Part 4

This may serve to give you some notion how accurately nations understand each other’s peculiarities. Since my sojourn in Europe, it has been my good luck to witness the triumph of one American, on a scene far superior to any thing that usually offers in London. I shall not name the place, nor even the country, but it was at a ball given by a woman of royal birth. The palace was magnificent; and the company, the first in Europe. There were present fifteen or twenty royal personages, or those who were closely allied to monarchs, and nearly half in the room were of the titular rank, at least, of princes. I remember there was the heir to an English dukedom among others, and he attracted no more attention than any ordinary young man. A young American girl was invited to stand up in the set of honour. Her quiet, simple, feminine, lady-like dancing, coupled with the artless ingenuousness of a sweet countenance, in which mind was struggling with natural timidity and the reserve of good breeding, caused her, even in that assembly, to be instantly an object of universal admiration. As I stood in the crowd, unknown, I overheard the comments, which were general on every side of me. “Who is it?” was the first question; and when some one told her name and country, I heard no exclamation of surprise, that an American should be a lady, or know how to dance. In the course of the evening, it is true, twenty compliments were paid me on the grace and deportment of my young countrywomen in general, for it was inferred, at once, that they had seen a specimen of the nation!

From the house of Mrs. ——, who, herself, is far more creditable to us, than many who figure in the periodicals, showing her adopted countrywomen in what the true virtues of your sex consist, by being a model for a wife and mother, while she has cleverness and spirit, I went to that of a Lord C——. Although I was now under a patrician roof, I saw no sensible difference in the building. Even the merchant was as well lodged as the peer, and all three of the houses had precisely the same wearisome monotony as our own. After the taste and variety of the dwellings on the continent of Europe, you may imagine how dull and fatiguing it is to enter twenty houses of a morning, and find precisely the same internal arrangement. They appear to me to be constructed like the coffins one sees in our streets, for some particular market, differing in sizes to suit, not the persons, but the purses, of customers, and, being put one in another, sent away for sale.

The company at Lord C——’s, was much the same as that at Mrs. ——’s. It was generally well bred and well toned, and, in the principal drawing-room, where the quadrilles were in motion, I saw no difference, beyond that which belongs to personal peculiarity. There were the same pretty faces, the same fine, well-rounded forms, and the same regulated and graceful carriage. Depend on it, the English women will, sooner or later, dance as well as yourselves. Good luck to Free Trade!

You will feel some desire to know how balls, like the two last, will compare with balls of our own. In London, the rooms are a little larger; the music is much the same; the females, to a slight degree, are better dressed, as to freshness, though scarcely as well dressed as to taste; the men also, I think, are a little better dressed. The attendance has much more style, and the refreshments are not as good as with us. As to the essential point of deportment, the distinctions are more obvious than one could wish, especially among the men, and among the very youthful of your own sex.

The young play a very different part in Europe from that which is confided to them at home. On the continent of Europe, though girls of condition are now permitted to mingle a little with the world previously to marriage, it is under severe restraint, and with much reserve. The English have greater latitude allowed them, though infinitely less, than is granted with us. They still play a secondary part in society, and are subjected to a good deal of restraint. I should say that tone, reflection, and perhaps necessity, impart more _retenu_ of manner here, than it is common to see with us, though girls of good families, certainly the daughters of good mothers, at home, come pretty nearly up to the level of English deportment. It is the _pêle mêle_ of society, in towns that double their population in fifteen years, that is so destructive of manners with us. In the general scramble, no set remains long enough in a prominent situation to form a model. The growth of the country has this sin to answer for, as well as many others that are imputed to the institutions. In brief, then, a better manner prevailed at these balls than is usually met with at ours. I say usually, for I know exceptions in America, but our present concern is with the rule. There was less noise, nothing of the nursery, and generally that superiority of air, which is a natural consequence of minds more scrupulously trained and cultivated, and of a breeding subjected to laws more unyielding and arbitrary. Do not whisper these opinions, I beseech you, to any of your acquaintances, lest they murder me.

In making these comparisons, however, I do not wish to be misunderstood. I could fill a drawing-room, even in New York, that Babel of manners, with women who should do credit to any country. The difficulty would not be to select, but to exclude.

