In fulfilment of my agreement, I will tell you, as nearly as I can
remember, all the details of the meeting at Stafford House.
At about eleven o'clock we drove under the arched carriage way of a
mansion, externally, not very showy in appearance. It stands on the
borders of St. James's Park, opposite to Buckingham Palace, with a
street on the north side, and beautiful gardens on the south, while the
park is extended on the west.
We were received at the door by two stately Highlanders in full costume;
and what seemed to me an innumerable multitude of servants in livery,
with powdered hair, repeated our names through the long corridors, from
one to another.
I have only a confused idea of passing from passage to passage, and from
hall to hall, till finally we were introduced into a large drawing room.
No person was present, and I was at full leisure to survey an apartment
whose arrangements more perfectly suited my eye and taste than any I had
ever seen before. There was not any particular splendor of furniture, or
dazzling display of upholstery, but an artistic, poetic air, resulting
from the arrangement of colors, and the disposition of the works of
_virtu_ with which the room abounded. The great fault in many splendid
rooms, is, that they are arranged without any eye to unity of
impression. The things in them may be all fine in their way, but there
is no harmony of result.
People do not often consider that there may be a general sentiment to be
expressed in the arrangement of a room, as well as in the composition of
a picture. It is this leading idea which corresponds to what painters
call the ground tone, or harmonizing tint, of a picture. The presence of
this often renders a very simple room extremely fascinating, and the
absence of it makes the most splendid combinations of furniture
powerless to please.
The walls were covered with green damask, laid on flat, and confined in
its place by narrow gilt bands, which bordered it around the margin. The
chairs, ottomans, and sofas were of white woodwork, varnished and
gilded, covered with the same.
The carpet was of a green ground, bedropped with a small yellow leaf;
and in each window a circular, standing basket contained a whole bank of
primroses, growing as if in their native soil, their pale yellow
blossoms and green leaves harmonizing admirably with the general tone of
coloring.
Through the fall of the lace curtains I could see out into the beautiful
grounds, whose clumps of blossoming white lilacs, and velvet grass,
seemed so in harmony with the green interior of the room, that one would
think they had been arranged as a continuation of the idea.
One of the first individual objects which attracted my attention was,
over the mantel-piece, a large, splendid picture by Landseer, which I
have often seen engraved. It represents the two eldest children of the
Duchess of Sutherland, the Marquis of Stafford, and Lady Blantyre, at
that time Lady Levison Gower, in their childhood. She is represented as
feeding a fawn; a little poodle dog is holding up a rose to her; and her
brother is lying on the ground, playing with an old staghound.
I had been familiar with Landseer's engravings, but this was the first
of his paintings I had ever seen, and I was struck with the rich and
harmonious quality of the coloring. There was also a full-length marble
statue of the Marquis of Stafford, taken, I should think, at about
seventeen years of age, in full Highland costume.
When the duchess appeared, I thought she looked handsomer by daylight
than in the evening. She was dressed in white muslin, with a drab velvet
basque slashed with satin of the same color. Her hair was confined by a
gold and diamond net on the back part of her head.
She received us with the same warm and simple kindness which she had
shown before. We were presented to the Duke of Sutherland. He is a tall,
slender man, with rather a thin face, light brown hair, and a mild blue
eye, with an air of gentleness and dignity. The delicacy of his health
prevents him from moving in general society, or entering into public
life. He spends much of his time in reading, and devising and executing
schemes of practical benevolence for the welfare of his numerous
dependants.
I sought a little private conversation with the duchess in her boudoir,
in which I frankly confessed a little anxiety respecting the
arrangements of the day: having lived all my life in such a shady and
sequestered way, and being entirely ignorant of life as it exists in the
sphere in which she moves, such apprehensions were rather natural.
She begged that I would make myself entirely easy, and consider myself
as among my own friends; that she had invited a few friends to lunch,
and that afterwards others would call; that there would be a short
address from the ladies of England read by Lord Shaftesbury, which would
require no answer.
I could not but be grateful for the consideration thus evinced. The
matter being thus adjusted, we came back to the drawing room, when the
party began to assemble.
The only difference, I may say, by the by, in the gathering of such a
company and one with us, is in the announcing of names at the door; a,
custom which I think a good one, saving a vast deal of the breath we
always expend in company, by asking "Who is that? and that?" Then, too,
people can fall into conversation without a formal presentation, the
presumption being that nobody is invited with whom, it is not proper
that you should converse. The functionary who performed the announcing
was a fine, stalwart man, in full Highland costume, the duke being the
head of a Highland clan.
