Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands Volume I Part 7

Coming home we met with an accident to the carriage which obliged us to get out and walk some distance. I was glad enough of it, because it gave me a better opportunity for seeing the country. We stopped at a cottage to get some rope, and a young woman came out with that beautiful, clear complexion which I so much admire here in England; literally her cheeks were like damask roses.

I told Isa I wanted to see as much of the interior of the cottages as I could; and so, as we were walking onward toward home, we managed to call once or twice, on the excuse of asking the way and distance. The exterior was very neat, being built of brick or stone, and each had attached to it a little flower garden. Isa said that the cottagers often offered them a slice of bread or tumbler of milk.

They have a way here of building the cottages two or three in a block together, which struck me as different from our New England manner, where, in the country, every house stands detached.

In the evening I went into Liverpool, to attend a party of friends of the antislavery cause. In the course of the evening, Mr. Stowe was requested to make some remarks. Among other things he spoke upon the support the free part of the world give to slavery, by the purchase of the produce of slave labor; and, in particular, on the great quant.i.ty of slave-grown cotton purchased by England; suggesting it as a subject for inquiry, whether this cannot be avoided.

One or two gentlemen, who are largely concerned in the manufacture and importation of cotton, spoke to him on the subject afterwards, and said it was a thing which ought to be very seriously considered. It is probable that the cotton trade of Great Britain is the great essential item which supports slavery, and such considerations ought not, therefore, to be without their results.

When I was going away, the lady of the house said that the servants were anxious to see me; so I came into the dressing room to give them, an opportunity.

While at Mr. C.'s, also, I had once or twice been called out to see servants, who had come in to visit those of the family. All of them had read Uncle Tom's Cabin, and were full of sympathy. Generally speaking, the servants seem to me quite a superior cla.s.s to what are employed in that capacity with us. They look very intelligent, are dressed with great neatness, and though their manners are very much more deferential than those of servants in our country, it appears to be a difference arising quite as much from self-respect and a sense of propriety as from servility. Every body's manners are more deferential in England than in America.

The next day was appointed to leave Liverpool. It had been arranged that, before leaving, we should meet the ladies of the Negroes' Friend Society, an a.s.sociation formed at the time of the original antislavery agitation in England. We went in the carriage with our friends Mr. and Mrs. E. Cropper. On the way they were conversing upon the labors of Mrs.

Chisholm, the celebrated female philanthropist, whose efforts for the benefit of emigrants are awakening a very general interest among all cla.s.ses in England. They said there had been hesitation on the part of some good people, in regard to cooperating with her, because she is a Roman Catholic.

It was agreed among us, that the great humanities of the present day are a proper ground on which all sects can unite, and that if any feared the extension of wrong sentiments, they had only to supply emigrant s.h.i.+ps more abundantly with the Bible. Mr. C. said that this is a movement exciting very extensive interest, and that they hoped Mrs. Chisholm would visit Liverpool before long.

The meeting was a very interesting one. The style of feeling expressed in all the remarks was tempered by a deep and earnest remembrance of the share which England originally had in planting the evil of slavery in the civilized world, and her consequent obligation, as a Christian nation, now not to cease her efforts until the evil is extirpated, not merely from her own soil, but from all lands.

The feeling towards America was respectful and friendly, and the utmost sympathy was expressed with her in the difficulties with which she is environed by this evil. The tone of the meeting was deeply earnest and religious. They presented us with a sum to be appropriated for the benefit of the slave, in any way we might think proper.

A great number of friends accompanied us to the cars, and a beautiful bouquet of flowers was sent, with a very affecting message from, a sick gentleman, who, from the retirement of his chamber, felt a desire to testify his sympathy.

