Part 4

When we returned to the Vine, we found a visiter, in this land of strangers. Mrs. R——, of New York, a relative and an old friend, had heard that Americans of our name, were there, and she came doubting, and hoping, to the Vine. We found that the windows of our own drawing-room looked directly into those of hers. A few doors below us, dwelt Mrs. L——, a still nearer relative, and a few days later, we had _vis-à-vis_, Mrs. M‘A——, a sister of A——’s, on whom we all laid eyes for the first time in our lives! Such little incidents recall to mind the close consanguinity of the two nations, although for myself, I have always felt as a stranger in England. This has not been so much from the want of kindness and a community of opinion on many subjects, as from a consciousness, that in the whole of that great nation, there is not a single individual, with whom I could claim affinity. And yet, with a slight exception, we are purely of English extraction. Our father was the great-great-grand-son of an Englishman. I once met with a man, (an Englishman,) who bore so strong a resemblance to him, in stature, form, walk, features, and expression, that I actually took the trouble to ascertain his name. He even had our own. I had no means of tracing the matter any farther, but here was physical evidence to show the affinity between the two people. On the other hand, A—— comes of the Huguenots. She is purely American by every intermarriage, from the time of Louis XIVth, down, and yet she found cousins, in England, at every turn, and even a child of the same parents, who was as much of an English woman, as she herself was an American.

We drunk to the happiness of America, at dinner. That day, fifty years, she declared herself a nation; that very day, and nearly, at that hour, two of the co-labourers in the great work we celebrated, departed in company for the world of spirits!

A day or two was necessary to become familiarized to the novel objects around us, and my departure for London was postponed. We profited by the delay, to visit Netley Abbey, a ruin of some note, at no great distance from Southampton. The road was circuitous, and we passed several pretty country houses, few of which exceeded in size or embellishments, shrubbery excepted, similar dwellings at home. There was one, however, of an architecture much more ancient than we had been accustomed to see, it being, by all appearance, of the time of Elizabeth or James. It had turrets and battlements, but was otherwise plain.

The Abbey was a fine, without being a very imposing, ruin, standing in the midst of a field of English neatness, prettily relieved by woods. The window already mentioned, formed the finest part. The effect of these ruins on us proved the wonderful power of association. The greater force of the past than of the future on the mind, can only be the result of questionable causes. Our real concern with the future is incalculably the greatest, and yet we are dreaming over our own graves, on the events and scenes which throw a charm around the graves of those who have gone before us! Had we seen Netley Abbey, just as far advanced towards completion, as it was, in fact, advanced towards decay, our speculations would have been limited by a few conjectures on its probable appearance, but gazing at it, as we did, we peopled its passages, imagined Benedictines stalking along its galleries, and fancied that we heard the voices of the choir, pealing among its arches.

Our fresh American feelings were strangely interrupted by the sounds of junketting. A party of Southampton cocknies, (there are cocknies even in New York,) having established themselves on the grass, in one of the courts, were lighting a fire, and were deliberately proceeding to make tea! “To tea, and ruins,” the invitations most probably run. We retreated into a little battery of the bluff King Hal, that was near by, a work that sufficiently proved the state of nautical warfare in the sixteenth century.

LETTER III. TO R. COOPER, ESQ., COOPERSTOWN.

At a very early hour, one of the London coaches stopped at the door. I had secured a seat by the side of the coachman, and we went through the “bar” at a round trot. The distance was about sixty miles, and I had paid a guinea for my place. There were four or five other passengers, all on the outside.

The road between Southampton and London, is one of little interest; even the highway itself is not as good as usual, for the first twenty or thirty miles, being made chiefly of gravel, instead of broken stones. The soil for a long distance was thirsty, and the verdure was nearly gone. England feels a drought sooner than most countries, probably from the circumstance of its vegetation being so little accustomed to the absence of moisture, and to the comparative lightness of the dews. The wind, until just before the arrival of the Hudson, had been blowing from the eastward for several weeks, and in England this is usually a dry wind. The roads were dusty, the hedges were brown, and the fields had nothing to boast of over our own verdure. Indeed, it is unusual to see the grasses of New York so much discoloured, so early in the season.

