The upper portion of Greenwich (where my last article left me loitering)
is a cheerful, comely, old-fashioned town, the peculiarities of which,
if there be any, have passed out of my remembrance. As you descend
towards the Thames, the streets get meaner, and the shabby and sunken
houses, elbowing one another for frontage, bear the sign-boards of
beer-shops and eating-rooms, with especial promises of whitebait and
other delicacies in the fishing line. You observe, also, a frequent
announcement of "Tea Gardens" in the rear; although, estimating the
capacity of the premises by their external compass, the entire sylvan
charm and shadowy seclusion of such blissful resorts must be limited
within a small back-yard. These places of cheap sustenance and
recreation depend for support upon the innumerable pleasure-parties who
come from London Bridge by steamer, at a fare of a few pence, and who
get as enjoyable a meal for a shilling a head as the Ship Hotel would
afford a gentleman for a guinea.
The steamers, which are constantly smoking their pipes up and down the
Thames, offer much the most agreeable mode of getting to London. At
least, it might be exceedingly agreeable, except for the myriad floating
particles of soot from the stove-pipe, and the heavy heat of midsummer
sunshine on the unsheltered deck, or the chill, misty air-draught of a
cloudy day, and the spiteful little showers of rain that may spatter
down upon you at any moment, whatever the promise of the sky; besides
which there is some slight inconvenience from the inexhaustible throng
of passengers, who scarcely allow you standing-room, nor so much as a
breath of unappropriated air, and never a chance to sit down. If these
difficulties weigh little with you, the panorama along the shores of the
memorable river, and the incidents and shows of passing life upon its
bosom, render the trip far preferable to the brief, yet tiresome shoot
along the railway-track. On one such voyage, a regatta of wherries raced
past us, and at once involved every soul on board our steamer in the
tremendous excitement of the struggle. The spectacle was but a moment
within our view, and presented nothing more than a few light skiffs, in
each of which sat a single rower, bare-armed, and with little apparel,
save a shirt and drawers, pale, anxious, with every muscle on the
stretch, and plying his oars in such fashion that the boat skimmed along
with the aerial celerity of a swallow. I wondered at myself for so
immediately catching an interest in the affair, which seemed to contain
no very exalted rivalship of manhood; but, whatever the kind of battle
or the prize of victory, it stirs one's sympathy immensely, and is even
awful, to behold the rare sight of a man thoroughly in earnest, doing
his best, putting forth all there is in him, and staking his very soul
(as these rowers appeared willing to do) on the issue of the contest. It
was the seventy-fourth annual regatta of the Free Watermen of Greenwich,
and announced itself as under the patronage of the Lord Mayor and other
distinguished individuals, at whose expense, I suppose, a prize-boat
was offered to the conqueror, and some small amounts of money to the
inferior competitors.
The aspect of London along the Thames, below Bridge, as it is called, is
by no means so impressive as it ought to be, considering what peculiar
advantages are offered for the display of grand and stately architecture
by the passage of a river through the midst of a great city. It seems,
indeed, as if the heart of London had been cleft open for the mere
purpose of showing how rotten and drearily mean it had become. The shore
is lined with the shabbiest, blackest, and ugliest buildings that can be
imagined, decayed warehouses with blind windows, and wharves that
look ruinous; insomuch that, had I known nothing more of the world's
metropolis, I might have fancied that it had already experienced the
down-fall which I have heard commercial and financial prophets predict
for it, within the century. And the muddy tide of the Thames, reflecting
nothing, and hiding a million of unclean secrets within its breast,--a
sort of guilty conscience, as it were, unwholesome with the rivulets of
sin that constantly flow into it,--is just the dismal stream to glide
by such a city. The surface, to be sure, displays no lack of activity,
being fretted by the passage of a hundred steamers and covered with a
good deal of shipping, but mostly of a clumsier build than I had been
accustomed to see in the Mersey: a fact which I complacently attributed
to the smaller number of American clippers in the Thames, and the
less prevalent influence of American example in refining away the
broad-bottomed capacity of the old Dutch or English models. About midway
between Greenwich and London Bridge, at a rude landing-place on the left
bank of the river, the steamer rings its bell and makes a momentary
pause in front of a large circular structure, where it may be worth our
while to scramble ashore. It indicates the locality of one of those
prodigious practical blunders that would supply John Bull with a topic
of inexhaustible ridicule, if his cousin Jonathan had committed
them, but of which he himself perpetrates two to our one in the mere
wantonness of wealth that lacks better employment. The circular building
covers the entrance to the Thames Tunnel, and is surmounted by a dome of
glass, so as to throw daylight down into the great depth at which the
passage of the river commences. Descending a wearisome succession of
staircases, we at last find ourselves, still in the broad noon, standing
before a closed door, on opening which we behold the vista of an arched
corridor that extends into everlasting midnight. In these days, when
glass has been applied to so many new purposes, it is a pity that the
architect had not thought of arching portions of his abortive tunnel
with immense blocks of the lucid substance, over which the dusky Thames
would have flowed like a cloud, making the sub-fluvial avenue only
a little gloomier than a street of upper London. At present, it is
illuminated at regular intervals by jets of gas, not very brilliantly,
yet with lustre enough to show the damp plaster of the ceiling and
walls, and the massive stone pavement, the crevices of which are oozy
with moisture, not from the incumbent river, but from hidden springs in
the earth's deeper heart. There are two parallel corridors, with a
wall between, for the separate accommodation of the double throng of
foot-passengers, equestrians, and vehicles of all kinds, which was
expected to roll and reverberate continually through the Tunnel. Only
one of them has ever been opened, and its echoes are but feebly awakened
by infrequent footfalls.
Yet there seem to be people who spend their lives here, and who probably
blink like owls, when, once or twice a year, perhaps, they happen to
climb into the sunshine. All along the corridor, which I believe to be
a mile in extent, we see stalls or shops in little alcoves, kept
principally by women; they were of a ripe age, I was glad to observe,
and certainly robbed England of none of its very moderate supply of
feminine loveliness by their deeper than tomb-like interment. As you
approach, (and they are so accustomed to the dusky gas-light that they
read all your characteristics afar off,) they assail you with hungry
entreaties to buy some of their merchandise, holding forth views of the
Tunnel put up in cases of Derbyshire spar, with a magnifying-glass at
one end to make the vista more effective. They offer you, besides,
cheap jewelry, sunny topazes and resplendent emeralds for sixpence, and
diamonds as big as the Koh-i-noor at a not much heavier cost, together
with a multifarious trumpery which has died out of the upper world to
reappear in this Tartarean bazaar. That you may fancy yourself still
in the realms of the living, they urge you to partake of cakes, candy,
ginger-beer, and such small refreshment, more suitable, however, for the
shadowy appetite of ghosts than for the sturdy stomachs of Englishmen.