Among the first that entered were the members of the family, the Duke
and Duchess of Argyle, Lord and Lady Blantyre, the Marquis and
Marchioness of Stafford, and Lady Emma Campbell. Then followed Lord
Shaftesbury with his beautiful lady, and her father and mother, Lord and
Lady Palmerston. Lord Palmerston is of middle height, with a keen, dark
eye, and black hair streaked with gray. There is something peculiarly
alert and vivacious about all his movements; in short his appearance
perfectly answers to what we know of him from his public life. One has a
strange mythological feeling about the existence of people of whom one
hears for many years without ever seeing them. While talking with Lord
Palmerston I could but remember how often I had heard father and Mr. S.
exulting over his foreign despatches by our home fireside.
The Marquis of Lansdowne now entered. He is about the middle height,
with gray hair, blue eyes, and a mild, quiet dignity of manner. He is
one of those who, as Lord Henry Pettes, took a distinguished part with
Clarkson and Wilberforce in the abolition of the slave trade. He has
always been a most munificent patron of literature and art.
There were present, also, Lord John Russell, Mr. Gladstone, and Lord
Grenville. The latter we all thought very strikingly resembled in his
appearance the poet Longfellow. My making the remark introduced the
subject of his poetry. The Duchess of Argyle appealed to her two little
boys, who stood each side of her, if they remembered her reading
Evangeline to them. It is a gratification to me that I find by every
English fireside traces of one of our American poets. These two little
boys of the Duchess of Argyle, and the youngest son of the Duchess of
Sutherland, were beautiful fair-haired children, picturesquely attired
in the Highland costume. There were some other charming children of the
family circle present. The eldest son of the Duke of Argyle bears the
title of the Lord of Lorn, which Scott has rendered so poetical a sound
to our ears.
When lunch was announced, the Duke of Sutherland gave me his arm, and
led me through a suite of rooms into the dining hall. Each room that we
passed was rich in its pictures, statues, and artistic arrangements; a
poetic eye and taste had evidently presided over all. The table was
beautifully laid, ornamented by two magnificent _épergnes_, crystal
vases supported by wrought silver standards, filled with the most
brilliant hothouse flowers; on the edges of the vases and nestling
among the flowers were silver doves of the size of life. The walls of
the room were hung with gorgeous pictures, and directly opposite to me
was a portrait of the Duchess of Sutherland, by Sir Thomas Lawrence,
which has figured largely in our souvenirs and books of beauty. She is
represented with a little child in her arms; this child, now Lady
Blantyre, was sitting opposite to me at table, with a charming little
girl of her own, of about the same apparent age. When one sees such
things, one almost fancies this to be a fairy palace, where the cold
demons of age and time have lost their power.
I was seated next to Lord Lansdowne, who conversed much with me about
affairs in America. It seems to me that the great men of the old world
regard our country thoughtfully. It is a new development of society,
acting every day with greater and greater power on the old world; nor is
it yet clearly seen what its final results will be. His observations
indicated a calm, clear, thoughtful mind--an accurate observer of life
and history.
Meanwhile the servants moved noiselessly to and fro, taking up the
various articles on the table, and offering them to the guests in a
peculiarly quiet manner. One of the dishes brought to me was a plover's
nest, precisely as the plover made it, with five little blue speckled
eggs in it. This mode of serving plover's eggs, as I understand it, is
one of the fashions of-the day, and has something quite sylvan and
picturesque about it; but it looked so, for all the world, like a
robin's nest that I used to watch out in our home orchard, that I had it
not in my heart to profane the sanctity of the image by eating one of
the eggs.
The _cuisine_ of these West End regions appears to be entirely under
French legislation, conducted by Parisian artists, skilled in all subtle
and metaphysical combinations of ethereal possibilities, quite
inscrutable to the eye of sense. Her grace's _chef_, I have heard it
said elsewhere, bears the reputation of being the first artist of his
class in England. The profession as thus sublimated bears the same
proportion to the old substantial English cookery that Mozart's music
does to Handel's, or Midsummer Night's Dream to Paradise Lost.
This meal, called _lunch_, is with the English quite an institution,
being apparently a less elaborate and ceremonious dinner. Every thing is
placed upon the table at once, and ladies sit down without removing
their bonnets; it is, I imagine, the most social and family meal of the
day; one in which children are admitted to the table, even in the
presence of company. It generally takes place in the middle of the day,
and the dinner, which comes after it, at eight or nine in the evening,
is in comparison only a ceremonial proceeding.