I have certainly met with a few instances of the exuberant manner among English women, but never among the higher classes. A caste, or two, lower in the social scale, it is not uncommon, and there is a set in which it actually appears to be the _mode_. Taking one example from this specimen of the nation, I will describe her, in order that you may know, not _whom_, but _what_, I mean.

Imagine a pretty woman, who will put herself in the centre of the floor alone, _entertaining_ two or three men! She talks loud, laughs much, and has altogether a most startling confidence about her; she looks her companion full in the eye, with a determined innocence that makes him feel like a victim, and causes him to wish for a fan. This is a decided garrison manner, and has little or no success at London. Something like it might be seen in the house to which I first went this evening, but nothing like it, at the two others.

It ought to be said, that the young of both sexes have greatly improved, of late years, in England. The dandies, of whom you read in novels, have positively no existence here, or if they have, it is not among gentlemen. I have seen a great deal of mannerism of deportment, in the secondary classes, often to a disagreeable and ludicrous degree, but nothing at all like the coxcombry that figures in the descriptions of the works of fiction. The men, as a whole, are simple, masculine in manner and mind, and highly cultivated, so far as elegant instruction goes. They fail in the knowledge that is practical, though with a certain set, even with this, or that which relates to things as they are connected with the machinery of their own power, they are familiar enough. Nearly all have travelled, and most read four or five languages, though few speak any well but their own. The same is true of your sex. I have hardly ever heard the merits of a novel discussed among them, and to the continental sentimentality they seem to be utter strangers; but it is apparent at a glance, that they understand better things, and have had their minds highly disciplined. Remember, unless, in specific cases, I allude always to rules, and not to exceptions.

The English women are a little apt to strike an American as, in a slight degree, less feminine than his own countrywomen. There is something in the greater robustness of their _physique_ to give rise to such a feeling, and I think they are, to a trifling extent, more pronounced in air. While they are much more punctiliously polite, they are scarcely as gracious. There is certainly less nature about them, though there is more frankness of exterior. All their conduct is rigidly regulated, and while they give you their hands in the manner of friendship, you do not feel as much at home, as with the American, who does not even rise to receive you, and who protects the extremities of her fingers, as if they were not the prettiest in the world. While the English woman would command the most respect, the American would win most on your feelings, in a general intercourse. I believe both to be among the best wives and mothers, that the world contains. The English aid nature, in all things, while the Americans too often mar it. No women do so much injustice to themselves, as the latter; their singularly feminine exterior requiring softness and mildness of voice and deportment, a tone that their unformed habits have suffered to be supplanted by the rattle of hoydens and the giggling of the nursery. I have seen many a young American, who has reminded me of a nightingale roaring. It is a pity that they do not seek models among the better society of their own country, instead of the inferior sets of Europe.

LETTER XVIII.

TO RICHARD COOPER, ESQ., COOPERSTOWN, N. Y.

Mr. —— has carried his kindness so far, as to go with me on the Thames. It had been our plan to row to Greenwich but the weather not proving favourable, we determined to go as far as London bridge, and return on foot through the city. We took boat, accordingly, at Westminster stairs, and went down with the tide.

The Thames is both a pretty and an ugly stream. When full, it is a river of respectable depth and of some width, but, at low water, above London bridge, it is little more than a rivulet flowing amid banks of slimy mud. The wherries in use are well adapted to their work, in this part of the river, but lower down they are not sufficiently protected against the waves. Accidents very frequently happen, though probably they are not out of proportion to the number of boats that are constantly plying in every direction. The principal danger is of getting athwart the cables of barges and ships, when the strength of the current is very apt to cause a wherry to fill.

As we went down with the tide, a pair of sculls answered our purpose, for one can have oars or sculls, at pleasure. The banks of the Thames, above Westminster bridge, are quite pretty, and above Chelsea, where the river flows through fields, they may be said to be even more; the villas on the shores, the windings of the current, and the meadows, raising them almost to positive beauty. But below Westminster bridge, little remains to be admired, until you reach the sea. Though on a larger scale, the navigable part of the river has a strong resemblance to the Raritan below Brunswick, being crooked, muddy, and bounded by wet meadows. The latter has a small advantage in scenery, however; the hills lying nearer to the stream. The passage of the Kilns, also, has frequently reminded me of the Thames below London.

