak in his moral
sensibilities on coming in contact with American rocks and currents,
with which neither had any special occasion to concern himself, and
which both had a great deal better have steered clear of.
But here I stand once more before the home of the long-suffering,
much-laboring, loud-complaining Heraclitus of his time, whose very smile
had a grimness in it more ominous than his scowl. Poor man! Dyspeptic on
a diet of oatmeal porridge; kept wide awake by crowing cocks; drummed
out of his wits by long-continued piano-pounding; sharp of speech, I
fear, to his high-strung wife, who gave him back as good as she got! I
hope I am mistaken about their everyday relations, but again I say, poor
man!--for all his complaining must have meant real discomfort, which a
man of genius feels not less, certainly, than a common mortal.
I made a second visit to the place where he lived, but I saw nothing
more than at the first. I wanted to cross the threshold over which he
walked so often, to see the noise-proof room in which he used to write,
to look at the chimney-place down which the soot came, to sit where he
used to sit and smoke his pipe, and to conjure up his wraith to look in
once more upon his old deserted dwelling. That vision was denied me.
After visiting Chelsea we drove round through Regent's Park. I suppose
that if we use the superlative in speaking of Hyde Park, Regent's Park
will be the comparative, and Battersea Park the positive, ranking them
in the descending grades of their hierarchy. But this is my conjecture
only, and the social geography of London is a subject which only one who
has become familiarly acquainted with the place should speak of with any
confidence. A stranger coming to our city might think it made little
difference whether his travelling Boston acquaintance lived in Alpha
Avenue or in Omega Square, but he would have to learn that it is farther
from one of these places to the other, a great deal farther, than it is
from Beacon Street, Boston, to Fifth Avenue, New York.
An American finds it a little galling to be told that he must not drive
in his _numbered_ hansom or four-wheeler except in certain portions
of Hyde Park. If he is rich enough to keep his own carriage, or if he
will pay the extra price of a vehicle not vulgarized by being on the
numbered list, he may drive anywhere that his Grace or his Lordship
does, and perhaps have a mean sense of satisfaction at finding himself
in the charmed circle of exclusive "gigmanity." It is a pleasure to meet
none but well-dressed and well-mannered people, in well-appointed
equipages. In the high road of our own country, one is liable to fall in
with people and conveyances that it is far from a pleasure to meet. I
was once driving in an open carriage, with members of my family, towards
my own house in the country town where I was then living. A cart drawn
by oxen was in the road in front of us. Whenever we tried to pass, the
men in it turned obliquely across the road and prevented us, and this
was repeated again and again. I could have wished I had been driving in
Hyde Park, where clowns and boors, with their carts and oxen, do not
find admittance. Exclusiveness has its conveniences.
The next day, as I was strolling through Burlington Arcade, I saw a
figure just before me which I recognized as that of my townsman, Mr.
Abbott Lawrence. He was accompanied by his son, who had just returned
from a trip round the planet. There are three grades of recognition,
entirely distinct from each other: the meeting of two persons of
different countries who speak the same language,--an American and an
Englishman, for instance; the meeting of two Americans from different
cities, as of a Bostonian and a New Yorker or a Chicagonian; and the
meeting of two from the same city, as of two Bostonians.
The difference of these recognitions may be illustrated by supposing
certain travelling philosophical instruments, endowed with intelligence
and the power of speech, to come together in their wanderings,--let us
say in a restaurant of the Palais Royal. "Very hot," says the talking
Fahrenheit (Thermometer) from Boston, and calls for an ice, which he
plunges his bulb into and cools down. In comes an intelligent and
socially disposed English Barometer. The two travellers greet each
other, not exactly as old acquaintances, but each has heard very
frequently about the other, and their relatives have been often
associated. "We have a good deal in common," says the Barometer. "Of the
same blood, as we may say; quicksilver is thicker than water." "Yes,"
says the little Fahrenheit, "and we are both of the same mercurial
temperament." While their columns are dancing up and down with laughter
at this somewhat tepid and low-pressure pleasantry, there come in a New
York Réaumur and a Centigrade from Chicago. The Fahrenheit, which has
got warmed up to _temperate_, rises to _summer heat_, and even
a little above it. They enjoy each other's company mightily. To be sure,
their scales differ, but have they not the same freezing and the same
boiling point? To be sure, each thinks his own scale is the true
standard, and at home they might get into a contest about the matter,
but here in a strange land they do not think of disputing. Now, while
they are talking about America and their own local atmosphere and
temperature, there comes in a second Boston Fahrenheit. The two of the
same name look at each other for a moment, and rush together so eagerly
that their bulbs are endangered. How well they understand each other!
