Passages From the English Notebooks, Volume 1.

N >> Nathaniel Hawthorne >> Passages From the English Notebooks, Volume 1.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27

November 9th.--I lent the above Frenchman a small sum; he advertised for
employment as a teacher; and he called this morning to thank me for my
aid, and says Mr. C------ has engaged him for his children, at a guinea a
week, and that he has also another engagement. The poor fellow seems to
have been brought to a very low ebb. He has pawned everything, even to
his last shirt, save the one he had on, and had been living at the rate
of twopence a day. I had procured him a chance to return to America, but
he was ashamed to go back in such poor circumstances, and so determined
to seek better fortune here. I like him better than I did,--partly, I
suppose, because I have helped him.

November 14th.--The other day I saw an elderly gentleman walking in Dale
Street, apparently in a state of mania; for as he limped along (being
afflicted with lameness) he kept talking to himself, and sometimes
breaking out into a threat against some casual passenger. He was a very
respectable-looking man; and I remember to have seen him last summer, in
the steamer, returning from the Isle of Man, where he had been staying at
Castle Mona. What a strange and ugly predicament it would be for a
person of quiet habits to be suddenly smitten with lunacy at noonday in a
crowded street, and to walk along through a dim maze of extravagances,--
partly conscious of then, but unable to resist the impulse to give way to
them! A long-suppressed nature might be represented as bursting out in
this way, for want of any other safety-valve.

In America, people seem to consider the government merely as a political
administration; and they care nothing for the credit of it, unless it be
the administration of their own political party. In England, all people,
of whatever party, are anxious for the credit of their rulers. Our
government, as a knot of persons, changes so entirely every four years,
that the institution has come to be considered a temporary thing.

Looking at the moon the other evening, little R----- said, "It blooms out
in the morning!" taking the moon to be the bud of the sun.

The English are a most intolerant people. Nobody is permitted, nowadays,
to have any opinion but the prevalent one. There seems to be very little
difference between their educated and ignorant classes in this respect;
if any, it is to the credit of the latter, who do not show tokens of such
extreme interest in the war. It is agreeable, however, to observe how
all Englishmen pull together,--how each man comes forward with his little
scheme for helping on the war,--how they feel themselves members of one
family, talking together about their common interest, as if they were
gathered around one fireside; and then what a hearty meed of honor they
award to their soldiers! It is worth facing death for. Whereas, in
America, when our soldiers fought as good battles, with as great
proportionate loss, and far more valuable triumphs, the country seemed
rather ashamed than proud of them.

Mrs. Heywood tells me that there are many Catholics among the lower
classes in Lancashire and Cheshire,--probably the descendants of
retainers of the old Catholic nobility and gentry, who are more numerous
in these shires than in other parts of England. The present Lord
Sefton's grandfather was the first of that race who became Protestant.

December 25th.--Commodore P------ called to see me this morning,--a
brisk, gentlemanly, offhand, but not rough, unaffected and sensible man,
looking not so elderly as he ought, on account of a very well made wig.
He is now on his return from a cruise in the East Indian seas, and goes
home by the Baltic, with a prospect of being very well received on
account of his treaty with Japan. I seldom meet with a man who puts
himself more immediately on conversable terms than the Commodore. He
soon introduced his particular business with me,--it being to inquire
whether I would recommend some suitable person to prepare his notes and
materials for the publication of an account of his voyage. He was good
enough to say that he had fixed upon me, in his own mind, for this
office; but that my public duties would of course prevent me from
engaging in it. I spoke of Herman Melville, and one or two others; but
he seems to have some acquaintance with the literature of the day, and
did not grasp very cordially at any name that I could think of; nor,
indeed, could I recommend any one with full confidence. It would be a
very desirable task for a young literary man, or, for that matter, for an
old one; for the world can scarcely have in reserve a less hackneyed
theme than Japan.

This is a most beautiful day of English winter; clear and bright, with
the ground a little frozen, and the green grass along the waysides at
Rock Ferry sprouting up through the frozen pools of yesterday's rain.
England is forever green. On Christmas day, the children found
wall-flowers, pansies, and pinks in the garden; and we had a beautiful
rose from the garden of the hotel grown in the open air. Yet one is
sensible of the cold here, as much as in the zero atmosphere of America.
The chief advantage of the English climate is that we are not tempted to
heat our rooms to so unhealthy a degree as in New England.