Within the town, itself, warehouses blackened by coal-smoke, manufactories, timber-yards, building and graving docks, and waterman’s stairs, principally line the shores. There are no magnificent quays, as at Paris, the shipping taking in and discharging by means of lighters, except in the wet docks, of which, however, there are now nearly sufficient to accommodate all the shipping of the port that is engaged in foreign trade. The Thames presents a very different picture to-day, from what it did when I first entered it, in the year 1806. At that time the river was literally so crowded as to make it a matter of great difficulty to get a ship through the tiers. There were hundreds of galliots alone, engaged in the trade from Holland, and this in a time of vindictive warfare! It was the only place I knew, which gave one a vivid impression of what is meant by a forest of masts. Most of the docks existed, too, at that time, and they were crowded with vessels. I asked the waterman to-day, an old man who remembered the river many years, what he thought might be the visible difference between the number of vessels in the port, during the year 1806 and that of 1828, and he told me fully half. My own eye would confirm this opinion. The trade has gone to the out-ports; particularly to Liverpool. With the commerce of the river much of its life and peculiarities, it seems to me, have departed. The _costumes_ have disappeared: the waterman have a less jolly manner, and even Jack wears the bell-mouthed trowsers no longer. These mutations are constantly going on in the world, but the Thames left a vivid impression on my young fancy, twenty-two years ago, and returning to it, after so long an absence, they struck me with force, and in some degree painfully.

Although the Thames is not the Seine, nor the Arno, nor the Tiber, it has a picturesque and imposing beauty of its own, especially between the bridges. There is a gloomy grandeur in the affluence of the dark objects, in the massive piles that cut the stream, in the movement, and in the sombre edifices that line the shores. Here and there a building remarkable in history, or of architectural pretension, is seen, and usually the dome of St. Paul’s is floating in the haze of the back-ground. As for the bridges themselves, they are not unsuited to the general sombre character of the view, though I think them in bad taste as to forms. There is an English massiveness about them that is imposing, but they strike me as being out of proportion heavy for the stream they span, and unnecessarily solid. The arches, with the exception of those of Southwark, are not sufficiently elliptical for lightness and beauty. It would have been a poetical and worthy thought to have made the bridge at Westminster gothic. Southwark bridge is of iron, and the open work impairs the effect of its proportions, which are much the finest of any, but could the sides be closed, it would be a succession of bold and noble arches. Between Westminster Hall and the custom-house, there are now five of these heavy piles, viz. Westminster, Waterloo, Southwark, Blackfriars, and London. Preparations are making to rebuild the latter, and as London has improved so much in nothing, of late years, as in its public architecture, it is fair to suppose that the new work will be more worthy of the capital of a great empire than its predecessor; though, I dare say, it will not be as much extolled, since nations, like individuals, as their minds expand become less vain of their knowledge than they were wont to be of their ignorance. The London bridge of my nursery tales was but an indifferent specimen of national taste, though lauded to the skies.

We passed the Temple gardens, and one or two more belonging to private dwellings, before we got to Blackfriars, after which no signs of vegetation were visible. The Temple buildings are quaint and interesting, and the gardens, as usual in this country, spots of emerald, beautifully arranged.

We landed at London bridge, and my companion had the good nature to point out to me the supposed site of the Boar’s Head, in East Cheap.[3] It must have been what the cockneys call a _rum_ place, for an heir-apparent to carouse in, and yet, Shakspeare, who wrote in the century after that in which Henry reigned, would scarcely have presumed to take so much liberty with royalty, in an age like his, without being sustained by pretty well authenticated traditions, in favour of what he was doing.

Mr. —— threaded the narrow streets of this part of the town, like one who knew them well, kindly pointing out to me every object of interest that we passed. I smiled as we went along the well-remembered thoroughfares, for it was not possible to avoid comparing the cultivated, celebrated, and refined man who gave himself this trouble, with an individual who had first introduced me, twenty-two years earlier, into the very same streets.