Thirty-two degrees marks the freezing point. Two hundred and twelve
marks the boiling point. They have the same scale, the same fixed
points, the same record: no wonder they prefer each other's company!
I hope that my reader has followed my illustration, and finished it off
for himself. Let me give a few practical examples. An American and an
Englishman meet in a foreign land. The Englishman has occasion to
mention his weight, which he finds has gained in the course of his
travels. "How much is it now?" asks the American. "Fourteen stone. How
much do you weigh?" "Within four pounds of two hundred." Neither of them
takes at once any clear idea of what the other weighs. The American has
never thought of his own, or his friends', or anybody's weight in
_stones_ of fourteen pounds. The Englishman has never thought of
any one's weight in _pounds_. They can calculate very easily with a
slip of paper and a pencil, but not the less is their language but half
intelligible as they speak and listen. The same thing is in a measure
true of other matters they talk about. "It is about as large a space as
the Common," says the Boston man. "It is as large as St. James's Park,"
says the Londoner. "As high as the State House," says the Bostonian, or
"as tall as Bunker Hill Monument," or "about as big as the Frog Pond,"
where the Londoner would take St. Paul's, the Nelson Column, the
Serpentine, as his standard of comparison. The difference of scale does
not stop here; it runs through a great part of the objects of thought
and conversation. An average American and an average Englishman are
talking together, and one of them speaks of the beauty of a field of
corn. They are thinking of two entirely different objects: one of a
billowy level of soft waving wheat, or rye, or barley; the other of a
rustling forest of tall, jointed stalks, tossing their plumes and
showing their silken epaulettes, as if every stem in the ordered ranks
were a soldier in full regimentals. An Englishman planted for the first
time in the middle of a well-grown field of Indian corn would feel as
much lost as the babes in the wood. Conversation between two Londoners,
two New Yorkers, two Bostonians, requires no foot-notes, which is a
great advantage in their intercourse.
To return from my digression and my illustration. I did not do a great
deal of shopping myself while in London, being contented to have it done
for me. But in the way of looking in at shop windows I did a very large
business. Certain windows attracted me by a variety in unity which
surpassed anything I have been accustomed to. Thus one window showed
every conceivable convenience that could be shaped in ivory, and nothing
else. One shop had such a display of magnificent dressing-cases that I
should have thought a whole royal family was setting out on its travels.
I see the cost of one of them is two hundred and seventy guineas.
Thirteen hundred and fifty dollars seems a good deal to pay for a
dressing-case.
On the other hand, some of the first-class tradesmen and workmen make no
show whatever. The tailor to whom I had credentials, and who proved
highly satisfactory to me, as he had proved to some of my countrymen and
to Englishmen of high estate, had only one small sign, which was placed
in one of his windows, and received his customers in a small room that
would have made a closet for one of our stylish merchant tailors. The
bootmaker to whom I went on good recommendation had hardly anything
about his premises to remind one of his calling. He came into his
studio, took my measure very carefully, and made me a pair of what we
call Congress boots, which fitted well when once on my feet, but which
it cost more trouble to get into and to get out of than I could express
my feelings about without dangerously enlarging my limited vocabulary.
Bond Street, Old and New, offered the most inviting windows, and I
indulged almost to profligacy in the prolonged inspection of their
contents. Stretching my walk along New Bond Street till I came to a
great intersecting thoroughfare, I found myself in Oxford Street. Here
the character of the shop windows changed at once. Utility and
convenience took the place of show and splendor. Here I found various
articles of use in a household, some of which were new to me. It is very
likely that I could have found most of them in our own Boston Cornhill,
but one often overlooks things at home which at once arrest his
attention when he sees them in a strange place. I saw great numbers of
illuminating contrivances, some of which pleased me by their arrangement
of reflectors.
Bryant and May's safety matches seemed to be used everywhere. I procured
some in Boston with these names on the box, but the label said they were
made in Sweden, and they diffused vapors that were enough to produce
asphyxia. I greatly admired some of Dr. Dresser's water-cans and other
contrivances, modelled more or less after the antique, but I found an
abundant assortment of them here in Boston, and I have one I obtained
here more original in design and more serviceable in daily use than any
I saw in London. I should have regarded Wolverhampton, as we glided
through it, with more interest, if I had known at that time that the
inventive Dr. Dresser had his headquarters in that busy-looking town.