The most capacious of the shops contains a dioramic exhibition of cities
and scenes in the daylight-world, with a dreary glimmer of gas among
them all; so that they serve well enough to represent the dim,
unsatisfactory remembrances that dead people might be supposed to retain
from their past lives, mixing them up with the ghastliness of their
unsubstantial state. I dwell the more upon these trifles, and do my best
to give them a mockery of importance, because, if these are nothing,
then all this elaborate contrivance and mighty piece of work has been
wrought in vain. The Englishman has burrowed under the bed of his great
river, and set ships of two or three thousand tons a-rolling over his
head, only to provide new sites for a few old women to sell cakes and
ginger-beer!
Yet the conception was a grand one; and though it has proved an absolute
failure, swallowing an immensity of toil and money, with annual
returns hardly sufficient to keep the pavement free from the ooze of
subterranean springs, yet it needs, I presume, only an expenditure three
or four (or, for aught I know, twenty) times as large, to make the
enterprise brilliantly successful. The descent is so great from the bank
of the river to its surface, and the Tunnel dips so profoundly under the
river's bed, that the approaches on either side must commence a long way
off, in order to render the entrance accessible to horsemen or vehicles;
so that the larger part of the cost of the whole affair should have been
expended on its margins. It has turned out a sublime piece of folly; and
when the New Zealander of distant ages shall have moralized sufficiently
among the ruins of London Bridge, he will bethink himself that somewhere
thereabout was the marvellous Tunnel, the very existence of which will
seem to him as incredible as that of the hanging-gardens of Babylon.
But the Thames will long ago have broken through the massive arch, and
choked up the corridors with mud and sand and with the large stones of
the structure itself, intermixed with skeletons of drowned people, the
rusty iron-work of sunken vessels, and a great many such precious and
curious things as a river always contrives to hide in its bosom; the
entrance will have been obliterated, and its very site forgotten beyond
the memory of twenty generations of men, and the whole neighborhood
be held a dangerous spot on account of the malaria; insomuch that the
traveller will make but a brief and careless inquisition for the traces
of the old wonder, and will stake his credit before the public, in some
Pacific Monthly of that day, that the story of it is but a myth, though
enriched with a spiritual profundity which he will proceed to unfold.
Yet it is impossible (for a Yankee, at least) to see so much magnificent
ingenuity thrown away, without trying to endow the unfortunate result
with some kind of usefulness, though perhaps widely different from
the purpose of its original conception. In former ages, the mile-long
corridors, with their numerous alcoves, might have been utilized as
a series of dungeons, the fittest of all possible receptacles for
prisoners of state. Dethroned monarchs and fallen statesmen would not
have needed to remonstrate against a domicil so spacious, so deeply
secluded from the world's scorn, and so admirably in accordance with
their thenceforward sunless fortunes. An alcove here might have suited
Sir Walter Raleigh better than that darksome hiding-place communicating
with the great chamber in the Tower, pacing from end to end of which he
meditated upon his "History of the World." His track would here have
been straight and narrow, indeed, and would therefore have lacked
somewhat of the freedom that his intellect demanded; and yet the
length to which his footsteps might have travelled forth and retraced
themselves would partly have harmonized his physical movement with the
grand curves and planetary returns of his thought, through cycles of
majestic periods. Having it in his mind to compose the world's history,
methinks he could have asked no better retirement than such a cloister
as this, insulated from all the seductions of mankind and womankind,
deep beneath their mysteries and motives, down into the heart of things,
full of personal reminiscences in order to the comprehensive measurement
and verification of historic records, seeing into the secrets of human
nature,--secrets that daylight never yet revealed to mortal,--but
detecting their whole scope and purport with the infallible eyes of
unbroken solitude and night. And then the shades of the old mighty men
might have risen from their still profounder abodes and joined him in
the dim corridor, treading beside him with an antique stateliness of
mien, telling him in melancholy tones, grand, but always melancholy, of
the greater ideas and purposes that were so poorly embodied in their
most renowned performances. As Raleigh was a navigator, Noah would have
explained to him the peculiarities of construction that made the ark so
seaworthy; as Raleigh was a statesman, Moses would have discussed with
him the principles of laws and government; as Raleigh was a soldier,
Caesar and Hannibal would have held debate in his presence, with this
martial student for their umpire; as Raleigh was a poet, David, or
whatever most illustrious bard he might call up, would have touched his
harp, and made manifest all the true significance of the past by means
of song and the subtile intelligences of music.
Meanwhile, I had forgotten that Sir Walter Raleigh's century knew
nothing of gas-light, and that it would require a prodigious and
wasteful expenditure of tallow-candles to illuminate the Tunnel
sufficiently to discern even a ghost. On this account, however, it would
be all the more suitable place of confinement for a metaphysician, to
keep him from bewildering mankind with his shadowy speculations; and,
being shut off from external converse, the dark corridor would help
him to make rich discoveries in those cavernous regions and mysterious
by-paths of the intellect, which he had so long accustomed himself to
explore. But how would every successive age rejoice in so secure a
habitation for its reformers, and especially for each best and wisest
man that happened to be then alive! He seeks to burn up our whole system
of society, under pretence of purifying it from its abuses! Away with
him into the Tunnel, and let him begin by setting the Thames on fire, if
he is able!
If not precisely these, yet akin to these were some of the fantasies
that haunted me as I passed under the river: for the place is suggestive
of such idle and irresponsible stuff by its own abortive character, its
lack of whereabout on upper earth, or any solid foundation of realities.
Could I have looked forward a few years, I might have regretted that
American enterprise had not provided a similar tunnel, under the Hudson
or the Potomac, for the convenience of our National Government in times
hardly yet gone by. It would be delightful to clap up all the enemies
of our peace and Union in the dark together, and there let them abide,
listening to the monotonous roll of the river above their heads, or
perhaps in a state of miraculously suspended animation, until,--be it
after months, years, or centuries,--when the turmoil shall be all over,
the Wrong washed away in blood, (since that must needs be the cleansing
fluid,) and the Right firmly rooted in the soil which that blood will
have enriched, they might crawl forth again and catch a single glimpse
at their redeemed country, and feel it to be a better land than they
deserve, and die!