I could not help thinking, as I looked around on so many men whom I had
heard of historically all my life, how very much less they bear the
marks of age than men who have been connected a similar length of time
with the movements of our country. This appearance of youthfulness and
alertness has a constantly deceptive influence upon one in England. I
cannot realize that people are as old as history states them to be. In
the present company there were men of sixty or seventy, whom I should
have pronounced at the first glance to be fifty.
Generally speaking our working minds seem to wear out their bodies
faster; perhaps because our climate is more stimulating; more, perhaps,
from the intenser stimulus of our political _régime_, which never leaves
any thing long at rest.
The tone of manners in this distinguished circle did not obtrude itself
upon my mind as different from that of highly-educated people in our own
country. It appeared simple, friendly, natural, and sincere. They talked
like people who thought of what they were saying, rather than how to say
it. The practice of thorough culture and good breeding is substantially
the same through the world, though smaller conventionalities may differ.
After lunch the whole party ascended to the picture gallery, passing on
our way the grand staircase and hall, said to be the most magnificent in
Europe. All that wealth could command of artistic knowledge and skill
has been expended here to produce a superb result. It fills the entire
centre of the building, extending up to the roof and surmounted by a
splendid dome. On three sides a gallery runs round it supported by
pillars. To this gallery you ascend on the fourth side by a staircase,
which midway has a broad, flat landing, from which stairs ascend, on the
right and left, into the gallery. The whole hall and staircase, carpeted
with a scarlet footcloth, give a broad, rich mass of coloring, throwing
out finely the statuary and gilded balustrades. On the landing is a
marble statue of a Sibyl, by Rinaldi. The walls are adorned by gorgeous
frescos from Paul Veronese. What is peculiar in the arrangements of this
hall is, that although so extensive, it still wears an air of warm
homelikeness and comfort, as if it might be a delightful place to lounge
and enjoy life, amid the ottomans, sofas, pictures, and statuary, which
are disposed here and there throughout.
All this, however, I passed rapidly by as I ascended the staircase, and
passed onward to the picture gallery. This was a room about a hundred
feet long by forty wide, surmounted by a dome gorgeously finished with
golden palm, trees and carving. This hall is lighted in the evening by a
row of gaslights placed outside the ground glass of the dome; this light
is concentrated and thrown down by strong reflectors, communicating thus
the most brilliant radiance without the usual heat of gas. This gallery
is peculiarly rich in paintings of the Spanish school. Among them are
two superb Murillos, taken from convents by Marshal Soult, during the
time of his career in Spain.
There was a painting by Paul de la Roche of the Earl of Strafford led
forth to execution, engravings of which we have seen in the print shops
in America. It is a strong and striking picture, and has great dramatic
effect. But there was a painting in one corner by a Flemish artist,
whose name I do not now remember, representing Christ under examination
before Caiaphas. It was a candle-light scene, and only two faces were
very distinct; the downcast, calm, resolute face of Christ, in which was
written a perfect knowledge of his approaching doom, and the eager,
perturbed vehemence of the high priest, who was interrogating him. On
the frame was engraved the lines,--
"He was wounded for our transgressions,
He was bruised for our iniquities;
The chastisement of our peace was upon him,
And with his stripes we are healed."
The presence of this picture here in the midst of this scene was very
affecting to me.
The company now began to assemble and throng the gallery, and very soon
the vast room was crowded. Among the throng I remember many
presentations, but of course must have forgotten many more. Archbishop
Whately was there, with Mrs. and Miss Whately; Macaulay, with two of
his sisters; Milman, the poet and historian; the Bishop of Oxford,
Chevalier Bunsen and lady, and many more.
When all the company were together Lord Shaftesbury read a very short,
kind, and considerate address in behalf of the ladies of England,
expressive of their cordial welcome. The address will be seen in the
Morning Advertiser, which I send you. The company remained a while after
this, walking through the rooms and conversing in different groups, and
I talked with several. Archbishop Whately, I thought, seemed rather
inclined to be jocose: he seems to me like some of our American divines;
a man who pays little attention to forms, and does not value them. There
is a kind of brusque humor in his address, a downright heartiness, which
reminds one of western character. If he had been born in our latitude,
in Kentucky or Wisconsin, the natives would have called him Whately, and
said he was a real steamboat on an argument. This is not precisely the
kind of man we look for in an archbishop. One sees traces of this humor
in his Historic Doubts concerning the Existence of Napoleon. I conversed
with some who knew him intimately, and they said that he delighted in
puns and odd turns of language.
I was also introduced to the Bishop of Oxford, who is a son of
Wilberforce. He is a short man, of very youthful appearance, with bland,
graceful, courteous manners. He is much admired as a speaker. I heard
him spoken of as one of the most popular preachers of the day.