I think I have been happier this Christmas than ever before,--by my own
fireside, and with my wife and children about me,--more content to enjoy
what I have,--less anxious for anything beyond it in this life.

My early life was perhaps a good preparation for the declining half of
life; it having been such a blank that any thereafter would compare
favorably with it. For a long, long while, I have occasionally been
visited with a singular dream; and I have an impression that I have
dreamed it ever since I have been in England. It is, that I am still at
college,--or, sometimes, even at school,--and there is a sense that I
have been there unconscionably long, and have quite failed to make such
progress as my contemporaries have done; and I seem to meet some of them
with a feeling of shame and depression that broods over me as I think of
it, even when awake. This dream, recurring all through these twenty or
thirty years, must be one of the effects of that heavy seclusion in which
I shut myself up for twelve years after leaving college, when everybody
moved onward, and left me behind. How strange that it should come now,
when I may call myself famous and prosperous!--when I am happy, too!

January 3d, 1855.--The progress of the age is trampling over the
aristocratic institutions of England, and they crumble beneath it. This
war has given the country a vast impulse towards democracy. The nobility
will never hereafter, I think, assume or be permitted to rule the nation
in peace, or command armies in war, on any ground except the individual
ability which may appertain to one of their number, as well as to a
commoner. And yet the nobles were never positively more noble than now;
never, perhaps, so chivalrous, so honorable, so highly cultivated; but,
relatively to the rest of the world, they do not maintain their old
place. The pressure of the war has tested and proved this fact, at home
and abroad. At this moment it would be an absurdity in the nobles to
pretend to the position which was quietly conceded to them a year ago.
This one year has done the work of fifty ordinary ones; or, more
accurately, it has made apparent what has long been preparing itself.

January 6th.--The American ambassador called on me to-day and stayed a
good while,--an hour or two. He is visiting at Mr. William Browne's, at
Richmond Hill, having come to this region to bring his niece, who is to
be bride's-maid at the wedding of an American girl. I like Mr. ------.
He cannot exactly be called gentlemanly in his manners, there being a
sort of rusticity about him; moreover, he has a habit of squinting one
eye, and an awkward carriage of his head; hut, withal, a dignity in his
large person, and a consciousness of high position and importance, which
gives him ease and freedom. Very simple and frank in his address, he may
be as crafty as other diplomatists are said to be; but I see only good
sense and plainness of speech,--appreciative, too, and genial enough to
make himself conversable. He talked very freely of himself and of other
public people, and of American and English affairs. He returns to
America, he says, next October, and then retires forever from public
life, being sixty-four years of age, and having now no desire except to
write memoirs of his times, and especially of the administration of Mr.
Polk. I suggested a doubt whether the people would permit him to retire;
and he immediately responded to my hint as regards his prospects for the
Presidency. He said that his mind was fully made up, and that he would
never be a candidate, and that he had expressed this decision to his
friends in such a way as to put it out of his own power to change it. He
acknowledged that he should have been glad of the nomination for the
Presidency in 1852, but that it was now too late, and that he was too
old,--and, in short, he seemed to be quite sincere in his nolo
episcopari; although, really, he is the only Democrat, at this moment,
whom it would not be absurd to talk of for the office. As he talked, his
face flushed, and he seemed to feel inwardly excited. Doubtless, it was
the high vision of half his lifetime which he here relinquished. I
cannot question that he is sincere; but, of course, should the people
insist upon having him for President, he is too good a patriot to refuse.
I wonder whether he can have had any object in saying all this to me. He
might see that it would be perfectly natural for me to tell it to General
Pierce. But it is a very vulgar idea,--this of seeing craft and
subtlety, when there is a plain and honest aspect.

