An Epistle to Posterity/Chapter VIII
CHAPTER VIII
In 1869 I went to England for the first time. I had no mission, political, religious, or literary. I represented nobody but myself. When I found the English people kind, courtly, well-bred, and especially polite on the ground that we were Americans, I could not but be won. "Remember, you are taking the reflex wave of the war," said one of my friends, who was not so much fascinated as I was. No matter what I took, it was very good, and " mine own."
"We went for the delicious purposes of travel. We wished to realize the reading of a lifetime; to see the Tower and Westminister Abbey and Eastcheap; to hear Bow Bells; to see the Queen; to look at Madame Tussaud's waxworks. Nothing was too low or too lofty for our omnivorous appetites. One of us had travelled before, but the other had not. But we both enjoyed alike her hedgerows, her golden pheasants trooping through the grass, her deer hiding in the ferns, her magnificent old oaks, her lordly residences, and her rose-embowered cottages. It was a gracious June day, a red-letter day in my humble annals, when we found ourselves sailing up the Mersey. We had had a glorious view of the romantic Irish coast the evening before and all the morning, and I thought it a fine sight when Liverpool, proud commercial town, lay before me. I did not find Liverpool ugly. Her stately public buildings, broad streets, public squares, and noble statues redeem her from the charge; and after a bath, a nap, and an excellent dinner at the comfortable Adelphi we took a drive to a park in the environs, which we found charming. They say the first cathedral you see remains with you forever as the cathedral of the world. Perhaps this first glimpse of an English June and of a European park so favorably impressed me because it was the first, but I am convinced it was charming; so was the fresh-looking, pleasant-spoken English lady whom we met walking in the park, and who so kindly and even learnedly answered our questions about the new trees and flowers. And this English lady, who so agreeably surprised us by her affability and courtesy, was a type of all our accidental acquaintances. "His speech bewrayeth him," and our accent generally brought out, "I see you are Americans"; or if not, we had but to say so, and our questions were answered with a ready politeness which it is but fair to say English people do not seem to show to each other. I suppose the great differences of rank necessarily bring about a certain stiffness. We took our first bath in antiquity at Chester, where we spent a Sunday. The service in that venerable cathedral — those boy voices in the choir — shall I ever hear anything like it this side the golden gates?
Time should be imaged with a paint-brush instead of a scythe; he knows how to wield the former even better than the latter. What he has adorned let no man attempt to copy. I dare say those ruined cloisters were very commonplace in their youth; now time has so judiciously colored them, gnawed them, hung them with ivy and mosses and lichens, that they are beautiful, with a tender, perennial loveliness. Wandering through the cathedral, we found, strange to say, a memorial stone to one Thomas Phillipse, who was much praised for having remained loyal during the "late rebellion in his Majesty's colonies of North America, by which he lost much valuable land and all his riches," etc., etc. Thomas Phillipse lost the goodly town of Yonkers, on the Hudson, and many acres besides, and gained the ugly name of Tory over here; but there he lies in the odor of sanctity in Chester Cathedral, which is some compensation.
We went up to London through Shrewsbury, bought some "Shrewsbury cake," and thought of Falstaff fighting an hour by Shrewsbury clock. As we were talking and laughing over the former, a companion of ours in the railway carriage, who proved to be an English manufacturer, and who had been talking of America to us, said, "And so you know Shakespeare over there, and Byron too?" Our national vanity got another shock after this from a young lady who asked us if we had ever heard the music of Mendelssohn and Beethoven. However, our friend the manufacturer was extremely kind. He showed us the "Wrekin" in Shropshire, well known to all ballad-singers by the song "Round the Wrekin," which he said embodied a Shropshire custom. Not being a Shropshire man himself, he told us that the Shropshire people thought the world of themselves and were the most self-sufficient people in England.
We glided past the smoky chimneys of Wolverhampton, and finally, after a railway journey of four or five hours, rich in pictures to us, reached London.I was awakened my first morning in London by the brilliant strains of the band of the Coldstream Guards, who were marching, as they do daily, from guard mounting to St. James's Palace, where they play delightfully. I should like to stop and say something about the precision and brilliancy of this band, but I forbear, lest my geese be accused of being all swans.
There was a bright sun shining. Buckingham Palace was in front of our windows, and shortly the well-appointed equipages, unsurpassed in the world, began to drive by. At one o'clock we went to Rotten Row to see the equestrians. It is a pretty sight, were it only for the horses. At first we were very much disappointed in English beauty, but after a while the pretty faces and majestic figures began to reach us. The men are magnificent — the young men tall, well formed, and admirably dressed; the old men positively beautiful, with their fresh complexions, white hair, and admirable neatness. Nothing struck me more than this, and we might copy it to advantage here. As an Englishman grows older he becomes more and more careful in his dress.
