REDBURN ROVES ABOUT HITHER AND THITHER
I do not know that any other traveler would think it worth while to
mention such a thing; but the fact is, that during the summer months in
Liverpool, the days are exceedingly lengthy; and the first evening I
found myself walking in the twilight after nine o’clock, I tried to
recall my astronomical knowledge, in order to account satisfactorily
for so curious a phenomenon. But the days in summer, and the nights in
winter, are just as long in Liverpool as at Cape Horn; for the latitude
of the two places very nearly corresponds.
These Liverpool days, however, were a famous thing for me; who,
thereby, was enabled after my day’s work aboard the Highlander, to
ramble about the town for several hours. After I had visited all the
noted places I could discover, of those marked down upon my father’s
map, I began to extend my rovings indefinitely; forming myself into a
committee of one, to investigate all accessible parts of the town;
though so many years have elapsed, ere I have thought of bringing in my
report.
This was a great delight to me: for wherever I have been in the world,
I have always taken a vast deal of lonely satisfaction in wandering
about, up and down, among out-of-the-way streets and alleys, and
speculating upon the strangers I have met. Thus, in Liverpool I used to
pace along endless streets of dwelling-houses, looking at the names on
the doors, admiring the pretty faces in the windows, and invoking a
passing blessing upon the chubby children on the door-steps. I was
stared at myself, to be sure: but what of that? We must give and take
on such occasions. In truth, I and my shooting-jacket produced quite a
sensation in Liverpool: and I have no doubt, that many a father of a
family went home to his children with a curious story, about a
wandering phenomenon they had encountered, traversing the side-walks
that day. In the words of the old song, _“I cared for nobody, no not I,
and nobody cared for me.”_ I stared my fill with impunity, and took all
stares myself in good part.
Once I was standing in a large square, gaping at a splendid chariot
drawn up at a portico. The glossy horses quivered with good-living, and
so did the sumptuous calves of the gold-laced coachman and footmen in
attendance. I was particularly struck with the red cheeks of these men:
and the many evidences they furnished of their enjoying this meal with
a wonderful relish.
While thus standing, I all at once perceived, that the objects of my
curiosity, were making me an object of their own; and that they were
gazing at me, as if I were some unauthorized intruder upon the British
soil. Truly, they had reason: for when I now think of the figure I must
have cut in those days, I only marvel that, in my many strolls, my
passport was not a thousand times demanded.
Nevertheless, I was only a forlorn looking mortal among tens of
thousands of rags and tatters. For in some parts of the town, inhabited
by laborers, and poor people generally; I used to crowd my way through
masses of squalid men, women, and children, who at this evening hour,
in those quarters of Liverpool, seem to empty themselves into the
street, and live there for the time. I had never seen any thing like it
in New York. Often, I witnessed some curious, and many very sad scenes;
and especially I remembered encountering a pale, ragged man, rushing
along frantically, and striving to throw off his wife and children, who
clung to his arms and legs; and, in God’s name, conjured him not to
desert them. He seemed bent upon rushing down to the water, and
drowning himself, in some despair, and craziness of wretchedness. In
these haunts, beggary went on before me wherever I walked, and dogged
me unceasingly at the heels. Poverty, poverty, poverty, in almost
endless vistas: and want and woe staggered arm in arm along these
miserable streets.
And here, I must not omit one thing, that struck me at the time. It was
the absence of negroes; who in the large towns in the “free states” of
America, almost always form a considerable portion of the destitute.
But in these streets, not a negro was to be seen. All were whites; and
with the exception of the Irish, were natives of the soil: even
Englishmen; as much Englishmen, as the dukes in the House of Lords.
This conveyed a strange feeling: and more than any thing else, reminded
me that I was not in my own land. For _there,_ such a being as a native
beggar is almost unknown; and to be a born American citizen seems a
guarantee against pauperism; and this, perhaps, springs from the virtue
of a vote.
Speaking of negroes, recalls the looks of interest with which
negro-sailors are regarded when they walk the Liverpool streets. In
Liverpool indeed the negro steps with a prouder pace, and lifts his
head like a man; for here, no such exaggerated feeling exists in
respect to him, as in America. Three or four times, I encountered our
black steward, dressed very handsomely, and walking arm in arm with a
good-looking English woman. In New York, such a couple would have been
mobbed in three minutes; and the steward would have been lucky to
escape with whole limbs. Owing to the friendly reception extended to
them, and the unwonted immunities they enjoy in Liverpool, the black
cooks and stewards of American ships are very much attached to the
place and like to make voyages to it.
