London has been enshrouded to-day in what they call a ‘_blight_’—a
blanket-like atmosphere which dulls the sun without the aid of clouds.
By taking the pains to hold your arm close to your eye, on days like
this you find it covered with small insects, and the trees, in the
course of a week will show what is their errand from the morasses. Why
these leaf-eaters did not come before, or why they did not stay longer
where they were, seems to be a mystery, even to the newspapers.
I saw a new combination this morning—_a whip and a parasol_. A lady
most unhappily plain, (whose impression, however, was very much
mollified by the beautiful equipage she drove,) came very near running
me down at the crowded corner of Oxford and Regent streets. She was
driving a pair of snow-white ponies at a famous pace, and, as she laid
the lash on very vigorously, in passing me by, I discovered that the
whip was but a _continuation of the handle of the parasol_.—In holding
up the protector for her own skin, therefore, she held up the terror of
the skins of her ponies! It was like so many other things in this world,
that I went on my way moralizing.
It should be recorded, by the way, that though one sees good-looking and
cleanly-dressed women trundling wheelbarrows in the streets of London,
one sees also that very many of the equipages of pleasure are driven by
ladies—the usurpation covering the sunshiny and voluntary, as well as
the shady and involuntary extreme of masculine pursuit. It really does
somewhat modify one’s ideas of the fragile sex, however, to see some
hundreds of them mounted on spirited blood horses every day, and every
third carriage in the Park driven by the fingers that we are taught to
press the like of, so very lightly. How far this near blending of
pursuits, male and female, adds to the sympathy and rationality of their
intercourse, or how far it breaks down the barriers that enshrine
delicacy and romance, are questions that our friend Godey should settle
in the “Lady’s Book.”
One does not very often see Americans in London, somehow, though one
sees them by hundreds in Paris: but last night, I saw one or two
distinguished country people at the opera. Mr. Bryant’s sachem-like head
was in un-recognised contact with the profane miscellany of the pit. Mr.
Reed, the able Philadelphia lawyer, (who made the capital speech, you
will remember, at the dinner of the Historical Society a year ago) was
with a party in the stalls. Mr. Colden of New York was present also. A
very distinguished _looking_ countryman of ours, as well as a very
distinguished one, by the way, passed through London a few days since on
his route to Vienna—Mr. Stiles, of Georgia, who was lately appointed
our _Charge_ to the capital of Austria. With this gentleman, I was
delighted to meet, as he was a school-boy friend whom I had not seen for
many years, and for the pleasure of joining him at Vienna, I have
changed my plans, and given up my proposed wintering in Paris. Mr.
Stiles was kind enough to confer upon me a very easily-given, but, at
the same time, very useful addition to my passport, since as a
_Charge’s_ secretary and _attaché_, I may defy custom-houses and see
courts—privileges denied to Mr.’s and editors! I shall leave London
soon, and zig-zag it to Austria, visiting the intermediate cities in the
centre of Europe, where you know I have never been, and in the
police-ified and etiquettical atmosphere of which my embroidered
passport, trifling as is the addition to it, will save me a deal of
trouble.[7]
To return once more to the subject of the paragraph preceeding the
last:—I have often remarked another interchange of male and female
occupation, which, if not peculiar to England, is at least different
from the habits of the sexes in our country. The _men_, of the middle
and lower classes, _share freely in the out-doors’ care of the
children_. Ten minutes ago, a handsome young soldier, a private of the
Queen’s Guards—an elegant fellow, in a high bear-skin cap and full
uniform—passed up Regent-street before my window, carrying a baby in
his arms, very leisurely, and _not at all remarked by the crowd_, though
no woman accompanied him. He was probably carrying “the child” home,
having left the mother to shop or gossip; but what one of your private
soldiers, my dear General, would quietly walk up Broadway in full
uniform, with a baby in his arms? You could not take a walk in London,
any pleasant day, without meeting a number of well-dressed men drawing
children in basket wagons. They sit at shop-doors with them in their
laps, or smoke their pipes while keeping the cradle going behind the
counter. To any possibility of ridicule of such duties, the men of this
country seem wholly insensible. In this and some other matters we have a
false pride in America, which is both peculiarly American and peculiarly
against nature.
