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Chapter XVII - PersonalChapter XVII - Personal
Chapter XVII - Personal
In these comments on an old journey now revised after seven busy years
have much changed men and things in England, I have abstained from reference
to persons, except in the last chapter, and in one or two cases where the fame
of the parties seemed to have given the public a property in all that
concerned them. I must further allow myself a few notices, if only as an
acknowledgment of debts that cannot be paid. My journeys were cheered by so
much kindness from new friends, that my impression of the island is bright
with agreeable memories both of public societies and of households: and, what
is nowhere better found than in England, a cultivated person fitly surrounded
by a happy home, "with honor, love, obedience, troops of friends," is of all
institutions the best. At the landing in Liverpool, I found my Manchester
correspondent awaiting me, a gentleman whose kind reception was followed by a
train of friendly and effective attentions which never rested whilst I
remained in the country. A man of sense and of letters, the editor of a
powerful local journal, he added to solid virtues an infinite sweetness and
bonhommie. There seemed a pool of honey about his heart which lubricated all
his speech and action with fine jets of mead. An equal good fortune attended
many later accidents of my journey, until the sincerity of English kindness
ceased to surprise. My visit fell in the fortunate days when Mr. Bancroft was
the American Minister in London, and at his house, or through his good
offices, I had easy access to excellent persons and to privileged places. At
the house of Mr. Carlyle, I met persons eminent in society and in letters. The
privileges of the Athenaeum and of the Reform Clubs were hospitably opened to
me, and I found much advantage in the circles of the "Geologic," the
"Antiquarian," and the "Royal Societies." Every day in London gave me new
opportunities of meeting men and women who give splendor to society. I saw
Rogers, Hallam, Macaulay, Milnes, Milman, Barry Cornwall, Dickens, Thackeray,
Tennyson, Leigh Hunt, D`Israeli, Helps, Wilkinson, Bailey, Kenyon, and
Forster: the younger poets, Clough, Arnold, and Patmore; and, among the men of
science, Robert Brown, Owen, Sedgwick, Faraday, Buckland, Lyell, De la Beche,
Hooker, Carpenter, Babbage, and Edward Forbes. It was my privilege also to
converse with Miss Baillie, with Lady Morgan, with Mrs. Jameson, and Mrs.
Somerville. A finer hospitality made many private houses not less known and
dear. It is not in distinguished circles that wisdom and elevated characters
are usually found, or, if found, not confined thereto; and my recollections of
the best hours go back to private conversations in different parts of the
kingdom, with persons little known. Nor am I insensible to the courtesy which
frankly opened to me some noble mansions, if I do not adorn my page with their
names. Among the privileges of London, I recall with pleasure two or three
signal days, one at Kew, where Sir William Hooker showed me all the riches of
the vast botanic garden; one at the Museum, where Sir Charles Fellowes
explained in detail the history of his Ionic trophy-monument; and still
another, on which Mr. Owen accompanied my countryman Mr. H. and myself through
the Hunterian Museum.
The like frank hospitality, bent on real service, I found among the great
and the humble, wherever I went; in Birmingham, in Oxford, in Leicester, in
Nottingham, in Sheffield, in Manchester, in Liverpool. At Edinburgh, through
the kindness of Dr. Samuel Brown, I made the acquaintance of De Quincey, of
Lord Jeffrey, of Wilson, of Mrs. Crowe, of the Messrs. Chambers, and of a man
of high character and genius, the short-lived painter, David Scott.
At Ambleside, in March, 1848, I was for a couple of days the guest of
Miss Martineau, then newly returned from her Egyptian tour. On Sunday
afternoon I accompanied her to Rydal Mount. And as I have recorded a visit to
Wordsworth, many years before, I must not forget this second interview. We
found Mr. Wordsworth asleep on the sofa. He was at first silent and
indisposed, as an old man suddenly waked, before he had ended his nap; but
soon became full of talk on the French news. He was nationally bitter on the
French: bitter on Scotchmen, too. No Scotchman, he said, can write English. He
detailed the two models, on one or the other of which all the sentences of the
historian Robertson are framed. Nor could Jeffrey nor the Edinburgh Reviewers
write English, nor can . . ., who is a pest to the English tongue.
Incidentally he added, Gibbon cannot write English. The Edinburgh Review wrote
what would tell and what would sell. It had however changed the tone of its
literary criticism from the time when a certain letter was written to the
editor by Coleridge. Mrs. W. had the editor`s answer in her possession.
Tennyson he thinks a right poetic genius, though with some affectation. He had
thought an elder brother of Tennyson at first the better poet, but must now
reckon Alfred the true one. . . . In speaking of I know not what style, he
said, "to be sure, it was the manner, but then you know the matter always
comes out of the manner." . . . He thought Rio Janeiro the best place in the
world for a great capital city. . . . We talked of English national character.
I told him, it was not creditable that no one in all the country knew anything
of Thomas Taylor, the Platonist, whilst in every American library his
translations are found. I said, if Plato`s Republic were published in England
as a new book to-day, do you think it would find any readers? - he
confessed, it would not: "And yet," he added after a pause, with that
complacency which never deserts a true-born Englishman, "and yet we have
embodied it all."
His opinions of French, English, Irish, and Scotch seemed rashly
formulized from little anecdotes of what had befallen himself and members of
his family, in a diligence or stagecoach. His face sometimes lighted up, but
his conversation was not marked by special force or elevation. Yet perhaps it
is a high compliment to the cultivation of the English generally, when we find
such a man not distinguished. He had a healthy look, with a weather-beaten
face, his face corrugated, especially the large nose.
Miss Martineau, who lived near him, praised him to me not for his poetry,
but for thrift and economy; for having afforded to his country-neighbors an
example of a modest household, where comfort and culture were secured without
any display. She said that, in his early housekeeping at the cottage where he
first lived, he was accustomed to offer his friends bread and plainest fare:
if they wanted anything more, they must pay him for their board. It was the
rule of the house. I replied that it evinced English pluck more than any
anecdote I knew. A gentleman in the neighborhood told the story of Walter
Scott`s staying once for a week with Wordsworth, and slipping out every day
under pretence of a walk, to the Swan Inn, for a cold cut and porter; and one
day passing with Wordsworth the inn, he was betrayed by the landlord`s asking
him if he had come for his porter. Of course, this trait would have another
look in London, and there you will hear from different literary men that
Wordsworth had no personal friend, that he was not amiable, that he was
parsimonious, &c. Landor, always generous, says that he never praised anybody.
A gentleman in London showed me a watch that once belonged to Milton, whose
initials are engraved on its face. He said, he once showed this to Wordsworth,
who took it in one hand, then drew out his own watch, and held it up with the
other, before the company, but on one making the expected remark, he put back
his own in silence. I do not attach much importance to the disparagement of
Wordsworth among London scholars. Who reads him well will know that in
following the strong bent of his genius, he was careless of the many, careless
also of the few, self-assured that he should "create the taste by which he
is to be enjoyed." He lived long enough to witness the revolution he had
wrought, and "to see what he foresaw." There are torpid places in his mind,
there is something hard and sterile in his poetry, want of grace and variety,
want of due catholicity and cosmopolitan scope: he had conformities to English
politics and traditions; he had egotistic puerilities in the choice and
treatment of his subjects; but let us say of him that, alone in his time, he
treated the human mind well, and with an absolute trust. His adherence to his
poetic creed rested on real inspirations. The Ode on Immortality is the high -
water mark which the intellect has reached in his age. New means were
employed, and new realms added to the empire of the muse, by this courage.
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