Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete

N >> Nathaniel Hawthorne >> Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete

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Visitors this morning. Mr. Ogden of Chicago, or somewhere in the Western
States, who arrived in England a fortnight ago, and who called on me at
that time. He has since been in Scotland, and is now going to London and
the Continent; secondly, the Captain of the Collins steamer Pacific,
which sails to-day; thirdly, an American shipmaster, who complained that
he had never, in his heretofore voyages, been able to get sight of the
American Consul.

Mr. Pearce's customary matutinal visit was unusually agreeable to-day,
inasmuch as he laid on my desk nineteen golden sovereigns and thirteen
shillings. It being the day of the steamer's departure, an unusual
number of invoice certificates had been required,--my signature to each
of which brings me two dollars.

The autograph of a living author has seldom been so much in request at so
respectable a price. Colonel Crittenden told me that he had received as
much as fifty pounds on a single day. Heaven prosper the trade between
America and Liverpool!

August 15th.--Many scenes which I should have liked to record have
occurred; but the pressure of business has prevented me from recording
them from day to day.

On Thursday I went, on invitation from Mr. B., to the prodigious steamer
Great Britain, down the harbor, and some miles into the sea, to escort
her off a little way on her voyage to Australia. There is an immense
enthusiasm among the English people about this ship, on account of its
being the largest in the world. The shores were lined with people to see
her sail, and there were innumerable small steamers, crowded with men,
all the way out into the ocean. Nothing seems to touch the English
nearer than this question of nautical superiority; and if we wish to hit
them to the quick, we must hit them there.

On Friday, at 7 P.M., I went to dine with the Mayor. It was a dinner
given to the Judges and the Grand Jury. The Judges of England, during
the time of holding an Assize, are the persons first in rank in the
kingdom. They take precedence of everybody else,--of the highest
military officers, of the Lord Lieutenants, of the Archbishops,--of the
Prince of Wales,--of all except the Sovereign, whose authority and
dignity they represent. In case of a royal dinner, the Judge would lead
the Queen to the table.

The dinner was at the Town Hall, and the rooms and the whole affair were
all in the most splendid style. Nothing struck me more than the footmen
in the city livery. They really looked more magnificent in their
gold-lace and breeches and white silk stockings than any officers of
state. The rooms were beautiful; gorgeously painted and gilded,
gorgeously lighted, gorgeously hung with paintings,--the plate was
gorgeous, and the dinner gorgeous in the English fashion.

After the removal of the cloth the Mayor gave various toasts, prefacing
each with some remarks,--the first, of course, the Sovereign, after which
"God save the Queen" was sung, the company standing up and joining in the
chorus, their ample faces glowing with wine, enthusiasm, and loyalty.
Afterwards the Bar, and various other dignities and institutions were
toasted; and by and by came the toast to the United States, and to me, as
their Representative. Hereupon either "Hail Columbia," or "Yankee
Doodle," or some other of our national tunes (but Heaven knows which),
was played; and at the conclusion, being at bay, and with no alternative,
I got upon my legs, and made a response. They received me and listened
to my nonsense with a good deal of rapping, and my speech seemed to give
great satisfaction; my chief difficulty being in not knowing how to pitch
my voice to the size of the room. As for the matter, it is not of the
slightest consequence. Anybody may make an after-dinner speech who will
be content to talk onward without saying anything. My speech was not
more than two or three inches long; and, considering that I did not know
a soul there, except the Mayor himself, and that I am wholly unpractised
in all sorts of oratory, and that I had nothing to say, it was quite
successful. I hardly thought it was in me, but, being once started, I
felt no embarrassment, and went through it as coolly as if I were going
to be hanged.

Yesterday, after dinner, I took a walk with my family. We went through
by-ways and private roads, and saw more of rural England, with its
hedge-rows, its grassy fields, and its whitewashed old stone cottages,
than we have before seen since our arrival.

August 20th.--This being Saturday, there early commenced a throng of
visitants to Rock Ferry. The boat in which I came over brought from the
city a multitude of factory-people. They had bands of music, and banners
inscribed with the names of the mills they belong to, and other devices:
pale-looking people, but not looking exactly as if they were underfed.
They are brought on reduced terms by the railways and steamers, and come
from great distances in the interior. These, I believe, were from
Preston. I have not yet had an opportunity of observing how they amuse
themselves during these excursions.