Being so young and inexperienced then, and unconsciously swayed in some
degree by those local and social prejudices, that are the marring of
most men, and from which, for the mass, there seems no possible escape;
at first I was surprised that a colored man should be treated as he is
in this town; but a little reflection showed that, after all, it was
but recognizing his claims to humanity and normal equality; so that, in
some things, we Americans leave to other countries the carrying out of
the principle that stands at the head of our Declaration of
Independence.
During my evening strolls in the wealthier quarters, I was subject to a
continual mortification. It was the humiliating fact, wholly unforeseen
by me, that upon the whole, and barring the poverty and beggary,
Liverpool, away from the docks, was very much such a place as New York.
There were the same sort of streets pretty much; the same rows of
houses with stone steps; the same kind of side-walks and curbs; and the
same elbowing, heartless-looking crowd as ever.
I came across the Leeds Canal, one afternoon; but, upon my word, no one
could have told it from the Erie Canal at Albany. I went into St.
John’s Market on a Saturday night; and though it was strange enough to
see that great roof supported by so many pillars, yet the most
discriminating observer would not have been able to detect any
difference between the articles exposed for sale, and the articles
exhibited in Fulton Market, New York.
I walked down Lord-street, peering into the jewelers’ shops; but I
thought I was walking down a block in Broadway. I began to think that
all this talk about travel was a humbug; and that he who lives in a
nut-shell, lives in an epitome of the universe, and has but little to
see beyond him.
It is true, that I often thought of London’s being only seven or eight
hours’ travel by railroad from where I was; and that _there,_ surely,
must be a world of wonders waiting my eyes: but more of London anon.
Sundays were the days upon which I made my longest explorations. I rose
bright and early, with my whole plan of operations in my head. First
walking into some dock hitherto unexamined, and then to breakfast. Then
a walk through the more fashionable streets, to see the people going to
church; and then I myself went to church, selecting the goodliest
edifice, and the tallest Kentuckian of a spire I could find.
For I am an admirer of church architecture; and though, perhaps, the
sums spent in erecting magnificent cathedrals might better go to the
founding of charities, yet since these structures are built, those who
disapprove of them in one sense, may as well have the benefit of them
in another.
It is a most Christian thing, and a matter most sweet to dwell upon and
simmer over in solitude, that any poor sinner may go to church wherever
he pleases; and that even St. Peter’s in Rome is open to him, as to a
cardinal; that St. Paul’s in London is not shut against him; and that
the Broadway Tabernacle, in New York, opens all her broad aisles to
him, and will not even have doors and thresholds to her pews, the
better to allure him by an unbounded invitation. I say, this
consideration of the hospitality and democracy in churches, is a most
Christian and charming thought. It speaks whole volumes of folios, and
Vatican libraries, for Christianity; it is more eloquent, and goes
farther home than all the sermons of Massillon, Jeremy Taylor, Wesley,
and Archbishop Tillotson.
Nothing daunted, therefore, by thinking of my being a stranger in the
land; nothing daunted by the architectural superiority and costliness
of any Liverpool church; or by the streams of silk dresses and fine
broadcloth coats flowing into the aisles, I used humbly to present
myself before the sexton, as a candidate for admission. He would stare
a little, perhaps (one of them once hesitated), but in the end, what
could he do but show me into a pew; not the most commodious of pews, to
be sure; nor commandingly located; nor within very plain sight or
hearing of the pulpit. No; it was remarkable, that there was always
some confounded pillar or obstinate angle of the wall in the way; and I
used to think, that the sextons of Liverpool must have held a secret
meeting on my account, and resolved to apportion me the most
inconvenient pew in the churches under their charge. However, they
always gave me a seat of some sort or other; sometimes even on an oaken
bench in the open air of the aisle, where I would sit, dividing the
attention of the congregation between myself and the clergyman. The
whole congregation seemed to know that I was a foreigner of
distinction.
It was sweet to hear the service read, the organ roll, the sermon
preached—just as the same things were going on three thousand five
hundred miles off, at home! But then, the prayer in behalf of her
majesty the Queen, somewhat threw me back. Nevertheless, I joined in
that prayer, and invoked for the lady the best wishes of a poor Yankee.
How I loved to sit in the holy hush of those brown old monastic aisles,
thinking of Harry the Eighth, and the Reformation! How I loved to go a
roving with my eye, all along the sculptured walls and buttresses;
winding in among the intricacies of the pendent ceiling, and wriggling
my fancied way like a wood-worm. I could have sat there all the morning
long, through noon, unto night. But at last the benediction would come;
and appropriating my share of it, I would slowly move away, thinking
how I should like to go home with some of the portly old gentlemen,
with high-polished boots and Malacca canes, and take a seat at their
cosy and comfortable dinner-tables. But, alas! there was no dinner for
me except at the sign of the Baltimore Clipper.
