It was fit that on our way to Boston we should pause in passing through
Cambridge. That was quite as we should have done at home, and I can only
wish now that we had paused longer, though every moment that kept us
from Boston, if it had been anywhere but in England, would have been a
loss. There, it was all gain, and all joy, the gay September 24th
that we went this divine journey. My companion was that companionable
archaeologist who had guided my steps in search of the American origins
in London, and who was now to help me follow the Pilgrim Fathers over
the ground where they sojourned when they were only the Pilgrim Sons.
At divers places on the way, after we left London, he pointed out some
scene associated with American saints or heroes. We traversed the region
that George William Curtis’ people came from, hard by Roxburgh, and
Eliot’s, the Apostle to the Indians; again we skirted the Ralph Waldo
Emerson country, with its big market town of Bishop’s Stortford; and
beyond Ely, where we stopped for the Cathedral and a luncheon, not
unworthy of it, at the station, he startled me from a pleasant drowse I
had fallen into in our railway carriage, with the cry: “There! That is
where Captain John Smith was born.” “Where? Where?” I implored too late,
looking round the compartment everywhere. “Back where those chickens
were.”
I
That was the nearest I came to seeing one of the most famous Virginian
origins. But you cannot see everything in England; there are too many
things; and if the truth must be known I cared more for the natural
features than the historical facts of the landscape. The country was
flat, and a raw green, as it should be in that raw air, under that
dun sky, with sheep hardily biting the short tough pasturage under the
imbrowning oaks and elms, and the olive-graying willows, beside the
full, still streams scarce wetter than the ground they dreamed through.
We did not reach Boston until six o’clock, when the day was already
waning, and the Stump of St. Botolph’s Church stood dim against the sky.
It was a long drive through the suburban streets from the station to the
hotel, which we found full, and which with its crazy floors touched the
fancy as full of something besides guests. But it was well for us so,
because across the market-place, which forms the chief public square
of Boston, was a far better hotel, where we were welcomed to the
old-fashioned ideal of the English inn, such as I did not so nearly
realize anywhere else. The ideal was a little impaired by the electric
light in our bedrooms, but it was not a very brilliant electric light,
and there was a damp cold in the corridors which allowed no doubt of its
genuineness. In the dining-room, which was also the reading-room, there
was an admirable image of a fire in the grate, and a prevailing warmth
and brightness which cheered the heart of exile. When we presently had
dinner, specialized for us by certain differences from that of two other
travellers, there seemed nothing more to ask, except the conversation of
our companions, and this we duly had, quite as if we were four wayfarers
met there in a book. One of these gentlemen proved a solicitor from
Bath, and that made me feel more at home, knowing and loving Bath as I
did. It did not matter that in trying for some mutual acquaintance
there we failed; our good-will was everything; and the solicitor was
intelligent and agreeable. The other gentleman, tall, dark, of urbane
stateliness, was something more, in the touch of Oriental suavity
which, more than his nose, betrayed him; and it appeared, in delightful
suggestion of the old-time commercial intimacy of the Dutch and English
coasts, that he was from Holland, and next morning at breakfast he
developed a large valise, which I now think held samples. If he was a
Dutch Jew, he was probably a Spanish Jew by descent, and what will the
difficult reader have more, in the materials for his romance? Did we
gather about the grate after we had done dinner, and each tell the
story of his life, or at least the most remarkable thing that had ever
happened to him?
[Illustration: THE “STUMP” OF ST. BOTOLPH’S CHURCH AGAINST THE SKY]
I cannot say, but I remember that my friend and I, in my instant hunger
for Boston, which was greater than my hunger for dinner, set forth while
the meal was preparing, and visited the Church of St. Botolph. To reach
it we had to pass through the greater length of the market-place, one
of the most picturesque in England, and the worthy ancestress of
Faneuil Hall and Quincy market-places, which are the most picturesque in
America. At one side of its triangle is the birthplace and dwelling
of Jean Ingelow, and at the point nearest the church is the statue of
Herbert Ingram, the less famous but more locally recognized Bostonian,
who founded the _Illustrated London News_ with the money he made by the
invention and sale of Old Parr’s Pills. He was thrice sent to Parliament
from his native town, and he related it to America, after two centuries,
by drowning in Lake Michigan. “R. N.,” the otherwise anonymous author of
a very intelligent and agreeable _Handbook of Boston_, relates that in
his first canvass for Parliament Ingram was opposed by a gentleman who,
when he asked the voices of the voters, after the old English fashion,
was told by four of them in succession that they were promised “to their
cousin Ingram,” and who thereupon declared that if he had known Ingram
“was cousin to the whole town” he would, never have stood against him.
Like the Bostonians of Massachusetts, the Bostonians of Lincolnshire
were in fact closely knit together by ties of kinship, owing, “R. N.”
believes, to the isolation of Boston before the draining of its fens,
and not to their conviction that there were no outsiders worthy to mate
with them.