To say how London opened itself to us in the next six weeks would be to write an encyclopædia. First itself — its illimitable extent; its magnificence; its gay, courtly, rich life; its historical points; its inexhaustible stores of museum, picture-gallery, library, church, abbey, tower, everything. What a city it is! And this was the gloomy, foggy, melancholy city which every American had told me to avoid, to hurry through, and get to Paris! I have now seen them both, and I find London in June superior in attraction to Paris in any month, beautiful, gay capital that it is. I must acknowledge that we were in England in an exceptional summer as to weather. The weather was brilliant, warm, and clear. Had it rained all the time my enthusiasm might have been dampened.
One day we consecrated to the venerable abbey, of course. No amount of description can render this threadbare to us. I gazed with as much emotion on the beautiful profile of Mary Queen of Scots as if I were the first person who had ever wept over her "strange, eventful history." Nothing is disagreeable here but the old vergers, who trooped us round like sheep, and who gave us the most familiar historical facts with great deliberateness, as if they feared we should "dilate with the wrong emotion." I was pleased to see a full-length statue of Mrs. Siddons in Westminster Abbey. Since the Romish Church denies Christian sepulture to actors, it was pleasing to see this proof of the superior liberality of her English daughter. I stopped a moment before the bust of Thackeray. He was the only one of those immortals whom I had seen, and I rejoiced as I looked upon the speaking marble that I had known and listened to that great genius.
Westminster Abbey is thoroughly Saxon; its architecture suggests a forest. Its stones seem to have been dug from primeval quarries; those dark rafters hewn from Saxon oak, smoked perhaps by druidical sacrifices. Those Gothic lines in their upward flight tell us that nature is herself a church, even as she is a tomb. Westminster Abbey is nature crystallized into a conventional form by man, with his sorrows, his joys, his failures, and his seeking for the Great Spirit. It is a frozen requiem, with a nation's prayer ever in dumb music ascending.
To look at and properly appreciate the British Museum is the work of a lifetime. We gave it one day — just enough to set our teeth on edge. There I remember a letter of Sir Walter Scott denying emphatically the authorship of Waverley. I afterwards had the pleasure to meet Mr. Jones, the curator of this magnificent place, and I begged him to hide that away, for it is not pleasant to see "Walter Scott's name appended to a lie. "Oh! he was a writer of fiction, you know," was his answer.
The National Gallery we visited on a private day, thanks to the courtesy of Sir John Bowring, whose accomplished wife and daughter we found copying pictures with great ability. This accomplishment, so rare here, is an almost universal one in England; all the educated women sketch well, and some paint admirably. The Hogarths interested me immensely. I had no idea he had such a charm of color. His pictures are as fresh to-day as when they were painted. I looked long and earnestly at the Turners, and found that I could get to understand them after a while. But Turner is like classical music and Browning's poetry — he requires study. The valuable Raphaels, Correggios, and other treasures of this glorious gallery have been too often described for me to add a word. The water-color galleries were our next great delight. We found these pictures exquisitely beautiful and choice. The English landscape lends itself naturally to water-color. When I afterwards paid a visit to an English country seat and saw, as I sat at breakfast, the old family chapel hung with ivy, just framed by the window, I said. "There you have a water-color arranged to your hand," I imagine this lack of neatly finished object is the reason we have so few water-colorists in the United States. Our grand distances and atmospheric effects, the absence of mullioned windows hung with ivy and of other architectural beauties, undoubtedly stint us as to water-colors and therefore make oil[1] the most convenient medium. Our American landscape-painters — Kensett, Church, Gifford, Bierstadt — have no superiors in Europe in oils, if, indeed, they have many equals.
I saw the yearly exhibition at the Royal Academy. Of it, I remember one of Landseer's — a curious picture — eagles attacking swans, a bloody, cruel, unequal fight. Then I saw a "Vanessa," by Millais, the deserted love of Dean Swift — another unequal fight. She was represented a tail, proud, unhappy-looking creature, a beauty, and in the handsomest brocade that ever was woven or painted. That brocade alone should have insured a large female attendance at this exhibition.
Westminster Hall I remember with peculiar pleasure, and also the richly decorated St. Stephen's Chapel, under the House of Commons, of no use to anybody, but as rich as an illuminated missal. I was afterwards shut up, as becomes my dangerous character, in a wired den over the House of Commons — and heard Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Disraeli, Mr. Lowe, and Dr. Ball; also some men of lesser note. Mr. Gladstone speaks with singular clearness and elegance, and I noticed none of that hesitancy so often attributed to English speakers. Disraeli had just been defeated for the premiership,
A permission to the House of Lords was not so easily obtained, for it was the height of the debate on the Irish Church Bill, and the peeresses demanded their right to every one of the few available seats. However, that came in time, and I was so fortunate as to hear Earl Granville, the Lord Chancellor, Lord John Russell, and some others, on an interesting subject — that of life peerage. There was a desire, as I was told by a member of the House of Commons, to infuse some new life into the "Lords" by the introduction of a limited number of life peers, men who did not desire or who had not the wealth to aspire to "founding a family." The opponents of the case quoted some good things from English history, of men who had desired title simply that they might give it to a son, and the question of life peerage was lost.