January 9th.--I dined at Mr. William Browne's (M. P.) last, evening with
a large party. The whole table and dessert service was of silver.
Speaking of Shakespeare, Mr. ------ said that the Duke of Somerset, who
is now nearly fourscore, told him that the father of John and Charles
Kemble had made all possible research into the events of Shakespeare's
life, and that he had found reason to believe that Shakespeare attended a
certain revel at Stratford, and, indulging too much in the conviviality
of the occasion, he tumbled into a ditch on his way home, and died there!
The Kemble patriarch was an aged man when he communicated this to the
Duke; and their ages, linked to each other; would extend back a good way;
scarcely to the beginning of the last century, however. If I mistake
not, it was from the traditions of Stratford that Kemble had learned the
above. I do not remember ever to have seen it in print,--which is most
singular.

Miss L---- has an English rather than an American aspect,--being of
stronger outline than most of our young ladies, although handsomer than
English women generally, extremely self-possessed and well poised without
affectation or assumption, but quietly conscious of rank, as much so as
if she were an Earl's daughter. In truth, she felt pretty much as an
Earl's daughter would do towards the merchants' wives and daughters who
made up the feminine portion of the party.

I talked with her a little, and found her sensible, vivacious, and
firm-textured, rather than soft and sentimental. She paid me some
compliments; but I do not remember paying her any.

Mr. J-----'s daughters, two pale, handsome girls, were present. One of
them is to be married to a grandson of Mr. ------, who was also at the
dinner. He is a small young man, with a thin and fair mustache, . . . .
and a lady who sat next me whispered that his expectations are 6,000
pounds per annum. It struck me, that, being a country gentleman's son,
he kept himself silent and reserved, as feeling himself too good for this
commercial dinner-party; but perhaps, and I rather think so, he was
really shy and had nothing to say, being only twenty-one, and therefore
quite a boy among Englishmen. The only man of cognizable rank present,
except Mr. ------ and the Mayor of Liverpool, was a Baronet, Sir Thomas
Birch.

January 17th.--S---- and I were invited to be present at the wedding of
Mr. J-------'s daughter this morning, but we were also bidden to the
funeral services of Mrs. G------, a young American lady; and we went to
the "house of mourning," rather than to the "house of feasting." Her
death was very sudden. I crossed to Rock Ferry on Saturday, and met her
husband in the boat. He said his wife was rather unwell, and that he had
just been sent for to see her; but he did not seem at all alarmed. And
yet, on reaching home, he found her dead! The body is to be conveyed to
America, and the funeral service was read over her in her house, only a
few neighbors and friends being present. We were shown into a darkened
room, where there was a dim gaslight burning, and a fire glimmering, and
here and there a streak of sunshine struggling through the drawn
curtains. Mr. G------ looked pale, and quite overcome with grief,--this,
I suppose, being his first sorrow,--and he has a young baby on his hands,
and no doubt, feels altogether forlorn in this foreign land. The
clergyman entered in his canonicals, and we walked in a little procession
into another room, where the coffin was placed.

Mr. G------ sat down and rested his head on the coffin: the clergyman
read the service; then knelt down, as did most of the company, and prayed
with great propriety of manner, but with no earnestness,--and we
separated.

Mr. G------ is a small, smooth, and pretty young man, not emphasized in
any way; but grief threw its awfulness about him to-day in a degree which
I should not have expected.

January 20th.--Mr. Steele, a gentleman of Rock Ferry, showed me this
morning a pencil-case formerly belonging to Dr. Johnson. It is six or
seven inches long, of large calibre, and very clumsily manufactured of
iron, perhaps plated in its better days, but now quite bare. Indeed, it
looks as rough as an article of kitchen furniture. The intaglio on the
end is a lion rampant. On the whole, it well became Dr. Johnson to have
used such a stalwart pencil-case. It had a six-inch measure on a part of
it, so that it must have been at least eight inches long. Mr. Steele
says he has seen a cracked earthen teapot, of large size, in which Miss
Williams used to make tea for Dr. Johnson.

God himself cannot compensate us for being born for any period short of
eternity. All the misery endured here constitutes a claim for another
life, and, still more, all the happiness; because all true happiness
involves something more than the earth owns, and needs something more
than a mortal capacity for the enjoyment of it.

After receiving an injury on the head, a person fancied all the rest of
his life that he heard voices flouting, jeering, and upbraiding him.