Now, if all this enthusiasm for freedom and humanity, in the person of the American slave, is to be set down as good for nothing in England, because there are evils there in society which require redress, what then shall we say of ourselves? Have we not been enthusiastic for freedom in the person of the Greek, the Hungarian, and the Pole, while protecting a much worse despotism than any from which they suffer? Do we not consider it our duty to print and distribute the Bible in all foreign lands, when there are three millions of people among whom we dare not distribute it at home, and whom it is a penal offence even to teach to read it? Do we not send remonstrances to Tuscany, about the Madiai, when women are imprisoned in Virginia for teaching slaves to read? Is all this hypocritical, insincere, and impertinent in us? Are we never to send another missionary, or make another appeal for foreign lands, till we have abolished slavery at home? For my part, I think that imperfect and inconsistent outbursts of generosity and feeling are a great deal better than none. No nation, no individual is wholly consistent and Christian; but let us not in ourselves or in other nations repudiate the truest and most beautiful developments of humanity, because we have not yet attained perfection. All experience has proved that the sublime spirit of foreign missions always is suggestive of home philanthropies, and that those whose heart has been enlarged by the love of all mankind are always those who are most efficient in their own particular sphere.

LETTER III.

GLASGOW, April 16, 1853.

DEAR AUNT E.:--

You shall have my earliest Scotch letter; for I am sure n.o.body can sympathize in the emotions of the first approach to Scotland as you can.

A country dear to us by the memory of the dead and of the living; a country whose history and literature, interesting enough of itself, has become to us still more so, because the reading and learning of it formed part of our communion for many a social hour, with friends long parted from earth.

The views of Scotland, which lay on my mother's table, even while I was a little child, and in poring over which I spent so many happy, dreamy hours,--the Scotch ballads, which were the delight of our evening fireside, and which seemed almost to melt the soul out of me, before I was old enough to understand their words,--the songs of Burns, which had been a household treasure among us,--the enchantments of Scott,--all these dimly returned upon me. It was the result of them all which I felt in nerve and brain.

And, by the by, that puts me in mind of one thing; and that is, how much of our pleasure in literature results from its reflection on us from, other minds. As we advance in life, the literature which has charmed us in the circle of our friends becomes endeared to us from the reflected remembrance of them, of their individualities, their opinions, and their sympathies, so that our memory of it is a many-colored cord, drawn from many minds.

So in coming near to Scotland, I seemed to feel not only my own individuality, but all that my friends would have felt, had they been with me. For sometimes we seem to be encompa.s.sed, as by a cloud, with a sense of the sympathy of the absent and the dead.

We left Liverpool with hearts a little tremulous and excited by the vibration of an atmosphere of universal sympathy and kindness. We found ourselves, at length, shut from the warm adieus of our friends, in a snug compartment of the railroad car. The English cars are models of comfort and good keeping. There are six seats in a compartment, luxuriously cus.h.i.+oned and nicely carpeted, and six was exactly the number of our party. Nevertheless, so obstinate is custom that we averred at first that we preferred our American cars, deficient as they are in many points of neatness and luxury, because they are so much more social.

"Dear me," said Mr. S., "six Yankees shut up in a car together! Not one Englishman to tell us any thing about the country! Just like the six old ladies that made their living by taking tea at each other's houses."

But that is the way here in England: every arrangement in travelling is designed to maintain that privacy and reserve which is the dearest and most sacred part of an Englishman's nature. Things are so arranged here that, if a man pleases, he can travel all through England with his family, and keep the circle an unbroken unit, having just as little communication with any thing outside of it as in his own house.

From one of these sheltered apartments in a railroad car, he can pa.s.s to preengaged parlors and chambers in the hotel, with his own separate table, and all his domestic manners and peculiarities unbroken. In fact, it is a little compact home travelling about.

Now, all this is very charming to people who know already as much about a country as they want to know; but it follows from it that a stranger might travel all through England, from one end to the other and not be on conversing terms with a person in it. He may be at the same hotel, in the same train with people able to give him all imaginable information, yet never touch them at any practicable point of communion. This is more especially the case if his party, as ours was, is just large enough to fill the whole apartment.