At the dock, the other day, the steamer arrived from Rock Ferry with a
countless multitude of little girls, in coarse blue gowns, who, as they
landed, formed in procession, and walked up the dock. These girls had
been taken from the workhouses and educated at a charity-school, and
would by and by be apprenticed as servants. I should not have conceived
it possible that so many children could have been collected together,
without a single trace of beauty or scarcely of intelligence in so much
as one individual; such mean, coarse, vulgar features and figures
betraying unmistakably a low origin, and ignorant and brutal parents.
They did not appear wicked, but only stupid, animal, and soulless. It
must require many generations of better life to wake the soul in them.
All America could not show the like.

August 22d.--A Captain Auld, an American, having died here yesterday, I
went with my clerk and an American shipmaster to take the inventory of
his effects. His boarding-house was in a mean street, an old dingy
house, with narrow entrance,--the class of boarding-house frequented by
mates of vessels, and inferior to those generally patronized by masters.
A fat elderly landlady, of respectable and honest aspect, and her
daughter, a pleasing young woman enough, received us, and ushered us into
the deceased's bedchamber. It was a dusky back room, plastered and
painted yellow; its one window looking into the very narrowest of
back-yards or courts, and out on a confused multitude of back buildings,
appertaining to other houses, most of them old, with rude chimneys of
wash-rooms and kitchens, the bricks of which seemed half loose.

The chattels of the dead man were contained in two trunks, a chest, a
sail-cloth bag, and a barrel, and consisted of clothing, suggesting a
thickset, middle-sized man; papers relative to ships and business, a
spyglass, a loaded iron pistol, some books of navigation, some charts,
several great pieces of tobacco, and a few cigars; some little plaster
images, that he had probably bought for his children, a cotton umbrella,
and other trumpery of no great value. In one of the trunks we found
about twenty pounds' worth of English and American gold and silver, and
some notes of hand, due in America. Of all these things the clerk made
an inventory; after which we took possession of the money and affixed the
consular seal to the trunks, bag, and chest.

While this was going on, we heard a great noise of men quarrelling in an
adjoining court; and, altogether, it seemed a squalid and ugly place to
live in, and a most undesirable one to die in. At the conclusion of our
labors, the young woman asked us if we would not go into another chamber,
and look at the corpse, and appeared to think that we should be rather
glad than otherwise of the privilege. But, never having seen the man
during his lifetime, I declined to commence his acquaintance now.

His bills for board and nursing amount to about the sum which we found in
his trunk; his funeral expenses will be ten pounds more; the surgeon has
sent in a bill of eight pounds, odd shillings; and the account of another
medical man is still to be rendered. As his executor, I shall pay his
landlady and nurse; and for the rest of the expenses, a subscription must
be made (according to the custom in such cases) among the shipmasters,
headed by myself. The funeral pomp will consist of a hearse, one coach,
four men, with crape hatbands, and a few other items, together with a
grave at five pounds, over which his friends will be entitled to place a
stone, if they choose to do so, within twelve months.

As we left the house, we looked into the dark and squalid dining-room,
where a lunch of cold meat was set out; but having no associations with
the house except through this one dead man, it seemed as if his presence
and attributes pervaded it wholly. He appears to have been a man of
reprehensible habits, though well advanced in years. I ought not to
forget a brandy-flask (empty) among his other effects. The landlady and
daughter made a good impression on me, as honest and respectable persons.

August 24th.--Yesterday, in the forenoon, I received a note, and shortly
afterwards a call at the Consulate from Miss H----, whom I apprehend to
be a lady of literary tendencies. She said that Miss L. had promised her
an introduction, but that, happening to pass through Liverpool, she had
snatched the opportunity to make my acquaintance. She seems to be a
mature lady, rather plain, but with an honest and intelligent face. It
was rather a singular freedom, methinks, to come down upon a perfect
stranger in this way,--to sit with him in his private office an hour or
two, and then walk about the streets with him, as she did; for I did the
honors of Liverpool, and showed her the public buildings. Her talk was
sensible, but not particularly brilliant nor interesting; a good, solid
personage, physically and intellectually. She is an English woman.

