AMERICAN VISITS.
A vast volume is before me containing my first American journal, which I
sent over piecemeal in letters and newspaper clippings to Albury, where
my wife and daughters arranged them and kept them safely, till on my
return after three months travel I pasted them duly into this big book.
If I were to record a tithe of the myriad memorabilia there entered, the
present volume now in progress would not afford space even for a tithe
of that: and after all, the result would only appear as a record of
numerous private hospitalities (which I object to making public), of
sundry well-appreciated kindnesses, compliments, and tokens of honour
from stranger friends in many cities, and the numerous incidents that a
tourist visitor ordinarily experiences; most of which, although
paragraphed in a gossiping fashion through hundreds of the 3000 American
papers, are not worth recording here. In fact, I look at this enormous
volume with despair,--the more so that there is its other equally bulky
brother about my second visit,--and so intend to give only some samples
of both. The world is too full of books, and does not call out for
another American Journal. The main social interest of my two visits
consisted in the contrast shown between the one in 1851 and that in
1876, just a quarter of a century after; between in fact the extreme
drinking habits of one generation and the extreme temperance of another:
mainly due, amongst other causes, to the overflowing prosperities of the
middle of this century and the comparative adversities of its declining
years. "Jeshurun once waxed fat, and kicked,"--but since then he has
become one of the "lean kine:" wines and spirits were formerly in
abundance as well as hard dollars, but have now been replaced by the
cheaper water and discredited paper. Moreover, such shrewd and caustic
writers as the Trollopes and Dixon and Charles Dickens have done great
good service to their sensible and sensitive American brothers,--who,
far from resenting strictures which for the moment stung, took the best
advantage of their utterance in self-improvement. My first visit was
hospitably redolent of all manner of seductive drinks,--wherein,
however, I was (as they thought) too temperate; my second was as
hospitably plentiful so far as eating went, but iced water (wherein I
was temperate too) appeared solitarily for the universal beverage:
though even in the most teetotal homes this English guest was always
generously allowed his port or Madeira or even his whisky if he wished
it. Temperance was a fashion, a _furore_, on my second visit, as its
opposite had been on my first: and on each occasion, I persisted in a
middle course, the golden mean,--which I know to be proverbially a
wisdom though not at present universally so accepted.
It is hopeless for me to look through the multitudinous large quarto
pages of my first diary and its letters, comments, paragraphs, &c.; they
are only too full of compliments and kindnesses from friends in many
instances passed away: and I will simply record two or three of the more
public hospitalities which greeted me.
One of these was a grand dinner with the Maryland Historical Society at
Baltimore, May 13, 1851, my late friend Mr. Kennedy in the chair as
president, while Sir Henry Bulwer and myself supported him right and
left, some hundreds of other guests also being present. Of course all
was very well done, luxuriously and magnificently; but perhaps the best
thing I can do (if my reader's patience and my present tired penmanship
will approve it) is to extract from a newspaper, the _Baltimore Clipper_
of the above date, a _précis_ of my speech on the occasion. Some
distinguished gentleman having proposed my health,--"This brought to his
feet Mr. Tupper, who, having expressed his thanks in an appropriate
manner, and acknowledged his superior gratitude to the Author of all
good, alluded to that international loving-kindness which he avowed to
be one main errand of his life; and he very happily brought in Horace's
prophetical description of England and America in their relation of
mother and child, 'O matre pulchrâ filia pulchrior.' He followed by
relating some striking incidents of the good feeling which pervades the
old country in favour of her illustrious offspring. One we cannot fail
to give was that the Royal Naval School at Greenwich had inserted his
well-known ballad 'To Brother Jonathan' in a collection published for
the use of the Royal Navy. The speaker then paid an eloquent compliment
to the literature of America--her poets, statesmen, historians, and
divines. He rejoiced that 'Insular America and Continental England' were
so intimately and inseparably intermingled in the authorial productions
of the human mind, as well as bound together by the strongest ties of
nature and religion, of lineage, laws, and language. Adverting to the
wise piety of such associations as the one before him, he exhorted to
keep together the records of the past, that they may sanctify the
present and be an encouragement to good and a warning against evil for
the future. He commented severely upon the vandal act of the British
troops under General Ross in burning the national archives at
Washington. In this connection he introduced the beautiful lines from
Milton:--
'Lift not thy spear against the Muse's bower;
The great Emathian conqueror bid spare
The house of Pindarus, when temple and tower
Went to the ground.'
In conclusion, Mr. Tupper related an interesting fact, which in his mind
suggested what should be to Americans a pleasing idea--possibly a
discovery--as to the origin of the national flag. On making a pilgrimage
just lately to Mount Vernon, he was forcibly struck by the circumstance
that the ancient family coat-of-arms of the illustrious Washington
consisted of three stars in the upper portion of the shield, and three
stripes below; the crest represented an eagle's head, and the motto was
singularly appropriate to American history, 'Exitus acta probat.' Mr.