February 19th.--I dined with the Mayor at the Town Hall last Friday
evening. I sat next to Mr. W. J------, an Irish-American merchant, who
is in very good standing here. He told me that he used to be very well
acquainted with General Jackson, and that he was present at the street
fight between him and the Bentons, and helped to take General Jackson off
the ground. Colonel Benton shot at him from behind; but it was Jesse
Benton's ball that hit him and broke his arm. I did not understand him
to infer any treachery or cowardice from the circumstance of Colonel
Benton's shooting at Jackson from behind, but, suppose it occurred in the
confusion and excitement of a street fight. Mr. W. J------ seems to
think that, after all, the reconciliation between the old General and
Benton was merely external, and that they really hated one another as
before. I do not think so.

These dinners of the Mayors are rather agreeable than otherwise, except
for the annoyance, in my case, of being called up to speak to a toast,
and that is less disagreeable than at first. The suite of rooms at the
Town House is stately and splendid, and all the Mayors, as far as I have
seen, exercise hospitality in a manner worthy of the chief magistrates of
a great city. They are supposed always to spend much more than their
salary (which is 2,000 pounds) in these entertainments. The town
provides the wines, I am told, and it might be expected that they should
be particularly good,--at least, those which improve by age, for a
quarter of a century should be only a moderate age for wine from the
cellars of centuries-long institutions, like a corporate borough. Each
Mayor might lay in a supply of the best vintage he could find, and trust
his good name to posterity to the credit of that wine; and so he would be
kindly and warmly remembered long after his own nose had lost its
rubicundity. In point of fact, the wines seem to be good, but not
remarkable. The dinner was good, and very handsomely served, with
attendance enough, both in the hall below--where the door was wide open
at the appointed hour, notwithstanding the cold--and at table; some
being in the rich livery of the borough, and some in plain clothes.
Servants, too, were stationed at various points from the hall to the
reception-room; and the last one shouted forth the name of the entering
guest. There were, I should think, about fifty guests at this dinner.
Two bishops were present. The Bishops of Chester and New South Wales,
dressed in a kind of long tunics, with black breeches and silk stockings,
insomuch that I first fancied they were Catholics. Also Dr. McNeil, in a
stiff-collared coat, looking more like a general than a divine. There
were two officers in blue uniforms; and all the rest of us were in black,
with only two white waistcoats,--my own being one,--and a rare sprinkling
of white cravats. How hideously a man looks in them! I should like to
have seen such assemblages as must have gathered in that reception-room,
and walked with stately tread to the dining-hall, in times past, the
Mayor and other civic dignitaries in their robes, noblemen in their state
dresses, the Consul in his olive-leaf embroidery, everybody in some sort
of bedizenment,--and then the dinner would have been a magnificent
spectacle, worthy of the gilded hall, the rich table-service, and the
powdered and gold-laced servitors. At a former dinner I remember seeing
a gentleman in small-clothes, with a dress-sword; but all formalities of
the kind are passing away. The Mayor's dinners, too, will no doubt be
extinct before many years go by. I drove home from the Woodside Ferry in
a cab with Bishop Burke and two other gentlemen. The Bishop is nearly
seven feet high.

After writing the foregoing account of a civic banquet, where I ate
turtle-soup, salmon, woodcock, oyster patties, and I know not what else,
I have been to the News-room and found the Exchange pavement densely
thronged with people of all ages and of all manner of dirt and rags.
They were waiting for soup-tickets, and waiting very patiently too,
without outcry or disturbance, or even sour looks,--only patience and
meekness in their faces. Well, I don't know that they have a right to be
impatient of starvation; but, still there does seem to be an insolence of
riches and prosperity, which one day or another will have a downfall.
And this will be a pity, too.

On Saturday I went with my friend Mr. Bright to Otterpool and to Larkhill
to see the skaters on the private waters of those two seats of gentlemen;
and it is a wonder to behold--and it is always a new wonder to me--how
comfortable Englishmen know how to make themselves; locating their
dwellings far within private grounds, with secure gateways and porters'
lodges, and the smoothest roads and trimmest paths, and shaven lawns, and
clumps of trees, and every bit of the ground, every hill and dell, made
the most of for convenience and beauty, and so well kept that even winter
cannot cause disarray; and all this appropriated to the same family for
generations, so that I suppose they come to believe it created
exclusively and on purpose for them. And, really, the result is good and
beautiful. It is a home,--an institution which we Americans have not;
but then I doubt whether anybody is entitled to a home in this world, in
so full a sense.