You must be sufficiently acquainted with family events to know that I was once in the navy. At that time, it was considered creditable as well as advantageous to the young naval aspirant, to show his mettle by going a voyage or two in a merchant vessel, as a common mariner, before he was placed on the quarter-deck of a man-of-war. This was my course, and I had twice visited London, in the capacity of a young tar, before I was eighteen, besides making several other voyages. The first time I came to London, it was fresh from college, a lad of about seventeen. I had then been long enough at sea to get a nautical air, and of course was confounded with my shipmates of the fore-castle. The oldest custom-house officer put on board the ship had been a gentleman’s domestic, and he was full of the lore of the servants’ hall. He soon singled me out, and I was much edified, for a week, with his second-hand anecdotes of great people, and the marvels of the West-end. The first Sunday after our arrival in dock, he proposed giving me ocular proofs of the truth of his accounts, and we sallied forth in company, he as Minerva, and I as Telemachus. We passed over much of the ground now passed over under the better guidance of Mr. —— and it was amusing to me to note the difference in the tastes and manner of my two cicerones. When we approached the monument, the ex-valet stopped, and with an important manner inquired if I had ever heard of the great fire in London. I had, luckily, for it singularly raised me in his estimation. With due formalities, I was then introduced to the place where it had broken out, and to the monument. “That is what we call the monument,” said Mr. ——, in his quiet way, glancing his eye at it, as he turned away to show me the new Boar’s Head. “This is the house of my Lord Mayor, and that is the coach of one of the sheriffs,” said Mr. Swinburne, for so was the custom-house officer named. “Wren has been much praised and much censured for this edifice,” observed Mr. ——, as we passed beneath the massive walls. I was led by the ex-valet down a narrow street into a quaint, old, gothic, edifice, where, in a large hall, I was confronted with carved monstrosities in wood, which I was told with much chuckling were Gog and Magog. “That is a quaint and rather remarkable building,” said the poet, as we passed the head of the same street; “it is Guildhall; you may know that it gets its name, from being used by the guilds, or corporated companies of the city.” “This is Bow-church, and those are the bells that Whittington heard, as he was quitting Lunnun,” observed the oracular Mr. Swinburne—“_You_ were born far enough from this place, to escape the imputation of cockneyism,” remarked the poet, as we trudged along. “There, that is St. Paul’s!” cried Mr. Swinburne, with an awful emphasis, as if he expected me to fall down and worship it. “It was a great work to be executed by a single architect,” the poet simply said, “and it has many noble points about it; I think it has, at least, the merit of simplicity.” He was right enough, as to externals, but it wants unity of design, within.

In this way, then, I went along, with my present companion, irresistibly tempted to compare his quiet, unpretending manner, with the brimful importance, and strutting ignorance of the guardian of the revenue. One of the contrasts was so droll that I have not yet forgotten it, though it is unconnected with any of the historical monuments. Mr. Swinburne bristled close up to me, when we had got nearer to the court end, and putting his hand to his mouth, as we passed a quiet old gentleman, he whispered ominously, “An earl!”—“Do you see that person on the opposite side of the street,” said the poet, within fifty yards of the same spot—“it is Lord ——, known as the husband of the handsomest woman in England, and for nothing else.” I remember to have greatly scandalized Mr. Swinburne, by one of my antics. “Did you ever hear of such a man as John Horne Tooke,” he inquired. “Certainly; what of him?” “Why that is he who has just passed—the fellow who looks like a half and half parson.” I turned in my tracks, incontinently, and gave chase, for, at that early age I was not insensible to the pleasure of looking at celebrated men, and I had been taught to regard Horne Tooke as a writer who had got the better of Junius. Favored by the jacket and trousers I passed several times round “the chace,” and I believe at length attracted his attention, by my manœuvres. He was an austere looking man, but I fancied he was not displeased at such evident admiration. As for Mr. Swinburne, he applied some very caustic epithets to my folly, but I succeeded in mollifying him by double doses of admiration for his cockney wonders.