As to the comforts of the cars, it is to be said, that for the same price you can get far more comfortable riding in America. Their first cla.s.s cars are beyond all praise, but also beyond all price; their second cla.s.s are comfortless, cus.h.i.+onless, and uninviting. Agreeably with our theory of democratic equality, we have a general car, not so complete as the one, nor so bare as the other, where all ride together; and if the traveller in thus riding sees things that occasionally annoy him, when he remembers that the whole population, from the highest to the lowest, are accommodated here together, he will certainly see hopeful indications in the general comfort, order, and respectability which prevail; all which we talked over most patriotically together, while we were lamenting that there was not a seventh to our party, to instruct us in the localities.

Every thing upon the railroad proceeds with systematic accuracy. There is no chance for the most careless person to commit a blunder, or make a mistake. At the proper time the conductor marches every body into their places and locks them in, gives the word, "All right," and away we go.

Somebody has remarked, very characteristically, that the starting word of the English is "all right," and that of the Americans "go ahead."

Away we go through Lancas.h.i.+re, wide awake, looking out on all sides for any signs of antiquity. In being thus whirled through English scenery, I became conscious of a new understanding of the spirit and phraseology of English poetry. There are many phrases and expressions with which we have been familiar from childhood, and which, we suppose, in a kind of indefinite way, we understand, which, after all, when we come on English ground, start into a new significance: take, for instance, these lines from L'Allegro:--

"Sometimes walking, not unseen, By hedge-row elms on hillocks green.

Straight mine eye hath caught new pleasures, While the landscape round it measures; Russet lawns and fallows gray, Where the nibbling flocks do stray; Mountains, on whose barren breast The laboring clouds do often rest; Meadows trim with daisies pied, Shallow brooks and livers wide: Towers and battlements it sees Bosom'd high in tufted trees."

Now, these hedge-row elms. I had never even asked myself what they were till I saw them; but you know, as I said in a former letter, the hedges are not all of them carefully cut; in fact many of them are only irregular rows of bushes, where, although the hawthorn is the staple element, yet firs, and brambles, and many other interlopers put in their claim, and they all grow up together in a kind of straggling unity; and in the hedges trees are often set out, particularly elms, and have a very pleasing effect.

Then, too, the trees have more of that rounding outline which is expressed by the word "bosomed." But here we are, right under the walls of Lancaster, and Mr. S. wakes me up by quoting, "Old John o' Gaunt, time-honored Lancaster."

"Time-honored," said I; "it looks as fresh as if it had been built yesterday: you do not mean to say that is the real old castle?"

"To be sure, it is the very old castle built in the reign of Edward III., by John of Gaunt."

It stands on the summit of a hill, seated regally like a queen upon a throne, and every part of it looks as fresh, and sharp, and clear, as if it were the work of modern times. It is used now for a county jail. We have but a moment to stop or admire--the merciless steam car drives on.

We have a little talk about the feudal times, and the old past days; when again the cry goes up,--

"O, there's something! What's that?"

"O, that is Carlisle."

"Carlisle!" said I; "what, the Carlisle of Scott's ballad?"

"What ballad?"

"Why, don't you remember, in the Lay of the Last Minstrel, the song of Albert Graeme, which has something about Carlisle's wall in every verse?

'It was an English, laydie bright When sun s.h.i.+nes fair on Carlisle wall, And she would marry a Scottish knight, For love will still be lord of all.'

I used to read this when I was a child, and wonder what 'Carlisle wall'

was."

Carlisle is one of the most ancient cities in England, dating quite back to the time of the Romans. Wonderful! How these Romans left their mark every where!

Carlisle has also its ancient castle, the lofty, ma.s.sive tower of which forms a striking feature of the town.

This castle was built by William Rufus. David, King of Scots, and Robert Bruce both tried their hands upon it, in the good old times, when England and Scotland were a mutual robbery a.s.sociation. Then the castle of the town was its great feature; castles were every thing in those days. Now the castle has gone to decay, and stands only for a curiosity, and the cotton factory has come up in its place. This place is famous for cottons and ginghams, and moreover for a celebrated biscuit bakery.