In the afternoon, at three o'clock, I attended the funeral of Captain
Auld. Being ushered into the dining-room of his boarding-house, I found
brandy, gin, and wine set out on a tray, together with some little
spicecakes. By and by came in a woman, who asked if I were going to the
funeral; and then proceeded to put a mourning-band on my hat,--a
black-silk band, covering the whole hat, and streaming nearly a yard
behind. After waiting the better part of an hour, nobody else appeared,
although several shipmasters had promised to attend. Hereupon, the
undertaker was anxious to set forth; but the landlady, who was arrayed in
shining black silk, thought it a shame that the poor man should be buried
with such small attendance. So we waited a little longer, during which
interval I heard the landlady's daughter sobbing and wailing in the
entry; and but for this tender-heartedness there would have been no tears
at all. Finally we set forth,--the undertaker, a friend of his, and a
young man, perhaps the landlady's son, and myself, in the black-plumed
coach, and the landlady, her daughter, and a female friend, in the coach
behind. Previous to this, however, everybody had taken some wine or
spirits; for it seemed to be considered disrespectful not to do so.

Before us went the plumed hearse, a stately affair, with a bas-relief of
funereal figures upon its sides. We proceeded quite across the city to
the Necropolis, where the coffin was carried into a chapel, in which we
found already another coffin, and another set of mourners, awaiting the
clergyman. Anon he appeared,--a stern, broad-framed, large, and
bald-headed man, in a black-silk gown. He mounted his desk, and read the
service in quite a feeble and unimpressive way, though with no lack of
solemnity. This done, our four bearers took up the coffin, and carried
it out of the chapel; but, descending the steps, and, perhaps, having
taken a little too much brandy, one of them stumbled, and down came the
coffin,--not quite to the ground, however; for they grappled with it, and
contrived, with a great struggle, to prevent the misadventure. But I
really expected to see poor Captain Auld burst forth among us in his
grave-clothes.

The Necropolis is quite a handsome burial-place, shut in by high walls,
so overrun with shrubbery that no part of the brick or stone is visible.
Part of the space within is an ornamental garden, with flowers and green
turf; the rest is strewn with flat gravestones, and a few raised
monuments; and straight avenues run to and fro between. Captain Auld's
grave was dug nine feet deep. It is his own for twelve months; but, if
his friends do not choose to give him a stone, it will become a common
grave at the end of that time; and four or five more bodies may then be
piled upon his. Every one seemed greatly to admire the grave; the
undertaker praised it, and also the dryness of its site, which he took
credit to himself for having chosen. The grave-digger, too, was very
proud of its depth, and the neatness of his handiwork. The clergyman,
who had marched in advance of us from the chapel, now took his stand at
the head of the grave, and, lifting his hat, proceeded with what remained
of the service, while we stood bareheaded around. When he came to a
particular part, "ashes to ashes, dust to dust," the undertaker lifted a
handful of earth, and threw it rattling on the coffin,--so did the
landlady's son, and so did I. After the funeral the undertaker's friend,
an elderly, coarse-looking man, looked round him, and remarked that "the
grass had never grown on the parties who died in the cholera year"; but
at this the undertaker laughed in scorn.

As we returned to the gate of the cemetery, the sexton met us, and
pointed to a small office, on entering which we found the clergyman, who
was waiting for his burial-fees. There was now a dispute between the
clergyman and the undertaker; the former wishing to receive the whole
amount for the gravestone, which the undertaker, of course, refused to
pay. I explained how the matter stood; on which the clergyman
acquiesced, civilly enough; but it was very strange to see the worldly,
business-like way in which he entered into this squabble, so soon after
burying poor Captain Auld.

During our drive back in the mourning-coach, the undertaker, his friend,
and the landlady's son still kept descanting on the excellence of the
grave,--"Such a fine grave,"--"Such a nice grave,"--"Such a splendid
grave,"--and, really, they seemed almost to think it worth while to die,
for the sake of being buried there. They deemed it an especial pity that
such a grave should ever become a common grave. "Why," said they to me,
"by paying the extra price you may have it for your own grave, or for
your family!" meaning that we should have a right to pile ourselves over
the defunct Captain. I wonder how the English ever attain to any
conception of a future existence, since they so overburden themselves
with earth and mortality in their ideas of funerals. A drive with an
undertaker, in a sable-plumed coach!--talking about graves!--and yet he
was a jolly old fellow, wonderfully corpulent, with a smile breaking out
easily all over his face,--although, once in a while, he looked
professionally lugubrious.