I soon established amicable relations with my companion on the box. He had been ordered at the Vine to stop for an American, and he soon began to converse about the new world. “Is America any where near Van Dieman’s Land?” was one of his first questions. I satisfied him on this head, and he apologized for the mistake, by explaining that he had a sister settled in Van Dieman’s Land, and he had a natural desire to know something about her welfare! We passed a house which had more the air of a considerable place than any I had yet seen, though of far less architectural pretensions than the miniature castle near Cowes. This my companion informed me, had once been occupied by George IVth, when Prince of Wales. “Here his Royal Highness enjoyed what I call the perfection of life, sir; women, wine, and fox-hunting!” added the professor of the whip, with the leer of a true amateur.

These coachmen are a class by themselves. They have no concern with grooming the horses, and keep the reins for a certain number of relays. They dress in a particular way, without being at all in livery or uniform, like the continental postillions, talk in a particular way, and act in a particular way. We changed this personage for another, about half the distance between Southampton and London. His successor proved to be even a still better specimen of his class. He was a thorough cockney, and altogether the superior of his country colleague; he was clearly the oracle of the boys, delivering his sentiments in the manner of one accustomed to dictate to all in and about the stables. In addition to this, there was an indescribable, but ludicrous salvo to his dignity, in the way of surliness. Some one had engaged him to carry a black-bird to town, and caused him to wait. On this subject he sang a Jeremiad in the true cockney key. “He didn’t want to _take_ the _bla-a-a-ck-bud_, but if the man wanted to _send_ the _bla-a-a-ck-bud_, why didn’t he _bring_ the _bla-a-a-ck-bud_?” This is one of the hundred dialects of the lower classes of the English. One of the horses of the last team was restiff, and it became necessary to restrain him by an additional curb, before we ventured into the streets of London. I intimated that I had known such horses completely subdued in America, by filling their ears with cotton. This suggestion evidently gave offence, and he took occasion soon after to show it. He wrung the nose of the horse with a cord, attaching its end below, in the manner of a severe martingale. While going through this harsh process, which, by the way, effectually subdued the animal, he had leisure to tell him, that “he was an _English_ horse, and not an _out-landish_ horse, and _he_ knew best what was good for him,” with a great deal more similar sound nationality.

Winchester was the only town of any importance on the road. It is pleasantly seated in a valley, is of no great size, is but meanly built, though extremely neat, has a cathedral and a bishop, and is the shire-town of Hampshire. The assizes were sitting, and Southampton was full of troops that had been sent from Winchester, in order to comply with a custom which forbids the military to remain near the courts of justice. England is full of these political mystifications, and it is one of the reasons that she is so much in arrears in many of the great essentials. In carrying out the practice in this identical case, a serious private wrong was inflicted, in order, that, in form, an abstract and perfectly useless principle might be maintained. The inns at Southampton were filled with troops, who were billeted on the publicans, will ye, nill ye, and not only the masters of the different houses, but travellers were subjected to a great inconvenience, in order that this abstraction might not be violated. There may be some small remuneration, but no one can suppose, for a moment, that the keeper of a genteel establishment of this nature, wishes to see his carriage-houses, gate-ways, and halls, thronged with soldiers. Society oppresses him, to maintain appearances! At the present day, the presence of soldiers might be the means of sustaining justice, while there is not the smallest probability that they would be used for contrary purposes, except in cases in which this usage, or law—for I believe there is a statute for it—would not be in the least respected. This is not an age, nor is England the country, in which a judge is to be overawed by the roll of a drum. All sacrifices of common sense, and all recourse to plausible political combinations, whether of individuals, or of men, are uniformly made at the expense of the majority. The day is certainly arrived when absurdities like these should be done away with.

The weather was oppressively hot, nor do I remember to have suffered more from the sun, than during this little journey. Were I to indulge in the traveller’s propensity to refer every thing to his own state of feeling, you might be told what a sultry place England is, in July. But I was too old a sailor, not to understand the cause. The sea is always more temperate than the land, being cooler in summer and warmer in winter. After being thirty days at sea, we all feel this truth, either in one way, or the other. I was quitting the coast, too, which is uniformly cooler than the interior.

When some twelve or thirteen miles from town, the coachman pointed to a wood enclosed by a wall, on our left. A rill trickled from the thicket, and run beneath the road. I was told that Virginia Water lay there, and that the evening before, a single foot-pad had robbed a coach in that precise spot, or within a few hundred yards of the very place where the King of England, at the moment, was amusing himself with the fishing-rod. Highway robberies, however, are now of exceedingly rare occurrence, that in question being spoken of as the only one within the knowledge of my informant, for many years.