Yet the Sunday dinners that Handsome Mary served up were not to be
scorned. The roast beef of Old England abounded; and so did the
immortal plum-puddings, and the unspeakably capital gooseberry pies.
But to finish off with that abominable _“swipes”_ almost spoiled all
the rest: not that I myself patronized _“swipes”_ but my shipmates did;
and every cup I saw them drink, I could not choose but taste in
imagination, and even then the flavor was bad.
On Sundays, at dinner-time, as, indeed, on every other day, it was
curious to watch the proceedings at the sign of the Clipper. The
servant girls were running about, mustering the various crews, whose
dinners were spread, each in a separate apartment; and who were
collectively known by the names of their ships.
“Where are the _Arethusas?—_Here’s their beef been smoking this
half-hour.”—“Fly, Betty, my dear, here come the _Splendids.”—_ “Run,
Molly, my love; get the salt-cellars for the _Highlanders_ .”—“You
Peggy, where’s the _Siddons’ pickle-pat?”—“I_ say, Judy, are you never
coming with that pudding for the _Lord Nelsons?”_
On week days, we did not fare quite so well as on Sundays; and once we
came to dinner, and found two enormous bullock hearts smoking at each
end of the Highlanders’ table. Jackson was indignant at the outrage.
He always sat at the head of the table; and this time he squared
himself on his bench, and erecting his knife and fork like flag-staffs,
so as to include the two hearts between them, he called out for Danby,
the boarding-house keeper; for although his wife Mary was in fact at
the head of the establishment, yet Danby himself always came in for the
fault-findings.
Danby obsequiously appeared, and stood in the doorway, well knowing the
philippics that were coming. But he was not prepared for the peroration
of Jackson’s address to him; which consisted of the two bullock hearts,
snatched bodily off the dish, and flung at his head, by way of a
recapitulation of the preceding arguments. The company then broke up in
disgust, and dined elsewhere.
Though I almost invariably attended church on Sunday mornings, yet the
rest of the day I spent on my travels; and it was on one of these
afternoon strolls, that on passing through St. George’s-square, I found
myself among a large crowd, gathered near the base of George the
Fourth’s equestrian statue.
The people were mostly mechanics and artisans in their holiday clothes;
but mixed with them were a good many soldiers, in lean, lank, and
dinnerless undresses, and sporting attenuated rattans. These troops
belonged to the various regiments then in town. Police officers, also,
were conspicuous in their uniforms. At first perfect silence and
decorum prevailed.
Addressing this orderly throng was a pale, hollow-eyed young man, in a
snuff-colored surtout, who looked worn with much watching, or much
toil, or too little food. His features were good, his whole air was
respectable, and there was no mistaking the fact, that he was strongly
in earnest in what he was saying.
In his hand was a soiled, inflammatory-looking pamphlet, from which he
frequently read; following up the quotations with nervous appeals to
his hearers, a rolling of his eyes, and sometimes the most frantic
gestures. I was not long within hearing of him, before I became aware
that this youth was a Chartist.
Presently the crowd increased, and some commotion was raised, when I
noticed the police officers augmenting in number; and by and by, they
began to glide through the crowd, politely hinting at the propriety of
dispersing. The first persons thus accosted were the soldiers, who
accordingly sauntered off, switching their rattans, and admiring their
high-polished shoes. It was plain that the Charter did not hang very
heavy round their hearts. For the rest, they also gradually broke up;
and at last I saw the speaker himself depart.
I do not know why, but I thought he must be some despairing elder son,
supporting by hard toil his mother and sisters; for of such many
political desperadoes are made.
That same Sunday afternoon, I strolled toward the outskirts of the
town, and attracted by the sight of two great Pompey’s pillars, in the
shape of black steeples, apparently rising directly from the soil, I
approached them with much curiosity. But looking over a low parapet
connecting them, what was my surprise to behold at my feet a smoky
hollow in the ground, with rocky walls, and dark holes at one end,
carrying out of view several lines of iron railways; while far beyond,
straight out toward the open country, ran an endless railroad. Over the
place, a handsome Moorish arch of stone was flung; and gradually, as I
gazed upon it, and at the little side arches at the bottom of the
hollow, there came over me an undefinable feeling, that I had
previously seen the whole thing before. Yet how could that be?
Certainly, I had never been in Liverpool before: but then, that Moorish
arch! surely I remembered that very well. It was not till several
months after reaching home in America, that my perplexity upon this
matter was cleared away. In glancing over an old number of the Penny
Magazine, there I saw a picture of the place to the life; and
remembered having seen the same print years previous. It was a
representation of the spot where the Manchester railroad enters the
outskirts of the town.