All the time the scent of that horrible mourning-coach is in my nostrils,
and I breathe nothing but a funeral atmosphere.

Saturday, August 27th.--This being the gala-day of the manufacturing
people about Liverpool, the steamboats to Rock Ferry were seasonably
crowded with large parties of both sexes. They were accompanied with two
bands of music, in uniform; and these bands, before I left the hotel,
were playing, in competition and rivalry with each other in the
coach-yard, loud martial strains from shining brass instruments. A prize
is to be assigned to one or to the other of these bands, and I suppose
this was a part of the competition. Meanwhile the merry-making people
who thronged the courtyard were quaffing coffee from blue earthen mugs,
which they brought with them,--as likewise they brought the coffee, and
had it made in the hotel.

It had poured with rain about the time of their arrival, notwithstanding
which they did not seem disheartened; for, of course, in this climate, it
enters into all their calculations to be drenched through and through.
By and by the sun shone out, and it has continued to shine and shade
every ten minutes ever since. All these people were decently dressed;
the men generally in dark clothes, not so smartly as Americans on a
festal day, but so as not to be greatly different as regards dress. They
were paler, smaller, less wholesome-looking and less intelligent, and, I
think, less noisy, than so many Yankees would have been. The women and
girls differed much more from what American girls and women would be on a
pleasure-excursion, being so shabbily dressed, with no kind of smartness,
no silks, nothing but cotton gowns, I believe, and ill-looking bonnets,--
which, however, was the only part of their attire that they seemed to
care about guarding from the rain. As to their persons, they generally
looked better developed and healthier than the men; but there was a woful
lack of beauty and grace, not a pretty girl among them, all coarse and
vulgar. Their bodies, it seems to me, are apt to be very long in
proportion to their limbs,--in truth, this kind of make is rather
characteristic of both sexes in England. The speech of these folks, in
some instances, was so broad Lancashire that I could not well understand
it.

A WALK TO BEBBINGTON.

Rock Ferry, August 29th.--Yesterday we all took a walk into the country.
It was a fine afternoon, with clouds, of course, in different parts of
the sky, but a clear atmosphere, bright sunshine, and altogether a
Septembrish feeling. The ramble was very pleasant, along the hedge-lined
roads in which there were flowers blooming, and the varnished holly,
certainly one of the most beautiful shrubs in the world, so far as
foliage goes. We saw one cottage which I suppose was several hundred
years old. It was of stone, filled into a wooden frame, the black-oak of
which was visible like an external skeleton; it had a thatched roof, and
was whitewashed. We passed through a village,--higher Bebbington, I
believe,--with narrow streets and mean houses all of brick or stone, and
not standing wide apart from each other as in American country villages,
but conjoined. There was an immense almshouse in the midst; at least, I
took it to be so. In the centre of the village, too, we saw a
moderate-sized brick house, built in imitation of a castle with a tower
and turret, in which an upper and an under row of small cannon were
mounted,--now green with moss. There were also battlements along the
roof of the house, which looked as if it might have been built eighty or
a hundred years ago. In the centre of it there was the dial of a clock,
but the inner machinery had been removed, and the hands, hanging
listlessly, moved to and fro in the wind. It was quite a novel symbol of
decay and neglect. On the wall, close to the street, there were certain
eccentric inscriptions cut into slabs of stone, but I could make no sense
of them. At the end of the house opposite the turret, we peeped through
the bars of an iron gate and beheld a little paved court-yard, and at the
farther side of it a small piazza, beneath which seemed to stand the
figure of a man. He appeared well advanced in years, and was dressed in
a blue coat and buff breeches, with a white or straw hat on his head.
Behold, too, in a kennel beside the porch, a large dog sitting on his
hind legs, chained! Also, close beside the gateway, another man, seated
in a kind of arbor! All these were wooden images; and the whole
castellated, small, village-dwelling, with the inscriptions and the queer
statuary, was probably the whim of some half-crazy person, who has now,
no doubt, been long asleep in Bebbington churchyard.