Tupper said he could not but consider this a most interesting
coincidence. He thought the world might well congratulate America upon
being the Geographical Apotheosis of that great unspotted character,
who, while he yet lived, was prospectively her typical impersonation.
The three stars by a more than tenfold increase have expanded into
thirty-three; the glorious Issue has abundantly vindicated every
antecedent fact; and your whole emergent eagle, fully plumed, is now
long risen from its eyrie and soars sublimely to the sun in heaven." I
may venture as an end to all this to quote a bit from my home letter.
"At 6 o'clock, and thereafter till 12, I was the honoured guest at the
enclosed splendid banquet. Our English ambassador sat on one side of the
chairman and I on the other; the newspaper will save me all the trouble
of a long account; but it was altogether one of the best triumphs I have
ever achieved: see the papers. My dinner was very light, terrapin soup,
_paté de foie gras aux truffes_, and sweetbread: with a deluge of iced
water, and very little wine. My two speeches raised whirlwinds of
applause, and took the company by storm. It was a most important
opportunity for me, and, by God's help, I met it manfully. All the
principal people of Maryland were there, besides our own minister; with
Lady Bulwer in a side room and that nice young fellow Lytton; and there
were many other distinguished strangers. You should have heard the
shouts and cheers which greeted the points of my speech, and the after
congratulations crowded about me. I begin to feel that if I had had
common chances I should have been an orator. When I kindle up, my
steam-horse goes off, and carries all his audience with him. While I was
speaking, the people moved up _en masse_, and they gave me three cheers
upstanding when I had done."
* * * * *
Another memorable event was a grand dinner given to Washington Irving
and myself, as chief guests amongst others, by Prince Astor at his
palatial residence in New York. As for the profusion of gold plate,
glittering glass, innumerable yellow wax-candles in ormolu chandeliers,
and general exhibition of splendid and luxurious extravagance, and all
manner of costly wines and rarest gourmandise, I never have seen its
like before or since; and more than this (if I may state the fact
without much imputation of vaingloriousness), the intellectual treat
was, to my _amour propre_ at least, of a still more exquisite character,
when our host protested to his company in a generous and genial speech
that, if he could make the exchange, he would give all his wealth for
half the literary glory of Washington Irving and Martin Tupper! We
whispered to each other we heartily wished he could. I strangely missed
visiting Irving at his own home, though urgently invited to it; but
somehow other pressing engagements hindered, and so it was not to be.
On the same day with the Astorian dinner, Mr. Davis, a man of high
social position, had urged me to dine with him, but I could not come as
engaged till the evening. Now he, a local poet himself, had asked me in
divers stanzas of fair rhyme; and so, not willing either to beat him in
versification or to let him beat me, I made this epigrammatic reply in
dog-Latin, which was taken to be rather 'cute:--
"Certes, amice Davis,
Ibo quocunque mavis,
Sed princeps Astor primo
Me rapuit ad prandium;
Cum me relinquit, imo
In me videbis handyum."
This skit was well appreciated. I met at his house divers celebrities,
as indeed I did at many other splendid mansions, especially at the
Mayor's, Mr. Kingsland: I hear he is the third personage in rank in the
United States, and he lives with the grandeur of our London Lord Mayor.
I went with him on the 22d of March 1851 to one of the most magnificent
affairs I ever attended. Here is an extract from my home-letter journal
of same date:--
"Mr. Kingsland, the Mayor, came early to invite me to a grand day, being
the inauguration of the Croton Waterworks. Went off with him at 10 from
the City Hall in a carriage and four followed by forty new omnibuses and
four, some with six horses, and caparisoned with coloured feathers and
little flags, besides a number of private carriages; a gay procession,
nearly a mile long, containing all the legislature and magnates of New
York State and of the city--several hundreds." They visited in turn
divers public institutions, and at most of them I had to speak or to
recite my ballads, especially at a Blind Asylum, where, after an address
from a blind lady (the name was Crosby), "at the request of the Governor
of the State and the Mayor, I answered on the spur of the moment in a
speech and a stave that took the room by storm," &c. &c. And so on for
other institutions, and to the opening of the Croton Aqueduct. But there
is no end to this sort of vainglorious recording. As Willis says in his
_Home Journal_ at the time, "Mr. Tupper is among us, feeling his way
through the wilderness of his laurels, and realising his share of
Emerson's 'banyan' similitude,--the roots that have passed under the sea
and come up on this side of the Atlantic rather smothering him with
their thriftiness in republican soil." I suppose by thriftiness he meant
thrivingness.