I was not sorry when the daylight reached me after a much briefer
abode in the nether regions than, I fear, would await the troublesome
personages just hinted at. Emerging on the Surrey side of the Thames,
I found myself in Rotherhithe, a neighborhood not unfamiliar to the
readers of old books of maritime adventure. There being a ferry hard by
the mouth of the Tunnel, I recrossed the river in the primitive fashion
of an open boat, which the conflict of wind and tide, together with the
swash and swell of the passing steamers, tossed high and low rather
tumultuously. This inquietude of our frail skiff (which, indeed, bobbed
up and down like a cork) so much alarmed an old lady, the only other
passenger, that the boatmen essayed to comfort her. "Never fear,
mother!" grumbled one of them, "we'll make the river as smooth as we can
for you. We'll get a plane and plane down the waves!" The joke may not
read very brilliantly; but I make bold to record it as the only specimen
that reached my ears of the old, rough water-wit for which the Thames
used to be so celebrated. Passing directly along the line of the sunken
Tunnel, we landed in Wapping, which I should have presupposed to be the
most tarry and pitchy spot on earth, swarming with old salts, and full
of warm, bustling, coarse, homely, and cheerful life. Nevertheless,
it turned out to be a cold and torpid neighborhood, mean, shabby, and
unpicturesque, both as to its buildings and inhabitants: the latter
comprising (so far as was visible to me) not a single unmistakable
sailor, though plenty of land-sharks, who get a half dishonest
livelihood by business connected with the sea. Ale-and-spirit vaults
(as petty drinking-establishments are styled in England, pretending
to contain vast cellars full of liquor within the compass of ten feet
square above-ground) were particularly abundant, together with apples,
oranges, and oysters, the stalls of fishmongers and butchers, and
slop-shops, where blue jackets and duck trousers swung and capered
before the doors. Everything was on the poorest scale, and the place
bore an aspect of unredeemable decay. From this remote point of London,
I strolled leisurely towards the heart of the city; while the streets,
at first but thinly occupied by man or vehicle, got more and more
thronged with foot-passengers, carts, drays, cabs, and the all-pervading
and all-accommodating omnibus. But I lack courage, and feel that I
should lack perseverance, as the gentlest reader would lack patience, to
undertake a descriptive stroll through London streets; more especially
as there would be a volume ready for the printer before we could reach a
midway resting-place at Charing Cross. It will be the easier course
to step aboard another passing steamer, and continue our trip up the
Thames.
The next notable group of objects is an assemblage of ancient walls,
battlements, and turrets, out of the midst of which rises prominently
one great square tower, of a grayish hue, bordered with white stone, and
having a small turret at each corner of the roof. This central structure
is the White Tower, and the whole circuit of ramparts and inclosed
edifices constitutes what is known in English history, and still more
widely and impressively in English poetry, as the Tower. A crowd of
river-craft are generally moored in front of it; but if we look sharply
at the right moment under the base of the rampart, we may catch a
glimpse of an arched water-entrance, half submerged, past which the
Thames glides as indifferently as if it were the mouth of a city-kennel.
Nevertheless, it is the Traitor's Gate, a dreary kind of triumphal
passage-way, (now supposed to be shut up and barred forever,) through
which a multitude of noble and illustrious personages have entered
the Tower, and found it a brief resting-place on their way to heaven.
Passing it many times, I never observed that anybody glanced at this
shadowy and ominous trap-door, save myself. It is well that America
exists, if it were only that her vagrant children may be impressed and
affected by the historical monuments of England in a degree of which
the native inhabitants are evidently incapable. These matters are too
familiar, too real, and too hopelessly built in amongst and mixed up
with the common objects and affairs of life, to be easily susceptible of
imaginative coloring in their minds; and even their poets and romancers
feel it a toil, and almost a delusion, to extract poetic material out of
what seems embodied poetry itself to an American. An Englishman cares
nothing about the Tower, which to us is a haunted castle in dreamland.
That honest and excellent gentleman, the late Mr. G.P.R. James, (whose
mechanical ability, one might have supposed, would nourish itself by
devouring every old stone of such a structure,) once assured me that
he had never in his life set eyes upon the Tower, though for years an
historic novelist in London.
Not to spend a whole summer's day upon the voyage, we will suppose
ourselves to have reached London Bridge, and thence to have taken
another steamer for a farther passage up the river. But here the
memorable objects succeed each other so rapidly that I can spare but
a single sentence even for the great Dome, though I deem it more
picturesque, in that dusky atmosphere, than St. Peter's in its clear
blue sky. I must mention, however, (since everything connected with
royalty is especially interesting to my dear countrymen,) that I once
saw a large and beautiful barge, splendidly gilded and ornamented, and
overspread with a rich covering, lying at the pier nearest to St. Paul's
Cathedral; it had the royal banner of Great Britain displayed, besides
being decorated with a number of other flags; and many footmen (who are
universally the grandest and gaudiest objects to be seen in England
at this day, and these were regal ones, in a bright scarlet livery
bedizened with gold-lace, and white silk stockings) were in attendance.
I know not what festive or ceremonial occasion may have drawn out
this pageant; after all, it might have been merely a city-spectacle,
appertaining to the Lord Mayor; but the sight had its value in bringing
vividly before me the grand old times when the sovereign and nobles were
accustomed to use the Thames as the high street of the metropolis, and
join in pompous processions upon it; whereas, the desuetude of such
customs, nowadays, has caused the whole show of river-life to consist in
a multitude of smoke-begrimed steamers. An analogous change has taken
place in the streets, where cabs and the omnibus have crowded out a rich
variety of vehicles; and thus life gets more monotonous in hue from age
to age, and appears to seize every opportunity to strip off a bit of its
gold-lace among the wealthier classes, and to make itself decent in the
lower ones.
Yonder is Whitefriars, the old rowdy Alsatia, now wearing as decorous a
face as any other portion of London; and, adjoining it, the avenues and
brick squares of the Temple, with that historic garden, close upon the
river-side, and still rich in shrubbery and flowers, where the partisans
of York and Lancaster plucked the fatal roses, and scattered their pale
and bloody petals over so many English battle-fields. Hard by, we see
the long white front or rear of Somerset House, and, farther on, rise
the two new Houses of Parliament, with a huge unfinished tower already
hiding its imperfect summit in the smoky canopy,--the whole vast and
cumbrous edifice a specimen of the best that modern architecture can
effect, elaborately imitating the masterpieces of those simple ages when
men "builded better than they knew." Close by it, we have a glimpse of
the roof and upper towers of the holy Abbey; while that gray, ancestral
pile on the opposite side of the river is Lambeth Palace, a venerable
group of halls and turrets, chiefly built of brick, but with at least
one large tower of stone. In our course, we have passed beneath half a
dozen bridges, and, emerging out of the black heart of London, shall
soon reach a cleanly suburb, where old Father Thames, if I remember,
begins to put on an aspect of unpolluted innocence. And now we look back
upon the mass of innumerable roofs, out of which rise steeples, towers,
columns, and the great crowning Dome,--look back, in short, upon that
mystery of the world's proudest city, amid which a man so longs and
loves to be: not, perhaps, because it contains much that is positively
admirable and enjoyable, but because, at all events, the world has
nothing better. The cream of external life is there; and whatever merely
intellectual or material good we fail to find perfect in London, we may
as well content ourselves to seek that unattainable thing no farther on
this earth.
