Passages from the French and Italian Notebooks Part 24

Mr. B------ now conducted us to his residence, which stands a little beyond the outskirts of the city, on the declivity of a hill, and in so windy a spot that, as he a.s.sured me, the very plants are blown out of the ground. He pointed to two maimed trees whose tops were blown off by a gale two or three years since; but the foliage still covers their shortened summits in summer, so that he does not think it desirable to cut them down.

In America, a man of Mr. B------'s property would take upon himself the state and dignity of a millionaire. It is a blessed thing in England, that money gives a man no pretensions to rank, and does not bring the responsibilities of a great position.

We found three or four gentlemen to meet us at dinner,--a Mr. D------ and a Mr. B------, an author, having written a book called "The Philosophy of Necessity," and is acquainted with Emerson, who spent two or three days at his house when last in England. He was very kindly appreciative of my own productions, as was also his wife, next to whom I sat at dinner. She talked to me about the author of "Adam Bede," whom she has known intimately all her life. . . . . Miss Evans (who wrote "Adam Bede") was the daughter of a steward, and gained her exact knowledge of English rural life by the connection with which this origin brought her with the farmers. She was entirely self-educated, and has made herself an admirable scholar in cla.s.sical as well as in modern languages. Those who knew her had always recognized her wonderful endowments, and only watched to see in what way they would develop themselves. She is a person of the simplest manners and character, amiable and unpretending, and Mrs. B------ spoke of her with great affection and respect. . . . .

Mr. B------, our host, is an extremely sensible man; and it is remarkable how many sensible men there are in England,--men who have read and thought, and can develop very good ideas, not exactly original, yet so much the product of their own minds that they can fairly call them their own.

February 18th.--. . . . This present month has been somewhat less dismal than the preceding ones; there have been some sunny and breezy days when there was life in the air, affording something like enjoyment in a walk, especially when the ground was frozen. It is agreeable to see the fields still green through a partial covering of snow; the trunks and branches of the leafless trees, moreover, have a verdant aspect, very unlike that of American trees in winter, for they are covered with a delicate green moss, which is not so observable in summer. Often, too, there is a twine of green ivy up and down the trunk. The other day, as J----- and I were walking to Whitnash, an elm was felled right across our path, and I was much struck by this verdant coating of moss over all its surface,--the moss plants too minute to be seen individually, but making the whole tree green. It has a pleasant effect here, where it is the natural aspect of trees in general; but in America a mossy tree-trunk is not a pleasant object, because it is a.s.sociated with damp, low, unwholesome situations.

The lack of foliage gives many new peeps and vistas, hereabouts, which I never saw in summer.

March 17th.--J----- and I walked to Warwick yesterday forenoon, and went into St. Mary's Church, to see the Beauchamp chapel. . . . . On one side of it were some worn steps ascending to a confessional, where the priest used to sit, while the penitent, in the body of the church, poured his sins through a perforated auricle into this unseen receptacle. The s.e.xton showed us, too, a very old chest which had been found in the burial vault, with some ancient armor stored away in it. Three or four helmets of rusty iron, one of them barred, the last with visors, and all intolerably weighty, were ranged in a row. What heads those must have been that could bear such ma.s.siveness! On one of the helmets was a wooden crest--some bird or other--that of itself weighed several pounds. . . . .

April 23d.--We have been here several weeks. . . . . Had I seen Bath earlier in my English life, I might have written many pages about it, for it is really a picturesque and interesting city. It is completely sheltered in the lap of hills, the sides of the valley rising steep and high from the level spot on which it stands, and through which runs the muddy little stream of the Avon. The older part of the town is on the level, and the more modern growth--the growth of more than a hundred years--climbs higher and higher up the hillside, till the upper streets are very airy and lofty. The houses are built almost entirely of Bath stone, which in time loses its original buff color, and is darkened by age and coal-smoke into a dusky gray; but still the city looks clean and pure as compared with most other English towns. In its architecture, it has somewhat of a Parisian aspect, the houses having roofs rising steep from their high fronts, which are often adorned with pillars, pilasters, and other good devices, so that you see it to be a town built with some general idea of beauty, and not for business. There are Circuses, Crescents, Terraces, Parades, and all such fine names as we have become familiar with at Leamington, and other watering-places. The declivity of most of the streets keeps them remarkably clean, and they are paved in a very comfortable way, with large blocks of stone, so that the middle of the street is generally practicable to walk upon, although the sidewalks leave no temptation so to do, being of generous width. In many alleys, and round about the abbey and other edifices, the pavement is of square flags, like those of Florence, and as smooth as a palace floor. On the whole, I suppose there is no place in England where a retired man, with a moderate income, could live so tolerably as at Bath; it being almost a city in size and social advantages; quite so, indeed, if eighty thousand people make a city,--and yet having no annoyance of business nor spirit of worldly struggle. All modes of enjoyment that English people like may be had here; and even the climate is said to be milder than elsewhere in England. How this may be, I know not; but we have rain or pa.s.sing showers almost every day since we arrived, and I suspect the surrounding hills are just about of that inconvenient height, that keeps catching clouds, and compelling them to squeeze out their moisture upon the included valley. The air, however, certainly is preferable to that of Leamington. . . . .