I must not forget to say that many ladies of the society of Friends were
here, and one came and put on to my arm a reticule, in which, she said,
were carried about the very first antislavery tracts ever distributed in
England. At that time the subject of antislavery was as unpopular in
England as it can be at this day any where in the world, and I trust
that a day will come when the subject will be as popular in South
Carolina as it is now in England. People always glory in the right after
they have done it.
After a while the company dispersed over the house to look at the rooms.
There are all sorts of parlors and reception rooms, furnished with the
same correct taste. Each room had its predominant color; among them blue
was a particular favorite.
The carpets were all of those small figures I have described, the blue
ones being of the same pattern with the green. The idea, I suppose, is
to produce a mass of color of a certain tone, and not to distract the
eye with the complicated pattern. Where so many objects of art and
_virtu_ are to be exhibited, without this care in regulating and
simplifying the ground tints, there would be no unity in the impression.
This was my philosophizing on the matter, and if it is not the reason
why it is done, it ought to be. It is as good a theory as most theories,
at any rate.
Before we went away I made a little call on the Lady Constance
Grosvenor, and saw the future Marquis of Westminster, heir to the
largest estate in England. His beautiful mother is celebrated in the
annals of the court journal as one of the handsomest ladies in England.
His little lordship was presented to me in all the dignity of long,
embroidered clothes, being then, I believe, not quite a fortnight old,
and I can assure you that he demeaned himself with a gravity becoming
his rank and expectations.
There is a more than common interest attached to these children by one
who watches the present state of the world. On the character and
education of the princes and nobility of this generation the future
history of England must greatly depend.
This Stafford House meeting, in any view of it, is a most remarkable
fact. Kind and gratifying as its arrangements have been to me, I am far
from appropriating it to myself individually, as a personal honor. I
rather regard it as the most public expression possible of the feelings
of the women of England on one of the most important questions of our
day--that, of individual liberty considered in its religious bearings.
The most splendid of England's palaces has this day opened its doors to
the slave. Its treasures of wealth and of art, its prestige of high name
and historic memories, have been consecrated to the acknowledgment of
Christianity in that form, wherein, in our day, it is most frequently
denied--the recognition of the brotherhood of the human family, and the
equal religious value of every human soul. A fair and noble hand by this
meeting has fixed, in the most public manner, an ineffaceable seal to
the beautiful sentiments of that most Christian document, the letter of
the ladies of Great Britain to the ladies of America. That letter and
this public attestation of it are now historic facts, which wait their
time and the judgment of advancing Christianity.
Concerning that letter I have one or two things to say. Nothing can be
more false than the insinuation that has been thrown out in some
American papers, that it was a political movement. It had its first
origin in the deep religious feelings of the man whose whole life has
been devoted to the abolition of the white-labor slavery of Great
Britain; the man whose eye explored the darkness of the collieries, and
counted the weary steps of the cotton spinners--who penetrated the dens
where the insane were tortured with darkness, and cold, and stripes; and
threaded the loathsome alleys of London, haunts of fever and cholera:
this man it was, whose heart was overwhelmed by the tale of American
slavery, and who could find no relief from, this distress except in
raising some voice to the ear of Christianity. Fearful of the jealousy
of political interference, Lord Shaftesbury published an address to the
ladies of England, in which he told them that he felt himself moved by
an irresistible impulse to entreat them to raise their voice, in the
name of a common Christianity and womanhood, to their American sisters.
The abuse which has fallen upon him for this most Christian proceeding
does not in the least surprise him, because it is of the kind that has
always met him in every benevolent movement. When in the Parliament of
England he was pleading for women in the collieries who were harnessed
like beasts of burden, and made to draw heavy loads through miry and
dark passages, and for children who were taken at three years old to
labor where the sun never shines, he was met with determined and furious
opposition and obloquy--accused of being a disorganizer, and of wishing
to restore the dark ages. Very similar accusations have attended all his
efforts for the laboring classes during the long course of seventeen
years, which resulted at last in the triumphant passage of the factory
bill.
We in America ought to remember that the gentle remonstrance of the
letter of the ladies of England contains, in the mildest form, the
sentiments of universal Christendom. Rebukes much more pointed are
coming back to us even from, our own missionaries. A day is coming when,
past all the temporary currents of worldly excitement, we shall, each of
us, stand alone face to face with the perfect purity of our Redeemer.
The thought of such a final interview ought certainly to modify all our
judgments now, that we may strive to approve only what we shall then
approve.