Our rate of travelling was much the same as that of one of our own better sort of stages. The distance was not materially less than that between Albany and C——n, the roads were not so hilly, and much better than our own road, and yet, at the same season, we usually perform it, in about the same time, that we went the distance between Southampton and London. The scenery was tame, nor, with the exception of Winchester, was there a single object of any interest visible, until we got near London. We crossed the Thames, a stream of trifling expanse, and at Kew we had a glimpse of an old German-looking edifice in yellow bricks, with towers, turrets, and battlements. This was one of the royal palaces. It stood on the opposite side of the river, in the midst of tolerably extensive grounds. Here a nearly incessant stream of vehicles commenced. I attempted to count the stage-coaches, and got as high as thirty-three, when we met a line of mail-coaches that caused me to stop, in despair. I think we met not less than fifty, within the last hour of our journey. There were seven belonging to the mail, in one group. They all leave London at the same hour, for different parts of the kingdom.

At Hyde Park corner, I began to recall objects known in my early visits to London. Apsley House had changed owners, and had become the property of one whose great name was still in the germ, when I had last seen his present dwelling. The Parks, a gate-way or two excepted, were unchanged. In the row of noble houses that line Piccadilly, in that hospital-looking edifice, Devonshire-house, in the dingy, mean, irregular, and yet interesting front of St. James’, in Brookes’, White’s, the Thatched House, and various other historical _monuments_, I saw no change. Buckingham-house had disappeared, and an unintelligible pile was rising on its ruins. A noble “_palazzo-nonfinito_” stood at the angle between the Green and St. James’ Parks, and, here and there, I discovered houses of better architecture than London was wont, of old, to boast. One of the very best of these, I was told, was raised in honour of Mercury, and probably out of his legitimate profits. It is called Crockford’s.

Our “_bla-a-a-ck-bud_” pulled up, in the Strand, at the head of Adam-street, Adelphi, and I descended from my seat at his side. An extra shilling brought the glimmering of a surly smile athwart his blubber-cheeks, and we parted in good-humour. My fellow travellers were all men of no very high class, but they had been civil, and were sufficiently attentive to my wants, when they found I was a stranger, by pointing out objects on the road, and explaining the usages of the inns. One of them had been in America, and he boasted a little of his intimacy with General This, and Commodore That. At one time, too, he appeared somewhat disposed to institute comparisons between the two countries, a good deal at our expense, as you may suppose; but as I made no answers, I soon heard him settling it with his companions, that, after all, it was quite natural a man should not like to hear his own country abused; and so he gave the matter up. With this exception, I had no cause of complaint, but, on the contrary, good reason to be pleased.

I was set down at the Adam-street Hotel, a house much frequented by Americans. The respectable woman who has so long kept it, received me with quiet civility, saw that I had a room, and promised me a dinner in a few minutes. While the latter was preparing, having got rid of the dust, I went out into the streets. The lamps were just lighted, and I went swiftly along the Strand, recalling objects at every step. In this manner I passed, at a rapid pace, Somerset-house, St. Clements-le-Dane, St. Mary-le-Strand, Temple-bar, Bridge-street, Ludgate Hill, pausing only before St. Paul’s. Along the whole of this line, I saw but little change. A grand bridge, Waterloo, with a noble approach to it, had been thrown across the river just above Somerset-house, but nearly every thing else remained unaltered. I believe my manner, and the eagerness with which I gazed at long remembered objects, attracted attention, for I soon observed I was dogged around the church, by a suspicious-looking fellow. He either suspected me of evil, or, attracted by my want of a London air, he meditated evil himself. Knowing my own innocence, I determined to bring the matter to an issue. We were alone, in a retired part of the place, and, first making sure that my watch, wallet, and handkerchief had not already disappeared, I walked directly up to him, and looked him intently in the face, as if to recognise his features. He took the hint, and, turning on his heels, moved nimbly off. It is surprising how soon an accustomed eye will distinguish a stranger, in the streets of a large town. On mentioning this circumstance next day to ——, he said that the Londoners pretend to recognise a rustic air in a Countess, if she has been six months from town. Rusticity, in such cases, however, must merely mean a little behind the fashions.

I had suffered curiosity to draw me two miles from my dinner, and was as glad to get back, as just before I had been to run away from it. Still, the past, with the recollections which crowded on the mind, bringing with them a flood of all sorts of associations, prevented me from getting into a coach, which would, in a measure, have excluded objects from my sight. I went to bed that night with the strange sensation of being again in London, after an interval of twenty years.