The bell of the old church was ringing as we went along, and many
respectable-looking people and cleanly dressed children were moving
towards the sound. Soon we reached the church, and I have seen nothing
yet in England that so completely answered my idea of what such a thing
was, as this old village church of Bebbington.

It is quite a large edifice, built in the form of a cross, a low peaked
porch in the side, over which, rudely cut in stone, is the date 1300 and
something. The steeple has ivy on it, and looks old, old, old; so does
the whole church, though portions of it have been renewed, but not so as
to impair the aspect of heavy, substantial endurance, and long, long
decay, which may go on hundreds of years longer before the church is a
ruin. There it stands, among the surrounding graves, looking just the
same as it did in Bloody Mary's days; just as it did in Cromwell's time.
A bird (and perhaps many birds) had its nest in the steeple, and flew in
and out of the loopholes that were opened into it. The stone framework
of the windows looked particularly old.

There were monuments about the church, some lying flat on the ground,
others elevated on low pillars, or on cross slabs of stone, and almost
all looking dark, moss-grown, and very antique. But on reading some of
the inscriptions, I was surprised to find them very recent; for, in fact,
twenty years of this climate suffices to give as much or more antiquity
of aspect, whether to gravestone or edifice, than a hundred years of our
own,--so soon do lichens creep over the surface, so soon does it blacken,
so soon do the edges lose their sharpness, so soon does Time gnaw away
the records. The only really old monuments (and those not very old) were
two, standing close together, and raised on low rude arches, the dates on
which were 1684 and 1686. On one a cross was rudely cut into the stone.
But there may have been hundreds older than this, the records on which
had been quite obliterated, and the stones removed, and the graves dug
over anew. None of the monuments commemorate people of rank; on only one
the buried person was recorded as "Gent."

While we sat on the flat slabs resting ourselves, several little girls,
healthy-looking and prettily dressed enough, came into the churchyard,
and began to talk and laugh, and to skip merrily from one tombstone to
another. They stared very broadly at us, and one of them, by and by, ran
up to U. and J., and gave each of them a green apple, then they skipped
upon the tombstones again, while, within the church, we heard them
singing, sounding pretty much as I have heard it in our pine-built New
England meeting-houses. Meantime the rector had detected the voices of
these naughty little girls, and perhaps had caught glimpses of them
through the windows; for, anon, out came the sexton, and, addressing
himself to us, asked whether there had been any noise or disturbance in
the churchyard. I should not have borne testimony against these little
villagers, but S. was so anxious to exonerate our own children that she
pointed out these poor little sinners to the sexton, who forthwith turned
them out. He would have done the same to us, no doubt, had my coat been
worse than it was; but, as the matter stood, his demeanor was rather
apologetic than menacing, when he informed us that the rector had sent
him.

We stayed a little longer, looking at the graves, some of which were
between the buttresses of the church and quite close to the wall, as if
the sleepers anticipated greater comfort and security the nearer they
could get to the sacred edifice.

As we went out of the churchyard, we passed the aforesaid little girls,
who were sitting behind the mound of a tomb, and busily babbling
together. They called after us, expressing their discontent that we had
betrayed them to the sexton, and saying that it was not they who made the
noise. Going homeward, we went astray in a green lane, that terminated
in the midst of a field, without outlet, so that we had to retrace a good
many of our footsteps.

Close to the wall of the church, beside the door, there was an ancient
baptismal font of stone. In fact, it was a pile of roughly hewn stone
steps, five or six feet high, with a block of stone at the summit, in
which was a hollow about as big as a wash-bowl. It was full of
rainwater.

The church seems to be St. Andrew's Church, Lower Bebbington, built in
1100.

September 1st.--To-day we leave the Rock Ferry Hotel, where we have spent
nearly four weeks. It is a comfortable place, and we have had a good
table and have been kindly treated. We occupied a large parlor,
extending through the whole breadth of the house, with a bow-window,
looking towards Liverpool, and adown the intervening river, and to
Birkenhead, on the hither side. The river would be a pleasanter object,
if it were blue and transparent, instead of such a mud-puddly hue; also,
if it were always full to its brine; whereas it generally presents a
margin, and sometimes a very broad one, of glistening mud, with here and
there a small vessel aground on it.