The House of Lords, architecturally, is a magnificent room, and the dignity, quiet, and repose of the scene made me unwillingly acknowledge that the Senate of the United States might possibly improve its manners. Perhaps in our desire for simplicity, absence of title, or badge of office we may have thrown over too much. The drives out of London shared, of course, in our pleasures. Hampton Court, Windsor, Richmond, the Crystal Palace at Sydenham, came in their turn. I walked through a half-mile of roses at a rose show at Sydenham, and saw that imperial flower for the first time, for we cannot grow such roses here. The rose in America is dwindled and thin compared with the English rose. It has suffered from transplantation, as the human animal did for two centuries. Now the human animal is beginning to grow broad and rosy and show his English origin. I hope the roses may too.
Of the English dinner-table we had a pretty fair experience. Had our indebtedness to English hospitality been limited to the dinners alone, we should have returned overwhelmed with a sense of unrequitable favors bestowed; but when all these dinners were followed up by other kindnesses, we owned ourselves hopelessly bankrupt. For every letter a dozen doors flew open; for every friend you make you sow dragons' teeth for innumerable other friends, and each one is kinder than the last. Some of my new friends spoke handsomely of American hospitality, I was compelled to say, "It must be an inherited virtue."
They can be more hospitable than we, these fortunate people. They have a far more highly organized system of domestic service; they have immense wealth; they have that regular, graduated society wherein every man and woman knows his or her place; and whatever we, as republicans, may say as to the so-called snobbery of English people, I have seen something like it at home. It is better to pay court to a queen (who to them is abstract England) or to a duke with a "long pedigree" than to worship, as we too often do, some unworthy person whose wealth is his sole passport into society. I believe that a habit of respect is good for the human race — "It blesseth him that gives and him that takes," and it produces in England such manners in the trades-people, servants, innkeepers, and, in fact, in all who serve you, that I would fain become a student and a copyist of the better specimens, that I might become in my turn a teacher "of the same" to the dominant race who drive our carriages and rule our households. I do not wonder that American women like Europe and are happier there than here. Women are more sensitive than men in this matter of respectful attendance; and they receive so little of it here from our so-called servants that the perfect deference and good breeding of that class in the older countries is a happiness in itself.
We reluctantly tore ourselves from the delights of Nilsson and the opera at Covent Garden, and all the theatres, and from the parks and drives and dinners of London, for fresh fields and pastures new. We wanted to see Oxford, Stratford-on-Avon, Warwick, Kenilworth, York, Edinburgh, and all that glorious company.
Oxford we saw out of term-time. There were no gowns and caps walking about, no races on the Isis. But what a regal old town it is! How we enjoyed the architecture — the quaint old gargoyles, the delicious gardens of Merton, Magdalen, and St. John's! How heavy the air was with the perfume of the lime-trees, then in full bloom! Nowhere in England is the turf more green, the English landscape purer or more characteristic. The air is eloquent with learning and splendid names. We drove to Blenheim and enjoyed its magnificence, tried to realize that we were in Woodstock Park; but here two sets of reminiscences clashed, and it was hard to define where Fair Rosamond ended and the stormy Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, began. We drove home by Godstow Abbey, where the frail favorite ended her career; and we finished the day by a visit to a sweet English rectory right out of Birket Foster, all strawberries and roses and diamond-paned windows. Our host was full of the legends of the spot, and told me he had an apple in his garden called the "Fair Rosamond," which shows (for he was a divine) how meritorious a thing it is to be pretty.
From Leamington we drove over to Stratford-on-Avon, on one of the loveliest summer days I remember, and lunched in Washington Irving's parlor at the "Red House." We afterwards walked to Shakespeare's house, where we found five Americans before us. We were not surprised, though perhaps our national vanity was a little gratified, when the sensible old lady who acts as custodian took down an American edition of Shakespeare and told us how highly the English scholars appreciated the work of our Shakespearian scholar, Richard Grant White.We attempted to walk to the church where Shakespeare lies buried, but the heat overcoming one lady of our party, we sought shelter on a friendly door-step in the shade, while the gentlemen went back for carriages. The door behind us softly opened and revealed the features of an elderly lady, who kindly invited us to enter, saying, "I am sure the rector of the parish would not like to see ladies reduced to sitting on his door-step. Pray walk in." We accepted the gracious invitation, and were soon rewarded by the presence of the rector, a good-looking, well-bred man. He told us that of all the visitors to Shakespeare's tomb the Americans constituted one-sixth; that they were by far the most interested in the visit. He preached every Sunday in the famous church where Shakespeare's bust and body are enshrined; and he knew Miss Bacon well, but was, I thought, a little astonished that she lodged at a shoe-maker's. He gave me some local details of the place, and offered us refreshments with true English hospitality.