The next day, I set about the business which had brought me to the English capital. Most of our passengers were in town, and we met, as a matter of course. I had calls from three or four Americans established here, some in one capacity, and some in others, for our country has long been giving back its increase to England, in the shape of Admirals, Generals, Judges, Artists, Writers, and _notion-mongers_. But what is all this, compared to the constant accessions of Europeans among ourselves? Eight years later, on returning home, I found New York, in feeling, opinions, desires, (apart from profit,) and I might almost say, in population, a foreign, rather than an American town.

I had passed months in London, when a boy, and yet had no knowledge of Westminster Abbey! I cannot account for this oversight, for I was a great devotee of Gothic architecture, of which, by the way, I knew nothing except through the prints, and I could not reproach myself with a want of proper curiosity on such subjects, for I had devoted as much time to their examination as my duty to the ship would at all allow. Still, all I could recall of the Abbey was an indistinct image of two towers, with a glimpse in at a great door. Now that I was master of my own movements, one of my first acts was to hurry to the venerable church.

Westminster Abbey is built in the form of a cross, as is, I believe, invariably the case with every catholic church of any pretension. At its northern end, are two towers, and at its southern, is the celebrated chapel of Henry VIIth. This chapel is an addition, which, allowing for a vast difference in the scale, resembles, in its general appearance, a school, or vestry room, attached to the end of one of our own churches. A Gothic church is, indeed, seldom complete, without such a chapel. It is not an easy matter to impress an American with a proper idea of European architecture. Even while the edifice is before his eyes, he is very apt to form an erroneous opinion of its comparative magnitude. The proportions aid deception in the first place, and absence uniformly exaggerates the beauty and extent of familiar objects. None but those who have disciplined the eye, and who have accustomed themselves to measure proportions by rules more definite than those of the fancy, should trust to their judgments in descriptions of this sort.

Westminster itself is not large, however, in comparison with St. Paul’s, and an ordinary parish church, called St. Magaret’s, which must be, I think, quite as large as Trinity, New York, and stands within a hundred yards of the Abbey, is but a pigmy compared with Westminster. I took a position in St. Margaret’s church-yard, at a point where the whole of the eastern side of the edifice might be seen, and for the first time in my life, gazed upon a truly Gothic structure of any magnitude. It was near sunset, and the light was peculiarly suited to the sombre architecture. The material was a gray stone, that time had rendered dull, and which had broad shades of black about its angles and faces. That of the chapel was fresher, and of a warmer tint; a change well suited to the greater delicacy of the ornaments.

The principal building is in the severer style of the Gothic, without, however, being one of its best specimens. It is comparatively plain, nor are the proportions faultless. The towers are twins, are far from being high, and to me they have since seemed to have a crowded appearance, or to be too near each other, a defect that sensibly lessens the grandeur of the north front. A few feet, more or less, in such a case, may carry the architect too much without, or too much within, the just proportions. I lay claim to very little science on the subject, but I have frequently observed since, that, to my own eye, (and the uninitiated can have no other criterion,) these towers, as seen from the parks, above the tops of the trees, have a contracted and pinched air.

But while the Abbey church itself is as plain as almost any similar edifice I remember, its great extent, and the noble windows and doors, rendered it to me, deeply impressive. On the other hand, the chapel is an exquisite specimen of the most elaborated ornaments of the style. All sorts of monstrosities have, at one period or another, been pressed into the service of the Gothic, such as lizards, toads, frogs, serpents, dragons, spitfires, and salamanders. There is, I believe, some typical connexion between these offensive objects, and the different sins. When well carved, properly placed, and not viewed too near, their effect is far from bad. They help to give the edifice its fretted appearance, or a look resembling that of lace. Various other features, which have been taken from familiar objects, such as parts of castellated buildings, port-cullises, and armorial bearings, help to make up the sum of the detail. On Henry VIIth’s chapel, toads, lizards, and the whole group of metaphorical sins are sufficiently numerous, without being offensively apparent, while miniature port-cullises, escutcheons, and other ornaments, give the whole the rich, and imaginative—almost fairy-like aspect,—which forms the distinctive feature of the most ornamented portions of the order. You have seen ivory work boxes from the east, that were cut and carved in a way to render them so very complicated, delicate and beautiful, that they please us without conveying any fixed forms to the mind. It would be no great departure from literal truth, were I to bid you fancy one of these boxes swelled to the dimensions of a church, the material changed to stone, and, after a due allowance for a difference in form, for the painted windows, and for the emblems, were I to add, that such a box would probably give you the best idea of a highly wrought Gothic edifice, that any comparison of the sort can furnish.