The steamer terminates its trip at Chelsea, an old town endowed with a
prodigious number of pot-houses, and some famous gardens, called the
Cremorne, for public amusement. The most noticeable thing, however, is
Chelsea Hospital, which, like that of Greenwich, was founded, I believe,
by Charles II., (whose bronze statue, in the guise of an old Roman,
stands in the centre of the quadrangle,) and appropriated as a home for
aged and infirm soldiers of the British army. The edifices are of three
stories with windows in the high roofs, and are built of dark, sombre
brick, with stone edgings and facings. The effect is by no means that
of grandeur, (which is somewhat disagreeably an attribute of Greenwich
Hospital,) but a quiet and venerable neatness. At each extremity of the
street-front there is a spacious and hospitably open gateway, lounging
about which I saw some gray veterans in long scarlet coats of an antique
fashion, and the cocked hats of a century ago, or occasionally a modern
foraging-cap. Almost all of them moved with a rheumatic gait, two or
three stumped on wooden legs, and here and there an arm was missing.
Inquiring of one of these fragmentary heroes whether a stranger could be
admitted to see the establishment, he replied most cordially, "Oh,
yes, Sir,--anywhere! Walk in, and go where you please,--up-stairs,
or anywhere!" So I entered, and, passing along the inner side of the
quadrangle, came to the door of the chapel, which forms a part of the
contiguity of edifices next the street. Here another pensioner, an old
warrior of exceedingly peaceable and Christian demeanor, touched his
three-cornered hat and asked if I wished to see the interior; to which I
assenting, he unlocked the door, and we went in.
The chapel consists of a great hall with a vaulted roof, and over the
altar is a large painting in fresco, the subject of which I did not
trouble myself to make out. More appropriate adornments of the place,
dedicated as well to martial reminiscences as religious worship, are the
long ranges of dusty and tattered banners that hang from their staves
alt round the ceiling of the chapel. They are trophies of battles fought
and won in every quarter of the world, comprising the captured flags of
all the nations with whom the British lion has waged war since James
II's time,--French, Dutch, East-Indian, Prussian, Russian, Chinese, and
American,--collected together in this consecrated spot, not to symbolize
that there shall be no more discord upon earth, but drooping over the
aisle in sullen, though peaceable humiliation. Yes, I said "American"
among the rest; for the good old pensioner mistook me for an Englishman,
and failed not to point out (and, methought, with an especial emphasis
of triumph) some flags that had been taken at Bladensburg and
Washington. I fancied, indeed, that they hung a little higher and
drooped a little lower than any of their companions in disgrace. It is
a comfort, however, that their proud devices are already
indistinguishable, or nearly so, owing to dust and tatters and the kind
offices of the moths, and that they will soon rot from the banner-staves
and be swept out in unrecognized fragments from the chapel-door.
It is a good method of teaching a man how imperfectly cosmopolitan he
is, to show him his country's flag occupying a position of dishonor in a
foreign land. But, in truth, the whole system of a people crowing over
its military triumphs had far better be dispensed with, both on account
of the ill-blood that it helps to keep fermenting among the nations, and
because it operates as an accumulative inducement to future generations
to aim at a kind of glory, the gain of which has generally proved more
ruinous than its loss. I heartily wish that every trophy of victory
might crumble away, and that every reminiscence or tradition of a hero,
from the beginning of the world to this day, could pass out of all men's
memories at once and forever. I might feel very differently, to be sure,
if we Northerners had anything especially valuable to lose by the fading
of those illuminated names.
I gave the pensioner (but I am afraid there may have been a little
affectation in it) a magnificent guerdon of all the silver I had in
my. pocket, to requite him for having unintentionally stirred up my
patriotic susceptibilities. He was a meek-looking, kindly old man, with
a humble freedom and affability of manner that made it pleasant to
converse with him. Old soldiers, I know not why, seem to be more
accostable than old sailors. One is apt to hear a growl beneath the
smoothest courtesy of the latter. The mild veteran, with his peaceful
voice, and gentle, reverend aspect, told me that he had fought at a
cannon all through the Battle of Waterloo, and escaped unhurt; he had
now been in the hospital four or five years, and was married, but
necessarily underwent a separation from his wife, who lived outside of
the gates. To my inquiry whether his fellow-pensioners were comfortable
and happy, he answered, with great alacrity, "Oh, yes, Sir!" qualifying
his evidence, after a moment's consideration, by saying, in an
undertone, "There are some people, your Honor knows, who could not
be comfortable anywhere." I did know it, and fear that the system of
Chelsea Hospital allows too little of that wholesome care and regulation
of their own occupations and interests which might assuage the sting
of life to those naturally uncomfortable individuals by giving them
something external to think about. But my old friend here was happy in
the hospital, and by this time, very likely, is happy in heaven, in
spite of the bloodshed that he may have caused by touching off a cannon
at Waterloo.
Crossing Battersea Bridge, in the neighborhood of Chelsea, I remember
seeing a distant gleam of the Crystal Palace, glimmering afar in the
afternoon sunshine like an imaginary structure,--an air-castle by chance
descended upon earth, and resting there one instant before it vanished,
as we sometimes see a soap-bubble touch unharmed on the carpet,--a
thing of only momentary visibility and no substance, destined to be
overburdened and crushed down by the first cloud-shadow that might fall
upon that spot. Even as I looked, it disappeared. Shall I attempt 'a
picture of this exhalation of modern ingenuity, or what else shall I
try to paint? Everything in London and its vicinity has been depleted
innumerable times, but never once translated into intelligible images;
it is an "old, old story," never yet told, nor to be told. While writing
these reminiscences, I am continually impressed with the futility of the
effort to give any creative truth to my sketch, so that it might produce
such pictures in the reader's mind as would cause the original scenes
to appear familiar when afterwards beheld. Nor have other writers often
been more successful in representing definite objects prophetically to
my own mind. In truth, I believe that the chief delight and advantage of
this kind of literature is not for any real information that it
supplies to untravelled people, but for reviving the recollections and
reawakening the emotions of persons already acquainted with the scenes
described. Thus I found an exquisite pleasure, the other day, in reading
Mr. Tuckerman's "Month in England,"--a fine example of the way in which
a refined and cultivated American looks at the Old Country, the things
that he naturally seeks there, and the modes of feeling and reflection
which they excite. Correct outlines avail little or nothing, though
truth of coloring may be somewhat more efficacious. Impressions,
however, states of mind produced by interesting and remarkable objects,
these, if truthfully and vividly recorded, may work a genuine effect,
and, though but the result of what we see, go farther towards
representing the actual scene than any direct effort to paint it. Give
the emotions that cluster about it, and, without being able to analyze
the spell by which it is summoned up, you get something like a
simulachre of the object in the midst of them. From some of the above
reflections I draw the comfortable inference, that, the longer and
better known a thing may be, so much the more eligible is it as the
subject of a descriptive sketch.