The old church is delightfully situated close to the banks of the Avon. "We went in, read the inscription:
"Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbear!"
and looked at that wonderful bust which gives us all we can see of the most astounding genius the world has ever known.
We drove away silently, too full of delicious reverie to talk. Nothing roused us till our coachman said, two or three miles from Stratford, "Charlecotes, the seat of Sir Thomas Lucy; now the property of Mr. Lucy. Strangers not permitted to enter." So the family keep up the traditional inhospitality. We allowed our eyes to enter, however, and saw through the barred gate the beautiful long, low Elizabethan house, and some of the finest elms in England. We drove home by Stoneleigh Abbey, another charming specimen house, where are some interesting relics of Lord Byron, but we were not able to stop and see them. The owner, Mr. Leigh, however, permits his house and treasures to be seen at certain hours by the public.
Kenilworth, Warwick Castle, Guy's Cliff, afford another day's drive from Leamington; and I insisted ou going through the old town of Coventry, for the sake of Godiva and Peeping Tom, whose luckless effigy is carefully arranged at a window. But, alas! Coventry is a modern, prosperous manufacturing town; and had it not been for a wonderful old church we should have been wofully disappointed. At Warwick Castle, where are the two best Vandykes of Charles I., I saw the only relic of Oliver Cromwell which I could find in England. It was a cast of his face after death.
Kenilworth is a dreadful disappointment. It is too much of a ruin. You can scarcely, even with Sir Walter in your hand, reconstruct that famous banquet-hall, of which the floor and the roof are gone. I found Amy Robsart's staircase. She is the most real person connected with Kenilworth.
York Minster was one of my great joys. It is the only cathedral I have seen in England or on the Continent that can be seen. It has no ugly, unsightly, intrusive buildings between you and it. It stands majestically in its own green park, glorious, complete—a poem and a history in itself.
We could never become accustomed to the beauty of England—the finish, the perfection of the whole thing, all so agreeable to an eye used to our own incompleteness. We have not been touched up by time yet; and, indeed, where will be our old cathedrals, our Warwick Castles, to touch up? We can never have the green turf or the lovely flowers; our torrid summers and frigid winters forbid it. We are a vast country with few people; they are a small country with many people. They can afford to have their railway embankments sodded, their little stations each a flower garden. With us those enormous public works must remain forever rough, great scars on the face of nature. We must get our beauty in other things, and leave to England her peerless enamel of green grass, brilliant flowers, her gray ruins, and graceful ivy.
I was amused, sometimes a little offended, to find how little English people knew of the United States. It seemed impossible to believe that two steamers a week ran between Liverpool and New York,[2] each freighted to the water's edge; and yet the English ladies would ask me if we "ever had ice-cream in New York," if we "had frequent fires because it was built of wood," etc.; and they would smile incredulously when I said it had been against the law for forty years to build a wooden house in New York. And the worst of it is, they do not care to know much in the social way about the United States. The stream of thought flows steadily from England here, not from here there. They are very kind, very friendly, interested in a general way, and consider us a great, wonderful, unknown sort of Australia, and that is all.
One thing they do respect and admire in us — the way we are paying our national debt; but they cannot understand (and who could explain to them?) the curious combinations brought about by our system of politics and by our republican institutions. "Who are your best people?" was a favorite and unanswerable question. It is a strange and significant fact that Americans who travel in Europe are more amazed at the other Americans they meet there than at any other people who travel. So we may well stop trying to describe ourselves to foreigners. We are too vast, too heterogeneous. Lord Houghton said, "Don't try."
One question I always asked and never got answered satisfactorily. It was: "Why did England take the side of the South?" I hoped to receive some philosophical solution of this great problem. Sir John Bowring said, "She did not." Dr. Mackay, the poet, gave me a witty answer: "Because England loves all rebels except at home!" But, with all this, they were most kindly, most hospitable; they seemed to feel, in spite of themselves, a sort of brotherhood. They take trouble for you, are delighted if you enjoy England; take pleasure in opening wide those splendid doors within whose folds are hidden so much luxury, so much comfort. The conversation at an English dinner-table, cordial, refined, often learned, never (to my hearing) commonplace; the low, deliciously musical voices of Englishwomen (would that they could be imported!); the straightforward, pleasant talk of the men — all these things go to form a society such as we cannot have in this country for many, many years to come, if ever.
This was written in 1869, after my first visit. Since then I have spent five seasons in London and have almost lived a year in England, but I do not know that I could improve upon my early recollections; at any rate, I am glad that I saw England then as I have always seen it — kind, hospitable, and most agreeable.