The day was very cold, and the skaters seemed to enjoy themselves
exceedingly. They were, I suppose, friends of the owners of the grounds,
and Mr. Bright said they were treated in a jolly way, with hot luncheons.
The skaters practise skating more as an art, and can perform finer
manoeuvres on the ice, than our New England skaters usually can, though
the English have so much less opportunity for practice. A beggar-woman
was haunting the grounds at Otterpool, but I saw nobody give her
anything. I wonder how she got inside of the gate.

Mr. W. J------ spoke of General Jackson as having come from the same part
of Ireland as himself, and perhaps of the same family. I wonder whether
he meant to say that the General was born in Ireland,--that having been
suspected in America.

February 21st.--Yesterday two companies of work-people came to our house
in Rock Park, asking assistance, being out of work and with no resource
other than charity. There were a dozen or more in each party. Their
deportment was quiet and altogether unexceptionable,--no rudeness, no
gruffness, nothing of menace. Indeed, such demonstrations would not have
been safe, as they were followed about by two policemen; but they really
seem to take their distress as their own misfortune and God's will, and
impute it to nobody as a fault. This meekness is very touching, and
makes one question the more whether they have all their rights. There
have been disturbances, within a day or two, in Liverpool, and shops have
been broken open and robbed of bread and money; but this is said to have
been done by idle vagabonds, and not by the really hungry work-people.
These last submit to starvation gently and patiently, as if it were an
every-day matter with them, or, at least, nothing but what lay fairly
within their horoscope. I suppose, in fact, their stomachs have the
physical habit that makes hunger not intolerable, because customary. If
they had been used to a full meat diet, their hunger would be fierce,
like that of ravenous beasts; but now they are trained to it.

I think that the feeling of an American, divided, as I am, by the ocean
from his country, has a continual and immediate correspondence with the
national feeling at home; and it seems to be independent of any external
communication. Thus, my ideas about the Russian war vary in accordance
with the state of the public mind at home, so that I am conscious
whereabouts public sympathy is.

March 7th.--J----- and I walked to Tranmere, and passed an old house
which I suppose to be Tranmere Hall. Our way to it was up a hollow lane,
with a bank and hedge on each side, and with a few thatched stone
cottages, centuries old, their ridge-poles crooked and the stones
time-worn, scattered along. At one point there was a wide, deep well,
hewn out of the solid red freestone, and with steps, also hewn in solid
rock, leading down to it. These steps were much hollowed by the feet of
those who had come to the well; and they reach beneath the water, which
is very high. The well probably supplied water to the old cotters and
retainers of Tranmere Hall five hundred years ago. The Hall stands on
the verge of a long hill which stretches behind Tranmere and as far as
Birkenhead.

It is an old gray stone edifice, with a good many gables, and windows
with mullions, and some of them extending the whole breadth of the gable.
In some parts of the house, the windows seem to have been built up;
probably in the days when daylight was taxed. The form of the Hall is
multiplex, the roofs sloping down and intersecting one another, so as to
make the general result indescribable. There were two sun-dials on
different sides of the house, both the dial-plates of which were of
stone; and on one the figures, so far as I could see, were quite worn
off, but the gnomon still cast a shadow over it in such a way that I
could judge that it was about noon. The other dial had some half-worn
hour-marks, but no gnomon. The chinks of the stones of the house were
very weedy, and the building looked quaint and venerable; but it is now
converted into a farm-house, with the farm-yard and outbuildings closely
appended. A village, too, has grown up about it, so that it seems out of
place among modern stuccoed dwellings, such as are erected for tradesmen
and other moderate people who have their residences in the neighborhood
of a great city. Among these there are a few thatched cottages, the
homeliest domiciles that ever mortals lived in, belonging to the old
estate. Directly across the street is a Wayside Inn, "licensed to sell
wine, spirits, ale, and tobacco." The street itself has been laid out
since the land grew valuable by the increase of Liverpool and Birkenhead;
for the old Hall would never have been built on the verge of a public
way.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27