And, _apropos_ of children—I have taken some vain pains, the last day
or two, to find in the London shops, India-rubber shoes for my little
daughter. This article and suspenders of curled India-rubber, which I
have also enquired for in vain, are two out of many varieties of this
particular manufacture in which London still remains to be civilized,
and for that step in civilization, the Queen (whose children go out in
all weathers, and whose husband wears suspenders,) would probably be
willing to thank our friend DAY of Maiden-lane. Most of the uses to
which the magical king of Caoutchouc has put his subject gum, would be
novelties in England, I fancy, and he should be advised to set up a
branch shop in Regent street, with his celebrated portable India-rubber
canoe for a sign.
The Morning Post states that FREDERIKA BREMER is on her way to our
country. If ever there was a writer who sees things as every one wishes
to, and nobody else can—whose eyes penetrate just to the right depth
through the skin of human nature, neither too much nor too little—who
describes people with an unequalled novelty and just-enough-ness, that
is to say, and at the same time, invariably betters the heart of the
reader, it is this Swedish authoress. I would rather see her than any
woman living whom I have not seen, and I feel very much interested that
our country should cherish her, and show her its appreciation of her
womanly and yet wonderful genius.
I write with a pen keeping tune with some very indifferent music under
my window. My lodgings look out upon Regent street, and they have but
one objection—the neighborhood of a vender of beer who draws customers
by giving some manner or other of music, nightly, in front of his shop.
It is now ten o’clock, and six musicians are posted on the side-walk who
play just well enough to entertain a street crowd of two or three
hundred people—just well enough to bewitch a man’s pen, without making
it worth his while to stop and listen. They are just now murdering the
incomparable air to Mrs. Norton’s song of “Love not,” and, to one who
has ever had his tears startled with it, (as who has not?) it is a
desecration indeed. But what a tune to play to such an audience! The
flaunting guilt that nightly parades the broad sidewalks of
Regent-street is now embodied in one dense crowd listening attentively
to the bitter caution of the song! It would be curious to know how many
among them would be now on the other side of the possibility of
profiting by it, had they been blessed with more careful example and
education.
I went on Sunday to “the city,” to hear the poet Croly preach in the
chapel of St. Stephen’s—a small church adjoining the mansion house of
the Lord Mayor. Of Croly’s drama of “Cataline” and of his poems, I am
(as you know by my frequent quoting from them,) a very great admirer. He
is a fine scholar, and a man of naturally a most _dramatic_ cast of
mind—all his poems being conceived and presented to the reader with
invariable stage effect, so to speak. I was curious to see him—for, to
begin to know a man, _mind-first_, is like living in a house without
having ever seen the outside of it. The church service was
long—precisely two hours and a quarter before the sermon—and though
there was a fine picture of the stoning of Stephen over the altar, and
tablets to the memory of several worthy citizens on the walls and
columns which it was profitable to read, I found the time pass heavily.
Mr. Croly was shown into the pulpit at last. He is a tall powerfully
built man of sixty—stern, gray, and more military than clerical in his
look and manner. His voice, too, was very much more suited to command
than to plead. He preaches extemporaneously, and he took the chapter
from the morning service for his subject—the prophet’s triumph over the
prophets of Baal. His sermon lasted half an hour, and it was, _entirely
and only_, a magnificent painting of the sublime scene outlined in the
Bible. It was done in admirable language, and altogether like a
scholar-poet inspired with his theme—(its _poetry_, that is to
say)—but very little like most efforts one hears in the pulpit. When he
had pronounced his Amen, I suposed he had only laid out foreground of
his sermon. Incidentally he expressed two sentiments—one, that God
chose to have miracles prayed for, even when they were certain to come
to pass, having been predicted by Himself. Second, that the _popular
voice_ (to which the prophet appealed to pass judgment on the trial
between the Lord and Baal) was the _only true test of everything_! I
thought this last _rather_ a republican sentiment for the Lord Mayor’s
chapel.
Dr. Croly would have made a modern Peter the Hermit, if a new crusade
were to be preached up, but he is little likely to lead much faster to
Heaven than they would otherwise go, the charity-school of girls who sit
in the broad aisle of his chapel. I shall return to my ideal of him as a
poet.
-----
[7] Of this and the opportunity of a similar appointment by Mr. Wheaton,
our Minister at Berlin, I was unable to avail myself, from increasing
illness.