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 he 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.
March 27th. – I attended court to day, at St. George's Hall, with my wife, Mr. Bright, and Mr. Channing, sitting in the High Sheriff's seat. It was the civil side, and Mr. Justice Cresswell presided. The lawyers, as far as aspect goes, seemed to me inferior to an American bar, judging from their countenances, whether as intellectual men or gentlemen. Their wigs and gowns do not impose on the spectator, though they strike him as an imposition. Their date is past. Mr. Warren, of the "Ten Thousand a Year," was in court, – a pale, thin, intelligent face, evidently a nervous man, more unquiet than anybody else in court, – always restless in his seat, whispering to his neighbors, settling his wig, perhaps with an idea that people single him out.
St. George's Hall – the interior hall itself, I mean – is a spacious, lofty, and most rich and noble apartment, and very satisfactory. The pavement is made of mosaic tiles, and has a beautiful effect.
April 7th. – I dined at Mr. J. P. Heywood's on Thursday, and met there Mr. and Mrs. – of Smithell's Hall. The Hall is an old edifice of some five hundred years, and Mrs. – says there is a bloody footstep at the foot of the great staircase. The tradition is that a certain martyr, in Bloody Mary's time, being examined before the occupant of the Hall, and committed to prison, stamped his foot, in earnest protest against the injustice with which he was treated. Blood issued from his foot, which slid along the stone pavement, leaving a long footmark, printed in blood. And there it has remained ever since, in spite of the scrubbings of all succeeding generations. Mrs. – spoke of it with much solemnity, real or affected. She says that they now cover the bloody impress with a carpet, being unable to remove it. In the History of Lancashire, which I looked at last night, there is quite a different account, – according to which the footstep is not a bloody one, but is a slight cavity or inequality in the surface of the stone, somewhat in the shape of a man's foot with a peaked shoe. The martyr's name was George Marsh. He was a curate, and was afterwards burnt. Mrs. – asked me to go and see the Hall and the footmark; and as it is in Lancashire, and not a great way off, and a curious old place, perhaps I may.
April 12th. – The Earl of – , whom I saw the other day at St. George's Hall, has a somewhat elderly look, – a pale and rather thin face, which strikes one as remarkably short, or compressed from top to bottom. Nevertheless, it has great intelligence, and sensitiveness too, I should think, but a cold, disagreeable expression. I should take him to be a man of not very pleasant temper, – not genial. He has no physical presence nor dignity, yet one sees him to be a person of rank and consequence. But, after all, there is nothing about him which it need have taken centuries of illustrious nobility to produce, especially in a man of remarkable ability, as Lord – certainly is. S – , who attended court all through the Hapgood trial, and saw Lord – for hours together every day, has come to conclusions quite different from mine. She thinks him a perfectly natural person, without any assumption, any self-consciousness, any scorn of the lower world. She was delighted with his ready appreciation and feeling of what was passing around him, – his quick enjoyment of a joke, – the simplicity and unaffectedness of his emotion at whatever incidents excited his interest, – the genial acknowledgment of sympathy, causing him to look round and exchange glances with those near him, who were not his individual friends, but barristers and other casual persons. He seemed to her all that a nobleman ought to be, entirely simple and free from pretence and self-assertion, which persons of lower rank can hardly help bedevilling themselves with. I saw him only for a very few moments, so cannot put my observation against hers, especially as I was influenced by what I had heard the Liverpool people say of him.
I do not know whether I have mentioned that the handsomest man I have seen in England was a young footman of Mr. Heywood's. In his rich livery, he was a perfect Joseph Andrews.
In my Romance, the original emigrant to America may have carried away with him a family secret, whereby it was in his power, had he so chosen, to have brought about the ruin of the family. This secret he transmits to his American progeny, by whom it is inherited throughout all the intervening generations. At last, the hero of the Romance comes to England, and finds, that, by means of this secret, he still has it in his power to procure the downfall of the family. It would be something similar to the story of Meleager, whose fate depended on the firebrand that his mother had snatched from the flames.
April 24th. – On Saturday I was present at a dejeuner on board the Donald McKay; the principal guest being Mr. Layard, M. P. There were several hundred people, quite filling the between decks of the ship, which was converted into a saloon for the occasion. I sat next to Mr. Layard, at the head of the table, and so had a good opportunity of seeing and getting acquainted with him. He is a man in early middle age, – of middle stature, with an open, frank, intelligent, kindly face. His forehead is not expansive, but is prominent in the perceptive regions, and retreats a good deal. His mouth is full, – I liked him from the first. He was very kind and complimentary to me, and made me promise to go and see him in London.
It would have been a very pleasant entertainment, only that my pleasure in it was much marred by having to acknowledge a toast, in honor of the President. However, such things do not trouble me nearly so much as they used to do, and I came through it tolerably enough. Mr. Layard's speech was the great affair of the day. He speaks with much fluency (though he assured me that he had to put great force upon himself to speak publicly), and, as he warms up, seems to engage with his whole moral and physical man, – quite possessed with what he has to say. His evident earnestness and good faith make him eloquent, and stand him instead of oratorical graces. His views of the position of England and the prospects of the war were as dark as well could be; and his speech was exceedingly to the purpose, full of common-sense, and with not one word of clap-trap. Judging from its effect upon the audience, he spoke the voice of the whole English people, – although an English Baronet, who sat next below me, seemed to dissent, or at least to think that it was not exactly the thing for a stranger to hear. It concluded amidst great cheering. Mr. Layard appears to be a true Englishman, with a moral force and strength of character, and earnestness of purpose, and fulness of common-sense, such as have always served England's turn in her past successes; but rather fit for resistance than progress. No doubt, he is a good and very able man; but I question whether he could get England out of the difficulties which he sees so clearly, or could do much better than Lord Palmerston, whom he so decries.
April 25th. – Taking the deposition of sailors yesterday, in a case of alleged ill-usage by the officers of a vessel, one of the witnesses was an old seaman of sixty. In reply to some testimony of his, the captain said, "You were the oldest man in the ship, and we honored you as such." The mate also said that he never could have thought of striking an old man like that. Indeed, the poor old fellow had a kind of dignity and venerableness about him, though he confessed to having been drunk, and seems to have been a mischief-maker, what they call a sea-preacher, – promoting discontent and grumbling. He must have been a very handsome man in his youth, having regular features of a noble and beautiful cast. His beard was gray; but his dark hair had hardly a streak of white, and was abundant all over his head. He was deaf, and seemed to sit in a kind of seclusion, unless when loudly questioned or appealed to. Once he broke forth from a deep silence thus, "I defy any man!" and then was silent again. It had a strange effect, this general defiance, which he meant, I suppose, in answer to some accusation that he thought was made against him. His general behavior throughout the examination was very decorous and proper; and he said he had never but once hitherto been before a consul, and that was in 1819, when a mate had ill-used him, and, "being a young man then, I gave him a beating," – whereupon his face gleamed with a quiet smile, like faint sunshine on an old ruin. "By many a tempest has his beard been shook"; and I suppose he must soon go into a workhouse, and thence, shortly, to his grave. He is now in a hospital, having, as the surgeon certifies, some ribs fractured; but there does not appear to have been any violence used upon him aboard the ship of such a nature as to cause this injury, though he swears it was a blow from a rope, and nothing else. What struck me in the case was the respect and rank that his age seemed to give him, in the view of the officers; and how, as the captain's expression signified, it lifted him out of his low position, and made him a person to be honored. The dignity of his manner is perhaps partly owing to the ancient mariner, with his long experience, being an oracle among the forecastle men.