On a Sunday afternoon, I passed through a side--entrance in the
time-blackened wall of a place of worship, and found myself among a
congregation assembled in one of the transepts and the immediately
contiguous portion of the nave. It was a vast old edifice, spacious
enough, within the extent covered by its pillared roof and overspread by
its stone pavement, to accommodate the whole of church-going London, and
with a far wider and loftier concave than any human power of lungs could
fill with audible prayer. Oaken benches were arranged in the transept,
on one of which I seated myself, and joined, as well as I knew how, in
the sacred business that was going forward. But when it came to the
sermon, the voice of the preacher was puny, and so were his thoughts,
and both seemed impertinent at such a time and place, where he and all
of us were bodily included within a sublime act of religion which could
be seen above and around us and felt beneath our feet. The structure
itself was the worship of the devout men of long ago, miraculously
preserved in stone without losing an atom of its fragrance and fervor;
it was a kind of anthem-strain that they had sung and poured out of the
organ in centuries gone by; and being so grand and sweet, the Divine
benevolence had willed it to be prolonged for the behoof of auditors
unborn. I therefore came to the conclusion, that, in my individual case,
it would be better and more reverent to let my eyes wander about the
edifice than to fasten them and my thoughts on the evidently uninspired
mortal who was venturing--and felt it no venture at all--to speak here
above his breath.
The interior of Westminster Abbey (for the reader recognized it, no
doubt, the moment we entered) is built of rich brown stone; and the
whole of it--the lofty roof, the tall, clustered pillars, and the
pointed arches--appears to be in consummate repair. At all points where
decay has laid its finger, the structure is clamped with iron, or
otherwise carefully protected; and being thus watched over,--whether
as a place of ancient sanctity, a noble specimen of Gothic art, or an
object of national interest and pride,--it may reasonably be expected to
survive for as many ages as have passed over it already. It was sweet to
feel its venerable quietude, its long-enduring peace, and yet to observe
how kindly and even cheerfully it received the sunshine of to-day, which
fell from the great windows into the fretted aisles and arches that laid
aside somewhat of their aged gloom to welcome it. Sunshine always seems
friendly to old abbeys, churches, and castles, kissing them, as it were,
with a more affectionate, though still reverential familiarity, than it
accords to edifices of later date. A square of golden light lay on the
sombre pavement afar off, falling through the grand western entrance,
the folding leaves of which were wide open, and afforded glimpses
of people passing to and fro in the outer world, while we sat dimly
enveloped in the solemnity of antique devotion. In the south transept,
separated from us by the full breadth of the minster, there were painted
glass windows, of which the uppermost appeared to be a great orb of
many-colored radiance, being, indeed, a cluster of saints and angels
whose glorified bodies formed the rays of an aureole emanating from a
cross in the midst. These windows are modern, but combine softness with
wonderful brilliancy of effect. Through the pillars and arches, I saw
that the walls in that distant region of the edifice were almost wholly
incrusted with marble, now grown yellow with time, no blank, unlettered
slabs, but memorials of such men as their respective generations
deemed wisest and bravest. Some of them were commemorated merely by
inscriptions on mural tablets, others by sculptured bas-reliefs,
others (once famous, but now forgotten generals or admirals, these) by
ponderous tombs that aspired towards the roof of the aisle, or partly
curtained the immense arch of a window. These mountains of marble were
peopled with the sisterhood of Allegory, winged trumpeters, and classic
figures in full-bottomed wigs; but it was strange to observe how the old
Abbey melted all such absurdities into the breadth of its own grandeur,
even magnifying itself by what would elsewhere have been ridiculous.
Methinks it is the test of Gothic sublimity to overpower the ridiculous
without deigning to hide it; and these grotesque monuments of the last
century answer a similar purpose with the grinning faces which the old
architects scattered among their most solemn conceptions.
From these distant wanderings, (it was my first visit to Westminster
Abbey, and I would gladly have taken it all in at a glance,) my eyes
came back and began to investigate what was immediately about me in the
transept. Close at my elbow was the pedestal of Canning's statue. Next
beyond it was a massive tomb, on the spacious tablet of which reposed
the full-length figures of a marble lord and lady, whom an inscription
announced to be the Duke and Duchess of Newcastle,--the historic Duke of
Charles I.'s time, and the fantastic Duchess, traditionally remembered
by her poems and plays. She was of a family, as the record on her tomb
proudly informed us, of which all the brothers had been valiant and all
the sisters virtuous. A recent statue of Sir John Malcom, the new marble
as white as snow, held the next place; and near by was a mural monument
and bust of Sir Peter Warren. The round visage of this old British
admiral has a certain interest for a New-Englander, because it was by no
merit of his own, (though he took care to assume it as such,) but by the
valor and warlike enterprise of our colonial forefathers, especially the
stout men of Massachusetts, that he won rank and renown, and a tomb in
Westminster Abbey. Lord Mansfield, a huge mass of marble done into the
guise of a judicial gown and wig, with a stern face in the midst of
the latter, sat on the other side of the transept; and on the pedestal
beside him was a figure of Justice, holding forth, instead of the
customary grocer's scales, an actual pair of brass steelyards. It is an
ancient and classic instrument, undoubtedly; but I had supposed that
Portia (when Shylock's pound of flesh was to be weighed) was the only
judge that ever really called for it in a court of justice. Pitt and
Fox were in the same distinguished company; and John Kemble, in Roman
costume, stood not far off, but strangely shorn of the dignity that is
said to have enveloped him like a mantle in his lifetime. Perhaps the
evanescent majesty of the stage is incompatible with the long endurance
of marble and the solemn reality of the tomb; though, on the other hand,
almost every illustrious personage here represented has been invested
with more or less of stage-trickery by his sculptor. In truth, the
artist (unless there be a divine efficacy in his touch, making evident a
heretofore hidden dignity in the actual form) feels it an imperious law
to remove his subject as far from the aspect of ordinary life as may
be possible without sacrificing every trace of resemblance. The absurd
effect of the contrary course is very remarkable in the statue of Mr.
Wilberforce, whose actual self, save for the lack of color, I seemed to
behold, seated just across the aisle.
This excellent man appears to have sunk into himself in a sitting
posture, with a thin leg crossed over his knee, a book in one hand, and
a finger of the other under his chin, I believe, or applied to the side
of his nose, or to some equally familiar purpose; while his exceedingly
homely and wrinkled face, held a little on one side, twinkles at you
with the shrewdest complacency, as if he were looking right into your
eyes, and twigged something there which you had half a mind to conceal
from him. He keeps this look so pertinaciously that you feel it to be
insufferably impertinent, and bethink yourself what common ground there
may be between yourself and a stone image, enabling you to resent it. I
have no doubt that the statue is as like Mr. Wilberforce as one pea to
another, and you might fancy, that, at come ordinary moment, when he
least expected it, and before he had time to smooth away his knowing
complication of wrinkles, he had seen the Gorgon's head, and
whitened into marble,--not only his personal self, but his coat and
small-clothes, down to a button and the minutest crease of the cloth.