There are no antiquities except the abbey, which has not the interest of many other English churches and cathedrals. In the midst of the old part of the town stands the house which was formerly Beau Nash's residence, but which is now part of the establishment of an ale-merchant. The edifice is a tall, but rather mean-looking, stone building, with the entrance from a little side court, which is so c.u.mbered with empty beer-barrels as hardly to afford a pa.s.sage. The doorway has some architectural pretensions, being pillared and with some sculptured devices--whether lions or winged heraldic monstrosities I forget--on the pediment. Within, there is a small entry, not large enough to be termed a hall, and a staircase, with carved bal.u.s.trade, ascending by angular turns and square landing-places. For a long course of years, ending a little more than a century ago, princes, n.o.bles, and all the great and beautiful people of old times, used to go up that staircase, to pay their respects to the King of Bath. On the side of the house there is a marble slab inserted, recording that here he resided, and that here he died in 1767, between eighty and ninety years of age. My first acquaintance with him was in Smollett's "Roderick Random," and I have met him in a hundred other novels.

His marble statue is in a niche at one end of the great pump-room, in wig, square-skirted coat, flapped waistcoat, and all the queer costume of the period, still looking ghost-like upon the scene where he used to be an autocrat. Marble is not a good material for Beau Nash, however; or, if so, it requires color to set him off adequately. . . . .

It is usual in Bath to see the old sign of the checker-board on the doorposts of taverns. It was originally a token that the game might be played there, and is now merely a tavern-sign.

LONDON.

31 Hertford Street, Mayfair, May 16th, 1860.--I came hither from Bath on the 14th, and am staying with my friends, Mr. and Mrs. Motley. I would gladly journalize some of my proceedings, and describe things and people; but I find the same coldness and stiffness in my pen as always since our return to England. I dined with the Motleys at Lord Dufferin's, on Monday evening, and there met, among a few other notable people, the Honorable Mrs. Norton, a dark, comely woman, who doubtless was once most charming, and still has charms, at above fifty years of age. In fact, I should not have taken her to be greatly above thirty, though she seems to use no art to make herself look younger, and talks about her time of life, without any squeamishness. Her voice is very agreeable, having a sort of m.u.f.fled quality, which is excellent in woman. She is of a very cheerful temperament, and so has borne a great many troubles without being destroyed by them. But I can get no color into my sketch, so shall leave it here.

London, May 17th. [From a letter.]--Affairs succeed each other so fast, that I have really forgotten what I did yesterday. I remember seeing my dear friend, Henry Bright, and listening to him, as we strolled in the Park, and along the Strand. To-day I met at breakfast Mr. Field Talfourd, who promises to send you the photograph of his portrait of Mr.

Browning. He was very agreeable, and seemed delighted to see me again.

At lunch, we had Lord Dufferin, the Honorable Mrs. Norton, and Mr.

Sterling (author of the "Cloister Life of Charles V."), with whom we are to dine on Sunday.

You would be stricken dumb, to see how quietly I accept a whole string of invitations, and what is more, perform my engagements without a murmur.

A German artist has come to me with a letter of introduction, and a request that I will sit to him for a portrait in bas-relief. To this, likewise, I have a.s.sented! subject to the condition that I shall have my leisure.

The stir of this London life, somehow or other, has done me a wonderful deal of good, and I feel better than for months past. This is strange, for if I had my choice, I should leave undone almost all the things I do.

I have had time to see Bennoch only once.

[This closes the European Journal. After Mr. Hawthorne's return to America, he published "Our Old Home," and began a new romance, of which two chapters appeared in the Atlantic Monthly. But the breaking out of the war stopped all imaginative work with him, and all journalizing, until 1862, when he went to Maine for a little excursion, and began another journal, from which I take one paragraph, giving a slight note of his state of mind at an interesting period of his country's history.

--ED.]

West Gouldsborough, August 15th, 1862.--It is a week ago, Sat.u.r.day, since J----- and I reached this place, . . . . Mr. Barney S. Hill's.

At Hallowell, and subsequently all along the route, the country was astir with volunteers, and the war is all that seems to be alive, and even that doubtfully so. Nevertheless, the country certainly shows a good spirit, the towns offering everywhere most liberal bounties, and every able-bodied man feels an immense pull and pressure upon him to go to the war. I doubt whether any people was ever actuated by a more genuine and disinterested public spirit; though, of course, it is not unalloyed with baser motives and tendencies. We met a train of cars with a regiment or two just starting for the South, and apparently in high spirits. Everywhere some insignia of soldiers.h.i.+p were to be seen,-- bright b.u.t.tons, a red stripe down the trousers, a military cap, and sometimes a round-shouldered b.u.mpkin in the entire uniform. They require a great deal to give them the aspect of soldiers; indeed, it seems as if they needed to have a good deal taken away and added, like the rough clay of a sculptor as it grows to be a model. The whole talk of the bar-rooms and every other place of intercourse was about enlisting and the war, this being the very crisis of trial, when the voluntary system is drawing to an end, and the draft almost immediately to commence.

END OF VOL. II.