My first acquaintance with N.P. Willis arose in this, way. He had (as I
have mentioned before) been in the habit of quoting month after month in
his own paper passages from my "Proverbial Philosophy," believing that
book to be an obscure survival of the Shakespearean era, and that its
author had been dead some three centuries. When he came to town, I
called upon him at his lodging near Golden Square, walking in plainly
"_sans tambour et trompette_" but simply announcing the then
young-looking author as his old Proverbialist! I never saw a man look so
astonished in my life; he turned pale, and vowed that he wouldn't
believe that this youth could be his long-departed prophet; however, I
soon convinced him that I was myself, and carried him off to dine in
Burlington Street. Afterwards we improved into a friendship till he went
the way of all flesh in Heaven's good time.
Perhaps another notable matter to record is that President Fillmore
invited me to meet his Cabinet at dinner in the White House, and that I
there "met and conversed immensely with Daniel Webster, a colossal
unhappy beetle-browed dark-angel-looking sort of man, with a depth for
good and evil in his eye unfathomable; also with Home Secretary Corwen,
a coarse but clever man, who had been a waggon-driver; and with Graham,
Secretary of the Navy, and with Conrad, Secretary at War, both gentlemen
and having lofty foreheads; and with many more, including above all the
excellent President," &c. &c. It was no small honour to meet such men on
equal terms.
If I allowed myself to quote more from my first visit to America, it
could only amount to variations of the same theme,--the great kindness
of all around me to one, however humble, who had shown himself their
friend both by tongue and pen. My books and my ballads had made the way
to their affections, and so the author thereof reaped their love.
A little before my departure on this first visit this notable matter
happened, and I will relate it in an extract from my last letter
homeward.
"The happy thought occurred to me to call on Barnum, as I had brought
him a parcel from Brettell; and, through him, to leave a card of respect
for Jenny Lind. Barnum received me most graciously, and favoured me with
two tickets for Jenny's concert to-night, whereof more anon. Meanwhile I
thought of sending to Jenny, through Barnum, a pretty little copy of
'Proverbial Philosophy,' with a pretty little note,--whereof also more
anon. Called on Edwards by good providence, and found that J.C. Richmond
had misled me--he isn't to be married till next week. A nice visit to
Major Kingsland and his good wife:--I find that my oratory has gone
everywhere, and has made quite a sensation. Think of my stammering
tongue having achieved such triumphs.--I do hope you get the papers I
send. A card at Lester's, Union Hotel, as to Mary M. Chase.--Dined.--A
full feast of reason with George Copway, the Redman chief, a gentleman,
an author, and a right good fellow. Meeting also Gordon Bennett, the
great New York Heraldist, who sat next me at dinner, when we had plenty
of pleasant talk together; also Squier, the celebrated American Layard,
who has discovered so much of Indian archæology, a small, good-looking,
mustachioed, energetic man: also Tuckerman, the amiable poet: also
Willis, a good sort of man, just now much calumniated for having shown
up English society in his books,--but a kindly and a clever every way.
Mrs. Willis called and carried off Willis, and I took Tuckerman under my
wing to the monster concert at Castle Garden. The immense circular
building, full of heads (it holds 8000!) and lighted by 'cressets' of
gas, put me in mind of Martin's illustration of Satan's Throne in
Milton! The concert, as per programme, was a cold and dull affair
enough,--though Lind did terrible heights and depths in the Italian
execution line,--but after the concert came this beautiful episode.
Barnum hunted me out from the two or three acres of faces,--because the
fair and melodious Jenny had expressed to him an urgent wish to see me.
When I got to her boudoir, where Barnum introduced me, I really thought
she would have cried outright,--as feeling herself a stranger in a
foreign land, and in the presence of an old unseen book-friend; for it
seems,--as she told me in beautiful slightly broken English,--that my
poor dear 'Proverbial Philosophy,'--which I never thought she had seen
till I gave it to her,--has been to her 'such a comfort, such a comfort,
many days;' and she was 'so glad, so ver glad,' to see me,--and she
looked so unhappy,--though the immense hall was still echoing with those
tumults of applause,--and she clasped my hand so often, and would hardly
let it go, and made me sit and talk with her, for I was 'her friend,'
and really seemed like a child clinging to its elder brother. I was
quite sorry to leave her,--and when, putting aside all idle musical
compliments, I tried to cheer her by the thought,--how nobly and
generously for many good purposes she was using the melodious gift of
God to her, poor Jenny only looked up devoutly, and shook her head, and
sighed, and seemed unhappy. However, it was time to go, so with another
hearty shake-hands, and 'my love to _dear_ England,' Jenny Lind and I
took leave. This testimony as to my book's good use for comfort,--she
will 'read more now she sees me,'--is very pleasing,--it is much to do
poor Jenny good, who does good to so many others. I think I've forgotten
to say that great old Webster, the Secretary of State, avows that he
'always after hard work refreshes his mind' with that book: and--I might
fill volumes with the same sort of thing. God has blessed my writings to
millions of the human race! And from prince to peasant good has been
done through this hand, incalculable.--God alone be praised."