The ludicrous result marks the impropriety of bestowing the agelong
duration of marble upon small, characteristic individualities, such as
might come within the province of waxen imagery. The sculptor should
give permanence to the figure of a great man in his mood of broad and
grand composure, which would obliterate all mean peculiarities; for, if
the original were unaccustomed to such a mood, or if his features were
incapable of assuming the guise, it seems questionable whether he could
really have been entitled to a marble immortality. In point of fact,
however, the English face and form are seldom statuesque, however
illustrious the individual.
It ill becomes me, perhaps, to have lapsed into this mood of half-jocose
criticism in describing my first visit to Westminster Abbey, a spot
which I had dreamed about more reverentially, from my childhood upward,
than any other in the world, and which I then beheld, and now look back
upon, with profound gratitude to the men who built it, and a kindly
interest, I may add, in the humblest personage that has contributed his
little all to its impressiveness, by depositing his dust or his memory
there. But it is a characteristic of this grand edifice that it permits
you to smile as freely under the roof of its central nave as if you
stood beneath the yet grander canopy of heaven. Break into laughter, if
you feel inclined, provided the vergers do not hear it echoing among the
arches. In an ordinary church, you would keep your countenance for fear
of disturbing the sanctities or proprieties of the place; but you need
leave no honest and decorous portion of your human nature outside of
these benign and truly hospitable walls. Their mild awfulness will take
care of itself. Thus it does no harm to the general impression, when
you come to be sensible that many of the monuments are ridiculous, and
commemorate a mob of people who are mostly forgotten in their graves,
and few of whom ever deserved any better boon from posterity. You
acknowledge the force of Sir Godfrey Kneller's objection to being buried
in Westminster Abbey, because "they do bury fools there!" Nevertheless,
these grotesque carvings of marble, that break out in dingy-white
blotches on the old freestone of the interior walls, have come there by
as natural a process as might cause mosses and ivy to cluster about the
external edifice; for they are the historical and biographical record of
each successive age, written with its own hand, and all the truer for
the inevitable mistakes, and none the less solemn for the occasional
absurdity. Though you entered the Abbey expecting to see the tombs only
of the illustrious, you are content, at last, to read many names, both
in literature and history, that have now lost the reverence of mankind,
if, indeed, they ever really possessed it. Let these men rest in peace.
Even if you miss a name or two that you hoped to find there, they
may well be spared. It matters little a few more or less, or whether
Westminster Abbey contains or lacks any one man's grave, so long as the
Centuries, each with the crowd of personages that it deemed memorable,
have chosen it as their place of honored sepulture, and laid themselves
down under its pavement. The inscriptions and devices on the walls
are rich with evidences of the fluctuating tastes, fashions, manners,
opinions, prejudices, follies, wisdoms of the past, and thus they
combine into a more truthful memorial of their dead times than any
individual epitaph-maker ever meant to write.
When the services were over, many of the audience seemed inclined to
linger in the nave or wander away among the mysterious aisles; for there
is nothing in this world so fascinating as a Gothic minster, which
always invites you deeper and deeper into its heart both by vast
revelations and shadowy concealments. Through the open-work screen that
divides the nave from the chancel and choir, we could discern the gleam
of a marvellous window, but were debarred from entrance into that more
sacred precinct of the Abbey by the vergers. These vigilant officials
(doing their duty all the more strenuously because no fees could be
exacted from Sunday visitors) flourished their staves, and drove us
towards the grand entrance like a flock of sheep. Lingering through one
of the aisles, I happened to look down, and found my foot upon a stone
inscribed with this familiar exclamation, "_O rare Ben Jonson!_" and
remembered the story of stout old Ben's burial in that spot, standing
upright,--not, I presume, on account of any unseemly reluctance on his
part to lie down in the dust, like other men, but because standing-room
was all that could reasonably be demanded for a poet among the
slumberous notabilities of his age. It made me weary to think of
it!--such a prodigious length of time to keep one's feet!--apart from
the honor of the thing, it would certainly have been better for Ben
to stretch himself at ease in some country-churchyard. To this day,
however, I fancy that there is a contemptuous alloy mixed up with the
admiration which the higher classes of English society profess for their
literary men.
Another day--in truth, many other days--I sought out Poets' Corner, and
found a sign-board and pointed finger, directing the visitor to it, on
the corner house of a little lane leading towards the rear of the Abbey.
The entrance is at the southeastern end of the south transept, and it
is used, on ordinary occasions, as the only free mode of access to this
building. It is no spacious arch, but a small, lowly door, passing
through which, and pushing aside an inner screen that partly keeps out
an exceedingly chill wind, you find yourself in a dim nook of the Abbey,
with the busts of poets gazing at you from the otherwise bare stonework
of the walls. Great poets, too; for Ben Jonson is right behind the door,
and Spenser's tablet is next, and Butler's on the same side of the
transept, and Milton's (whose bust you know at once by its resemblance
to one of his portraits, though older, more wrinkled, and sadder than
that) is close by, and a profile-medallion of Gray beneath it. A
window high aloft sheds down a dusky daylight on these and many other
sculptured marbles, now as yellow as old parchment, that cover the three
walls of the nook up to an elevation of about twenty feet above the
pavement. It seemed to me that I had always been familiar with the spot.
Enjoying a humble intimacy--and how much of my life had else been a
dreary solitude!--with many of its inhabitants, I could not feel myself
a stranger there. It was delightful to be among them. There was a genial
awe, mingled with a sense of kind and friendly presences about me; and
I was glad, moreover, at finding so many of them there together in fit
companionship, mutually recognized and duly honored, all reconciled
now, whatever distant generations, whatever personal hostility or other
miserable impediment, had divided them far asunder while they lived. I
have never felt a similar interest in any other tombstones, nor have I
ever been deeply moved by the imaginary presence of other famous
dead people. A poet's ghost is the only one that survives for his
fellow-mortals, after his bones are in the dust,--and he not ghostly,
but cherishing many hearts with his own warmth in the chillest
atmosphere of life. What other fame is worth aspiring for? Or, let
me speak it more boldly, what other long-enduring fame can exist? We
neither remember nor care anything for the past, except as the poet has
made it intelligibly noble and sublime to our comprehension. The shades
of the mighty have no substance; they flit ineffectually about the
darkened stage where they performed their momentary parts, save when the
poet has thrown his own creative soul into them, and imparted a more
vivid life than ever they were able to manifest to mankind while they
dwelt in the body. And therefore--though he cunningly disguises himself
in their armor, their robes of state, or kingly purple--it is not the
statesman, the warrior, or the monarch that survives, but the despised
poet, whom they may have fed with their crumbs, and to whom they owe all
that they now are or have,--a name!
In the foregoing paragraph I seem to have been betrayed into a flight
above or beyond the customary level that best agrees with me; but it
represents fairly enough the emotions with which I passed from Poets'
Corner into the chapels, which contain the sepulchres of kings and great
people. They are magnificent even now, and must have been inconceivably
so when the marble slabs and pillars wore their new polish, and the
statues retained the brilliant colors with which they were originally
painted, and the shrines their rich gilding, of which the sunlight still
shows a glimmer or a streak, though the sunbeam itself looks tarnished
with antique dust. Yet this recondite portion of the Abbey presents few
memorials of personages whom we care to remember. The shrine of Edward
the Confessor has a certain interest, because it was so long held in
religious reverence, and because the very dust that settled upon it was
formerly worth gold. The helmet and war-saddle of Henry V., worn at
Agincourt, and now suspended above his tomb, are memorable objects, but
more for Shakspeare's sake than the victor's own. Rank has been the
general passport to admission here. Noble and regal dust is as cheap as
dirt under the pavement. I am glad to recollect, indeed, (and it is too
characteristic of the right English spirit not to be mentioned) one or
two gigantic statues of great mechanicians, who contributed largely to
the material welfare of England, sitting familiarly in their marble
chairs among forgotten kings and queens. Otherwise, the quaintness of
the earlier monuments, and the antique beauty of some of them, are what
chiefly gives them value. Nevertheless, Addison is buried among the men
of rank; not on the plea of his literary fame, however, but because he
was connected with nobility by marriage, and had been a Secretary
of State. His gravestone is inscribed with a resounding verse from
Tickell's lines to his memory, the only lines by which Tickell himself
is now remembered, and which (as I discovered a little while ago) he
mainly filched from an obscure versifier of somewhat earlier date.
Returning to Poets' Corner, I looked again at the walls, and wondered
how the requisite hospitality can be shown to poets of our own and the
succeeding ages. There is hardly a foot of space left, although room
has lately been found for a bust of Southey and a full-length statue of
Campbell. At best, only a little portion of the Abbey is dedicated
to poets, literary men, musical composers, and others of the gentle
artist-breed, and even into that small nook of sanctity men of other
pursuits have thought it decent to intrude themselves. Methinks the
tuneful throng, being at home here, should recollect how they were
treated in their lifetime, and turn the cold shoulder, looking askance
at nobles and official personages, however worthy of honorable interment
elsewhere. Yet it shows aptly and truly enough what portion of the
world's regard and honor has heretofore been awarded to literary
eminence in comparison with other modes of greatness,--this dimly
lighted corner (nor even that quietly to themselves) in the vast
minster, the walls of which are sheathed and hidden under marble that
has been wasted upon the illustrious obscure. Nevertheless, it may
not be worth while to quarrel with the world on this account; for, to
confess the very truth, their own little nook contains more than one
poet whose memory is kept alive by his monument, instead of imbuing the
senseless stone with a spiritual immortality,--men of whom you do not
ask, "Where is he?" but "Why is he here?" I estimate that all the
literary people who really make an essential part of one's inner life,
including the period since English literature first existed, might have
ample elbow-room to sit down and quaff their draughts of Castaly round
Chaucer's broad, horizontal tombstone. These divinest poets consecrate
the spot, and throw a reflected glory over the humblest of their
companions. And as for the latter, it is to be hoped that they may have
long outgrown the characteristic jealousies and morbid sensibilities
of their craft, and have found out the little value, (probably not
amounting to sixpence in immortal currency) of the posthumous renown
which they once aspired to win. It would be a poor compliment to a dead
poet to fancy him leaning out of the sky and snuffing up the impure
breath of earthly praise.
Yet we cannot easily rid ourselves of the notion that those who have
bequeathed us the inheritance of an undying song would fain be conscious
of its endless reverberations in the hearts of mankind, and would
delight, among sublimer enjoyments, to see their names emblazoned in
such a treasure-place of great memories as Westminster Abbey. There are
some men, at all events,--true and tender poets, moreover, and fully
deserving of the honor,--whose spirits, I feel certain, would linger a
little while about Poets' Corner for the sake of witnessing their own
apotheosis among their kindred. They have had a strong natural yearning,
not so much for applause as sympathy, which the cold fortune of their
lifetime did but scantily supply; so that this unsatisfied appetite may
make itself felt upon sensibilities at once so delicate and retentive,
even a step or two beyond the grave. Leigh Hunt, for example, would be
pleased, even now, if he could learn that his bust had been reposited in
the midst of the old poets whom he admired and loved; though there is
hardly a man among the authors of to-day and yesterday whom the judgment
of Englishmen would be less likely to place there. He deserves it,
however, if not for his verse, (the value of which I do not estimate,
never having been able to read it,) yet for his delightful prose, his
unmeasured poetry, the inscrutable happiness of his touch, working soft
miracles by a life-process like the growth of grass and flowers. As
with all such gentle writers, his page sometimes betrayed a vestige of
affectation, but, the next moment, a rich, natural luxuriance overgrew
and buried it out of sight. I knew him a little, and (since, Heaven
be praised, few English celebrities whom I chanced to meet have
enfranchised my pen by their decease, and as I assume no liberties with
living men) I will conclude this rambling article by sketching my first
interview with Leigh Hunt.
He was then at Hammersmith, occupying a very plain and shabby little
house, in a contiguous range of others like it, with no prospect but
that of an ugly village-street, and certainly nothing to gratify
his craving for a tasteful environment, inside or out. A slatternly
maid-servant opened the door for us, and he himself stood in the entry,
a beautiful and venerable old man, buttoned to the chin in a black
dress-coat, tall and slender, with a countenance quietly alive all over,
and the gentlest and most naturally courteous manner. He ushered us into
his little study, or parlor, or both,--a very forlorn room, with poor
paper-hangings and carpet, few books, no pictures that I remember, and
an awful lack of upholstery. I touch distinctly upon these external
blemishes and this nudity of adornment, not that they would be worth
mentioning in a sketch of other remarkable persons, but because Leigh
Hunt was born with such a faculty of enjoying all beautiful things that
it seemed as if Fortune did him as much wrong in not supplying them as
in withholding a sufficiency of vital breath from ordinary men. All
kinds of mild magnificence, tempered by his taste, would have become
him well; but he had not the grim dignity that assumes nakedness as the
better robe.
I have said that he was a beautiful old man. In truth, I never saw a
finer countenance, either as to the mould of features or the expression,
nor any that showed the play of feeling so perfectly without the
slightest theatrical emphasis. It was like a child's face in this
respect. At my first glimpse of him, when he met us in the entry, I
discerned that he was old, his long hair being white and his wrinkles
many; it was an aged visage, in short, such as I had not at all expected
to see, in spite of dates, because his books talk to the reader with the
tender vivacity of youth. But when he began to speak, and as he grew
more earnest in conversation, I ceased to be sensible of his age;
sometimes, indeed, its dusky shadow darkened through the gleam which his
sprightly thoughts diffused about his face, but then another flash of
youth came out of his eyes and made an illumination again. I never
witnessed such a wonderfully illusive transformation, before or since;
and, to this day, trusting only to my recollection, I should find it
difficult to decide which was his genuine and stable predicament,
--youth or age. I have met no Englishman whose manners seemed to me
so agreeable, soft, rather than polished, wholly unconventional, the
natural growth of a kindly and sensitive disposition without any
reference to rule, or else obedient to some rule so subtile that the
nicest observer could not detect the application of it.
His eyes were dark and very fine, and his delightful voice accompanied
their visible language like music. He appeared to be exceedingly
appreciative, of whatever was passing among those who surrounded him,
and especially of the vicissitudes in the consciousness of the person to
whom he happened to be addressing himself at the moment. I felt that no
effect upon my mind of what he uttered, no emotion, however transitory,
in myself, escaped his notice, though not from any positive vigilance on
his part, but because his faculty of observation was so penetrative
and delicate; and to say the truth, it a little confused me to discern
always a ripple on his mobile face, responsive to any slightest breeze
that passed over the inner reservoir of my sentiments, and seemed thence
to extend to a similar reservoir within himself. On matters of feeling,
and within a certain depth, you might spare yourself the trouble of
utterance, because he already knew what you wanted to say, and perhaps
a little more than you would have spoken. His figure was full of gentle
movement, though, somehow, without disturbing its quietude; and as he
talked, he kept folding his hands nervously, and betokened in many ways
a fine and immediate sensibility, quick to feel pleasure or pain, though
scarcely capable, I should imagine, of a passionate experience in either
direction. There was not an English trait in him from head to foot,
morally, intellectually, or physically. Beef, ale, or stout, brandy, or
port-wine, entered not at all into his composition. In his earlier life,
he appears to have given evidences of courage and sturdy principle, and
of a tendency to fling himself into the rough struggle of humanity on
the liberal side. It would be taking too much upon myself to affirm that
this was merely a projection of his fancy-world into the actual, and
that he never could have hit a downright blow, and was altogether an
unsuitable person to receive one. I beheld him not in his armor, but in
his peacefullest robes. Nevertheless, drawing my conclusion merely from
what I saw, it would have occurred to me that his main deficiency was
a lack of grit. Though anything but a timid man, the combative and
defensive elements were not prominently developed in his character, and
could have been made available only when he put an unnatural force upon
his instincts. It was on this account, and also because of the fineness
of his nature generally, that the English appreciated him no better, and
left this sweet and delicate poet poor, and with scanty laurels in his
declining age.
It was not, I think, from his American blood that Leigh Hunt derived
either his amiability or his peaceful inclinations; at least, I do
not see how we can reasonably claim the former quality as a national
characteristic, though the latter might have been fairly inherited from
his ancestors on the mother's side, who were Pennsylvania Quakers. But
the kind of excellence that distinguished him--his fineness, subtilty,
and grace--was that which the richest cultivation has heretofore tended
to develop in the happier examples of American genius, and which (though
I say it a little reluctantly) is perhaps what our future intellectual
advancement may make general among us. His person, at all events, was
thoroughly American, and of the best type, as were likewise his manners;
for we are the best-as well as the worst-mannered people in the world.
Leigh Hunt loved dearly to be praised. That is to say, he desired
sympathy as a flower seeks sunshine, and perhaps profited by it as
much in the richer depth of coloring that it imparted to his ideas. In
response to all that we ventured to express about his writings, (and,
for my part, I went quite to the extent of my conscience, which was a
long way, and there left the matter to a lady and a young girl, who
happily were with me,) his face shone, and he manifested great delight,
with a perfect, and yet delicate, frankness for which I loved him. He
could not tell us, he said, the happiness that such appreciation gave
him; it always took him by surprise, he remarked, for--perhaps because
he cleaned his own boots, and performed other little ordinary offices
for himself--he never had been conscious of anything wonderful in his
own person. And then he smiled, making himself and all the poor little
parlor about him beautiful thereby. It is usually the hardest thing
in the world to praise a man to his face; but Leigh Hunt received the
incense with such gracious satisfaction, (feeling it to be sympathy, not
vulgar praise,) that the only difficulty was to keep the enthusiasm of
the moment within the limit of permanent opinion. A storm had suddenly
come up while we were talking; the rain poured, the lightning flashed,
and the thunder broke; but I hope, and have great pleasure in believing,
that it was a sunny hour for Leigh Hunt. Nevertheless, it was not to
my voice that he most favorably inclined his ear, but to those of my
companions. Women are the fit ministers at such a shrine.
He must have suffered keenly in his lifetime, and enjoyed keenly,
keeping his emotions so much upon the surface as he seemed to do, and
convenient for everybody to play upon. Being of a cheerful temperament,
happiness had probably the upper hand. His was a light, mildly joyous
nature, gentle, grace-fill, yet seldom attaining to that deepest
grace which results from power; for beauty, like woman, its human
representative, dallies with the gentle, but yields its consummate
favor only to the strong. I imagine that Leigh Hunt may have been more
beautiful when I met him, both in person and character, than in his
earlier days. As a young man, I could conceive of his being finical in
certain moods, but not now, when the gravity of age shed a venerable
grace about him. I rejoiced to hear him say that he was favored with
most confident and cheering anticipations in respect to a future
life; and there were abundant proofs, throughout our interview, of an
unrepining spirit, resignation, quiet relinquishment of the worldly
benefits that were denied him, thankful enjoyment of whatever he had to
enjoy, and piety, and hope shining onward into the dusk,--all of which
gave a reverential cast to the feeling with which we parted from him.
I wish that he could have had one full draught of prosperity before he
died. As a matter of artistic propriety, it would have been delightful
to see him inhabiting a beautiful house of his own, in an Italian
climate, with all sorts of elaborate upholstery and minute elegancies
about him, and a succession of tender and lovely women to praise his
sweet poetry from morning to night. I hardly know whether it is my
fault, or the effect of a weakness in Leigh Hunt's character, that I
should be sensible of a regret of this nature, when, at the same time, I
sincerely believe that he has found an infinity of better things in the
world whither he has gone.
At our leave-taking, he grasped me warmly by both hands, and seemed as
much interested in our whole party as if he had known us for years. All
this was genuine feeling, a quick, luxuriant growth out of his heart,
which was a soil for flower-seeds of rich and rare varieties, not
acorns, but a true heart, nevertheless. Several years afterwards I met
him for the last time at a London dinner-party, looking sadly broken
down by infirmities; and my final recollection of the beautiful old man
presents him arm in arm with, nay, partly embraced and supported by, if
I mistake not, another beloved and honored poet, whose minstrel-name,
since he has a week-day one for his personal occasions, I will venture
to speak. It was Barry Cornwall, whose kind introduction had first made
me known to Leigh Hunt.
* * * * *